Trust E-Book

Lydia Brownback

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

An easy-to-carry "pocket book" that steers women away from the world's weak remedies for anxiety and fear and points them to their security in Christ. While fear-provoking headlines fill our days, and struggles with anxiety are a fact in a fallen world, Scripture says fear does not need to be a fact of life for Christians. This little carry-along "pocket book" for women focuses on the Bible's great truths about what lies beneath their fears and the means to overcome them-for those who worry just a little, those who suffer a gnawing, controlling fear or actual panic attacks, and every woman in between. The first in a series of small, Bible-centered volumes for women, each of which covers a particular struggle, Trust is full of biblical truths and promises that will reassure readers that if they belong to Christ, they have absolutely nothing to fear. On-the-Go Devotionals easily tuck into a purse or gym bag and make great gifts. Each lesson is self-contained, with Scripture and a paragraph or two of teaching that will steer women away from worldly coping techniques, away from themselves and their circumstances, and onto God and their security in Christ.

Leseprobe

Trust

Copyright © 2008 by Lydia Brownback

Published by Crossway Books a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Jon McGrath

Cover illustration: iStock

First printing, 2008

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version®. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NKJV are from The Holy Bible: The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NIV are from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brownback, Lydia, 1963–

Trust : a godly woman’s adornment / Lydia Brownback.

p. cm. — (On-the-go devotionals ; #1)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-58134-957-3 (tpb)

1. Trust in God. 2. Christian women—Religious life. I. Title. II. Series.

BV4637.B825

2008

248.8'43—dc22

2007037924

VP 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

With gratitude to God for Russ, the rock of our family, and for Lisa, who sacrifices much for all of us

Contents

Introduction: Why Women Fear

The Devotions

The Secret Places of the Heart

The What-If Woman

A Phobic’s Only Remedy

God Knows Best

The Goodness of God

Safe and Secure

Building on Rock

False Security

People Pleasers

Fear of Man

Resting on Self-Righteousness

No Ifs

Self-Salvation?

Nothing More Than Feelings

Afraid of the Pain

Feelings and Fear

Eyes Wide Open

Control Freaks

Fretful Living

Mistaken Identity

Getting Unstuck

Whose Fault Is Our Fear?

The Truth about Pride

The Blessings of Humility

Triumph in Trials

Destructive Desire

Great Expectations

A Broad Place

Going God’s Way

Peace in Hardship

Remembering

The Insanity of Unbelief

The Path to Healing

The Weapons of Our Warfare

Getting Personal

Fickle Hearts

Warped Perceptions

A Divine Feast

A Haven from Heartbreak

A Woman’s Wilderness

The Wonder of Weakness

Thorns of Blessing

Sweet Rest

The Choice Is Yours

Good in Every Way

Our Good Father

Your Place in God’s Family

Where Is Your Faith?

A Fence against Fear

Are You Sure?

Introduction: Why Women Fear

Tornado rips through Kansas town . . . four dead in campus shooting . . . suicide bomber blows up school bus—such news stories flash across the ticker tapes on our television screens. Day or night, we are bombarded with breaking news alerts of triple homicides, abused children, and the steady march toward moral collapse in Western civilization. And then there are the painful realities of our own lives—abandonment, disappointment, sickness, sorrow. Will the stream of death, loss, and destruction never end? The good news is that these heartbreaks will indeed cease. The end will come with the return of Jesus Christ. God has promised this, and he always fulfills his promises. In the meantime, all the horrors we witness on our television screens are not catching God off-guard. He has everything under the control of his mighty hand, which means that we have no reason to be afraid. So why do so many of us who profess to know Jesus Christ go about our lives in fear? Although God’s Word tells us we have nothing to fear, the fact remains that many of us are afraid or anxious much of the time.

Do you struggle with fear? Have you felt its icy grip immobilizing your heart? Perhaps you aren’t afraid exactly, but you are anxious. Stress is your constant companion, and you are nagged by worries over issues large and small. From restless thoughts to heart-racing panic attacks, we all struggle with fearful emotions to one degree or another, because fear is a fact in a fallen world. But according to Scripture, anxious fear doesn’t have to be a fact for a daughter of God. In fact, the Bible tells us that there is no place for such fear for those who are in Christ Jesus. The Bible has a lot to teach us about what underlies our fears, and it also reveals the means to overcome them. I hope that as we look at God’s Word together in this book, we will uncover great truths that will strengthen our faith and diminish our fears.

Overcoming anxiety begins with the realization that each one of our fears has a spiritual root. They are all directly linked to our view of God. It doesn’t seem that way much of the time. Our overbooked agendas—even our preschoolers need scheduling calendars today—are natural stress generators. Most of us have too much to do with not enough time or money or energy to do it all, and trying to keep up brings stress to our marriages and worry lines to our faces. Nevertheless, our busy lives aren’t the root cause of our anxiety. The root cause is our failure to understand who God is and how he is working in our lives. When we are rightly related to God, when we understand who he is—to and for us in Christ—we will realize we have no need to be anxious.

He is the God who numbers every hair on our heads (Matt. 10:30) and the one who has promised to supply all our needs (Phil. 4:19). He is the Father who gives us all things for our enjoyment (1 Tim. 6:17). He is the God who has promised to fulfill the heart desires of all who seek their happiness in him (Ps. 37:4). He is the one who tells us to be anxious for nothing and to cast all our anxieties on him because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). He is the one who has already given us the best—his Son—and tells us that therefore we can certainly expect his intervention in all lesser things (Rom. 8:32).

If that is true, and it is because his Word says so, then why are we still fearful women? We are fearful because we don’t really trust him. And we don’t really trust him because at some level we don’t really believe he is good. We simply don’t take him at his word.

The only way we will learn to trust God is by getting to know God. When our understanding of him is deficient, we are going to view him wrongly. We are going to have a low view of him. If God is low in our estimation, then the things of this world are going to rate too high, which will snow us under. If we believe that somehow it is up to us to take control of our lives and the lives of those we love, fear is inevitable, because we simply aren’t in control of anything. Many of us are quick to dismiss a link between our stress and our view of God. “I don’t hold God in low regard,” we object. “I live a Christian life and attend worship each Sunday, and I spend lots of time with other believers.” But if we suffer from chronic anxiety and fear, we are kidding ourselves. Our view of God isn’t as majestic as we think. A right view of God is the only thing that will dispel our illusion that we have to control our lives and that everything depends on us.

Additionally, our anxiety-producing, wrong view of God leads us to place too much value on the wrong things. If we don’t know God very well, we can’t see that he is the only thing ultimately worth living for, and we wind up living for ourselves instead. Our problems, our families—everything in our world—becomes supremely important. We put off the gentle and easy yoke of Christ that we are called to wear and instead attempt to harness God to a yoke of our own devising. Many of our anxieties and fears spring from dragging this self-made yoke. “The foolishness of a man twists his way, and his heart frets against the LORD” (Prov. 19:3 NKJV).

Some of us don’t realize that we are trying to pull the wrong yoke. We reach toward dreams and goals designed to further God’s kingdom and to bring blessing, and our prayer requests are for good things. But how do we react when things don’t go according to plan? If, when our plans don’t work out or our prayers aren’t answered in the way or time we think best, we get frustrated and impatient and worried and fearful, that’s a tip-off that something is off-kilter. All wrong views about God result in anxieties and fears about life. The health of our vertical relationship—our relationship with God—will always determine the health of our horizontal relationships—those we have with people, with life, and with ourselves. So the first thing to get straight is our view of God.

Since God overarches everything, we must view our lives and everything that happens to us through that lens. But we often don’t. Instead we allow our circumstances to shape our view of God. We experience something bad, and we allow it to throw our belief about a loving, compassionate Father right out the window.

“Where is the God of all comfort in this heartache?”

“How could a powerful God let my baby die?”

“Why would a good God allow my marriage to fall apart?”

Sometimes when we cry out in our pain, asking God to make himself known, we can’t find him. He seems faraway and distant, and we conclude that he just isn’t as good and kind and powerful as we had thought. Our weak faith is shaken, and we wind up distancing ourselves from God, because our own means of comfort and the people who love us seem safer.