Day 3: Defeating Anxiety
Philippians 4:6-7 “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”
Fear is the opposite of faith. Your future is unknown in the exact steps that it will map out to be, yet because you know that you have victory through Jesus Christ, you can be certain that it will be prosperous. However, when you allow for your mind to factor in possibilities that don’t line up with the victory, because we are not ignorant to the fact that they are out there. Fear and anxiety creep in.
The bible says in Corinthians that the just walk by faith and not by sight. When understanding this scripture, don’t get caught up on the word “sight” literally. Instead, allow it to be a place holder for all of the five senses. Understand that the word “walk” is a parallel to the decisions that you make. And apply the word faith as the definition given in Hebrews being “the evidence of things not seen”. If we were to restructure the sentence in that case, it would read, “the just make decisions based on the evidence of things that are not seen and not what they see, taste, hear, feel, and smell.” In the moment that you begin making decisions based on your five senses, you are operating in fear instead of faith.
A valuable lesson in defeating fear and anxiety is to not allow your senses to dictate your soul, but instead your spirit man. Often times we see lack or insufficiency with our eyes, we taste disappointment on our tongue as we rehash negative experiences, we hear disillusioning reports of possibilities for our future, and so on and so forth. When we allow our sensory processors to fester this information, decisions are made. The decisions are immediately played out through your soul: your mind, will and emotions. logical doubt is a decision in your mind. Fear and anxiety is a decision your emotions create. Inconsistency and disentitlement with your promises are created with your will. Then the cycle just recreates itself from there. More sensory inputs, create more decisions, create more outcomes, over and over again.
This was titled “defeating” it, not “defining” it, yet it wold have been a disservice to you who are trying to gain your confidence back if I did not defraud the mystery that is the root of your fear and anxiety. A lot of people just characterize fear and anxiety as a doubt of the future. Which it is, but for the believer that has a relationship with God, and understands what receiving Christ’s deed on the cross, fear and anxiety is a little bit more complex.
I was always confused about that. It discouraged me even me actually. I wondered how I could have a full blown relationship with my Abba Father and still be plagued by bouts of fear and anxiety. I revelled at the fact that I understood what Christ dying on the cross did for me, yet would consistently worry abut things that were clearly beyond my control. Then I finally understood, that defeating fear and anxiety wasn’t based on the fact that it was there, it was simply rooted in my acknowledgement of it. That’s what gave it power and made it real.
When Jesus instructs us in the gospels to live like children, it becomes real at this point because you must use your imagination like nobodies business. Looking at an empty bank account, and instead of acknowledging that and allowing fear and anxiety to hit you, imagining by the spirit that the account is flowing so fluidly that every9one around you is blessed. Seeing a dying business, and instead of acknowledging that through fear and anxiety, imagining yourself having business meetings that you don’t have scheduled in your appointment book.
Someone who was key at doing this was Ezekiel. In chapter 37 of this great prophet’s book, God called him to use his imagination to see a valley of dry scattered bones put together as whole people flourishing and ripe. Even though Ezekiel SAW dry bones with his natural eyes when the Lord asked him, he PROCLAIMED through viles of his imagination that they could be whatever the Lord had called them to be. I don’t believe the dry bones came to life just because Ezekiel said it after he heard the Lord say it, but because Ezekiel IMAGINED and whole heatedly believed they could be whatever the Lord had called them to be BEFORE he physically saw anything.
So what is our exercise for today going to be? Playing like a child. Exercising our God-given imagination by the spirit in all of the areas that we have been experiencing fear and anxiety in. I want you to take some time this morning and draw all of the things that you know are not according to the word of God in your life. Draw them not as they are, but as they should be. Whatever that looks like for you, take the time and really close your eyes and imagine it to the best of your abilities. Don’t feel pressured to have Picasso drawing abilities or colored pencils for shading. Just take your time and allow your hands to do what God made them to do: Create.
Then pray over those areas and declare that the word of the Lord will be established in your life.