“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down.” – Proverbs 12:25
The body of an anxious person reacts in ways that can put an extra strain on their heart. Rapid heart rates, increased blood pressure, decreased heart rate or variability are but a few ways. Anxiety can also interfere with any recovery. Dr. Una McCann, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins School for Medicine says, “Anxiety disorders can play a major role in heart disease.”
A study published last year in Sociology of Religion suggests that prayer can help ease a person’s anxiety. But the authors of the study put a caveat on that statement: that it “depends on the personality of the God they believe in.”
Who is God to you? A major source of comfort and strength, ordering your path with love and acceptance? Or a God of vengeance and wrath, watching for every malevolent step you take? Matt Bradshaw, an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University said the key is to be rooted in prayer to a God with whom you have an intimate relationship. Acquiring that intimacy is God’s desire for you. Jesus said in John 14 that to know the Father is to know Him. In Philippians, the Apostle Paul says to know Christ, you must keep Him the focus of your life. It is a challenging thing to set aside worldly glories to follow the Lord; but to do so, to develop that level of intimacy, will reduce—if not totally eliminate—anxiety from your life.
Study the Scriptures. Dive a a little deeper into His Word. See what God has planned for you there. Seek to know Jesus better day by day. Pray that leaders in the Congress will learn to set their own agendas aside and look to Jesus in faith for His promised abundant life.
Today’s Verse: Proverbs 12:25
Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down,
but a good word makes him glad.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: Philippians 3:4-16
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
