On Sunday April 29, 2018, all of our adult classes met together for breakfast. Many thanks to all of you who helped set up, cook up, wash up and clean up! 
Afterwards Amy Friend spoke to us. Her topic was “The Truth About Worry.” She took us into a dozen bible passages that deal with the topic. She listed about 8 major components of worry and talked about the roots, sinfulness, and effects of worry.
She did not merely discuss the negative aspects though, but gave as much attention to solutions we can and must use against the temptation to worry.
I suspect we all have been worried, concerned, fearful, or doubtful a few times in our lives. After all, no one can see what lies ahead an hour from now, much less into tomorrow or next week.
Amy challenged us to be courageous – and maintain our confidence in God to save us. Here are the verses she cited, roughly in the same sequence listed on her handout. As always, be careful to look at the full context of each passage.
1 Peter 5:6-8
Philippians 4:6-9
James 1:1-12
Galatians 5:22
Isaiah 26:3
Romans 4:17b
2 Thessalonians 1:2
Romans 12:2
Joshua 1:8
Parable of the Soils
Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, Luke 8:4-15.
At the end of it all, when we have done all we can to face the day with courage, we grow up a little bit more each time we trust God to meet our needs. Amy closed with these 2 things which we can rely on all day long: GOD is good, and HE is sovereign !
Post Script: She said several things that struck me as being very insightful. Here are two of them.
- Whenever we start to imagine a worst case scenario in which everything goes wrong, we inevitably don’t see God in it. Although we know God is able to take care of us, we sometimes choose poorly by thinking “maybe He might not want to solve my problems.” Duh. Of course He cares about us, but maybe He orchestrated our situation in order to show how reliable He is! Maybe – just maybe, He wants us to learn how to trust Him in all situations. Maybe through carelessness we got ourselves into a “tight spot” and He is teaching us to stop doing that. Either way, our job (I think) is to be like Abraham who “merely” trusted God to keep His word (Genesis 15:5).
- A second piece of advice was this one which I’m roughly paraphrasing: “ Today we do not yet have the grace that God is going to give us tomorrow ” so rather than worry about how we are going to survive tomorrow, let’s live faithfully right now and watch God meet our needs today, without worrying about how He is going to take care of everything else that comes along in the future.
I look forward to Amy’s next assignment!!
🙂