Don't Worry

"Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life." Philippians 4:6-7 (The Message)


       Worrying really does nothing beneficial for us. In fact, Mark Twain once said, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened." Worry is just that. It's the negative expectation of an outcome that has yet to occur. Why do we do that to ourselves? 


         Jesus as part of His greatest sermon addressed the issue of worry by saying, “I tell you this: Do not worry about your life. Do not worry about what you are going to eat and drink. Do not worry about what you are going to wear. Is not life more important than food? Is not the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds in the sky. They do not plant seeds. They do not gather grain. They do not put grain into a building to keep. Yet your Father in heaven feeds them! Are you not more important than the birds?" Matthew 6:25-26 (NLV) 
    
          Jesus knew that worry and fear are the greatest adversaries of faith and hope. He knew that in order to give increase to faith and hope He needed to show people practical examples of things that don't worry, and How God cares for even the most finite things. Stop and think for a moment of the birds of the air and the flowers of the fields, and those things can't praise Him like we could, so how could He not care for us in greater measure? It's as simplistic as that. Stop your worrying, it leads to nothing productive, but trusting in God does.