Lie: Be anxious, for there is much to worry about.
Satan wants us to look at our problems instead of looking towards God. The devil knows that the ultimate answer to our problems can only come from God and so he wants our minds to be preoccupied with those things that keep us from thinking about God. Fear is one of his most useful tools.
This is not simply because fear causes us to lose trust in God, it is also so that we do not have a proper “fear of the Lord”. Monsignor Charles Pope explains that the devil plays a game of diversion . . . hoping we will be drawn into anxieties and fears to divert our attention away from God…
“Anxieties and fears also cause us many distractions. And by these, the devil causes us to fixate on fears about passing things, and thereby not to have a proper fear of the judgment which awaits us. Jesus says Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.
Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matt 10:28). In other words, we should have a holy reverence and fear directed towards the Lord, and in this way, many of our other fears will be seen in better perspective or will go away altogether.
But in this matter of fear, the devil says just the opposite: we should fear 10,000 things that might afflict us on this passing earth, and not think at all of the one most significant thing that awaits us, our judgment. The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most temporal part of time–for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays.’”
We can also remember the words of scripture which were the words John Paul II often reminded us of during his papacy: “I say to you who are My friends: Do not be afraid.” (Luke 12:24)