Feeling anxious is part of living in a broken world, and God weaves those feelings into his providential plan for our spiritual growth. As we mature, our feelings of anxiety may abate, or they may swell. What runs constant is God’s call to trust him and act in the context of our feelings. Simply listening to our kids express their feelings is a great way to ease their burden by assuring them of our non-judgmental presence.

It takes time for us to realize we aren’t made of glass, that shattering isn’t imminent, that God can always bring us through to the other side—no matter what hellish things we experience. Time teaches us. In fact, for any person of faith, time is the only tutor.
But kids don’t have time yet—at least, they have more ahead than behind. Each day holds out threats without the assurance of safety, let alone the promise of strength for having weathered hard things. And so, for kids, fragility comes naturally. They see their smallness in a wild world. A tiny scratch demands a Band Aid. The sidewalk cracks threaten their bicycle tires. Honey bees have daggers attached to their abdomens. The world is big. Children are small. Dangers abound.
As parents, with more time behind than ahead, we go through seasons when we feel confident in God’s sovereign care, maybe even impervious to harm (or at least ignorant of it). But the longer we live, the more quickly we spot this feeling as a momentary illusion. We lose a parent. Our highschool friend dies of spinal cancer at thirty-one. A Yellowstone mudslide wipes out a bridge as if it were built of toothpicks and glue. Health issues crop up like weeds in everyday conversations. The world is uncontrollable. And though we’re more confident in God’s control than we used to be, we’re still small. And dangers abound.
Maybe that’s why nearly 20% of the American population battles an anxiety disorder, including yours truly for the last 16 years.1 I’ve written about my own anxiety war in Struck Down but Not Destroyed. But I’ve also had the joy of being a parent for nearly 9 years, which means I’ve had to take what God has shown me about anxiety and use it to help my own children. I approach them with deep empathy, as one whom the Lord has shattered and put back together many times. Let me offer what I’ve learned so far and then point you to some resources I’ve found helpful along the way.
What I’ve Learned
1. Kids are very perceptive.
While children deal with their own fears and worries, they’re also watching you, taking cues on how they should respond. As parents, we tend to think it’s best to shield our children from our anxiety, and there are times when that’s appropriate. But shielding them and denying the presence of anxiety teaches them to do the same. That’s unhealthy, and it’s unbiblical. The psalmists didn’t bottle things up; they poured everything out. That doesn’t mean you should pour out your soul before your kids each day. But it does mean they should see it’s okay that you deal with fear and anxiety, too, and you do something about it: you turn to your heavenly Father in prayer. You read his word. You walk by faith. You believe. Showing them what to do with anxiety is much healthier than modeling denial.
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Part of me wants to smile a bit when I think about a statue to Satan being torn down and decapitated because my heart rejoices in the defeat of the devil. This urge, though, must be tempered with truth, the truth that toppling a ridiculous display doesn’t do anything to defeat the devil. It’s at best a symbolic gesture of someone who professes to oppose evil. For those who are interested in seeing the souls of men saved and Christ truly glorified, our hearts must yearn for more than symbolic gestures. We should long for the true defeat of the devil by the power of God. 

Earlier this month, a man named Michael Cassidy allegedly tore down and beheaded a statue erected by the Satanic Temple in the Iowa state capitol. He reportedly took this action because “it was extremely anti-Christian.” Later, he posted a quote of 1 Peter 5:8 to his X feed, where the apostle exhorts Christians to “be on the alert” because our “adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (NASB).
Many Christians and politically conservative individuals have hailed Cassidy’s actions as ‘brave,’ applauding him for taking a stand against the evil that has infected our nation. People are exhausted by the constant onslaught of wickedness that occurs in our nation day after day, and to see someone fighting so publicly against Satan and satanism feels very refreshing. Such a bold protest, even if illegal, seems laudatory because, after all, it is opposition to evil. As Christians, however, we would do well to allow our passions to simmer and to think through this situation biblically in order to exercise wisdom and discernment in our fight against the powers of darkness. Is tearing down a statue really a biblical way to oppose evil, and a path that Christians should choose, or even celebrate?
To be clear: all statues that represent objects of worship are evil. The Old and New Testaments state that all forms of idolatry are an abomination to the Lord. Whether a statue is meant to symbolize Zeus, Satan, or even Yahweh (see Exodus 32 and the golden calf), such images are forbidden by the law of God and amount to idol worship. Christians should recognize that all forms of idolatry are detestable in God’s sight. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that all idols are demonic in character. Paul told the Corinthians that people who offer sacrifices to idols actually offer sacrifices to demons. Idols, in and of themselves, are nothing (1 Corinthians 10:19-20). Idols can’t speak, see, hear, smell, feel, walk, or talk (Psalm 115:4-7). The statues are empty and powerless. Nevertheless, behind all idolatrous worship, we find demonic powers. These demonic powers seek to destroy the souls of men and constantly assault the glory of Christ.
Christians, therefore, should oppose idolatry and the demonic powers it represents out of love for and loyalty to Christ our Lord. How should we do so? Do we oppose idolatry by destroying statues of Satan, demons, or false gods?
In the Old Testament, we find several examples that might provide biblical warrant for such actions against images and idols. For example, after the golden calf incident in Exodus 32, Moses burned the idol, ground it to powder, scattered it over the water, and made Israel drink the remnants (Exodus 32:20). A few chapters later, Yahweh commanded Israel to tear down the altars and idols of the foreign gods of the Canaanites (Exodus 34:13). In Judges 6, the angel of Yahweh came to Gideon and commanded him to tear down the altar of Baal and the Asherah (a false god’s image) next to it. God expressly commanded people in the Old Testament to destroy idols and images, and those who were faithful to Yahweh did so to honor Him.
New covenant believers might conclude from these examples that we should follow suit. God is still outraged by idolatrous worship and statues that dishonor Him, and such images are still worthy of being destroyed. As believers, some might therefore conclude, we should still destroy them when we have a chance to do so. However, there are some clues in the OT and the NT that the way we destroy idolatrous worship is different today than it was in the OT.
Many of the events we read about in the OT were of a typological nature, representing something greater that would occur in the NT. In the passages that relate to the destruction of idols, we see this typology at work.
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The doctrine of imputation is one of the most under-taught teachings in the church today, and every Christian needs to know it. God credits to us the righteousness of Christ, and this comes through faith alone, which is also God’s gift to us in Christ (Eph. 2:8-9). Additionally, our sin is credited to Christ, who, though he knew no sin, was punished for the sins of all who trust in him for salvation (2 Cor. 5:21).

Here are 10 words every Christian should know—and be able to explain—in order to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).
1. Faith
Saving faith is not, as is commonly believed, a blind faith. There are three aspects of saving faith:

knowledge of Christ and his salvific work;

agreement that the claims of Christianity are true;

hearty trust in Christ alone for our salvation.

Faith is the instrument through which, by God’s grace, Christ’s perfect righteousness and atoning sacrifice are credited to us. It is God’s gift, not a work of any kind (Eph. 2:8-9). For more on the definition of faith, please click here.
2. Grace
Grace is one of God’s attributes. According to theologian Louis Berkhof, the grace of God in our redemption in Christ

is God’s free, sovereign undeserved favor or love to man, in his state of sin and guilt, which manifests itself in the forgiveness of sin and deliverance from His justice. (Systematic Theology, p. 427).

There is nothing we have done or could ever do to merit God’s grace. We receive it by God’s sovereign choice alone (Rom. 11:5-6).
3. Peace
There are two aspects to peace—objective and subjective. Just as two countries have a status of peace with each other through official agreements, so Christians are declared at peace with God through Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:1). This means that we still have the status of peace with God regardless of how we feel or how well we keep his commands at any given time.
It is normal for Christians to still feel anxious in this troubled world and to feel a lack of peace from the sin in their lives. These feelings should spur us on to trust in God, repent of our sins, and seek to live in such a manner that honors our Lord. Christians should always be exceedingly thankful and find unfathomable comfort in the fact that the blood of Christ sufficiently atones for all their guilt and sin.
4. Cross
God in his perfection must uphold all his attributes. We cannot separate God’s love from his holiness, or his mercy from his justice. God must be true to all his attributes, because to do otherwise would be to deny his own self.
As theologian Michael Horton so aptly states in his book The Christian Faith, “God would not be God if he did not possess all his attributes in the simplicity and perfection of his essence” (229). Jesus was born in the flesh so he could fulfill the whole law and be the perfect sacrifice on behalf of all who put their faith in him (Heb. 10:11-14).
At the cross Jesus offered up his life as the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for all who trust in him for salvation (e.g. John 10:14, 15). According to Horton we observe, “the clearest evidence of the complete consistency between God’s goodness and his sovereignty, justice, wrath, and righteousness in Christ’s cross” (p. 266). At the cross we see God’s “righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
5. Law
According to theologian R. C. Sproul, the law is like a mirror: it shows us our sin, but it can do nothing to save us. In fact, the law condemns everyone who is not in Christ. Jesus was born in the flesh in order to be the perfect Son whom God had promised since the fall of Adam in the garden (Gen. 3:15).

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)

Jesus kept the law perfectly on behalf of all who trust in him for salvation, and they are counted righteous in God’s sight through faith alone by God’s grace alone.
The law also serves the purposes of restraining evil and showing us what is pleasing to God.
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