Welcome to the Food for Your Soul podcast, where we apply the Word of God to the hearts of men and women to stoke the fires of your delight in Christ. So we overcome anxiety through being thankful, but thankful for what specifically? What is it that we're going to thank God for? You're all spun up over something. You want peace in your heart. You remember this verse, like, oh yeah, Philippians 4, I got to pray with Thanksgiving. I need to be grateful, grateful to God for, for what? The command here is in everything, right? Verse six, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving, present your request to God. So here's how I take that. What should you be thankful for? Just three things. Just three. This will be enough if you're just these three. Number one, the things that God has done for you in the past. Number two, the things that God is currently doing right now. And three, the things that God is going to do. And that last one, that's the hard one, right? That's the one that doesn't come naturally. And yet it's the most important one, I think, for overcoming anxiety. thanking God for what He's going to do. When your heart is in turmoil, and so you say, okay, principle number one, pray hard, okay, I'm gonna drop my knees, I'm gonna pray my face off, I'm gonna really just pray, pray, pray, oh, I'm sorry, I also have to pray with thanksgiving, I need to be thankful, but how can I be thankful if I don't know what God's gonna do, if He's gonna say yes or no to my prayer? See, being thankful for the answer to the prayer before the answer comes, even before you know if it's a yes or a no, sounds like nonsense to people who have a James Ford attitude about praying, the nevertheless my will be done kind of praying, like God is my servant. For people like that, prayer is like an intercom to buzz the great bellhop in heaven to bring you a soft pillow or to adjust the thermostat. And that's what prayer is for, is to tell God to do something to make your life comfortable. Their prayers are always like that. God, make my life comfortable. James 4.3 talks about that. When you pray, you don't get what you pray for because you're praying with the wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your desires, your pleasures. When you pray like that, you can't pray with gratitude. When you pray to God, your bellhop, you can't pray with gratitude because you don't know how good the service is going to be yet. You don't know if he's going to give you what you're asking for. So how can you be thankful if the answer might be no? How can you already be thankful? And that's big because we pray for some pretty important things, right? So your teenager is two hours late coming home. The roads are icy. Her cell phone is going straight to voicemail. Here comes the anxiety. She might be dead, she might be in a ditch somewhere. So you drop to your knees, you pray your heart out, please God, please let her be okay, let her be okay. And then you get to the, nevertheless not my will, but your will be done. I'm thankful God for whatever you're gonna do in response to this, even if. What if God's perfect plan for me right now is to get the horrible call from state trooper that says, I'm sorry, we did everything we could. She didn't make it. What if that's God's answer? What if that's his perfect plan for you to go through the most painful ordeal of your life right now? What if that's his plan? If that's what he decides is best, then that's what's best. So you embrace that and say, God, even if that's what you decide is best, I'm thankful that that's what you're gonna do. I'm thankful right now. I'm glad that you're gonna do that. That's hard. See, this is not just assuming God will do whatever you want and then trusting in that. This is the opposite. You need to face the possibility of the most painful scenario and then embrace that as God's best. If that's what God decides to do, then that's what the best course was. And then gratitude will come when you realize Wait a second, I really can't lose here. Whatever happens, I know it's God's perfect plan for me, it's what's best, and so I can't lose. Even if it's a painful thing, it'll be His best plan. And that's when the fear and the anxiety will evaporate, because there's nothing to be afraid of, because God's doing what's best. But, it takes some doing to convince your heart of that, right? And that's crucial, and I can illustrate this. Last week, we went out after church to lunch at the Black Eyed Pea, got home, and I'm missing my cell phone. So I drove back to the Black Eyed Pea where I had it last, and I'm praying, driving back there, the whole time I'm driving, I'm praying, God, let me find that phone. It would cost me hundreds of dollars if I don't have it, I have to pay for it, and all this lost time, and I'd lose all my pictures. God, just let me find the phone. And so I'm asking God for this. And then I got to the part, but God, nevertheless, your will be done. If it's your perfect plan for me to lose this phone, then thank you. If that's what you have, if I'm gonna go through this trial and I'm gonna lose all this money and all my pictures, thank you. Thank you for whatever you have planned because I really believe that's what's best. Thank you for this hardship of losing the phone. I know it's a trial that's for my benefit, if that's what you have, but God, I would prefer the other way. Okay, so that's how I think Jesus taught us to pray. That's what I said on the drive down to Black Eyed V. Now looking back, I realize that I didn't take the time and effort required to actually convince my heart of what I was saying. And emotionally embrace that as God's perfect plan, if that's what happened. and to keep thinking that way and keep thinking that way until I felt genuine emotions of gladness and gratitude and favor back to God in my heart for that. I didn't do that. I prayed the right thing because over the years I've trained myself to pray that way all the time, but in that case, last week, looking back, it was mostly just words. It's just words. So the phone was lost. It never did show up. I had to buy a new phone. And then I had all kinds of trouble getting that one hooked up. And I became irritable and annoyed and hard to be around. I'm ashamed to say. I said words about being thankful, but I didn't feel gratitude in my heart. And so the whole thing didn't work. Now, there have been other times, if I would have done it right, it would have been a great illustration for this Bible study. There have been other times when I actually did, so I know this works. There's been plenty of times in my life where I really did embrace the worst-case scenario ahead of time while I was praying. I really did. I thought about it long and hard enough until my heart did embrace it. I did feel gratitude. It brought incredible peace. Amazing peace. So I know it works. I've experienced it many, many times in my life. But I'm telling you this story just so you know, it's not just some simple, easy ritual of saying words of thankfulness. It has to be real gratitude, real enjoyment of God as your good Father, and real enjoyment of the certainty that He absolutely will do what's best. Have you ever stopped to think of all the times in Scripture where somebody wanted something, prayed for something, cried out to God for something, and the answer to their prayer was no because the thing they were asking for would not have been best, even though, in their mind, they couldn't conceive of the possibility that what they were asking for wasn't best. I can imagine Joseph, when he was a kid, being thrown into a well and then sold into slavery. God, please rescue me from this situation. Let me go back home. And that would have meant the end of the people of Israel if God would have said yes to that prayer. Or how about Mary or the disciples at the cross begging God during the trial, Lord let them be acquitted, let them go free, don't let them die. You know, can you imagine? They're praying for the exact opposite of everything God is doing, and yet in their mind they can't conceive of how it isn't a good thing they're asking for. Or you can think of the reverse. There are times when God punished Israel by answering their prayers. Remember when they're asking for a king? And God knew if they got a king like the other nations, it was going to be nothing but trouble for them. He warned them about that, and yet they wanted a king anyway. They prayed, give us a king, give us a king. And so God punished them by saying yes to their prayer. But if we pray with a submissive heart, God won't do that. He won't need to chastise us by saying yes to a request that isn't really the best thing. so we can trust Him. So those are some biblical examples. Can you think of some examples in your own life? Here's the godliness training for today. The first one is take some time to think back over some of the things that you asked God for, begged God for, and now, looking back, you can see that it would have been a horrible thing if God had said yes to those prayers. How many times has God done that in your life? The more time you spend thinking of examples of that in the past, the easier it will be for you to believe that maybe this thing you're praying for now is like that, and so you need to thank God. Thank God that you can trust Him. Isn't it a wonderful, marvelous thing that you can trust Him to say no to harmful prayers? That's what it means to pray with thanksgiving. And when you pray that way, anxiety goes away because you just can't lose. You realize, if this thing is good, God's gonna give it to me. And if it's bad, he's not gonna give it to me. So I can't lose. It's gonna be good either way. That's praying with thanksgiving, and that's how it takes anxiety away. So make a list of times God has done that in your past, then spend some time in thankful prayer, praying for some things that you really, really want, and then praising God, thanking God that you can count on Him to say no if need be, if that's what's best. That should cause gratitude to well up in our heart every single time we pray. So practice this today. Spend some time praying for some things that you really, really want, but then thanking God genuinely with heartfelt gratitude for whatever He's going to do, whether the answer is yes or no, because you can count on the fact that that answer is a good answer. Spend some time doing that, and then on your memory verses, let's add verse 34, the final verse of the section, Matthew 6, 25 to 34. Memorize that verse today, and then from now on, just throughout this whole rest of this podcast season, every day, keep reviewing that whole section so you really get it down. Now tomorrow we're gonna move on to the next principle in Philippians 4. We've talked about how you can use anxiety to power fervent prayer, give you energy to really pray hard. We've talked about how you can pray with thanksgiving and how that works. Now there's one more principle. Paul says, the Lord is near. In tomorrow's podcast we'll talk about the wonderful principle of how you can gain peace from God by understanding his nearness to you. Thank you for listening! We pray these principles from the Word of God are helping you find the peace of God as you draw nearer to the God of peace. Maybe there's someone in your network who would enjoy these podcasts. You never know how posting a link on Facebook might change someone's day, or their whole life. Please remember to pray for this ministry, and remember that we're a crowdfunded ministry, so every gift helps. Just go to treasuringgod.com. Until next time, rejoice in the Lord always and set your mind on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.