Prayer

Have no anciety 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 passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:6-7).

What do these verses mean? What is “the peace of God that passes all understanding?” How does praying help? What do we usually do when we are worried or anxious about something? What should we do? These verses in Philippians raise some interesting questions for us to think about. However, they also give us the ultimate answer to all our questions and problems: prayer.

Prayer is how we communicate with God. We thank our heavenly Father and praise Him through prayer, and we ask Him for His help and direction in our lives. In this passage, Paul is concerned with this latter aspect of prayer. Quite often when we are worried or upset about something, we will talk about it with our friends or family. And they can help and support us in many ways. But just imagine if we could present our problems before someone who not only listened perfectly, but also knew exactly what we really needed and exactly what is best for us, someone who loves us more then we can even imagine and who knows us better than we know ourselves! Doesn’t that sound like the perfect confidant and helper? It is wonderful to be able to seek the help of those close to us, and undoubtedly a good idea to do so, but our first reaction in any situation should be to pray to our Father in heaven.

There are many examples in the Bible where faithful people in dire situations turn directly to God in prayer. We can think of Daniel who, even when threatened by lions, continued to pray, or Jonah, while inside the whale, realized that even there God could hear him.

Example of Abraham

There are countless other examples we could turn to, but one of my favorite ones is Abraham. In Genesis 18, God tells Abraham that he is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. We all know the ensuing conversation between Abraham and God. Abraham asks God if he would destroy the city if there were 50 righteous people in it. And God says no, He wouldn’t. So Abraham keeps going lower and lower until he gets down to only ten righteous. And still God says that He would not destroy it. (This might not seem like a prayer to us, but praying is communication with God.)

Now Abraham might have been genuinely concerned about the citizens of the plains, however his main concern, no doubt, was for his nephew Lot. And indeed when God failed to find even ten righteous people and commenced with the scheduled divine judgment, He answered Abraham’s prayer and saved Lot (Gen. 19:29). But did Abraham ever know? We do not know for certain, but it is possible that he never knew God had spared his nephew.

So what’s the point? In the story of Abraham and Lot, we get a really wonderful insight into how God works. God knew exactly what Abraham wanted, even though Abraham never specifically said it. And God answered his prayer, even though Abraham may have never known! God answers our prayers too. Although often He answers them in ways that we do not expect or even ever see! We pray to God from a human point of view, but His answers are divine!

Peace with God

This is where the peace of God comes from. It comes when we realize that God is all-powerful and entirely in control! He is completely loving and faithful! He answers our prayers, and He knows exactly what He is doing. It is sometimes so hard to see this from our hugely limited perspective; like that of Abraham in Genesis 18. But the writer to the Hebrews tells us in chapter 11: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Faith is believing that God answers our prayers even when we can’t see it. Faith is realizing that God is in control. Faith shows itself in our lives when we are able to present all of our problems to God in prayer; and once we have given them to God, not trying to take them back again!

Hannah

There is another Old Testament character that I think wonderfully portrays Philippians 4:6-7: Hannah. We can find her story in I Samuel 1. She is a vexed woman, taunted by her rival, not understood by her husband (verse 8 is a pretty classic “clueless guy” thing to say) and barren. But she approaches God and prays fervently!

She is so distraught and full of emotion that Eli mistakes her for a drunk!

But have a look at verse 18, “… So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.” All she had done was pray. Yet Hannah knew that God listens. She didn’t know what the answer to her prayer would be, whether it would be “yes” or “no.” But she did know that it would be the right answer. And just like Paul writes in Philippians, she went away peaceful.

We live in a world devoid of peace and full of anxious, worried people. But we do not have to conform to this pattern. Through prayer, like Hannah, and the firm belief that God hears and answers, like we saw with Abraham, we can be truly filled with “the peace of God, which passes all understanding.”