Msgr. Seth Osei-Agyeman
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I don’t know if you have ever worried about something or had worry in your life, but from my own experience, I can testify to the paralysing power of worry and its ability to freeze my life to a point where I am bound in my mind, my emotions and my actions.
When this happens, the growth journey of our life is short – circuited and we feel powerless to make good decisions – in some cases, powerless to make any decisions, we feel powerless to progress past this moment in our lives and powerless to breakthrough and overcome the situation or circumstance we find ourselves in – worry saps energy.
The beginning of worry is the end of faith – faith stretches you – worry shrinks you – faith takes you where you have never been and worry will keep you where you have always been before. Analysing, doubting and worrying over an issue will stop you from maximising the opportunity.
Story told of an English Executive, who decided to do all his worrying on one day each week. He chose Wednesdays. When anything happened that gave him anxiety and annoyed his ulcer, he would write it down and put it in his worry box and forget about it until next Wednesday.
The interesting thing was that on the following Wednesday when he opened his worry box, he found that most of the things that had disturbed him the past six days were already settled. It would have been useless to have worried about them.
Worry is a dwarf – The world has never been so stressed out and freaked out where we are overdosing on pills and all sorts of stuff just to control our emotions which are generally dominated by worry
Worry is the first dwarf that we need to evict from our lives
Anger: Psalm 37:8 – Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret – it only causes harm other words for wrath are boiling point or rage. What does anger do? It only causes harm in our lives but we engage in it often only to our own detriment.
Ecclesiastes 7:9 Don’t be quick-tempered, for anger is the friend of fools.
Fool – One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion. I don’t want to be a fool so therefore anger cannot be my friend. Anger has to be something I push out of my life.
Proverbs 22:24 & 25: Keep away from anger, short-tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul.
Not angry short people!! Angry, short tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul – what a great verse.
How many know that bad company can corrupt your good character? How many know that bad attitudes can rub off on you? Let us not forget that anger is only one letter away from danger! Anger makes your mouth move faster than your mind – who’s experienced that?
Anger over-emphasises the negative of the situation – anger over complicates a potentially simple problem. Anger is a dwarf and we need to evict it from our home and life – it is a characteristic you cannot hang on to. It will shrink you, it will dominate you, it will overtake friendships and will annihilate friendships – its not your friend – it is the friend of a fool.
Stingy Proverbs 11:24: It is possible to give freely and become more wealthy, but those who are stingy will lose everything. The generous prosper and are satisfied; those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.
There is one who scatters, yet increases more; and there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty. The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself.
Here we learn that generosity is better than stingy. I notice the word used here – withhold – it means to refrain from giving, granting, or permitting. I am not just talking about being stingy in the area of finance – we can also be stingy and withhold when it comes to our time, our effort, our relationships and how much we give of ourselves to any given opportunity, situation or circumstance.
Some of the most stingiest people I have known have not been those who are stingy with their money but stingy when it comes to giving of themselves to others. The word ‘withhold’ carries so many negative associations – when we withhold we hold back – we limit – we restrict and we do not permit something new or different to be caught or taught in our lives, – we miss out on the opportunity for growth. Therefore stingy – whether it be with money or any other area of our life, is a dwarf – it will limit and keep us small.
When we withhold, we do not embark on some of the biggest and greatest opportunities of our life – we miss out on the opportunity to grow our wealth – to grow in wisdom – to grow in understanding and to grow in influence, we miss out on the chance to expand in the things of life or to grow our own personal ability to bless the Kingdom of God – therefore, losing the opportunity to invest, to increase, to bless, to prove God and to grow in our capacity to help other people in the Kingdom of God.
On the subject of money, We need to be careful of the stingy dwarf because when it attaches itself to our lives it causes us to over rate the importance of money in our lives and to over emphasise its value in our lives. The word of God teaches us – “That which we serve becomes our master” and so if we over emphasise money in our lives and we over rate its value in our life – thinking to that we attach our security and our happiness – if you over rate it – you begin to serve it, therefore it becomes your master, and Jesus said you will either serve
to be continued
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