Antidote to anxiety

You might have seen some anxiety creeping into recent posts regarding the future. Well overnight God's given me some antidotes to that.

I can't know what the future holds for my precious family.
But I do know the God who holds our future in His hands.

Last night I was reading in Hebrews and came across Hebrews 14:5-6:

⁵ Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said,

“I will never fail you.
    I will never abandon you.”

⁶ So we can say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper,
    so I will have no fear.
    What can mere people do to me?” (NLT)

I can't recall having seen that quote in vs. 5 in the context of money before. And then vs. 6 coming after seems a strange transition, though it is in the context of "concluding words" where very often in the New Testament letters there exists a whole list of advice, much like that which a mum sprouts off at her kids just before they go away to something like a camp.

However, I'm thinking about this in the context of my concerns about the future. It is "mere people" who support us, who provide what we need to stay in Japan. But the verse is clear that it is God who I need to rely on, not "mere people". That's significant when you consider that for us "mere people" can stop supporting us, or can make life difficult for us in various transitions that we need to make. Yes, we rely on others to help us, but ultimately we relying on God our helper, who has promised repeatedly that he will never fail us or abandon us. Comforting words. Encouraging thoughts.

Then I sit in church this morning and listen to a sermon about "Letting Go", based around Abraham's episode in Genesis 22 where God tells him to make an offering of his only son and lets him go through with all the actions preparing for that until the very last minute when God provides a ram instead and assures Abraham that he's proven his faith, and goes on to promise many blessings. The preacher's point (at least from my point of view) was that we can trust God with everything, and indeed that if we withhold things that we will be missing out on blessings.

And here is part of the New Testament verse that was read as part of the service:

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
    and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
    for those who love him” 1 Corinthians 2:9b NLT.

Indeed. Who am I to try to imagine what the future might hold? Especially to imagine bad things that might happen. In doing that I'm doing an injustice to God who loves me and has good things planned. He's not guaranteed that bad things won't happen, but instead has promised his presence and help throughout whatever might come.

Yes, I'm feeling encouraged.