e178 Are You Captive to Anxiety? (let God be the measure of its depth and scope)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.

Season 3 Episode 178 Are You Captive to Anxiety? (let God be the measure of its depth and scope)

Here’s the gist, human. Nothing new here. Who doesn’t have anxiety, who doesn’t work hard to not worry and perpetuate more of it in the process? For so many of us, that is an ongoing rhetorical state of mind. We don’t even need to answer. We know it’s true. Let’s call anxiety exactly what it is. Let’s name it to God. A petition of the heart. That we take it to him, and let him measure the depth of our anxiety against the scope of its reach in our life. Because our God is sovereign.

Join us. E178. 

Today I want to gain a little more clarity on what anxiety is, and how God asks us to deal with it. He knows the human plight of our daily off-roading on anxiety’s trails. He made us.

There is a reason this landed front of mind for me right now, but I’ll circle back to my personal motivation.

Right now let’s capture the meaning of anxiety, measure its range and reach within the human heart, and submit ourselves to God’s persuasion of our heart when anxiety rises.

Nothing new here. Who doesn’t have anxiety, who doesn’t work hard to not worry and perpetuate more of it in the process? For so many of us, that is an ongoing rhetorical state of mind. We don’t even need to answer. We know its true.

Let’s lay a foundation of what the Greek word means for anxiety. 

Consider our anchor passage today.

Philippians 4:6

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 

The Greek world for anxiety is merimnaō (mer-im-nah’-o). The words “be anxious” can refer to being unduly concerned about anything. 

Take No Worry Because Jesus Cares

Ellicott’s Commentary defines anxiety as to “be careful for nothing” and notes that this is an exact repetition of our Lord’s command in Matthew 6:25 and Matthew 6:34, with merimnao (mer-im-nah’-o) meaning “take no thought.”

Matthew 6:25

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

And,  

Matthew 6:34

34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Ellicott defines a worrisome, anxious state of mind like this: “that painful anxiety which is inevitable in all who feel themselves alone in mere self-dependence amidst the difficulties and dangers of life.” 

Simply, that we feel alone. So he points us to our relationship with Christ. That we are free to “take no thought” because Jesus cares for us. 

1 Peter 5:7 

Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

And that aloneness Ellicott defined when we sink deeper into the pain of anxiety, is not real. Not when we accept God’s grace as he intends it for each of us. 

2 Corinthians 6:1

6 As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.

That no matter what we are feeling, God is in it with us. Ellicott calls out how we navigate toward being alone, and he calls out the power of our Savior to answer for it. This is an eternal truth that will outlive our days. It is enough to endure this life.

Be Anxious About Nothing… Easy for You to Say

But sometimes we need to connect to a deeper affirmation in our heart. Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) was a renowned 19th-century Scottish Baptist minister and characterized as the “prince of expositors.” He was known for capturing the essence and power of a verse that helps us literally want to sing it aloud. That’s why I am sharing his insights, his gift,  here, for a deeper dive into why “taking no thought” is so difficult, and how Paul directs the people in Philippi, people he dearly loved, to turn toward God. Every time. 

Maclaren wrote an exposition on Philippians 4:6 that has the kind of searing clarity that calls for our hearts to respond. He characterizes Philippians 4:6 as “an impossible injunction with impossible advice.” In other words, a legal mandate to do something or stop doing something. 

Let’s listen and consider selected portions of Maclaren’s exposition to rally his insights into some type of jumping off point for our own spiritual growth.

Maclaren begins with the historical context of Paul’s situation in Philippians 4:6.

“It is easy for prosperous people, who have nothing to trouble them, to give good advices to suffering hearts; and these are generally as futile as they are easy. But who was he who here said to the Church at Philippi, ‘Be careful for nothing?’ A prisoner in a Roman prison; and when Rome fixed its claws it did not usually let go without drawing blood. He was expecting his trial, which might, so far as he knew, very probably end in death. Everything in the future was entirely dark and uncertain. It was this man, with all the pressure of personal sorrows weighing upon him, who, in the very crisis of his life, turned to his brethren in Philippi, who had far fewer causes of anxiety than he had, and cheerfully bade them ‘be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make their requests known unto God.’ Had not that bird learned to sing when his cage was darkened? And do you not think that advice of that sort, coming not from some one perched up on a safe hillock to the strugglers in the field below, but from a man in the thick of the fight, would be like a trumpet-call to them who heard it?

Maclaren calls Paul’s call to the Philippians “impossible advice.” He goes on to define anxiety. 

He explains:  “‘Be careful for nothing.’ the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which, as the word in the original means, tears the heart apart and makes a man quite incapable of doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the circumstances. We all know that; so that I do not need to dwell upon it. 

But even with that explanation, is it not like an unreachable ideal that Paul puts forward here? ‘Be anxious about nothing’–how can a man who has to face the possibilities that we all have to face, and who knows himself to be as weak to deal with them as we all are: how can he help being anxious? There is no more complete waste of breath than those sage and reverend advices which people give us, not to do the things, nor to feel the emotions, which our position make absolutely inevitable and almost involuntary. Here, for instance, is a man surrounded by all manner of calamity and misfortune; and some well-meaning but foolish friend comes to him, and, without giving him a single reason for the advice, says, ‘Cheer up! my friend.’ Why should he cheer up? What is there in his circumstances to induce him to fall into any other mood? Or some unquestionable peril is staring him full in the face, coming nearer and nearer to him, and some well-meaning, loose-tongued friend, says to him, ‘Do not be afraid!’–but he ought to be afraid. That is about all that worldly wisdom and morality have to say to us, when we are in trouble and anxiety. ‘Shut your eyes very hard, and make believe very much, and you will not fear.’ An impossible exhortation! 

…. But all that is of no use when once the hot pincers of real trouble, impending or arrived, lay hold of our hearts. Then of all idle expenditures of breath in the world there is none to the wrung heart more idle and more painful than the one that says, Be anxious about nothing.

Call Your Anxiety Exactly What It is

 So Maclaren confronts how to make the impossible possible.

He says, “Paul goes on to direct to the mode of feeling and action which will give exemption from the else inevitable gnawing of anxious forethought. He introduces his positive counsel with an eloquent ‘But,’ which implies that what follows is the sure preservative against the temper which he deprecates; ‘But in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.’

There are, then, these alternatives. If you do not like to take the one, you are sure to have to take the other. There is only one way out of the wood, and it is this which Paul expands in these last words of my text. If a man does not pray about everything, he will be worried about most things. If he does pray about everything, he will not be troubled beyond what is good for him, about anything. So there are these alternatives; and we have to make up our minds which of the two we are going to take. The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man’s heart is like a couple of millstones; if you don’t put something between them to grind, they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our hearts that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So the victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn gnawing care out of my heart and life is to usher God into it, and to keep him resolutely in it.”

So, let’s keep this thought close: “the heart is never empty.”

And Maclaren goes on to say:

“And if we are not to get help from God by telling Him about little things, there will be very little of our lives that we shall tell Him about at all. For life is a mountain made up of minute flakes. The years are only a collection of seconds. Every man’s life is an aggregate of trifles. ‘In everything make your requests known.’”

A Prayer Life to Petition for An Anxiety-Free Life

I cannot leave us hanging on what seems like another induction, to pray, pray, pray. That impossible advice. Not with without sharing a deeper concept here, Maclaren’s astounding definition of prayer and petition.

He says, “‘By prayer’–that does not mean, as a superficial experience of religion is apt to suppose it to mean, actual petition that follows. For a great many of us, the only notion that we have of prayer is asking God to give us something that we want. But there is a far higher region of communion than that, in which the soul seeks and finds, and sits and gazes, and aspiring possesses, and possessing aspires. Where there is no spoken petition for anything affecting outward life, there may be the prayer of contemplation such as the burning seraphs before the Throne do ever glow with. The prayer of silent submission, in which the will bows itself before God; the prayer of quiet trust, in which we do not so much seek as cleave; the prayer of still fruition–these, in Paul’s conception of the true order, precede ‘supplication.’ And if we have such union with God, by realizing His presence, by aspiration after Himself, by trusting Him and submission to Him, then we have the victorious antagonist of all our anxieties, and the ‘cares that infest the day shall fold their tents’ and ‘silently steal away.’ 

Maclaren ends with a call to action for our petitions:

“Put them into definite speech to God; and there are very few of them that will survive.”

Let God Measure the Depth and Scope of Anxious Thoughts

Hey human, let’s call anxiety exactly what it is. Let’s name it to God. A petition of the heart. That we take it to him, and let him measure the depth of our anxiety against the scope of its reach in our life. Because our God is sovereign. I’m not done with Maclaren’s amazing exposition on Philippians 4:6, and the toll it takes on the human spirit. Today, we laid it out for our hearts to contemplate.

And this one is very personal for me. I let a gnawing anxiety of the past two years live within my self-dependence:  my most ever-present, most immediate worry, the anxiety that ran through pretty much every moment of my day, 24/7. I held on tight to “caring” for this worry on my own. I was emotionally, physically and psychologically invested in caring for my anxiety about what could happen.

Then this anxiety that relentlessly gnawed at the edges of my heart, came true. 

And I was not prepared for it.

I am in the thick of my fight, human. Maybe my belated petition, my prayers to God and sharing the painful process will help you give your anxious thoughts to him. Before one of them holds you captive to the chains of self-dependence indefinitely, and causes your heart to “grind” in its own futility.

So now, I am letting God measure the depth and scope of my anxious thoughts about the future in the heart-shaking moments of the present. I am shaken.

Join us for e179.