Grace In The Moment, Luke 12:22-34
Introduction
A young boy was driving a hayrack down the road when the wagon fell over in front of a farmer’s house. The farmer came out, saw the young boy crying, and said, “Son, don’t worry about this, we can fix it. Right now dinner’s ready. Why don’t you come in and eat with us and then I’ll help you put the hay back on the rack.” The boy said, “No, I can’t. My father is going to be very angry with me.” The farmer said, “Now don’t worry, you’ve got yourself all worked up, just come in and have some lunch and you’ll feel better.”
The boy said, “I’m just afraid my father is going to be very angry with me." The farmer and the young boy went inside and had dinner. Afterwards, as they walked outside to the hayrack, the farmer said, “Now, son, don’t you feel better after that great meal?” The boy said, “Yes but I just know that my father will be very angry with me.” The farmer said, “Nonsense. Where is your father anyway?” The boy said, “He’s under that wagon.”
This life is inevitably going to be full of cares and concerns which we do well to consider. Clearly, it is a good thing to be concerned with our lives and take care to consider our actions as they relate to handling responsibilities, duties, and caring for other people. For many of us, however, there are times in our lives when being concerned turns into being worried, when being careful to handle our responsibilities morphs into anxiety, fret, and worry which distracts us and can even consume us and threaten to consume all that is around us.
The things which we love are loved best by trusting God with them. The things we are for are cared for best by placing our faith not in our ability to care for them, but in God’s sovereign grace. It has been said that worry is much like interest paid on a debt not yet owed. Who among us would freely go to a bank and offer them monthly interest payments on a loan we had not yet incurred? Anxiety and worry about the future is just the same way, though many of us find ourselves trapped in patterns of worry at times in our lives while still others find themselves so ensnared by anxiety and worry that they simply cannot find the strength to free themselves from the onslaught of anxiety.
In order to live the grace-filled life which God has intended for us, in order to be free from worry, freed to live a life of active participation in God’s grace, we must first learn to control our thought life. We must learn to replace thoughts of worry with thoughts of trust, thoughts of anxiety with knowledge of God.
It is important to remember here that there is a distinction between legitimate concern and worry. It is right to be concerned, even to some extent worried, about walking in an unsafe area late at night or driving a car which is known to have rotten brake lines! What I will be discussing is more the worry which distracts us from knowing and loving God. The worry that Jesus talks about is the kind that has the power to overtake us and distract us from knowing the grace of God.
I am also keenly aware that as I write this there are many people who struggle so severely with anxiety that they must seek out professional care through counseling and even medication. I have no intention of trivializing the very real pain and stress which anxiety can cause in a persons life. I am convinced, though, that the Bible speaks to all areas of life; mind, body, soul. I am a Pastor and I mean to offer an alternative way of viewing worry in our lives from a purely biblical perspective. As we apply the teaching of Christ in regard to worry, may we find a place of refuge from anxiety and a means of growing in the grace of God!
Do Not Worry
Luke 12:22-34 Jesus lays out a two part method of finding freedom from worry. We must capture our thought life. Human beings have been made Imago Dei, that is, in the image of God. God has made us wonderfully thought filled beings with unimaginable complexities, capacities, and capabilities. Our minds are active, as they should be, but it is not very difficult to become overwhelmed by our own thoughts. One need not look very far or for very long to find a great many things to occupy, fill, and eventually consume one’s mind with concern and worry.
II Corinthians 10:5 says, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Worry is a battle which takes place primarily in the mind. The trouble is that most of us have convinced ourselves that our internal situation, our internal state of peace or lack of peace, is determined primarily by what is going in around us. To be sure, when the storms of life rage around us, when our circumstances are at there worst, it is more difficult to capture our thoughts in order to bring them into submission to the will of God.
The point here is not that our external circumstances do not matter. The point is that regardless of our external circumstances, ultimately we have the choice to make; will we allow our thoughts to spin out of control or learn to take them captive to make them obedient to Christ? Notice that nowhere in the entire New Testament does Jesus say to us, “Do not have problems.” While we can not always choose our circumstances, we can choose our response.
The time to choose the right response to worry, though, is not in the midst of anxiety, in the moment when we are overwhelmed; this battle must be won much earlier in our thought life. If we are going to take every thought captive them we must learn to slow down our thinking. This life comes at us very fast. Whether it is the immediate concerns of a job and family or broader concerns over the world at large, if we are not intentional about slowing down our thoughts to a manageable level, we can easily find ourselves trapped by anxiety and worry.
Our family dog, Happy the Saint Bernard, is much more active than the book on the breed, and the breeder, had promised. She is calm most of the time but every now and then when she gets worked up over food which is out of her reach, children she wants to play with, or, to quote Elmer Fudd, “a wascily wabbit,” she is nearly impossible to catch. She is so fast that she can not easily be chased down and she is so heavy and powerful that even if reached, she can not easily be wrestled in submission. I have tried and failed many times!
The trick with Happy is to slow down and then wait a moment for her to come to you. Almost without fail, this technique has proven successful in catching my sometimes mischievous dog. So it is with our thought life and with the things in our lives that we worry about. If we are going to be able to “take captive every thought,” we are going to have to slow our thoughts to a manageable speed. When our minds are racing with worry of this thing and that, we have to learn to slow our thoughts in order to capture them and bring them into submission to Christ’s will.
There is a second lesson in Happy’s mischief as well; if we will stop chasing after the things which worry us they may, in fact, come to us. How often do we find ourselves worrying over something that we can not control? How much of our anxiety is centered on things that will dissipate if given just a little time to dissolve? In Luke 12:25 Jesus says, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?”
We must learn to let go of worry over things which are out of control, not in defeat, throwing in the towel, but in recognition that if our efforts are futile then they are self defeating. God is not the author of confusion but of peace. At the root of worry are misconceptions about the nature of reality. We must also learn to confront false beliefs. Once we have slowed our thoughts to a point where we may capture them, we then must examine our belief systems.
We live in a world which is full of lies. Every television commercial, billboard, and latest fad promises to make us happier, healthier, and wiser. Some of this happens through insinuation, so-called subliminal messages, while much of it is blatant and easily understood. We are bombarded from all sides all the time. Our minds are pummeled daily with false advertising about everything from our appearance to our health to our happiness and prosperity. Inevitably, we pick up some or many of these false belief systems just like we pick up burs and thorns when we walk through the high grass of a wild field. We must challenge these false belief systems with the truth.
Some have likened excessive worry to an addiction though I would liken it much more to an infection of wrong thinking. Our minds drift from legitimate concern and care over our circumstances into anxiety and worry largely as a result of wrong attitudes and misperceptions about the nature of reality in general or the nature of a given set of circumstances. The world has thrust lie after lie upon us. It is as though the landscapes of our minds are filled with holes that can only be filled with the truth of God’s word. We have to take our thoughts captive and confront those thoughts which are out of accordance with the will of God with the truth of God.
This is not something that we can do once and be cured from worry and anxiety! This is a continual and gradual process, a habit which we must develop in order to retrain our minds. In Romans 12:2 the Apostle Paul writes, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” That is exactly what we must do if we are to find freedom from worry. We must allow God’s word to transform us from the inside out. We must allow God to work in our minds so that we can replace anxious thoughts with peace filled, faith filled, thoughts even as we allow the word of God to penetrate our minds, confronting the lies of this world with the truth of God.
Follow Christ
The second part of finding freedom from worry which Jesus lays out in Luke 12:22-34 is to follow after Christ. While the first admonition of Christ was, in a sense, a negative command not to worry, the second dose of medicine in this cure for worry is the positive instruction to place all of our cares secondary to following Jesus Christ. It is a matter of attention and focus. Jesus is telling us that when our attention and focus is on doing God’s will, living in God’s will, then we will not be as easily distracted and tempted toward worry and anxiety.
I remember when I was a young Marine in combat training which, at least at that time, was a school that all Marines, regardless of job specialty, attended just following a week of leave after basic training. Marine Combat training was intense. Each of the four weeks of training culminated with a long hike in full combat gear, with rifle, canteen belt, and a full pack. Each Friday morning the hike was significantly longer than the week before, concluding with a hike of what felt like at least one hundred miles, though I believe it was actually in the high teens. At any rate, it was long and grueling.
It was sometime during the first hike that I realized that the best thing to do was to simply focus on the sloshing water in the canteens of the man in front of me and keep my attention on him. These hikes were fast and were often through difficult terrain. It did not use to look at your watch or wonder how far we had gone.
The very best thing was to keep my focus straight ahead and put the rest of the world out of my mind. So it is with following after Christ in this life.
We too are on a mission. We are on a mission to declare Christ to this world by reflecting His love all around us. When our minds drift, when our thoughts race, when we are consumed by worry and anxiety, we are not free to live the grace-filled life. In I Corinthians 9:24, the Apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.” Just as a runner keeps his focus on Christ, just as I learned to keep my focus on the man in front of me during a long road march, we too must learn to keep our focus on Christ lest we be consumed by worry and cares of this life.
Conclusion
In the Gospel of Luke 12:29-31; 34 Jesus says, “And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Experiencing Gods grace is a moment by moment experience of placing my trust in the unseen Christ rather than in the seen circumstances of my life. It is a matter of choosing to trust God’s grace in the moment of trial, in the moment of worry; indeed, it is choosing to focus on the man in front of you rather than on the terrain through which you walk.
The things in this life, the cares of this life, are passing and fleeting. If we are to live lives free of worry, if we are to life grace-filled lives, we must place our trust in the eternal things which will not pass away. We must let go of this life and in so doing, receive the grace necessary in the moments of this life!
Amen.
