Anxiety and the Peace of God

Jesus said a lot of challenging things in the Sermon on the Mount: love your enemies, don't be angry, don't judge, don't lust. But right in the middle of Jesus' most famous discourse, He says what might be the most difficult command of the whole sermon, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Mt. 6:34) We are faced with the temptation to anxiety daily if not constantly. To be clear, Jesus is not saying that we should just drop out of school, live moment to moment and not think or plan for the future. That’s not spirituality; it's irresponsibility. Jesus Himself thought about the future, made plans, and yet he did not “worry”. What He's warning us against is something more sinister. 

What is anxiety?

The original word implies being pulled in different directions, being distracted and divided. And that’s exactly what anxiety does: it divides our attention, our thoughts, and our heart so that we are living neither fully in the present nor in the future. Anxiety sets you against yourself. It keeps you from being whole. Psychologists define it as “a negative emotional state of uncertainty because of real or potential future problems or challenges.” Again, this is not just thinking about the future, but allowing the uncertainty and potential difficulties of the future to distract and even paralyze you.

There are a number of reasons why we experience anxiety. Some of those are tied with survival and provision. Jesus prefaced His anti-anxiety call with those very examples: “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?” Tied closely with this is the anxiety we experience over our performance. This goes beyond mere physical provision. We tend to latch a sense of our own worth onto our accomplishments. It's not just about not starving but, “Am I successful? Have I proven myself capable? Have I 'made it'?” This kind of anxiety comes in both personal and professional flavors—relating to family as well as career. Some of our reasons for anxiety are more existential. We worry about if our life has meaning and what meaning it has. We worry about our own unavoidable, impending death. We deal with a sense of anxiety over being good enough, and feel guilt for not meeting up to our own standards, whatever they may be. Some of our anxiety is social. "Will he like me? Will she accept me? Will those people respect and love me? Will they judge me and exclude me?" It's more than likely that we've all dealt with some of these—and probably on a recurring basis.

In light of all the possible grounds for anxiety, Jesus’ words “do not worry about tomorrow” seem more like an impossible challenge than any real comfort. But it's worth asking why the Bible calls us not to worry. To begin with, God desires our blessing and anxiety is contradictory to that, dividing us and pulling us apart. But there is another reason. In reality, anxiety is an act of pride, and that in at least a couple ways. First, anxiety is always future-oriented. It's kind of a prophecy about the future—usually a false prophecy. The truth is we don’t actually know the future. When we allow ourselves to be consumed by worry, we are basically living in a future that we’ve created in our own minds. But that’s the problem: only God can make the future. And in that sense, our anxiety sets us up in the role of God. Not surprisingly, it turns out horribly. Secondly, anxiety is a result of pride because it occurs when we calculate our own resources and abilities to overcome potential problems and then somewhere deep down we realize: we are insufficient. It is the result of exhausted self-reliance.

Why we cannot free ourselves from anxiety

Anxiety is in itself an unpleasant experience, and so people are naturally uncomfortable staying in that state. We try to end our worry, to get free of it in one of two basic ways.

The first is to try to change the equation. If we worry about being successful enough, we set about working harder. If we worry about finding a mate, we set about making ourselves more attractive. Just consider how much advertising is geared toward this idea! If we worry about our abilities not being enough to meet a challenge, we seek to enhance those abilities. Of course, to some degree that’s okay. If you’re worried about failing your math test, you may just need to study harder and then you’ll be less worried. However, the problem is there are some things—many things actually—that we cannot change. Sometimes people will seek to shortcut the reality of our inability to change the equation. We try to convince ourselves that we’ve changed the equation when in reality we haven’t. We hurl self-aggrandizing embellishments at our anxiety like pebbles at an angry bear about to devour us. We tells ourselves pleasant lies about how we are successful and important—though this may not actually any basis in reality. And sooner or later there comes a time of crisis when these lies we tell ourselves begin to crumble. All of a sudden our fictitious ego-stroking runs into the jolting reality of our own insufficiency. It's at that point that people often turn to the second attempt to avoid anxiety.

We hide. We attempt to distract ourselves with other activities, with excessive amounts of entertainment, social interaction, food, drink, sleep, sex or drugs. In a word, we try to suffocate our anxiety under a pillow of amusement, but it tenaciously refuses to die. We are just putting off the inevitable and when our anxiety comes back, it’s all the more vicious for our attempts to kill it.

The problem is that both of these ways of “coping” with anxiety misunderstand what causes it in the first place. Both methods do not work because they have the same root as anxiety itself: self-reliance. Anxiety comes in the first place when we consider potential future problems and realizes that our current resources aren’t enough. But then our attempt to overcome the resultant anxiety are just further based on self-reliance! Either we try to squeeze more out of self, convincing ourselves that our resources are actually enough, or we simply run from the problems because we've realized that our resources are not enough.  In short, the whole problem of anxiety begins with being locked in the vicious cycle of self-reliance, and this is why we can never get free from it by continuing to look to ourselves. We need someone else to break the cycle.

What frees us from anxiety

The answer is that what frees us from worry is not a what but a Who. Peter says in his first epistle, "Cast your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you." (1 Pet. 5:7) We are freed from anxiety not because we know something, but because we know Someone—Jesus. Our anxiety is based on not knowing the future and our inability to deal with it's challenges. But the reality is that we don’t need to know the future; we just need to know the One who holds the future. Freedom from anxiety is not about seeing the path of life in front of us, but about knowing the One who holds our hand as we walk on that path, even if we cannot see the next step forward.

In the midst of great suffering and before his own martyrdom, not knowing at the time if he’d be killed or not, the apostle Paul wrote, “I know whom I have believed and am confident that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.” (2 Tim. 1:12) He didn’t say “I know what’s going to happen” or “I know I can handle it”. Rather, though the future was ominous and Paul knew that martyrdom was a challenge he didn’t have resources for, he still had confidence. He knew in Whom he had believed—in Christ—and he knew that Christ had the resources to make sure everything worked out in the end, in “that Day”. 

During his first imprisonment, Paul wrote the following in Php. 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing, 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 minds through Christ Jesus.” Paul repeats the frequent Scriptural call not to live in anxiety, but rather to entrust our circumstances to God, to His resources. And here’s the promise Paul notes: peace which surpasses understanding. He does not promise peace that comes from understanding. Paul is not saying, “Just pray and God will explain everything.” He’s not saying, “God will show you the full plan for how He’s going to work it out.” No! If God did do that, we’d just trust our understanding. Instead, the peace God gives us is a peace which surpasses understanding, not based on information or calculation, but on trusting the heart of God. We walk by faith, not by sight.

The reason we can be freed from anxiety is not because we see the future, but because we see Jesus. He also stood on the brink of the unknown—on the edge of the grave. Yes, He had the promises of the Bible as we do, but as a man He had to trust His Father in the darkness. However unlike us, Christ was forsaken in the darkness. The Father let go of His hand on the cross so that He could take our hand and never let go. Christ was cut off from the resources of the Father so that we might always have access to His resources. And yet, the Father did not leave Him forever. He rose Him up in glory just as He had promised. Jesus went through the dark night of death, loss, shame, guilt, failure—and came out into the dawn of glory and eternal blessedness. The resurrection is proof that whatever we go through, as those who love God, really will work out for good. It's proof that He really does care for us. He has dealt with our death and guilt, He has given our life meaning, He has proven our worth in giving His life for ours, He has accepted us, does not judge us for our crimes but loves us with an everlasting love. And when we see Him, His heart, what He did for us on the cross—our anxiety melts away like frost before the relentless spring sun. We might not see what is down the road, we realize fully that our resources will not be enough, but we know that He cares for us, Has cared for us in giving Himself for us. That is the peace that surpasses understanding.

This article is based on an excerpt from my sermon "Anxiety and the Peace of God", available in Russian here. If you enjoyed this article and want to catch future posts, don't forget to subscribe to the blog.