[transcript] Life has no shortage of things to worry about or be anxious about, and so today we're going to take a look at what God has to say about our fear and our worry.

Hi, Friends! Welcome to my channel. My name is Sarah and I love the Word of God. Recently, I found myself in a season where I was really struggling with fear and anxiety, and I was pleading with the Lord for relief, both from my circumstances, but also just from the fear and anxiety that I was feeling.

And I felt the Holy Spirit remind me that God's word actually has a lot to say about worry and anxiety. And so I set my heart and my mind into studying the Scriptures, just pouring over them, looking for wisdom and guidance for how to deal with the anxiety and the worry that I was experiencing.

In the next couple of videos, I'm going to share with you what I've been learning from God's Word about how to find peace in overwhelming circumstances and how we can actually find rest for our hearts, even in the midst of fear and anxiety and the unknown. So without further ado, grab your Bible and let's seek Him together.

Okay, we're going to be looking at Isaiah chapter 40, verses 27 through 31. I'm going to read the whole passage to you initially, and then we're going to kind of break it down and look at it one verse at a time. So Isaiah 40, verse 27, says:

Jacob, why do you say,

and Israel, why do you assert,

“My way is hidden from the Lord,

and my claim is ignored by my God”?

Do you not know?

Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

the Creator of the whole earth.

He never becomes faint or weary;

there is no limit to his understanding.

He gives strength to the faint

and strengthens the powerless.

Youths may become faint and weary,

and young men stumble and fall,

but those who trust in the Lord

will renew their strength;

they will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not become weary,

they will walk and not faint.

So, looking here at Isaiah 40, we're actually looking at a passage that is a prophecy of God's deliverance. So, the book of Isaiah is a prophetic book, but it's kind of divided into two parts. The first half of Isaiah is actually a prophetic warning to the people of Israel of coming judgment that will be for their rebellion against God.

But then the second half of the book of Isaiah is actually God's promise that after they have received that judgment that was spoken about in the first half of the book, now He's promising that He will come to rescue them. He will come to deliver them. And so this passage that we looked at in Isaiah 40, it's actually part of that promised rescue portion of Isaiah. So, these words in Isaiah chapter 40 were written to a people very familiar with suffering. Now, their suffering was a result of divine judgment, and yet it was suffering nonetheless. They had been exiled, so they had been sent away from their home and they were under the control of an enemy nation.

They had been powerless to save themselves. They probably felt really hopeless and abandoned by God. They seemed to be at the mercy of their circumstances. They wanted something to change, but they didn't have a way to change anything. I don't know about you, but that's actually very familiar to me.

I have been in seasons where I found myself in circumstances that I felt like I had no control over, where I was longing for a change, but powerless to change anything. And if that doesn't breed anxiety and fear, then I don't know what does. So let's get into our passage.

We're going to start by looking at verse 27 and in 27, what we actually see is what the Lord is going to respond to in the following verses. Israel has made this cry, they said,

“My way is hidden from the Lord and my claim is ignored by my God.”

And you can really sense their feeling of abandonment, right? And to be completely honest, I've felt that way before. I have had times where I look around at my life and I think, “Where is God?” Where I felt like, “it seems like He's not here. Like, He's not showing up, He's not involved.”

And that's what they're saying. But God responds to their alleged ignorance with a challenge, and He says to them, “Do you not know? Have you not heard?” But here's the thing, they did know. They had heard. It was actually an integral part of their culture to pass on stories of what God had done, stories of His miracles, of His provision of His protection, so they did know. But, and I think that this happens to us, in the midst of their suffering and their confusion, they forgot to remember. And so, God firmly and clearly reminds them of who He is. He says the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary. There is no limit to His understanding. So, do you hear that direct response to their accusation? Remember, they had said, “My way is hidden from the Lord. My claim is ignored by my God.” And He says, “Oh no, there is no limit to my understanding.” And then He also reminds them of His strength, of His might. It's not just that there's no limit to His understanding, but there's also no limit to His ability to intervene.

Now, in verse 29, it says,

He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

Now here, the Lord is actually speaking to their feelings of weakness and powerlessness, and He's reminding His people that He is strong and that He also strengthens His people. I love verse 30 because there's this comparison to the strength of youth.

Now, I have two teenaged sons and the older I get, the greater the discrepancy between what they're capable of doing and what I'm capable of doing. But there is still a limit even to the strength of a strong athletic young man. Even my sons become weary at the end of a long, hard day, and sometimes they even stumble and fall.

But not our God. There is no limit to His understanding, but there is also no limit to His strength. Now, don't miss what that means for His children, what that means for me and for you. It means that there is no limit to the strength that He is able to give to us.

So now, in verse 31, it says,

but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not become weary. They will walk and not faint.

Now, it's important to notice the poetic language here, and we see it especially in the line that says they will soar on wings like eagles.

Clearly, it doesn't mean that the Lord intends to give His people literal eagles wings, right? So we can assume that He's not specifically or exclusively referring to physical strength. This strength that God is promising is like a fortitude against weariness. He's talking about strength of spirit and of mind.

He's talking about this confidence to move forward in the face of fear and of the unknown. The ability to not give up, even when we don't understand what God is doing, even when we can't see what the future holds, even in the waiting. And in fact, the word that my translation uses is trust, in verse 31, it says that those who trust in the Lord. Some translations say those who wait or those who hope. And this word, it really carries a feeling of trust with anticipation. You see, it's the one who looks for and trusts in the Lord who renews their strength.

When we depend on ourselves, we will always find ourselves to be lacking, right? There is a limit to our strength, and I think about our physical and our mental and our emotional capacities, they're all limited. We need the Lord. And if we will look to Him expectantly, trusting that He is the everlasting God, that He is in control, that He has a perfect understanding of our situation and a perfect plan, then we can find peace and strength in our minds and in our hearts. Then we can find peace in that place of anxiety, in that time of worry and of fear. That's where that peace comes. It comes from the strength of the Lord.

We find that we can move forward, regardless of our circumstances, because we are leaning on and leaning into the strength of the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth, the one who has no limit to His understanding and no limit to His strength, who never becomes faint or weary. That's why we can have strength. That's why we can have peace.

And so my encouragement to you today is that when you are feeling overwhelmed, when you're afraid, or you're worried, and that anxiety is just building up inside of you; when you're tempted to look at your circumstances and think that you may have been abandoned by God, look to God's very words here in Isaiah 40. Remember who He is. Friend, our God is faithful. He is compassionate, He is strong, and there's no limit to His understanding.

He sees you. He knows you and He loves you. Lean into that.

To watch the next video in this series, you can click this link here, where we're going to look at a few of the first instances in Scripture, where God specifically addresses fear. He tells three different men not to be afraid, and He gives them reasons why and those reasons I have come to rehearse in my times of worry and fear.

In the meantime, keep seeking the Lord. He is so worth knowing!