When you honestly evaluate your worries, you’ll realise you’re doing these: 1) Forgetting that God is your friend. The psalmist said, ‘The Lord is a friend to those who fear him’ (Psalm 25:14 NLT). Friendship with God is built by sharing your life’s experiences with Him – every activity, every conversation, every problem, and every thought. When you don’t, you end up unaware of His presence, oblivious to His voice, resistant to His correction, and out of sync with His timing. And when you live that way, there’s one certain result – worry! 2) Taking on things you shouldn’t. Peter Marshall prayed: ‘Father…check our impulse to spread ourselves so thin that we’re exposed to fear and doubt, to the weariness and impatience that makes our tempers wear thin; [that] robs us of peace of mind; that makes skies grey when they should be blue; that stifles a song along the corridor of our hearts.’ You lose your song when you add the unnecessary pressure of maintaining your exterior image, increasing your pace to keep up with others, and trying to fix everybody or live up to their expectations. 3) Not understanding the difference between the secular and the sacred. Either Jesus is Lord over every area of your life, or He’s not Lord over any of it. We tell ourselves certain parts of our lives are within God’s concern, but not others, when all of it is His realm. The Bible says, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight’ (Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV). To live any other way means we’ll be living a worried life.
