Anxiety and Frustration

Session Four

Anxiety and Frustration

  

 I don’t often get anxious, but I do become frustrated. I know it is a sin and yet I frequently become frustrated by circumstances and events in my life. As I read through the chapters I found myself weeping as I recognized how much I have allowed those circumstances and people to rob from me, and then even as I had that thought that I had to correct myself and say NO! It wasn’t people or circumstances that stole from me peace and joy but I

 myself, who had stolen peace and joy as I failed to recognize the Sovereign hand of God in each of my circumstances, and in each of the people He has placed in my life. There is a lesson for me in each frustration, and in each area of discontent, there is a lesson for each of us. The gist of the lesson is this:

^“ Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding. In all your ways know, recognize, and acknowledge Him, and He will direct and make straight and plain your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

  

 Jesus said: "I give you a new commandment, that you LOVE one another. Just as I have loved you, so too should you love one another. By this ALL men should know you are My disciples. IF you love one another.  (if you keep on showing love among yourselves.)"

What does this love look like?

    Well, Jerry nailed it when he talked of the second most mentioned character trait in the Bible. Humility. It begins with humility. You can’t love properly without it. In order to DO any of what we’ve been commanded to DO we have to first LOVE as Jesus loved us, then we must be humble and trust God. It’s really quite simple, but we muck it up with our over thinking and our sin.

Let’s get to our questions:

I.           Anxiety and Frustration

1.  What did Jesus teach, in Matthew 6:25-34 about how believers should respond to anxiety (worry)?

     Matthew 6:25-34 says: “Therefore I tell you, stop being perpetually uneasy (anxious and worried) about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink; or about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life greater [in quality] than food, and the body [far above and more excellent] than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the ^[span of his life? And why should you be anxious about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow; they neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence (excellence, dignity, and grace) was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not worry and be anxious, saying, What are we going to have to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the Gentiles (heathen) wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all. But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides. So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own. Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.”

     Of all the creatures that God created, Man is the one He specifically and purposefully formed, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. (Genesis 2:7) Isaiah 49:15 asks us if a nursing mother can forget her child and answers,

     Yes, SHE may, but the Lord will never forget, verse Isaiah 49:16 tells us that HE has imprinted us on the palms of His hands, He never forgets, we are ALWAYS on His mind.

    

As believers we are not to worry about today or tomorrow, we are to remember that He is faithful, even when we are not. This does not mean we will not be TEMPTED to be anxious. And there is a way to handle the temptation. There is a way to handle ALL temptation. 

I Corinthians 10:13 tells us that NO temptation we experience is special, in other words, we are not experiencing something that is an uncommon temptation. EVERYONE on the planet has been tempted in a similar way, indeed even our LORD Himself was tempted in a similar way, but the promise there is that we WILL be provided with a way of escape. The amplified says it like this: “…but with the temptation He will [always] also provide the way out (the means of escape to a landing place), that you may be capable and strong and powerful to bear up under it patiently.” I LOVE that…a landing place! Because so often when I am tempted I feel like I am falling…and the Amplified describes a safe landing place where I (we) will be strengthened and made powerful to bear the temptation PATIENTLY.

2.  What do Matthew 26:39 and Philippians 4:6-7 reveal about our need to pray for relief and deliverance from whatever tempts us to be anxious?

 Matthew 26:39 says:  “And going a little farther, He threw Himself upon the ground on His face and prayed saying, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will [not what I desire], but as You will and desire.”

The point of that Matthew passage is to surrender your will to the will of the Father, but I think the Luke passage captures the full meaning of that surrender, at least it did for me. You see when Trent was thirteen he was involved in an accident that almost took his life. He broke his arm and hit his head on the sidewalk in front of our home and spent a week in Oschner hospital. As he lay on the side walk in the throes of a grand mall seizure (I didn’t know this at the time, I just thought he was dying) I prayed, and this Luke passage came to my mind and it has become very dear to me.

 Luke 22: 41-46 ^“And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done.’ And there appeared to Him an angel from heaven, strengthening Him in spirit. And being in an agony [of mind], He prayed [all the] more earnestly and intently, and His sweat became like great clots of blood dropping down upon the ground. And when He got up from prayer, He came to the disciples and found them sleeping from grief, And He said to them, Why do you sleep? Get up and pray that you may not enter [at all] into temptation.” 

 Some things I wanted to share: as I prayed for Trent, and he lay there, eyes fixed, with a deep growl emanating from his throat, I looked at him and thanked God for the thirteen years I had with him. I asked God to spare his life, I prayed that Trent would survive fully intact, I prayed and told God I would accept it if Trent were a vegetable and told God I would still praise Him. I prayed that if Trent died I would still praise Him. I prayed the words not my will but Yours, and a peace that I never felt before flooded me. I felt as though I had been strengthened to accept whatever was about to happen. I still had the agony facing me, the possibility that my son was dying or would be permanently damaged, but there was this peace and when people came to the hospital they thought I had been given some type of medication to calm me, but I had not. I had peace and comfort that whatever happened would be ok, and I trusted in that, but I still had the burden, and the grief of the moment, if that makes any sense.

The other thing I want you to see is that the disciples were sleeping because of grief. Sometimes people become so overwhelmed by their circumstances that they slip into depression, and they try to escape from their problems. Sleep is one way people do this, drugs is another, over working is another. Jesus solution to that was simple. He reminded them to pray, so that they would not enter into temptation, the temptation to sin, by being anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, etc.

It’s the reason why I encourage you to have an accountability partner, of course if you are married, your husband is the best accountability partner, but sometimes you may need a sister to come along side to remind you what your role is. Check on each other, check in often, because as Jerry pointed out, LOVE was taught MOST often.

 Galatians 6:1 tells us, “Brethren, if any person is overtaken in misconduct or sin of any sort, you who are spiritual [who are responsive to and controlled by the Spirit] should set him right and restore and reinstate him, without any sense of superiority and with all gentleness, keeping an attentive eye on yourself, lest you should be tempted also.”

 Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God.”

Let me reiterate what Paul says, in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and definite requests with thanksgiving continue to make our wants known to God. How often do we really do this? Are we specific? Are we thankful for the circumstances we find ourselves in?

 I recently listened to a sermon by John Mac Arthur where he spoke of a man who kept a prayer journal (he was on book 19 at the time of the sermon) and he wrote down every request and every answer to those requests, with dates, so that he could see God working through his prayer life. It is good to share those requests with someone else so that you can have someone else praying with you, but not necessary. It increases your fellowship in the body as you share yourself with others, and it causes you to grow.

3.  When our faith falters and our situations loom larger in our minds than God’s promises, how should we obey Jesus’ command in Matthew 6:34 and find hope in Luke 12:6? What insight does Mark 9:23-24 offer?

     There will be times your situations will loom larger in your mind than God’s promises and you will be tempted to believe that God’s promises will not hold. But God tells us that each day has enough to worry about. The hairs of your head are numbered, and not one falls out without His knowledge. He constantly reminds us we have no reason to worry and points to His good care of us in the past as proof of our need NOT to worry. Who among us can not relate to the cry of the father of the demon possessed child in Mark 9:23-24? Lord I believe! Help my unbelief! The amplified translates that passage like this, “At once the father of the boy gave [an eager, piercing, inarticulate] cry with tears, and he said, Lord, I believe! [Constantly] help my weakness of faith!” Isn’t that what we are struggling with? A weakness of faith? An unbelief in the Sovereignty of God? We too can cry out in the midst of our pain and confusion as this father did and I believe it is a prayer He will answer.

4.  Our frustration, which usually involves being upset at whatever or whoever blocks our plans or desires, has roots in ungodliness because we are living as if God is not involved in our circumstances. What comforting and encouraging insights can we gain from Psalm 139:16?

Psalm 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them.”

I am comforted by the knowledge that He is aware of the number of my days, I am equally if not more comforted by the fact that He will preserve my coming in and my going out (Psalm 121:8) and that He knows the words I will speak before I utter one syllable, that He is not surprised by the words I think escaped my lips (Psalm 139:4) and if I am faithless, He will remain faithful (II Timothy 2:13)

The constant cry of my heart though, is 

make me MORE like Christ.