Worry and anxiety?

We all know Jesus said 'do not worry' about anything.  However we do.  Well done if you don't!  I wanted to explore some thoughts around why we worry and can have anxiety.  The ideal place to be as a Christian is entirely rooted sourced and anchored into Christ.  Jesus is in the process of making this possible and sometimes we have good and bad days at this. What are the barriers to Jesus making us free?

As living entities we exist in this world.  To different degrees we are attached to the things of this world.  We are anchored into and depend upon the stuff of earth.  We can have periods of time where we fail and this exposes our need to have a moment by moment walk with the Lord.  Jesus wants us free because He knows that we fail and this causes us pain.  Our dependency on the stuff of earth erodes our faith because when we follow through in that dependency it is always a dead end. Subsequently we can go into a low, a sort of spiritual depression.

As we negotiate these things we can fall into worry.  Worry is the 'now' experience that can lead to anxiety.  Anxiety is more like predicting how the subject of our worry will devastate our lives.  Every worry exists because we are not anchored into Christ.  We are simply not believing-on-purpose His word.  Some have said to me 'I know what the bible says.... I just worry.'  I always say that knowing the text is not the same as having applied it to your own life as a reality.  God has contained in the Bible some examples and stories and direct statements that amount to one thing:

God, your Father longs for you to trust Him for EVERYTHING.

We can afford to disengage from dependencies other that the Lord.  If you've ever had an experience where it seems the Lord was not there for you, you are not alone in FEELING this.  In the sanctifying work of the Lord failure is all part and parcel of the package.  there are things we can learn from Moses, Joseph and Elijah.  They were slapped around pretty good by the Lord.  In each case there was an opportunity to turn to God and question his practices.  I'm sure they all had their moments... for sure.  But the key is to know that the prison, failure, let down, tragedy were all used to break our  dependency on this world.  God has not invented the trouble but He does use it.

Try this:
1. write down your present worry
2. also write down how you feel the thing will impact your future
3. Identify what you are anchored into other than the Lord
4. State what you need to be thinking about the worry
5. Find scriptures that tell you God has it covered.

Generally Psalm 139 / Ephesians 1 and  Matthew 6 of course -

25 “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? 26 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? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Gary Ward