Cast All Your Anxiety on Him
GCD Newsletter – Wednesday, July 5, 2023
GCD Writers’ Cohort
Before we dive into this week’s newsletter, we’d love to invite you to join the 2023 GCD Writers’ Cohort starting on the 17th of July. There are only a few spaces left. This is your opportunity to join a group of writers committed to help encourage, sharpen, and spur each other on in their craft.
Over six months, you’ll be given access to community and coaching to help shape and sharpen your writing, your process, and your craft. Over six video calls you’ll meet with high caliber coaches, who will guide you through different aspects of making, maturing, and multiplying disciples of Jesus through your writing.
This year we have the joy of welcoming:
Jen Wilkin: Why Write?
Jared C. Wilson: What Makes for Good Writing?
Barnabas Piper: Writing for the Head
Jonathan Dodson: Writing for the Heart
Hannah Anderson: Writing for the Hands
Drew Dyck: Writing for Publication
Our worries tend to fabricate in our minds a sequence of events that we fear will proceed inevitably, like great links in a titanium chain. This event will lead to that event, we think, which will certainly lead to some other terrible situation worse than the first. Therefore, we think, if we don’t act a certain way, pretty soon we’ll be living in our own dystopian apocalypse.
Worries can especially dig into us when our health falters. We published an article from Tim Shorey, one of our staff writers, last week about his struggles with worry during his cancer treatments. There’s so much to worry about, Tim tells us. He could worry about his increased fatigue and limitations. He could worry about the pain he already has and the increased pain he doesn’t yet have but will have someday soon. He could worry about running out of energy six hours before bedtime. He can worry about not feeling good at church on Sundays. And he could worry about the day he’ll no longer be able to attend church on Sundays. His list goes on.
But even as Tim models healthy transparency in weakness, he also models what we should do with our worries: go to God in prayer. The apostle Peter tells us to cast all our anxiety upon God because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). So that’s what Tim does in his journal article. Rather than carrying his worries on his shoulders, he prays them to God’s shoulders. “Help me to keep my thoughts firmly fixed on you, my Captain-Commander,” Tim prays, “for on the worry-battlefield there is rest and peace when my mind settles its gaze on you.”
I don’t know what worries your heart cultivates today, what dystopian apocalypse you fear might be right around the corner. But I know God cares. He’d love to hear you talk to him about your deepest worries. And talking about your fears with God might be the very way he begins to break unbreakable chains.
Thanks for reading,
Benjamin Vrbicek
Managing Editor
Gospel-Centered Discipleship
Last Week at GCDiscipleship.com
13 Pieces of Unconventional Preaching Advice
by Tim Wilson
Including, “If you try to preach to everyone, you end up preaching to no one.”
My Warfare Against Worry: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#12)
by Tim Shorey
Tim Shorey, one of our staff writers, is journaling through his struggle with stage 4 cancer. In this entry he reflects on his temptations to worry and how he fights against it.
Why Is it Better That Jesus Went Away?
by Brandon D. Smith
In this excerpt from the recently released The Biblical Trinity, author Brandon D. Smith reminds readers of the Holy Spirit’s role in redemption.
Writers’ Coaching Corner (July 2023): Avoid Bullet Points
by Benjamin Vrbicek
Each month I offer coaching to writers based on an article on the GCD website the previous month. This month I talk about the principle that “Good writing avoids bullet points.”