Jesus said, “That’s
why I am saying to you: Don’t be anxious about your life, as to what you are to
eat or what you are to drink, nor, as far as the body is concerned, about what
you are to wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than
clothing?”
—
Matthew 6:25 (USC)
Jesus has
been building to this very point right through the chapter. Does it not seem
odd to you that Jesus now speaks of the underlying preponderance hiding beneath
the want for recognition and the coveting of all sorts of worldly pleasures?
The subject of our
clamouring after everything not of God is anxiousness.
God, and our Lord
alone, can help with our anxiousness, yet, in our desperation to feel safe we
go the very opposite way, into any number of directions that will spell the propagation, and not the alleviation, of
our anxiousness. We fall for a lie of the devil. He says he can help. He can
only make things worse, taking us farther from a true healing experience from
our anxiousness.
Now anxiousness is
buried deep beneath many evident sins. The struggles and temptations we have
are due to anxiousness — a fear that we will be abandoned without a crutch.
Even if we are to
experience what Job experienced, we are counselled to not be anxious, though we
will certainly be understood and forgiven for feeling abandoned by God. Again,
it’s the Evil One who ushers the lie into our inner being: “God cannot and will
not help you; but I know what you need — come my way.”
Satan is an imitator
of God, but he’s a counterfeit of the worst conception — for what
looks the goods is never good at all.
What are we to do?
Not be anxious. Continue to trust in God. And when we are anxious, prefer it to
go to God. Pour out yourself to him, for he, who is the only one who truly
knows, understands, and cares, will make it for you to cry out in the evening —
even to exhaustion — so as to wake at peace in the morning. That peace will
abide for the day, because peace that bears fruit in hope is not easily surrendered.
We are to cry out
not in the mood of indignation for the external circumstance against us, but
for the internal circumstance for
which these external circumstances are doing to us internally.
God knows what you
need. He knows what we need.
God will give you
what you need, ultimately, as a process of having faith to trust him,
especially when his promise is full and the fruit of his promise seems emptiest.
***
QUESTIONS in REVIEW:
1. Think of a time you were beside
yourself in the grief of anxiousness. Have you ever experienced such a
communion with God in prayer, that, through exhaustion, which is to be brought
to the end of yourself, you experienced the sweet peace of the morn? If not,
what have you got to lose by crying out only to him who alone can help?
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
Note: USC version is Under the Southern Cross, The New Testament in Australian English
(2014). This translation was painstakingly developed by Dr. Richard Moore, a NT
Greek scholar, over nearly thirty years.
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