Anxious striving.
Those words would have described me about a year ago. I didn’t realize that I was the foolish man in Luke 12 who thought his happiness would come when he got his bigger barns built. I wasn’t striving for stuff, I knew that was a fools game. My sights were a bit more lofty. I was working at church revitalization.
And that’s really one of the problems with our current model of pastoring and revitalizing and that whole game. How do you know when you’ve “done it”? It creates in us a bigger barn mentality. Not that we necessarily are striving for a bigger church or a healthier budget. But there is always something that needs fixing.
I was drowning. The depression was deep. I no longer had the optimism of the rich fool who thought he could build bigger barns. I saw the whole thing topple and crumble and it crushed me. I developed fear like I had never known before. Anxiety that was overwhelming me. Dark thoughts entered my mind that I hadn’t thought for years.
Jesus grabbed me in a most unexpected time. I was writing sermon outlines for LifeWay and teaching on stewardship from Luke 12. In studying for the outlines I read over the passage a few times and then a verse captivated me. I’d never seen it before:
“Don’t be afraid, little flock, for your Father delights to give you the kingdom”.
I was terrified. Scared to death of where my mind was going. I didn’t see light at the end of any tunnels. Hope was all but strangled out of my life. But these tender words stirred something in my heart. I think it was the phrase “little flock”. Such tenderness. Before I knew it my hardened shell began to crack and I started weeping. Sobbing. Snot-crying.
Delights.
Good pleasure.
Great happiness.
Those are words which describe God’s heart in giving to to us (to me) his kingdom. Here I am striving and plotting and clawing and scratching to get somewhere in a local church—to build bigger and better barns—and the Father joyously has given me the greatest treasure ever.
That was what I needed. My fear and crippling anxiety and dark depression was coming from a foolish belief that there were places where Jesus wasn’t. I was carrying around the belief that God isn’t for me. It’s not that I though he was against me—but the fact that he is radically FOR ME had not yet entered my thick skull. At least until this text broke through.
If you are in Christ it is God’s great delight to give to you His kingdom. That kind of kills the impulse for anxious striving, doesn’t it? It’s a gift. It’s not from building bigger barns. Rest doesn’t come from that. Rest doesn’t come from my accomplishment. It comes from the accomplishment of another applied to my account. It comes from our good Father giving us His kingdom.
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Photo source: here
I typically preach from a full manuscript. I know, I know, you aren’t supposed to do that. But it works for me. And I don’t just read from my manuscript. Even if I use a modified outline form, I still type out pretty much every bit of my sermon. This means that I have at my disposal about 15 years worth of sermons. Some of them are cringe-worthy. Others I can tweak to a present context and recycle for certain occasions.