God’s Provision for Worriers

This is a devotional post that related to two DIY tutorials: How To Create a No-Dig Flower Bed | Faux Stepping Stones That Are Better Than The Real Thing

Every morning, I walk into my rose garden and am pleasantly surprised at what new blooms await me.  No matter what I think I’ll see, there is always a surprise.  Never are the same flowers blooming in combination, and even their blooms vary in color and shading. 

What I didn’t realize was how much this concept of being graced with the surprise of new blooms has helped me in the area of worry.

In the same way, God gives us a new start every single morning.  Lamentations 3:22-23 tells us:

“Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

I’ve heard that God’s compassions are new every morning, but it wasn’t until recently I realized what that actually meant.  I have always been a worrier, especially when it comes to visualizing my future self in a horrible circumstance.  It turns out there is actually a name for this:

Catastrophizing is defined as irrational thinking that something will turn out much worse than it actually does.

I find I do this when I see something horrible happens on the news or to someone I know in real life.  Then, I imagine how I’d react if the same terrible situation happened to me.  I think I do this to try to prepare myself if something horrible were to actually happen.  But it does the exact opposite.  It only makes me more afraid and anxious about something that will probably never happen.

While bad things do happen, we often discount the grace that God will give us when we encounter those times.  God’s grace is new every morning according to what we will actually need for the day at hand. 

So, when we try to visualize ourselves in future catastrophes, we can never accurately anticipate what it will truly be like or how we react because we often leave out “future grace”.

Future grace is a concept explained in Ed Welch’s book Running Scared.

Just like God rained down new manna each day to the Israelites, He gives us new mercies every day in accordance with what we need – and even in an abundance of what we need. 

“There is no sense in devising future scenarios now because God will do more than you anticipate,” Welch writes.

This is the major factor that worriers never account for in their false prophecies:  We will receive grace in the future. 

Scripture is clear that there will be suffering in life. It is to be expected.  What we can also expect is that God will give us abundant grace in the suffering.

Therefore, you cannot project the grace onto tomorrow that you have today.  Today’s grace is today’s grace and God will give us the grace we need for tomorrow.

Are you worried about the future?  You are looking at the future as if it was a final exam and it’s only the first day of class.  Of course, you panic at the thought of the exam, but you haven’t considered that you will go through the class before you take the final.  You will be given all the grace you need when you need it!

For me, knowing that there is grace for tomorrow has made the most noticeable difference in my own anxieties and fears.  The hurdle that was always in front of me was that I limited God to the size of my own imagination. 

Now, I know that I could never imagine that grace because I have yet to receive it.  As a result, I am beginning to look forward to days of final exams rather than dread them.

To read more of Ed Welch’s Running Scared on how to overcome fear and anxiety, click here.