Post Anxiety Freedom Syndrome

Anxiety is not only a pain which we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask him to pardon—for he’s told us to take no care for the morrow.
~C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
~ from Philippians 4

Oh beloved, it is true. We are a people both able and willing to worry about things. As Oswald Chambers said, we simply worry because we would rather. We, even having been delivered from the deepest of pits are still inclined to believe that things are not going well in our lives.

And as we worry, we take on this ballast in our lives. And we cut the ability of lives to simply flow in joy with Him. Let’s read what he had to say on worry and the depth of the problem of anxiety in our lives.

This fool of a writer can get deeply and alone into his own head. He can quickly worry about what people have said, or even how they have said it – and how that saying affects me. My perspective on who i am in Christ gets twisted around some axle of egocentricity and quickly grinds my spiritual gears to a halt.

We can worry about what people say, about what they think, and what they do. And none of it does any good. We become afraid of how other’s actions will affect our future. We stop abiding in the eternal now of His Presence and start to venture along some temporal tightrope, thinking (wrongly) that we have to navigate our way to peace over the gorge of a problem we are perceiving.

What to do? 

Rejoice. 

Can we see it? There is, beloved, no fear in the presence of G_d.  

So, rejoicing is a celebration of the truth that G_d is present in our lives and and a repentance from the belief that we should (or even can) do any of our lives on our own. So, in re-joicing, we reaffirm our belief that G_d has put Himself into us, and us into Him. And in being reassured of this position, we begin to experience again the unfathomable Peace He Himself is in our lives.  

So further, rejoicing frees us to engage in the kind of intimate prayer and thankful communion with Him which engages both our faith and the movement of His great hand on our behalf. We, once again, rest in the truth that G_d is in control, that He is Loving, and True and Noble and Just and Pure and Lovely and Commendable and Excellent and Worthy of our praise.

And so again, in this space, we are guarded fully by the goodness of G_d. We are no longer trying to make it across some precipice on some gossamer strand. We are, once again, dwelling in the Shadow of The Most High; both comforted and strengthened by our very near proximity (read union) with Him.

And so finally, in finding ourselves again in His Presence, we see the truth which was actually true all the time: We are free in Him. G_d is in control. All is now, and will ever be, well.  

This is very good news beloved. Oh that we all would simply rejoice in the L_RD!