Grappling With Worries
Who doesn’t worry? Everyone worries about something in life at some point. As a student, maybe your exams. As a worker, maybe your performance and grading from your boss. As a friend, maybe how you are part of a clique or not. As a parent, maybe your child’s future or spiritual growth. As a child, maybe your parents’ or loved ones health status and salvation. We all worry. But I am sure some of us are also familiar with this verse from 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 than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” Worrying is becoming such a common emotion we will have in life that sometimes we trivialise its impact on us. But the truth is anxiety reveals some form of lack that we have in trusting that God is entirely sovereign and has His good will in His plans we are unsure of. We will try to give reasons why we are in a worried state and fail to move to the next right step, and that is to recognise we need to first go back to stand on the truth. We tend to exaggerate the circumstances or play out worst case scenarios in our minds, putting all our focus on what we are unable to change or control. So much so that it smears off our perspective that we are children of God and we have a Father to turn to instead of our troubled heart and mind that only brings us round and round in circles of insinuations. Psalm 139:8-12 says, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Here, the Psalmist is reminding us to regain and restore God’s presence and Lordship over our lives. God’s care and promises for His children are certain, even though we may experience life in many different ways. The people of the world tend to chase after many things of this life that only God can provide, but God wants us to know that they are more important and valuable things than food and clothes (in other words, worldly possessions). Let us remember that we have a Provider and this world that often causes us worry is ultimately not our home.
Today, let us look to Matthew 6:32b-34, as Jesus provides us with 3 ways to turn our worries into deeper faith. Let’s read Matthew 6:32-34, “And your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
God Knows Your Needs.
Firstly, we see here that God knows our needs. And that is the first thing we have to remember to help us live in a world of uncertainty. That is knowing who God is and what He knows. He knows all our needs, what is filling up your mind with troubles, what you are lacking in, what you are anxious about. He is aware and because God is in full knowledge of all things, He can be trusted with our needs.
Seek God’s Kingdom and Righteousness
Next, is the focal point. Now that we know we have a dependable God that is aware of our troubles, where do we put our focus? “Seek first His kingdom and righteousness.” We need to intentionally turn our eyes to God and not our ourselves. Seek His counsel, seek what He says instead of what we feel right about, seek to do what is pleasing to Him, seek the blessed shelter He provides in a church or fellowship. When we seek God before anything else, then can we have a clear lens to make sound and rational judgment about our circumstances, about people and everything else.
God Holds Our Tomorrows.
Finally, “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” We can be the best planners and trying to predict the best way for the future, but we know we have no control over what tomorrow holds. Because of that, instead of putting our center of attention of worrying about what is to come, that is beyond us, we should look to working out our faith now and refining our faith living in the present as “each day has enough troubles of its own.” We should be finding and pursuing a heart of contentment in God’s daily provision and sustenance.
Children of God are battling with worries and anxiety from time to time. So we really have to be alert to how our lives respond to trials and problems. When we counterintuitively seek God every time troubles hit us, we will start to see the radical change that God can bring into our hearts and minds, changing our attitudes as we see challenges and sanctifying our focus and motives to be driven by His ways as we grapple and tussle through with our nature to worry. God bless.
