Finding Peace in your Mind, Body, + Soul
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Fear hits us from every direction when we have cancer.
It messes with our minds as we churn the what-ifs of our journey into the night,
It bombards our bodies as we hold onto stress and tension in unseen ways,
And it sucks the life out of our souls leaving us empty and untethered.
In today’s episode on the podcast, Pastor Al Hardy talks about how to fight fear in each one of these areas so you can find peace in your mind, body and soul and overcome all that overwhelms you.
Throughout Pastor Al’s journey through life and battle with anxiety, Philippians 4 has his companion and guide.
The truth of “Do not be anxious about anything” is not only a reality that we have in our lives, but it is also an ongoing work.
Fear is a constant thing with cancer so saying “do not be anxious about anything” almost sounds like a joke.
How can I not be anxious? I have cancer!
So let’s unpack some of these verses in Philippians 4…
The end of verse five says “The Lord is near.”
This is the starting place and everything else flows from this.
So when we pray, that is where we start. We start with the premise that The Lord is near.
We rejoice as best we can because we know that is what we are called to do.
And then we bring everything we are dealing with to The Lord because He is near. We can literally vomit all our anger, fear, and anxiety to Him.
We can come to Him just as we are because that is not going to change what He thinks of us, how much He loves us, and the fact that He is near.
When we vomit out everything that we are thinking and feeling to the Lord, THEN we can move onto the next step…
“but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
This is the third stage of our prayers, where we ask the Lord for His help.
Once we have finished laying our fears and circumstances before Him, we are in a place where we can bring our requests petitions to Him.
Finally, we have God’s promise:
“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
The key word here is “guard.” It is active. He WILL guard your heart and mind.
After walking through this prayer using the format from this verse, we can now be in the place to be receptive to what God has to say to us.
Don’t stop with just giving it all to the Lord, but look for what God is doing and how He wants to shape us.
What does He have to say to us right in the middle of our circumstances?
When we don’t sit and listen to God, it is as if we are having a one-way conversation.
Our relationship with God is to be intimate, so allowing God to speak back to us brings us closer to Him.
Prayer is God’s solution to fear, and it happens over time. It is a cumulative thing, not all-at-once.
However, when it comes to prayer, so many people wrestle with the question of unanswered prayer.
When we pray, we are not trying to bend God to our will, but we are really praying God’s will into existence.
Part of prayer is seeking His will and then praying it.
I prefer to think of prayer as this ongoing process of walking with Jesus.
The more we pray, the more we understand what He is doing, and that is where peace is found.
Not in the answers, but in the will of God.
Praying this way and using Philippians 4 can transform the relationship we have with anxiety.
It is not about one prayer, but it is about the relationship we have with a loving God by drawing close to Him.
The single most important thing when it comes to prayer is this: do it.
Pray.
Don’t get hung up on the words but just use the words that come to you and draw near to God.
Let’s take a moment to pray using our simple guided prayer format that uses the acronym TRUST.
Thanking Him for who he is and what he’s done. Resting in his love. Unburdening our hearts. Surrendering our hopes, fears and needs. Taking Him at his word.
If you haven’t already, you can download your own copy of our TRUST prayer practice on a beautiful book mark below!
Or listen on Apple Podcasts.
If you haven’t already, download your TRUST prayer book mark HERE so you can pray along with me and pray with more confidence and less doubt in the week ahead.
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