Why worry tears us from God

I have always been a very serious worrier.  I often think about something until I'm physically sick with the worry of it all.  It is, in my opinion, an illness, but it's one that God has been doing things with in my life. 

I worry in a cyclical, worst case scenario sort of way.  Here's an example:  My friend and I are joking around and I make a funny comment.  I think I see a strange look on her face after I speak and immediately I think "was that joke off-colour?  Did it hit close to home on some hidden issue?  Is she mad at me?"  I start to worry, running through things in my head.  "What if she tells someone that I was so insensitive and then a rumour starts about me?" So I falteringly apologize.  She looks at me strangely as I do and I think "nope, that's it, obviously our friendship is over since she won't accept my apology.  Really I didn't even do anything wrong!  It was a joke!"  Now I'm angry at her for dragging this out.  Can't she see I'm worried about it?  Can't she tell she's tearing me up inside?  I can barely keep my end of the conversation going until she leaves.  The afternoon is ruined for me and I cry.

You know what she was thinking?  "I'm so hungry. I wonder if Amy would be upset if I had a sandwich."

Our reactions are learned behaviours

Worry tears us from God in many ways.  We cease to rely on His ability to handle a situation and rely on our imperfect selves instead.  Clearly, based on the above scenario, my ability to handle that exchange is, ahem, not good to say the least.  In the last year or so I've gotten better at immediately recognizing that my behaviour is learned, and because of that I can unlearn it (at least partially - a lot of learned behaviour is just here to stay) and relearn something new in it's place.  Take, for example, the immediate response.  My learned behaviour is to fly into a panic and make rash decisions.  "Oh my goodness she's mad at me I have to apologize or our friendship is over and we can NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN!!!!"  Dramatic, yes, but also learned behaviour.  When we can recognize that then we can take steps to halt that process as soon as it starts and eventually to replace it with a better response.

Worry attempts to put ourselves in control

Worry is the opposite of prayer.  When you pray you turn to (and tune into) God for answers.  What is He saying to you?  What are you saying to Him?  It's a dialogue and sometimes a slow one, but worry is lightening fast, immediate and me-centered.  What do I feel about this situation?  What do I think I should do?  How am I feeling?  I'm adrift, I'm uncertain, I'm sick...ahhhhhhh!  God is nowhere to be found in that exchange since worry ceases to encourage dialogue and focuses on internal monologue.

Worry calls us to actions that are not God sanctioned

You know what I do when I worry?  I pick at my hands till they bleed, I bite my nails, I over eat and then I don't eat at all for days, I yell at my cats, my son, my sister and whomever is unfortunate enough to come near me, I cloister myself away and refuse to answer the phone or the door.  I don't go out.  I don't let anyone in.  I don't pray.  Now contrast those actions to these verses:

Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence?

....

If I say "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,

Even the night shall be light about me;

Indeed the darkness shall not hide from You,

But the night shines as the day;

The darkness and the light are both alike to You."

(Psalm 139 7-8, 11-12)

Those actions, the yelling and lack of prayer, those only work for us in a world without God.  And there is no darkness so dark that He is not there.  There is no place so far from Him that He isn't dwelling in it.  There is nothing so bad, nothing so horrific that we can do that would make Him say "you are no longer allowed near me since you are no child of Mine."  The darkness doesn't obscure us from His sight.  Our actions do not hide us under a rock where He can't see anymore.  The darkness and the light - they are both alike to Him.  So those things He asks of us, such as treating our body as a holy sacrifice, loving our neighbours, praying constantly - those are in effect whether we feel like they are or not.

Worry is counterproductive

Jesus was a do-er, God is a do-er, the Spirit is a do-er.  Scriptures place a great deal of emphasis on action.  And worry is not on not action, it is counterproductive to action.  The longer you worry do you find yourself suddenly more inclined to action or less?  Less of course.  We may fool ourselves into believing that playing that conversation over and over again in our heads is helping us clarify what went wrong, or that imagining every possible outcome to the meeting is giving us a heads up, but it isn't.  It's encouraging a lack of action and encouraging the opposite of what God wants us to do.  Think of the action words He uses:  Go and make disciples, Come to me, and so on.  We were created for work, for action, not for dwelling.

When we worry, and we all worry, we tear ourselves away from God's best for us.  It is so easy to say "here's my life, God, consecrated to you...oh except for that bit.  And if it gets tough then that bit over there, too.  And I want to veto any undo faith requirements.  And if I get cancer then I want to be able to worry about it.  And if my child gets sick then it's up to me to make him better.  And I want two children, no more, no less....."  It's clear inside us all how far we have to go to rely on Him completely, and one of the biggest things we can do is to say "Lord, I don't know, but You do."

David used to tell me that there were only two prayers:  Please, please, please and Help, help, help.

Lord, help, help, help.