Chapter 24 - Anxiety

Chapter 24 challenged us with 7 Bible passages to help us discern the presence of “Anxiety” in daily life situations, as follows:

Philippians 4:6-7
Matthew 5:25-34
Luke 12:1-12
Matthew 13:1-23
Luke 11:38-42
Luke 21:34-36
1 Peter 5:6-7

Prayer:

Can you identify your greatest fear? And could you confess it to God? If you keep it hidden within you he can never cleanse it, much less use it to his glory. Offer your fears and anxieties to him this week.

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 24 was “Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus” by Charles Wesley. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“O God, who is the life of all who live, the light of the faithful, the strength of those who labor, and the repose of the dead: I thank you for the timely blessings of the day, and humbly beseech your merciful protection all the night. Bring me, I pray, in safety to the morning hours; through him who died for me and rose again, your Son my Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.” (The Book of Common Prayer)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Howard Thurman, Annie Dillard, Thomas à Kempis, George MacDonald (edited by C. S. Lewis), Andrew Murray, Hannah Whitall Smith, Anthony Padovano, Joshua L. Liebman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Philip S. Watson, and Henri J. Nouwen. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

· “There is a sense of wholeness at the core of man … That warms the depth of frozen fears …”
· “I meant to accomplish a good bit today. Instead I keep thinking: Will the next generations of people remember to drain the pipes in the fall? I will leave them a note.”
· “To preserve peace in time of trouble our will must remain firm in God …”
· “The next hour, the next moment, is as much beyond our grasp and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away.”
· “Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. …Heed not thy feeling: Do thy work.”
· “All growth in the spiritual life is connected with the clearer insight into what Jesus is to us. …the more I learn to live the real life of faith, which, dying to self, lives wholly in Christ.”
· “…there are two things which are more utterly incompatible than even oil and water, and these two are trust and worry.”
· You find no difficulty in trusting the Lord with the management of the universe, and all the outward creation, and can your case be any more complex or difficult than these, that you need to be anxious or troubled about His management of you?”
· “Prayer is successful not in terms of what it logically produces or pragmatically achieves but in terms of what it forces reality to experience.”
· “… I set down my inventory of earthly desirables: health, love, beauty, talent, power, riches and fame… With a pencil stub he crossed out my entire schedule. …Then … he wrote down three syllables: peace of mind.”
· “Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. …The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves.”
· “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 24 not quoted) mean to you?

Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John