“Be 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 surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
Tammy and I have talked about this many times. Prayer is a priority for us, but we know that we need to persevere in prayer more often.
I don’t think we’re alone in that. And I think it’s worth highlighting, because prayer is the one thing that feels like it should come naturally, and yet somehow it’s the first thing that gets crowded out. So this week, that’s exactly what we want to sit with together.
Paul wrote this letter from prison. That context matters. He shouldn’t be writing about rejoicing, and yet twice in the same breath he says, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. He is not out of his mind. He has arrived at a place where he understands that joy isn’t dependent on circumstances, it’s rooted in God, and the reminder of how God has come through time and time again.
And then he says something that I think we need to read slowly: be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
God wants us to bring all our cares to Him.
We have couples we walk with who are praying for wayward children. We know parents who have been cut off from their adult kids’ lives entirely and don’t know what to do with that. We have friends who prayed for a child for more than ten years, and just this week, we got a call that God answered that prayer. And we also just said goodbye to a dear friend who battled brain cancer for almost twenty years.
That’s life. Bitter and sweet, sometimes in the same week. And what God tells us to do with all of it, with every single bit of it, is pray.
Three things prayer does in a marriage
- It gives you somewhere to put what you can’t fix. There are things you will face in your marriage that you cannot resolve, cannot control, and cannot talk your way through. Prayer is not giving up. It’s giving it to the only One who can actually do something with it.
- It reminds you who you’re both standing before. Something shifts when a husband and wife kneel together, even just figuratively. You stop being on opposite sides of a problem, and you become two people on the same side, before the same God.
- It guards your heart in a way nothing else can. Paul says the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. That’s a military word. The kind of peace that comes through prayer stands watch over you; it keeps anxiety and bitterness and hopelessness from getting through the gate.
Pray this together
Father, we thank you that you tell us to cast all our cares upon you, because you care. We come before you today, not because we have it figured out, but because you invited us to. Guard our hearts and our minds with that peace that passes all understanding. Where we’ve been anxious, replace it with trust. Where we’ve been silent, give us courage to pray. And where we’ve been praying for a long time without an answer, remind us that you hear us, and that you are faithful. In Jesus’ name, amen.
