Winning Over Anxiety

So you’re sitting there mindlessly twirling your hair while your stressed out thoughts are also twirling through your head.

Your anxiety level is up.

You sigh again.

You pick up the cold cup of coffee sitting beside you and mindlessly sip its contents.

These anxious thoughts have become a pattern during the daytime and they plague your thoughts in the night and rob you of sleep.

I don’t know the reason of your worried thoughts, but I do know that we all have them from time to time, and perhaps now more than ever. What are we to do as believers in Christ when anxious thoughts plague us 24/7?

Recently I picked up my Bible to read the Proverb for the day. It was Chapter 7 – a familiar chapter about how the adulterous woman lures men into sin. I then asked God to show me what I needed to hear from this chapter that truly seemed to have no significance in my own life at the moment. The Spirit of God arrested my attention when I read the first five verses!

My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.

² Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.

³ Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.

⁴ Say unto wisdom, Thou art my sister; and call understanding thy kinswoman:

⁵ That they may keep thee from the strange woman,

Though I wasn’t dealing with the subject of infidelity mentioned in this chapter, the Lord showed me that obeying the first four verses of this chapter is how we overcome any sin that is overwhelming us…including the anxiety that seems so prevalent in our world today.
Here’s what I learned about winning over anxiety according to this passage:

1. Obey God’s Word and commands. Just do it. What you know to do, what you are challenged to do…do it. Instead of sitting and fretting, get up and obey what you know you’re to be doing.
   Read His Word.
   Pray.
   Serve the Lord in your home.
   Give the Gospel to others.
   Fellowship with believers.
   Do the work God has called you to do…laundry, meals, your day job. Be faithful.
2. Keep God’s commands and live! Love God’s Word as though you cannot live with out it, for indeed we would be lost without His counsel! He has the Words of life!
3. Keep God’s Word as the apple of your eye. The most tender part of your eye is the most beautiful and vulnerable part of your eye. You must guard it against being neglected. We may be shocked or horrified when we read of Bible burnings that are taking place, but are we truly valuing God’s Word as we would guard the apple of our eye? We must value God’s Word and see it as the most precious part of our life. If that were true…
   ~How often would we read it?
   ~How much more value would we give it?
   ~How much more would we speak it and share it with others?
4. Bind God’s truths on your fingers. This is speaking of treasuring Scripture like you would a precious gem on your fingers. Maybe it would help us to keep God’s Words at our fingertips!
   This made me think of my Memory verse cards – these should be dangling more often from my fingers as I treasure the Truth written on them, study them, and obey them.
5. Write them on the table of your heart. We can only do this by memorizing verses and passages. In the middle of the night when darkness prevails, the passages we’ve “written on our hearts” become a light in the shadows.
6. Call wisdom your sister . Recently my husband was trying to reach a friend of ours and her number was busy every time he called. Then finally she called him and said, “I was on the phone with my sister, but I saw you kept calling. It takes someone really special to make me hang up on a phone call from my sister! This verse is saying, more than an earthly sister we love and take delight in, we must love the wisdom we receive from God’s Word. We need to read, to listen, to glean from it’s pages.
7. Call understanding your kinswoman. A kinsman is a near relative. We must make the Word of God familiar to us, consult it, and consult its honor, and take a pleasure in conversing with it as we would a close relative. 

Verse 5 then says if we do these things it will keep the man from the strange woman. But I have it written in my journal like this:

That they may keep me from ____________________________.

We need to put our besetting sin on that line, because God’s Word can keep us from it. Is it…

• Worry? Think Philippians 4:6-8
• Fear? Think Isaiah 41:10
• Gossip? Think Ephesians 4:29
• Envy? Think Proverbs 14:30

What anxious thoughts are plaguing you today? We can win over them if we will apply these simple Truths from Proverbs 7.

Which of these truths do you need to ask God to help you do today? He will help you if you ask!

Refresh your heart and win over anxiety!