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- I don't know if you've ever been worried
about something, and someone has said
something well-meaning to you, but like
"stop worrying, it's a sin",
well how does that work for you?
Are you able to turn off the negative feelings
of fear or threat in the moment?
And if you're not able to, which you're not, I'm not,
does that then mean it's not a sin?
So first I want to clarify on how we're even
thinking about this question, because if by worry
we simply mean negative feelings associated
with something we value being threatened
from external circumstances, then I don't think
we want to call that a sin.
The reason I can say that is because both Jesus
and Paul report having this level of distress
when something they valued was externally threatened,
so I think of Luke chapter 12 when Jesus said,
"how great is my distress at my coming baptism".
He knew the cross was coming, he knew what that meant
for him regarding his relationship
to the first person of the trinity, the Father,
and he was distressed because of it.
That was an external circumstance
that threatened something that he valued.
The apostle Paul, in 2nd Corinthians, also talks
about the anxiety or the distress that he feels
for the churches, so while he's not with them,
he's worried in that sense of negatively
emotionally effected, by what's the state
of these churches, are they holding on to the gospel.
And so, if that's what we mean by worry,
I don't think we want to define that as sin.
So what makes worry a sin, then?
It's helpful to think of worry as a tactic of our fear,
so in other words, it's obsessing with our thoughts
and our emotions about some threat
to something we value.
Some thing that we see as essential
or want as essential to our very life.
The problem, or the sin that can be involved
in worry is we mix up what actually
we most value for life and we forget God's
role in relation to that value, what life actually is.
I think this is what Jesus is doing
in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 6,
where he says "don't be anxious about tomorrow,
"don't be anxious about your life,
"don't be anxious about anything."
and what's astounding is, Jesus talks about
not being anxious about the things that seem
most essential for our existence, like food and clothing.
When we so value those things as if my existence
ceases if I don't have them, that results
in worry, that results in anxiety,
and so he says, as a remedy to that,
"seek first the kingdom, seek first what is actually life",
and as you do that, it's not that you stop
wanting food and clothes, it's that it
gets prioritized right under what it is
that we most value and should most see as important
to our lives and that is the promises of God
to include us in the inheritance of who he is,
that's what the kingdom is.
And so, the second remedy Jesus offers for our anxieties
is "look at the birds of the air,
"look at the lilies of the field",
they're fed, they're clothed, your heavenly Father
knows their needs and you're way more valuable
to Him than they are.
It's saying we don't seek even food and clothing,
those values that our emotions and thoughts
tend to orbit around, we don't seek these things
as if its our efforts that guarantee them,
and once we have them we have life.
He's saying no, it's your heavenly Father,
his relationship to your need has to be forefront
in your mind when you think about
the things that are most threatening to you.
So what should we do if we find ourselves
caught in a cycle of worry?
Well, first of all, don't guilt yourself
for the negative feelings of threat,
that something that you're wanting or that
you're viewing as essential to your life is under threat,
and you have a negative emotional response,
it's just wasted time to try to sort of coach
yourself out of a negative emotional response.
Instead, it's much better to identify what
is the object, what is the thing that I'm wanting,
that I'm thinking, if taken away I lose my life.
So it could be food and clothing, in Jesus' example,
it could also be things like performance at work,
it could be that relationship that's so important to me,
that if I don't have my life is over,
so you identify it, and then secondly you open
your hand before the Lord with it.
You entrust that to the Father who knows
your needs before you ask, who knows your needs,
actually, better than you do.
We're not just correcting our emotions,
we're actually using our emotions to flag something
that we're misbelieving, that we're valuing too much.
Something that we're kind of holding onto in a way
that's not seeking God's kingdom first and is not
trusting my Father in heaven as my Father in heaven.
And I'm not saying that any of these steps
are going to necessarily eliminate the immediate
experience of fear, that's not the point.
The point is how do I steward my responses
when these fears come over me,
and as we learn to do this, we learn better
what it is to truly treasure God's love for us
as the most central need that we have,
and in that way we get to entrust ourselves
to the provision of a heavenly Father who is in no way
threatened by what we are threatened by in the moment.
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