Shift Your Focus

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Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head? It’s such a common experience that someone has coined a word to describe it: earworm. I had an earworm a few days ago. I had watched the French Canadian musical, Notre Dame de Paris (in French with English subtitles). A few days later I listened to the sound track. Next thing I knew, I had one of the songs, Tu Vas Me Detruire, playing over and over in my head. I tried unsuccessfully to get it out of my head. Then I had a flash of inspiration. I began singing a Christian praise song, Blessed Be Your Name. My mind was filled with praise. The earworm was gone.

Worry is a lot like an earworm. It’s a thought pattern that gets stuck in your mind. Telling yourself to stop worrying doesn’t dispel the worry anymore than telling yourself to stop listening to the tune dispels an earworm. Changing your focus from the worry to One who is greater than your worry is what’s needed. Next time you start worrying, stop and pray, telling God your concerns. Then shift your focus. Start thanking God for hearing your prayers and praising him for who he is and what he’s done. I think you’ll find that worry can’t coexist with praise and thanksgiving.

Death is Swallowed Up in Victory

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I was disappointed when I shopped for Easter cards. Sure, there were plenty of cute cards with Easter eggs, bunny rabbits, or spring flowers, but I was looking for something else. Even the cards marked “religious” missed the mark. They had clever rhymes asking God to bless the recipient, but never mentioned the reason Christians celebrate Easter. It’s as though Hallmark developed Easter amnesia.

Why do we celebrate Easter? As you probably know, Jesus of Nazareth was condemned to die. He was beaten, mocked, and stripped naked before being nailed to a cross and left to suffocate. He died on a Friday afternoon, about the time lambs were slaughtered for the Jewish festival of Passover. Joseph of Arimathea took his body down from the cross, wrapped it in a linen cloth, and placed it in a tomb.

Women taking spices to the tomb early Sunday morning found Jesus’ body was gone. Angels appeared and said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” The women told Jesus’ followers, but they were incredulous. Peter, impulsive as usual, raced to the tomb, entered, and found only the grave clothes. Later Jesus showed himself, alive and well, first to the twelve disciples, then to many others. Death could not hold him.

Because Jesus died as our Passover lamb, he took away our sins and the punishment for sin—death and eternal separation from God. Because Jesus lives, death cannot hold us either.  He said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live….” He didn’t set us free only from death, but also from the fear of death: “By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.”

Because we do not need to be “scared to death of death,”

  • We do not need to fear illness.
  • We do not need to fear accidents.
  • We do not need to fear terrorist attacks.

Jesus conquered death and the grave, giving us the courage to conquer our fears.

Christ has risen! Alleluia!

 

 

 

Seeing Jesus

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When I was in fourth grade, my Sunday school teacher announced a contest to memorize the 23rd Psalm. The prize was an 8-by-10-inch portrait of Jesus in a beautiful gold frame. I memorized the psalm, won the contest, and proudly hung the painting on my bedroom wall. In this iconic painting, Warner Sallman portrayed Jesus as a bearded man with long wavy hair, gazing up to heaven. He looked meek and mild to me—a tame Jesus who asks little and gives little.

That painting wasn’t the only image of Jesus in our house. The other portrait, a print of Richard Hook’s Head of Christ, was much larger and showed Jesus looking you straight in the eye. He has shorter, unkempt hair and a short beard. He looks ready and able to drive out the moneychangers and cast out demons. That portrait of a radical, powerful Jesus presided over my Dad’s workshop in the garage.

How do you see Jesus? Do you see him as a wimp who has no relevance today? Or do you see him as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the creator of the universe, a real man embodying a real God? The answer to that question determines whether you can rely on Jesus when you feel worried or afraid. Only the latter Jesus has the power to change your mind and heart, to cast out the demon of worry and fill you with his peace.

 

Warning Signals

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BEEP. The piercing, high-pitched sound penetrated my consciousness. The battery in the smoke alarm must be dying, I thought, as I rolled over and drifted back to sleep. BEEP. There it was again. I didn’t want to get out of bed to check the battery. Instead I lay there, half awake, dreading the next BEEP.

Worry, like that intermittent beeping, is a signal that all is not well. Too often we tolerate it, just as I tolerated the beeping. It’s better to pay attention. Start by asking yourself, “Can I take some action to solve this problem?” Perhaps you need to make an appointment to see the doctor about the lump you found or call the dentist about the tooth that’s hurting. Perhaps you need to make a phone call to ask why your son or daughter hasn’t come home yet.

If you can’t identify an action that will solve the problem, then worry may be a signal that all is not well on a deeper level. It calls you to examine your life, to look below the surface, to seek out the source of your worry. As Francis Chan writes in his book, Crazy Love, “Worry implies that we don’t quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what’s happening in our lives.”

So take a few moments. Consider what you usually worry about. Ask God for insight regarding the underlying cause. Then ask him to direct you to a solution. Don’t hang back, because Scripture says, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7, NLT).

In case you’re wondering, the beeping eventually woke my husband. He got up and removed the batteries from both smoke alarms before finding the problem:  the carbon monoxide detector. Once those batteries were replaced, we were both able to get some sleep.

Don’t let worry interrupt your sleep. Track down its source, take action when possible, and trust God with the rest.

Prayer Works

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God amazes me with his answers to prayer. Let me share one example. My mother lives in a nursing home in Albuquerque, far from my sisters and me. She has macular degeneration and has been legally blind for seven or eight years. Recently her vision deteriorated further and she lost the ability to read large print books. She was very discouraged, especially because she couldn’t read her Bible.

About that time, my mom’s roommate died. I prayed for her next roommate to be a good fit. A few days later her new roommate, Donna, answered the phone when I called. She told me she’d served as a missionary in Indonesia and had read to blind people. I asked if she would read to my mother. She said they had already talked about that. I had prayed for a kind roommate and God provided someone who can read to my mom. No wonder the apostle Paul describes God as the one “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” (Ephesians 3:20).

God’s astonishing power and his gracious answers to prayer encourage me to pray instead of worrying. My mom’s new roommate is only one answer to recent prayers. Some answers have come almost immediately—a friend’s daughter who was facing a 90-day residential treatment program for substance abuse issues improved the day my small group prayed for her, so she can be treated as an outpatient. Other answers have taken longer, teaching me to persevere in prayer.

I’ve started praying about issues at work also. For example, I helped coworkers develop a complex database. At one point we hit a brick wall. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get certain fields in the data entry form to automatically fill. Our frustration level skyrocketed. On the way home I prayed about the problem. A day or two later I woke up in the middle of the night with the phrase “auto-fill” in my mind. I wrote the phrase down, did a Google search the next morning and found detailed instructions with a worked example. Those were sufficient to show us how to redesign the tables and their relationships and produce a query that worked. This sort of thing has happened so often lately that both my supervisor and I recognize that Romans 8:28 is true: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him….”

Knowing that God can solve problems I can’t has set me free from much worry. Paul’s words to the early Christians at Philippi are spot on: “Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life” (Philippians 4:6-7, The Message).

As Christ becomes the center of my life, my natural pessimism is giving way to a brimming optimism. God truly can accomplish far more than anything I can ask or imagine.

Don’s Legacy

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Do you worry about your health? Let me tell you about Don, who had every reason to worry about his. He developed insulin-dependent diabetes when he was only four years old. In his early 20s, as his vision was failing, he tried unusual diets and experimental surgery to save his eyesight. Nothing worked. Blind at 22, he lost all hope. His mother didn’t. When her coworker was miraculously healed at a Pentecostal service, she took Don. He didn’t receive his sight, but he received a more precious gift—a relationship with Jesus Christ—to replace the empty religion he had rejected in his teens.

Through the next 36 years of his life, Don suffered six heart attacks, kidney failure and the amputation of one foot. He had 15 angioplasties, 24 stents and was on dialysis for 13 years. Only his faith and hope kept him alive.

Don recognized that worry is a temptation: “It’s easy to dwell on your circumstances. If the enemy can keep us focused on our problems, he can disable us.” He didn’t let that happen. He focused on God’s word, listening to the Bible on tapes until he had memorized much of it.  He also spent hours in prayer. His influence transformed his church into a house of prayer.

Don told anyone who would listen that we live in two realms, the visible, physical world and the invisible, spiritual world. His worldview was shaped by passages like 2 Corinthians 10:2-5. Here’s J. B. Phillips’ paraphrase:

The truth is that, although of course we lead normal human lives, the battle we are fighting is on the spiritual level. The very weapons we use are not those of human warfare but powerful in God’s warfare for the destruction of the enemy’s strongholds. Our battle is to bring down every deceptive fantasy and every imposing defence that men erect against the true knowledge of God. We even fight to capture every thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ.

Don captured worried thoughts using the authority of Christ. He replaced those thoughts with praise. “If you’re praising God, the devil won’t stick around long,” he said. Two other verses which helped him guard his mind were Colossians 3:2, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” and James 4:7, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Don was a role model for many, including the children he taught in Sunday school and the inmates he visited in the Broome County jail. He was a role model for me as well, teaching me that I have a choice when I’m tempted to worry. I can listen to the devil’s whispers or use the authority Christ has given me to capture worried thoughts.

Don died six weeks ago. At his funeral his three siblings, nieces, nephew and friends all spoke about his tenacious faith and unwavering hope. He has left a lasting legacy.

 

New Year’s Resolutions

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Do you make New Year’s resolutions? How long do they last? If you’re like me, you’ve forgotten them by February. If you want real change, don’t make a resolution—set a goal. My local public radio station showed me how to set goals that work. Effective goals are:

  • Specific. WSKG set $130,000 as its fall fundraising goal.
  • Attainable. The overall goal seemed unattainable, so they broke it down further, setting daily goals and program goals. Raising $3,000 during the Saturday afternoon opera was doable.
  • Measurable. Progress toward the goal was easily measured by tallying pledges.
  • Time-bound. WSKG planned a ten-day pledge drive and set deadlines for individual matching fund challenges.
  • Positive. They focused on a positive goal, raising $130,000, rather than on avoiding a negative outcome.

Two attitudes also characterized the pledge drive:

  • Persistence. Even though listeners were probably groaning by day 2, WSKG kept asking for pledges through day 10.
  • Celebration. They celebrated the small successes, each goal met which brought them closer to the overall goal. They repeatedly thanked listeners who had pledged.

Did the station reach its goal? The answer is a resounding yes. Pledges exceeded the goal by over $10,000!

What does a pledge drive have to do with overcoming worry? Rather than resolving to worry less in 2012, set a specific, attainable, positive goal. Here are some suggested goals; choose one that will work best for you or write your own.

  • I will learn to trust in God by reading a devotion from Jesus Calling every day.
  • I will develop an intimacy with God and grow in my ability to praise him by reading one Psalm each day.
  • I will develop an attitude of gratitude by writing down three things I am grateful for at the end of each day.

Whatever goal you choose, write it down. Post it where you will see it regularly. Don’t be discouraged if you fail for a day or a week—simply begin again. Remember, you’re not doing this on your own. You have supernatural help. As Psalm 37:5 says, “Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him, and he will help you” (New Living Translation, ©2007).

Please share the goal you set, and check in periodically to let us know how you’re doing. Happy New Year!

 

Angelic encouragement

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“You’re going to have a baby!” the exuberant four-year-old playing the angel Gabriel said, flapping his wings. The three-year-old playing Mary remained silent, despite our prompting her to say, “I will do whatever God wants.” The children were acting out the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) in the preschool Sunday school class I team teach. They grasped the basic story, but Luke includes two additional details that stand out in my mind.

Before Gabriel tells Mary she will have a son and name him Jesus, he says, “Do not be afraid.” That refrain echoes through the Bible from beginning to end. God knows we are often fearful, so he tells us repeatedly, “Do not be afraid.” Mary didn’t need to fear, the angel explained, because she had found favor with God. We don’t need to fear, either, because we have also found favor with God through Jesus’ death on the cross.

When Mary asks how she will have a baby since she’s a virgin, Gabriel tells her “nothing is impossible with God.” Isn’t that encouraging? A virgin birth? Not too hard for God. Finding a job for those who are unemployed? Not too hard for God. Finding a place to live for those who are facing foreclosure? Not too hard for God. The message of the Annunciation is that we don’t need to fear because nothing is impossible with God. He can provide the courage we need for the challenges we face.

Next time you’re struggling with fear and uncertainty, remember Gabriel’s words: “Do not be afraid.” When you face a situation that seems hopeless, remember his promise: “Nothing is impossible with God.” Cry out to God in prayer and wait patiently to see what he will do.

 

Face Your Fear

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I’ve overcome my fear of flying. How? Drum roll, please…. I’ve been flying. A lot. In the last nine months, I’ve boarded twenty-five planes. What had been frightening has become routine. I take off my coat and shoes at security, remove liquids and laptop, and then reclaim them all after passing through the metal detector or full-body scanner. On the plane, the sensations of acceleration or deceleration and the noises that accompany takeoff and landing have become familiar. I’ve come to realize that turbulence doesn’t last and doesn’t mean the plane is going to crash.

This process is called habituation. If you expose yourself frequently to an anxiety-provoking stimulus, the response (fear, anxiety or panic) gradually decreases. In other words, your comfort level will increase each time you fly.

If you can’t imagine yourself boarding a plane, let me explain how I found the courage to fly. It came from prayers—my own and those of my friends. We prayed for “traveling mercies”—good weather, no missed connections, no lost luggage—and most importantly peace of mind. It came also from meditating on Scriptures like Isaiah 41:10: “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Are you still unconvinced? Look no further than the story of David facing the nine-foot giant, Goliath. While the soldiers in the Israelite army were terrified by Goliath, David had the courage to fight him. What weapons did he use? A slingshot, five smooth stones and the confidence that God was on his side. These were sufficient. David killed Goliath. Likewise, with God’s help you can slay the giant of fear. Face your fear, trusting God to provide the courage you need.

Thought control

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The fall I lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, I was impressed by the city’s snow clearing program. Snowplows kept the main thoroughfares open during the day. Then in the wee hours of the morning, an army of plows, graders and front loaders with flashing yellow lights would drive through our neighborhood, clearing snow from streets and the ends of our driveways. At the T-shaped intersection where I lived, the plows cleared lanes in all directions but left a pile of snow in the center of the intersection. Cars often drove into the unplowed snow where they invariably got stuck, tires spinning uselessly.

I never understood why people would drive into such deep snow. The result was quite predictable. But for many years I allowed my thoughts to do a similar thing—one stray thought would lead to another and another, until I was mired in worry. In that way worriers are like alcoholics. Just as an alcoholic can’t consume only one drink, a worrier can’t think only one worried thought.

What is the solution? Just as alcoholics must abstain from alcohol to maintain their sobriety, worriers must learn to abstain from worry. How? To prevent my imagination from dragging me into fear and worry, I envision putting a leash on worried thoughts and taking control of them. As the apostle Paul wrote: “…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). Doing this immediately and consistently has made such worried thoughts less frequent and easier to control.

Can you imagine putting a leash on a worried thought? If not, what image works for you?