“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your
life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the
body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap; they have
no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are
than birds! Who of you by
worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry
about the rest?” Luke 12:22-26
I’m not ordinarily a fearful person. I
worry from time to time about all the normal stuff that everybody worries
about: money, the health and welfare of my family, etc. and since we got to
Arizona I worry occasionally about finding a snake on my front porch (it
happens here). But I’ve never been one to worry excessively. Recently that has
changed.
We live in scary times, scarier than
anything I have seen in my lifetime. Wars, rumors of wars, unemployment,
eroding moral and ethical standards, the national debt, mass shootings and a
nation that is sharply divided over political and moral issues… If I really
want to get myself worked up all I have to do is think about the fact that
future generations are stuck with the unholy mess that we’ve made of this world.
All I have to do is turn on the news or read the paper and I get apprehensive.
The words of Jesus in Luke 12:22-26 caused me to rethink my current
tendency to stress about things I can’t control. Jesus’ position on worry is
pretty straightforward. I suppose it’s because He knows better than anybody
that worry changes nothing and often ends up cheating us out of blessings.
When we allow fear to overtake faith we are
inclined to take matters into our own hands without consulting God and
wise human counsel. Often we end up exchanging a bad problem for a much worse
one. A scriptural example of this is found in 1st Samuel. 1st
Samuel 27:1 says:
David thought to himself, “One of these days I will be destroyed by the hand of
Saul.”
The text says David “thought
to himself” it’s really code for David got freaked out and started to worry. Honestly,
David had reason to worry; when he began his stint as a fugitive from Saul he
was a young guy with few responsibilities. At this point he is no longer young:
he has two wives, and a large group of men with families that he is responsible
for as their leader, and Saul is ruthlessly hounding him. It would be a lot to
deal with.
So David got busy and went to Philistine
territory and had a meeting with the King of Gath (a known enemy of the Israelites).
The King allowed him to take refuge in Philistine territory under the condition
that he would go to Israel everyday and kill Israelites. For obvious reasons
David was unwilling to comply with this condition; instead he spent his days
wiping out entire Philistine communities and lying to the King about his activities.
As you can imagine, David’s “solution” created all kinds of crazy drama (and guilt).
David’s
actions only served to further complicate his already complicated life. Christians
can be guilty of the same type of sin. For example, women who enter into
marriages with unbelieving husbands because of loneliness or fear of never
getting married or businesspeople who compromise their values for the sake of
fitting into their corporate culture.
I have learned first hand that one of the
greatest perils of worry is that it steals our ability to live in the moment
and enjoy our blessings. There are people who approach worry with a
superstitious attitude. They know that most of the stuff they worry about never
happens, so they worry in an effort to prevent bad things from happening. A
woman once confessed to me that she approached parenthood from that angle; she
spent so much time worrying about her kids as they were growing up that she
didn’t enjoy their childhoods at all. In fact, she barely remembered their
growing-up years.
The greatest problem with worry is that it
minimizes God as it magnifies our problems. God can become lost in the fray of
our fear. That turns our worry into a weird form of idolatry, where we give our
fear a greater platform in our lives than we give God.
The answer to worry is not to block out
our problems or to simply focus on the positive. That is denial and it’s
unproductive and dangerous. The first response to worry should be to focus on
the things that are really a problem. Things that might possibly happen someday
aren’t real problems.
I
have found that prayerful action and planning for the future helps to minimize
anxiety. If you are worried about your finances, pray about it. Ask God for
wisdom, seek wise human counsel and then do something! Cut back on your
spending, find a second source of income, and pay off debt. If you are
concerned about the state of your marriage get some godly help. If the behavior
of your kids has you concerned, change the direction of your parenting. It’s
not wrong to take action as long as we don’t sin in the process.
The most critical piece of overcoming
worry is to really believe God for the future; especially when it comes to
things we have no control over (like the state of the economy or the current
political landscape). We must believe that God is still in control and believe
that as crazy as the world has gotten it’s all a part of God’s greater plan and
the turmoil serves a greater purpose. We must pray through our fear for the
future and keep praying until the fear subsides. I will be the first to admit
that trusting is not easy; but nobody honest ever said faith is easy.
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do
not see. Hebrews 11:1
This has been an interesting reading this post. I still worry, that will never stop. But I do know that God will provide and help me through these scary times. But I need to be honest, I have taken things in my own hands at some point, can't think of an example right now. But God helped me see that I need to trust Him, even though sometimes that can be painful. It's painful because I want to take things such as having a job into my own hands. But I think it comes down to the question of "Do we (I) really want to take matters into our hands and make God a weak God?" and in reality God is much more stronger, even stronger than the darkness that I have encoutered. I pray and hope by the grace of God my point gets through some how. Very good reading in very dark times.
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