Can I ask you a question? Well, other than this one. Do you find yourself thinking about things you have no control over? And, no matter how you try to think happy thoughts, your mind comes up with the worst scenarios. Are you fighting anxiety–put your warrior boots on. You’ll need some help with the pain that’s weighing you down.
Thomas Jefferson said it best! “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”
Habits of Overthinking
Habits of overthinking causes anxiety. I think our biggest challenges with anxiety come through helping other people resolve their issues while allowing ours to go lacking. I believe it’s a mere unspoken rule to lend a hand to someone in need.
This is the most irritating part of me. I have given myself pep talks about mining my own business.
But, it doesn’t work.
Have you ever heard that saying? “Take 6 Months to mind your own business and 6 Months to stay out of other people’s business.”
This is one of my husband’s major quotes for me as well. However, it’s easier said than done.
That’s tough to do when your friends, family, or your inner circle is struggling with some stuff.
Nonetheless, I get involved Afterward, I get tickled and amazed at myself when I can discover solutions to someone else’s issues in a heartbeat. But it takes me months to work through my own issues while knowing my answer.
A Suitcase Full of Old Junk
Undoubtedly, as women, we have been great coaches to other women who have faced issues in their relationships. We have given them the best advice on how to resolve the issues they’re struggling with. For example, I have encouraged women not to carry around a suitcase full of old junk. If the suitcase has too much weight and it’s causing their back to hurt, they should consider getting rid of the junk inside.
Many times they refuse to get rid of the junk inside the suitcase. As a result, many of them fall into anxiety. So, their situation becomes more complex.
My pep talks become meaningless because I can’t get them to see their back is hurting because of the old junk they refuse to stop carrying around.
So, in their minds, it’s much easier to keep carrying the old junk because they don’t know how to unload or detach from what’s hurting them.
Despite all the ways I’ve tried to get them to think positively about getting rid of that old junk, their mind thinks of the worst scenarios. Therefore, that old junk is carried around for years. Sometimes until death.
Whenever worry enters our minds, another emotion tends to come along with it. Impatience. We grow impatient by worrying about the outcome of our life. We’re afraid it won’t turn out the way we’ve planned.
The only problem is–we have planned our life, but we forgot to include hard rough turbulent times.
Let’s be clear! Worry is something we will struggle with a lifetime. While it’s normal to get nervous about an important event or something life-changing, at some point, we must realize we don’t have full control over every situation.
Simply put, when we don’t have full control over every situation our joy and faith can be zapped from us. Therefore, we have allowed the dark thoughts of fear and overthinking to govern our emotions.
As a glimpse of hope, our days change. Some days we may feel at our strongest, overtaking Goliath with your bare hands. And on other days, the winds of change knock us off our feet.
Girl, I feel ya!
Put Your Warrior Boots On?
If this is you right now, Lisa Whittle, author of “Put Your Warrior Boots On”, talks about what it is to live a “Jesus’ strong life.” In a world of uncertainty, and not making the choice to make Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
If you haven’t made that choice. It’s going to be impossible to make it through a lifetime of struggles.
Lisa’s book focuses on how to fight fear and anxiety using the spiritual tactics that God has put in place for times like these. There is no way you can be strong on our own. God is our advocate; His strength is made perfect in us.
Lisa will also help you realize how to fortify your shaky heart in the truth of God’s word because God’s word is truth. It settles everything. Sometimes that is difficult to see amid the chaos and the misfortune our nation is facing. But, it doesn’t make God any less.
If anything, He is bigger now than ever.
“In the spiritual realm, eyesight is not required to know how well we are doing. Belief is.” -Lisa Whittle
That’s pretty powerful. Our eyes and ears deceive us into believing many things that are not true about our destiny. Consequently, we deal with God the same way. We try to see our God-Destiny through the natural lens of everyday life when there is practically no comparison.
Thus, if God is one thing, He is just. He can’t lie or shift. He isn’t double-minded, and He won’t be a part of anything that is.
Not only–but, the clearest evidence you have that God hasn’t deserted you is through the strength He is giving you every day to get up.
He has His eyes on you!
In conclusion, God is sending you an invitation to pray to him. Philippians 4:6-7 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Pain is a big factor in our lives. It either pushes you to succeed. Or, it will bury you. -Valerie Tatum
Pain is a clear indicator that something is wrong. Pain can’t be ignored, no matter how small a situation is. For instance, if you get a papercut, throughout the entire day that little small cut will become cumbersome until you deal with it.
Pain is our guide, a warning. It’s a reminder that something is wrong, and it can’t be ignored.
Your mind is trying to tell you that something is wrong and it needs attention before matters become worse. Our emotional health is just as important as our physical health. We’re just prone to dealing with our physical health first and put off dealing with our mental health, until later.
The pain will not allow you to become comfortable. You will have to address it.
“5 Ways to Fight Fear and Uncertainty”
Leah Baugh shares five things to remember and meditate on when uncertainty threatens to overwhelm you.
Remember, God’s faithfulness throughout history.
The Biblical stories showcase God’s faithfulness to his promises. My personal favorite is the story of Abraham. Called by God to leave his home and be a wandering nomad, Abraham lived with uncertainty every day. Where was he going? How was God going to provide him with a son? What if he was killed or taken into slavery by a foreign king? The most important part of Abraham’s story is not Abraham but God’s faithfulness to care for Abraham.
Even when Abraham tried to take things into his own hands, God continued to work His plan for Abraham and Sarah despite the many obstacles. It didn’t happen the way they expected, and it took longer than they would have liked, but God did what he promised and provided for Abraham. Reading these stories shows us that God is a God who can be trusted to do what he promises and provide what we need. While the future is uncertain to us, the future is never uncertain for God.
Remember, God is working even when we can’t see it.
Just because something didn’t happen the way we wanted it to or the way we imagined does not mean God has left us or forgotten about us. On the contrary, God is working in and through everything in our lives, even when it seems he is absent. Again, we can turn to the biblical story for evidence and comfort. The Messiah returned to Israel after a hundred years. However, as God reminds them through his prophet Jeremiah:
I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer. 29:11).
This future and hope finally came in God’s incarnate Son Jesus. God works through normal, everyday circumstances to bring about his plans for our lives, just as he did for his most important work, his plan of redemption. The Bible also tells us that while our knowledge is limited, God’s knowledge, wisdom, and power are unlimited (Job 9:4-10). God’s work is often hidden from us and is brought about in ways that we don’t see and often least expected.
Remember, God’s provision for the rest of creation.
When uncertainty and fear threaten to overwhelm us, take a look at creation. The sun rises and sets, rains fall, and animals have food and shelter. The natural world tells us about God’s loving and constant provision.
Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you. (Matt. 6:25-30)
If God provides these things for his creation, he will certainly provide for his beloved people. God’s abundant love so provided for us that he sent his own Son into the world to free it from death (Jn. 3:16). If he does not hold back even his own Son, how much more will he give us what we need for our everyday existence?
Remember, God always has a plan and it is always good.
Some people like to make plans while others like to live by the seat of their pants. Either way, the apostle James reminds us that ultimately God is in control of our lives.
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring…. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (Jm. 4:13-15)
God works all things for our good (Rom. 8:28). All good gifts, even every breath we take, come from him, including things that don’t seem like good gifts. When our plans don’t go as planned, even then he is working to bring our lives closer to him. His infinite wisdom sees what we cannot see (Prov. 16:9).
Remember, God has provided a secure eternal future.
Ultimately, God works all things so that we would not lose our heavenly inheritance for we are heirs, “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17). The inheritance is the kingdom of God and it is yours. Christ secured an eternal future for his people that is as certain as the bread we eat and wine we drink when we celebrate his death and resurrection in the Lord’s Supper. God is a God who is always in control and He never lies or deceives us when times are uncertain and we are tempted to worry, meditate on this certainty, (Tit. 1:1-3).
Our comfort through uncertainty is God’s unfailing and faithful love. He loves us and cares for us enough to faithfully bring us through this life into his kingdom, as he did for his Son through the resurrection (1 Cor. 15).
There, we can live our best lives before Him.
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