Monday, December 28, 2015

Jesus wants to help you!

I am surprised and chagrined at how long it has taken me--despite all the wonderful things the Lord has done in my life--to realize that I can give Him everything:  no problem is too minor for Him to help you.  It's hard to comprehend being loved that much:  we usually don't find that kind of love from other people, but He does love us that much!

Yesterday I had one of my anxiety attacks, which have been a pretty regular feature of my life for years.  I decided to give it to Him.  He gave me the insight to understand that the anxiety I was feeling was in reality the way I was expressing anger, believe it or not!  I am frequently angry at my parents, who are both getting fairly senile; I have enough self-control not to lash out at them (most of the time), but I have been internalizing a huge burden of anger, which plays havoc with my emotions.  I am angry, can't let it out, so instead I get terribly stressed.  Now that I understand this, it's a little easier to handle.  I Googled "how can christians express anger" and found a really helpful article that further clarified that anger is, deep down, a pride problem--we want the world, other people, to do what we want--but control of the world is really God's province, not ours.  Therefore, we have to learn to let go of pride and judgment, and leave that up to God.  Jesus forgives.  He forgives us all the time. We have to forgive like He does, and stop trying to control people.  This was a major insight for me.

But He also helps with really trivial things!  Last night my parents could not get the back door unlocked and instead of calling me, my father started messing around with a screwdriver.  He got the lock so screwed up that the bolt would not turn back, and the door could not be opened at all.  This is a huge worry to me, because I am so scared of fires.  This morning, I finished taking the lock off, but still could not get the bolt to turn with a screwdriver, although I thought it should.  It seemed to me that this was such an unimportant issue in the vast scheme of things, but then I thought:  "you know what?  I am going to give this to Jesus," so I asked Him to help me get the door open.  I then thought of calling the locksmith a few blocks away from here; he told me what to do to get it open, and it worked.  Do you think that the idea of calling the locksmith was just chance?  I don't.  +

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