I’m having a bit of fun with the title on this one. If you’re on your toes some of you might recognize this line from a song popular in the early 1990s.[1]
Title fun aside, today’s topic is serious business. Worry steals more peace, robs more sleep, disrupts more moods, preoccupies more minds, and stresses more people than just about any other mental state.
And anyone who says to you they never worry. Well, now that is a lie.
Will application of the psychological insights and biblical truths in this post end your worry?
Absolutely not.
If I told you that, I would be lying. We are imperfect people living in a broken and rebellious world. We do nothing perfectly.
But what if you could lessen your worry by 50 percent? Or 70 percent? Or 85 percent? You would take that in a flash, wouldn’t you?
I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is possible! It is amazing what diligent, directed application of biblical truth and time-tested psychological insight, accompanied by persistent determination to subdue a mental enemy like worry can accomplish.
With that reality in mind I would encourage you to utilize the following five steps when worry comes knocking.
1. As soon as you can – get quiet. (It might be helpful if you read our recent post The Healing Prayer of Amy Carmichael.) It’s hard to combat worry on the fly.
There is a visual aid I use to help me get quiet that might be useful to you. God’s Word tells us that He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.[2]
We are further told that we can take refuge in the shelter of [His] wings.[3]
Taking the above imagery, I imagine myself alone with God, pushed up close against Him. As close as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings when a threat is nearby. This imagery helps quiet my mind. It calms the fear.
I don’t proceed to the following steps until I can sense the Father is quieting my worried mind. I want to feel that quietening calming me.
2. Slow down your thinking. Worry, like fear and anxiety, is one of those emotions that loves speed. Don’t allow your thoughts to race.
Again, mental imagery can help here. In your mind track the setting of the sun as it moves down slowly and then slips below the horizon. Or imagine a faucet with a slow drip and see the drops falling lazily to the ground every few seconds. Or make up your own! All you need is your good imagination. Use any image that slows your mind down.
3. After you’ve slowed your skull chatter (#2), corral your catastrophizing thoughts. Beware of those paralyzing omniscient statements like “I just know how this is going to turn out.” No, you don’t.
Or, “I’ll never recover from this setback.” That’s more than a little catastrophic.
We cannot allow such thinking if we want to break free from a worry cycle.
4. Learn to ask yourself good questions. For example, “Am I really worried about the thing itself, or do I hate dealing with uncertainty?”
It takes a lot of pressure off once we accept the reality that certainty, in this life, is a myth.
This will be especially important if you are one given to a control compulsion (“control freak,” as they say).
5. Enlarge your reality. Worry is one of those thought threads that shoots with a zoom lens. It likes to make the worrisome thoughts take up the whole lens.
Zoom out. Enlarge your reality. If the frame isn’t large enough to include what Scripture says about the problem worrying you, you have lost perspective. You need to zoom out and take in the biblical realities.
Matthew 6:25-30 is a passage loaded with biblical truth aimed specifically at enabling us to conquer worry. Let’s draw some observations from this rich passage.
— Worry is not mandatory: Therefore I say to you, do not worry 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?[4]
Jesus puts it straight out – do not worry. That statement would be as cruel as it is impossible to obey if worry is unavoidable.
— Worry overlooks the Father’s care: Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?... So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.[5]
Our Lord draws an analogy for the crowd listening that day. The birds are completely dependent on the Father for their day-to-day sustenance. And the vulnerable flowers of the field are beautifully adorned as they stand in reliance on Him.
The rhetorical point is “Do you think the birds and the flowers outrank you... you whom I have come to redeem?” (Are you not of more value than they? He asks.)
— Worry is worthless: Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?[6]
Worry is an activity with perhaps the worst ROI (return on investment) of any behavior possible. It quite literally has no value. Every consequence derived from worry has a negative impact on us.
This is exactly the point Christ is making when He asks the above question. His point is, worry doesn’t enlarge you. It is not an asset.
— Worry is ultimately a faith problem: Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?[7]
The point He is making here is simple. Worry and faith cannot occupy the same space. We can bounce back and forth between the two... and who among us doesn’t know that dance!
But they cannot coexist. There is no such thing as worrying faith or believing worry.
I close with this – Don’t confuse being tempted to worry with giving way to worry.
Many struggle here. Like any other temptation, you and I cannot prevent being tempted to worry.
Our responsibility lies in whether or not we choose to give in to that temptation. That is the challenge.
Charles Spurgeon said, “You cannot help birds flying over your heads in the air, but do not let them alight, and build their nests in your hair.”[8]
The birds of worry will fly over our heads regularly. It is only when we invite those birds in, when we focus on worrying thoughts and give our minds over to them... allow them to build their nests... that the trouble begins.
[1] RHCP, Under the Bridge.
[2] Psalm 91:1, ESV.
[3] Psalm 61:4, ESV.
[4] v 25, NKJ.
[5] v 26, 28-29, NKJ.
[6] v 27, NKJ.
[7] v 30, NKJ.
[8] From his sermon, Driving Away the Vultures from the Sacrifice, based on Genesis 15:11.
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