When I was a much younger man, I didn’t believe anxiety was a real thing.
I would hear people talk about being anxious and think perhaps they weren’t sturdy enough to break the full court press of everyday life.
Then I read the Bible closely. I became a father. I became a pastor. Soon, I realized anxiety is a real thing, a dreadful ogre. There were many good people around me who struggled mightily with it. And I learned it experientially as its uninvited tentacles wrapped around my own mind.
The young me was surely stupid for thinking anxiety was emotional fiction.
Anxiety is real, an enemy that is emotionally and spiritually paralyzing. Jesus Himself anticipates anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount in a passage that’s been of great personal comfort in seasons when I’ve fought intense bouts of depression and anxiety. Clearly, Jesus addressed anxiety because it is real and is a foe against whom most fallen humans will wage war.
• Antidote to Anxiety: Matthew 6:25–34
Jesus begins in verse 25 by saying “Don’t be anxious about your life.” Our entire life is in view here. With God as our Father, Jesus is saying we should not be anxious for anything. In the section of Matthew 6 just before this one, Jesus was concerned with our laying up of treasures on earth, so it’s likely He’s addressing worry over material things. We may think we’re not guilty of worldliness, but we may be worldly because we’re always jacked up over whether we will have enough.
We are in grave danger of being possessed and obsessed by the things that are seen, the things that belong to time and this world. Look at what He says about (1) What you will eat or drink; (2) About your body — what you will wear.
Then Jesus presents an antidote for our anxiousness.
• Lesser to Greater
Here’s antidote number one: If God cares for creation, how much more will He meet the needs of His redeemed children (vv. 26–30)? Look at the birds of the air: Do they shop at Walmart weekly for groceries? Do the baby birds ever go hungry? God feeds them. Birds are not made in God’s image, but you are. A promise from lesser to greater, gloriously common in Scripture.
Jesus then points to the flowers of the field (28–30). King Solomon was known the world over for beautiful robes and glorious kingly attire, and yet the common flowers of the field are far more glamorous than is he, Jesus said. Do the daffodils shop at Belk? God clothes them. How long do flowers last? Scripture often uses flowers as a metaphor for the brevity of human life and the eternality of His Word.
Here’s Jesus’s point: If God so pays attention to the flowers and clothes them in beauty without fail in their seasons, how much more can you trust Him to take care of you, who are made in His image? How much more will He take care of you whom He has adopted as His own child? How much more will He take care of you for whom He sent His son to die? (Rom. 8:32). Jesus didn’t die for the flowers. He didn’t die for the birds. He died for sinners like us. Can we not trust Him with every compartment of daily life to meet our needs and to guide and direct us according to His will? Trust is an anxiety killer.
• 657,000 Hours Plus Nothing
I’ve found what Jesus said next to be particularly helpful when feelings of anxiety wash over me. I often repeat it aloud to myself: By being anxious, you cannot even add a single hour to your life (27).
You can worry and worry, but hand-wringing will not prolong your life for even one hour. Modern medicine and modern science are always conspiring to try and find ways to extend human life — yet they have not. Worry cannot accomplish what medical science finds impossible. It would seem to be an easy thing: merely add one hour to our life.
A person who lives to age 75 will have spent 657,000 hours on this planet. Even with the most intense anxiety, we cannot add even 60 minutes.
• Two Causes
Worry is, most fundamentally, a heart issue. There are two primary causes of anxiety in a Christian: First, worry is a failure to understand that God is your Father. This is why Jesus twice refers to God as our heavenly Father in this text (26, 32). Our Father takes care of creation, so how much more will He care for His redeemed children? (See Matt. 7:7–11.)
Second, anxiousness demonstrates miniature faith (30b). Worry and anxiety, universal dilemmas, amount to a specie of practical atheism. By “little faith,” I think Jesus means those who possess saving faith in Jesus, an immature faith whose growth awaits. Their trust in God doesn’t extend to every circumstance, every compartment of life, only for saving grace.
I once heard Adrian Rogers say, “The trouble with many Christians is they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but they do not believe Him.” We believe in Jesus to save our souls, but we tend to not believe Him when He says things like, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” We cling to our problems, and we grow weary and worried. Eventually anxiety defeats us. Ours is a “little faith.” And “little faith” does not really take Scripture as God’s Word and live by it daily. It’s like a man shipwrecked at sea clinging to a splintered piece of the ship floating in the shark-infested waters, refusing to let go and board the rescue helicopter that hovers above to pull him from the water.
The gospel isn’t something we merely think about at church for two hours each Sunday; it is absolute truth that governs all of life. A Christian becomes anxious when he is mastered by his circumstances. Instead of standing on the promises of an unshakable God, we stew under a dark cloud of worry over things like food and drink and clothing.
• The Doctor’s Diagnosis
What happens when anxiety enslaves us? Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the famed medical doctor-turned-preacher, points to three things.
First, we fail to think Christianly. The Bible is full of logic. We must not think of faith as a purely mystical thing; we are being transformed by the renewing of our mind. If we lie in bed at night for hours with our minds spinning with worry, what are we doing? Thinking like a non-Christian. When we do this, our minds are being controlled by worry and misery and not faith.
Second, we fail to take Scripture at face value. God’s Word is full of promises. Either the Bible is God’s Word to us or it isn’t.
Finally, we fail to realize the implications of our salvation. If God is our Father and we are in Jesus Christ, then He who is guarding our inheritance in heaven can also be trusted to provide our daily needs.
• Fight for Faith Amidst Anxiousness
How do we strengthen our faith and become more worry-proof? Meditate often on:
1. God’s promises.
God’s promises toward us are unchangeable and God is immutable. Spurgeon calls the promises “God’s checkbook.” This renders the biblical truth of election of profound comfort to those who’ve embraced it: God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world, and nothing can snatch us out of His hands (Eph. 1:4–6; John 10:28–29). Who can bring any charge against God’s elect? What can separate us from the love of God in Christ? (See Rom. 8:31–39.) Even the hairs of our head are numbered, yet we fear the cupboard will grow bare, the bank account will empty, disease will ravage our bodies, we will be overweight, our hair will turn gray, nobody will like us.
See the absurdity of worry and anxiety? That is the picture Jesus is painting by using birds and flowers as illustrations.
2. God’s great love for His children.
God loves you. You are His adopted child. Parents, think of how you love your children. Would you stand idly by while their needs go unmet? How much more our heavenly Father knows how to care for us, for He is the perfect Father.
3. God’s power and sovereignty.
God’s sovereignty is the single most comforting truth about God besides His redeeming love as displayed in the gospel. Your world isn’t spinning out of control but is under the governance of One who is holy and wise and good and all-powerful. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and is not stingy with His children.
Worry Not
Next time you are anxious, prayerfully go to Matthew 6:25–34. It will build a strong foundation under you when you fear all else will soon give way.