Are You Trusting God for Restoration?

A little known secret about the blogging world is that often posts are pitched and written well before they are published. This allows ample time for the editing and scheduling of the posts. I, and I’d venture to say all of the contributors to The Glorious Table, pour our hearts into posts, turn them in, and then pray over you, the reader, while we wait. We pray that our words will reach readers at the exact moment God has ordained and impact their lives. I have been praying for some time that this is the case for you today.

I originally pitched this post–pitching is just giving a short summary of the intended theme of the post–before my world turned upside down. By the time you read these words, it may be righted again. Or it might be turned upside down all over again. You see, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor a couple of weeks ago. She had surgery to remove part of it shortly after that diagnosis, and yesterday, it was confirmed a Grade 4 aggressive malignant tumor.

Life can be so sweet. It can also be so difficult. Often the two are so intertwined that it can be hard to find our bearings. So how do we cope? How do we trust? How do we live out God’s command not to worry?

Before we deal with those questions, let me first address the topic of anxiety. Anxiety and worry are often lumped together, but I view them as two different things. Sometimes we call magnified worry “anxiety,” but I disagree with that. I think anxiety occurs when there’s a chemical imbalance that causes your body to react in ways you cannot control on your own.

While I am not a doctor or an expert on anxiety, I want to be clear here that I do not believe anxiety is a sin. Portions of the church body can be judgmental when it comes to anxiety because they equate it with worry, and I want no part of that. Anxiety deserves prayer and compassion, and often requires therapy or medical care. I grieve with those of you who endure it and pray you are released from it.

Then there is worry. Jesus himself instructs us not to worry, saying, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” (Matt. 6:27 NIV). I’d encourage you to read the entire passage if it’s been a while. When life throws us curve balls, it’s so difficult not to worry. But Jesus is so right! What good does it do? Now, I don’t think allowing one errant “What if . . .” thought into our minds takes us to sin. I think it’s what we do with that thought. Do we let it fester? Or do we take hold of it, reject it, and turn our hearts and minds back to our heavenly Father?

When we get down to the heart of the matter, worry is a sin because it displays a lack of trust in our creator. Sometimes we convince ourselves that worry invokes control over outcomes. What we must realize is that outcomes are God’s alone. These are truths I must remind myself of regularly. Trusting God is just like love in a marriage. It’s a daily, intentional choice. We are not trusting God for results; we are trusting him for restoration. We can and should ask and believe for the outcome we want. But our trust shouldn’t be shaken if we don’t get our way. At our core, we must believe God wants all good things for us and will restore all things.

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My curve ball right now is dramatic and likely different than yours. You may worry about your children’s safety, about gun violence, about the outcome of our upcoming election. You may worry about your marriage or a friend experiencing abuse. You may also have a loved one who is ill. And if you have none of these concerns, it’s likely one will come your way eventually. My charge to us as women is that we not enable each other to sink into worry, but that we instead lovingly point each other to our Savior, on whom we can fully depend. May we acknowledge our lack of control over our lives and our utter dependence on him. May we take our errant worries and lay them at the feet of Jesus as we choose, day by day, to trust him for full and complete restoration.

Amy Wiebe is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.

Photograph © Bethany Beams, used with permission