Two weeks ago, a professional football player in Dr. David Jeremiah’s Shadow Mountain Community Church congregation asked about the significance of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis in light of biblical prophecies about the End Times. In response, Dr. David Jeremiah wrote two sermons that have been viewed close to 2 million times and have been shared more than 4,000 times.
We spoke with Dr. David Jeremiah to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on his life, his church and on people around the world.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length:
1. How do we go deeper in prayer — maybe more than we’ve ever gone before — through this time?
Prayer should be the first thing. I got a call from my daughter late last night. She was feeling a little bit cut off and afraid, and I reminded her that God is available to us. We don’t have to go anywhere. God is a breath away, and I told her that when I have moments when I feel a little bit disconnected, I hear God’s voice in my heart and I think I hear him saying, “I’ve got this,” and God is in control. And when you pray, you become so much aware of that. You become aware of the presence of God in your life and the fact that there aren’t any surprises for God. He didn’t get surprised by all of this.
2. Tell us some principles that we can use to calm our minds as we face isolation and hear news about what is going on around us.
We should open our Bibles instead of turning on the television, because that’s what will help us more than anything else. There’s so much in the Word of God to comfort our hearts and strengthen us.
And I’ll just give you a little nugget that I shared the other night: The Bible says that “in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” God didn’t say, “In the world you will have tribulation but I have overcome tribulation.” No, he said, “in the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer because I have overcome the world.” God doesn’t just overcome the event, he overcomes the environment in which the event occurs. So God’s not just in charge of what’s going on; he’s in charge of everything. He is still on the throne, and we’re gonna look back on this and see that in spite of all of the difficulty that this has created for everyone, God got glory to his name.
3. Can you give us some principles and techniques from Scripture that we can focus on when we really feel anxious?
Well, in the book of Philippians it says, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God.” Be anxious for nothing, but be prayerful in everything. What Paul was saying there is, if you want to be anxious, you can have anxiety, but you don’t have to be anxious for anything, but you have to replace that with prayer. Be anxious for nothing, but be prayerful in everything.
There’s two circles. One is anxiety — you don’t want to be in there. If you’re in the prayer circle, you won’t be in the anxiety circle. But so often what happens is we let our anxiety run crazy with us and today I’m just seeing that in talking to some people. They’re just saying “but what if and what if” and before you know it they’ve spun this thing out and I just want to say to them, “This is not the end of the world.” So step back, take a deep breath, and get into the Word of God and be reminded that God is in control.
Source: Christian Headlines
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