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00:00:01 morning fbc welcome back to the church worship this morning we're going to be dealing with a very important topic that's relevant to all of us as you can see the slide what is at the top of people's minds is this pandemic that's going on and the covet virus seems to be multiplying and also having variance four variants coming really up so in in the light of this how do we as believers handle the anxiety that comes from actually a real threat so our passage is matthew chapter 6 verses 19 to 34. let's start with the word of prayer
00:00:40 father lord this morning we're going to ask you to be with us help us understand what anxiety is how do we actually fall into that trap and how are we to handle it in the light of your word we ask for jesus sake amen let me start off uh by quoting deepak chopra who's basically a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the university of california at san diego he actually says instead of one pandemic there are actually three pandemics the first one is the covid 19 pandemic the second one
00:01:18 is a financial economic pandemic because of the first and the third one there's a pandemic of anxiety yes anxiety which is why we've chosen this passage today uh if you look at the data looking at internet searches for acute anxiety there have been 3.4 million searches on anxiety the highest search volume in the last 16 years if you look at google so people are all anxious and looking at ways to handling anxiety it seems anxiety has been with us from time immemorial what is anxiety well basically what happens when we are
00:01:58 confronted with fears either present or in the future we stop we consider possible outcomes and then we make decisions based on the best possible prediction of how life is going to go when we're confronted with uncertainty the problem with anxiety is that it's a shortcut through that process and it goes directly into fear someone else arthur summers roche actually wrote he's an american novelist wrote anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind if encouraged it cuts a channel into which all
00:02:36 other thoughts are drained it becomes a torrent as it were we've got depression that it leads to insomnia chronic pain addiction panic attacks phobias hypertension these are all the attendant consequences of anxiety if it's not handled if we don't cope with it and we let it run wild in our lives it is estimated one in four adults will have anxiety as a significant problem throughout their lifespan and specific phobias about 12.5 percent lifetime prevalence so what we're speaking about this morning is
00:03:14 highly relevant to all of us in fact it was a study of imu students 762 students in 2014 15 and they found that the anxiety was very prevalent in a problem in 76 of these particular students right so what is anxiety why do we have anxiety and how do we overcome anxiety so what we're going to do is we're going to pose these three questions into the text to get answers of what how god is going to minister to us this morning the first step is what is anxiety well here we are matthew 6 25-26 therefore i tell you
00:03:55 do not be anxious about your life what you will eat what you will drink nor about your body what you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing so here is a command not to be anxious and the word manoa is actually the greek word for anxiety it focuses on two possible meanings one is focused care and the other one more importantly here is a distraction in occupying the attention of the mind occupied with or dwelling on something so it's a distraction from your normal lifestyle and causing
00:04:33 you to focus attention on that particular threat that comes there's a difference between anxiety and actual fear for example if you actually have this horrible bumblebee you don't actually see very many of them nowadays if they're attacking you or flying around you it's frightening because it's got these horrible fangs it's going to sink stuff on you and you're going to get allergic reaction and die perhaps so we we our heart races we get sweaty we get frightened we might scream we might run that's a response to fear
00:05:05 the problem is right after that when the bee has gone away or you killed the bee every time you look around the corner every time you go on the street every time you go shopping or jogging you're always looking out for b's there's no b there but there's an anxiety about the possibility of the bee coming again now that is anxiety versus what is fear right so anxiety is basically the uncontrollability focused largely on possible future threats and dangers or other upcoming potentially negative events
00:05:44 in contrast to fear where the danger is present and imminent so when the bee is here that is fear and it's okay to confront that fear and deal with that be the problem is anxiety is focusing on future threats where the bee is not here but the bee might be here or that danger and then that preoccupies our mind this is matthew 25 to 26 i tell you do not be anxious about your life look at the tents what you will eat what you will drink what you will put on there is a future tense so therefore these problems aren't here they're
00:06:22 tomorrow's problems and what you're doing is you are taking tomorrow's probably bringing up today and you're worrying about it today tomorrow's problems today that is what the bible tells us jesus tells us not to be engaged in that was a 14th century german mystic called johannes taller had this interesting conversation with a beggar whom he had met along the road and he said to the wrecker god give you a good day my friend and the beggar replied i thank god i never had a bad day and taller replied
00:06:56 god give you a happy life then my friend that beggar said i thank god i'm never unhappy that's strange and tallah said what do you mean well the beggar said well when it's fine i thank god when it rains i thank god when i have plenty i thank god when i'm hungry i thank god and since god's will is my will and whatever pleases him pleases me why should i say i'm unhappy when i'm not then taller looked at the beggar and asked him who are you and the beggar said i'm a king well when where's your kingdom the
00:07:32 beggar said the king my kingdom is in my heart now is this a picture of someone who has basically no anxiety because his will is god's will is that how a christian is supposed to be to to act or behave well if that's the case that's not real that's actually a false sense because this guy really has zero anxiety because his will is god's will now let's look at jesus here we have jesus the day the night before he's supposed to be crucified he's in the garden of gethsemane verse 44 luke chapter 22 being in agony
00:08:09 he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down into the ground now don't you think jesus will is god's will and here we have jesus in agony but that beggar was never in agony that's an unrealistic depiction of how a person in sync with god should be here he has an imminent threat there is fear and jesus experiences that fear and he agonizes over that and taking with him peter and the two sons of zebedee he began to be sorrowful in trouble and he said to them my soul is very
00:08:46 sorrowful even unto death and here we actually have the actual prospect of a horrific death where god abandons him jesus knows this and he begins to deal with this in his mind as he anticipates this imminent threat now that is dealing with fear anxiety is when jesus starts his ministry three years before and he starts worrying about the death that will come three years later on what's going to happen to me will they nail me the cross how many nails will they use that is anxiety now we can be optimists or pessimists
00:09:24 this which side of which we will lean towards in our personalities but the biblical picture of what a christian is is not like the beggar it's more like jesus realists are the ones who deal with life in this eternal perspective right why do we actually have anxiety well two reasons one is that we have divided hearts and two it seems that we don't really trust god let's deal with the fact that we have end divided hearts therefore do not be anxious about your life see when you see the word therefore you must always look in the
00:10:02 passage why is it therefore so if you look at the previous passage it describes a whole bunch of things here we're not going to read it's just for you to look at and basically what jesus is alluding to in verse 19 onwards is basically three metaphors to illustrate progressively what he means by the fact that we actually have divided hearts which is the source of our anxiety it's the imagery is treasure eyes and basically slavery slavery and being a master right let's start off do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth
00:10:39 where the moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal but lay up for yourself treasure in heaven whether neither the moth nor rust destroys where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also and so what jesus is saying that the source of our anxiety is actually on what we value if we value things that are temporal treasures moth and rust could destroy your clothes the clothes in those days were very expensive you could probably afford one good coat for your whole life
00:11:15 or maybe two and this is where the moth and rust will destroy or if you've got gold the thieves will break in because no fixed box in those days and steel but lay up for yourself trash in heaven where neither moth nor us destroy where the thieves do not break in the steel which means if we place what we value in a place that cannot be threatened then actually we won't actually have the anxiety where your treasure is there your high so your heart your anxiety will beat where your treasure is look at this
00:11:47 young lady which do you think she will have anxiety losing that clump of broccoli on the ice cream if you take the broccoli away she got no problem because that's not where her treasure is if you threaten to take the ice cream away then she'll have anxiety where your treasure is there your heart will be also martin luther said possessions belong in your hands not in your heart and that's a very important lesson because money that we have possessions that we have belong in your hand for you to use either for yourself
00:12:22 or for your neighbor for the kingdom of god but the moment you put those possessions in your heart then that's where your anxiety comes from if you look at the previous study about 76 imu students having anxiety they look at them what are the main factors in that particular study in 2015 that drove their anxiety well three main factors one students were higher drive higher desire to succeed and an indian ethnic group so basically the more you want it the more you want a particular thing and here and
00:12:55 they want to be doctors they will be successful doctors the more anxiety they will actually have now anxieties also have an indicative function they tell you where your heart is test yourselves if you were to be upset whether you missed the corporate board meeting versus the worship session whether you missed your office meeting versus a live group meeting whether you could afford a new car versus whether you could contribute to missions which one gets you anxious anxiety will point to where your
00:13:26 heart really is and we need to look at where we get anxious about are we anxious about the things of god or the ministry of god our we anxious about everything else anxieties have indicative function we often have a career trajectory but we don't have a spiritual trajectory of where god wants us five years look honestly have you ever asked yourself in five years where does god want you in terms of your spiritual growth or is that really on a holding pattern if it's a holding pattern then most probably jesus is not your
00:14:01 treasure that's a fact do we actually look at our spiritual health versus our physical health we're always measuring our weight we are most of us have fitbits we're more concerned about physical health but we're not concerned about spiritual health we don't monitor the fact that we're not spiritually healthy why is it that we don't why we because problem with treasure why do we value certain things well it's because we have the wrong perspective in life the second metaphor the eye is the lamp of the body
00:14:33 so if your eye is healthy and your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is bad your whole body will be full of darkness if then the light is in you is darkness how great is the darkness see what jesus is trying to tell us that we have the wrong perspective the wrong perspective is based on what kind of eye we have what kind of vision we actually have you see he's using the metaphor light in a room the room is your body the eye is basically the light right so if your eye is healthy and the greek
00:15:07 word here for healthy is basically haploss okay it actually doesn't mean healthy it means single if your eye is single which means it's focused on a single-minded trajectory towards spiritual things singleness of purpose undivided loyalty which means if we have a single-minded eye or single-minded perspective on life that's healthy then your whole life will be full of light but if your eye is bad poneros is greek which basically evil if your eye is evil then your room or your body will full of darkness right so therefore
00:15:47 we have a choice we either have a eye which is full of light that lights up our entire life with the beauty of christ or we have a eye of basic darkness whole body full of evil in matthew chapter 5 verse 14 the same sermon mounts jesus says you are the light of the world and light is revelation and purity that's the good eye we should have we do not see the world even because he says we don't see the world as it is we see the world as we are and because many of us come from our non-christian backgrounds we
00:16:24 still have an evil eye and that evil eye causes us to lose perspective and focus on the wrong things and that brings anxiety upon our lives we're focusing on everything else that can be taken away which is where the source of anxiety is the third reason why we actually have anxiety besides the fact that our treasure in the wrong place or we've got the wrong perspective and how we look at things is that we're trying to balance loyalties between god and money we want to have our cake and eat it that's a trouble
00:16:54 look at this guy balancing balancing is very very difficult no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to one and despise the other you you can't serve god and money and and here is a picture of slavery you can have you can't have two masters because a master by definition the master is in full control whatever he says goes you can't argue you can't discuss you can debate with a master a master has full control the question is who has full control
00:17:29 martin luther says if money becomes one's master and not the servant which means it's your heart rather than your your hands he sings deeper and deeper into greed he gets further and further away from the word of god and finally he becomes completely hostile to it so therefore if you actually trying to balance two masters and if money is one of them it's an all-consuming master right it will take you further and further away which is why when one timothy 6 9 paul says those who desire to be rich fall into temptation
00:18:03 into a snare into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction we have anxieties when we're trying to serve two masters on one hand we're serving money and that's brings us to guilt to greed and when we're too greedy we feel guilty because we're going to deal with that because we're trying to serve god as well so balancing the two things and then the reason we're doing all that is about attempting control verse 25 therefore i tell you do not be anxious about your life
00:18:35 see what we want to do all of us want to be in control what you eat what you would drink normal body what you put on those are issues that are important to us but the issue is we need to control those aspects of our lives here we see a picture of a child and and and the child and i'm sure many of you put your children to this and my father probably put myself on his lap as he drove the car we actually have an illusion of control we think we the things that we do actually control the cost of our lives
00:19:10 actually that cut that the control is actually illusion a lot of things in life we actually don't control and the problem is that is that we've got a problem between uncertainty versus control the reality of life is that in real life life is uncertain you could walk into any shop you like and you might still catch covet 19 despite the fact that we're actually wearing masks i've had a couple weeks uh two weeks ago when melbourne started to have covet 19 again everybody got into a panic and then they found out there were about
00:19:47 couple of cases in nursing homes now the nursing homes up in in melbourne already 99 vaccinated and the shocking part is even though you're vaccinated how did they get the covet 19 again so there's really no solution the reality of life is that life is uncertain and the trouble is in with us that we want control we have a demand for certainty in the face of a life that's uncertain and that brings anxiety so we have got endless thought loops we're thinking about how are we going to get overcome this
00:20:19 problem we think about it endlessly we get exhausted we lose perspective the things we're anxious about completely take over our entire radar and it alters our perspective in life we interpret everything in the light of those anxieties and we we need to have accurate predictions and management of the future a week but the trouble is we can't we're planning we're over planning to control the uncontrollable we can't relax and not only that we try to control others it's we've become like this hoarders
00:20:49 look at this guy is hoarding everything the reason why people hoard is that if one hoarded item will prove useful then it's probably justified to keep the hundred that are not and so we in our minds we're hoarding everything ruminating over everything because we're trying to control the uncontrollable which is why we've got anxiety the reality is we are not in control verse 27 of which of you being anxious can add a single hour to span of life you can't no matter how you try you cannot add one single hour in times
00:21:26 of uncertainty we turn to social media and social media is full of fake news anthropological studies have shown us when there is uncertainty people where there's no control over environmental threats people resort to fake news or superstitions take for example the black death this was the world pandemic in those days which is far worse than covet 19 because the mortality rate or death rate from the black plague right was 30 percent huge numbers of people died and and the doctors weren't quite so clever in those days they didn't
00:22:03 really have the solutions a lot loud doctors today and this somebody who described the doctor john frost chronicles 1380 describe doctors doctors need three qualifications to be able to lie and not get caught to pretend to be honest and to cause death without guilt wow doctors really have bad press in those days and so what did the people do well they resorted to drinking vinegar some of them were eating crushed minerals arsenic and mercury you know you would take acidic and miraculous happened to you
00:22:38 all right rubbing onions or herbs onto the wounds chopped up snakes chopped up pigeons into the snake and then some even put themselves near fire because the fire will will burn and push your fever away so see fake news takes prime spots in your life when there's huge amount of uncertainty the problem with anxiety this is from the parable of the soul and what was sown among thorns this is the one who hears the word but the character of the world the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves
00:23:12 unfruitful the problem anxiety is that you are so preoccupied with it that it will detract you from serving and honoring and making god your total focus in life that's the problem the second reason uh why we have anxiety is basically we don't trust god and this is what jesus says very clear you look at the birds they neither sow nor reap no gather in barns and yet their heavenly father feeds them are you not more valuable than a bird look at the are you anxious about clothing consider the lilies of the
00:23:47 field how they grow they neither toil nor spin none of them got an investment plan or retirement plan and look at how beautiful they are and i tell you even solomon all his glory was not arrayed like the one of these but if god so clothed the grass of the field which is today alive and through more thrown into but how much more will he clothe you of little faith so we are more valuable than all of god's creation so therefore we need to trust god so how do we actually overcome anxiety this is a passage i mean
00:24:19 anything to tell us well first of all obedience i tell you do not be anxious do not be anxious three times in this particular passage this is an imperative tense imperative tense means it's a command so therefore we actually have to obey why do we have to obey why because there are three reasons given you can't balance loyalties god who provides for his creation regards us of greater value he will certainly provide for us and there's too much on our plate i mean the troubles of today are so much that
00:24:49 you don't have to bring tomorrow's problems and bring it today that's logic to understand and the third thing is the most famous verse is to priority to seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you what does it mean to seek first to seek first means to prioritize and if you look back in this particular passage the prioritization or seeking first is basically four has four aspects one we need to relocate our treasure because these are all the reasons why you actually have anxiety
00:25:20 we need to change our perspective we need to serve only one master and we need to trust in his love you might notice some of you in the financial realm the price of bitcoin which is this cryptocurrency has been shooting really high up up to 34 000 last year uh taken a bit of a dive recently but there was this chap called stefan thomas who actually owned he's in california he owned 7 000 bitcoins which is actually today's money worth 230 million us dollars the problem with him is that he forgot his password
00:25:59 now if you forgot your password all your money is locked up in the thumb drive and you can't access it at all you only got 10 tries and every day he would be so anxious he'll lie on his bed and started dreaming of a particular password he'd go out and try that thing and it's wrong and he tries it again and it's wrong and each time his heart sinks he's sent into a tailspin of anxiety and fear and finally the last one thing [Music] he lost 230 million because he couldn't remember his password didn't write it down
00:26:38 and this is what he said afterwards it was actually a really big milestone in my life where like i sort of realized how i was going to define myself worth going forward it wasn't going to be about how much money i have in the bank he realized in the end that his self-worth his treasure was actually not in his hands it was in his heart and so therefore he had to relocate his treasure because his treasure could be so easily taken away wiped away with just a loss of a password you know the psalmist in psalm 27 4 says one
00:27:12 thing i have asked of the lord that i will seek after that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the lord and inquire in his temple brothers and sisters psalm 27 is the psalm that tells us of true treasure in life and that it's only one thing the psalmist asked it's only one thing what are you going to ask of god this morning david asks only one thing there's only one thing i seek after that i may dwell in the house of the lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the
00:27:47 beauty of the lord and inquire in his temple why because he recognizes that we as human beings have been created and were wired to respond to beauty and there is no greater beauty than the beauty of the creator of all beauty if you look in an aquarium and see the beauty of a shark or beauty you've got to understand where did that beauty come from it comes from a creator every time you step out in the jetty and you watch the beautiful sunset with sea girls flowing across their screen or looking up in a vast expanse of space
00:28:24 we take a breath and we're awed we're wired to worship you know leon preached a couple of uh two weeks ago about prayer and fasting and the thing about prayer and fasting is that fasting reveals appetite for true treasure which means everything else whether food or or your social media we're willing to put that across put them aside because we are saying to god one thing i desire is to gaze upon your beauty and i'm not going to be distracted by any other beauty whether by food or social media i'm going to sit here
00:29:02 in fasting and press okay that i can worship and experience your beauty that's what it's about when that happens imagine what happened to all your anxieties it will go away because you are putting your treasure where the devil can't get at it you're putting a treasure in heaven second thing is that we have to change our perspective in life we we've got two eyes the evil eye or the single-minded eye so unless we change our perspective then we will continue if we have an evil i will continue with
00:29:33 anxiety because we're putting our treasure our perspective on things that will be taken away the good eye sees it all the 80 90 years that you live right up to eternity the bad eye only sees up to 80 years at the most and we're always looking for temporal outcomes the evil eye only sees immediate threats and solutions and even we tell uh sometimes we've got a problem and our friends counsel us the comfort we actually draw is the fact that we will be healed of our financial situation will turn around but that's
00:30:09 only here we are never comforted by something that goes beyond the good eye sees it all and and basically there's a difference of maturity between a child who looks at immediate short-term outcomes i want my chocolate now where the mother looks at long-term outcome for the child let me and this is typical human nature you look at melbourne's uh vaccination program a couple of weeks ago vaccine hesitancy in fact you actually have one nurse who actually testified that she vaccinated one patient in eight hours
00:30:42 how ridiculous a rich country that has got lots of vaccines and nobody wants to get vaccinated and then what happens a cluster starts off in melbourne with 26 people due to indian variant a person bringing it from adelaide who has tested covet negative four times and immediately within a few hours people are lining up you know six hour wait on the 29th of may daily average vaccination was 6 000 before this came and suddenly on the 25th of may 15 000 vaccinations and on the 24 on the 27th of may 21 000 and it's
00:31:19 climbing all the time but did you realize that koval's always been there they just couldn't see it when we have the evil eye we are blind to eternal perspectives we need the gospel special glasses to put on so that we can see life in all its perspective in fact when in the miracle of the feeding of 5000 this is what jesus says truly i say to you you're seeking me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures the eternal life which the
00:31:57 son of man will give you give to you for on him the father has set his seal and jesus knew the people who came to him they're free lovers all they want is makkah and all they want is makkah right but is this you have to change your perspective work for food that perishes the food that endures to eternal life which is basically faith right i was uh listening to the podcast which kaisen brings out uh you know you can actually access that through our fbc channel and there's a young lady called florence who
00:32:28 was uh sharing how she was in a melbourne tram when she was in melbourne some years ago and there was a very disruptive young man he was shouting and making trouble in the tram everybody sort of shied away from him on that day and what she did was she actually sat next to this rather disruptive young man and started a conversation and when she started a conversation he actually calmed down and she found out that he was really having a very difficult time very difficult time in his life at the end of the conversation he was
00:33:01 calmed and he was really grateful to florence because she actually spent time to show concern to him as a fellow human being and then he went off and and when she went home to share this with her non-christian boyfriend instead of saying wow that's great he's he was actually upset he didn't see it the same way he says you know this kind of person is a threat to you you should actually move aside you you shouldn't go and talk to strangers like this but it was then then florence actually realized the difference between a
00:33:35 non-christian and a christian in terms of their perspective she he saw the gentleman as a threat the one that brings anxiety into your life in the tram she saw it as a wonderful opportunity and how god can bring someone who is so troubled and yet a stranger and that she had the courage by the holy spirit to actually confront that person and talk to the person in love as an opportunity to show god's love that's what i mean you could look at the same situation you can see opportunity or you could see
00:34:08 threat if our eyes are filled with a single-minded devotion to see the world as god sees it we will not have the anxiety we will not see a threat we actually will see an opportunity so we need to change our perspective jesus saw the same people he ate a drank with he saw lost souls who needed his love the pharisees saw sinners who had to be despised and avoided just like florence and her boyfriend a different perspective in life jesus sees things that really matter in life whether it's a crowd and he sees he sees them
00:34:43 as sheep that's lost that needs his love or he sees a woman who is a samaritan by the she doesn't see a thirsty woman he sees a woman with five partners and who needs god's love jesus looks at zacchaeus he doesn't just see a short man up on the tree or matthew a horrible tax collector he sees souls that need to be saved and so therefore how do we handle anxiety we need to take a biblical perspective look at the world as opportunities to share the gospel rather than threats to our lives matthew henry was robbed once the
00:35:23 commentator was very famous he's actually got a big commentary called matthew henry's country he said lord i thank you that i've never been robbed before although they took my money they spared my life although they took everything it wasn't very much it was i who was robbed and not i who robbed it's a same situation you can look at it in two different perspectives and as we strive and and take in the bible our lives we learn to see things in his perspective and thirdly third option how we're gonna
00:35:58 put first the kingdom relocating our treasure having a different perspective a single-minded perspective in the kingdom third perspective we have to decide to only serve one master we can't balance too much will seek first seeking first the kingdom means serving only one master jesus all right otherwise if you've got two masters like the parable of sower it will choke the word it will choke your devotion we we should start to have a spiritual trajectory in our life to start to plan five years from now
00:36:31 how am i gonna grow in my knowledge of who he is and how intimate i'm going to be with him you know in the book of revelations chapter three jesus speaks to the seven churches then there's a cluster of churches um uh there was seven of them and he was speaking to the librasian church actually is a tri-city church the three cities around the same area there's ladasia here at paulus and colosse and these are three cities at here and basically colossae was famous for its beautiful cold pristine water they came from the
00:37:08 snow hieropolis had uh hot springs you know beautiful hot spring water and ladasia had neither it's a worse water the whole of empire according to sisera if you look at some of these pipes they were so caked up with calcium uh that it was horrible and jesus said to them you know you're neither hot nor cold you're actually horrible and yeah you spit them from here he would treat them the people or christians and let them say like he did that like their water horrible verse 17 says i'm for you say i'm rich i've prospered i
00:37:48 need nothing not realizing your wretched pitiable poor line and these are people with spiritual empathy why because they decided to serve two masters and you cannot do either of them well you wind up like the horrible lukewarm water of leosia contrast this to paul paul's motivation because he served only one master and paul's motivation if we read here in philippians uh he reads i press on chapter three towards the goal of the prize of the upward call of god in christ jesus philippians 3 13 forgetting what
00:38:26 lies behind straining forward to what lies ahead if that soul captivates our attention and so captivates our hearts desires where do you think anxiety will be it will be left in the rear view mirror because we are leaving those things behind so brothers and sisters today decide who is your master or are we balancing too because as long as you're balancing two you will never do either well and you will be beset with anxiety anxiety won't go away until we decide to serve one master and lastly we're supposed to trust his love
00:39:07 you see you've got so clothed the grass of the field which is today alive and tomorrow is thrown in the oven will he not how much more clothed you oh of little faith therefore do not be anxious saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for the gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly father knows you need them all so basically god knows what you need and he will supply what you need seek first the kingdom of god seek him as treasure change your perspective decide to
00:39:39 to serve him as master and all these things will be added to you and what he has given us more than the trees and the lilies and the birds he has given us his only begotten son for god shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners christ died for us for sins therefore we we now have been justified by his blood how much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of god so the only tool that ever has against you today is anxiety 1 peter 5 6 to 8 humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of god
00:40:24 a major treasure serve him as your master change your perspective so that at the proper time he may exalt you lift you up casting all your anxiety the moment anxiety hits you about what's going to happen tomorrow whether you're covered with a merry variant or not cast all your anxieties and because why because he simply cares for you be sober minded be watchful your adversary your devil prowls around like the roaring lion seeking someone to desire to devour you see the devil can't touch you but it can scare you so that you can let
00:40:57 go of your only treasure in the world which is jesus christ so when we are beset with anxiety understand anxiety is showing you where your heart is where is your heart understand you need to change your perspective where's the kingdom perspective on this situation that you're worried about choose your one master and trust god's love will provide for you i psalm 16 verse 8 i have set the lord always before me because he's at my right hand i shall not be shaken this doesn't sound like an anxious guy
00:41:34 does he therefore my heart is glad my whole being rejoices and my flesh also dwell secure this is because i have set the lord on my right hand and i will not be shaken and brothers and sisters this morning we have a choice seek first god's kingdom which uses set god first before you at your right head at the place where he will not be shaken from your life at the place where he can minister to us what life throws you don't know whether the one varian indian variant spanish valiant chinese variant
00:42:13 what life throws at you is totally uncertain if you go through your entire life trying to control the uncontrollable you're gonna fail and jesus challenge to us this morning is to basically look at life you can either look at life because of his uncertainty and be motivated by fear so you're always trying to work out how you're going to overcome the dangers or life is a series of dangers to be overcome or life is full of hope because you have a purpose where god has created you and god has saved you god has provided a mission for
00:42:52 you it's exciting and god will bring you to the end we either live in fear or we live in hope and the first step to that brothers and sisters this morning is to put christ as your treasure
