I am anxious. I feel it in my body. I let my mind wander back, seeking to trace its cause, and hear again in my head the squeaky grind of my Prius brakes. Ah, that’s the trigger: finances.
Sometimes I can be maniacally driven by fear. Currently, the fight of my life is refusing to seek easy comfort for my distress, a soothing anesthetic to numb the pain, which is actually just some sort of slow-acting poison. Some call it sin. We all have our preferred poisons, I suppose, and some are perhaps faster-acting than others, but all poisons kill eventually, if unaddressed.
While suffering can result from the poor quality of our choices, it’s also from living in a shadow world where evil is threatening its original goodness. Our collective rejection of God results in suffering and eventual death—for us and the world we were given to care for. Yet suffering and death are also what God uses to bring us back to wholeness.
The power of death has been broken! The Word came into the very world that He brought into existence! His life was so potent that death itself became a life-giving force in Him. The very thing which separated us from God—death—now brings us to the fullness of life in Him.
Now to live (in the fullest sense), we have to let that old self die—the one driven by fear and seeking comfort in all the wrong places—so we can receive a different kind of life. The Word became human to teach us how to be authentic humans.
When my fears and sins have led the day, I have felt less myself. Only in drawing near to Jesus do we feel most real and alive.
Bad things still happen. My brake pads really could be shot. I could run out of money. Yet in these challenging moments, God can work to bring us more of His life by using it to test and refine our faith. We can’t always see how He is going to provide, but God’s action isn’t contingent on our own imaginative or conceptual capacities. We are not in control. We can only rest in the God who is.
God, over and again, has shown Himself trustworthy. I can honestly say that goodness has followed me, and He has taken care of me kindly. It is not often in the ways I would have chosen, but Jesus in Gethsemane wouldn’t have chosen to die; I’m thankful He instead said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:29).
I am so grateful that the Lord will always provide. The exercise of looking back on how he has truly been there is something I don’t do enough.
Rest in him!
This is amazing. Thank you Aurora. God spoke to me through your beautiful words❤️
I’ve been searching for comfort in the wrong places and have yet again been reminded that true comfort can ONLY come from the Lord❤️
Just prayed for you. May the Lord give you strength and provide the next faithful step and sustain you. I too have kiddos and understand your fear. You are not alone.
Letting go of our poison and letting God instead is so difficult. Praying for you to have strength and comfort as you lean on God. I pray you have a blessed Christmas as well!
These readings and this devotional is exactly what I needed today. I have fear and anxiety, mostly focused around my children; I want their lives to be perfect, and I want them to be happy always; I have a really hard time with seeing them sick or sad, or when they face hard situations (which we all do in life!); I also have a huge fear of losing them, as I know many people who have children that have passed and I had friends/schoolmates that passed when I was younger. Anyway, I too seek easy comfort, mostly with alcohol… it makes me sad to say it… and just yesterday I decided that I am going to stop drinking for good, not even in moderation. I will have to deal with any and all situations and feelings that arise, and I know that this will be hard, but I don’t want this “poison” to lead to my death. Please pray for me for strength in this season, and for help with my anxiety. I am someone who always wants to be in control of situations, and I’m still learning that God is the one in control not me; still such a hard lesson for me to learn.
Aurora: “His life was so potent that death itself became a life-giving force” —- wow!! Amen!!