“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace  of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:4-7

Our verses for today are familiar ones, but like many verses, need to be revisited quite often because worry often gives small things a big shadow and that big shadow can blot out today’s sunshine.  Worry is faith in reverse.  Instead of freeing us, it imprisons us, and most often about things that might not even be real.

There was a woman who constantly worried about burglars and never got a night’s sleep anticipating a nightly break-in.  Finally, after her husband had gone downstairs night after night to investigate normal sounds and invisible burglars, he actually came upon a man who had sneaked his way into the house.  “Well, hello there,” the husband exclaimed, “I am pleased to meet you.  Would you mind coming upstairs to meet my wife.  She has been waiting ten years to meet you.”  That is often what worry is all about.  Anticipating what may not happen at the expense at what does.

Worry often extracts interest on trouble before it comes due.  Like someone wise once said, “I’ve had a lot of trouble, most of which never happened!”  God calls us to turn over our cares to Him, but that is easier read than done.  God knows that we will still worry because we are fretters by nature.  Our sin nature has bred worry into us because faith is intentional while anxiety is natural.   Worry is a useless pursuit because it never gets us closer to a goal and on the contrary it slows our progress.

When I used to coach I told the players to learn their assignments so well that they did not have to worry about what they were going to do (that would just slow them down),  and consequently, they could just go out and do.  That is what we should strive to do- turn our worries over to God so that we can just do. David tells us, “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul.” (Ps 94:19) If we don’t nip our worries in the bud, they will flourish into a weedy garden that will take all our time to work. We will spend more time on worry than worship and more time being anxious than active.

In these verses, God gives us several commands:  Always rejoice.  Be reasonable.  Never worry.  Come to God with your requests about everything.  These are not empty words like we so often hear from friends in times of need.  “Hang in there,” and “Tomorrow will be a better day,” and “Just put it out of your mind,” are all well-intentioned, but powerless statements.  They give the end without the means.  It is almost like giving someone the infamous Bermuda Triangle of directions, “You can’t miss it.”

How to “hang in there” is just as important as how to “get there.”  The how-to-dos are more important than the what-to-dos.

So God tells us how to negate the worries that assail us.  If we pray, if we rejoice, if we turn our requests over to Him, and if we are thankful, it will be hard to remain anxious.  Somewhere in that process, the worry will begin to melt.  Most of what we worry about is not worth the time investment anyway.

There was a man who decided to make a Worry Wednesday.  He would set aside his worries until Wednesday and worry about them then.  The funny thing was that by the time Wednesday rolled around, most of the worries he had were not worries any longer.

One thing we can do to cut back on worry is to be prepared.  When I give a speech, I don’t worry if I have truly taken the time to prepare (only the people I am speaking to are worried).  It is the same for us in life.  Paul says, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”  (1 Corinthians 16:13) If we are in the Word, think upon God, and surround ourselves with godly influences, we will be prepared to handle what others might just worry about.  With preparation we will set aside much of what the world worries about.

We need to eliminate those things that will never happen.  There is an old Scottish saying “What may be, may not be.”  We have a tendency to worry about what might be even though it will, under all measurements, probably never be.  When ebola hit the US, some people spent so much time worrying about the disease, that it probably took more time off their lives than ebola ever could.  The present Covid Crisis is presenting the same challenge to thousands who might be “worrying themselves to death.”  That kind of worry is like being afraid to eat food because it might have chemicals in it and then starving to death.  It is said that 40% of what we worry about has no real chance of ever touching us.  Let’s eliminate those first.  We never want to worry too much about things over which we have no control at the expense of things we can control.

The next worry we should get rid of is things that have already past. In coaching I always said that the only important play is the next one.  If we allow the failure on the past play to affect our performance on the next we have given it more power than it deserves.  Here is the scenerio: a pitcher makes a good pitch and we swing, miss, and look silly in the process.  If we don’t shake that off and instead let that pitch affect our next swing, we have given the pitcher credit for what he has not earned.  The previous one pitch controlled us twice.  That should never be.  If we spend time in our daily lives worrying about the past, it will affect our present. We should not give more power to what is gone than what is yet to come.  I am retired now and it seems I am paying taxes on the same money I have already paid taxes on a couple of times before.  When it comes to worry, we should not spend energy on worries that we have already paid on before.

Finally, eliminate those worries about untrue criticism that comes from others.  If it is true criticism, listen to it, make changes, no worries.  If it untrue, ignore it, no worries. Not everything that people bring to our attention is worth keeping there. Some of the things that people criticize us for cannot be changed anyway.  If I worry about people who don’t like how short I am, that is a waste of time.  My last growth spurt was fifty years ago.  I am not holding my breath.  Some criticism is that foolish.

So, once we have eliminated those things that won’t happen, have already happened, or don’t matter if they happened, what do we do with the approximately 8% that is left.  Those are the legitimate worries that we need to take to God as He has instructed and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will become ours.

Admittedly, it is easier to complain than rejoice, be bitter rather than thankful, and panic than pray, but those are useless endeavors.  In Africa there are people who rely on witch doctors rather than real doctors and we think that is foolish.  But we are doing the same thing if we think complaining, bitterness, and panic are more effective than rejoicing, thankfulness, and prayer.  I had a friend once that complained about always having peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  I told him that he should have his wife fix something different, but he told me he fixes his own lunches.  Doesn’t make sense to complain about that which we have control over any more than if makes sense to worry about things we shouldn’t.

It is so wonderful that the promises in our verses today are being delivered by a great God.  God welcomes us to bring our worries to Him.  I think it is our responsibility, however, to run them through a strainer first.  We can take every single worry to Him, but some should not be worries in the first place.  Our vice principal was talking to me years ago about how some teachers send him students for not bringing a pencil to class or doodling during a lecture.  Those are not heavy-duty discipline issues.  Those should be handled by the teacher.  Well, God expects us to look at our worries with discernment and take care of some of those before we send them to the office.

A while back I gave a lecture on router use in my shop class.  I said if the machine misbehaves, the first thing they need to do is turn it off.  A student ask me, “Shouldn’t we ask you first?” and I told him that I would just tell him to turn it off, so he can eliminate the middleman and do what I would tell him to do anyway.  If I am worried about my weight, God will probably tell me to exercise and eat right.  I can go right to those things without worry.  If I am worried about the way people see me, maybe I should treat people the way God’s Word instructs.  That might take care of a lot of worry.

Christian author John Blanchard has said it well, “So he supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace has given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly.”

God said it even better, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.  Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”    (John 14:27)