Worried?

Worry creates anxiety, right? Anxiety is unhealthy and has been linked as a factor in many physical ailments. Anxiety causes stress and can raise our blood pressure, interfere with sleep, and causes us to be act in ways we would not normally act. Worry stinks, but we give in to it an awful lot of the time, which makes those times somewhat awful.

We say things like “Don’t worry, it will work out” or “Don’t worry, God has a plan” or even have a song for it: “Don’t worry, be happy!” These are all well and good, but has any statement ever made you stop worrying? They have never worked for me. As a matter of fact the only times I remember be able to “not worry” about something I was worrying about was when I convinced myself that I didn’t care about it any more. Is that the answer? I don’t think so.

We were created to care, but not to worry. Scripture says “…do not be anxious about anything…” (Phil 4:8, emphasis mine) Really? Anything? That is impossible. Worry is natural, otherwise God wouldn’t have told us not to do it, and He knew we would worry. The problem is not about what you are worrying about, but all about whom you think God is. Think about this – worry is not about your circumstances, but all about your God. When we think we can control, assist, or do anything with our problems, we stop looking to God and what He can do, and focus on what we could do and ourselves.

If you think God is controllable, and needs us to complete Him…worry, and I would worry a lot. We need God to complete us, to help us, and to make us whole. Wondering about God’s plans still leaves us worrying about what His plans are – whether or not we are going to like them. So when we find ourselves in any moment where we begin to worry, we need to shift our focus from trying to find God’s plans in the problem, and start to try and find God. Besides, God’s plans are usually only visible in hindsight to us.

Only when we look at things looking for God, can we start to approach what God is looking for. We are not supposed to understand God’s plans, just understand that they are God’s and not ours. When we come to this place, surrender happens, and when we surrender to God you are not going to believe what leaves us: it is not control, it is not anything of value, it is worry. When we look at things from a perspective of what matters to God, and try to see things as God sees them, then we lose something we want nothing to do with: worry; look at this passage:

Isaiah 55:8-9 (ESV)
”For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

We are not created to “get” God, we are created by God for God. We are not supposed to figure out God’s plans, just how we fit into them, and we do this simply by looking for Him in everything. Still struggling to believe this? Worried that if you don’t worry it will look like nothing matters to you? Stop that, and what will happen is that you will start to care more about what matters to God, and then you will really see how much you matter to Him.

In His grip,

Pastor Pat