“Anxiety is a normal human experience. In fact, it can be a potentially beneficial response in anticipation of dangerous situations. The physical symptoms of anxiety are coming from your autonomic nervous system response. It is different from but related to the fear, which is a natural reaction to a clear and present danger.”
Most of us will struggle with anxiety at some point in life. It is normal to be anxious right before a test, when you have a job interview, or when facing the unknown.
Last week I did a devotional on YouVersion called, Victory Over Anxiety. I learned some new things about anxiety, while I was doing the devotional.
“Anxiety in itself is not a sin. It’s a normal response to the uncertainty we face in the situations that play out before us in everyday life. The issue is what we do with those anxieties and how long we allow them to live within us.” This is one of the main things that I learned from the devotional, and it is so true and important for us to remember. Sometimes we allow our anxious thoughts to live within us for far to long instead of dealing with them.
While doing the devotional I also learned that it is important for us to find out what the source of our anxiety is. That is one of the first steps we can take in order to overcome it. Sometimes we may need God’s help to find out the source of our anxiety. God sees the things that we have hidden deep inside our hearts, and these may be things that even we do not know about. God can reveal these things to us.
“There are countless sources for anxiety-anything can cause it.”
Anxiety isn’t easy, and it can be hard to overcome it. But we don’t have to overcome anxiety on our own. God cares about us so much, and he wants us to give our anxious thoughts to him.
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
There are steps that we can take to work through and overcome our anxiety. We can repeat bible verses about anxiety, and we can repeat truth over ourselves. It is also so important to trust in God. In the past few months I have found that it is not always easy to trust in God, but it is so much better when we do trust him.
God wants to trade our anxiety for peace instead.