Moving from Anxiety to Peace

The worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
–Mark 4:19

In August 1933, famed novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his eleven-year-old daughter, who was away at summer camp. In the letter, he counseled her on what to worry about and what not to worry about. Included among the things to worry about were courage, cleanliness, and horsemanship. The things he told his daughter not to worry about included mosquitoes and flies. Then, like any concerned father, he added, “Don’t worry about boys.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world in which the biggest things you had to worry about were horsemanship and bugs? Yet I’ve discovered that the size of what we worry about doesn’t necessarily determine our level of anxiety. What matters is our focus. Think about it this way: If you hold up a penny in front of your eye, that tiny coin will look larger than anything else, even a distant mountain. In the same way, whatever you focus on will seem larger than anything else in your life. Whether you’re worried about finances or fruit flies, that worry will sap the strength and joy from your life.

Our English word worry is related to the Old High German word wurgen, which means to strangle. That’s what worry does: It chokes out the joy in our lives. In fact, Jesus used the same imagery in Mark 4:19 when He described “the worries of the world” as thorny weeds that “choke the word [of God], and it becomes unfruitful.” Of all the things that render God’s Word ineffective in your life, at the top of the list is worry.

So how do you keep worry from strangling out the good things in your life? In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said if you have even a tiny amount of faith, you can move a mountain. Now, you might not be able to move that mountain physically, but you can conquer that mountain by changing your perspective. Remember the penny? What you focus on will look larger than anything else in your life. You may not be able to remove the obstacles you face in life, but you can conquer them by changing your perspective. This week, we’re going to learn how to conquer the mountain of anxiety by shifting our focus.

Today’s devotion is adapted from “Moving from Anxiety to Peace,” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2021.

“F. Scott Fitzgerald to His Daughter ‘Pie,’” August 8, 1933, as quoted in Letters of a Nation: A Collection of Extraordinary American Letters, ed. Andrew Carroll (Broadway, 1997), 341–42.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.