“Anxiety’s Cure” – FBC Morning Light (7/18/2024)

Well, a good Thursday morning to you, and again, just this week, just this week,

I promise, I'm reminding of the opportunity to give to help support the work of these morning light broadcasts and the ongoing opportunity to produce them.

I've pointed out each day this week, in case you haven't heard, that we started these broadcasts four years ago during COVID, primarily for our church family to encourage them during those times of lockdown and uncertainty and so forth.

And then that ministry just kept going, it just kept expanding and branching out into other venues, and so now these broadcasts are on YouTube and Facebook Live and Sermon Audio, the church website, there's the

Boxcast, which is our streaming service. We have a boxcast .tv

site where all of the live streams are recorded or presented. But it's just expanded, and a lot more people than simply those in our church congregation watch these, and that's wonderful, and I hope they're a help and a blessing to you.

But we've never asked anybody outside of our church family to give in support of this ministry, and so our church has basically funded everything needed to make these recordings possible and these devotionals possible.

So I thought after all this time, it might be a good time for the sake of our church stewardship as well as the blessing and benefit of those who are benefiting from these broadcasts to give you the opportunity to give.

So if you're so inclined and the Lord would lay that on your heart, you can follow that link in the lower left -hand corner of your screen, and there's a box on that website page for the

Morning Light Devotionals, you just click on that and it'll lead you through how to give. As I mentioned the other day,

I don't have any great incentives to give to you, like make a contribution and I'll send you a book of some kind, or as one televangelist says, make a contribution and I'll send you a vial of water from the

Jordan River. Now, that isn't going to happen, okay? I wouldn't waste those resources in that way.

So again, if you can give, fine. If you can't, fine. But did want to give the opportunity.

Well, and after tomorrow I won't say anything more about it, I'll probably keep that banner up most of the time, but I'm not going to harp on this, it's not the point.

Well, today in our Bible reading, one of the passages we're reading is in Isaiah 26, and we're reading chapters 24 through 27.

And there are an awful lot of things that can cause anxiety, aren't there? What causes you to be anxious?

What are you anxious about in this day of economic turmoil?

Perhaps you're anxious about the future economically, the political scene, oh my goodness, we could talk all day about that, couldn't we?

And we can be anxious about the future of our country because of the void in true leadership in our country.

We can be anxious about the threat of war all over the world, and even on our shores.

The media would want us to be anxious about burning up in climate change or freezing to death in the winter, depends on the season,

I suppose. There are all kinds of things that we can be filled with anxiety over, and those are all things outside, and then we can talk about things within our own family.

We can be anxious about our children, their future, our job, and on and on and on we can go.

A ton of stuff we can be anxious about, and probably many of us are.

Even right now as I speak, there's probably somebody listening whose heart is an anxious heart and you're filled with anxiety.

What's the cure for that? What's the solution to such anxiety? Well, the solution is simple.

I didn't say it was easy. I said it was simple as opposed to complex. There's not a whole lot of hoops that a person has to jump through to eradicate anxiety from one's life, but the solution is simple, and it's given to us in Isaiah 26, verses 3 and following.

It says this, speaking to the Lord, you will keep him in perfect peace.

The Hebrew there is interesting. It's the use of the word peace twice.

You will keep him in peace, peace, and that Hebrew idiom communicates total, complete peace.

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed, fixed on you because he trusts in you.

There it is, isn't it? Isn't it true? I know it's true for me that when my heart is filled with anxiety,

I'm not thinking about the Lord. I'm not resting in him. I'm not focused on him.

I'm not fixed on him. I'm not trusting in him. I'm expecting the worst to happen, or I'm trusting in myself or somebody else to solve a problem or to make up for something or another, and I'm not trusting in the

Lord. Then I'm filled with anxiety, and I wonder why. The next verse goes on to say, trust in the

Lord forever, for in Yah the Lord is everlasting strength.

Interestingly, that phrase everlasting strength could be translated rock of ages, for Yah the

Lord is the rock of ages. There was a hymn written with that title.

You're probably familiar with it, rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

Indeed, there it is. There's that simple, simple approach to dealing with anxiety, to hide ourselves in the rock of ages.

Now, that hymn is primarily dealing with the things that should cause and would cause us the most anxiety, the reality of our sin and its consequences.

The wages of sin is death, and that should cause us a great deal of anxiety.

What's the solution? Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

It goes on to say, let the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.

Oh, the solution is in the rock of ages, trust in him. And then

I suppose probably the ultimate event that could cause us and often does cause us anxiety is the end of life and the end of life issues, death.

And what's the solution to that anxiety? It's the same thing, the rock of ages.

Listen to the last verse of that hymn. It says, while I draw this fleeting breath, when my eyes shall close in death, when

I soar to worlds unknown, see thee on thy judgment throne, rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

Yeah, again, the cure for anxiety is not complex.

It's really simple. I didn't say easy. I said simple, simply trusting in our

God. As Isaiah says, the prophet says, trust in Yahweh forever, for in Yah, the

Lord, Yahweh is everlasting strength. And those who will trust in him, what's the promise?

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

I don't know if you're going through something causing you a great deal of anxiety today, but if so,

I hope that by God's grace, you can turn to the

Lord and trust in him, focus on him. What has he promised?

What has he provided for you? Trust in him, and he will give you perfect peace.

Our Father and our God, to one who's listening today, who's feeling anxious over some situation in life,

I pray that they might take the cure for that anxiety and trust in you, be stayed on you.

Pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, listen, have a good rest of your Thursday. May the Lord bless you.