21 Ways to Finding Peace and Happiness (8 page)

I was thrilled to learn that God wanted to take care of me, but learning how to cast my care so He could do His job was a long lesson. It seemed so foreign to me not to worry about situations. I still need more growth in this area, but at least I’m not where I once was.

I admit that worry has been a problem in my life. I had many burdens at a young age and didn’t know anything else to do except worry. I formed bad habits, and they have not been easily broken. It seemed I was literally addicted to worry and reasoning. I could not settle down and feel peaceful until I thought I had an answer to my situation. The main problem was that I always had some sort of situation; therefore, I rarely had the pleasure of being at peace.

If you are one of those people who seem to worry about everything, I want you to know that I know how you feel. I do believe the Lord can and will deliver you. There are biblical principles you can learn that will bring freedom from the bondage of worry. Retire from self-care! Make a decision to let God take care of you.

First Peter 5:6 says we are to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, so in due time He might exalt us. It says in verse 7, as we’ve seen, to cast all our care on Him, for He cares about us. These two verses together are saying that humility leads us into freedom from worry. We will worry as long as we think we can solve our problems, but humility says, “I need God, I need help.”

Proud people are independent, but God requires us to be totally dependent upon Him. Habakkuk 2:4 teaches us that the soul of the proud person is not right within him. Part of the soul is the mind, and God does not consider our minds to be “right” when we are worrying. The just and righteous man lives by faith; he leans on God for everything.

First Peter 5:5 states that God resists the proud but gives grace (help) to the humble. Humble people know they are nothing without God, that they can do nothing of any real value without Him. I did not even begin to enjoy any measure of freedom from worry until I faced the fact that I was not able to solve my own problems.

If we know what to do, we should do it; if we don’t, we should admit it.

M
EDITATE ON THE
W
ORD

If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. It means to think of something over and over. Meditation on God’s Word is one of the major ways you can find deliverance from worrying. Just as we once formed a habit of worrying (meditating on the problem), we can form a new habit of meditating on God’s Word. Take portions of Scripture that comfort you, and roll them over and over in your mind. Do it on purpose!

As soon as you are facing a difficult situation that tempts you to worry, begin to confess and meditate on Scripture. In this way, you do warfare with the enemy of your soul (Satan).

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

F
EAR

Worry cannot exist without fear. We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen. “Fear hath torment,” according to 1 John 4:18 (KJV). Anyone who has experienced fear can say a loud
Amen
to that statement. Fear definitely torments!

Having revelation on God’s love for us and placing our faith in that love is the only antidote for fear. We can relax and live free from worry and fear when we know that God is good and that He loves us. He loves us with a perfect, full, and complete love. He loves us unconditionally, which means there are never days—not even moments—when God does not love us. Knowing this helps us feel better about ourselves, and it also delivers us from tormenting negative emotions such as worry and fear.

God is on our side, and no matter what happens, He has promised never to leave us or forsake us. He said, “Fear not, for I am with you.” Meditate on this Scripture until it becomes a reality in your life: “There is no fear in love [dread does not exist], but full-grown (complete, perfect) love turns fear out of doors and expels every trace of terror! For fear brings with it the thought of punishment, and [so] he who is afraid has not reached the full maturity of love [is not yet grown into love’s complete perfection]” (1 John 4:18).

God loves you,
and you can live without fear because He does. He has promised to take care of you, to meet your legitimate needs. I am not promising that God will give you everything you want. There are times when we want things that God knows would not be good for us. He promises in Luke 11 that if we ask for bread, He will not give us a stone; likewise, if we ask for a stone, He will not give us a stone when what we need is bread. God will always do what is best for us, and we need to trust that. That kind of faith leads us into lives of peace that passes understanding.

K
NOW
G
OD’S
C
HARACTER

God is faithful, and because faithfulness is embedded in His character, He cannot fail us or let us down. Experience with God gives us experience with His faithfulness. We have needs, and He meets them time and again. He may not always do what we would like, but He does do the right thing. He may not be early, but He is never too late.

I have seen God come through multitudes of times during the years I have been serving Him. I can truly say,
God is faithful.
He has given me needed strength, answers that came just in time, right friends in right places, open doors of opportunity, encouragement, needed finances, and much more. There is nothing we need that God cannot provide.

God is good. Goodness is one of His many wonderful character traits. When something is part of an individual’s character, we can expect him to respond in that way every time. God is not good only sometimes, He is good all the time. He is good to people who don’t deserve it. He helps us even when we have done dumb things, if we will just admit our mistakes and ask boldly for His help. We can always ask God for help: “If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him” (James 1:5).

What good news! God will give us wisdom when we have trials—He will show us the way out. All we need to do is ask, and He will give without finding fault with us. Amazing! We don’t have to be afraid that God will not help us because we have been weak or made mistakes.

Another one of His character traits is mercy. Mercy chooses to be good to people who, in reality, deserve punishment. His mercy is new every morning. I have always said that God makes a new batch of mercy daily because we used up all of yesterday’s supply.

Study the character of God (I have a tape series available on the subject); it will increase your faith and help you not to worry or be fearful. Remember that fear is a demon spirit Satan sends out from hell to hinder our progress. Fear stops us and even drives us backward. It causes us to shrink back. Hebrews 10:38 says, “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him” (KJV).

The
Amplified
translation of that verse says if we draw back and shrink in fear, God has “no delight or pleasure” in us. This simply means that God is not delighted when, through fear, we are cheated out of what Jesus died for us to have and enjoy. We must keep going forward in God’s plan and never fall back. Satan hates progress, and more than anything, he uses fear to prevent it.

I believe fear is the master spirit Satan uses to control people. It seems that so many of our problems are rooted in fear. The only answer to fear is to face it with courage. Courage is not the absence of fear—it is going forward in the face of it. Courage overrides fear; it refuses to bow its knee to it. The only acceptable attitude toward fear is:
I will not fear!

To fear is to take flight or to run away. We are truly afraid if we run from what God wants us to confront. When the Israelites were afraid of Pharaoh and his army, God told Moses to tell them to “fear not; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (see Exodus 14:13).

We will never see or experience God’s delivering power if we run from things in fear. Stand still, and see what God will do for you. Trust Him; give Him a chance to prove His faithfulness and goodness to you.

When fear knocks on the door, send faith to answer. Don’t speak your fears; speak faith. Say what God would say in your situation— say what His Word says, not what you think or feel. The book of Mark relates an account of a woman who had been bleeding for twelve long years. She heard of Jesus and believed that He could help her. “For she kept saying, If I only touch His garments, I shall be restored to health” (Mark 5:28).

The very next verse says, “And immediately her flow of blood was dried up . . . and [suddenly] she felt in her body that she was healed.” This woman received her miracle because of faith, but notice that her faith said something.

Whatever is in our hearts will come out of our mouths. Are you speaking fear or faith? Both can produce results. Faith produces positive results, and fear produces negative ones. Did the woman sense any fear? I believe she did. The Bible records that the crowds were so heavy that people pressed Jesus from all sides. I am sure the woman looked at those people and thought,
How am I ever going to get to Jesus? What if I cannot press through to Him?
The devil offers fearful thoughts of that nature.

But the woman made a choice: In the presence of fear telling her she wouldn’t make it, she pressed on! She did not shrink back in fear, she pressed on, and that is exactly what God wants all of us to do. She pushed forward and kept speaking her faith, and she got her miracle.

Jesus told the disciples that if they had “faith [that is living] like a grain of mustard seed,” they would
say
to the mountain, “Move,” and it would move. He further said that with faith, nothing would be impossible to them (see Matthew 17:20).

We see that once again Jesus told us that faith
says
something. I ask again, what are you saying in your situation? When trouble comes, are you able to keep a good confession?

In Matthew 21:21, we find Jesus saying basically the same thing to the same group of men. He was reminding them that if they had faith and did not doubt, even if they
said
to the mountain, “Be cast into the sea,” it would be done. The mountains mentioned in these verses refer to obstacles in our way.

Imagine having that kind of power! God wants us to have power, but He also wants us to have spiritual maturity. He would not allow us to use His power for carnal, personal desires. We are His representatives on earth, and our goal should be to see His kingdom come and His will be done on earth as in heaven.

During our trials and tribulation, during the times of what Paul called “abasing,” we should hold fast our confession of faith in Jesus, wait patiently, and know that He will never fail us.

What we talk about has a lot to do with our level of personal peace. Why? Because Proverbs 18:20 teaches us that we must be satisfied with the consequences of the words we speak. The next verse adds, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it shall eat the fruit of it (for death or life).”

We can encourage ourselves with our own conversation, or we can discourage ourselves. We can decrease and even eliminate our peace or increase it. I encourage you to be accountable for your words—they are powerful!

D
ON’T
B
ELIEVE
Y
OUR
F
EELINGS

God wants us to enjoy lives of peace. Jesus provided it, and we must aggressively pursue it and hold on to it. Second Corinthians 5:7 says that we walk by faith and not by sight; that means we do not make decisions by what we see or feel. We have to search our hearts, where faith abides, and live from there. The kingdom of God is
within
us, and we are to follow those inner promptings that lead to righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Feelings can mislead us and steal our faith more than any other single influence. The problem with feelings is that they are ever changing. We can feel one thousand ways about the same thing in thirty days. One minute we may feel like doing a thing, and the next minute we don’t.

Feelings provoke us to say things that are unwise; we talk a lot about how we feel. Do you believe the god of your feelings or the God of the Bible? This is a question we must all ask ourselves. More than anything, people who come to me for help and counsel tell me how they feel. We should be telling each other what the Word of God says, not just how we feel.

Our feelings do not convey truth to us; Satan can use them to deceive and lead us astray. Emotions are unreliable; don’t believe them. Respond with your heart, where the Spirit of God abides, and see if you then have peace. Check with your heart, not your emotions, before making decisions.

For example, I may meet individuals with whom, in the natural,

I would like to form relationships. They may have gifts or talents that I think would benefit my ministry. But the more I am around them, the more uncomfortable I become in my spirit about them.

I can sense strongly if people are phony or their motives are impure. I may not have anything natural to base my knowledge on, but the inner sensing will not go away, and I do not have peace about making alliances with them. I have learned to trust those promptings of the Spirit but to distrust emotional feelings. I may want to do something in my flesh but know in my spirit it is the wrong thing to do.

I remember one woman we hired at the ministry. This woman seemed to have strong gifts of leadership, and some of our key leaders wanted to promote her. I had a sense that something was not right but could find no natural reason for my feelings. We desperately needed good leadership, so I finally relented, even against what I sensed within, and agreed to put the woman in a place of authority.