Last time out I was sharing about how my Dad was encouraging me again to not worry. I also spent some time looking at the debilitating effects of worry both in the physical and worse in the spiritual.
So how to overcome worrying? Well first thing is to address the fact that the opposite to worry is thanksgiving. Worrying is taking something that doesn’t belong to you. Thanksgiving as kind of hinted in the word itself is putting it back where it belongs.
Sounds bizarre in practice. Here are bills that need paying and the income suggests those bills won’t be paid. A trip to the doctor’s has informed you of the dreaded ‘c’ word. Your child comes home from school and finally confesses to being the victim of bullying. The spouse is not at home when you return, but a note is saying that maybe it’s time to spend some time apart to think things through. You respond with giving thanks to God? What?
Think it through, though.
What will your selfish desires acted out achieve? What will taking it on board and fretting it over really have as an outcome? So as you cannot handle it, give it to God thanking Him for the opportunity, even in your pain, to again prove Himself as healer, provider, protector, Father and friend. Not that He needs to for His sake – He’s fairly comfortable in His own track record, but this is one of those occasions when you could do with Him coming through again.
Here we go though, even if things do not turn out as you’d wish, thanksgiving keeps things in perspective. The issue is in the best hands – there is nothing more you can do and this exercise gives the whole issue back to the source of your being.
That’s what the encouragement to cast your cares on Him is all about – He cares so much that He knows it won’t do you any good carrying it, so having been there in the beginning, in the middle and at the end, He’s in the best position to take it on for you … if you’ll allow Him, by releasing it in giving it.
Not just giving it, but giving it with thanks. Giving it with gratitude that you need not carry the burden. Giving it appreciating the release it will give you to know that you have a Father who cares and wants you in as much as you can to actually invest your time in the things that matter – even in responding to the harsh realities with your head and heart looking to Him.
Not that I’ve mastered these things. I know I will continually be challenged on these so as to grow in Christ. What I’ve seen in my Dad, what I see in the Word and what I see in the examples of those few who choose not to worry is a great advert for the truth in my Dad’s rhetorical question – why worry.
Also reminds me of this song by the Winans that also sums up the position nicely. No need to worry, because either way, it will be all over … in the morning.
Thank you Jesus and thanks Dad.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
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