joy 3

Paul continues (Phil 4:6), “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” The opposite of anger is not the absence of anger. The opposite of anger is being full of joy. So too the opposite of worry is not the absence of worry, but being filled with thanksgiving. Worry and anger are close cousins. They feed and care for one another. If we don’t deal with the worry, we won’t be successful in dealing with our anger. Thus Paul’s counsel here becomes important.

When one is worried, it is very hard to be thankful. The reason is simple. Worry is idolatry (Matt 6:24-25). Worry says of God that he is unable to control the uncertainties of life. Worry argues that God is not doing enough to handle the situation. Worry’s consolation is that at least it is doing something. It is worrying. That is more than what God is doing at that moment. Thus the door is opened for anger to come in and create resentment toward God.

This is why Paul first affirmed the presence of the Lord. The presence of the Lord creates the perfect climate for praise and thanksgiving. The spirit of the believer in response to the Holy Spirit naturally wants to thank and praise God. It is this aid of the Holy Spirit that frees us to practice thanksgiving. Thanksgiving drives out the worry and its cousin anger.
At this point it is well to say something about grief and the process of thanksgiving. One huge reason for worry and anger being so hard to drive out is that we often fail to properly grieve our losses. We live in a culture that is always in a hurry and wants quick, simple solutions to life’s problems. Unfortunately, most of life’s problems are not so easily fixed. With the rapid pace of life we easily become a repository for unresolved losses. We bound from financial setbacks to relationship failures to health crisis to family problems without ever having time to process the things we have lost at each point on the way. It becomes easy to be fearful of what may happen next and thus give worry a foothold. It is easy to build defenses against the hurt that is felt, which can produce a great deal of anger. There is no energy left to be thankful.

Part of the process of thanksgiving ironically is mourning. When we mourn, we stop to acknowledge our loss. That is why we have funerals. When we mourn, we take time to feel our pain at the loss. When we mourn, we look for a source of comfort. As Christians, we look for that source in a loving God who shared our loss at the cross of his Son and overcame our loss when he raised Jesus from the dead. It is this Jesus who is with us to mourn our loss and is able to give genuine comfort (Matt 5:4). It is in that comfort that we find a new beginning, which produces thanksgiving that flows from the heart. With every loss and failure comes the comfort and hope of a new beginning. With every death comes the hope of resurrection. This is what gives thanksgiving its resilience.