Psalm 56:3 "When I am afraid, I will put my trust in Thee."
Psalm 121:1-2 "I Will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From whence shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth."
Psalm 23:4 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."
Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight."
Psalm 46:10 "Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
First of all sorry for my brief respite from blogging. I was under the weather - or in the the weather, because it felt like a tornado ran through me. I'm back now :) So, I hope you are also.
No matter how you look at - straight in the eye, sideways, front or back - anxiety is a monster worse than the one that used to live under my bed... or was that in my closet... or.....
Seriously, though, in this day and age people are increasing going to see their doctor, counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist for help because anxiety breeds anxiety. The more one dwells on the anxiety, the more anxious one gets and it could very well lead to an all-out panic attack when one cannot function without medical attention or friends praying them through it or relaxation techniques (which, by the way - when you're in the middle of high anxiety or a panic attack most of the time relaxing doesn't even enter one's mind. So, what to do???
These Psalms talk about three aspects of what to do:
1) Faith
2) Trust
3) Unwinding
Faith - trusting that the Lord has EVERYTHING under control, even ourselves when we submit our body and soul to him. That even though we can't see the light at the end of the tunnel and everything looks dark - or we're in a valley and all we can see is the valley because of the fog covering the high places where we would like to be - our loving Father is in control.
Trust - The world system goes against the grain on this one. Deception permeates our society - we don't know who to believe - even our friends at times. The One Who wrote the Book of Books (i.e. Bible) - he's the One we can trust, because He's the same yesterday, today and forever. He loves us and demonstrated that by sending Jesus, His only Son to die for us - in our place - for our sins. Then He took the keys of death and hell away from lucifer and now ever lives to intercede for us. He even gave us His Holy Spirit to help lead us and guide us. We can trust him. He will never leave us or forsake us, even when we think we're going over the edge of insanity - He has our shirt-tail.
Unwinding - Why is it we always seem to want to strive towards doing things... busy, busy, busy. 'I'm too busy to do be with my friends' - 'I'm missing dinner and family time because I have too much to do at work' - 'I can't have fun or reat because there is just too much to do and not enough hours in the day' (like more hours would actually help...). We must learn to rest - a hobby, putting on worship music and being in the presence of the Lord, doing things we've always wanted to do --- ''but didn't have time for''. We have to make time. The alternative is not pretty. The alternative is worry, anxiety, panic attacks, being hospitalized (worst case). We have to make time.
Anxiety is a killer. lucifer comes to steal, kill and destroy. If he can't get to us one way, he always has his hand in his bag of tricks. The object to this is to recognize what triggers our anxiety and work on ways to have faith, trust and unwind with the One who holds us in the palm of His hand.
In The Palm of Your Hand - Alison Krauss
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