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Board of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF),
Fear is natural to us. We don’t have to learn it. We experience fear and anxiety even before there is any logical reason for them.
anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. With freedom come more choices, which mean more opportunities to get it wrong.
Rather than minimize your fears, find more of them. Expose them to the light of day because the more you find, the more blessed you will be when you hear words of peace and comfort.
Any time you love or want something deeply, you will notice fear and anxieties because you might not get them.
Any time you can’t control the fate of those things you want or love, you will notice fears and anxieties because you might lose them.
Control and certainty are myths.
If you listen a little more closely, you will probably detect the theme of control. Stress is saying that life is teetering on the brink, right at the farthest reaches of your ability to maintain some control.
What would happen if you really lost control? You don’t know, and you don’t want to know.
Stress can also signify that there is something on your to-do list that will ...
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For others, there is a curious love-hate relationship with their lifestyle. So much of their busyness is self-imposed.
What am I avoiding? What is it about quiet places that is so scary?
I am not strong enough to handle the despair any longer. I am afraid all the time. I am losing my ability to hide my true self. I am afraid I’ll be exposed. Underneath the emotional pain is terror.
Depression is rarely sought. It finds you and covers you in darkness.
Notice the depressed person who can’t get out of bed. Is it possible that he or she doesn’t want to face the dangerous world? Outside the covers is a world that is out of control with the potential for failure, rejection, and endless surprises we can’t even imagine, so depression opts for paralysis.
Fear and anger can be the same words spoken with a different attitude.
You just want courage that is not overcome by fear. You don’t mind having fear in dangerous situations. It is the nagging background anxieties that you would gladly jettison.
Implicit in “Life is dangerous” is “I am vulnerable.”
Listen and you hear: “I am not in control.”
Here is where fear is a door to spiritual reality. It suggests that authentic humanness was never intended to be autonomous and self-reliant. Humans are needy by design.
Will we abandon the myth of independence and seek God? Fear, control, God—they are all linked together.
At this point, just realize that fear is saying something about you.
There is a close connection between what we fear and what we think we need.
Anxiety about the future event is usually worse than the event itself.
One message is obvious: If I imagine the worst, I will be more prepared for it. Worry is looking for control.
there is an entire worldview implicit in some worry. It cries out about an ultimate aloneness.
Take a hard look at yourself instead of your circumstances when worry is blaring. Ask yourself what you are trusting in. Consider your poor track record for predictions, yet recognize that all these steps, while they may give some hope, still don’t push back the boundaries of fear and worry. Reason alone can’t do it. Face the reality that we have to go outside ourselves for an answer and seek the God who is in control.
Remember, “Do not be afraid” are the words of the one who can match speech with action. He is the sovereign King who really is in control. The efficacy of the words is directly related to the authority, power, and love of the one speaking them.
Because one of the first steps in combating fear and worry is to slow down. “Be still”
So here is the proposal: let fear point us to the knowledge of God, and let the Spirit of God, by way of Scripture, teach us the knowledge of God.
We tend to judge God’s words by our own feelings and sensory observations.
Scripture assumes that we will be afraid and anxious at times. What is important is where we turn, or to whom we turn when we are afraid.
Yes, we are being taken to places we can’t yet see. We are asked to live by faith. But God’s communication allows us to see. It might all look like a bloomin,’ buzzin’ confusion, but when our eyes are opened, we will see much more.
Father, open my eyes. I act like I see all reality. I act like I can see even more than you do. But I am seeing now that there is an entire world that is blurry to me, and that world is you. It is you I don’t see well.
He doesn’t hear because of us and the quality of our prayers. He hears because he is the God Who Hears.
when God hears, he acts. Every instance of God hearing is followed by his mighty acts.
God tests us because we are so oblivious to the mixed allegiances in our hearts. The purpose of the test is to help us see our hearts and if they are found traitorous, we can turn back to God. God is not playing mind games with us; he is forging a relationship.
The outcome of these
daily tests doesn’t give God any new information about us. He is the Searcher and Knower of hearts. At least one of their purposes is to reveal us to ourselves.
God will give us what we need for today and today alone.
God’s strategy is to give us enough for today and then, when tomorrow comes, to give us enough for that day too.
Fears and worries live in the future, trying to assure a good outcome in a potentially hard situation. The last thing they want to do is trust anyone, God included. To thwart this tendency toward independence, God only gives us what we need when we need it. The emerging idea is that he wants us to trust him in the future rather than our self-protective plans.
By incorporating the Sabbath into the normal rhythms of life he gives us weekly opportunities to say, “You, God, are in control, and I will practice trusting you by honoring your Sabbath and resting today.”
Paul knew that, no matter how well-fed, the physical body was inevitably going to die. But a fed spirit is satisfied for this life and the life to come. To make it more personal, if Paul had God, what else did he really need?
Things are not always the way they appear. Instead, it is a time when God is especially close. He is teaching me to call out to him and trust him.
This is God’s method with us. He asks for no leap of faith, no blind trust, only our acknowledgment of his history of faithfulness.
Last-minute deliverance is not God’s only means of care. More often his care is less obvious.
His quiet daily care is the rule.
As she looks back on her previous depression, she can see deliverance in a way she didn’t expect: God gave her the gift of faith to cling tenaciously to the one who holds her. Yes, it takes a certain amount of spiritual maturity to appreciate such things, but even those who know her recognize that she has been transformed into an increasingly glorious woman through her trials. She has seen a redemptive deliverance. The thing she feared did happen, but God did something in her in the midst of it that she recognized was for her good and his glory. It was worth it to her.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. (Psalm 130,
