Be Anxious For Nothing--Now?
Sermon on the Mount:
When Jesus saw all the people, his heart was filled with love for them. They were like a little flock of sheep that didn’t have a shepherd to take care of them. So Jesus sat them all down and he talked to them …
“See those little birds over there?” Jesus said.
Everyone looked. Little sparrows were pecking at seeds along the stony path. “Where do they get their food? Perhaps they have pantries all stocked up? Cabinets full of food?”
Everyone laughed—who’s ever seen a bird with a bag of groceries?
“No,” Jesus said. “They don’t need to worry about that. Because God knows what they need and he feeds them.”
“And what about these wildflowers?”
Everyone looked. All around them flowers were growing. Anemones, daisies, pure white lilies.
“Where do they get their lovely clothes? Do they make them? Or do they go to work every day so they can buy them? Do they have closets full of clothes?”
Everyone laughed again—who’s ever seen a flower putting on a dress?
“No,” Jesus said. “They don’t need to worry about that because God clothes them in royal robes of splendor! Not even a king is that well dressed!”
“Little flock,” Jesus said, “you are more important than birds! More important than flowers! The birds and the flowers don’t sit and worry about things. And God doesn’t want his children to worry either. God loves to look after the birds and the flowers. And he loves to look after you, too.”
Jesus knew that God would always love and watch over the world he had made—everything in it—birds, flowers, trees, animals, everything! And most of all, his children.
From the Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones
It does seem comical to think of birds worrying about the groceries in the pantry, or anxious flowers fretting over their wardrobe. Yet, when it comes to losing a job, facing foreclosure on a house, or squeezing by on half the income of last year, childlike faith in God’s provision is no laughing matter. In fact, it’s downright tough to believe any version of Scripture’s promise that God really is watching over His children. As unemployment throughout the country pushes 10 percent and many in the church suffer right alongside their neighbors, how do we continue to trust in God as our provider, let alone obey the command of Luke 12:22: “Do not be anxious about your life … ”?
Whether we’ve been wiped out by the unemployment wave or are simply shuttering the windows in the face of a threatening storm, we need answers that go beyond, “All things work together … .” Theologians and experts in psychology affirm three truths for surviving the anxiety inherent in our stormy economic times. First, we must accept our realistic, necessary, and fully human emotions while overcoming improper fears and anxieties. Second, we must dig into our hearts to examine the buried location of our real treasure. And third, we must cling to the goodness, sovereignty, and faithfulness of our loving God, trusting His promises to care for us, even in the most dire of circumstances.
Accept Emotions
“All of our emotions need to be brought under the lordship of Christ,” says Richard Winter, professor of practical theology and counseling at Covenant Seminary, who was originally trained as a psychiatrist. “’Don’t be anxious’ is the command,” he says. “But if I’m taking an exam, I need to feel a little healthy anxiety.” Winter explains that there is a distinction between proper anxiety and improper anxiety. “What is healthy in terms of anxiety is when it drives us to productive action. If I am worried about whether my wife and child will be able to eat, then I need to work to ensure they will be able to eat. Now, in economic times like ours, that anxiety becomes very real.”
Winter continues, “You can have right concern to provide for your family, but when it becomes an anxious, obsessive, gnawing worry that can even become sickening physically, it means you have put your trust in the wrong things … . Sometimes fears and anxiety get out of control.”
Author Paul Tripp agrees: “The fact that I experience some degree of anxiety because I’m a limited human being actually gives glory to God—I’m bearing His image. My concern says that I take seriously my responsibility before Him in regard to my family. That concern and fear honors Him—we don’t want to turn that into a sin.”
The subtle distinction between healthy fear and faithless anxiety can be difficult to assess, but Winter offers the example of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, described in Hebrews 5: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.” Winter observes: “Here is the perfect man who is facing some sense of fear and anxiety.” Contrast that with Peter, explains Winter, who experiences a faithless fear in Matthew 14 when he walks toward Jesus on the water and fears the wind, sinking as a result of anxiety.
So how do we assess our own anxiety levels? Although the distinction is subtle, Winter offers a sort of formula: “It is a matter of where your attention is most of the time,” he says. “Look at the quantity and quality of what you worry about. It’s appropriate to worry about an exam or medical lab results or a driving test. But if you begin to become preoccupied or overwhelmed or doubting the goodness of God, that’s when it goes over the edge.”
Dig for Treasure
It’s when we become obsessively anxious that we need to examine where our real treasure lies, says Tripp. Going back to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Tripp says Jesus connects anxiety to forgetting and reminds us to look at physical creation—the birds that don’t buy groceries and the flowers that don’t shop at Macy’s. “God has invited us into His family and as a father, God has covenantally committed Himself to provide for our needs. [But] He hasn’t said He’ll do that in a particular way.” So when I’m convinced that I need a 4,000 square-foot house and am anxious because I can’t afford the mortgage, my anxiety reveals something about my heart’s treasure, explains Tripp.
Steve Brown, radio personality and founder of Key Life Ministries, agrees that we often don’t get from God what we think we want. In the midst of unemployment and deprivation, Brown asks: “Is it still possible to say that God is good all the time and God is faithful all the time? Sometimes you express anger at God: ‘If you really loved me, I’d have more!’ There has to be extreme authenticity when you’re dealing with God.”
Brown speaks from experience. He recently resigned from Reformed Theological Seminary to focus on his radio and Internet ministry. “That means I have to sell my house,” Brown explains. Illustrating his own authentic communication with God, he says, “I told God that if He loved me He would have given me a better market for selling my house.” Yet, Brown acknowledges that God has provided what he truly needs. “I had breakfast this morning. I am sitting in a nice chair right now,” he quips. “But, I want to ask God for $100,000 in my bank account. God asks me: ‘What, you don’t have enough?’”
Our sinful hearts always want more than what God has graciously provided—a consequence of living in a fallen world. “Sin causes us to set up our own little kingdoms—my wants, my needs, my feelings,” explains Tripp. “Even so thoroughly that I judge God’s faithfulness by how He delivers the things I say I need. The problem is that what God has promised to deliver may be very different from what my heart craves.”
“A downturn like this reveals what I’m really pursuing, what I’m really serving,” says Tripp. “My identity, my meaning and purpose, my inner sense of well-being becomes attached to physical, temporal, impersonal things. They don’t have the God-given ability to satisfy my soul.” While it can be hard to recognize sinful patterns, Tripp says there is wealth to be found when we dig in our hearts. “This is the uncomfortable grace of the gospel. God is up to something good in this moment of uncomfortable grace. He will take you where you haven’t intended to go in order to produce in you what you haven’t achieved on your own.”
In order to take advantage of this opportunity for growth, Tripp says we can ask ourselves: “What is it in this particular moment in our culture that God is trying to reveal to me, rescue me from? Where is He working to pry open my hands so that I’m not working so hard to hold onto things that don’t satisfy?”
Cling to His Promises
It is in this prying open of our hands from our abilities, accomplishments, and possessions that we can discover the true promise of God: Himself. Tripp says, “The hardest thing to hold onto, but the most beautiful when we get it, is that what God promises to us in times of suffering is not first the relief of the suffering. His promise is to give us Himself.”
This truth is hard to hold onto partially because of a very real enemy. “The devil can sow seeds of cynicism and doubt about God’s character,” says Winter.
“You have to believe that God is in sovereign control and He hasn’t abandoned you, even if it doesn’t seem that way.” Brown reminds us: “God is not only near to you, the Spirit lives inside of you, so don’t fight this war alone,” says Brown. “Where God is trying to reveal good things to us, the enemy wants to whisper that you can’t trust this guy—look what He’s doing to you. That war is fought on the turf of your heart.”
Instead of believing the lies about God’s character, Christians need to remind themselves of truth, says Tripp. “One of the things a person needs to say is that this present crisis is under the direct control of my heavenly Father. The God who is in control is the definition of wisdom and power and everything good and true and amazing and gracious.”
When we believe in the promise of His presence, we suffer differently, explains Tripp. “You don’t have to clean yourself up and hide your emotions before you approach God,” he says.
Brown agrees: “The anxiety of faith will drive you to God, not away from Him. The other will cause you to conclude that God is not trustworthy.”
The Psalms illustrate God’s response as people of faith run to Him in times of confusion. “David often wrote with great anxiety,” Winter observes. “Most times David tells God what he is thinking and gradually works through to a point of trust in God. God accepts us in our confusion. He doesn’t expect us to instantly grab hold of faith and trust Him and our anxieties will go away,” he says. “It’s a working through—whether in the presence of God in prayer, or with a friend or with a group of other believers. We share our struggles and sorrows together.”
Rest in Trust
Sometimes, we don’t understand and we just need to rest in the trust of our heavenly Father, says Brown. He tells the story of his golden retriever puppy, Quincy, who like many others of his breed was born with hip problems. So, when Quincy was still a puppy, Brown reluctantly put him through a long and painful surgery. Arriving home after the surgery, Brown picked up the bandaged puppy, which couldn’t even hobble from the car to the house, and placed him on a blanket in the corner of the family room.
Brown remembers his heavy heart as he sat down to read the newspaper across the room from Quincy: “He’ll never be the same again. I’m trying to help him, but I inflicted all this pain on him and he doesn’t understand.” But as Brown turned his attention to the newspaper, Quincy roused himself from the blanket in the corner and hobbled over to Brown’s chair. He nudged his nose under the newspaper and put his head in Brown’s lap.
When we experience anxiety in the midst of suffering, there’s much we can do to proactively respond in faith—accepting our emotions, examining our hearts, clinging to God’s promises. But sometimes, we just need to rest our head in God’s lap.
To listen to Bryan Chappell's interview with Richard Winter about anxiety, click here.
Susan Fikse is a freelance writer and member of Intown Community Church in Atlanta, Ga.
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