The Invitation That Our Challenges Hold

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

Ever have a week where it just feels like everything falls apart? Let me tell you a story and see if you can relate:

A long, long time ago (actually it was just last week.) In a galaxy far away….(jk, it was our galaxy) Lived a girl named named Faith (nope, her name was Joy….the girl was me, this story is about me) had a beast of week. (Not Star Wars beastly, but beastly all the same)  In the midst of a pretty frustrating season, her family got some further frustrating news…. it seemed like challenges ran increasingly high and the grace to endure ran increasingly low. Trying to sleep proved elusive so all she could do was pray, ask God to move, and bring a breakthrough. At the end of herself the only thing that brought peace was worship, prayer and surrender. The next morning she woke up to find an infestation of fleas in her house, on her dog, on her clothes and that’s when the waterworks let loose. She sobbed, and played worship music and prayed and cleaned….she felt like everything including herself had fallen apart. However, being at the end of herself was the perfect setup for something miraculous to occur: God stepped in. A peace that passes all understanding descended. The cleaning finished, the onslaught of tears called a cease-fire and a divine stillness remained. In place of the stress, God’s love, mercy and presence took over. 

I wish I could say the story ended there and everything worked out fine…..but instead, the plot thickened (also we’re changing to first person now:) 

As I sat in peace, I got a message from my husband to call him, and found out he’d been let go from his job. What normally felt like a sucker punch to the gut, instead was an opportunity for the peace to remain, and it did. Only God could do that. When I stepped back from the entire situation one thing was abundantly clear- prayer and worship changes things…..it is an invitation for our hearts, our minds and our perspective to shift. 

We often read/think/pray through Philippians 4 and simply ask for a “peace that passes all understanding”…..but much like wanting to look at an open sky when we’re standing beneath a canopy of trees there are conditions  that need to be fulfilled- we need to shift ourselves and our perspective if we are going to stand beneath an unhindered view of the heavens. Here’s a few takeaways I hope will help:

1. We have to choose to replace worry with prayer (Phil. 4:6) There is LITERALLY nothing good that comes from worry. Not. A. Thing. We waste our time, our headspace and the opportunity situations present to trust God when we worry instead of pray. So let the hard, the challenging and the overwhelm drive you TO pray and TO your relationship with God, not away from it. 
2. Talk to God about it. Telling God what we need (Phil. 4:6) is not because God is unaware. It’s because he is allowing our circumstances to open a door that causes us to come to him with our burdens so he can unburden us. It’s an invitation to go deeper and to see your rescuer come to the rescue. Telling God what we need isn’t for his benefit, it is for ours and for our relationship with him to deepen when we are struggling. 
3. Thanking God, being grateful and worship hold a trifecta of goodness to opening up our relationship with God. When we are thankful/ grateful we are celebrating the goodness of God in our everyday life. When we worship, we are choosing in the midst of whatever we are going through to keep our eyes fixed on the one who sits on the throne. Putting God in his place at the center realigns everything around him. 

The result? Peace.(Phil. 4:7) His peace breaks in, and breaks through demonstrating that even when things don’t make sense, God holds us grounded and close to him until the storm stops, or the storm in us stops.

Regardless of where you’re at today friends….I’m praying for you and for peace. That even if you need to fall apart, ugly cry, or shift your perspective, God will meet you there, and fill you with more of him.

Much love,

Joy