Strategies for Dealing with Anxiety, Part 3

Before I move on to strategies two and three in coming posts, I want to say a little more about God’s love for his people as a means of dealing with anxiety. I’m convinced that if we don’t know, experience, and trust God’s love for us, then the next two strategies won’t make any sense and will therefore prove unhelpful.

 

God’s love for his children is a topic that Jude picks up in his short, one-chapter book near the end of the Bible. “I am writing to all who have been called by God the Father, who loves you and keeps you safe in the care of Jesus Christ” (v. 1, NLT). God is described here as having the nature of a loving father, who then calls people into his circle of love where they can be cared for and their faith in him is protected.

 

Jude’s big-picture concern is for the health and strength of his readers’ faith when they were being threatened by false teachers. My big-picture concern here is that our faith can falter when we feel threatened by things like an upended world we’ve never before experienced. Trials, pains and losses threaten our faith, engender fears and anxieties, and move us to question God’s love.  

 

How very interesting and helpful, then, when Jude goes on to tell his audience to “keep yourselves in the love of God” (v. 21, ESV). Jude is saying that while God loves his children, his children have a responsibility for the development of their spiritual maturity. Think of this activity as building your spiritual immune system in anticipation of the next threat (which could be anything from a difficult conversation with a spouse or child, to the day when death comes knocking on your door).  

 

How then do we keep ourselves in the love of God? Jude gives us two ways: “build yourselves up in your most holy faith, and pray in the Holy Spirit” (v. 20). Let me hone in for now on the first, “building ourselves up in our most holy faith”. I was helped last week by a short article written by Fred Sanders. Fred is a professor at BIOLA and the theologian I referred to in my last post. In his article, “A Welcome to the Plague”, Sanders draws a short biographical sketch of Samuel Shaw (1635-1696), an English minister who lived through a devastating plague. Shaw, his wife, and two children contacted the plague, and while Shaw and his wife survived, his two children and many others did not. Shaw is not dealing in hypotheticals.

 

Shaw’s advice is that the best thing to do to build up our faith is to reflect on the attributes of God. He limits his list to eight attributes, with number 7 being love, and number 8 being God’s infinite self-sufficient fullness. In referring to God’s fullness, and why that attribute is so valuable to us, Sander’s writes,

 

“For Shaw, the created world is a good place. It is even, in its relative, finite way, full of good things. The reason that times of affliction are appropriate for [reflecting on] divine fullness is that affliction is a kind of emptying out of created fullness: poverty empties your money; sickness empties your health; old age empties your potential; suffering empties your sense of well-being. When these fullnesses fail, says Shaw, is the opportune time to [meditate on and internalize] the unfailing fullness [of God].”

 

There are plenty of times when I feel like I am being emptied out. But God is not diminished when he shares a piece of himself, as it were, with me. When I’m at the limits of my capacity, can I find strength from God? When a quandary demands more wisdom than I possess, can I find the desired insight from God? When the circumstances around me tend to incite fear, can I find the needed comfort and courage in God?

 

Let’s take the assurance of God’s constant love for his children, and Jude’s command to “keep ourselves in the love of God”, and make this actionable. Consider Mary, who gave birth to Jesus. Mary was told that God would come to live inside of her, that the Lord of all creation and the King of kings had chosen her, out of all the people in the world, to inhabit her life. And that his very character and attributes would be an eternal source of life and blessing for her. Upon receiving this news, Mary was told, “Don’t be afraid, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30, NLT).

 

If you were in her shoes, how would you react? What would you do? In fact, here’s what Mary did: “But Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often” (Luke 2:19, NLT). The reality that Mary “thought about them often” is something that God’s people have always done as a way to fortify themselves and their faith (see Job 37:14; Psalm 8:3; 119:92-95; Ecclesiastes 7:13; Acts 20:32; Philippians 2:12-13; 2 Peter 1:5-7).

 

It’s worth noting that even though Mary was so chosen, blessed, and loved, this would not spare her of grief, pain, and loss. Simeon was clear about this with Mary when he said that “a sword will pierce your very soul” (Luke 2:35, NLT). Surely that piercing of Mary began early in her life with Jesus, culminating in Jesus’ own piercing on the cross. Yet he loved her through to his bitter end: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26-27 ESV).  

 

It has always been this way for God’s people. “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:1-4a, ESV).

 

In imitation of Mary and other believers across time, here’s how I’d like to encourage you: if your heart has been regenerated by God’s Spirit, then you, like Mary, have found favor with God (see Ephesians 1:6, God “has blessed us in the Beloved”—the word “blessed” here is the same word as “favored” in Luke 1:30). And in that case, shouldn’t our response mimic Mary’s by keeping all these things in our heart and thinking about them often?

 

Because where love grows deep, as the saying goes, deep waters run still.