BATTLING WORRY
Think back to the beginning of this year. Despite previous failures, many of us made New Year’s Resolutions. This year would be different, we reasoned. Little did we know just how different!
Churches, restaurants, stores, and schools closed. Stock market earnings flattened. Gas prices diminished. Meetings and flights were canceled. And masks and toilet paper became the leading consumer must-haves.
Social distancing, now known as physical distancing, became our mantra. We obeyed one-way aisles and six-feet markers in grocery stores and elsewhere.
We may never know whether every bit of information about the pandemic contained news-you-can-use or added an over-sensationalized tidbit. With reality seeping into blurred lines, truckloads of worry moved in like caravans.
The textbook definitions of worry include words like anxiety, unrest, focusing our minds on our troubles, and concern. There’s a secondary, interesting definition having to do with the use of dogs or carnivorous animals’ teeth for tearing, gnawing, or dragging objects. Who knew?
Is worry more prevalent in this day and age than at any other time in history? The short answer is no. Why? The Bible lists more than one hundred verses on the topic! God knew our need to win the battle worry would wreak in our minds then and now.
Here are a few worry-relievers:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7, ESV)
Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:7, ESV)
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:27, ESV)
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matt.6:27, ESV)
A couple acrostics I devised when my mind seems bent on wallowing in Worry Land are:
Who
Offers
Relief (and)
Revives
You?
Just
Empty
Stress
Upon (our)
Savior
Using your tried and true verses from God’s word, see what acrostics you can come up with. Then, the next time you feel prone to wade into Worry Land, arm yourself with God’s promises to you.
By Amre Cortadino
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