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May 19, 2019

Be Not Anxious

Be Not Anxious

Passage: Matthew 6:25-34

Speaker: Ben Seneker

Series: The Highest Good

Anxiety is something that most, if not all, of us can relate to. We may experience different causes and degrees of it, but anxiety is an emotion that we encounter often. Jesus tells us, though, that we should not be anxious about our lives. How can this be possible? How can the gospel of Jesus free us from a life of anxiety and bring us into a life of hope, peace, and contentment?

Order of Worship

Pre-Service Text: 1 Peter 5:6, 7
Call To Worship: Psalm 23
Old Testament Reading: Exodus 16:1-12
Sermon Title: Be Not Anxious
Central Text: Matthew 6:25-34
Response: Communion!
Benediction: Luke 12:32
Post-Service Text: John 16:33

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. Do you consider yourself to be an anxious person?  Would others see you in this same way? What things tend to cause you anxiety?
  2. What role do expectations (unrealistic or otherwise) play in causing us anxiety?
  3. Discuss the connection between this passage and the preceding passage (Matthew 6:19-24).  Why does Jesus begin v 25 with “Therefore…”?
  4. Looking at the passage (Matthew 6:25-34), list all the reasons that Jesus gives for why we should not be anxious.
  5. What does it look like, practically, for you to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness”?  How does this help us in our fight against anxiety?
  6. How does the gospel of Jesus free us from a life of anxiety, and bring us into a life of hope, peace, and contentment?

Quotes:

  • Anxiety can wear anger’s mask. Fear of failing, of falling, of falling behind, it can make us fierce. Life can be messy before nine in the morning. - Ann Voskamp
  • We are free when we are open to what is real and disposed toward what is true. - Charles Marsh
  • Anxiety comes from the self as ultimate concern, from the fact that the self cannot bear this ultimate concern; it buckles and wavers under the strain, and eventually, inevitably, it breaks. - Christian Wiman
  • We would rather be ruined than changed
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And let our illusions die.
    - W.H. Auden, “The Age of Anxiety”
  • Labor exercendus est, sollicitudo tollenda (“work is to be done; it is anxiety that is to be taken away.”) - St. Jerome

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