Chapter Eight: Anxiety and Frustration
CHAPTER EIGHT
Anxiety and Frustration
Life is often difficult, and sometimes painful. If my car breaks down on a vacation trip, that is difficult. If I have an accident and am permanently disabled, that is painful. And of course there are varying degrees of difficulty and, to some extent, of pain. Difficulties usually occur in the ordinary activities and responsibilities of life, whereas pain is likely generated by extraordinary events. So in this chapter we’re going to focus on the difficulties of ordinary life and our too-frequent responses to those difficulties in the forms of anxiety and frustration.
ANXIETY
Some years ago, I surveyed the entire New Testament looking for instances where various Christian character traits were taught by precept or by example. I found twenty-seven. It may not surprise you that love was taught most often, some fifty times. It may surprise you that humility was a close second with forty instances. But what really surprised me is that trust in God in all our circumstances was third, being taught thirteen or more times.
The opposite of trust in God is either anxiety or frustration, and Jesus had a lot to say about anxiety. The most prominent passage in which Jesus speaks about it is Matthew 6:25-34, in which He uses the word anxious six times. We are not to be anxious about what we are to eat, drink, or wear, or even about the unknown circumstances of tomorrow. Another expression Jesus uses regarding anxiety is “Fear not” or, as some translations render it, “Do not be afraid” (see, for example, Matthew 10:31; Luke 12:7). Paul picks up this admonition about anxiety with his words in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything.” And Peter adds his exhortation, “[Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
When you or I say to someone, “Don’t be anxious” or “Don’t be afraid,” we are simply trying to encourage the person, or admonish in a helpful way. But when Jesus (or Paul or Peter, who were writing under divine inspiration) says to us, “Don’t be anxious,” it has the force of a moral command. In other words, it is the moral will of God that we not be anxious. Or to say it more explicitly, anxiety is sin.
Anxiety is sin for two reasons. First, as I’ve already mentioned, anxiety is a distrust of God. In the Matthew 6:25-34 passage, Jesus said that if our heavenly Father takes care of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, will He not much more take care of our temporal needs? And Peter told us that the basis of our casting our anxieties on God is that He cares for us. So when I give way to anxiety, I am, in effect, believing that God does not care for me and that He will not take care of me in the particular circumstance that triggers my anxiety of the moment.
Suppose someone you love were to say to you, “I don’t trust you. I don’t believe you love me and will care for me.” What an affront that would be to you! Yet that is what we are saying to God by our anxiety.
Anxiety is a sin also because it is a lack of acceptance of God’s providence in our lives. God’s providence may be simply defined as God’s orchestrating all circumstances and events in His universe for His glory and the good of His people. Some believers have difficulty accepting the fact that God does in fact orchestrate all events and circumstances, and even those of us who do believe it often lose sight of this glorious truth. Instead we tend to focus on the immediate causes of our anxiety rather than remembering that those immediate causes are under the sovereign control of God.
I have to confess that anxiety is one of my most persistent temptations. It’s not that I’m a Chicken Little who is always afraid the sky is falling. Rather, my most common temptation to anxiety occurs in connection with air travel, which I do frequently. Almost always, my travel to another city involves connecting flights at one of the airline’s hub cities. Often my first flight from the city where I live to the hub is late, resulting in a tight connection to the second flight. So I am tempted to become anxious. Will I make my connection to my destination city? And usually I am scheduled to speak within a few hours after my scheduled arrival, so it’s important to me that I make that flight. (Obviously, in the course of a lifetime, or compared to other people’s problems, this is a minor issue, but for me at the time, it is a major one.)
So my agenda is to arrive at my destination city on time and get comfortably settled before I am to speak. But what if God’s agenda is different? What if God’s agenda is for me to be late for that meeting, or miss it altogether? (I have had both experiences.) Will I succumb to the temptation to anxiety and fret and fume, or will I believe that God is in sovereign control of my travel and accept His agenda, whatever that may be? As I have struggled with anxiety in this area of life, I have come to the conclusion that my anxiety is triggered not so much by a distrust in God as by an unwillingness to submit to and cheerfully accept His agenda for me.
I tend to think, Lord, it’s important that I arrive in time to speak at that meeting. The people in charge are counting on me. What will they do if I don’t arrive in time? But I have learned to say to myself, But God, it’s Your meeting. If You don’t want me there, that’s Your business. And what the people who are counting on me to be there will do is also Your business. God, I accept Your agenda for this situation, whatever that may be.
I have been greatly helped in this issue of accepting God’s providential will, or God’s agenda, as I often call it, by the writings of John Newton, whom we’ve already encountered in chapter 4. In one of his letters to a friend, Newton wrote:
[One of the marks of Christian maturity which a believer should seek is] an acquiescence in the Lord’s will founded in a persuasion of his wisdom, holiness, sovereignty, and goodness. … So far as we attain to this, we are secure from disappointment. Our own limited views, and shortsighted purposes and desires, may be, and will be, often over-ruled; but then our main and leading desire, that the will of the Lord may be done, must be accomplished. How highly does it become us, both as creatures and as sinners, to submit to the appointments of our Maker! and how necessary is it to our peace! This great attainment is too often unthought of, and over-looked; we are prone to fix our attention upon the second causes and immediate instruments of events; forgetting that whatever befalls us is according to his purpose, and therefore must be right and seasonable in itself, and shall in the issue be productive of good. From hence arise impatience, resentment, and secret repinings [i.e., complainings], which are not only sinful, but tormenting; whereas, if all things are in his hand, if the very hairs of our head are numbered; if every event, great and small, is under the direction of his providence and purpose; and if he has a wise, holy, and gracious end in view, to which everything that happens is subordinate and subservient; — then we have nothing to do, but with patience and humility to follow as he leads, and cheerfully to expect a happy issue. … How happy are they who can resign all to him, see his hand in every dispensation, and believe that he chooses better for them than they possibly could for themselves!1
An acceptance of God’s providential will does not mean we are not to pray about the eventual outcome. Paul’s command to not be anxious is accompanied by the instruction to pray about whatever situation is tempting us to be anxious (see Philippians 4:6). And Jesus, in dread of His impending suffering on the cross, which far exceeded any anxiety we will ever experience, prayed, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). So it is appropriate to pray for relief and for deliverance from whatever circumstance is triggering our anxiety, but we should always do so with an attitude of acceptance of whatever God’s providential will may be and a confidence that, whatever the outcome, God’s will is better than our plans or desires.2
You may or may not be frequently tempted to anxiety as I am. But if you are, can you recognize the types of circumstances that tend to make you anxious? Do you identify with me in chafing under God’s providential will for you when it is different from your own agenda? If so, I encourage you to memorize and pray over some of the texts I have mentioned in this chapter, especially in connection with any recurring circumstances you identify that tend to trigger your anxiety. Above all, ask God to give you faith to believe that His providential will for you in these circumstances comes to you from His infinite wisdom and goodness and is ultimately intended for your good. And then ask God to give you a heart that is submissive to His providential will when it is contrary to your own plans.
WORRY
Worry is a synonym for anxiety. While some translations of Matthew 6:25-34 speak of anxiety, the New International Version uses the word worry. In popular usage, however, we tend to associate worry with more long-term difficult or painful circumstances for which there appears to be no resolution. These are the kinds of circumstances that tend to keep a person awake at night “worrying” about what to do while realizing there is nothing one can do.
For example, I have several friends who have mentally or physically dependent adult children. These friends can easily lie awake at night worrying about the future for their child after both husband and wife die. Even if finances were not a factor, which it is for all of my friends, the question remains, Who will care for my child?
These are indeed difficult circumstances, and I have to be careful here because I have not experienced any such seemingly intractable situation. So I do not mean to dismiss lightly these circumstances, but if we want to stick closely to Scripture, we have no choice but to seek to do what it says. And in the New International Version, Jesus says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow” (Matthew 6:34).
We do have the promises of God and the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help us in these difficult times. Recently, a friend, who is actually experiencing one of these long-term situations, called my attention to the Phillips Modern English rendering of 1 Peter 5:7, “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.” Though the Phillips version is usually regarded as a paraphrase, I believe its rendering of 1 Peter 5:7 accurately captures the meaning of the text. Jesus said that God does not forget a single sparrow (see Luke 12:6). How much more, then, is it true that you, His child, are indeed His personal concern?
It’s true, however, that oftentimes the situation at hand looms larger in our minds than the promises of God. We then find it difficult to believe the promises. In those times, I find the words of the father of a demon-possessed son encouraging: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). There is a vast difference between stubborn unbelief such as was demonstrated by the people of Jesus’ hometown, Nazareth (see Mark 6:5-6), and the struggling faith of the son’s father. God honors our struggles, and the Holy Spirit will help us. The important issue is that we seek to honor God through our faith, even though weak and faltering, rather than dishonoring Him through rank unbelief.
FRUSTRATION
Closely akin to anxiety or worry is the sin of frustration. Whereas anxiety involves fear, frustration usually involves being upset or even angry at whatever or whoever is blocking our plans. I might have an important document to print from my computer, but the printer will only produce gobbledygook. Instead of believing that God is sovereignly in control over the actions of my computer and that He has a good reason for allowing it to act up, I get frustrated. Actually, this type of reaction has its roots in my ungodliness at the moment, for at that time I am living as though God is not involved in my life or my circumstances. I fail to recognize the invisible hand of God behind whatever is triggering my frustration. In the heat of the moment, I tend not to think about God at all. Instead, I focus entirely on the immediate cause of my frustration.
The passage of Scripture that has greatly helped me deal with frustration is Psalm 139:16, which says, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (NIV). “Days ordained for me” refers not only to the length of my life but to all the events and circumstances of each day of my life. This is a tremendously encouraging and comforting thought. So when something happens that tends to frustrate me, I actually quote Psalm 139:16 to myself and then say to God, “This circumstance is part of Your plan for my life today. Help me to respond in faith and in a God-honoring way to Your providential will. And then please give me wisdom to know how to address the situation that tends to cause the frustration.”
Note what resources I have brought to bear on the circumstance that tends to frustrate me: specific applicable Scripture and dependence on the Holy Spirit expressed through prayer to enable me to respond in a godly manner. And then I pray for practical wisdom to know how to deal with the situation. After all, in my illustration about the computer printer, the important document does eventually need to be printed.
It is also beneficial to ask God if there is something I need to learn, or if there is something I need to be attentive to. Sometimes God uses events that tempt us toward frustration to get our attention, or even to push us further in an area we need to grow in. In any case, there are no events in our lives that do not ultimately come to us from the invisible hand of God, even though they come through some visible cause.
Let me repeat, however, what I have said or implied throughout this chapter. Both anxiety and frustration are sins. They are not to be taken lightly or brushed off as common reactions we have to difficult events in a fallen world. Can you picture Jesus ever being anxious or frustrated? And whatever in our lives is not like Jesus is sin. Granted, we will never achieve complete freedom from anxiety or frustration in this life (at least I don’t expect to). But we should never accept them as just part of our temperament any more than we would accept adultery as part of our temperament. Keep in mind that even though anxiety and frustration may not be as serious as adultery, they are still sins. And all sin is serious in the eyes of a Holy God.