Skip to main content

Let your Requests be made Known to God

Philippians 4:4–7
[4] Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. [5] Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; [6] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. [7] And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (ESV)
At a typical prayer meeting, what do we do? ... We share requests. We have request boxes. We make lists. We submit them to one another, share them through prayer chains, and ultimately lay them at the feet of God. This is precisely what we ought to do, according to this verse, but there is more here.  Why did Paul use so many different words to describe our prayer request list?


Prayer: προσευχή (proseuchḗ) is literally speaking about prayer. It is the act (or the place where) we come to God to communicate. It comes from another word that means prayer, but includes the idea of nearness (the prefix pro).

Supplication: δέησις (déēsis) is, according to Thayer's Greek dictionary, need, want, privation, a seeking, asking, entreating... it is an entreaty to God or to man. When you dig into the roots of this word, you realize that it is a word that demonstrates the binding of yourself to someone because you have a need/desire and they have the means to fulfill. It is what our little ones do when we are at the store and they see that candy they want and they wrap their arms around our leg and begin to ask for that candy. (Not in the obnoxious way that some children do this, but in a humble entreaty to the parent.)

Thanksgiving: εὐχαριστία (eucharistía) is just what it sounds like. It is a giving of thanks, in the midst of the entreaty. It is acknowledging that the king has already been so good to us. It is what surrounds our entreaty, and reminds us that we have come to the right person. It is recognizing the good and attributing it to the God who gave.

Requests: αἴτημα (aítēma) is the well-worded petition. This is when we put our exact words to the desires. This is our list, our box, our specific need or want...

Put it all together... We are coming near to God to communicate with Him. It feels one way, but it is conversational. We cling to Him because He is our King and the fulfiller of all that is good. We acknowledge that He has already done this in the past and that He will continue to do this in the future. And we lay our specific desire at His feet, knowing that he will fulfill in the best way possible... and usually in a way that is better than we can imagine.

When captured like this, the ending of this passage makes sense. When coming to God in this way occurs, there is a peace that arrives with it. Don't be mistaken, it is not a peace that we have manufactured, but a peace that is given, simply because we have been granted an audience with the Good King of the Universe.



Comments

Post a Comment

Leave a thought of your own.

Popular posts from this blog

The Seed and The Soil of Education (New Learning Project Part 1)

(This is my entry for the first part of my project for my New Learning course that I am taking.) Introduction Corn Fields in Illinois I have lived the majority of my life in the Midwest: mid-state Illinois to be specific. Where I live, farming is everywhere. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers. My dad grew up on a farm and owned farmland, well into my own adulthood. But, even if it wasn’t in the family, I still would have been surrounded by farming. You can’t go more than a mile outside of my city’s limits without encountering miles and miles of fields. Most of our highways, and even interstates, are located between acres of farmland.

This too shall pass...

Gam zeh ya'avor (Hebrew) "This Too Shall Pass" Welcome!  According to Google Analytics, this is by far the most visited post that I have ever written.  If someone comes here from a search engine, most of the time they are looking for " this too shall pass quote " or simply " this too shall pass " on Google or one of the other search engines. I am sure that most of the time visitors are looking for the originations of this quote, but I have to wonder, why is this quote on people's minds? Why are they pondering the passing of events?   Here is my thought: It is probably because most of us have realized that the adult life is much harder than we ever imagined it to be. There is more pain and more sorrow than we had ever imagined as children, but we have learned that time keeps ticking. And as time continues to flow things pass. In fact, even the really big things and the really hard things will still pass. If you are here because you are thinking ...

The Minnesota Crime Commission wrote:

Every baby starts life as a little savage. He is completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it: his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous were he not so helpless. He's dirty, he has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children but all children, are born delinquent. If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy, given free reign to their impulsive actions to satisfy each want, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist.