thoughts
anxiety vs. will
Passage: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." Philippians 4:6
It is 10:00 in the evening as I write this, and I have a little bit of anxiety right now.
Actually, a lot of anxiety.
You see, tomorrow I get a big idea as to where I will be working over the summer. I'm supposed to find out my status on an internship position tomorrow. I've really wanted to work for this company, and so it's a big deal to me. I already know that my fate is not in my hands, though. Someone else has first opportunity at this position. If they take it, I have to look somewhere else. But if they don't, it's mine if I want it (which I do). So it's hard for me at this point to feel anything but nervousness about the whole thing; after all, I have really no say in it.
Or do I?
In the above passage it says that I should present my requests to God. I have already been in prayer about where I should go over the summer, and about this job in particular. 1 John 5:14-15 says that if I am presenting my requests to God in His will, then I shall have what I ask for.
So I've asked for this position, if that's what I'm supposed to do. I know that God wants what's best for me (Romans 8:28), so really I'm asking to know if this is what He wants for me. Now, I can't honestly say that this has somehow magically put me in a completely tranquil mood. I'm still not exactly at peace with this. But I do know that He is watching out for me.
Now, to extend this to other things in my life:
I was going to write a thought about how I feel that I don't know a lot of things about life, and as a result I worry about them. I don't know what a real job is like, and so a lot of the time I feel that I'm going to be inadequate when I start one this summer (wherever it may be). I don't know how to live completely on my own yet, and so I'm concerned with what it's like. (It's comforting to know that my sister and brother-in-law have gotten along swimmingly so far, but that doesn't completely put me at ease.) I worry constantly if I will ever find someone. When I think I've found them, I worry about how to act around them, how to approach them, etc.
I could keep on going for a while about such matters. But that doesn't really do anything except make me think (and therefore worry) about them. One of the things that I have to constantly keep working on is to put my faith in God when it comes to myself. Too many times I want to take control of my own life; then I find that by "taking control" I mean just worry about everything. I have found that when I am really close to God everything really works out well. That goes back to 1 John. When I am in His will, what I ask for will be granted because what I want and what He wants are one and the same.
I know that I've got a long way to go before I completely manage to put this into action. But I know that it's going to be better for me as a whole when I do.