Warring Against Worry: Part 3
Are you a victim to your emotions? Do you just have to live with anxiety because you feel anxiety? Many believe they are helpless. But God doesn't and He speaks to this in His word. This message will focus on how to fight back and win over our anxieties and worries.
The Soul's Conflict with Itself, and Victory over Itself by Faith Richard Sibbs
1) Hence in general we may observe that grief gathered to a head will not be quieted at the first. We see here passions intermingled with comforts, and comforts with passions; and what bustling there, is before David can get the victory over his own heart. You have some short-spirited Christians that, if they be not comforted at the first, they think all labour with their hearts is in vain, and thereupon give way to their grief. But we see in David, as distemper ariseth upon distemper, so he gives check upon check and charge upon charge to his soul, until at length he brought it to a quiet temper. In physic, if one purge will not carry away the vicious humour, then we 􀀉dd a second; if that will not do it, we take a third. So should we deal with our souls. Perhaps one check, one charge will not do it, then fall upon the soul again; send it to God again, and never give over until our souls be possessed of our souls again.
2) But to come to some helps: First, in that he expostulates with himself, we may observe that one way to raise a dejected soul is to cite it before itself, and, as it were, to reason the case. God hath set up a court in man's heart, wherein the conscience hath the office both of informer, accuser, witness, and judge; and if matters were well carried within ourselves, this prejudging would be a prevention of future judging. It is a great mercy of God that the credit and comfort of man are so provided for that he may take up matters in himself, and so prevent public disgrace. But if there be not a fair dispatch and transaction in this inferior court within us, there will be a review in a higher court. Therefore, by slubbering over our matters we put God and ourselves to more trouble than needs. For a judgment must pass, first or last, either within us or without us, upon all unwarrantable distempers. We must not only be ready to give an account of our faith, upon what grounds we believe; but of all our actions, upon what grounds we do what we do; and of our passions, upon what grounds we are passionate; as in a well-governed state, uproar and sedition is never stirred, but account must be given. Now in a mutiny, the presence and speech of a venerable man composeth the minds of the disordered multitude; so likewise in a mutiny of the spirit, the authority that God hath put into reason, as a beam of himself, commands silence, and puts all in order again.
3) If men, carried away with their own lusts, would give but a little check, and stop themselves in their posting to hell, and ask, What have I done? What am I now about? Whither will this course tend? How will it end? &c., undoubtedly men would begin to be wise.
4) Yet this caution must be remembered, that we shape not in our fancies such troubles as are never likely to fall out. It comes either from weakness or guiltiness, to fear shadows. We shall not need to make crosses; they will, as we say of foul weather, come before they be sent for. How many evils do people fear, from which they have no further hurt than what is bred only by their causeless fears! Nor yet, if they be probable, must we think of them so as to be altogether so affected, as if undoubtedly they would come, for so we give certain strength to an uncertain cross, and usurp upon God, by anticipating that which may never come to pass. It was rashness in David to say, 'I shall one day perish by the hand of Saul,' 1 Sam. xxvii.1.
5) Therefore we must conceive in a godly man, a double self, one which must be denied, the other which must deny; one that breeds all the disquiet, and another that stilleth what the other hath raised. The way to still the soul, as it is under our corrupt self, is not to parley with it, and divide government for peace sake, as if we should gratify the flesh in something, to redeem liberty to the spirit in other things; for we shall find the flesh will be too encroaching. We must strive against it, not with subtlety and discourse, so much as with peremptory violence silence it and vex it. An enemy that parleys will yield at length. Grace is nothing else but that blessed power, whereby as spiritual we gain upon ourselves as carnal.
Sermon Discussion Questions:
What is "Emotional Victimhood"?
How do we live it out in our lives?
Why does God not buy it?
How did David not buy it?
What does it mean to "expostulate with yourself"?
What practically does it mean to: "Speak to yourself---Don't listen to yourself"?
How about this one "Don't take counsel from your fears"?
What does the encouragement to "Fight Hard" mean in this war against worry?
