Grosey's Messages

Please read the whole of Psalm 73

  COPING WITH ANXIETY AND FEA  Help for anxious days during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As cases of COVID-19 increase and social life is more and more restricted, levels of fear and anxiety increase. A wide range of common reactions will be visible over the next few days and weeks. These may include:
• Anxiety, worry, fear
• Difficulty concentrating and/or sleeping • Feeling helpless and confused
• Frustration and even anger
• Scepticism and bravado
• Social withdrawal
• Excitement and curiosity
Even Christians who know the One who holds the future will also fear the unknown. Very few of us have lived through anything like this before. Christians will experience fear (2 Cor. 7:5; 12:20; Gal 4:11), but just as we have joy in the midst of sorrow (2 Cor. 7:4; Phil. 2:17–18; 1 Th. 1:6; 1 Pet. 1:6), Christ gives us confidence and hope amidst fear and worry.
How our brains respond:
It helps to understand something of the way our brains respond to the current crisis. This might give you perspective on your own feelings and on reactions from other people.
Everyone experiences fear and anxiety at some point in their lives. Anxiety is a protective mechanism to help us avoid anticipated or potential threats. Fear is a response to a perceived or imminent threat. Both are normal and include cognitive and behavioural responses.
Normally, our brains manage fear and anxiety without allowing them to interfere with our daily functioning. If there is a nearby threat, the brain
assesses it and may amplify or suppress our anxiety and fear. In order to function well these normal responses have to be moderated through an accurate perspective about our environment. Within the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic, this can be difficult even for people with no previous experience with anxiety.
Anxiety employs multiple areas of the brain, cognitive and emotional. The amygdala, a small area buried deep in the brain is consistently active in anxiety. It is responsible for, among other functions, processing our emotional response to what is happening in our environment.
It seems that when the amygdala is over stimulated, as it will be just now, we are less capable of a realistic perception of threats and of regulating emotions. If you have found yourself particularly jumpy or weepy this week, that's your amygdala (over) functioning.
In the current context with constant anticipation of negative events, our brains recruit several parts together referred to as the 'fear network'.
During periods of anxiety, this network amplifies our feelings and draws us into a cascading cycle of anxiety and fear. It takes a conscious effort to stop that cascade as the brain functions to help us get very good at whatever we spend our time doing. If we reinforce fear and anxiety, that is what we learn. We need to actively refocus attention on other things to break the cascading cycle. This same mechanism then is used by the brain to strengthen accurate and adaptive thinking patterns.

You Need a Biblical Strategy to Stop Anxiety and Fear.
It is appropriate that we should trust in God in this situation, but we know this is not always easy to do. Here are some practical ways in which we can care for ourselves and others.
Remind yourself of God's loving care for His people
Think about what you know is true and most secure — God and his promises. The first question of the Heidelberg Catechism states that we are not our own, but belong to Jesus, who has fully paid for our sin with His blood. What is more, He watches over us in such a way that not a hair can fall from our head without the will of the Father in heaven. We can take great comfort in knowing that no matter what the situation, nothing happens that is outside of God's sovereign will. That does not mean that we will never get sick, but we know that even in the midst of illness, He is with us and will not leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
The Psalmist in Psalm 73 was dealing with crisis of faith that was consuming his ability to think straight.

1. The Incidents Faith Regrets.

1 Truly God is good to Israel, To such as are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; My steps had nearly slipped.

3 For I was envious of the boastful, When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 For there are no pangs in their death, But their strength is firm.
Things weren't going like Psalm 1 says: Book 1 of Psalms begins with the blessedness of God's people and the perishing state of those living without His Word in their life. And for the Psalmist in the first Psalm of Book 3 of the Psalms (Psalm 73) everything seemed upside down! 

He was upset! 

13 Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, And washed my hands in innocence.

14 For all day long I have been plagued, And chastened every morning.

15 If I had said, "I will speak thus," Behold, I would have been untrue to the generation of Your children.

16 When I thought how to understand this, It was too painful for me ---

17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God; Then I understood their end.

18 Surely You set them in slippery places; You cast them down to destruction.

19 Oh, how they are brought to desolation, as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors.

20 As a dream when one awakes, So, Lord, when You awake, You shall despise their image.

21 Thus my heart was grieved, And I was vexed in my mind.

22 I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You.

And the Psalmist, looking back regrets that he had his faith shaken. He regrets that he could have spoken inadvisably and shaken others faith. Sometimes it is good to keep our doubts or confusion to ourselves and not unsettle others. Sometimes we try to give ourselves excuses for not trusting God, and we think that uttering our complaints to others will sort it out. It doesn't. It just makes us look foolish and ignorant.  Grief and vexation can be very real. But we need a better perspective.   

2. The Insight Faith Receives.

In the place of worship, everything gets back into perspective. But more, when the Lord is worshipped for Who He is, the Lord brings insight to the troubled soul. 

Martyn Lord Jones wrote a tremendously helpful book called "Spiritual Depression." The Lord laid out for him the whole layout and content of that so helpful book one morning while he was dressing for church.

A couple of years ago, while in a time of depression distress the Lord spoke in such a soul encouraging way through the words of a hymn, that I was overwhelmed by the mercy and love of our Father and His plan for me. I have no doubt the Lord has done the same for you.

3. The Inheritance Faith Realises

The psalmist realises at the end of this Psalm 73 that his inheritance is God Himself.

You can know the presence of God in this crisis. 

Psalm 73 says "Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;
you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.
But for me it is good to be near God;
I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,
that I may tell of all your works."

You have the Grasp of His Hand 

23 Nevertheless I am continually with You; You hold me by my right hand. 

He holds you Personally. Isn't this something amazing? He knows you. He holds you. 

The Lord Jesus said John 10: 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. 28 And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand. 30 I and My Father are one."
Do you hear His voice in His word? 

Do you follow Him? 

Then you are His sheep and He knows you. and you can't ever be out of His hand. 

The grasp of His hand implies that you can be conscience of your Father's love and care for you in all of this. Though you may not feel it now in our distress, you shall feel it consciously as the days move forward.

He holds you Powerfully.  

Even your worst desires cannot take you out of His hand.. He will draw you to Himself, to love and follow Him.... 

He holds you and those are pierced hands that hold you. John10:11-18 11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.15 As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.16 And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.17 "Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. 18 No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father."

You Have the Guidance of his Counsel 

Psalm 73 : 24 You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory..... do you wonder what to do in these times? Draw near to God, He will draw near to you. (James 4). He will guide you, helping you through this time of crisis. 

You Have the Glory of His Heaven

Psalm 73:24 You will guide me with Your counsel, And afterward receive me to glory. 

Earlier this week I was reading in Richard Baxter's "The Saints Everlasting Rest"

He notes these points:

"Afflictions are exceeding useful to us to keep us from mistaking our rest. Many a poor Christian is sometimes bending their thoughts to wealth, or flesh-pleasing or applause and so loses his relish of Christ and the joy above until God breaks in upon his riches or conscience or health and breaks down his mountain that he thought was so strong. And then, the world is nothing and heaven is something.

Afflictions also quicken our pace towards heaven.

Further it is but the flesh that is chiefly troubled and grieved by afflictions.

God seldom gives His people so sweet a foretaste of their future rest as in their deep afflictions. "

Whatever happens there is an eternity ahead. This life is short in comparison to eternity. Many years ago as a young man of sixteen I heard a short ugly man ask the question "Where will you spend eternity?" Another time, concerned about this issue, I walked down a street in Sydney and was asked by a very polite elderly gentleman, "Excuse me sir, may I ask you an important question, where will you spend eternity?" That same day I gazed down at an old chalked message written in beautiful copper plate lettering on the sidewalk of another street in Sydney the one word sermon "Eternity." Are you heading towards a glorious Heaven? In the Lord Jesus Christ's sacrifice at the cross, God the Son stepped into our world to do something for you, you could never do for yourself: He came to die in your place as an atoning sacrifice for your sins. He died for you. "The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" Romans 6:23. Have you settled the issue of eternity?

You Have The Guarantee of His Strength.

Psalm 73:25 Whom have I in heaven but You? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides You. 26 My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 

The same God who saved you is the same God who keeps you and is the same God who will strengthen you through this crisis. If He determined to save you and keep you, He determines to strengthen His own for the crisis ahead. he is the source of your strength, depend upon Him today