Finding Peace Through Trust: Jesus’ Teaching on Anxiety

Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on February 8, 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores finding peace through trust in God’s provision, examining Jesus’ teaching from Matthew 6 about overcoming anxiety. The sermon challenges us to let creation be our teacher and discover true security in our identity as God’s children.

The future is not what it used to be. The world is an increasingly unsettling place. It feels like it has shifted on its axis, and yet Jesus says, do not worry. Really? Is that possible? Can Jesus help us to worry less in a world like this? Yes, he can. So the reading we just had is from the very heart of Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, and I feel like it speaks to the very heart of the human condition.

It is profound and precious wisdom. We should return to it often. It is teaching to be treasured and put into practice. And I mean that by the way, that knowledge without practice isn’t worth very much. And I fear that too much modern Christianity is knowledge without practice. You know, the great quote by GK Chesterton. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried. Let’s listen and learn and try to put this into practice.

And if you take nothing else away from this sermon, I love that Jesus encourages us to take creation seriously. Jesus would often, if you read his life in the gospels, go out into the wild places to pray and there he would clearly allow creation to teach him, to remind him of important things.

And if you are worried, if you are feeling anxious. It is a really good thing to get outside, outside of your own head, but also outside of your own house and get into nature for a walk or an afternoon walking in the woods to spend time there and it will make a difference. It is scientifically proven to alter your mood, to shift your perspective. And Jesus says in that place allow creation to be your teacher. Allow it to lift your eyes to God.

And in this passage, I’ve got two things that Jesus would say that you can allow creation nature to teach you and remind you about God. The first is in verse 26, he says, look at the birds of the air. Now, there’s nothing quite so lovely as being out for a walk and hearing the birds singing and they are a reminder that life goes on anyway.

Despite all of our crises and all of the problems that we face, life is happening out there year by year, century by century. Those birds are living their lives, raising their youngs, and yet they never seem to stop and worry about the future. Jesus says, verse 26, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns.

They’re not anxious about tomorrow. They’re just focused on what needs to be done today. When we sow and reap and gather in barns, essentially what we’re trying to do is store up stuff to secure our future. Perhaps in the modern world, you might describe it as earning money and investing it wisely, and seeking promotion in your work in order to secure our futures.

Now, those are fine things to do. But of course they don’t actually work. They don’t ever make us worry less. As verse 27 says, can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? And in fact, you might add that our worrying tends to reduce the span of our lives quite significantly.

Jesus is saying, you are no more in control of the future than the birds are. That only God holds the future in his hands. As he says, your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? God cares for the sparrow and he cares for you even more.

That if you are anxious about the future, the best thing that you can do is to trust, to believe that God is your Father, that you are love. That it is he who provides and that you are a valued and precious child of God. That’s the antidote to our anxiety. That faith is the antidote to our fear to believe that you are profoundly and eternally valuable. To remember that identity as a child of God because no other source of security will do.

No amount of hard work, no amount of money or savings can secure the future. Does that mean you don’t need to work hard? Not at all. If you watch those birds, you’ll never see anybody work so hard. They work exceptionally hard. Their work is part of who they are, part of who they’re created to be, and our work is part of our dignity and what we are made for.

But it is not a way to try and be in control apart from God. Have you learned to find your security in God? You will need to learn that, to practice it, to do it day by day, and you will fall short of it time and time again. To learn to let creation be your teacher. To turn your anxieties into prayers, to put your confidence in the God who loves you and who will provide. He provides for the sparrows. How much more will he provide for you? Your faith says Jesus is the antidote to your fears.

Did you notice though, that he didn’t say there is nothing to worry about? So in verse 34, he said, do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Isn’t that interesting?

We often say, when we’re anxious, oh, there’s nothing to worry about. Jesus doesn’t say there’s nothing to worry about. He simply says that today’s troubles are what you need to worry about. Focus on that. And when we pray, give us this day our daily bread, we are asking God to give us what we need for today’s problems and say, I’ll trust him with tomorrows.

I think that’s a really important discipline to learn, to focus on what is at hand, to pray to God for the strength to deal with that and to trust him with tomorrow. So Jesus says, look at the birds. Learn from them. Let them be your teacher.

Then secondly, he says, consider the lilies. So the lilies are the wild flowers of the field. As you are out for your walk, you can’t help but miss them. Even at this time of year, the snow drops are springing up and they are exquisitely beautiful. Small, fragile, apparently insignificant, but such an extravagant beauty.

One of the main causes of anxiety for all of us is worrying about what people think of us. You may not be aware of it, but you spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what people think of you. And we’ve always done it from the playground at school to the boardroom at work. We’re worrying do people like us, do they respect us? Are you popular? And we put so much energy in trying to make people think we are more significant than we are.

We might dress in a certain way to make an impression. We might even spend money on stuff, whether that’s a car or a house in order to make us look more significant. And have you noticed it never works? It never works. The people who like you are probably going to like you anyway. The people who don’t like you, not a great deal you can do about that. And yet we spend so much time worrying about it.

Jesus says, verse 28, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and yet even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. It is just such a beautiful line that those wild flowers apparently insignificant, and yet they are more glorious, if you will look closely at them than even King Solomon and all his finery, which by the way, is a tragic story because he tries so hard to be impressive, and yet it all crumbles and comes to nothing. There’s a whole other sermon there.

But Jesus says, look at the lilies. And now look at yourself. If only you could see yourself as you really are, as God sees you. You are a miracle made in the image of God. You think those wild flowers are beautiful. You should see yourself. Stop trying to be what you are not.

Your calling is to be you as you are created to be. And there is only one opinion of you that matters and that is God’s opinion of you. Now, you might say that’s all very well, but it is easier said than done and you would be absolutely right. But as I said at the beginning, this requires practice like an artist or an athlete.

If you don’t practice this every day, then it will start to show quite quickly. And you’ll fall short of this and you’ll fail. But when you do, you need to get up and start again. It is a spiritual discipline of finding our strength and our courage, our identity in our relationship with God.

And when Jesus says, consider the lilies, it’s not just a figure of speech. Actually that discipline of stopping and looking at the world around us of remembering how things really are, rather than how they seem in our own heads, to take control of our worried minds and focus on what matters is a valuable spiritual discipline. Jesus says, focus on what really matters on what life is really about.

Because it isn’t, and you know it’s not, about achievement or the accumulation of possessions or status. He says, verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well. Your meaning and your worth and your security, your future, your peace, they’re not to be found anywhere else but in God. Seek first his kingdom and let everything else fall as it may.

It’s a remarkable passage, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful one. It is precious. Jesus says, your faith is the antidote to your fear. That your Heavenly Father alone is the source of your security and your worth.

And in a world like this, a world in constant crisis, we need, absolutely need, this spiritual discipline of rooting ourselves in who God says that we are. To live that day by day prayerfully. To faithfully let God be God because he is the only one who is in control, and to humbly be who we are created and called to be, loved by God and let that be enough. That will require practice and you need to start that today and you need to practice it every day. So let’s just be still shall we, and ask God by his spirit to give us what we need to find our true identity in him.