“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?...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.” Matthew 6:25, 31-34 I love Rembrandt's painting The Return of the Prodigal Son. The father holds his son, holds his daughter, and touches his son and his daughter and says, "You are my beloved. I'm not going to ask you any questions. Wherever you have gone, whatever you have done, and whatever people say about you, you're my beloved. I hold you safe in my embrace. I touch you. I hold you safe under my wings. You can come home to me whose name is Compassionate, whose name is Love”…If you keep that in mind, you can deal with an enormous amount of success as well as an enormous amount of failure without losing your identity, because your identity is that you are the beloved. Long before your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your teachers, your church, or any people touched you in a loving as well as in a wounding way—long before you were rejected by some person or praised by somebody else—that voice has been there always. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." That love is there before you were born and will be there after you die. If we do not know we are the beloved sons and daughters of God, we're going to expect someone in the community to make us feel that way. They cannot. We'll expect someone to give us that perfect, unconditional love…If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, "Love me!" and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:18-19
I’ve been describing some of the lights on the dashboard of my life. When warning signals such as acquisitions, appetite, and anger begin to burn bright in my life, they indicate that something other than Jesus is the center of my attention and the desire of my heart. I try to pay attention to these affections as they rise in my heart because they give me fresh opportunities to turn again from idols to serve the true and Living God (1 Thessalonians 1:9). These little lights help keep my heart engaged on this journey of gospel transformation.
All too often my heart gets clogged with anxiety, that fear of the unknown and the uncontrollable that can seize my soul and stop short my love for God and others. According to 1 John 4:18-19, the remedy for fear is the perfect love of God. The love of God the Father--as it is expressed through the life, death, and resurrected life of His Son Jesus and poured out with the Holy Spirit—is the detergent that cleans the anxious gunk out of my fear-clogged heart (1 John 4:9-10; Romans 5:5). When I know I am loved, I won’t spend my time and energy trying to get others to love me or worrying about whether they do. Knowing that I am His beloved son in whom He is well-pleased because of Jesus frees me to live the cruciform life of loving God and loving others. Henri Nouwen makes this point in a helpful article entitled “Moving From Solitude to Community to Ministry”:
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At this writing, my wife and I are planting a new church, what we hope will one day be a family of house churches called Riverside. Needless to say, church planting, especially planting a non-traditional church, can be scary. A few months ago I went through one of those seasons in which I seriously thought this plant could die at any moment. I took my anxious heart on a 24-hour silence and solitude retreat and poured out all my fears and frustrations to God, begging Him to show up and rescue me.
That night as I walked and talked with God in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina, I noticed the anxiety light on the dashboard of my life was about to explode, so I cried out to God in my heart, “What do You want me to do? Where will all of this lead? Is this plant going to fail? What will I do next? What will people say?” My heart was full of fears, but my eyes were drawn to the clear night sky that sparkled with a myriad more stars than I’m used to seeing. The Big Dipper constellation was most prominent to me, so I stared at it for awhile. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the Father’s love for me as through this collection of stars He seemed to say, “Oh Thirsty One, I am your supply. See how big this dipper is? It still cannot contain the love I have for you. It will never run dry. I am enough.” He never answered my questions that night. As is so typical of Jesus, He answered my questions with a question of His own, “No matter what happens, whether Riverside makes it or folds, whether you are considered a failure or a success, whether you stay in Knoxville for the rest or your life or have to move away…Am I enough for you? Is my love enough to sustain you through the horror of failure or the happiness of so-called success?” To this day, I cannot look at the Big Dipper without hearing Him say, “I am enough for you, Thirsty One. I am enough. I Am.”
