I’ve been talking a lot this week about knowing the role propositions should play in our lives as Christians. I’ve also written about how we need to be grounded in Scripture in order to know these propositions. I would like to give an example of applying such a proposition tonight that struck me as reading the Philippians 4 passage which I was reading mainly to remind myself of the kind of things I’m to think about.
I haven’t completely thought this through yet. I sometimes see that as an advantage though as I’m one who best sees by writing. In writing, you can also get to see the way my mind is working and how I come to the conclusions I come to from the premises that I start with.
Right before the main verses in Philippians 4, Paul gives a simple admonition. “Be anxious for nothing.” It’s so short that you could skip over it if you weren’t really thinking about what you were reading, and isn’t that too often a problem for us whenever we do read anything?
But let us suppose we took that commandment and we did something amazing. What if we actually obeyed it? Paul tells us to be anxious for nothing. You might be tempted to say “Paul doesn’t know what kind of life I live!” Go read 2 Corinthians 11 first though and see what kind of life he lived!
What do we really have to be anxious about? I generally am anxiety-ridden, so I can think of several things to be anxious about, but in the light of the great picture of God’s hand working in the universe, are any of them really something to be anxious about? I get anxious about marriage for instance and wonder if it will ever happen. Does getting anxious about such help me get closer? It sure hasn’t so far and if anything, by making me nervous about any presentation to a lady, it drags me further away.
Maybe you’re anxious about money. Don’t we remember what Christ said in Matthew 6? Don’t we know that we are worth more than many sparrows and that if God clothes beautifully flowers, how much more will he take care of us? Do we not remember that Luk 12:32 says that we, the little flock, should not fear. It is the Father’s GOOD PLEASURE to GIVE US the KINGDOM!
How about the future? Whose hand is it in? Do you trust the hand of God? Your future on Earth will probably not be perfect. So what? Your future in Heaven is guaranteed to be awesome. Has worrying about the future ever really helped change the future or has it made you more nervous in approaching it?
Equally absurd is worrying about the past. Actually, it’s more absurd in a way. We can work to do something about the future. Can we change the past? Now I could go back and edit anything I wanted to in this blog before I published it, but I couldn’t go back and edit the time I spent writing it.
Why do we worry so much about what we can’t change? Do we regret a lot. Yeah. We all do. Do we not realize though how we’re making out God to be? We’re making him out to be one who is holding our sins over our heads from the past and eager to punish us for them. Do we really think we serve a God like that? The more we’re anxious about the past, the more we will think like that.
Then there’s also the present. Time spent in anxiety could be better spent in prayer or study or doing good to your neighbor or just relaxing and having some fun. Worrying only shuts us down in the present. It doesn’t enable us to act in any way that is more godly.
So why not take this and realize the propositions behind it. Be anxious for nothing. Why? Because God is sovereign and in control. The same one who wrote this wrote Romans 8, another passage that should be reviewed to understand how all things do work for good to those that love the Lord.
Indeed they do. Do we believe it though?
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