Settled Assurance

SYNOPSIS: Anxiety is your cue to pray—specifically, thankful prayer, which is reflecting back to God your acknowledgment of his caring and competent involvement in your life. Now your anxious feelings may or may not subside right away, but just do it. If you will begin to lift grateful prayers, you will get what God guarantees: The peace of God—no matter what! So, if you want to consistently win over worry, make this your anti-anxiety strategy: memorize Philippians 4:6-7, quote it daily, and most importantly, constantly practice grateful praying.

Project 52—Memorize:
Philippians 4:6-7

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I like how Dallas Willard, an influential Christian thinker, defines the peace that the Apostle Paul promises as the fruit of prayer and petition:

The peace of Christ is the settled assurance that because of God’s care and God’s competence, this world is a perfectly safe place for me…even though it doesn’t always seem so.

When you and I come to trust that God cares for us, and is competent to do so, we can live confidently—we will experience the transcendent peace of God guarding our hearts and minds.  And when we live in the settled assurance of that promise, all of life will change for us.

That’s the kind of settled assurance that Jesus lived in.  Author John Ortberg describes it in this helpful way—which I will summarize:

In Matthew 8, Jesus and his disciples are in a boat in the middle of a storm. The disciples are frantic, but Matthew reports that Jesus is sleeping! Why does Matthew include that detail?  He wanted us to know what Jesus knew about life in the Father’s hands: That given God’s care and competence, the world was a perfectly safe place—even in the midst of raging storm! So he sleeps right through it. Now in their frantic state, the disciples went to Jesus since they trusted he’d do something to help them.  They had faith in Jesus, but they didn’t have the faith of Jesus.

Wouldn’t you love to have not only faith in Jesus, but the faith of Jesus?  What would that look like for you? In your financial life you would be more generous and less focused on yourself.  The me-centeredness and materialism that robs you of joy and energy and freedom would take a back seat to calm and contentment and compassion. In your emotional life, there would be a whole lot less anxiety, guilt, insecurity and frenzied living.  There would be inner calm and poise even under the most intense pressure. In your relational life there would be less hostility.  You would be much better at resolving conflict. You would not be so caught up in who likes you…or doesn’t. People would die to be near you because of your confidence.

When you live in the settled assurance of God’s care and competence, you’ll become an oasis of sanity in a world of conflict and chaos. That is what God promises to give us when we exchange our anxiety for his peace through prayer. Thankful prayer is simply the practice of reflecting back to God an acknowledgment of his careful and competent involvement in your life.

Exchanging of your anxiety for God’s peace That sounds like a pretty favorable exchange, I’d say!

“You can tell the size of your God by looking at the size of your worry list. The longer your list, the smaller your God.”

Reflect and Apply: Anxiety is your cue to pray. Your anxious feelings may or may not subside right away, but just do it. If you will begin to lift thankful prayer, you will experience what God guarantees: The peace of God—no matter what!