Well, happy Memorial Day for those of you who are listening in the States and hopefully enjoying a nice long weekend. And thanks for joining us again on the Ask Pastor John podcast as we enter our week number 280, week 280 in the life of this podcast. We couldn't do it without you.

So thank you for listening and being a part of this project. Thank you for your sustained interest over these years. Well, I recently ran a quick search of the APJ inbox for the words anxiety and anxious. And what I found is that these terms appear in 620 different emails, Pastor John.

Anxiety questions arrive for us every single week and they come in many different forms from many different people with many different stories. And I know Pastor John, you have some general thoughts on anxiety that you want to share here in the podcast. So today I'll simply hand off the mic to hear from you on this theme more broadly about anxiety.

Well, let me tell you a story with a twist, which really happened, happened to me about 35 years ago, but it's a parable. It really happened, but it's a parable. It made such an impact on me that I remember it to this very day. And it's intended, I believe, for me, and I hope for you, by God, to be instructive about anxiety and to help us live more free from the crippling and witness damaging effect of anxiety.

So back when Noel and I were in our mid-30s with three children at the time, we eventually had five, finances were really tight, and we were going over our budget at the end of several months. And I knew I had to take some initiative here to do something. So we attended a seminar that was held at our church, and we discovered that the culprit was the MasterCard, which we had in those days.

We couldn't stay on top of what we were using it for, so we cut it up into pieces. Actually we saved one, and actually it worked. We just absolutely stopped using a credit card, paid everything with checks and cash, and therefore we could tell what was in our account.

Now I still carried this MasterCard, though I never used that, and we took it to California on vacation with the family, and I lost it. And I had no idea where it was. Could have been at the Seal Show in Sea World, or it could have been in a fruit shop in Tijuana where we had crossed the border to visit.

It could have been in who knows how many McDonald's, goodness gracious, and on the beach in Coronado, California where the sand really is gold, and the condos sell for a one and a quarter million dollars. We were swimming, not shopping. But the wonderful thing is that this time I felt no worries at all, none.

Now mind you, this is not natural for me. I am by nature a short-term pessimist. Ask my wife. And under ordinary circumstances, I would have concluded that someone had already charged the limit on my card, and we were in deep trouble, and I would usually get mad at myself or the family, take it out on somebody with frustration indirectly, and I would, yes, try to find some divine purpose that God was working through this, all the while struggling to be happy because I'm a Christian hedonist and I'm supposed to be happy.

This time it was different. I felt no worries at all. I didn't get angry with anyone. I never felt any frustration. I was happy the whole way through. What a victory. The whole time it was lost, I went about my business as usual, trusted God, loved my family. And when I got back from vacation, there it was, in an envelope from Dr.

Fuller, my former teacher, whom I had visited. He had found it on the floor of his car and had dropped it to me in a letter. Now you know what the secret to my happiness was? I didn't know I'd lost it. I never even looked in my wallet. I didn't know it was gone.

And I stood there holding it in my hand and smiling, and I thought, "Just think of how feisty I would have been if I'd known I'd lost it. Think how depressed I would have been and worried and angry and frustrated and irritable." And the whole time, God was covering for me, and the card was safely on its way to Minneapolis, and all my anxiety would have been useless, and all the damage I would have done to people would have been absolutely unnecessary because everything was quite under control.

Now I ask, "Is there not a parable in this for me?" It's this. As soon as we discover we have a problem, God has already been working on it, and the solution is on the way. Not always with this much ease and freedom from difficulty, but God is always at work with a solution, and it's already on the way.

I have seen it happen again and again in my life. A letter arrives with the solution to some problem, but just the day before, I had been discouraged and downcast, not knowing that the letter was already in the mail. If we believe in the God of Romans 8:28, that all things—this sovereign God—works all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

If we believe in the God of Romans 8:28, we will remember that by the time we know a problem exists, God has already been working on it, and his solution is on the way. And yes, he is already working on it before it happens. It is fitting into a plan for our good, and therefore don't fret.

Cast all your anxieties on him. They are as unnecessary as mine would have been for the lost MasterCard. Thank you, Pastor John, for sharing this story with us. This I think is now our tenth episode we've released on the theme of anxiety. A lot of emails to go based on the overflowing inbox.

You can find those past episodes at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And there you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes. You can scan through a list of our most popular ones all time, which is in a list that's updated every day. And you can read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.

And if you want new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast player. Until next time, we're going to talk social media and ask, "How can we tweet to the glory of God?" Surely, we all have a lot to learn in using our new media for eternal purposes.

And John Piper always has challenges for us as we think through stewarding our social media to the glory of God. I'm your host, Tony Rank. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.