In this verse Paul offers some practical insight not only into anxiety in particular but also prayer in general. He uses three words that all refer to our communication with God and so he helps us understand some of the broader spectrum of a well-rounded life of prayer. 

His first reference is to “prayer”. Sounds pretty simple. “God is great, God is good…” and “Now I lay me down to sleep…” are not what the Apostle is referring to here. The word translated prayer is the Greek “proseuche” (prahs-yu-kay). This word does indeed mean “a prayer addressed to God”, but there is another meaning that offers a bit more insight into what Paul is getting at here. In Thayer’s Greek Lexicon this word also carries this meaning:

A place in the open air where the Jews were wont to pray, outside the cities, where they had no synagogue…such places were situation upon the bank of a stream or the shore of a sea, where there was a supply of water for washing the hands before prayer.

– Thayer’s Lexicon

Paul’s use of three different words here in Philippians allows us to drill into the meaning of each as we can assume that he wasn’t just using three words to speak of the exact same thing. Paul was complicated at times, but rarely was he overly redundant.

There is a profound sense that Paul is suggesting more than that we simply have a “prayer time”, but that we live in such a way that our entire life becomes a potential “prayer time”. The secondary definition refers to a place of prayer away from the synagogue, away from the set aside “house of prayer” that Jesus seems to have cared enough about to explode in anger at the sight of its marginalization. The implication is that our hearts, the new Temple of God’s dwelling, is a place of prayer that can travel, it doesn’t require a centralized location to be useful. There is a place we can go away from our church buildings, away from our “prayer closets”, and still have profound communion with God. That place is in our hearts.

When Paul says, “in everything by prayer”, at least part of what he is talking about is an attitude more than an action. Robert Mulholland says this,

Prayer (proseuche) seems to be Paul’s term for the deep inner posture of one’s being toward God in open receptivity and pliable responsiveness.

– Robert Mulholland

This is, in fact, the same word that Paul uses as he tells us to “be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12). Obviously we aren’t called to mumble to ourselves all day long, which leaves the idea of an attitude at the forefront of Paul’s language as he uses this word.