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The Pursuit of Happiness Daily Devotional -31

by David Joynt on February 02, 2021


PHILIPPIANS 4:6 | 6 Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Learn to pray your anxiety. Sometimes we hold onto and rehearse our anxieties, through habit or familiarity. Sometimes we use tremendous energy trying to resist our anxieties. Paul suggests we offer them to God, in a list. As we name them we also recontextualize each one. Anxieties about illness? God is the great healer and knows our bodies and minds better than any doctor. He promises restoration, ultimately, for every mental and physical brokenness. Anxious about an exam or a presentation or a problem? God is the source of all knowledge, the fountain of truth. Remembering this allows our list to be a litany of thanksgiving as well as a set of requests. Gratitude and faith begin to invade the anxious feelings and soon pervade our hearts. God wants your feelings and life to become an anxiety-free zone.

Identify an anxiety of yours, and recontextualize it.

Pray it as a petition, with thanksgiving.

 

Tags: anxiety, thanksgiving

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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