The Great Source of Anxiety -- I Could Never Trust Myself

In effect, no one should ever place absolute trust in anything that is man.

Remember Jeremiah 17: 5?


"Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD." (Jeremiah 17: 5)


This warning includes not just other people, but also ourselves.The first mention of man refers to "Gibber" or a strong person. The second word "man" is Adam, which means humankind, and also the flesh.

We are called to walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5: 16), not in the flesh. This calling includes giving up any pretension efforts of caring for ourselves, or fixing ourselves. We cannot overcome our flesh with our flesh. We cannot break free of our self-effort insanity with "more action, and still more action."

The great anxiety that permeated my life, then, was the fear of doing wrong, the fear of failure, the fear of falling short of the glorious ideal laid out in the AA Book, in the Bible.

As far as the Bible is concerned, I learned that Jeus wants to live in me. It's no longer about trying to live up to a standard of being like Jesus through my own efforts.

We need a new life, and a new understanding which witnesses to us that we are forever secure, forever righteous, that we need not live our lives looking over our shoulders or get worked up about deceitful thinking or "wrong and foolish motives."

Why? Because God places His laws in our hearts and minds, so that the more we know and believe how forgiven we are, the more that His guidance can work in our lives!

"10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:

11And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

12For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more."

 

Jesus cut the New Covenant with His own blood when He died on the Cross. More than dying for our sins, His death allows the LORD to be a God for us and to move in our lives, to direct us, to guide us, and let the peace of His Son rule in our hearts (Colossians 3: 15)

 

The great source of anxiety in my life was that I never trusted myself. In Christ, I no longer even have to look at myself. I just look at Jesus, and as I see Him, I find who the true life that we all look for:

 

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (
2 Corinthians 3: 18)

 

and

 

"1Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 2Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 3And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." (1 John 3: 1-3)

 

and

 

"Herein is love made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17, ASV)