Anxiety
An anxiety visual: picture in your mind a well-worn hat that you have worn so often that it is just downright comfortable. It might not look good, or even be stylish, but over the years it’s molded to your head because you have worn it so often.
When Jesus saved you and came into your life, one of the things He did is tell you that He now owns that hat and you don’t have permission to wear it anymore because it’s not yours. He proceeds to hand you a brand-new hat called peace. Once you have experienced His grace, now you can wear this new hat that He made for you.
As you go through your Christian life, every day you get up in the morning and go to bed at night, you pass that hat rack. Some days things don’t go so well at work or in your relationships or even with your health. That’s when that old hat starts to look good again. You think in your mind, I do love this new hat Jesus gave me, but I wonder if that old hat still fits? Maybe you’d feel better if you grabbed the hat on the way out today and put it on once again. So, you decide to take off the hat that Jesus gave you and go back to your favorite old hat. But now that you have a new hat, the old hat feels different, doesn’t it? Did the old hat change and get worse? No, it didn’t, it still looks the same, fits the same, and even smells the same. What changed is that you have now experienced a new hat. You didn’t know what other hats felt like before. You only had that one hat your whole life until Jesus showed up. Now that you put the old hat on again, you don’t like how it fits or looks anymore because you’ve experienced a far greater hat. This is where your flesh, the enemy, and the world come in and battle against the Spirit of God in you. Every day now, those three voices try to tell you “Hey you look way better in that old hat, dump the new one”. The Holy Spirit reminds you that the old hat is no longer your hat, that it’s not good for you, and that the hat He made for you was made just for you. This becomes a battle in you because some days you fellowship with the Lord all throughout your day and He constantly reminds you of the goodness of the new hat. Some days you don’t spend time with Him at all and those other voices try to convince you that the old hat is best.
You see, this is the struggle of the Christian life. In this example, I am talking specifically about anxiety, but the same lesson applies to all areas of our old selves versus our new life in Christ.