Change How You Think ...

 Life is full of choices, research tells us that each person potentially makes up to 35,000 conscious decisions each day. Take sleep time out of the equation, (which involves a decision about when to go to bed) and the numbers equate to something like 2000 decisions each hour or a decision every two seconds. Exhausting if you had time to think about it! For today's purpose, I'd like for us to focus on how we spend our time thinking. The way I see it we have a choice in how we think. We can either spend our time worrying about things, or we can spend our time meditating and in prayer about those same concerns. 

Worrying is not constructive. As a matter of fact worrying is debilitating and thus destructive in nature. Spending your time worrying about matters doesn't change the matter in any way. Should I go or should I stay? Will I fail or will I be successful? The list goes on and on, we can literally worry ourselves out of doing anything. Productivity is decreased or denied as we digress into worrying and creating mental images of the worse case scenarios in our minds. In Luke 12:25-26 Jesus raises this poignant question, "Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?" Not being a fatalist, but more of a realist, we aren't guaranteed tomorrow, none of us are. When we woke up this morning, that was the gift we received, the gift of today. Holocaust survivor Corrie Ten Boom said this about worrying, "Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength." If we spend our time worrying about what "might" happen, then we give up on the potential of what "might" happen if we move forward instead of sitting around worrying about things that haven't even happened. It would be interesting to see how many people would have been successful in life if they could have just left their worries behind them in the dust of hesitation and fear. Worrying is an anchor that we choose to knot ourselves to, but as with any choice there is another option, an option that provides the energy to move forward with confidence and hope!

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank Him for all He has done." Philippians 4:6 (NLT). The Apostle Paul could have been justified by our modern standards if he had been a worrier. After his conversion as a Christian persecutor to that of a mouthpiece for the Christian faith as we know it today, Paul spent the last portion of his life being persecuted, pursued, and prosecuted for his faith in Jesus. I suppose you could say Paul had legitimate concerns that would have caused many of us to be stuck in our worries and fears. But not Paul, his challenge to the Church in Philippae was to stop worrying and start praying. Prayer and meditation about your prayers is powerful. Paul went on to explain why prayer is so much more powerful than worry, "Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His Peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7 (NLT). In other words, prayer instead of worry creates peace in your heart and mind. That peace, God's peace, exceeds what we are humanly capable of experiencing on our own. When we spend our time praying and seeking God's will, not our own, that peace is powerful and it allows us to move forward confidently guided by a higher calling than our own design. 

Prayer in itself isn't going to solve our dilemmas and it doesn't guarantee us that our potential worries will magically be resolved. What prayer and subsequent meditation does provide is hope. God's response to our prayers isn't what reduces the worries of life, it is more of the salve that is applied to an injury to heal the hurt and reduce the pain. Ultimately, prayer provides peace in your life's storms and when we experience the peace of God that is where we transcend worry to a state of peace. The status may not change, but the perspective we adopt changes. When the perspective changes what might have been used to create worry and anxiety actually becomes the very fuel that motivates and moves us to where God needs and wants us to be. Fear freezes, faith fuels. 

Am I immune to worry? I'd be telling one if I said that I never worry. Do I live or choose not to live my life because of the worries in my life? No. When I begin to feel that I am worrying, I turn to prayer to help bring my thoughts into a different perspective on life and what is happening in my life. I move from a place of what is happening to me, to a place of what God is doing through me. When my perspective is more about what God can do in me and through me, I begin to leave behind the worries of what may or may not even happen. Worry is time lost that denies us of the unlimited possibilities God has in store for us if only we step into the light of God's purpose for the life He has given us to live. Change how you think and change how you live life!  

Coach Carter