May 24, 2018October 5, 2018 jathan

How To Stop Anxiety Before Your Day Gets Started

Faith, Mental Health, Stress

I went to sleep last night with something troubling my mind. When I woke up, you guessed it, it was still there. First-waking-moment thoughts such as these come to us with bad intentions. Their end game is to ruminate in our consciousness throughout the day until they grow up to become full-blown case of anxiety.

I have fallen to anxiety in this way many times, and, no doubt, would have done so today if not for one thing.

The second thought that entered my mind.

Last week I watched a sermon on anxiety and the words to the anchor text popped into my mind as an immediate counter punch to the worrying thought that woke me up.

The text is I Peter 5:7. It says,“casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.“

It’s as if God was reminding me that this kind of anxiety is a choice. I could succumb to the fear and intimidation of a problem too big for me to solve, or I could trust Him to take care of it and go about my day with a sense of enduring peace.

Since the latter sounded like a much better option, instead of checking the notifications on my phone (which usually leads to more anxiety) I got out of bed, went to my office and began to write several bible verses for anxiety in my journal. I started with I Peter 5:7.

As I did so I felt encouragement begin to rise immediately. So, I wrote another verse.

It was Psalm 55:22 and is the basis of Peter’s aforementioned admonishment.

It says, “Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

I was on a roll now. Doomsday scenarios were fading into the background and encouragement, hope, possibility was rising to prominence. So, naturally, I kept on writing.

Besides, I love the way the nib of my fountain pen feels as I pull it across the really awesome paper in my refillable Italian leather latch journal. I bought them at Papier Plume in the French Quarter in New Orleans. This is one of the best pen and paper stores I’ve gone to. (These are not affiliate links, by the way.)

Anyway, back to more spiritual matters…

Matthew 6:25 popped into my mind, “…don’t worry about your life…”, so I went ahead and copied the entire passage, which ends at verse 34.

What I loved about copying these bible verses for anxiety much more than the sparkle of my Aqua Sheen ink, was the way they transformed my early morning anxiety into peace. In a matter of ten minutes, my heaviness had disappeared and had given way to an un-explainable comfort that everything was going to be alright.

I guess that’s what it feels like to cast one’s anxiety on the Lord.

I suppose this kind of trusting peace is not unlike that of a child who knows that he or she is going to be fed and clothed and tucked in a night. No doubt about it.

Just don’t ask them how it’s going to happen. They don’t have a clue.

The Price of Peace

Truly, this type of peace is available to us daily, but we often forgo it because it’s counter intuitive to us. To truly cast our anxiety upon God means that we must relinquish our perceived control over our lives. And that feels risky.

To cast our anxiety upon God means that we must confess our weakness, embrace our inability to fix things, and trust God fully to take care of us those things most threatening to us.

It’s not unlike what Moses was forced to do as he attempted to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage. His massive jailbreak was going great until he ran smack dab into the Red Sea. As if this looming body of water in front of him wasn’t problem enough, when he turned to retreat, Pharaoh’s army was bearing down on him from behind.

Knowing his predicament was too big for him to handle, Moses cried out to God in desperation. God answered and said this, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

Translation, “Cast all your anxiety on the Lord.”

This where letting go of our anxiety gets real and why we so often choose to hold on to it. Because letting go and believing in God’s deliverance in the face of life’s threatening circumstances takes courage, it takes reckless abandon, it takes faith.

“ALL I can do is pray.”

Quite possibly, the main reason we’re so reluctant to trust God in this way is because we’ve been conditioned by our humanistic society that crying out to God for deliverance is the coward’s way out. It’s a sign of weakness. Society tells us that we’re less of a man or woman if we seek salvation from a source other than the great power that is supposedly lying dormant within us.

To be sure, we are less of a man or woman when we cry out to God for help. It absolutely is a confession of weakness to seek divine intervention in our time of need. And as Christians planted in a humanistic society, we must sometimes be reminded that weakness of this sort is not an insult, but a sign of maturity.

Confessing our weakness demonstrates the type of spiritual maturity that caused John the Baptizer to say, “He (Jesus) must increase and I must decrease.”

And Paul to say in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “…I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. “

Often, however, we think more along the lines of “If I’m not strong enough to work my way out of this situation, perhaps I’ll pray and ask God to bring me the rest of the way home.”

I found myself thinking that way this morning.

Here’s what I literally said out loud, quite wistfully I might add. “Well, there’s not much I can do about this situation. All I can do is pray.”

Huh?

“ALL I can do is pray?”

As if prayer to the omnipotent God of all creation is a last resort, a fail-safe in case my self sufficiency doesn’t quite measure up.

I’m thankful I didn’t walk out my front door thinking like this.

Instead, the God of all grace gently smote my heart and inverted my thought process. Therefore, instead of stumbling through the rest of my day thinking of prayer as a last-ditch-effort, I joyfully pursued my all sufficient Christ as Plan A through Z.

In other words, I treated my anxiety as if I actually believed that He is the alpha and omega.

In so doing, I gave my anxiety to Him, and He gave His peace to me.

That’s a trade I can live with.

What About You?

Are you battling anxiety? Do anxious thoughts wake you up in the morning? What’s worry you? What are you facing that is too big for you to fix?

What are you doing to transform your anxiety into peace?

Reply in the “comments” section below. I would love to hear from you.