Today’s passage: Philippians 4:4–9
Focus verse: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6)
Does today’s passage sound familiar? It’s the same one as Day 9. Then we focused on verse four, which tells us to rejoice in the Lord.
Today we’ll focus on verse six, which tells us to not be anxious about anything and present our requests to God. We do this through prayer.
Regardless of the situation, we pray. Paul says that through prayer and petition, coupled with a thankful heart, we give our requests to God. Let’s break this down.
First, Paul tells us not to be anxious about anything. In short, we shouldn’t worry. We covered worry in Day 11 when we learned to seek God first. To not be anxious about anything means anything—whether big or small, overwhelming or trivial.
In every situation, we turn to God. This starts with prayer and petition.
Though we sometimes view prayer as a petition to God, in a broader sense, prayer is communicating with the Almighty.
Through our prayers we worship him. We confess our sins, praise his name, and offer thanksgiving. This is an addition to petitioning him. As a subset of prayer, a petition is to make a specific request to God.
As we make prayers and petitions for every situation, we should come to our Lord with thankful hearts. He made us. He loves us. And he saved us. He also sent us the Holy Spirit.
In addition, God gives us many provisions for our lives. As such, we have much to thank God for, but how often do we remember to do this?
With an attitude of thanksgiving, we present our requests to God. Doesn’t presenting our requests to God sound a lot like petition? It does.
It seems Paul wants to make sure we come to God with thankful hearts and not just a list of things we want him to do. Thankfulness is the framework for requesting God’s help.
As we pray in every situation, with thanksgiving, we give our anxiousness to Jesus. Therefore, as we move toward a new beginning in our lives, we shouldn’t be anxious about it.
Instead, we should pray with thankful hearts and give our concerns over to God.
As we do, we can stride forward with expectation and confidence, not in ourselves, but in our Lord.
Questions:
How well do we do at presenting our requests to God in every situation?
How often do we remember to thank him for all he’s done for us and is still doing?
Prayer: Jesus, we thank you for loving us and for saving us. We thank you for giving us a new beginning in you and through you. When anxious thoughts assault us, may we give every one of them over to you and wait upon you.
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Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront a status quo faith and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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