“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they. Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these… So do not worry, saying, ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

(Matt 6.25-34)

..and because I’d heard that you are loyal and faithful to Jesus the master, and that you show love to all God’s holy people, I never stop giving thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.

I pray that the God of King Jesus our Lord, the father of glory, would give you, in your spirit, the gift of being wise, of seeing things people can’t normally see, because you are coming to know him and to have the eyes of your inmost self opened to God’s light.

Then you will know exactly what the hope is that goes with God’s call; you will know the wealth of the glory of his inheritance in his holy people; and you will know the outstanding greatness of his power towards us who are loyal to him in faith, according to the working of his strength and power.

(Eph 1.15-19, translated by NT Wright)

Father, it’s like there is a disconnect in my brain; what you tell me to be true, what I know to be true, somehow doesn’t reach or influence the places where worry lives, where anxiety hangs out, where all my night-sweat fears lurk until they can jump out and cause my heart to beat like a great drum, bursting out of my chest.

I know, I KNOW, that you see me, you love me, you will never let me go from your loving hands. And I know that in this season of transition, of uncertainty, you go with me, indeed you go before me to prepare good works for me to do and things to enjoy with you! So why can I not control these feelings? 

Thank you for reminding me that my feelings are not the basis for my actions, for my decisions, and certainly not the basis on which my faith exists! Thank you, that it is as your beloved one in Christ that I experience your power and love, that I rest in your grace as one forgiven and restored to closest fellowship with my loving Father. It is all that Christ is and has done, and is doing even now that is the basis for my salvation and therefore the sure ground for my faith.

Thank you that in your abundant kindness, you are growing wisdom in me, the wisdom to see truth, to see what really matters; to see Christ in all his glory and to know that nothing can stop you from working in power to transform me, along with all the rest of the church, into his likeness.

Why, then, are you cast down my soul? I will yet delight in the Lord, my God and King! Bring all these troubles to your Father in heaven, who in his infinite power and goodness has provided for each need even before you recognise it. Delight to cast yourself with these burdens at his feet, and to exalt him by trusting him to deal with them in ways that will exceed all you can think or imagine. Remember that the power which is turned to work in the world for the glory of God, to glorify Christ in his church – is for you and all those who confess him as Lord. That power which raised Christ from the dead, is even now working through you and for you, all to the purpose of God, to the exaltation of Jesus and the making-right of all that is wrong.

Father, your daughter comes to you in her weakness – her frame is known to you, and the power which uncertainty, anxiety and change have to affect her in so many ways. Deliver her from false guilt about these feelings; give her wisdom to cling to you in response to them and to continually preach the truth to herself, so that the feelings are not the loudest voice in her mind, but rather the story of your power and love at work for eternal glory and a secure inheritance for all your beloved children.