Dallas Willard on Anxiety

December 3, 2013

Calendars can fill up faster in December. Within the last twenty-four hours, I have had conversations with people facing anxiety. Whether you are trying to get the details straightened up for the holidays or facing the unknown, all of us to a certain extent carry a level of anxiety.

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I find myself going back to the words of Dallas Willard in the Divine Conspiracy. This is his reflection on Jesus’ teaching about worry in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:25-32:

Soberly, when our trust is in things that are absolutely beyond any risk or threat, and we have learned from good sources, including our own experience, that those things are there, anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting things – like human approval and wealth – that were certain to let us down. Now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry, while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving (pg. 212)

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