Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Am I Sinning When I'm Anxious? - Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Is all anxiety sin? When does godly concern or care become sinful and ungodly anxiety? How can our legitimate stresses and pressures get elevated to a degree in which we no longer trust God and in turn, become sinfully worried? In this episode, Jonny Ardavanis answers these crucial questions and explains the difference between care, concern, and anxiety.You can pre-order Jonny’s book wherever books are sold! Releases October 8, 2024!Watch VideosVisit the Website Pre-order Consider the LiliesFollow on Instagram

One of the things that we see over and over again throughout the Bible is that what may start as a legitimate care and legitimate concern can quickly turn into an ungodly worry and anxiety when we don't cast those burdens and cares upon the Lord, and instead we bear them and become paralyzed by them. Welcome to the Dial-In Studios. I'm here with Hank Bowen. You look like you're ready to play 18. I am always ready to play 18. Always ready to golf. Always ready to golf. You, on the other hand, do not. No, I'm not. Well, I am always ready. But we're here, Hank, and we're talking about the subject of anxiety.

In our last episode, we talked about the reality that we live in an anxious world. Whether that's a 13 year old or a 73 year old, there's a commonality. And for that reason, often the USA is referred to as the United States of anxiety. And so in that regard, I wanted to, in this episode, begin to maybe break down some definitions, you know, because some people will ask, hey, when does anxiety become sin? Or is all anxiety and all worry, sin? You definitions, you know, because some people will ask, hey, when does anxiety become sin or is all anxiety and all worry sin? You know, you might say I'm anxious for Christmas. Is that anxiety sin? So I think it's maybe helpful, if that makes sense, to provide at least a foundational definition of terms. Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like this is one where the original language is especially helpful. I think we can get the thrust of the message, but more specifically, where does anxiety end or where does concern begin? Where maybe can you define for us for

a second? I feel like you have a common phrase that semantics actually matter because it's all in the words. People make fun of me because I say words matter. And I think even when you talk about the original languages as it relates to the subject before us, it actually might be more confusing because we'll talk about this in a minute. The same word is used for care, concern, and anxiety. And so to your point, we have to ask the question, when does a good and godly concern and care become an ungodly lack of trust in who God is and a sin? Previously, we talked about the Bible. We want to first, I guess, remind ourselves that the Bible is sufficient for the subject at hand. Sometimes we have this idea that when Jesus is addressing his anxious followers back then, they live totally different

lives than we live, and they can't imagine what we're going through. But previously, we talked about the reality that they were under the ruthless regime of Rome. They asked the same questions about their relationships, their finances, their future, all of those things. And Jesus in Matthew 6, 25 is going to say, therefore do not be anxious. And that might cause someone to swell up with shame. But as we'll talk about more and more as the series unfolds, Jesus is not just clear in his rebuke. He's tender and compassionate, and he's going to provide us with all of the necessary reasons for why we should trust him. Now, when Jesus says, do not be anxious, we need to really define what that word means.

And this is back to your point, like semantics. People say, eh, you know, potato, tomato, or is that what they say? Potato, tomato? Yeah. Potato, potato. I don't know. Potato, potato. Leave this in, Mark. Yeah. Potato, tomato? Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. And so your point is saying in the original. Yes. Okay. Now we're back. Let's get back for a second. I missed that in fifth grade. Chicago did me dirty. Don't blame this on Chicago. I was raised in the same school system you were.

Private school. Caveat. Okay. So people would say it's just semantics. And I say, hey, semantics are everything. And I want to explain why. The Greek word merom nao is used 17 times in the Bible. It can be translated a few different ways. The first couple being care and concern, and the third being anxiety or worry, which is often used interchangeably in the Bible. The first two terms, care and concern, are often good and godly things. For instance, Paul, when he's writing Philippians, he's writing to them. He makes the Philippian church know the extent and the depth and the breadth of his love for them, and he's writing Philippians, he's writing to them. He makes the Philippian church know the

extent and the depth and the breadth of his love for them. And he longs to be with them. And yet Paul can't be with them. Why? Because he's writing the epistle to the Philippians, not from his corner office overlooking the Mediterranean, but from a prison cell. And so he's telling them that, hey, I'm going to send Timothy to you. And in Philippians 2.20, he says, for I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be, keyword here, concerned, that's meram nao, for your welfare. In this case, this concern that Timothy has for the Philippian church is a good and godly thing. And for that reason, Paul is going to send his son in the faith, Timothy, to the Philippian church so that he might effectively minister and shepherd and love them.

Furthermore, in 1 Corinthians 12, 25, you have this scene where Paul is teaching on spiritual gifts, and then he exhorts the body of Christ at the church of Corinth to be unified. And then he says that his heart is that the members may have the same care, miram na'o, for one another. In this instance, like before, care is crucial for the unity and the strength and the health of the church body and is therefore a good and godly thing. And so maybe drag this into the present for a second. Might there be an example? I mean, you talk about this a little briefly in your book, but we can have cares and concerns that are not necessarily in and of themselves sinful. I think you give the example of maybe losing a job. Yeah. So, and you know, you could use the example of a guy named Jack. Let's say Jack loses his job and he feels the

stress and pressure, which are not bad things to one, provide for his family, care for his needs. And so what he does is he goes about strategically and creatively and diligently seeing what he can do while he waits on the Lord and prays that the Lord would provide to find a new job. A couple of things to clarify that we've already talked about in other episodes, but waiting on the Lord is not antithetical to hustling, to try to find a job, knowing that, man, I got a family to feed and boys to provide for. And so that care and concern that drives you to action

is a good and godly thing. And all the while, while you're filling out resumes and trying to find a job, you're asking that the Lord would continue to provide for all of your needs in Christ Jesus. And you trust in his sovereignty, his plan, his love, and his wisdom. Let's say antithetically,

and we'll talk about this more as we go. But let's say you can take that same guy who loses a job and you become paralyzed by the unknown and you start to, it's what may start with a legitimate care and concern gets taken out of control when we no longer cast our burdens upon the Lord, but bear them. And then we're, yeah, crippled by the unknown. And we start to doubt God's provision and love and kindness and goodness and sovereignty.

And so one of the things that we see over and over again throughout the Bible is that what may start as a legitimate care and legitimate concern can quickly turn into an ungodly worry and anxiety when we don't cast those burdens and cares upon the Lord. And instead we bear them and become paralyzed by them. And so the point would be where your anxiety rests or where the care ultimately finds its root, basically, whether it's in our own heart, on our own power, or whether we're bringing those to the Lord. Yeah. And now we'll talk about this more in a moment, but how we channel those different things, because one of the realities that we've talked

about before is the Christian is no stranger to suffering. He's going to go through a lot of difficult things. There's going to be cares and pressures and concerns. And even to this church that Paul is writing to, they're under persecution. Acts 14.22 says, through many tribulations, we will enter the kingdom of God. So when Peter and Paul are writing on the subject of anxiety to the early church, they're under ruthless emperors that are being, you're feeding Christians to the lions and lighting them on fire as torches for his garden parties. There's real anxiety there. And yet he's going to say at this other scene we'll look at is do not be

anxious. So yeah, to clarify, care, concern, very good things. What you do with that care and concern can quickly become an ungodly worry or anxiety. So in this regard, I've detailed and defined the word merom nao in the Greek. 12 out of the 17 times in the Bible that that word merom nao is used, it refers to something that the Bible is speaking against. And in this case, it's a sin or at least a failure to fix your gaze and to activate your faith. And I use that, you know, I would say exercise your faith in who God is. Something to be rebuked. Yeah, something to be rebuked.

Paul says, do not be anxious. Jesus says, therefore, do not be anxious. And so that is a command to not be anxious. And so that is a command to not be anxious. So what may have started as a care concern becomes an ungodly worry when, and the example I use in the book, is when we pool our anxieties rather than channel them towards God. And, you know, when I was working at Hume Lake, we used to go down into Kings Canyon, and there were different pools that were disconnected from the stream. And those pools would become just filled with stagnant water and then consequently would be filled with algae and would turn green. And when we worry, that's what we are doing. We're

pooling our cares and concerns, and then over time it becomes stagnant and ultimately unhealthy and ungodly. Maybe conversely, you would also have these streams, and these streams are constantly flowing and are full of crystal, clear, and drinkable water. And in this regard, that's what the believer is called to do with any care, concern, trouble, trial, tribulation in their life. They don't pool them. They don't hoard them. They don't meditate upon them. They cast them and carry them to God. Now, obviously this is easier said than done,

but this is why Peter says in 1 Peter 5, 7, cast your cares or cast your burdens upon the Lord because you're not supposed to iron them out. You're supposed to bring them to God. And when we bear our burdens rather than carry them to God, we inevitably become sinfully anxious because we've taken our eyes off of who God is as a sovereign, loving, wise father. And we begin to unnecessarily meditate on our worries. Anybody that is worried knows what meditation is because that's essentially what it is. It's to think about what might be uncertain and unknown rather than dwelling on God whose

character is certain and can be known deeply. That was going to be my follow-up question for maybe real briefly. If we're going to get very down in the weeds tactically, what are, again, some of the tactics for someone says, okay, that's convicting to me. I'm one who wants to cast my anxieties, cares, and concerns to the Lord. I think prayer is going to play a big role in this, but what else might you help calibrate what dwelling, what passing those cares and concerns onto the Lord might practically look like? Yeah. So I think you could, let's go back to, you know, the job situation. You know, practically, part of it is your attitude towards the stress and pressure that you're in. So if you're looking for a job, you can become paralyzed by the unknown and worry about the lack of provision and do nothing, which would be a sin because that's passivity and disobedience.

Then you could try to do everything on your own and neglect the reality that God is your father who wants to provide and care for you. So a lot of those things are, you know, Corrie Ten Boom used to say that worry is like racing the engine without letting in the clutch. You burn energy and you go nowhere. So on the one side, you have someone that's just worried. They're always worried and yet they're worried about money, but they don't work hard. Then you have another side of the spectrum, the person that is a workaholic, but fails to trust that God will provide. And so, as we'll talk about more and more as the different episodes unfold, basically, we work hard as unto the Lord, and then we live our life with an open hand. We then, and this is probably a big

takeaway, we rest in the promises of God. Because it's your attitude towards your circumstances, not the circumstances that dictate whether or not you have peace or not. So you could say, because the Christian is going to go through difficult trials and troubles. And if they're in that moment, they don't just say to God, take away my anxiety. What they have to do, and we'll talk about this more, is root their faith in what they know, and that's the promises of God. So we know that, hey, if you lost your job and you're walking with the Lord, then you know that God has already promised to provide for all of your needs in Christ Jesus, that

he is sovereign over your life, not just the universe, that he is sovereignly orchestrating and ordaining the things that transpire in your life for his glory and your good. Then you have to think about what's my good. You know, Romans 8, 28, my good is the confirmation of my life into the image of his son. So that means that if I'm losing, if I've lost the job and my nest egg is crushed, and there's an uncertainty in regards to my scholarship, because my ACL is torn, then you know that, hey, ultimately, because I'm pursuing the will of the Lord, that this is a part of his sovereign plan. So I can find joy, as James says, even in the midst of trials.

Furthermore, you can root your, you know, and we'll talk about each of these realities in a distinct episode, that God's sovereignty is never divorced from his love. That whatever I'm going through, if God is sovereign, he's not just a king who's pulling strings. He's also a father who loves us and is using even the difficulty in our life to wean us from the world and bring us towards himself. And that's why in the book I talk about kind of every anxiety in our life is an invitation to draw closer to God. And that is different than just saying, God, remove this anxiety. It's learning to dwell upon his character and to exercise our faith.

Because if there was no trouble in our life, we would never learn to trust God. Absolutely. So to recap even briefly, care, concern, anxiety, same word used in the biblical text, but used differently. One falling into a category broadly that needs to be rebuked and repented of. The other that are actually godly in a response to situations in which we find ourselves and actually can show care towards one another. Maybe set up for a second, where are we going next? Where are, maybe you want to talk a little bit about where some of the most common root causes or kind of reasons for anxiety many people find themselves in? Yeah, previously we talked about the physical, maybe recipes for anxiety, loneliness, exhaustion, grief, trauma. And after providing this definition of terms, in the next episode,

we'll talk about some of those spiritual recipes for anxiety and it's really just in the same passage that jesus says in matthew 6 25 therefore do not be anxious but you know if you've grown up in the church anytime you see a therefore you ask what's it there for what's it there for and because jesus is saying therefore do not be anxious based upon the previous verses and in that light we're going to see the same thing we've been talking about, that many of the things that we're anxious about, relationships, finances, our future, what are we going to wear, you know, start as good concerns, maybe normal pressures. But when not carried to God and when not tethered to a meditation upon his character,

they quickly become ungodly worries and ungodly anxieties. And when we worry, it's not just kind of a sin. It's telling God, I do not trust you. It's functional atheism. And so I think understanding that latter definition of anxiety, when we no longer fix our gaze on who God is, but on the problems and pressures of this life, understanding that to be sin is not crippling, it's freeing. Because only when we understand that ungodly anxiety to be something that grieves the heart of God to be sin, that's when we can move forward with confession and repentance and ultimately the pathway to transformation, which is trusting God and receiving the peace that only comes from him. Awesome. I look forward to it, diving into the spiritual response or the spiritual roots,

but maybe we can pause there and we'll pick it up next time. Awesome. Thanks, Hank. Yeah, looking forward to it.