Not Alone in Anxiety and Worry

<p>READ: <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=PSALM+94%3A17-19%3B+MATTHEW+6%3A25-34%3B+11%3A28-30&amp;version=NIV" data-type="link" data-id="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=PSALM+94%3A17-19%3B+MATTHEW+6%3A25-34%3B+11%3A28-30&amp;version=NIV">PSALM 94:17-19; MATTHEW 6:25-34; 11:28-30</a></p> <p>There are a lot of anxious and worried people in the world today, but that’s nothing new. People have been worrying for a long time, otherwise the Bible wouldn’t address worry like it does. We’re not the first people to have days when we feel anxious or nights when we lose sleep because we’re worried about what the future might hold.</p> <p>Moses worried that he wouldn’t know how to speak when God sent him to Pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt (Exodus 3-4). The proverbs talk about how a person can get weighed down with anxiety (Proverbs 12:25). The psalms are filled with verses that were written by people experiencing worry and anxiety. For example, Psalm 13 begins with the words, “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” Throughout the Bible, we see over and over again how God responds to all our worries, and how He meets us with compassion in times of anxiety.</p> <p>Jesus is “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and He took time to talk about worrying—and even more than that, He experienced anxiety firsthand. On the night before He went to the cross, Jesus went to a quiet place to pray. He was “deeply distressed and troubled,” and He told His disciples, “‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death’” (Mark 14:33-34). Jesus was “in anguish,” and as He prayed earnestly, “his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Jesus was willing to go through all this distress and sorrow and hurt…because He loves us. In Jesus, we see how God bore our weaknesses and took our pain, ultimately dying on the cross, so that