AN ANTIDOTE FOR ANXIETY
Psalm 131
I heard a man suggest on the radio that, “Anyone who doesn’t have high blood pressure these days simply isn’t paying attention.”
There is plenty to be anxious about in our world today. Nations nobody cared about five years ago are suddenly steering the world toward conflict. Rogue states are coming out of the woodwork, each one declaring its intent to build nuclear arsenals, and frankly daring anyone to try and stop them. When our war on terrorism began, it looked as if we’d be talking about basically secret operations involving the FBI as much or more than the Army. Now, it’s not outrageous to speculate that the world may be in greater danger of nuclear holocaust from the terrorists than we ever were when the old Soviet Union was aiming missiles at us.
At least the old Soviets were chess players who understood that the costs associated with an action may make that action unthinkable. Not so the powers who speak of going nuclear these days. They are fanatics who disregard personal cost altogether.
But we don’t have to speak that large to raise our blood pressures, do we? Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. Two thirds of all Black children are raised without fathers. (Don’t congratulate yourself about this if you’re not African-American...all the other races are heading in that direction. All this means is that Black folk will most likely get fed up with this trend before everyone else and repent before the rest of us.) One in five Hispanic girls gets pregnant in high school. As a father raising three half-Hispanic girls that one really bugs me. We continue to murder one and half million babies every year through abortion, all the while we slap God Bless America bumper stickers on our cars. One in ten of us will have to deal with cancer either in ourselves or in our loved ones.
Some of us hoped that after 9-11, God might grant us a spiritual renewal or revival in America. It looked hopeful for several weeks, but now polls show that if anything, Americans are even more indifferent to religion than they were before that event.
Or, even simpler than that, I can give you two words that’ll raise the blood pressure of every truck driver on the road: Fuel cost. How is an independent operator supposed to survive? Generally, the answer is, he doesn’t.
A couple of years ago, I heard a pastor talking about that bumper sticker that says, “No Fear.” He said, basically, you’re young. It’s normal to be fearless when you’re young. But stick around. We can teach you.
In our world, it’s easy to panic. Anxiety is normal. Fear is to be expected. In this context it is good for us to hear King David singing strongly, “O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.”
This is from Psalm 131, and here, I believe, we have a Biblical antidote for anxiety. (Read Ps.131 now.)
This Psalm is one of a small group of Psalms that is called a “Song of Ascent.” In most of your Bibles it will in fact say that right under the title. These are the hymns that the Jewish people sang on their way up to Jerusalem for one of the solemn feast days. They are songs sung on the way to worship at the Temple.
Now, I’m suggesting that what we’re all after is described for us in verse 2. (Read it again.) There it is. A calm and quiet soul. In our days of ever-increasing anxiety, that is our goal. Calmness and quietness.
It uses the image of a weaned child with his mother. The easiest way to grasp the point about this is to imagine the opposite, a baby that isn’t anywhere close to weaned yet. Here’s the thing about a baby that hasn’t been weaned. It’s still in the stage in which each and every pang of hunger is a cause for panic. The baby hasn’t learned enough yet to know where the food is coming from, or even whether it is coming at all, so every twinge of hunger sets it screaming. Nursing infants do not generally wait with poise and patience for their food. They are loud and upset and scared that they’re not going to eat.
On the other hand, you have the child that is weaned. It may still be very young and basically helpless, but he’s been around the block a few times. None of the previous instances of hunger have resulted in his death, so that sort of fear is gone by now. He’s old enough to know that mom is pretty good about giving him what he needs, and even most of what he wants. Maybe he’s old enough to tell his mom he’s hungry. Maybe he’s even old enough to understand and be satisfied with the answer that dinner is cooking and will be ready to eat shortly.
I want you to ask yourself today, which picture best describes the condition of your soul before God? Are you a worrier? Does the least bit of bad news seem to you to be cause for panic? When you go to God in prayer over evil tidings, is your cry the scared whimper of an infant who doesn’t understand his world, or is it the simple acknowledgment of the one who is old enough to say, “I’m hungry. I have a need.”
And when you are done praying over your need, are you fearful over the outcome, like an infant who knows nothing but how he feels? Or are you able to wait in the calm and quiet of the child who has learned to trust his parent’s provision?
Well, I think we all can see very easily which of these answers is preferable. We know what the goal is. We know we want to replace anxiety with calm. So, how do we get there from here? Our goal is in verse 2, and the things we need to do to reach that goal surround it, in verses 1 and 3. Sometimes your doctor will prescribe pills for you and the medicine is hidden beneath a layer of waxy, candy-like coating. Your body needs the medicine, but your stomach must first digest through the coating to get at it. That’s as it is here. If you want the good stuff of verse 2, you need to digest your way through what surrounds it.
The central issue in verse 1 is pride. If you don’t think that pride is a big problem in your own life, guess what? The reason for that is most likely that you’re so tangled up in it that you’ve lost the ability to recognize it, or to realize its danger. Pride is to the Christian man what the Philistines were to King David. That is, a constant, never-quite-destroyed enemy who may lurk in the shadows for long periods only to leap out and ambush you at your most vulnerable moment. Pride is to the Christian what those little yippy dogs are to the mailman, an irritating annoyance that would eat your eyes out if it could, and which you’d love to launch down the block with one solid kick…but you can’t.
This haughty, arrogant pride is the sort of self-interested, self-absorbed, self-promoting selfishness that may linger just below the surface in even the most apparently spiritual Christian man. A.W. Tozer wrote that this kind of pride is generally more at home in a Bible conference than in a tavern. Just being a Christian doesn’t kill it, however much we wish it would.
But for our purposes, we need to ask this question. How does pride and arrogance work against us when we are trying to replace anxiety with calmness and quietness of soul?
One way at least is this. Pride says, “The most important issue in these circumstances I face is, what will become of me?” Self-seeking asks, “What will people say about me as a result of all of this?” Or, “Will this cause me any pain at all?”
We will not experience the spiritual equivalent of weaning and calmness until these questions are banished from within us. Y’know, the apostle Paul had a great word for this sort of pride. In Philippians 3:8, after recounting all the things Paul might be tempted to place human confidence in, the things he might be tempted to be prideful about, the King James translates his estimation of all of that as “dung.” It’s the lowest, most worthless, filthy trash you can imagine. He goes on to contrast this with the surpassing excellency of knowing Jesus Christ, of living the life in Him that God called him to live.
You will not find quietness or calmness of soul until the most important person in your life is no longer you, but Jesus Christ.
Now, the second part of verse one is about concerning ourselves with things too great for us. That is difficult for me to come to grips with, because in other places the Bible clearly commands Christians to pray for even the most complex and important human issues: the course of nations and kingdoms and governments, the progress of the Church in the world, calamities and “natural disasters,” famines, droughts, etc. Even the six or eight year old kneeling down beside her bed should remember the President in her prayers.
Clearly, we’d be shirking our duties as praying people if we suddenly decided not to pray for things too complex and great for our understanding, right? I have come to believe that this is talking about an issue of control. It is related to the warning about pride above.
That is, when you pray, understand who you are. Keep yourself in perspective under God. You don’t have to know the right answer to every situation in order to confidently pray about it. You don’t have to first come up with a solution in order to pray, so that you’ll have an option ready for God to consider. It’s not up to you to get it all worked out. It is up to you simply to ask and to trust, as a weaned child might ask for food. I saw a T-shirt once that read, “Two unchangeable truths: 1. There is a God, and 2. You are not Him.”
Once this fact really sinks into our souls, the only result will be calm and quiet. To hear the Spirit whisper that you are not God, and don’t have to try and understand things as well as He does, has the same effect on the soul as the words of Christ had on the storm when He said, “Peace! Be still!”
So, in the little candy coating that covers the stuff we want, we have this. You will not have calmness and quietness of soul until you submit yourself totally to the will of God as expressed in Jesus Christ. The bloody cross of Calvary is the only place that can finally kill arrogant, self-seeking pride. And, as long as things must work out according to your own glorious plans for your life, you will have unceasing anxiety. That I promise you, on the authority of God’s Word. Changing circumstances around you will not change this. Hear me well.
The rest of what we need to digest is in verse three. Hope in the LORD. Notice your Bibles capitalize each letter in Lord, there. That is an indication that in the Hebrew manuscripts, this is the covenant name of God, revealed to Moses. This is Yahweh. This is the I AM. When God called out a peculiar people to be His own, this is what He called Himself. Therefore, this most holy Name is intimately related to …what? It is inextricably tied to the promises He has made to His own people. When you see Lord or God in the Old Testament in all caps, think to yourself, “The God who made the Promises.”
Which promises? This whole Book. Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21. Hope therefore in the God of the Word. It is this hope that the writer of Hebrews calls, “an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.” Some of you live your whole lives from storm to storm. Tossed by one, then quiet just long enough to catch your breath before the next one starts. Some of you desperately need to lower an anchor here. This is the place where calmness and quietness of soul are found.
It may surprise you to learn that this is very much what Scripture means when it speaks of “courage.” The ancient Hebrews had two words for courage, and together they present a picture of a man reaching out and seizing something, and when he has seized it, he hardens himself. Have courage, therefore. Grab onto the faithful promises of the God who keeps His Word, and refuse to be moved from them. From this time forth and forevermore.
This, beloved, is God’s antidote for anxiety. Receive it, and find the calm and quiet your soul longs for so desperately. Amen.
