Worries

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)

Being a parent is cause enough for anxiety, especially when the kids start driving and heading out on their own. Every time our two oldest drive off, when all three boys head out, when they are away from the relative safety of our home, I lift up a prayer for their protection.

Recently, God spoke to my heart, revealing to me that I was lugging a burden I was never intended to carry. Anxious thoughts will creep into my mind but when I allow them to linger and turn into worry then I am in dangerous territory because worry is a close cousin to doubt.

1 Peter 5:7 urges us to give all our worries and cares to God. Sounds easy on paper, doesn’t it? Yet our human desire to control our circumstances vies with our inability to make a legitimate change. So we fret and worry, as though we can alter the outcome through sheer mind power.

            Anxious thoughts will cross our minds. It’s inevitable. But when we crack open the door to worry, we are in essence, doubting God’s ability to handle the situation the way we want it to be resolved. Doubt puts in question God’s sovereignty, his supremacy, and his goodness. I’m not saying it’s easy. But feeding in to worry provides an opening to the devil’s flaming arrows.

            So what am I to do, you ask? God suggests an alternative to worry; He invites us to surrender those concerns that preoccupy our thoughts to Him so that He might fill our minds with His Truth. No matter what the news says, God is in control.

God did not create us to be like a mouse in a room full of cats. He doesn’t want us to tremble in our boots but enjoy the beautiful world He created for our good pleasure. Mind you, this doesn’t give us a license to make foolish decisions or live dangerously, but it does free us to live life to the fullest within reason and within the will of God.

Thought: “Each day that God gives us is holy and a precious gift from him. We should enjoy it fully. Joy is powerful.” –  Joyce Meyer

For further reading:

• Isaiah 41:10
• Matthew 6:34
• Luke 12:25-26
• Philippians 4:6

Excerpt from A Year in God’s Classroom

https://a.co/d/cyNgCDX