What do you do when your life hits its own "ground zero?" When you experience your own personal 9/11? When divorce, bankruptcy, loss of a job, cancer, kids on drugs, death of a loved one, or a host of many other dreadful things happens to you?
Bad things do happen to good people. How do you deal with it?
Almost all of us turn to God in these situations. Even if we don't know Him very well, or have ignored Him, or have turned our back on Him, we have this instinctive sense that there is no higher authority in the universe.
God is waiting for you to turn to Him. He loves you. Yes, you.
When you look around at your life and see the devastation, fear grips your heart so that you can barely breathe sometimes. All of your five senses scream in protest at this outrage. Your whole body can shake as the adrenaline pounds out its message to every fiber in your being. You hate this thing that's happened! Oh, God, help me!
God is there. He's in the midst of your pain with you. Turn to His Word, the Bible. Almost in the exact middle is Psalm 56. This Psalm says God is for you. That He wants the very best for you.
Also, it happens to have been written by a murderer and an adulterer, with a royally messed up life, who had many of his own "ground zero" experiences. It was King David. King David chose to continually affirm God's goodness and love in his heart of hearts even while his physical heart was pounding in fear with the hair on the back of his neck raised in dread. And there is the key. He did not rely on his physical senses to dictate how he would react to God. He said in many other Psalms, "I will not…be afraid." One of my favorite New Testament Bible verses is II Timothy 1:7, "For He has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and a sound mind."
You have a choice to be afraid in your situation or to have faith in God no matter what. Find a verse in the Bible that speaks to your situation and repeat it to yourself many times daily. You will find that fear cannot remain when God's Word is present.
