Removing Anxiety From Life
Tom Shrader examines Jesus's teaching in Luke 12 about the parable of the rich fool and God's provision for creation. He offers six practical steps for removing anxiety: believing God's promises, pursuing His priorities, praying for His involvement, praising His faithfulness, experiencing His peace, and sharing His eternal perspective. Shrader emphasizes that much anxiety comes from misplaced affection for possessions rather than trust in God's faithful provision.
“The greatest how-to book ever written is this one, and it's timeless, even though it's like copyright 2500 BC on some of it, it's timeless because man doesn't change.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain (2008)
Recorded: January 31, 2008
Duration: 40 min
Themes: anxiety, worry, trust, provision, faith, peace, possessions, contentment
Scripture: Luke 12:13-34, James 4:14, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Philippians 4:7, John 14:27, Psalm 39:4-7
Theological Themes: providence, gods provision, stewardship, materialism, spiritual discipline, biblical counseling, sanctification, spiritual maturity
Full Transcript
Week 2, we have an outline in front of you, series titled How to Stay Afloat in a World That's Circling the Drain. The premise of this series is that life has fluctuations, and in the middle of that there are all sorts of changes, things that we need to be looking out for. As change comes, that inevitably change seems to create an environment that produces at least the potential for serious problems. It creates an environment that leads to tension and stress and anxiety.
Sandy and I had a great trip, by the way. It feels like everything is changing just all around us, so many different things. I would love to sit down and talk to my dad, which is going to be hard to do because he's been dead for five years, but to ask, how did you feel when everything was changing around you?
I remember a couple of things from my dad. When my dad bought a Maxima, I knew General Motors was in trouble. When he bought a Maxima, I said, well, that's the end of that. Then I remember sitting down and we went out for coffee, we went to Starbucks, he bought and didn't complain. I knew this Starbucks thing was going to work. I wonder how he felt - he was a banker, so imagine him from a conservative environment, it was the largest bank in Iowa, imagine him in this conservative environment, what the world would be like today.
Everything Changes So Fast
When Sandy and I were talking about it, it just feels like everything changes so fast. I just figure out something. Two weeks ago when Tyler taught, I was working taking notes off my iPad and I was sitting in the back with a dinging, which if I were up here would drive me crazy, but I couldn't find it. I didn't know what was dinging on the iPad and I just start to figure out the iPad and I get a new iPad and then I get a new phone and you get all of this stuff around you changing. It produces an area of tension and stress.
Today is how to remove anxiety from your life. There's a CD that I did that's on our list. You can get it by calling the office and Sharon will send it to you and as with everything we do, there's no charge attached. There's cost for us, but no charge attached to it, but it's called Five Guaranteed Ways to Eliminate Stress in Your Life. It would be a part two to this conversation, but we're going to talk about removing anxiety from your life in a how-to situation.
When we were in Coronado, we were at Bay Books, which is this quaint little bookstore run by an old curmudgeonly lady, but she has great titles. She finds these great books, so I go through Bay Books with my phone, taking down the titles to order them off Amazon. She's got these great titles in there and there's a section on leadership.
Sandy and I have been talking. Sandy graduated from WashU, Washington University in St. Louis, which is an amazing school, and then got a graduate degree there and an MBA. We talk all the time about organization. She taught kindergarten for 12 years after that - it's a long story, but that's what she did to be able to be with her daughter, underemployed, but felt she needed to be with her daughter. She did all of that without any debt. She said a thousand times, "I learned more about organizational management teaching kindergarten than I did in my MBA program, for sure, and then I did subsequently in organization."
The Greatest How-To Book Ever Written
I've been trying to get her to say, "Listen, there's a niche market here for the kindergarten CEO and take this, and this is the kind of thing that you could do in all sorts of environments." We're talking, I said, "Let's go look at the leadership books." I'm looking, I said, "Sandy, you can do all of these better. You're going to be a better presenter, you're a better package to look at, then I got to look at Peter Drucker or whoever all over again, I can look at you."
There's all these how-to books, and it occurs to me, and I want to make sure we get this, the greatest how-to book ever written is this one, and it's timeless. Even though it's like copyright 2500 BC on some of it, it's timeless because man doesn't change. That's why you can read the old stories of ancient history and they relate, or you can read Shakespeare and it's the human condition. We don't change. It's the same inclination and instincts and thought processes. So we go back into the scripture.
If you have your Bibles, open them to Luke chapter 12, and Jesus has an encounter with a man and then tells him a story. It's a parable. Jesus told approximately 32 parables. Of the 32, 16 of them dealt with stuff. We know from scripture there's something like 500 verses on prayer and a few more than 500 on faith, but over 2000 relating to stuff. And Jesus is going to tell us that much of the anxiety in our life, the worry in our life comes from our concern about stuff.
The Story of the Inheritance Dispute
So here's the story. Luke chapter 12 verse 13, "Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, to Him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." Now that would be a normal process for a rabbi to be asked to mediate a dispute like this. And we can assume from this that this was not the older brother because he would not come for this. This would be the younger brother. And he wants a solution to this. He apparently feels that he can find somebody who will be a judge, who will be favorable to him, and maybe he has it with Jesus.
Jesus doesn't enter into the dispute. He said, "Man who appointed me judge an arbiter between you two," and here's what we're trying to get at here. Then He said to him, verse 15, "Beware and be on guard against every form of greed for not even when one has abundance does his life consist of possessions."
Jesus is going to come along and say, here's what life is, and it's going to be contrary to how the world sees things. Jesus is going to say, this is life. "I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly. This is life to know the one true God and me, His son who you sent."
That's life. The world has a vision of life. You have a whole media that's geared and the whole advertising industry designed to create a thirst within you. It's not like they create something out there. It's almost like sin—something external entices something internal. Something comes along and I am convinced I need a new driver, and it makes sense to me. I'm thinking I'll be a better person and life will be sweeter if I can hit it 20 yards further.
This is life. You've seen the ads—the guys in the lounge chair with beer in their hand, watching the girls play volleyball. Literally the message is: this is life, this is really living. You're walking through Coronado and all the way through, I'm saying to Sandy, "This is life." Well, it isn't. If there's fantasy land outside of Disneyland, it's Coronado. The minute you come over the bridge, nothing's real in there, but I'm thinking, "This is really life."
The Parable of the Rich Fool
Jesus says, "Listen, watch out, be on guard against all kinds of greed." And then He told a parable—a word picture, a story. The land of a certain man was very productive and this man began to reason to himself.
Let's look at what we have. We have a successful man. This is not a loser. This is the guy who, in our context today, would be doing infomercials. He'd be a contributor on Fox Business. He'd be on the front page of Fortune and all the magazines. He's a winner who then has a surplus. He's successful, but now he has a bumper crop and he says, "I need advice." You see a fundamental flaw here. He says, "I'm going to my favorite advisor, the one I love most, the one I can trust." And then he says to himself.
Now look in verse 17, 18 and 19. If you mark in your Bible, circle the singular personal pronouns—you'll see 13 of them. "What shall I do since I have no place to store my crops? And he said, this is what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store my crops and my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come. Take ease, eat, drink, and be merry."
"But God said to him, you fool, this very night your soul is required of you. Now who will own what you've prepared?" It doesn't need a lot of explanation.
Planning vs. Misplaced Affection
I'm going to take what I have and save it. We always have to point out here—God in His Word is never against planning. I spend a lot of time with young guys, and I try to talk about private life. I try to tell them, "You've chosen a career that unless you are an extraordinary preacher, or unless you are an amazing author, and then you have to be super amazing, you're not going to make much money. That's the bad news. The good news is you'll make enough not to live on, but if you're prudent, you'll make enough to retire on, especially if you started this when you're 25. You have compound interest, you make good decisions."
So I'm talking to a guy, he's 31, he has four kids, and we're talking about life insurance. He said, "Well, I don't have any life insurance." I said, "Well, my view is that's stupid for sure, and maybe immoral. You can get term life insurance for 30 bucks a month, you have four kids. What are you going to do if something happens to you? You're going to end up with us as a church having to take care of them? You need to be prudent."
He said, "Well, I'm trusting God." I said, "You know what? We just drove here for lunch, and I noticed you put on your seatbelt. Now, don't you trust God when you drive?" I'm not trying to be flip, I'm trying to say, "I trust God, too. I trust that He gave me $30 a month to buy the insurance." It's not anti-planning. It's planning and saying, "I'm going to make my plan"—this would be James—"whatever it is, life is but a vapor. Make your plans, write them in pencil, God has the eraser, but plan."
The problem is not planning. The problem here is misplaced affection. Look at verse 34: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." What He's saying is, in this case, your treasure's in this stuff. He said, "You've made a fundamental problem. You're rich toward this world, but you're poor toward God. You haven't thought through the inevitability of what'll happen." It seems to me that's kind of self-explanatory.
Jesus Teaches His Disciples
Verse 22—and if you're wondering how you disciple somebody, that's the key word. How do we develop people around us? How do we develop followers? It's interesting. Jesus says to His disciples, which means they were just there watching this whole thing. He's going to teach them from life's situation.
He said, "For this reason, I say to you, don't be anxious for your life—what you're going to eat—or for your body, what you're going to put on it. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing." He's going to go now to the familiar passage that we looked at last week.
"Consider the ravens." Remember that word consider? That was the operative word last week. It means to think about, ponder, analyze. Look at this and look at it seriously. "They don't sow. They don't reap. They have no storehouse, and God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than these birds?"
By the way, in the culture we're in now, it's like we have to answer that: very. You're more valuable than a bird. One of the things they're doing at the Del now, which is interesting, is they're walking around with hawks. The hawks now have scared away—there's no seagulls left at the Del. All the seagulls are gone. The hawks have done away with the seagulls.
Hawks are very valuable, and I'm watching. I think that might be the worst job—carrying the hawk around the dell and answering the question, "Yes, I have a license, yes, you have to be trained." These are very valuable animals, apparently. But just in our culture, just so you understand, you're more valuable than a bird. And He said, "How much more valuable are you than these birds? Who, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? Since you can't do this very little thing, why worry about the rest? Consider the lilies and how they grow. They don't labor or spin, yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that's how God has clothed the grass of the field, which is here today and gone tomorrow, how much more will He clothe you?"
This is a key point: to consider this, see this, and get this beyond just knowledge, but get this in your thinking and understanding.
The "I Got It" Moment
I have two daughters. Sarah was a student like me in that she spent zero time studying. She was not like me in that she got all A's. Haley studied really hard and she took it very seriously. What I tried to do, when they got to high school, I discovered that the best place for me to be with them, to communicate with them, was to go on a walk. In the car, there were distractions, we'd have music that would get in the way, but constantly we'd talk. When we'd go on a walk, I'd either have a pipe or a cigar or something, I'd be messing around with it, and they couldn't stand the silence, so they would start talking.
So I go in one night to Haley and say, "Let's go for a walk," and she said, "I can't, I'm doing math." I just said, "Haley, you're never going to use this stuff, it doesn't matter, forget it." "No, get out of here, go away, leave me alone, I don't get it. I don't get it." I went down an hour later, literally, and she's still doing it, and she said, "I don't get it." And I said, "That's because you need to go for a walk and clear your head." And she said, "No, go away." And then I hear from down the hall, I hear this: "I got it!"
I don't know what it is, but something in that whole math—and I've had people around who, and I never had the experience in math, I never had it in English, I never had it in anything really other than history and philosophy, where there are no wrong answers. But she had this "I got it" moment. You need to get that "I got it" moment on this truth right here: to consider the ravens and to understand God took care of them, and God will take care of you.
Verse 29, He said, "Do not seek what you'll eat and drink or what you'll wear in the morning, don't worry about that. For all these things, the nations of the world eagerly seek, but your Father knows that you need them. Seek first His kingdom." When all of a sudden, I'm starting to worry about the things of life, and the provision of them, I'm thinking just like somebody who denies God.
Six Points for Removing Anxiety
Now I want to go to your outline. What I did this week—all the answers are on them, there's no blanks. I'm giving you that so you can work through it. I want to look at the last six things under removing anxiety from your life, and pull out of this passage six points.
Number One: Believe God's Promises
Verse 30: "For the pagan world runs after all these things, your Father knows you need them." I had a guy that came into my office one day, and he said, "How are you doing?" Which is generally an okay question. I said, "I'm fine." And he said, "Well, how are you doing?" Now we're moving into the territory I don't like so much. And then there's the question that I can't stand. What is it? What's that next one? "How are you really doing?"
I don't like that. If I knew you well enough to want to share with you, I would have shared it at square one. He seemed concerned about how I was doing. So about four days later in the mail, I get this brown envelope. I open it up, it's bubble wrap. It's a frame inside of this parchment that clearly he's had somebody take and a little calligraphy, and on it, it simply says, "Tom, trust me, I have everything under control. Jesus."
Very sweet, very kind, and really very helpful is to remember God's promises. You could argue this, but don't. I'm talking with a guy and he says, "God doesn't owe me anything." And I said, "Just for sake of just expanding our thought processes a little, there is a sense in which He is now obligated to you." He said, "If you believe in my son, confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart, God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved." He at this point does owe me salvation. Now I understand how we could parse that, but you see what I'm saying? These promises that He made you are real. First Corinthians 10:13, "I'll never trust you beyond that which you can endure."
It feels like I can't handle it. That's why, when those feelings come in, what we know trumps what we feel. Here's part of the way of just dealing with anxiety in your life, stuff or whatever, is to remember and believe the promises of God.
Number Two: Pursue God's Priority
Here's the second thing: pursue God's priority. It's verse 31 and verse 30. "Seek His kingdom and these things will be added to you." All of a sudden my priorities need to be the same as God's priorities. I need to pursue what's important to Him.
What do you think is important to God? It seems to me from reading Scripture that there's three things: His word, the gospel, and people. So it'd be very interesting to take a sheet of paper, draw a line down it, put God at the top, put Him first on the left, you on the right, and put the priorities in your life, priorities in His life, and see if they overlap at all. What am I pursuing? So even as you leave and you're going about your business, there's a way to pursue your business so that those around you are seeing the gospel lived out and you're having an opportunity to make the invisible
Pursuing God's Kingdom
God cares about people and God cares about His word. Is that what you're seeking? And it's not just all of a sudden I have to go and work in a nonprofit or a church. It's I have to be the best example I can be for how a Christian deals in this issue, whatever it is.
So I was behind a plumber truck the other day and there's a fish on it. So if you talk to this guy, he's going to say, "I'm a Christian plumber." And the problem with that sentence is he's using Christian as an adjective, not a noun. There's not a Christian way to fix your toilet. It's whatever it is. There's not a Christian way to do it. I can be a Christian who does it. I can bring an attitude of honesty, integrity, and all. You see that? So you can be right in the middle of this pursuing His agenda.
I'm in the process of the 400th time working my way through Coach Wooden's pyramid of success. I have a thousand different books - a little hyperbole here - but I have one now and there's a part of the introduction written by his great-granddaughter. She's saying my grandfather was indeed a great-great-grandfather. She talks about the privilege of having him as a grandfather. Then she talks about the fact that she has none of the athletic ability that came from him.
I don't know how much you know about him, but in 1932 he was the National College Basketball Player of the Year. He was an All-American. To my knowledge, the only guy to be in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a collegiate player and as a coach - an amazing guy. But she said the pyramid of success isn't about athletics. The pyramid of success is about life. It's about taking these principles that essentially can be rooted in Scripture and bringing them to bear around you so that you're pursuing God's priorities.
Praying God's Involvement
Here's the third thing, and this is going to touch upon the study we just completed in the book of Philippians: pray God's involvement. Be anxious about nothing, but pray about everything. Come to God with this sense of prayer, of honest communication.
Almost everyone I've ever talked to has confessed that they feel inadequate in the area of prayer. I don't know if that's because they think it doesn't make any difference - God's going to do whatever He wants to do - or they don't really believe it's important. I don't know. I, too, struggle with it. I try to find ways to give myself the benefit of the doubt and say I truly have captured what Paul meant when he said pray without ceasing.
When he says pray without ceasing, I think what he's saying at this point is I'm developing an attitude of reverence toward God and submission to Him all day long. But remember the old acronym that many of you learned about prayer? Acts: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. That I come before Him and I acknowledge who He is, I confess - that means I agree with Him about my life and the sin there - I thank Him, and then I offer these requests.
I've discovered that the more specific you can be in prayer, the more you begin to see God's view on stuff around you. "God, I really need this driver." Which driver? That one. That one, and I really need it. It blows the budget a little bit for me, but I really need it. And God, here's why I really need it. I really need it because it gives me 20 to 25 extra yards. And God, I really need those 25 to 20 extra yards. Why do I need those 25 or 20 extra yards? Well, so I can hit a lower or higher iron into the green. And all of a sudden, I take an object and I think I just shed God's light on it, and pretty soon I'm in my fifth day of pleading for a driver, and I'm going, this seems kind of silly.
The Human ATM Problem
Everybody that I know that was a parent at some point would say they felt like a human ATM. My kids would come to me, and my kids were really good about it, but they'd come and they'd say, "Dad, I need $5. Dad, I need $10." And I would say, "Why didn't you just ask for 50 and come once and go blow all that and then come back again? Is that all I am to you? Is that all I am to you, just an ATM?"
I wonder if sometimes we don't respond to God the same way, with this transcendent ATM. "God, here's what I need." So we take Acts and we flip it around and we begin with supplication and we never get to thanksgiving, confession, or adoration.
Praising God's Faithfulness
Number four: praise God's faithfulness. It's with thanksgiving. We're wandering around Coronado, and from the day we get there, all I can think of is coming home. All I can think of is, this is amazing, but we have to leave. Then we're in about our second day and I'm saying to Sandy, "There must be a way. Doesn't Coronado need a Redemption Church too?" And it seems like they do, if only for June, July, and August.
I found myself walking along, and then everywhere we walked, we'd stop and it would say, "take one," and there's a 700 square foot house for $900,000. I found myself obsessing with the stuff I didn't have, rather than saying, "God, isn't it amazing you allowed me to be here for five days?" It doesn't look like I'm going to get back here this year, this summer. The more I thought about what I wasn't going to get, the more I failed to be thankful for the stuff that He gave me.
The more I'm thinking about what I don't have, I neglect to see the stuff I do have. Every day that I get up and I'm going, "God, my hands, my feet, my knees," every day I do that, I'm struck by the fact that the day before, I didn't have any pain and I didn't say thank you. It's to be thankful about everything.
The Foundation of Trust
The core of this is trust. It's the commodity that any relation trades on. You're watching it now nationally - it's been there for a long time - but there's not one person who, as they watch this thing, and I'm not getting into the politics of this, but
As they listen to this stuff about the Attorney General and all this, I haven't heard one person say, "I never dreamt something like that would happen." I don't have one person go, "Oh my." There's a natural suspicion where, in fact, all this does is kind of confirm this. There's no trust. We're in real tough shape.
Labor doesn't trust management, management doesn't trust labor, we don't trust the politicians, they apparently don't trust you. And I only come to God. There's a little place in Coronado that no tourists would go to because there's no windows in it, a little place called Danny's. It's a little hamburger joint, it's a great place, Sandy loves it.
We're in there and a lot of the Navy SEALs hang out in there. By the way, the night we got there, they were doing the storm on the rocks there on Coronado, where they come in with their training. I'm watching these guys and I'm thinking, they're doing this so I can sit up on the sun deck and have a $13 hot dog. It is an amazing thing what those guys do.
We're at Danny's and there's all the Navy stuff and there's "Semper Fi" - always faithful. Well, here's what's always faithful: God. Not a shot at the Marines, I admire them. But God's always faithful. He makes these promises, He keeps them.
Experiencing the Peace of God
Thanksgiving number five: I begin to experience the peace of God. It's what we talked about from Philippians 4:7. You'll have the peace of God that transcends all understanding. Jesus says it this way in John 14: "My peace I leave you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives."
The world gives a different kind of peace. The idea of world peace is the absence of turmoil and the presence of stuff. God's idea of peace is the presence of God in the midst of life.
When I was a young guy and old enough and my parents would let me, what I did every night is what a lot of people did. At 10:30 I'd turn on TV and at least watch the first half hour of Johnny Carson. Loved Johnny Carson, loved it. It was that Midwest - where was Johnny born? He wasn't born in Nebraska. He was raised in Nebraska. He was born in Iowa, that's what we need to know. Everybody thinks he was born in Nebraska, but he wasn't. His roots, his DNA are Hawkeyes, but he had that Midwest, even Nebraska though not quite as sharp, but he had that Midwest sharpness.
So he would just come on and say, "I read in the paper today where a man, 94, married Friday, a girl, woman, 92," and he said, "I'm not sure, but I think they spent their honeymoon getting out of the car." So he would just - that was it, it was every night. My favorite Carson is when Trigger died and Roy had Trigger stuffed and put in the living room, and Johnny got this little smile and said, "Don't you know Dale's hoping Roy goes first?" That's pretty good.
The Illusion of Worldly Peace
Well, what Carson did, among a lot of other things, is showcase new comics. So Eddie Murphy comes on there, Seinfeld. Well there's a guy that came on there by the name of Freddie Prinze, we now have to say Freddie Prinze Sr. I remember the first time I saw him and he's this kind of Puerto Rican kid, and funny.
Then a couple years later, he's on there, and he's got a hit TV show now, "Chico and the Man," he and Jack Albertson. He's got all this stuff. Well, about a week later, he goes and tapes the show and goes home and shoots himself.
I remember processing it. This is typically human now. And thinking, well, he should have shot himself before. He shouldn't shoot himself now. Now he's got all this. How can he shoot himself now? He should have shot himself before when he didn't have any money, he didn't have anything, he didn't have a place to live. Now he's got all this stuff and all this. How can he shoot himself now?
Well, because there's a peace that the world gives, but it's not real peace. There's an illusion. This is life, it all ties together. God says, "I'm going to give you a peace that transcends all human understanding."
Sharing God's Perspective
Here you go, one more. And I need to share God's perspective. You need to make a note because the scripture is not on there. It's Psalm 39, verse 4, 5, 6, and 7. "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days and let me know how fleeting my life really is. Teach us to number our days aright."
I used to go home every August and play golf with my dad and we played every day. I'm now stunned. I don't know how we did it. I don't think I could play golf every day. It was the vintage Midwest, this hilly course. Every day we'd go out and say, "Why don't we walk the front nine?" And I would say, "I can't even walk from the car to the clubhouse. We're not walking the front nine. Get in the cart." He'd play every day and he'd just grind.
We're driving home one day and he said, "Will you do me a favor?" And I said, "Yeah, within reason." He said, "I want to take you to the cemetery. We have a plot out there and we now have a stone and the other boys won't go and look at it, but I know you would. It's up your alley kind of thing." And I said, "Okay."
So we go and there's this stone. I mean, you can picture it. It's the gray stone. And it says "James E. Schrader" with his birth date, a dash. Obviously we haven't completed it yet. And then my mom, "Helen Irene Schrader," name, dash. I said, "What do you think?" I said, "It looks really..." He said, "It's a pretty, it's a great place, isn't it?" And I said, "Yeah, I don't know. Yes."
He said, "Carl Fidler's right over here." And I said, "You know, you're not going to have a block party when you get here, right? I mean, you know, this is what this is, right?" "Yeah, yeah." But he said, "You know, Carl was his mentor." And I said, "Yeah," and I could see it was important. I said, "It is really cool. And I appreciate as your kid, I appreciate you handling this so we didn't have to do it later on."
I walk around to the other side. So if you have all that data on one side, on the other side, all it says is "Schrader." And I remember...
An Eternal Perspective Changes Everything
Looking at that and then going back—I always had a camera and would go back and take a picture of that for a long time. I kept that picture around as a reminder of Psalm 39 verse four: "Show me, oh Lord, my life's end. Help me number my days aright." There's that eternal perspective that allows me to be able to say—not as a joke or a punchline, but to say it seriously—no matter how bad things get, they can only last a lifetime.
At my daughter Haley and Tyler's wedding, they had a video—they all have videos now. They did a Haley video and a Tyler video. The Tyler video obviously was nice, but the Haley video... I'm watching her and I'm looking at the day we brought her home from the hospital. I'm looking at her growing up, at cheer, at Sea Ranch, all that stuff. And I'm saying, "This is my little girl," and she's 20.
So we do the wedding, and in the wedding there's this awkward part at the end where you've done communion and you're finished with that, but they're finishing up the song. It's a terrible time because you're listening to somebody singing and you don't know what to do. I'm looking at Haley and I'm thinking back to that video and I'm thinking that was 20 years. Where did those 20 years go? They went so fast.
I think most people stop at that. But I found my mind going, "Wait a minute, how fast will the next 20 go?" What's fascinating now is that was 11 years ago. These last 11 years were filled with a lot of stuff, but they went by like that. It scares me—"scares" is the wrong word, but it scares me how fast the time goes and how prone I am to waste it. I can look and go, "It's almost June. Doesn't it seem like we just had Christmas services?" And at the other side of the coin, I'm in a meeting last week and the guys are talking about Advent. It just goes and goes and goes. God's saying, "That's my perspective. Make the decision. Live life. Deal with it with this understanding."
The Path to Peace
So how do I eliminate the stress in my life, the anxiety in my life? Well, basically I get my arms around who God is. I believe His promises. I get His priorities. I begin to pray and invite Him into my life. And I see His faithfulness. I look at how He's taking care of me time after time after time after time, always giving me everything I need. And oftentimes everything I want, and sometimes more than I want.
You experience this peace that passes all understanding. And then the big catch-all to me is to begin to see life as God sees it. Things are changing. Life is filled with anxiety. But you don't have to live on this roller coaster.
Natural Responses Are Still Normal
That doesn't mean, by the way, that if you lose your job, you're not going to be concerned. It doesn't mean that if you have these things that happen in your life, it's not going to take your breath away a little bit. You go to the doctor today and it's just a test. I've been down this road. Then you call and he says, "Well, I don't want to talk about it on the phone. You need to come in and see me." That's never good—unless he's got a boat payment due and he really needs that copay. That's just not good.
It's going to have you worried. And then he says, "I'm on vacation. I won't be back until July." And now you sit there for 30 days and stew. Well, the bottom line is your worrying doesn't help it, but it's natural.
Called to the Supernatural
Now, here's a key. Here's the leap, and then we're done. But God's called us not to live naturally, but supernaturally. And you can do that because you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you.
Well, the world's changing. We're going to pick up with that. Next week, we're going to talk about things that you don't often hear in polite conversation. So we'll talk about those next week.
Let's pray.
Father, thank You. Thank You that we can live a life where we trust You. It's not that we're free from the difficulties around us. It's not that there's the absence of turmoil. There's Your presence in the midst of that. God, thank You that You indwell us. And for those that are here and are listening that are really hurting, God, thank You that You will bring peace to their hearts and calm their minds. God, let us be on guard against every form of greed. We ask that You'd accomplish that in our life. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.