“Do not be anxious 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 surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” – Philippians 4:6-7.

HAVE NOT SOME of you felt clouds of anxiety and despair laying heavily over you before you get out of bed to face the day? Why does God permit such onslaughts? There can only be one answer: to train and discipline us in the art of prayer.

Someone recently had felt swamped by worry and fear the moment their eyes had awoken from sleep, but then powerfully interrupted by Truth came these words, “in everything by prayer…” God allows these ‘obstacles’ not to hinder us but to develop us in the grace of Jesus Christ. God is showing us to be constant in prayer, to learn the uninterrupted path of communion with Him, that everything and every situation is to be held up before Him. Anxiety occurs when God is not given access and abode into all our personal areas.

Prayer is literally the Christian breathing and God will discipline us and discipline us until it becomes as natural as breathing. It is none other than complete reliance on God, the abandoning of our self-sufficiency and pride. Have we come to realise that such pride is the very nature of falling from the glory of God? To sustain ourselves is not the way God created us; it is God Who keeps us and prayer keeps open such awareness.

God so desires that we bring absolutely everything before Him – no matter how insignificant or momentous – that would irritate us and mar our peace (the condition of mind that is consciously at one with God). It is the pathway of overcoming, the way by which we are made more than conquerors and the way such mountains are thrown into the sea. “In [and only through] everything by prayer” is the nature of walking by faith, where things look impossible.

Prayer is the realisation of Truth made actual in our circumstances, whether things change physically or spiritually. God will not have His Word ‘locked up’ in our heads but worked out through every sphere of our lives – then we become ‘epistles read of all men’ where our testimony becomes persuasive and not weak, authentic and not fake.

God knows it all beforehand and the whole purpose of bringing everything before God omniscient is to “stand and see the salvation of the Lord” and that never entails our passivity; genuine prayer will result in extra-sensitivity and obedience to God, the discerning of the slightest impressions of His Spirit.

Bringing all matters before God in prayer renders anxiety and fear powerless, for how can they stand when God is known to be GOD (Psalm 46:10)? Every power has to confess and bow the knee before the Name that is above all names and with his Name written on our foreheads and our names inscribed on the palms of His hands, we can have absolute confidence to boldly approach the throne of grace for whatever need arises, to come before our God Whose compassion fails not and Whose ear is ever open to our cries.