Habitual Destructive Routine Halted for the Moment

Worrying is one of my most habitual routines.  I can truly worry about anything and everything and I hate it.  I want to just stop it and be free of fear so badly.  Yet, instead of running to quiet and the Bible, I most often run to research to figure it out, social media to check out, or cleaning or tasks to make me feel accomplished. 


Today, I ran to the Word, and while it did not fix me, it left me 100% renewed.  It fed my hungry soul.  I devoured the verses and let truth penetrate to the deepest places.  I was desperate.  I read verses over and over and begged God to let them change me, to rid me of fear, and to forgive me for going everywhere but Him to find rest.  You see when I have a hurried heart, I hurt those in my path through words or my absence.   While I am present in body, I am severely checked out.  Hurt people truly do hurt people.  


As a mom and wife, I find myself in one of two familiar places: utter dependence where I desperately seek Him out or utter self reliance where I think I can handle things due to my knowledge, experience, etc.  The first of which breeds prayer because I rest in the providence and sovereignty of God; the second of which breeds a disengaged anxious woman because I live as if it is all up to me.
 
Our world is a fearful place.  Media and culture promote fear.  Instead of stories of hope and love, our media is drawn time and time again to stories of tragedy, violence, and the brokenness of our world.   While tragedy abounds, we so often forget to focus on truth.  Jesus is making all things new; He is able to bring good out of the worst bad.  He is redeeming this broken lost world.   One day He will wipe away every tear.   He alone is the answer to our problems.  Programs, more money, morals, the 'right' president....none of this will fix our broken world.  Job 12:22 says, "He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them." America is great not because of our mighty army or the way we give out money we do not have like we are God or our intelligence or any other reason.  America is a powerful nation currently only because God sustains it and established it. 


Today I originally chose to focus on my most favorite passage- Psalm 139.  I have loved this passage since high school when I first discovered it.  I find so much comfort in the fact that I am fully known by my creator.  I love that he knows my thoughts before I think them and that He knows all my ways.  He fully knows me and understands me...even I cannot say that about myself.  I struggle to understand and sort my many desires and moods!  Not only does he know me but He was so intimately involved in my making....it says He knit me together in my mother's womb...that is no passive role, y'all!  The verse that caused me to pause and camp out and read aloud over and over again was Psalm 139:16 which reads "all the days were ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  I then went to Luke 12:29 &30 which reads "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?"  Lastly on this topic, I went to Acts 17: 26  where it says "and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." As we are currently in season of much change, I cannot deny the sovereignty and predestination of all the events of my life past, present, and future. 


I then went on to focus on what the bible has to say about suffering and camped out in John 9 where Jesus' disciples question Jesus about the reason a man was born blind.  "...Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed."  Here the Jews just like Job's friends, and many of us- myself included, held a terribly wrong view about the cause of suffering.  They believed that this specific suffering was solely because of a specific sin.  Jesus disbanded these theories here saying it was for the glory of God.  Some of our sufferings, like those of Job and this man, are meant to display the glory of God either through our patient endurance or through a spectacular healing.


Jesus's dismissal here does not negate that in other situations, there may be other causes of suffering. Other trials in our lives may be ordained by God as punishments for a specific sin such as in the life of David after he committed adultery and murder.  There is also original sin. As a result of original sin all of us experience suffering which is a direct result of the fall. 


Thanks to my husband taking the kids to the park, I am able to write and be refreshed.  I am able to document truths that I need to chew on constantly.  While truth frees and uplifts, it must be a continual chewing.  While God is fully capable of taking away my worry forever, most likely he will allow me to struggle as it is what keeps me needing Him.