Keep Calm and Pray On

Do you start your day with anxiety, sometimes for no reason at all? For me, anxiety can be an unwanted companion that just won’t leave me alone. People tell me just don’t worry. They mean well, but if you struggle with anxiety, then you know that it’s not that simple.

I don’t know why some may struggle with worry and some don’t. But I also know that we all have different weaknesses. We have different struggles, strengths, and we are here to help and support each other.

Even if we don’t always understand each other, we can still empathize, because we also know what it is like to struggle. Because we go through trials, we can use those times to not only help ourselves, they can also help others. Have you ever noticed how much more you can empathize with someone in pain because you have also experienced pain? Don’t waste your struggles. Use them to learn, grow and then use those experiences to help someone else. Ask God for direction, to show you whom you can help today.

“For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.”

Ecclesiastes 4:10

My Own Worst Enemy

Oftentimes, we are our own worst enemy. We have our hang ups, bad habits, fears, and inner turmoil that can put us on a one-way path to self-destruction. Everyone can see it but us. We tend to see the faults of others with such clarity, but are blind to our own issues. Why do I always want to fix other people’s problems, but not my own? We first have to work on ourselves, and it will alway, always, be a work in progress. And while it is great to be there for others, we are created for relationships, just make sure that you’re being directed to whom God wants you to assist. Satan will try to use good relationships for his purpose. Don’t waste your energy on trying to “fix” someone that God may not want in your life. Ask God for direction on the relationships He wants you to build. Ask Him to help you mirror His will, not the other way around. It is hard to take a good look at ourselves, we may not like what we see, and we will try to justify our sins to appease our illusion. Ask God daily to help you do a self-check.

You may not like the answer and may even want to fight it, but God’s will for you will always be the best and better than anything you could possibly dream up.

Hang in there and hang unto God.

“Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Matthew 7:5

Me, Me, and Me

Anxiety can often put such a focus on ourselves, our problems, worries, and fears, that it can turn us to be quite self centered without even realizing it.  I have experienced that when I’m so focused on my own issues and I decide to take that focus off of me and focus on God and others, my fears appear much smaller. The problems may have not changed, but my constant focus on them increases their size, the looming fear that can easily spiral into panic. That fear, that panic is from Satan, not God. We have been given the power of Jesus' Name to rebuke Satan. Use the power that you have been given. When you feel the fear swallowing you up, go to God for peace. Rebuke Satan in Jesus Name. The name that every knee shall bow to and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord.

“that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:10 NKJV