Time to Live in Faith and Start Canceling the Spirit of Worry
Let me begin by just writing that God isn’t happy when we worry.
His will for all humanity is to see us thriving in our purpose and resting fully in Him regardless of the circumstances we may be facing at the moment.
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 ESV
So, when we worry, we suppress the faith we have in God and His promises over our life, and give the enemy a pulpit in our mind to speak doubt into us and take our focus off what God promised He would take care of if we fully rested in Him.
Worry also takes away the gift of joy from the Lord in our lives and weakens our faith in Him.
The devil has a way of making even the smallest of issues we face seem unsolvable by God sometimes, and causing a roller-coaster of emotions in our lives and lowering us into believing that we will be stuck in the same situation for the rest of our lives. Making us believe that God has taken His hand off us to let us suffer.
Worry is a curse from the enemy, because when we worry, we give the enemy a pulpit of control in our lives and rob ourselves the privilege to trust in God and most times fail to see that the challenges we may face are only to make us stronger in our walk with Him as the bible tells us in the book of James 1:2-3 NIV “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
What we need to do in this case when we find ourselves in a situation that causes us to worry is speak to God about how we are feeling, turn our worries into prayers no matter how small they look as the bible tells us in Psalms 55:22 ESV, “cast you burdens on the Lord and he will support you, God will never let the righteous be shaken”.
He wants to be part of our everyday struggle and every worry we face so that he carries us through it. He wants us to give him our worries in exchange for a peace beyond our own understanding if we let Him.
But before we do that, we first need to acknowledge that worrying is inevitable as humans since we live in an imperfect world, we must however, condition our thoughts to be in line with what the word of the Lord says.
Because if we magnify our thoughts on things that worry us, we begin to demolish our ability to stand firm with God during our tough times. We need to remember that what we nurture most in our lives is the thing that will begin to nourish and grow, so if we nurture worry and doubt it will be the thing that will begin to rule our lives and rob us of the chance to get intimate with God.
The bible reminds us in Philippians 4:4 NIV “rejoice in the lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” just how important it is for us to rejoice in the Lord always, we need to rejoice not because we are happy with the way things are going in our present life but we rejoice because we have faith that God will carry our weight and change the situation.
Rejoicing manifests our belief in God’s strength in our lives even as we read throughout scripture, we come to find that Jesus constantly told the people He healed and delivered that it was their faith that made it possible.
So, by having faith, we are being obedient to Him and fully trusting that He is the Alpha and Omega who knows beginning from end and is able to turn all things for the good of those that trust in Him.
If we are to be honest, a lot of things that we tend to worry about don’t even happen the way we play them out in our mind.
We worry because our flesh wants to have control of the outcome of things, but how good of a Christian walk would it be if we depended on the physical realm to show us the outcome of things, how much of our faith would be used if we already knew the prospect of things, and most importantly how much of a relationship with God would we desire if we had full control of our own life’s outcome and desires.
What we need to understand is by constantly seeking our own outcome of everything that plays out in our life that we don’t fully understand is dethroning God of his duties, our job is not to know the outcome of every situation beforehand but to trust in the one who will make the situation turn out in favor of both Him and us, and most importantly, put the ways of the enemy to shame.
In Mathew 6:31-33, the Bible tells us not to worry but seek Him first, the total opposite of what we do sometimes when we find ourselves in a predicament.
The reason why God asks us to do this (keep calm and trust him) is because He knew it would save us the time to worry, all the things we want answers to in life are found with God.
Our future is in His hands and not ours, and yet we worry even about days that are not even promised to us (Proverbs 27: 1 “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth”) instead of treating every day as gift that we have been given to us by our father and rejoicing in the ability to feel His presence because not everyone gets this chance.
If we were to be honest, most if all the things that we worry about are materialist that most times don’t even benefit our salvation. We do so and forget that Proverbs 22:1 NIV tells us to “choose a good reputation over great riches, being held in high esteem is better than silver and gold.”
We pay close attention to the worries of our life, that are material based, things that will not satisfy us in the long run. The reason why we see many people in the Bible seeming to have a perfect faith in God like Paul, is because they did not care about being provided with physical things because they trusted that God will provide no matter what, their concern was to have eternal life with our Father and not meaningless pleasure on earth.
And if I must confess, I have also fallen into this time and again. As believers, we are constantly seeking God to prove to us who He really is every day even though He has done it so many times in the past before.
Because our lack of faith that certain things will play out. It usually stems from our own insecurities in ourselves, because we don’t think we are capable of turning a situation around with our doubt, so, we put that presumption on God as well.
It is important that when we find ourselves in such situations to ask God to give us the ability and strength to see ourselves as capable human beings and ask Him to dethrone every negative aspect we might have towards His kingdom and believe that He is able to bring us through.
So, the next time we feel the need to worry, it’s important for us to remember that no amount of worry can change the situation. But the right amount of prayer will change our mindset towards the situation, and trust that it is now in the hands of our Heavenly Father, the only one capable of changing any situation that we face even with our little faith in Him sometimes.
