NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

February 2

Scripture focus: God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. He will surely do even more for you! Why do you have such little faith? Don't worry and ask yourselves, "Will we have anything to eat? Will we have anything to drink? Will we have any clothes to wear?" Only people who don't know God are always worrying about such things. Your Father in heaven knows that you need all of these. But more than anything else, put God's work first and do what he wants. Then the other things will be yours as well. Don't worry about tomorrow. It will take care of itself. You have enough to worry about today. Matthew 6:30-34 Contemporary English Version (CEV)

I am convinced that I worry about the wrong things. I belong to a fitness center that I use six days a week. A creature of habit, I have a particular treadmill that suits me. I’m already fretting about all those New Year’s resolutions and the people that will invade my club and mess up my routine. By mid-March, experience has taught me that the interlopers will give up and return to their couches. But the next few weeks will annoy me. I know this is stupid, small and petty behavior. I realize that I have no proprietary right to the one treadmill that doesn’t have a big air vent blowing down on it. It is incongruent for someone who knows God to worry about such things. But I believe, AND I fret. I’ve also learned a couple of hard lessons.

(1) If I’m fretting, I’m suffering unproductively; it is impossible for me to effectively participate in the solution when I’m in worry mode. Under stress, our brain lights up in all the wrong places to think clearly and creatively. (However, if you need to run from a bear chasing you, fret away! Your mid-brain and those giant shots of adrenalin shooting through your limbs will provide the fuel you need to run faster than at least one other person also fleeing from Smokey.)

(2) Worry causes me to focus on the minute details, and I fail to take into account a bigger picture. Have you ever noticed that the things we worry about rarely happen, but we’re sometimes blindsided by a problem that we never anticipated? I have a friend who is obsessed with her abs, and she is working out like an Olympic hopeful . Meanwhile, her husband is cheating on her and her kids are running amok. But she’s in that gym seven days a week for hours on end. She tells me that she doesn’t have time to book an appointment with a therapist – his schedule doesn’t mesh with her workout regime. I admire her abs. But I’m not sure how comforting they’re going to be when the consequences of such misplaced concern come home to roost.

Finally, I’ve learned this frustrating fact. No matter how much I know about the deleterious effects of worry on my body, mind and spirit – I still find myself becoming anxious about all sorts of large and small matters. Beating myself up about my worrisome ways doesn’t change my bad habit. I’ve begun the practice of asking God to protect me from myself. I’m asking him to make me conscious of my anxiety, and as soon as I am aware of my state of mind, I acknowledge to him, myself and my accountability partner my unmanageable and worry-dependent ways. I have ceased to believe that I have it within myself to change. But I am trusting God to protect me from my vulnerability to worry and the shame that this bad believing behavior triggers within me. Whether or not I can eliminate worry from my own life, God is standing with me. I am trusting that he is at work, as I work to believe. Lord, help us in our unbelief!

Has [God] said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? Numbers 23:19

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