Pilgrim No.1 The Problem of Worry

Again, just two or three verses from Philippians, or those two. Can I read from the Amplified Version of the New Testament? Another few verses, but this time from Matthew's Gospel. You don't need to turn to it unless you particularly wish to do so.

It's from the sixth chapter and the twenty-fifth verse. Sixth chapter of Matthew's Gospel. Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy, anxious and worried about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, and about your body, what you shall put on.

Is not life greater in quality than food and the body? Look at the birds of the air, they neither stone nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth more than they? And which of you, by worrying and being anxious, can add one unit of measure to his stature or to the span of his life? Why should you be anxious? Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his night munificence was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothed the grass of the field which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, would he not much more surely clothe you, O you men with little faith? Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, what are we going to have to eat? Or what are we going to have to drink? Or what are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles wish for and crave and diligently seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father well knows that you need them all. But seek for Abraham and strive after, first of all, his kingdom and his righteousness, his way of doing and of being right, and then all these things taken together will be given you besides. So do not worry, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own, sufficient for each day.

For, and be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds. I think it will be helpful if you keep your Bible. And as you are aware, a whole series of studies for this session of our Bible School is given over to a consideration of the problems that confront Christians in their day-by-day living.

And it's a good thing to recognize that there are problems that the devil, I don't think that's too strong a word, the devil, the Christian pilgrimage, pushes away through his life. These difficulties, these problems that come our way, are of such significance that it is good for us to recognize that they are there, or see if it has anything to say, anything to say about worry, about doubt, about loneliness. If it does, fill our minds, and we're not too sure just how to overcome the problems, the difficulties.

So it's good in engaging in Bible study to focus our attention upon these topics, and relate the Word of God to these difficulties, to these problems that confront the Christian. And as you do this, you discover that the Bible is eminently a practical book. It's not just a book of abstract theology.

We praise God for this. Christianity is not the same as philosophy. Christianity is a way of life, the best way of life, the abundant way of life.

The immediate task for this evening, we're going to concentrate upon this ever-present difficulty of worry. Someone has said that the Christian way of life is not an easy road. In the term of the Bible, it has to be evident in our lives and in the lives of others.

The way in which we live our lives these days seems to cultivate worry. We get an abundant thought every day, and every week, and every New Testament, which I quoted earlier, because they're too engaged in the hustle and bustle of life. And he says, come on, let's sort things out together.

The hymn writers were concerned to cause us in our singing to pray to God for peace. It is very interesting, as you look through the hymns, the value that there is in peace with God. Our ordered lives can be very pertinent.

Would you describe your mind as being an ordered mind? Would you describe it as being a disciplined mind? Or would you agree with me that one of the hardest things to control is your mind? Keeping your heart in the singing of our hymns. Take from our lives the strain and stress, and let our ordered minds confess the beauty of thy peace. This worry, what exactly is it? What does it do on the psychological front? The study of the meaning of a word is very interesting, it's very instructive, and it's vital to... Well, what does the word worry really mean? It means dividing the mind.

Dividing the mind. It's divided. If you like, when it's cracked, then you're in a state of tension.

You're in a state of tremendous worry. Burdens of power are on top of you. The mind has been divided.

The state of depression and despondency is such that you might even reflect the words of Job when he said... And if you do get depressed and despondent, then experience... And so we're grateful that in the Bible, we find illustrations of those people who've gone through the same sort of experiences as ourselves. Men who have known what it is to have the mind within the perfect will of God for us, not to have our mind... After all, the Bible says a double-minded man is unstable. And God certainly doesn't want us to be double-minded.

Approaching the worried, frustrated condition from the teachings of the Bible, which will lead you to hell. So that instead of being divided, our minds are unified. And on the other hand, I like to say, take a bunch of men apart.

You wouldn't say the completely different psychological make-ups these men had. And when he was very given to an anxious state, almost perpetually, Peter was different. Peter sometimes would be way up on the mountaintop, and when you saw Peter, I reckon he could have been one of the most frustrating individuals.

Because there he was, up on the mountaintop, and everything was buoyant, everything was jubilant, and you were feeling so good yourself. And, you know, Thomas, or Jesus, or any of these people, he suggested it's a good thing for you to recognize what type of academy in man. He used to have inscribed above the marble columns as you entered into the academy, he had inscribed in the Greek the words, know thyself, know thyself.

He felt that it was imperative for every student of philosophy to know what he as an individual was like. And to realize that some of us are perhaps more prone to go easy on ourselves if we have a temperament that's more disposed to show up. Paul type, or in the language of the Old Testament, a Moses type, or an Elijah type.

And yet the despondency of Elijah sometimes, when he plays the part of the suicide, I say personality. And then, I think it's necessary for us to realize that the Bible does have a lot to say about anxiety. It says an awful amount about peace.

Now we'll keep him in perfect peace. ...who stayed on thee. Very lovely verse, that, is it not? Look at Psalm 4 sometime, perhaps when you get home, maybe before you go to sleep this evening.

And as you're reading it, try to imagine the circumstances of David. He's a fugitive. You remember how Saul is filled with murderous intent towards David, who he sees as a rival to the throne.

And here's David, an outcast, filled with... ...and sleep. One thing to put your head on the pillow. But here is an instance of a man who had great strains on his life, and yet he was able to say, I will lay thee down and sleep.

And one could continue ad infinitum, going on into the New Testament and going through the verses of Scripture that have to do with the peace of mind. And one could make this assertion, I think, without the risk of anyone arguing against it, that the biblical message, listen, that I like that thought, and I reckon it embraces everyone here. This is how we have started our meditation this evening, by considering worry itself, its definition, the part that personality plays, and the fact that there is positive Bible teaching on this subject.

But let's move on, and that with some hay. On to the second section of my address, because I want to speak to you a little bit about coping with worry. And these two verses that I've read to you on a couple of occasions thus far from Philippians, I think can be very frustrating verses of Scripture, if you're in a worrying state of mind.

After all, think of the audacity of the Apostle Paul here in those days. Being careful for nothing. Being anxious for nothing.

Does that ever annoy you? Be honest, does the word of God ever annoy you? I feel, well, in pure life, as a middle-aged man, so I'm terrible here in wording. I know people object to me for calling myself young. In middle age I'm with all my care, with all my worries, with all my burdens.

Be anxious for nothing. Don't have a care in the world. Don't worry about... Does it really say that? I think not.

I don't think the statement is put quite as boldly as that. Let's examine the text, shall we? And when we examine it very carefully, do you know what we discover? That the Apostle is saying, in effect, this. Don't be fooled.

He's using exactly the same phrase as you will find twice in Matthew chapter 6, verses 25 and 34, where our Saviour says, and I'm reading from the Altified Version, so what does Paul mean, what does the Saviour mean? That we are not to go over and over and over again and again in our minds the things that concern us, the things that perhaps are tending to pull us down. We're not to engage in unhelpful thinking. We're not to cram our minds full of those worries.

You know what masochism is? It's the tendency to hurt yourself by letting an unpleasant experience go round and round and round and round, creating pain. Perhaps you will admit to it in your own experience sometimes, almost a delight in causing yourself pain. I'll tell you an illustration for the person.

I remember visiting this lady and her husband had died. He'd contracted a dreadful disease some years ago, Parkinson's disease, and you know what Parkinson's disease is like. It continues for a long, long time, for years it was in this case, at any rate.

And eventually this lady got very, very frustrated because of her husband's condition. And while she might, sometimes I think the folks who have to look after people with that type of condition need more prayers than the ones who've got the condition themselves. And there were times when she was a little bit... And then the day came when he was a Christian, so he was called to the presence of his Lord.

And she was not sorrowful in a normal fashion. Her sorrow continued and continued and continued. And really what was happening was this.

She was going back in her mind of the occasions when she could have dealt more than she did. And she was punishing herself at the thought of all that she'd done that she felt was not correct in the years gone by. She got the letters that folks had written to her, commiserating, sympathizing with her because of the death of her husband.

And she was reading them through again and again and again and again in the most unhealthy fashion. This was months after the death itself. What was she doing? She was being narcissistic.

She was causing pain. Feeling that by causing pain in her own experience at that moment she was vicariously putting right the things that were wrong years ago or during the period of her husband's illness. She was filling her mind with care.

This is what our Saviour is saying. We are not to fill our minds with worry. We are not to dotacon our worries, adding fuel to the fire, getting more things into our minds to be concerned about.

This is what we are not to do. This is from the Scripture too. In trying to help other people who are in a state of depression, we are not to fall back on this glib phraseology that sometimes we resort to when someone is depressed and worried.

Snap out of it. Pull yourself together. Here's someone, and worry has mastered them.

Maybe they were Christian people, maybe they were not. Anyway, they weren't able to cope with a specific circumstance in life and worries have piled up on top of them and they're in the depths of the depression. Some well-meaning person comes along and they say, snap out of it, pull yourself together.

I would go so far as to say that's almost a cruel snap out of it. If they could, they would. Nobody wants to be in a depression, not when they're considering it properly and being honest.

If they could pull themselves together, then they would do. And the Apostle Paul here, I say that within these verses, this good biblical psychology doesn't tell the worrier to pull himself together. And neither should we as we try to help people who are going through a distressing situation.

Here I say in my text, negatively, is what we're not to do. Not to fill our own minds, but to snap out of it. But let's assume then that we have been mastered by our worries.

What's to be our approach? How can we come to my text positively and deduce principles which will be of value? Well, it's obvious, isn't it, that the Apostle here tells us to take our burdens to the Lord. Be careful for nothing but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto the Lord. That's rather nice, I think, rather helpful.

But when we are in a state of anxiety, whatever degree that might be, we can come to the Lord and talk to him about it. Biblical teaching doesn't underline the British philosophy of the stiff upper lip, you know, the grim and bare it. It's got nothing to do with Christianity at all.

If you want to trace that philosophical notion through historically, well, you'll have to go to Stoicism, to the teaching of the Stoics, to the teaching of the early Christians. No, the Bible doesn't say grim and bare it. It says bring it to the Lord.

Bring your problems to the Lord. You know that little chorus, take your burden to the Lord and leave it there. And this is precisely what you find men doing in the Scriptures.

I couldn't take, although I want, half an hour illustrating this without repeating myself at all. Men would take their worries to the Lord. Tell me, what is a psalmist doing but that? Psalm 4, I've quoted.

Try Psalm 73 if you want to do a little bit more Bible study when you get home this evening. Here is a man who's taking his worries to the Lord. And he's having a good old bone.

Truly, God is good to Israel. The rest of them, well, they're living life swimmingly, having a whale of a time. But as for me, I'm the odd man out.

I'm the exception. So he takes his worries to the Lord and he tells the Lord just the way that he's thinking. Precisely the teaching of the Apostle Paul here.

And the Apostle takes his worries to the Lord. Read what he has to say in the opening chapter of 2 Corinthians when the Apostle himself was faced with tremendous problems as he was enhancing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus. He takes his worries to the Lord.

And you read a catalogue of difficulties that the Apostle enumerates twice in that letter, the second epistle to the Corinthians. Taking his problem to the Lord. This is what we are to do.

Let your requests be made known unto the Lord. But how are we to approach the Lord? Do we immediately rush into his presence and start to tell him all about our troubles? Doing some background reading for this series, I came across a book which was guaranteed, or so it suggested in its blurb, guaranteed to rid people of worries. So I thought, well if I'm going to tweet on this subject, I ought to read the book.

And I came across this proposition and it worried me. It said this. A man cannot pray and worry.

And if you immediately rush into the presence of God and you focus your attention upon your worries, well, the probability is this, that when you get up from off your knees, you'll feel worse than what you did when you got down on your knees. Now I'm not being trite. Come back to the plea that I often make that sometimes we read the Bible too quickly and we make our conclusions too quickly.

The Apostle Paul doesn't here say that the first thing you've got to do in your worried condition is to focus your attention upon your worries because all that you'll do there is undermine them. And they'll stand out more and more. What does the Apostle say? He certainly tells us to make our requests known unto the Lord.

But before that, he has a number of other observations, a number of other principles that he enumerates which are very important for us to latch onto. Listen. In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

Here are four categories in this approach to the Lord. Prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, requests. He's using the word there, prayer, in the general sense of worshipping God.

We generally associate prayer mainly with petitioning God, but the Bible doesn't do it. He says that in the presence of God, our first reaction as we're confronted with his majesty, with his glory, is to engage in worship. And here it's on the general front, supplicating God for other people, for other things.

And thanksgiving, oh yes, here I am in my worried condition, things have not been going right in my life, and I'm terrified, but there are things that are going right, there are things for which I can thank God, and I should not be reluctant to do this, I should not overlook this, because when I overlook the positives and emphasize the negatives in my life, let me give you an illustration, and it's a new one, it's very hot, it's hot. A lady came to see me, and she was talking to me about, and certainly her worries were, her difficulties were of that I had to experience, for which I thank God. And here she was in a very, very difficult situation, and she was obviously filled with tension and anxiety, and I thought to myself, well how can I talk to her generally, not about her problems, but how she lived, about, in general terms, without being specific, about her financial circumstances.

And for about 10 or 15 minutes, a completely different aspect came over our conversation. And she's getting almost enthusiastic about telling me of certain things in her life that, instead of pulling her down to the depths, were sort of raising her high, because these were things that were happy, that were causing pleasure in her own life. And we talked about this for a little while, and then we tried to relate these things to the thing that was unpleasant.

Now, when she went away, she hadn't resolved her problem, but I think it's true to say, and I'm not engaging in self-congratulations here, God forbid, I didn't know how to deal with the dear lady. In the first instance, I only trust that it was the Lord's leading. But she did go away feeling that the whole thing had been put on a different perspective.

Her problem was there. But along with her problem, there was more scenery that was colourful. There was something that she could concentrate on that would help her to be able to carry this specific burden which had not been lifted.

But as she went out from my company, then at least it seemed, by her own confession, that she was looking at her problems from a different point of view. And I suggest that this is an illustration of what the Apostle here is saying. That when we come to the Lord, we're not just to bring our own personal problems directly to Him and concentrate on them and get so anguished in our prayer, so passionate as we bring these to the Lord, and we get up from up our feet and from up our knees, and we feel as though we've got a dead weight instead of there being any relief at all.

No, the biblical procedure is coming into the presence of God, worship Him, supplicate Him on behalf of others, thank Him for what He's done, and then let our requests be made known unto God. And then what happens? What does Paul have to say next? And the peace of God which passes all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Let me be brief in dealing with this.

The peace of God keeps your heart and mind. You see, in that sentence, how ridiculous it becomes for us to tell people to pull themselves together. The Bible doesn't say that.

The Bible says the peace of God keeps your heart and mind. You can't, naturally speaking, control your own heart, at the centre of your personality. You can't, naturally speaking, control your own mind, the springboard of your thoughts.

It's beyond your ability so to do. But the Bible, which always underlines the sovereignty of God, tells us the peace of God, which passes all understanding, that shall keep your hearts and minds. And that verb there, keep, is a military one, fortify, garrison.

God has got a shield all the way around it, and He keeps it. How does He keep it? How does this blessing come, this peace of God? Well, it's mediated to us through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We read of the Saviour later on in this passage, and also in Ephesians 2, that He has been made our peace.

The Apostle Paul tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ has reconciled us to the Father. He has made it possible for us sinful people to be brought into relationship with our great God and Creator. Now says the Apostle, particularly when he's working out an argument to the Romans, the Lord God who has done this, who has sent Jesus Christ into the world and made Him to be your peace, will He not, having achieved the supreme thing in life, will He not also be thankful to you in the lesser things in life? He who has given you, He who has been the means of bringing the love of God to you, well, will He not, through Jesus Christ, will not God give you all things? Listen to Paul, Romans 8, verse 32.

He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? The Apostle goes on to talk about that great love of God, that you can't measure its breadth nor its depth, its length nor its height. Now says the Apostle, the God who has caused you to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ, He will also garrison your heart with His peace. The peace of God, which is of such a quality, it completely passes all understanding.

And let me conclude by saying that the Apostle, he was not trading in theological abstractions. He knew what he was talking about when he referred to the peace of God. There's no one here in this church who has known the same difficulties as the Apostle Paul knew in his life.

There were times when he was stoned, times when he was left half-dead. There were times when even the Christians were soaking. You read of this particularly in his letter to Timothy.

Here is Paul at Rome. He was on trial, brought before one of the leading dignitaries of Rome and he expected that the church, the members of the Christian church of Rome would turn up in number to support him. But no one was there at all.

And yet the fourthly Apostle Paul said, the Lord nonetheless stood by me and strengthened me. He kept me. So here is Paul working out his own biblical psychology in terms of his own life.

The peace of God which passes all understanding, garrisoning our hearts. Well, it is necessary I say to apply biblical psychology to the tradition of worry. Life is not to be thought of in terms of hurry, worry and worry.

Life is to be thought of in terms of God keeping us. God having given us principles by which we are to live our life, principles which are to be implemented and as we apply these principles to our own situation, then we shall know more of that peace which only He gives, the peace of God alone which keeps the mind and which keeps the heart. Now may God give to you and to me in every situation that peace so that we are free from so many of the anxieties that sometimes rob us of a tranquil and a serene spirit.

May we have the ability not only to understand these principles academically but experimentally to live them out in our own lives. And if that can be the result of our studying God's Wording over this evening, then I reckon we've spent forty-odd minutes well in terms of the quality of life which in God's grace we may know from henceforth. Amen.