“Anxiety is always the result of a collapsing false god.” Tim Keller

I glazed over this quote this morning, and immediately was pulled back by its reality. Anxiety is one of those “potential sins” that I tend to get all too comfortable in. Anxiety, for some, is like a second home. Anxiety is the result of a collapsing false god. Woah. 

The idea of my responding, creating, heeding to a false god causes my heart to hurt. In my heart of hearts I want God to be the treasure of my heart, the Love of my soul. Being prompted to consider anxiety, a lack of trust in God, as the result of a collapsing false god, causes me to look inward.

What false gods have I erected? Perfectionism, perhaps. Pride.

It’s only pride’s hunger for perfection that paralyzes a heart. It’s being enslaved to perfectionism that keeps us enslaved to fear.

Pride is fear’s father — and pride is the kin to all cowards.

And the Spirit just keeps soothing all the anxiety with surprising truth: Slip on humility, make humility the mainstay of a heart’s wardrobe, and the world enlarges. Open humility’s drawer and there lies courage. Ann Voskamp

Courage to have faith, courage to take leaps of faith. Courage that can be strengthed in prayer, in living in Presence with God. The book I’m currently reading has prompted me to consider silence. Progress towards intimacy with God means a progress toward silence.

“Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification.” Richard Foster

Self. Where pride and perfectionism and anxiety thrive.

“The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son.” Richard Foster

Even in the past few days, my prayer, in its entirety, has been one marked with intimacy, “Lord, move with me. In my speech, attitude, choices, activity, everything. Move with me.”

When He is present, self shrinks. An interesting and beautiful kind of grace.