“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” --Paul The Apostle, Philippians 4: 6-7

In my previous blog (Part 1), I made a case for “peace that passes understanding” being a condition of soul as opposed to the absence of anxiety. I also described the need to retrain our souls as the means by which we can grow toward this peaceful condition. Retraining is necessary because we live in a harsh and sometimes violent world. As a result, each of us developed self-protective habits that have become reflexive. By the time we come to faith in Jesus, these reflexive habits cause inner resistance to resting (trusting) in God. Therefore, the retraining process entails learning to distrust our emotionally triggered reflexive habits of self-protection that war against the ways God has invited us to rest in Him. This is difficult for all of us because, when we are under stress, everything in us screams for immediate relief.

Retraining begins with the recognition that Jesus is our peace (Ephesians 2:14), which doesn’t mean that He will eliminate our anxiety but that we can rest from our efforts to provide for and protect ourselves. This is why Paul instructed the Philippians to bring their anxiety to God in prayerful supplication “with thanksgiving” (v. 6). In my prior blog, I referred to the number of times Paul “rejoiced”, even though he was in chains. To pray with thanksgiving is to pray from a posture of rest—the awareness that our God has the power to rescue us if He so chooses or that He has the power to use the hardship for our good. In either case, God can use our circumstances as a retraining environment or as a means of glorifying Himself. Maybe both.

In Gethsemane Jesus brought His anxiety to His Father. The anxiety was so intense that He sweated drops of blood (Luke 22:44). He began His prayer by asking to be delivered from the cross. By the time He finished praying, He was resolute of mind and obedient in action. He regained perspective of His Father’s plan, His Father’s love, and the “joy set before Him” (Hebrews 12.2). He walked directly toward the cross. Something dynamic must have happened while He was praying because Jesus exhibited no sign of anxious struggle through the horrific events that followed. The peace that passes understanding guarded His heart and mind against self-protection that allowed Him to express surrendered obedience to the waiting adversities without a need to defend Himself.

Here's a summary of Jesus’s action:

• Recognizing His anxiety, Jesus brought His concerns to His Father in prayer, something He’d likely done throughout His lifetime.
• He was honest about His feelings and desire for deliverance in His prayer.
• It is possible that Jesus asked Himself if there was something He wanted more than deliverance from the cross. There was. He wanted His Father to be glorified by executing His plan of redemption.
• He embraced the pressure and pain that awaited Him and lived into those hardships with aconfident hope of God’s strength, and the peace that passes understanding anchored his soul.
• As we process through our anxiety we may need to repeat steps one through four, possibly numerous times.

So, in summary, how do we obey Paul’s command to “…not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present our requests to God?” In my view the two most critical ingredients are: one, a vision that God is faithfully at work in our anxiety-producing circumstances to transform our souls, and two, to be able, like Jesus, to draw upon our vision for God’s glory by asking ourselves, “Is there something I want more than God’s strength to endure?” When the answer is, “Yes, I want God to be glorified in me in light of my hardship,” self-protection loosens some of its grip, empowering us to walk into the hardships with courage like Jesus. God’s transforming power and a challenging life experience, combined with our faith, produces the integrating soul restructuring that, over time, can result in the increase of the peaceful condition of soul that passes understanding.