I’m fairly certain motherhood is synonymous with worry. Few things have tested and grown my faith like parenting, and with our daughter less than a year from college, my prayers are growing more frequent and fervent! Perhaps you can relate.

Today biblical fiction author Stephanie Landsem expands on a well-known but ever-needed verse. As an added bonus, she’s giving away a copy of her novel to one reader from the continental US, randomly selected from the comments left on today’s post.

But first, for those of you who are following our Call to Praise blog hop, I encourage you to join me on Carol Mclain’s as I chat about the appetite of vengeance. To follow the remaining stops on our blog hop, go here.

Victory over Worry by Stephanie Landsem

Martha let out a held breath. Judas had voiced her own thoughts. If she didn’t worry about what to eat, who would? The grain didn’t appear in the jar each morning. The bread didn’t bake itself . . . Martha stalked from the room to get the meat. It was easy for him to say to stop worrying. If he knew all she had to worry about, perhaps he would understand. (excerpt from The Tomb, A Novel of Martha)

Like Martha, many of us women—wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters—are ‘anxious and worried about many things’, and with good reasons. Our lives are complicated, our world filled with dangers, both physical and spiritual. And yet Jesus tells us to stop worrying, to choose the ‘better part’. But, as Martha asks in The Tomb, how are we supposed to stop worrying?

The dictionary defines worry as this: to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts. And that is certainly what we do, isn’t it?

We start with what we know. For example, a child isn’t home yet from visiting friends and so we start with the ‘what ifs’. What if he got in an accident? What if he’s in the hospital?

Or perhaps we’ve got a health concern. Our minds go immediately to the worst: What if it’s cancer? How will I manage? What about my family, my job, my insurance coverage?

As worriers we let our minds go into all those dark places, turning them over, considering the horrors, and

soon we’re literally sick with worry.

But Jesus says in Luke chapter 12: Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your life-span? ²⁶ If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? ²⁷ 

Jesus is asking us to stop tormenting ourselves. Yes, we may have worries. About our children, our jobs, ourselves. But we can’t allow our thoughts to dwell on all the bad things that may or may not happen. When we are tempted—and it is a temptation because Satan wants us to worry—we must make a conscious decision to turn our thoughts away from the darkness and toward the light.

One way is to turn to prayer. Some of the most beautiful prayers of the Psalms are about trust and can calm our minds and soothe our fears, while keeping us from heading down that tempting dark tunnel:

Hear, O Lord, have mercy on me; Lord be my helper. Psalm 30:11

You are my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead and guide me. Psalm 31:4

Wait for the Lord, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the Lord! Psalm 27:14

Or, we can repeat the most simple prayer of all: Jesus, I trust in you.

It’s not easy to stop ourselves from worrying. Sometimes we’ll fail. Sometimes we’ll give in and head down that dark tunnel. Yet, even then, Jesus will be waiting for us to come back into the light, just as he waited for Martha on the road outside Bethany, to come to him, to put her trust in him even as her brother lay dead in his tomb, and say:

“Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”

The Tomb:

In this captivating retelling of a classic biblical story, Jesus shocks the town of Bethany with Lazarus’s resurrection from the dead, leading Martha—a seemingly perfect woman trapped by the secrets of her past—to hope and a new life.

Everyone in Bethany admires Martha—the perfect Jewish woman. She feeds and clothes her loved ones, looks after the family farm, and meticulously follows every precept of the Pharisees’ strict laws. But Martha is hiding a secret. At her sister’s marriage feast, she gave her heart and her innocence to a young musician who promised to return and marry her, but instead betrayed her love and abandoned her.

Seven years later, only two people in Bethany know of Martha’s secret sin: her brother, Lazarus, and Simon, the righteous Pharisee to whom Martha is betrothed. When Lazarus falls ill, Martha is faced with a choice: send for Jesus to save her dying brother—risking the wrath of Simon who threatens to betray her—or deny Jesus’ healing power and remain trapped in her tomb of secrecy and lies.

Meanwhile, on the shores of Galilee, Isa roams the wilderness, tortured by demons and knowing only that someone is waiting for him. When he is healed by Jesus, he finds that seven years have passed since his descent into madness. Isa journeys home to Bethany only to find he is too late to win back Martha’s love.

When Martha risks all to heal Lazarus, will Jesus arrive in time, or will he—like Isa—come too late?

Let’s talk about this! I’m a big believer in memorizing Scripture and think doing so is one of the best ways we can counter negative thinking and center our mind and hearts in truth. Prayer is another power source given to us by Christ, and when we combine  prayer with Scripture, which is praying the very Words of Christ, we’ve positioned ourselves for victory! Have you prayed Scripture before? At the end of her post, Stephanie shared some wonderful prayers from the Psalms. What are some verses you like to pray? If you haven’t prayed Scripture, why not start? It truly is a beautiful, peace-inducing way to pray! Share your thoughts here in the comments below or at Living by Grace on Facebook. 

I also encourage you to sign up for my free, quarterly newsletter, which I and 7 other Christian authors put out. In it, you’ll receive scenes from a serial story available only through the newsletter, devotions, short stories of mixed genres, recipes, and more!

Praying the Scriptures for Your Children

Prayer Fatigue by Jennifer Kennedy Dean