Today, as I was completing my bible study, the author spoke about her battle with cancer. Every part of me seized up and I wanted to throw the book down. The "C" word. I worry about it all the time and every new bump, cough, pain I automatically go to the C place. However, I surmised that throwing away the entire study based on her testimony of cancer was a bit outlandish and I decided to forge through.
As I read on in spite of my skin crawling from hearing her struggles, I was asked to turn to a book in the Bible and out fell a notecard with numbers and dates written on it. It was a tally of costs to a weekend that I'd rather forget and why it was in my Bible I will never know. This reminder of the weekend could have set me off for the rest of the day. I could have been bound by bitterness and anger and missed out. But, God loves to prepare us for moments like this and throughout this week I have been hearing messages on focusing on God and not on the clatter and clamber of the world. So, through tears, I asked God to take the hurt that came with the card, prayed for the people that caused that weekend to be awful (through gritted teeth and tears) and placed the card out of sight and out of mind.
What does this have to do with worry? Well, my obsession with being fearful of getting sick takes my attention away from things that truly need fighting. My battle right now (and hopefully never) is not with cancer, its with bitterness and anger. Satan's great tool is distraction. He loves to get me in a grip of fear that involves things that I do not even struggle with so that I miss out on what I truly need to give to God and deal with. I hate to say it, but Satan is pretty good at what he does.
But God is better at what He does.
Worry takes us away from the present. It takes us away from the battles we ARE fighting because we are thinking of the ones we MAY NEVER fight. This gives Satan a chance to sneak in a sucker punch. Reading about cancer sent my mind into a tizzy and then when I was actually reading something I struggled with on that notecard, my spirit was already somewhat defeated.
But, God gloriously and beautifully steps in during those moments if we let Him.
Life would be more enjoyable if I stuck to the battles at hand. I have heard Matthew 6:34 so many times I could probably quote it....or at least paraphrase it: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own," but now it makes sense. Jesus is trying to tell us that you can't fight the battle today if you are worried about the one tomorrow. Sometimes my mind is blown by how much Jesus knows what he is talking about and how his truths are so rational and matter-of-fact.
So, cancer/death/plagues/terrorist attacks/other unknown tragedies may or may not be in my future, but they are currently not in my present. Therefore, I am COMMANDED by God to not focus on them. God has a purpose and a focus for me and for reasons that I can't see. He wants me to work through struggles and hardships that afflict me now so that I can be strong for whatever is to come. If I skip the present, then I may be setting myself up for self-fulfilling fear prophecies in the future. I could be missing out on what God is trying to strengthen inside of me that will help me fight my biggest fears later on.
Worry is useless. Now to pray this Truth sinks deep in my spirit.
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