Are you free from worry?
Week 27 – Celebrating 100 Years of Oswald Chambers
SCRIPTURE: “Do not fret – it only leads to evil.” Psalm 37:80
OSWALD: “Worrying always results in sin. We tend to think that a little anxiety and worry are simply an indication of how wise we really are, yet it is actually a much better indication of just how wicked we are. Fretting rises from our determination to have our own way. Our Lord never worried and was never anxious, because His purpose was never to accomplish His own plans but to fulfill God’s plans. Fretting is wickedness for a child of God.” (My Utmost for His Highest – July 4th)
Read the entire post:
How It Spoke to Me…
Okay. Let me just say it for us both. Ouch.
As a recovering worrier who still dabbles in the toxic stuff now and then, I know that anxiety isn’t God’s best for me. But to label it sin? Wow. That’s a little hard to swallow.
After all, life is hard. There are a zillion reasons to fret and fear – especially in this day and age. In fact, it sometimes feels downright irresponsible not to get a little worked up when life’s unfair, things go wrong and people act badly.
Someone needs to do something, we tell ourselves. If I don’t fix it, no one else will.
But on this July 4th – our American Independence Day – let me remind you that this kind of independent-of-God thinking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For when I live independent from God, believing the lie that I’m all alone and it’s all up to me, there is no other option than to fret and fume, worry and obsess. Life is hard, and ruling my tiny little world can be difficult, if not impossible work.
Instead, Jesus came to bring us a “dependent independence” – but it requires surrendering of our lives to God so that He alone is the Sovereign Ruler of our lives.
It isn’t an easy surrender. Abdicating the throne of our hearts and laying down our agendas doesn’t come easy to our self-determined natures. To relinquish our demands as well as our desires is hard. What if God doesn’t behave and doesn’t do what we want?
“Fretting arises from our determination to have our own way,” Oswald says. That’s why “worrying always results in sin.”
On this Fourth of July, I’d you to consider a different kind of revolution. Rather than rebelling against God’s rule, what if we submitted to it? What if we raised the white flag of our will and unconditionally surrendered our lives to Him?
I can promise you this…we’d experience a whole lot more freedom than we are currently experiencing.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free,” Paul writes in Galatians 5:1.
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed,” Jesus promises in John 8:36.
It was the purpose for which Jesus came, as He declared in Luke 4:18.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free…”
Why would we ever settle for captivity and slavery to our tyrant self?
It’s time to declare our Dependent Independence, my friend! It’s time to abdicate self-rule and enthrone the King of Kings over every aspect of our lives.
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I’d love to hear from you…How does worry “result in sin” in your life?