#39 – Worry – Thoughts to Think About!
Welcome to Act Like Men – Men’s Leadership Podcast Notes. You are the
reason we exist. Both Dale and I trust there is an inspirational truth today
that will impact your life.
Worry is often the product that comes when we are distracted and fail to
distinguish the incidental from the essential or the urgent from the important
in our life. When we do that, we often miss the blessings God has for us. At
the bottom line, God intends our relationship with Him to be more important
than the task or event about which we are worrying.
We all have unknowns in our life when we are unsure about what is coming
next. We often want to fill in the blanks to complete a story that we are
unsure about. The problem is that as humans we often fill in the blanks based
on our fears, doubts, or uncertainties. In those moments, Jim reminds us to
hold fast to God’s Word and place our complete trust in Him.
What can we do? What does the Bible – our book of authority have to say.
Jesus in His sermon on the mount said this in Matthew 6:34, “do not worry
about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough
trouble of its own.” Eugene Peterson paraphrased that verse well saying “Give
your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up
about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with
whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
What are some steps to think thru this issue of worry that all of us face? The
chapter on Worry in the book, Overcoming Barriers Men Face, the author, and
founder of this great ministry gives us Six thoughts to consider:
1. Trust in God’s plan for your life and not your own. Our creator has a
plan in mind for us. Let us seek it out and trust the one who gave it to us.
2. Satan loves to attack when we are weak, frustrated, tired or become
over-sensitive to personal attacks, human events, and horrific disasters.
So follow the example of Jesus and take time to replenish your body,
soul, and mind. A weakened body and a frazzled mind are not a good
position to effectively deal with worry.
3. Deliberately distract yourself from the tensions, struggles, and worries
that begin to cast a dark cloud over you. Find things to do that can at
least temporarily distract you from your worries, so you are not
consumed by them.
4. Prepare and arm yourself with God’s Word and practical decision-
making skills. Too many of us try to resolve our worries with human
wisdom alone. The Word of God has clear direction for all of the
challenges in which we find ourselves and needing to overcome our
worry.
5. Since worry is useless, replace worry with praising God for what He has
done for you. Worry does not resolve any of our challenges. Worry
actually exacerbates our challenge since we have added worry to the
mix. Replace the worry with a healthy dose of praising God for His
goodness and love to us, no matter what we are facing.
6. Journaling is a good way to record the lesson you learn from God’s
answers and solutions to your worries and concerns. Journalling can
release the tension that you are feeling about the difficulty or trouble
you may be facing.
In every case with worry we need to find someplace to place it. Whether it is
something imminently real you are dealing with or if it is something you are
worrying about that may or may not happen, worry can be debilitating if not
managed properly. Keep in mind as you are deciding how deal with your
worry: God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.
Ephesians 3:20
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