Welcome to our Together on Mission podcast, when we seek to be with and like Jesus, as we begin a conversation with Jesus in the morning, with scripture, prayer, and meditation, and then continue that conversation with him throughout your day. Your host is Travis Feynon, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. In this season of the podcast, we're going to be talking about diving deeper in our relationship with Jesus, through scripture, prayer, and meditation. We will focus on hearing the voice of God and being guided by the Spirit of God, not only when we chat with Jesus in the morning, but as we journey with Jesus throughout the entirety of your day.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Daily Together on Mission podcast. I'm in Philippians, chapter four, and the title of the podcast today is Frustration. And the reason why the podcast is titled Frustration is because so often, when it comes to focused, private prayer, we are often frustrated and irritated. And we may not like to admit that, because we don't often like to admit when we're frustrated or irritated, especially when it comes to prayer, but the reality is we are often frustrated and irritated ourselves when it comes to prayer.
Maybe we get up in the morning, and we just don't want to go and spend a bit of time praying, and we're irritated with ourselves. Like, I should want to do that, or we begin to pray, and we're reading scripture or meditating or, you know, trying to pray, and we find ourselves wanting to do anything but that, even clean the garage or vacuum, or do things that we normally wouldn't even want to do, but we want to do that more than pray right now, and then we can irritate ourselves and frustrated and begin to maybe think bad thoughts about us or our spirituality, or we are meditating, or reading scripture or praying or whatever, and our mind just begins to wander, and it can be thinking about anything other than maybe the goodness and the beauty and the irresistibility of God and then we can irritate it with ourselves, like, why can't I just keep my mind on track? Why can't I just, you know, stay focused on Jesus? I mean, I should be able to do that by now, and that frustration and that irritation, and I mean, I could go on, but this frustration and irritation that sometimes just comes upon us during prayer can be the nemesis of prayer, and the truth and the good news is that we do not need to be frustrated, and we don't need to be irritated when it comes to these kinds of things.
So let's just normalize it, right? Sometimes we won't want to go to prayer, sometimes we will be praying and we won't want to pray, sometimes we'll be meditating and our mind will be wandering everywhere, and the only thing it seems like we can't meditate on is the goodness and the glory of God. This is totally normal, and especially normal at the beginning of this journey of really diving deep into some of these practices, and really the fact that these things happen is not a problem when it comes to prayer, but when frustration and irritation happen as a result of these things, and therefore frustration and irritation get connected with prayer, that becomes a problem because we begin to worry and we begin to get anxious, and so we're gonna turn to our passage for this morning, which is a credible passage, Philippians chapter four, verse four, rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again, rejoice, the Lord is near.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, and in every situation through prayer and petition with lots of thanksgiving, present your request to God, and then the peace of God, think about that for a moment, the peace of God which transcends, it goes beyond, it goes deeper than all understanding, it will guard your heart and it will guard your mind in Christ Jesus. Now, before I get onto the point, or continue the point about this podcast, let me just remind us of what we talked about in the last podcast was simple prayer. Just go to a passage like this, begin to read slowly, not goal oriented, turn your attention toward Jesus, read slowly, don't try to get to the end of the passage, into the sentence, into the chapter, into the book, just rejoice in the Lord always, the peace of God, and when we begin to feel the presence of Jesus, just stop reading and just enjoy that. Don't rush, be still, enjoy that presence.
And then if you want to go back to the text, read a little bit more and allow the scripture to be this open door into experiencing the presence and the goodness of God. It's just simple prayer where scripture becomes the doorway or the threshold into experiencing Jesus. Now, as we take that journey this morning, tomorrow morning, the day after that, the week, the month after that, there are going to be time for you, don't want to go to prayer, don't be anxious. There's gonna be time for you're gonna go to prayer, you wanna be anywhere else, but in prayer, don't be anxious.
Don't be irritated at yourself. Don't think bad spiritual thoughts about yourself. There's gonna be times where you're gonna be meditating and your mind's just gonna wander here and wander there, and you're gonna be thinking about everything other than the goodness of God. Don't get frustrated, don't get irritated at yourself, don't let the enemy capitalize on that, don't think bad thoughts about yourself spiritually or give up, all of that is normal.
All of that is normal. Again, that's not the problem. The problem is when we let frustration and irritation or bad spiritual thoughts begin to be connected with prayer, and then the more that that happens, the more anxious we get, the more fearful we get, the less we rejoice in the Lord always, and we wanna turn away from prayer to something else that makes us feel just a little bit better. So just embrace the fact that sometimes our mind is going to wander and just go back to the text, give yourself the kind of patience that God actually gives.
God is so much more patient with us than we are with ourselves, and once we begin to realize that, and we hear Paul say, don't be anxious about anything, but just rejoice in the Lord. That will help us not be frustrated or not be anxious, and give us the kind of patience and care that God perpetually gives us. And there are going to be a number of things that we're gonna get to learn on this journey. And one of those is going to be that frustration and irritation at ourselves are really out of place in the presence of God, because God's not frustrated.
God's not irritated. And so whenever our mind starts to wander, whenever we don't wanna be there, God will just simply say, hey, just rejoice, just relax, just enjoy, just experience my peace, and just simply, without expectation, without even effort, really, just simply turn toward Jesus. Just turn your mind and your heart toward Jesus, and be as kind with yourself as Jesus is with you, because ironically, and here's just such a fun point to close on, ironically, prayer is the only place where there's no anxiety, no pressure. And that's one of the reasons why Jesus regularly went to that place, Jesus didn't go to the place of prayer because he's like, well, I just need to be disciplined.
You know, I just must do this. No, that place of prayer was the only place with no pressure, concerned deadlines, you know, expectation, this place of enjoying Jesus is the only place of peace in life. So let's spend just a bit of time with Jesus this morning. No frustration, you know, no need for irritation.
Just simply begin to read this passage, being aware of the presence of God. When you sense his presence, just stop and enjoy, relax, and spend a few minutes, no pressure, no frustration. No one realistic expectations. Just turn your heart and your mind inward to Christ, because Christ Jesus is in you, the hope of glory.
Thanks for listening to the Together on Mission podcast. We truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by you today. If you had any questions about the Inland Vineyard Church, our ministries, or our Sunday services, feel free to connect with us on our brand new app, which you can find in the Google Play and the App Store, and check out our social media pages like Facebook and Instagram, or even check out our website at inlandvignard.org.