Anonymous Asks (279)

“Is it possible not to worry about tomorrow?”

Our question today relates to a passage in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount in which the Lord Jesus encourages those who desire to follow him to trust their heavenly Father for their daily needs the same way he did during the three years or so in which he taught and healed in Judea and Galilee.

Do Not Be Anxious

The entire relevant section of the Sermon runs as follows:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

But the passage prompts this very practical question: Can perfect control of anxiety actually be accomplished in this life? On the one hand, it would appear the Lord himself assumed so, or he would not have said it. On the other, experience tells us not many Christians truly live this out.

The Sermon as Aspiration

My own understanding of the Sermon is that much of it is aspirational at best. It’s a target to be aimed at, not a resume to self-promote in the presence of God. Anger, insults and slips of the lip put the devout man or woman who relies on their ability to keep the Law of Moses in as much risk of hell as murder. Sexual desire entertained in the mind and heart displeases God in the same way adultery does. The bar the Lord sets is staggeringly high. If our relationship with God depended on obeying the Sermon top to bottom for the rest of our lives, we would all be without hope. This is why the default approach to the Sermon of Christians who believe it maps out the Lord’s daily expectations for every believer is to start telling us how the Lord didn’t actually mean what he appears to have meant.

I suspect that was the Lord’s intention. As with the rich young ruler, he identified some area of thought, presumption, omission or practice in every heart in the crowd that day and pierced every conscience present that hadn’t already been seared into uselessness. “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.” In doing so, he was pointing out that we are all hopelessly sick and in need of more than a series of divine health tips or a new set of legal boxes to check: we need the doctor himself to come and cure us.

The Sermon as Signpost

Thank the Lord our eternal salvation doesn’t depend on never getting angry, never judging, never lusting and never worrying, or never having left these offenses uncovered by animal sacrifices when we commit them. God had something better in mind for his people, and he provided it for us through the death of his perfect Son, in whom we place our trust.

So let’s get past repurposing the Sermon as a behavioral checklist we can use to pronounce ourselves pleasing to God and better than others. It doesn’t work that way, and it was never intended to. What the Sermon does is point us in the direction the Father expects his children to head as we are increasingly conformed to his likeness. Most Christians will never be entirely anxiety free in this life, but that doesn’t mean we may cease to aspire to obedience in this area.

Practice Makes Perfect

I believe there are practical ways we can learn to trust the Lord more completely and display a family likeness to God that will be both appealing and convicting to the world around us.

1/ Recognizing and Marking Patterns

One is to watch daily for answers to prayer and remember to audibly express thanks when they are received. I am amazed at how often I ask for something I need, then forget I asked, or forget to say thanks when I do. To the extent I mark in my own mind and with my own mouth every time the Lord provides for my needs as requested, it changes my level of concern about tomorrow because I have a reviewable history demonstrating a pattern of divine care that never fails.

We had a little dog for almost sixteen years who never feared anything for the simple reason he was almost never hurt or deprived in his entire life. He had an entire family of human beings watching out for him, so his expectation was always of good things, not bad. When the occasional moment of pain or unpleasantness happened, he shrugged it off because it wasn’t representative. He could recognize a pattern. We need to do that too. If we mark our days by rejoicing in what we have rather than contemplating what we don’t, we change our mindset. That’s not some sort of modern positive thinking theory; it’s simply learning to be appropriately thankful.

2/ Refusing to Give Expression to Doubts and Fears

Secondly, distinguish between a worried mind and a worried mouth. The former will follow the latter. There is a real sense in which we can give anxiety new life by expressing it to others or banging it out on the keyboard for the world on social media. When we put our fears into words, they become all the more real and dreadful. I resolved to stop doing this a while back. When I feel anxiety today, I don’t call a Christian friend or family member to unload on them. Rather, I take it to the Lord and cast my cares on him in prayer. Then I simply refuse to talk about it to anyone else. Words always make it worse, not better.

That sounds implausible, especially to women. Trust me, it works. It’s not inauthentic. It’s walking the walk and putting your mouth where your money is.

3/ Remember the Gentiles

Thirdly, remember the Gentiles, for “the Gentiles seek after all these things”. Remember all those panicky Christians during the COVID scare, flapping around on Facebook and fretting about what everybody else was or wasn’t doing? They too were just doing what all the Gentiles were doing, acting like the Lord wasn’t there or didn’t know what was happening. We are not supposed to be like that. In times of fear and peril, the world finds itself looking hard at us, and wondering why we are not reacting the same way they are — unless we are, in which case they can’t tell any difference. That’s sad when we allow it to happen, because it’s opportunity lost.

Making the Impossible Possible

So is it possible not to worry about tomorrow? Maybe not today, if you have regularly allowed yourself to spend hours working through all the possible negatives that might occur and rehearsed them endlessly for family and friends. It will take a while to change a pattern of anticipating the worst developed over years of bad practice. But it’s worth cultivating a mindset of trust based on a history of the Lord’s faithfulness. It will change the way you relate to both the Lord and the world.

One day it will dawn on you that instead of asking “What if” this or that goes wrong, you are asking “Why didn’t that bother me?”