Faith & Insight: Heading into 2017, worry less and pray more

Happy New Year to all of you faithful readers.

I pray the God of peace will guard your hearts and lead your lives throughout this upcoming year.

I love quotes that are so filled with wisdom, I hope you do also. Here’s a quote that’s certain to enhance and strengthen your walk for years to come.

“Worry doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow but it empties today of its strength,” by Corrie ten Boom.

It’s hard not to worry, it’s hard not to be consumed at times with things we can’t wrap our minds around, especially when it comes to the future.

The Bible teaches us to press onto the upper call in Christ Jesus, forgetting the past and pressing upward, onward. Forgetting the past doesn’t mean not to remember it, it means for it not be controlled and dominated with your every thought of it. Our past is a place we’ve come from and through. A good metaphor is the side mirrors and the rearview mirror of your car or truck.

If you take the time to measure these you may find the average size mirror would be 4-by-6 inches for both of the sides plus the rearview that hangs on the windshield to be possibly 2-by-8 inches, which would give a grand total of about 64 square inches. Now if you measure the windshield it may be, as mine is, 56-by-36 inches giving the square inch range of 2016. Interesting number, wouldn’t you say? 2016 has a lot to be remembered for, as well as learned from, but not to be worried and fretted over.

There are things that can’t be changed but shouldn’t be repeated. May they be life lessons.

The Bible teaches we should be anxious for nothing but in all things with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make our requests to the Lord. Prayer is the tool that takes worry and turns it into a request that’s attached to hope with trust.

2017 most assuredly will not be problem free, but may it be less and less worry filled as we become people who are prayer-filled. Prayerful means: Full of prayer.

Happy New Year to all,

From all of us at Calvary Chapel Carson City.

Pat Propster is the pastor of Calvary Chapel of Carson City.