How To Handle Worrying

Transcript

And hello again radio friends. How in the world are you? This is your good friend, Bob Cook, and I’m back with you once again to share from the Word of God. How are things going in your life? Are they all right? I trust so. I’m feeling fine, thank God, no complaints. (Laughs)Well, I don’t think I could do what I used to do when I was in college. I could lift up the corner of a Model T Ford (Laughs) off the ground. I, I was strong enough to back up to it and, and, and heave it up a little. I wouldn’t try that today, I don’t think. (Laughs) But I’m feeling great. I think that probably, like I told somebody in Ohio a while back, “I feel so good they’ll probably have to shoot me at age 93.” She looked at me and she said, “How nice.” (Laughs)

Well, we’re in 1 Peter 5:7; just got scratching at it the last time we got together. The ‘what if’ factor is what worries you. ‘What if my children don’t turn out right?’ ‘What if this business deal sours and I go broke?’ ‘What if there’s a merger between my corporation and, and another, and I get shuffled out in the deal?’ ‘What if I lose my health and I become an invalid, and have to be taken care of?’ What if, and what if, and what if…? Now recognize that for what it is. First, it’s human; second, it’s unnecessary; and third, it’s unbelief. It’s perfectly human to feel that way. You can join the group, everybody else feels the same way at, from, from time to time.

But you don’t have to do it that way. That’s the second thing, it’s unnecessary.You don’t have to do it that way, see? “Wait on the Lord, He shall strengthen thine heart.” You get alone with God, get your priorities straight; and then you march straight on into the future with confidence. Why? Because He’s leading you. “When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth ahead,” you read in John 14. And the footprints that you’re following have a nail-hold in them. The nail-pierced feet have gone ahead of you. And God is there in the darkness of the uncharted future. Do you believe that?

Worry, Dale Carnegie says, is the absence of an organized plan. When you don’t know what you’re doing, then you worry about it. Worry, I might add, is the absence of trust in a person that can handle things. If there’s somebody on the job that can handle things, you don’t worry quite so much. I flew for some thousands of miles with Paul Hartford, who for many years was a sort of a flying missionary taxi for missionaries in the Caribbean area. He operated a flying school, and I don’t know what all he did. And now he’s in counseling. A very wise bird indeed, down in the Florida area.

But flying side by side in his beach-craft bonanza across the, the waters of the Caribbean from Cuba to Jamaica to who knows where; and we’d encounter some rough weather now and again. And like any aviation tenderfoot I could feel the tightening of my stomach muscles, you know.And I’d look out of the wingtips. Those, those beach-craft bonanza’s have a flexible wing; and you could see it wobbling a little in the, in the turbulence as the wing buffeted you. And then I, I would look at Paul; he was handling the machine with perfect confidence.

I remember saying to him once, “You don’t look worried.”He said, “No, I’m not worried,” he said. “I’ve been through much worse than this.” And he told me about the time when he flew an airplane down to South America, and the storm was so bad that he had to hug the coastline flying just a few hundred feet above the ground so as to keep the ground in view. And then by dead reckoning, find a landing strip in the jungle at a certain place. He made it all right. And he looked at me and smiled, he said, “This is nothing,” he said. “We can handle this.” And he went right on. I felt better immediately. I don’t know why, but maybe I guess you understand. Somebody was on the job who knew how to handle things.

“Casting all your care upon Him.” Has it ever dawned on you that God runs things? God manages things. “It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” They said of our Lord Jesus, “On, on Earth He hath done all things well.” And Paul remarks in Ephesians 3:20, “God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us. To Him be glory in the Church for ever and ever.” God is able, able, able to do, able to do exceeding above anything you can think or ask; go beyond your imagination as well as your requests. He is on the job. God is working. What a blessed, beautiful concept that is, and so eternally true.

“Casting all your care upon Him.” He’s on the job. You can take your specific trouble and hand it over to Him. Now does that absolve us, absolve you from the responsibility of doing what you ought to do? Of course not. You can’t sit and sing yourself into sanctified senility and expect God just to take care of you. I’ve run across a few people like that, and invariably they were doing poorly in life although they were quite religious, not to say, spiritual. We dealt with a boy back in the early 1960’s, who was very angry at all of life. And it developed, angry especially at his own father.

And when the story came out finally through patient conversation and counseling, it developed that this father had at some point or other, decided that he was, he was going to devote himself to Christian meditation and, and all of that.And so he quit his job and just stayed home and meditated. Well what happened was that the kids got hungry and the bills had to be paid; and so mother and the older children had to go to work and, and as best they could, meet the needs of the family. And he sat, and was spiritual. And this boy, who happened to be, I think, the oldest of the children, came to college. He was angry, you know, at everything spiritual because he had the idea that anybody who wanted to be spiritual was also lazy.

No. See, we’re not saying that by, by, by turning things over to the Lord, you get out of doing your duty. What happens is, when you turn things over to the Lord, the ‘what if’ factor, the ‘worry’ factor, the, the ‘pressure’ factor is taken care of. And God then, is able to lead you in positive steps of His perfect will in the matter. You follow that? “Casting all your care upon Him.” Now like I said, worry, and pressure, is human. All of us do it. But it’s needless because you don’t have to. And there is a way out of it. It’s, it’s actually unbelief because you don’t, you’ve never quite decided that you can risk the outcome of the situation on God.

You have to read Daniel once again and hear the three Hebrews saying, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us, O King. But if not, be it known unto thee, we will not bow down or serve the image which thou hast set up.” ‘If not’, see? The ‘Hallelujah anyway’ factor needs to be worked in to our thinking and our deciding. Hallelujah anyway. I’m trusting God, I’m going to do the best I can, obeying Him. And the rest is up to Him. And if it doesn’t work out the way I think it should, Hallelujah anyway.

The Bible has this phrase, “God having prepared some better thing for them.” God’s better things… “Which of you having a son that asks bread, will he give him a stone?’ if he asks for an egg, will he give him a scorpion?; if he asks for a fish, will he given him a snake?” No, you wouldn’t do that. You give what’s good for the child. Jesus said, “If ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him.” The point of the, of the statement is, ‘you don’t always get what you ask for, but you get what you need’. Because God can see the end from the beginning, and He knows what is best.

Now, if somebody’s crippled with arthritis or polio; has, has made you immobile in the days before the Salk vaccine took effect; or if you’ve been in an accident and maybe you’re paraplegic or quadriplegic; or if advancing age has anchored you and you can’t do the things that you’d like to, and you’re, you’re shut away some place in what they euphemistically call it a retirement facility — someone has bitterly said, “That’s a warehouse for old folks.” And sometimes it would seem that that’s so. I don’t know what your station in life is. And you may be tempted when I’m talking like this to say, “Oh yeah, that’s, that’s Cook. He doesn’t know how I feel. He can still get around, he can still drive his car. He can, he’s, he still feels pretty good. Look at me; here I’m anchored and forgotten.”

Do you want just to review now your own relationship with the Lord and realize that He hasn’t quit on you; that He’s still on the job; and that there are still some things He wants to do through you? You can still talk, can’t you? You can still use the telephone; you can still write a card now and again; you can still smile; you can still praise your Lord; you can still have peace and joy that shines out from you if you’ll wait on your Lord until He takes all the bitterness out of your heart and puts joy and peace in instead. “Now the God of hope fill you,” says Paul, “with all joy and peace and believing, that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.” When you begin to commit yourself to God in faith, what is given to you? Hope, and peace, and joy — that’s according to Romans 15:13.

“Casting all your care on Him.” No, you don’t have to carry the burden; no, you don’t have to be embittered by the, by the accidents, and the hurts, and the heartaches of life. We get them all; or all of us get them. But it doesn’t have to get you down. Why? Because God is still on the throne; He’s still working on your behalf; and through the indwelling Holy Spirit, He’s still working in and through your very life. See, the wonderful thing about God — He’s big enough to run the universe and great enough to be aware of you, one of the several billion people on Earth; personally aware of you. “What is man, that thou art mindful of Him,” said the psalmist.

Well God is mindful of you. And He can hear your prayer. “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.” So be encouraged today, beloved, to turn the, the essence of your concern — whether it’s a trouble or a responsibility, or just the pressure of a job, or a life that has gone sour, or health that has failed, or an accident that has left you disabled, or whatever it is — turn the essence of your concern, the basis of your worry and heartache; turn it over to God. Say, “Lord, you handle it, and you can… you handle me in the, in the bargain. Take care of me.” It says, “He careth for you.” I’ll get at the rest of this verse the next time we get together. It’s a precious promise, isn’t it?

Dear Father today, Oh work in our lives, your perfect will. Thank you for caring for us, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!