God is our help in trouble; if you worry, you are on your own.
- Don’t lie awake at nights worrying about how to succeed; just stay awake days.
- Worrying doesn’t give you anything but wrinkles; something else to worry about.
- A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.
- When we worry, we believe more in our problems than in God’s promises.
- The hardest wart to remove is the worry wart.
- Life lived in worry invites death in a hurry.
Years ago, in the pioneer days of aviation, a pilot was making a flight around the world. After he had been gone for two hours from his last landing field, he heard a noise in his plane, it was a rat. For all he knew the rat could be gnawing through a vital cable or control of the plane. He didn’t know what to do.
Then he remembered that the rat is a rodent. It is not made for the heights; Therefore the pilot began to climb. He went up twenty thousand feet up. The gnawing ceased. The rat was dead. More than two hours later the pilot brought the plane safely to the next landing field and found the dead rat. Worry is a rodent. It cannot live in the secret place of the Most High. It cannot breathe in the atmosphere of prayer and the Scripture.From Charles Surgeon: “One of my hearers had seven children who had come in rapid succession. He was hard-working and well spoken of. His children were all asleep when I went to visit him, and as I expressed the pleasure the sight of their peaceful little faces gave me, the father said, ‘Yes, these are fine times for them; they don’t need to take any thought for themselves.’ “On the following Sunday the man was in church. I spoke of the happy state of children, exempt from care as they were, and went on to say that believers were the children of God, that the Lord had commanded them to be careful for nothing, and promised that he would care for them. The man understood me, and it evidently pleased him to hear his expression repeated from the pulpit.”
WE SHOULD AVOID WORRY BECAUSE GOD IS OUR FATHER
The believer has absolutely no reason to worry, because God is our heavenly Father.
DO WE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT FOOD?
Matthew 6:26 (ESV)
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
If God so carefully takes care of such relatively insignificant creatures as birds, how much more will He take of those who are created in His own image
and who have become His children through faith? “Are you not of more value than they?” Jesus does not suggest that birds do nothing to feed themselves.
Birds are very diligent about gathering food. But they do not worry about where their next meal is going to come from.
DO WE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT LIVING LONG?
Matthew 6:27 (ESV)
And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? Our culture is obsessed with trying to lengthen life. We exercise, eat carefully, supplement our diets with vitamins and minerals, get regular physical checkups, in the hope of adding a few years to our lives. Yet God has determined the length of life of every person. Exercise is fine. But it will not force God to extend our life. You can worry yourself to death, but not to life.
Dr. Charles Mayo, of the famous Mayo Clinic, wrote,
“Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands and the whole nervous system. I have never met a man or known a man to die of overwork, but I have known a lot who died of worry.”
DO WE NEED TO WORRY ABOUT CLOTHING?
Matthew 6:28-30 (ESV)
And why are you anxious about clothing? Con sider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, [29] yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [30] But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? The third illustration has to do with clothing and shelter, using flowers as a model. These beautiful decorations of nature make no effort to grow. But Jesus said, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Lusting after costly, stylish clothes is sinful, because its only purpose is to feed pride. The number of clothing stores we have today is staggering. Our worries today are seldom for necessary clothing. If Jesus told those who had but one simple garment not to worry about their clothing, what would He say to us? When a believer is not fresh in the Word every day, so that God is in His mind and heart, then Satan moves into the vacuum and plants worry. Worry then pushes the Lord even further from our minds.