Finding Peace: Casting Anxieties on God

And this morning, I want to continue our series that we've titled "Asking for a Friend." You know, several months ago, we sent out emails and Instagram and Facebook posts and asked you, as a church family, what are some of the questions within the faith that you have? What are some of the questions that you're wrestling with that, instead of maybe asking yourself, you would ask for a friend?

Last week, Pastor Chris talked through a wonderful message focusing on Christ being the only true God, and He is the way, the truth, and the life. Today, we are going to tackle a subject—one of the most requested subjects that we got from you as a church family. When Pastor Chris asked me to preach this weekend several months ago, I immediately knew that this was going to be yet another tough message for me.

The reason for that is, as we talk about fighting our battles, what seems to be a daily battle for me is the thought of anxiety. It is the snare, the thorn in my side. It cripples me. I have had moments, no matter the amount of counseling, therapy—I’ve got good therapists, medication, dedication to the Lord in prayer—I still, and I don't think I'm alone, hopefully like many of you, wrestle with anxious thoughts at times. They can be absolutely crippling to me. They can knock me down for a few days at a time. They can completely change my mood, my mentality, and even sometimes my family.

So the question that we want to go after today is this: Is anxiety, or being anxious, a sin? For many of us, we get wrapped up in this question alone because it seems like there are both answers to this question. I will be honest that this is one of those questions that, as we raised it to the congregation, I did not want to tackle. I will confess that attempting to answer the question, "Is anxiety a sin?" has brought me to such a point of anxiousness that I honestly did not want to preach this weekend.

There were physical manifestations of it for me. Anxiety expels itself through my body, through a ton of acne, and also—which I haven't dealt with for years—I get styes in my eyes. So for the last five days, I've been wearing my glasses and moping around, thinking about preaching this message. But I can tell you that this is one of the ways the Word of God that I fight my battles.

This is a tough topic for us to look at today because, on one hand, if we say, "No, anxiety is not a sin," or "being anxious is not a sin," then we're going to have trouble with the Bible and Jesus, who specifically says, "Do not be anxious about your life." That's a problem for me. I desperately want to follow after the Lord, and when I'm anxious, I feel at times that I am going against His will and His ways.

But on the other hand, if we say, "Yes, anxiety is a sin," then we have the issue of what to do with our anxiety. Today, I will tell you that contradicting Jesus is not a position that I want to be in at all. So if anxiety is a sin, then it seems like the solution to how we live our lives is to become detached or just deal with things and hold no true concerns about anything or everything. To me, the answer seems to be somewhat of an emotional, stoic, robotic response that has absolutely no deep investment in life or concern for the things of this world.

Now, I know the scriptures that say, "Do not be conformed" or "do not be concerned with the things of this world," but you, like me, likely get wrapped up from time to time in these anxious thoughts. I can tell you that today, if I begin to sweat, not only do I have a towel, but it's because of this anxiousness and the deep desire for the right handling of God's Word and tirelessly seeking Him through this anxiousness that I live with, and I'm sure at times you do as well.

There are scriptures all throughout the Bible that call us to deal with our anxieties, and the solution, if we just forget things and don't handle them, contradicts Jesus in such a strong way. Look at John 12:27. It says this: "The Son of Man must be lifted up." This is Jesus now speaking: "Now is my soul troubled." Here's Jesus being anxious. So if you're wondering today how I'm going to handle this, this is one of the precepts; this is one of the things that I am taking in mind.

Jesus, in this moment, is troubled, and He responds and says, "And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?" We know that this is the moment of Him being led to the cross. Jesus, in this moment, is anxious, but He has a response, and as He has this response, we see it all throughout scripture. Furthermore, the Apostle Paul spoke of these daily pressures and anxieties of leading the church. He says, "I have anxiety for all the churches" in 2 Corinthians 11:26.

So this morning, I can't say, even from the truth of the scriptures that I believe that I know are true, that anxiety is a sin. But on the opposite side, there has to be a way to rightly deal with the anxieties that we have. I hope, because of your silence, you don't want to, like me, just be reductionistic and boil the topic of anxiety down to such a small palette, a small plate, that we just wash it away and be done with it. Because there is a right place for our anxious hearts.

So how do we answer the question? It seems to me that the answer to our anxiety lies in what we are anxious about. So if our anxiety lies in what we are anxious about, then more anxiety is an issue of giving weight to the things that we care about. I have anxiety over raising my children. I have anxiety over my parents' health. I have anxiety at times over my financial situation. I remember in middle school, high school, and in college, anxiety over my grades and studying for tests.

But what we do with those anxieties is the key. If we give the proper weight—or you may say value—to anxiety, we can not only overcome them, but we can take them to the Father. So how do we know the difference? You may be asking. It's not simple, but the scriptures this morning will tell us and show us a very specific way to handle them.

But before we get to it, let's just talk about our anxieties for a second. Because you can dispel or right-size your anxieties by asking these three questions:

1. Am I assigning the appropriate significance to what I am anxious about in my life?
2. Is what I am anxious about the greatest and most important thing about me or for me?
3. This is the doozy: Are the things I'm anxious about becoming a god to me?

See, when Pastor EJ, when I get crippled, when I am absolutely broken over my anxious thoughts and ways, they become gods to me. I make them idols. But I don't need to because the scriptures will teach us that our disordered cares blind us to God and make our cares themselves a god to worship.

Today, we're going to open up the Bible to Psalm 77. So if you have your copy or your smartphone, go ahead and turn there with me. I want to, as we turn there, just give you the big idea for today: It's this: that rightly reflecting on God will reorder our anxieties.

Let me say it again: rightly reflecting on God will reorder our anxieties. In those anxious moments, when things seem like they are roaring around us, we need to look to God. I know that that sounds like a simple answer. Do not turn out because Psalm 77 shows us how to properly reorder our cares.

All throughout the Psalms, if you've read, with emotions filled with anxiety, they are far from a stoic, drawn-back treatise of life where there is no dealing with emotions or cares. The Psalms are filled with this beautiful emotional language towards God about the pressures, anxieties, cares, and concerns of life. There is no doubting that within the world we will find them, and yet the Psalms contain an abundance of perfect perspective for how we should feel, how we should act, and what we should do.

Psalm 77, I believe, is one of the greatest texts that, if you deal with any aspect of mental health issue—whether it be anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, a lack of hope—that we, as believers, can not only cling to but that we can give to others in their moment of need.

The psalmist here does such an amazing job of coming with this earnest prayer of a troubled heart. The psalmist literally walks his heart through this anxious feeling and anxiety, taking up his prayer to the Lord. And that's the first thing we need to do today: we need to acknowledge our, or your, anxiety to the Lord.

Look at Psalm 77, verse 1. It says this: "I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and He will hear me. In the day of my trouble, I seek the Lord. In the night, my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints." Selah, which means pause. "You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak."

The psalmist is so candid and honest. Boy, a church family, I want to be authentic with you today. I don't want you to think differently of me as one of your pastors, but I can tell you this: I have been over and over in this moment. Can I get an amen?

But look at what the psalmist does. He knows right where to take his anxiety. He knows right where to position it, and he's not shy about it either. He takes this anxiety here and he instructs us how to answer our anxious hearts by going directly to the Lord and laying it out all in front of Him. And we feel it with him too: "I cry aloud to God." He repeats himself: "I cry aloud." He is pouring everything out in anguish.

In verses one through five here, we approach God with our anxieties. The Hebrew language that is pulled out here gives no impression of soft or a weak expression of anguish. I don't know about you, but at times with my kids and myself, I have found them to be right here. This anguish that he is describing comes to the point where he is crying aloud to the Lord, and yet at a moment runs out of words. He is gasping; he cannot sleep; he does not know what to do.

This is that moment when you have kids, and they get so fixated on what is the problem and the anxiety that, as they're crying, they begin to stop using any words or any sounds. It goes from, like, I call it the ugly cry.

And this is it. He is so wrapped up; he is so undone that he keeps crying out, and then it just stops. In the experience of the psalmist here, by all means, he is hurting and inconsolable. Like me, many of us have been in this spot where we can look at these first five verses and say, "I cried aloud to God; my hands are stretched out without wearying; my soul has been at the point where it refuses to be comforted; I moan; my spirit faints; and I am so troubled I can't speak."

I love the Psalms because they help me to feel what I feel at times. These first five verses of anguish just keep going and going. I feel like at times I get stuck here, but there's a way to fight the battle. See, because what happens here is he begins to express and feel the anxieties. There are troubles within our souls so deeply that we feel this experience, and as we do, he has this valid anxiety.

There is no rebuke from God in his answer. There is no correction saying, "You know what, EJ? Get your stuff together," or "Quit crying and just deal with it." Here's what I feel like as the psalmist cries out: God responds with these are my words, EJ. God is great enough and kind enough to receive whatever expressive need you have.

"You want to weep to me? Weep to me, EJ. You want to kneel before me and cry out? Kneel before me and cry out, EJ. If you need hope, I am here. I am with you. You don't have to shield it; you don't have to hold it back. Cry aloud over and over; bring it to me, even if you can't speak."

But notice where he goes with it. He goes to the Lord: "This is what I'm dealing with; this is where I'm at." He is open and honest with God, even in the expression of his heart. This is exactly how I feel right now, and I'm spent.

I love spending time with my kids. It's really hard for me, but I love it. Last year, a family in our church blessed us with a place to stay out in Colorado, and we were in this beautiful mountains with the kids—the first time them really seeing mountains. As we're out there, we're in a city, or a resort, I guess you could call it, called Copper Mountain.

As we're there, we see all this beautiful landscape and how amazing it is, and we decide that we're going to rent bikes and we're going to ride our bikes from Copper Mountain seven and a half miles downhill to Frisco, Colorado, and we're going to have breakfast, a coffee, hopefully a croissant. Yes, Lord!

In that moment, I was elated. We started riding our bikes; the sun is shining; it is absolutely beautiful. There's a river rushing through; the kids are elated. We saw some mountain goats; they're climbing up these little rock faces. We get down into the town; we have our coffee; we get the kids ice cream; we buy a t-shirt, and we realize it's time to go back.

Now, my sweet Abby, my beautiful wife, does CrossFit five days a week. She is not only strong but she is determined. She is humble and she is meek. I had done my research, church. I found out that for thirteen dollars a person, they would put our bikes back on a shuttle and zip us all the way up the hill. Amen!

But sweet Abby had a different thought. My sweet Abby looked at us and she said, "You guys, we can do it." We had just climbed Pyramid Point the week before, you know, the steep down face all the way to the water. If you've been there, you know. She's like, "We can do it." I was like, "Okay, here we go."

Abby has Gideon, my little guy, on the tag-along bike behind, right? So she's not only pedaling for herself, but she's pulling Gideon, who is the closest thing to Dennis the Menace that you will find in living person. And she is off, and Ruthie and I are biking. In the first mile, it was great.

Then the weather changed. As the weather changed, it started to get scarier and scarier. It went from the bright, bright blue fluffy sky clouds to dark. At this time, Abby was just pulling away. I said to her, "You guys need to go and try and beat it."

We got to the point where Ruthie and I had about a mile, two and a half, and had to stop because a flock of geese were in front of us, and they would not move. I was trying everything. I was making noises, whistling, clapping, stomping my feet, bouncing my bike up and down. One flew off, and as it flew off, it came behind us and started chasing Ruth.

Then it happened. The clouds broke, and the rain poured. Mind you, at this point, I was sweating so much that I was drinking through every water source that I could find. It poured so much I could have held out my water bottle and filled it, but I didn't.

Ruthie looks at me and she says, "Dad, what are we going to do?" I said, "Ruthie, we're going to ride our bikes as fast as we can." She looked right back at me and she said, "Dad, I can't. My legs hurt." She said, "Will you carry me?"

Mountain bike day, mountain bike beef. What do I do in this moment? I looked at her and I said, "Sweetheart, I can't." I took her bike, I put it crossways on my bike, and I started walking. We were in torrential downpour. It was all good. We prayed for a minute and gathered ourselves together, and that's when the lightning started to go. It hit a tree, knocked down a tree, and it was over, you guys.

Ruthie looked directly at me, straight in my eyes, and she said, "Daddy, are we gonna die?" I looked at her and I said, "No, sweetheart, we're going to be alright as long as the lightning doesn't hit us."

In that moment, the only thing I could do with Ruth was to smile, pray, and keep moving. Here's the reason I tell you this story: for a bunch of us, we don't acknowledge our anxiousness. Within it, in that moment when Ruthie cried out and said, "Dad, are we going to die?" I needed to avoid a complete hysteric with her on the bikes.

But here's the thing: I did not find her anguish a problem. Actually, in that very moment, I didn't find her anxiety or her anxiousness repulsive either. In fact, it is because she was so concerned and so desperately in need of help that it inclined me more to walk and ride right beside her.

See, when we bring our anxieties to the Lord, when we cry out to Him, when we share with Him what is happening, He takes our anxieties. The presupposition that I'm coming from with this step is that God is good and He will care for us in those moments as beloved children of God in Christ. What He has done for us is He has commanded us, from 1 Peter 5:7, to cast all our anxieties on Him because He cares for us.

So step one: address our anxious hearts with the Lord. Acknowledge our anxieties to Him. Let Him have knowledge; speak the knowledge of our anxieties. Then go after the second thing: we need to ask questions about God's nature.

The reason we need to ask these questions is because we need to reveal to ourselves and remind ourselves of who God is. Look at verses 5 through 9 with me. It says this: "I considered the days of old; the years long ago. I said, 'Let me remember my song in the night; let me meditate in my heart.' Then my spirit made a diligent search: 'Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable? Has His steadfast love forever ceased? Are His promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He, in anger, shut up His compassion?'"

See, there's a mini turn that begins to happen. For a moment, he takes a deep dive for the sake of his heart. He looks back and he says, "Let me remember who God is and what God has done." In verses 5 and 6, he uses these three verbs: verse 5, "consider," as he says, "consider what God has done." He also primes himself to say, "Remember, I need to remember what God has done," and then "I need to meditate in my heart."

See, when anxiousness comes and we bring it to the Father, then we have to be reminded of who God is and His character. He gives us this full permission to come to Him with those anxieties: consider, remember, meditate. He says, "My heart has made a diligent search."

Then he starts to ask questions in verses 7 through 9: "Has God left? Is His goodness gone? Is His graciousness gone?" There's this rhetorical nature: "Is God going to hold me at arm's length? Is this going to be forever?" He then goes on and says, "Has God forsaken His covenant? He said He was going to care for His people. Why isn't God caring for me? I am anxious. Is He gone?"

He also says, "Is God being done being compassionate and gracious?" As he remembers these things, he begins to meditate. Listen to what Tim Keller says about meditating: "To meditate is to ask oneself questions about the truth, such as: What difference does this make? Am I taking this seriously? If I forget this, how will that affect me? Have I forgotten it? Am I living in light of it?"

I love how Eugene Peterson says it too: "Meditation is an intensification of awareness of perception." When the focus of meditation is narrowly bound by feelings of self-pity—which moments of anxiety certainly are filled with—"Why me?" Did you notice that in the first six verses, all of the statements start with "I"? It's very introspective; it's all about the psalmist, the self, in isolation. The result is an intensification of misery.

But if the focus is on God, on the self, on God in history, on God in creation, the result is a magnification of grace. When we slow down and we remember who God is, it allows us to ask the questions of God: "Why am I going through this? What do you say about this? How do I respond?"

So we reflect on scripture and what it says about the situations. We seek wisdom from others in the situations. If we dive deep in and on who God is and what He has done, we will find stability in the anxious moments.

But there's a turn that happens in his heart. It happens in verse 10, and he begins to appeal to God's character. This is where we're going to land today. It says this in verse 10: "Then I said, 'I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand of the Most High.'"

Do you see the switch? There is a move, a pivot from plea to praise. Look at the rest of these nine verses: "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all of your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What God is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You, with your arm, redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph."

This is a reference all the way back to the Exodus, where God frees the people of Israel. He says, "When the water saw you, O God, when the waters saw you, they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled. The clouds poured out water; the skies gave forth thunder; your arrows flashed on every side. The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lighted up the world; the earth trembled and shook. Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron."

Honestly, I don't understand how the psalmist moves from verse 10 to verse 11. I know that there were moments there where he was reflecting on God so deeply and desperately that he thought about His nature of the past, and God moved in such a way, such a shape, such a form that his heart pivoted.

But the thing I love about the Psalms is they're also a recipe. So we appeal to God's character. Verse 10 is where we get stuck in anxiety. Here's the Amplified version: "This is my grief, that the right hand of the Most High has changed and His lovingkindness is withheld."

This is where we get stuck in anxious thoughts. We don't know how to handle them: verse 1 through 6, verse 7 through 9. We ask the questions about who God is and why He is not working in this moment. Then verse 10, we have the opportunity to stay stuck or to move.

If we choose to pivot, this is where the Lord comes within us and He says, "I've got you." This is how you're going to fight your battle, church. This is what you need to do. The psalmist is almost as if he was jumping out of bed, and he said, "I'm going to appeal to this."

He goes in and he shares with the thought of this child of God being a faithful Father, a loving Shepherd who takes His people and leads them by the hand, even in the anxious moments. See, Jesus took our anxieties upon Himself. He went to the cross on our behalf, and He died in our place, laying His life down for His sheep. He came and stood in our place, and as He did, He was showing His might against the world so that in our anxieties, we can cast them onto Him.

So today, you and I have the opportunity to appeal to the cross. All of the anxieties that we have: Is anxiety a sin? Maybe not. But the value in the weight that we place on our anxieties will help us to determine it.

So I'll leave us with this: It's what we do with our anxiety that is most important, and that is take it to the Father. Acknowledge our anxieties, think about the character of God and who He is, and who He has been, and appeal to Him in His character, in who He is.

Let's pray together. Father, I know that this is a struggle of mine, and in as much humility as I can and in boldness as I can, Lord, I ask that the anxieties of my heart and my mind You take, You strip away, that I bring them to You, acknowledge them, and that, Lord, I am reminded of the truth and the character of Who You Are.

God, for my brothers and sisters who are here today or watching online, may they in the very same way take their anxious thoughts and bring them before You, God. Lord, when there is nothing else to say, when we are in the ugly cry moment, may we be reminded that through our praise, we fight our battles.

In these very moments, we speak Jesus over every thought, over every need, and over every anxiety because You can change them. Father, we love You, and we pray all these things in Your name. Amen.

Let's stand.