Worry

Lament

Like many of you I have been shocked and horrified about the school shooting in Uvlade, Tx

I was a high schooler when Columbine happened in Colorado…That school shooting started it all...

What is so difficult for me is is the rate at which America has become numb to this sort of thing

We watch with horror for a day or two and then a potential verdict in the Johnny Depp trial becomes far more interesting.

And as a church how do we even begin to respond to this?

First, I want to share with you what we believe about God.

There are some people who believe that God moves every little thing to happen. including Tsunamis and 9/11…And that in these events there is some cosmic meaning of God’s wrath.

Then they get angry at God and say, why would God let this happen? And the reality is that while God can handle your anger, it is misdirected

What we believe about God is that he is both Sovereign but that he also limits his sovereignty to allow for human choice

Evil really does exist in this world. And we live in a world where people reject God’s goodness and by default they lean into that evil.

People act on evil, apart from God.

So as this incredible expression of Love God gives us free agency to choose him or not choose him.

And in our world we have seen unspeakable evil perpetrated by people who are really agents of evil

So I want to talk about something for just a couple of minutes and give you an opportunity to respond

So much of the Psalms and the Bible is written in a style called Lament. Lament is different from just a sad writing…It actually does something very meaningful:

Lament is a protest of what is happening in our world

It is a prayer of truthfulness

Lament is a political act: in that the psalms of lament are there as a resistance to powerful people who have abandoned justice and mercy

Our own laments begin to tune our ears to the cries of pain in this world.

I just want to honestly say that over the years when tragedies like Uvalde happen, the church responds in a limp way, maybe saying all the right things but then moving on too quickly.

And I don’t want to do that this morning. I want to give us space to actually lament…to pray and protest before God

Something occured to me this week as I watched mothers and fathers weep over what happened in Uvlade...

Those tears expose suffering. They expose wounds

They bring painful memories to light and they evoke a bodily response

However in the united states we have looked at tears as a sign of inadequacy and weakness

But something about tears actually gives us access to our full humanity. It makes us fully human

What the tears do is allow those who are lamenting to speak for themselves…It gives victims a voice

Lament allows people to not just be victims of pain but to expose it and to then act in the world ...

So tears of Lament become an important and powerful part of our spiritual development

Tears express what our bodies know without words

Psalm 56:8 NIV

Record my misery; list my tears on your scroll— are they not in your record?

I think God receives and tenderly holds on to our tears as if they are precious and explosive testimony that he will use one future day.

In this way Lament becomes an act of resistance to the way our world operates…Our tears can give a new watery birth to hope

Lament refuses to accept the world as it is

So what I want to do is to encourage you and give you space to Lament. You each have a 3x5 card with your sermon notes

1. Common elements included in many lament psalms:

a. A direct address to God (sometimes by a unique name or title)

b. Stating the complaint or problem

c. Appealing for specific action, intervention, justice, vengeance

d. Vow or promise to praise; expression of trust in God

Oh God, Maker of heaven and earth

This keeps happening. The innocent among us are slaughtered

Safe places for children have now become a nightmare

Oh God, Maker of the human heart

Why don’t you act? Why does your church stay silent?

If we do nothing about the violence, are we complicit in it?

Oh God that you would tear through the heavens and come down

Oh God would you give vengeance to the wicked?

Lord would you break the hold of the enemy on this world

Would you lead your church to some meaningful witness in light of school shootings

God we trust you in our pain

Amen

So I want to encourage you to write out your lament

Sermon Intro

So it turns out that you shouldn't travel the week that you have to study and write about anxiety and worry...

Because likely, you will have to confront your own worries

I shouldn't worry about this

Well one of my weekly worries is to make sure I have enough time to study, pray and write for the sermon on Sunday. So, I had a busy week with travel…so I studied a lot before I left but knew that I would have to come home and write this message

Well My flight from St. Louis got delayed…One of the coolest thunderstorms I had ever seen came through…So we were delayed for a couple of hours...

I had a connecting flight through Austin, Texas…and when I got there my flight to Sacramento was long gone...

So I asked Southwest when the soonest they could get me back to Sacramento was...

And their response was 10am the next morning… oh and by the way that plane boards a 4:55am in Austin

So I had to choose…Do I get a hotel only to wake up at 3am and then get home and maybe get into the office by noon and be a complete zombie…or do I just stay up all night, pound coffees…write my sermon and get home and sleep...

So I decided on the latter…

So this sermon is the result of an all nighter that I pulled at the Austin, TX Airport

There was a machine that made coffee, a bathroom near by, an outlet and hours of quiet space...

It was actually perfect sermon writing conditions....Except for it was the middle of the night

So let’s just start with Jesus’ words shall we

Scripture

Matthew 6:25–34 NIV

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

What I love about this little chunk of scripture is that it is so profound and so easy but it is also really difficult at the same time. Because what Jesus is asking us to do overall is to have self control over our thought life.

It is so difficult and at the same time it is so profoundly hard.

Jesus starts this section with the word

Therefore:

So everything that comes after this “therefore” is intended to sort of sum up everything that Jesus has been teaching in this past section...

Remember we talked about trying to secure our own lives and futures based on reputation or money?

Jesus talked about that before and now he is launching unto this amazing summary

So the first thing he says is

Don’t worry about your life: What you will eat or drink or what you will wear:

See for many of us, the food we eat and the things we wear actually consume our lives.

But I want to show you something in the Bible that Jesus is communicating to his people...

There is stuff that we do not naturally pick up on when we read the Bible but I think the original people who were with Jesus would have picked up on this....

Jesus tells his listeners to not worry about eating or clothes

There are a few spots in the Bible where humanity didn't have to worry about food or clothing

In the Garden of Eden, we read that humanity could eat every seed bearing plant and that they were so abundant…But after humanity sinned…

1. Adam and eve recognized that their lack of clothing and God made them clothes

2. Food was hard to come by they had to work for it...

The point is that when they were with God....Their focus was God himself....work was easy and he sustained everything else...

They didn’t even notice that they were naked!

A number of years later God would save his people out of Egypt.

As God’s people are wondering through the dessert the Bible says that God himself was with them in this giant cloud and two things happened...

1. Every day…Manna was provided for the people

Exodus 16:4 NIV

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.

2 And the Bible specifically says that all of their clothing didn’t wear out

Deuteronomy 29:5 NIV

Yet the Lord says, “During the forty years that I led you through the wilderness, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.

Jesus isn't specifically referencing the garden and the exodus but isn't it interesting that whenever God is at the center of a community his people have their priorities straight. Isn’t it interesting that when God is at the center, his people’s needs are provided for.,..

The point is that when God is at the center of all that you seek, your, Basic human needs are taken care of There is nothing to worry about...

One of the reasons why we tend to worry is that we buy into a lie that everything rises and falls on me…And when everything depends on you then you have a lot to worry about…

So Jesus uses these examples that you can clearly see in nature...

Birds don’t have farms and yet they have plenty

Birds don’t have grocery stores

God makes the fields beautiful with wild flowers, and those fields and flowers look better than Israel’s richest king...

God takes delight in providing for you because he is Good...

God will provide for you because you are his kids

The core ethic of this text on worry is:

Being in the presence of God will give us power over worry

Why? Because God is Good and he loves

this is the core ethic of it. It is not rocket science…God is Good and he loves

And he wants to help you be free over worry because worry is an obsession that makes you focus disproportionately on yourself…And its Jesus’ heart to give freedom in this area!

The other major point that Jesus is making here that we really need to spend the rest of the time talking about is that

Seeking first the kingdom of God enables us to have power over our thought life

What Jesus wants his followers to know is that worry is something you can have power over

Many christians worry so frequently that it just seems normal and the normalcy of it blinds to the fact that there is a battle for the mind happening

Worry and anxiety are just a common every day issue and the commonality of it tricks us into thinking that we are powerless over it but the reality is that God wants you to rule over your worries. to have power in your thought life...

And here is the deal, worry is a non physical thing right? its mental and by its nature is not a physical issues but it can manifest itself in ways that are physical...

Let me share this story with you

There is a story about Nick Sitzman, a strong, young bull-of-a-man, who worked on a train crew. It seemed Nick had everything: a strong healthy body, ambition, a wife and two children, and many friends. However, Nick had one fault. He was a notorious worrier. He worried about everything and usually feared the worst.

One midsummer day, the train crew were informed that they could quit an hour early in honor of the foreman’s birthday. Accidentally, Nick was locked in a refrigerator boxcar, and the rest of the workmen left the site. Nick panicked.

He banged and shouted until his fists were bloody and his voice was hoarse. No one heard him. “If I can’t get out, I’ll freeze to death in here,” he thought. Wanting to let his wife and family know exactly what had happened to him, Nick found a knife and began to etch words on the wooden floor. He wrote, “It’s so cold, my body is getting numb. If I could just go to sleep. These may be my last words.”

The next morning the crew slid open the heavy doors of the boxcar and found Nick dead. An autopsy revealed that every physical sign of his body indicated he had frozen to death. And yet the refrigeration unit of the car was inoperative, and the temperature inside indicated fifty-five degrees. Nick had killed himself by the power of worry.

A non physical issue, worry....manifested it self into a physical condition....Hypothermia

See the problem with worry, anxiety and depression is that we tend to think that because we use medical terms that there should only be medical solutions…and while there are some medical solutions there are also spiritual solutions…Because these are also spiritual conditions.

I really think that one of the deceptions of Satan here is to get us to believe that we can’t possibly do anything about our worry....I mean we are not all psychiatrists!!!

But the Apostle Paul will sing a different tune…He tends to speak exactly to what is happening spiritually

we have an enemy that wants dominion over your mind...

See for the Christian our mind is supposed to belong to Jesus and yet we give it over to some many other things that do not belong to Jesus.

So we subject our own minds to evil and the kingdom of darkness

So we have probably all heard of the verse to take ever thought captive, but there is so much more to that verse 2 Cor 10 to you about taking every thought captive but when I read it again this week I was struck by this battle for the mind that Paul talks about

2 Corinthians 10:1–5 NIV

By the humility and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you—I, Paul, who am “timid” when face to face with you, but “bold” toward you when away! I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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.

What Paul is addressing is something non-physical…Knowledge, and knowledge lives in the mind....So what Paul is saying you have a great spiritual power over something that is physical…your mind

Satan wants you to worry…it is one of satan’s strongholds....It clogs you up and takes you out of the advancement of the kingdom of God

Worry gets you debating issues that have no consequence in God’s kingdom…It sidelines you!

The kingdom of Darkness will try to sideline you with worry

For many of you, worry and anxiety regularly eats you up and you are not the husband that you should be, you are not the wife you should be…Worry is a spiritual problem that affects you physically

you are not the follower of Jesus that you know you can be because of anxiety and worry

and the reality is that yes while there are physical sickness that cause anxiety and depression that there is also a spiritual battle happening for your mind.

You have divine power to demolish the stronghold of worry

And it is not just the stronghold of worry...

It is your entire thought life. God wants to be with you to give you power to give you a clear mind

In the opening to the letter to Ephesians this is what Paul writes to the church

Ephesians 1:18–23 NIV

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

I want you to get a couple of key words that Paul is saying

Incomparably great power for us who believe

Is the same power of the resurrection

Jesus saved us from sin and death

All things are placed under Jesus’ authority

Paul always told the church that there is a counter kingdom to the kingdom of God…That Satan is real and his real task to to get you to believe that your powerless

I have Anxiety and depression I am powerless

NO YOU ARE NOT! YES You might need medical help, but you are a child of the king…and he wants to give you power and authority over it

Paul will go on to make the point that when we allow for sin to rule and reign in our lives that not only do we withhold ourselves from God’s rule but we are actually following the kingdom of darkness

Ephesians 2:1–5 NIV

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

The reason why I bring this all up is because the apostle Paul sees our minds as a battlefield between light and darkness, good and evil

But you have this tremendous power....

Jesus has all authority over this world over darkness over anxiety, over everything...

I think we are conditioned to believe that anxiety is just a normal part of the experience

its just a regular part of life that you have no power over

But the God who raised his own life from the grave, can and will give you that same power over

and if he is the maker of your mind then he can take power over your deepest fears and anxieties

So how do you have this power on a practical level

Seek first the kingdom of God and all of these other things will be added to you…This is what Jesus said

A few weeks ago we talked about re organizing your life around Jesus...

Well that starts with re organizing your mind, your thought life around Jesus

When you are seeking first God’s kingdom, you are seeking His authority in your life and not your own authority

You have no power on your own, the only power you have is who you seek and who you embed your life with

When you try and go it all on your own you will fall into the idea that you need to secure your life through money, clothing, reputation, and things that will make you feel Good in the moment

But there is no power in that kind of life

Because you are ultimately seeking your own self gratification and you will eventually be powerless.

I think if the apostle Paul were here today what he would say is to

TAKE AUTHORITY OVER YOUR MIND! The power of Jesus is available to you

You are not powerless…you have the king of all of creation on your side…You have the power of the resurrection alive in you

The same God that caused the Blind to see, that made the lame walk

The same God that called Lazarus from the grave

that raised Jesus from the dead, is all alive in those who believe

TAKE AUTHORITY

Stop letting the world control your thought life

Stop letting facebook control your thought life

stop letting the 24 hour news cycle control your thought life

TAKE AURTHORITY!

Let’s Pray

Benediction:

Philippians 4:4–6 NIV

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

Lord your peace that mitigates the presence of worry and maximizes the prevalence of Gentleness be evident in our lives