Brad's Bistro

⁴Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

-Paul was in prison when he wrote these words. Have there been times when you felt imprisoned, or trapped by circumstances you couldn’t control or get out of and found it difficult to feel joy?

-Verse 5 talks about making sure everyone can see how gentle you are. That word means well behaved, or not freaking out over your circumstances. Do you think that comes from being joyful, or helps you become joyful? (which comes first, the chicken or the egg?)

-In speaking of being gentle, Paul reminds us that the Lord is near. There are two things that could mean. Look at each interpretation and say how it is important to the idea of everyone seeing how gentle we are.

-According to verse 6, what are the things that it is OK to have some anxiety about?

-Instead of being worried, Paul says to pray. According to this verse, what is an important element that we must include with your prayers in order for them to relieve stress? How does that work?

-The implication in this verse is that the peace of God will protect us. Protect us from what? Does anxiety have harmful effects that we need to be guarded from?

-How can we make prayer with thanksgiving in all circumstances a part of our lives in a way that protects us from the results of anxiety?

The purpose of this talksheet is to see the relationship between praying with thanksgiving and relieving the effects of stress in our lives.

Discuss

Paul was in prison when he wrote these words. Have there been times when you felt imprisoned, or trapped by circumstances you couldn’t control or get out of and found it difficult to feel joy?

There shouldn’t be any difficulty about finding a situation that we feel like we can’t control and results in stress, family, work, school should all qualify at times.

· Verse 5 talks about making sure everyone can see how gentle you are. That word means well behaved, or not freaking out over your circumstances. Do you think that comes from being joyful, or helps you become joyful? (which comes first, the chicken or the egg?)

The answer to this doesn’t really come from the text, but it’s always an interesting question. Does our behavior come from our feelings, or can we behave our way into right feelings? In general, we need to behave well regardless of how we feel, because our emotions are very unstable and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, Scripture tells us that joy is always a possibility for us. In this passage Paul even makes it a command, so it must be available to us in all circumstances, if we just know how to access it.

· In speaking of being gentle, Paul reminds us that the Lord is near. There are two things that could mean. Look at each interpretation and say how it is important to the idea of everyone seeing how gentle we are.

The idea here has to do with judgment and the result is two-fold: We will be held to account for how we treat other people and what kind of witness we have been for our faith, so that should motivate us. Also, the people that are persecuting us will experience the same judgment, so we shouldn’t have to stress out about them getting what appears to be the upper hand for now.

This should be obvious and is probably more to the point, given the context of this passage on how to access the peace of God in all circumstances. The reality is that Jesus is always near to us through his Spirit to give us the fruits of the Spirit (which include peace: see Galatians 5:22). The question is how do we access him? You can ask that question to lead into the next part of the discussion.

· According to verse 6, what are the things that it is OK to have some anxiety about?

· Instead of being worried, Paul says to pray. According to this verse, what is an important element that we must include with your prayers in order for them to relieve stress? How does that work?

The element Paul talks about is thanksgiving. It seems clear that when you are already thanking God for the outcome when you pray, you are implying that you believe he is in control and can bring about something good in these circumstances. (See Romans 8: 28) That is what it means to live by faith and should go a long way in relieving stress. After all, the context of our discussion is that we get in situations that are out of our control and apparently under the control of people who seem to mean us no good (or at least are creating uncomfortable circumstances for us). To know that ultimately, even they are not really in control of the outcome, but God is, should calm us down when we’re tempted to freak out over things.

This verse says that the peace of God that passes understanding will guard our hearts and minds. The next question explains this more, so you don’t have to dwell on it, just get the answer.

· The implication in this verse is that the peace of God will protect us. Protect us from what? Does anxiety have harmful effects that we need to be guarded from?

The word to guard here has a connotation of taking you into protective custody to guard you from something trying to get at you. We can’t know for sure what it is referring to—is it simply from feeling stressed, or is it from the negative behavior that results from it? Or both? The follow up question leads into more of a discussion of the outworking of stress in our lives. It can make us treat other people poorly, get depressed, even have negative physical effects which are sometimes very severe. Having the peace of God can put us into protective custody so our lives don’t deteriorate because of these things.

· How can we make prayer with thanksgiving in all circumstances a part of our lives in a way that protects us from the results of anxiety?