WORRY DENIES THE
FATHER’S CARE
Jesus gives us three key reasons why we don’t have to worry or be fearful.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you
will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more
than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they
do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not much more valuable than they? (Matthew 6:25-26)
The King James Version uses
“thought” to translate the Greek, but the context makes it clear that Jesus was
discussing anxious thought or worry.
In New Testament times, the
word “worry” meant having a fretful devotion to something. More
than a mild concern, worry refers to a compelling
anxiety, a concern that overwhelms us and disrupts our lives.
When we learn to trust Jesus
to meet our daily needs, we conquer the pattern of worrying. When we learn to
stop worrying about the basics of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter,
we’ll conquer the other fears that we face.
Where did the tendency to worry originate?
Humans come into this world
with basic needs. If those needs are met appropriately, people will grow and
thrive as their Creator intended. Man’s Creator is God, and God had a plan from
the beginning to meet people’s needs.
God made humanity for His
own good pleasure—to enjoy relationship with him. God also made men and women
“in need.” This need was intentional, for God wanted people to have a need, or
desire for Him, as He did for them.
People need each
other—that’s what relationship is. God couldn’t have a personal relationship
with the people He created, if they had no need of relationship with Him in
return.
God is infinitely creative
and diverse, and in that diversity He sought the give and take that
relationship with people requires. What
does that mean for God? He created us with the capacity to think, reason,
create, contemplate, and work as He does. We have the ability to express
emotion and to love Him in return for loving us first. This is the heart of
relationship.
People need God the way a
newborn needs its mother. If a newborn’s needs are not met, it will fail to
thrive and may even die.
Although adults have the
capability to care for themselves within limits, they don’t have the ability to
produce without God first providing the raw materials. We can grow our own
food, but we can’t create the seed. God
made the first seed and it’s through His creative hand that we are able to
produce food from these seeds.
We weren’t around when God
made the sun, water, and soil that provides for the plant’s nourishment. So
even in the smallest of details, God did His part first, by supplying what we
would need to sustain life. This is the most fundamental way in which God meets
people’s need.
God provided the elements
needed to make our clothing, the seedlings for trees to grow that provide us
with shelter and fire for warmth. We don’t have the ability to make the raw
materials needed for our very survival, although we have the ability to take
what God has supplied and use it for our good.
Many people are ungrateful
to God because they don’t consider how He meets our most basic needs for food,
clothing, and shelter. Human life is short and our life is more than getting our
basic needs met. We must ask ourselves how we came into existence and for what
reason. God reveals Himself in our everyday lives as we contemplate our being.
When our minds and hearts
are closed to God, we don’t grasp the concept of a personal God who delights in
having an intimate relationship with us. We worry because we subconsciously
know that we don’t have the ability to create everything we need to sustain
life, and this makes us feel vulnerable and helpless. Our neediness causes us
to worry and be anxious.
When we believe we won’t get
our physical and emotional needs met, we worry. If worry continues long enough,
it turns into anxiety and panic attacks. Eventually emotional disturbances such
as depression, addictions, strongholds, and ultimately psychosis may emerge.
This is why Jesus taught so
frequently on the topic of worry and why He continually stressed “fear not.”
God has gifted us with our very own internal awareness of Him–(through our conscience
and through His creation). He tells us not to worry about our basic human needs
because for Him—they’re the “givens.” It should be a “given” that fathers take
care of their children. (I know that not all earthly fathers properly take care
for their offspring, but that was not God’s original intent for people. This
disorder came as a result of being separated from the Father and because people
choose to go against His “perfect” will for their lives.)
Our needs make up what we
call our “human givens.” God meets our needs, or our givens, when we
acknowledge Him and the place He desires to have in our life. He becomes our
Heavenly Father and meets our most basic needs when we ask His Son, Jesus, to
come into our heart and change us.
God’s Word tells us that our
basic need of food, clothing, and shelter are so fundamental, in fact, that if
we would get to know our Heavenly Father we wouldn’t spend any time worrying
about these things. In other words, this concept is so elementary to the
Christian faith, that there’s no need to worry about them.
When people understand, and then choose to
believe that their Heavenly Father will take good care of them, they won’t
become insecure, anxious, depressed, or inclined towards escapism through
addiction. God is a good God who loves His children unconditionally and He
delights in caring for them. Beyond basic needs though, God wants us to know
that He created us for so much more. He created us for spiritual intimacy,
companionship, and for significance.Except taken from my newest book "DON'T BE A WORRY WART - Accept God's Peace and Change Your Life." Find it at Amazon/Kindle. Follow my link: http://www.amazon.com/Lilliet-Garrison/e/B004H28MCU.
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