Worry

One thing that has always been difficult for me is not worrying. It seems to be naturally engrained within me to want to fret about every little thing. Despite my knowledge that worrying does me absolutely no good, I really try to worry my way into solutions to problems. Over time I've really tried to worry less, and to have a more accepting attitude of things that are happening in my life.

Sometimes I feel as though I have conquered my penchant for worrying. However, every once in a while I understand much more clearly that the battle against worrying is something I am still fighting.

Monday was one such occasion. I realized seemingly all at once that I wasn't going to get all of my assignments done this semester, that I had nowhere to live come August, and that I certainly was not going to graduate on time. All of this uncertainty sent me into a panic of worry. Suddenly I needed to know the answers to all of these things. And I needed to have a plan to get everything accomplished. And I needed to know how everything was going to play out. And I didn't know any of those things and it made me scared, and sad, and stressed. I cried and cried and cried about the fact that there were all these things that were outside of my control and that I didn't know what was going on and that I felt unprepared for the mystery that was my future.

Lucky for me, I have a great mom and a great friend who can help me get it together by encouraging me from God's word.

Here are some of the passages which they encouraged me with, and some that I thought of as I was trying to overcome my worry:

Matthew 6:
²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
³⁴ “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

God is going to take care of you. And whatever sort of way that he takes care of you is going to be way better than what you think you need.

Jeremiah 29:
⁴ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. ⁸ For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, ⁹ for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.
¹⁰ “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Things might be pretty bad right now. Well guess what: they might stay bad for a good long time, so you need to make the best of the situation you are in and do the best you can. God isn't going to forget about you--he has a plan for you even during this hard time. It's going to turn out okay.

Ephesians 3:
²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

His plan for you is better than you could possibly imagine. You can't even ask for things to be as good as he is going to make them be for you. If nothing else, God is using hardship to prepare you for eternal glory and that's much better than him granting you relief from any trial.



These aren't necessarily always easy sayings. We can see them and we can know them, but maybe its hard to be fully confident of them in the heat of worry or hardship. But let's just remember the example of the father of the demon possessed boy in Mark 9:  

²⁰ And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. ²¹ And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. ²² And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” ²³ And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” ²⁴ Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

This mad had doubts about Jesus' ability to help his son. Clearly no one had successfully cast out this demon in the past, and this man didn't really understand how one would even do such a thing. He didn't fully believe in Christ's power. But instead of being content with a measure of unbelief, he asked the Lord to strengthen him. 
When we are faced with trials and we are prone to worry, let us remember that the Lord is our helper and our greatest asset. He wants to strengthen our faith and ease our worrying. It's all going to be okay.  
 
 

Lessons from Road Rage

One of my worst qualities is how I drive. It's just a fact of my life. I'm not really a good driver, nor am I consistently conscientious. I am easily distracted and quickly stress out over normal roadway situations. But, perhaps the worst of my qualities that surfaces when I drive is my road rage. I simply cannot tolerate it when people don't understand what is going on on the road and thus inconvenience me. I can often be seen talking very sternly to screaming at drivers around me, explaining to them exactly what it is that they are doing wrong and why it is that this action makes them a crazy person. This is, admittedly, not the most effective method of getting through to them, but I'm just so frustrated that they can't do what they need to do.

Now with this introduction you are probably thinking that I am writing a blog on patience, or level-headedness, or having a Christlike attitude in all situations.

I'm not.

See, as I was driving home from Dunkin' I had the (not at all rare) occasion to yell at the driver in front of me. We were at a 4 way intersection in which everyone had a stop sign but us. I get it, it's a confusing sort of thing. But, I imagined that the driver in front of me, who was initially confused, would survey the situation, realize that he didn't need to be stopped, and the whole stopping-ordeal would end quickly. I soon realized that this was not the case and flashed my lights at him. When this wasn't enough to encourage him to take the appropriate action I began to yell "We don't have a stop sign! We don't have to stop! Why are you stopping?! No one else is going! Everyone is waiting for you! Go! Go! Go!" Eventually, the confused driver got with the program (but certainly not because he listened to what I said) and we proceeded on our merry way. It wasn't my proudest moment, but when I got to thinking about it I saw that there was a biblical application in this scenario that I had never before considered.


Let's assume for a moment that we are the confused driver holding up the show. Let's also assume that God designed the road and this whole scenario for us, and that he has made sure that the Holy Spirit through the Bible is stuck behind us in traffic.

Here we are just meandering down the road of life, when we get to a situation that we should blow right past without stopping to get involved. It's a place we don't need to be, and it's time to get a move on. God, in his great wisdom, has given us lots of indicators about the appropriate actions in this situation. There are the road signs, that is--our natural sense of morality, telling us what to do and there are tons of Christian cars around us who are all taking the appropriate actions. This should certainly be enough for us to relatively quickly figure out what we should be doing in this situation--namely, getting out of it.
Of course, we are dead-set on doing things our way, or else we aren't even paying attention to what is going on around us, so in his great mercy God has put someone behind us on the road who knows what's going on, and is happy to set us in the right direction. So, when we don't understand the road signs, and we don't pay attention to the cars around us, the Holy Spirit sits behind us and flashes his lights and yells at the top of his lungs "Not that way! That's not the right choice! That won't make you happy! There's a better way! Listen to me!" Now we are even more dense than the people we encounter on physical roads. We simply are not going to ever get with the program unless we listen, otherwise we are just going to make a big mess of things.

Luckily for us, the major difference between my situation on the road today and the situation with us and the Holy Spirit is that we can hear him if we want to. When I'm behind a confused driver on a physical road, he can't be expected to respond to my commands because it's impossible for him to hear me. However, when we are in a situation where we must make choices in life, we only don't hear the Holy Spirit because we choose not to. The Bible is always here for us as a resource, but if we don't pick it up, all of the Holy Spirit's yelling falls on deaf ears. Should we be able to understand what's right to do using road signs and context clues? Yes. But we won't, so we need to be constantly in the word for guidance. We need to tune in, as it were, to the guy behind us in traffic who knows how we should be acting.

The second notable difference in these two situations is that, while I just yell at drivers on the road because I'm selfish and impatient, the Holy Spirit yells at us through God's word because he loves us so much that he wants us to only make good choices. He gave us lots of indications outside of the Bible that should tell us how to behave, and then he went the extra mile to spell it out for us very explicitly because he wants to be with us. If we ignore our conscience, or the good influences around us, but especially if we ignore His word, we aren't going to do the right things, and God cannot tolerate sin.


So really this is just a very weird (and probably convoluted?) way of me encouraging all of us to not ignore God. We need to be reading his word, and looking for his instructions in our lives or else we will be "that guy" who just can't get it together. And in life, not listening makes us more than just an inconvenience to those around us, it causes us to miss out on our reward. Nobody wants to be "that guy" on the road, and we certainly don't want to be him in life. Let us be always more diligent in our study, and more conscientious as we make decisions.

Letting Satan Win

For Spring Break this year I have traveled to North Carolina and am staying with my aunt and uncle. Time with them and my two little cousins has provided me with a nice change of pace, but has also provided me with many learning opportunities. One of these opportunities is the topic of my blog today.

My almost-4-year-old cousin had a rough day on Monday. He pushed his friend, and didn't eat nicely, and generally speaking just did not obey. I imagine that little boys just have days like that. We all have days like that.

Anyway, half way through the day he and his momma had to have a heart to heart about his behavior. In this conversation, which I overheard, he told his mom that he had let Satan win that day, but that he was going to make good choices the rest of the day and not let Satan win anymore. Later, at dinner, he prayed to God that we would all do better about making good choices.

And that's what I want to talk about today. So many things about that are just right and good and should be emulated. To spell out the goodness of this situation more clearly for us, I'll make a list as I sometimes like to do. This list represents the chronological order of events in my cousin's day and will hopefully encourage us to make his choices our choices. Here we go:

1. He made choices that he knew were wrong. (This isn't something that we should do, but it happens to all of us.)
2. He recognized that these choices constituted a victory for Satan, but that he was the cause of them. "I let Satan win." (We miss this step in the process a lot, which causes us to continue sinning. This is also a trick of Satan--making us think that our sin isn't sin. Alternatively, when we do recognize our sin, we sometimes fall victim to the trap of thinking that Satan was the only cause and so absolve ourselves of responsibility. We shouldn't do this either. It's somewhat easier for the 4-year-old than for us because someone else is directly telling him that this or that thing is wrong and shouldn't be done. We have the bible for that, which may seem less direct, but it leaves us without excuse. We can still look at our actions, see that they do not align with God's will for us, and realize that through our choices, we let Satan win.)
3. He determined to not let Satan win anymore for the rest of the day. When he realized his error he took immediate action to make it better. (This is important, because he moved on. He felt bad about doing wrong, but that didn't stop him from doing better. Often, we do wrong and we wallow and moan and feel bad about ourselves instead of becoming better people who do better things. And it doesn't mean that we will never struggle and do bad again. I'm certain that my cousin will do the wrong thing again. But, we have to determine within ourselves that we are the types of people that will try to do better.)
4. He asked God to help him do better. (We certainly can't forget to do this. We can't justify ourselves, nor can we do good, without God's help. When we do bad, God is still there for us and is definitely willing to support us and strengthen us in our fight against Satan.)

Jesus encourages his followers to be like children (Mark 10:14-15) and I think from now on when I think of that principle, I will think of this example. I hope you are all encouraged by this and that you have an uplifting week of serving The Lord. 

The Basics

Sigh. Somehow it became Saturday night and I haven't blogged yet this week. I don't feel as bad about this as I did a couple weeks ago though, because it wasn't for a lack of ideas that I fell down on the job. I've just been busy. I thought about writing about Judas this week, or some of the other things in the book of John because that's where I'm reading right now. Honestly though, I'm really tired and I want to go to bed, so I'm going to just write something really basic that I've been thinking about a lot. That doesn't mean it's not profitable, but I do apologize that I may not be giving it 100% tonight because we should always be giving 100% to spiritual things. 

 

"If you love me, keep my commandments" John 14:15

If I don't try to keep the commandments of The Lord, I don't love him. 

"Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself" James 2:17

If my faith doesn't make me do something, I don't have faith. 

These verses show us that it's not really a matter of "stop saying and start doing" when it comes to our spiritual lives. (Works, after all, don't make you righteous. God justifies you because he is gracious to those who have faith in him.) It's more of a matter of not being honest with ourselves and realizing that if we aren't following God's commandments, and doing good things because God is God, we don't have the qualities of faith and love that we think we have. 

So we need to just stop it right now with the "I love Jesus, but I'm going to get drunk every weekend" or the even more subtle "I love Jesus, but maybe I don't have to try so hard to stop thinking this kind of bad thought...I like this thought." And we certainly have to stop saying things like "Works can't save me so I'm just going to believe in Jesus and live only for myself" or the much more insidious "Faith saves me, so I shouldn't do this or that good thing lest people think I believe justification comes through works."

That's not love and that's not faith. If I have true love for and faith in my Lord, I will do things for him and for his people. It's the natural consequence of those attitudes. I know it's hard because no one can be perfected in love and faith on this earth, but we have to push in that direction. As we work on our hearts, the outward signs of the goodness of the inner man will increase and be perfected along with us.