September 10, how to fight anxiety. Cast all your anxieties on him

because he cares for you. Verse Peter 5, 7, Psalm 563 says,

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. Notice it does not say I never struggle with fear,

fear strikes and the battle begins. So the Bible does not assume that true believers will have no anxieties.

Instead, the Bible tells us how to fight when they strike. For example,

1 Peter 5, 7 says, Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. It does not say

you will never feel any anxieties. It says when you have them, cast them on God.

When the mud splatters your windshield and you temporarily lose sight of the road and start to

swerve in anxiety, turn on your wipers and squirt your windshield washer.

So my response to the person who has to deal with feelings of anxiety every day is to say

that's more or less normal, at least it is for me ever since my teenage years.

The issue is how do we fight them? The answer to that question is, we fight anxieties by

fighting against unbelief and fighting for faith in future grace. And the way you fight this

good fight, 1 Timothy 612, 2 Timothy 4-7, is by meditating on God's assurances of future grace

and by asking for the help of his spirit. The windshield wipers are the promises of God

that clear away the mud of unbelief. And the windshield washer fluid is the help of the Holy

Spirit. The battle to be freed from sin, including the sin of anxiety, is fought by the spirit

and belief in the truth, 2 Thessalonians 2.13. The work of the Spirit and the word of truth.

These are the great faith builders. Without the softening work of the Holy Spirit,

the wipers of the Word just scrape over the blinding clumps of unbelief on the windshield.

Both are necessary, the Spirit and the Word. We read the promises of God and we pray for the help

of the Spirit and as the windshield clears so that we can see the welfare that God plans for us,

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