There are a lot of things in this life that we can worry about. Our health, finances, relationships, family, work and quite a lot more. What are you worried about at the moment – and what difference is your worrying actually making, hmm?

So what is it that’s worrying you just at the moment? Is it your health, maybe it’s your finances, perhaps it’s your job, will you have a job tomorrow, will you have a career? Are you going to get married or is your marriage ever going to get any better than this? Are your children ever going to grow up to be great human beings? Will the economy pick up? And what about… It’s quite a list isn’t it and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface?

Sometimes we worry over little things, things that really in the scheme of things aren’t that important. I wonder what so and so thinks of me, do they like me, do they think I’m stupid or ugly? How do I look in these clothes? Some people I’m telling you are a mass of insecurities. Some people waste their whole lives worrying about stuff that, well it doesn’t matter.

There’s a bit of that in all of us. The other day I was crossing the road at a traffic light, it was green for pedestrians and red for the cars, I stepped out onto the crossing and just turned to the right for a little to talk to my wife Jacqui, we were coming home from a favourite cafe and as I turned back a car travelling at I’m guessing at least sixty kilometres an hour whizzed literally past me two or three inches in front of my nose. If I’d taken a slightly bigger step or if I’d been walking just a little bit faster I probably wouldn’t be alive anymore or at the very least I’d be in a coma in hospital somewhere.

I can’t tell you how shocked I was but the thing that I didn’t expect is that for the rest of that day, in fact for the rest of the week, every time I was confronted with something that should have been worth worrying about, it didn’t worry me in the least. When you’re confronted with the important things in life like am I going to be alive tomorrow or not, the little things all of a sudden, well we see them in perspective.

I wonder if in the next twenty-four hours you wrote down every single thing that you’re worried about, everything that concerns you and also the number of minutes you’ve worried about them and then sat down over a cup of tea or coffee and read through that list in the cold hard light of day how many of those things really have been worth worrying about. Well?

Of course there are other things in life that seem much larger and seem to be worth worrying about. A woman who has a lump in her breast and she’s sitting there in the Doctor’s surgery waiting to hear the test results. She probably didn’t sleep so well last night. She’s probably really, really worried sitting there, waiting for what seems like forever.

The man who’s just lost his job and he’s travelling home on the train to tell his wife: how am I going to pay the mortgage or the rent? How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to find another job? I’m fifty-five, no one wants to hire a fifty-five year-old. I was having coffee with a man in exactly that situation just the other week and those were exactly the things that he was worried about and yet, as I said at the beginning of the program, worrying doesn’t solve a single thing, not a thing.

That’s exactly the point that Jesus was making when He was talking with a bunch of relatively poor subsistence farmers and trades people. People whose lives were at the complete whim of the Romans because they were the occupying force in the land of Israel. Have a listen; it comes from the Bible, Matthew chapter 6 beginning at verse 25:

And Jesus said, ‘I tell you don’t worry about your life, what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to drink, about your body, what you’re going to wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither reap nor sow, they don’t gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Aren’t you worth so much more than them?

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? And why do you worry about clothing? Look at the lilies in the field, how they grow. They don’t toil nor spin yet even Solomon in all his glory was never clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you you of little faith. Therefore don’t worry saying, ‘what will I eat or what will I drink or what will I wear?

For it is the Gentiles who strive for all those things and indeed your heavenly father knows what you need but strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well. So don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of it’s own, today’s trouble is enough for today.

You know what I know, one day I’m going to die, just as sure as God made little green apples one day Berni Dymet is going to breath his last breathe on this earth. My heart will stop, my blood will stop flowing through my veins and my spirit, who I am, is going to depart from this body that I’ve fed and cleaned and exercised and lived in for however long I’ve had on this earth.

How will I die? Well you know at this point I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow a car or bus will hit me, and that will be the end, quick as you like. Maybe next month I’ll be diagnosed with cancer and given only a few weeks to live or perhaps in forty or fifty years time when I’m in my nineties or even a hundred years old I’ll end up just dying in my sleep. Who knows?

But it’s going to happen one day. Now I can worry about that, sure I can but that’s not going to change a single thing. There are some things I can do that will probably extend my life, if I eat healthily, exercise, and don’t smoke. Well I’m doing all those things; I’ve lost a lot of weight but still who knows about the next time I cross at the traffic lights?

Jesus is saying, there’s only one person that does and that’s God Himself. He has it all under control. He knows what I need, what you need. And if you want to have a life that’s free from worry the one thing you can do is to trust that He’s got it all under control and that His plan is a good plan.

I don’t know where you are in your life but these days there aren’t many things that I worry about and trusting in God’s goodness and in God’s provision and in His plan is the only thing I’ve been able to find that sets me free from worry.

It’s a strange thing but the closer I get to God, the more I listen to Him and the more I worship Him, the less I worry. It’s not something I have to work hard at. The absence of worry is just … it’s an obvious and natural outcome of my relationship with Jesus.

Yet you know, I do get rattled by things sometimes, we all do. But the only place to take that is to Jesus and He does take the worry away. The energy that we put into worrying can be put to so much better use in prayer. Have a listen to this passage of Scripture that I come back to again and again in my life, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Paul says, ‘Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

See what it says here? Take the time and energy you’ve spent worrying and use it instead in prayer and what’s going to happen is that God will put His peace around your heart and your mind. That Jesus Himself will take the worry and the anxiety away in a way that someone who’s never experienced it simply, well it doesn’t make sense, in a way that completely surpasses all understanding.

My friend it is time to trust your God for everything, big or small, it’s time to trust God for all your needs, in your relationships, in your job, in your family, in your health, sitting outside the Doctor’s surgery waiting for the test results and watching your children make mistakes. Everything.