A Prayer When Facing Overwhelming Stress and AnxietyBy Keri Eichberger Bible Reading"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." – Proverbs 3:5-6 Stress. Worry. Uncertainty. Overwhelm. I feel it all. And this definitely isn't the first time. Uneasiness plagued me day after day when my son started driving last fall. Fear consumed me when my dad went in for open-heart surgery a few months back. Overwhelm almost completely swallowed me 18 years ago when the ultrasound tech said, "I'm sorry we can't find your baby's heartbeat." And nagging stress? I'm all worked up in it right now for my mom as she wonders how she'll care for my dad after yet another life-altering stroke. I know you are familiar with similar suffocating waves of anxiousness, too, aren't you? Sometimes, the dark waters flood your world with such a constant that you feel you'll never catch a break or a breath. You want desperately for God to intervene with his divine relief before you crack, crumble, and flat-out collapse. Listen, I know how hard it is to pause for peace to combat the craze when the world keeps bringing bad news and more and more heavy burdens. Personally, I tend to relentlessly grasp for control and take charge as if it's in my hands to fix what's wrong and straighten out what doesn't make sense. Or I'll just distract and numb out from the realities I face. But it's in these overloaded, weighed-down moments we all must remember to place our trust in God. He knew this was all going to happen. He did. He also knows what's going to happen next. And he knows, ultimately, all things work for the good of those who love him. That's you and me. And all that we're going through. Whatever has you shaken or stirred up with stress and overwhelm, God knows. God sees. God cares. So you can take a deep breath right now, child of God. OK, I will too. Whisper the words, God, I trust you. Deeply inhale trust and exhale the stress. Again, God, I trust you. Replace each and every stress and worry with trust. God can be trusted with it all. Listen, if life didn't hand us all the heavy, hard waves you're being hit with, we wouldn't need our good God. And close to him is always right where he wants us. The best place to be. He wants you to trust in him. He wants you to lean on him. All the way through your anxious situation and season. Your almighty Father also wants to relieve your hurt and the heaviness you feel. He wants you to know he loves you, that he is making a way, and that he has everything that has you uneasy in his sovereign control. You may not understand. Many times we won't. But he does. And his way is absolutely the best way. You and I can trust our loving Almighty God. Right where he has you. Right now. Always. Let's pray: Loving Lord, I feel the overwhelm of uncertainty, uneasiness, and worry. All rooted in the enemy's lies of helplessness. And I don't want to be weighed down by this false fear. Lord, I know that because of your perfect love and all-powerful control, I don't need to worry about today or fear anything the future might hold. But the world can be such a struggle. Between the people I care about and my own inner and surrounding battles, there is always something competing for my care and concern. It easily becomes more than I can handle, and right now, I need you. I need confidence in your truths. I know you love me and each of your children more than I could possibly imagine. And I know that you have all things in your powerful hands. This means I have nothing to worry about now and nothing to fear for all of my tomorrows. For this, I praise you. Give me unshakable confidence in this unfailing truth. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your power, protection, and provision.In your mighty name, Amen. Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/PeopleImages Keri Eichberger is a Jesus-loving Kentucky girl. She is married to her best friend, Mike, and has a full house of five kids. After years of writing for an online audience, Keri became ordained through Southeast Christian Church, giving her life to full-time ministry. She is the author of Win Over Worry: Conquer What Shakes You and Soar With the One Who Overcomes, and has a passion for sharing faith-filled encouragement through devotional writing. Connect with Keri at KeriEichberger.com or Instagram. Related Resource: Remember God’s Enduring Love for You in this Guided Meditation on Psalm 100! This guided Christian meditation from Psalm 100 will help you experience and praise God for his unending love for you. Become aware of God's presence with you, and praise God for his loyal and enduring love from the beginning of time and into the future. Listen to every episode of the So Much More Podcast on LifeAudio.com, or subscribe on Apple or Spotify so you never miss an episode! Now that you’ve prayed, are you in need of someone to pray for YOU? Click the button below! Visit iBelieve.com for more inspiring prayer content. The post A Prayer When Facing Overwhelming Stress and Anxiety – Your Daily Prayer – August 31 appeared first on GodUpdates.

Washington — A joint operation by American and Iraqi forces killed 15 members of the Islamic State group in western Iraq, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said Friday. The raid targeted Islamic State leaders and was carried out early Thursday morning, resulting "in the death of 15 ISIS operatives" with "no indication of civilian casualties," CENTCOM said on social media platform X. It said the IS members were "armed with numerous weapons, grenades, and explosive 'suicide' belts," and that Iraqi forces were continuing "to further exploit the locations raided," only specifying that the operation occurred in "Western Iraq." "ISIS remains a threat to the region, our allies, as well as our homeland. US CENTCOM alongside our coalition and Iraqi partners, will continue to aggressively pursue these terrorists," it added. The operation comes as Baghdad and Washington have been engaged in months of talks over the presence of anti-jihadist coalition forces in Iraq. Despite Iraq's stated goal of a full withdrawal of the forces, no timeline has been made public. The United States has some 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State group. Coalition forces have been targeted dozens of times with drones and rocket fire in both Iraq and Syria, as violence related to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza since early October has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East. Last winter, the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups, had claimed some 175 rocket and drone attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. U.S. forces have carried out multiple retaliatory strikes against these militant factions in both countries. Thursday's raid also comes just under a week after U.S. forces killed a senior leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated militant group in Syria.

Many times, I’ve asked God to change my suffering. I’ve had sleepless nights and stomachaches. I’ve studied, sought coaching, made plans, and pursued best practices. I’ve poured out prayer after prayer, asking God to take my pain away. I’ve wanted it to end. I find it easy to see all that suffering takes, all I miss out on. I see what I’ve lost. But it’s easy to miss what God gives me in trials. What if there’s more to suffering than what has been taken? The Bible says that in suffering and weakness, there’s great joy to be found. How is this possible? What good can there be in our pain? We’ll never experience this joy if we don’t recognize that some of God’s greatest gifts come amid our hardest moments. God Draws Us Near On your best day, filled with all the blessings of the good life like friendship, feasting, and song, it’s easy to forget God. We swallow down his gifts and live with self-sufficiency. This is why C. S. Lewis said, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.” We often only see what suffering takes but miss what God gives. Suffering feels like an invasion, an intruder robbing us of what we love and enjoy. But it’s more than an invasion; it’s a personal invitation from God. He shouts amid the storm to come and be with him. God Reveals His Character You’ve called out to God to change your life and he didn’t. Paul experienced the same. He pleaded with the Lord to remove his suffering, and God answered Paul as he often answers us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). God says he won’t give Paul the gift of deliverance, but he’ll give him something greater: the grace of knowing his presence and power. It isn’t in the joyful times that we most pour out our hearts to God; it’s when we’re anxious, lonely, betrayed, and overwhelmed. There are aspects of God’s character and power we’ll never know if we don’t first experience our weakness. I only knew what it meant to count on God as my Father after my parents divorced. I wouldn’t have felt God’s comfort as a refuge had my wife and I not faced infertility and multiple miscarriages. I would never have known Jesus’s faithful presence as a friend had I not moved thousands of miles, leaving all my friends and family behind. I wouldn’t have known what it meant to rest in his righteousness had I not been slandered. I would never have known that God is my provider had I not struggled to pay the bills. I wouldn’t have known what it means that he knows my name without the experience of feeling inferior. I wouldn’t have known the freedom of forgiveness had I not seen my own sin. God wants to give you more than mere knowledge about him; he wants you to experience him personally. Can you know the abundant life of the Shepherd without first knowing the valley of death (Ps. 23:4)? Do you know the full strength of the rock before the waves crash around you? God uses your weakness to bring you to a greater reliance on his perfect power. Through your weakness, he leads you to experience and enjoy all he is. God Strengthens Us Paul says, “I will most boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9–10). To “boast” here means to have confidence and trust in God despite one’s circumstances. I know this is hard. The greatest pains in my life have been the unanswered prayers. I know who God says he is; I believe. But I’m not seeing him do what I know he can do. I’ve prayed, “God, I know you have power, so act. I know you hear my prayers, so please answer. I know you love me, so please show your love. I’ve seen you come through in the past, in your Word and for others. So why not now? Why not for me?” Through your weakness, God leads you to experience and enjoy all he is. To “boast” means we stay confident that God is good and wise and hasn’t abandoned us even when we don’t understand, even when we long for our circumstances to be different. Boasting in God makes us stronger because we stop leaning on ourselves and the hopes that fail us, instead finding our true source of strength and joy in him. We all live with suffering. We all experience the disappearance of what we’ve loved and hoped for. You may feel this fruitlessness and the failure right now. But suffering is more than something to “get through.” God is doing a million things in your suffering, working out countless details we can never imagine. We don’t know most of what he’s doing, but we do know that if we belong to him, suffering is a gift.

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