Worry:

Interest Paid on Trouble Before It Is Due

“Don’t worry, Lorrie, it’s fun. You’ll be fine,” were some of the words I heard as I was tentatively preparing to ride a bike. I had not been on a bike for about 11 years for a few good reasons! The last time had ended with two toes bleeding, one minus a large portion of a toenail, my dignity disintegrated, and my eyes spilling over with tears. All this, while my knight in shining armor, along with our two older boys on their own bikes, quickly pedaled down the city street on his rented bike pulling the baby in a trailer. As Randy was putting as much distance as possible between himself and the crazy lady who had just crashed into the sidewalk, I was praying and thinking, “Yeah right.” It came back to me all too clearly. I had been riding along with zooming cars on my left and a sidewalk on my right. As I slowly pedaled I encouraged myself, “Just watch the curb so you don’t . . . WHAM! . . . (hit it.) Well, I was so focused on the curb I worried my front tire right into it and myself right off my seat! With me spilling myself all over the street and sidewalk, my dearly beloved husband trying to look as if he has never met me, and my two darling little buggers—I mean, boys—giggling with no shame, I decided I needed to shut out the distractions of cars and traitors. I needed to stay focused on my goal of catching up to my family and forcing them to own up to me.

I was giving in too easily to the temptation to worry, and as a result, I was crashing. There are many ways we give Satan an opportunity to get us to worry. One major one is actually spelled out in the Bible.

“…casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” I Peter 5:7–8.

What gives Satan his opening? It’s not drugs or alcohol or sex or some mega-temptation. Of course, he effectively uses those also, but in this verse Peter is prompting us to be self-controlled and alert against the lion’s attack. In verse 7, he says, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

The implication is clear. If you don’t cast your worries on the Lord, you are giving the devil the opening he needs to bring you crashing down. Worry is one of Satan’s most valuable weapons. If he can get us to worry, he can get us to do what he wants instead of what God wants us to do. Why? Well, for one thing, worrying causes us to focus completely on ourselves.

We’re focused on our stress, our problems, ourselves, and not on the Lord who promises, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us,” Romans 8:37. The lion can bring us down, but

He’s no match for Jesus. When we’re all about Jesus, we’re invincible. When we’re all about ourselves, we’re lion lunch. Worry makes it all about me.

When we dwell on our anxieties and fears, we tend to become discouraged—a condition

Satan can use to get us to do all kinds of things we’ll regret later. We tend to panic and leave the will of

God so we can try to do something to fix things ourselves, except our panic response will probably only make things worse and spoil what God was doing. Worry takes us away from our time with God, away from our trust in God, away from good sleep and important disciplines, and causes us to abandon the very things we need to keep us strong in times of stress.

If your worries are a heavy burden sapping your strength, it’s time you take off that burden and give it to the Strong Friend who walks every mile by your side. That’s Jesus. You have no business carrying all that junk. He’s asking you to put those worries on His shoulders. When you do, you rob hell’s devouring lion one of his greatest tools to use against you.

When the Australians say, “No worries, mate,” they’ve got the right idea. You’ve got Almighty God asking for your burden of anxiety. What in the world are you doing still carrying it around? Trying to be lion bait? Don’t look at the curb that is coming in close to your tire.