Leadership Essentials: Dealing with Life
Anxiety. I never really understood the word for a long time. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t struggle with anxiety, it just means that I never fully understand the impact it had on my life. That is, until I realized that I have struggled with panic attacks at different times in my life.
My panic attacks started when I was 16 years old. This was several years before I came to accept Christ as my savior. Since then, the peace of God has been such an amazing comfort. But there have still been times when I left the cares of the world get to me too much. Recently, I’ve been asking God to help me control my anxiety and He has been gracious to guide me through some busy seasons in my life.
Recently, I was reminded during a Bible study about the verses regarding anxiety:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?…Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (Matt 6:25, 31 ESV)
Not long after that, a good friend told me about how God was teaching him the same thing. He said that God was helping him through this by using the illustration of the lilies of the field to paint a real and personal portrait using the Texas wildflowers that we had in abundance this year. He then sent me a post from someone who dug into the meaning and occurrences of the Greek word commonly found for ‘cares of the world’. in which we can become choked by the thorns of life.
As leaders, we must not allow our work to distract us from our calling. Even more so, we should not allow our ministries at church to become so distracting that we forget why and how we are doing them in the first place. Only through seeking the Kingdom of God, seeking His righteousness, prayer, and worship can we reach this point in our lives.
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