Cast Your Cares on Him– Or Else!

God loves passion in his people. We are to hate sin, hunger for righteousness, pant like a deer for the water of his word, delight in his word, weep over the ravages of sin, grieve over our sins etc.

So what is the difference between passion that provokes to righteousness and passion that kills?

Healthy passion flows like this:

1. Life happens
2. We “see” the event.
3. We feel a surge of passion that fits what we see.
4. We put out the fight or flight chemicals for energy stamina and immune protection.
5.  We turn on our thinking, “What are we going to do, who can help me, what tools and steps will I need?
6. We seize the moment, doing all God calls for us with the help of others and comfort of the comforter
7. Now we ask, “Anything else God wants me to do about this situation?”
8. If the answer is, “NO” , we cast our cares on him for he cares for us.
9. Lastly we say, “That is in your hands, now show me how you want me to interact with the new piece of life in front of me.

God wants us to be passionate and peaceful, caring and calm! He wants us to do, delight, and then drop it. We will never burn out by seizing the moment with his help and then dropping it.

To moderate passion, we first put out serotonin and then, when we have done our part, we put out some more serotonin and turn off the passion. We do the same with passionate thinking. We stop putting out glutamate and start putting out GABA to turn off our round-and-round thoughts. We stop dumping, fight or flight, chemicals in our body and return to rest.

This, “dance” between passion and rest should go back and forth throughout the day.

It is no accident that glutamate (seize the moment) and GABA (let it go) are the two dominant neurotransmitters in the brain. There are 100 times more of these than of any other neurotransmitter. God really wants us to be passionate and peaceful.

The world either learns not to care, or to drown their concerns in relationships, food, alcohol, video games etc., or cares and burns out.

We, caring people, get involved but stay tense all the time and continue to flood our bodies and brains with adrenaline, thyroid, cortisone, cytokines and glutamate. We try to cram intense, “recreation” into the weekends and wind up stressing ourselves trying to relax.

What are the consequences of prolonged exposure to worry chemicals?

Chronic adrenaline causes problems in almost all body systems but specifically damages blood vessels, elevates blood pressure, and increases the risk of heart attacks.

Chronic cortisone causes weight gain and poor sleep.

Chronic cytokines cause:

1. the inflammatory/immune system to be agitated and dysfunctional.
2. The immune system does a poor job of protecting us from bacterial invasion and from new cancers that pop up throughout life.
3. It also starts to attack us and is at the root of developing high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, fibromyalgia, weight gain, etc etc,
4. It also attacks the blood-brain barrier and inflammatory molecules leak into the brain attacking the hippocampus which ruins short-term- memory.
5. It attacks the pons, causing hoarding tendencies.
6. It attacks the ventromedial prefrontal cortex causing irrational fears.
7. It attacks our balance of focus, shifting it from whatsoever things are positive to whatsoever things are negative.

Chronic tension depletes the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. We enter this catch-22 where:

We know that we need to cast our cares on him.

To do that we have to release serotonin.

But have no serotonin to calm down with.

So we keep worrying and then yell at ourselves for worrying.

Which just uses up the serotonin that we have.

Without nor-epinephrine, we have trouble being mindful. Our thoughts wander inwards to worries that further deplete our nor-epinephrine, causing us to tune out the gifts of living in the now.

Without dopamine, life loses its color. We don’t want to do, doing is a struggle, there is no sense of accomplishment if we do, no desire to do it again.

Chronic glutamate release causes the responder cortex to stop listening. We shut out light, sound, people, objects, and situations and turn inwards to problems we can do nothing about.

As my missionary parents used to say, “Kai Caroo?” Which I think is Telegu for “What’s to do?”

I start by making a habit of three prayers in all situations:

Thanks

Show me my part

Help

I am to be grateful always for everything, so I say thanks and the stress loses its power, and God is seen as “Even bigger than that!”)