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.
—Philippians 4:6-7
It’s hard to forget that catchy refrain from the popular 80’s tune: “Don’t worry. Be happy.” A fun song? Sure. An easy thing to do? Yeah, right. Telling a worried person to just stop worrying is about as useful as telling a drowning person to just start swimming.
Most of us worry too much. Yet God’s desire is for us to hand Him our worries, and He tells us exactly how. Listen to Eugene Peterson’s masterful paraphrase of Paul’s words to the church in Philippi: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”
That last line is the key to the whole thing. When you make Jesus the priority in your life, He displaces the worry in your life. Notice Paul doesn’t simply say, “stop worrying.” He says replace it. Worry and prayer cannot occupy the same space at the same time, so the answer to worry is not to try harder to not worry; it’s to pray.
See the exchange Paul describes. You take the worry, and instead of turning it over and over in your mind, you reshape it into a petition and hand it to God. And what you get back is “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.” That’s a peace that doesn’t even make sense given your circumstances, a peace that stands guard, Paul says, over your heart and mind like a soldier at a post.
I don’t know what’s worrying you today. But I can tell you with full confidence that passing your concern on to the Lord will settle you down. So, forget the catchy refrain from the song. Do what Scripture actually tells you to do. Don’t worry. Pray.
And give Jesus His rightful place while you’re at it, because the two go together. When He is first, worry loses its grip. When He’s crowded down the list, worry rushes in to fill the space. A worried life and a Jesus-first life are heading in opposite directions.
So here is the simplest instruction in the world, and the hardest: the next time the worry rises, don’t fight it in your own head. Turn it into a prayer. Name the concern out loud to your Father, add your thanksgiving, and leave it in His hands.
Worry won’t rob you of a life of purpose when you learn to pray instead. Let Christ displace the worry at the very center of your life and let His peace stand guard there instead.
THE ANSWER TO WORRY ISN’T TRYING HARDER NOT TO WORRY, IT’S PRAYER. LET CHRIST DISPLACE THE WORRY AT THE CENTER OF YOUR LIFE.
