The Anxious Christian

Mike Runcie and I hope to present a lesson on January 29, 2006 at the McKnight Road Church of Christ on this subject. I have been studying what the Bible has to say about anxiety and wanted to give you a prelude to the theme of our lesson.

Anxiety is the generic mental illness of our society today. Almost everyone I talk with, whether a teenager, or an older adult living with the ravages of the aging process, will share with me how worried they are about life. We stress out about all kinds of things. Test results, teachers, employers, fellow employees, appointments, medical conditions, financial matters and the number 1 stressor.......relationships! We tend to think of stress as coming from the outside of us. Most people think that stress is caused by conditions in our surrounding environment. The Bible suggests something else. Stress comes from the six inches between one's ears! In other words, stress or anxiety is an internal "feeling".

Psalms 127 puts it this way:

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

There is only one way to avoid the stress of life that comes from living. That is to put oneself under the the protective watch of the Lord. Those who fail to turn their lives over to Him who made us will labor in vain and find "anxious toil". The reward for those who trust in God is "sleep". When you know that your life is in the hands of the God who made you, you can sleep through the storms of life trusting that God is in control.

May God grant you the "peace that passes understanding" as we look to Jesus as our Lord and Savior in the midst of our anxieties.