Life Hacks (Part 10): Living Without Angst

We are going to look at James 4, 11 through 17 in just a moment, but I do want to take just a few moments to comment on what took place yesterday in Squirrel Hill.

Obviously, that is a horrible tragedy.

It's evil.

And it's unsettling for those of us in Pittsburgh.

It's certainly tragic when you see it in other places, but when it happens in our city, our area, probably many of us here know some of the first responders, know the police officers, maybe people who were at the synagogue yesterday when the shooting happened, it becomes unsettling in a different way.

And as a church, I uh we sent out an email yesterday just very quickly saying, let's pray for the people who are involved.

And it was good to see so many comments come back.

And by the way, if you're not, if you didn't get an email yesterday, it means you somehow aren't on the email list.

If you want to be, uh info at orchardhillchurch.com can solve that.

Um, but it it was it was interesting to see so many people just just shaken by this.

And I understand, I mean, certainly it is unsettling.

And uh just a quick note here at Orchard Hill, we take security seriously.

In Wexford, you see an officer from Franklin Park uh in our lobby at almost every service, and we have a great partnership with them.

They came in and did some training for all of our volunteers in the last year about what to do if we were ever in a situation like that.

But having said that, you can't totally prepare for every eventuality.

Every school, every restaurant, every mall, every sporting event, every theater, every house of worship can't uh solve this problem completely.

And so there's a certain amount of saying we have to just say we go about our lives and trust that somehow God's at work even when it doesn't seem like it.

Now, here, there are the security measures you see.

There are some that you don't see.

Some of the best security measures anytime that you're somewhere are the ones that aren't seen because they're the ones that aren't obvious to somebody who might want to perpetrate any kind of evil.

But at the end of the day, again, what we can really do is just say, let's pray for God's healing in our nation around the issues of hate, protection on places of worship and other places.

And so I just want to take a moment and do that now.

Father, we pray just first of all for the the victims' families uh in Squirrel Hill and those who have been impacted.

We pray for the police officers who are still kind of recovering from being shot.

We thank you for the people who serve to protect this community in going into those situations.

God, we owe those people more than we probably even realize or often articulate, and we're thankful for them and pray just your hand on the civil servants who provide for the good of the community.

Father, we we pray that you would bring healing to the Jewish community there, to the Jewish community with those who who are at odds with them for whatever reasons.

And Father, we pray just for all the houses of worship for Orchard Hill, Butler County, Orchard Hill Strip District, Wexford, and other churches that are meeting today.

Lord, we pray just for a sense of your hand, your calm.

And uh, God, we pray that you would protect people in all settings.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, my typical week is to prepare my message usually by Thursday.

And what that means is by Thursday, sometime late afternoon, whatever I'm gonna talk about here, I've got it basically done, uh ready to go.

It's gone into the program that you get, uh, it goes to the slides and everything by Friday morning.

And and so that's just kind of the rhythm that I live in.

So this week, on Thursday, I decided to call this message uh kind of this idea of living without angst.

And if you were to look up the word angst in the dictionary, what you would find is that the word angst is basically a word that means to live with an unspecified anxiety about the future.

In other words, it's to live with a feeling of saying, this world, the places that I live, they aren't as they should be.

This world is not good, and to live with a bit of angst.

And so it's kind of interesting that the way that the week unfolded on Saturday is, I would guess, many of us come here today with greater angst than we would have come with on a normal weekend.

Now, angst isn't new, it isn't just a result of the shooting yesterday.

Angst is something that people have felt for generations.

You can go back to the 60s and talk about the generation that that felt angst and created Woodstock, or the 70s and the angst around the economy and gas prices and the Iran Contra issues or Iran uh hostage situation.

Then the 80s there was angst about will like hairbands last.

And um the 90s brought us more musical angst from the grunge era, and then 2001 brought angst around terror and terrorism, and now we live in an era where there's angst around the kind of violence that we saw yesterday.

But you know, as great as those types of angst are in our own lives, my guess is that there's another kind of angst, and this is the kind of angst in a sense that that James addresses, and that is many of us come here today with personal angst.

We're concerned about a situation with one of our children.

We're concerned about something in our marriage that doesn't seem right, doesn't feel right, isn't right.

We're concerned about something in our career, we're concerned about a decision we have to make.

We live with a sense of angst that something isn't as it should be.

And when we live with angst, we live with uh a sense of unsettledness.

And I think that James in this passage is telling us that it's not God's design, it's not God's intention that we live with perpetual angst.

And I see this because in this passage he addresses two different things that produce angst in our lives.

Here's the first, and this is in verses 11 and 12, and this is around this issue of judgment, and that is we have angst because of what other people are doing often in our lives.

Here's how he says this.

He says, brothers and sisters, do not slander one another.

Simple, straightforward command.

Don't go about talking other people down, is what he says.

And yet, if you're in a work environment, a neighborhood, a school, a dorm room, you know that that's one of people's favorite pastimes.

To talk about what other people are doing and to run down what they're doing, to talk about what they're doing poorly.

He says, Don't slander anyone.

Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.

When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but you're sitting in judgment on it.

And so his simple statement here is to say, what some of us will do, where some of us will find angst, is we'll sit in judgment on other people and constantly say, here's what they should do, here's what they shouldn't do, here's how they should live.

And I can't believe that he or she did that or that he or she thought that.

And we fill our time with angst about what other people are doing.

Now, now, certainly we live in an era that tells us that judgment is bad, which is kind of funny because judgment is so prevalent in our world.

And yet the the modern dialogue is you shouldn't judge anybody.

And here's what most people mean when they say that.

What they mean when they say, don't judge, is they say, basically, you shouldn't have an opinion about what anybody else does, and you certainly should never challenge them.

That's kind of the predominant thought about what it means to not judge.

But that's not really a biblical understanding of what it means not to judge.

In fact, I would suggest that the Bible challenges us, encourages us to both discern what's happening with people and to challenge them from time to time.

Here's where we see this in 1 John chapter 4, verse 1.

1 John 4:1

We're told this, dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they're from God, because many false prophets have gone into the world.

And so the author here says, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to test the spirits, I want you to discern what's right, what's true.

In other words, judgment can't mean that we have no opinion or no thought about what's happening.

And then we're told in James, just toward the end of the book, the last couple of verses, about this idea of challenging.

Verse 19 and 20.

My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth, someone should bring them, bring that person back.

Remember this whoever turns a sinner from the air of their ways will save them from death and cover a multitude of sins.

So what James says here is he says that that there's a role for us to challenge people, one another.

So judgment, no judgment, can't mean that we never have an opinion and that we never challenge somebody.

So what is it then not to judge?

I think that what it means is that we don't look past somebody's actions and impugn their motives.

We don't assume that we know things about them that we can't possibly know.

We don't assign to them the worst possible motives, but instead we say, that's what they did.

But I don't need to assign anything beyond a statement of what it was.

Now that may sound simple, but but I believe that one of the reasons that some of us have so much angst is because we get involved in all kinds of little dramas with people in our lives where we're basically sitting in judgment rather than living with discernment and challenging appropriately.

Maybe here's a way to think about it.

If you had a had a family member who was about to take most of their life savings and give it to a Ponzi scheme.

Do you know what a Ponzi scheme is?

Ponzi scheme is one of those things where the people at the top of the Ponzi scheme get other people to give money, and if people give money, the people at the top do well, but by the time it gets down to the bottom, those people can't possibly get enough money.

If you had a had a loved one who was about to give money into a Ponzi scheme and you knew that that was what was happening, would the most loving thing to be to be, I have no opinion.

I never challenge anybody.

No, of course not.

The most loving thing you could do at that moment would be to say, you know what, I'm pretty sure that this is a Ponzi scheme, that this is not going to work out well for you, and I want to encourage you to do some more research.

And yet, when it comes to moral issues, what what we tend to do is we tend to say, I can't judge.

And we mean I can't have an opinion and I can't challenge.

When what judgment really is, is it's saying, I know something about you and your motives and your intentions that nobody else knows.

And what James says here, if you want to live in a way that pleases God, and I would say a way that doesn't have angst, it means that you step back from judgment and instead live with a sense of saying, I don't need to sit in judgment.

That's what God does.

All I need to do is live my life in a way that honors Him.

So that's the first cause of angst.

Here's a second cause of angst, and this is the one that is more prominent here in this passage, and that is some of us will experience angst about what's going to happen, about the future.

And this is the point of verses 13 through 17.

He says, now listen, you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to this city and spend a year and carry on business and make money.

In other words, somebody's making plans.

And they're making plans without accounting for God, without accounting for a future.

And he says, Why do you not even know, why you do not even know what tomorrow will be?

What is your life?

And then he says, This you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

He says, What is your life?

It's just a morning dew that appears and then it's gone.

When I was in college, I worked uh construction for a few years, and one of the things I did uh in the summers that I worked construction was I would try to memorize portions of the Bible.

And I memorized James one summer, and I'll never forget the day that I memorized this verse, which was uh, what is your life but a vapor?

I think I learned it in the King James that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

You can tell that that's what's in my head from all those years ago.

The day I memorized that, I was driving home and and and I was about to pass a semi and a car got in my blind spot.

And when I checked my blind spot, I had to wait while the car went ahead of me.

And then the car got ahead of me, and the semi made a lane change, and the car that got where I wanted to go had to go into the meridian to avoid the semi, and it did a double flip and landed heads down.

And it was the day that I had memorized this verse to say, What is your life but a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away?

And I had a very real sense just that day that there's no guarantee.

I pulled off at the next stop to call emergency services.

This is before cell phones, yes, I'm that old.

And uh, and then I drove home just with a sober sense of saying, I'm not guaranteed tomorrow.

You see, what presumption on the future is, and part of why we have angst, is because we don't actually want to deal with the fact that we don't have a guarantee about tomorrow.

What we want to do instead is we want to live with the notion that says, I can control every eventuality and I'm going to make my plans.

And what James is saying is he's saying, be very cautious of this, because when you do this, what you'll do is you'll end up actually living with more angst.

In fact, I would say that part of how we live is in this tension between control and angst.

So on one side we have control, meaning I'm going to try to control everything about my future.

And on the other side is angst, and right in the middle, on a razor's edge, is this notion of trust.

And they may seem like they're not the same issue, but the control side says, I'm going to avoid angst by taking care of every eventuality.

Now, certainly we should plan for our futures.

I'm not suggesting that we don't, but but what happens is when we can't make everything work, when we can't answer every question, when there's a health issue, when there's a financial issue, when there's a relational issue, when there's a problem, then we start to flip into angst because we say we can't control it.

And what James is saying is the reason that we have angst ultimately is because we actually can't control it.

And until we come to terms with that, we will live with a sense of either false sense of control or a sense of angst.

It's only when we live with a sense of saying that God is in charge that we live with something different.

Now he says this, he says, here toward the end, he says, as it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes.

All such boasting is evil.

So he says, when you make your plans and you don't account for God, he says that that's evil.

Strong word.

Here's how Alec Moitiere writes about this in a commentary.

He says, the verb to boast, speaking of the original language, is often used in the New Testament in a good sense for the exultant, abounding joy in something.

But what an unholy, unacceptable thing this exulting becomes when it arises from your arrogance.

First John 2.16 uses the same word for pride of life, and he says this.

In other words, even when in little secret, almost unrecognized ways, we forget how frail we are and stop short of conscious dependence on God, it's an element of a proud, boastful, vaunting human spirit, flaunting its supposed independence and self-sufficiency.

In other words, we live with consistent angst.

So what's the answer?

Well, he says right here, verse 15, instead, so instead of planning without God and taking the weight of all of our future situations, he says, instead, you ought to say, if it's the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.

Now, if you've thought about things like God's will, you've probably had a lot of different kind of thoughts or ideas around this.

Because for some people, the idea of God's will is if God would just show me what to do, then I would do it.

And what we often mean in that moment is we're facing something that produces angst, and we say, God, would you just would you just show me what to do?

You don't even have to be a person who's had a lot of religion or a lot of faith in your background, but at some point you've probably had that moment where you said, if God would just show me, God, if you'd just show me, then I'd do it.

Do you know it probably doesn't actually work that way?

Do you know in the Old Testament when the Israelites left Egypt, that God put a pillar of fire and a cloud of fire by night and cloud by day to lead them, and they still were like, God, what are you doing?

Where are you taking us?

In other words, we tend to think, God, if you would just make it more clear, then I would really do it.

So what I'd like to do just for a few moments, and this is gonna be a little different than how I normally talk, I'm gonna take you to a bunch of passages.

They're in your program, so you don't have to try to write them all down, and show you how the Bible uses the term God's will.

And the reason for this is I think one of the reasons we have so much angst about the future is that we live with a sense of saying, saying, What I need is I need clarity on God's will, but I think God's will is already quite clear.

So here are some of these verses.

Ephesians 1.11 is the first one.

And these ideas, by the way, are not unique to me.

I've seen other people kind of put these verses together this way, and so um, this is not my all my original thinking, but here's what it says uh in Ephesians 1.11.

In him we also were chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works everything in conformity with his purpose of his will.

And so theologians who talk about things like this have said this is referring to God's determinative will, his sovereign will, the will that he has that says, whatever happens in human choice, God will work his purposes for his end.

This is the part of God's will that should be a great comfort to say, even when things look out of control, we know that God is at work.

That's kind of one category that talks about God's will.

Now, all the other verses are going to be a second category.

And this is a category where God is saying, This is my intention for people, this is my intention for you, and this is something that you choose to participate in.

Here's uh what we read in in uh 1 Timothy chapter 2, verses 3 and 4.

1 Timothy 2:3

It says this This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Jesus Christ.

And then 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9 says it's not God's will that anyone should perish.

2 Peter 3:9

He's not slow concerning his coming, but he wants everyone to come to repentance.

And here the idea is very simple.

God's will, God's desire for every person is that they come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

That is, they acknowledge their sinfulness before God and say, What I need is I need a substitute, I need a savior.

So if you want to know what God's will is, part of it is that you come to acknowledge your need for a savior, that I come to acknowledge my need for a savior.

But here's another place that we see God's will.

Ephesians chapter 5, verse 17 and 18.

Ephesians 5:17

It says, Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is.

So now he's about to tell us what God's will is.

He says, Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery, instead, be filled with the spirit.

Now, the point here, I don't think, is as much about the do not be filled with wine, although clearly uh that's an idea in the Bible not to be drunken.

But but the idea is saying, as wine controls your spirit, let God control your spirit, let the Holy Spirit control you.

And so this is about being spirit-filled.

So if we want to know what the will of God is, the will of God is that we come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and that we're filled with his spirit, that we let his spirit control our thinking, our attitudes, our actions, everything that we do.

Then we see this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 3, and then a little bit of the same idea in Romans 12 2, but I'll read 1 Thessalonians 4 3.

1 Thessalonians 4:3

It says, It's God's will that you should be sanctified.

Now it's kind of a big word that we don't use a lot.

Sanctified simply means to be set apart.

So he's saying, what's God's will for your life?

It's that you be set apart.

And then he tells us a little bit of where that should be.

He says that you would avoid sexual immorality.

So, in other words, God's will is that we come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, we get filled with the Spirit, and then we live a life that's set apart.

That's what Romans 12, 2 says, that will please, that will know what God's good and perfect will is, and that we will not be conformed to this world.

In other words, that the people who are who are living a life to please God will start to understand that they're called to live differently than the rest of the world.

And then we get in 1 Peter chapter 2, we see this about the will of God.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

Verse 13 through 15, it says, Submit yourselves to the Lord for the Lord's sake, to every human authority, whether to the emperor as supreme authority, or to governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and commend those who do right.

Then here it is, for it's the Lord's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.

Part of God's will is that people live in submission to authority.

Now, there's a lot of places in the Bible where authority and submission is talked about, but but part of his will is saying if you're part of a society, if you're in an authority structure, live with submission.

So come to a saving knowledge of Jesus, be filled with the Spirit, have a sense of separation or sanctification, and submit is what he's talking about.

Now, just two more.

1 Peter 3, 17 says this for it is better if it is God's will to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Now we don't often like to think about God's will being tied to suffering.

But here, what he's saying that it's better if you have to suffer, to suffer for doing God's will.

In other words, sometimes it will be God's will that you suffer because of doing right.

And he says that'd be much better for you, much better than suffering for doing wrong.

So God's will will sometimes involve suffering.

And some of us resist that notion.

In fact, there's whole churches sometimes that grow up with the notion that says, God's will will always be that you're healthy, that you're successful, that everything goes well in your life, that you never have a problem.

But the challenge with that is that when we read an actual Bible and we see that people suffer, that sometimes it is God's will that we suffer, but when we suffer that we suffer well, that we live as people who suffer in a way.

This is I've got a hope that's bigger than this world.

And then there's this verse that we also see in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 about God's will, verse 18.

1 Thessalonians 5 · chapter mention

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

So it's God's will that we stay grateful throughout our lives.

Now, the reason that I take some time just to say what is God's will, is for some people, this adds to angst in their life.

They're like, I've got to find God's will.

God, what do you want me to do?

God, if you would just show me, God, show me.

When God's will is more of a direction than a specific issue.

In other words, you don't have to go for a walk on a beach and say, I've got to find the one grain of sand that is God's will.

You can say, if I have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, I'm filled with his spirit, I'm being sanctified or set apart, I'm submissive, I'm suffering well when I need to, I'm staying grateful.

You can say I can walk in a direction and choose what I want to do.

So I can prioritize alignment, and then what I can do is say, if I do that, then I can choose to say, I am going to trust God because of his trustworthiness.

Even when there's things that create angst all around me.

You know, at the end of James chapter 4, verse 17, there it says, to him who knows to do sin and doesn't do it to him, it is sin, or knows to do right and doesn't do it, to him who knows to do sin.

James 4:17

For him who knows to do right and doesn't do it to him, it is sin.

Well, what that's saying is that sometimes what will happen is we'll have so much angst about our future that we won't trust God.

They will basically say, if I trust God in my marriage, if I trust God with my kids, if I trust God with integrity at work, if I trust God with my finances, if I trust God, then it won't work out for me.

And that's why I say this comes down to alignment and to trust.

And here's what ultimately helps us, I think, to live without angst.

It's not just simply saying, don't judge, don't worry about the future.

See, what we need to understand is that there's something that gives us a hope that transcends those things.

And what we're talking about here is Jesus Christ's death on the cross.

See, Jesus going to the cross, this is the point in verse 12 where he says there's only one who has the right to judge.

What that means is that God is the one who judges.

And sometimes you hear people say, Well, Christians are judgmental.

Christians should be the least judgmental people.

Because Christians live with an acute awareness that their standing is not because of their goodness, but because of Jesus' goodness.

And so when people feel judged by church, sometimes it's their own thing because they just kind of don't like how any standard feels to them.

But sometimes it's because people have have so abandoned the gospel that they say, if you don't behave the way I want you to behave, if you don't think the way I want you to think, then you're not as good a Christian as I am.

When the reality of faith should lead people to a point where what they do and how they live is to say, my way, right or wrong, is done unto God.

Your way is done unto God, and God is the only one who judges, and I don't have any goodness that I bring apart from Jesus.

You see how that takes away the angst of what other people are doing?

You don't have to be right politically, you don't have to be right on the latest issues, because it doesn't change things about how people live in your own soul.

And then we live without angst about what's going to happen because we know who holds the future.

If it's God's will, if God has a sovereign will and you've lined up with his personal will for your life, then you can say, well, whatever comes, even if it involves suffering, is somehow going to work out God's good purposes in the end.

Now I understand that that's a hard thing to say, because some of us right now are walking through something that we say, how could this be a part of God's purpose?

How could this be good?

How can God use this for good?

But your alternative is to live in a place of constant angst, saying, This thing that I'm facing is so big that I can't trust it to God.

And the way that we live without angst is being able to say, if God was good enough to send his son Jesus to die on the cross on my behalf, and he's good enough to promise me a future, then he's good enough to trust to hold my present in his hands.

And that's where you and I will be able to live without chronic angst because we root our sense of self in who Jesus Christ is and what he's done and what he promises, rather than just in our own ability to manage and control what we're facing.

Father, we pray today that you would help each one of us here to be free from angst, to be free from being so consumed with what's ahead or what other people are doing that we can't live with joy or hope or constancy.

Father, we pray specifically today for those in our midst who are walking through hardship, loss, grief, challenges.

Lord, we know that that saying that we can live without angst doesn't mean that we live without pain.

And so, God, we pray for you to relieve the pain, to bring your comfort and presence near to those who are hurting.

But Lord, I really also pray that you would bring such a hope and understanding in the gospel message that it would transcend even those things.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.