Anxious For Nothing (2)

Philippians 4:6 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

In his book “Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World,” Max Lucado writes: “The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional. It’s the life of perpetual anxiety that Paul wants to address. Don’t let anything in life leave you perpetually in angst.”

While it’s inevitable that we will have feelings of anxiety, we don’t have to get lost in them. Thankfully, God’s Word gives specific instructions for handling anxiety. Philippians 4:6-7 tells us we can become less anxious through:

Prayer.

Petition.

Expressing gratitude.

Trusting God.

If we want to be anxious for nothing, we should regularly ask God to reduce our anxiety. We can practice this by:

1) Noticing and interrupting anxious thoughts when they arise and replacing them with the truth — a Scripture or prayer.

2) Spending time every day in the presence of God.

3) Organizing a personal or group Bible study around Philippians 3 and 4.

4) Reading daily devotionals about trusting Jesus Christ.

5) Seeing a Christian counselor who can help us change anxious thinking patterns.

Matthew 6:25 ““For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

Anxiety: Knowing God’s Peace Day 1: Anxiety Distracts Us

Anxiety is so much a part of our lives that it’s natural for us to talk about it frequently. However, defining it, and understanding how it works, sometimes seems like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Anxiety is an emotion—but it’s more than a feeling. It often includes a physical reaction—but it’s more than that, too. So what is anxiety, exactly?

The writers of the New Testament employ two different, but related, words to refer to the experience that we call anxiety. They combine the noun merimna, which is usually translated “care,” with the verb merizo, which means to draw in different directions or distract. To be anxious, then, means to have a distracting care—to have our minds and hearts torn between two worlds. We see this in Jesus’s warning about thorns choking out the Word of God, which is intended to produce faith. He identifies these thorns as “the cares of the world” (Mark 4:19) or “the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luke 8:14). Anxious cares are typically tied to our earthly lives and are most often temporal, not eternal.

These distracting cares divide our mental energy and cloud our spiritual vision; they keep us focused on the here-and-now instead of on the future-promised-but-not-yet. They form cataracts over our spiritual eyes and hinder us from keeping heavenly things in clear focus or from keeping diligent watch for the Lord’s return (see Luke 21:34).

Anxiety diverts us from what is most important. It causes our eyes to see only what is before us at that very moment. Our worries exert great effort to keep our vision fixed on the horizontal (the things of the world) instead of on the vertical (the things of God).