The Wednesday Word
NO
WORRIES!
”Be
careful
(anxious)
for
nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of
God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus.”
-Philippians
4:6-7
What a wonderful scripture. It’s a pity that we
so often don’t believe it is there. An epidemic of worry and
anxiety seems to have invaded the homes and hearts of numerous
believers. Many followers of the Lord are now having sleepless
nights and anxious days.
The
word ‘careful’ is also translated “worry.” Worry,
according to the dictionary definition, means “to slay, kill or
injure by biting and shaking the throat" (as a dog or wolf
does), from Old English ‘wyrgan’ "to strangle.
‘Strangle!’
That’s what worry does to our faith.
But consider the
Lord Jesus, He could have worried about the Pharisees or Herod or the
Sadducees or Judas Iscariot or others of the disciples. He
could have worried about any number of things, but instead He prayed
about everything and worried about nothing. Think of the buildup to
Calvary. He knew what He was going to face on the cross, but He
prayed to His Father saying, “not
My
will, but Thine
be done.”
The
letter to the Philippians, from where we get our text, is one of the
most practical letters in the New Testament. Our verse says,
”Be
anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God ….”
(Philippians
4:6-7).
That’s as good a picture of Christ’s prayer life as we will ever
get.
Likewise, we are to worry about nothing; pray about
everything and be thankful for anything. Most of us will admit that
we worry. We know the Bible says it’s wrong, even sinful, but we do
it anyway. Let’s be encouraged to change our ways.
Instead of fretting, let’s worry about nothing; pray about
everything and be thankful for anything.
Look again
at Philippians 4:6. How much are we to worry about? …
“Nothing.”
Nothing is probably the most exclusive word there is in the English
language … it excludes everything. We are to worry about nothing
(NO THING). The reason we are to worry about no thing is
because we are to pray, like Jesus, about everything.
Years
ago, a widow asked the great preacher Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, “Do
you think we ought to pray about the little things in our lives?”
And Dr. Morgan, replied, “Madam, can you mention anything in your
life that is a big thing to God?”
The Lord wants us to bring
all to Him.
The opposite of NOTHING is EVERYTHING.
As believers, we need to get in the habit of bringing everything to
Him in prayer—excluding nothing.
Just
as nothing means no thing, so everything means every thing.
When
Paul says that a Christian is not to worry, he is not saying we need
to ignore reality. Paul doesn’t say we are to pretend difficulties
and challenges don’t exist. Instead, we need to move the things we
want to worry about into the realm of prayer.
A man
couldn’t sleep one night. He rolled and tossed, until his wife
finally asked him, “What is the matter? Why can’t you sleep?”
He said, “I owe the tax man $20,000 and the bill is due, and I
can’t pay it.” “Well,” his wife said, “Get up, get dressed,
go and tell the tax man you can’t pay him. Then come back and go to
sleep and let him stay awake.”
That’s the kind of
thing Paul is saying in Philippians 4:6-7. When we tell the Lord
everything, it becomes His problem. We have the right as His
children to go to Him in prayer and say, “This is something I can’t
handle” and then turn everything over to Him. As Luther used to
say; “Pray and let God worry!”
As believers, we are to
worry about nothing; pray about everything and be thankful for
anything.
And that’s the Gospel Truth!
-preacher D.G. Miles McKee
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