This has been one of those weeks where every time someone asks how it’s going I respond with varying degrees of busy, tired, exhausted or overwhelmed. To be honest, my tank is low. For all sorts of reasons, working two jobs, preparing to leave the country with a group of teenagers, relational stressors and just simply busyness, I feel the pressure of life. Sometimes it seems like the little things compound into big things and can weigh on us. The weight can make us feel as if we have nothing to give. In fact, I almost decided to repost an old blog today because it felt like no good would come of what I had to say during a week like this. Then the Lord got a hold of me.
On my way to a meeting today the song Peace, by Hillsong Young & Free came up on my Spotify. The chorus goes like this:
There's a peace far beyond all understanding
May it ever set my heart at ease
What anxiety fails to remember is peace is a promise You keep
Peace is a promise You keep
“What anxiety fails to remember…” This week I have allowed anxiety to take root in my heart, but the Lord wants something greater for me. He has a peace that goes far deeper than my circumstances, my stressors, my capacity. He has a peace that puts my heart at ease. Because frankly, I am at the end of my capacity. I don’t have it in me to get everything done, to follow through with every commitment or even to really enjoy the day. It is all simply too much for me this week.
The beauty is that when I find the end, it allows God to completely take over. As I let these words wash over me on my drive, it wasn’t as if some switch had flipped. My circumstances were the same; I still felt exhausted and overwhelmed, but what welled up inside of me was confidence. Confidence that, in my inadequacies, the Lord can use me anyway. Confidence that whatever need to get done would, and the things that didn’t matter would fall away. Confidence that stress can be a teacher, and God can use even the most difficult circumstances to bring about his glory and my good. Confidence that Christ has won the fight for my heart, mind, soul and strength.
So today is anxiety taking root in your heart? Where do you need to let the peace enter in? As you walk through whatever circumstances in your life that cause you stress, remind your anxiety that peace is promise he keeps and that he is the fulfillment of that promise.
You are peace to a restless soul
Peace when my thoughts wage war
Peace to the anxious heart
That's who You are, that's who You are
Peace,
Lis