(music) - I don't know if you've ever been worried about something, and someone has said something well-meaning to you, but like "stop worrying, it's a sin", well how does that work for you? Are you able to turn off
the negative feelings of fear or threat in the moment? And if you're not able to,
which you're not, I'm not, does that then mean it's not a sin? So first I want to
clarify on how we're even thinking about this
question, because if by worry we simply mean negative
feelings associated with something we value being threatened from external circumstances,
then I don't think we want to call that a sin. The reason I can say that
is because both Jesus and Paul report having
this level of distress when something they valued
was externally threatened, so I think of Luke chapter
12 when Jesus said, "how great is my distress
at my coming baptism". He knew the cross was coming,
he knew what that meant for him regarding his relationship to the first person of
the trinity, the Father, and he was distressed because of it. That was an external circumstance that threatened something that he valued. The apostle Paul, in 2nd
Corinthians, also talks about the anxiety or the
distress that he feels for the churches, so
while he's not with them, he's worried in that sense of negatively emotionally effected, by what's the state of these churches, are they
holding on to the gospel. And so, if that's what we mean by worry, I don't think we want
to define that as sin. So what makes worry a sin, then? It's helpful to think of
worry as a tactic of our fear, so in other words, it's
obsessing with our thoughts and our emotions about some threat to something we value. Some thing that we see as essential or want as essential to our very life. The problem, or the sin
that can be involved in worry is we mix up what actually we most value for life and we forget God's role in relation to that
value, what life actually is. I think this is what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount,
in Matthew chapter 6, where he says "don't be
anxious about tomorrow, "don't be anxious about your life, "don't be anxious about anything." and what's astounding
is, Jesus talks about not being anxious about
the things that seem most essential for our existence,
like food and clothing. When we so value those
things as if my existence ceases if I don't have them, that results in worry, that results in anxiety, and so he says, as a remedy to that, "seek first the kingdom, seek
first what is actually life", and as you do that, it's not that you stop wanting food and clothes, it's that it gets prioritized right under what it is that we most value and
should most see as important to our lives and that
is the promises of God to include us in the
inheritance of who he is, that's what the kingdom is. And so, the second remedy
Jesus offers for our anxieties is "look at the birds of the air, "look at the lilies of the field", they're fed, they're
clothed, your heavenly Father knows their needs and
you're way more valuable to Him than they are. It's saying we don't seek
even food and clothing, those values that our
emotions and thoughts tend to orbit around, we
don't seek these things as if its our efforts that guarantee them, and once we have them we have life. He's saying no, it's your heavenly Father, his relationship to your
need has to be forefront in your mind when you think about the things that are
most threatening to you. So what should we do if we find ourselves caught in a cycle of worry? Well, first of all, don't guilt yourself for the negative feelings of threat, that something that you're wanting or that you're viewing as essential
to your life is under threat, and you have a negative
emotional response, it's just wasted time
to try to sort of coach yourself out of a negative
emotional response. Instead, it's much better to identify what is the object, what is the
thing that I'm wanting, that I'm thinking, if
taken away I lose my life. So it could be food and
clothing, in Jesus' example, it could also be things
like performance at work, it could be that relationship
that's so important to me, that if I don't have my life is over, so you identify it, and
then secondly you open your hand before the Lord with it. You entrust that to the Father who knows your needs before you
ask, who knows your needs, actually, better than you do. We're not just correcting our emotions, we're actually using our
emotions to flag something that we're misbelieving,
that we're valuing too much. Something that we're kind
of holding onto in a way that's not seeking God's
kingdom first and is not trusting my Father in heaven
as my Father in heaven. And I'm not saying that any of these steps are going to necessarily
eliminate the immediate experience of fear, that's not the point. The point is how do I steward my responses when these fears come over me, and as we learn to do
this, we learn better what it is to truly
treasure God's love for us as the most central need that we have, and in that way we get
to entrust ourselves to the provision of a heavenly
Father who is in no way threatened by what we are
threatened by in the moment. Thanks for watching Honest Answers, you can submit your questions by email, Twitter, or in the comments section below. And don't forget to subscribe to find out the answer to next Wednesday's question. (music)
