"To Him be glory forever": anxiety

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Prayer and Anxiety

I recently read something from a pastor stating that he was no longer going to make what he called "weak prayers" that people would seek from him. For example, he wasn't going to pray for guidance for doctors and strength for families, saying doctors are trained and families have strength when they rely on Jesus. He would pray for healing and for God's miraculous touch to change the outcome, but not to guide the outcome.

Hmm, I thought at first. That hardly seems pastoral. And then I thought some more and thought that I understand, I think, at least a little of what he might have been getting at, but that perhaps there is more going on than the prayer request suggests.

I get requests related to health care often, and so I pray for healing often. I pray for healing for things that could seem to be relatively minor, and I pray for healing for situations that are extremely difficult.

I pray not only for healing but also for doctors, nurses and other care providers. Even if I had never worked in health-care I would know that those highly trained, highly skilled professionals have bad days. They make mistakes. They come to work with personal problems that can affect their job. I recently prayed with someone who told me that her surgeon had changed the date of her surgery because he didn’t think he'd be at his best operating after a full day of travel.

And as to the pastor's other objection, i.e. that people will find strength when they rely on Jesus, I fully agree. But something I've come to learn over the past year is there is quite a lot of anxiety floating through the people I serve among. And it isn’t just among the occasional visitor to my back door whose anxiety is exacerbated by being intoxicated. It is present in people who I know to be life-long Christians. People who have shared with me powerful stories of their lives and the situations God has carried them through.

To the best of my ability I try to preach "Christ and him crucified" each Sunday morning. Each week, in some way, I try to point the sermon in some way to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the one thing that He did to bring salvation to all who love and have faith in Him.

As a pastor I have learned that even though some people have that faith in Christ deep in their bones they still have moments of uncertainty and anxiety as they live day-by-day. So instead of sending them away, perhaps with a reminder to "rely on Jesus" I pray with them. You see, when I take a moment and lift a prayer with them to God, it is not only their faith that is being strengthened, but mine as well.

While I wrote this from my perspective as pastor, the ability to join with a sister or brother in Christ is one that is open to any Christian. I understand well the anxiety that may arise in yourself when that opportunity comes before you. I felt it many times between the time of my own conversion and my becoming a pastor. But don't let that stop you. Like jumping into a swimming pool on a hot day, joining in prayer with another person is something that will always be the right decision. It will bring calm to their anxiety and strengthen both of you as followers of Jesus.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Transition

“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?” Matthew 6:25

We (my family and I) are in a transition. Some major things have been changing and we are expecting them to continue to change for a while. We have some ideas of how they may change but since several of the things we thought were imminent last summer haven’t happened we are less certain now about where we are headed and how we will “get there.”

Looking back it could be said that I’ve been in transition for the past ten years but this transition for our family began in earnest about one year ago. I graduated from seminary and Robin took a leave of absence from her teaching job. We had some feelers out to several churches but nothing was happening. We believed that God was leading us, somewhere, and we prayed that we would be able to listen well and be obedient when his call became clear. We sincerely wanted, and continue to want, to know and follow God’s lead rather than just going off in the direction that we may think is best.

Last fall we took what seemed to be a larger “leap of faith,” by putting our house up for sale. It made logical sense, as we did need to sell our house should God call us away from Rochester, and in this market we had no idea how long it would take to sell.

After four weeks on the market and an unexpected turn of events we took our house off the market. That turned out to be a good decision, although at the risk, in our minds, of having our house for sale for a longer time when we did attempt to sell it again.

And while selling our house would be a major step, we had the blessing of knowing a friend with a vacant house we could rent in the interim. That seemed to fit well with the whole notion of being “in transition.”

So this past February we put our house back on the market, and it sold in less than one week! The quickness of the sale caused us to wonder if God was up to something that would soon become clearer to us.

And last week we moved into our “back-up plan,” the vacant house belonging to a good friend. We knew when the rental plan was first made that the house needed a bit of work, work that is still underway as I write this. But it is working out okay. We are all settling in. We are unpacking boxes and placing furniture, some of which will be moved again soon, as the work is completed inside the house. And perhaps moved yet again, as God makes his plans for us clearer.

I’ll be honest and admit that while we believe that God is up to something and that we are in transition, we have had moments of anxiety, moments when we wish that he would just make things clear for us, and make them clear now. Robin and I have each, in our own way, had moments of being tired of waiting for God to act and to clear up the particular unknowns about our life at this point in time. I was reminded of this again yesterday, as I was reading from the Sermon on the Mount and came to the verse at the start of this post.

In that verse Jesus invites us not to be anxious, for we are always in his hands. He knows everything about our current situation. He knows every need that we have. He is able to meet every one of our needs, and we can trust that he will meet them, in the timing that he knows is right.

Later on, in verse 33, Jesus points us to the place where our attention should be in anxious times, saying,

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

I experience anxiety when my focus is on my own needs and concerns, rather than on my Lord and Savior. One year while I was in Community Bible Study we did a study of the Psalms and I memorized a verse that stays with me to this day. Psalm 143:8 says,

“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.

Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.” (NIV)

In all the seasons of life, both those of transition and those of stability, our rest and peace, our purpose and the means to do it, will always be found in God.