Faith and Anxiety 1987

Surely we all agree that the proof that these Sunday gatherings are valid, that it's really worth our while to come together like this, that God truly visits us here, the proof that we commune with Jesus in this place and that the Holy Spirit rules over this time of worship, the proof of this is the kind of life we live when we leave here. Are we living by faith? Do these Sunday morning gatherings and the other small group meetings or whatever we fellowship in through the week sustain us in a life of faith, a daily life in which we really trust God, in which he rules over everything we do, that we get up in the morning trusting God to guide us through the day, and we lie down at night trusting that while we sleep, he'll take care of things. When Jesus called us into his kingdom, washed away our sins, filled us with the Holy Spirit, he called us to a life of faith, a life in which we trust him for everything, for provision, protection, guidance, the power to do the Father's will.

The new life, the the supernatural life of God that's put into us can only be lived by faith. But when we try to live this life in the real world, with its uncertainty, its noise and confusion, its wars visible and invisible, we quickly learn that there is an enemy to faith, and for most of us this enemy to faith is this thing we call anxiety, the fear that tomorrow will not be safe, the dread that up the road or perhaps around the very next bend there's trouble waiting for us. And so when everything's so uncertain, when you never know who's going to turn out to be your enemy, how can you keep from being anxious? And we settle, most of us, for a kind of continuous low-grade anxiety interspersed with storms of severe anxiety which sweep over us, and we accept that as normal.

That's the way it's going to be until death catches up to us. But Jesus calls us to live by faith. Even if the whole world is ruled by anxiety, we are to live by faith.

True things are uncertain, and you don't know who's going to turn out to be your enemy, but, he says, you have a Heavenly Father who absolutely will keep you if you trust him. Trust him and do not be anxious. And he says that over and over and over again in a thousand different ways.

Do not be anxious. Reading from Matthew chapter 6 verse 25, Jesus is speaking, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you, by being anxious, can add ten minutes to a span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, what shall we eat, what shall we drink, what shall we wear? The Gentiles seek all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

Let today's own trouble be sufficient for the day. Do not be anxious. And we say, yeah, that's all right for him to say that.

He was a son of God. You know, he knew what was going to work out somehow. Son of God, though he was, Jesus was human.

And he had to live by faith, just as we do. He didn't have a walkie-talkie connecting him with heaven. He had prayer, as we have prayer.

He had the Holy Spirit, as we have the Holy Spirit. He had to trust his Father, just as we do. And he did this.

Well, you say, but that was back in the first century. You know, things were more peaceful then. Oh, yeah.

I mean, they had Roman troops almost on every street corner, who just as soon would kill you as look at you. And from the time Jesus began his ministry, the authorities in Israel, threatened by him, were out to get him. And he knew it.

Yet he kept right on. And he slept like a baby every night, except the night he stayed up to pray. They had hurricanes and storms in those days, too.

And Jesus could sleep right through the storm. He could trust God in the middle of the storm. And so we read in Matthew 8, 23, when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him.

And behold, there was a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, Save, Lord, we're perishing.

And he said to them, Why are you afraid, O men of little faith? And then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea. And there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, What sort of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? And we marvel at the fact that the wind and the sea obey him.

But that was because he had faith. Not because he was a son of God. He was a son of God.

But that was because his divine prerogatives were back in heaven. He was a man. And he did this by faith.

And the power to be able to say to the wind, Peace, be still, comes to the man or woman who can lie in the boat when it's tossing up and down and about, ready to sink, and still keep on sleeping. And so when Jesus says to us, Do not be anxious, he speaks to us as one who walked that road of faith himself and will help us to walk that road, too. He helped the Apostle Paul.

Apostle Paul lived by faith, put his life into the hands of Jesus and kept trusting him all the way to the end. Now, if there's anybody on earth who should have had five ulcers and lived in continuous anxiety, it was Paul. Listen to his autobiography in these few verses in 2 Corinthians 11.

Imprisonments, he's describing his life. Countless beatings, often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews, the forty lashes less one.

Three times I've been beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I've been shipwrecked.

And you know what it means by being stoned. It's not the modern version, right? Three times I've been shipwrecked. A night and a day I've been adrift at sea and on frequent journeys in dangers by rivers, dangers by robbers, danger by my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren.

Dangers like you and I, we think we live in danger. We don't live anywhere near the kind of danger this man lived through every day in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night. And I mean, to make this fit, I mean, it wasn't because he was worried, it was because he was praying.

But I mean, even if he was worried, I mean, he learned how to turn his worries into prayer and to transform his anxieties into prayer. We'll talk about that in a minute. Many a sleepless night in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.

And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon me, the care of all the churches, who is weak and I'm not weak, who is made to fall and I'm not indignant. And so we see this man goes on by faith all the time. How does he do it? He never burns out.

He remains fresh. And, you know, he enjoys the work in the kingdom. This man's having a good time.

He couldn't have survived if he hadn't been having a good time. In the midst of all his problems, this man is having a great time. How does he do it? He does it because he refuses to be anxious.

That doesn't mean that he's not attacked by anxiety, just as we are. But he refuses to accept anxiety as a normal state. He doesn't say, well, OK, that's the way it is.

I guess I'll have to put up with it. He learns to take his anxieties and constantly turn them into prayer. He takes every problem, every worry, every need and lifts it into prayer.

And he describes how he does this by calling us to do the same in Philippians 4.4. This is almost like a formula of describing how he himself lived. Most of us probably know it by heart. He says, Rejoice in the Lord always.

And again, I will say rejoice. That's how he lived. Let all men know your forbearance, your generosity.

That's how he lived. The Lord had no anxiety about anything. That's how Paul lived.

But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. That was his way of life. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So at the center of this formula of living by faith, describing how you live by faith, is this command. Have no anxiety about anything. Which echoes the command of our Lord.

Do not be anxious. If we're going to live by faith in this world, we have to conquer anxiety. And we can do this.

We can overcome anxiety if we will do three things. One, put God's kingdom first. Two, come to rest under the yoke with Jesus.

And three, let the Holy Spirit rule within. First, we put God's kingdom first. Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? After all these things the Gentiles seek, and your Father knows that you need them, but seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, and all those things will be yours as well.

Put God's kingdom first. God's kingdom first. And practically, it comes down to specific things.

You put God's kingdom first in your heart. You put it first in our hearts, meaning that we constantly fix our hearts at the beginning of each day on Him. Turn away from everything else.

We fix our hearts on Him. You had a bad night? You fix your heart on Him. Walk into the day in peace.

Had a bad day? Fix your heart on Him. Lie down in peace. When we do this, we discover that the atmosphere of anxiety by the Spirit of God is transformed into an atmosphere of peace.

Now, this doesn't necessarily happen in three seconds, but it will go. It will happen if we do this. Secondly, along the same first point, we put God first in our use of time.

And you put God first in our use of time by giving Him prime time, a slice of time during the day that's His, a time during which we bathe in His peace. We drink in His Word. We get refreshed in Him.

When we do this, the rest of the time of that day is flooded with peace. The pressure's off. We put God first in our use of money.

All of us have to handle money, whether we're rich or poor. We all have to handle money, and money makes us anxious. So now we take a prime portion of money, and we offer it to Him in thanksgiving and praise.

And He'll tell us where to put it. It may not necessarily go on a plate in a church. It may go somewhere far away from that.

That's up to God. He'll show us where to put that, and He'll show us what to do with what's left. And if we learn to offer Him that prime portion all the time, consistently, He will absolutely, in a mystery, give us peace, deliver us from anxiety in the realm of money and things.

God first in our relationship with people, relating to people now, all people at all times in the way of God's righteousness, so that now all people are seen and related to with a holy respect and holy justice and holy mercy, so that the people we live with and the people we work with and the strangers we deal with and even our enemies are treated in the way we know God wants us to treat them. And as we do this, our fear of man, our anxieties generated by our fear of man are swallowed up in wonderful peace. Second thing we do to drive anxiety out of our lives and conquer it is get under that yoke with Jesus.

In Matthew 11, 28, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now this heaviness and this, you know, we labor and we're heavy laden because we're burdened down with anxiety, all kinds of it.

Now we take the anxiety, the burden, and we bring it under the yoke with him, and we walk with him, and we work with him, and we enter into his labor. As we do this, our labor comes to an end, and our burden begins to lift, and instead of our labor, it's his labor, his yoke. Our burden becomes his burden, and his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, and this is absolutely practical, it works.

Jesus is the Sabbath rest of God. He is the secret place of the Most High. When we dwell in him, walk with him, we dwell under the shadow of the Almighty.

We're secure, we have rest, we have peace, unspeakable peace. You can't burn out under that yoke, nor can you sink into despair under that yoke. And all of us are tempted to burn out and sink into despair, and it's because we kind of slip out from underneath that yoke.

And what we do, I mean, when we find our minds, you know, becoming distraught, and our spirits uneasy, and our hearts troubled, we come back to him. Fix our hearts on him again, get under that yoke with him, bring him all the anxiety, the whole mess, and walk with him again. And as we do, we're flooded with peace.

A cloud of peace comes in and drives out the fear and the anxiety. We have peace. Finally, we conquer anxiety, we drive it out of our lives, by submitting to the Lordship of the Holy Spirit within.

Romans 8, 5. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. For those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

And to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Peace means that the Spirit who is in me now is given control. The Spirit who is within us is given control and rule, authority over the mind, over our thinking.

We submit to him. We yield to him. And as we do this, a cloud of glory from above comes in and fills the temple and drives out the darkness and the fear and the despair and the anxiety.

And we're absolutely filled with the peace of God. That's how our Lord lived. He walked by faith because he allowed his Father to rule him from within through the Holy Spirit.

I do nothing of myself. The Father who dwells in me, he does the work. He dwells in him through the Holy Spirit.

So Jesus can lie down in the boat, in the storm, and sleep. He can get up and quiet his disciples with the Word. And he can command the peace of God to come in and conquer that storm.

And we can do the same when we do what he did. When we allow ourselves to be ruled, ruled by the Holy Spirit. It's just not enough to let the Holy Spirit come in and give me goose pimples.

I have to let the Holy Spirit come in and give me commands and direction. And he will. Our Lord never promised that our circumstances would be without storms.

But he did promise to give us, to fill us with peace far, far greater than any storm this earth has ever seen. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.

Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid.

Do not be anxious. Seek first God's kingdom. Come to rest under my yoke.

Let the Holy Spirit rule within. And you will live by faith. And by faith you will conquer, overcome the world.

Let's just wait on the Spirit of God now and let him speak to our hearts. Amen.