Trusting God With Our Worries || Being Pulled Apart || Week 1

To my long-time followers, this series may feel familiar to you. To my newer followers, this series may also feel familiar to you. In March 2020, I wrote a series called “Anxiety in Anxious Times,” which was all about my anxieties when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Then in February 2023, I wrote a series called “Anxiety in an Anxious World,” which was a revamp of that series about the anxieties we felt today. After recording some TikToks and YouTube videos about that series, I realized I didn’t do the revamp justice. I pretty much just recycled the content, and it wasn’t right. I recognized my fatal flaw. The series was all about anxiety in different parts of the Bible, but it wasn’t the same anxiety. Finding the connective tissues between each message was all over the place. I used the Greek word merimnaó to give us a standard perspective of anxiety for the series but only mentioned it twice in four parts. I needed to do a better job, and that’s where this series comes in.

Over the next four weeks, we will talk about merimnaó properly. Four stories in the Bible used this Greek word. Two stories come from Jesus (which are essentially the same story, just one was told to the Jews and the other to the Gentiles) and two stories from Paul. I’ve talked about two of these four stories before, both in the past two iterations of this series. In my research for this series, I feel you will get a much better understanding than I shared in the previous series combined. 

Before we get into our first story, let’s create the definition we’ll work with throughout this series. Merimnaó is defined as two phrases: “to be anxious” or “to care for.” At face value, this seems like two ends of our emotional spectrum. It seems like this because it’s the fourth version of the original word. Gaining the context of the previous iterations of this word and combining all those definitions gives us the best understanding of this circumstance. Merimnaó is the verb for being anxious or caring for something. Still, the word merimna is a noun that means anxiety or care. This word is based on the Greek word merizó, which can mean to divide. The usage of this word would be translated as, “I divide into parts…” Again, merizó is the verb that means to divide the parts, but the noun that this phrase comes from is the Greek word meros, which means part, share, or portion. What should we glean from all of this? 

Being anxious (merimnaó) means having our worries, concerns, and anxieties (merimna) pulled apart (merizó) into many different directions (meros).

Does this sound like the anxiety you deal with? It sounds like mine. My anxiety pulls my focus and energy into many different directions, which causes me to care about many different things simultaneously. 

So, what does the Bible say about all this? There’s a key feature of our focus scriptures that I will be sharing with you. The passages will have highlighted verses. These verses contain the Greek phrase merimnaó. We will look at four stories containing this specific word to better understand what it means to be anxious. This is a full page of my rough draft, a plentiful introduction. Let’s read our primary scripture today. It’s Matthew 6:25-34 from the New Living Translation (which is the translation where all of our scripture in this series will come from.) Here’s what it says: 

25 That is why I tell you to not worry about everyday life – whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 

26 Look at the birds. They don’t plan or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 

27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 

28 “And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 

29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 

30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith? 

31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 

32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 

33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. 

34 “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

What is the crucial thing Jesus is teaching in this passage? To not worry about the things that God promised us. God promised to provide for us our needs. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer to “give us this day our daily bread.” God will provide us with the necessities that give us strength and protection, just as God provided for the Israelites in the desert, just as he provided for the Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament, just as he provided for Paul and his churches during Paul’s tenure. We have a book that shows God’s promises and provision over 1,500 years. There are ample testimonies and historical artifacts where people continue to share how God provided for them. We shouldn’t be worried about these things. Worry is harmful to us in many ways, such as:

• Worry can damage your health
• Worry can disrupt your productivity. 
• Worry can negatively affect the way you treat others. 
• Worry can rob your day of joy. 
• Worrying can reduce your ability to trust in God. 

Worry / Stress / Anxiety (which I will use as synonymous terms even though I recognize differences between them) can damage our health, causing more stress on our organs and bodily systems, affecting our mental health, and disrupting our emotional health. Worry can also disrupt our productivity because we are no longer focused on the results but focused on the steps to get to the result to the point where we can lose our minds if we mess up one step by 1%. Worry can change how we treat others. Worry puts uncomfortable emotions into our minds, such as anger, frustration, nervousness, depression, etc. We can unintentionally and unconsciously treat others with these emotions and not realize them. Those same emotions will also affect our perceptions, leading to our day being robbed of joy or positivity. We’ll have these emotions at the forefront of our minds, allowing us to only view our life through those lenses. Above all, worry reduces our ability to trust in God. Worry tells God that you can handle what’s worrying you. We no longer trust that God will care for it and lean on our faith to make that happen. We’re taking care of things in a me-first mentality. How do we know what’s a worry? Sometimes we worry about something genuinely or are anxious for a rational reason; sometimes, we don’t and aren’t. I love what my study Bible says.

Worry immobilizes you, but concern forces us to act. Worry paralyzes us. Concern causes us to move. I love that. Often when I’m worried about something, I’m stuck in freeze mode. My brain is running through the ruminations, what-ifs, and other related scenarios to make sense of the worry. When I’m concerned about something, I’ll contact that person. I’ll research that issue. I’ll be actively doing something to work through that concern. 

1 Peter 5:7 talks about how we can actively work through these concerns: 

7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares for you. 

Carrying these anxieties by ourselves shows, as I mentioned earlier, that we don’t fully trust God. We can say we do. We can acknowledge we do. We don’t show it as we believe it. Note the critical thing here is “by ourselves.” Humility is needed here. God didn’t create us to do life alone. We are to call others into our life and share the good and bad moments with each other. Humility lets us see how much God cares for us and wants a relationship. Humility recognizes that we need help. Humility shows that we need others involved in our life. 

Now, we might feel too prideful to ask for help, or we might feel like a burden to ask for help. That could be with God or with others, but that is far from the truth when we do that. God, at least, cares about our struggles, sin, and foolishness. People may judge us or treat us negatively because of it, but God loves us as we are. When we turn to God in repentance, he will carry the weight of all those things no matter how heavy they’ve been for us. Letting God do this for us requires asking God for help and not just waiting for God to do this himself. 

Are you familiar with the term “repentance?” I don’t hear this explained much in churches other than when read in scripture. Repentance is the Greek word metanoia (met-an’-oy-ah), which means a change of mind. It comes from the Greek word metanoeó (met-an-o-eh’-o), which means to change one’s mind or purpose. It’s actually a compound Greek word. It’s meta (met-ah’), which means “changed after being with,” and noeó (noy-eh’-o), which means to apply the mental effort needed to reach “bottom-line” conclusions through the God-given capacity to think. Are you lost? It’s okay. It’s been fascinating to me in this series to be doing these word studies to understand deeper what these Greek words mean for us today. So, repentance means changing our minds after spending time with God and reaching conclusions about how we need to change our ways. 

One of the best ways to repent is to give God all the things weighing us down. Again my study Bible says it best: “Don’t submit to circumstances; submit to the Lord, who controls circumstances.” Don’t allow your circumstances to control your life and your perspective, but allow God to guide you through your circumstances. God will set your circumstances to grow and mold you in ways sufficient to his plans for you. This isn’t me saying that God causes bad things to happen to you because I don’t believe that at all. Dire circumstances are often the result of human free will and life happen-stance. Still, God will be able to use your circumstances to share his grace and mercy and do works through you that you would never think you could do. 

The editing may split this next part of the message into a second part because I’m already on page four. Still, I’ll continue with the conversation by talking about time. Jesus said to only focus on the worries of today. Tomorrow will have its worries, and we should focus on them then. We can and should plan for tomorrow. We’re using our time wisely for preparation. Yet, if we spend time today worrying about tomorrow, we’re just wasting time. Think about what I said earlier. Worry paralyzes us, and concerns cause us to act. The act of preparation is good because it removes the concerns about how we’re spending our time. Worrying about tomorrow paralyzes us from preparing and, therefore, will enhance tomorrow’s worries. 

The planning I’m talking about includes thinking ahead about goals, steps, and schedules, plus trusting in God’s guidance. If it’s done well, we shouldn’t be worrying. If not, worry can consume us and make it difficult to trust God. Our goals should be reasonable. Our steps should be broken down as simply as possible. Our schedules should make us able to do these steps effectively. Our goals should be broken down into short- and long-term timetables to help us stay accountable for our plan. Our steps should be accomplishable to meet our goals reasonably. Our schedules should be built in a way that doesn’t bring us panic, fear, or overwhelmingness. How? The one thing I didn’t elaborate on. That is, trusting in God’s guidance. When we get into planning, invite God in the process. Pray about how our goals, steps, and schedule should be structured. Invite God into the checkpoints and help keep you accountable. If something isn’t working with your due diligence, invite God to return to the whiteboard and adjust those goals, steps, and schedules. 

God has an example of how this process works. The people of Israel were complaining about hunger and how they would be left in the desert to die. Moses went to God to share their complaints, and this is what God said in Exodus 16:4-5: 

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Look, I’m going to rain down food from heaven for you. Each day the people can go out and pick up as much food as they need for that day. I will test them in this to see whether or not they will follow instructions. 

5 On the sixth day they will gather food, and when they prepare it, there will be twice as much as usual. 

There is a goal (to be fed); there are steps (gather what you need per day and twice as much on the sixth day), and there is a schedule (once a day for days 1-5 and twice a day on day 6). Yet, here’s what caught me off guard with this text. God’s testing them with this. God’s going to test them to see if they obey this plan. Why would God do this?

What does it mean to “test” them in this context? The Hebrew word nasah (naw-saw’) means to test or try. The synonyms for this word can mean adventure, prove, tempt, or try. There seems to be a wide range of definitions and concepts that come with that God’s test. God promised to meet their needs but decided to test their obedience. God wanted to see what they’d do. We are subject to this same test in many different parts of life. We can trust God by obeying, which starts with small steps. What that looks like to you is different from what will look to me, but obedience is still obedience no matter what. 

That wraps up our first week of learning how the Bible talks about anxiety. We talked about worry, what it can do to our lives, and how to overcome it. We also discussed obeying God and trusting him in our planning and his plans. Next week, we’ll discuss the same/a similar story (the jury is still out) from the Gospel of Luke and see if anything changes. Until then, stay blessed!