Reading the Bible to Your Fears

Are you anxious and afraid? Try this - Read the Bible to Your Anxiety by John Piper:

I created three labs teaching through Matthew 6:24–34 on anxiety. My objectives were both to understand how Jesus helps us overcome anxiety, but also to draw out six lessons for how to read the Bible for ourselves. With this short series, I have methodology, theology, and application in mind. Here are the six lessons I highlighted for Bible reading. Click on the links below to find the study guides and videos for all three labs.

Click through to the link to get the study guides

We Have Already Faced the Future

"..The world runs the way it does because we are a people of the present - people with so much to do and so much to be afraid of. When we begin to live like Jesus, people will perceive our peace as an indictment in their violence; they will see our security as an indictment on their insecurity. It is a fearful thing to behold someone who is truly human in all the ways that Jesus said we could be- precisely because we have nothing left to be afraid of. we have already faced the future, so the future is not intimidating to us anymore."

-Jonathan Martin, Prototype: What Happens When You Discover That You Are More Like Jesus Than You Think, page 19

Reacting to the Threat

"...the gospel is more threatening to religious people than non-religious people, Religious people are very touchy and nervous about their standing with God. their insecurity makes them hostile to the gospel, which insists that their best deeds are useless before God. One of the ways we know that our self-image is based on justification by Christ is that we are not hateful and hostile to people who differ from us; one of the ways we know that our self-image is based on justification by works is that we persecute."

        - Timothy Keller, Galatians For You, page 128

The Freest Person on Earth

Wow. Just wow.

"You see, real freedom is not liberty to do what we want or the absence of distress. Real freedom is the deep-seated confidence that no matter what, God really will provide everything we need (Philippians 4:19). The person who believes this is the freest of all persons on earth, because no matter what situation they find themselves in, they have nothing to fear (Philippians 4:11). "

                        From Jon Bloom at Desiring God
       
      
 

Freedom to be Small

"The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be. This may sound at first like bad news, but as we will see, it could not be better news.

In the Bible, slavery is equated with self-reliance.... When your meaning, your significance, your security, your protection, your safety are all riding on you, it actually feels like slavery....

...God wants to free us from ourselves, and there's nothing like suffering to show us that we need something bigger than our abilities and our strength and our explanations. There's nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need god. In other words, suffering reveals to us the things that ultimately matter, which also happen to be the warp and woof of Christianity: who we are and who God is."

        - Tullian Tchvidjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free:, pages 142-143

Everything You Need, You Already Have

From an interview by Timothy Dalrymple with Tullian Tchvidjian regarding approval and acceptance.

When you realize that you already possess everything you need in Christ, you recognize that you don’t actually need anything from anybody.  Everything you need, you already have in Christ — you don’t need anything more, so now you can now spend your life giving yourself away.  That invests your life as a leader with unbounded courage.

Now, I can walk into a meeting to announce an important decision and not be worried that some in the room might not like it, and fight against it.  I can live my life with unfettered sacrifice because I don’t need to win.  I’m free to lose, and that’s something leaders face all the time.  So much of their own sense of value and worth and identity is wrapped up in success as the world defines it.

But when you realize that because Jesus won for me, I’m free to lose, because Jesus succeeded for me I’m free to fail, that makes you a powerful leader.  You can live your life with reckless abandon, realizing on the one hand that, like Paul said, to live is Christ and to die is gain.  Everything I need I already have.  There is nothing anyone can strip away from me that I actually need.  I’m free to be unpopular, free to make tough decisions, free to stand on principle and do what’s right even if people will resist it.

It changed me as a leader.  I have more courage.  I’m able to lead more boldly.  I’m able to lose and not have to walk out of a meeting getting my way.  I can be sacrificial.  I can give myself away, because all I need is Christ.  I don’t need anything else.  I’m now free to give everything I have without needing anything in return.  I can love those who hate me, I can turn the other cheek when I’m slapped in the face, because my dignity and my sense of value is not wrapped up in what I have in this person or this project.  It’s wrapped up in Jesus.

That changes everything.

 BTW, I highly recommend Tullian's book Jesus + Nothing = Everything.

Humbled Out of Pride, Assured Out of Fear

“The fact that Jesus had to die for me humbled me out of my pride. The fact that Jesus was glad to die for me assured me out of my fear.”

— Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), page 200

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Come Out of Hiding

“Because Christ lived perfectly, died sufficiently, and rose victoriously, you and I can come out of hiding. We are free to own up to, without fear, the darkest of our thoughts and motives, the ugliest of our words, our most selfish choices, and our most rebellious and unloving actions. We are freed from our bondage to guilt and shame. We are freed from hiding behind accusation, blame, recrimination, and rationalization.

Confession is powerful and effective. It turns guilt into forgiveness. It turns regret into hope. It turns slavery into freedom. It turns you from mourning over your harvest to planting new seeds of faith, repentance, and hope. You see, you are not trapped! Things are not hopeless! The Lord, the great Creator and Savior, is the God who never changes, but at the same time he is the God who promises and produces deep personal change. The changes he makes in us are so foundational that the Bible’s best words describing them are ‘new creation.’ God’s plan is to change us so fundamentally that it is as if we are longer us; something brand new has been created!”

- Paul David Tripp, Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God (Wapwallopen, Pa.: Shepherds Press, 2004), 124.

Hat Tip: Of First Importance
 

He's Got You Covered

I like this simple thought:

Christ releases us from ourselves to see/love God and others.

Apart from Christ, we are nothing less than chained to our own fear and insecurity. The misery of self.

If you are in Christ, look out. Look at people and love them with one-way love. Same goes with your interaction with God. As you look out, don’t sweat you… Your needs, fears, desires, etc.

It is either about him or you. He’s got you covered so be about Him and others.

Quoted from:   Dan Orr at  It's a Beautiful Gospel