… and Supplication
Let’s look again at our study verse, Philippians 4:4-6 New American Standard (italics mine):
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, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Supplication G1162; in the Greek is: a petition, a request, seeking, asking. And later in the verse, it says to “let our requests be made known to God.” So God wants us to petition, ask, request Him for what we need. I have a little problem with this part of the verse, because doesn’t God already know our thoughts? So doesn’t He already know what we need? Psalms 139:4 King James Version says:
Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all!
So why do I need to ask Him, if He already knows what I am thinking? The thing about a request, is that you have to go to the person to make the request. It’s the difference between the request staying in your thoughts versus you going to God with your request. It’s about connecting to Him. He wants to connect with us. It’s about communicating with Him. He wants us to communicate with Him. It’s about our RELATIONSHIP with Him. He wants to build a relationship with us. To build a relationship with someone, you have to communicate with them and spend time with them.
There’s something about the process of turning our thoughts into requests and offering them up to God that helps us not be anxious. Psalms 139: 23 NASB gives us some more insight on this:
Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my anxious thoughts.
Thoughts H8312 in this verse actually means “disquieting thoughts” and its root means “divided in mind” which comes from “to disbranch”. Hmm. Remember that Jesus is the Vine and we are the branches (John 15:5). When we allow disquieting thoughts in, we are actually dis-branching ourselves from Jesus, in a sense disconnecting ourselves from Him. Anxiety is not abiding, not STAYING CONNECTED to the Vine, to Jesus.
So as we bring our requests to God, it connects us to Him, it builds our relationship with Him. We, the branches, are connected to Jesus, the Vine and this helps us not be anxious. So instead of mulling those anxious thoughts over and over, let’s turn to God and let Him know our requests.
LET’S TURN OUR WORRIES INTO PRAYERS.
In His Love,
Suzanne
Mom Morsels 