Reshaped: Worry | Week 4
Reshaped • A Life Formed By Jesus • Week 4
Matthew 6:25–34 • Romans 8:32Our Trust: Anxiety
Jesus does not dismiss the things that make us worried or afraid. He invites us to see them within the care of our heavenly Father, loosen our grip on the things we cannot control, and grow into a deeper trust that allows us to seek His Kingdom today while entrusting tomorrow to Him.
Key Concept
Jesus reshapes how we carry anxiety by calling us away from fear and toward deeper trust in our Father.
Reflection Questions
- What is one area of your life that seems to be a constant source of worry or fear, and what might it reveal about where you are placing your trust?
- Does what you regularly consume - news, social media, conversations - move you more toward peace or fear?
Scripture
Matthew 6:25–34
Romans 8:32
Our attention is not passive. What we repeatedly watch, read, listen to, and focus on has the ability to shape us. And when our attention continually shifts toward the fears and demands of this world, the space once occupied by hope and peace can slowly become filled with worry.
There is no shortage of things to worry about.
Relationships.
Our health.
Our children.
Our finances.
Our careers.
The future.
Things happening in our city, our country, and around the world.
Sometimes even the things we once assumed were safe become new places of concern.
If we are not careful, fear can always find another subject.
What happens when the things receiving our attention continually move us toward fear?
A necessary word about anxiety.
Before we hear Jesus say, "Do not worry," we need to acknowledge that the word anxiety describes very different experiences for different people.
There is the everyday worry Jesus addresses in Matthew 6.
And there are also people who live with severe, persistent, or debilitating anxiety that can affect relationships, work, sleep, decision-making, and even the ability to get through an ordinary day.
For someone living with that kind of anxiety, a careless use of this passage can create another burden:
"If I were trusting God enough, I would not feel this way."
"If I prayed correctly, this would disappear."
"If I am still anxious, I must be failing God."
That is not the burden Jesus is placing on us here.
Jesus' words are not meant to add shame to anxiety, but to remind us how deeply our Father sees and cares for us.
God can heal miraculously.
And people can also experience real help through prayer, Christian community, counseling, doctors, medication, and other forms of wise care.
Receiving help is not a failure of faith.
The invitation in Matthew 6 is not to pretend every experience of anxiety is simple.
It is to encounter again the character of the Father in the midst of what we carry.
Jesus begins with "therefore."
Matthew 6:25 does not begin a completely new conversation.
Jesus says:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life.
Matthew 6:25"Therefore" tells us to look backward.
Jesus has been talking about treasure.
What do we value?
What are we pursuing?
What receives our attention?
What do we believe will provide security?
The surrounding world tells us to build our lives around things that can be accumulated, protected, achieved, controlled, and possessed.
Jesus tells us those things cannot bear the weight of our lives.
They fade.
They can be lost.
They cannot become our ultimate security.
Some of our worry is connected to what we have asked to carry the weight of our trust.
Jesus is talking about two kingdoms.
The Sermon on the Mount describes a different way of living.
Jesus announces that the King has come and that His Kingdom operates according to different values, priorities, and assumptions.
The kingdom of this world tells us:
- Your security depends entirely on you.
- Get enough, hold enough, and protect enough.
- Control as much of the future as possible.
- Build your life around what you can see and possess.
Jesus invites His followers into another Kingdom.
A Kingdom in which we are responsible, but not ultimately self-sufficient.
A Kingdom in which we work, plan, save, and care for what has been entrusted to us without believing everything depends entirely upon us.
Jesus invites us to live as people who have a Father.
Jesus does not say our needs are unimportant.
Food mattered to the people listening to Jesus.
Clothing mattered.
Shelter mattered.
Tomorrow mattered.
These were not imaginary concerns.
Jesus is not minimizing them.
He is challenging the disproportionate place they can begin to occupy within us.
A legitimate concern can become consuming.
A real responsibility can become an attempt to control the uncontrollable.
Something that matters can slowly become the thing around which our entire emotional life revolves.
These things matter, but they do not have to consume us.
Jesus tells us to look at the birds.
Jesus lifts the eyes of His listeners toward creation.
Look at the birds of the air.
Matthew 6:26The birds are active.
They gather.
They move.
They build.
Jesus is not celebrating inactivity or irresponsibility.
His point is that the birds are not solely responsible for sustaining the world in which they live.
They do not create the rain.
They do not cause the sun to rise.
They do not grow the trees in which they build their nests.
They live and work inside a creation being sustained by God.
Look at creation long enough to remember that you are not carrying the universe by yourself.
Then Jesus points to the flowers.
Look at their beauty.
Look at the care woven into something so temporary.
Jesus says even Solomon at the height of his splendor could not manufacture what God creates effortlessly in a field.
Then comes Jesus' argument from the lesser to the greater.
If God cares for birds...
If God clothes grass and flowers...
Then:
Are you not much more valuable than they?
Matthew 6:26Do you remember your value to the Father?
Jesus' argument is rooted in our worth.
Human beings are uniquely described in Scripture as created in the image of God.
Jesus speaks to His followers as people known by the Father.
Loved by the Father.
Valued by the Father.
If God pays attention to creation, how much more does He pay attention to His sons and daughters?
Anxiety can narrow our vision until we forget how the Father sees us.
Jesus wants to lift our eyes again.
Not toward denial.
Toward trust.
We may trust God with eternity but struggle to trust Him with Tuesday.
Many of us sincerely say that we trust God.
We trust Jesus for salvation.
We trust Him with eternity.
Yet trust becomes more complicated when it reaches ordinary life.
Do I trust Him with my career?
My finances?
My children?
My health?
My relationships?
My future?
The things I most deeply desire?
Trust is not only what we believe about eternity. It is what we practice in the ordinary places of today.
For some of us, trust is underdeveloped.
We believe God is trustworthy in principle.
But when difficulty arrives, our trust immediately gives way to control.
We hold certain areas tightly.
We allow God access to some parts of life while quietly deciding that other parts remain ours to manage alone.
For us, Jesus may be inviting a deeper practice of trust.
Not irresponsibility.
Not passivity.
But the recognition that we can faithfully do what has been entrusted to us without carrying the burden of being God.
Where am I saying I trust God while still believing everything ultimately depends on me?
For others, trust has been wounded.
This is a different conversation.
Some of us trusted God.
And the thing we feared happened anyway.
The relationship ended.
The job disappeared.
The diagnosis came.
The family fractured.
The prayer was not answered in the way we hoped.
So when someone says, "You just need to trust God," something inside us resists.
Not because we never trusted.
Because we did.
And we were hurt.
Sometimes our struggle is not an absence of trust. It is wounded trust.
Wounded trust needs honesty before it needs another slogan.
If you feel disappointed with God, the next step may not simply be trying harder to trust Him.
It may begin with healing.
And healing may begin by becoming honest.
Can we trust God enough to tell Him that we are angry?
Confused?
Disappointed?
Afraid?
Can we name the place where we felt abandoned?
The Psalms repeatedly teach us that God is not threatened by the unedited truth of our hearts.
If your trust has been wounded, trust God enough to be honest with Him and move toward Him for healing.
The world has to chase.
Jesus then contrasts life in His Kingdom with the surrounding world:
The pagans run after all these things.
Matthew 6:32In context, Jesus is describing people who do not know God as Father.
And if there is no Father...
If this world is all there is...
If our security depends entirely upon our ability to acquire and protect...
Then running makes sense.
Grab.
Strive.
Hoard.
Protect.
Control.
Because everything depends on you.
Fear tells us to run after security. Jesus reminds us that we already have a Father.
Your heavenly Father knows.
Jesus follows the contrast with an extraordinary promise:
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
Matthew 6:32Jesus does not say our needs are imaginary.
He says they are known.
Before we have found the perfect words to pray...
Before we have solved the problem...
Before tomorrow arrives...
Our Father knows.
"The Father knows" is not a promise that everything will happen the way we want. It is relief from believing we carry everything alone.
Seek first His Kingdom.
Jesus does not simply tell us what to stop focusing on.
He redirects our attention.
Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.
Matthew 6:33Seek the values of God's Kingdom.
Seek His priorities.
Seek His righteousness.
Allow Jesus to reorder what matters most.
"First" is not merely a sequence in which we spend a few minutes on God and then return to everything else.
It is priority.
Orientation.
A life centered around the Kingdom of God.
Seek the Kingdom first, and let everything else find its proper place around it.
Today has an assignment. Tomorrow belongs to the Father.
Jesus finishes:
Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Matthew 6:34There is something freeing in Jesus' words.
He gives us permission to live in the day we actually have.
Today, seek the Kingdom.
Today, love the person in front of you.
Today, take the next faithful step.
Today, carry today's responsibility.
Tomorrow?
Entrust tomorrow to the Father.
Seek Him today. Entrust tomorrow to Him.
Worry promises control but steals the present.
Jesus asks whether worrying can add even a single hour to our lives.
We know the answer.
Worry does not create more life.
It can steal from the life already in front of us.
We can be sitting in the middle of something beautiful while mentally living inside a future that has not happened.
We can be physically present and emotionally somewhere else.
Worry often asks us to sacrifice today's joy in an attempt to control tomorrow.
Jesus invites us to receive today as a gift.
Everything hinges on the character of the One we trust.
"Trust God" can sound like a simple answer to a complicated life.
But trust only grows when we believe the object of our trust is actually trustworthy.
Do we believe God cares?
Not theoretically.
Not merely as a doctrine.
Do we believe He cares about what is keeping us awake?
That He notices the weight we are carrying?
That He knows the fear we have not told anyone else?
We grow in trust as we become convinced that our Father actually cares for us.
Our circumstances are not the proof of God's care.
One of the easiest mistakes to make is using our circumstances as the measurement of God's love.
When life is going well:
"God must really care about me."
When life is painful:
"Maybe God has forgotten me."
But the gospel gives us a more secure place to look.
The proof of God's care for you is not your circumstances. The proof is the cross.
God's love is not established by whether this week feels easy.
It is established in what He has already done in Jesus.
Paul gives us the same lesser-to-greater argument.
Writing to believers experiencing suffering, Paul asks:
He who did not spare his own Son... how will he not also graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:32If God has already given what was most precious...
If He gave His Son...
Why would we conclude that He has suddenly become indifferent to us?
That does not promise an easy life.
Romans 8 is written into suffering, not around it.
It does not promise that feared circumstances will never occur.
It promises something stronger:
Whatever tomorrow brings, it cannot erase the love God has already demonstrated at the cross.
Communion gives us something tangible to remember.
On the night Jesus was betrayed, He gathered His disciples around a table.
He knew what was ahead.
He knew how frightened and confused His followers would become.
And He gave them a practice of remembrance.
Bread.
A cup.
His body given for them.
His blood poured out for forgiveness.
When their circumstances made God's care difficult to see, they would have something tangible to remember.
The cross becomes the fixed point from which we interpret the changing circumstances of our lives.
Where is Jesus inviting you toward deeper trust?
For some of us, the invitation is to loosen our grip on something we have been trying to control.
For others, it is to recognize how much fear is being fed by the things receiving our attention.
For some, it is remembering our worth and value to the Father.
For others, trust has been wounded, and the next step is simply becoming honest with God about where it hurts.
The invitation is not to manufacture certainty about everything that will happen tomorrow.
The invitation is to trust the Father with tomorrow while following Jesus today.
Seek today. Entrust tomorrow.
When worry begins pulling your attention into the future this week, allow Jesus' words to bring you back to the day you have actually been given.
- Name it: What am I worried about right now?
- Notice: What am I trying to control, protect, or secure through this worry?
- Remember: Remind yourself, "My Father knows what I need, and the cross proves His care for me."
- Seek: Ask, "What does faithfulness to Jesus and His Kingdom look like today?"
- Entrust: Name tomorrow's concern honestly before God and release it again into His care.
Reflection Questions
- What is one area of your life that seems to be a constant source of worry or fear, and what might it reveal about where you are placing your trust?
- Does what you regularly consume - news, social media, conversations - move you more toward peace or fear?
A Prayer of Trust
Father, You know what I need before I even know how to ask. You know the things that make me afraid, the places where I am trying to hold tightly to control, and the parts of my trust that may have been wounded. Help me remember my worth and value to You. When fear pulls my attention toward everything that might happen tomorrow, teach me to seek Your Kingdom in the life You have given me today. Give me courage to be honest with You about disappointment, confusion, and hurt. Thank You that Your care for me is not measured by whether my circumstances are easy. You have already shown me Your love through Jesus and the cross. Help me trust You with what You have entrusted to me today, and trust You enough to place tomorrow back into Your hands. Amen.
