Luke 12:25-26
25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life[a]? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
When it comes to worry, it is said that an average person’s anxiety is focused on :
40% — things that will never happen 30% — things about the past that can’t be changed 12% — things about criticism by others, mostly untrue 10% — about health, which gets worse with stress 8% — about real problems that will be faced
No wonder Jesus would ask us this very critical question. The reality is that worry does not make things better, it makes things worse. Before asking this question, Jesus brings things into perspective for us because it is when we lose perspective of the truth that we begin to worry.
Luke 12-22-23
22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!
Jesus is telling us not to worry about life, food and clothing, He has got us covered. The birds of the air should be a constant reminder for us because we are more valuable than they are yet God takes care of them daily.
To worry is to have faith in the negative. To worry is to trust in the unpleasant, to worry is to be assured of disaster and belief in defeat. Worry is wasting today’s time to clutter up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles. A dense fog that covers a seven-city-block area one hundred feet deep is composed of less than one glass of water divided into sixty thousand million drops. Not much is there but it can cripple an entire city. That’s what worrying does to us, it is not much but it cripples our life.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones says this and it is a confession worth making
I am inwardly fashioned for faith, not for fear. Fear is not my native land; faith is. I am so made that worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil. I live better by faith and confidence than by fear, doubt and anxiety. In anxiety and worry, my being is gasping for breath–these are not my native air. But in faith and confidence, I breathe freely–these are my native air.
