Letting Go of Worry

 

What is Worry?  According to the dictionary it is “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret.”  Well, that sounds just lovely doesn’t it?  The Bible has a lot to say about worry, Jesus tells us not to worry.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:6-7

“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” 1 Peter 5:7

“Then Jesus said to His disciples: ‘Therefore, I tell you,d o not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.  And how much more valuable you are than the birds!  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?” Luke 12:22-26

“Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.” Proverbs 12:25

And those are just a few of my favorites.  There are many, many more.  Okay, so we know the Bible tells us not to worry, but does it tell us how to not worry?  We know we are not supposed to do it, but still we continue to do it (myself included! More times than I would like to admit

Why should we not worry?  Well, for starters it doesn’t do anything.  Worrying wastes our time where we are inventing things in our heads that may or may not happen (you know the line- 95% of what we worry about doesn’t actually happen) when we could be spending precious time finding solutions.  Or if we can’t find a solution we could be praying and talking with God instead of going round and round in our heads.

Worrying is the opposite of trusting God.  I know that is not what we want but it is precisely what we are doing when we are worrying.  We are not trusting Him, the Creator of the Universe, to provide the answers and what we need.  We are instead trying to provide these on our own.  We have to let go of the control (which is an absolutely scary thing) we want to have and hand our thoughts over to Him.  By trying to overpower the thoughts we try to control it and then it can just grow.  Instead, if we release it immediately to God, refuse to let it take up anymore of our time, then we are not letting it get a stronghold.  Worry is just fear.  And so we are choosing fear or trusting God.  I want to do my best to trust God.

Now just a side note, there are some things that we need to focus on and make plans for but we don’t need to let these control us.  There are some big things that are going to come into our lives that aren’t just ‘what-if’ worries but are actually happening, things we do need to be concerned about.  With these we need to plan and do the best we can, all the while realizing that God is in absolute control.  So what is going to happen is going to happen.  We can do our best to prepare for it, but ultimately it is in God’s hands.

My steps for worrying?  
1. Immediately pray to God.  Let Him know how I am feeling and why I think I am feeling that way.
2. Take a deep breath and work on slowing my breathing. If I need to I go down to my knees to calm myself down.
3. I ask myself if I can solve whatever this worry is easily.  If I can, then I do.  If it is truly something outside of my control then I pray it to God again.  There isn’t anything I can do about it.
4. I try to distract myself and change my thoughts.  The more I try to not think about something, the more I think about something.  Start doing something else, focus your attention elsewhere and not on your worries.

Now, do these steps always work?  Nope.  Do I continue to try them? Absolutely.  It is a constant battle to try to keep emotions in check.  I find it is even more difficult when I know I am worrying about nothing that I can control.  Those are the hardest times but if I continue to meditate on the truth in scripture, I know I will be okay.  You can find so many verses on worry and fear in the Bible.  If God didn’t want us to work on it, I don’t think He would have put it in there so many times.  We need to focus on Him as letting go of worry and giving it to Him is so incredibly freeing, while continuing to worry can harm us.  Another thing we can focus on?  Being Content