I’d just stepped out of the shuttle upon arrival at Logan airport in Boston, my breath visible in the chill air and my mind still spinning after a stressful semester of college. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a distressed lady talking to a seasoned skycap as he tossed luggage onto a conveyor belt. Assuring her everything was going to be fine, I heard him utter five words I’ve never forgotten despite the passage of decades: “You ain’t got no problems.” It was as if God were talking directly to me, putting all my worries about school and my future in perspective.
We lack perspective anytime we find ourselves overcome by worry. Like one of those eight-foot, air-filled Halloween figures, often we’ve grossly inflated a problem or situation with thought after thought, until we’ve erected something frightful! So here’s a question: Who’s liable for this monstrosity dominating the lawn of one’s mind?
A distraught woman in an audience I once taught asked, “I’ve prayed and prayed, but God just hasn’t taken this anxiety away—what can I do?” I gently pointed her to John 14:27 and asked who was the responsible party in the statement, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” We choose what we set our minds upon.
Once, as a creative teenager inspired by current events, I jokingly decorated correspondence to my sister with explosion drawings and the words, “Caution: Letter Bomb.” I never expected law enforcement to show up at my puzzled parents’ door or the bomb squad to intercept my innocent attempt at humor. (I now understand bomb threats constitute a felony offense.)
Figuratively speaking, the devil is constantly sending packages our way hoping to scare us. Whether by postal carrier, T.V., radio, internet post, text, or the words of a misguided friend, his special deliveries contain bait to trap us in the jaws of fear. But a boxed, folded plastic monster shouldn’t scare us. Our thoughts make those fears larger than life and blow things out of perspective. Let’s not willingly collaborate with the enemy, turning every shape and shadow into a threat. We arm his bombs when we surrender our imaginations to his cause.
Jesus answered the devil’s missives with the Word, and so should we! Here are three verses to help you stamp those intrusive envelopes “Return to Sender.”
Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one (Ephesians 6:16). When we magnify God instead of our problems, we exercise faith!
Peace I leave with you; My [own] peace I now give and bequeath to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. [Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed; and do not permit yourselves to be fearful and intimidated and cowardly and unsettled] (John 14:27 AMPC).
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
More fear extinguishers:
Joshua 1:9
Psalms 34:4, 56:3, 61:2, 91, 94:19
Proverbs 3:5-8, 18:10, 29:25
Isaiah 41:10
Luke 10:19
Philippians 4:6-8
Hebrews 13:5
1 John 4:4,18
Well put, JB. Great perspective and constructive ways to deal with fear! Thanks for all the Bible references too.