Text: Phil. 4: 6
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God”
Life is full of issues that will promote worry and anxiety. Whether at home, at work, at play, even when we listen to the news or read the newspaper we get enough dose of news, information, situations and circumstances that will give us our fair share of things to worry about daily. The fact that we have a very active mind that is capable of imagining the worst in all situations even to the point of blowing things out of proportion does not help matters. Worry and anxiety is bad because if not controlled it can lead to different health complications ranging from mild headache to outright insanity. Worst of all worry and anxiety can kill. Worry and anxiety does not give room for the mind to be settled and when the mind is not settled, performance whether at work or in business will be negatively impacted and if it not arrested on time, it can lead to job loss or failed business.
Jesus knowing the dangers inherent in worry and anxiety, Jesus condemned it and warned his disciples seriously against it in Matt. 6: 25-34. Jesus in this passage explained that worry and anxiety does not accomplish anything good neither does it produce the results we desire.
God is not pleased when His children are full of worry and are anxious about anything, a major reason for this is because worry and anxiety is evidence of lack of trust in God. When you as a child of God begin to worry about anything, what you are saying indirectly is that you do not trust God to handle the situation for you. How will you feel as a father or a mother, if after you assure your son that you will pay his school fees, you still find him going around the house looking sad, depressed and morose and when you demand to know what the problem is, he tells you that he is disturbed because he has not been able to pay his school fees, you certainly will not be happy with that child and you will likely reprimand him rather than console him, you are angry because after you have given assurance that you will pay his fees, you do not expect him to still be worried about it, unless if for some reason that child does not trust you to do as you have promised. In the same way God feels insulted when His children are worried about anything because that attitude is an indirect expression of lack of trust.
Our anchor text, Phil. 4: 6, gives us the cure or what I can call the antidote for worry. The cure is very simple and the simple cure here is to turn our worries into prayers. He says that rather than worry about anything, pray about everything, you will find that the more you pray the less you will worry and the reverse is also true that the less you pray, the more you will worry. If you desire to live a worry free life therefore, develop and maintain a lifestyle of prayer and you will find that with time all your worries will disappear.
Jubilee 2020 is a prayer based program and for the last 29 days we have essentially been praying, our prayer net has covered a number of issues and we give thanks to God who alone can answer prayers for the answers received already and for the ones that we will receive in the course of the year. By tomorrow Jubilee 2020 ends, but the end of Jubilee 2020 does not and should not signal the end of prayer in our lives. We should maintain the fire of prayer that we have received in the program and through it, we should develop the habit of prayer in case we have not done so already. We then use prayer fire as a weapon to defeat and totally eliminate worry and anxiety. How do you do this?
Whenever you find yourself worried about anything, get a jotter and biro and make a list of all the things you are worried about. Then begin to pray about them, one after the other, like a dream of the night you will just discover that worry and anxiety has disappeared finally in your life. That will be your testimony in Jesus name. Amen Shalom.
Prayer Points
1. Father, I praise you because you are able to take care of all my needs and to deliver from all circumstances, so I need not worry or be anxious about anything
2. Thank you Father, for giving me the weapon of prayer as an antidote to worry and anxiety
3. Father, please forgive me for the times that I have demonstrated lack of trust in you by giving room to worry and anxiety in my life.
4. Father, I break the yoke of worry and anxiety over my life and I ask for permanent restoration of everything that worry and anxiety has taken from me in Jesus name.
5. Father, please grant me the grace to develop and maintain a lifestyle of prayer through which I will be able to conquer every force seeking to push me back into the valley of worry and anxiety
