Audio Transcript
The alarm buzzes. You wake up — or try to wake up. You haven’t gotten out of bed. Your phone is in your hand. World War III is trending on X. Your email inbox is full of new messages to respond to. You regret opening your phone. A low-grade dread comes over you, partly from another day ahead of bad news online, but partly because you are reminded of overdue bills. The day ahead is full of challenges and things you don’t really want to do. You want to stay in bed, but you can’t. You have to fight. Today on Ask Pastor John: defeating daily anxiety.
The experience is global. The question comes from Juliana in Brazil: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for Ask Pastor John. As a woman in my mid-twenties, I feel the constant weight of anxiety. Not full-blown, debilitating panic attacks, but more of a persistent background hum of dread, pressure, and exhaustion I feel all the time. Between social expectations, a nonstop cycle of bad news I see on my phone, and from my own overthinking, I just feel overwhelmed, and I feel it almost every day. How can someone like me cultivate peace, sanity, and spiritual steadiness in a world that seems to be driving me into a state of relentless hyper-anxiety? What practical steps minimize the nerves I feel every day in order to live like how a daughter of the sovereign King should?”
Well, Juliana, since I don’t know you well enough to diagnose all the factors that might be making you anxious, maybe the most responsible thing I can do is to ponder with you some words of Jesus that he spoke exactly so that you would be free from anxiety. That’s his aim.
There are eight arguments or reasons in Matthew 6:25–34 that Jesus speaks to help you not be anxious. It’s amazing. I know there are people who think (they’ve told me so) that arguments or reasons don’t affect our emotions. Well, Jesus did not believe that, or he wouldn’t have spoken the way he’s about to speak. He expected that his words, in the power of the Spirit, believed by his disciples — these arguments, these eight reasons — would make them amazingly bold and free from fear and anxiety.
“You have a need-meeting Father who is meticulously sovereign over your life in this world.”
Let me just preface these few comments with the fact that Jesus really did believe in the absolute, meticulous, pervasive sovereignty of God. That’s assumed in this passage. He believed that it would have an effect on his disciples to know that. He said in Matthew 10:29–31, “Not one [sparrow] will fall to the ground apart from your Father. . . . Fear not [Juliana, that’s for you: Fear not]; you are of more value than many sparrows.” That’s the way Jesus argued. In other words, believing that God is that much in control of the details of the world steadies the Christian heart and makes us bold, makes us free.
So, I’m going to take Matthew 6:25–34 one argument at a time, draw your attention to it, and explain why it can help take away your anxiety.
1. God Gives Life
Matthew 6:25: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” In other words, God has already given you the greater gift of life and body. Will he not give you the lesser gift of food and clothing? Your life and your body are astonishing — they are astonishing works of God. Be amazed at the wonder of your own life and your own body. And if he created those, how easy it is for him to meet your physical needs.
2. God Feeds the Birds
“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. [Second argument:] Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26). This is an argument from the lesser to the greater. If he concerned himself with the least valuable — mere birds, billions of them — will he not concern himself with the greatly valuable, namely, his disciples? Yes, he will. So, don’t be anxious as if he won’t take care of you.
3. Worrying Doesn’t Work
Matthew 6:27: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” In other words, anxiety doesn’t work. It doesn’t help. It makes matters worse. Jesus really does expect us to think this way. I mean, people scoff at this kind of argument, like, “Stop doesn’t help.” But Jesus expects that our thinking this way is going to make a difference in our feelings. Preach to yourself. Say, “Self, this feeling of anxiety is not helping me at all. It’s only making matters worse, so stop it.” Now, we may laugh at that kind of assumption. I used to. I don’t anymore. I don’t. I think we can preach to ourselves and to our emotions in the power of God’s Spirit much more effectively than we think we can.
4. God Clothes the Lilies
Matthew 6:28–30: “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, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. [Here comes the fourth argument:] 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?” In other words, if God provides lavishly for the ephemeral lilies, the grass, will he not provide for his children? Yes, he will. He will give us the clothes we need to do his will and glorify his name. Yes, he will.
5. God Is Father
Matthew 6:31–32: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ [The fifth argument:] For the Gentiles seek after all these things.” When we are anxious, we are acting like unbelievers, who have no heavenly Father who cares for them. You don’t want to act like an unbeliever, and so you renounce anxiety. You put it to death. You say to your anxiety, “You are not telling the truth about me, anxiety. You are not telling the truth to me, and you’re not telling the truth to other people. You are lying about who I am. I am a child of God. You are making me look like I don’t have a heavenly Father, so stop it right now and go away. You are a liar. Get out of my life.”
6. God Knows Our Needs
Matthew 6:32: “Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” In other words, you have a Father in heaven, not a cosmic force, but a Father, not a slave master, not an employer. You have a Father, a need-meeting Father who is meticulously sovereign over your life in this world. Your Father knows every need, and he is God. Implication: He’ll meet your needs. Yes, he will. Believe him.
7. God Loves His Mission
Matthew 6:33: “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” In other words, the reason God meets all our needs is that he loves the advancement of his saving rule in the lives of his people. He loves the advancement of his righteousness in the lives of his people. He loves to support his mission. “All these things will be added to you” — everything you need to do his mission, to do his will, to glorify his name.
8. God Gives New Mercy
Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” In other words, tomorrow’s trouble is appointed for tomorrow, and there will be new mercy for it tomorrow — not today (Lamentations 3:22–23). Don’t try to run tomorrow’s car on today’s gas. That’s not what it’s for. His mercies are new every morning because our troubles are new every morning, and there will always be sufficient mercy for the day’s trouble.
So, Juliana, take your precious Savior at his word. Hold fast to God’s pervasive sovereignty and goodness, and preach to yourself reason after reason after reason from the Bible why you do not need to be anxious in this world.
