Tell Your Anxieties To Ask Permission

I might have thought that the long, steady march of sanctification would mean I’d only see progress against sins, struggles, and temptations. But I am learning that there may be some areas where I actually experience a kind of regress. One of these is anxiety, for the older I get, the more I find myself prone to it. I dare say I may struggle with worry more now than I have at any other time in life. What’s especially frustrating …

Shedding Tears Over Sorrows That May Never Come

We prayed as a family before Nick and Abby left for their fall semester, then snapped a photo of the two of them standing together outside our home—our two college students. It was August 1, 2020, and they were headed to Louisville, Kentucky, Nick for his junior year and Abby for her freshman. I made the journey with them since CDC regulations at the time mandated foreigners quarantine for two weeks upon arrival. We stayed isolated together in a borrowed …

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We Prophesy Grief, Not Grace

If this pandemic has taught us anything, surely it’s taught us that we are lousy prognosticators. The best of our politicians, the best of our scientists, the best of our statisticians, could not, between them, do much of anything to predict how far the virus would spread, how quickly it would move, how many lives it would claim. The greatest optimists and greatest pessimists alike were often shown to be wrong not just by small degrees, but by whole orders …

Not Worrying ≠ Not Caring

Those nights when you lie awake, restless and tossing and turning, your mind churning over a future that is uncertain and unknown. Those days when your heart is heavy and your spirit is sorrowful while you imagine what will befall you or that person you love. There isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the agony of worry. There isn’t a human being alive who hasn’t allowed legitimate concern to devolve into illegitimate anxiety. But just because worry is …

Letters to the Editor (Christians and Anxiety)

One of the great joys of running this blog is receiving letters to the editor. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those letters this week concerned Adam Ford’s guest article Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety. I have chosen to print only letters related to that subject. I hope you find them both interesting and thought-provoking. I have a 17 year old daughter who also has Generalised and Social Anxiety disorders. I found this article a …

Some Things You Should Know About Christians Who Struggle With Anxiety

You have probably bumped into Adam Ford before, either through his comics at Adam4d.com or through his satire at The Babylon Bee. Over the past couple of years I’ve come to enjoy Adam as a friend and recently asked if he’d like to try his hand at another medium by penning a guest article. He obliged and this is the result. I trust you’ll benefit from it. For 7 years I have lived with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and …

Pensive, Doubting, Fearful Heart

While John Newton will always be known as the man who wrote “Amazing Grace,” that is just one of hundreds of hymns he penned. Another beautiful and powerful hymn of comfort and assurance is “Pensive, Doubting, Fearful Heart.” I have it on good authority that it will be on the next album by Indelible Grace; it was also on one of Red Mountain Music’s albums (you can hear it below). Read these lyrics as a poem or read them as …