Audio Transcript

We have a sad question today, Pastor John, from a friend of ours in Southern California. “Pastor John, hello to you. We lost our home in the California fires this past November, and many others lost their homes in the much larger fires in the Los Angeles area in January. In the face of this devastation, we are struggling with worry about the future — whether we’ll be able to rebuild, whether insurance will cover our losses, and what will happen when our equity is exhausted by these fires. I’ve been praying for wisdom, and I’m deeply thankful that God hears our prayers and gives generously without reproach. However, in the midst of so much uncertainty, I’m still grappling with anxiety about how we move forward and what the future holds. Could you offer guidance to those of us struggling with fear about our future in times of deep loss?”

The Threat of Anxiety

Anxiety is always about the future, even though the causes of it can be in the past. So, thousands of people lost virtually all their material possessions in the fires in California. I know of one family personally whose house was totally destroyed — I mean, nothing left. And they lost irreplaceable, precious things, all destroyed. It’s one thing to count dollars; it’s another thing to count treasures.

So, the anxiety that we might lose our house in the fire as it was coming is over. We did. That’s not an anxiety anymore. It’s history, it’s pain, it’s grief, it’s loss. And now comes the grief at those irreplaceable losses and the uncertainty of the future with its anxieties. Will the insurance cover the losses? Will all the equity that we had built up be lost? What will we do in the meantime? And decision after decision has to be made along the way — will we make them wisely?

Now, I’m not in a position of having lost my house and my possessions, but in a strange, timely way, I did get a text when I was preparing this yesterday that my sixteenth grandchild, born now three days ago, choked and then his heart stopped beating. And they did CPR for twelve minutes, and this little eight-pound treasure, his heart started beating again. He’s on a respirator now as I speak, and his heart is beating, and he has to have surgery. By the time you listen to this, he may be in heaven or he may be recovering from surgery. So, I’m speaking out of an experience of present anxiety for my daughter and for my son-in-law and for this one-day-old little boy who’s got a heart defect and has to have surgery anyway.

Nobody is immune from anxiety. It comes; it just shows up. You don’t plan for it. It’s just there with a phone call from the nurse that says, “You need to come back to the hospital quickly,” and you wonder, “Has he gone?” It comes at us from all angles. It’s a feeling that something very painful may be just over the horizon, and the feeling is nervous and fearful because we don’t want it to happen.

Now, I doubt that there’s any feeling that humans have that is more frequently a threat to our trust in the goodness and power and wisdom of God than anxiety. When we’re trusting God with our life and the lives of those we love and our whole situation, we enjoy a peace about the future and its uncertainties that passes all understanding. It’s beyond what human reasoning can produce (Philippians 4:7). And when anxiety is gaining the upper hand emotionally in our hearts, that trust and that peace are in jeopardy, and we need help.

The Fight to Trust

So, what help does God give us with these feelings of anxiety? The longest text on anxiety in the Bible is Matthew 6:25–34. Four times in those verses Jesus tells us not to be anxious.

• Verse 25: “I tell you, do not be anxious about your life.”
• Verse 27: You can’t add “a single hour to [your] span of life.”
• Verse 31: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’”
• Verse 34: “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow.”

Now, we need to be careful here. The Bible does not portray the faithful follower of Jesus as a person who never tastes anxiety or fear. Rather, the Bible portrays anxiety and fear as something that rises unbidden in the heart and must be dealt with from a Christian perspective, a Christian approach, a Christian way.

“Reasons for anxiety are new every morning, and mercies to bear them are new every morning.”

The Bible doesn’t just say, “Don’t be anxious.” It also says, “Cast your anxieties on the Lord.” I think you’ve got some. Everybody knows you’ve got some. Cast them on the Lord (1 Peter 5:7). The Bible portrays the Christian life as a good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12), and a great part of the fight is that we do with our anxieties what the Bible says we should do — namely, roll them onto the Lord, who is so eager to express his strength on our behalf and carry them for us.

We are not helpless victims of this emotion. Don’t think about yourself that way — Anxiety is my ruler. I’m a victim. I can’t have any influence over this emotion. That’s just not true. When Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34), he implies that God sees to it that no one day has more in it than we can handle, and that when the anxieties arise for that day, he’ll see to it that we will not be overcome by them but will be able to roll them onto the Lord.

God will work for us so that “as your days” — one day at a time — “so shall your strength be” (Deuteronomy 33:25). Every day will have no more trouble than you can bear. And every day will have mercies sufficient for that day’s stress. That’s Lamentations 3:22–23: The mercies of God “are new every morning.” Reasons for anxiety are new every morning, and mercies to bear them are new every morning.

The Spirit and the Word

This is my analogy that I’ll close with, and it just might stick and help. (It helps me.) Suppose you are in a car race. You’re driving the car. And your enemy, your adversary, has hired somebody, and they don’t want you to finish this race at all, and they throw mud on your windshield.

Now, the fact that you temporarily lose sight of the road or the goal and start to swerve around doesn’t mean that you’re not going to finish the race. It certainly doesn’t mean that you are on the wrong track. Otherwise, your enemy wouldn’t give a hoot about bothering you at all. You’re not going to defeat anybody (because you’re on the wrong track). But he knows you’re on the right track, and so he’s throwing mud on your windshield so he can somehow get you to leave the race.

What this means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers and use your windshield-washer fluid — which, if you are thinking with me, the windshield wipers are the promises of God in the Bible. Oh, they are precious. They clear away the mud of unbelief — yes, they do. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by a good promise (Romans 10:17). And the windshield washer fluid is the Holy Spirit. Without the softening work of the Holy Spirit, the wipers of the word just scrape over the blinding mud of unbelief; they don’t remove it. Both are necessary: the Spirit and the promises. We read the promises of God, and we pray for the help of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the way I live my life as these anxieties rise in my heart. And as the windshield clears, we see the power and the goodness and the wisdom of God at work in and through those promises. He’s going to work all things together for our good. We can see it more clearly now because of the word of God. And our faith grows, and we find rest behind the wheel as we press on in the race of life.

Book of Precious Promises

When I’m anxious about some difficult meeting coming up, I turn to Isaiah 41:10. “Fear not” — I just preach it to myself — “I’m with you. Be not dismayed, I’m your God. I’ll help you. I’ll strengthen you. I’ll uphold you.” And that promise, by the power of the Spirit, has rescued me from anxiety a thousand times, I think, in this life.

When I’m anxious about being too weak to do my work, I turn to 2 Corinthians 12:9. “My grace is sufficient for you. My power is perfected, Piper, in weakness. Get on with it. I’ll take care of the problem.”

When I’m anxious about decisions that I have to make, I turn on the wipers that say, “I’ll instruct you. I’ll teach you in the way that you should go. I’ll counsel you with my eye upon you” (see Psalm 32:8).

When I’m anxious about the welfare of those I love, like a little baby, I turn the windshield wiper on. “If you, John Piper, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (see Matthew 7:11).

Oh, how many promises. I could keep going for a dozen more instances of anxiety and corresponding promises. Oh, how many are the promises of God to help us in times of uncertainty and anxiety. So, ransack the Bible for these precious promises. Turn on the windshield wipers, pray down the washer fluid of the Holy Spirit, and he will keep you on the track that leads to life.