Worry is like a plague to our body. It attacks our mind, then our heart, and over time, it can consume our overall health.
Wouldn’t it be great to never worry again?
I’m not sure this is humanly possible – although I can’t imagine either why Jesus would give a command He wouldn’t fully allow us to obey.
Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.” How good are you at obeying that verse?
But, then again, He commanded a lot of other things I’m not perfect at either.
So, I’m still a work in progress.
I know this, however – one part of maturing as believers is to begin to eliminate worry from our life. Certainly, as we mature in our Christian life – we should, over the years, worry less.
Let me share a few things I’ve learned, which may help.
Here are 5 suggestions to having less worry:
Pray more.
You see, it’s a trade-off. You can pray or you can worry, but you can never do both at the same time. Which would you rather do? Seems to be a reasonable trade. How amazing is it the Creator of sunsets wants to have a conversation with me? Worry seems to be a cheap substitute in this regard.
Do wise things.
As a believer, sin is always going to cause my inner conscience to feel guilty – which usually translates quickly into other emotions, such as doubt, anxiety and worry. When I know I’m doing the best I can do my heart is freed of needless worry.
Read more.
Of course, I’d recommend the Bible. I think followers of Christ should read it everyday. It’s where we find the hope, faith and trust spelled out for us by God Himself. But we should read things, which speak of truth and bring encouragement. For some people this may mean turning off the news and reading. In our home we opted not to have a television in our living room. We have to “go” watch TV. It’s not that television is necessarily bad, but I just don’t seem to find much which really encourages me these days. I try to read at least one chapter of a Christian book everyday, in addition to my Bible reading. The point is when we fill our minds with good things it crowds out some of the bad things.
Choose your thoughts carefully.
The Apostle Paul said to think about these things – “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy.” (Philippians 4:8) I always ask myself: Why worry about what I can’t control? Why worry about what might happen when I can choose to think about good things which are happening? And, lots of good things occur everyday – when I choose to think about them.
Trust more.
This really is the key to worrying less. The more I trust – the less I worry. I can step up my faith, because I know God is on His throne. He has a plan and He will do what is best. Every time! And, listen, the key to trusting Him more is simple – spend more time with Him. Like any healthy relationship it grows stronger with time and effort. The more you know God the more you will love and trust Him.
Here’s to a worrying less lifestyle! Who’s with me?
Good post.
Sounds good to me!
Twitter: Twitter
says:
Hi Ron!
I used to worry alot before I realized what worry meant for a Christian. When it suddenly became clear to me that worrying about the future was actually the same as saying to God, “I don’t believe you!”
I really don’t feel that a true Christian would say that they don’t believe God’s promises; however, that is exactly what worrying about things is saying.
Learning to trust God with everything is a discipline. It is our opportunity to turn away self and to start trusting God for everything.
Amen. Good word.
Yes Ron! You are absolutely correct.
To overcome worry in our life, we need to flex the muscle of gratitude at regular intervals. As a famous song goes, we need to keep counting our blessings and be grateful to God.
Also, I think that praying more, medidating on His Word, thanksgiving and praising Him will help a lot in helping us worry less.
I need to focus on #2 a bit more. Been making a few foolish decisions (which turn in foolish actions, go figure) lately. Thanks for the info.
Thanks for your honesty.
I thought that too, at first. Here is the thing – It usually does this when I click on a link in an email notice (from your site here). But just now I clicked on an email link and it is not skewed and works. So it is intermittent and I've noticed that too. You just never know sometimes, heh. The next time I see it skewed, I'll take a screen shot so you can see what I mean. It may not happen again, but if it does, I'll make note. Have a great weekend. 😀
Thanks. I appreciate you looking out for me. Seriously.
Good Advice, as always. 😀
OFF Topic: I'be been getting an error when wanting to tweet your articles for about um, a week. The only way to tweet them is from the lone tweet button at the bottom of each entry. The left sidebar share stuff is goobered up somehow. You should have someone look at that. It's skewed and it gives a twitter error when trying to tweet from there. I thought you'd want to know. 🙂
I wonder if it's a cache issue now, because I just did it and it worked for me. I did have a problem with it about a week ago. I'll look into it further. thanks for letting me know
You're growing! Praying for you today!
Thanks for the prayers Ron! I might be including some for a little bit of snow too…would like to see just a small tad of winter.
Update Ron….it's 2:17 AM, the "medical concern" that I listed above arrived at 8:19 tonight, weighing in at a hefty 8lbs …and 2 weeks early!!! Thank you for your many prayers lifted. All are well and we could have 'worried' ourselves silly, but we chose to pray and trust. Oh yea, almost forgot….boy baby!
God is awesome.
I do worry less…but I had a big case of it last week. It took some repeated prayer to get over that one. I'm still striving to have a "Hakuna Matata" outlook. =)
Thanks for your honesty!
I've been a worry wart in the past….but on my walk now, I trust, I have faith, I believe….I'm now the blind man, and I can see….without worry blinders. I've got to dig deep and hold on to these 3 things many times a day in order to abandon any thoughts on worry and anxiety…which will consume. I don't want to spend my everyday with worry consuming my heart.
Thanks as always for the post, heading in today for medical concerns for a family member…how timely a reminder….trust, faith and believe….not worry.
Don't worry, be happy. Cornball song, but I like it more and more everyday.