Win the Battle with Worry by Victoria Osteen
When you feel your concerns and troubles building, how do you handle the stress? If you’re like me, unless you make the decision to push pause for a moment and give it to God, knowing He is in control of the situation, your mind will start to spin with worry.
It’s interesting that the word “worry” comes from the Old English “wyrgan,” which means “to strangle.” It’s so easy to let worry and stress take over and literally choke the joy out of our lives.
I worked with a woman whose military son was serving overseas in a very dangerous place. She became so overwhelmed with worry that she could hardly function. I said to her, “Look, you can’t do anything about his situation, but you can come to a place of peace and rest in the Lord.” We began to pray together, and then I told her she needed to arm herself with scriptural declarations to wage warfare when worry tried to strangle her joy and peace. She wrote them down to declare out loud when she felt the stress building: “God, thank You that my son is in the palms of Your hands. No weapon formed against him will prosper. Thank You that Your angels have charge over him to keep him in all his ways. He won’t even dash his foot against a stone, but he’ll tread upon the lion and the cobra! Thank You, Father, that my son will come home safely.”
As she put this into practice, she began to take control over that worry little by little, and her focus and resolve came back. She began to praise God in the midst of her fear, and it made all the difference through her son’s six years in the military and safe arrival home. Worry pulls us away from God’s power, but worship draws us to Him, and His presence changes us.
The Bible says, “Let us lay aside every weight…which so easily ensnares us,” so we can run with purpose the race God has set before us (Hebrews 12:1). There’s a technique I’ve used that helps me do that when I feel concerns and troubles building. I imagine myself putting all those troubles into a big red helium balloon, and then I release it to God and say, “Father, thank You that You’re bigger than all these troubles. I’m giving them to You, and I know You’re going to take care of them.”
So how are you doing with worry today? Do what works for you, but find a way to lay aside those worries, because God will sustain you when you release them to Him.
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Victoria Osteen is an American author and the co-pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. She is the wife of Joel Osteen and the daughter-in-law of John Osteen.