Future Fears

by: Jessica Heikoop

Many of us would have to confess that we aren’t anxious about anything except our worries. “I can resist anything except temptation,” quipped Oscar Wilde.

Worry usually looks something like this: As we allow our fears to prevail, we tend to let our imaginations run loose. We think of all the bad things that could happen and then spend our time trying to figure out how to avoid or overcome them. We create countless worst-case scenarios and try to imagine what we would do if they ever happen. But in these scenarios, is God ever present? If we’re honest, we’d admit that we usually don’t include God in our “problem solving” because we think we can handle it ourselves. That’s not surrender.

God doesn’t want us to be worried about the future. We need to trust that our future is in his good and capable hands. We need to put into practice what Peter instructed us and “[cast] all [our] anxieties on him, because he cares for [us]” (1 Peter 5:7). Don’t let your imagination dwell on “what-ifs.”