From Panic To Peace

From Panic to Peace

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! Isaiah 26:3

When my friend Cathy’s college-aged daughter was losing her eyesight, anxious thoughts plagued my friend: Will Susan be able to finish college or get married? How can she fulfill her dream of being a foreign exchange student and running a horse farm if she’s blind?

Each morning as Cathy met with the Lord, God drew her attention to a different verse that comforted her and helped her to focus on what his words said instead of on what she felt. If she focused on negative circumstances or saw doctors’ reports, she spiraled down into depression and worry. One morning when she was reading Isaiah 26:3, she had an idea: to write the verses God highlighted in her morning reading on index cards and carry them everywhere she went so she could focus her thoughts on them. As she did this, she found it not only kept her from dwelling on the worrisome whys and what-ifs but also gradually transformed her thoughts from worry and sadness to serenity and peace.

In time, Cathy typed the verses on blue cards and put them in small resealable bags to give to other women in need, and they became known as the “Peace Packet.” She took them to the emergency room when a friend’s husband had a heart attack, sent them to a missionary in South America, and gave them to a young mother whose husband had left her. Years later, Cathy’s Scripture packet is still bringing peace to women around the world.

You can make your own packet: On colored three-by-five cards, write verses that speak to your situation and carry them with you. Repeat the promises in your own words, telling God you are depending on him. For example, “God, you said you would lift the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. Now I trust you to do this in my life” (see Psalm 145:14). Read your cards in the morning, at lunch, and at bedtime, and watch your peace grow. —CHERI

Father, you said that if I would trust in you and turn my thoughts often to you, you would keep me in perfect peace. Help me to focus on your Word instead of on my anxieties, and as I do, please fill me with your marvelous, out-of-this-world peace.

Just as saving faith comes through hearing the gospel, so also the faith to trust God in adversity comes through the Word of God alone. . . . Only from the Scriptures, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, do we receive the grace to trust God when we are afraid. —JERRY BRIDGES, AUTHOR