The Difference Between Worry and Prayer
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By Pastor Cory Swinderman
Pastor Cory Swinderman
Tony Evans tells the story about a man who was late for his flight. He sprinted through the airport terminal huffing and puffing and perspiring. As he passed a man in a pilot’s uniform, the pilot called out, “why are you in a hurry?” The breathless man shouted, “I’m late for my plane… I’ve got to catch it… It’s flight 4937… and its leaving from gate A3 soon.” The pilot shouted out, “You can slow down. It’s not going to leave without me. I’m the pilot for that flight.”
Evans writes, “If the pilot is chilling, you chill too. Don’t stress yourself out about things unnecessarily. Wait on God and trust that if He’s taking His time, you can too” (Tony Evans Book of Illustrations, p. 349).
Worry and prayer are very different things, but how often prayer can be the very place where we worry. We might say that we are praying about a matter, but all we are really doing is worrying about it.
We can lock our attention on the worrisome matter. We recite the concern and then we try to derive our own solutions. If no suitable solution is found, we sit and try to justify our anxiety before God.
The worried routine can last minutes, hours, or months, and the weight of anxiety grows over time. It’s hard to chill if the pilot is chilling, indeed.
I was recently speaking with a family member about a worry that I had. She simply said, “give it to God.” It was simple advice; too simple if you asked me. I figured that I had every right to try and figure this out because what would releasing it to God really do? My problem was way too complicated. I needed an answer way too soon. I concluded that I would keep praying (a.k.a. worrying) about it.
But my family member was right because giving it to God is exactly what true prayer is.
True prayer does not lock its attention upon the matter, but seeks to lock its attention onto God. I can change nothing, but God can change anything.
True prayer seeks to release things that I cannot control, to the one who controls everything. Prayer is surrender. Prayer is trust. Prayer is faith.
I am thankful for the Holy Spirit because He is always leading us back to God. When my prayer time becomes a worry session, the Holy Spirit is great at getting me back on track. One way he does this is to simply ask, “You’ve been praying about this for a long time. Are you feeling better about this or worse?” Worry always makes me feel worse: heavier and more confused. But if my attention is locked upon God instead of my problem, prayer lightens my load. We all need the correction the Spirit comes to give.
Philippians 4:6-7 says something about this: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
In her book, Praying with Eyes Wide Open, Sherry Harney shares why prayer works the way it does in these verses (p. 157). We can present our requests to God and receive his peace because the phrase just before these verses tells us, “The Lord is near” (4:5b).
He is near to the troubled and the one in trouble. He is near to the worried and the anxious. He is near to the sinner and the saint. He is near to those of us breathlessly running through life. “Why are you in a hurry? You can slow down… I’m the pilot…”
