The Secret to Fighting Anxiety
00:00:00.000 | Well, happy Memorial Day for those of you who are listening in the States and hopefully
00:00:08.280 | enjoying a nice long weekend.
00:00:11.260 | And thanks for joining us again on the Ask Pastor John podcast as we enter our week number
00:00:15.560 | 280, week 280 in the life of this podcast.
00:00:20.820 | We couldn't do it without you.
00:00:21.820 | So thank you for listening and being a part of this project.
00:00:25.540 | Thank you for your sustained interest over these years.
00:00:29.180 | Well, I recently ran a quick search of the APJ inbox for the words anxiety and anxious.
00:00:36.460 | And what I found is that these terms appear in 620 different emails, Pastor John.
00:00:42.600 | Anxiety questions arrive for us every single week and they come in many different forms
00:00:48.820 | from many different people with many different stories.
00:00:52.420 | And I know Pastor John, you have some general thoughts on anxiety that you want to share
00:00:55.060 | here in the podcast.
00:00:56.060 | So today I'll simply hand off the mic to hear from you on this theme more broadly about
00:00:59.780 | anxiety.
00:01:00.780 | Well, let me tell you a story with a twist, which really happened, happened to me about
00:01:07.580 | 35 years ago, but it's a parable.
00:01:11.820 | It really happened, but it's a parable.
00:01:14.340 | It made such an impact on me that I remember it to this very day.
00:01:19.740 | And it's intended, I believe, for me, and I hope for you, by God, to be instructive
00:01:27.140 | about anxiety and to help us live more free from the crippling and witness damaging effect
00:01:37.860 | of anxiety.
00:01:40.180 | So back when Noel and I were in our mid-30s with three children at the time, we eventually
00:01:46.100 | had five, finances were really tight, and we were going over our budget at the end of
00:01:54.460 | several months.
00:01:57.220 | And I knew I had to take some initiative here to do something.
00:02:01.940 | So we attended a seminar that was held at our church, and we discovered that the culprit
00:02:07.160 | was the MasterCard, which we had in those days.
00:02:12.240 | We couldn't stay on top of what we were using it for, so we cut it up into pieces.
00:02:21.220 | Actually we saved one, and actually it worked.
00:02:24.900 | We just absolutely stopped using a credit card, paid everything with checks and cash,
00:02:33.420 | and therefore we could tell what was in our account.
00:02:35.860 | Now I still carried this MasterCard, though I never used that, and we took it to California
00:02:44.980 | on vacation with the family, and I lost it.
00:02:48.320 | And I had no idea where it was.
00:02:51.960 | Could have been at the Seal Show in Sea World, or it could have been in a fruit shop in Tijuana
00:02:58.420 | where we had crossed the border to visit.
00:03:02.680 | It could have been in who knows how many McDonald's, goodness gracious, and on the beach in Coronado,
00:03:08.880 | California where the sand really is gold, and the condos sell for a one and a quarter
00:03:15.120 | million dollars.
00:03:16.180 | We were swimming, not shopping.
00:03:19.160 | But the wonderful thing is that this time I felt no worries at all, none.
00:03:27.600 | Now mind you, this is not natural for me.
00:03:29.400 | I am by nature a short-term pessimist.
00:03:34.280 | Ask my wife.
00:03:35.440 | And under ordinary circumstances, I would have concluded that someone had already charged
00:03:41.120 | the limit on my card, and we were in deep trouble, and I would usually get mad at myself
00:03:47.560 | or the family, take it out on somebody with frustration indirectly, and I would, yes,
00:03:54.880 | try to find some divine purpose that God was working through this, all the while struggling
00:04:00.640 | to be happy because I'm a Christian hedonist and I'm supposed to be happy.
00:04:05.000 | This time it was different.
00:04:06.520 | I felt no worries at all.
00:04:09.440 | I didn't get angry with anyone.
00:04:10.960 | I never felt any frustration.
00:04:13.200 | I was happy the whole way through.
00:04:16.120 | What a victory.
00:04:17.120 | The whole time it was lost, I went about my business as usual, trusted God, loved my family.
00:04:23.840 | And when I got back from vacation, there it was, in an envelope from Dr. Fuller, my former
00:04:30.840 | teacher, whom I had visited.
00:04:32.720 | He had found it on the floor of his car and had dropped it to me in a letter.
00:04:38.080 | Now you know what the secret to my happiness was?
00:04:41.960 | I didn't know I'd lost it.
00:04:44.920 | I never even looked in my wallet.
00:04:47.360 | I didn't know it was gone.
00:04:49.160 | And I stood there holding it in my hand and smiling, and I thought, "Just think of how
00:04:58.520 | feisty I would have been if I'd known I'd lost it.
00:05:04.080 | Think how depressed I would have been and worried and angry and frustrated and irritable."
00:05:10.600 | And the whole time, God was covering for me, and the card was safely on its way to Minneapolis,
00:05:19.360 | and all my anxiety would have been useless, and all the damage I would have done to people
00:05:26.640 | would have been absolutely unnecessary because everything was quite under control.
00:05:33.640 | Now I ask, "Is there not a parable in this for me?"
00:05:39.600 | It's this.
00:05:40.720 | As soon as we discover we have a problem, God has already been working on it, and the
00:05:49.040 | solution is on the way.
00:05:51.600 | Not always with this much ease and freedom from difficulty, but God is always at work
00:05:59.960 | with a solution, and it's already on the way.
00:06:04.160 | I have seen it happen again and again in my life.
00:06:09.080 | A letter arrives with the solution to some problem, but just the day before, I had been
00:06:15.560 | discouraged and downcast, not knowing that the letter was already in the mail.
00:06:22.380 | If we believe in the God of Romans 8:28, that all things—this sovereign God—works all
00:06:32.280 | things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
00:06:38.040 | If we believe in the God of Romans 8:28, we will remember that by the time we know a problem
00:06:46.440 | exists, God has already been working on it, and his solution is on the way.
00:06:53.400 | And yes, he is already working on it before it happens.
00:07:00.280 | It is fitting into a plan for our good, and therefore don't fret.
00:07:09.320 | Cast all your anxieties on him.
00:07:11.640 | They are as unnecessary as mine would have been for the lost MasterCard.
00:07:20.360 | Thank you, Pastor John, for sharing this story with us.
00:07:23.600 | This I think is now our tenth episode we've released on the theme of anxiety.
00:07:28.760 | A lot of emails to go based on the overflowing inbox.
00:07:32.200 | You can find those past episodes at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:07:37.600 | And there you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes.
00:07:41.600 | You can scan through a list of our most popular ones all time, which is in a list that's updated
00:07:45.800 | every day.
00:07:47.240 | And you can read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.
00:07:50.880 | And if you want new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to Ask
00:07:54.600 | Pastor John in your favorite podcast player.
00:07:58.640 | Until next time, we're going to talk social media and ask, "How can we tweet to the glory
00:08:02.760 | of God?"
00:08:03.760 | Surely, we all have a lot to learn in using our new media for eternal purposes.
00:08:08.880 | And John Piper always has challenges for us as we think through stewarding our social
00:08:13.360 | media to the glory of God.
00:08:15.040 | I'm your host, Tony Rank.
00:08:16.040 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:08:17.040 | Thanks for listening.
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