What If.....

....I choose the wrong fellowship
....I make the wrong disciplining decision as a mother
....I am not a good enough wife or let my husband down
....I do not match into a fellowship or am not smart enough to do the research
....I can not lose the weight that I am trying so hard to do
....my friends stop being my friends
....something happens to those close to me

So many what ifs float through my mind each...more than those written here. I am sure many of you are not much different. You worry about your job and progressing in your career. If still in school, you worry about your grades. Relationally, if you are single, you wonder if you will ever meet the person God has for you in terms of a spouse...if married, you worry about your marriage, the solidarity and strength of it. We worry about how our children will turn out, if we will be able to have children, if we can fund our adoptions.... we worry. Ask my dad. He always told me I was worry-er... So I get your worry, my worry.

I have started doing a bible study called "Me, Myself, and Lies" by Jennifer Rothschild. Yesterday's study focused on the "what ifs" and letting God control your worry....filling your mind with God's concerns, thoughts and agendas rather than our own. The initial passage that struck me and really convicted my "worrying nature" ...

Matthew 6:25-32 "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? 28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them."

So much easier said and read than lived out in our everyday life. But this where we are called to be...thinking on things above rather than the worries we get bogged down with between work and family and education and friends and everyday life. In the bible study, it also reference the below verses....so that when we start our mental ramblings....we can press pause and begin to shift our focus:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I write all this to issue a challenge...primarily to myself, but to those readers who wish to take it....begin changing our worrisome hearts and minds .... allowing God to replace our worry with resolution and His thoughts. Though not easy, I imagine the journey will be totally worth. I am going to work on this. Will you?