"SET YOUR AFFECTIONS ON THINGS ABOVE"
‘SET YOUR AFFECTIONS ON THINGS ABOVE” WORRY: This past week, I spent a lot of quality time with my family. I noticed one of my daughters was worrying “about me” over things that will never happen. If they do, then we will deal with those problems when they arise. So, I confronted her that she was constantly worrying. She replied, “Mother I don’t know how not to worry.” There are many people who have not received the Grace of a worry-free mind. “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For we are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life, shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth…inordinate affection.
When we become excessively worried about and preoccupied with a problem or person, we can become guilty of inordinate affection. Worry over this person attacks our mental energy and productivity. Or, we may graduate to becoming obsessed with and controlling of the people and problems in our environment. Then our physical, mental and emotional energy is directed at the object of our obsession (inordinate affection). We may become reactionaries, instead of acting authentically of our own volition. We may become caretakers (rescuers, enablers) to the people around us. These are needy people and we attach ourselves to their need. Over-involvement of any sort can keep us in a state of chaos; it can keep the people around us in a state of chaos. If we’re focusing all our energies on people and problems, we have little left for the business of living our own lives.
If we take all the responsibility on ourselves of other people’s problems, there is none left for the people who have the problem. It overworks us and under works them. Furthermore, worrying about people and problems doesn’t help. It doesn’t solve problems, it doesn’t help other people, and it doesn’t help us. It is wasted energy. If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a fact, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system” wrote Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in Your erroneous Zones. Worrying and obsessing keep us so tangled in our heads we can’t solve our problems. Whenever we become attached in these ways to someone or something, we become detached from ourselves. We forfeit our power and ability to think, feel, act, and take care of ourselves. We lose control. Obsession with another human being, or a problem, is an awful thing to be caught up in. I had this happen to me in my early 40’s. My mind was like a train caught on a track that ran round and round and couldn’t get off the track. I could also describe it being in ruts and not able to get out of the ruts. That person can talk about nothing else, can think of nothing else. Even if he appears to be listening when you talk, you know that person doesn’t hear you. His mind is tossing and turning, crashing and banging, around and around on and endless race-track of compulsive thought. He/She is preoccupied. He relates whatever you say, no matter how unrelated it actually is, to the object of his obsession. He says the same things, over and over, sometimes changing the wording slightly, sometimes using the same words. Nothing you say makes any difference. Even telling them to strop doesn’t help. He/She has a problem or concern that is not only bothering them---it is controlling them. As Christians, we often attribute this to self-lessness in contrast to selfish people with whom all conversations are “all about me”. The “all about me people” are the ones using their victims. We have to be healthy and whole in Christ Jesus before we can be used as a vessel of His love to others. This is a trap that many Christians fall in to. Their entire focus was on someone or something other than themselves. Some of them spent years of their lives doing this---worrying about, reacting to, and trying to control other human beings. They were shells, sometimes almost invisible shells of people. Their energy was depleted---directed at someone else.
I see relationships of co-dependency like “the all about me people” as vampires sucking all the life out of their victim. Once there is no more life to give, then they will dump their victims and find fresh life to suck their life blood. When you are obsessed with someone or something, a problem enters your awareness. Something happens or doesn’t happen, or you sense something’s happening, but you’re not sure what. He doesn’t call, and he usually calls by now. He doesn’t answer the phone, and he should. Then panic hits, you know something bad---something terrible---has happened, is happening, or is about to happen. It hits you in the stomach. The feelings fill you up---that gut twisting, hand wringing anxiety that is so familiar to codependents. It is what causes us to do much of what we do that hurts ourselves. It is the substance worry and obsession feed upon. It is fear at its worst. Fear usually comes and goes, leaving us in flight, ready to fight, or just temporarily frightened. But anxiety hangs in there. It grips the mind, paralyzing it for all but its own purposes---an endless rehashing of the same useless thoughts. It is the fuel that propels us into controlling behaviors of all sorts. We can think of nothing but keeping a lid on things, controlling the problem, and making it go away. Some of us may be living with less serious problems, but they concern us anyway. People we love or care about may have mood swings. They may do thing we wish they wouldn’t do. We may think he or she should do things differently, a better way, a way that we believe wouldn’t cause so many problems. Out of habit, some of us may have developed an attitude of attachment---of worrying, reacting and obsessively trying to control. Maybe we have lived with people and through events that were out of control. Maybe obsessing and controlling is the way we kept things in balance or temporarily kept things from getting worse. And then we just kept on doing it. Maybe were afraid to let go, because when we let go in the past, terrible, hurtful things happened. Maybe we’ve been attached to people---living their lives for and through them---for so long that we don’t have any life of our own left to live. It’s safer to stay attached. At least we know we’re alive if we’re reacting. At least we’ve got something to do if we obsessing or controlling. This spirit is rampant in ministry. We are to help the poor. However, we are also to discern if that person is a con artist or has a valid need. Melody Beattie has an interesting approach to detachment. She says when I suggest to people that they detach from a person or problem, they recoil in horror. “Oh no!” they say, “I could never do that. I love him or her, too much. I care too much to do that. This problem or person is too important to me. She describes detachment as not a cold, hostile withdrawal’ a resigned despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way; a robotical walk through life oblivious to and totally unaffected by people and problems; a Pollyanna like ignorant bless; a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others; or a severing of our relationships. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern. Ideally, detachment is releasing, or detaching from, a person or problem in love. We mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically disengage ourselves from unhealthy (and frequently painful) entanglements with another person’s life and responsibilities, and from problems we cannot solve. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people’s responsibilities and tend to our own instead. This is called minding our own business. In this church, there are Deacons who have areas of responsibility. I tell them they are only to attend to their area of responsibility, not someone else’s area. If we are not in authority and think we need to instruct others on how to do their job, we are in serious boundary violation.
We have a family of administrators. When everyone gets together, everyone is giving instructions and taking charge. This past week, I called, “time out”. For this particular family gathering, I am the only one in charge. That ended the confusion. (Smile) However, we need to have the respect to know that at other gatherings, I wear beige, fade in the background and rest while others are “in charge”.
We develop a policy of keeping our hands off other people’s responsibilities and tend to our own instead. If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. And we give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change things we can’t. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. We can live happily---focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that. We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more.
People respect someone who is trying to do their best and giving life their best shot. It is called a “good attitude”. When we have a “good attitude”, then we come into that place of receiving blessings and are a blessing. Everyone wants to be around a blessing. Detachment also involves accepting reality---the facts. It requires faith---in us, in God, in other people, and in the natural order and destiny of things in this world. We believe in the rightness and appropriateness of each moment. We release our burdens and cares to the burden bearer. After all as the was declared this morning in the Word that “For by Jesus were all things created, that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether there be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things are created by him and for him. And he is before all things and by him all things consist.” Hebrews 1:3: “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, say down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” The rewards of this trust are great: serenity, a deep sense of peace, the ability to give and receive love in shelf-enhancing, energizing ways; and the freedom to find real solutions to our problems.
When do we know we have a problem? When we can’t stop thinking, talking about, or worrying about someone or something; when our emotions are churning and boiling; when we feel like we have to do something about someone because we can’t stand it another minute; when we’re hanging on by a thread, and it feels like that single thread is frayed; and when we believe we can no longer live with the problem we’ve been trying to live with. It is time to detach! It may be that your loved ones are destroying themselves right before your eyes. When you get well and happy, they will want what you have. Then you can show them the way to Christ Jesus and his wonderful power of deliverance.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Center City , Minnesota 55012-0176
Colossians 3:2
Some will even neglect personal responsibilities to be someone else’s hero.
We find the freedom to live our own lives without excessive feelings of guilt about, or responsibility toward others. We stop worrying about people and they pick up the slack and finally start solving their own problems or assume the responsibility to stop being the problem.