Throughout the Gospels, Jesus called upon his disciples to renounce things. One of the things he asked them to renounce was worry. Worry was thrown into the lot of renunciation with things like money, family, and career among other things.

I don’t think I ever really got that before. Of course I have read the scripture where Jesus tells us not worry, because God takes care of the lilies and the birds . . . but I never saw worry as something that got in the way of following Jesus.

I want to be a disciple of Christ . . . I want to renounce the things that I feel he is calling me to renounce . . . one of which is worry.

You see in my life, worry can be translated as anxiety . . . something I have dealt a lot with, especially over the last few months. And though it will not honestly be as easy as saying “I renounce . . . worry.” I do need to take the removal of worry and anxiety from my life a little more seriously . . . because it is getting in the way of me following Jesus. Because all the time I spend being anxious and thinking about things I don’t have much control over, is time I could be spending for the kingdom.

I don’t mean to sound cheesy or corny or like a dorky Christian trying to leave all her issues at the altar, but . . .

I am serious about this following Jesus thing . . . I may not have been as serious as I should have been the in the past few months or years . . . but I know that right now I am . . . and for me it begins with the renunciation of worry.

So worry . . . anxiety . . . I renounce your presence in my life.