"Anxiety, after all, is simply living out the future before gets here." -- Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something
Anxiety is a false prophet. It presumes to be so certain about the future that it acts in perfect accordance with its dire predictions now in the present. It lives out the doom and gloom of its prophecies before they occur, because anxiety has perfect faith in its predictions.
But we don't know the future and should not live like we do.
James 4:13-15
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”
That isn't to say that your predictions about tomorrow are never on point. But even if they are, what do you gain by being anxious about them now?
When you worry, you suffer twice.
Anxiety ruins today and offers no respite from tomorrow. It makes nothing better and yet makes everything worse and still, knowing this, we turn to it faithfully, reliably, hopefully time and time again. Anxiety has let us down and beaten us down a thousand times and yet we cling to its every word as though it has infallibly benefited us.
We need to repent of our anxieties. Instead of explaining them away or therapeutically muting them, we need to confess them for what they are, unbelief, and repent of them. We then need to believe God and His Word and place our faith in Him and in it.
Only then will we be free to enjoy today and fret not about tomorrow.
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