Introduction.

1. Ruth according to Boaz, had come to Bethlehem to find refuge under the wings of the God of Israel. Ruth 2:12. Finding refuge under the wings of the living God is a privilege offered by the Lord to all those who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The concept of finding refuge under the wings of the Lord is most comprehensively dealt with in Philippians 4:4-9. In this passage Paul lays down four exercises that believers need to continually do in order to abide under the wings of the Almighty and enjoy refuge. We have already looked at verses 4 and 5 and examined the exercises of ‘keeping your faith, trust, and love focused on the Lord', and ‘keeping your actions God centred.' The next exercise we need to look at is ‘keeping your prayer life alive' which is found in Philippians 4:6-7, ‘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 understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.' It is important to remind ourselves that the Apostle Paul lays out a process which begins at verse 4 and runs through to verse 9. You cannot isolate the third exercise from the two that precede it, nor the one that follows. As part of our everyday Christian lives we need to be diligent in doing all the exercises in the process Paul describes.
   
   
2. Without the on going exercises of keeping your faith, trust and love focused on the Lord and keeping your actions God-centred the instruction ‘be anxious for nothing' would seem impossible to implement. When Paul wrote to the church at Philippi Christians were hated by the Jews, mocked by the Greeks and despised by the Romans. Christians were severely persecuted for their faith. Some believers lost their employment, possessions, freedom, and family rather than deny that Jesus was their LORD and Saviour. Some believers loved the LORD more than life itself and were brutally put to death. Paul is in a Roman prison waiting the judgement of Caesar as to whether or not he should be executed. Living the Christian life in apostolic times from a human perspective was hard, dangerous and very stressful. Early Christians had to learn not to be overcome by the tyranny of their grim circumstances by finding refuge under the wings of the LORD. One of the key exercises in not being overcome by circumstances is to keep your prayer life alive by trusting the Lord. Paul is teaching believers to find refuge under the wings of the Lord when life is lived under extraordinary pressure. As most of us live life under pressure we need to examine the exercise of keeping our prayer lives alive in order to implement it in our daily routine.

1.  ‘Keeping your prayer life alive by trusting the Lord.'

1. One of the great enemies of true prayer is anxiety. Anxiety fixes our focus on circumstances and sets the imagination free to take our feelings on a roller-coaster ride as it plays through every possible scenario our circumstances allow. Anxiety pushes us to respond according to feelings rather than according to the word of God. We become victims of our thoughts and feelings; we are not really in control, but being taken for a ride by our hearts and this Paul tells us to avoid. We need to understand the injunction, ‘Be anxious about nothing', because if we misunderstand the Scriptures at this point we could easily place totally unrealistic demands on ourselves and tempt ourselves to doubt the genuineness of our faith. Listen to this injunction according to the New Living Translation, ‘Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.'  The translators can do this because we are very imprecise when we talk about our inner responses to difficult or threatening circumstances. We tend to overwork the term worry and use it to describe our state of care, concern, trouble, bother, upset, and anxiety. Anxiety usually means more than worry, its worry so intense that you are constantly distracted by the things you are thinking and feeling so you cannot concentrate on other things or go to sleep at night and this leaves you weary and worn out. Anxiety runs on the nervous energy of our feelings and so makes us uneasy and unsettled in heart and mind. If we love one another, we will care and be concerned about each other which is what the Lord requires. Paul is telling us not to allow circumstances ever to distract us to such a degree that we become dysfunctional.
   
   
2. Jesus in John 14:1 commands his disciples ‘Let not your hearts be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in me.' They were troubled because Jesus told them of his death and that Peter would deny him three times. Jesus could see that they were becoming agitated and unsettled, so he commands them to stop the process of their hearts and minds that would fill them with anxiety. Jesus tells them that the way to stop the process is to exercise their belief in God and himself. Our Lord knew that they were focussing on the circumstances in such a way that God's presence and activity were ignored. Jesus would have his disciples think about his circumstances in the light of God's involvement in his life and work. Jesus would have his disciples see their circumstances through the eyes-of-faith which the Lord has given them. When we become anxious we stop seeing things through the eyes-of-faith and give our feelings the right to interpret our circumstances and so we follow our hearts. We must avoid becoming anxious by trusting the Lord's presence and covenant promises.
   
   
3. Paul urges believers to fight anxiety by engaging in the privilege of prayer. Listen again to what Paul says, ‘Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.' We need to emphasize that prayer must never, never be seen as a coping mechanism, but always as an exercise of faith. Prayer is not to be used like worry-beads or as a means to make ourselves feel better. Paul does not tell believers, ‘Stop worrying, pull yourself together, get a grip on life.' That's the language of our British stoicism; the stiff-upper-lip attitude that was part of Victorian England. Following this advice demands a strong-will that allows you to repress your emotions and thoughts and carry on working. This coping technique is called repression and is bad psychology, and causes a condition that is much worse than anxiety. Another bit of homespun counsel that is often given is, ‘Don't worry; worry will not change your situation.'  This is absolutely true, it will not change my situation, but that does not address the problem of my troubled heart and pulsating mind. This advice is as much help as the lyrics of Bob Marley's song, ‘In every life we have some trouble, when you worry you make it double don't worry, be happy, don't worry, be happy now.'  You cannot simply switch from being worried to being happy, the way the Lord made us does not allow us to function in that way. The problem that needs to be addressed is the turmoil, fear and anticipation that are in the heart and mind. The way you think about your circumstances needs to change so that your runaway feelings can be brought to heel. You need to start by thinking about coming to your heavenly Father who loves you with an everlasting love and asking him to give you grace and mercy as he promised. (Hebrews 4:16)
   
   
4. When the apostle Paul tells believers to be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, he is not simply telling them to pray, but telling how to make their requests to God. Paul lays down a process. We are to start with prayer and move on to supplication and then on to thanksgiving and only then bring our requests to God. In order to understand the process we need to look at each of the terms Paul uses.
   
   
1. The first term Paul uses is ‘pray'. What does this term mean? Listen to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, ‘In the word ‘prayer' the idea of being face to face is inherent in the very word itself. You come into the presence of God and you realize the presence and you recollect the presence-that is the first step always.' Think about the living God that you are meeting with, who he is and your relationship to him. The God you meet with to talk about you problems is the LORD who is in total control of all things because he is absolutely sovereign over all things. You are meeting with God who knows all things and he is all wise. The Almighty God whom you meet with is a God of love, everything he does is according to perfect love. This LORD with whom you meet has loved you from before the foundation of the world and sent his only begotten Son to be a propitiation for your sins. No greater demonstration of love exists than the voluntary death of the incarnate Son of God to save his people. You as a believer not only know of the demonstration of love, but have experienced the reconciliation accomplish by his death. The Almighty God with whom you meet has loved you and adopted you as a son and given you the right to call him loving Father. You are face to face with your Father who promised to work all things for the good of those who love him. You may be thinking to yourself, ‘How can you to start thinking about these things when your mind is already overcrowded with thoughts about your problems and your heart is choking on feelings that are out of control?' You may even be thinking that what you are being asked to do is impossible, and you cannot do it. I would say two things to these objections. Firstly do not forget that you as a believer have the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, and according to Romans 8:26 he helps us in our weaknesses especially in our prayers. You do not do this in your own strength, but in the strength of Christ through the Holy Spirit. Secondly as we looked at what is encapsulated in the word 'prayer', you should have been able to say, ‘I do this everyday when I rejoice in the Lord.' Thinking about the God you meet with and your relationship with him ought to be an activity that you are already very familiar with. If you keep on rejoicing in the Lord, you keep your faith, trust and love focused on the Lord which is exactly what you need to do when you are being pressurized to become anxious about your circumstances.
   
   
2. The second term Paul uses is supplication. What does supplication mean? The word translated as supplication can also be translated as petition. What is a petition? According to the dictionary it is a formal written request addressed to an official person, or to an organized body, having power to grant it; specifically (Law), a supplication to government, in either of its branches, for the granting of a particular grace or right. There are three great lessons that this word teaches, firstly that a petition or supplication is something very specific, secondly a petition has been thought through and arguments in favour of it's granting have been formulated, and thirdly a petition is addressed to a person who is able, according to their authority and power to grant and implement the request. The task given here by the Apostle Paul is for you to think about your problem and ask four questions, ‘What do I want the Lord to do specifically? How will what I ask for glorify God? Do I truly believe that is able to do what I ask? Is my petition according to Biblical principles? In Exodus 32:11-13 we have Moses' petition asking the Lord not to destroy the rebellious people whom he had brought up out of the land of Egypt. Listen to Moses, ‘Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God, and said: "Lord, why does Your wrath burn hot against Your people whom You have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, and say, ‘He brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this harm to Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'
   
   
3. The third term Paul uses is thanksgiving. This is a very important part of the process that Paul sets out for those becoming anxious about their circumstances. Paul wants us to ask the following question, ‘Can you at this very moment give thanks to the Lord? Every believer no matter what their circumstances must be able to thank God for his salvation, and thank God for sending Jesus to redeem him. Thank God that your sins have been forgiven and that through his blood you are justified and adopted as a son. Why is thanksgiving important at this point? It is a reminder of God's great goodness towards you in Christ Jesus. That you are saved by grace is a fact and declares in the most authoritative way that God is for you and not against you. Knowing that God is for you, is very important for three reasons: firstly it encourages you to ask in confident faith, and secondly it prepares your heart and mind to submit to the will of God, and thirdly it humbles us. If we follow this process our requests to God will be well thought out and offered in confident faith. Not confidence in getting our request, but confident in the God we pray to.
   
   
5. Paul gives believers a wonderful promise in Philippians 4:7, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Whether your request is granted or declined the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. It is very important to note that the peace you have will not come from changed circumstances, but from God himself. Your circumstances may get worse, a lot worse but will not rob you of your peace, if you continue to keep your faith, trust and love focussed on the Lord by rejoicing in the Lord and keep your actions God's centred by letting you gentleness be know to all men. Your peace will remain because it comes from the Lord and from abiding under the wings of the Almighty. It is vital to emphasise that the peace you have comes from the Lord alone. If your peace is based on the hope of your request being granted, it is a false peace. If your peace is based on the fact that you feel better having poured out your heart to the Lord, it is a false peace and will soon shatter.
   
   
6. The promise of peace that the Lord gives is not linked to our circumstance, but to his grace. Our loving Father cares more about us than our circumstances, therefore he addresses the real problem of your heart and mind. Listen to God's undertaking; the peace of God...will guard you hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. The peace of God is not a feeling but an activity. The activity according to the NKJV is described as guarding your heart and mind. What does this mean? Listen to Lloyd-Jones' explanation, ‘What will happen is that the peace of God will walk around the ramparts and towers of our life. We are inside, and the activities of the heart and mind are producing those stresses and anxieties and strains from the outside. But the peace of God will keep them out and we ourselves inside will be at peace perfect peace. It is God that does it. It is not prayer, it is not some psychological mechanism.' God works with us in the circumstances to enable us to glorify him, and to bring our hearts and minds under control by his peace. The peace of God keeps us focussed on him and not on our circumstances. When your heart and mind are garrisoned by the peace of God your prayer life is kept alive, because you draw near to God in faith, trust and love and not because you are despairing about your circumstances.
   
   
7. Paul tells us that the peace of God surpasses all understanding. What does he mean by this phrase? I cannot better Lloyd-Jones' explanation, he says, ‘You cannot understand this peace, you cannot imagine it, you cannot even believe it in a sense, and yet it is happening and you are experiencing it and enjoying it. It is God's peace that is in Christ Jesus. What does he mean by that? He is telling us that this peace of God works by presenting the Lord Jesus Christ to us and reminding us about him.' This the Lord does by the internal witness of the Holy Spirit from the Word. The peace of God is the wonder of finding refuge under the wings of God. This is what Ruth trusted God to supply, God's peace that keeps the heart and mind filled with the glory and love of Christ Jesus our Lord. To keep your prayer life alive and prevent you from saying your prayers in a mechanical way you need the peace of God to guard your heart and mind. Could it be that your prayer life seems lifeless because you do not have the peace of God at work in you? If that is the case take time to give obedience to the command that says, rejoice in the Lord always.

Conclusion.

Listen again to Philippians 4:6-7, ‘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 understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.'  This is not an impossible injunction, but a call for believers to find refuge under the wings of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Abiding in the refuge of the Lord is a life of joy and peace irrespective of circumstances and it is God's will that all his children enjoy his grace in this way. Believers ought to greatly pity unbelievers because they do not have a real place of refuge and will not know true peace and joy in their lives. Give God praise that you are his son and he is your Father.