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Saturday, April 04, 2009

Don't Worry, Part 2

The second part of David Powlison's article series "What Good Is "Don't Worry' in Time Like These?" is available at the CCEF blog. This series has been very helpful to me so far because I am personally dealing with a lot physical effects related to high levels of anxiety. This is something new to me.

Of course there is the question: What do you worry about? But then a second penetrating question is: Why do you worry. Here's why I consider Powlison to be a master at biblical counseling, he writes about Jesus in Luke 12:
The easy answer is to point your finger back towards what you are worrying about, and to think that explains it. “I’m worried because I don’t know if I’m going to get a job. I’m worried because I don’t have enough saved for retirement. I’m worried because I have a family history of cancer.” But Jesus doesn’t do that. He explains our worries not by pointing to how uncertain life is, but by pointing to something in us. Throughout this whole passage He says, “You worry because of something about you, not because of the things you worry about.” That’s what He threw on the table in the interchange just before the passage we’re focusing on: “Guard yourself from every form of greed.”


I bolded that line in the above quote because it gets to the heart of the matter - the heart, my heart, your heart, everyone's heart. Quotes like this are equalizers in that the truth in them places everyone on common ground.

Then Powlison shows us where Jesus is taking the crowd:

Jesus has no interest in simply talking about what’s wrong with us. He’s always going somewhere good. He does make reference to the temptations you face during anxiety, and to some of the ways you go off the rails, and to how your faith dims when you fall into greed. But the passage is largely about giving you lots of solid reasons not to worry. Sure, you have good reasons to worry, because lots of things are uncertain. But you have many, much better reasons not to worry!


This is great stuff! It's the gospel message in very practical terms. I find it helpful in showing me how to live out what the gospel really means in my own life. I hope you read the article.

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