anxiety

How Not to Worry

by Ben Zornes · Apr 19, 2024

Introduction

Nobody has to teach us how to worry. It’s like one of those viruses that we all carry around, and if our immune system is compromised it can erupt into a violent fever. Because of how common worry is we can easily begin to treat it as merely a part of the furniture of our emotional life. But worry is not simply an emotion, it is a sin.

Worry is a Respectable Sin

Worry seems to us like the common cold. It might even be seen as commendable and praised as a twisted form of a devoted work ethic. But worry really is a violation of what God’s word commands for us.

Be careful/anxious for nothing (μηδὲν – Accusative Singular Neuter; and it ought to be translated as, wait for it…nothing). Philippians 4:6

The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth against the LORD. Proverbs 19:3

Psalm 37 commands us to fret not because of evildoers:

Fret not thyself because of evildoers.
Fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.
Fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

Reasons we Worry

There can be a number of reasons why worry takes us by the throat. Worry takes advantage of our circumstances and our uncertainties. Worry takes advantage of our passage through time to churn up a whole sludge of events to consume our minds with concerns.

Past – Unconfessed sin; embarrassing mistakes, harm done to us.
Present – Lack of faith in God’s sovereignty in governing and ordaining our particular set of present circumstances.
Future – Idolatry by concluding you should carry your burdens with no reference to God’s promised care and provision for you. Worry looks at the future with arrogance, convincing you to think you can discern the future which only God knows.

Furthermore, when you look at what Scripture teaches about worry is that it often comes side by side with a warning against a sin which is in a symbiotic relationship with worry: envy. Envy is the practice of ungodly comparison, and worry is the tag-along. you can see how this ungodly comparison can enflame all sorts of worries:

How do I get what those wicked people have?
How do I keep those wicked people from hurting me?
How do I get revenge on those evildoers?
How do I get the ungodly to like me or ignore me?
How do the evildoers get away with their sin, but I have to do what the Bible tells me to?

How to Overcome Worry

First, you must do your duties with Gospel joy. Imagine that you are tasked with carrying a bag of feathers up a hill. Worry is insisting that you need to add an unnecessary brick or two. Will it help you go faster? No. Will it accomplish what you were assigned? No. Will it increase your joy? No. God has given us duties to carry out, but we are to do so in faith and by the joy that comes from placing that faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God through Christ has forgiven all your sins, supplied you grace for every circumstance, and a certain hope of being found righteous in Christ at the final judgement.

Secondly, you need to understand something about yourself. You are finite. You have a limited amount of knowledge and capacity to process that knowledge. You’re like a computer with a limited amount of processing space and if you try to load all the programs at once you will fry the motherboard. It is not wrong to think about things, to consider things, even to meditate and plan. In fact Scripture requires this of us. But it demands that we do so without any worry/anxiety.

Third, you should pay close attention to how the Word teaches about this sin. Paul prohibits worry when he says, “Be careful for nothing”. However, Scripture never tells us just to knock it off. The removal of the weeds of a particular vice is accompanied with instructions to plant in its place a vineyard of a particular virtue. Here is Paul’s strategy for battling worry: but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God (Phi. 4:6). Prayer is the true application of Calvinism. If God is sovereign, act like it and this means pray about everything. But that prayer is to be marked by an important attribute: thanksgiving.

Conclusion

So then, do not expend any extra bandwidth on worry. It is a brick in the bottom of your backpack. Just take it out. The hand you take it out with the hand of gratitude. Thank the Lord for all His benefits to you (both in private prayer and public worship). Thank those around you for ways they bless you (notes, texts, verbally). This isn’t power of positive thinking. This is the power of living by faith. By faith you can look at the world as a magical place made by the loving hand of Almighty God; you can see your present circumstances as dragons to slay or an orchard to nurture; you have certain hope for a future that is bright because you are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.

Crippling Anxiety

by Ben Zornes · Mar 23, 2023

Paul commands the Philippian believers to “Be careful (anxious) for nothing (Phi 4:6).” Jesus taught, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on (Mat 6:25).” In both instances the word for careful/thought is merimnaō. Very simply it means one’s cares or worries. Biblically, anxiety is caring about something to the point of distraction. Anxiety and fear tend to go together. When you are anxious over something it can very easily lead to a whole host of largely irrational fears. When we begin to carry a worry to the point where it consumes almost our entire attention we have grown anxious.

Anxiety can cripple a person to the point of almost entire inaction. Fear can breed more fears, which breeds fear of fears. Anxiety can lead to severe health issues, and fear can lead to severe relational issues. The stress of anxiety can cause heart attacks, high blood pressure, whereas fear can result in being unable to function normally in our relationships. Headaches, sleeplessness, and difficulty concentrating on one’s responsibilities are often the result of merimnaō taking over someone’s life.

We all have responsibilities and “weights” to carry. Scripture doesn’t say that we have no concerns, but rather emphasizes that the things which we are to care for do not grow to dominate all our focus and energy to the neglect of all our other “cares.” The old adage carries a load of wisdom, if you count your cares they’re sure to grow. The Psalms show us that when our cares come to weigh us down, burdening us with their load, we ought to cast them upon God (Ps. 37:5).

When faced with the weight and paralysis which anxiety brings, you must first turn to the simple wisdom of Christ: worrying never made anybody taller (Mt. 6:27). Scripture admonishes us to set our mind on things above, not on earthly things (Col. 3:2), which means that although we have responsibilities to take care of, our primary focus should not be our cares, but upon God. He tends to our needs by upholding us each and every day, and we should walk with a “care-free” disposition trusting him to supply all our needs. This doesn’t mean we do nothing, but rather that we actively work to do our duty, trusting God through it all to protect and provide for us.

A very simple strategy for beginning to deal with anxiety is simply to take a page and begin to list things for which to be grateful, followed by ways in which God has provided and protected in times past. The simple exercise of “looking back” at God’s prior faithfulness emboldens us to face todays trials and troubles. It is easier to number up your worries and think they are innumerable, because they multiply like vermin. But when you begin to look, really look, at tall of God’s kindness to you, your worries all begin to melt away like wax. Like the hymn says, “What have I to dread? What have I to fear? Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

Worry Can’t Be Wielded Responsibly

by Ben Zornes · Mar 22, 2021

Jesus tells us explicitly not to worry (Mt. 6:25). But we, in our boundless pride think that just a wee bit of worry is certainly allowable. â€œIf God could only see my situation, Heâ€™d understand why my fingernails are in the condition they are,â€ so our â€œreasoningâ€ goes.

No matter what you tell yourself, you canâ€™t wield worry responsibly. Worry is a strong magnet, and if you pass it over the shop floor it will collect every last scrap of metal shavings, lost bolt, bent nails, and pieces of twisted metal which are from some inexplicable source. Laying awake at night and fretting over an exam, or a bill, or a meeting is a surefire way to invite other worries to come for a sleep over. But those sleepovers rarely have any sleep.

Worry convinces you that if you indulge in the exercise of fretting, youâ€™ll be able to escape whatever consternation is facing you. Worry tries to supplant what God has commanded you to do: rest on the Lordâ€™s Day, and then cheerfully work your tail off for the next six days. Anxiety, whatever its source, is a black hole of restlessness. It will never bring you peace, it will overwhelm you.

You see, worry is believing the lie that by worrying you can sneak in and grab hold of Godâ€™s sovereignty over all things. If you worry enough surely you can sway the events you are brooding over. AW Tozer once said, â€œno religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.â€ Yet we all too often, in our worrying and bustling panics, reveal that we hold far too low a view of God. He spun the galaxies into their ordered dance. He breathed life into every living thing, upholding it all by His creative power and word. Yet we think God has overlooked this, that, or the other thing. Worry is a black sin, because it us planting a flag on some slice of God’s creation and thinking that we can assess and manage the situation better than He can. This is rank pride. Especially in the midst of a world that is in an all out panic, fleeing from every breath of wind, God’s people ought to be bastions of Christ’s peace.

Instead, God has told you to cast your cares upon Him in prayer, obey His clear commands regarding your particular circumstances, and walk in faith that whether good or evil comes You are held by Him who holds the scepter of the universe. Trusting in Godâ€™s sovereignty is the antidote to the poison of anxiety.