Wisdomfest 2024: Rising Above Anxiety – First Things First 7/14/24

We’ve been talking through the series that anxieties abound in Western civilization in America, everything from the basic to the complex anxieties. The late Edwin Friedman, in his book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, described contemporary America as “chronically anxious.” He says that’s what describes us is anxiety.

You can see it all around you from very simple anxieties like last month I was at Boy Scout camp with my son. At Boy Scout camp, there were a lot of 11 and 12-year-olds. My son’s not that young. He’s been to camp before, but for those kids that were there for their first time, they were experiencing what we used to just call “homesickness.” But it’s now called “homesickness anxiety.” And it is. They are anxious. You could tell with The ones because they had tear stains down their faces because they missed their mom and dad, probably for the first time. That was the first time they’d been away for summer camp. So we kind of try to comfort them, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get through this week. Just stick with it. It’s going to be okay.” That’s a form of separation anxiety.

There’s also things like performance anxiety. For decades, studies and surveys and polls have shown that people would rather die than speak in public. Actually, what that means is that for most of you in this room, you would rather die than do what I’m doing right now, which is stand up in front of a crowd and talk. Ironically, as I was thinking about and praying to get up and teach today, on Friday night I was having a terrible time going to sleep because I was actually wrestling with anxiety about getting up and speaking about anxiety. How dumb is that? Like, “Jesus, what is going on here? This is stupid.”

There are religiously flavored anxieties. I was reading a little bit this week about end-times anxiety. You can imagine that if you’re spending a lot of time thinking about the apocalypse, you might become anxious. There are newer anxieties like climate change anxiety. Friedman writes this, he says,

“American civilization’s emotional regression has perverted the élan—” which is just a French word that has to do with momentum. “…of risk-taking, discovery and pioneering that originally led to the foundation of our nation. As a result, its fundamental character has instead been shaped into an illusive and often compulsive search for safety and security. This is occurring equally in parenting, medicine, and management. The anxiety is so deep within the emotional processes of our nation that it is almost as though a neurosis has become nationalized.”

I think he’s getting at something regarding our search for safety and security that seems to be so important and central to our thinking. In fact, there is actually a name for it now. It’s called Cartesian anxiety.

“Cartesian anxiety,” writes Charles Pope for First Thing magazine, “is a term that refers to a longing for absolute certainty, and the belief that scientific methods, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. It is called Cartesian due to its connection to René Descartes who sowed seeds of extreme doubt by insisting upon a kind of absolute or ontological certainty in things. Western civilization has suffered from unrealistic expectations as to the basis of knowledge, and a kind of anxiety ever since, that we can really know anything in a way that will satisfy our doubt.”

I think he’s getting at the heart of what so many people want: certainty. In fact, one of the podcasts I listen to regularly has a commercial for California Psychics. California Psychics’ tagline asks,

“Clouded by doubt? With the help of our insightful guidance, you can clear away the doubt and experience the joy of certainty.”

To be clear, I’m not promoting California Psychics right now. That’s not my intent. I hope you understand that. I actually think it’s a brilliant commercial because I think they’re getting at the heart of what so many people want. They want certainty. They want the safety and security of knowing what’s ahead that certainty can provide. And they’re coming out and they’re saying, we can provide that certainty for you for anywhere between $4 and $20 a minute. I guess it just depends on how sure you want to be.

Jesus also says in Matthew 6, you don’t have to be anxious, but not because you can have certainty and not because he’s offering to be your California Psychic. He’s actually showing us a better way, a way that trusts our heavenly Father in the uncertainty.

In Matthew 6, Jesus is teaching his followers what to live for. He teaches us not to live for status and not to live for stuff. Status is the first part of Matthew 6, and we’ve been looking at “don’t live for stuff”   for a lot of the second half or most of the end of Matthew 6. He’s asking, where do we ultimately put our trust? What are we ultimately seeking? And so we spent the last several weeks in the back part of Matthew 6 where Jesus is warning us about living for stuff.

He says, don’t live for stuff. Look at verse 19. He says, live for heavenly investment or heavenly kingdom or treasure. Not earthly, but heavenly. In verse 24 he says, devote to one heavenly master. He says you can’t serve God and money. Pick. Serve God or money. Money is a great teller of where our hearts are. Jesus said that where your treasure is, your heart is, and where your heart is, your treasure is. Money is a great barometer of those things.

As people come together in marriage, Katie (my wife) and I get to do a lot of premarital counseling. It’s interesting to see the divergent views of money that are often joined together. Often a spender marries a saver. Someone who is primarily a spender will marry somebody who’s primarily a saver.

We have a little bit of an inkling in our society, or at least in maybe church culture, that it’s better to be a saver than a spender. So sometimes the spender will say, “I’m a saver too,” until they get married to a real saver. Then they go, “You know what? I’m not a saver after all.” But God in his beautiful providence, and sometimes sense of humor, often brings those two together, the opposites.

In the best-case scenarios, they complement one another. I’m the spender, Katie’s the saver. As long as we’re respecting each other and honoring the other person, God can really use that to both of our advantages to do something beautiful. But here’s the thing that can be self-deceptive for us: we can think that it’s better to be a saver because savers don’t have a money problem. But actually, money can be your master whether you’re a spender or a saver.

Often spenders look to money for their significance, and often savers look to money for their security. When we’re looking for our significance or our security in money rather than God, it has become our master, and we are living for stuff. And Jesus says, you can’t do both. You can’t serve God and money.

Then in verse 25, he continues to drill down further and opens up this topic of anxiety. He says, therefore, do not be anxious about what you’re going to eat, drink, and wear. Then if you fast forward, as we have been looking at those verses over the last several weeks, and get down to verse 31, he says it again: therefore don’t be anxious about what you eat or drink or wear. Don’t live for stuff. Don’t be devoted to and live for stuff. Anxiety follows our living for the temporal. The more we devote ourselves to stuff—and status, too, but stuff—the unstable nature of those things leads to anxiety upon anxiety.

In these last couple of verses now, Jesus makes two points that are the climax of his teaching on anxiety. He tells us that anxiety is incompatible for the disciple, but faith is fitting for the disciple.

Before I jump into this, I want to give you one caveat because—as with all emotions—there’s a lot going on when we experience anxiety. We, brothers and sisters, are embodied souls. So what happens in one of those areas inevitably affects what happens in the other. For some of us, there are more factors going on in our bodies and souls when it comes to anxiety. Some of us wrestle with—because of our physiological makeup or because of past experience (whether trauma or relationships, past or present)—you are continuing to experience anxiety because of those physiological factors.

I want to be careful not to take all kinds of anxiety and collapse them into the spiritual bucket. I am trying to deal primarily with the spiritual root causes of anxiety. For those of you who continue to wrestle with more significant struggles that are connected to physical things and so on, we would love to help you. We’d love for you to reach out to the counseling ministry. We’d love to connect you and seek to help you with those. Today we’re looking at the spiritual causes that Jesus is addressing here.

First of all, let’s look at how anxiety is incompatible for the disciple. Verse 31 says,

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’”

This verse is almost identical to verse 25, and it acts as brackets or bookends or frames the whole discussion about anxiety. This verse is kind of personal because he actually uses those sentences like somebody is saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? Verse 32,

“For the Gentiles seek after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”

He says anxiety is compatible for the lost. That’s what he means by “Gentiles.” He’s talking about people who are not part of God’s people. He’s talking about the lost. Gentiles are the ones who seek after these things, but your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Anxiety is compatible for the lost, but it’s not for the disciple.

It’s compatible for the lost because, first of all, it’s all they have. They overestimate the importance of the material world. Everything for the lost is crammed into the visible because they’re not living for the invisible. They’re not living for a future kingdom, another kingdom. This is the kingdom. They’re making all their investment into earthly investment. It’s all they have. They’re not living for something else, so they must fret and protect what’s here. They must worry about what we would call “secondary things” rather than primary things. They must worry about the secondary, like food and clothes. That’s all they have.

Second, they misunderstand God’s character. The non-Christian views God as either non-existent or absent, disconnected from the troubles that we experience in some way. He’s disconnected. He’s away.

The old spiritual from the 19th century,

“Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen.”

If you remember The Lion King, Zazu sang,

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,”

until Scar shut him up. But he didn’t finish. The old recording from Louis Armstrong finishes:

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows but Jesus.”

That’s actually true. That’s the Christian worldview, and that’s what Jesus is saying, that God the Father is connected to the troubles that you face. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, he says. That’s what distinguishes the Christian so we can trust him.

That leads me to the second point, which is, faith is fitting for the disciple. Verse 33,

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

That verse does not mean seek first the kingdom of God and he’ll give you whatever you want. That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying to seek the first things and trust God for the second things. Seek the first things, the things that are most important.

The disciples of Jesus are devoted to first things, not secondary things. We seek God’s kingdom as the first thing. God’s kingdom is the rule and reign of God. We seek to expand the rule and reign of God at every turn. God’s righteousness is his goodness. We seek to spread his goodness through the doing of good works, God’s rule and reign, and his goodness to spread and to expand. That’s his kingdom.

Jesus is teaching here an antidote to anxiety, and it is blessedly simple, but not easy. But it is simple: seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and trust God for the rest. This is our passion.

Jesus does it in a present imperative. He says seek and keep on seeking while today is today. Every day that is called today, seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. And tomorrow, when tomorrow is called today, seek it then, too. It’s a present imperative. Seek and keep on seeking, every day, God’s kingdom and his righteousness. Make first things first. Seek God’s kingdom and the rest will be okay. We can trust God for the rest.

We get so encumbered with anxieties. We long for certainty. We want to call the California Psychics, and then for them to tell us what we can be sure of. But Jesus gives us clear direction and instead calls us to faith. Instead of being fretful and anxious and living that existence over the worries of tomorrow, seek God’s kingdom today and trust him for tomorrow. Charles Spurgeon said,

“Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but it only empties today of its strength.”

Amen? That is so true. We can be so anxious about what’s going to happen tomorrow, and it never empties the anxieties of tomorrow. But it saps our strength and our peace and our joy today and we cannot live for God’s kingdom. We cannot live for other people. We cannot love God and other people when we are just cobbled together by anxieties. It will sap that strength from us.

In the Old Testament, Abraham is one of many biblical examples of faith in God for tomorrow. Though he had many opportunities to trust God and to follow him, perhaps none is as stark and dramatic as when God told him to take his son Isaac—his only son, through whom the promise would come—take him up to the mountain and sacrifice him in worship to God.

A.W. Tozer, in his classic work The Pursuit of God, described Abraham’s wrestling and the conclusion he came to so well, I won’t try to restate it. I’ll just read the few sentences that he said.

“How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, ‘In Isaac shall thy seed be called’? This was Abraham’s trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the great dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead.”

That’s what Hebrews said about what Abraham was thinking. Abraham was like, “I don’t know what God’s going to do. I assume he’s going to raise him from the dead.” It’s not like that’s what God was doing constantly around Abraham. It’s not like he was pulling people out of the grave right and left. It’s not like that was Abraham’s everyday experience. That was just the next logical conclusion.

No, God told Abraham to do something that didn’t make sense and when he decided, “I am going to trust God for tomorrow. I assume God’s going to raise my son from the dead.” And he got up early in the morning, it says. Wouldn’t you be tempted to sleep in and hope that God changes his mind? He got up early in the morning to go and say, “I’m going to trust God today for tomorrow.” Tozer says it perfectly,

“It is beautiful to see that, while Abraham erred as to God’s method, he had correctly sensed the secret of God’s great heart.”

You see what he’s saying? Abraham was wrong. He was wrong in that God wasn’t going to raise Isaac from the dead. Instead, he stopped Abraham from taking Isaac’s life. So Abraham was wrong in the method, but right in trusting God for tomorrow.

That is a dramatic story, and maybe our stories aren’t as dramatic. And yet God still calls us to trust his great heart.

Here’s my story. In 2012, me and my family left North Hills Church to start another church with your blessing and support.

Why would we do that? Was it because we didn’t like you? No, it wasn’t that. It was because we were studying the life of Abraham and Matthew 6:33, and so we left to seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness. We left what was safe and comfortable, to trust God and to move towards what we believed was seeking his kingdom and his righteousness.

Eight years later, we felt like our time at that church was done, and we came back to North Hills. That is not at all what we expected to happen when we left. That’s not what we thought was going to happen.

When you think to yourself, “I’m seeking God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and it looks like __________,” and it doesn’t happen that way, it’s hard not to feel anxious. The kingdom of God was not built like we expected it to be. I thought we would never see you again ’till heaven. But that’s not what God had.

It’s hard not to ask, why. Or, where did we go wrong? Or, did we hear you wrong, God? Our kids enjoy North Hills, and some of them asked us since we’ve been back, “Why did we leave? We actually like this place. It’s like eight years cut out of our lives where we could have been a part of what’s going on here.” And we say, because we believe we were seeking God’s kingdom, and that he called us to do something else.

But what do we have to show for eight years of work only to go back? It feels like that nasty word “regret.” We love seeking his kingdom and righteousness. But he didn’t build the kingdom like we thought he would. And then God gave us a little peek into what he was actually doing.

In 2013 — we left here in 2012 — In 2013, we moved into a new house in a new neighborhood in Spartanburg. Not long after, our next-door neighbor, Ms. Ly, came over to our house to ask Katie for help.

Ms. Ly is ethnically Chinese, and though she’s been a US citizen for decades, she’s significantly more comfortable with Cantonese than with English. And so Katie, my wife, became her assistant in an English-speaking world. Ms. Ly brought over her credit card, her social security card, and her driver’s license and said, “I need help.” And Katie said, “Okay.”

God gave Katie the gift of interpretation. I know this because when Ms. Ly would come over and start talking to me, I would say, “Let me get Katie. I have no idea what you’re saying.” And Katie would come and help Ms. Ly.

She helped her with Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare, buying furniture. She went with Ms. Ly to the vet when Ms. Ly had to euthanize her dogs. We helped her purchase a car. We didn’t purchase it, she did, but she said, “I need your help.” So we went to the car dealer. She looked at me and said, “You drive.” I test-drove the car. She sat in the back, and then she bought it! We sat there while the salesman was giving her the paperwork. “This is what this says,” and helped her.

I got to go with her to traffic court when she got a ticket on New Year’s Eve. She had never gotten a ticket. She thought she was toast. It’s its own story, but I got to stand in front of the judge with her while the judge had no idea what she was saying. I got to advocate for her and saw him lean over the bench and give her grace and just say, “I’m taking care of this.” Turns out he was a Christian. I imagine that, a Christian judge. I’m teasing. That’s its own story.

When we found Ms. Ly’s son was in nursing home care and she didn’t have a will, Katie said, “You’ve got to have a will, Ms. Ly,” and took her to an attorney in town. Hired a translator to make sure she understood everything she was signing and could understand the attorney to get her will signed and done.

Ms. Ly didn’t know Jesus. Her house was filled with idols. She was Buddhist. But Katie faithfully loved Ms. Ly and told her about Jesus. None of it was getting in, but just trying in English to say this is who Jesus is. We’d have her over to our house for Christmas Eve dinner. We make great dinner for Christmas Eve and just open the Bible and read Luke 2, just praying that somehow Jesus was breaking through the language barrier.

When we left in 2020, Katie wrote Ms. Ly a long letter laying out the gospel for her and put it in Google Translate into Cantonese (hoping that Google wouldn’t remove all the references to Jesus) and gave it to Ms. Ly. And we left.

About a year later, that translator—wouldn’t you know, just happened to be a Christian—called Katie and said, “Can I call Ms. Ly and give her the gospel in her language so she can understand?” Katie was like, “Yes, please.” And she called Ms. Ly and got together with Ms. Ly and told her, and gave her the gospel. Ms. Ly said, “Oh, that’s what Katie was trying to tell me?” And she turned in faith to Jesus.

About three weeks ago, a group of our Chinese brothers and sisters that meet here came for membership. Among them was Ms. Ly, who’s now a member of North Hills Church.

When Ms. Ly came to faith in Jesus, I looked at Katie and said, “Is that why God sent us? To get one sheep? If so, it’s totally worth it.” I don’t know if that’s why. It certainly was part of it, because God was building his kingdom, it just wasn’t what we expected. But it was totally worth it because Ms. Ly is in the kingdom now. She’s in the kingdom. When she dies, she’ll be with Jesus. Her house has been cleared of idols. Instead of Buddhist music, she has Jesus music playing in her home.

We don’t always know why God did what he did or led where he led, but God was building his kingdom, just not like we expected. I’m not Abraham, but just like Abraham, I was wrong in the method that he would build his kingdom. But we were right to trust God, trust that he would build his kingdom. He always seems to do it in a way that we don’t expect, because it’s his kingdom after all, not ours.

Brothers and sisters, anxiety is a false prophet. Peter said that the first week in the personifications of anxiety. It’s a false prophet that asks us “what ifs,” what ifs today that keep us from following God tomorrow. We ask all the what-ifs of the things that might happen tomorrow. We live in the “today” of anxiety and not trusting God for tomorrow, and that false prophet continues to lie and lie and lie.

You know who the father of lies is? He is our enemy, and he is behind the false prophet that asks the what ifs, 99.9% of which will never happen, but they will rob us of peace and joy in the present. Anxiety lies about the 99.9%. The 0.1% of things that do happen tomorrow, God will be with us in those, and we can trust him for those.

I have no idea what tomorrow is going to hold, and neither do you, but I know that God will be with you in the tomorrow. He promises to be with us in the one or two things that will happen. We just sang,

“Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him
How I’ve proved him over and over
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus.
Oh for grace to trust him more.”

That false prophet continues to lie to you and I. It wants us to be hamstrung in the present and never be able to move forward, never to have the strength and peace and joy that God offers us if we will simply seek first his kingdom and trust him for the rest. You know what they did to false prophets in the Bible? They identified them, sent them out of the city, and sometimes they killed them.

Brothers and sisters, it’s time for us to take the false prophet of anxiety and kick it out of our homes and out of our hearts, and kill it outside the city. To get rid of the false prophet of anxiety and instead to trust the true Prophet, Priest, and King, the resurrected Jesus. He is the one that we can trust, that we can count and depend our lives on.

Just like Abraham, who couldn’t see tomorrow but believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead, we can trust the God who actually did raise Jesus from the dead and brought him back to life again. The God who is already in tomorrow and knows exactly what you and I will face and is already there waiting for us to trust him so he can walk with us in the tomorrow.

“Because he lives, I can face tomorrow
Because he lives, all fear is gone
Because I know he holds the future
And life is worth the living
Just because he lives!”

We sing those songs and they are true, brothers and sisters. We sing them with joy so we can seek first the kingdom of God. Martin Luther said,

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and do as you please.”

Why? Because if you’re seeking the kingdom of God, then what you please will align with what pleases God. C.S. Lewis said it this way:

“Put second things first and we lose both first and second things … put first things first, we get second things thrown in.”

The Old Testament said it this way in Psalm 37:4,

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your hearts.”

Why? Because if you’re delighting yourself in the Lord, your desires will align with his desires. Jesus said it this way:

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

So you can seek his kingdom and move forward and do as you please. You don’t need to be paralyzed by anxiety and not know what to do. Seek first the kingdom of God and take that job, or don’t take that job. Because if you’re seeking first the kingdom of God and there is not a moral issue at hand, then you can do either one.

You can seek first the kingdom of God and move to a new city or a new state, or don’t. But as long as you’re seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, move forward. Pick that college or that college. God doesn’t care as long as you’re seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

If you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and get married. Marry that girl. If she’s a Christian and you love her, and she’s willing to put up with your nonsense for more than 24 hours, then marry her. That’s what I did. That was almost 24 years ago. There’s probably not going to be anybody else that will. You don’t have to sit there and go, well, should I or shouldn’t I? Are you seeking first the kingdom of God? That’s the first thing. Everything else is second.

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” and build a new auditorium. Or don’t. As long as we as the church here are seeking first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. Do it or don’t do it, but make sure we’re seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Brothers and sisters, faith is fitting for the disciple. Jesus is giving us profound truth that has the power to decimate the false prophet of anxiety. Let us not be paralyzed. Let us not have our feet cobbled together with the false prophet of anxiety. Rather, let us seek first the kingdom of his God, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then trust him for the rest. Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, I ask one last time that anything that I’ve said that’s unhelpful, that you would burn like chaff, and anything that glorifies you and expands your kingdom, that you would keep. And thank you for Ms. Ly. I hug her neck and I kiss her cheek. I don’t know all the other things you’ve done for your kingdom, but you give one little picture for my family. How kind. Please expand your kingdom exponentially because your people that are sitting here and listening to what Jesus has said, to seek first the kingdom of God by your power and by your grace say, “I want that. I’m going to seek first God’s kingdom.” And God, would you take our tiny little commitments and by your grace do more than we can possibly imagine, as you have already done? In Jesus’ name, amen.