(Audio Sermon Clip) Covid-19 and Anxiety

Of all the sins that I am able to think about that grow up in the heart from unbelief, anxiety has the most branches. It produces more other sins than all the others that I could think of. For example, when I'm anxious about finances, it can give rise to coveting or greed or hoarding or stealing. Or I can become abrupt with people and surly in my disposition. When I'm anxious about relationships, how am I going to come off with that person and so on, I can be very withdrawn and very indifferent and very uncaring about that person who may be just as anxious as I am about the relationship. And you could take the list further, couldn't you? What's the root of anxiety? Where does it come from? How could that be severed? The root cause of anxiety is disbelief in the Word of God. The issue in the Christian life is not whether Satan slings mud, throws you into a swerve, fills you with anxiety. The issue is how are you going to deal with it. Are you going to fight or are you going to cave? The issue is not whether we deal with anxiety every day, but how we deal with anxiety every day. What we do with Satan's attacks, the rising of our own remaining corruption and the insults and blindings of this world system. In other words, normal Christian living is to be attacked, to feel the blow, to stagger under Satan's lies about your future, the black picture that he paints right on the windshield of your life. To stagger under it, to fret, to begin to swerve in your life. That's normal Christian living. How do you battle it? Because it's unbelief that sets in. As soon as the future, God's future of welfare and joy and hope and gladness are cut off, the issue is, is God for me? And is there a future out there? It's an issue of belief in God's promises. So we fight the anxiety of the swerving of our life by fighting with the promises of God to get the lies of Satan off of there that are making us disbelieve in the future that God holds out to us. Romans 8, 31, If God is for you, who can be against you? And when I'm anxious about getting sick, I steady my hand with tribulation works patience, and patience works a provenness, and a provenness does not make a shame. And when I'm scared that I might die and wonder what death would hold for me, I steady my hand with Romans 14. None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's, for to this end Jesus died and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. And when I'm anxious finally, that I might make shipwreck of faith, that some sin might rise and get control of my heart, and it might be hardened and I fall away from God, I steady my hand with Philippians 1, 6. He who began a good work in you will complete it under the day of Christ. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.