Jan 17 - Psalm 118:4-5

 

I prayed to the Lord

in my distress,
and He answered me

by setting me free.
The Lord is for me,

so I will have no fear.

Psalm 118:4-5

 

“God’s got this.”

 

Have you heard anyone say this?

 

It’s more than a cliché. If “the Lord is for me,” I truly can have “no fear.”

 

And yet we worry and fear too often, don’t we?

 

Anxiety is one of the biggest reasons that people come in for counseling. I tell them, in part, that anxiety is largely excessive adrenaline flowing through you, and adrenaline is normal. It’s good. If a bear jumps out in front of you on a forest path, you want adrenaline! But why does it flow so freely and so inconveniently when life gets stressful?

 

I’m not going to give a whole counseling session in a short devotional, but one of things I recommend is working to move our thoughts from the feeling part of our brain to the thinking part of our brain. And we need to start thinking the truths of the faith, until we begin feel the reality of God’s protection.

 

For example, we’re encouraged to put on the helmet of salvation. Helmets guard our heads and the thinking part of our brains. And when our minds are focused on the permanence of heaven … we’re less concerned with the temporary things of earth.

 

The Apostle Paul puts it like this. Read it like a blessing: “[May] the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, … guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who is not

a scarecrow …

I have a thinking brain