Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father call us out of anxiety, away from fear, and into the powerful, peace-full guidance of the Holy Spirit within us. Father, we are not able to do anything by ourselves. We need you for all things unto even breathing! Help us. It is your breath in our lungs. Your power and peace in our inner-selves. Give us what we need to do as you command. You say, "do not fear!" Help us obey you. In the name of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, help us to trust and obey you. Help us to give up the pride of holding on to our fear when you have offered to free us from it. Father, thank you for being merciful to us!
Your Morning Song: "Silent Night (Be Still)" by Rend Collective
Your Morning Scripture: 2 Timothy 1:7
...for God gave us a spirit not of fear
but of power and love and self-control.
...
I struggle with anxiety. It's like living with a boa constrictor wrapped around my entire body, all the time. And anything, everything can set it off. It could be a text, a phone call, a vague email, even someone calling my name from behind me. And there it is! The snake tightens, slipping whispered, lightning-sharp lies into my well-spring heart in the midst of the garden of my thought-life. It's hard to breathe. It's hard to think. I am the worst. Life is the worst. Darkness takes all.
Or does it?
I have not changed much over these thirty-seven years. But I have been changed, very much. I have not changed. I have been changed. This is how God answers my anxiety. He changes me. I love him and thank him and embrace his work in me, but it is he who works in me.
And the Holy Spirit, he who lives within me, changing me ever more into the likeness of my sweet and life-precious savior, Jesus, this Spirit, he does not deal in fear. God has given me his Spirit inside me, and he deal in power, love, and self-control.
I like the power part, because anxiety has forever left me feeling desperately powerless. I like the love part, because anxiety has forever left me feeling desperate for acceptance. But self-control?
I don't like that part. More than any other command in the Bible, God says not to be afraid. He commands us not to fear and, as with all of his commands, expects us to obey him, as he should. Because God never commands us to do anything that he does not also make us able to do.
Self-control. Anxiety has no place in my heart if I am filled with the Spirit. I have no excuse. Anxiety cannot be allowed to rule me any longer.
Church, if you are anything like me, and anxiety is a burden you have been carrying, give it up. The Spirit makes you able to control yourself, to control your fear. He makes us able to take it and give it to him. If we keep it, even after being freed from it, then we are sinning, mocking God and masking pride as fear.
Give up your fear, church. By the power and love of the Spirit, give your fear to God and accept his call to control yourself, for your good and his glory.
May we accept the fearless blessing of his Spirit, and not pridefully reject his help.
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