Anxious for Nothing!

 Read Philippians 4:6-7

There are two short verses today, but they pack a big punch.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Which brings us to restraints & constraints. That’s how Paul paired these verses. Restraints are things that we must not do. Constraints are those things that we must do.

We will take the first part in this service—the restraints.  Don’t do this.  There seem to be a bunch of those in the Bible. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t cheat on your spouse, don’t covet what others have should sound familiar, and I am still in the top 10.

Go to Leviticus if you need some more, thou shalt nots. But this restraint doesn’t sound like a command. It doesn’t feel like a don’t even think about having other gods directive.

It is part of a coupling of what to do and what not to do, with the end result being peace, which is more than we can comprehend.

In the middle of this very conflicted world, we have peace, and it is more than we can comprehend.

Consider the words of Jesus from John’s gospel.

 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

That’s a good place to land, in a peace that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So, let’s look at the restraints proffered in Philippians. Do not be anxious or be anxious for nothing. It’s a familiar tact.

·       Don’t be anxious.

·       Don’t worry.

·       Don’t’ be afraid

·       Don’t rely on your own understanding.

·       Don’t store up treasures on earth.

·       Don’t think that your anger can bring about God’s righteousness.

·       Don’t run with scissors.

·       Don’t spend it all in one place.

That’s a good list, but it doesn’t include the how. That’s in the second part of the verse, which we will discuss more in the next service. For now, consider that if you can worry, then you can pray. I first considered this thought years ago when I read The Purpose-Driven Life.

If I become anxious, pray.

If I start to worry, pray.

If I am afraid, pray.

If I am selling myself on my own understanding, pray.

If I am starting to feel self-righteous in my anger, pray.

If I am running with scissors, walk.

The prayer part is the constraint part—the must do part. To have any degree of efficacy in the second part, we need to master the first part.

These two conditions should create dissonance in your hearts and minds:  Worry and Trusting God.  We either trust or we don’t.

These two conditions should create dissonance in your hearts and minds: Anxiety and Assurance. We can either be anxious or rest in the assurance that all of God’s promises are true.

These two conditions should create dissonance in your hearts and minds: Fear and Faith. It’s one or the other.

Paul’s counsel is to get rid of the obstacle and pursue relief in prayer.

The promise is that if we abide in the restraints and constraints, our problems will go away. No, the promise is that we will have peace even in the middle of the world’s conflict, confusion, and continuing controversy.

It’s a peace not reliant upon what happens to the circumstance that is elicting anxiousness or worry. It’s one of those, the numbers don’t add up but I still have peace.

If we consider the syntax further, we see that nothing is excluded from the category. Be anxious for nothing.  Nothing means nothing. There is no thing, no circumstance, no force excluded here. Nothing is too difficult or too complicated for God.

Nothing!

I used to run about 7 miles a day, 5 or 6 days a week.  It was a good distance. I could run it, get showered and back in uniform, and finish my day.

I wanted a little more challenge but couldn’t give up more time for more mileage, so I got an old, metal-plated flak vest to run with. It added a few pounds and was good for kicking my workout up a notch.

Had I opted to add a hundred-pound pack to my back, the debilitating effects would have outweighed the benefits. No question.

You can run with a hundred-pound pack for a couple of miles and not have any ill effects. At the end of a long hike in full gear, we would often run the last mile or two.

But trying this for much more than that works against you.

It’s the same for holding on to your anxiousness while you pray to God. You can carry a little burden while you give things to God, but not a lot.

You are still working on the problem or circumstance but not debilitated by it. You still have peace. You might not understand how you can have peace, but you can.

Quit holding on to your anxiousness first, then let God do the heavy lifting.

Be anxious for NOTHING!

Amen.

 

Don't Worry

 Read Matthew 6:25-34

There is godly counsel. We listen to it weekly if not daily. We should trust it.

There is our own understanding. Sometimes we can trust it if it is in sync with God’s way.

Sometimes our own understanding gets it. We are counseled to take God’s counsel over our own understanding, but sometimes our own understanding gets it.

Here are some thoughts on the matter of worry that has come from the understanding of many.

 

“Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything.” – Mary Hemingway

 

“Turn your attention for a while away from the worries and anxieties. Remind yourself of all your many blessings.” – Ralph Marston

 

“The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.” – Wayne Dyer

 

“A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.” – Aesop

 

“Worry pretends to be necessary, but serves no useful purpose.” – Eckhart Tolle

 

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom

 

“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.” – John Lubbock

 

“People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.” – George Bernard Shaw

 

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius

 

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“To him who is in fear, everything rustles.” – Sophocles

 

“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra

 

“If you ask what is the most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” – George F. Burns

 

“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.” – Robert Frost

 

“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot

 

“Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, faith looks up.” — Anonymous

 

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.” – Arthur Somers Roche

 

“That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.” – Chinese Proverb

 

“Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.” – Cullen Hightower

 

“Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere” – Erma Bombeck

 

“People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching a cold.” – John Jay Chapman

 

“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” ― Mark Twain

 

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” — E. Joseph Cossman

 

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”— Elbert Hubbard

 

“Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.”– Henry Ward Beecher

 

Jesus tells us that we can get this no-worry business and understand it from our perspective too.

Look at nature. The flowers, the birds, and everything around us rely totally on God but you don’t see stressed songbirds and flustered flowers. God knows what they need in season and he provides. We can see this. Even for the grass that lives but for a short season. God provides.

We understand this but we need help to apply it to ourselves. Sure, God takes care of the birds and the flowers and the spiders and snakes, but I’m a person. I’m more complicated.

Jesus tells us that maybe we are not that complicated. We need to trust God. We need to have faith in God. We need to put God’s words into practice and in this case, those words say don’t worry.

Yes, we may absolutely have trouble tomorrow, but it does not need to cut into today’s joy. We make reasonable plans, we listen to God when we pray and all day long while we work at our jobs as if we are working for God, we listen to what he is telling us.

We want to trust God enough that we know the outcome will be exactly what it needs to be but that we won’t worry about how we get there.

We don’t need to worry along the way.

Paul would later reinforce this thinking with his own words. Be anxious for nothing…

Understand that trouble is one thing.  Worry and anxiousness are another.

There might be a bear on the road to work tomorrow.

That’s correct but there might be a gold coin too. You should not be worried about one to the point it takes away your joy for today and you should not obsess on things that might bring you pleasure. Let today have its life and tomorrow its own life.

The Proverbs remind us that heaviness can weigh down the heart.  Jesus tells us that hope, not heaviness, should be on our hearts.

Message for today:  DON’T WORRY.

They say the proof is in the pudding, so here’s your pudding.

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” — E. Joseph Cossman

Amen.

Choose this Day: Live for God or for the Creation

 Read Matthew 6:25-34

We catch todays scripture with the words of Jesus included with a bunch of words of Jesus. We get this red-letter effect because Jesus had begun what we now call the Sermon on the Mount. This didactic turned from homiletic to teaching at some point but Jesus was doing all of the talking.

After blessing and the receipt of blessings for many things that many people might overlook and even discard as trials, Jesus began teaching on of variety of topics.

As we enter Chapter 6 of Matthew’s gospel, we see teaching on not making a show of doing what’s right and giving to the poor.  These things are between you and God.

Don’t pray and count it to your credit that you use some fancy words and can make the name of God into a three-syllable word.  Praying is not for show.

Jesus even gave those who were listening a model prayer.

And by the way, don’t go all snowflake on me when you are fasting.  You are growing nearer to God. Quit acting like you are on the Batan Death March.

And when you think of your treasures, think of treasure that will last. Think of doing the will of your Father in heaven as making deposits in your heavenly account.

Then Jesus sang the first round ever of Be Careful Little Eyes what you seen.

Jesus told us that we can’t sit on the fence. Either we love God or we love his creation more. It’s one or the other. Do we love God or do we love money and all it can buy us?

Which brings us to today’s scripture and the words of Jesus.

And his words are—don’t worry.  Don’t worry.

Can any of you add one hour of life to your life by worrying about your life.  Jesus said, we’ve got this life thing.  Trust the Father in heaven. Trust me, and before you know it, you will be able to trust a spirit that lives within you.

Don’t worry.

You don’t see the birds worrying, do you? You don’t see the flowers growing anxious, do you?  Your Father in Heaven knows just what they need and he knows what you need, so stop worrying about what you think you need.

Why do we spend so much time worried about what we will eat or drink or wear?  Live for your relationship with God, not for your relationship with the opinions of others or those of your stomach or your ego.

We might say, “of course, I get that,” but living it—putting these words into practice—gets much tougher in life outside of the pew you are now in.

Worry shows up uninvited and makes itself at home.  Jesus is telling us not to give worry a home. He will take care of us.

This returns us to a familiar place. It is our nature—our human nature—to worry. We are taught to trust but we practice worry. We worry about things and events and outcomes that often don’t make a hill of beans in the long run.  

Our own understanding wants to take charge and be in charge of our decisions and countenance. Jesus said, don’t worry.

Don’t worry.

It sounds easy but to truly rid ourselves of worry, we must trust God—not a little—but with everything.

Jesus returned to making comparisons with the pagans.  They worry about everything that they have or don’t have.  They make some of the things that they desire into their gods.

Jesus challenges us to seek God and his kingdom and his righteousness before anything else.  The pagans seek after all of the things of the creation.  Jesus tells us to seek the Creator instead and he will bless us with all the things that the pagans have made into gods.

God wants us to have good things. He loves to give good gifts but he must always be God. We must put all of our trust in him. We must choose this day whom we will serve: God or his creation.

And what about worrying about the future? Don’t do it.

Tomorrow will have troubles of its own. You don’t need to claim them today.  Seek God and his kingdom and his righteousness now and let God deal with tomorrow.

Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make you paths straight.

Some days are going to seem better than others. The flu, the regular crud, and even the common cold are allowed back on the once-dominated COVID scene. Jobs come and go. Death and other losses happen.

Some days are just tougher than others, but even those days are not cause for worry.

Our soul is grasped firmly by the Lord.

He has a room prepared for us.

We just need to put his words into practice.

Even in this life, he has promises for abundance and abundant life.

He has promises of health and well-being.

He has good plans for us.

Let us never despair. Let us never lose hope. Let us live without worry, knowing that God is in control.

Trust in the Lord…

Amen.