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TRUST JESUS TODAY

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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Time-consuming (02/24/11)
Thunderstorm warnings and tornado sightings prevailed throughout the night. Devastating winds are still howling, and I have to travel later today.

Road trips are always a cause for me to fret, even on a sunny day, much more so on a day like today! So I’ve spent the last few hours on edge instead of sleeping.

Perhaps you know the feeling. Maybe it’s even a way of life for you. Worrying and fretting about things that are out of your control. You’re always a little uneasy and irresolute about tomorrow, spending time fantasizing that the future is threatening for you, or especially your children.

So you spend the best parts of your day or night pacing the floor, wringing your hands and rubbing your eyelids. You sit down, but you bite your nails. Listen, as the heel of your foot goes tap…tap…tap…tap…tap, quickly, rhythmic on the floor.

You’re not sleeping - not for long anyway – a notepad rests beside your bed in case you awake with a thought, a plan, something on your mind to help you make sure you’ve covered all of your bases and that you’ve planned for anything that “could” happen.

Worrying about what may happen tomorrow is eating away at your mind, causing headaches, insomnia, chest pains, and irritability. Fretting is devouring your emotional well being – you’re sad and often crying – fearing death, you make sure you’ve planned for it; in your mind. So you try to stop feeling.

The noise of anxious thoughts causes your mind to go into a cloudy state of confusion, and your environment seems to be dark and illusory, so you walk about trancelike.

You have no time to feed the hungry, care for the sick, visit the prisoners – you have no time to build God’s kingdom, because you have everything else to think about. So you do nothing.

Your mind, your emotions, your activities stop. Your family time suffers; time for your friends is devoured. You’re idle.

Spiritual robust and fruitfulness and fruit bearing have been consumed by the time gowb - worry.

Gowb is a Hebrew word meaning “locusts.” Locust swarms are so massive they darken the skies and envelope everything in their environment in blackness. The deadening noise of their swarm prevents any beneficial sounds, just the earsplitting hissing of millions of hornets. Such are anxious thoughts.

Gowb come down on the land and devour the foliage of an entire region; they consume any fruitfulness in the land. Not only do they raze the fruit on the vine, they eat up the roots, the bark and the hard wood of the tree leaving it barren, fruitless, and in a state of nothingness. Such is worry to the spirit.

In Exodus 10:18, Moses entreated God, and God provided a contrary wind and carried the deadly gowb of Egypt into the Red Sea and destroyed all of them. Nothing stops a swarm of gowb but a mighty, miracle wind to carry them away.

You cannot control the storm or anything in the future with worry. It’s a time gowb. So how do you stop the time gowb, the locusts of the mind, from eating fertile thoughts and consuming precious, fruit bearing moments? Like Moses, entreat God!

“Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious - the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse (Philippians 4:6-8 MSG).”

And just as the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow answered Moses’ prayer, he will provide a mighty, miracle wind for you to stop the time gowb, carrying them away to die in the Red Sea!
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Shann Hall-LochmannVanBennekom 
03/04/11
This is a wonderful subject for a devotion and you picked great scripture verses. You started the first two sentences or so in the first person, then switched to the third person, I think it mould have had a stronger impact if youhad stayed mirth the first person. Swill admit I do spend far too much time worrying about thing I can't change. Thanks for the reminder.
diana kay
03/04/11
great piece. well written I think many people will be able to relate to the tie consuming worries.. and educational too :-)
Bonnie Bowden 
03/08/11
I could so relate to your message. I have an active mind and think a lot about the what ifs. I had no idea what a Gowb was, before reading your piece. The analogy of locusts is right on.

Thank you.
Shann Hall-LochmannVanBennekom 
03/16/11
Congratulations for placing 7th in level one!