Worry is powerful, but Scripture says, “Do not be anxious.” Let’s study Philippians to find out how to experience freedom from anxiety!
The Call to Not Worry
Worry is one of life’s most intense emotions.
You worry when your kid doesn’t make it home from practice on time.
You worry when your doctor steps into the room with a grim look on his face.
You worry when the bills come in and you just don’t have the money to pay them all.
Worry is a part of life. It’s normal, expected, and – by all worldly standards – inevitable. Nothing can possibly defeat the steely grip of anxiety, right?
That’s not what Philippians tells us. In Chapter 4, we read the following:
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 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. Philippians 4:4-7, ESV
Indeed, nestled within this passage of Scripture is a command to not be anxious. Furthermore, the language is strengthened by the phrase “about anything.”
Don’t be anxious about ANYTHING. Your monetary woes? Don’t be anxious. Your health issues? Don’t be anxious. Your relationship or marriage troubles? Don’t be anxious.
Someone’s robbing your house? Don’t be anxious. (Well, not quite!)
When we read this text and seriously consider it, it sounds a bit ridiculous – even absurd. How is it even possible to avoid anxiety? Isn’t anxiety a normal human emotion? Does this text even mean what we think it means?
Let’s break it down and examine it.
Anxiety: a Word Study
Let us begin by re-visiting the passage where we are told to not worry.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. Philippians 4:6.
The keyword that we’ll be focusing in on here is that for anxious. The original Greek word for anxious (as used in this passage) is merimnaó.
Merimnaó literally means, “To be anxious; to care for.” But the word also had a somewhat deeper connotation. It is a derivative of the Greek word mérimna, which meant, “A part, as opposed to the whole.”
In its context, the “anxiety” spoken of here is that which essentially tears you apart.
Have you ever experienced the form of worry that threatens to rip you into pieces? Strong feelings of worry often make it difficult to concentrate. You go to work or school and cannot focus. Your mind is elsewhere. The feeling of dread within you makes it nearly impossible to live your life.
People quite literally often describe extreme worry or anxiety as “tearing them apart.” There’s even a saying in pop culture used to describe an especially terrifying event: That scared me to pieces!
Healthy Anxiety and Unhealthy Anxiety
There are anxieties and fears that are perfectly rational. The anxiety you feel in a moment where you’re being attacked, for example, is reasonable. It’s necessary. Such anxiety motivates you to defend yourself. It motivates you to take action.
Similar to this is the anxiety of wanting to protect your loved ones. It’s only natural (and healthy) to feel anxiety when your child gets hurt or doesn’t get home from her friend’s house at the proper time. This form of anxiety motivates us to protect and guard that which is important to us.
These are healthy anxieties. They can be God-honoring. It doesn’t matter how much faith you have in God; you’re still going to be fearful if you’re confronted by a mugger.
The anxieties pointed to in Philippians, on the other hand, are the anxieties and worries that add nothing to our lives. They only burden us and distract us from God. These are the worries of financial hardship, of relationship struggle, and of health woes.
For example: if you’re diagnosed with a serious medical condition, that would likely be a source of great anxiety to you. Yet consider this – does your worry do anything to help the situation? No.
If anything, it makes it worse.
The same can be said for tough financial situations. Are money problems going to cause stress and anxiety? Absolutely. But worrying about them won’t make things better.
To tie everything together, there is a type of worry (more on the level of fear or terror) that is healthy. However, much of the worries we experience on a day to day basis – the worries of how others see us, how much money we have, how our health is – are unhealthy. They are detrimental to our lives.
It is this worry that Philippians speaks to.
How to Not Worry
On the surface, the command to “not be anxious about anything” might sound ludicrous. ‘How is this even possible?’ you might ask.
The simple answer is this: it’s possible because of who God is.
This passage of Scripture is nothing less than a call to complete reliance upon our Heavenly Father.
Let’s re-examine it in its entirety.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 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. Philippians 4:4-7, ESV
Right away, we can begin to construct a “road map” that will get us to the destination of eliminating worry from our lives.
First off, we must REJOICE in the Lord.
A healthy lifestyle begins with a sincere and heartfelt worship of God. When we are in awe of who He is, the fears and cares of this world naturally begin to melt away.
Consider this: you’re a small child who is being picked on by a few other kids in your class. But then you see your father – a tall, muscular man – walking towards you. Wouldn’t your mood immediately lift? Do you really think that those other kids are going to keep making fun of you in front of him?
Quite simply, we need to have a high and right view of God. We need to see Him for who He is, and we need to turn that into worship and praise towards Him. This is a call to live a life of love for the Lord. God is great! Our battles may be tough, but when we fix our eyes upon who He is, we know that there will come a day when the fight is over.
Secondly, we must seek to be in proper fellowship with other Believers.
“Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.”
This is a call to be in fellowship with your brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a call to be someone who is reasonable and agreeable, willing to help out your brethren in Christ.
All too often, we have this picture of the “lone wolf Christian” who just goes his own way. He doesn’t attend church or make his faith known to others. He’s a child of God, yet he doesn’t associate much with other people.
Such a life is not going to help you not worry.
Instead, Scripture often calls us to seek fellowship with others. We’re called to bear one another’s burdens. We have to be vulnerable with each other. We need to seek to be in good relationship with others.
Even if we’re consumed with worries or doubts, we should still seek to serve and be served. As we do that, as we unite together with other believers, worry tends to evaporate.
Thirdly, we must be reliant upon Him!
This is probably the biggest step in being free from worry.
What is at the root of worries and anxieties? What is at the root of worrying about money, worrying about health, worrying if your friends really like you, worrying if you’re good enough?
The worry is that you’re not enough.
The worry is that you don’t have the power to accomplish what must be accomplished.
It’s focusing on you.
Worry is what often happens when we focus too much on ourselves. We put weight after weight on our backs, and we expect ourselves to be strong enough to carry them. We begin to worry when it seems that situations are beyond our control, when it seems that we could never possibly do enough.
The solution?
Focus your eyes off of yourself and onto God! This is the heart of today’s passage of Scripture, which says,
The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:5-6)
Do you see the language being used here? The Lord is at hand, do not be anxious… in EVERYTHING by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
This is a portrait of total reliance upon the providence of our Father. It’s almost as though the verse is saying, ‘Let down your guard. Stop striving. Stop carrying all the weight. Submit to God, thanking Him and humbling yourself before Him, and pray to Him for what you need.‘
The proper posture of a Christian before the Lord is one of humility and thanksgiving. Our proper posture is one of total submission to Him. That’s why this verse is telling us to bring everything before God in prayer, with supplication (humble requests) and thanksgiving (gratitude and praise).
We are to have a gentle and sweet relationship with our Father in Heaven. We are to owe Him thanksgiving and humility at all times. We are to bring everything before Him in prayer, waiting upon His strength before we make moves and decisions.
In practice, this means that we need to cease our strivings. We need to stop being concerned about whether or not we are enough. To put it very bluntly, we’re often NOT enough.
I can’t cure my friend’s cancer.
I can’t suddenly double my income.
I can’t will my marriage back into health.
But guess what? Although we cannot do these things, we have a God who can do all of them – and far, far more. Now, does this mean that God will always answer us by changing our situations?
No.
People often become perplexed when a family member falls ill and God won’t heal them. People begin to imagine that they have too little faith or that God doesn’t really care. But that’s not the issue. God is sovereign, and we cannot expect Him to always do what we want.
Look at the rest of the passage:
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7
Notice that there is nothing in this verse that tells us God will always answer us by changing our circumstances.
But there IS another promise, and that promise is this: you will have the peace of God.
If you go to God in humility and love, it’s still likely that He will not answer your prayer as you think He should. But that does not mean He’s silent or disinterested. Oftentimes, God is in the business of allowing trials in our lives so as to strengthen our own faith in Him!
God doesn’t promise deliverance from all earthly pain, but He does promise that you can be free of your worry. This Scripture is a promise that, if you have faith in Him and you’re submitting your life to Him and you’re devoting yourself to prayer, you WILL have the peace of God.
You DO have a way to “not be anxious about anything.”
It is possible.
But it requires faith. It requires faith that God is good and that He is true to His promises. It requires us to seek Him, love Him, and submit our lives to Him. Those who do that, though they may be afflicted with all the pains that life has to offer, will be guarded by a peace that is not from us.
This is a true statement that sums everything up nicely: peace begins where you end. When you let go of your grip on things, when you give everything up to God in faith, you will be blessed with peace.
That is certain.
Final Remarks on Anxiety and Worry
Today, you can have peace. That’s a hundred percent true. You are not guaranteed deliverance from your trial, whatever it may be. You are not guaranteed more money, more friends, better health, or nicer circumstances.
But if you have faith in the Lord, if you entrust yourself to Him in prayer and thanksgiving, you will have peace.
Before I draw this to a close, allow me to say this: sometimes, worries and anxieties seem to come upon us without cause. There are millions who suffer from diagnosed conditions such as anxiety and depression. These are people who, without a clearly-discernable cause, are embroiled in worry and discouragement.
Does this verse still apply to them? Yes!
You see, the whole premise behind “do not be anxious” is that of giving your cares and worries over to God. We live in a fallen world where anxiety is sometimes unavoidable. Do you think that a patient with terminal cancer never worries about his condition? Do you think that a parent with a sick child never worries about that child?
Not at all. Worry and anxieties still exist, even for Christians who yield their lives over to God. The feeling of worry is still there.
But in the midst of all the troubles, all the heartache, all the trials, there is a deep-seated sense of peace. There is a peace that goes beneath the worry.
If you struggle from depression or anxiety, God may choose to not deliver you from your illness (at least not immediately). But what He does promise is a sense of peace that transcends worry and goes beneath your anxiety.
Could you still get panic attacks? Yes. Could you (and will you) still have bad days? Yes. But there will be an overwhelming sense of peace beneath all of the storms of life, and that sense of peace is enough to keep you rooted in Christ.
This verse does not promise deliverance from all worry and all anxiety, but it does promise a peace that assures you, in your heart and your spirit, that all will turn out well. You can have this peace today. You can have a peace that “roots” you firmly in God, and allows you to bend (but not break) in the winds of worry and fear.
God bless!