Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.
And I'm Van Owens.
And I'm Tim Adams.
Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,
connections, and real life application.
We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and
discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.
Welcome back.
We are in part two of anxiety.
And I want to start off again by just reiterating what we talked about last time and having
a little bit of a disclaimer here.
So last time we talked about how great God is, that He is a good master that provides
for us, and we can trust Him, and He will take care of our needs.
That said, and I want to just say none of us are psychotherapists.
And I've even taught on this subject before and afterward people have come up to me and
say, told me, hey, you know, I struggle with anxiety.
You didn't mean that, what did you mean by this?
And I had to apologize basically for saying, oh no, that's not what I meant.
If you need to take meds, that's great.
You should do that.
Van, we were talking off camera here about this.
Do you want to share some of your thoughts?
Yeah, I think it's important to realize that when you think about anxiety, you should think
about it on a spectrum.
There's on the low end of that spectrum is sort of an everyday kind of anxiety.
You're driving the work.
There's a traffic jam.
You're going to be late.
You've got a big meeting and big presentation.
That's sort of on the milder end.
That's not sort of a life debilitating kind of anxiety.
That's oh no, I'm going to be late for work.
That's a kind of daily experience or oh, the kids are out of milk.
There's no milk for the cereal or, you know, these are the milder things.
And then on the other end of that spectrum is the debilitating kind of anxiety disorder
where you feel almost paralyzed.
You feel frozen in place.
You can't do anything because you're so wrought with anxiety.
You're not talking when you're closer to that far and that anxiety disorder thing, you need
to get help.
And that help might be psychotherapy.
It might be medication.
It might be a combination of those things.
What we're talking about here is the stuff that's on sort of the first half of that spectrum.
The sort of day to day anxiety, the ones that distract us from our relationship with God
and make us start to go in ways that we shouldn't go and, if undoubt with, could lead to that
higher level of anxiety.
It's important to think of it in that way.
Yeah, thank you.
Definitely, if you are struggling with crippling anxiety, please get help.
And we're grateful to now keep looking at Jesus' words because they do make a difference.
But if you're not able to hear them because you're so anxious, please get help.
There's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with you.
So let's get back to this.
Would you like to read?
Start at the top again.
Yeah.
All right.
Matthew 6, verse 25,
If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear?
For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need
them.
But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you
as well.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Thank you.
All right.
In some of our previous episodes, we were talking about treasuring earthly treasure,
and I made a point about the wordplay there, and how treasure is used both as a verb and
as a noun, like quit treasuring earthly treasure.
But there's also this sense that it does mean store up.
And we know that for sure, because we can see how Jesus is using it when He's teaching
us about the birds.
How does looking at birds help us not be anxious?
I mean, what do birds teach us about our attitude toward earthly treasure?
So as I was thinking about this, one of the things that is fun with birds is that they
are always singing.
They are singing far more than it seems like they would need to.
Especially early in the morning.
But there's a freedom with birds.
There's a effortlessness that they convey.
And I think that's one of the pictures that Jesus gives us.
He wants us to look up to see the freedom that they have flying in the air.
And there's not this worry that's dragging them down.
Wow.
Right?
You're soaring.
Yeah, exactly.
And so that's what worry often does for me.
It's like an anchor.
So I think that's being able to notice that God provides for these creatures.
And they can do that living their life, flying around and singing.
Okay, well maybe God will provide for me and I don't have to live my whole life, you know,
hanging my head and all uptight.
Yeah, they're also always eating.
Birds are always, they're looking for food.
You know, not that I'm a, what's a bird person?
Is that an ornithologist?
I'm not one of those.
But I have recently moved from the city to the country.
So I get to sit on my porch and listen to and watch birds a lot.
And they're always scavenging in my lawn for seeds or insects or whatever they eat.
The food is plentiful for them.
And they're always, they're always striving to get it.
But not in the way that I strive.
Their striving is different from mine.
And I love what you said, Tim, about them always singing.
And I equate that to being someone whose mindset is praising God and being thankful to God
for, for everything, being thankful for God for the fact that I can watch birds and learn
from birds.
They, the birds are resourceful and God provides for them.
And they're, you know, we have a, I bought a springtime wreath to go on my front door
for Easter time.
And the birds have come and taken, there was a little, there were little pieces of hay
stuck in the wreath.
And the birds have taken all of the hay out of the wreath.
I caught them one morning when I was going to work, they fly down, they grab the hay
and they take it to make their nests.
And you know, the birds are, the birds are working.
They are working.
They're always working to, to provide for themselves, to provide for their offspring.
But they do it in a way that seems stress free from a human perspective.
And always singing always seem to be, they're just kind of delightful.
They're delightful animals.
And you know, and if I could somehow adopt that in my day and be more pleasant as I go
through the day, it would, I think, reduce some of the anxiety that I can feel during
the day.
Yeah.
I love what you're saying, both of you, about equating the singing with gratitude.
That is something I was, I had not thought about the looking up of the birds or soaring.
It's a beautiful image.
Well so what I was going to, I do, I love what you guys are saying about how they're
carefree and they just kind of go about and they look for food and they get it and they
find it and they manage and they've learned how and where to find food.
I think it's an oriole that loves whatever's in my yard, whatever dead grass is in my yard.
I also had a couple ducks that wanted to sit in my pool and we had to manage that.
My son was disappointed they haven't come back, but that's okay.
One of the things I think about here is the audience and I think that there's a certain
element in this audience where having enough food to eat probably didn't feel guaranteed
to a lot of the people listening to this.
It's easy in America where if we don't have food we can go buy more food, we can either
walk or drive to the grocery store, buy more food, buy everything we need and a lot of
things we don't with minimal effort.
I think a lot of these people, I would imagine them going, gee, I don't necessarily see,
they didn't have the same kind of grocery store system we did.
They had to actually work for their food.
This was in an era where maybe not necessarily in this region of the world, but where famine
and starvation was very much on the table.
It was not an unheard of thing.
I would imagine to most of his audience the idea that I'll have enough to meet my needs
didn't actually feel like a guarantee.
It didn't feel as certain as it is, like I'm never going to run out of food living in 21st
century America, I hope, unless something changes drastically.
But I think for these people, it was on the table that I might not have enough to be able
to provide for all my daily needs.
And Jesus is trying to refocus them from being stressed out about that.
And I really appreciate what Vance said on the front end, that it gets, that can be very
stressful.
I mean, that is a being in poverty and not knowing where your next meal is coming from,
which thankfully is a situation I've never personally been in.
But if I've heard people who have talk about it, it is a stress and anxiety inducing existence.
And it feels to me like Jesus is trying to get them to reframe it and reframe that God
is going to provide what you need even if you can't necessarily see it in a similar way
to the manna and the bread.
I was hoping you'd bring that up.
He's going to do it.
I bet he is.
And you strung it out to the very end.
That was very good.
I agree.
Yeah, this is like the manna.
And to me, it feels like he, well, first of all, he's making an argument from a lesser
to a greater, right?
He's going to take, he's actually saying God is providing for the bird.
God feeds the birds, these little creatures, and they're carefree.
I love that we were talking about how grateful they can be.
But if God's going to take care of the little birds, aren't you worth more than those things?
And so I think it's what he's also doing, which we've talked about a few times now,
is getting us to point back to God's character and to trust him and build our faith in God
that he will provide for us.
So if he's going to take care of all those minor details in the life of birds, providing
for them, he's going to take care of us, so we don't have to be anxious.
The next argument that he makes is in the form of a question Jesus asks, can any one
of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
There are plenty of studies out there that suggest worrying doesn't add time to your
life, rather it subtracts time from your life.
What's the argument Jesus is making here that helps us not be anxious?
This was a challenging question for me, and I think that what I thought about is, what
I thought about is time, as far as the time of, how much time I have in my life.
That's something that is an unknown quantity.
And because again, I kind of hate that it is, but money is always the thing that my
mind goes back to.
I imagine the scenario where I have a certain amount of money.
So I work and I get a paycheck every month.
I know exactly how much that paycheck is going to be, and so I can plan for that.
But I imagine the scenario where, what if I worked and got pay, but never knew how much
pay they were going to give me, and did not have a way of even recording, not knowing,
not having a relationship with my bank, and not knowing how much money was in the bank
at any given time.
I would know that I have money, some amount of it, to spend on the things that I want
and the things that I need, but eventually there won't be anymore.
And that's what the time of my life is like.
And so if I think about time as something that is limited and that one day I'm going
to run out of, then I'm going to use it in a different way.
And so if I'm worrying about my life all the time, if I'm worrying about how am I going
to get to a place where I'm going to be happy?
This is something when I was a younger man that I worried about all the time.
And it prevented me from being content or joyful or happy in the moment.
And I lost my happiness by worrying about my happiness.
Does that make sense?
This was really strange to me.
It was like, so I'm sitting here concerned about what's going to happen to my life, what's
going to happen when I'm all alone?
That's sometimes something that I think about.
I would think, God, I hope I die before all the people I love die, so I won't be all alone.
And what will happen to me when I'm all alone?
What will happen to me?
When I end up spending hours sitting in my room worrying about being all alone when my
family and friends are right there.
It's a waste of time, huh?
It's a waste of time.
It just makes you miserable.
Exactly.
I have a funny anecdote I wrote down here that's a little similar to that.
I was talking at the Memorial Day Parade in town.
I was talking to one of my buddies in the town I live in about our kids riding bikes.
His daughter is about two years older than mine, his son is about a year older than mine.
And he was saying it took his daughter a long time to learn to ride a bike.
And the reason it took her a long time was she was afraid that she would fall off the
bike, get a scrape, need a bandaid, and that it would hurt to pull the bandaid off.
And we were just looking at each other and we were like, yeah, that sounds like a kid
worry.
Which one of the parents did you get that level of anxiety from and how, and that's
going to be unpacked in therapy when you're a little bit older and we'll help you with
that.
But I do think about there are so many worries that his daughter, she had this worry that
was, she was anxious about it.
She was like, oh no, about this thing that hasn't even happened yet.
Right, yeah.
And it kept her from learning to ride a bike.
It was somewhat irrational, but not inconceivable.
Yeah, it was very plausible, but it was also not guaranteed to happen.
And it prevented her from even trying for a while.
And she's since learned.
I've seen that in my own life.
I'm seeing it now play out in my kids.
I have one kid who's like, I'm just going to hop in and try it and we'll see what happens.
And the other one who's very cautious.
And so learning to skate has been like, he still looks like a robot on ice because he's
going super slow.
The other one, you know, fell down a few times, but like zips around now.
Yeah.
And I won't say which of us, my wife or I is the super cautious.
It's me.
It might be me.
I wonder.
Yeah.
So this is obviously a rhetorical question, but I've had a long struggle with it over
the years because I've always thought, well, I can add an hour to my life.
I mean, if I live in a healthy way and I do the right things, then like my life expectancy
will go up.
But that's the thing.
It's like life expectancy.
Like it's like a statistical probability.
It's not an actual guarantee.
So you know, this whole section is in this context of the, we can only serve one master,
God is our master.
And I think Jesus is making the point of what will understand your abilities and your limitations
and understand God's abilities without limitations and recognize, okay, you can maybe can control
some things, but you can't control everything.
Give that in the hand of the person who can control it, who is your master, who you are
serving, who is going to take care of you.
I would also add with the worrying, adding hours to your life, what generally when I'm
worrying about things, I'm not actually addressing them.
You know, I've mentioned my wife and I's financial situation is challenging right now and I'm
kind of tapped out in terms of how far I can go in my career.
And that's part of the reason I chose to go back to grad school because I actually,
even though grad school is going to be a lot of time, it's going to be some energy, I'm
probably going to sleep a little bit less.
When we worry about things, we don't address the things.
We don't actually spend any time with God trying to figure out, okay, how can, how does
this actually get addressed?
Because some of the things we worry about, we do have to allow that some of them are
very real.
I know if you have health challenges or you have a family member with health challenges,
I have some with my dad, I worry about how my mom is going to be able to handle my dad
going forward.
It's not, I just worry about it because it's not guaranteed and it's hard, but all the
time worrying means I don't actually address the things that we can do right now.
Both to improve my dad's health and to prepare my mom to be able to care for him better going
forward.
Jim, that is so helpful to think about caution and worry and the fact that when you're worrying,
for me when I'm worrying, I'm not doing anything else except worrying.
And that caution is good and caution is, we're all related, we all are related to some answers
to this.
I read about anxiety.
In a book that I read about anxiety, I read about, there were two guys living in a cave
and outside the cave was a big field and in the field was a lion.
And they both knew the lion was there and one guy said, to get water, I'm going around
the field to get water, it's twice as long, but I avoid the lion.
That's the guy who was cautious.
The guy who was not cautious said, I'm just going straight through the field, probably
won't see the line. Well, the line eventually got that guy. And so we're all related to
the guy who went around. So it's in our DNA to be cautious. But the human condition produces
in us this desire to always want more and to always be preparing for more. And when
we can't get more, it produces worry. And it's helpful to me to hear you say, you know,
when I worry, I'm not doing anything. Because my natural mode is worry.
Yeah. I could relate to what both of you were saying. I think for me, this question comes
down to what's within my control and what's outside of it. It reminded me a little bit
of the thing Jesus was saying about, you can't make a hair white or black. And we talked about
how they probably had a hair dye then. But the truth would come out. Here he goes. It's
still gray underneath. And so many things I worry about are outside of my control. And
I mean, I have ulcer of colitis and they don't know exactly, it's multifactorial. They don't
know exactly what causes it. But one of the main factors is stress. And I have stressed
out about things so much that I remember a particularly stressful point in life. And
that's just a little bit after that was when I had a massive flare up and was in the hospital.
So there's like stress worry can lead to shortened life. It can mess you up. It does no good.
It's a waste of time. But I like what you're saying to Jim about it. We become unproductive
because I think in other times of my life, I've procrastinated too because, oh my gosh,
that's insurmountable. I don't think I can ever, I don't know what I can do. I'm going
to go watch TV now. I'm going to have a movie marathon. That feels good. But then the stress
is still there when I'm done with that and haven't really done anything.
Well, and I was going to just on what you said, like, and I've unpacked this in therapy,
I'll talk about that a little bit more later. But like, what I talked about taking steps
to address some of the shortcomings in my own life, my therapist was like, so how do
you feel when you do that? Like, she was like, you know, you're applying to grad schools.
How do you feel when you're applying? And I actually I said, I actually feel good when
I'm doing that, because I see this potential issue. And instead of just having anxiety,
just having anxiety about it, I'm actually taking steps to address it. And I think, and
I don't want to hear, I don't want anyone who's listening to this to hear this and go,
I got to do a million things to address. Like, I got to work my way out of the anxiety. That's
not what we're saying. That's not what any of us are saying. But the more we sit around,
we just sit in our worry, the less time we actually do things that could help our worry,
whether it's if we're anxious about our final our financial situation, well, if I sit around
worrying, I'm not coming up with a way to improve it. Or if we're anxious for those
of us that are parents in here of varying ages, Vance kids are grown ish. And Matt's
kids are older than mine. But if I'm anxious and worried about my kids, and I'm just sitting
there being anxious, that's time I could spend with them. That's time I could engage with
them. That's time I can train them to be who God designed them to be instead of being worried
about it. I like what you're saying too about taking this addressing things with God, because
I think that's where the real power comes from. And I think this gets back to the issue
of faith that we were discussing and trusting God and all of this. Yeah, it reminds me of
Jacob wrestling with the angel, right? And, and then facing some pretty difficult things.
And I think you're right, it might feel tough to go through something. But if you're doing
it with God, you can trust that he will carry you through. So there's that too. So we've
covered a lot here. We've gotten through a couple of questions. I love the description
of birds being so carefree, singing, grateful to God, and how God is so concerned with all
the details of their lives. He's even more concerned about our details and that we don't
need to worry. We can instead go to him. So we're going to come back to this topic in
another podcast. And thank you very much.