Worrying Does Nothing...

    Okay, I know I am guilty of this, and I'm pretty sure that most of you are, too.  When we go through our day, are we really paying attention to our surroundings?  Or are we just falling into our own routine, or getting so caught up in life that we don't ever take a look around us?  A while ago, I was walking down a road that I had been down dozens of times before, and as I was walking listening to my iPod, I started looking around.  When I saw some of the amazingly beautiful things on that road, I was stricken.  How could I have gone down this road so many times and yet never realized the beauty of it?  I had admired the houses, but not once before that had I looked at the beautiful fingerprints of God.  Not once had I seen the trees, the flowers, the way the grass grew around the garden beds, or anything of the sort.  
     Aren't we all guilty of that?  As I said, we often get so caught up in the stress of life, we don't ever stop to smell the roses.  Literally.  God has given us SO many gifts in these simple things, and we just pass them by as if they are nothing special.  
     When we worry about things, or when we stress about things, we can't appreciate God in our lives.  We all have the tendency to put our own situations and worries before God on our priority chart.  But God says not to worry - to give Him your worries and stresses and let Him take care of them!

     In Matthew it says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these..." - Matthew 6: 25-34.

     Don't worry about anything!  If God can care to care for the needs of a little bird, then surely He can care for anything you need.  If He can give a flower a more beautiful dress than King Solomon, don't you think He can give you the clothes you need?  

     I especially like when it talks about when you are anxious, you aren't doing anything for yourself.  Worrying about something doesn't fix the problem, nor does it help you one bit.  If there is nothing you can do about a situation, GIVE IT TO GOD!!!!!  He can take care of it, and He can do such a better job than any of us can!!!!  And He wants to take care of your needs!!  Peter 5:7 says, "Cast all your worries to Him, because He cares for you."  You really can't get much simpler than that!  

     I have recently realized this - that when you are worrying about something, you are insulting God - you are telling Him that you don't trust Him enough to fix your problems.  In Crazy Love, by Francis Chan, it says that, "both worry and stress reek of arrogance."  

     Whenever you feel worry starting to creep up on you, or whenever you start to feel stressful, just pray this simple prayer silently, "God, I know that You can deal with this problem.   Please take my worries off of my shoulders."  I promise you, those words, if spoken with sincerity, work.  If you ask Him to take your worries, God will!!

     I have been all over today - I think I have established that I am very A.D.D.  I can't really keep a straight line of thought, so most of my blogs will probably end up on a totally different note than when it started...

God bless and comfort you,

Sincerely,

Tyler Henke