Do not be anxious

Anxiety in our world

Good morning all. Today I’ll be talking about anxiety. Actually, I’ll mostly be talking about the alternatives to anxiety. If you’re struggling with anxiety this morning, I hope you can hear the encouragement of God’s word. In fact, let’s pray now:

Dear Lord Jesus, we come to you as struggling people. We confess that we don’t live like you did, that we fail in so many ways and let you down over and over. Remind us this morning that you are our solution, that your strength is seen in our weakness, but also that you can, and do, transform us into your likeness, reforming us into the people you made us to be. Fill our hearts and minds with your peace and truth that we might rest in you.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Australia’s anxiety

Anxiety is significant issue for us in Australia. Despite living in a nation where almost everyone is fed, clothed, and relatively safe, anxiety is rampant.

Anxiety, the feeling, is defined in Merriam-Webster’s as a “painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually over an impending or anticipated ill.”

Anxiety, like many feelings, can spin out of control and become self-perpetuating and debilitating. Beyond Blue, the mental health support charity, calls this an “anxiety condition.” The terminology can be confusing, and Beyond Blue perpetuates that by sometimes using “anxiety” to mean “anxiety condition,” and instead using “anxious” for the temporary feeling. You’ll find this confused terminology when you talk to Gen Z’ers, too. I’m using “anxiety” in its normal, primary usage as a synonym for “worry,” and “anxiety condition” for the debilitating mental condition.

Beyond Blue claim that 1 in 4 Australians will suffer anxiety conditions at some time in their lives.

My anxiety

I have never suffered from an anxiety condition, but I have certainly suffered from anxiety, and to my surprise I have found the last twelve months more anxious than ever.

It started when we bought a house for our daughter to rent. Now, being able to buy a house is such a privilege you’re probably already wondering how I could be anxious about anything. But that’s the thing with anxiety—too little can lead to anxiety, too much can lead to anxiety, and even just the right amount can lead to anxiety! As we’ll see, anxiety isn’t a result of external forces, but rather internal ones.

Anyway, we had to go up to Brisbane to do the final transfer for settlement, on the day before settlement was happening, and I felt an incredible burden of responsibility, which led to intense anxiety. On the way up in the train I needed to do breathing exercises to calm myself down (along with some other things that we’ll talk about in a moment).

Since then we’ve had all sorts of issues with that house, and the most recent anxiety was caused by relational breakdown. It was a temporary breakdown, fortunately, but I was very distressed by it, and had to really fight to avoid becoming too anxious.

How did I fight, you might ask? I’m glad you asked, because that’s precisely what I want to talk about. You see, the New Testament has some quite direct advice about how to handle anxiety. Let’s dive in and see what it says, and then we can briefly talk about how this might relate to an anxiety condition.

Jesus’ perspective

First, let’s look at Jesus’ perspective on anxiety. He explains his approach in the Sermon on the Mount, and we find his comments on worry or anxiety in Matthew 6, verses 25 to 34.

Matthew 6:25–34 NLT

25 “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? 28 “And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, 29 yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. 30 And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith? 31 “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. 34 “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Why not be anxious?

Now, the first thing to notice here is that Jesus is talking about a particular object of anxiety or worry, namely anxiety about the bare necessities of life: food, drink, clothing. It’s worth noting that these things are on the base level of Mazlow’s Heirarchy of Needs. In other words, they are among our most fundamental and basic needs, without which we cannot survive. If Jesus is telling us not be anxious about these most important needs, what might he think about worrying about the needs above them?

Yes, I expect he would consider those “higher” needs even less worthy of worry. Basically, Jesus’ is using the most important things in life, the things we are most justified in worrying about, as his example.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Greek word translated as “worry” or “anxious” here means to care about things. It is mostly used in the context of over-caring, or worrying, but, for example in 1 Corinthians 12:25, Paul is talking about honouring the weaker members of the church, and says:

1 Corinthians 12:25 NLT

25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other.

The word “care” there is the same as the word “worry” in Matthew 6. The reason I point this out is because in modern society, we often portray anxiety as a subset of fear, and it’s easy to see why being afraid of some hypothetical in the future is unwise. But in Greek thought anxiety is a distortion of care, and even in this context Jesus (and Paul, as we’ll see) warn against anxiety. Caring in the wrong way can be a bad thing.

So what does Jesus say about anxiety over food or drink or clothing? He exhorts us to consider creation: how God provides for the birds and the flowers. If God provides for these less important creatures, won’t he provide even more for his human children?

There are a couple of things to note here. First, Jesus, as God, clearly values human beings above the rest of creation. Contrary to radical environmentalists, who view humanity as a curse and a destructive virus, God views human beings as his most precious children. This does not mean that God is careless of his creation, indeed Jesus’ whole point depends on God caring even about flowers that last just a day.

One of the huge differences between Christians and the secular world is that, as Christians, we believe in an infinite God of infinite provision. But those who don’t believe in our God often believe that the world is a closed system in a precarious balance. That’s why there is so much alarm around climate change. But Christians don’t need to be so anxious, because we know that there is a loving God caring for us, looking out for us. Even in this world, devastated as it is by human sin, we can still see the wonderful abundance of God’s love.

While we were building our back patio years ago, a pair of Willie Wagtails nested in our back yard.

They learnt how to fly in the “forest” of the exposed beams of our patio roof. It was wonderful to see how God’s tiny creatures simply took advantage of whatever was provided around them. Here we were, having saved up, busily building, and the baby Wagtails simply took advantage of the beams. Now it is in the nature of people to build, and in the nature of Wagtails to fly, but neither of us need add worry to those activities.

In fact, as Jesus points out, anxiety will not improve our situation at all. It will not add a moment to our lives.

Jesus finishes with an interesting piece of advice. Don’t worry about tomorrow, focus on today, which will have enough trouble to focus on. Focus on tomorrow when it arrives. This is very pragmatic—the recognition that each day has its own troubles. But it is also very wise—we only have a limited amount of attention, so we should be focusing it where it can make a difference: the present. Buddhists and modern psychologists call this “mindfulness.” Christians call it faithfulness.

Let’s summarise Jesus’ advice:

Don’t worry because it doesn’t achieve anything. Don’t worry because God cares for you. You know this by observing the way he cares for the less important natural things around you. And finally, don’t worry about tomorrow, focus on the struggles of the present.

Paul’s perspective

Let’s turn now to Paul’s perspective on anxiety. Paul shares his perspective in his letter to the Philippians, a church that he truly loved, and who were suffering under persecution, even while Paul himself was suffering in prison.

Paul wrote:

Philippians 4:4–9 NLT

4 Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! 5 Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. 6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. 8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Paul’s alternatives to worry

Jesus gives us reasons not to worry or be anxious, but Paul takes a slightly different approach. He gives us things to do instead of worrying. We can replace anxiety with prayer, peace and pondering.

I rarely do this, but Paul’s alternatives to anxiety do fall into a nice, alliterative threesome: prayer, peace, and pondering. Let’s look at these three alternative actions with which we can replace anxiety.

Prayer

First, prayer

Philippians 4:6 NLT

6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.

Notice that Paul tells the Philippians not to worry about anything. Anything at all. We did infer that Jesus also meant that, but he didn’t explicitly say it, so it’s encouraging to see Paul be so explicit: don’t be anxious about anything!

Instead, pray. How do we pray? Well, Paul gives us three (or four) guides to our anxiety-swamping prayer. And, guess what? More alliteration! Yay!

First, prayer should be Constant and Comprehensive.

Paul says “pray about everything.” We can only pray about everything if we’re praying all the time. One of the wonderful things about being in constan conversation with God about our lives and the world we are living in is that it becomes very difficult to get worried about anything. If my daughter tells me she never wants to speak to me again and I immediately take that to God, and bring all of the associated concerns and questions to him, it’s a lot harder to find time to be anxious about it. Of course, I will find myself drifting off into worry, but if my natural instinct on feeling that is to bring it to God, I will be constantly short-circuiting the anxiety pathways that are trying to form in my brain, and I will prevent anxiety from taking control of me.

This works. It’s what I did just a few weeks ago in precisely that circumstance. I certainly felt a constant pull towards worry, but as soon as I felt that worry drag at me I would go to God and ask for his provision, his care, his love. It wasn’t easy, but it was certainly better than the alternative.

Second, our prayer should be Cherishing, embracing God with thanksgiving in our hearts.

The reason it is important to cherish God is because it helps us to keep perspective. Too often, when we encounter troubles, we focus more intently on ourselves and our own feelings, and our troubles loom larger and larger, until they block out everything else in the world. Not only can we not see the beauty and wonder that continues to exist in the world, but we cannot see the pain other people are suffering, either. We become selfish and thoughtless, bent in on ourselves in mindless pain and suffering. But if we can make the effort to remember all the good gifts God is continuing to give us, and the pain we are spared from, then our perspective is radically transformed.

While I was struggling with my daughter’s rejection, I found myself very emotional. I found myself weeping with others. And yet, at the same time I was thankful for the wonderful life God has given me on the Gold Coast. I was so grateful to God, and that gratitude opened me up to both the joy and the mourning of others. And that is what we are called to do, as Paul tells the Roman church:

Romans 12:15 ESV

15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Finally, our prayer should be Candid.

We should tell God what we need, holding nothing back. So much of our relationships with one another is governed by our fear of rejection. We don’t reveal our true desires to one another because we don’t want to be a burden, or we don’t want to be seen as selfish, or we don’t want to be judged, or whatever. But God knows our hearts. We can never surprise him, and he will never hear something from us that newly disappoints him. And God’s love for us is more faithful and resilient than any relationship we can ever have with another person. We can never push him away.

And so it is important to bring everything to him. All those silly, selfish things that we were worrying about—bring them to God in prayer. That embarrassing confusion, those conflicting desires, bring them to God. The Psalms are a model for us. Look at Psalm 43:

Psalm 43 NLT

1 Declare me innocent, O God! Defend me against these ungodly people. Rescue me from these unjust liars. 2 For you are God, my only safe haven. Why have you tossed me aside? Why must I wander around in grief, oppressed by my enemies? 3 Send out your light and your truth; let them guide me. Let them lead me to your holy mountain, to the place where you live. 4 There I will go to the altar of God, to God—the source of all my joy. I will praise you with my harp, O God, my God! 5 Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

It seems to me that the author of this Psalm (King David) is filled with doubt and confusion and sorrow and anger, and yet he wants to bring it all to God, because he knows that God is his salvation. The reason King David was called a man after God’s own heart is evident in this Psalm. It’s because David brings all of himself to God. He doesn’t hold back.

His prayer is Constant and Comprehensive, it Cherishes God, and it is completely Candid.

And when we pray like that, not only do we leave no room for anxiety, but something else happens.

Peace

We encounter the peace of God.

What is the peace of God? The peace of God is not merely an absence of conflict, it is, rather the presence of harmony, of unity. But harmony and unity with what? Well, it’s the peace of God, so it will not surprise you to find that it is harmony and unity with God.

What is so special about harmony and unity with God? Well, that’s a part of what Jesus is portraying in the Sermon on the Mount. Harmony with God is wonderful because it means we are in line with creation. After all, creation is God’s creation—God didn’t make the world to be at odds with him. The ugliness and death in the world comes from our rebellion, from humanity turning away from God and going their own way. You see, God made us co-regents of the world with him, so when we chose and continue to choose to do our own things in the world, that has an impact on the world. As I mentioned before, we are more important to God than the rest of creation, and so when we do something it has a bigger impact on the world, for good or evil.

And so, when we choose to allow God to bring us back into alignment with him—when we choose to give our lives over to Jesus—we encounter a realignment with all the goodness left in the world.

But even more importantly, we are realigned with God himself. All the beauty and goodness in existence has its source in God. When we are out of alignment with God, we are distanced from that beauty and goodness. It’s like a kink in a garden hose—until you get rid of that kink, it doesn’t matter how fancy your sprinkler or spray head is, you’re not getting any watering done. Until we straighten out the kink in our own attitudes, until we have an unobstructed connection to God and his water of life, we are not going to be able to enjoy goodness in ourselves or share it with others.

But when we do have a good connection, we find ourselves completely at peace, in harmony with the way we are designed to be. It doesn’t matter what’s going on around us because we, ourselves, are connected to the source of life and all goodness.

And that’s how our hearts and minds are guarded, by that connection to the foundation of reality. It’s an active thing, being connected to God, not a passive state. The continuous flow of God’s love and grace is an impenetrable defense against anything.

Pondering

But there is a further thing we can do when we find ourselves anxious, which more fully aligns us with God. And that is to ponder the right things. Rather than worry about bad things that might happen, Paul calls us to ponder good things. He gives us a list of things to think upon.

True—so important in a “post-truth” society where objective “true” truth has been sacrificed on the altar of human desires and is lost in a sea of internet fantasies. How do we recognise truth? By how it accords with God’s testimony, in his Word, and in his World.

Noble/honourable—this seems like an old-fashioned concept to us, but Paul often uses this idea of dignity and nobility of character to describe Christian leaders, and this simple dignity is something that should characterise all followers of Christ.

Righteous—we should always be thinking about how to do the right thing, according to God’s perspective, not our own or our society’s. Good behaviour isn’t simple, easy, or natural, it arises only from careful consideration and deliberate choice.

Pure—as Christians we are called to have one master, to give our allegiance to one Lord, we cannot have divided loyalties and remain holy, and if we don’t remain pure, we will lose our saltiness, and be useful only for lining footpaths.

Lovely/delightful—our thoughts should not be filled with ugliness and unpleasantness—what we ponder on we become—and so we should be pondering delightful things, things that bring everyone pleasure and delight.

Admirable—again, our thoughts should be filled with things that are to be admired, not things to be despised.

Finally, Paul summarises the sorts of things we should be pondering on by including anything excellent—things which anyone can admire and be impressed by—and anything praiseworthy, which is self-explanatory. A mature Christian does not ponder the ugliness of the world or the dark depths of their heart, rather they consider God’s mercies and glories, the beauty of the flowers and birds, the blessing of God’s provision and his protection, the joy of relationship.

So often today we consider the world-weary, broken hearted person to be wise and mature. No, says Paul, the person who is weighed down by thoughts of betrayal and sin is, in fact, the immature one. The mature person has deliberately turned from stewing over these realities and is, instead, seeking and exploring beauty in the midst of the struggle. They are not unaware of the struggles of life, but they are not captive to them. Rather, their hearts are held captive by the beauty and grace of their Lord Jesus Christ. And from that beauty they speak and act, and bring light wherever they go.

That can be us.

Final encouragement

A final encouragement.

Some of us struggle more with anxiety, but anxiety is an ever-present temptation for us all. This is a universal struggle. Some of us have anxiety conditions, in which anxiety has basically taken control of us. Does this make us worse Christians? No, I think if we heed Jesus and Paul it will make us better Christians. When I was worried about my daughter it pushed me into prayer so much more, and encouraged me to think on good things. Now you may find that you need some external help with anxiety conditions, and there is no shame in seeking such help, but please don’t think that modern therapy, drugs, or counselling will ever be sufficient to completely overcome anxiety. The only true cure for anxiety is complete trust God.

Years ago I was struggling with intense loneliness and misery in Tokyo. I even lost a lot of weight because I couldn’t eat properly. That pushed me to give myself completely to God. Instead of using God and his promises as a series of band-aids that could do nothing to stop me emotionally bleeding out, I abandoned myself to God, trusting him with everything that I needed, recognising that he was all I needed. I trusted God with all my soul. God responded with an overwhelming gift of peace, and also with everything I needed.

Too often we find our lives so full of good things that we have no room for the better things of God. We must make it our practice to empty ourselves, even of good things, so that we may be filled with the better things of God. This is not a one-time activity, but an ongoing practice. We are all on a life-long journey, slowly being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. That journey isn’t always consistent, and sometimes we even go backwards. But in Jesus’ strength we can keep moving slowly forward, and that will be to everyone’s advantage: ours, our family’s, our community’s, our nation’s, and the world’s.

Summary

There’s been a lot in these passages, so it’s worth recapping what we’ve learnt:

“Do not be anxious” is not a command to add to our anxiety, but an encouragement that we can be free of anxiety when we are completely given over to serving and loving God.

We can abandon our self-interest and give ourselves over to God with confidence because of what we observe about God’s wonderful providence in the world around us.

When we do feel anxiety, we can deliberately turn away from those thoughts and feelings and instead pray, constantly, comprehensively, cherishingly, and candidly.

Abandoning ourselves to faithful prayer will ultimately yield us God’s peace.

We can cultivate an attitude that avoids anxiety and worry by pondering anything that is excellent and praiseworthy.

Let’s pray:

Dear Lord Jesus, you told us not to be anxious, but to trust you and our Father in heaven. You modeled that for us, even in the face of death. Fill us with your Holy Spirit that we might live like you in total abandonment to the Father. And, through us, change the world.

In your name we pray,

Amen.