How to Overcome Anxiety

Anyone who has hung around an evangelical congregation (or church-related group) for any length of time has heard the exhortation not to worry, and the passage from Philippians 4:

Don't be anxious about anything, but in 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.

Philippians 4:6-7 (approximately)

So does this work? Well, yes and no. You see, the same Apostle Paul who wrote that also wrote this:

And apart from other things there is the constant pressure every day of my anxiety for all the congregations. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?

2 Corinthians 11:28-29

What's going on here? Is this one of those contradictions that Bible-haters are always looking for? (No, but they should look at Proverbs 26:4-5.)

Or, to take another easy one, is a different Greek word used? Well, one (μεριμνᾶτε "to be anxious") is a verb and the other (μέριμνα "anxiety") is a noun, but they're talking about the same thing.

I think one passage ("Don't be anxious") is the goal, the "vision" if you like. The other ("my anxiety for...") is more like confession. You know, like Romans 7:19, "For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing." So if even the Apostle Paul couldn't overcome anxiety, how are people like you and me supposed to? I mean, there isn't a 3-step plan or anything, is there?

Well, sure there is -- there are probably dozens of them. But they don't work! Or they take a lifetime to complete. I won't reprise my How to Overcome Anger posting but I think the way I try to deal with anxiety is:

1. Tell God what I'm concerned about and ask him to take care of my children (or whatever) -- if applicable, ask him to fulfill one of his promises, etc., and maybe pray with someone else about that.
2. Remember (like Psalm 77:11-12) what God has done in the past.
3. Fellowship -- along the lines of #1, getting encouragement from brothers and sisters in Christ (like Hebrews 3:13) to help me hold on to hope and courage.
4. Continue doing #1-#3 for 20-30 years, and repeat as necessary.

One day, those of us who have trusted Christ will be in his presence and we'll have no need to worry about anything. (I'm not encouraging you to rush toward that day though!) Until then, I think we have to be patient with ourselves and with each other, encourage each other, pray for one another.

And not blandly quote verses when someone is anxious about something.

By the way, when I'm worried about something, I usually am not real happy when somebody who doesn't know my situation just quotes Philippians 4 or Romans 8 to me. And I hope I don't do that to others. If I do it to you, would you please remind me of what I've written here? Thanks.

The heavenly calling here on earth

I used to think the book of Hebrews was all about Jesus and his supremacy. Which it is, but it also has a lot to say about our multifaceted salvation -- that it's for here and now and also for heaven and later.

And so chapter 3 opens with a call to those with the heavenly calling (for heaven and later) -- a call to fix our thoughts on Jesus (for here and now):

Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.

Hebrews 3:1

What does salvation have to do with fixing our thoughts on Jesus? According to Csikszentmihalyi's Flow, "we are the prey of thoughts and worries intruding unwanted in consciousness" (p. 58) -- "What if this happens?" "Why did (or didn't) I say that? " ...and so on. To the extent that we fix our thoughts on Jesus, our thoughts will be off our unproductive anxieties and regrets; they'll be aimed somewhere higher. We'll be saved, then, from our tendency to obsess over those useless anxieties and regrets.

He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.

Hebrews 3:2-6

We are his house, it says; we are not a collection of miscellaneous parts, scrap lumber and bricks and such, but a real house, a place where Christ our brother lives.

This must have been an astonishing idea to its first-century readers. To them, God filled heaven and earth; only his Name dwelt in the Temple. And it was the Temple in Jerusalem; they had to travel there to be near it. The Temple was also divided into several zones: the court of the Gentiles, the court of the women, (I'm not sure of the order here) and so on, and inward to the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. To enter the inner areas required very specific qualifications, and some places could be entered only by one person, and only on one day of the year. So to think of actually being Jesus Christ's house must have been hard to imagine, maybe downright shocking.

And how do we become and remain his house? By doing great things, by observing religious rituals, by making ourselves perfect? No -- by holding on to our courage and hope. By faith, in other words.

But does this make faith another kind of job -- we do the "faith" thing and our compensation is salvation in heaven? No, I'm going to say it's more like holding a winning lottery ticket -- but to redeem it you have to travel some miles to the redemption center in Sacramento. If you hold on to your ticket all the way to Sacramento, you get the prize.

Does that mean you earn the prize by traveling to Sacramento? No, the prize is already yours. But you have to hold on to your hope when your car's radiator starts spewing steam, the train breaks down, you make a wrong turn somewhere, or whatever.

Turning 30 (no, really)

I turned 30 this month!

That's right, this month in 1978, I called Jesus my Lord for the first time and asked him

1. to save me from my sins and their eternal consequences, and
2. to be my Lord and Master.

And according to the New Testament I was born a second time then.

The way I sometimes express it is to say I was traveling down the road of life, and Jesus was at a crossroads, indicating he'd like to go the way of life with me. I thought about it (quite a while actually) and decided I'd like that. So I reached over and opened the passenger-side door and he gave me one of those looks -- you know, a look that tells you that you've just blown it.

Of course he wanted to drive. (I actually knew this -- that's why I took so long thinking about it.) So I got into the passenger seat and Jesus drove; he got the accelerator, the wheel, and the brake. Sometimes I try to grab the wheel back, or pull on the emergency brake, and inevitably my "improvements" to his plan cause trouble. But he promised that even the worst of my goof-ups wouldn't take us off a cliff.

So is Jesus still driving? As I get older, I like to think that I'm interfering with his driving less and less, but unfortunately it's a "three steps forward, two steps back" kind of thing -- or the reverse. Do I worry less? Depends on the day. As the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 11, "And apart from other things there is the constant pressure every day of my anxiety for all the churches."

And about those other things -- love, joy, peace, patience and so on -- well, I hope I'm growing in those, but do you know what? Those are fruit of the Spirit, not a wage/salary kind of deal. Paul said, "it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me" -- so he gets the credit for any changes in my life and for any good that comes from it. Well, if he's driving, then it makes sense that he gets the credit for where we end up.

And so I'm a thankful guy today.

A relaxing commute

This is a 5-minute exercise because I have a day job -- both a blessing and a curse, right?

This morning, I started up "Fred," our red '86 Toyota. It takes some doing when he's been sitting there for more than a couple of days. Over to the Menlo Park Caltrain station, where I pulled out my "Atlantic" -- it arrived yesterday -- and I didn't open my laptop, didn't write anything, didn't worry about anything.

I read 'til Mountain View, then walked over to the light rail, where I boarded the waiting train and continued reading. I read about Barbara Walters, I read about education (the cruel myth that anybody can go to college and pass freshman English), I read about politics (Obama's ascent -- and also politics of funding a defense against space-rocks). I got off the other train, kept reading, waited for the light to change, walked, and kept reading.

My five minutes are up. It was a nice commute in. Time for work though.

Prerequisites?

In today's New Testament reading, Jesus has a ships-passing-in-the-night conversation with a crowd that saw him feed the 5,000. Let's look at one part of this:

Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval."

Then they asked him, "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

Jesus answered, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

John 6:27-29

Verse 27 reminds me of an Old Testament passage -- which I see the NIV editors also marked as a cross-reference:

Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

Isaiah 55:2

I'm pretty sure this crowd would have recognized the allusion. In that Old Testament passage, God is telling the Israelites that they're fundamentally on the wrong track, that they need a major course change. Jesus, of course, is telling them the same thing.

But they don't ask him how their hearts need to change; instead, they ask "What must we do to do the works God requires?"

I don't know why they asked it quite that way -- are they asking about prerequisites or qualifications? Or were they being oblique for some other reason? In any case, Jesus doesn't quite answer them. Rather than saying, "You have to do this (in order to accomplish what God desires)," he says: "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent."

The crowd continues to miss the point, but I want to stop here. What does he mean that the work of God is to believe in Jesus?

It's not an accident of wording; I believe Jesus is turning their question on its head. What he's saying, i think, is that God requires only that we believe in Jesus.

What would happen if I really believed in him? What does that mean?

If I really took Jesus as proof of God's great love for me, I wouldn't seek validation through other people. That is, I wouldn't try to use people to make myself feel good. I'd spend more effort in blessing them, and less effort trying to trick them into admiring or respecting me.

If I really took Jesus as proof of God's promise of eternal life, I'd be less anxious about seeking pleasure here in this life. I'd be more generous, and I'd indulge myself less.

And so on. So what am I saying then? That I don't believe?

I'm saying what the distraught father in Mark 9:24 said:

I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!

That father had it right -- help comes from God through Jesus; faith isn't something we can manufacture ourselves.

And so I agree with the old song:

    I need thee, O I need thee
    Ev’ry hour I need thee. 

There really is nothing of value I can do apart from Jesus. A good thing to remember.

Report cards revisited

You remember report cards, don't you? Are you glad you're not getting them any more? Well, an open secret is that we never stop getting report cards, because most of us (maybe all) keep giving them to ourselves. If you're one of us (and I think you probably are) then I have both good news and bad news for you, but first let me review the report card.
NOTE: This is a hypothetical report card, strictly fictional. (I'm not showing you mine)

Subject	Grade	Comments
Community development	C-	donated to community center but that was it
Spiritual growth	C+	Attend church every week, don't volunteer for anything
Career/Professional	A-	That recent promotion...
Family	C	Talk with spouse an average of 20 minutes/month(*1), with kids 35 seconds/week (*2)
Exercise	B+	semi-weekly workouts; personal trainer

NOTES:

1. average husband/wife 1-on-1 conversation for "happily married" couples is 20 minutes per month.
2. I made up this 35 seconds/week; actual number may be as high as 2 minutes/week

The details in your own mental report card may be different, but I think we (particularly the male population) tend to keep score like this. I also think that the overall view we have of ourselves is based on the best grade we have. The fictional person getting the above hypothetical "mental report card" probably thinks of himself in terms of his recent promotion and his exercise regimen.

An item of good news (depending on how you look at it) is that "straight-As" is impossible. So if you're not getting all As, relax; nobody is. Why not? Because nobody's got more than 24 hours in a day.

Years ago I read a newspaper article in which the writer asked experts in a variety of fields (sleep researcher, vocational coach, financial planner, physical trainer, family therapist, and so on) how much time people needed to devote per day in their particular area just to get by—not excel,just do the minimum. Added together, the “minimum requirements” for life management totaled up to thirty-six hours a day.

John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over It All Goes Back in the Box
(Zondervan, 2007), p.127

Now the bad news (depending on your perspective) is that your life will probably be evaluated, not by the best grade you got, but by your worst. Consider a man who rose to the top of his profession but never exercised and dropped dead at forty-two. Or another who graduated at the top of his Theological Seminary class but was immediately divorced by his wife (and children) for utterly neglecting them while pursuing his dream of a theological degree.

Therefore I propose the following "meta-grade", a grade over all subjects, calculated roughly like this:

• If your worst grade is no lower than "A-minus," you are delusional and need to talk to a counselor to get a more realistic view of yourself.
  
• If your worst grade is no lower than "B-minus," your overall grade is "A"; you're doing what very few people can do. Either that or your self-assessments are whacky.
  
• If your worst grade is no lower than "C-minus," your overall grade is "B" because you're well above average. Congratulations!
  
• If your worst grade is lower than "C-minus" and your highest grade is an A or A+, that's a sign that you've been climbing a ladder that's leaning on the wrong building and you're in big trouble. Back off on that A/A+ area and bring those Ds and Fs up to C-minus, for the sake of your community, family, health, or whatever. Please!

That is what I think, anyway. Because when you look at the Bible, there are no commands that say "Thou shalt rise to the top!" -- that's just not there! What we do see, however, are things like

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

and

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her...

Ephesians 5:25

These are all in the vein of "Don't get an 'F'" rather than "Push to improve that B-plus to an A-minus, an A-minus to an A"

So for everyone searching for excellence in his/her own life, I urge you: embrace mediocrity in some things, to prevent a failing grade in other things. Excellence is OK if you don't massively goof up some other area of your life.

Do you want to get well?

That's what Jesus asked the lame man lying near the pool at Bethesda after hearing he'd been in that condition for a long time (John 5:6). The correct answer to Jesus was, of course, Yes, Lord!" (or "Yes, please, Lord," for those with better manners than I). But what does the man say?

"Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me."

Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

from John 5:7-9

I used to think it odd that the man didn't actually answer Jesus' question. But it occurred to me this morning that Jesus might have asked that in order to gauge how depressed the man was. It could have been worse -- the man might have just given Jesus a deer-in-the-headlights look.

But let's step back a minute. What's all this about the water being stirred? Apparently, the waters of this pool would be disturbed from time to time, and there was a race to see who could be the first one in after such a stirring. People believed that the first one in would be healed. Was it true? Probably not.

So this guy was focused on a false hope for healing. And how many of us are, too? How often have I thought happiness would be found in a new toy or book, or later on in life, a new car, book or relationship?

Yet, as we see, Jesus did heal the man, as he wants to heal us today.

The other thing that comes to me is this: when I'm listening to someone's problems, and I see them focused on a false hope for healing, do I just get exasperated, or do I extend grace to them, as Jesus did?