How to Find Hope for Your Anxious Heart
These are the days of appointments and answers I don’t like. Of whispering hope in a waiting room to one anxious heart:
After all, it is I, the Eternal One your God,
who has hold of your right hand,
Who whispers in your ear, “Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”
– Isaiah 41:13, The Voice
These are the days of God up-close and personally invested. Of leaning on what I learn is true of Him as I read through prophets and more Psalms.*
God is:
First Responder and Unstoppable Might,
Forever-Lasting Word and Gateway of Hope,
Beyond-Understanding Wisdom,
Unshakeable Joy,
Here In The Not-Yet.
He is:
Who Is, Was, and Will Be,
Maker of Through-Paths,
Compassionate Counselor,
Certain Savior,
Cannot-Be-Broken Promise.
I keep writing names in Bible margins because I can’t pause this treasure hunt.
God is:
Grief’s Patient Friend,
Weeping Intercessor,
Coming Intervention,
Merciful Withness,
Stirred Compassion,
Nearer Than Trouble,
and By Our Side.
Render of the Heavens,
Unsullied Glory,
Dawning Brilliance,
Cresting Righteousness,
and Weighty Significance.
Redeemer-Father,
Glorious Warrior,
Praised King,
Creative Potter,
Tender Advocate for Justice,
Healer of Apostate Hearts,
and Year-Round Life.
Forever a Waymaker
When you can’t go back or stop what’s coming, the only way forward is straight through Jesus. Once a Waymaker, always a Waymaker, as the ancient stories remind. So we read and remember how no impossible situation is too much, no human error is too grave to be redeemed, no discontent heart doesn’t tug at the very heart of Jesus.
From everlasting until forever begins, He’s the sort of God who levels paths and parts waters because nothing–literally nothing–can stop Him from thinking about you.
Over and over it hits me, how God’s heart bleeds and His chest heaves and His arms stretch in forever welcome–long before He stretched the length and height of a cross and sweat blood and breathed His last.
Could we say a God like this doesn’t care about spines curving where they should be straight, about anxiety and stomach pain and all the what-ifs that sound terrible?
He who bridges every fault line with His own busted heart says He knows every hair on our heads (Luke 12:7) and every tear that silently drops (Psalm 56:8). What kind of Love would bend so near that He can whisper in our ear and cup our right hand next to His heart?
A God who walks amongst us. Who shelters by cloud and guides by fire. Who sends judges and prophets and poets to turn hearts back to Him. Who never leaves, never stops loving, never stops making a way back to Himself.
God Gives Us Himself
Because this sort of God does give answers in time, but every time we ask, He gives us Himself. Wilderness seasons bring tender clarity: we see Him, see how He’s More Than Enough, the Very Way Through, Blazing Glory Lighting Up Every Forlorn Corner. And we need nothing truly but Him beside us.
That’s my prayer for you, tangled in your own uncertainty and impossibility. That your heart would know that Jesus doesn’t withhold Himself from you. He doesn’t spin you around and send you reaching for what will never satisfy. He comes close and gives Himself and keeps on giving Himself–because He loves you!
All the peace you need, you can have it now. As you’re wintering through doctors appointments and disappointments. As you prayerfully set boundaries. As you lean into tender surrender.
All the strength you lack on your own, He’ll supply.
All the hope that ran out along the way, He’ll restore.
All the joy that dried up, He’ll revive.
He who promises is Eternal Keeper of His Word.
God Knows Us and Is Near US
Maybe we don’t trust–really trust–God’s word will hold when everything feels on the verge of busting or combusting. When worry taps with icy fingers, perhaps we surmise that God can’t feel solidarity with our pain.
But “God knows what it’s like to be you,” as Ann Voskamp says. “What the triune God, in the person of Jesus, tasted in murky shadows of the Garden of Gethsemane, what He absorbed and swallowed right down and metabolized, was all the brokenness, all the darkness, all the sadness that has ever existed in every atom, every iota of the whole universe–and in your own heart.”**
God knows the way to calm a frantic mind is to reach for our eyes. To lock eyes with us. To know us and be near us.
But we’ve got to still our own eyes looking everywhere but to Him for answers, for hope, for relief, for healing.
Pause. And breathe. He’s here.
Here in waiting rooms and murky waters, in situations you can’t iron out and persistent thoughts you can’t wish away with willpower. And He whispers this promise until you begin to believe it:
After all, it is I, the Eternal One your God,
who has hold of your right hand,
Who whispers in your ear, “Don’t be afraid. I will help you.”
– Isaiah 41:13, The Voice
A Prayer for Your Anxious Heart
Let’s pray.
God, You are Right Here and Staying Near and Always On Time. Not only do you work out most wonderful things, Your “tender thoughts towards us . . . go on and on, ever increasing” (Psalm 41:5, The Voice).
Before You bring answers, You give us Yourself. Truly, truly, there is none like You!
May we know the “deep delight of being saved by You” (Psalm 51:12, The Voice.
And may we “boldly tell others how You save and how loyal You are” (Psalm 40:10, The Voice).
* I’m taking Mary Demuth’s 90-Day Bible Reading Challenge, searching for names of God as I read like it’s some sort of treasure hunt. Never though to look for God in this way until I began journaling through Ann Voskamp’s Sacred Prayer.
** I’m also reading an early copy of Ann Voskamp’s newest book, Loved to Life. And maybe it’s the best of her work, if that’s even possible since every one of her books has deeply changed me.
Just a friend over here in your corner,
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