“What to Do If You Wake Up Feeling Fragile”

So, I had this saved in my notepad a long time ago but the message it contains is always valid because we all have “those days”. I was kind of slipping into one of those moods this morning even without thinking about anything deep when I got a grip of myself, like asap. I literally started saying out loud while I was making the bed: “I will have a blessed day. I am happy. I am blessed. I have a good disposition towards my husband and kids. I am loved by God and his joy is my strength. This is the day the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it. I threw in a little tongues here and there and honestly, within a few minutes I felt a whole lot better. Read the write-up and save it as well.

“There are mornings when I wake up feeling fragile. Vulnerable. It’s often vague. No single threat. No one weakness. Just an amorphous sense that something is going to go wrong and I will be responsible.

It’s usually after a lot of criticism. Lots of expectations that have deadlines and that seem too big and too many.

As I look back over about 50 years of such periodic mornings, I am amazed how the Lord Jesus has preserved my life. And my ministry. The temptation to run away from the stress has never won out, not yet anyway. This is amazing. I worship him for it.

Instead of letting me sink into a paralysis of fear, or run to a mirage of greener grass, he has awakened a cry for help and then answered with a concrete promise.

Here’s an example. This is recent. I woke up feeling emotionally fragile. Weak. Vulnerable. I prayed: “Lord help me. I’m not even sure how to pray.”

An hour later I was reading in Zechariah, seeking the help I had cried out for. It came.

Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and livestock in it. And I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord, and I will be the glory in her midst. (Zechariah 2:4-5)

There will be such prosperity and growth for the people of God that Jerusalem will not be able to be walled in any more. “The multitude of people and livestock” will be so many that Jerusalem will be like many villages spreading out across the land without walls.

Prosperity is nice, but what about protection?

To which God says in Zechariah 2:5, “I will be to her a wall of fire all around, declares the Lord.” Yes. That’s it. That is the promise. The “I will” of God. That is what I need.

And if it is true for the vulnerable villages of Jerusalem, it is true for me a child of God. God will be a “wall of fire all around me.” Yes. He will. He has been. And he will be.

And it gets better. Inside that fiery wall of protection he says, “And I will be the glory in her midst.” God is never content to give us the protection of his fire; he will give us pleasure of his presence.”

“What to Do If You Wake Up Feeling Fragile”
By John Piper 

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