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amidst all the urgencies of modern life. But also, how well do you take care of the body that you have been given? Do you take care of it in a way that shows thanks and praise to God? Think about a really thoughtful and expensive gift that you have received. You wanted to take extra-special care of it, showing your appreciation for the gift and its value, didn’t you? Make sure to do the same with your body. Most of us know what a reasonably healthy diet is. With something as complex as the human body, we need to give it the best food we can. Find the healthiest diet that you can afford, and which still enables you to look forward to eating. In time, you will learn to look forward to meals because they are healthy, and the food will taste even better.
Let’s also look at what you put into your mind. Do you watch shows that make you angry, such as political talk-shows? Or shows that make you feel bad about your life? Finally, do you watch too much news? The news is deceptive. It calls itself reality, while its only goal is to make you so panicked that you will watch more of it and become easier prey for advertisers. Simply put, the news is addictive and depressing, which makes it just about the worst thing to feed your mind.
Both your mind and your body need exercise, and on a regular basis; both need rest, with silence and stillness; and both need to be ingesting the right things and avoiding the wrong ones. Just as you would be proud to show a friend the care you took of a gift she gave you, take such good care of your body and mind that you are proud for God to see them. And what does God do when he sees how well you treasure his gifts? He gives you more!
“I will say of the Lord, He is
my refuge and my fortress:
My God; in him will I trust.”
(Psalm 91:2, KJV)
Psalm 91 was the favorite psalm of General Charles Gordon, a symbol of heroism and chivalry during the Victorian period in Great Britain. His indomitable courage took him to suppress bloody civil wars in China and the Sudan. The psalm is filled with military metaphors, and presents a thundering image of our triumph through God.
Notice that the verse says, “I will say of the Lord.” The psalmist doesn’t just think positive thoughts about God’s help; he says them out loud. It is amazing how much more convincing something feels when we hear ourselves say it. If you want to win, you need to be confident to say you are going to win, not just have it as a thought in your mind. The more you hear yourself say it, the more you will believe it. Saying is believing!
The psalm resounds with a spirit of courage-under-fire, of safety amidst threats and danger. We are safe, for God is our refuge and our fortress. The speaker says,
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
Nor for the arrow that flieth by day.
(Psalm 91:5, KJV)
The “terror by night” is the sleepless night that we have, tossing and turning and overthinking about that problem in our present, that mistake in our past, that anxiety about our future. The “arrow that flieth by day” is the hurtful words of another, the backstabbing deception of a co-worker, that cruel disappointment in your personal life. These are real-life occurrences, and they happen to all of us.
But the speaker tells us to not be afraid, saying that these dangers will not come near us. And why? For one, we have made the Lord our “habitation” (Psalm 91:9, KJV): that means, we have put our faith in him, living in him. And this leads to one of the most reassuring lines in the Bible: “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways” (Psalm 91:11, KJV). We often don’t realize that when we put our faith in God, he puts his team to work. These guardian angels are supernatural, and we cannot see them, but we can trust that they are fighting battles for us. There are indeed demons out there that want to see us suffer, who delight in bringing us pain; and at the same time, when we stay in faith, there are angels to fend off these demons.
While we keep our minds open to the supernatural, let’s also keep our minds open to see God’s goodness in the natural, as shown through others. One of my friends, when he was going through a dark time with work and with family, told me that complete strangers were being very nice to him – holding doors, saying hello, even waving to him and smiling. “They’re not even smiling like normal friends would smile,” he said, “they are smiling at me like I’m their best friend, like they are totally overjoyed to see me.” He was confused by all of this, but I told him, “That’s God’s way of telling you that you are not alone in all this darkness. Those smiles, those waves, are signs that God is watching over you.”
The psalm also shows us that we will come to conquer these terrors that threaten us, not just withstand their onslaught. The imagery in the psalm is rich with creatures that inspire terror: “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder . . . and the dragon shalt thou trample” (Psalm 91:13, KJV). What could be more terrifying than the deadly trio of a lion, snake, and dragon? Significantly, a dragon is a supernatural being. But God tells us that he and his angels will enable us to trample all attackers, no matter how vicious, and even those that are otherworldly. The ferociousness of the lion, with its teeth and claws; the deceptiveness of the snake, with its sting and venom; and the seeming inescapability of a flying, fire-breathing dragon – all are feeble when we have God on our side. As the Lord says in the final verses,
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him:
I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him:
I will be with him in trouble.
(Psalm 91:14–15, KJV)
“O God, be not far from me:
O my God, make haste for my help.”
(Psalm 71:12, KJV)
God is always with us. He is everywhere, though at times it can seem that he is light-years away. That suffering, that adversity that we are experiencing, that lack of peace that we feel inside – these are the times when we call for God’s help. And when it doesn’t arrive with the speed that matches our urgency, we begin to panic, and jump to conclusions that God isn’t listening or that he does not want to help.
I discuss why God waits – why he does not seem to “make haste” – in my chapter on Psalm 27:14, but I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about feelings of anxiety and panic, and how we can control them. These feelings are the arch-enemies of inner peace, and cause us to imagine such things as God being distant from us. The speed of modern work culture, which causes us to believe that every decision is a life-or-death matter, intensifies our tendency to panic. Sadly, anxiety has now become a standard part of life for millions of people.
Anxiety walks hand-in-hand with its companion, Overthinking. Negative thoughts can enter the mind with incredible stealth, like a thief in the night, and that’s when anxiety and overthinking go to work. The first negative thought that you have will likely set off a chain reaction, and then your brain talks itself into an anxiety attack or a depressed mood. Let’s say that a colleague annoys you at the office; you dwell on this, and it reminds you of that shop assistant who wasn’t very helpful several days ago; then you are thinking about that frustrating situation with your car, the expensive repairs, the unhelpful customer service representative on the phone, the bad conversation you had with a friend a few weeks back . . . and suddenly, you have this rushing river of negative thoughts going on in your head, all because of that one thought that started it.
So how do we stop this? As soon as you recognize a negative thought, take action. A monk once advised me to go straight to focusing on my breathing when I find myself in a state of anxiety. Become conscious of your breathing, and start to take regular breaths: one second in, one second out; two seconds in, two seconds out; and so on, up to five seconds for each. Meanwhile, in