Caring Free From Anxiety
Top of the third inning. I’m manning the shortstop position and a sharp ground ball gets hit a few steps to my right. I shuffle-shuffle over and the ball clanks off the heal of my glove, falls three feet to my left and by the time I step over to pick up the ball the runner is two steps past first base. I can feel my blood beginning to boil. Making errors on makable plays is simply the worst.
It's what happens next that I want to clue in on. The inning concludes and as I’m jogging back to the dugout I have this urge to throw my glove to the ground. It’s accompanied with the thought of wanting to prove to my teammates that I care about playing better. Handling the failing emotions of sports was always the biggest hurdle for me to get over during my playing days.
Why was it that I felt that I needed to express some eruption of outward emotion in order to prove to my teammates that I cared about the game? I was thinking about this paralleled with talking to someone you’re interested in and awaiting their response. Why does anxiety so often accompany the waiting time? I tell myself it’s because I “care” about it. But caring and anxiety are not synonymous. What would it look like to be able to pursue something or someone free from the oppressing feelings of volatile emotions like anger and anxiety?
Biblically, there are a few verses I want to focus on here. First, Jesus tells us specifically, not as a recommendation but as a command, not to worry. “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:34). Paul also tells us in his letter to the church in Galatia, “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else” (Galatians 6:4).
Tying these together, we are not supposed to worry and we are called to work hard and work well. In other words, don’t be anxious but do care about what you’re doing. There’s a certain aspect to understanding God’s sovereignty here as well – the reality that God is above and in control of all things. The concepts of our own free will and God’s intimate control are a complexity of seemingly contrasting truths that are beautifully married together. This post isn’t meant to explain these concepts and there’s plenty more to be said about them, for now, it’s sufficient for us to understand that they are both part of the equation.
Back to our original two verses, paying careful attention to our own work is the “our responsibility (free will) portion, and the don’t worry piece is the trusting God’s control (sovereignty) variable. Both of these things are to happen simultaneously. And there’s a glorious invitation to freedom to be unearthed here. Somehow, there is a way to give something everything we have and be free from being ruled by the outcome due to our trust in the Lord.
Friends, to be extremely transparent with you, I struggle with the relinquishing of control. This is the true key takeaway. So many times I give all that I have and do everything in my power to arrive at my intended outcome on my own power. The problem is that this leaves me wide open to the temptation of manipulating situations, taking short cuts, and not just paying careful attention to our work, but paying careful attention to me getting what I want. There’s a real dirty piece of my heart here that I am pleading for the Lord to wash clean.
What I’m beginning to see is that the cleaning solution, if you will, is trusting God. I believe that it’s God’s desire for us to be free from outcomes and even finished products. We ought to pursue these things, but we are not to be ruled by them. Can you envision a life where this freedom was a daily walk you stepped in to? If you’re anything like me, just the concept makes me smile and say yes, I want this.
My prayer for us today friends is this, “Lord, teach me to partner with you as I work and as I pursue.” Ultimately, this partnership will produce trust, because by partnering with God we are forced to realize that He is greater than we are, therefore, His ways and His conclusions are the way we ought to go. This is possible. The Bible has not charged us with a reality that we are unable to step in to. But we can’t do it on our own. This freedom is centered solely around relinquishing control and trusting in the Lord – let’s endeavor towards this together!
