Don't Worry, Be Thankful!
This morning in my devotions I turned on my phone intending
to read the book of Jude, and instead my phone opened up to the last place I’d
been: Philippians 4:4-8.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say,
rejoice! Let everyone see your gentleness. The Lord is near! Do not be anxious
about anything. Instead, in every situation, through prayer and petition with
thanksgiving, tell your requests to God. And the peace of God that surpasses
all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”(NET).
Last night in Wednesday night service, my father-in-law, our
pastor, spoke from this passage. Did you know that Amazon did a survey to see
what passage of Scripture was downloaded the most from their website, and it
was that one? I didn’t, until he told us about it last night. I think we were
all surprised actually, but when I think about it, it makes sense.
The world we live in is a scary place that seems to grow
more scary all the time. One constantly hears stories about kidnappings,
murders, wars, terrorists, politicians’ arguments (the impeachment, anyone?),
civil and political unrest everywhere…you get the idea. Before I had children,
I used to think I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to bring children into this
scary world and expose them to the evils of man; now that I have children, my
concern is on how to keep them safe and how to teach them to be prudent and
vigilant so that they don’t fall victim to the many evils abounding in our
world. You hear people talking about the “good old days” when you didn’t have
all these social and political problems, but I wonder if the good old days weren’t
merely an illusion. Mankind has always been sinful and wicked; in previous
generations in our country, evil things simply were not talked about in public
or private, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. They did, and they were
swept under the rug by most law-abiding, respectable citizens. We didn’t hear
the news about wars and terrorists and such as much, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t
there. They were; such things have always been around, and such things will continue
until the return of Jesus Christ.
I admit to some private anxiety on my own part lately, too.
Yesterday, I was deep into computer work when I was startled by a knock on my
front door. A lady stood there, holding the sweetest little boy, who looked to
be no more than 2, by the hand, and she asked me the last thing I thought she
was going to say: “Is this your little boy? I found him wandering onto my front
porch, and I’m trying to find his parents.” The little boy reached toward me
like he wanted to come to me, and I wanted nothing so much in that moment as to
pick him up, hug him tight, and reassure him everything would be okay. But I
didn’t, because he was not my child,
and I didn’t want to send the wrong message to this sweet lady helping him. I
told her “no”, and followed her onto the porch, my mind spinning: “How could
anyone leave such a little child alone to wander around by himself? He could
get hit by a car; he could get picked up by the wrong person; anything could
happen to him! What are his parents thinking?!?” The lady asked my next-door
neighbors the same question and then decided it was time to call the police. I
went back inside at that point, but I haven’t stopped thinking about him and
praying for him since. In fact, I need to go over and ask my neighbor today if
she knows what happened to that little child.
I’ve been thinking recently about Monkey’s transition to the
3rd grade, too. I know—it’s still half a year away—but if I let
myself, I start seriously worrying. See, Monkey is very small, so small that
she’s routinely mistaken for a preschooler by new or substitute teachers. She
gets bumped into frequently, and last year we had a problem with bigger kids
pushing her down a lot in P.E. She stands elbow-height to some of her
classmates. There’s nothing wrong with her—she gets it honest; I was always
very small and petite as a child too. (I stood 4’2” in the 6th
grade!) But I worry because next year she’ll be going to the intermediate
school –a new school—for 3rd-6th grade; she’ll be
surrounded by hundreds of kids who are all much bigger than she is, and no one
will know her, no one will know to watch out for her. I worry that, at least
initially, she’ll have to deal with bullying, simply because she’s the smallest
kid, and I want to be there to protect her, but obviously I can’t. She’ll have
to face it on her own, and I’m sure every mother knows how my heart feels about
that! I have to remind myself
(frequently!) that A: God is in control, B: Monkey is His child, and He can
take care of her, and C: I need to trust His plan for her life, whether that
includes bullying or not. This is where that passage from Philippians comes in.
When I opened the Bible app on my phone this morning and saw
those verses first thing, it stopped me in my tracks, metaphorically speaking.
“Be anxious for nothing” (KJV translation—the one I learned as a child)—the
words made me pause in my thoughts. Jesus spoke for some length about the sin
of worrying to His disciples in Matthew 6 in His Sermon on the Mount. The sum
of what He said was that our Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even
ask Him, and He has promised to provide it, so why worry? You notice I said
that worry is a sin. That may seem extreme to some, but those aren’t my words; they’re
Jesus’ words. Worry is our human brains trying to manage everything around us, even things completely outside of our
control, because, whether consciously or subconsciously, we think we can handle
it better than God. When we worry, we are essentially telling God that He is
not big enough to handle our problems, and that is a very arrogant thing to tell the Creator of the universe!
The good news is that when Paul wrote this negative
command—Don’t worry—he immediately followed it up with a positive one—Instead,
pray about everything, giving it to God. And that is the cure for worrying. When we come before our Heavenly Father,
telling Him of all of our needs and concerns and (notice the end of that verse)
thanking Him for what He has already
done in our lives, we are basically reminding ourselves of all the ways that
God has already taken care of us and
The best part of this Bible passage is the last verse: “And
the peace of God that surpasses all [human] understanding will guard your
hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” I love the word used in the New English
translation there: “guard”. God’s peace guards our hearts and minds, protecting
us from the attacks of the Prince of this world and all his minions. Sure, bad
things happen to God’s people physically, but a child of God who puts his or
her trust in God will find that even in the midst of the worst circumstances he
or she is able to react with an unearthly calm because the Holy Spirit is
protecting his or her mind and heart. This kind of calm makes absolutely no
sense to the lost and dying world around us because they can only see things
from an earthly perspective, whereas a child of God is able to see things from
a heavenly perspective, an eternal perspective. This kind of thinking says with
Paul in II Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore
we do not despair, but even if our physical body is wearing away, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary,
light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory
far beyond all comparison because we are not looking at what can be seen
but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot
be seen is eternal.”
Let’s face it—worrying
about our problems—real or imaginary—is the easy thing to do, but if we can
stop, take a deep breath, and instead choose to hand the outcome of those
problems over to our loving Heavenly Father, reminding ourselves of all that He
has already done for us and all that He has promised to do in the future, we
will find ourselves living much happier, healthier lives. Science has proven
definitively that worrying and stressing over things is very bad for our
health, but that the happiest people in the world are usually the most
thankful. Interesting, huh? Coincidentally, we are approaching the one holiday
in America where we are strongly encouraged to focus on our blessings and be
grateful, so I can’t help but feel that this blog is rather timely (though that
was not my intent, I promise!), but Christians shouldn’t need a holiday to
remind us to be thankful to our Lord and Savior for all He’s done for us; it
should be a daily, even hourly, occurrence in our lives. In truth, we have been
given so much—forgiveness from sin, entrance into the family of God, eternal
life, and the hope of a new perfect heavenly body after this earthly one dies,
just to name a few—how can we not be thankful?
Believe me, I do
not have this down pat; this whole blog is kinda like preaching to the choir
for me. But writing all this down has helped me to refocus on my Savior and His
plan, not just for me, but also for my children, and I know that His plan is
best. I will probably worry about my petite daughter’s transition to 3rd
grade again before the year is out; I am consistently lifting that lost little
boy up in prayer every time I think about him, and trying not to worry in said
prayers, but instead giving him to God, but I’m sure I can say with the rest of
you that it’s not always easy. I am grateful that the God I serve is faithful
to lead me to the verses I need in any given situation in my life, whether it’s
through my devotions, a sermon, a song on the radio, a random comment or even a
Sunday school lesson (come to think of it, our Sunday school lesson this week
was on how God provided for Elijah the Tishbite during the famine he proclaimed
against King Ahab…okay, God, I get it!). And I hope and pray that anyone
reading this blog will find it right when they need it most, too, so that God
can use it to remind them how much He loves them and what good care He takes of
His children.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened
for you. For everyone
who asks receives, and the
one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there
anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you
then, although you are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good
gifts to those who ask him!”
—Matthew 7:7-11
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