Anxious About Nothing

How many of us are anxious or worrying about something this morning? I’m telling Jesus ya’ll are sinners.

Philippians 4:6 ESV

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

*Now disclaimer- I am not by any means talking to those with severe anxiety that is treated by medication. Do not stop taking your meds because Pastor said your not allowed to be anxious. Our chemical deficiencies are the result of sin—although it may not be your sin—since we left the garden we are like the cubism era of art where everything is distorted and portrays only a shadow of reality.

We find this in when Paul tells them that wait patently for the transformation of our body—that is the removal of sin in all three areas- body, soul, and Spirit. Christ’s death takes away the sin in the Spiritual, but just because you recieved Christ doesn’t mean your bones are going to stop aching every time it rains. So take your meds!

This morning we are addressing the everyday anxiety in your life and in order to do that we are going to be in the book of Psalms—There are many anxious letters in Psalms, but we are going to

Psalm 139:17–22 ESV

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies.

David was a troubled soul. Theologians have a hard time pinning when this psalm was written. We know it was somewhere in David’s early years pre-Bathsheba, but really this could speak to any point of our lives and David’s life. But as the Psalm continues I want you to note the shift in David’s focus:

Psalm 139:23 ESV

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts!

Psalm

Psalm 139:23 NKJV

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties;

Psalm 139:23–24 NKJV

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties; And see if there is any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.

Psalm

Some versions have it and know my every thought.

David says I know people are coming against you—and ultimately that means they are coming against me, but I cannot control circumstances outside of me. So search me

Psalm 139:24 ESV

And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

The word grievous can be translated-anxious toil

I find the definition of toil interesting. It literally means extremely hard labor.

Let’s sum this up in the Pastor Sean version:

Search me and see if my mind is working hard against me. Condensed-this is what David is actually saying. Anxiety is your mind, not just working, but working hard against you.

I recently read this book, or had this book read to me-audible is an amazing tool for those who are busy or don’t like to read. Called For Men Only. There are two books One is For Women Only. It is written by Christian Psychologist attempting to explain women to men and men to women. I believe it has transformed the way I see my wife.

Don’t be offended because remember the book is written so men can understand women-The author equates the female mind to a computer and the women’s thought process to windows. Essentially he states that women can have many windows open at a time and although there may be one window displaying on the screen there are many windows or thoughts working in the background. This differs from men as men typically only have one window open at a time. When we want to change thoughts we close the one that’s open and open another. This is why women are typically good multitasking and men aren’t. Understandably there are always the anomalies where a women can’t multitask and a man can, but we are talking typical.

It’s why women can pause a discussion mid sentence transfer to another topic, and then bounce back to the original discussion all the while the man is now confused thinking he is have a teachers meeting for dinner, and wonders why the dog is getting bathed at the same time.

This is how amazing God is because both genders were made in the image of God and work just as they should. Women are from Mars and Men aren’t from Venus. The issue is anxiety comes in like a virus to a 90’s computer. I don’t know how many of remember: your innocently surfing the web looking at dinosaurs for a school paper and bam a flood of windows begin to open. To your horror you hear your parents footsteps coming down the hall and all these opening windows are chock full of inappropriate images. Frantically you begin a futile attempt to close the windows and like grey hair on an aging persons head when you close one two more open. The computer is working hard against you-you cannot close the windows and now your grounded from the computer and stuck with an encyclopedia to finish your paper.

This is the way anxiety works in our mind whether you have only one initial window open or many. You’re innocently going about your day and then you can’t stop thinking about your bills. Or why susie didn’t message you back when clearly it says she read it. Is susie mad at me? What did I do to susie? Did susie die in a car accident. Oh no susie got abducted. Meanwhile susie got a notification on her watch and tapped it to stop the buzzing, but she is driving so didn’t reply. But in your mind susie is now in Mexico and is a sex slave crying for help. You’re mind just worked overtime to stress you out.

Your Thoughts Can Change the Direction of Your Life!

It can take a blessing God gave you and keep you awake at night perverting the blessing into a thorn in your flesh. That’s they way David starts out. Lord look at all these people against us. If I let my guard down they will attack. Kill them all Lord. Smite them. Give them the black plegue.

Somewhere within the process of all those thoughts you can either frantically try to close the windows or you can shut the entire computer down and upon reboot activate the antivirus software.

David shuts down his computer to his thoughts and says search me O Lord and find not the pop windows-those are just the fruit of a larger-more rooted problem, but search me and lead me in the way of everlasting.

Literarily translated lead me into eternity.

Matthew 6:27 ESV

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Has double meaning-not only does worry subtract time for you phyiscal life-worry is usually rooted in mistrust. Mistrust is what got Eve to eat the forbidden fruit- separation of God and man. I have watched as the root of mistrust had guided people away from God. Can’t isn’t handling my situation. Can’t handle my situation. Isn’t handling it correctly or the way I want. Don’t let anxiety take you away from eternity with God.

So how do we guard against anxiety?

1. Prioritize

When you don’t have priorities EVERYTHING becomes an EMERGENCY

When there isn’t an order of execution than you try to start everything at once and fail to keep everything afloat.

Take the church for example. If we tried to tackle all that was wrong with the church at once we would never have the money to complete it so we would always either be mid-construction meaning sitting with no carpet and with 20 chairs-How many of you remember that? or We won’t start always talking about what needs to be done and never doing anything.

The board is getting ready to do this again—making a list of what needs to be done and putting it in order of importance so that when money comes in we can start at one and end at 20. instead of starting with 20 and ending with nothing.

2. Know your limitations

Don’t try to do God’s work for him. You can’t—your not big enough.

Ste

Steven Furtick states: You always know your in a presence of a fool when they try to know too much.

Know what you can and cannot do and keep your focus on the things you can get done. Everything else has to be let up to God. Doing God’s work can at best hinder the completion or at worst stop it from ever completing.

3. Keep your Integrity

You can’t expect God to close windows you keep opening. Pop ups are one thing; it’s entirely different if you go searching for it.

When I was a youth pastor I had two types of people in youth group—if you include those who just didn’t care than 3 types.,

The first type was the chameleon- at school they were one way-At home another-at church another-and at a friends house completely different than the rest. Inevitably if they stuck around long enough you would begin to see their other other selves bleed into their church self. A curse word would pop out of no where. A cute boy or girl would show up unleashing their inner self.

They say the hardest part of juggling isn’t the catching or the throwing. It’s keeping track of all the balls that are in the air. Too many and your bound to drop one— and christianity is usually the first to go because it the hardest to keep.

4. Delete Old Files

One of the biggest things that slows down old computers is when they are more documents than there is storage. Your computer goes on overload. As we transition from Trinity AG to The Bridge Community Church I have people coming up to me noticing small things that have changed and big things that have yet to change. If you close out all the small worries in your life-sprinkling in a few major ones here and there you will begin to feel the weight lifted off your shoulders. Some of are drug down by all the decisions we have to make that, like a deer caught in the headlights we stop moving, and just start panicking.

5. Trust God

Philippians 4:7 ESV

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I’m going to state the obvious here because sometimes you have to point to someones head to help them find their glasses.

Peace from God-skips through your understanding and straight to the root to guard your heart and mind. If we can understand it chances are it isn’t God.

Sometimes you just have to trust because all you can do is either worry or trust and trust doesn’t give you ulcers.