The Cure for Anxiety

 

We live in a world that makes it very easy to be anxious. Whether it’s financial hardships, relationship troubles, issues at work, or a thousand other things, it’s no wonder that people worldwide are worried. It can be easy for us to feel like the “default setting” of our hearts is to worry about things and stress over them. If you’re a follower of Christ, however, there is a problem with all the anxiety that we tend to feel in our everyday lives. The Bible tells us not to worry. Sounds crazy, right? How can we just not worry? Well, Jesus, in Matthew 6.25-34, lucky for us, teaches us the cure for anxiety: trust in God. Let’s look at that passage and see what Jesus’s teaching is all about.

My temptation in writing this blog is to treat it like a sermon and break down the passage verse by verse, phrase by phrase, word by word. I want so desperately to tackle the passage in depth and explain all the wonderful things happening in this block of Jesus’s teaching. This blog isn’t the right place to do that, though, so I’ll just give you a couple of high-level truths from the passage to help you understand why Jesus says that simply trusting in God is the cure for anxiety. Then, you can grab your favorite study Bible or commentary and dive deeper on your own (I would actually encourage that). 

The first thing to realize in reading Matthew 6.25-34 is that Jesus describes God as the creator of all things. God creates the birds, the flowers, and us. Now, this might seem obvious, and you might be saying, “Yeah Matt, of course He is. I already know that.” But I think it can be easy to miss the implications of what that truly means. If God is the creator and Father to all of creation, then that means that all of creation answers to Him. Therefore, He is in full control of everything that exists. That alone should be encouragement enough for us to trust in Him because if God is sovereign, and we believe that He loves us, then there is no reason to worry about anything. After all, we can know that God is strong enough, and loving enough, to take care of anything that comes our way. 

The second thing that this passage does to prove that the cure for anxiety is to trust God is Matthew’s use of what’s called a “lesser to greater” argument. This is a literary device used to argue a point where the author points out that because something lesser happens, something greater will surely happen. Let me explain a little: God is sovereign over all creation, and He takes the time to care for the birds and the flowers and provide for their needs. Birds and flowers are of little value compared to humans in everyone’s eyes, God’s and man’s. Therefore, it would stand to reason that since God provides for the things that are of less value than us, He will certainly provide for us and take care of our every need just as He does for the birds and the flowers. The result, then, is that we should not fear or worry about anything because we can trust that God loves us, His children, enough to provide for all of our needs. 

God promises to provide for every need we could ever have because He loves us. But did you notice that the passage doesn’t stop there? Verse 33, in a lot of ways, is the key to this passage. The focus is always on God’s provision because of His love for us, and rightly so, but this all comes about because of a command that He gives to us. “But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (NIV). Our focus isn’t on our worry, fear, or anxiety about the troubles of this life. Our focus is to be on living a holy life that represents Christ, serving the LORD. In doing so, we don’t have any room in our minds to worry. When our minds are fixed on God’s Kingdom and living for Him, we can truly trust in Him to take care of everything else and find the cure for anxiety.