By John Stallings
One of the sayings of Christ that used to baffle me was;
There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him those are they that defile the man. Mark 7:15
I pondered this statement for quite some time before finding the simple answer. My thinking was; --- surely we know that ingesting strong drink, inhaling tobacco smoke, eating too much of the wrong foods, ingesting poisonous things, or breathing air laden with pollutants are the things that defile us. But Jesus is saying it’s just the opposite; the things that go into a man aren’t what defile him, but rather the things that come out of him. How strange, until you get the revelation.
One day I was in a grocery store & God used a very simple object to reach my simple mind. He said, “Why don’t you go ask the man in the veggie department to wrap you up a half pound of malice?Then go by & ask the butcher to wrap you up a couple of pounds of hate. Check in the drug department & buy some fear, envy, lust & maybe some hypocrisy. Then on your way out pick up some fraud & deceit & maybe a sack of anxiety.”
It was like a light-bulb was turned on in my mind. That store didn’t carry those articles. Fear, murder, adultery, lies, envy, malice & hypocrisy aren’t concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and don’t roll down the conveyor belts of any manufacturer. These things aren’t even resident in the hearts of the brute animals of the jungle. They can’t be found in the hearts of cats & dogs & birds or the fish that swim the murky depths of the sea. The only creator of these monsters is the darkened, fallen, sinful heart of man.
1. WORRY & ANXIETY ARE MONSTERS FROM INNER SPACE.
We think that somehow worry comes to us from the outside but in truth worry is something we do, not something done to us. That’s why Jesus commands us not to do it. Matt.6:26-27---33-34.
I heard about a man who worried so much it gave him an ulcer. He hired a man to do his worrying for him & paid him $100,000. One day he was telling a friend about what he’d done & the friend asked “how in the world can you afford to pay someone that much money to do your worrying?” He answered, “I don’t know, I’m letting him worry about that.”
Wouldn’t it be great if we could pay someone to do our worrying for us?
Back in the sixties I read a book by Dale Carnegie called “How to stop worrying & start living.” It’s an excellent book, & among other things, he gives a four-step rule for dealing with worry.
Carnegie tells in the forward of his book that in the mid-nineteen thirties, not long after the great depression ended, he realized how prevalent worry was among professional men & saw that worry was actually killing people. He looked through libraries to find books on the subject but couldn’t find any so he wrote his book on worry.
As far as I know Carnegie wasn’t a Christian but he includes many passages of scripture in his book so it’s obvious that he found as others have that the Word of God is the definitive book on worry & anxiety.
Philippians 4:7 says;
Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer & petition with thanksgiving present your requests to the lord.
This is a command of God. From start to finish the Bible tell us plainly not to worry, presents us cases where people have been worried & then shows us how they came out of it with God’s help.
Mental health experts say more than half of our hospital beds are filled with people suffering the effects of worry. Mental distress can cause headaches, arthritis, cystitis, colitis, backaches, ulcers, depression, digestive disorders, & even death. When we add to that the mental fatigue of nights without sleep & days without peace we get a glimpse of the havoc worry plays in destroying the quality & quantity of life.
The mortality rate of worry is astounding. Worry is bad for us because it has no nutritional value for the body or for the soul. Some people try not to let anything happen to them that they haven’t worried about well in advance. They have raised worry to an art form. God never intended that the people He created & saved should hang between certainty & doubt, filled with anxiety over so many things.
It’s been said that the average person’s worries break down like this;
40% about things that never happen
30% about the past that can’t be changed
12% about inaccurate criticism from other people
10% about health which gets worse because of worry
8% about real problems we have to face
Someone said, “When you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure nine of them will fall into the ditch before they reach you.”
If you’re a close observer, you can look at a person & see worry on their countenance. It makes them look haggard & bends the body over choking the creative life out of them. Worry is serious business. You can almost feel sorry for them & feel like saying, “There, there, things will be alright.” But God says, “No! Repent! Stop this way of life.” Worry is a radical kind of unbelief & it drives the dagger of slander into the ribs of God’s integrity.
When we worry we take the imagination that’s supposed to see God in everything & misuse it by conjuring up things that have no redeeming value. When we hear a voice telling us how bad things are going to be, we can be certain we’re not hearing God’s voice. It’s not God’s voice because God doesn’t dwell in the nightmare, “never- never” world of Apocalypse Now.
I’m going to say something now that will shock you; worry, real hard-core worry is worse than drug addiction. It’s worse than other sinful behaviors & monsters that are also born in the shadows of our inner-space. Why-you say? Worry is worse because worry is actually the father & progenitor of many of these heinous monsters such as drug & alcohol addiction.
Worry can cause a person to get into drugs & alcohol in order to drown out the pain it brings. It can cause people to lash out at everybody & alienate friends. Worry has many bad “monster cousins” that slip right into our lives when worry opens the door. Worry has a close friend called anger. Worry has a close traveling companion called self-pity. Many people go into adulterous affairs because they are feeling sorry for themselves & tell themselves their flesh needs a little pampering. It all started with worry & anxiety, and then slipped into self-pity.
Worriers have a subtle way of dumping on others. They transfer their worry to other people so innocently if you blink you’ll miss it. After the worrier leaves others can’t figure out why they’re now in depression. It’s because the worrier always sees the dark side & bring their troubles in, spreading them all around. Sometimes worry even masquerades as “prayer concerns.”
Before we make the decision to dump on others we need to remember that it takes eight positive thoughts to cancel or cover one negative thought. That’s why God is so serious about our mental attitudes. He doesn’t suggest that we don’t worry & fret, He absolutely forbids His children to worry & fret about anything.
Longstanding anxieties & worries arise out of a lifestyle in which we’ve forgotten God & His wonderful provisions for us. I wish I knew a gentler way of saying that. I don’t want to come off pompous here because I’ve had to fight worry in my life like fighting the demons of hell. But I can tell you that in those times when I’ve allowed worry to climb into the saddle, it’s been times when I wasn’t bringing God into the equation. Doesn’t that ring true with you?
If the Bible commands me to “be anxious for nothing” & the Bible commands me to “fear not,” I can be sure that it’s within my power to stop it. I can choose to believe God’s presence is with me & in His presence fear & anxiety are swallowed up. There’s no twelve step formula to be free from worry. We are freed from worry by our fellowship & relationship of trust with the living God.
Have you ever noticed when reading the Psalms; you’re overhearing a man talk to his God? He’s not telling the church or his friends, he’s talking to his God. The Psalmist is clear about how he feels. Sometimes he wants people dead, their wife widows, & their children orphans. He comes out of it but that’s because he went to God with it. Have you talked to God lately in real honesty? He can handle it. Don’t pretend you’re not worried, angry or upset, but take it to God in prayer & let Him know your true feelings.
Watch out now because I’m going to throw you a hanging–curve ball.
GOD DOESN’T ACTUALLY TELL US NOT TO WORRY!
If God were to say, --Be anxious for nothing---he’d actually be dooming us to certain worry. God would never tell us not to worry. The way we’re physiologically made-up, a command -not to worry-would assure us that we’d worry. We’d worry so much that if we ran out of something to worry about that would worry us. Telling us not to worry would be like walking into a dark room & trying to throw the darkness out. No! What do we do in a dark room? We turn on a light.
God doesn’t say – “be anxious for nothing, try to get your mind off of it.” God doesn’t say— “Be anxious for nothing, attack worry with everything you have in you.”
What does God say? He says---Be anxious for nothing—pray! God doesn’t leave us without a plan, but says—Be anxious for nothing BUT in everything by prayer & supplication make your requests known unto the Lord.
Don’t try to come against worry; you’ll lose just like you would if you cursed the darkness. Instead, turn your attention to God & let your requests be made known to Him…..in everything by prayer & supplication---turn to God & let Him know exactly what the cause of your worry is….let your requests be made known. Fully uncover it to God.
In Luke 24:17 & following, The Risen Christ joined Himself to two men as they walked toward a town called Emmaus. Jesus started asking the men questions about what their problem was. He said, in essence, “What’s bugging you guys?” Jesus wanted them to spill out their requests & needs to Him. After they told Him their problems of disappointment & disillusionment, then Jesus started to minister to them. Do you realize the risen Lord wouldn’t deal with their problems until they poured out their hearts to Him? God doesn’t ask questions for information. He already knows everything. He asks questions to get us to talk to Him.—let your requests be made known. Give it all to God!
Don’t just come crashing in asking God for things before you remember His goodness to you in the past…..With thanksgiving let your requests be made known. Forget not all His benefits.
Then we have a wonderful promise. ……The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts & minds through Jesus Christ. ---Phil.4:7
Rather than dumping my gloom on people, I can just tell it all to Jesus & he’ll give me peace that’s incomprehensible. What a promise!
Take your tomorrows that don’t yet exist, take the person & the thing that is giving you cause to worry & fret & just give them all to God.
Whatever your tomorrows hold for you, your spouse, your children & your children’s children, put all of it in God’s hands.
There is nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him those are they that defile the man. Mark 7:15
I pondered this statement for quite some time before finding the simple answer. My thinking was; --- surely we know that ingesting strong drink, inhaling tobacco smoke, eating too much of the wrong foods, ingesting poisonous things, or breathing air laden with pollutants are the things that defile us. But Jesus is saying it’s just the opposite; the things that go into a man aren’t what defile him, but rather the things that come out of him. How strange, until you get the revelation.
One day I was in a grocery store & God used a very simple object to reach my simple mind. He said, “Why don’t you go ask the man in the veggie department to wrap you up a half pound of malice?Then go by & ask the butcher to wrap you up a couple of pounds of hate. Check in the drug department & buy some fear, envy, lust & maybe some hypocrisy. Then on your way out pick up some fraud & deceit & maybe a sack of anxiety.”
It was like a light-bulb was turned on in my mind. That store didn’t carry those articles. Fear, murder, adultery, lies, envy, malice & hypocrisy aren’t concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and don’t roll down the conveyor belts of any manufacturer. These things aren’t even resident in the hearts of the brute animals of the jungle. They can’t be found in the hearts of cats & dogs & birds or the fish that swim the murky depths of the sea. The only creator of these monsters is the darkened, fallen, sinful heart of man.
1. WORRY & ANXIETY ARE MONSTERS FROM INNER SPACE.
We think that somehow worry comes to us from the outside but in truth worry is something we do, not something done to us. That’s why Jesus commands us not to do it. Matt.6:26-27---33-34.
I heard about a man who worried so much it gave him an ulcer. He hired a man to do his worrying for him & paid him $100,000. One day he was telling a friend about what he’d done & the friend asked “how in the world can you afford to pay someone that much money to do your worrying?” He answered, “I don’t know, I’m letting him worry about that.”
Wouldn’t it be great if we could pay someone to do our worrying for us?
Back in the sixties I read a book by Dale Carnegie called “How to stop worrying & start living.” It’s an excellent book, & among other things, he gives a four-step rule for dealing with worry.
Carnegie tells in the forward of his book that in the mid-nineteen thirties, not long after the great depression ended, he realized how prevalent worry was among professional men & saw that worry was actually killing people. He looked through libraries to find books on the subject but couldn’t find any so he wrote his book on worry.
As far as I know Carnegie wasn’t a Christian but he includes many passages of scripture in his book so it’s obvious that he found as others have that the Word of God is the definitive book on worry & anxiety.
Philippians 4:7 says;
Don’t be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer & petition with thanksgiving present your requests to the lord.
This is a command of God. From start to finish the Bible tell us plainly not to worry, presents us cases where people have been worried & then shows us how they came out of it with God’s help.
Mental health experts say more than half of our hospital beds are filled with people suffering the effects of worry. Mental distress can cause headaches, arthritis, cystitis, colitis, backaches, ulcers, depression, digestive disorders, & even death. When we add to that the mental fatigue of nights without sleep & days without peace we get a glimpse of the havoc worry plays in destroying the quality & quantity of life.
The mortality rate of worry is astounding. Worry is bad for us because it has no nutritional value for the body or for the soul. Some people try not to let anything happen to them that they haven’t worried about well in advance. They have raised worry to an art form. God never intended that the people He created & saved should hang between certainty & doubt, filled with anxiety over so many things.
It’s been said that the average person’s worries break down like this;
40% about things that never happen
30% about the past that can’t be changed
12% about inaccurate criticism from other people
10% about health which gets worse because of worry
8% about real problems we have to face
Someone said, “When you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure nine of them will fall into the ditch before they reach you.”
If you’re a close observer, you can look at a person & see worry on their countenance. It makes them look haggard & bends the body over choking the creative life out of them. Worry is serious business. You can almost feel sorry for them & feel like saying, “There, there, things will be alright.” But God says, “No! Repent! Stop this way of life.” Worry is a radical kind of unbelief & it drives the dagger of slander into the ribs of God’s integrity.
When we worry we take the imagination that’s supposed to see God in everything & misuse it by conjuring up things that have no redeeming value. When we hear a voice telling us how bad things are going to be, we can be certain we’re not hearing God’s voice. It’s not God’s voice because God doesn’t dwell in the nightmare, “never- never” world of Apocalypse Now.
I’m going to say something now that will shock you; worry, real hard-core worry is worse than drug addiction. It’s worse than other sinful behaviors & monsters that are also born in the shadows of our inner-space. Why-you say? Worry is worse because worry is actually the father & progenitor of many of these heinous monsters such as drug & alcohol addiction.
Worry can cause a person to get into drugs & alcohol in order to drown out the pain it brings. It can cause people to lash out at everybody & alienate friends. Worry has many bad “monster cousins” that slip right into our lives when worry opens the door. Worry has a close friend called anger. Worry has a close traveling companion called self-pity. Many people go into adulterous affairs because they are feeling sorry for themselves & tell themselves their flesh needs a little pampering. It all started with worry & anxiety, and then slipped into self-pity.
Worriers have a subtle way of dumping on others. They transfer their worry to other people so innocently if you blink you’ll miss it. After the worrier leaves others can’t figure out why they’re now in depression. It’s because the worrier always sees the dark side & bring their troubles in, spreading them all around. Sometimes worry even masquerades as “prayer concerns.”
Before we make the decision to dump on others we need to remember that it takes eight positive thoughts to cancel or cover one negative thought. That’s why God is so serious about our mental attitudes. He doesn’t suggest that we don’t worry & fret, He absolutely forbids His children to worry & fret about anything.
Longstanding anxieties & worries arise out of a lifestyle in which we’ve forgotten God & His wonderful provisions for us. I wish I knew a gentler way of saying that. I don’t want to come off pompous here because I’ve had to fight worry in my life like fighting the demons of hell. But I can tell you that in those times when I’ve allowed worry to climb into the saddle, it’s been times when I wasn’t bringing God into the equation. Doesn’t that ring true with you?
If the Bible commands me to “be anxious for nothing” & the Bible commands me to “fear not,” I can be sure that it’s within my power to stop it. I can choose to believe God’s presence is with me & in His presence fear & anxiety are swallowed up. There’s no twelve step formula to be free from worry. We are freed from worry by our fellowship & relationship of trust with the living God.
Have you ever noticed when reading the Psalms; you’re overhearing a man talk to his God? He’s not telling the church or his friends, he’s talking to his God. The Psalmist is clear about how he feels. Sometimes he wants people dead, their wife widows, & their children orphans. He comes out of it but that’s because he went to God with it. Have you talked to God lately in real honesty? He can handle it. Don’t pretend you’re not worried, angry or upset, but take it to God in prayer & let Him know your true feelings.
Watch out now because I’m going to throw you a hanging–curve ball.
GOD DOESN’T ACTUALLY TELL US NOT TO WORRY!
If God were to say, --Be anxious for nothing---he’d actually be dooming us to certain worry. God would never tell us not to worry. The way we’re physiologically made-up, a command -not to worry-would assure us that we’d worry. We’d worry so much that if we ran out of something to worry about that would worry us. Telling us not to worry would be like walking into a dark room & trying to throw the darkness out. No! What do we do in a dark room? We turn on a light.
God doesn’t say – “be anxious for nothing, try to get your mind off of it.” God doesn’t say— “Be anxious for nothing, attack worry with everything you have in you.”
What does God say? He says---Be anxious for nothing—pray! God doesn’t leave us without a plan, but says—Be anxious for nothing BUT in everything by prayer & supplication make your requests known unto the Lord.
Don’t try to come against worry; you’ll lose just like you would if you cursed the darkness. Instead, turn your attention to God & let your requests be made known to Him…..in everything by prayer & supplication---turn to God & let Him know exactly what the cause of your worry is….let your requests be made known. Fully uncover it to God.
In Luke 24:17 & following, The Risen Christ joined Himself to two men as they walked toward a town called Emmaus. Jesus started asking the men questions about what their problem was. He said, in essence, “What’s bugging you guys?” Jesus wanted them to spill out their requests & needs to Him. After they told Him their problems of disappointment & disillusionment, then Jesus started to minister to them. Do you realize the risen Lord wouldn’t deal with their problems until they poured out their hearts to Him? God doesn’t ask questions for information. He already knows everything. He asks questions to get us to talk to Him.—let your requests be made known. Give it all to God!
Don’t just come crashing in asking God for things before you remember His goodness to you in the past…..With thanksgiving let your requests be made known. Forget not all His benefits.
Then we have a wonderful promise. ……The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts & minds through Jesus Christ. ---Phil.4:7
Rather than dumping my gloom on people, I can just tell it all to Jesus & he’ll give me peace that’s incomprehensible. What a promise!
Take your tomorrows that don’t yet exist, take the person & the thing that is giving you cause to worry & fret & just give them all to God.
Whatever your tomorrows hold for you, your spouse, your children & your children’s children, put all of it in God’s hands.
The peace of God will keep you, will garrison you round about as you live for Him Who lives in you. It’s true for all of us! Praise His name!
Blessings,
John
Blessings,
John
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