Sunday, October 07, 2007

Four Steps to Overcoming Worry (Overcoming Worry, Part 2)

[This message, the second part of the last series I'm presenting at Friendship Lutheran Church, Amelia, Ohio, was shared this morning during worship. On November 1, I'll begin my work as the pastor of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, Logan, Ohio.]

Psalm 104:24-35
Two weeks ago, we began this series on Overcoming Worry by saying that worry is like the static we hear on low-tech radios like the ones in my car. When I drive further away from transmitting radio stations, static takes over and I can’t hear them any more. Worry can do something similar, blocking out the assurance, love, and power for living that God wants to give all people through Jesus Christ. The number one foundational method for overcoming worry is to place our whole lives in the hands of the God we know through Jesus Christ.

But how do we do that? It isn’t easy.

Many times in my life I’ve told God, “Lord, I place this problem in Your hands. Your will be done.” But too often, usually within seconds, I find myself worrying about the very thing I just handed to God!

How can we let God take our worries from our shoulders and instead of taking them back, emerge with a positive plan of action for our lives? Our Bible lesson, taken from Psalm 104, gives us a good program, I think.

You should know though, that to take these steps for eradicating worry from your life, you’ll have to invest the most precious commodity you possess. Time. To overcome worry, we have to spend time with God.

I know how hard it is to set aside time for God. These past few weeks, as you can imagine, life in the Daniels household has been in overdrive. It’s been tempting to let my regular times with God slide. I’ve told myself more than once, “I don’t have the time today.”

But then, I remember listening to a radio personality interview a cardiologist. The cardiologist discussed how important it is to have a regular exercise regimen in order to fend off heart problems. The interviewer, who had suffered a heart attack a few months before, cut the doctor off to say, “I used to say that I just didn’t have the time to exercise. But after you’ve had a heart attack and find yourself flat on your back in a hospital bed, hooked to countless tubes and wires, you come to realize that you probably had the time for exercise all along and you resolve that if you ever get out of the hospital alive, you will exercise.”

The New Testament tells Christians, “Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

To see an end to our worrying, we need to train ourselves in godliness by spending time with God. Psalm 104 gives us one plan for doing that.

Our passage begins with the psalmist marveling at the world God creates and renews. That's step one. Read that part of the lesson with me: “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, creeping things innumerable are there, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan that you formed to sport in it.”

You’ve heard me before tell the story of the man who stood on a pier watching an ocean liner dock. A guy next to him said, “You know, nobody made that ocean liner.” “What did you say?” the first man asked incredulously. “Nobody made it. One day all the sheet metal, all the nuts and bolts, the engine, the steering mechanism, the rooms, the pools, the exercise facilities, everything just showed up on shore for Carnival Cruise Lines to use.”

Obviously, that man was wrong. Irrespective of the mechanism the creator uses to create, anything created requires a creator. And that includes this amazing uinverse!

Banishing worry from our lives can begin for us when we contemplate, as the psalmist did, that we belong to the same great God Who created the universe in which we live. The crucified and risen Jesus Christ, God reaching down to us in humility and love to make it possible for us to live with God forever, assures us of that! We belong to God.

Now, read the next section of the psalm with me: “These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.”

In our quiet times with God, the second thing we need to do is remember that God is still active in this world and still stoops to hear our prayers.

Millions of people have found this truth to be a great banisher of worry. Sir William Osler, father of modern medical science, once said that one way he overcame worry in his life was to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” In saying that prayer, taught by Jesus, Osler expressed faith that God would provide his needs that day, freeing him to focus on the tasks of the day, rather than stewing about them.

Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx and also a Christian, has a plaque in his office that says simply, “Wait to worry.” Good advice. After all, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow, just ask the God Who cares for us to provide our needs today. Jesus also tells us, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

None of this means that God is a genie who will give us all we want. But it does mean that God is our compassionate maker, prepared to give us what we need and prepared to use those who are tuned into Him to be the conduits for His blessings to reach others. Someone may ask, "If that's true, then what about the starving people of the world?" The starving and others who suffer want of other sorts in our world neither disprove God's existence or His compassion. The existence of starving millions only prove that the haves aren't concerned enough to find ways to share what God has given to them with the have-nots. God is still active and still hears our prayers. He's still in the business of providing daily bread. To banish worry from our lives, we need to remember that.

In verse 33, the psalmist says, “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.” This is the third thing the psalm reminds us to remember in our battle to overcome worry.

A national magazine once ran a profile of a young African-American growing up in inner-city Baltimore. Throughout his growing-up years, he swam against the stream. While he studied hard and got good grades, his classmates derided him for wasting his time and pressured him to join the gang, do dope, and enjoy some good times before dying young. But that young man was fortunate: He had a mother who worked two jobs, loved him and disciplined him, and pushed him to do well in school.

But she gave him something even more important than that. She prayed with him, read Scriptures with him, discussed the goodness of God with him, took him to worship and to Sunday School, and expected him to attend the Wednesday night services even when she was working. She wanted her son to know that if he remained connected to the God we meet in Jesus Christ, his life didn’t have to be the hopeless cesspool his friends thought it was. Time and again, that young man was tempted to chuck all the hard work, including the work involved in resisting temptation and remaining pure for God.

I'll never forget the climactic vignette in that article. The writer wondered, with everything seeming to work against him and the temptation to give up constantly dogging him, how did he maintain his focus? How did he remain tenacious in the pursuit of his dreams? How did he hold onto hope?

On a Wednesday night, the writer followed him to the Wednesday night prayer and worship service. He saw the young man stand with other members of the Church as they sang and prayed their praises to God and with hearty Amen's shouted their affirmations of the Pastor's message of hope from Christ!

In his times of temptation, that the young man took his gaze off of himself and his own circumstances. He turned instead, to look on God and to praise Him. When he lifted his praises to God, God lifted him up.

Here’s what I’ve learned in my own life. (Actually, it's what I'm learning in my life because I often wonder whether I'll have truly, definitively learned it before I die.) When my focus is on elevating myself, life pulls me down. I worry. I stew. I get nowhere fast. But when I shift my focus onto God, God lifts me up. He gives me the power to live and hope and thrive. To overcome worry, we need to take the time to praise God every single day.

The third step the psalm gives to us for overcoming worry is to spend time praising God!

Finally, the psalmist writes, “May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the Lord.” Meditation isn't just for the adherents of religious systems.

The Bible says that believers in the God we know through Jesus Christ are supposed to be into meditation.

Pastor Robert Schuller says that a great way to picture Christian meditation is to imagine yourself riding in the backseat of an open convertible on a clear sunny day.

When Christians meditate, they turn their lives toward heaven. They let Jesus the Son shine on them. They let the Holy Spirit blow the breath of God into them.

In another psalm, Psalm 46, which inspired the lyrics of Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God, we’re told, “Be still and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth!”

In the first three steps I’ve discussed this morning, we tune into God. In the fourth step, meditation, we clear away the static and listen to God’s instructions.

We do that first, by reading a bit of Scripture and then by listening, not for an audible voice, but for that still small of voice of God telling us that in spite of all our worries, God is still there and still will give us strength. We let God show us how to apply His Word to our daily challenges and opportunities.

Years ago, as I was preparing a message on this very topic of worry, I was praying and decided to take a few moments to be still before God. I did something very hard for me: I shut up! I sensed God almost laughing at me. Here I was telling people to stop worrying and yet I spent hours each day worrying. I realized again that while my worries were too big for me, nothing is to hard or too big for God to handle. I felt as though God was inviting me again to hand my worries over to Him and get on with my life. As profound as that experience was though, if I don’t spend time with God each day, I start to forget how good God is and can only seem to remember how big my problems are. It’s so easy to fall back into the bad habit of worrying instead of living. Don’t let that happen to you!

This week, invest your time to let God erase worry’s power over your life:
  • Remember that a powerful God made you and that through Jesus Christ, you belong to Him.
  • Remember that God is still active in your world and will stoop to answer your prayers.
  • Remember to praise God, focusing attention on Him and in the process, lifting yourself up too.
  • Remember to meditate on God’s Word; God will assure you of your value and surely show you “a peace that passes all understanding.”
Next week: Four affirmations and four action steps for overcoming worry, all taken from another psalm, Psalm 145.

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