Worry is the dress rehearsal for something that may or may not ever happen. Take any situation that you worry about and keeps you awake at night. When you worry about it, you envision all the pieces, all the players, all the circumstances and here is the funny part, you aways envision yourself as the one that gets hurt, shunned, disrespected, disappointed and the one who loses.

Why is it that we always see ourselves as the loser in the worries of dress rehearsal? Here is the truth – Satan wants us to worry, he wants us to be discouraged, he wants us to feel ‘less than enough,’ and wants us to see ourselves as the loser. If he can get us to think these thoughts, he basically sidelines us from succeeding. There is nothing more fearful to Satan than a happy, well-adjusted and successful Christian who is unashamed to share their faith.

When I was worrying and going through all the debt situations with the restaurants in the early 90’s, I always saw myself as the failure. The one that was not good enough, not smart enough, not resourceful enough, basically just not enough. Well, God got me through that, and all the worry dress rehearsals turned out to be wrong. Sometimes it turns out to be correct, but more times than not, we always envision it to be worse than it ends up being.

It’s impossible to tell someone ‘stop worrying’ and they instantly quit worrying. Ha. You can, however, whisper uplifting words to help someone through that situation.

So, as best you can, stop creating a full-dress rehearsal of all the bad things that could happen to you and try as best you can, to roll the care over on God. KT