We’re in a summer sermon series devoted to bringing the change into our lives that we’ve always longed for. It’s a series devoted to advocating living life with the fruit of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).
We’ve been looking at the fruit of the Spirit in turn over the course of the summer. We began the series by looking first at love and then we looked at joy. Today, we examine the third healthy attitude a believer is to adopt in their lives: the attitude of peace. Wouldn’t you like to be more peaceful? Wouldn’t you enjoy your life and your relationship with God, if you were less anxious? Change is possible; your life is not hopeless! But you’ll need more power than just willpower in your life. You’ll need God’s power.
Today, I want to speak about how you can have greater peace in your life. Specifically, I want to speak on how to overcome the anxiety that creeps into our lives. I have noticed at least two characteristics about anxieties and worries. First, my anxieties is usually about my future. Anxiety and worry is rarely about my present circumstance but my future. Worry and anxiety are voices that creep up inside your mind and say, “I think there will be problems down the road.”
Second, the most anxious people I know rarely listen to reason. An empty-nest wife is petrified to be alone. She has visions of robbers and rapists invading their homes when her husband is away on business trips. Her husband asked the local police for records of crimes committed within a three miles radius. And even though there was very little in the way of crime in their neighborhood, she wasn’t put at ease. Then the couple installed burglar alarms, security cameras, and motion detectors around the home. But none of this helped. Again, the more anxious you become, the less you listen to reason.
Jesus wants to give you peace and a steadiness to life.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
‘Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble’” (Matthew 6:25-34).
Two Fights
Keep in mind that before your conversion, you were fighting against God – this is what I’m calling your first fight. After your conversion God is fighting against the evil in you – this is what I’m calling your second fight. But the minute you make peace with God instantly, all of God’s enemies declare war on you. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). The first fight (before your conversion) you had to lose. You were fighting God. The second fight you must win for God is fighting on your behalf. Again, there’s hope for you in the fight against anxiety and worry. You can have peace – remarkable peace.
Here’s a brief sermon preview of where we’re going: 1) Provision of God; 2) Prison of Anxiety; 3) Power of Surrender. At the end of today’s message, I am going to tell you a personal story of how God spoke to me through these verses today.
1. Provision of God
Circle or underline these words in your Bibles: “…your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” (Matthew 6:32). God takes care of His children. Repeat that after me: God takes care of His children.
Peace is the confidence that God is controlling your life. Peace is the confidence or the trust that God is wisely shaping the events of your life for your best and His best. Jesus wants you to have freedom from worry. Jesus wants you to be free from caring about the necessitates of life. Jesus offers us two examples.
1.1 Birds
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they” (Matthew 6:28)? Jesus tells us to look at the birds of the air as an example of how we should be carefree from worry. This first example is what we call Providence. Providence is more than the capital of Rhode Island. Augustus Hopkins Strong writes in an old Systematic Theology, “Providence is God’s attention concentrated everywhere. His care is microscopic as well as telescopic.” Providence comes the word provide. Don’t you know that God is in charge of the world? “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will…” (Ephesians 1:11). “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
When you remove God from the center of your universe, you put yourself in the center of your universe. You were never meant for that. God will provide for you, and He is in charge of you.
1.2 Lilies
Jesus offers us His second example: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith” (Matthew 6:28-30)?
When Jesus points us to the wildflowers growing in the field, He is telling us He loves us. Jesus says to us, “Your Father knows what you need.” God takes care of His children. So put Jesus' two examples together, and you hear Him telling you – I control the world, and I love you.
The Provision of God
2. Prison of Anxiety
Now the opposite of peace is anxiety. I heard a pastor give a great description of anxiety recently. He said it’s like having a constant Jaws theme bass note line going through your life. You’re always looking around for the fin. You’re sure something’s is about to go wrong. It’s a frightening thing. It really can characterize our whole life, but more than that, anxiety also has a physical aspect. Physically, anxiety is called stress. We The founder of the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Charles Mayo had this to say about worry and anxiety: “Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands and the whole nervous system. I have never met a man or known a man to die of overwork, but I have known a lot who died of worry.”
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” (Matthew 6:25a). Jesus repeats His words three times in this passage: “do not be anxious” in verse 25, 31, and 34. Three times Jesus tells us do not be anxious. If you have battled anxiety and worry for any length of time, you know that you don’t stop being anxious by simply telling yourself, “Do not be anxious.” Jesus isn’t saying, “Cut it out. Stop worrying. Instead, whistle a happy tune.” Instead, if you look carefully, you’ll see that Jesus gets underneath our anxieties, and He explains to us the why we are anxious.
There’s a real sense in which he does surgery. Jesus addresses three areas of worry: Food, Clothing, and Life. All three of these areas are really geared toward one thing, the Body. When you drive around North Texas, you begin to see what is a priority, our image. We are consumed with our bodies. There are gyms that are open 24/7, there are billboards boasting lap band and plastic surgeries, and clothing stores are a dime a dozen. We want to always figure out how to be healthier, look better and younger, live longer, all while not being stressed out. But you have to allow Jesus to do surgery on you if you want to be free from the prison of anxiety. For anxiety in its truest essence is this: anxiety is to control that which I cannot control.
In the beginning of this message, I told you there’s two characteristics to constant worry and anxiety: 1) anxiety doesn’t listen to real very well; 2) anxiety is more about the future than the present. The essence of the anxious person is he is someone who is attempting to control the uncontrollable. Again, when you remove God from the center of your universe, you put yourself in the center of your universe.
Let me add to your anxiety for a moment. Your Life is not under your control. You are astonishingly vulnerable in countless ways. There are so many reasons you should be anxious that you haven’t even thought of!
“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith” (Matthew 6:30)? The reason you’re anxious is because you want to be in control. That was the problem of Adam and Eve for they thought they knew a better plan for their lives than God. Relinquish your desire for the throne and place God in change of your universe.
The Provision of God
Prison of Anxiety
3. Power of Surrender
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).
I want to share with you a personal story about this passage. I want to tell you how God showed me how He was going to provide for me. Years ago, I was living in Fort Worth, TX, and I was about to enter the last phase of my education. My wife, Traci and I were about to have our first child, and I really wanted to give her the opportunity to stay at home with our first child. Up until this point, she had been the main breadwinner in our family as she worked for the city of Fort Worth at the time. But she was now pregnant while I was about to enter school for my last phase. When you are a full-time student, and you are paying for your school, the prospects of securing a job where you can support a wife and child are slim. But I had a plan. I was going to pursue a job at a local company where I would work the third shift and go to school during the day. Again, I had a plan. I was told how much this company paid, and it was more money than I had ever made. I could see us living comfortably on this salary even though I wasn’t going to sleep well for about three years. In the midst of pursuing this “job” (which was really more of a mirage), I came into contact with a pastor search team. They were looking for a pastor, and I wanted to be a pastor. Up until this time, no church had contacted me about becoming their pastor. Yet without really talking in depth to the pastor search committee, I turned them down. Remember, I had a plan ?. I thought they could not take care of our material needs where Traci could stay home with our child, so I turned them down. In the midst of this time, I laid awake one night and was laying on the floor of our home. Even though it was the summer of 1999, I can picture it to this day. All this was turning through my mind and had kept me awake. I had my elbows propping up my head as I lay on the hardwood floors between our living room and hallway when I randomly read through Luke’s gospel. There I was, lying on the floor of our home. It was then I found these words of Jesus (Matthew 6:25-34 is effectively repeated in Luke 12:22-34). And the power of Christ’s power spoke to me so much that I began to quietly weep. It was while I was reading God’s Word that I began to weep. The Holy Spirit spoke to me as if to say, “I sent you a church that needs a pastor, and you are called to pastor. Why don’t allow me to worry about paying the bills, and you follow my plan for your life.” I knew in that instant that God was telling me to call the little church back and see if they were still interested in talking with me. I told Traci what I sensed the Lord telling me, and then I called a man named Jay Yother, the chairman of the Pastor Search Committee for Lakeview Baptist Church. And he told me that it was funny I called him as he was about to call me back to see if I would reconsider. The feeling that made me weep on that evening was this: I simultaneously felt a sense that I had not been listening to God, and I also sensed the Lord saying, “I have you.” I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. By the way, I had a wonderful four years with the good people of that church, and they were so gracious with me. And the Lord marvelously took care of our family’s needs in ways I could not anticipate.
Let me tell you a couple of those ways. Soon after I officially became pastor of the church, a young man came to me and handed me a Texaco gas station card. He said to me I know you are going to be driving a lot with this position and the pay wasn’t a great deal, so this is a gift for you to use over the years to come. Can you believe that? We were given a gas card that we used to fill up the tanks of our vehicles when we needed. Then during a pastor appreciation time, many of the people of this small church came to our church and built my kids a wooden play set for our backyard. It was an amazing gift to us as our oldest two kids were not even three years old. We were so humbled by their generosity and their amazing kindness. There were other ways the Lord worked but I want to tell you personally how the Lord took care of my needs in ways I could not anticipate. I cannot tell you how seeing God do this has impacted my life. My faith in God began to grow. And your faith can grow as well but you have to experiment with God. You cannot fully appreciate how God provides for you until you experience this yourself.
You have to personally experience God’s peace. “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).
Queen Elizabeth (not the second Queen Elizabeth, the first Queen Elizabeth) once told a man that she wanted him to go on a voyage to the New World because we needed his skills on this voyage to make it a success. The man looked at her and said, “Hey, I’m a small businessman and my business has been floundering. If I go on it, I’m sure it’s going to sink.” She looked at him and said, “My dear friend, you mind my business and I’ll mind your business.” And this is exactly the way it works with God.
