Just Continue That Thought...

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World (Kindle Location 1380). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) But so many of us live on the banks of the If Only river. Max asks, “Are you standing on its shore? Does it seem, the good life is always one if only away? One purchase away? One promotion away? One election, transition, or romance away? If so, then we’ve traced your anxiety back to one of its sources. You’re in a hurry to cross the river and worried that you never will. Consequently, you work long hours, borrow more money, take on new projects, and pile on more responsibilities. Stress. Debt. Short nights. Long days. All part of the cost of the ticket to the land of the good life, right?” He then says, “Not exactly, opined the apostle Paul. The good life begins, not when circumstances change, but when our attitude toward them does. Look again at his antidote for anxiet

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World (Kindle Location 1276). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Do you ever hide when you see a homeless person coming?   You know they want something from you.   God is not like that. Max says, “God doesn’t delay. He never places you on hold or tells you to call again later. God loves the sound of your voice. Always. He doesn’t hide when you call. He hears your prayers.   For that reason, ‘be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God’ (Phil. 4:6).” He goes on, “With this verse, the apostle calls us to take action against anxiety. Until this point, he has been assuring us of God’s character: his sovereignty, mercy, and presence. Now it is our turn to act on this belief. We choose prayer over despair. Peace happens when people pray.”   And we need that

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World (Kindle Location 1205). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.) Maybe you need to be reminded of this today. Max says, “In his fine book The Dance of Hope , Bill Frey remembers the day he tried to pull a stump out of the Georgia dirt. He was eleven years old at the time. One of his chores was the gathering of firewood for the small stove and fireplace of the homestead. He would search the woods for stumps of pine trees that had been cut down and chop them into kindling. The best stumps were saturated with resin and therefore would burn more easily.” Bill said, “One day I found a large stump in an open field near the house and tried to unearth it. I literally pushed and pulled and crowbarred for hours, but the root system was so deep and large I simply couldn’t pull it out of the ground. I was still struggling when my father came h