Saturday, October 24, 2015

Devotional 132 - Anxiety

"Fretting is wicked if you are a child of God...All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God." Having a Merry Heart in a Martha World  by Joanna Weaver

Proverbs 16:20 "Who so leaneth on the Lord, happy is he."

Our pastor gave a sermon entitled "The Cure for Anxiety". He used the text, Matthew 6: 25 - 34.  I never tire of hearing these sermons. I need the constant reminder of confessing this sin of worry that so easily crops up.

In the Amplified Bible, verse 25 states "Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy (anxious and worried) about your life." Isn't that an exact way to describe it - perpetually uneasy. It's like a drag on our soul, a thought that won't go away, a nagging fear. As Proverbs 12:25 says "An anxious heart weighs a man down..."  

When we are weighed down we are not fully experiencing the joy of the Lord. We are missing out on Him. We are missing out on life! Stop living like God is not trustworthy! That's what we do when we insist on coddling anxiety. We should rebuke it! Refuse it entrance into our thinking. We should say when worry threatens to ruin our joy: "Let God take care of it!"

100 times a day we should repeat: "God is in control". That should be our mantra. My God lives. My God loves me. My God is good. My God is in control. What should I fear?

Not even a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father's will as we read in Matthew 6:29. He has His eye on us and He is able to take care of things.

"Whatever the Lord pleases He does, in heaven and in the earth, in the seas and in all the deep places." Psalm 135:6

We have a cure for anxiety.