God’s Word for You

Philippians 4:6 Anxiety

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, April 20, 2026

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests to God.

In the context of the chapter, this verse connects without any break from the previous one, where the Apostle encouraged us to rejoice. How can we rejoice if we are anxious or worried about anything? And is worrying a sin? That isn’t how Jesus addresses it. Worry surely exists as an emotion, but just as there is a kind of sinful anger and a kind of righteous anger, so also there is a sinful worry and a righteous worry. A kind of righteous anxiety is a concern over the people of God, especially when they are in mortal danger. Here is where David says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts” (Psalm 139:21). But Paul is telling us to take that anxious concern, and lay it all at the feet of the Lord. Peter says, “Cast all your anxiety on the Lord because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

With almost all worry and anxiety there is a danger of losing confidence and trust in God. Then one has just worried oneself into unbelief! When we pray, do we think he behaves like we do, only half-listening, scrolling, keeping one eye on the big game rather than really paying attention to what we ask him for? This is not a God who is in a hurry, whose schedule is too full to give us a moment’s notice. This is our heavenly Father, who invites us to pray to him and to present our cares to him.

Here we should remember that Peter’s words, “Cast all your anxiety on him,” does not label all anxiety as evil. The Apostle says rather that we can and should take all of our anxiety and hand it over to God; to throw it all on his back, because he has the biggest shoulders, the strongest back. And he does indeed have literally and theologically all the time in the world for each of us and for each of our anxieties. This is the God who stopped the sun from moving when Joshua was fighting the Amorites from Gibeon to Aijalon (Joshua10:12-13). This is the God who made the sun move backwards: “The sun’s shadow moved backwards, ten steps higher on the stairway that it had just descended” (Isaiah 38:8, EHV). The Lord has all the time we need to listen to us, and to hear all of our troubles, worries, anxieties, and concerns. And he promises to help us. “When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul” (Psalm 94:19). Giving our anxieties over to God will increase our joy. “But,” someone might ask, “what if God won’t help me?” Then we point to the words of James: “You do not have because you do not ask God” (James 4:2). Therefore, ask.

This asking is prayer. Prayer is an act of worship in which we speak to God from our hearts. It is important to state, on account of a gross misunderstanding of the Word of God, that God does not speak to us or make his will known to us when we pray, but only through his inspired Word. Now, he can and does answer our prayers by carrying out what we have requested, but no one should ever say, “I was praying to God, and he said to me….” This is simply never promised or stated in Scripture, and if someone believes that God has spoken to them outside of his Word, such as whispering in their ear or making his words heard in our hearts in response to what they were praying, they are mistaken. They might have been misled by a false teacher, or they could even be in danger of listening to the words of a demon. What did Abraham say to the rich man? “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

Now, about prayer. Jesus says, “My Father will give you whatever you ask in my name” (John 16:23). And Peter says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12). So when we pray in faith, we know that God listens and he will answer us.

Paul calls for us to come to God in both prayer and petition. What is the difference? A petition is a request; it is something we ask God for. In the Lord’s Prayer, there are seven of these, beginning with “Hallowed be your name” and ending with “Deliver us from evil.” A prayer that is not a petition is usually a prayer of thanks, or of praise to God for his greatness and his glory. In a sense, the address and the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer are examples of these.

Is thanksgiving a separate form of prayer, or is it meant to accompany prayer and petition? The answer must be yes, it can be either of these things. Giving thanks to God can be a prayer all by itself, or it can and should accompany all of our other prayers.

Is it useful to categorize prayers? I am of two minds about this, both with concerns for Christian sanctified living. On the one hand, it doesn’t always help us to break everything down into “either this or that” in our way of living out our faith. If I need to stop and think to myself, “Wait, which kind of prayer should I pray?” before I pray, then is that helping my prayer? But on the other hand, to know that there are different kinds of prayers can be helpful, especially to those people who have not prayed as the head of a family, or as a leader in a group. If one person has usually only prayed for better commerce and another person has usually only prayed to bless a meal, then a little instruction about different prayers is in order and can be useful. Reading the Second Commandment and pondering Luther’s Small Catechism explanation may help: “Pray, praise, and give thanks.”

God wants us to pray to him in times of trouble (Psalm 50:15). He invites us to ask for anything we need (John 14:14). He wants us to use his name to tell other people about him, and this might take the forms of preaching or teaching (Acts 4:20), but could also be a prayer. And he invites us to pray to him in order to thank him for his good gifts: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (Psalm 118:1).

Should we pray for the dead, and do the dead pray for us? Let me say that I agree with Luther: If the dead might perhaps pray on our behalf, ‘Let’s permit them to pray!’ But there is no passage in the Scripture that suggests that they do. I would rather that my dear mother and my darling wife and our sweet little daughters enjoy their time in Paradise, singing God’s praises, living as spirits in God’s mansions, and running up and down on heaven’s green lawn than spending any of their glorious moments there worried about me down here.

As for the reverse, whether we should pray for the dead, there is no reason to pray for the disposition of their souls, for their judgment has already been declared at the moment of death (Luke 16:22-23). But I will confess that I do say prayers of thanks to God for my loved ones who have died and are in heaven. And when I console those who have lost a loved one, I modify such prayers to teach them how they might say, as Paul says, “A prayer with thanksgiving” for them. It goes something like this:

“Dear Lord, bless her spirit, already with you in heaven;
Watch over her body, waiting for the resurrection;
Bless her memory in our hearts. Amen.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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