Finding Peace Through Prayer

Introduction

Good afternoon men. It is my pleasure to be a guest at Master’s Men. Thank you to Pastor Chris and Pastor Keith for this opportunity to preach here. I want to briefly share with you the life of John Bunyan. John Bunyan is most well known for writing his book, The Pilgrims Progress. What is often less known about him and yet arguably more admirable is his suffering for Christ. Bunyan became a believer in Christ in the early 1650’s and would begin preaching not long after his conversion. Bunyan was arrested for preaching in November of 1660 due to religious restrictions passed down from Charles II. Bunyan was originally sentenced to 3 months in prison but would end up staying in prison for 12 years. He could have walked free under one condition, that he swore to never preach again. Bunyan was determined to hold fast to his faith and his calling to preach the Word but there were times where he was tempted to anxiety and despair. He left behind his second wife Elizabeth and his four children, one of them who was blind. He said “The parting with my wife and four children hath often been to me in this place as pulling of flesh from my bones.” He would also question whether his decision to remain imprisoned was the right one or not. He said when questioning his decision, “I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family was like to meet with me being taken from them.”

12 Years of imprisonment for not recanting of preaching the Word of God. 12 years of anxiety and despair crouching at the door of Bunyan’s heart. The constant wrestling with his soul on whether or not he made the right decision. How did he not lose hope?

While someone can provide many answers to this question, i believe prayer was Bunyan’s bread and butter as he looked to God for everything and resisted the anxiety and despair.

Bunyan said this regarding prayer, “Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer.” What kind of man are you? What kind of man am i? Do we constantly turn to the Lord in prayer or do we succumb to the sin of anxiety?

Our passage tonight this afternoon will challenge our souls and fix our eyes in this main truth that we find in our passage and that is “The Peace that flows from Christ is found in prayer to Christ”! With that, please turn in your Bibles to Philippians 4. We will be focusing on verse 6 and 7 but for the sake of context, lets read starting from verse 1 and we will read through verse 7.

Philippians 4:1-7

1. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. 2. I entreat Euodia and i entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. 3. Yes, I ask you also, true companion, help these women, who have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. 4. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. 5. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6. do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus.

We will consider 3 headings from this passage so that we can resist anxiety and pursue Christ’s peace found in prayer.

A. Anxiety is Antithetical to the Christian Life.

According to the ADAA, that is The Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness affecting 40 million adults in the United States over the age of 18, every year. That is 18% of the population. As of 2022, there are 9 broad categories of anxiety a person could have. These range from General Anxiety Disorder to Obsessive Compulsive disorder and so on. The world were a pair of pants, anxiety is bursting at its seams. Anxiety seems to be everywhere and how does the world define and treat anxiety? The world says that someone who struggles with anxiety has one of 9 disorders. A malfunction mentally that is externally internal. Or often said another way, i don’t know where it came from but it is not my fault its in me. People are treated with medicine and therapy to manage the symptoms of anxiety. Multiple and multiple of billions of dollars are spent on medication to combat anxiety. According to drugs.com and no that is not a place to buy illegal drugs, there are at least 54 different medications to “treat” anxiety. Now don’t get me wrong, i am not against medication for real mental illnesses, i believe they do exist but from a Christian worldview general anxiety is not one. What does Paul say again in the beginning of verse 6? “do not be anxious about anything.”

Paul leaves no wiggle room in this command. Anything in the Greek means anything! Brothers in Christ, is there an area of your life that you are holding onto with an anxious heart? If there is, what are we saying to God? Anxiety at its foundation is a lack of trust in God. Primarily a lack of the sovereignty of God. An anxious heart whether it is anxious about something big or small says to God, “I dont trust you”. I am not a father, but i know there are some fathers in this room. Imagine if your child was going through a hard time and when you asked them what was wrong, they told you i don’t trust you. How would that make you feel? When we stop and think about the times when we are anxious, i don’t think any of us would verbally say that we don’t trust in God, but that is what our hearts say to him when we are anxious. The apostle Paul of all people could have said “I have a right to be anxious.” He is writing this letter from prison. He was previously beat and imprisoned at Philippi for preaching the gospel but he tells them earlier in the letter multiple times to rejoice!

Philippians 1:18-20. “Yes and i will rejoice, for i now that through your prayers and help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that i will not be ashamed but that with full of courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or death.”

Philippians 3:1 “Finally my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. And then of course in chapter 4 verse 4 he says it twice again.

Anxiety is antithetical to the Christian life. We cannot live a life that pleases God if we are anxious all of the time. Paul exhorts the Philippians and by extension us not to be anxious because there is a better, a righteous, and a sure remedy when anxiety creeps closely to us. That leads me into my second point.

B. Persistant Prayer

Prayer and Anxiety are completely opposite of one another. Just like how UCLA can have no part of USC or vice versa, Prayer and Anxiety cannot peacefully coexist within a Christian. Paul gives us the appropriate action to pursue instead of anxiety in the second part of verse 6. “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

How often do you pray when you are struggling with anxiety? I know that i have tended to overcome my anxiety by solving the things i am anxious about without going to the Lord in prayer. If you have experienced that as well, you’re not alone. I think often we try to put off being anxious without replacing it with what Paul so clearly tells us what the replacement is. It is prayer!

But this command to pray isn’t just reciting biblical truths off the top of our head, while that may help at times, if done without these qualifiers that Paul mentions, we are likely to fall back into being anxious.

Paul says by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

I have been thinking about the series our church has been going through on prayer. Examining the Lord’s prayer and learning how to rightly pray has been challenging for me and yet extremely helpful. I have noticed that my prayer life is often lopsided. I like the acronym ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I confess my sins and i ask God to provide things for me but my prayers often lack thanking him, truly thanking Him for all that he has given me. I often miss to give adoration to God for who He is, his character and his works in redemptive history.

These distinctions in this passage (Hand Motion demonstrating tighten) tighten our focus on what we are praying to God about, allowing no room for anxiety to creep in. When we are bringing everything to God in prayer, there shouldn’t be any anxious area of our hearts that we haven’t told him.

When we rightly ask God to supply our needs, we are showing our dependency on God to provide. Matthew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” When we seek the kingdom of God, there is an implied truth for us to consider that it is his kingdom that we are to seek, which from it, everything else flows from as he gives!

And ask we pray with thanksgiving we approach God in prayer with a heart that is joyfully indebted to the Father knowing that we deserve none of it. I think of the apostle Paul at the end of Romans 7 after Paul tells us of his wrestling within his inner man, he says i do the things i dont want to do, and i dont do the things that i do want to do, who will deliver me from this body of death? He says in verse 25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! What would our prayer life look if we started them out by thanking God for the things he has given us and for saving us through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord?

When we pray within these bounds that the Lord calls us to, i truly believe that it slows us down and helps us focus on what a gift it is that we are able to pray to an Almighty God. Paul ends verse 6 by saying make your requests known to God. What a gift that is in itself! A sinful saint like you and like me has the privilege to commune with the God of the universe.

See, when we are anxious, we forget what a gift it is to pray to the Lord. We are focused on how we feel and what we can do rather than how God feels when we disobey by being anxious.

Persistent Prayer that is rooted in thanksgiving and supplication is a Christians best defense against the temptation of anxiety.

We have covered that anxiety is antithetical to the life of a Christian, as well as the remedy of persistent prayer. Our third and final point to consider is

C. The Practicing the Peace of God

As if the gift of praying to our Heavenly Father wasn’t enough, Paul gives us the cherry on top of the cake with what he says in verse 7. Read with me again verse 7. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus.”

Paul mentions three distinct qualities of God’s peace in verse 7. First he says the peace of God which surpasses all understanding. How could John Bunyan choose to be imprisoned for his calling as a preacher when he could have said one sentence, recanting to preach and been set free? He lived out the peace of God within him. How could the Apostle Paul say rejoice multiple times throughout this letter while in prison? He lived out the Peace of God within him.

In Isaiah 26:3, it says, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”

Have you ever fallen into anxiety minutes after you prayed to God for the exact thing you were anxious for previously? I know i have and i do. But I believe what Bunyan and the Apostle Paul did so well, even when they were tempted to despair and anxiety, they stayed their minds on God and by doing so, God kept them in perfect peace, even when it made no sense to the people around them. Our response should be exactly like theirs. When we come to the Lord in prayer rightly, we must keep reminding our selves to keep our mind fixed on His promise of Peace, otherwise we will find ourselves right back where we started, wrestling with anxiety.

Paul concludes this verse with a “military term” that means to keep watch over our hearts and minds. We serve a Lord who is a protector. He is a good shepherd who protects his sheep and when we are filled with the peace of God, we are not filled with fear, anxiety, doubt, or any other emotion that will take our eyes off of the beauty of God! God Peace protects our entire being, this mention of heart and mind is meant to be understood as a full encompassing of guarding a believers being. He protects our minds and hearts so that we can not only think rightly, but act and obey rightly as well.

And of course this peace is found only in Christ Jesus. I thank God that all of us here believe in our one and only savior who provided all of this for us by dying on the cross to save us from our sins. Jesus says in John 14:27-28, Peace I leave with you; my peace i give to you. Not as the world gives do i give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Application.

1. Don’t be anxious. NEXT. When anxiety feels like it is bringing you to your knees, you’re in the perfect spot to pray.

2. Confess when you know you haven’t for being anxious. I believe anxiety amongst Christians today can be considired not a sin or a respectable sin, when you confess your anxiety to the Lord, i know from personal experience it usually helps me focus on how to ask rightly for supplication with thanksgiving.

3. Keep your mind perfused with the promise of God’s peace in your life! You have the peace of Christ which he gives to all those who are in him.

Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. Let us all be known as men who Pray!