Philippians 4:6-7
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.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
Have you ever written out a message to someone and read over it before you sent it… only to discover that what you had written sounded silly or ridiculous? Maybe you expressed worry or concern over something, and once you saw it written down on paper, it all seemed trivial or less important. Often, when thoughts come into our head, it is helpful to write them down and let them settle before doing anything further. This could be akin to "shaping your worries into prayers".
If you have ever worked with cookie dough… the kind you roll out and cut into pretty shapes for baking…you know that at some point, you work and work with the dough until there is nothing left but scraps that are hard to shape and form into anything pretty. These last few pieces usually end up as a “blob cookie” – most often eaten by the baker (at least at my house!).
Writing out our prayers… listing our worries and “shaping them into prayer”… might actually be a pretty good idea. When we write things down, then step back and look at them, we can see where God is already on the job… and how He can handle certain aspects of whatever concerns us far better than we ever could hope to do. Just as with the cookie dough, we might even do a halfway decent job of working out the first few shapes… but God can take that last “blob” and mold it into something beautiful, as well.
So whether we actually write out our worries and petitions to God… or we simply voice them… let’s understand that He’s got this. God knows our concerns and is already working on them. He’s waiting for us to surrender them completely to Him, so that He can resolve them perfectly. This is a hard one for me… and maybe for you, also. I want to scoop up my worries and concerns and keep reshaping them. Surely if I just massage that “worry dough” enough, I can get it all to work out in perfectly formed “cookies”… right? What I need to learn – and maybe you do, too – is that God is the far superior “baker”… He can work everything out perfectly, and I need to step aside and let Him. AND… I need to trust Him more.
Today, I challenge you to write out a prayer to God and tell Him ALL of your worries and concerns. Then read it again and see where you are trying to “rework the dough” that God is already forming into the perfect “cookies” for your life. We are often our own worst enemy when it comes to having peace about all things. God has already promised to handle our worries and our cares and give us complete peace… isn’t it time for us to let Him?
©2013 Debbie Robus
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