How To Be Anxious - For Nothing

June, 2004

by: Jack Hughes

• Common Sins

Anxiety and Who's Responsible

This is the second Calvary Review article in a series dealing with common sins that people struggle with and how to overcome them. For this Review we will put the sin of anxiety under the microscope. Anxiety might be defined as a state of worry, unease, or eager concern caused by real or imaginary fears. Sometimes the Bible speaks of a godly kind of concern, usually a concern for the welfare of others (I Cor. 12:5; Phil. 2:20), but usually when the Bible speaks of anxiety, worry, or fretting it is singled out as a sin to be avoided.

Most people try to justify their anxiety by either trying to convince themselves they merely have godly concern, or by blaming their anxiety on someone or something else. Excuses such as, “You don't have to work where I do,” or “You aren't married to my husband,” or “Everything went wrong today,” etc., might be used to shift the blame away from ourselves and on to someone or something else. But we have already learned that there is only one person to blame for our sin and that is our self. This is the first step in overcoming the sin of anxiety. You must admit your anxiety is your fault, and that no one or no thing can make you anxious. You have to choose to be anxious. As long as there is doubt about this in your mind, it is doubtful you will ever overcome anxiety. It is next to impossible to get the person who doesn't believe he is sick to see a doctor and take his medicine.

Anxiety and Its Characteristics

Everyone has experienced anxiety, and it is good to stop and ask ourselves specifically how anxiety manifests itself. Usually anxiety manifests itself when we are concerned about something that we feel we don't have control of or that we are losing control. Because we want control and don't have it, we worry, fret, get anxious or get “stressed out.” The amazing thing about it is that most of the things that people are anxious about never happen. Most people are anxious about “what if's…”

It is true that some times “what if's” come true. You're trying to get home from work to go to your son's birthday party and the freeway is jammed packed with cars inching their way along at a half a mile per hour. You know that if the traffic doesn't speed up you will miss your son's birthday party. You want to go faster but the traffic is going so slow you begin to get anxious, maybe even angry and you start thinking that maybe you could get off at the next exit and take surface streets home. You do this only to discover that everyone else had the same idea and now you are inching your way through an endless string of stop lights. Time slowly ticks away and you realize the birthday party is starting right now but you are not there! You are still a long way from home and moving very slowly. You imagine your son crying and bummed out because you are not there for his birthday and you promised to be there. You begin to clench your teeth, speak to yourself in the car and speak to others who are in front of you with language that cannot be repeated here. You are consumed with anxiety!

You are a housewife and your husband comes home and tells you that he has lost his job because of unexpected company cut backs. You are instantly seized with anxiety. Your husband tries to console you telling you that they did give him a six week severance package. But both of you know that six weeks goes by quickly and soon all of your resources will be depleted. You have been saving for new furniture and surely you will have to give that up. You just purchased a new car that you really like driving and you owe more on your car than it is worth. Now what are you going to do? Anxiety terrorizes your soul as you wonder how you are going to pay the bills. Five weeks go by and your husband still can't find a job! Your reserves are almost gone! You are so anxious that you can't sleep at night. Your stomach is continually full of butterflies. Your appetite is gone, you are losing weight, and you keep thinking of the dreadful consequences of what might happen if your husband doesn't find a job soon. You are consumed with anxiety!

We could list a thousand other scenarios, some big, some small, which tempt people to worry, fret, and be anxious. Some people are worried about their safety. Others are worried about their health. Others are worried about their finances. Others are worried about relationships. Some are worried about jobs, food, being liked, having things, spiders, and the list goes on and on. Some people can find a way to worry about being calm and relaxed. And while some people will admit that their anxiety over little things is a sin, they will attempt to justify fretting over issues they feel are big and significant. A small child might worry about losing a one dollar ball in the ivy while an adult might worry about losing a home, but the value of the home doesn't justify the sin. A child might worry about the health of his goldfish, while a mother might worry about the health of her children. Most would agree that children are more important and valuable than goldfish, but nevertheless they are not acceptable excuses before God to sin.

We must come to realize that when we are not in control — we are not in control. Because we are not God, we can't control most things happening around us. There are a few things we might have control of but we don't need to be anxious about those things because we have control of them. For the things we don't have control of we need to admit it and let God be God. We must choose not to be anxious knowing we are not in control.

The difficulty arises when we realize that we are not in control but we want to get into control. Sometimes this is a reasonable goal and sometimes it is not. If a mother is standing fifteen feet away from her child and sees her child walking towards the street, she may not be in control at first but it is reasonable that she get control in order to protect her child's life. But if her child is an adult, grown up, and living in another state, she needs to realize that she no longer has control of her child.

In summary we might say that anxiety is a failure to submit to and accept reality. Anxiety is self–inflicted emotional trauma whereby a person chooses to torture himself on the rack of his own grief. It is a failure to discern what is real and reasonable and what is not.

The Reason Your Anxiety is Sin

How would you answer these questions. Is God sovereign? Is God all knowing? Is God all powerful? Is God all wise? Most Christians would be quick to respond by saying, “of course!” Let me ask you in another way to test your thoughts about God. Does God know all things that are going to happen to you before they happen to you and did He know everything that would happen to you before the creation of the world? Does God have the power and ability to control, change, stop, or cause any situation in your life? Does God always know what is going to happen to you or what is presently happening to you? Is it true that every detail, event, and circumstance in your life is part of God's perfectly wise plan for your life? Is God's wisdom perfect, and does that mean that it cannot be improved upon? I would hope that you would answer a definitive “yes” to all of those questions because “Yes” is the biblical answer. God is in absolute and perfect control of every detail in all of His creation.

Anxiety is self inflicted emotional trauma brought on oneself because of a failure to realize and/or accept that you are not in control of most of your circumstances. A sister dies, you get fired from a job, your husband leaves you for another woman, your wife contracts a deadly cancer and you are instantly placed into a position where you have no control. Instead of accepting what God has brought into your life, you get anxious. So what is the cure?

Someone has said, “Every sin we commit can be traced back to an incorrect or insufficient understanding of God.” This is true. Anxious people don't have their thoughts fixed on God and His sovereignty but on themselves. This is why anxiety is a sin. Anxiety is a failure to live this singular reality, “God is sovereign and in complete control of all things and I am not.” By being anxious we deny that God is in control. By being anxious we live like God doesn't know what is happening to us, that our circumstances have somehow slipped by the radar of His omniscience, that His perfectly wise plan for us is flawed. Being anxious causes us to accuse God of not being perfect in wisdom because from our sin cursed fallen perspective He would never have allowed what we are going through to happen to us if He was perfectly wise. It is a failure to accept the fact that we know very little and God knows everything. Anxiety is to accuse God of not being a good God! This is why anxiety is a sin.

The Bible strictly forbids the sin of anxiety for these reasons and God commands us, “Do not be anxious ” (Phil. 4:6), “Do not worry” (Lk. 12:22), “Do not fret ”(Psa. 37:8). God wants us to submit not only our lives, but our emotions to the reality that He is the Almighty King who knows all and who is ruling heaven and earth and every aspect of our lives with perfect wisdom. What that means is that God's plan for each of us cannot be improved upon. Perfect wisdom is perfect. From our perspective we might not like certain things, we might not understand how pain, suffering, sin, and evil can be part of God's perfect plan for us or how it can be used by God for our good and His glory. Nevertheless, that is exactly what the Bible says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Notice God “causes all things” and does everything “according to His purpose” — not ours.

So when your daughter drives your new car into a telephone pole, when your husband falls off the roof and breaks his neck, when you discover that you have some terrible disease, or when your teenage son decides to go on a sinning spree, know that none of this has happened apart from God knowing it would happen and allowing it to happen in your life for your good and His glory. Refuse to live like an atheist who has every reason to be anxious because he is just one of many amebas in a petri dish trying to survive in a world of random chance.

Your Cure for Anxiety

The encouraging part of anxiety, or any other sin for that matter, is that God's grace is sufficient to help the believer overcome the sin of anxiety. As you survey the Scriptures many texts tell us how to overcome anxiety. Anxiety has always been a prominent sin in the lives of God's people. Jesus knew this and that is why He addressed anxiety and its cure in Mt. 6:25-34. Let me walk you through the text and briefly show you the cure for anxiety. The Word of God instructs us to believe in God's goodness Psa. 27:13-14, to trust, delight, commit our way, and rest in the Lord (Psa. 37), to cast our burdens on the Lord (Psa. 55:22), to pray (Phil. 4:6-7), to be content (Heb. 13:5), to humble ourselves and to cast our cares upon the Lord (I Pet. 5:6-7). The Scriptures do not leave us without help. God tells us plainly how to overcome the sin of anxiety. In the Old Testament the greatest text on anxiety is Psalm 37. In the New Testament the greatest text on anxiety is Mt. 6:25-31 and the parallel text is Lk. 12:22-31. Let's look at the remedy for anxiety from the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount.

Jesus said in Mt. 6:25, “For this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, as to what you shal eat, or what you shall drink; nor for your body, as to what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body than clothing?” Here Jesus gives us a command not to worry or be anxious. He then gives us some of the frequent things people worry about, things that are so big that they might seem to be justifiable excuses to be anxious. He says don't worry. Here Jesus lists the one thing that tempts people to be anxious the most, their own lives, specifically having enough food to eat, liquids to drink, and clothing to protect them from the elements.

When it gets down to self preservation, anxiety comes easy. Jesus said, “don't worry, even about your life!” But He doesn't stop there. He continues to explain why you shouldn't even be anxious about your life saying, “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” These two questions are loaded. The implied answer for both is, “Yes, life is more than just having enough food and clothing.” Life is about knowing the Almighty, Sovereign, creator of heaven and earth. Life is about having eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ which no one can take away from you.

Then Jesus gives us several examples to help us see the futility of anxiety. Starting in vs. 26 He says, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet our heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!”

Here Jesus shows us the folly of worrying and being anxious. First, He points to the birds of the air that God feeds though they do not plant or harvest crops. Secondly, Jesus asks a question that is easy to answer, “What person has increased his life span by being anxious?” The answer is simple, “No one!” Finally, He points to the lilies of the field, most likely anemonies which are very beautiful in appearance. His point is that even Solomon, the richest man who ever lived, did not have the resources to clothe himself like God clothes the anemonies, which are part of the grass of the field which is here today and gone tomorrow.

Jesus then gives us the primary reason people are anxious when He says, “You of little faith.” Faith in what? Faith in everything He has just taught them. Jesus is saying, “You are anxious because you are unwilling to place your faith in the truth of who God is and what God has promised.” God tells us what is true in His Word but then He expects us to live in submission to the truth of His Word. The Bible clearly says, “Whatever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23), and “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6), and “My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back My soul has no pleasure in him” (Heb. 10:37-38). Anxiety is the sin of unbelief. Anxiety is the sin of refusing to believe that God is who He says He is in the Bible.

Jesus' illustrations give seven truths you need to overcome anxiety: 1) Know that anxiety is a sin, 2) Remember that God has promised to provide for you, 3) Remember that true life is knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, 4) Remember that God provides for birds and you are more valuable to God than birds, 5) Remember that anxiety never sustains you, protects you, provides for you or increases your life span, 6) Remember that God dresses the wildflowers in spectacular raiment and you are worth much more to God than wildflowers, and 7) Remember that you must have faith that God is sovereign over every detail of your life and live like He is.

But Jesus is not finished with us yet! After giving us seven remedies to cure the sin of anxiety, He then reasons with us starting in vs. 31 by saying, “Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.” In these concluding words Jesus gives us the final two cures for anxiety, 8) Remember when you are anxious, you are acting like the pagans who do not know God, and 9) Remember that your heavenly Father knows your needs better than you do and like any loving father He is going to give you what you need because He loves you.

Your Plan of Attack

Do you struggle with anxiety? If so, here is a plan of attack, First, make it a habit to confess your sin to God whenever you feel anxiety, worry and fretting welling up within you. Secondly, read, meditate and memorize Scriptures that address the sin of anxiety, worry and fretting. I would strongly encourage you to memorize Psalm 37 and either Mt. 6:25-31 or Luke 12:22-31. Memorize and meditate on these Scriptures until they become part of your soul. Third, whenever you are anxious, go to the Lord in prayer and cast your cares upon Him. Praise Him for who He is and what He has promised and thank Him for being in control of every aspect of your life. Fourth, make it a habit to meditate on God continually reminding yourself of who God is, what He has promised, and finally, choose to place your trust in His Word, not your emotions.

It comes down to this, are you going to live like an unbelieving pagan and be anxious, or a believing Christian and place your complete trust in the Lord Jesus Christ? Anxiety is always a choice to doubt God. Trusting in God is always an act of faith to believe what the Bible says. “Be anxious for nothing!”