Is there a place where
God will not venture? Not according to Psalm 139. Well I don’t know about the Psalmist, but it
seems that there is one place God refuses to go with me. It’s the land of “What Ifs”.
What
if I got sick and couldn’t work anymore… Or what if the furnace gives out,
since we have no savings….. Or what if I there’s not enough to pay the mortgage
this month…. I go to these imagined
places in my head, and find myself getting stressed out and fearful about
things that are not actual events, just possible events over which I have no
control. If they are not real, then they
are not true. Therefore they are lies,
and God doesn’t do lies. Isa. 28:15
“…for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.” I leave God
at the door when I go into that place of falsehood, and like quicksand, it’s
hard to escape once I am entrenched in the mess.
So what do I do when I find myself
alone in the land of what ifs? The good
news is that God has an app for that.
No, it’s not on your smart phone, but there is a way out of that
paralyzing place. God’s app for escaping
the land of what ifs is a series of four steps that I learned some years back
in ladies’ bible study at Keswick:
1. Stop and
ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” For
me it might be “fearful, hopeless and alone about finances”.
2. Next ask,
“What am I thinking?” What is the thought behind those feelings? For me it might be “God doesn’t care about me
and how I am struggling financially”.
3. Is there
anything in my thinking that does not line up with what God says in his
word? Well, sure there is. If I am thinking God doesn’t care about me,
there are numerous scriptures that tell me differently. How about “I have loved you with an
everlasting love”. (Jer. 31:3), or “Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the children of God” (I John 3:1)
4. Choose to
correct your thinking with the truth God has revealed.
By making that choice to turn from the
error in my thinking to the truth God speaks in his word, I take that first
step out of the “what if” quicksand. There
is a delightful relief in admitting I am wrong in my thinking, (God really does
care about me!), and consciously choosing to step away from the lie, out of the
land of what ifs, and into God’s truth. Yeah,
there’s an app for that! And it works!
