top of page
Search
nicole

3.11.21


Please feel free to reach out if you have any thoughts or questions

Our daily Bible readings are found at Listener's Bible. You can listen to the text or read it and it will update each day. Let’s pray together: Lord, let our souls rise up to meet you as the day rises to meet the sun. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Father, we pray for the Nigeria, Turkey, Ireland, Comoros, Costa Rica and the church in these countries as well as the lost. Help us to not grow weary of doing good. Help the “helpers” who put themselves at risk to serve. Help us to be alert to lies and hungry for truth. May the peace of the Lord Christ go with us: wherever He may send us; may You guide us through the wilderness: protect us through the storm; may You bring us home rejoicing: at the wonders You have shown us; may You bring us home rejoicing once again into our doors. Amen Meditation Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1Peter 5:7 Satan is a liar, his native language is lies, and deception is what he does. It may feel a little hysterical or old school to drag ol’ Scratch into things but he is a fact. There is ample Biblical testimony to the existence and activity of the enemy. He is relevant to today’s meditation because at the root of much of our worry and fear are lies; lies that stay just out of sight, at the edges of our peripheral “vision”, fueling a sense of anxiety and concern. In C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, the devil Screwtape writes, “There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the “enemy” (God). He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our (the devil’s) business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.” This is basically what worry is, borrowing trouble from the future. Consider what we worry about… What keeps you up at night? Sometimes it’s things that went wrong, (but can you change that?) Most often it’s the uncertainty about what is to come; will I be okay, will they be okay, will it be okay? What should I do? What should they do? What if it isn’t okay?... Jesus was very clear that our worry is utterly powerless, it can’t change the color of a hair on our head (unless it’s turning it gray) it can’t add a single hour to our lives so why do it? This is where the deceptions of the enemy come in with intrusive thoughts about things we can’t control. Think of the lies of satan like a radio station, he can’t read our minds or control us as Christians instead he broadcasts lies 24/7 and we need to choose not to tune in. How? By asking God for wisdom and discernment so we can tell what is the truth and what is a lie. Then when we find ourselves dwelling on anxiety or worry we know that we are “tuning in” to the wrong station. How do we change the "station"? We need to replace the lies with the truth; listen to worship music, sing a hymn, call a good and faithful friend who speaks the truth, read the Bible, watch a Bible Project video, go for a walk and pray, listen to the Bible, repeat memorized scripture, ask your spouse for prayer, color a scripture image, pray for someone else that you know who struggles with the same worry, call out to God..out loud. Worry is so natural for us as human beings, but just because it’s natural does not make it right. Jesus died so we can exchange our dead spiritual natures for the Holy Spirit, hearts of stone for hearts of flesh, as Paul said, before Christ, we were dead in our sin, in Christ, we have been raised to life. The habit of worry may seem like a little sin but giving into worry is insidious and has the power to erode our faith and eat up our lives. As Screwtape wrote, “It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

3 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page