Let the object of your prayer be examined carefully. You ask for the removal of every worry, anxiety, and fear from your heart. But consider: there is a fear that is a scourge, an unprofitable slavery, keeping us fixed to clay and brickmaking, toiling with endless care for the devil, not for God. How long shall we stir up this mire? This anxiety, this fear for car repairs and provision, scourges the soul far more grievously than any lash upon the body. Do you wish to be rid of this fear? Do not seek to be rid of the very condition that forces you to look up to God. The woman in the Gospel came trembling, full of fear, and what did the Master do? He did not merely cast out her disease; He cast out her fear, and then gave her more than health, He gave her a provision for her journey, saying, "Go in peace."
The peace you seek is not found in the certain knowledge that an extended warranty will cover your needs. Such peace is built upon a thing liable to be destroyed by anything, a beauty that takes flight before it appears. The true beauty, the peace that ever blooms, is the one cultivated when we consider that God is everywhere present, hearing all things, seeing all things, even the intents of the heart. Why do you fear? Is it because you stand beside the King and do not recognize it? Whenever you prepare to sleep, or give way to anxiety about the market and your car, consider that God is present. If you stand constantly near the person of an earthly ruler, you stand there with fear and trembling; and standing in God’s presence, will you allow yourself to be disfigured by this desponding anxiety? Let it never be that you despise His patient endurance.
This is the manner of your provision. He freed His disciples from the distress about their needs, not by promising that all repairs would be paid, but by casting out all care for such things. You ask for this care to be removed. Good. But do not then replace it with another anxiety, a greater scrupulosity, trembling over whether He will act. That scrupulousness arises from fear and cowardice. The one who, hearing the fact of God’s providence, still abstains from trusting it, does so in dread. The thing in itself, the car, the warranty, the money, these are not in their essence evil; it is the intention of the heart that makes one unclean. Ask no question of how provision will come. God will work all things. Do your part: bring a mind resolute, clenched, and unrelaxed in its contempt and hatred of this unmanly fear.
You see Him as Provider and Protector. Hold to that reality as the only firm tie, the only principle of love that brings peace. For if this love exists, everything else follows of course. If He seems to delay, never mind; you are to love, to fulfill your own duty of trust. If the resolution of the warranty does not follow as you wish, still obey the law of God, that nothing may lie at your door. The soul must pass into the nuptial chamber that is undefiled, adorned not by the fading beauty of a perfect, untroubled circumstance, but by the embellishment of a faith tested by fire. This is no democracy where all desires rule; the ruling power of your heart must be one. Let it be the fear that brings peace, the awe of His presence, and you will find that the scourge of worldly anxiety fades, and you go forward in peace, with health of soul, and provision for the journey you never expected.