What Jesus said about ... (series)

 

What Jesus said about ... worry.

"Jesus said to His disciples, “And so I tell you not to worry about the food you need to stay alive or about the clothes you need for your body. Life is much more important than food, and the body much more important than clothes. Look at the crows: they don’t sow seeds or gather the harvest; they don’t have store rooms or barns; God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! Can any of you live a bit longer by worrying about it?” Luke 12: 22-25 

Anxiety and worries are the destroyers of our souls and our health. I guess more illnesses in modern society are due to worry and our way of life.

Worry … worry … worry … what if this happened to me … what if I couldn’t cope any longer … what if … what if … what if … worry … worry … worry.

You know the feeling. It happens to most of us and we deal with it differently. 

Worry is a human emotion. We can’t help feeling anxious, sometimes unnecessarily, and in so doing we give way to doubts and worry. It’s like meeting three evil witches intent on destroying you: Anxiety, Doubt and Worry.

Like many human emotions, they can get out of control.

We’re anxious about the results of some medical tests we’ve had done. We worry unnecessarily. We fear the worst and doubt whether God loves us.

We worry without cause about our loved ones. Will our children do well in life, especially in these difficult times? We worry when they are a few minutes late returning home.

Why doesn’t God provide us with a switch we can flick and these negative emotions just vanish away. After all, He knows we can’t help these emotions creeping on us unaware and play havoc with our minds. Why can’t He provide a switch to turn them off?

Or …. Maybe He has.

Whenever we look away from God for a moment that’s when we allow anxiety to enter our life and implant the seeds of doubt and worry. Perhaps it’s because at that very instant when we look away from God, the devil is ready to pounce and lead us astray.

He’s very clever the devil, you know. He leads you to believe he doesn’t really exist, but he’s there all right. By your side day by day. Waiting for the appropriate moment to put negative thoughts in your mind. Playing on your fears. Adding a sprinkle of worry. Making you anxious about something or other. And before long, if you are a little weak, you’ll begin to doubt that God even exists, never mind love you.

The remedy is to re-focus on God in the sure knowledge that He will not let us down.

That’s the switch which He has provided to comfort us in our times of difficulties. The certainty that He has conquered evil once and for all. And the knowledge that He will not allow us to perish because He cares for us.

“Look at the birds flying around … your Father in Heaven takes care of them! Aren’t you worth much more than birds?” Matthew 6:26

Father G's Deal

 

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

For some reason, out of the blue, Father G came to mind earlier today. Can't think why.

He is now long gone to be with Jesus in Heaven. Father G was Italian but brought up and ordained in America. He had an American/English accent rather than Italian. He was from an Order of priests who were all Italians but, like him, born and brought up in the States.

He was a visiting priest at our church in England UK.

When he visited our church he never stood at the lectern to deliver his sermon. When he finished reading the Gospel he just walked up and down the central aisle and just spoke to the people rather than preach a sermon as such. His message was always appropriate to something we could all use there and then in life, rather than repeat what he'd just read from the Gospel.

One day he talked about worry. He explained that we all have a tendency to worry; some more than others. We worry about real or imagined problems, we worry about the past, or present and future, we worry about someone else, or health or all sort of things.

He said that often the devil picks up a weakness in us and uses it to create worrying thoughts in our mind in order to distance us from God.

He told us that we will all have troubles in life, none are immune from them. But Jesus has overcome sin and trouble, and we should trust Him to protect us and care for us. (John 16:33).

Whenever worrying thoughts come to mind we should repeat over and over again, "(Jesus, I trust in you."

Then he told us of a deal he made with God. He said, "God, I shall do your will on earth as best as I can, and you take care of the worries."

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; be of good cheer; For I have overcome the world. (John 16:33 KJV). Maranatha Singers.V)

I am very worried ...

Because I tend to worry a lot, I have devised a system to stop me worrying which unfortunately has caused me more worry than before.

I worry about many things which the rest of you may consider inconsequential and not worth worrying about. For example, have I remembered to put a piece of cheese in the mouse trap? Have I bought enough apples to make an apple pie? Is wearing a brown tie too ostentatious for attending the church committee meeting? These kind of thoughts cause me no end of sleepless nights especially when I have to do something important.

For example, if I have to go somewhere I've never been before, say another town. I usually go there the day before to check how to get there. Which route to drive, where is the car park, or which bus or train to take. That sort of thing. I check the day before having to go to the place in question. It's a common malady, I understand. Once I booked for a group therapy session with other like-minded people. I went to the meeting place the day before and everyone in the group was also there checking where the place was.

For a while I also visited a hypnotist because I was terrified of heights. The slightest height made me panic; like walking on the side-walk rather than on the road itself. The hypnotist would put me in a trance and when I woke up I was on something high. Like the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the leaning Tower of Pisa and such like. I had to give up the treatment because of the costs involved. Not once did he put me on top of a cupboard or a tree in his garden. 

Anyway, I digress, as I am liable to do to add amusement to my otherwise tedious stories.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself; I have devised a system to stop me from worrying, or at least to curtail a little my tendency towards despondency and despair. 

I have designated a room in our house as the "Worry Room". I have promised myself that I am not allowed to worry about anything ever unless I am in the Worry Room. If a negative thought crosses my mind as I am nonchalantly crossing the road, or otherwise engaged in non-worrying activities, I quickly dismiss it out of my mind and leave it until I am at home and in the Worry Room whereupon I consider its anxiety levels.

This system has worked for about a week or so. I purposely concentrate on dismissing any worrying thoughts until I am in the Worry Room when I deal with them in order of seriousness and impending doom. 

I have made a little notice saying "DO NOT DISTURB" which I hang with a piece of string to the door handle and it stops the family coming into the Worry Room when I'm inside worrying about the price of carrots, and how will we feed our pet rabbit, and will it affect his eyesight and we'll have to take him to the optician. Does an optician cost more than the carrots anyway?

One day, in a state of extreme worry, I absent-mindedly took the notice with me in the room and hanged it on the inside door handle. I could not get out of the room because I did not want to disobey my own edict not to open the door and disturb whoever is on the other side. I had to shout for a family member outside the Worry Room to open the door and let me out.

However, the worrying problem is now worse because I have now lost the key to the Worry Room. I just cannot remember where I last put it and where it could possibly be. I have searched all over the place with no success. I'll admit I am worried about the situation but I cannot worry about it properly because I cannot enter the Worry Room in order to deal with this particular worry.

I'm sure you can understand my dilemma. How can I worry about the lost key when I am not in the Worry Room to worry about it?

I can't climb through the window because of my latent fear of heights. The last thing I need now is another course of hypnotism which will take me all over the world. 

Any suggestions?

What the ...

 

You know what it's like folks. One moment you are happy and smiling and the sun is shining in your life. Then suddenly there's a dark cloud all over you. Your mood changes, and you're feeling low.

How could it be? Only a few moments ago you were joyful and seemingly without a care in the world and now you're in this sombre mood.

Was it that sad song you just heard? Or the snippet of news on the radio? Or a thought perhaps triggered by something you've just seen? An old photo perhaps, or a memento of times gone by, a gift perhaps from a loved one no longer here? 

Somehow, suddenly your world seems a lot darker now. You feel a tightening of your chest, the need to cry, or just give up altogether.

Perhaps you turn to any distraction at hand. The ice cream tub in the freezer. The cookie dough. Chocolates. Or whatever else is available for such emergencies.

Or maybe you just crumble under the pressure and the worries and concerns for yourself, or someone dear to you. 

Or possibly you struggle on until the dark clouds move away and you return to some semblance of normality; whatever that is for you.

Let's now look at this scenario all over again but from a different perspective.

How do you think God feels when suddenly a bad mood or thought gets hold of you?

Do you think He delights and enjoys your moment of despair?

When you were young and you hurt yourself, or something made you sad, you probably ran to a loving parent to kiss it better and to wrap you round with love and caring.

But now you're grown up. Age does not protect you from hurt and grief. But a loving Creator Father in Heaven is still there to comfort you and see you through your darkness.

Use your moment of negativity as an opportunity to pray to God. Hand the matter over to Him. Tell Him what's on your mind. Praise Him even.

You are not praising Him because things are going bad for you. You are praising Him because, whatever the circumstances, He is still in control. 

He allowed you to be brought to this situation, and He will see you safely through it.

Whenever your world is dark; Christ will light your way.

Do not worry about tomorrow ...

 

Well I guess some of my readers ... I have many you know. Three figures by now according to the statistics. Last count was 10.7 - I wonder who the 0.7 is?

Anyway, as I was saying before I got interrupted by 0.7 of my readers ... ... ... some of my readers will say, "Oh no ... he's going to be preaching about Christianity again! Why can't he tell us something funny instead?" 

I don't apologise for my Christian posts. Maybe someone somewhere might think I'm talking some sense. But if it's funnies people want ... OK ... I'll oblige:

The priest was telling the congregation about the evils of drink. “To drink is to follow Satan. Drink is bad for you. It will lead you to damnation”.

To demonstrate his point he put two glasses on the pulpit. One contained water and one contained whisky. He then produced a small box containing two worms that he had dug from the garden before the service began. He placed a worm in the glass of water and it floated about merrily. He then put the second worm in the glass of whisky and after wriggling for a few seconds it died.

“What does this tell you?” he asked.

A member of the congregation replied, “If you have worms drink whisky”.

*******

A priest is buying a parrot. "Are you sure it doesn't scream, yell, or swear?" asked the priest.

"Oh absolutely. It's a religious parrot," the storekeeper assures him.

"Do you see those strings on his legs? When you pull the right one, he says "Halleluiah !!!" and when you pull on the left he shouts "Amen Amen."

"Wonderful!" says the priest, "but what happens if you pull both strings?"

"I fall off my perch, you stupid fool!" screeched the parrot.

*******

A very rich woman in hospital in intensive care dies for a few seconds. She sees herself leave her body in a near death experience and meets God in Heaven. “Is that it?” she asks Him, “Am I dead?”

“No,” says God, “you will live for many more years yet!”

She recovers in hospital and is well again. She is so cheerful that she decides to improve herself. She gets plastic surgery done on her face and other parts of her body, gets her hair re-styled and dyed a different colour, gets a new set of stylish clothes and looks terrific once again.

A few days later she is hit by a bus and killed instantly.

When she meets God she complains, “I thought you said I’ll live for many years yet!”

He replies, “Sorry, I didn’t recognize you after the make-over!”

*******

And now for the serious bit. How often do we spend time worrying about this and that and getting anxious over nothing? Anxiety can come from nowhere. A quick thought is planted in our minds and it grows and grows as we ponder what may happen and whether we will be able to cope. We worry about ourselves, our loved ones, the future, our finances, the state of the world, and the price of fish even.

And where is God in all this? He is pushed to the side-lines, because the more we worry the more we distance ourselves from Him. Somehow He seems irrelevant to our worries. How do you think He feels about this? Being ignored ... once again ... whilst we focus on our problems and how to solve them. Or how to let them overwhelm us into oblivion.

Let's consider this: “Every test that you have experienced is the kind that normally comes to people. But God keeps His promise, and He will not allow you to be tested beyond your power to remain firm; at the time you are put to the test, He will give you the strength to endure it, and so provide you with a way out”. (1 Corinthians Chapter 10 Verse 13).

The way I see it, (and I may be wrong),  God is not in the business of losing His followers. He knows you love Him and try your best to live according to His teachings. He knows you are weak. We all are. He knows we often let anxiety take over our lives. He understands.

When this happens, when anxiety overwhelms us, let us turn to God in prayer. In confidence. In humility. In faith and in full trust. And love.

He will not allow us to be pushed beyond our endurance.

We Trust In God

 

It was Friday afternoon. Father Ignatius was at the local Catholic school taking on the Religion class as usual. He always allowed a few minutes at the end for the students to ask any questions which he promised to answer honestly. There was no hiding from them. They were astute enough to know when he was not being straight.

The first question was aimed directly and with force, "how do you trust God?"

"Do you mean me, personally," he asked, cleaning his spectacles to gain thinking time, "or do you mean anyone in general?"

"Both," said the teenager, "you always appear calm and full of faith, Father ... how do you do it? How can you be so sure that things will be OK? How can we or anyone else be so sure? To have faith like Jesus said!"

"Yeh ..." joined in another young man, "it was easy for Him. He was Jesus. We are not. We can't have His faith can we?"

A young girl raised her hand and asked, "are you never afraid Father? Have you never wondered that things may turn out not as you want? It's one thing to say you trust in God; but trust Him to do what? What if things don't turn out as you wished?"

He put on his spectacles and motioned gently for some quiet.

"So many good questions," he said quietly, "I don't even know where to start. But I'm sure you'll remind me if I miss out your question!"

They laughed.

"The first question asked by Helen was how do I personally trust God," he said, "there is no magic way to trust God. In my case, I base my trust through personal experience. I have lived much longer than all of you and when I look back, there have been many difficult and sad situations in my life. At the time, I was worried, concerned, afraid even. But when I look back I realise that over all they turned out all right. They may not have turned out exactly as I wanted but generally they worked out well in the end. 

"Looking back, I now realise that God was with me at the time. So, over the years, I have learnt to trust Him. Trust is something you build up gradually. When you first meet someone new you are unsure of them. You chat, you get to know them, they get to know you, and gradually you build up a friendship and you build up trust!"

"Is that how it is with you and God?" asked Peter.

"In a manner of speaking, yes it is," answered the priest, "I have experienced many difficult situations in life. I guess at the time I panicked. Why me? I asked myself. I am a good person. I love God. I am a priest for Heavens sake; why is this happening to me?"

They laughed again. He had the knack of using humour to teach a lesson they'd remember.  

"But in general, all worked out well in the end," he continued, "God was there to protect me. And that has built more trust in Him. So now, when things do go wrong, I try to remember again events in the past and I try to trust Him again. It is not always easy, especially if the situation is really dire, but you have to trust God as best you can! But based on past experiences when God helped me I have learnt to trust Him more and more every day. Now, what was the other question?"

"Have you ever been afraid?" asked June, "that things would not go well ..."

"Yes, often ..." said Father Ignatius gently, "fear is a natural emotion. It just happens. Fear is good, because it teaches us to be careful, not to do dangerous things, not to be reckless. As we grow, we learn to control our fears. We learn to identify which are genuine fears and which are unwarranted fears based on our imagination perhaps, our tiredness, wrong information or understandings and so on. 

"But sometimes in life fear just happens especially in a dangerous situation. Let me explain. Once, years ago, I was visiting an elderly parishioner who was very unwell and not expected to live beyond the night. She lived in the Northern part of town which, as you know, is not that nice a place. It was late at night, it was raining and very dark. On my way to the car as I left her home a mugger pointed a knife at me."

He paused to judge their reaction.

"Yes ... I was afraid ..." he said, "I was not so much afraid of dying ... but I was more afraid as to how much it would hurt if he stabbed me!"

"Gosh ..." said one of the young teenagers, whilst the others remained silent.

"What other questions were there?" he asked to ease the tension. They remained silent. 

 "Look ..." he said, "life is not always easy. For some of us it is sometimes difficult. I hope you will not have many difficulties as you grow up. But you need to learn, now that you're young, to trust God every day. See Him as a friend, a caring Father, Someone who loves you. Jesus said to His disciples ... and to us ... 'I call you friend!' ... look it up in John Chapter 15 Verse 15 ...

"As a friend ... Jesus ... and God our Father, care for us. They will not see us perish and be lost to Him. Yes ... we will have difficult times; but God will always be there by our side. Protecting us. Jesus is but a prayer away. All we need do is call His name. 

"Trust God now ... when life is good and perhaps you're generally doing well in life. And that trust will grow when things get harder!"

The worms of worry.

It happens to all of us I suppose.

You’re going through life quite happy with your lot, not a care in the world, perhaps even looking forward to something nice you had planned for yourself, or some event or other which would have cheered you up and then … suddenly … all change …

You see the news on TV and something depressing is announced in that robotic monotone voice which those newscasters are born with … or trained to perfection.

It could be something about the economy … or the rate of inflation … or something terrible that’s happened somewhere or other in the world … whatever it is – it’s bad news.

You could open a newspaper or switch on the radio … and it’s bad news.

You receive a letter or phone a friend … and it’s bad news.

Suddenly … your happiness and short-lived cheerfulness is wiped away and the worms of worry start burrowing in your brain.

Worry … worry … worry … what if this happened to me … what if I couldn’t cope any longer … what if … what if … what if … worry … worry … worry.

Jesus said to his disciples, “And so I tell you not to worry about the food you need to stay alive or about the clothes you need for your body. Life is much more important than food, and the body much more important than clothes. Look at the crows: they don’t sow seeds or gather the harvest; they don’t have store rooms or barns; God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! Can any of you live a bit longer by worrying about it?” Luke 12: 22-25