Comfort in Uncertain Times

A Positive Response to Covid

Covid has put many into a spin of hopelessness, fear, and despair. As we listen to the news, watch those who are masked, not masked, those who do not stay six feet apart or wash their hands…many thoughts run through our minds. We are trying to protect ourselves from getting sick but if someone does not follow your rule, you form a judgment and unknowingly agree with fear.

It is human nature to avoid emotions that scare or annoy us and then to respond negatively. Who wants to walk directly into what promises to be a harmful experience? But by continually avoiding truth and ignoring the ‘fear’ within, anyone can be held captive that leads to an isolated, judgmental life. Therefore, fearfulness causes us to distrust others or even ourselves to do the right thing. We sacrifice our sense of community and togetherness. We stop listening or only listen to what we want to hear.

Typically, this involves hiding from any potentially stressful situation that might cause upset. This decision leads to isolation. Unfortunately, one is also hiding from potential challenges that can lead to growth and joy. No one can hide forever from fear. It’s going to strike, despite your best efforts to suppress it. And it is likely that it will strike at a time when you most need emotional composure. The good news is that once you understand and face your fear, rather than shove it into a distant compartment of your brain, it begins losing the ability to rule you and dictate your decisions.

Tips to Work Through Your Fear and Live Your Life

1. Guard your thoughts. “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life,” Proverbs 4:23. Whatever is focused on, one’s power is given to that thought. When fear is the focus, it will dictate life decisions and well-being. Fear is restricting and projects hopelessness into the future as to what could happen. For example, a son who lives in Texas, due to fear of Covid, does not want his parents from Georgia to visit their child. He had been listening to the news, watching others, forming judgments, and now his thoughts went to fear for the baby. The course of his life, due to fear, is isolation and preventing his parents to celebrate the joy of a new child.
2. Seek Truth. Fear is a spirit that projects into the future whatever you are meditating on that it will come to pass. Fear has torment and makes you form judgments that lock you into discontentment, anger, and resentment. God’s Word cancels every fear. There is no power over you that God’s Word does not have power over. To break fear, repent, and renounce the agreement with fear and decree, “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind,” 2 Timothy 1:7.
3. Maintain your faith. Take time to schedule prayer and bible reading. Ask for wisdom to look at the situations through God’s eyes and to be able to walk with His Heart. A young wife suffered a stroke after going on the wrong pills. The doctor told her she may never fully recover physically and that she would not be able to have children. Through prayer, the Lord told her to “paint a new picture on the canvas of her imagination.” The negative report from the doctor put fear that was binding and restricting her vision for the future. Her prayer was, “Father, I want to see my future through your eyes. You said you would give me the desires of my heart; I choose to erase the negative words spoken over me and to paint a new picture in my heart of the future. I receive your promises of having children and walking in health.” Her mother drew a picture on a canvas, placed at the foot of her hospital bed. When she woke up, she saw her new future. Today she is healed and a mother of three beautiful children.
4. Use God’s Word as a weapon against the enemy. Every day, our minds are bombarded with thousands of thoughts. Do those thoughts agree with what God says in the Bible? Or are they lies from the enemy? God commands us to take our thoughts captive and He gave us the Bible as our best weapon to defeat the enemy. Fear of Covid does not have to control you when you know you have the right standing with Jesus to overcome any challenge. We are to challenge our thoughts to come into alignment with the truth in God’s Word. If you have a problem, find a promise. God’s promises decreed and proclaimed cancel every lie of the enemy. How does God want us to respond to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic…by the power in His Word, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” Isaiah 54:17.