...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.Paul...got it: "Don't be anxious about anything," he says, "but in every situation, with prayer and supplications, with thanksgiving, let God know what you want. And the peace which God himself has will, beyond anything we can intellectually grasp, stand guard over your hearts and minds, which are within the reality of Jesus the Anointed" (Phil. 4:6-7).We will find all this so much easier, of course, once we have been freed from our old dependency upon the opinions of others and upon our "treasure" of material goods.
Dallas Willard from The Divine Conspiracy, 212, 213.
3 comments:
One of my all time favorites. Good stuff.
Yes. I got to hear Dallas Willard once, here. It was great. He talks on and on, just like in his books. And this one I quote from probably is my favorite of his, and an all around favorite of mine. Though all his books are really good.
...not that I've read them all. The ones I have here I have.
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