One of the great impacting quotes for me personally that I often ponder is by Tim Keller “Worry isn’t caused by thinking too much, it is caused by not thinking enough.”
What he means is we think that we can avoid worry by just ‘clearing our mind’ or ‘not thinking negative thoughts’. Instead the way to kill worry dead is to in fact think more. However we think more about the power of the gospel in our own life. The Psalms are a great book to go to for evidence of this. So often the Psalmist (normally David) has hit some pretty major life circumstance and is honest about it (it’s ok to have emotions!). Take Psalm 3, David has foes against him and he is being humiliated and things are going so bad, but instead of going quiet and stoic, instead of turning to self pity or worry, he thinks! In fact more than thinks he writes a psalm and no doubt sings it allowed. He quite literally sings a sermon to himself and reminds himself who God is and what he has done and what he can do. Listen to v3 “But you, Lord, are a shield around me…” and V8 “From the Lord comes deliverance.”
If you read the rest of the Psalm he ends up essentially claiming victory. You can tell by the end of it, worry was a distant memory. What are you facing today that is causing you to worry? Kill Worry Dead by Powerful Gospel Thinking.
Carl Mutzelburg 