Winning Over Worry

Here's a few thoughts I didn't get to share yesterday.  They are miscellaneous bits of information – which all can be summarized by David's statement in  Psalm 37:8   …    Do not fret--it only causes harm.

   

In the New Testament one Greek word translated as "worry" is merimnao, which means "to be anxious, to be distracted" or "to have a divided mind" (merizo, "to divide"—nous, "the mind").

—To worry is to divide your mind between that which is useful and worthwhile and that which is damaging and destructive.

—To worry is to block the flow of creative energy in your life.

               

The concept of worrying is conveyed throughout Scripture by numerous words and phrases.

•             —to be fretful

•             —to be anxious

•             —to be concerned

•             —to be weighed with cares

•             —to be heavy-hearted

•             —to be without peace

•             —to be distracted

•             —to be troubled

•             —to be distressed

•             —to be despairing

Disbelief

Worry reveals that you really don't believe God when He says He will provide all that you need.

"The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail." Isaiah 58:11

Worry reveals that you are taking on personal responsibility and concern for that which God has already promised to provide.

Worry shifts the focus of attention from the all sufficient power of Christ to your human insufficiency and insecurity. Ultimately, worry can undermine your Christian witness by presenting God as impotent and unworthy of praise.

"In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:16

 What Is the Focus of Worry?

A specific characteristic of worry is a negative focus on the future. If you are a worrier, you are spending time speculating on what may or may not happen and then fearing the worst.

Destructive Worry	Constructive Concern
• paralyzes	• motivates
• decreases creativity	• increases creativity
• prevents initiative	• promotes initiative
• results in anxious fretting	• results in calm focusing
• attempts to control the future	• attempts to improve the future
• fears the worst	• hopes for the best
• appears negative to others	• appears positive to others
• distracts the mind from what is important	• directs the mind to what is important

What you worry about is not nearly as important as why you worry. You may know and love God, but when you trust in anything other than God's promises and provision for your life, then worry will turn your heart away from the Lord and turn your trust into distrust.

May the trials of our lives continue to cause our minds to run – to run to Jesus, rather than run from Him.

    Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

Finding Life

Matthew 10:34-40

What is life?   How do we define life?  How do we view a meaningful life?.  From our perspective, it hinges on what we view a meaningful life to be.  God views a meaningful life as one who chooses to follow Jesus. The disparity between the two viewpoints will determine much.  

I often find myself guilty of the same temptation expressed by Amy Carmichael and quoted by Elisabeth Elliot in A Chance to Die- praying that a particular trial in a person's life will just go away.  Amy found that the better advice was to encourage someone to see in their circumstances an opportunity to die.  

We have learned to consider death to be something that is painful and harmful.  Painful - yes, almost every time.  But, harmful - not necessarily.  The death of a virus is a good thing, many would view the death of venomous insects or reptiles as a good thing.  Google "How to kill mold" and you will discover the term and question welcome by just about everyone.  I found no websites proposing ways to help mold survive.

So, why do we try so hard to preserve and feed our flesh?  I would propose that it is because we have the wrong viewpoint of the flesh.  We see our flesh as being for us, as being profitable to us, as being a means to meaning, or maybe just satisfaction, or fulfillment.  Maybe, if we were honest, we would have to admit that we really do understand that our flesh is nothing but a means to temporal pleasure.

In some ways our flesh is good. But never when it dominates.  When we try to preserve our flesh rather than die to it, we are so often aiding and abetting our very own enemy.

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. 

    

1 Timothy 4:8 For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. 

In John 6:63, Jesus was talking about the things of the kingdom.  In the spiritual realm, the flesh profits nothing.  In the realm of this earthly life, 1 Timothy tells us that it does profit a little.

Matthew 10:39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

I like the order of this verse.  When we find our life in Jesus, it is so much easier to die to that which pulls us away from Him.

Before we can offer Amy Carmichael's encouragement to others, we need to consistently apply it to our own lives.  Then and only then is my advice something I can say is tried and true.  That's the wonderful thing about choosing to follow Jesus rather than the dictates of our flesh.  He never fails.

Journeying Beyond Your Jealousy

I find that blogging right after I teach is a bit challenging as I feel like I've said what the Lord would have me say.  But, I found this in the message on jealousy that I taught 9 years ago and like Peter, feel like it would be good to bring it to your remembrance.

 [11] If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? [12] Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? [13] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" Luke 11:11-13

Do you see what that is saying?  It’s saying, if it’s good for you and you ask for it, God will give it to you. The only things He withholds are things that are not for our best.

Do you believe that?  If you do, you won’t be jealous of someone else.  You won’t want anything someone else has if God doesn’t want it for you.  In psalm 107 there is a phrase that is repeated.  It is this.  Oh that men would give thanks to the LORD for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!

Want more than what you have?  Jealousy is not the means to get it.  Israel was an ungrateful nation.  Here’s just a few things that Psalm 106 declares about them:  They soon forgot God’s works, they did not wait for His counsel, they tested God and He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.  They envied Moses and Aaron, the earth opened up and swallowed them, they made a calf and worshipped the molded image.  Thus they changed their glory into the image of an ox.

One phrase keeps popping up in this psalm – they forgot.  They forgot God their Savior, who had done great things for them.  God responded to that forgetfulness, that ungratefulness.  .  Look at Psalm 106:15

    And He gave them their request,

    But sent leanness into their soul.

He sent leanness of soul and He allowed their enemies to have victories over them.  Is that what you want?  Leanness of soul.  That’s a terrible thing.  It's an empty feeling, One of the definitions of this kind of leanness is "scarcity".  I think that describes it well.  In our effort to satisfy the longing of our soul, we seek temporal fixes and we end up, not with fulfillment, but with scarcity.  Too often the fruit of jealousy is leanness of soul.  Nothing – no possession and no status is worth that.

The Compassion of Jesus

Consider the list Pastor Dale provided for us from Matthew 8 and 9:

The Sheep  Whom the Shepherd Touched

the outcast	the leper	8:1-4
the outsider	the centurion's servant	8:5-13
the looked down upon	Peter's mother-in-law	8:14-15
the fearful	the disciples in the storm	8:23-27
the captives	the two demoniacs	8:28-34
the weak	the paralytic	9:1-8
the powerless	the ruler whose daughter died	9:18-25
the hopeless	woman w/issue of blood	9:20-22
the blind	two blind men	9:27-31
the feeling defeated	man who was mute & possessed	9:32-34

As I thought about this list, I was impacted with the fact this list covers all aspects of need - the spiritual, the emotional and the physical.  Jesus was touched by all of them.  As believers, so should we be touched.  But, I find that we are often moved according to our spiritual giftings.  I am more moved by the emotionally hurting than those who are physically hurting.  I am moved by both, but I find myself moved to action more for those who are emotionally hurting, as my gift is that of counseling.   As 1 Corinthians 12 teaches us, the Spirit gives different gifts to each of us as He wills.  Jesus, being God in the flesh, functioned in all of the gifts.  Therefore, He was able to not only be moved with compassion, but respond in healing each one.  We (as individuals) cannot do that.  BUT - via the sending of the Holy Spirit, each gift has been given to members of the body of Christ.  We, as individuals, have each been equipped in some way to carry out, to continue His work.

1 John 3:17 specifically speaks of meeting a financial need in someone's life:   But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? 

How much more is this a challenge to us (every believer) to use the "spiritual gifts/goods" we've been given to meet the need of someone when we see (are aware) of the need?  

That's His plan.  We are now His hands.  May we be faithful to stretch them out as He did to touch those whom He has called us and enabled us to touch - FOR HIS GLORY.

    

Attacking Your Anger

In considering the tools available to us for attacking anger, I feel pressed to "put you in remembrance" of one of my favorite tools - drawing your anger line - the line you are determined not to cross regardless of who or what provokes you.

We all have drawn a line - that which we feel is justifiable when we are pushed enough.  For some, but few, it is murder.  When provoked enough, some people feel that murder is justified.  For some it is physical harm; some verbal abuse or yelling, some retribution, some the silent treatment.  What is yours?  Where have you drawn the line?

Here's God's line:

Ephesians. 4:29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. 

 Matthew 5:44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, 

If your anger line crosses the lines set by our Lord, then you are "out of line".  Choose His ways.  They will never disappoint.  Loving others when they seemingly don't deserve it reveals strength, not weakness. We can only love like that with God's strength.  

As a believer, you have committed your life to Him.  Commit your line to Him too.
   

The Cost of Discipleship

Text:  Matthew 8:16-23

The call to discipleship is the call to follow Jesus.  That requires a lot of moving.  Jesus is always up to something.  Being reminded of that coupled with the statement - "between the altar and the door", I found myself seeing the choices set before me, daily, even hourly to decide whether I will choose the altar or the door.  As the pastor's wife, I sit in the second row, figuratively closer to the altar than just about everyone else in church.  But, the power is AT the altar, not being near it.   Sitting in the second row makes me no more a beneficiary of the power of the altar, than the person sitting in the back row.  

We all must come to the altar... if we are to be followers.  Followers can't sit ANYWHERE between the altar and the door.  

I considered the scribe who so boldly announced to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go.  Scribes were the Bible experts.  They knew it well.  If Jesus had failed to follow the law in just one point, I don't think this scribe would have wanted to follow Jesus.  In Jesus, this scribe had found the real thing. But, scribes were used to the niceties of life.  So, in verse 20, Jesus reminded him that following Him could mean walking away from those things.  The next disciple in the story wanted to take care of the demands and cares of this life first.  So, in verse 22, Jesus challenged him.

We don't know how either of these men responded.  Maybe, because I have a natural tendency to be like the scribe, I'd like to think the scribe took Jesus up on His offer.  If the Word of God was important to this scribe, how much more would be the One who was able to follow it and make it real?

Hopefully, we were all challenged this morning.  Hopefully, the Lord spoke to us in that area that tends to keep us from following Him (in whatever turns He takes).  And, hopefully, we will choose the altar.  The door is a bad option.   So, is any point between the door and the altar.  

And when Jesus saw great multitudes around Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side. (verse 18)

Now, when He got into a boat, His disciples followed Him.  (verse 23)

In between those two verses is a call  - Follow Me and a challenge that reminds us that, when Jesus calls, He knows exactly the demands and priorities of our lives. Yet, He calls us anyway.  Will we walk away like the rich young ruler of another story?  Or will we choose to get in the boat like the disciples of verse 23?

As we can read in the next verses, getting in the boat did not enable them to avoid the storms of life.  But it did enable them to be eye witnesses of God's work and His protection in the storm.    We discover that at the altar.

Guarding Your Guilt

As I sat at my desk this morning, contemplating this topic of guilt, which plagues so many (all of us at one time or another), I thought about the cure for guilt.  The cure for guilt is the cross.  Without the cross, you and I would be stuck with our guilt.  There is no other remedy.  But, like the cough medicine that remains in the cabinet while we hack away, God's remedy for our guilt often remains with the cap still tightly screwed on the bottle.

First, we need to analyze our guilt to determine its source. Are you feeling the godly conviction of sin, —or twisted emotions from enemies within?

The remedy is the same.  Yet, the voice of one, reassures us with the hope of forgiveness, drawing our focus to our loving, forgiving Lord Jesus; the other condemns and draws our focus inward to our failing, sin prone selves.  How do you determine whether you are feeling godly conviction or enemy/self condemnation?  Look at who you are drawn to look at - Jesus' accomplishments on the cross for you or your failure.

Then, how do you unscrew the cap of the bottle of God's forgiveness?  Here are 3 steps:

1 and 2.  Acknowledge and confess your sin.

Psalm 32:5  I acknowledged my sin to You,And my iniquity I have not hidden.I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord," And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. 

1 John 1:9 

    If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

3.  Repent

Acts 3:19  Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, 

In acknowledging, confessing, and repenting we are admitting our sin, agreeing with God that it is wrong and determining (in His strength and your choices) to turn from that sin.  There is no short cut.  If you leave one out, you will either remain in your guilt or remain in your sin.

Notice the results of our obedience to our part - God's sure forgiveness, God's sure cleansing from ALL unrighteousness and times of refreshing in the presence of the Lord.

When we continue to "hack" away, letting the guilt of our sin get the best of us, we are missing out on the cure Jesus died to provide for us.  Confession and repentance restore our relationship with the Lord so that we no longer dread being in His presence for fear of retribution, but we long for His presence because that is the place of refreshment.  And, oh how you and I need to be refreshed by Him.

As we come to the close of 2012, we tend to evaluate our lives or at least the previous year.  Failures will certainly pop up for each of us.  What place will they have in 2013 for you?