(From our church-wide devotion book at Pinedale Christian Church, "You 2.0”)

My son has a very rare, chronic, possibly terminal genetic disorder. And on bad days, it scares the mess out of me. On bad days, the “what ifs” overtake me, and I can’t seem to rise above the anxiety that creeps into my heart and threatens to overtake my soul. On the bad days, I can’t see the forest for the trees or the light at the end of the tunnel or [insert your favorite hopeless metaphor here.]

We all have our stuff. And my guess is that we all spend a good amount of time worrying about it. Right now, I have a friend whose marriage is falling apart around her, and she has no clue what to do or how to bring it back to life. I have a coworker whose not-even-two-year- old grandson is having unexplainable seizures, and the doctors have no answers. I just found out about another friend of mine, a mother of seven children, all adopted, most special needs, who has stage four cancer. And most recently, that a friend of a friend’s three- year-old daughter is battling leukemia.

On the bad days, when we watch the news, scroll through our Facebook feeds, or even answer the phone calls of our best friends, the hits seem to keep on coming, and it’s hard to gain any kind of holy grasp or Kingdom perspective on the crappy things of this broken, fallen world. We feel powerless to heal any of the hurts, and the growing, suffocating vines of anxiety start creeping in.

When I feel the walls crushing in, all I know to do is hold on. I stop. I step away from the noise. I pray. I open the Word and put all the Truth in me I can handle. ALL I know to do is keep ingesting His Truth until it’s so loud and so bold and so heart-stirring, that it drowns out the lies: The lies that say this hard thing will never end; that there will never be a cure; that all hope is lost; but mostly, the devil’s favorite lie - God is not enough for this one.

Imagine getting stuck believing that nonsense – that the Creator of the Universe, the One who hung the moon and stars, the One who holds the earth just so as it spins on its axis, the One who tells the tides when to come and when to go, the One who daily puts breath in my lungs and sustains my very life is somehow stumped by my current situation. Sorry, I can’t figure this one out. You’ve managed to confound the God of Angel Armies. Better luck next time.

No! Stop! Right this very moment, I will recognize that garbage lie for what it is, and replace it with the Truth of who God is. Because despite our circumstances and despite our “feelings” about our circumstances, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. All His promises to us in Christ are “Yes!” and “Amen!” He is who He says He is, and He can do what He says He can do.

No one has a cure for anxiety. It’s a hard topic to write about because how can you possibly convince someone to stop worrying? I certainly do not have that power. But what I have is the faithfulness of God - the looking back and seeing that time and time and time again, He has shown up and done His thing. And I can pray and wait in hopeful expectation because guess what? He’s absolutely going to do it again.

When the Israelites were roaming in the desert and had no food, God made it rain manna from Heaven. They were told to collect just what they needed for the day. If they tried to collect too much, not trusting that God would provide again tomorrow, that stuff would rot and be teeming with maggots (Exodus 16). When we don’t trust God for our tomorrows, Satan is waiting on the wings, ready to fill our brains with maggots and our souls with rot. (Nice imagery, huh?) He is a liar. When he lies, he’s speaking his native tongue (John 8:44). And he speaks no second language.

When I feel the anxiety and lies taking me over, all I can do is stop, pray, fill myself with Truth, collect just enough manna to get through today, and meditate on one of my favorite verses in all the Bible. This verse is talking about Abraham, but in my mind, I insert she’s and her’s for the he’s and him’s, and try to imagine it as the epitaph on my headstone. (I highly recommend writing it on a notecard and posting it where you can see it every day.)

No unbelief made [her] waver concerning the promise of God, but [s]he grew strong in [her] faith as [s]he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised. (Romans 4:20-21)

“No unbelief made her waver.” “Fully convinced that God was able.” Let those words sink deep into your spirit today. Imagine living that legacy of faith.

Look, I can’t make you stop worrying. I can’t make me stop worrying. But if we ask for God’s help, we can train our hearts and our minds to recognize satan’s lies for what they are, to replace those lies with Truth, and to trust completely in the One who has done it before - the One who will do it all again.

That’s our manna for today. And I am fully convinced that it truly is enough.