[Gary Petty] This is part 2 in a series of BT Dailys we’re doing on anxiety. Last time I talked about how the importance of starting each day with personal time and prayer and Bible study with God, to get all other distractions out and start your day with that kind of mindset, that kind of help, where He comes into your life, He tells you what to do, and now you have instructions for life. And you can think about it. But during the day, all kinds of things happen to cause anxious thoughts – to cause worry, it causes fear. What do we do at those times? And this is why it’s so important to start the day that way, because during the day you can look back, look back on your morning experience.

And this is our second point. If you have that morning experience as your first point, the second point is during the day, stop. Return to that experience. Pray. Return to God. Think about what you learned in the scripture that morning. Think about God’s plan. Think about what He’s doing. And take those little moments. You may have to get away from the office a little bit. You may have to step outside. Sometimes it’s as simple as going into another office where there isn’t anybody, and just thinking for a moment. But take those little moments of prayer and thinking about your morning experience.

Dealing with anxiety isn’t a single event. It is how you face life. So if we start with this time with God, we have to renew that time with God throughout the day. And those happen in little moments and little times of returning to God. Thinking about – think about what you learned. Part of the problem with anxiety is obsessive thoughts. We get trapped in our own fears. We get trapped in our own thoughts. You break those thoughts by returning to what you read in the Bible. If we don’t study our Bible, we won’t know what to replace our thoughts with. But when you look to scriptures where, like Jesus said, don’t be anxious, or don’t have anxious thought, remember your Father knows what you need. When you can return to those kinds of thoughts – “Yes, Father, I come to you because Jesus told me. You know what I need.” And that begins to change everything.

So our second point in dealing with anxiety is throughout the day, return back to what you learned in the scripture that morning, and then through prayer, return to that to deal with your anxieties. Next time, we’ll deal with one more point that can help you deal with anxieties.

That’s BT Daily. Thanks for watching.