"Do you know enough to worry?"

Let’s say I give you an apple seed. It’s a seed from a Washington Red Delicious. You love and have eaten bushels of them. You’ve even picked them. You know a tree-ripened apple from one picked early and sprayed to ripen. You make your own apple pies. You know just about everything there is to know about apples…

…except one thing. I ask you to look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it. You can’t. And of course you can’t. You don’t know what the future holds. It’s reasonable to assume that seed contains bushels and bushels of apples in it, but it may hold none. You don’t know enough to say.

Just as you can’t look at that apple seed and tell me how many apples are in it, you don’t know enough about the future to worry. You can’t look at a life situation and tell what it contains. Sure, you can worry about a lot of possible outcomes, but you can’t with certainty say what will happen.

When you start to worry today, remember: God knows. And God is in control.

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"Are you worrying today?"

Today, I’m doing something I’ve known about for nearly 18 years, looked forward to in some ways, but not in others. Today, I’m taking our older daughter to college.

She’s a brilliant and beautiful young lady who has accomplished much, will do even more, and has a deep, abiding spirit about her. She’s mature and my wife and I are very proud of and excited for her.

But she’s leaving home today. And we know she’ll do fine, but you’ll understand when I say we still worry some. All of these, “What if’s…?” keep leaping into my mind. “What if she does this?” and “What if she forgets to do that?” and on and on the list goes, most of it silly stuff that I know will never happen; some of it potentially legitimate, but not really.

So once again I face a situation where I have no control, but I know someone who does: God. God is in control and since God’s in control, I know I don’t need to worry, just wish our daughter well, and love her come what may.

Don’t worry. Just love others come what may today. God is in control.

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"Are you in a storm?"

Last month, Hurricane Cindy made landfall in the Gulf of Mexico region and headed north toward where I live. The storm produced some severe rainfall, like 5 inches in 3 hours at our farm. It also produced tornado warnings.

I watched the progress of the storm with increasing interest as she came closer. Using the Doppler radar on the Weather Channel’s website, I read the tornado warnings, and saw the “hooks” in the radar readings, indicating tornadic activity. We were under a tornado warning for about 6 hours.

I’ve lived through more than a few funnel clouds, some of which touched down where I was. So I began worrying a bit…until I realized that as with most of life, this storm was beyond my control. Sure, I could secure a few things around the farm, but my worrying wouldn’t change that storm one bit. So I prayed, asking God to help me not to worry, to keep everyone safe; letting God have control of the situation. Remember: God is in control. And avoid the “worry warnings” as you listen to life and make a life.

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"Are you pregnant with worry?"

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I did a funeral service for a baby who went full-term, but was still-born. Everything seemed normal enough until the child was born.

Well, you can imagine how I felt—“What could be wrong with our child that we didn’t know about? Would she be still-born, too?” I worried…a lot. It stayed on my mind, following me everywhere I went and in everything I did.

Finally one day, exhausted with worrying and my wife tired of me asking, “Are you okay?,” I decided that my worrying was doing none of us any good. In fact, it was hurting me. I was giving away the joy of our first pregnancy, my passionate productivity at work, and my happiness in life. And for what? I had no control whatsoever over my wife’s pregnancy, but I knew who did—God was in control. So I prayed, asking God to take away my worry; giving God control over what I couldn’t.

Don’t be pregnant with worry. Listen to life today and give control to God.

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"Do you worry?"

Last month, I shared a story with you about how my wife and I sometimes worry about the horses in the pastures when the fog rolls in and we can’t see them from our home. Your response was incredible to that story with people all over the world saying, “Thank you for that story about worry!”

So this week, let’s talk about worry and why we worry and what to do about it.

I saw a beautiful butterfly on our yellow butterfly bush recently. And I thought about how that butterfly became so lovely. Basically, it had to die to itself. It was a caterpillar that ate leaves until one day it sensed that it was time to spin a cocoon around itself. It stayed in that cocoon, basically dead, until it was time to emerge a beautiful butterfly.

Now did the caterpillar worry: “What if I don’t come out alive?” No, it trusted the abundance of God’s created world and the sense God gave it to know what to do when, and lived into it. The butterfly knew what you know at some level: God is in control. So be a butterfly today and know God is in control.

Click here to listen to Dr. Joey