Worry & Faith

This devotion is written in the “SOAP” format.

SCRIPTURE

Philippians 4:6-9 NIV
⁶ Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. ⁷ Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

 ⁸ And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. ⁹ Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

OBSERVATION

Tell God everything and thank him for all he has done.

• Give it to God in prayer
• Express Thanksgiving (This is how you experience a peace that passes understanding and protect your heart.)
• Focus/Meditate on good stuff

APPLICATION

People, who worry, do not pray enough.  They need to learn how to pray with thanksgiving.  Worry is the opposite of the peace of God.  We speak about giving it to God.  This is a matter of trusting God to work out His will in a situation one is worried about.  Trust is hard.  We tend not to leave whatever we place in God’s hands alone because of a lack of trust.  Yes, but where does that distrust come from? 

The next instruction of Paul gives us a hint of where the distrust comes.  The lack of trust comes because we do not remember how God has been faithful in the past.  That is why the second instruction is to express thanksgiving for all God has done.  In order to leave whatever is troubling us in God’s hands we need to thank God for how He has proven himself trustworthy with our worries in the past.  Then and only then is our peace secure and God guards our hearts and minds. 

Even beyond learning how to give thanks we need to be intentional about focusing on good stuff.  Good stuff like truth, honor, rightness, purity, whatever is lovely or admirable anything excellent or worthy of praise.

PRAYER

        Dear Lord:

Help me to walk in such peace of mind.