How to Deal with Anxiety: Dealing with Difficult Problems with R.C. Sproul

If we look at the New Testament and the record of Jesus' life and ask ourselves this question: "What negative prohibition did Jesus utter more often than any other negative prohibition?" The answer is simple, because this particular commandment was spoken so many times by Jesus that he was far ahead of anything that comes second. And if you're thinking in your mind right now, racking your brain trying to figure it out, let me help you by putting it on the board here. There were two words: "Fear not." In fact, Jesus says it so often that we sometimes miss the meaning of it because it seems as if every time he met his disciples the first thing he said to them was, "Do not be afraid." Or "Don't be afraid." He says it so often it almost seems like a greeting.

Instead of "Hello" or "Shalom," he says "Don't be afraid." And I have wondered many times why Jesus did that so often, why he used those words so often. And I suspect it has something to do with knowing him, His intimate knowledge and understanding of the fragility of our human constitution, because we, as a people, tend to be afraid. We tend to fight

anxiety

. Now, there is a word that is often misused in our vocabulary. You'll hear someone say, "Oh, I'm so looking forward to Christmas." And what they say, really, is that they really want to. They are joyfully anticipating this coming event.

But what they have really said when they say they are anxious is that they have some kind of fear of the arrival of Christmas. And that's why the term

anxiety

is often used as a substitute for the word anxious, when in fact the term anxiety refers to a spirit of fear, worry, or apprehension about something that lies in the future. Everyone is afraid. We don't always fear the same things that other people fear, but we all experience anxieties and we all experience fears. I have often said as a minister that when people go to the hospital, no matter how minor the procedure they face, there is some kind of level of anxiety that needs to be addressed in the patient.

It is human nature to feel anxious about physical well-being when you enter a place like a hospital. Anxieties can become intense and paralyzing, to the point that the level of fear in our personality can rise to the level of a phobia. And a phobia is usually a type of fear that paralyzes us in one way or another. I recently read a study that listed the ten most experienced phobias among Americans. And in that list of the ten most common phobias were things that included acrophobia, which is the fear of heights, xenophobia, which is the fear of foreigners or people different from us, claustrophobia, the fear of being in small spaces.

But the number one fear on the list was the fear of speaking in front of a group. And I looked at him and said, "Well, I can relate to that, because I have to do it quite often, and I can't imagine ever having the experience of anticipating speaking without some kind of anxiety." You would think that someone who speaks as frequently as I do would never suffer from anxiety when speaking in public, but I'll be honest with you, there is never a time when I don't have anxiety about speaking in front of a group. It's a scary thing.

And some people are so terrified that they just can't do it at all. But again, we have all these different types of anxieties, and these relate to our relationship with God. Let me direct your attention to a portion of the Sermon on the Mount that I think everyone has heard at one time or another, but we don't spend much time talking about it, where we find it in Matthew, chapter 6, beginning at the verse. 25, these words of Jesus: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will wear.

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, which neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them, are you not worth more than them? Can he add one cubit to his height? Why do you care about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they neither work nor spin, and yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory dressed one of these like this. of the field, which is today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will it not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?

Therefore, do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" drink?" Or "What shall we wear?" For all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things, and for the day its own troubles are enough." Long before I read the Bible for the first time, I was familiar with this passage of Scripture, because it was one of my father's favorite passages.

And I heard him quote it over and over again, especially at the dining table. He used the old version: "Be anxious about nothing, don't worry about what you have to eat tomorrow." "You should drink, what you should wear." The fact is that we worry about tomorrow. And our worries about tomorrow often provoke a spirit of anxiety within us. I believe Jesus gave this sermon to a mixed audience of men and women, but it has particular relevance to the men who heard it. In our own culture, I again saw a report from a psychologist that spoke of one of the most gripping anxieties for the average American man, an anxiety that he rarely expresses. , and when men meet they never talk about.

They talk about sports, they talk about business, they talk about all these things, but they don't open up and reveal the fears that they have, thinking that it's basically unmanly or something like that. And this gripping anxiety that psychologists have discovered in the American man is the fear of not being able to support his own household. That is, this is a problem specific to married men and those who have children. Because the moment a man says "I do" in front of a justice of the peace minister, he has assumed, at least in our cultural understanding, the burden of caring, not only for himself, but also for himself. same. for his wife and for his family.

And although we have now changed much of the cultural structures in which many women are in the workplace and so on, there is still that old expectation that the man is the one who should be the provider and protector of the family. He is still deeply embedded in the male psyche of our nation, and I suspect many other nations as well. Another phenomenon reported in the secular world of medicine is the strange rate of experience of nightmares; that men have twice as many nightmares as women. I wonder why: that men would have more nightmares than women.

And again, the consensus is that it is rooted in this particular fear or anxiety that man carries with him. I'm sure women have their own distinctive sets of anxieties and worries that they have to worry about, and also related to taking care of their children, their homes, and everything else. But when Jesus focuses his attention on this problem of anxiety, he is talking about the basic needs of human life and the worries and anxieties we apply to these provisions. "Will I be able to feed my family tomorrow? Will I be able to clothe my family tomorrow?

How am I going to accomplish all these things?" And Jesus says, "Do not think about tomorrow." Now, he's not saying, "Don't be provident." He is not saying, "Do not be wise." Because elsewhere in Scripture we are told that the man who does not provide for his family is worse than an infidel, and that we are supposed to be wise, prudent, and disciplined in making provisions for our family. So Jesus is not prohibiting careful planning and provisioning here. He is prohibiting our spiritual attitudes toward these endeavors and these responsibilities. He is not saying, "Don't think about tomorrow," in terms of being diligent to provide for tomorrow.

He is saying, "Don't worry about tomorrow. Do what you have to do, but at the same time, tomorrow is in God's hands." And it really is our fear of the future, more than anything else, that generates anxieties, fears and worries. We never worry about what happened yesterday. We don't have to worry about what happened yesterday, because yesterday has already happened. We may worry about the consequences of what happened yesterday and how they will play out today or tomorrow. But once the moment passes, our anxiety about it passes with it. And so we can understand at this point that the focal point of our worries and the focal point of anxiety is always the future.

It's always about what hasn't happened yet. I used to play a lot of golf and hit balls in some bad spots. And I remember once faced with a horrible situation where I had out of bounds on one side, water on the other, and trees in front of me, and there seemed to be no safe way to proceed. And I shot, it hit the trees, it ricocheted off the trees, it hit the water and I got into big trouble. But at that moment I smiled and my golf buddy said, "How can you be happy?" And I said, "Because it's over.

And all I know is that I'll never have to take that shot again as long as I live. I may have to take one just like it, but not the same one. It's gone." There's nothing to fear when it's all over. It is beforehand that anxiety invades us, because we do not know how

difficult

, painful or problematic the

problems

we will face tomorrow will be. Now, when Jesus tells those gathered not to be anxious, not to worry, and says that you cannot add any size to your body by worrying about it, worrying does not solve any

problems

, and then he rebukes. them for being of little faith, now why do that when it is our nature to worry about the things that can happen to us, and many things that can and will happen to us are worth fearing?

Because there are scary things out there. There are painful things we can experience. And not all of our concerns remain unresolved. We can remember David saying, "The thing I feared most has come upon me." And yet, at the same time, the pain of that which he feared most is something that hurt him for many, many years before it actually happened, which, we are told, the coward dies a thousand times, but the brave person, only once. But the coward goes through the experience worrying and being afraid many, many times before it actually happens. I can't think of many things that have happened to me in my life, bad things that have happened to me, that were actually worse than I thought they would be.

There are some. There were times when I went to the dentist's office where I didn't anticipate much pain, where the pain was worse than I had anticipated. We've all been there. But most of the time, when we worry about things, and when they happen, they actually aren't as bad as we thought they would be. And I think part of that is because God gives us the grace of Him in our hour of need in a way that we don't really anticipate. So this all comes down, theologically and spiritually, to a question of the relationship between the future, our fears of the future, and faith.

Jesus said, "Why are you worried, you of little faith?" Our worries and anxieties really come from a lack of trust in God's promises. And we all have that. We all have faith, but our faith is limited, and sometimes our faith does not help us overcome the anxiety of what will happen, because we are afraid that God will not do what he promises he will do. Or, on the other hand, we may be afraid that He will do what He promises. That's what scares me about God, because God calls us to live in a world that is full of problems, and He says that in the world we will have tribulation, we will have affliction, and we will have suffering.

That's what scares me, is that his word will come true. But I have to listen, as we have already seen in the problem of suffering, the other side of it, where God promises his presence and his grace to sustain us in the most

difficult

human endeavors. And Jesus is saying, "You don't have much faith if you're in the grip of anxiety. And your lack of faith is a lack of faith in God's promises." Where God says, "Trust me for tomorrow. Trust me with your life." And that's what it means to be a Christian, to trust in God throughout your life.

I have to trust God not only for what I eat, what I drink, and what I wear, but I also have to trust God to know how I will die, when I will die, where I will die, and what will happen to me. my family and everyone else when I die. I have to trust God for the future. And I believe that the greatest cure there is, the simple cure, but it is not as simple as it seems, it is simple to understand, but it is difficult to apply, is that we need to immerse ourselves in the word of God, because nothing dispels. fear more quickly than it reinforces and our understanding of God's promises, and the knowledge of God's presence.

But we are afraid that He won't be there when we need Him, or that He won't do what He said He would do. Now, as I said a few moments ago, there are different types of anxiety and they are related, as I said, to the future. And I am going to distinguish between three types of fear, or worry, or anxiety that afflict us. The first is an objective, specific fear,As I already mentioned, like a phobia, where we are afraid of small places, or we are afraid of talking, or we are afraid of dying, or we are afraid of pain, or fear of the dentist, fear of cats, fear of snakes, fear of spiders.

Those are specific fears and anxieties that we have, and there are specific ways to address them, as we all know. But unlike that type of fear, there is another type of fear that can be extremely debilitating, and this is what existentialist philosophers often talked about when they talked about the experience of distress, where they defined distress or anxiety as a nameless fear. . It's a condition that I think we've all experienced to one degree or another, where you're pacing back and forth, your stomach is spinning, your hands are shaking a little bit. You know you're scared, you might be having an anxiety attack and you have no idea why.

This has to do with being afraid in general. And again, when philosophers look at that, they talk about this kind of fear, which can feel as frightening and paralyzing to us as it is non-specific. We do not know why. That's why psychiatrists make money. Someone will come up to them and say, "I'm suffering from anxiety, but I don't know what I'm afraid of." And the psychiatrist will have to probe, investigate and try to discover what is troubling the person. Well, there may be all kinds of hidden things involved in this. I've told the story of the anxiety I experience when I'm waiting for a friend or for my wife to get home and she's late.

And she doesn't have to be an hour late for her to start getting on my nerves. If he's five minutes late, I start thinking, I start wondering, I start worrying. "Where is she? What happened to her? Has she been in a traffic accident?" I start imagining all these things that could be so terrible and I get more and more anxious. And I remember one time I waited for a friend to get home, and he didn't arrive on time, and I started pacing back and forth in front of my living room window, getting more and more nervous, looking down the road toward A.

See if I could see his car coming. And in the midst of all that, these words came to my mind: "A watched pot does not boil." You've heard that saying many, many times. You can look at that pot and look for the bubbles, and they will never appear while you're looking. You have to leave the room before the water boils. And suddenly I had a vivid memory of myself as a child, where every morning my father went out to his business in downtown Pittsburgh, and my mother was his secretary, so I went to work every day with he.

And my grandmother lived with us and would see us off to school in the morning after my parents were gone. And every night, my father and mother would come home at six and we would plan dinner around 6:15, and my grandmother would be in the kitchen making dinner. And around five to six, I was standing in front of the kitchen door, looking up the street, looking for my father's car. And if they didn't come down the street at six, I would panic. I was anticipating being an orphan. "They won't come home." Now, this was the reaction of a boy who was insecure about safety, who wanted his parents to be safe, to be alive and well, and to come home from work every day.

And my grandmother was standing by the stove looking at me anxiously. And that's where she told me: "A watched pot never boils. Go into the other room. Go play with something. They're going to be here." She knew what was worrying me. I thought, "Here I am, a grown man, and I'm still pacing in front of the window when someone is late?" This is just one of those things that happened to us when we were children and can haunt us in many, many ways as long as we live. Because in some ways we are still children and we carry the scars of the things that scared us as children, even to this day.

And I say this not to practice psychiatry without a license, but simply to say that when you have anxieties and you don't know why you have those anxieties, take a look at the past. And it may help you discover why that is. But this nameless anxiety is rooted in an even deeper fear. Again, it is fear of the future. Existentialist philosophers have no optimism about what tomorrow will bring. They say that what causes anxiety, according to Martin Heidegger, is the experience of what he calls "geworfenheit", where he says that modern man feels as if he has been thrown or thrown into a chaotic world.

It has no significant beginning. He has emerged from the slime, he is an adult germ and he moves while the clock ticks every moment towards his annihilation. And so, we are as if suspended between birth and death in the context of a vortex of meaninglessness. And that is always eating away at us, according to these pessimistic existentialists. I would look at it a little differently from a Christian perspective, that this nameless anxiety may be more deeply rooted in what I'm going to call the third type of anxiety, which is what we simply call restlessness. And this was addressed by Saint Augustine.

If you remember, his prayer in his confession book when he wrote, "O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." Now, restlessness is a kind of fear. Restlessness is the manifestation of a particular type of anxiety. It has no name, according to existentialists who speak of this amorphous type of anguish or anxiety. Augustine names the child. He said: "That anxiety, that restlessness is rooted in our basic estrangement and alienation from God, because our lives are out of control if we are estranged from God. And to be out of communion with God is an intense and powerful provocation to fear. "We not only fear the creator, but we fear His creation.

We begin to fear life itself, because we are not truly in communion with the author of life and the Lord of all life." And the only way I know to overcome this is what Augustine said: "Our hearts will remain restless until they find rest in you." This is what Jesus gave to his people. He said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God. Believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many mansions. I am going to go and prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you may also be there.

Be also .So do not be afraid of the future. Do not be afraid of tomorrow, because I am in charge of tomorrow; that God is the God of tomorrow. He says, "But I'm going to leave something behind. I'm going to give you a legacy, an inheritance." And what was it? "Peace I leave you. My peace I give you. Not as the world gives it. I give it to you. Let not your hearts be troubled." In other words, the peace Jesus speaks of here is the opposite of restlessness. It is a calmness of spirit that comes when you are in communion with God and can trust Him for tomorrow.

He is the one who conquers fear. Now, at the same time we have this negative prohibition, "Fear not." We are also called to encourage one another as Christians. And what does it mean to encourage each other? It's helping another person find courage. In many ways, I think one of the reasons the nation responded so positively to the Wizard of Oz is that we could identify with some of the characters, including the Cowardly Lion. The Cowardly Lion represented our fear, our anxiety. And what did he need to overcome his problem? He was looking for courage. He needed courage.

And that's why we need to encourage each other, because we all need courage. Now, let me finish by saying this. What is the indispensable and necessary ingredient to have courage? What do you have to have, absolutely, before you can have courage? It is the sine qua non of courage, a necessary precondition for courage. You have to have it, or you won't be able to have courage. You can have it and not have courage, but you can't have courage without having this. This is what it is, friends: fear. Why do I say that? Because it doesn't take courage to do what you're afraid to do.

Courage exists for those who are afraid. Having courage is doing what worries you, doing what you are afraid to do. And that is why we need to encourage each other, help each other overcome the anxieties, the fears, the apprehensions that prevent us from living for God.