Avoiding Half-Minded Living Series

Avoiding Half-Minded Living!

Every person has baggage and so far I have not met one person who likes their baggage. Everyone wants a place to check their bags. They all want a place to lie down and rest and put their cares aside for a while. Today we are going to look at a form of baggage that nearly every person deals with. Some of us are worse about it than others, but for the most part we all have this baggage. Now, if I told you that I knew the way for you to lay down your baggage, would you be interested? Well good, because I know how to lay aside our baggage.

Many times you will hear people say things like, “But what if my spouse dies? I don’t think I can handle that? What if I marry someone who snores? What if I’m not a good parent? What if I’m not raising my kid’s right? When my kids leave and go to college, what if they don’t make good decisions? What about next month’s bills? I’m already behind. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make all the payments.” This is known as the baggage of worry, and we all have it. We all worry at different levels. For some of us it’s the big things in life and for some of us it’s the little things that we barely notice. And yet, we all worry about something.

Unfortunately the Bible doesn’t speak on worry very many times. The word worry only appears in 9 verses in the Bible and another word the Bible uses for worry, anxiety, only appears 7 times. So there isn’t a lot of talk about worry or anxiety in the Bible, but we do have some very interesting insights into what God thinks about worry in the Bible. For instance, the biblical word for worry is merimnao. This word is a combination of 2 other Greek words, the words merizo, which means “to divide”, and nous, which means “the mind.” So the biblical word worry means “to divide the mind.” What happens when we worry in life is that we try to live in the future so much, that we aren’t even fully living in the present. The result of worry is simply half-minded living. We aren’t able to make good decisions for today, because our mind is already onto tomorrow. This as you might expect, is not healthy for us and God doesn’t want us to have to live this way.

Another problem with worry, or anxiety, is that it can cause many diseases. Maybe you didn’t know this, but worry or anxiety, is linked to many diseases and health risks in our lives. For instance, worry is linked to high blood pressure, heart problems, blindness, migraine headaches, thyroid malfunctions, stomach disorders and even sleeplessness. You see, not only do we not live our lives to the fullest, but we also make ourselves sick. Worrying is an expensive habit to have.

It was some time after the events of September 11th, that I had to fly again. I am not the world’s biggest fan of flying, it does make me slightly nervous. After Sep. 11th, it made me even more nervous. Before that flight I was worried during the weeks leading up to my flight. I worried myself with thoughts like, “What if one of the engines goes out? What if when I’m in line the police decide to check me out a little more closely? What if there aren’t any peanuts on the flight?” I was worried sick about this flight. My biggest worry was that the security guards were doing those random checks. They would pull aside random people and search them more closely than everyone else. Now, I had nothing to hide. I knew that I wasn’t a terrorist, I had nothing to hide from them, but I worried anyway. “What if they found something that they didn’t like? What if I had something in my pocket that they thought was a weapon, but I tried to explain to them it wasn’t and they didn’t believe me?” I was really worried about the security check. The day arrived for my flight and I was waiting in line to have my bags scanned and walk through the metal detector. I walked through and everything was fine, but then one of the guards took his hand and motioned me over to a special place behind a wall. I had been randomly selected for a check. My heart started racing, I was so nervous. My worst fears were coming true. I didn’t want to act nervous because I didn’t want him to think I was acting funny, so I stayed as still as possible. After they did their search of my shoes and my pockets, they let me go. I waited for the flight to board, the plane took off and I landed safely. Everything was fine. What’s the point? My worrying for weeks and months ahead of time didn’t change a thing for me at the airport. My worrying did nothing to help me at the airport; it just made me sick ahead of time.