Worry_2 Corinthians 4:16-18

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

I woke up at 3:30 am and couldn't go back to sleep.  Worry took a seat in my mind and refused to leave.  To try to feel drowsy again, I decided to read "40 Unstoppable Women" by one of my favorite authors, Harold Sala, and began reading his account on Gracia Burnham.

She and her husband, Martin, were missionaries.  One day they, along with a Filipina nurse, Ediborah Yap, were kidnapped by the Abu Sayaff and held captive for more than a year in the extreme conditions of the jungles in Mindanao. At the end, just as they were being rescued by the military, her husband and the nurse were killed.

In her book "In the Presence of My Enemies", Gracia wrote that in the middle of this horrifying ordeal, she told her husband that she had not given up her faith, but she just has chosen "not to believe the part about God loving me.  Because God's not coming through."

I feel this way nowadays. I cry out to the Lord, pray through His promises in the Bible, yet He hasn't come through.  This is why I am awake in the middle of the night conversing with Worry.

Then Gracia writes, "I knew I had a choice.  I could give in to my resentment and allow it to dig me into a deeper and deeper hole both psychologically and emotionally or I could CHOOSE TO BELIEVE what God says to be true whether I felt it was or not."

Lord, forgive me for allowing Worry keep me company. Take away the chair I've allowed Worry to rest on, and instead sit with me. Please give me the strength of faith to choose to believe Your Truth over my feelings of fear, doubt and insecurities.
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