Faith's Firm Foundation: Spiritual Attack and Fretting (Part 2): Timely Tips on Tuesday

Read "Spiritual Attack and Fretting (Part 1)."

Reading from Psalms and Proverbs is excellent, but God never ceases to amaze me also by using whatever Scripture is on the schedule in my daily reading plan (I use the "Read Through the Bible in a Year" plan from Discipleship Journal) to speak directly to my heart and situation.

Help for Fretting

God also uses unique and personal ways to teach me and this is how He did it this time:

First, He reminded me that every time I feel truly overwhelmed, and am sure there's absolutely no way I can accomplish all I have to do, He answers my cry for help by removing some upcoming thing I've been fretting about. One or all of my responsibilities or scheduled events is canceled because of an illness, or weather, or something (e.g. "Major snowstorm shuts down all travel in Minnesota.") This has happened so often that I have almost come to expect it! Which in some strange way has helped me not to worry! What's to worry about if God is going to cancel everything before it happens anyway?! But He had to remind me of this in my Quiet Time on Monday morning. Then, later in the day, He confirmed this rebuke of my fretting when He allowed my daughter to come down with strep throat! (Not that I'm rejoicing that my daughter got sick!) But, this canceled the event I'd been fretting about: dinner guests coming Wednesday night!
Then, on Tuesday, God sat me down and gave me a "talking-to"! And He used my very own words to do it, as I exhorted and encouraged a friend on the phone "to lean on the Lord, to trust Him to help her, to not grow weary in well-doing and to finish the course well and persevere." Everything I needed to hear and do myself! In giving me the opportunity to help someone else, God helped me. (Isn't He wonderful?!)
God finished off this lesson on fretting when He used the words of people close to me to humble me, and I felt very broken, but when I went to my knees before Him, I was now in a very teachable state, as I cried out to Him in prayer. I realized and remembered, there on my knees, that I have been asking for "grace" a lot lately, and that in the Bible, God says, "He giveth grace to the humble." ("But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." James 4:6-7) Instead of worrying and fretting, I needed to be humble and accept the grace that is mine through Christ, and believe that "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." (Philippians 4:13) So, I thanked Him for the trials I had recently come through and the painful, humbling words I had just received, because they were the prerequisites for the grace that I'd been praying for and needed.