10. Wipe your fears away. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you, Psalm 563. One possible

response to the truth that our anxiety is rooted in unbelief goes like this. I have to

deal with feelings of anxiety almost every day. And so I feel like my faith in God's

grace must be totally inadequate so I wonder if I can have any assurance of being

saved at all. My response to this concern is suppose you are in a car race and

your enemy who doesn't want you to finish the race throws mud on your windshield.

The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve does not

mean that you are going to quit the race and it certainly doesn't mean that you are

on the wrong racetrack. Otherwise your competitor, your adversary, wouldn't

bother you at all. What it means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers.

When anxiety strikes and blurs our vision of God's glory and the greatness of the future

that he plans for us, this does not mean that we are faithless or that we will not make

it to heaven. It means our faith is being attacked. At first blow, our belief in God's

promises may sputter and swerve, but whether we stay on track and make it to the

finish line depends on whether by grace we set in motion a process of resistance,

whether we fight back against the unbelief of anxiety, will we turn on the windshield

wipers. 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. It tells us how to turn on the windshield wipers.