Matthew 6:25-33
Overcoming Worry with Prayer

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 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? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe youÑyou of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

New Revised Standard Version

It might just be me, but there is one phrase that, when said to me, will slap my brain into full alert, send my blood pressure soaring, tense every muscle in my body, and cause me to break out in a cold sweat. What is this harbinger of hypertension, this prelude to panic, this antecedent of anxiety?

        "Oh, there's nothing to worry about."

That phrase implores me to prove it wrong. It lures me with a siren's song to confront the naive well-wisher with the harsh reality of all that truly can go wrong if one considers all the possibilities. Part of this might be my professional environment: in many areas of my computer support career, what would normally be labeled as obsessively paranoid is rewarded and encouraged as a fundamental key to success. (Or maybe I'm in this career because I'm such a good worrier!) There's always something to worry about; it's just that for some of those worries, the cost of avoiding them is greater than the cost of enduring them (at least for now; I'll run the numbers again next year!)

Jesus knew people of my ilk would read this passage. To make sure we couldn't ignore the message, He repeated this concept several times with several examples: don't worry about even the basics of what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, even how long we live. I can't twist this to be the same as the saying "don't sweat the little stuff", because food and water are major issues for survival. I can't even argue that there are differences between the first century needs and present needs that alter the intention. We have a commandment: "don't worry"--and it worries me that I can't obey that commandment!

But that isn't the whole commandment. In partnership with the "don't" is a "do" that brings it all into focus. Instead of directing our energies to gain things of this world, Jesus instructs us to direct our energies towards the Kingdom of God. There's even a promise accompanying the "do": if we focus first on following God, God will provide everything we need. Not only will God provide, but we don't even have to ask, because God already knows what we need!

But let's examine this commandment and promise a little more closely. Does this mean that we express worry when we ask God in prayer for something? When we follow the Lord's Prayer and ask for our daily bread, don't we realize that God already knows we need to eat? Are we insulting God when we ask for guidance, for healing, or for peace? Is our spiritual goal to stop asking God for anything?

No, of course not. I think the foundation of the sin of worrying is our desire to control and to impose our will on circumstances. Worry comes about when we devise the plan and are compelled to see our plan carried out. The sin goes away when we accept God's plans and let go of our own. We break worry's hold on us as we learn to trust God's plans, even when we don't know or understand them and can't see how they are coming about. We are overcoming worry when our strongest desire in prayer is to hear God speaking to us, not to make certain God hears us.

Always pray hard. Pray from the ugly lower reaches of your soul, not the proper, well-groomed surface. God already knows what's deep inside you, so you'd only be fooling yourself. Pray out all the pain you feel, pray out your worries and fears, put everything in front of God--and listen expectantly and constantly for how God will answer. Be open to how God wants to answer, not how you want God to answer, because God already knows more about your problems and your possibilities than you could possibly know. Worry falls off like last year's leaves from a tree when we listen to God and walk, step by step, in God's Way for us.

Just don't worry if this feels unnatural and difficult to do. God is eager to help us grow in our faith!