One Thing

Ever feel stressed out? How do you deal with it?

Many books on the market that offer coping mechanism for anxiety or fear simply try to reassure the reader that what you fear probably won’t happen, so put you mind on happier things. Sometime that can work for a little while.

In many ways like burying head in sand and hoping the boogeyman won’t see you.

Where does our anxiety and fear come from?

Anxiety happens when a good thing becomes the main thing. When something that I’d like to have becomes the one thing I must have in order to happy.

For instance:

Not a bad thing to want to be able to pay your bills. But when it becomes your obsession it becomes a source of anxiety

It’s good that you want your kids to be safe. But if you child’s safety is THE MOST important thing then you will life in constant fear

It’s alright to want to be healthy. But if your health is your very highest priority, then any new ache or pain can send into a spiral of fear and anxiety. My shoulder is stiff - I must have cancer!

When we make these things the most important things - the one thing - they actually become the cause of our anxiety. We set these good things up as the most important thing. In the language of the Bible, we turn these things into idols. And if anything messes with our idol, our world implodes into anxiety and fear.

Going to look at Psalm 27. Written my King David. He shows a different strategy for how to deal with our anxiety that just trying to ignore it or imagine it away.

Psalm 27:1–3 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh— my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.”

To pretend that there is no evil or that bad things don’t happen is to be fake. Rather than ignoring this reality, David faces it head on. He is honest about what could happen.

There’s no indication that anyone is assailing him or that an army is surrounding him at the moment, though David had many enemies and faced lots of hardship. He’s saying that even if this happens, I will not be anxious. How is this possible?

Psalm 27:4 “One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”

David is saying that the “one thing” he will seek after is the Lord. If he made peace his “one thing”, then whenever there was an absence of peace, his heart would fall into anxiety.

To seek as David does is about the desires of our heart. What do you want most? For David, it was the Lord. That doesn’t mean he didn’t also want to live in peace and not have enemies. It just meant what would be most important to him - his one thing - would be God.

So how then do we seek God above all else? David gives us two ways.

I’m going to Live in God’s presence. The house he refers to is the Temple. David couldn’t physically go live in the Temple, only priests could go in there. But the Temple was the place of God presence, so David is say that he wants to dwell with God the way in which God dwelled in the Temple.

For David, to live in God’s presence means to be face to face with him. To have a personal relationship. It wasn’t enough to know about God; he wanted to know God. Looking at a famous painting is not the same as knowing the Painter. David is looking for intimacy with God. The first way David will seek the one thing is by dwelling in God’s presence continually.

I’m going to Behold God’s beauty.

Any collectors in here? Stamps, coffee mugs, coins? Do you ever find yourself taking your collection out and simply gazing at it. Just beholding how unique, beautiful, and satisfying it is?

That’s something like what David is saying. He is going to look upon God and see what is beautiful, good, and true. Gazing is really a mental exercise. It’s letting the truth of God’s goodness and character occupy you mind until what you know is true in your head becomes true in your heart.

David determined that he would make God his “one thing” - the object of his greatest desire. And because of that, even if the worst thing happened, he still had what he wanted the most, and so there was no longer anything that could make him be afraid.

So how do we live a life free of anxiety? The good news is that we have something far better and more beautiful to gaze upon than the Temple.

2 Corinthians 4:6 “For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

This a complicated way of saying that how we live free of anxiety is by making Jesus our “one thing”. As the living Lord, we can dwell in his presence. We can turn our gaze upon him in such a way that his truth becomes our truth. In his face, we see all the beauty and goodness of God. And he invites us to know him face to face.

This idea is captured in my dad’s favorite old hymn called In the Garden. The chorus says:

And He walks with me And He talks with me And He tells me I am His own And the joy we share as we tarry there None other has ever known

When Jesus is your “one thing” - the thing your heart desires most, then even if something bad happens, you will still have peace.

Allan Gardiner - English missionary

In 1851 on way to South America to begin a new mission shipwrecked on a remote island. He and shipmates did their best to stay alive until someone came looking for them. Unfortunately, no one did. Finally he died, far away from his home and loved ones. Dying of starvation and thirst. Horrible way to go.

When someone eventualy discovered his body, they found lying beside him his journal. In his very last entry he had written out Psalm 34:10 “The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.” And right underneath he wrote this: “I am overwhelmed with the sense of the goodness of God.”

What?! Seriously? Why wasn’t he sad, or angry, or scared? Because he had the one thing, and so there was nothing to be afraid of.

King David and Allan Gardiner found their one thing. Have you?