War Against Worry
"Doubtless
the shadow of anticipated trouble is, to timorous minds, a more prolific source
of sorrow than the trouble itself, but faith puts a strengthening plaister to
the back of courage, and throws out of the window the dregs of the cup of
trembling." C.H.Spurgeon
John Piper
has a great line in which he says "Books don't change people. Sentences
do." That, of course, is a paraphrase but it is also a line that has
changed me. I linger over sentences. My opening quote from the famous 19th
century British preacher, Charles Spurgeon, reminded me of another line that
gripped me many years ago. It was from an eighteenth century French Jesuit
named Jean Nicholas Grou who I know nothing more about than this one quote. He
wrote "The chief pang of most trials
is not so much the actual suffering itself as our own spirit of resistance to
it."
I am sure
that the reason these quotes stand out to me is that I, like many others, have
the unfortunate ability to "anticipate trouble." Worrying is exercising
the gift of imagination without simultaneously exercising the gift of faith.
Faith is the God-given ability to see the future through God's eyes by means of
the promises of God in Scripture. Worry is to strip the future of the promises,
the presence, and the power of God and to imagine what a God-forsaken trial is
going to be like for us. This misery is what Grou calls "the chief pang of most trials..."
and Spurgeon calls "a more prolific
source of sorrow than the trouble itself."
The simple
answer to the battle against the stress of anxiety is to return to the real
world: a world in which God is actually sovereign, Christ is truly King, and
God's promises are irrevocably certain because of the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Stop imagining life without God.
In Psalm
27, David is surrounded by his enemies. This could be when Saul was chasing him
into the wilderness to kill him. It could be later when David's own son,
Absalom, seeks to overthrow David and take the kingdom by force. What does David
say? "The Lord is my light and my
salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom
shall I be afraid?" David had a strategy that enabled him to sleep at
night when his life was in perpetual danger. He writes in Psalm 27:4 - "One thing I have asked of the Lord,
that I will seek after; that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his
temple." David's singular priority was to consistently live with God in
the center of his sight. To spend time meditating on an imaginary world in
which God was absent and evil reigned supreme was idiotic. He made it His
consistent ambition to always be in the presence of God looking at the beauty
of God.
That is the
answer to worry. Get God in clear and central focus. This is why the Scriptures
are the most helpful gift that you and I have for gaining a right view of
reality. David's only concern was not to be able to see God's face. When God
and His glory and His promises were before His eyes through faith, David could
end with this attitude toward the future: "I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land
of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord."
The
Scriptures tell us as Christians that we have been given the clearest view of
the glory of God in the face of His Son Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6). We
have been given the assurance that because Christ died and rose from the dead
that nothing will separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:32ff). Every
promise of God is sealed and guaranteed in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
If you are going to let your imagination run wild, let it run through the
promises of God. You will still have troubles for a time but you will be
rescued from "a more prolific source
of sorrow than the trouble itself." Let such sorrow cease. See God as
He really is. Kill worry with the Word.
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