The four steps that Dr. Habermas gives are based on Philippians 4:6-9, which says:
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
(Php 4:6-9)
Dr. Habermas pointed out at the start of his lecture that there is nothing “sacred” about these four steps or about the order in which they are applied. In reality they should all be applied together. In other words, there is nothing magical about these four steps. They are not a magic formula, they are just practical biblical advice applied to our lives. With that in mind, I will give the four steps, and then I will expound on the first one:
- Pray (verse 6)
- Give thanks and praise (verses 6 &
- Change our thoughts (verse
- Practice, practice, practice (verse 9)
In this blog entry I want to deal with the first step: Prayer. But before I do that I want to share a couple of things that Dr. Habermas said. They profoundly affected me, and I recorded them word for word:
If someone says something to me that’s hurtful, then it hurts. But if I internalize it and buy into that, and say it to myself, then it hurts far more. The logic is, “I would never lie to myself.” We must change the way that we think.
Your circumstances may not change right now. But what you tell yourself about your circumstances can begin to change right now, and what we tell ourselves is what causes the hurt.
I think that Dr. Habermas makes a very, very powerful point in these two quotes. Emotional pain and worry is caused by us running through all of the “what-if” scenarios in our head (just like I talked about in part #1 of this series). See, we cannot change our circumstances, but we can change our response to our circumstances! Whenever we face the unknown our tendency is to worry about all of the things that might happen. Needless to say, all of those things are worst-case scenarios! So the best thing that we can do is to change what we tell ourselves about our circumstances.
In other words, instead of running through the worst-case scenarios, remind ourselves that everything–everything!–works together for the good of those who love God! Everything! Period! Nothing works for bad to a child of God! No matter how dreadful things seem right now, they will work together for good!
See, the natural human tendency when facing the unknown is to imagine how dreadful it is, but as Christians we need to look at the unknown and try to imagine how wonderful it will be.
With that in mind let’s talk about prayer for just a moment.
Paul says “in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God,” but Paul does not say what we should pray! He just says to pray. So what should we pray? Well, everyone’s circumstances are different, so everyone needs to pray about whatever it is that they are facing.
One thing that I should say at this point is that I do not believe that there is any magic button that a person can press with God to get a desired response. God refuses to be manipulated. It’s just the way that He is. However, He always does respond to our prayers with one of three answers:
- Not right now, just wait on Me and let me renew your strength (Isaiah 40:31)
- No, My child, because I have something better planned for you; something better than anything that you can imagine right now
- Yes
Sometimes those answers vary a little in form, but the essence of them is always the same.
I once read an article on prayer that was written by a rabbi. I would like to quote him directly, but I lost the link to the article so I will have to paraphrase what he said. In his explanation of prayer he said that God loves to give His children the desires of our hearts; He promised to (Ps. 37:4). But the problem, according to this rabbi, is that we are all too often like teenagers who want the keys to the car. A good parent wants their child to be able to drive and to go out with their friends, but if they recognize that their child is not responsible enough to take the keys and go out for a night on the town then they will say no. But, this rabbi says, the good parent will work to make the child mature enough so that the answer can eventually be yes.
Isn’t that such a beautiful concept? God looks on us as children, and so many times He does things that we cannot understand because He is preparing us for what He has for us further down the road. The problem is, we’re often not spiritually mature enough for what God wants to do for us and through us, so He has to temporarily give us “no” answers until He can prepare us for what He wants to do.
I think that is a wonderful example of how God works with His children, but the point that Paul makes is simply that we should pray and bring our supplications before God. Let God know what we want, but trust Him to do what is best for us even if His answer is one that we do not understand.
That involves entrusting everything to God (and that’s not easy!), but let me ask this question: What better place could we put our trust than in the hands of God?
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Category: Facing The Unknown |
Tags: inspirational, scriptural musings
