 Touching Our Lives: The God of Peace
Session #5
Overcoming worry depends not only on early detection of our anxious thoughts, but also their careful elimination. These thoughts are temptation. They are not sin but will lead us into worry. Through the regularly renewing of our mind with the truth of God's Word and careful examination of our lives and situations, we canby God's grace easily ward off even a great multitude of anxious thoughts just as the Psalmist did.
• Principles
What principles were strongly impressed on you today? Circle the ones that are most significant.
- It is normal to be suddenly aware of the many anxious thoughts swirling through our minds.
- In order to eleminate these thoughts, we need to quickly evaluate each one in light of the truth.
- Unresolved anxious thoughts pile up and willl overwhelm our ability to rightly discern matters.
- The reason some temptations are so difficult to resolve is because truth is mixed in with error.
- Renewing our minds fills our minds by meditating on God's Word.
- A renewed mind is needed to effectively fight off these worries by making truth prominent in our minds.
- Stating truths about God, ourselves and our situations effectively eliminates anxious thoughts.
- Listening to our feelings in these cases is only valuable in that they allow us to see how weak we are.
- Even great men of God must be able to humble themselves before God and admit their vulnerability.
- When we focus on doing what God wants in God's way, we have extra faith in God's promises.
• Applications
What clear decisions, plans, or confessions do I need to make because of what God spoke to me during this session?
- Did you do the assignment on Psalm 94? We need to stop demanding explanations from God. We can do this by training ourselves to rightly read God's Word. This Psalmist had what felt like an innumerable number of problems. He had so many things to worry about. But he became aware of them. He was honest about his vulnerability. He couldn't do anything about them. But then he triumphed by trusting in God's ability and desire to help him.
- We get instable when we allow anxious thoughts to swirl about our lives. We rarely authoritatively deal with them by God's truth. Since instability produces lack of confidence, the evil one works hard to cause God's people to worry so that they are discouraged from active ministry. Do you tend to give up when things get tough? Do you have tenacity to hold out? If not, this might be a key problem area to investigate.
• Testimonies
What one or two special lessons, stories, illustrations, warnings, etc. can I share with others that might encourage their faith?
- I used to tremble at the thought of public speaking. I regularly stuttered even in university speech class! God has brought me a long way since then. Two fears caused my lack of confidence. I feared people would think critically of me and about what I would say. I overcame my many problems by focusing on God's purpose for that speech or lesson rather than thinking about what people thought of me. I slowly learned that it really only mattered on what God thought of me. God not only proplerly focused me but helped me in my speaking abilities. I wish I had more quickly and thoroughly gone through these three steps!
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