Have I Cast My Anxieties or Hoarded Them?
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00:00:05.000 | Matthew in Edmonton, Alberta writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I was wondering how
00:00:10.180 | exactly to go about casting my anxieties on the Lord.
00:00:13.980 | For example, do I need to pray and explain every anxiety I have, or can I just trust
00:00:19.480 | Him without signifying it with prayer, much like conversion does not need to be signified
00:00:23.520 | with a prayer?
00:00:25.080 | Maybe I'm thinking too mechanically about it because I end up feeling more anxious about
00:00:29.280 | it and I feel I'm not explaining the anxiety well enough.
00:00:32.760 | So I get anxious that I'm not casting every little anxiety on Him."
00:00:37.600 | Pastor John, what would you say to Matthew?
00:00:41.080 | Overly introspective people can get so tangled up in the processes of sanctification that
00:00:49.320 | they are paralyzed.
00:00:51.120 | And Matthew seems to wrestle with that tendency.
00:00:54.560 | I'm making a judgment call.
00:00:55.960 | He can decide if I'm right or not.
00:00:57.720 | A lot of us are like that.
00:01:01.920 | It is good to be introspective.
00:01:05.120 | If I don't know what I'm feeling, I won't know whether I should give thanks to God for
00:01:12.040 | His blessing or counter Satan's assault.
00:01:14.280 | If you're never introspective, you don't know what you're feeling, then you don't know how
00:01:18.480 | to do anything spiritually.
00:01:21.320 | So we have to be aware of what's going on inside of us.
00:01:24.560 | So yes, amen.
00:01:26.120 | Matthew's doing the right thing in analyzing his own soul in that regard, but there is
00:01:32.560 | an unhealthy preoccupation with ourselves that can produce no good fruit.
00:01:38.320 | So for example, if you're feeling anxious and you ask God to give you peace, it won't
00:01:46.040 | work to fix your gaze steadily on your soul and analyze whether the peace is happening
00:01:53.920 | or not.
00:01:55.360 | You'll never have peace that way.
00:01:57.440 | Why not?
00:01:58.680 | This is going to take us into the answer to Matthew's question about what it means to
00:02:03.800 | cast your burdens and your anxieties on the Lord.
00:02:07.920 | It does not mean cast them and then stare at the soul to see if it feels unburdened
00:02:15.920 | or anxiety-free.
00:02:17.920 | And the reason that won't work, and you can't have peace that way, is that our souls were
00:02:24.760 | made to be drawn out of themselves to Christ.
00:02:29.960 | We're made to be drawn out, our focus to be drawn out, our attention, our love, our admiration,
00:02:36.320 | our focus is to be drawn out to Christ.
00:02:41.960 | This may be the most important thing I could say to Matthew that he needs to get a handle
00:02:47.040 | on introspection or looking at the state of our souls to see if they're peaceful or if
00:02:55.000 | they're anxious or if they're coveting or if they're lustful or if they're puffed up
00:02:59.520 | or if they're ungrateful.
00:03:02.040 | The reason for that inward look to see if we're in the grip of any of those things is
00:03:07.840 | to help us know what to look to Christ for.
00:03:12.600 | Let me say it again, the reason for the inward look is to know better what to look to Christ
00:03:22.480 | for.
00:03:23.920 | Look to Christ for.
00:03:25.840 | Look to Christ for.
00:03:29.360 | Christ is our peace.
00:03:30.840 | Christ is our safety.
00:03:32.760 | Christ is our righteousness.
00:03:34.440 | Christ is our satisfaction, which means that the key to experiencing peace and safety and
00:03:41.480 | holiness and satisfaction is to look steadily, steadfastly to him and not to whether our
00:03:50.040 | souls are having those experiences or not.
00:03:53.120 | Now, let me be a little more practical, a little more specific to what Matthew is asking.
00:03:58.480 | I think the answer specifically to his question about how to cast our anxieties on the Lord
00:04:06.400 | is made problematical because Christ is invisible.
00:04:10.280 | You can't see him, and I'm telling you, look at him, look at him.
00:04:13.820 | So what do I mean when I say look to him?
00:04:17.600 | And what I mean is look to his promises.
00:04:23.640 | We see Christ through the Word of Christ.
00:04:28.480 | First Samuel 3, 21, "The Lord revealed himself to Samuel by the word of the Lord."
00:04:36.560 | He revealed himself by the word of the Lord.
00:04:40.520 | That's how we fix our gaze on the Lord.
00:04:43.680 | That's how we go out of ourselves to the Lord.
00:04:47.080 | We see him through his word.
00:04:49.560 | So practically speaking, we get outside ourselves and experience the peace of Christ by fixing
00:04:56.280 | our consciousness on a particular promise that God has for us because of Christ.
00:05:02.960 | All the promises of God are, yes, in Christ.
00:05:05.660 | We fix our gaze on one of those promises, and we see Christ speaking to us through that
00:05:12.840 | promise.
00:05:13.840 | I did that so many times, Tony, as I stood up to preach.
00:05:17.080 | It was as though the Lord just looked me right in the face and said, "I will help you."
00:05:23.560 | And that was a quotation from Isaiah 41.10.
00:05:26.480 | I didn't make that up.
00:05:27.800 | He said that to me.
00:05:29.740 | And so that's what I mean by meeting the Lord in his word.
00:05:34.360 | So Matthew, if you want to get the whole picture of how I work on this, the book Future Grace
00:05:41.220 | is what that's about, or the boiled-down version of Future Grace is called Battling Unbelief.
00:05:47.780 | So one last thing.
00:05:49.920 | You ask, "Do I need to pray and explain every anxiety I have, or can I just trust him without
00:05:57.440 | signifying it with a prayer?"
00:05:59.800 | Okay, I hear what he's saying there, because it says in Philippians 4, "Let your requests—don't
00:06:07.720 | be anxious about anything—let your requests be made known to God."
00:06:12.000 | And he's saying, "Do I have to do it with every anxiety all day long?"
00:06:16.960 | Well, it doesn't say, Matthew, it doesn't say, does it, how often to let your requests
00:06:23.000 | be made known.
00:06:24.000 | It just says, "Let them be made known."
00:06:26.280 | So here's what—here we are sitting together, Matthew, you and me in a counseling room.
00:06:30.760 | I'm sending you out with this practical counsel.
00:06:34.200 | The way I would suggest that Matthew go forward is this.
00:06:37.560 | At the beginning of every day, call to mind from the Word some promises, two or three
00:06:44.780 | or one, promises of God that relate to the typical anxieties that might crop up that
00:06:52.040 | day.
00:06:53.040 | You're going to be going through a storm in that day, and he finds a promise or two
00:06:55.920 | that relates to that.
00:06:58.480 | Then pray and ask God to help you believe that promise.
00:07:04.640 | I would say, Matthew, write one of those down on a little piece of paper and stick it in
00:07:10.040 | your shirt pocket, and then head out into your day.
00:07:15.160 | And periodically, periodically—don't ask me how many times, just as you feel led—periodically
00:07:21.360 | through the day, pull out that little piece of paper, read that promise, and say to God,
00:07:26.800 | "Help me trust this promise," and then enjoy him saying the promise back to you.
00:07:31.680 | "I will help you.
00:07:32.680 | I will strengthen you," and go back to the work that you're doing.
00:07:36.880 | And don't worry that over the next two hours you're not going to be saying to the Lord,
00:07:40.320 | "Help me," because you're concentrating on your computer programming or whatever you're
00:07:44.880 | doing.
00:07:45.880 | In other words, you don't have to be asking for help consciously all day long.
00:07:52.400 | There is a rhythm, a rhythm of life in the Holy Spirit, and he'll guide you what that
00:07:58.120 | rhythm is.
00:07:59.960 | Wonderful word.
00:08:00.960 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question, Matthew.
00:08:03.200 | For more details about those books, "Future Grace" and "Battling Unbelief," go to DesiringGod.org
00:08:09.280 | and click on the "Books" tab at the top of the homepage.
00:08:11.880 | As always, this is the easiest way to find John Piper's books.
00:08:15.320 | Most of them you can download in their entirety for free, and it is possible because we have
00:08:20.440 | generous financial donors who support our work and who I know listen to this podcast,
00:08:25.040 | so thank you.
00:08:27.040 | Will Pastor John encourages Christian leaders to give their lives to build a risk-taking
00:08:32.160 | local church?
00:08:33.960 | That's tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:08:35.840 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:37.400 | We'll see you then.
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