Tag: anxiety

Stone, Bronze, Rock & Gold: Finding Strength To Hope

Posted on by abigail
Man standing in strength atop massive rock in ocean.

From the end of the earth I call to you, when my heart is overwhelmed: 

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Psalm 61:2

I had no strength to hope and my mind wouldn’t rest. The tension from work wouldn’t let go when I fell into bed. After 20 years on the job, this kind of conflict is new, complex, and unique.

Hopeless And Sleepless

But I rest my head on the soft pillow of providence. So I should still able to sleep, right?

Because compared to Afghanistan and New Orleans and a friend who can’t eat because of radiation rampaging her mouth, my troubles are nothing. Because I believe to my core that my times are in his hands. And because I trust that in this messiness God is working for good.

But my anxious mind wouldn’t let my tired flesh sleep. Despite casting my cares and reciting a verse, two days in a row I awoke by a mind awash, weary and weak.

Then sometime in the third watch of the third night, totally unprompted, stones and a rock entered and settled me.

Strength Of Stones

I can’t explain how they came except to say, if you put God’s Word in your heart, the Spirit pulls it out.

He brought stones to mind first: What is my strength that I should hope? Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?  (Job 6:10-11)

Job was my man. He felt my pain and I felt his. He was strong. I was strong.

I’ve been strong. My sisters and cousins and I joke about our strong genes and high tolerance for pain. After all, we milked kicky goats and weeded field gardens and bailed August hay. We Considine girls are strong.

Depending Strength

My flesh is strong, but it is not the durable strength of bronze. My heart is strong, but it it is not the staunch strength of a stone. It’s true: my flesh and my heart fail me. That happens when my hope dims, like it did in the dark this week when I couldn’t solve my way out of the tension at work. The truth is, I still don’t see the way out.

But I’m not alone. Centuries ago the Puritan Matthew Henry was also taken up by Job’s words.

He noted,

What is my strength, that I should hope? You see how I am weakened and brought low, how unable I am to grapple with my [moods], and therefore what reason have I to hope that I should outlive them, and see better days?

Is my strength the strength of stones? Are my muscles brass and my sinews steel? No, they are not, and therefore I … sink under the load […]

What is our strength? It is depending strength. We have no more strength than God gives us; for in him we live and move. 

The only real strength that we stones have is a depending strength. That is not a bug. It is a design feature.

Because, as Paul Tripp says, It is not your weakness that will get in the way of God’s working through you, but your delusions of strength. His strength is made perfect in our weakness!

God created us weak and needy, not with the unyielding strength of stones.

Strong Enough To Stay Upon

The truth is, I still don’t see a way out of the conflict at work. But my perspective is changing. This depending strength is giving me hope. I know He will be with me with the tension is high. Trusting Him for that brings peace.

Which is the second truth God sent in third watch of the third night. It was Isaiah 26:3-4,

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

Stayed upon means my mind is fixed on, focused on, stayed upon Jehovah. That is the only way to perfect peace. The Hebrew word sawmak comes from the root “to prop.” A Bible dictionary says it has the idea of “to lean upon or take hold of … lay, lean, lie hard, put, rest self, set self, stand fast, stay (self), sustain.”

No sugarcoating: staying our minds takes work. It means first we press on to know God. Because we won’t trust what we don’t know. And we certainly won’t focus and fix and lean and stay our minds on what we do not trust.

But I’m here to tell you that there is perfect peace when this dependent stone stays her mind on the everlasting Rock.

Come Forth As Gold

I actually started this post nine years ago when as I first pondered those “strength of stone” words of Job. Infertility wearied me then. It took massive depending strength that I didn’t always have to hope in God’s goodness—whether it came through a third child (it didn’t) or by knowing Him more (it did).

To tell you the truth, most of my adult life feels like a series of tests. Maybe yours does too. And maybe that’s normal for every believer. Maybe it’s God’s way of testing us lumps of gold.

I’ve got some theology for that too. It didn’t come in the third watch of the night like the Rock and stones. But I know what Job knew (23:10): that he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

No, my flesh is not bronze and my strength is not the strength of stones. But as I trust in the Everlasting Rock, I gain perfect peace and strength to hope.

And when he has tested us, we will come forth as gold.
 

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6-7

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26

Rough Day? Rest on the Pillow of Providence

Posted on by abigail
Child sleep on pillow of providence

We hit a new low. We’ve had bad weeks in our house before, but this week’s behavior borders on criminal. Still, there’s a reason this blog is called JoyfullyPressingOn. My times are in his hands; every jaw-dropping event in his providence.

To protect the guilty one I love, I won’t share details. But trust me, if I told you, your jaw would drop. You’d ask, “What are doing about that?”

So why do I disclose this much?

Because I know that some of you are facing tough stuff too—that kind that keeps you tossing and turning at night. Please don’t hear this as a brag, because I mean to boast in the God of all grace: I slept like a baby last night.

Because I’ve got a stellar pillow.

When It’s Hard To Sleep

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. Psalm 31:9

The events of the week could have made it hard to sleep. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

What happened this week marks years of prayers still answered, Not now. That answer, these events could make it hard for a mom to sleep.

At least, without the right pillow.

But too many nights tossing and turning on too-soft and too-firm foreign pillows have taught me: when I travel, I pack my pillow.

It’s well worth the space because to sleep in all sorts of strange beds and new places.

Providence Is A Soft Pillow

I will both lie down in peace, and sleep; For You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8

But when I put my head on that pillow and catastrophic, hopeless thoughts still swirl, I need another pillow. Because uncertainty should not be the occasion of panic. Alistair Begg says, The only thing you can put your head on is the providence of God. Then you go to sleep.

Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads.

Quoted by C.H. Spurgeon

The Puritans said, “Providence is a soft pillow for anxious heads.” And some of us are terribly anxious about the uncertainty we face. We are not trusting our unknown futures to a known God who knows the future. And we are not alone.

Begg confides,

Most of the occasions of my worrying, most of the occasions of my rising fears can be traced ultimately to a loss of confidence in the doctrine of providence—can be traced to the fact that I am prepared to say, “My times are in your hands,” but I’m not prepared to live in the light of that truth.

Joyfully pressing on means living in light of that truth. It means that even though I have no idea how this today’s event will unfold and if the heart will untwist, I will trust. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep.

Because I sleep on the soft pillow of providence.

My Times Are In Your Hands

But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand… Psalm 31:14-15a

My old theology text books defines providence as the “continued exercise of [God’s] divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all of His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.”

Unpacked: Providence means God is guiding all the events of the world including those in your life. In other words, your times are in his hands.

Some of you know I’m working on a book about meekness. Here’s a little secret: The meek know how to sleep. They have a heightened sense of God’s providence. They carry this pillow everywhere. On it they rest their heads.

And as they doze off, you might hear them pray, “My times are in your hand.”

Asleep in the Storm Like Jesus

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. Mark 4:37-38a

As I was writing this, it hit me. Jesus had a pillow too. His head was on it that evening he slept in the stern of the boat on the stormy sea. But his disciples then, like his disciples now, had trust issues. They got anxious.

Remember what they did? They woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?” 

For Jesus, Mark tells us, was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. Yes, a pillow. The very same pillow, in fact, that you and I can sleep on—the soft pillow of providence. The pillow that helps me sleep in the midst of the storms in my home is the same pillow that Jesus lay his head on in the storm-tossed boat.

Into Your Hand

Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God. Psalm 31:5

How do I know? Well, it goes back to Psalm 31. A few verses before David prayed, My time are in your hand, he prayed:

Into your hand I commit my spirit.

I doubt Jesus prayed that on the boat. But great David’s greater Son did pray it in the most stressful of all times, ever.

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said,  “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

Luke 23:44-46, ESV

Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it, John Calvin said.

I did not sleep well this week because I know how this chapter ends. I only slept well because of my pillow.

Because I trust my loving Father knows best.

At the Gate of the Year: A Message for Uncertain Times

Posted on by abigail
Poem is read at 3:07.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

I think of these lines as December runs out. They’re from a king’s speech to his fearful people—people of one of the most powerful nations on earth in a time of great uncertainty and three long months at war.

More than eight decades have passed since King George delivered that message, but its truth is as needed as it was then. Because the times they are a-changin’. And the order rapidly fading and the roads rapidly changing isn’t all good.

It wasn’t so good then, either.

Peace In Troubled Times

Great Britain had entered the Second World War in September 1939. In the three months since, air-raid sirens had been ringing in their ears and tension was rising. Anxiety and fear over the New Year pressed into English hearts and minds.

King George VI was England’s reigning monarch in December 1939. As was the custom, the king addressed the nation on a BBC radio broadcast on a Christmas day when all was not calm and bright. He told the people of the only true source of peace in troubled times. King George concluded the message with the part of a poem introduced to him by his 13 year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth.

The king read the poem to encourage the English people that even during the dreadful war their future could be bright and secure.

That’s why I share it with you on the gate of this year. If your hand in His, you will walk by faith in him, your way will tread safely and rest secure—come what may.

Here’s the poem.

“At the Gate of the Year”

by Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957)

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.

Gate

God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.

Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.

God knows. His will is best…Our fears are premature. He will provide for all time.

For all your days and times.

Our Days Are Numbered, And That’s Good News

All of our days are numbered. They were written in his book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:16). Priest and missionary Henry Martyn said, You are immortal until God’s purpose for you is complete. And since God loves his children with great love, this is very good news.

So I echo the king at the gate of our year, May that Almighty hand guide and uphold us all. Amen.

Now heart, be still, and rest. For he holds our hand.

For I the Lord your God hold your right hand; it is I who say to you. ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you.’ I am the one who helps you, declares the LORD. Your Redeemer is on the Holy One of Israel. 

Isaiah 41:13-14

My times are in your hands.

Psalm 31:15

Are you an A-Thrower?

Posted on by abigail

Oh no, I moaned. Honey, please come. You need to see. It’s bad. 

He came. I scrolled. And late Saturday night, we strode into our 12 year-old’s otherworld where Jim saw what I had seen:

Scotchlover16 

RealDirtyDon.

No. Not good, Jim said,.

We winced at the too-gleeful, Joker-y profile picture of a 30-something male. One of Sam’s gaming “friends.” Our eyes raced down the message thread until they landed on this,

“You there, Sam?” Scotchlover16 wrote, when- thank God- Sam was already in bed.

“‘Sup Sam?” is all RealDirtyDon hadsaid.

Anxiety Hits

Last month, our school offered “Online Safety: What Parents Should Know.” I didn’t go, But I know about phishing and trolling. I know that perverts and creeps sneak into kids’ sites seeking prey not play.  Enter Scotchlover16 and RealDirtyDon.

So we two gaming novices- actually, gaming nots– scoured the site in vain for more red flags. But just because we couldn’t see them didn’t mean there weren’t there. These types are savvy. They don’t leave tracks beyond these creepy names and few lines of chat.

But whenever Sam was on, Scotchlover16 or RealDirtyDon were too. Just waiting for our son. Stalking. Prowling.

Anxiety hit. I feared.

Are you an A-Thrower?

But the Word of God is living and active, and at just the right time, at10:55 pm, Saturday, December 8th, a verse came to mind,

[C]asting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).

Ant that reminded me of a sermon I heard last week on the same verse.  The pastor mentioned a new term for garbage men. It’s G-Throwers.  As in garbage-throwers. Then he asked, Are you an A-Thrower? 

I remembered that too and right then, Jim and I did some A-throwing. We threw our anxiety on God.  By grace, we obeyed.

Then we made our game plan: no drastic measures yet. Talk to Sam in the morning- gravely and calmly- and go from there.

Then we A-throwers fell into bed and slept.

Cast Them Like Coats (On A Donkey). And Pray.

But what, you might be asking, does A-throwing look like?  How do we cast our cares?

It helps to know the same form of the Greek word translated cast or throw in 1 Peter 5:7 is found in Luke 19. The disciples had just fetched a donkey. Then verse 35 says, “They brought it to Jesus, and throwing [casting] their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it.”

When they cast their cloaks the disciples put them on the donkey. They didn’t wear or carry them. When we throw our cares on God,  he carries them.

And how we throw them on him, Paul explained, is to pray: Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer…present your requests to God.

The next day, I had to throw them again.

No more let sins and sorrows grow. 

Our race to church left no time for anxiety. Not until I’d slid into the back row, did the next wave of worry hit. But since I am training to be an A-thrower. and since on the job training is best, I did some A-throwing. I prayed.

Lord, please protect Sam. Please give us wisdom. I know you care. Amen.

Then, in the middle of Joy to the World, right at No more let sins and sorrows grow, I leaned over to Sam.

Sam, we need to talk about your gaming friends. You know, Scotchlover and RealDirtyDon? Dad and I don’t think you should be their friends.

His eyes got wide.

Son, did you know Scotch is a hard liquor- a dangerous beverage? And RealDirtyDon…well, you know, that does not sound good. 

The Wonders Of His Love

Um, Mom? Sam whispered back. Scotch is Nick’s dog’s name. Remember Nick, my friend from school?  

But that profile picture? That isn’t Nick. 

No, Mom. He just picked that picture because he thought it was funny.

What about RealDirtyDon? 

Oh, Mom, Sam giggled. Don is Donovan. He’s sitting right there-here Sam pointed up a few rows and to the left- with his mom and dad. Mr. and Mrs. Murphy- your friends.

Boy, did we laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh. By the time it simmered low enough to sing, the choir was on verse four.

He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove, the glories of his righteousness and wonders of his love. 

And wonders of His love.

You are His personal concern.

We know there’s more that is frightening ahead. There are always more worries to toss. A-throwers, like G-throwers, have job security. There are creeps and predators and evil men.

But there is a God who rules this world he so loves with truth and grace. There is a God who cares.

Exhibit A? That mom in the back row last Sunday. The one whose relieved laughter spilled joyful tears in wonder of God’s love. In wonder of a Father who actually calls his anxious kids to throw the weight of all their cares on Him. In wonder of a God who takes them on as his own personal concern.

One version of 1 Peter 5:7 says it this way, Throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.

So- yes. You bet I’ll sing the wonders of His love. 

Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you.

Psalm 55:22