A travel advisory, or travel alert is an official warning statement issued by government agencies to provide information about the relative safety of travelling to or visiting one or more specific foreign countries or destinations.
Similarly, life is often described as a journey and God has also provided a travel advisory which is His word to alert life’s travelers on how to successfully navigate life’s many bumps, and its unexpected twists and turns.
To pay attention to the instructions in God’s advisories and obey them we would need to travel light on the journey of live devoid of the burden of fear and worry, the two most common baggage that weigh us down.
To travel light means to take as little baggage as possible when traveling, and it could also be defined as trying to avoid the unnecessary or paying undue attention to what does not really matter.
True, we are living in an increasingly fast paced life with attendant worry and anxieties while worrying seems to be the number stressor in our world today.
Even though it is the natural for human nature to be concerned about some situations in our world and in our personal lives, but if we don’t learn to empty our minds of anxieties through a simple faith in the word of God, the devil will be glad to wear us out.
Not having a simple faith in God to take care of our concerns gives the devil an advantage and a leverage to steal our peace of mind. In John 10:10, Jesus contrasts himself with “the thief’, saying ‘the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it in abundance.”
For many Christians one of the most diversionary topic of the present time is the increasing political unrest around the world which causes a lot of interest and attention and with it steals the abundant life promised by Jesus.
Should we be ignorant about our political context? No. Should we be paying a fixative attention to them, No. Did Jesus pay much attention to the political upheavals of his time, No. This should also be our attitude to the present political unrest around us as well while only having our eyes on what matters, the Kingdom of God which is not of this world.
Because Jesus knew this it helped governed his attitude to the political distractions of his day even though He knew He was the promised Messiah. Jesus refused to be made king; He also withdrew from confrontation with the religious rulers, in addition, He never incited the people against Rome.
Against the background of His knowledge of His ministry to bring the revelation of God’s Kingdom to many Jesus was careful to focus on his message and not leverage on political resources to fulfill his goal.
Political Messiahs who came before Jesus were so preoccupied with using political force to bring about the Kingdom of God that they all perished doing so. Helping God to fulfill his plan is probably the greatest stressor we can bring to birth in our lives. (Read: Acts 5:36-38).
Defining worry a writer says, ‘Worry is the opposite of faith. It steals our peace, physically wears us out, and can even make us sick. When we worry, we torment ourselves—we’re doing the devil’s job for him! Worry is caused by not trusting God to take care of the various situations in our lives.
Too often we trust our own abilities, believing that we can figure out how to take care of our own problems. And yet, after all our worry and effort to go it alone, we come up short—unable to bring about suitable solutions’.
The Bible says “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8.
Knowing the draining role of undue baggage of worry and anxiety during our Christian life-journey, the Bible did not leave us without words of encouragement and advise on how to travel light so that we can be swift to hear and quick to obey God in our journey- this a key to avoiding unnecessary spiritual accidents and injuries, or even robbery caused by the burden of anxiety, worry and stress.
Key among the advisories is that we must empty our minds of anxiety while perfecting our gaze on the Lord without much thought for the heavy burden of life’s daily challenges. In Matthew 6:34 Jesus warns: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
In Philippians 4:6-7 we gain another insight into this advisory thus: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God’.
Now what are the useful tips we can use to help us to travel light?
Get rid of worry and anxiety by trusting God. Lay hold of a relevant scripture that talks to your worry, read and meditate on it until the peace in that word takes over the worry in your heart.
In Joshua 1:8 the Bible admonishes us saying: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success’.
A wise uses his travel advisory and prepares in advance, in the same fashion we do not just plunge headlong into the journey of life without the ample preparation, but we must prepare in advance.
The best way we can prepare in advance is to first learn God’s word about our situation and plant it firmly in our hearts. How do we apply God’s word into our situation? We apply it by Reading, understanding, memorizing, and meditating over it.
Digging deep in our study of what God has communicated about our situation and applying it is crucial to overcoming worry and anxiety. In Isaiah 26:3 we read: “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You’.
We must also learn the art of taking thoughts captive by discerning if it is a thought from God or a thought from the enemy. When it is from the enemy, we must exchange it for God’s truth that we already learned. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
This is the often-forgotten strategy of spiritual warfare. We do not let what we see or hear settle into our thoughts and then begin to move us into undue pressure, but we stand on the meditated word of God in faith, confessing only what the word of God says concerning our situation or keeping quiet, standing quietly in faith.
We must trust God that no matter what we are going through He knows what is best for us and he will help us fulfill what we ask in His own wisdom. Consequently, we choose not to be anxious but to keep our peace by trusting that just as God’s word hold the universe firmly together, and causes the night to give way to the day, He will also keep us and help us to fulfill destiny in His power, only if we trust in him.
Reading: Matthew 6:25-3
