Several years ago, I had the chance to speak to a young lady at a shelter in Phoenix, Arizona. She had no job, no place to stay, no money, and no food. But she did have a husband. He was in prison for many years to come. On top of all that, she had a liver disease that was slowly taking her life away from her.
I talked to her for a few minutes, and I asked her how she was coping. She smiled and said she was doing okay. She said God was keeping her safe. Here this woman was, in living in conditions that were sub-human, and she smiled and said she wasn’t worried.
Isn’t it amazing how some people who suffer a lot worry very little, while others, like myself who suffer a little seem to worry a lot? Could that have something to do with the depth of our faith? Does your mind ever seem to just run away with thoughts of what “could happen”? Then we look back and see all the time we spent worrying about what “could have happened” just to see that nothing did happen. You’d think that if we were as smart as we think we are, we’d learn.
Were you aware that …
1. WORRY CAUSES SICKNESS & SPIRITUAL CHAOS?
Worrying can cause heart disease, cancer, migraines, and even diabetes. The Mayo Clinic actually estimates that more than 80% of their total caseload is directly related to worry on the parts of their patients. One medical doctor said that he believes that if people could learn to stop worrying, most diseases would be cured.
John Haggai tells of a woman who worried for 40 years that she was getting stomach cancer. Every cramp had to be cancer she thought. When she was 73, she died of pneumonia. She wasted 40 years worrying about the wrong disease!
Not only does worry cause illness, it causes spiritual chaos. When we are focusing on worry, we are not focusing on God or His will for us. When we spend time in worry, we have no time to spend in prayer or Bible study. Now, ask yourself if worry is good or bad, and then ask yourself who gives it to you.
Worrying not only affects the way we treat God, but it also affects the way we treat other people. We become short and terse, furrowed brow and downturned mouths. It is evident when talking to somebody that our minds are not focused on them or their conversation, but on something troublesome: Our worries.
Some might do more or less than others, but we all worry, don’t we? What does the Bible say about that? The Bible says …
2. DON’T WORRY!
Let’s read what Jesus said.
MATTHEW 6:25.
‘Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?’
PHILIPPIANS 4:6.
‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’
Worry is kind of like a rocking chair. It is something we can do, but it never gets us anywhere. We spend so much of our time worrying, we forget that Christians have nothing to worry about! We need to remember to just pray, and then let God do any necessary worrying. That way we can concentrate more on being good Christians.
Let’s imagine what was said between Abraham and God.
“ABRAHAM, THIS IS GOD. I WANT YOU TO LEAVE EVERYTHING AND GO TO THE LAND I WILL SHOW YOU.”
“Where’s that?” Abraham said.
“IF I TOLD YOU, YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE ME.”
Abraham said, “Try me, God.”
“IT’S 1500 MILES FROM HERE IN A PLACE CALLED CANAAN.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I TOLD YOU SO, BUT GUESS WHAT ELSE?”
“What?” questioned Abraham.
“I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU THE FATHER OF A GREAT NATION.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t have any children.”
“DON’T WORRY, TRUST ME.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You want me to leave everything I have, travel across the desert to someplace I’ve never heard of, and become the father of a great nation. Is this some kind of joke? What am I supposed to tell my wife?”
And God said, “THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.”
In reality, HEBREWS 11:8 says that in faith, Abraham obeyed and went. Abraham trusted God to give him all he needed, so he didn’t worry. Worry is something that the devil gave us.
So, if worrying causes so many problems, and we are not supposed to worry, how can we keep from worrying? Here is how you can ..
3. WORRY LESS AND LIVE MORE
Let me re-read PHILIPPIANS 4:6, but this time I want to add verse 7.
‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.’
We must learn how to pray instead of worry. We pray and hand Him all our worries. Let God handle them for us. You see, God wants our problems. He wants us to lay our worries in His lap.
1 PETER 5:7, tells us to ‘cast all our anxieties on Him.’
Many of us do go to God and tell him all about our worries, don’t we? But that is all we do. We don’t leave them with Him. When we get through praying, we reach over and take them back, then spend the rest of the day worrying. When we go to prayer, we must learn to leave our worries with Him.
I had a friend in Phoenix who developed cancer. I knew this threw him and his family for a loop. They had never experienced anything like this before and, to be truthful, they had a hard time at first.
I met him for coffee quite frequently, but at one time it had been about two months since I had seen or talked to him. I called him and asked him to meet me for coffee. When I met him, he was smiling and seemed very relaxed. I asked him how the cancer was going, and he said it was still there, and he was still being treated for it.
I told him he seemed pretty relaxed. I cautioned him about resigning himself to this so-called inevitable, and he said that wasn’t what he did. He said he had been praying a lot and had just given it over to God. He said what happened would be what God wanted, and no matter what it was, he was blessed to be in God’s will.
Several months later, he called me to say that he was now cancer free. This has been about 10 years ago, and as far as I know, he is still cancer free. He went to God, put it in God’s lap, and then left it there.
In MATTHEW 6:34, Jesus says,
‘Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.’
Can all of us say, “Amen” to that?
Jesus tells us to live one day at a time. He says to not worry. There was a song out several years ago entitled, “Don’t Worry – Be Happy.” That is about the best advice a Christian could have, because we have no reason to worry and we have every reason to be happy.
How many of us fall to pieces with worry when we think about what somebody else might think of us? We are so concerned with what other people think of us, aren’t we? Let me ask a quick question: Do we ever get that worried over what God might think about us?
Many ministries are actually based on getting people to worry about the end of the world. The more they can instill fear in you, the more they apparently receive in funds. But should we worry about the end of the world?
One man recently said that he wasn’t worried at all about tomorrow, because the way things were going lately, tomorrow might never get here. Why worry about something that is totally out of your control?
In MATTHEW 24:36 we are told that only God knows when that will happen, so we shouldn’t give it another thought, except to just be sure we are spiritually ready for whenever it is.
Many people are worried about death. For the most part, that, too, is out of our control, so don’t worry about it. Just be sure you are prepared so that when you do die, you know where you will be going. Death is the number one fear in all the world, but for Christians death is simply a victory, so why do so many of us worry about it?
We need to be more aware of the peace that is offered by God. We were made to be conquerors through Jesus Christ. We are loved more than any earthly parent can love their child. And there is no power the devil has that can make us be separated from our God. The only power great enough to do that is the power of doubt and worry that rests in our own hearts and minds. And they rest there because we have not yet learned to lean totally on God for all things.
Just as a loving parent will always protect their child, God, who is so much more powerful, will always protect His children. Now, this is where we get all confused. All we know is the physical. All we can be aware of is that which we can relate to with our five senses.
But God surpasses these paltry things, and God looks at the spiritual. How much more important is the spiritual than the physical? One way to judge is this: How long does the physical last? How long does the spiritual last? God protects us on the spiritual level, or the most important level.
We look at the problems in our lives and think they are so big and insurmountable, but in reality, our entire lifetime doesn’t last long enough to even be a blip on the radar screen. The devil makes us concentrate so much on the here and now, we forget about the there and then.
Would the Victory Singers please come back on stage?
God loves us enough to have done everything there is to do to be able to offer us the chance to be reconciled with Him. He has reached out His wonderful, loving, and protecting hand to us. But we get so hung up on worry that we cannot see the hand or the promise it represents.
My answer to you about worrying is simply this: Come to the point in your life that you know you cannot handle anything in your life for your benefit. Know that if you are going to be in charge, you are going to die and go to hell.
Then, trust God and tell Him you have no other direction to turn to and no other choice but to depend on Him. Then feel His love surround you.
But to be able to even access God, we must first have been saved from this world by a sincere belief in Jesus as the Savior; the Son of God; the only way to Heaven.
INVITATION
