Greg Laurie to students Combat anxiety, stress with prayer
Greg Laurie to students Combat anxiety, stress with prayer
Riverside, Calif. (Feb. 25, 2020) – Greg Laurie, senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, encouraged a California Baptist University chapel audience to seek God’s will in the midst of life’s worries.
“We need to learn how to communicate and hear from God instead of focusing on worrying,” Laurie said. “We can take all our concerns and anxiety to God. Prayer is a conversation with God to help get my will aligned to His will.”
Laurie, a best-selling author and international evangelist, spoke in chapel on Feb. 25.
Laurie said students live in some of the most “stressful and anxiety-filled days.” He exhorted students not to stay stuck in a pattern of worrying but instead to trust in God’s sovereignty and promises revealed through His word.
“Worrying does not help make your life better in any way,” Laurie said. “Worrying is like a rocking chair; you keep rocking but you go nowhere.”
Laurie quoted Jesus’ statement about worrying from Matthew 6:25-27:
“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?” (NASB)
Laurie joked that he has never seen a stressed-out bird. He also reminded the audience that God has a plan for their lives.
He quoted Jeremiah 29:11 to reinforce his claim: “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope” (NASB).
“When life is all going bad, it is good to know that God is still all good. In life we want to know what’s coming ahead. Only God can see what’s ahead and it is God who is in control,” Laurie said.