Toiling or Trusting?

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:6-7)

If you are anything like me, you have those moments of worry or doubt that plague you from time to time. As much as you want to trust God for the outcome, you just find it hard to let go of the worry. You mull over the stuff until it is a constant nagging in your brain and your heart. A sense of God's wholeness is the furthest thing you are experiencing at that moment, but it is the one thing you long for more than anything. So, how do we go from being so overwhelmed by the circumstances of life to the place where we sense his wholeness in our lives? Maybe it comes when we are finally willing to let God know our concerns, not holding them so close to the breast, and really 'get real' with him about the things that give us so much anxious concern.

I looked at this passage in many different translations this morning, but one thing stood out to me from The Living Bible: "6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don’t forget to thank him for his answers. 7 If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus." We are actually supposed to tell God our needs - not just stew in them. We are to follow our asking with our thanksgiving, because God has never once failed to be concerned about what concerns us. The thing I realized that this is a conditional passage - there is that "If you do this..." portion that makes it conditional. If we bring our concerns to him with an attitude of thanksgiving for the answers, we experience his peace. It isn't thanksgiving for what he has done, but what he will do. In other words, we thank him in advance of the answer.

Is that kind of foreign to some of us? We were likely raised to thank someone when they did something for us, but to thank them in advance of the answer...do we do this that often? If we bring God our concerns, believing he will answer, we find thanksgiving in ADVANCE of the fulfillment of the need comes naturally. Why? We have learned to trust that God is as concerned about what concerns us as we are! He wants to deal with those concerns and we can know his peace, as a result. What this does for us is keep our hearts and minds at rest - we no longer 'toil over' those plaguing thoughts any longer. We allow God to do the 'toiling' while we stand 'trusting' him to do so. Just sayin!

Give - not in part - but in whole

Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. (I Peter 5:7)

Anxieties and worries don't just disappear - they have to be dealt with, but it isn't always our effort that is needed to deal with them. All will probably agree that the most beneficial thing to do is to take them to God in prayer. Some will think there are going to be times when you just gotta fix things yourself. I have to challenge that this morning. There is never a time when our anxieties and worries are best dealt with in our own power. As we take them to God in prayer, there will be times when he asks us to do something, but that doesn't mean we are 'fixing' the problem on our own. It means we were humble enough to recognize we don't possess all the knowledge, have all the power, or understand fully how to 'deal with' the issue at hand - then when God tells us how to deal with it, we do as we are told!

Sometimes we will be told to lay it right there at the foot of the cross and leave it alone. We are supposed to take our hands off of the issue and just let God be God. At others, he will show us where we may take action, then we are supposed to take it. Probably one other thing occurs as we take these things to God - he shows us where any of those anxieties or worries are 'unfounded' - our mind working things over and over again until we are tied up in knots. The anxiety is real - we get so emotionally invested in what is churning within our minds and hearts, that we just cannot stop it. It is like a self-fueling fire - it just doesn't burn out or go away. Those are the worries we definitely don't want to carry - for they will consume us if we continue to carry them ourselves.

Notice that God doesn't tell us to give him the worries and cares that we don't think we can deal with on our own. He tells us to give him ALL of them - the big and little ones, the real and imagined ones, the ones that leave us hurting and the ones that bring fear. ALL of them - none excluded. He may take some and work on them himself. He may show us where we can take action ourselves - but it doesn't mean we still carry the worry ourselves. It means he is enabling us to take the necessary steps to be free of those worries once and for all. For example, if we are in debt, we bring that worry to God and he may ask us to cut up our credit cards - to begin to live within our means. The debt will be worked off in time - maybe because he helps us find a debt consolidation program, or a second job, or overtime at our present one. We do what he tells us to do - but not before we take the worry to him.

Give ALL to him - hold nothing back. Don't believe the self-help gurus who proclaim "God helps those who help themselves" because that is nowhere in the Bible! Just sayin!

A cut path

My troubles turned out all for the best—they forced me to learn from your textbook. (Psalm 119:71)

To disturb the mental calm and contentment of an individual is indeed an unfortunate state of affairs. To constantly worry, be in distress, feel agitated or stirred up is a terrible place to find oneself. There are a whole lot of things in this life that annoy the stuffing right out of us. One trouble upon another will wear us down. If you have ever observed a stone 'grooved' by a constant drip of water, you may not know exactly when the 'erosion' happens, but it does! We never really know what "drop of water" will actually be the first to begin the "groove", nor do we know when the last drop will accomplish its work, do we? We have lots of tiny drops, all working away to "cut a groove" across our lives, trying desperately to divert the waters in a totally different direction. The seemingly impervious stone is eventually eroded away by the "troubling" of the water over its surface. The same is true in our lives - those drops can just splash upon the surface, being deflected for a time, but in enough time, they leave a mark, and in even more time, the mark becomes a well-worn path.

Troubles don't have to vex us - they can become instruments to drive us deeper into God's word, if we will let them. The first "drop" which hits upon the hard surface of our hearts may just seem to "splash" everywhere, affecting much around it. Eventually, God "narrows" the path of the "drops" which he allows to hit our hard hearts until there is a well-worn groove that correctly directs the trouble we face directly back toward him! The troubles we face at first, we try to handle on our own - cleaning up the mess the "drops" create by "splashing over our lives". In time, God wants those "drops" to be channeled directly to him - so he becomes the source by which those troubles no longer produce damage in our lives but are directed away - not affecting our peace because his presence has set the course for those troubles to travel.

If we keep in mind the heart as being the center of our emotions, doesn't it make sense that God wants to have those things which so miserably "stir up" our emotions to be channeled in such a way those "stirred up" reactions don't continue to occur? The enemy of our souls wants the troubles he "drops" into our lives to "stir us up" so we become all "murky" on the inside - an emotional mess, so to speak. God's desire is to provide a means to keep the purity and beauty of the heart undisturbed. When we begin to realize the tiny drops are "cutting a groove", we might just embrace the work of those "drops" in our lives a little differently. Take notice of the drops, then use them as a reminder of the importance of looking deeply into God's word for the means by which the drops can be dealt with. Troubles have a way of either sending us into a tizzy, or driving us to our knees. God's hope is that we take the latter path! God's textbook is his word - filled with every imaginable struggle, sin, and stubborn display of man's troubles. In the pages we also find the tremendous means by which those troubles can be channeled into the very place where God's grace and mercy help us deal with them so they don't disturb our peace.

I don't know what "drops" are wearing the groove into your lives right now, but know this - God's will is for them not to splash out of control, causing havoc in your inner man, destroying your peace and "muddying" the waters of your life. His will is to allow these troubles as a means of wearing away at the hardness of our hearts, until we one day find the path of least resistance is to divert those drops directly to him! Just sayin!