"What If?" Or "Why Not?"
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series I, Cycle C
Worry changes nothing but the worrier and most always in a negative way! The word worry in the original language means "to choke or strangle." Worry does nothing but choke or strangle our creative juices, thus robbing us of the vitality of life. We spend so much energy on the negative worry that we have little left for anything positive. Genuine concern gives rise to preventative and creative measures. Worry kills!
Did you know that according to A. J. Cronin, only eight percent of the things we worry about are real and legitimate -- only eight percent! Ten percent concerns things that are petty and insignificant. Another twelve percent of our worries has to do with our health, which, of course, is made worse by worry. Thirty percent of our worries has to do with the past, which worry cannot change. The most disturbing fact is that forty percent of our worry is concerning things or events that never happen! Emerson said it best:
Some of your hurts you have cured
And the sharpest you still have survived.
But what torment of grief you've endured
From evils that never arrived.
From a positive viewpoint, worry is really a distortion of our capacity to care. If we were thoughtless and irresponsible, we would have little or no worry. From a negative viewpoint, worry is a mild form of agnosticism. It is the often unexpressed but real feeling that God cannot or will not act in this situation. Since God will not or cannot, we feel we have to "take matters in our own hands" and worry about them. Then we play the worry-filled destructive game of "What if?"
I like to characterize the negative game of "What if?" as a sit-down anxiety. This is a wringing-of-the-hands, do-nothing, negative approach to life. We know it accomplishes nothing, but we do it anyway! We worry about the past: What if our failures and sins catch up to us? This totally ignores God's ability to forgive. We worry about the future: What if our past failures are repeated in the future? This totally ignores God's ability to teach us from our mistakes. We worry about people: What if the people I love don't succeed or don't like me? As Lloyd Ogilvie states, "We all have a little (cocker) spaniel in us -- we like to be liked." This stems from our inability to love ourselves as God loves us.
We worry about our health. What if I become ill and lose everything? Dr. Charles Mayo, of the famed Mayo Clinic, says, "Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system and it profoundly effects the health of us all." He continues, "I very rarely meet anybody who died of over work, but I have known many people who have died from worry."1 To worry excessively about our health doubts God's ability to care for his children.
We worry about finances: What if I can't make my payments? What will we do? Worry is a mild form of agnosticism. When we practice tithing, God gives us the discipline and wisdom to manage the rest better. He will provide if we will do as he has commanded.
We also worry about guilt. We worry that we are to blame and too easily accept guilt that does not belong to us. This is an effort to retreat from the real world. We are trying to tell everyone, "Don't blame or hurt me -- I'm doing a good enough job on myself." If we have done wrong, it is healthy to confess and accept forgiveness. But to blame ourselves continually for everyone else's problems is a form of self-hate.
Lloyd Ogilvie wrote a book titled Let God Love You. To many of us, this is our greatest need -- to let God love us. He wants to love us and cure our anxiety. The word for anxiety (v. 6) in the original language means "to divide or share." An anxious person is a divided person -- one who works against himself. God wants to reconcile (bring back together) us to himself, to our fellowman, and to our own selves! When we let God love us, we don't work against ourselves; we work with him. When we let God love us, we take the first step in overcoming a sit-down anxiety.
I like to characterize the positive lifestyle of "Why not?" as a get-up audacity. This is a positive, worry-free lifestyle that dares God to keep his promises and reaches out into every new day in the full assurance that he will! When we let God love us, we are replacing a negative sit-down anxiety with a positive get-up audacity.
I love the story of the first grader feeling the pains of leaving his beloved first grade teacher upon being promoted to the second grade. In saying a tearful good-bye, he told his mentor, "I wish you knew enough to teach me in the second grade." One point of that story is that it is time to move on.
Dennis Waitley reminds us of the best seller, The Anatomy of An Illness: As Perceived by the Patient:
It was written by former Saturday Review editor, Norman Cousins, who was hospitalized in 1964 with an extremely rare, crippling disease. When conventional medicine failed to improve his condition and he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Being aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the human body, Cousins reasoned that the reverse also might be true. He decided to dwell on becoming well again.
He borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment plan, consisting of Marx Brothers motion pictures and old Candid Camera reruns on film. He studied all aspects of his disease and with the help of his physician learned what would have to take place in his body to make it "right" again. In his book he recounts that he "made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep." What had seemed to be a progressively debilitating, fatal cellular disease was reversed and, in time, Cousins almost completely recovered. After his personal account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, he received more than 3,000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world. Thirty-four medical schools have included his article in their instructional materials and in 1978, Norman Cousins joined the faculty of the UCLA Medical School.2
What Norman Cousins did was simple! He replaced a sit-down negative attitude with a get-up-and-go positive one. What about you? Isn't it time to move on? Let me show you a three-point prescription for how you can replace a sit-down anxiety with a get-up audacity.
1) Put God first! Listen to the words of our Lord, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness: and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself" (Matthew 6:33-34). When we put God first and let him love us, we are giving him the proper place in our lives. When we worry, we are putting our fear in his rightful place. We are putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble! When we put God first, we can say with David, "The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need" (Psalm 23:1 TEV).
2) Seek his kingdom! This means to actively seek God's rule in our hearts -- his Lordship in our lives. Day by day we seek God's guidance, as we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit. We often worry about things that God never guided in the first place! Then we become over-involved, over-extended, and over-exhausted.
3) Remember: What God guides, he provides! Memorize this! Repeat it in your mind! Make it the motto of your life! If you get nothing from this sermon but this, remember: what God guides, he provides! If he's not providing, maybe he's not guiding! Don't you believe that the Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Lord of the entire universe has the resources to see you through the crises of your daily life? When we let God love us, put him first, seek his kingdom, become aware of his providing guidance, we not only exchange a sit-down anxiety for a get-up audacity, we begin to enjoy his abundant life. We exchange the negative, "What If?" for a positive "Why Not?" and enjoy the abundant life -- "And how!"
The Christian with a get-up-and-go audacity enjoys and expects the serendipitous surprises of God. He expects God to work. She dares God to keep his promises! When a situation seems hopeless, the Christian is praying, working, believing, expecting. The Christian knows that "Surprise" is God's other name and awaits his response! He knows that God will strengthen us in the problem, teach us from the problem, or he will remove the problem. He may even work a miracle.
Ever hear of Arnold Lemerand? On November 1, 1980, Arnold was taking his daily stroll when he was witness to a tragedy. He heard some children screaming and hurried over to where they had been playing near a construction site. A massive, cast-iron pipe had become dislodged and had rolled down on top of the children, pinning five-year-old Philip Toth against the earth. The boy's head was being forced into the dirt directly under the huge pipe and certain suffocation appeared to be imminent.
Arnold Lemerand looked around, but there was no one to help him in the attempted rescue. He did the only thing he could. He reached down and lifted the 1,800 pound cast iron pipe off Philip's head. After the incident, he tried again to lift the pipe and could not even budge it. His grown sons tried to move it, but they failed as well.3
Not bad for a 56-year-old who had recently suffered a heart attack and was told by his doctor "not to lift anything heavy." God used Arnold Lemerand to work a miracle. I am not saying that God will use you to perform a miracle, but I'm not saying he will not either.
The abundant life-living Christian not only expects and enjoys God's serendipitous surprises, he exchanges his impotency for God's potency. Our lack of power is exchanged for his abundant power. Worry and anxiety are sure signs that we are depending upon our own power and not God's! Worry is often caused by the fear that we are inadequate. And we are! We were never meant to be adequate! God is always more than adequate! God's power is always adequate and available to those who will accept it.
The abundant life-living Christian expects God's surprises, is sustained by his power, and is kept by his love. "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ" (v. 7). The word keep in the KJV means to "guard or to hold in custody." It carries the image of a faithful sentinel on duty. Instead of a divided and anxious heart, the abundant life-living Christian has a heart held securely and guarded by God's love.
There's a famous painting in which the artist depicts the great interview between Faust and Satan. Faust gambled for his soul. The painting pictures the two sitting at a chessboard, the Devil on one side and Faust on the other. The Devil leers with delight over the checkmate of Faust's lonely king and knight.
Contemplation of the painting leaves one with the conclusion that Faust is completely beaten and at the mercy of Satan. Faust's expression is one of hopeless worry. The Devil gloats with superiority. But one day a world famous master of chess went to the gallery in London to view the picture. He spent hours meditating over the seemingly impossible situation it depicted. He paced back and forth. Then, to the utter amazement and surprise of the other art viewers in the gallery, he shouted a discovery which echoed around the marble corridors. "It's a lie!" he blurted out. "It's a lie! The king and the knight have another move!"
God always has another move. So do you! It is the choice of gratitude. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (vv. 6-7 NIV).
Replace your sit-down anxiety with a get-up audacity and enjoy the serendipitous abundant life. Entrust yourself to God. In this, even though we do not always understand, we still can smile in the dark!
And how...!
____________
1. Eric S. Ritz, "Who Me? Worry?" an unpublished sermon.
2. Denis Waitley, Seeds of Greatness (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1983), p. 154.
3. Waitley, op. cit., p. 151.
Did you know that according to A. J. Cronin, only eight percent of the things we worry about are real and legitimate -- only eight percent! Ten percent concerns things that are petty and insignificant. Another twelve percent of our worries has to do with our health, which, of course, is made worse by worry. Thirty percent of our worries has to do with the past, which worry cannot change. The most disturbing fact is that forty percent of our worry is concerning things or events that never happen! Emerson said it best:
Some of your hurts you have cured
And the sharpest you still have survived.
But what torment of grief you've endured
From evils that never arrived.
From a positive viewpoint, worry is really a distortion of our capacity to care. If we were thoughtless and irresponsible, we would have little or no worry. From a negative viewpoint, worry is a mild form of agnosticism. It is the often unexpressed but real feeling that God cannot or will not act in this situation. Since God will not or cannot, we feel we have to "take matters in our own hands" and worry about them. Then we play the worry-filled destructive game of "What if?"
I like to characterize the negative game of "What if?" as a sit-down anxiety. This is a wringing-of-the-hands, do-nothing, negative approach to life. We know it accomplishes nothing, but we do it anyway! We worry about the past: What if our failures and sins catch up to us? This totally ignores God's ability to forgive. We worry about the future: What if our past failures are repeated in the future? This totally ignores God's ability to teach us from our mistakes. We worry about people: What if the people I love don't succeed or don't like me? As Lloyd Ogilvie states, "We all have a little (cocker) spaniel in us -- we like to be liked." This stems from our inability to love ourselves as God loves us.
We worry about our health. What if I become ill and lose everything? Dr. Charles Mayo, of the famed Mayo Clinic, says, "Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system and it profoundly effects the health of us all." He continues, "I very rarely meet anybody who died of over work, but I have known many people who have died from worry."1 To worry excessively about our health doubts God's ability to care for his children.
We worry about finances: What if I can't make my payments? What will we do? Worry is a mild form of agnosticism. When we practice tithing, God gives us the discipline and wisdom to manage the rest better. He will provide if we will do as he has commanded.
We also worry about guilt. We worry that we are to blame and too easily accept guilt that does not belong to us. This is an effort to retreat from the real world. We are trying to tell everyone, "Don't blame or hurt me -- I'm doing a good enough job on myself." If we have done wrong, it is healthy to confess and accept forgiveness. But to blame ourselves continually for everyone else's problems is a form of self-hate.
Lloyd Ogilvie wrote a book titled Let God Love You. To many of us, this is our greatest need -- to let God love us. He wants to love us and cure our anxiety. The word for anxiety (v. 6) in the original language means "to divide or share." An anxious person is a divided person -- one who works against himself. God wants to reconcile (bring back together) us to himself, to our fellowman, and to our own selves! When we let God love us, we don't work against ourselves; we work with him. When we let God love us, we take the first step in overcoming a sit-down anxiety.
I like to characterize the positive lifestyle of "Why not?" as a get-up audacity. This is a positive, worry-free lifestyle that dares God to keep his promises and reaches out into every new day in the full assurance that he will! When we let God love us, we are replacing a negative sit-down anxiety with a positive get-up audacity.
I love the story of the first grader feeling the pains of leaving his beloved first grade teacher upon being promoted to the second grade. In saying a tearful good-bye, he told his mentor, "I wish you knew enough to teach me in the second grade." One point of that story is that it is time to move on.
Dennis Waitley reminds us of the best seller, The Anatomy of An Illness: As Perceived by the Patient:
It was written by former Saturday Review editor, Norman Cousins, who was hospitalized in 1964 with an extremely rare, crippling disease. When conventional medicine failed to improve his condition and he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Being aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the human body, Cousins reasoned that the reverse also might be true. He decided to dwell on becoming well again.
He borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment plan, consisting of Marx Brothers motion pictures and old Candid Camera reruns on film. He studied all aspects of his disease and with the help of his physician learned what would have to take place in his body to make it "right" again. In his book he recounts that he "made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep." What had seemed to be a progressively debilitating, fatal cellular disease was reversed and, in time, Cousins almost completely recovered. After his personal account of his victory appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, he received more than 3,000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world. Thirty-four medical schools have included his article in their instructional materials and in 1978, Norman Cousins joined the faculty of the UCLA Medical School.2
What Norman Cousins did was simple! He replaced a sit-down negative attitude with a get-up-and-go positive one. What about you? Isn't it time to move on? Let me show you a three-point prescription for how you can replace a sit-down anxiety with a get-up audacity.
1) Put God first! Listen to the words of our Lord, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness: and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself" (Matthew 6:33-34). When we put God first and let him love us, we are giving him the proper place in our lives. When we worry, we are putting our fear in his rightful place. We are putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble! When we put God first, we can say with David, "The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need" (Psalm 23:1 TEV).
2) Seek his kingdom! This means to actively seek God's rule in our hearts -- his Lordship in our lives. Day by day we seek God's guidance, as we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit. We often worry about things that God never guided in the first place! Then we become over-involved, over-extended, and over-exhausted.
3) Remember: What God guides, he provides! Memorize this! Repeat it in your mind! Make it the motto of your life! If you get nothing from this sermon but this, remember: what God guides, he provides! If he's not providing, maybe he's not guiding! Don't you believe that the Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Lord of the entire universe has the resources to see you through the crises of your daily life? When we let God love us, put him first, seek his kingdom, become aware of his providing guidance, we not only exchange a sit-down anxiety for a get-up audacity, we begin to enjoy his abundant life. We exchange the negative, "What If?" for a positive "Why Not?" and enjoy the abundant life -- "And how!"
The Christian with a get-up-and-go audacity enjoys and expects the serendipitous surprises of God. He expects God to work. She dares God to keep his promises! When a situation seems hopeless, the Christian is praying, working, believing, expecting. The Christian knows that "Surprise" is God's other name and awaits his response! He knows that God will strengthen us in the problem, teach us from the problem, or he will remove the problem. He may even work a miracle.
Ever hear of Arnold Lemerand? On November 1, 1980, Arnold was taking his daily stroll when he was witness to a tragedy. He heard some children screaming and hurried over to where they had been playing near a construction site. A massive, cast-iron pipe had become dislodged and had rolled down on top of the children, pinning five-year-old Philip Toth against the earth. The boy's head was being forced into the dirt directly under the huge pipe and certain suffocation appeared to be imminent.
Arnold Lemerand looked around, but there was no one to help him in the attempted rescue. He did the only thing he could. He reached down and lifted the 1,800 pound cast iron pipe off Philip's head. After the incident, he tried again to lift the pipe and could not even budge it. His grown sons tried to move it, but they failed as well.3
Not bad for a 56-year-old who had recently suffered a heart attack and was told by his doctor "not to lift anything heavy." God used Arnold Lemerand to work a miracle. I am not saying that God will use you to perform a miracle, but I'm not saying he will not either.
The abundant life-living Christian not only expects and enjoys God's serendipitous surprises, he exchanges his impotency for God's potency. Our lack of power is exchanged for his abundant power. Worry and anxiety are sure signs that we are depending upon our own power and not God's! Worry is often caused by the fear that we are inadequate. And we are! We were never meant to be adequate! God is always more than adequate! God's power is always adequate and available to those who will accept it.
The abundant life-living Christian expects God's surprises, is sustained by his power, and is kept by his love. "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ" (v. 7). The word keep in the KJV means to "guard or to hold in custody." It carries the image of a faithful sentinel on duty. Instead of a divided and anxious heart, the abundant life-living Christian has a heart held securely and guarded by God's love.
There's a famous painting in which the artist depicts the great interview between Faust and Satan. Faust gambled for his soul. The painting pictures the two sitting at a chessboard, the Devil on one side and Faust on the other. The Devil leers with delight over the checkmate of Faust's lonely king and knight.
Contemplation of the painting leaves one with the conclusion that Faust is completely beaten and at the mercy of Satan. Faust's expression is one of hopeless worry. The Devil gloats with superiority. But one day a world famous master of chess went to the gallery in London to view the picture. He spent hours meditating over the seemingly impossible situation it depicted. He paced back and forth. Then, to the utter amazement and surprise of the other art viewers in the gallery, he shouted a discovery which echoed around the marble corridors. "It's a lie!" he blurted out. "It's a lie! The king and the knight have another move!"
God always has another move. So do you! It is the choice of gratitude. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (vv. 6-7 NIV).
Replace your sit-down anxiety with a get-up audacity and enjoy the serendipitous abundant life. Entrust yourself to God. In this, even though we do not always understand, we still can smile in the dark!
And how...!
____________
1. Eric S. Ritz, "Who Me? Worry?" an unpublished sermon.
2. Denis Waitley, Seeds of Greatness (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1983), p. 154.
3. Waitley, op. cit., p. 151.
