For many of us, anxiety and worry can flood our hearts and minds. These prayers and readings were created to lead us into the presence of God . In His presence, He can ease our worried minds and turn our hearts toward Him, and we can find rest.
Harvest House Publishers
Day 1
Scriptures: 2 Chronicles 20:12, Philippians 4:6, Exodus 14:13
When a Worry First Appears
It’s happened to me countless times. A potential worry crosses the landscape of my mind, and I become fixated. I tug on it, pick at it, stretch it, and bring it into my thought-life long past its usefulness. Soon, that single thread of uncertainty has entangled my mind in a web of worry. What happened?
Our minds are created to solve problems. Granted, not everybody knits a thread of concern into a five-armed sweater of doom as I’ve been known to do. But we all experience and process big and small warnings. For example, if a morning news report is about a house fire, your thoughts might grab onto that as a potential concern. While you eat your Cheerios with almond milk, your mind pulls up its file called “In Case of Emergency” and skims through the top questions: Do I run from this? Do I battle this? Do I call out a warning to others?
Those are useful questions if the fear is triggered by a charging bear who wants your breakfast cereal (or you for breakfast). However, these questions aren’t so useful for the less dire matter of whether you put new batteries in the smoke alarm. That concern is easy to resolve. However, your thoughts start to weave and wind through questions about family safety, fire statistics, and whether a metal object in a microwave will ignite. Yes, yes it could. But the point is that your mind is taking a worry and running with it like a kid in the middle of a windstorm with a huge kite and way too much string (and apparently no supervision).
If only we would pause and pray at the very first stage of concern; when we have a foundation of truth to stand on! Rather than after there is a web of tangents in which we are stuck.
Philippians 4:6-7 tells us not worry and instead take our requests and needs to God. It also says to thank the Lord. When we follow this progression of:
1.) Pray
2.) Make our request
3.) Express gratitude
Then we calm the part of our wiring that calls us to solve, to act; because we are doing both! This shifts our focus to God and away from the worry we would otherwise play with until it fully entangles us.
When a faith response is your first response, God gives you a great peace that frees you to hear His assurances, promises, and guidance.
Reflection:
What concern has crossed your mind recently? Identify what piece of it, if any, is true. Pause and turn your focus on God, seek His help, and give thanks.
Prayer:
Lord, a new worry has entered my thoughts. I’m handing it over to You before I give it power in my life. Grant me clarity about this concern and the wisdom to call on your strength. I’m grateful that this need is drawing me to your presence.
Day 2
Scriptures: Luke 12:25-26, Isaiah 58:11, Psalms 55:22
When Your Mind Is Wound Up in Worry
When a worry has been on my mind for a long time rather than in God’s care, it inevitably takes up more than its share of mental and emotional real estate, including a stake in my future. No longer is my focus on the present moment or even the past moment when the worrisome situation first appeared on my radar. I’m lost in the thought maze of “What if this happens, what if that happens.”
In grade school, did you ever play cat’s cradle…a game in which you crisscross string around your hands and then pass the formation along to others? Well, the tangle our worried minds are spinning is about as useful…but not as innocent or fun.
A long-held worry steals joy, hope, and time while it creates a false validity in your mind. The influence of far-fetched ideas about what might happen is far-reaching enough to distort discernment of what’s true. Your picture of the future will be knotted up in lies. Your view of who you are and what God is doing in your life will be diminished.
When that worn thread of uncertainty intertwines with our daily thoughts for weeks, it can dictate our actions, reactions, and choices. We might not recognize that’s happening, but chances are that the free-range concerns have run ahead to anticipate outcomes and sound more alarms. We’re not any closer to controlling our futures; we’re merely becoming one of the proverbial chickens. You know, the one squawking about the falling sky or the unfortunate fowl hopping around without a head.
What do you do if you’ve unintentionally replaced God’s hope with hyped-up hypotheticals?
The answer is to pray and surrender it. All of it. Ask for discernment to know what deceptions you have held onto. For example: Everyone is against me. I’ll never be able to change. That situation or person is not redeemable. God’s love isn’t enough. It’s too late. It’s never too late to gather up a worry and all its fabricated mazes and loose ends and pass them to God’s capable hands.
There is surprising relief when you realize you’ve been waylaid by falsehoods and not truth. The predicted obstacles were mirages. The grace that clears them away is your beyond-understanding, very real, no-strings-attached miracle of faith.
Reflection:
What embedded worry has influenced your life with unknowns rather than certainties? In prayer, surrender to God’s control the worry and the wound-up predictions.
Prayer:
God, this concern has sent me reeling from lack of control rather than healing in your power. Show me where I gave authority to a deception. Forgive me for investing in unknowns rather than your certain strength. I am so grateful to lean into your promises and receive the miracle of your great peace.
Day 3
Scriptures: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Romans 15:4, James 3:17
The Spiritual Practice of Surrendering Worry
When an irritating grain of sand dwells within an oyster for a while, the oyster responds by coating the intruder and protecting itself from harm. In time, that gritty annoyance becomes a beautiful, treasured pearl. The oyster does this instinctively.
We have an opportunity to do the same. We can respond to the irritant of worry by covering it in prayer and asking God to protect our hearts, minds, and spirits. The result? God’s peace blesses us with the pearl of wisdom.
This way of responding to worry is a spiritual practice that will change your life. Most of us don’t do this early in our journey of belief. It takes life experiences. Falling, getting up in forgiveness. Worrying all night, then in the light of day and truth, wondering why you anguished so. Those lessons allow you to grasp God’s faithfulness. Covering your concern with prayer and asking for the hope of Christ starts as a happy experiment and becomes a healthy practice.
With awe, we realize that it is possible to pray without ceasing by offering up concerns, questions, doubts, fears (and praises…don’t forget those) as they appear. In this way we keep our prayer line, our lifeline to God, open. God satisfies our needs, speaks to our broken hearts, calms sensitive souls, whispers assurances to an anxious mind, and fills us with his peace-loving wisdom.
Take your thoughts captive (2 Corinthians 10:5) and surrender them to God out of obedience and faith. Deeper encouragement comes when you also relinquish words and phrases that have anchored you to fear. Exchange them for words that emphasize the nature of God’s character: loving, enduring, ever-present, faithful, eternal, unconditional, unchanging, gracious, merciful. Rest in those.
Regularly immerse your mind in the help and comfort of Scripture so eternal truth enters your thoughts before temporal tangents begin. God’s promises and presence will release you from the restraints of fear-thinking and His peace will guard your heart and mind so that you might live, breathe, believe, trust, serve, pray, and think with a faith that produces the beautiful treasures of hope and wisdom.
Reflection:
Commit to ongoing prayer as a spiritual practice. See how your thoughts change in the next few days as you freely give your concerns to God’s care and seek His guidance, wisdom, and peace to move forward.
Prayer:
God, I am thankful to be able to lift up each concern to you. In your wisdom, Lord, I have learned to release worry and hold onto wonder, to turn from fear and walk in faith. Thank you for this way of peace through life.