Be still and know I am God

Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Matthew 6:27 NIV

This is a question posed by Jesus, during the famous sermon on the mount. What he is asking in other words is by worrying can anyone make any actual difference to the current situation someone may find themselves in? 

Modern day life it would seem to promote the stress, worry, anxiety on a daily basis, there is so much to be anxious or worry about. Load shedding, lack of water, power outages, financial burden's, joblessness, what does the future hold for me and my loved ones? On the surface it seems absurd for Jesus to say don't worry, I mean how not to? 

However I observe that the anxiety comes from the inability to control the stuff that is happening in my life. We are control freaks in so many ways, and want to control everything around us, to have all of our ducks in a row, and think of having a plan for every eventuality. Yet so much is Not under our direct control, despite our deep desire to be in control. Emotional  intelligence would tell us that only our response to situations or events is within our direct control. 

Having this "so said control" is at best an illusion or at worst an idol. 

Without it we have to admit that we can't have a plan in place to counter everything that would disturb our world. Jesus called it trouble, and said that we would have plenty of it to spare, each day in fact, but that he had overcome the world.

Back to the sermon on the mount, Jesus concludes the discourse with the following

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:33‭-‬34 NIV

This is his solution to worry, anxiety or stress, having plans for each situation. That is in the form of a command, to seek his Kingdom or Himself first and foremost, because you can actually add something of eternal value to your life today and into the future that worry Never will.

The backdrop is this, that Jesus knows the Father 

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

Matthew 6:32 NIV

The Father loves his children, and if he dresses the fields of the earth or feeds the bird's of the air, how much more does he love the sons? Read the account in Matt 6: 25 -34. We as humans don't know what our immediate future holds, we can try or hope to but in reality how can we? 

I as a young man was very sure I could have a plan for every eventuality, and confident in my ability to make a plan in need, slowly I came to realise that this was an illusion, that I had so many factors that affect or influence the world, even the safety and security of my family. That having control was in fact an illusion that I held up as an idol, it replaced God and my need and dependence on Him, therefore an idol, simply named. I see the same tendency in my son and pray that he would renounce it sooner in life than I did. 

Worry, stress and anxiety are killers of our joy, peace and dependence on God, not to mention what it does to our bodies, souls and emotional state of being.

This scripture is also a command from God

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalms 46:10 NIV

We have to acknowledge that God the Father and Jesus know what is best and surrender our anxiety to him alone, he cares for us