FERGUSON: This is a time for us to prove in our own lives the gospel that we've always
professed to believe.
Just to start the conversation, in the passage that probably is best known to most true Christians
in which Jesus gives us teaching about living the Christian life in the Sermon on the Mount,
he has a whole section there where he underscores for us that the knowledge of God as our loving,
caring, heavenly father delivers us from two things.
One is hypocrisy, that we no longer need to pretend to him to be something that we're
not.
We no longer need to pretend to anyone else that we are something we're not.
But the other thing Jesus underscores is that the knowledge of God as our heavenly father
delivers us from anxiety.
Because we know that no matter what happens, our lives are in his hands.
That our lives are secure as our fathers used to say.
Our life will never be done until the Lord's numbering of our days is completed.
So for ourselves as Christian believers, I think this is what anchors us much else in
scripture that anchor us.
I think this experience for us, which is paralleled for Christians in the past and in various
seasons, but as for most of us unparalleled is a challenge to us as to whether we really
believe the gospel we have said we believe, whether we trust in the heavenly father, actually,
whether we really know him as a caring father.
But these things being in place, it's this anchor or this is one of the anchors that
enables us to minister to others.
As Paul says, we are able to comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received
in Christ.
CHARLES: Yeah, I would just tack on to what Sinclair said by just noting as a initial
comment, Philippians 4:6 and seven, where Paul says what Jesus says in Matthew 6, "Do
not be anxious."
It gives a very clear, direct, simple strategy for overcoming the anxieties and worries and
fears of life and that answer is prayer.
So it's important during this period that the saints are just stepping up their devotion
to spiritual disciplines, being in his word and communing with God in prayer.
He bids us to take everything off of our worry list and put it all on our prayer list.
He literally says that there's nothing that happens in life that is worth worrying about,
but everything is worth praying about.
There's nothing too small for God to care about, nothing too big for God to handle.
One of the notes of commands to pray is that there are many times promises attached to
these commands...
I think Philippians four means so much to me because of the promise attached.
The promise attached does not bid that God will change circumstances even though he is
able, as Paul will say in Ephesians 3 to do that, to do beyond what we could ask or think.
But he says if we give all of the matters we're attempted to worry about to God in prayer,
God will give us peace that surpasses all understanding, that guard our hearts and minds.
It's not so much a divine intervention to circumstances, it's divine insulation for
our hearts and minds so that we're not living lives dominated by worry, doubt and fear.
Of course at this point in season, we have limited means to have contact with our congregation
but in every opportunity that I have, I'm just...
I'm encouraging the saints to pray to the God who hears and knows and cares.
PARSONS: That's a good word H.B.
We were talking earlier about measures we're both taking and striving to put in place along
with the other elders in our churches in worship services and all the midweek activities and
events being canceled for the time being.
This is a complicated matter and I think we tend to oversimplify things when it comes
to anxieties and worries and cares.
The Bible tells us, it doesn't just suggest it to us, but it tells us to cast all our cares
upon the Lord because he cares for us.
So the Bible is allowing for the reality that we do have cares and that various concerns
and anxieties will indeed bubble up in our lives.
We all know people in our lives, friends and family who are certainly more or less given
to anxiety, given to great concern and worry.
Even we ourselves, some of us are more prone to that.
This is complicated because you have people that are concerned not only about either contracting
this virus, people are concerned about spreading this virus, transmitting it to others.
They're concerned about their loved ones who are either older or those who are high risk
individuals, are concerned about their children who have problems with their breathing or
lungs and so on.
I was just talking with my brother about that today.
So we both have children that could be affected because of their lung problems.
A lot of people who weren't concerned maybe two or three weeks ago about the impact of
the virus are very concerned about the economic and financial impact, not only to their companies,
organizations, schools and so on, but to their own savings and retirements.
There are people who are worried that they're not going to have enough money to continue
living, continue to have the things that they have worked all their lives for.
So the question that we need to ask and I think one of the things that we need to make
sure that we are understanding and striving to serve people with is the reality of the
worries, the reality of the anxieties, the reality of those fears.
Then the question, not do we have them because there are people who will say, oh, I don't
worry about anything.
Often when I talk with people who say that, I realize that they're either being very foolish
or they're lying because we all have concerns about tomorrow and about the future.
The question is, what do we do with those worries?
What do we do with those fears?
What do we do with those anxieties in our lives?
The question that we need to answer for ourselves and as we strive to lead our friends and our
families and our churches is that we don't run to the answers that the world gives us
or even the answers that our own flesh might give us, that we run to the Lord with our
worries.
We go to him with our anxieties.
Too often, we worry and we fret and we are scared and we don't stop to pray.
We don't stop to say, Lord, please help me not to be anxious for anything and Lord, please
help me not to worry about tomorrow, but to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness.
You know that passage where we are told, cast all your cares upon the Lord for he cares
for you, I think sometimes we read that or we've memorized that and we've heard it in
our lives and I think sometimes we think that means well, we should try to take care of
everything in our lives and handle everything and only when certain things get out of control
or only when we recognize certain things in our lives, we can't really control or we can't
really get ahold of, those are the things and only those things that we go to the Lord
with.
But we need to always be about the regular pursuit of casting all our cares upon the
Lord.
The reason is, is because he cares for us.
He cares for us far beyond what we could even care for ourselves.
That's something I try to remind my children of regularly, as hard as it is that although
I love them and I care for them, that their heavenly father cares for them far more than
I ever could.
That's hard for me to admit, but that's the truth.