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Peace in Anxious Times


In Paul's letter to the church at Philippi, he writes, "do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (4:6-7). We live in a  world full of anxious people. It only takes one click of the mouse or one turn of the newspaper or one push of the remote to see a litany of possible reasons to be paralyzed with anxiety. I recently went hunting with some other men, one of which was a gun salesman at a popular outdoorsman store and he told me that people have been so arrested by anxiety with the recent news of school shootings that they are flooding to him to purchase firearms to feel a little more safe. When people used to leave their doors unlocked at night, they now feel compelled to purchase state-of-the-art security systems. When school used to be seen as a safe place, parents now are afraid to leave their children at school for fear of some psychopath blowing a gasket. When the only terror used to be missing your flight, now people are frightened that they could be on board a plane with a terrorist. If you have always been the kind of parent who makes your child where kneepads and elbow-pads when they ride their back, these days you'd feel safer driving them around in an armored car. 

So how can Paul say so simply, "do not be anxious about anything"? Some say its because he was so separated from the dangerous world in which we live that he didn't have to worry about the prospect of nuclear war or school lockdowns. Those who argue Paul's distance from our dangerous world have distanced themselves from his so much that they don't know it. Paul was not writing this letter as he sat in a plush, leather Lazyboy, sipping some freshly brewed Starbucks, in a climate-controlled environment. Paul was writing his letter from a cold, stingy, rat-infested prison cell far away from any friends or family. And he wasn't writing to a group of people who had freedom of religion or freedom of speech, but to a people whose environment was utterly hostile to the message they proclaimed. Luke records in Acts 16 how Paul and Silas were beaten with rods and thrown in prison during their little trip to Philippi. You did not go door-to-door witnessing in Philippi and live to tell about it. The Philippians lived in an environment similar to many Middle Eastern believers today, whose lives and families are put at risk simply for owning a Bible. So how could Paul charge them to eliminate all anxiety from their lives? Because of what he promises in the next few phrases. The secret to peace in our anxious times is spelled out before us plain as day: whenever we are anxious, we must bring our anxieties to God's feet in prayer and leave them there. Peter calls believers in a similar situation of persecution to cast all their anxieties on Him who cares for them (1 Pet. 5:7). David also shares the secret to having peace in anxious times when he writes, "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never permit the righteous to be moved" (Ps. 55:22). 

Peace is available to all who would bring their problems to the One who is the only true problem-solver. If God so dealt with our ultimate problem of sin on the cross, then He too will deal with our other smaller problems if only we will loosen the grip of our anxieties and let Him have a look. When you learn to pray "in everything" and to pray "with thanksgiving", then you will begin to understand that relief is yours for the taking. Never let a problem come upon you without giving it to the Lord. Burdens are not meant for us to bear alone, but for us to drop them at the feet of the One who bore our greatest burden in Jesus. Paul writes elsewhere, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all; how will He not also, with Him, freely give us all things?" (Rom. 8:32). Do you need peace and stress-relief in ways a massage chair can't help you and a stress ball doesn't do it? Then learn to leave your problems at Heaven's doorstep. Only when you leave it to God to worry about will your problems seem small; then you can enjoy a life of peace in these very tense and anxious times.  

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