Yes, I know that wonderful scripture in 2 Timothy 1:7 where it says the following in the Old Afrikaans Translation:
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control.”
Or as it is translated in the BIBLE FOR ALL:
“God has given us the Holy Spirit, and therefore we are not afraid. No, the Holy Spirit makes us strong and helps us to love people and to decide rightly what we should do. “
I had to learn every day in the presence of the Lord for the past 32 years to grasp these words in faith, along with a whole host of other scriptures that deal with money, the Lord’s total and faithful care for His children and His grace that is always sufficient for us.
I can also tell of hundreds of times that as a responsible man in my home, as a husband to my wife, and as a father to my children, I woke up at night with a heart racing a hundred miles an hour in my chest from fear and anxiety!
This is part of the reason why I had to learn new spiritual disciplines. Like getting up every morning at dawn before anyone else in the house, and there in the Lord's presence, grabbing His peace back in faith to also start that day with faith and with a newfound peace.
There I learned to recite a verse like Psalm 46:11 and 12 out loud to myself every morning:
“Be still and know that I am God, high above the nations, high above the earth.
The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”
I have to learn every morning to calm this body and brain of mine, which tries everything to protect my “flesh”, and therefore only wants to fight or flee, or “pass out” when nothing works!
I had to learn to, as the Hebrew word literally says, breathe (= do diaphragmatic breathing, as we call it), to get myself out of this survival mode of a heart that beats at 100 miles an hour, with hands that are cold and sweaty, and a throat that wants to tighten from fear and anxiety.
This helped me to rediscover (“know” in the language of the Psalm) and to experience, even in my own body, that the God I have come to know in Christ Jesus, is with me and in me, through the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself is in and with me.
I had to choose every day, at the beginning of each day, to believe again for that day and to trust that my Lord will take care of me and my loved ones as He promised.
That is why I hold on to His promises every day, such as Psalm 23, Psalm 91, Philippians 4, and 2 Cor. 9:8.
“And God is able to make all things abound to you, that in all things, always having all sufficiency in all things, ye may have an abundance for every good work.”