3 Reasons why I Worry…

3 REASONS WHY

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3 REASONS WHY We…

I have been on this planet for quite some years now, many of them spent in an attitude of worry over one thing or another.

It's because of this extensive experience as a worrier that I can categorically report, nothing good ever comes of it.

Worry has no beneficial side to it. It's not, as some part of my brain likes to superstitiously think, that worry has an innate power to ward off the worst from happening. We all know that's hokus pokus bonkers nonsense, right? 

Reality Check No 1:

There is no good side to worry, only plenty of unpleasant side effects.

Worry is, to all intents and purposes, a molestation of the mind and sends my imagination into negative overdrive so that I end up with a totally unrealistic view of the problem. 

If I worry long enough (which I have been known to do!) it depresses my emotions. When that happens my energy levels become depleted, setting the stage for the kind of gloom that undermines any possibility of me coming to a place of hope and resolution about the situation.

The word itself originates from an old English word meaning: 

to strangle or to harass by rough or severe treatment… like dogs or wolves attacking the sheep!!

What an insight this gives into the dark spiritual dynamic behind this worthless meditation. 

Before I became a Christian I worried because I didn’t know any better.

As a Christian, I do know better, and yet, even with the Creator of the universe looking out for me, I have still chosen way too many times to grovel in the mental dust of worry.

As I considered the reasons why I would do that, one word kept making an appearance ~ trust.

Reality Check No 2:

I can only engage in the act of worrying when I’m not engaged in the act of trusting.

These two things ~ worry and trust ~ are mutually exclusive, which means, when I find myself in a difficult situation, it is an either/or moment for me. 

I have to choose my response. 

I cannot worry and trust at the same time. 

God told His people who were about to enter their Promised Land, whose future exploits would give anyone cause for some fingernail-biting worry, that they had a choice, and that that choice was between life and death!

“I give you a choice between life and death, choose life”!

Or, to put it another way:

"I give you a choice between trust (life) and worry (death)... choose TRUST!"

And here's the lesson I've had to learn, and continue to learn to this day (over and over I may add):

Choosing life often means I have to be brave enough NOT to choose the thing that comes instinctually to me! In the face of daunting situations that would be worry ~ every time! It is undoubtedly my first and most basic instinct, coming far more naturally to me than trust.

But, it doesn’t mean I have to choose it.

So, in the spirit of honesty and with a heart to encourage those of you who, like me, tend to keep tripping up because your trust laces keep coming undone, here are my top three reasons for worrying... see if you identify;

1. I don't trust God.

When I say that, I mean the Person of God... I don't trust the Person.

It is so easy to fall into the habit of impersonal relationship with the Word of God. And I know He is The Word and He speaks to us through His Word, but in my daily interaction with it I can forget He is a Person, that's it's an actual Person speaking to me through the Word.

I think of Abraham who, the Bible says, 'believed God'. It doesn't say he believed what God said to him (although we know he did), but that he believed God - the Person of God, the One speaking the directive to Him!
Think about it; could Abraham really have made his way up to the mountain with his only son, about to action (second to Jesus) the most radical obedience ever, if all he had was an impersonal relationship with His word?
I doubt it.
He had to have known and trusted the 'Who' behind the 'what'.

I know for me, to know the 'Who' means I have to be intentional about carving out time in my day to be with Him.
And I don't always do that.
There are many times when I let other things steal me away and hold my attention so that my relationship with the Person of God suffers as a result.

As a Christian, when I start to worry, I know it is time for me to look at this area.
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2. I don't trust the Love.
The apostle John wrote in 1John 4:16 '... we have put our trust in His love...'
Paul's prayer was that we would be 'rooted and grounded' in God's love and that we would come to understand 'how high, how long, how wide, how deep' His great love really is. (Eph 3:18). 

When I find myself not trusting His love, it can only be because I have become incurious about it.
I have become lazy basically... blasé... lukewarm... And as a result, my life begins to weaken, to lose ground and I become vulnerable to, amongst other things, this ugly-ism we call worry.

A really important scripture in my own life has been 1 John 4:18 'There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear'
'Perfect' here means 'mature' or 'grown up'.

It is the one whose heart is on an intentional journey to know, and understand more and more, and ultimately grow up in His love that, slowly but surely, learns to live a fearless ~ or worry free ~ life, because, as the scripture says; it’s only the knowledge of this love that displaces fear.

An immature love relationship says things like;

‘It feels like He loves everyone else but me’… ‘He loves others more than me’… ‘He loves me only when I’m good’… ‘He might love me but I’m way down in His list of priorities’.

And I haven't pulled these objections out of thin air, they (and many more besides) have been, at different times over the years, my own childish thoughts and beliefs, each one of them opening my life up to a life of harassing worry.
Should I find myself in a state of worry these days, it doesn't take long before I come to my senses and recognise, if it's not that I'm not trusting the person of God, it is probably because I've fallen back into an incurious state about His love.

3. I don’t trust the Word of God.

I recognise when I don’t trust the Word of God what I’m actually doing is not trusting that His word is personal to me. I’m not trusting He sees me and knows me and cares about me, that He has something to say specifically to me.

Again, it is the problem of childishness as opposed to child-likeness. 

Spiritual childishness, like fleshly childishness, will always be 'me' centred ~ self serving and self protecting ~ making it complicit in complicating the uncomplicated!

The reality is;

Truth is a most unconvoluted state of being, something only a childlike heart could possibly know.
Worry, on the other hand, is a mental quagmire ~ something the childish heart is naturally drawn to because of the 'me' centred nature of its mental anguish.

So, again, when I become aware of the fact that I am in worrying mode, I have to let that awareness drive me back to the truth which is; if Gods word is nothing else, it is always personal... deeply personal.         

                                                                                        
So there you have it, the top three reasons why I worry.
How about you - what are your top three reasons?
Did you identify with any of my reasons?
And what can you do to end the cycle of worry in your life?

'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?... Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself...' (John 6: 25-34)