What does the future hold? That’s a question a lot of people have, and no human has the specific answer to. Yet, many still question the one who actually knows the answers, who guides life in the right direction. Many worry fruitlessly about the things that have yet to come, even knowing that the only thing they can do is live through it and choose how to react.

Anxiety: it’s dangerous and terrible and altogether a thorn in the minds and lives of people everywhere, but especially to believers who know the one true God who has all of time in His hand. I know it’s hard to live with, through, and around, but I hope the message Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 8: 1-9 will help you a little in tackling and overcoming anxiety.

Ecclesiastes 8:1 says, “Who is like the wise person, and who knows the interpretation of a matter? A man’s wisdom brightens his face, and the sternness of his face is changed.”

I think, and I think psychology backs me up on this thought, that how we choose to think overrides how our brains actually think, given time. Solomon, at least, seems to agree with me. In this first verse, he details something similar, if you can get past the weird phrasing he used. One of the things that helped me battle my own anxiety was the knowledge of, not only my own thought process, but what my thought process should be.

Let’s translate verse 1 into some more common English: who is wise enough to know what everything means? Who knows exactly what will happen based on what has already happened? A man’s wisdom enlightens his mind, and the strength of his mind is changed.

If we finagle with the words a little bit, we can adjust a brightening of the face to an enlightenment of the mind. (The Hebrew word “panah” used here has a whole paragraph and a half of possible translations. One of them is mind. Whether that’s more correct than face, I don’t know, but it does fit the idea.) And there is some sense to this: the brain works by establishing neural pathways to memories, actions, emotions, and more, and it is fully possible to override and rewrite pathways that have already been constructed. Thus, it is fully possible that coming to terms with your thoughts, knowing how you should think, and changing how you think could strengthen your mind against anxiety.

Knowing is half the battle, and with the mind, it’s even more than that. I think it’s important to note that, in verse 1, the verb is “changed” not “increased.” In this case, the strength of your mind isn’t increased to handle anxiety, but it is changed to rely on God, who does know what will happen, instead of yourself.

Verses 2-4 say, “Keep the king’s command because of your oath made before God. Do not be in a hurry; leave his presence, and don’t persist in a bad cause, since he will do whatever he wants. For the king’s word is authoritative, and who can say to him, ‘What are you doing?’”

I think the thing to take from this verse is the fact that you don’t have control. Part of the problem with anxiety is that you can’t control things you want to control, specifically, our lives. As believers, God has full control over our lives, just like a king would have full control over his subjects. There’s no point arguing or railing against it because we promised to follow what He says. And there’s no point in running away to do whatever you want, either, because He is an authority. He knows all that was, is, and is to come, so asking God what He’s doing as if He doesn’t know is silly.

And Solomon writes all this to point it out: you wouldn’t say or do these things to an all-knowing human king, so why would you do the same with God? It’s important to come face to face with this thought process, to know, unequivocally, that the one who guides your life has everything under control, and you don’t need to do anything but follow his plan. And it’s important to know because, again, knowing that is half the battle to changing your mind to have reliance on God.

Verses 5-6 say, “The one who keeps a command will not experience anything harmful, and a wise heart knows the right time and procedure. For every activity there is a right time and procedure, even though man’s troubles are heavy on him.”

Part of verse 5 is a promise from God: if you do as I say, I promise that evil will not come to you. And we can take God at His word for this because, even things that seem evil will come to good if we follow His plan. The rest is an assertion and a reminder that you can’t rush things. In God’s plan, there is a time for everything. Even when it feels like the world is weighing so heavily on your shoulders you feel like you’ll be crushed, there is not a moment of your life that the Lord has not looked over and prepared personally for you. He knows what you need and when you need it even better than you do, and he knows just how to give you what you need in the right time for good.

Verses 7-9 say, “Yet no one knows what will happen because who can tell him what will happen? No one has authority over the wind to restrain it, and there is no authority over the day of death; there is no furlough in battle, and wickedness will not allow those who practice it to escape. All this I have seen, applying my mind to all the work that is done under the sun, at a time when one man has authority over another to his harm.”

You can take thoughts like those expressed in verse 7 as either good or bad. It’s kind of like one of those: which animal you see tells you about your personality quizzes on Facebook, but this verse actually does something useful. Verse 7 can either be assurance or fear. You can read it as “Despite not knowing what will happen, I know God knows, so I have no need to worry,” or you can read it, “I know God knows, but I still don’t know what will happen, so I worry.” I think the way you first interpret this verse is an indication of your battle with anxiety.

But look, another key thing to know in the battle against our own minds is that, even if you had all the knowledge, you still would have no power to control things; therein lies the crux of the anxiety problem: part of the cause of anxiety is that we believe we have power to change things. But as verse 8 says, we don’t. It would be like trying to restrain wind or stop death. It’s just something we cannot do. You can’t control others without harming yourself, just like a soldier in war can’t be sent home unless he’s injured. And those who do try to control others will only harm themselves by the wickedness they practice.

I know this is a hard battle to fight. Anxiety is a beast that does not let its prey slip from its claws with ease, but you can escape it. There is much power in knowing God has it all under control; you can rework your brain to be dependent on Him rather than yourself, to trust Him, even when your mind tells you to fear. I don’t say this to just be optimistic or lessen the struggles, but I know it helped me, and I know it can help others.