A Prayer Against Anxious Thoughts
By: Chelsey DeMatteis
He answered, “Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up." - Matthew 15:13
All of us at some point in our lives have dealt with anxious thoughts. The kind of thoughts that feel like they come from out of nowhere, they catch us off guard, they make our stomachs ache, and quickly cloud our clarity. Something changed for me when I began diving deeper into Matthew 15:13. The words Jesus spoke reveal two things. 1) Every anxious thought is planted by something not from God. 2) Jesus promises that God will uproot what He has not planted. He made a way for us to overcome this suffering when we lean into Christ.
I woke up to a call from my friend a few weeks ago who was in the throes of this type of thinking. This friend had completely bought the lie that she had been fired from her job, all because she couldn’t log in to her work computer. Confused, I sat there wondering how she went from not being able to log in to her computer to the downward spiral of “they fired me and didn’t tell me”? It pained me to sit on the other end of the phone feeling like I had nothing more to offer than prayer and a reminder of where those lies were coming from.
About 45 minutes later my friend called to tell me that she was able to log in, explaining there had been a blip in the system and all that was needed was a password reset. Her clouded clarity was coming from the one who takes our eyes off the truth. We spoke a few days later and I began pressing into where she felt the anxious thoughts stemmed from, where the lie was sown, and how she was going to hand it over to The Lord and allow Him to root it up from her life!
We found out the lie was sown 10 years ago when she went to work one morning only to find she had been unjustly fired. The enemy saw a foothold and ran with it. As we walked through how to hand this over to The Lord, my friend realized the why behind The Lord telling us to know His word and write it on our hearts. Because, when we know His word and stand firm in His truth are able to withstand the blows of the enemy and stand victorious in Christ over the anxiety-inducing lies.
Today if you’re in this place of anxious thoughts, worries, and fears feeling too heavy… rest in His truth spoke in Matthew 15:13, surrender what you’re walking through to The Lord, and know He will reveal to you He’s uprooting things from your life that were never meant to be there.
Pray with me:
Lord, you are a good God with good intentions behind all the works of your hands. Help me see the areas where I’ve allowed lies to be sewn into my life. Once they are revealed, help me to hand them over to you and allow you to remove them from my life completely. I ask that once they are removed you would then fill the newly freed spaces with the truths of your word. In the midst of anxiety, help me always look to you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Chelsey DeMatteis is a wife, SAHM, devotional writer, and the host of the weekly aired Living With Less podcast, birthed from John 3:30. Chelsey loves serving in her local church ministries, but the greatest ministry she loves to watch unfold is the one that happens in her heart and in her home. You can find more about Chelsey at her website - www.ChelseyDeMatteis.com.
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