Going for it!

Special Hints Identify when these symptoms started occurring. Worries often pop up during transitions in life. Study the worry journal. Realize that one worry is often built on another one. {Piggyback}

The root cause of all worry is that we do not trust God as we should for some perceived deep need of our hearts. We put our confidence in another plan. Our worry demonstrates that our plan is not working. How do you discover your heart needs? Let's try to summarize it by three simple points.

• Hooked!
When fishing, how does he know there is a fish on the end of the line? They feel a tug, don't they? The symptoms that we have just gone over are like tugs on our line. When we see symptoms occurring in our lives, then we should see that we are anxious people.

Hopefully, we will not want these symptoms anymore and that we have got hold of a strong confidence in God's Word. This provides the motivation and ability to eliminate all our worries. The symptoms will continue to bother us until we do something about it. Don't be like stubborn Jonah. Don't wait till other people are suffering because of your individual problems. Say, "I don't like experiencing this. I don't need to be this way! God has a better way." He does.

Hooked means that you sense something is wrong and you want to deal with it. Remember that the fish will keep pulling until you get wise. The problems will worsen until you solve them.

• Pull it in!
What do you do when you feel that tug on the line? You pull it in! Right. You might first jerk the line to get the hook in the lip of the fish, but you pull the fish in.

Many people when dealing with anxieties are like a person who catches a fish on his line, ties his pole down, jumps into the water and starts swimming after the fish to catch. Surely the fish will elude him. Anxieties are caused by not trusting God in one or more areas. Don't be confused. Go pull that fish in. You might ask, "Well fishing I understand, but how do I pull a worry in?!"

We will eventually get down to our root insecurities by rejecting each secondary worry as shown in the Detect-Reject illustration.

Detecting the worry is the hooking of a fish. When one sees the symptom, start dealing with it immediately. Don't let it just hang around. Confusion increases quickly when we do not quickly deal with worries and stresses.

We reject it by three steps:

• Acknowledging my lack of trust
  
• Confessing my sin (belief in lie)
  
  
• Adopting God's way (Can't? Cry out for help)

Perhaps it is best seen like this. I have a neighbor named John who was telling me about this one fish he caught. It was up in Lake Erie. They struggled with that one fish for 12 hours. It was a 4 foot channel catfish. The bigger the fish, the harder the pull. The longer it takes. Think of your deep rooted insecurity as the big fish.

However, because you have not dealt with it earlier on, it is not easy to pull in. It has grown. There are many other lies that first must be dealt with. The length of the line depends on how many secondary worries have to first be dealt with. The line consists of a lot of lies. You do need to deal with all of them by God's truth.

Some people are scared because they do not get rid of all of their worry at once. We have spent years piling worry upon worry. It will not be so easy to eliminate them. But like my neighbor, by persistence he brought that 4 foot catfish in. There are usually more tears associated with this root worry, but it is dealt with in exactly the same way.

If you are just coming to know Christ as your personal Savior and Lord, you will need to see your whole life as a big lie. You need to come to the truth for forgiveness. Sin is sin. All our sins are dealt with in the same way. Once you detect a worry, you reject it. You reject the worry by exposing the lie to the truth and stop believing it.

• Hit it over the head!
When we get to the insecurity (-ies), we need to write these down very clearly. They usually are very simple in nature, but they have greatly affected our lives. Have a good talk with the Lord about each one. Some needs are not real needs. Other needs are part of how God made us but have not realized how God can differently fulfill them.

Talk to God as a friend. Ask Him to show you how He will fulfill that special need in His way. Ask Him to give you a scripture or a picture in your mind to assure you of His love and comfort during this particularly insecure time.

God made you to trust Him because He wants to be your first love. He wants you to be excited about His place in your life. Why has it taken us so long to come to the most basic part of life?!

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Biblical Foundations for Freedom