Let’s try an experiment: close your eyes and think hard about something you’d like to change. If you’re similar to me, you’d like to change many aspects of your life. Concentrate, now. Focus all your energy on that illness, challenging relationship, or debt (or maybe all three!). Raise your level of frustration as high as you’d like; that can only help erase the problem/s once and for all. You can do it!
While you’re at it, try to solve the current challenges in Paris and Orlando, Florida by thinking about them, too. After all, that’s your responsibility. If you stress long enough, you may come up with a solution to end maliciousness and extremism of any kind. Come on, everyone is counting on you!!!! Don’t let us down!!! It’s your responsibility to help the whole world live in peace, hold hands, and sing “We are the World."
Whaaaat? You aren’t in agreement with that plan? It’s not working? It hasn’t worked in the past, either? You have never stopped world strife, gotten a new job, or cured an illness by merely worrying about the situation?
Let God fight your battles.
All exaggeration and sarcasm aside, we simply cannot change any situation by agonizing over it. That’s why we have to stop worrying and give the situation over to God. The Bible lets us know that worry slanders every promise of God. Matthew 6:26-28 says that birds and lilies don’t toil, worry, or create and store their own food--yet God feeds them. He gives them more glory than Solomon at the peak of his power. Since I am a little less than five feet tall, I totally relate to verse 27:
“Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”
We’re always in charge of our attitude.
“We can’t control what happens to us; we can only control our response.”—Joel Osteen
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“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”—The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr
Worry is impractical.
There’s an Irish poem, original author anonymous. The poem puts worry in the tiny box that it deserves; it chops it down to size. The message of the poem is that we have no reason to worry, because it won’t change anything. This is my own re-phrasing of the poem:
Why worry? We are always either sick, or we are well. If we’re well, we’re good. If we’re ill, we’ll either get better, or we’ll die. If we get better, that’s great. If we die, we’ll either go to Heaven, or we'll go to Hell. If we go to Heaven, we’re good. However, if we go to Hell, we’ll be so busy shaking hands with friends that we won’t have time to worry.
My Conclusion
Worry accomplishes nothing. Obsessing over situations and people beyond our control gets us nowhere. We will only succeed when we turn our lives over to the Creator of the universe. He will help us in His own time and His own way.
“But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands; deliver me from the hands of my enemies; from those who pursue me.”—Psalm 31: 14-15 (NIV)
How have you cast your care to God?
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