Be Anxious for Nothing

When was the last time sleep wouldn’t come, and the muscles in your shoulders and neck muscles were locked? Anxiety is a normal feeling which happens when habits which foster a sense of predictability, and therefore control, are disrupted by life circumstances. Rapid or lasting disruptions of yearly milestones and events often cause people to feel unanchored, adrift, and uncertain. It is a feeling of angst, concern, dread, foreboding, nervousness, or inadequacy regarding the future, which happens when we project or expect only negative results. In debilitating anxiety, you become the director of your life movie, but only script a bad, unfair, or overwhelming outcome. Since you anticipate a negative outcome, you are stuck, tense, alert, and guarded.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Philippians 4:6

Many factors fuel anxiety, but the root of anxiety is fear. Consider anxiety as a weed with fear being the root.  While trimming anxiety is as useless as trimming a weed, uprooting the source of fear can bring lasting peace. The first step in recovery is locating the source of your anxiety and then embracing God’s perspective. 

Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.

Deuteronomy 31:6

Roots of Anxiety

When anxiety debilitates daily function, usually there are underlying lies deeply rooted in your belief system. Those beliefs were formed based on messages and events, especially from your childhood. For example, if your parents were not available, or worse, volatile, you may conclude that you are on your own or unloved. That may have been true in your childhood, but in Christ, it is not true. Those past conclusions were your attempt to deal with and make sense of pain. The lingering lies and feelings from the past compound and affect your present behavior. Unfortunately, lies leave you with a distorted internal image of yourself, God, and life. These buried beliefs, rooted in fear, are the source of debilitating anxiety. 

Think of your belief system as a foundation on which everything else sits. Where there are cracks (lies) in your foundational beliefs, uncertainty and insecurity grow, roots take hold, and the promises of God are choked out by the lies. God’s solution is an exchange of your lies which produced your faulty internal image, for the truth of who you are in Christ and who you are to your Heavenly Father. In Christ, you are made alive to God as His child, holy, blameless, and righteous. The Holy Spirit wills and works in you to transform your beliefs and exchange debilitating lies for liberating truth.

COMMON LIFES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO ANXIETY

FEAR OF REJECTION … I will not be or am not loved or liked-accepted. 
– TRUTH: God delights in you, and through Christ’s sacrifice, you belong to Him. 

FEAR OF ABANDONMENTPeople or God will quit me, I will be, or am, on my own.
– TRUTH: God can never leave or forsake you. He gave you the Holy Spirit as a constant helper. 

FEAR OF POWERLESSNESS OR INADEQUACY … I am not able or cannot stop bad things.
– TRUTH: What is impossible for you is not impossible as God empowers and enlightens you. 

FEAR OF BEING OVERWHELMEDI will not have solutions or be able to cope.
– TRUTH: God is your source of wisdom and ability; He knows the end from the beginning. 
– TRUTH: God goes before you to make the rough places smooth and removes lies (barriers).  

FEAR OF PUNISHMENT … People or God will make me pay.
– Christ paid for all your sins. Approach God with a confident expectation of His goodness.  
– Christ paid the penalty for sin so that you could live free from the practices of sin.

HOPE FROM ABOVE

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

People have failed you and will fail you again, but God’s love and presence will never fail nor leave you and His love never ends (1 Cor 13:8). Christianity is a journey of exchanging.  First, we exchange spiritual death in Adam for spiritual life in Christ. Then, from the inner workings of our spirit, the Holy Spirit undertakes to expose and uproot every lie. As you partner with and thereby invite the Spirit to renew your beliefs, you progressively come to appraise yourself in the light of God’s love. 

While anxiety is the expectation of bad, HOPE IS THE CONFIDENT EXPECTATION OF GOD’S GOODNESS in every circumstance, relationship, injustice, lack, inconvenience, or trial. In Romans 15:4-6 and 13, the Apostle Paul explains that God “gives perseverance and encouragement.” Promising to ignore stuff, or power through anxiety is futile. Victory is found by asking God, who brings victory without regard to your past or present performance. He gives because you are His child. Scripture says “the God of hope [will] fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” Believing what? Believe that you are a child of God. As an heir of God, you have a blessed hope for today and the future. God actively works things out for your benefit. The result is that “you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

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