Don’t Worry About a Thing || Anxiety in Anxious Times || Week 1

The last few years have been some of the most anxious the world has been in a long time. How did you get through these times?

Whether you have gone to therapy, tried meditating, created a healthy routine, socialized, or had other beneficial solutions, I’m proud of you. I also want to acknowledge the hardships the last few years have brought for you and the world.

We’ve been in a pandemic for almost three full years as I write this; we’ve seen social justice movements take place, we’ve had political upheaval in a variety of ways, we’ve had an unstable economy, we’ve had a very chaotic school system throughout the pandemic, we’ve had an unstable job market. Did I miss anything?

The one that I hope you haven’t heard is to “not worry about it” or “don’t worry” because that can, and probably did, make your anxiety worsen. Anxiety isn’t something that most of us can’t just get over. It’s something that people have to deal with day in and day out of their waking life. According to an article from Elements Behavioral Health, 25% of all teens have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder as of 2013. These numbers are projected to increase, given everything we’ve gone through as a society.

Mental health is becoming more and more normalized nowadays, with therapy and counseling being easier to access, more support groups being created, and more understanding of what anxiety does to our mind and body allows for flexibility and adaptability in the workplace and classroom. Yet, do you know what the Bible says about anxiety? 

During this four-week series, we’ll look at just that. We’ll discuss how we can shift our worry, what wisdom we can provide our anxiety, how faith impacts our views on our anxiety, and how prayer plays a role in managing our anxiety. Today, let’s discuss how we can shift our anxiety to a more peaceful mindset. 

Before we get into scripture, let’s define anxiety from a biblical perspective. Jesus uses variations of the same Greek word in this context. The word ” merimnaó ” (mer-im-nah-o) can be translated as “being pulled apart in different directions.” Anxiety pulls our attention in multiple directions at one time. We can be anxious about school, our home life, our relationships, and our friendships, among other things, all at the same time. This can cause us to feel panic, fear, overwhelmed, and scared. This can make our thoughts race, our chest tightens, and our breathing shallow, among other things. Do you feel anxiety? If so, how do you feel it?

Everyone will experience anxiety at some point in life and in many different ways. Some people have difficulty managing their anxiety and might be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder such as General Anxiety Disorder, a type of Phobia, Social Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Panic Disorder. Sometimes, people will need medication to help manage the symptoms, therapy/counseling to talk about their anxiety, and possible lifestyle changes to remove triggers. 

Feeling anxiety or having an anxiety disorder isn’t unbiblical or makes you a bad Christian. God gave us our emotions and the ability to understand them. Things like medication and therapy are ways we have available to help manage and understand our anxiety. We can find out why it is the way it is and understand how we can live with it. Sometimes, mental health can be looked down on in Christian cultures, but that’s not what this series is about. This series will provide a safe space to discuss these topics and attempt to gain a biblical understanding of anxiety that we can apply to our daily lives. If you need to talk to someone about your anxiety, please talk to an appropriate adult, such as a licensed therapist/counselor, school counselor, Pastor, or youth leader.

Let’s begin our series by reading today’s main scripture.

Open up your Bibles to Matthew 6:25-34 (ERV):

“So I tell you, don’t worry about the things you need to live – what you will eat, drink, or wear. Life is more important than food, and the body is more important than what you put on it. Look at the birds. They don’t plant, harvest, or save food in barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. Don’t you know you are worth much more than they are? You cannot add any time to your life by worrying about it.” And why do you worry about clothes? Look at the wildflowers in the field. See how they grow. They don’t work or make clothes for themselves. But I tell you that even Solomon, the great and rich kind, was not dressed as beautifully as one of these flowers. If God makes what grows in the field so beautiful, what do you think he will do for you? It’s just grass – one day it’s alive, and the next day someone throws it into a fire. But God cares enough to make it beautiful. Surely he will do much more for you. Your faith is so small. “Don’t worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?'” That’s what those people who don’t know God are always thinking about. Don’t worry, because your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. What you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what he wants you to do. Then he will give you all these other things you need. So don’t worry about tomorrow. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Tomorrow will have its own worries.

We’re going to break this story down into three points: 

• Birds still do stuff while God feeds them, which means you can do stuff too. 
• Wisdom starts our understanding of where we are currently.
• Anxiety has been around for a long time, reminding us that we are not alone.

Point #1: Birds do things, and God cares for them, which means you can do things too. 

Have you ever wondered why Jesus mentions birds and flowers in this section? Does it feel weird that Jesus mentions them in the same section about deciding what to eat and wear? In proper Jesus format, there’s a reason for this. 

Jesus is using this analogy to refer back to an old proverb from Solomon, whom we will discuss soon.

Open your Bibles up to Proverbs 19:15 (ERV):

Laziness brings on sleep, and an appetite for rest brings on hunger.

Jesus wants us to remember that even though God feeds the birds, the birds will still work to provide for their needs. The birds don’t sit and do nothing, waiting for God to feed them. God provides them food; the birds must go out and get it.  

We can go out and provide for ourselves. We have the power of the Holy Spirit to do what’s needed. There will be days when we feel too tired, anxious, or exhausted to go out and do what we need to do. There will be days when our anxiety feels too powerful to manage. There will be moments when we feel paralyzed and don’t know what to do. Guess what? 

Jesus walks with us through all those moments. Jesus understands the pain of anxiety and still marches forward. Look at Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he prays to God to take his suffering away from him. Jesus doesn’t want to be killed. He sweats blood in his anxiousness about this and still tells God that he will follow God’s will. Jesus marches on. 

We can march on. We can go get the thing done that’s making us nervous. We can do the scary thing. We can overcome the thing that brings us fear. We can do it through the power of Jesus, who walks with us each step of the way. We just have to take action to do it, and God will provide how we can do it. Birds do things, and God cares for them, which means you can do things too. 

Point #2: Wisdom starts with understanding where we are currently.

How many of you are familiar with King Solomon? [Take some time to discuss this with your group. Write down the things that they know about Solomon.]

Why does Jesus mention Solomon in this section? What does Solomon’s clothing attire have to do with anything about worry or anxiety? We will explore 1 Kings and Ecclesiastes to see what Solomon is about.

Open up your Bibles to 1 Kings 10:4-7 (ERV):

The queen of Sheba saw that Solomon was very wise. She also saw the beautiful palace he had built. She saw the food at the king’s table. She saw his officials meeting together. She saw the servants in the palace and the good clothes they wore. She saw his parties and the sacrifices that he offered in the Lord’s Temple. She was so amazed, she could hardly breathe! Then she said to King Solomon, “The stories I heard in my country about your great works and your wisdom are true. I did not believe it until I came and saw it with my own eyes. Now I see that it is even greater than what I heard. Your wealth and wisdom are much greater than people told me. 

Solomon was one of the wisest men of his time, if not the wisest. He wrote a more significant majority of the book of Proverbs and the entirety of the book of Ecclesiastes. Yet, why is he lumped in with talking about wildflowers? Did you notice similarities between what the woman saw and what Jesus said? 

The wildflowers don’t work or make clothes for themselves. Solomon had many servants and provided them with fabulous clothes to wear. This was a very wealthy and wise king, and nothing was said about Solomon’s appearance. Yet, the wisdom was the thing that the women noted. Solomon’s wisdom developed over time in his walk with God. I’m sure it didn’t come naturally to him, nor was it easy. He had to grow in his faith, like a wildflower that grows in the field.

Note that this isn’t a houseplant or a garden, but wildflowers. We take care of the houseplants and gardens, but only a few, if any, take care of the wildflowers. Wildflowers are just there. They just exist until someone decides to get rid of them. We’re just humans as well. Solomon is just human. 

God cares so much about his creation that he would make something that we view as ugly and intrusive, beautiful, and colorful. If he does that for them, what can God do for us? Note that Jesus didn’t stop there in this analogy. Jesus calls his audience out, accusing them of their faith being small. What does that mean to you? How can your faith be small? 

We’ll touch on that later but let me share Solomon’s wisdom that connects to what Jesus is saying here.

Turn your Bibles to Ecclesiastes 12:12-14 (ERV):

So, son, study these sayings, but be careful about other teachings. People are always writing books, and too much study will make you very tired. Now, what should we learn from everything that is written in this book? The most important thing a person can do is to respect God and obey his commands, because he knows about everything people do – even the secret things. He knows about all the good and all the bad, and he will judge people for everything they do.

Solomon teaches us to study scripture and be mindful of what we receive outside the Bible. There are tons of self-help and self-care resources out in the world that can overwhelm us in trying to figure out our problems. Who would have thought Solomon would warn us of this? People always share their insights; too much studying will wear us out. So, what should we do? 

Respect God and obey his commands. Honor God with everything we say and everything we do. Love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as Jesus loved us. How do we get there? 

Keep the faith that God can guide you. Jesus tells his disciples that they have small faith. The Greek word for “little faith” is oligopistos, meaning “someone disinterested in walking intimately with God.”

These could be people just going through the motions of being a Christian. People who attend church because it’s Sunday and mom and dad say I have to. People who pray because everyone else does it. People go to their youth group because mom and dad tell them to go instead of wanting to fellowship with friends and learn about God’s word. 

Jesus isn’t forcing them to do this, and he’s not forcing you. He would love it if you followed him closely by: 

• Reading your Bible to better understand his teachings and develop a tighter relationship with him. 
• Praying and worshipping because he wants to hear from you. All the good things going on in your life and the wrong things. Talk to him like you’re talking to a friend. 

It takes faith sometimes to do this, let’s be honest. Yet, the benefits greatly outweigh the consequences. We need to have faith in our God. That faith comes from understanding who we are and where we’re at.

Point #3: Anxiety has been around for a long time, reminding us that we are not alone.

God knows everything we need to keep us alive and kicking and will provide those things. Yet, we should focus on God’s kingdom and doing what God wants us to do. We’ll get all the other things we need if we do that. God will provide us the food and clothes we need, and as long as we focus on God’s kingdom and will for us, then we will receive the other things we need. 

The focus on God’s kingdom refers to the concept of salvation. What is salvation? Salvation is “God’s rescue that delivers believers out of destruction and into His safety.”. Jesus wanted all his followers to be saved, and God’s complete care and provision would come with it.

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter 5:7 (ERV):

Give all your worries to him, because he cares for you. 

Peter is addressing the young people in his community. Peter wants them to be humble with God and others because God will lift them up when the time comes. Young people should give all their worries to God because God cares for them. Different translations say that young people should “cast their anxieties onto God.”.

Anxiety was around when 1 Peter was written in AD 64-65. Anxiety has existed for at least 2,000 years. It also existed in the Old Testament but was given this name throughout the New Testament. We are not the only ones going who have dealt with anxiety. Based on the statistics I gave at the beginning of the lesson, 1 in 4 people will have struggled with anxiety in their lives. 

Jesus wrestled with anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was arrested and crucified. David wrestled with anxiety on the battlefield. Daniel was anxious during a vision he had with God. Paul was dealing with anxiety with his missionary work at the different churches. 

Anxiety is an emotion that God has given us from the beginning, and Jesus teaches us how we can manage it. The last verse of our focus scripture reminds us to not worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will have its own worries. We should instead worry about today and the worries it brings.

We can only exist in the present. We can’t exist in the past, but we can learn from it. We can’t exist in the future, but we can strive to be a better version of who we are today. The only version of us that exists right now is breathing right now. We can focus on that, bring us to the problems that face us today, learn how to overcome those problems, and set us up for success. When tomorrow gets here, we can worry about its problem then. Until then, let’s stay in the moment. 

So, what did we learn today? We talked about the importance of going out to get what God has provided for us, like the birds do. We talked about how wisdom begins by understanding where we’re currently. We talked about how anxiety was around since the early Bible days, and we are reminded that we are not alone in this journey.