Twenty Seventh Sunday of the Year: Why Worry When You can Pray? (Philippians 4:6-9)

The story is told of one of Napoleon's generals, Massena who, with his army of 18,000 soldiers besieged an Austrian town that had no defences whatsoever. The town council met to discuss how to surrender. Just then an elderly man, the dean of the town church, reminded the council that it was Easter and suggested that they hold the usual Easter services and put the problem in God's hands. The council took his advice, went to the church and rang the church bell to assemble the townsfolk for worship. Napoleon's forces heard the joyful ringing of the bells and concluded that the Austrian forces had arrived to rescue the town. Immediately, they broke camp and beat a retreat, and the town was saved.

This story illustrates what Paul is saying in today's second reading from the Letter to the Philippians. Faith in Christ affects how we face the problems of life. Whereas people who have no faith usually respond to life's problems with worry, people of faith respond to life's problems with prayer. As we can see in the story of the Austrian town, worry only makes us surrender in weakness to the challenges facing us. In prayer, on the other hand, we raise our hands to our all-loving and all-powerful Father, who is able to draw us out of the pit into which we have sunk, even if it should take a miracle to do so.

And so Paul enjoins us: "Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."(Philippians 4:6). First Paul reminds us that prayer is not simply reading a shopping list of our needs before God. It also includes thanking God for the blessing of life and faith that we enjoy already ("thanksgiving") and lifting up before God all other people and their needs ("supplication"). Much of what passes for Christian prayer is too self-centred. But Christian prayer should be God-centred, just as Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord's prayer. From that prayer we learn the fours components or ACTS of Christian prayer. Christian prayers is made up of A-C-T-S. "A" is for Adoration, in which we praise God for His goodness. "C" is for Contrition, in which we ask forgiveness for our failures. "T" is for Thanksgiving, in which we thank God for blessings received. And "S" is for Supplication, in which we ask God for our needs and the needs of all of God's people.

"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (verse 7).This is what happens when we learn to take all our problems to the Lord in prayer. We trade our stress and worry for peace of mind. It was George Mueller who said that, "The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety."

"Beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (verse 8). The second thing Paul teaches us in this passage is that prayer is more than just praying. Prayer is not just what we do on our knees. It also includes what we think about all day long. Prayer includes what Norman Vincent Peale calls "positive thinking." A person of prayer is a person who thinks always of what is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise. Paul does not ask us to spend our days thinking about our needs, our failures or what is wrong with the world, as some of us tend to do.

"Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you" (verse 9). Finally, prayer involves action. A person of prayer should be a person of action. The formula, as the saints tell us, is to pray fervently as if everything depends on God, and then to act decisively as if everything depends on us. The key to finding peace in a world of stress and distress is not worry but prayer, thinking positively, and doing what is right We start here now in church with prayer, we leave church and continue with positive thoughts, and we follow it up with doing the right thing. That way, the peace of God will be with us.