Fret vs Faith

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
-Matthew 11:28,29

Fear is a natural instinct, necessary for survival. Nothing brings this home quicker for me than watching our cat Reason. Reason was born into a colony of feral cats but was orphaned at about one week of age. We bottle-fed and weaned the tiny thing. He is seven years old now.

Although he has lived with humans these years, his feral cat instincts remain as acute as ever. Any unexpected noise sends him racing for a hiding place. A dish in the sink, foil ripped from a roll, off he runs. We laugh about it, but this would be an absolutely essential reaction if he still lived in the wild. For his own protection he would need the ability to react swiftly to any sudden change.

Of course humans have natural and necessary instincts as well. If we didn’t fear lightning we might stay outside in the storm, walking aimlessly, looking for rainbows. If we didn’t fear fire, we might get burned. And yet there is one crucial difference in our instincts and that of animals like my fraidycat Reason.

We have the ability to fret, to worry about things that have not yet happened. We can become paralyzed with the fear of things that may never even come close to happening. We have the ability to dwell on things from years gone by. We can work ourselves into such a state of anxiety that everything seems hopeless.

Jesus said, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Fear only makes sense when it is a reaction to an event in that moment – jumping back from an oncoming vehicle, for example. When we find ourselves dwelling on future fears, we can either do something to prepare for that eventuality, or accept that some things are beyond our control. I have never understood fear of death. It will happen to all mortal things. Why dwell on it?

Trust/Faith in God is the opposite of fret.

Jesus said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
-Matthew 11:28,29

Jesus says that He will walk with us and help shoulder our burdens. We will all shoulder burdens, which may be completely unrepeated to those fears we dwell upon.

I wonder if it is humanly possible to reach the point of such complete trust in God that we no longer fret about the people we love, or future events. Maybe it’s not possible, yet it is worth remembering whenever we begin to worry: Faith, not fret.

If your pastor is preaching about all the things that should cause you to stay awake at night fretting, something is very wrong. Fret is not faith. Sadly, many Christians are held hostage to fret because that is all they have ever been taught. Do you really think Christ wants us to live in fret? His own words are a resounding NO.