Worry not.

When I was younger, I used to worry about the future. Where will I be in twenty years? Will I be successful? Will I have a wife and kids? Will I be healthy and happy?  I’d also worry about things that were (and still are) completely out of my control. What is the world going to be like in twenty years? Will our country continue to live in freedom and blessing? Will we destroy ourselves with some horrible nuclear or biological apocalypse? I’d sometimes find myself fixated on these things, often to the point of giving myself bouts of anxiety.

As a Christian, I also greatly struggled with the idea of grace—that God loves me regardless of the things I have said and done and that nothing could ever separate me from that love. No matter how unworthy I felt, I couldn’t embrace the idea that no mistake could change His mind. How do you explain a love like that? It worried me.

I am by no means a picture-perfect example of obedience and right-living. I have made some really, really poor decisions and blatantly chose to go down some paths that I knew full-well were wrong. And when regret and shame caught up with me, I felt like God was a million miles away. In fact, I felt so embarrassed of my guilt that I hesitated even coming to Him (again, and again, and again) to seek reconciliation for not obeying or trusting Him. And when I felt His gentle nudges to return home—like the prodigal son—I hesitated. Instead, I convinced myself that someday I would finally get my act together enough to be seen as acceptable; that some future version of me would be the better man that God would love.

You see, worrying about the future crippled me in my present. 

I was so weighed down by angst that I wasn’t enjoying what I had. I was so concerned with how the future was going to unfold—by the weight of my own stupid choices, and by imagined scenarios of what the world itself was going to be like—that I felt despondent and dejected. I was not living the life I was created to live. Not only was I cheating myself out of my potential, but I was robbing God of the plan He had for my life.

There’s this certain phrase that I have seen on so many bumper stickers and Facebook posts that used to make me kind of roll my eyes. It says, “I don’t know what my future holds, but I know Who holds my future.” I thought it was cute but kind of cheesy. But it’s true. Now I get it.

It was only when I gave up worrying about the future that I could enjoy the present. It was only when I stopped trying so hard and failing so often to overcome the stupid things that I believed were keeping me from God that I found enough joy and peace which then allowed me to overcome. I wasn’t trying to change in order to gain acceptance, but I was changing as a response to the acceptance I already had been given. That’s huge.

Concern is one thing, but worry is just stupid. It’s taxing, it’s exhausting, it’s counter-productive and it’s dangerous—not only to your mind but to your health. The only control we have is in what we do right now. There is power in the present. We must live in the now. My trust in God gives me faith in the future. I don’t know what tomorrow holds—that’s not my concern. But God does, and I know He cares.

And my faith assures me that just as a parent’s core love for their children doesn’t change, so God’s unimaginable love for me can never change. I’m told in Romans 5:8 that “God showed His great love for us in that WHILE we were STILL sinners, Christ died for us.” Who does that? I am comforted in knowing that I don’t have to wait for some future me to clean up his act to have a right relationship with God. I don’t have to worry. Because Christ lived a holy, sinless, obedient life, and because I accept that gift that His righteousness can be attributed to me (without me having to work for it—because I have already failed and will undoubtedly continue to do so), I am saved from myself and made right with my Dad.

So, while I have concerns about the future (I think it’s irresponsible not to), I don’t worry. Glenn Turner once said, “Worrying is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere.” Though I have concerns, I don’t worry where the world is going to be in ten years. I don’t worry that I am ever going to be good enough. I have faith in the future, that no matter what happens, I will trust God in His wisdom and grace. I let hope guide my heart in decisions I make today. I don’t let worry consume or distract me or keep me from enjoying and making the most of what I have in this day.

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday. And as the great philosopher, Bobby McFerrin once said, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

“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? 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? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 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? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” —Matthew 6:25-34

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” —Ephesians 2:8-9