Seek First

So, Jesus came off of that mountain from last week that we were on, if you were with us. You remember, it was a battle between cosmic titans, not equals, because our Lord defeated the evil one in the wilderness. But he leaves the wilderness, and by the way, it was like we were going to school, wasn't it? We had a blackboard out, we're learning all of these things, and how do we face our temptations? But Jesus then leaves that mountain, and he begins to preach, we're told. This is the public ministry of Jesus. He's not just the wisest man who ever lived. He's not even just the best man who ever lived. He is all of that. But this is the Son of God now beginning his ministry. He's in the Galilee. This is the northern region where he grew up in. But what we read in Matthew chapter 4 is that Jesus went throughout that region, throughout the Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. And then this. Healing every disease and sickness among them. Is there anybody here who wants healing? Is there anybody here who thinks God can still change things in our lives? Because I'm telling you, that's what they saw in news about him spread all over Syria. And why not? Because he's healing of so many different afflictions. He's confronting the demonic. It's all happening. Church crowds from the Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan. They followed him. He's got a big crowd. And that's where we'll pick things up now in Matthew chapter 5 verse 1.

Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. Now I want you to know, when it says disciples, it doesn't mean the twelve. They haven't even been named yet. That'll happen in chapter 10. But there was already a group of people that were moving in closer to Jesus and saying, I think he's the one. I think we should follow him. Now not everybody in that crowd believed. But they were still there. And Jesus spoke to his people, but he also spoke to the rest of them. He knows they're within hearing distance. It's kind of like that here. You'll hear me speak to those of you who follow Jesus, who have confessed him as Lord. And we'll talk about what it is to live this life with God. But I know there are others in the room who are listening in. Do you know why we do it this way? Because I believe the sovereign God of the universe brought you here for this moment, for this day, so that you too could turn to Jesus and follow him. But I need you to understand that when we hear the words of Jesus, we are listening to the words of God himself. When we go through this series now, when we go to these different mountains, we will be hearing the words of Jesus every time. And these are the words of God. Y'all, pay attention. In the liturgical tradition, there is something where a reader will often get up, I'm thinking like in an Anglican church, and they will hold high the scripture and say, this is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the people will respond back, blessed are you, O Lord Jesus. Now we don't do it like that.

And I want you to understand something now. Would you stand with me? Everybody stand. At the sites, in the hub, at, you know, Fenton, Grants Trail, Mid Rivers, everywhere. I just want you to know, these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what this symbolizes is that we stand underneath the authority of those words. We are proclaiming that we stand under the authority of Jesus. So listen up, and lean in, because you're about to hear the words of Jesus. And if you listen to the way it's described, we've got a crowd, we're sitting on the hill. Jesus sits down, because that's what someone in authority would do. They would sit. This is what a king would do. This is what a teacher would do. And then he begins to teach. But there's a phrase in the Greek that doesn't make it into most of our translations. It says, and he opened his mouth. We just jump right into that, and he began to teach. I love the way Tom Wright renders this. So picture now, we're at the edge of a mountain. Jesus sits down. He took a deep breath, and he began his teaching. Father, we come before you now, and we are grateful for the gift of your word. We are grateful that you have gathered us here from so many different places. We are grateful for times of worship, but we're coming before you today, and we need your help, because we're covering a topic that is so timely and such a struggle for so many. So I pray that you would help us to remember that at every turn and at every step that you are guiding, that you are helping, that you're caring for us. Jesus, I'm so grateful that you've made a way for me to approach. Spirit, I can't do any of this without You.

Please now move through this room. But what we are asking is that Your Word would reach those who are close in, but may it also reach those who are on the outer edges of the mountainside today. Lord, we're asking for You to do a mighty thing. In the name of Jesus, we pray, Amen. Y'all probably want to have a seat. So what is that mountain anyway? Do we know technically what mountain it is? No, we don't, if we're going to be really honest. Tradition tells us, and it's a pretty good guess, if you look, it's what's sometimes called Mount Beatitude, because we were talking about the Sermon on the Mount, and He starts off with the Beatitudes. So you get up just north of the Sea of Galilee, you're just to the northwest of a city called Capernaum, which is really important to Him, and you would see this area that traditionally we think this happened. It kind of opens up into a natural amphitheater, but as you're seeing this, you get a great view of the Sea of Galilee. Now what I want you to imagine is that all of these crowds are there, Sermon on the Mount, we are not going to go through the entire Sermon on the Mount. That takes up three chapters in the Gospel of Matthew. We devoted an entire series to this before. What we're going to do this week and next week is just drop in on portions of that sermon. We're going to listen to the glorious wisdom of Jesus as it applies to us today. But I want you to know, by the time we get into this thing, like where we're going to be today, He's already covered a lot of ground. He's covered the Beatitudes, what it means to live this life of blessedness. He talks about how to handle your anger, how to treat your enemies, how to pray. He talks about our fantasy lives, about adultery, about murder, about how we handle our money. I mean, He covers a lot. By the time you get to the end of it, Jesus says, anyone who puts these words into practice,

my words, they're like a wise person who builds their house on a firm foundation. But where we are right now is in chapter six. Let's just jump in. Here's what we... Let's just start. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? So today, we are talking about anxiety. Yay. Quick show of hands. Anyone? You ever worried more than you wanted to worry? I'm not talking about like that appropriate, oh, I got to worry about this. I'm concerned about this. I'm talking about something that consumes you. Anyone here know what it's like to have anxiety wrap itself around you? Anybody? Yeah. All of our sites anywhere? Yeah. Okay. Some of you are like, meh, I don't know. Not so much. If I told you about a National Institute of Health survey that said there is a direct

link between high IQ and people who experience anxiety. One more time. Anybody here ever experience? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That always works. That always works. So we can kind of kid about it and we can talk about it, but the truth is it happens to each of us at one form or another. We all experience this kind of worry, this sort of corrosive worry that begins to distract us. And at some points, we're convinced that it will destroy us. But this is not the plan of God for your life. And so Jesus says something here. He says, do not be anxious. Really? Like, what are we supposed to do with that? Well, I want us to take a look at this. First of all, he's not, he's not like, he's not making fun of people who are worrying. He's not doing that. He's not saying that there isn't trouble in this life. He's going to make that point in just a few verses. But he is talking about a kind of anxiety and, and, you know, he says, you know, don't go there. And if you are there, don't stay there. But we do, don't we? Yeah. There's a, there's a, there's a, I'll just give you one survey. There's so many different polls. A recent poll showed that 43% of adults felt more anxious this year than the previous year. Let me say that again, 43%.

That's almost half of the room is more anxious this year than last year. And if you look at the chart, last year was just a little bit more than the year before that and just a little bit before the year before that. And so you see, we're on the wrong trend with all of this. There's another survey. Last year. One in five teenagers experiences at least moderate anxiety, maybe even severe anxiety. So there is something going on in our world and we all know the symptoms. We go over this every time we talk about anxiety. It's like sleeplessness and irritability and we just get jumpy and our blood sugar levels are all out of whack. We got all sorts of things that we worry about. Our LDL's are high, our HDL's are low, BP's through the roof, HRV is not what we want it to be, I got IBS all the time, I got FOMO and FOBO, I'm thinking of trying out JOMO. I know, I know, it's TMI, TL, DR. But can the preacher get an AMEN for getting the acronyms right? This is a timely thing that we are going through and what I want you to do right now, we're not going to turn and talk to each other yet, but what do you worry about? Like what's on the top of the list? It's not so much if, it's like when, what? I would suggest to you that for most of us it's different than the people that we're around, like you're sitting next to. It's a very personal thing that kind of starts to happen. You remember last week that bullseye and we said that Satan, the evil one, will customize his temptations of us? Let me warn you about something now. Some of you, if you sense the temptation right now to look at the people around you and go, just toughen up, it is just exactly that, a temptation. It's a temptation to say, well what you're worrying about isn't as important as what I worry about.

Everybody should worry about what I worry about. Some of you are going to be tempted now to go, don't talk to me about this. I think we should be on edge and I think we need to just be really worried about the world. Let me help you with that. We should be very concerned about things, but the minute that we allow anxiety to take us over, we're not going to do anybody any good. Some of us are being tempted to say, I'm Teflon, I'm bulletproof, that's for weak people. Some of us are going to be tempted right now to misunderstand Jesus. You see, if you look at what he said at first glance, you might be going, wow, so it sounds like he's saying, don't worry about food or clothing, just suck it up, cupcake. But that can't be. That's not Jesus. That's not a fair way to characterize him. I mean, was there a more compassionate man in all of history? Is there anyone who was a bigger champion of the unfortunate than Jesus? You get to the end of Matthew in chapter 26, he even says he takes it personally how we treat what he calls the least of these. Like if you serve or don't serve those people, I'm going to take it real personally. It's as if you are doing this to me. So that can't be it. I agree with one scholar who says that you can't expect Jesus to make all the points to all the people about all the things in one sermon. Let's just understand that would have been a long time on the mountainside that day. Does Jesus talk about food and clothing and use it as an example? Absolutely. Does that mean that he doesn't really care about people who need such things? Absolutely not. What Jesus is doing here is making a point in the middle of his message, in the middle of his message. So like we should probably see what he was talking about right before that.

Because remember, when we see a therefore, we ask what's the therefore therefore. So let's just go up just one phrase. What was hanging in the air? Just show us what was hanging in the air. You cannot serve both God and money. That was the last thought that he gave them. Now if you know that whole section, he's talking about there are two kings here and he's basically saying you have to pick one. Therefore don't be anxious about your life. Now I think it's really interesting here. He says he's just so wise. Of course food and clothing, shelter, all of these things matter. I'm going to go as far as to say that money matters. Can we say that? You got to keep it in perspective. But money is how we bless. Money is how we protect. Money is how we provide. Money is how we serve and help others. I also agree with a scholar who says there's a difference between matter and worship. Let me tell you what I mean. Like things matter to me and they should matter to me. But the minute that they start creeping up the priority list. The minute I start letting it be the center of my life and I arrange all of the thoughts and the dreams and the hopes and the efforts and the worry and everything. It just is all arranged. Like all of my focus is going to be arranged around that thing. Because I think that's what's going to satisfy me. That's what's going to bring me joy and peace. Man when that changes, when that happens.

Then I can relax. That's getting real close to worship. I picked the wrong king. Jesus the master teacher here. Put money, put all of these things to the side for just a second. Jesus the master teacher I think is asking us a core question. Do you think God is up to the challenge of your life? Is he in charge? Can you trust him with everything? Or do you need to control that one section because I don't know if he can handle that. In fact, I don't even know if God's way works in this one part of my life. You and I have to get to a place where we are willing to say he's in charge and his way is the best way. It begins to then shape and color how we worry about things. I'm so glad Jesus doesn't just leave us hanging here though by just saying, hey, don't do that. He keeps going. He says, hey, look. And the word in the Greek means just what you think it means. Look. Yeah, go ahead. Turn your gaze towards and he starts talking about birds. Now this is me. It's not in the text, but I can imagine again, the most brilliant teacher ever sees these birds that are just kind of, maybe it's a, you know, some ravens that are kind of doing their thing and they're flying up and down and Jesus just goes, hey, look at those magnificent creatures. They're doing all right, aren't they? They don't act like farmers. They're not, they're not like, they're not worried about the crop.

They're not, they're not planting and harvesting and storing things away and they're doing all right. Your heavenly father is caring for them. Psalm 147 says, God feeds the ravens, but they're doing all right. Don't you think he's got you? Now at this point, I think there was a smattering of giggles in the crowd because Jesus would often say things to get people kind of smiling and giggling and then make his point. But the point, I think really the point for us today is the next thing he says, are you not much more valuable than they? You see, whatever else we end up talking about when it comes to anxiety, I think it comes down to this. Do you have any idea how much you matter to him? Do you have any idea? You are the beloved. Do you have any idea what he has done so that you can enjoy a closeness with him forever? What Jesus is saying here is you matter that much. So the question is, can you rest in that? Now I'm not saying you don't work. I'm not saying we don't plan and we don't save like this isn't like, oh wow. So the rest of my days are hot Cheetos and tick tock. Trying to read the room, hummus and Netflix. Does that work better? There we go. There we go. No, it's, it's a good, you don't think those birds were expending energy. You don't think they're like they're building nests, they're forging for food, they're protecting their young, they're avoiding predators. It's good to work hard. It is good to accomplish things, to set goals and to, and to know that you're making a difference. It is good to go.

Yup. That just happened. And to keep it in perspective, which just quick, I'm acting like she's watching this. She's in Milan, so she's not watching this, but quick shout out to Joy Dunn, right? I've had more than one person come up to me and just say, Hey, didn't we baptize her here like a couple of three years ago? Yes, we did. And congratulations, Joy, for a gold medal being a part of the USA women's hockey team. But wait, wait, here's the reason it's so important to the point we're making. This is just, this is her post, not mine. It was before the medal, but at the end of the day, I'm just a girl that loves Jesus and happens to play hockey. My identity is in Him, not the game. Listen to me. It is good for you to accomplish things, to set goals, but you want to keep it in perspective. You know what's not good, according to Jesus? Letting anxiety, like, ruin your day. It is so physically exhausting, mentally distracting, spiritually draining, and Jesus is caring for us here. Jesus is here to help us because He knows what the cost is. There's a priest, Francois de Salle, in the 1600s, who wrote about anxiety, and what he wrote was so good, if he published it today, it'd be like bestseller stuff, but he talks about how we turn on ourselves and how we, like, we torment ourselves, and it costs us so much, and he says, when we do this, we become vulnerable. When we're that anxious, we become vulnerable to, his words, the evil one who is all the more ready to fish in troubled waters. There is an evil one who loves fishing in the troubled waters of your soul. Now here's what I want us to do. Would you now... We're going to turn and we're going to talk to each other. And here's the question. What does anxiety do to you?

Because it's personal for each of us. Like, what's your reaction? What do you see it doing to you? Let's go ahead and talk to each other. And hear this. And I promise I'm not trying to be funny. This is the most anxiety-producing moment of the day for some of you. And let me tell you why. There is somebody near you who doesn't know anybody at this church. And it was a huge risk for them to attend in person. And right now they are aching for someone to just look their way and say, Hey, you want to hang out with us? So do that. Don't leave anybody out there on their own. Okay. What is your reaction to anxiety? What does it do to you? Go ahead. Talk to each other. Okay. All right. We can talk about this one for a while. Anybody here willing to, in a sort of a general safe way, willing to say, Hey, this is what anxiety does to me. Anybody here got anything for us? Yeah. Okay. Chest gets tight. I zone out. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I heard a man over here. Say it again. No sleep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about symptoms here. Yeah. And it affects us. Yeah. Anybody here feel the weight? This has just been coming up. So I'm curious if anybody here feel the weight of expectations? It's like, man, I got to measure up. I got to live up. I got to do this. We're really close to perfectionism. Now I had somebody in a previous service who came up and said, you know what it is for me? I'll tell you what's at the core of it all. What it does to me is it just pushes me into a kind of perfectionism that I can never live up to. Brené Brown put it like this. She said, when perfectionism is driving us, shame is riding shotgun and fear is that annoying backseat driver. Listen to me. That's a carload of trouble and it's heading towards anxiety. Now I want you to understand something. When you sense that you haven't like done something and it didn't go the way it was supposed to go and it's a godly sorrow because it's connected to a sin. No, that's different. That's different. That's the Holy Spirit nudging you. That's how you move forward. But he will always point you to Jesus and it will always

be filled with grace. What I'm talking about is that weight of, I got to do it all. I got to be all. I got to know it all. I got to, I got to, I got to accomplish it all because it's the only way I'm going to be accepted. It's the only way people are going to think I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm worthy. It's the only way my, my parents are going to accept me. The only way I'm going to be loved. The only way you see how this goes, but the problem is it never works because we're imperfect. And that weight begins to crash in and creep in and it does these things that you're talking about. And that gets us to Inside Out 2. Now, some of you are aware of that movie. Maybe you're not. Uh, it's one of Pixar's movies. Uh, Inside Out 1 was, was, was a great, brilliant, really, uh, way to try to describe a young girl named Riley and the inner world that she has. All of her emotions, each of them has its own, uh, its, uh, its own character, its own personality, its own color. And they're all kind of in the control room of Riley and you see their interactions. It's actually an interesting way to think about this. The second movie, Riley is starting high school and she's wanting to make a hockey team. There you go. But there are new emotions that she has to make room for like envy and embarrassment and anxiety. And you can pick anxiety out if you watch the movie. She looks just about what you think anxiety should look like. You know what I'm talking about? It's just like, wild eyes, wild hair, lots of teeth, and even more energy. But she's trying to protect, she's trying, her whole thing is, I want you to make it, I want you to fit in, I want you to, you gotta be cool, you gotta, and so she's pushing, pushing, pushing, you gotta do, you gotta do, you gotta do, until it all comes to a head when Riley hurts her best friend Grace in a hockey game. Watch this. We hurt Grace. It all happened so fast, I didn't even see her. I'm not good enough. Oh no, what did I do? No, oh no. I can fix it, I can fix it. I'm not good enough. Come on Riley, get it together.

I'm not good enough. You have to score Riley, or this will all have been for nothing. Anxiety, you're putting too much pressure on her. Listen to me. The evil one loves to fish in troubled waters. Some of you are old enough to be like, man, I think I'm past that. You have a child, you have a grandchild, you've got somebody in your neighborhood that is feeling the weight of this right now, but I'm telling you, it isn't just teenagers. There is something that weighs in on us and we go, I'm not good enough. I'm not thin enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not jacked enough. I'm not wealthy enough. I'm not successful enough. I'm not popular enough. I'm not a good enough parent. I'm not a good enough spouse. I'm not a good enough friend or sister or son or athlete or student. I'm not a good enough Christian. And he fishes in those troubled waters. Let's pay attention to what Jesus does here. He takes this whole topic and he connects it to the care of your loving father. Now, I just want to say this to be clear. There can absolutely be a biological component to anxiety. There's all sorts of research that shows that there can be a genetic predisposition towards some kinds of anxiety. Let me tell you something you know. For some people, it's connected to a trauma, a deep hurt, a deep wound that you never really dealt with and it never got healed. And it doesn't take much to bring it back.

For some of you, it wasn't one event. It was a season, a long season, maybe years of struggle and threat. And you learned along the way how to worry at big unhealthy levels that are not helping you now if they ever helped you at all. What Jesus is saying here is this thing is overwhelming. But you don't want to do this alone. You have a heavenly father who cares for you. So what do we do? We'll answer this question a couple of times. What do we do? Well, I'm going to say use every tool in the tool belt that's available to you. It might be that you actually talk to your physician and say, hey, I need to tell you what these symptoms are. It might be that you make an appointment with a Christian counselor and go, can you help me with this? Or you talk to a friend or you confess to a spouse or you say to someone who would never know, this is what my three o'clock in the mornings are like. Or maybe you make an appointment with a pastor or you ask for prayer afterwards. There's so much more to this. Here's what I would say now. There is a spiritual component that has to be a part of the victory. There is a heavenly father who cares for you and loves you. I mean, he cares for the birds. He cares for you. But he's also given you choices to make along the way. Sometimes there's a kind of a, oh, I don't know what to do. There is a way through this and there are choices that you make. Later, Jesus says these words, see how the flowers of the field grow. He's still there. So I just want us to kind of stay with that.

And I'm going to now move into very quickly. Some of you will get this, but this is a Bob Ross moment. You guys just go back and look him up on YouTube. He was a weird kind of a painter, had a huge fro and he would paint while he talked. I can't do that very well, but I'm going to try. Oh, there's a little happy tree right there. Just some burnt ochre and titanium white. No, no. I just want you to picture now. Now this, this, this hillside that everybody's on, and Jesus says, you know, I want you to just see how these flowers, like how they, how they grow, because there's something about them that is just extraordinarily beautiful. And he says, really, if you, if you kind of take a look at what's going on, can you imagine if it was happening while, while Jesus is talking that they, they could just look out on that hillside and see some wildflowers in full bloom? But his point is, if you take a look at these wildflowers, Solomon, in all of his glory, couldn't match this. You see, God planned for these wildflowers. God, God created these wildflowers. How much more, then, does God have a plan for you? That's really the point there, but I think the takeaway that I want you to see is, is that word see. So the word see isn't just like, hey, look, it's a different word, and it means to, to ponder, like you consider something, like you really, like, oops, ponder, you consider something.

Here it is, you think. You think deeply about something. That's what I want you to see it as. You think deeply about something. Here's part of how we deal with our anxiety, and it is thoroughly biblical. Are you with me? You pay attention to your thoughts. Long before there was something called cognitive behavioral therapy, thousands and thousands of years ago, there were writers of scripture who would say things like, you know, as a person thinks in his heart, so is he. That's, that's how this works. Your thoughts are gonna take you in directions, and you gotta ask yourself, are those thoughts based on reality or not? This thing that I'm turning over and over and over in my head, is it even true? Does it even have any connection to being true, or am I kind of believing a lie somewhere along the way? Do I need some help, some perspective on how all of this works? Listen to me, Satan is the father of lies, and one of his favorite tricks is to isolate you. Nobody else will understand, nobody else can know about this, and he keeps filling your head with half-truths and lies and false assumptions. You know why? Because he wants you to be stuck.

Now, David Corning, pastor, oversees our youth ministries here, David, you and I were talking about this not long ago, you shared an illustration with me, and I said, well, you gotta come share that, and then you started sharing more, and I said, well, you gotta share that too, so I'm gonna get at you. Yeah, so when he was talking a little bit about this, what it made me think of is a quote that I heard years ago. I'm not sure who said this originally, but the quote goes, worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. I think it's, we tend to think about all the things that are going on in our life, and we sit in our thoughts, and we think about the future, the things that we can't fully control, and we say, what if I don't get that job? What if I don't pass that class? What if they don't like me? What if I say the wrong thing? Or maybe we don't think about the future. Maybe we think about the past, and it's about the things that we can't fully change, and we say, if only, I didn't say that stupid thing. If only I looked differently, if I looked as pretty as him or her, if only things were different in my life, I would be happy. Truth is, this hyper-connected world that we live in, it doesn't help us. The newsfeed and social media, it kind of plays into this.

We tend to look out there into the world and compare it to our inside world and go, man, there's just some, this isn't the way it should be. Do I matter? Our teenagers, our students, and our young adults, this is the life that they grew up in. Like, this is all they know. In fact, a well-known sociologist, Jean Twing, actually talks a little bit about this. She says that anxiety, depression, and suicide started to skyrocket in 2011, 2012. She goes on to talk about how the iGen generation is on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades. And she basically says that this deterioration in mental health is all due to their phones. And here's the thing. She's not saying that, her point isn't that it's all bad. Technology and social media is all bad. What she's saying is that it starts to take a toll on us. And I think it starts to train us to look at the wrong things, to seek after the wrong things. If you're a parent, a teacher, a coach, an uncle. a grandma, grandpa, you know what this looks like. You've seen this in teenagers. You see them sit in their thoughts, they look at influencers or social media, their friends and think, who can I trust? What do I do in this life? Do I even matter?

But let's not kid ourselves. Like if Gene is right and that spike really happens in 2011, if you do the math on this, then who were the ones that had their phones all day in their hands? It was us. Which means we fall into this same anxiety trap that they do. In fact, that means that we're in our own mental health crisis. Now, Greg did not get me up here to be, you know, Debbie McDowner pants. That's just not what he asked me to do. No, honestly, I wanted to share something that I've been seeing in sort of this next generation. As I work alongside them, I've started to see just how different they are starting to, they're trying to find solid ground in this world. They're trying to make sense of this world. And many of them are exploring who, just asking questions about Jesus. And really they're seeking him and they're finding him. And I'm not saying he's hiding from them. It's just, we live in a loud world. About a month ago, I went to a conference with a bunch of our young adults and it was a conference specifically for them. There were thousands, tens of thousands of young adults there. And I was blown away at the number of them

who did what I did today, who walked in with a physical, like into a stadium with a physical Bible and notebook. Did they have their phones? Of course they had their phones. It's something they're gonna have to navigate for the rest of their life. But they, something else took priority in their life. They were trying to figure out, they were trying to learn and apply what God has to say for them. Last week, I was talking to a mom whose daughter went to winter blast and she could not stop gushing about the notes her daughter took. It wasn't a couple of bullet points or some doodles. It was 15 pages of notes in a 48 hour period. It's not just one student either. It's hundreds of our students. In fact, our youth crossing team really felt like started to see some of this happen. And so we decided that we were gonna have a notebook for the series that we're in the middle of on Wednesday nights. And so our team put together a notebook because we wanna lean into this desire that they have. And in case you think this is like just arbitrary observations that like little David has, like I think the stats and statistics are starting to show this.

Just look at Bible sales. Bible sales are at a 21 year high. What's the driving factor? Most people point to the next generation. What am I saying? I'm saying that these young people are trying to take every thought captive. I think they're seeking Jesus and they're finding him. And honestly, Greg, I think we can learn from it. So first of all, thank you. Let's thank him. Thank you. Secondly, we should celebrate this, I don't know what to call it, but a revival that is happening and has been brewing for a while now in our youth and in our students. Let's celebrate that. Let's champion it. Let's invest in it. But you gotta hear me, his last point. Let's learn from them. Follow their lead. If you are a student right now or a young adult in our midst, lead. Show us what it's like. Show us what it's like to be passionate about the word. Show us what it's like to be passionate about worship. That young woman, you know what she's doing? She's pondering.

She's thinking deeply. How do I apply this to my life? Your thoughts matter. Paul says in Philippians four, not very far from where he's talking about anxiety. Think on these things. And then he just gives you a list. Man, think about stuff that's true, that's honorable, that's noble, that's pure, that's excellent. Because your thoughts matter. When it comes to tomorrow, okay, okay. But if you get obsessed with it, Jesus says you're not gonna add one hour to your life. Do you know who holds the hours and days of your life? The same one who created those wildflowers. The same one who cares for those birds. Your heavenly father. Please hear me now. This is the big point. Your heavenly father. It's emphatic in the text. He could have said our heavenly father. He could have said the heavenly father. He could have said my heavenly father. But in this text, talking about anxiety, he says your heavenly father cares for you. Your heavenly. Father, He wants this to be personal. This is why we keep inviting you

to accept what Jesus has done for you on the cross because then this lesson gets to land deeply. And we face today and then tomorrow with Him. And Jesus tells us the truth, tomorrow we'll have it's sheer trouble. But you get to face it with Him. Did you know in the Old Testament, one of the names of God is El Shaddai. El, God, Shaddai, Almighty, God Almighty. It can also be translated, God is enough. I want you to know whatever it is that you're facing today and whatever it is that you wake up with tomorrow, your Heavenly Father is enough. Therefore, seek first the kingdom. Now my words, these are Jesus' words. Seek first the kingdom, His righteousness. The rest of it, it'll be added to you. It means seek His way, do things His way. If you are at a place where you have received the forgiveness that Jesus offers and the Holy Spirit now lives in your life, chase after God's things. Live the Holy Spirit-soaked life. Live the grace-filled, resilient to evil, eyes on Jesus life. And the rest of this, God'll meet you in it. C.S. Lewis put it like this. He said, aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. Your Heavenly Father cares for you.

Is there more to this? Absolutely. Am I saying, oh yeah, if you'll just do this, then everything's gonna be fine and you'll never have another worry? I'm not. I'm saying every step we take, we keep seeking Him and He keeps showing up and He keeps proving that He's enough. But don't forget this part. You are the beloved and when you come to Him, you're adopted into His family and that means you are a son or a daughter of the King. There's your identity. When was the last time you were around a new father? I love watching new fathers. It reminds me of being a new father. First thing you wanna do as a new father is not break them, right? So you're just like, can I? But then there comes a moment where you find your groove. I remember with my girls, both of them. Like I would rock them to sleep. But man, I would just like watch them. I was like enthralled with them. And just because it was me, I would sing to them. I would sing over them. But here's the secret. Long after they fell asleep, I was still singing to them. Do you know what Zephaniah 3.17 says?

The Lord is with you. He will save you. He delights in you. He exalts over you with singing. That's the kind of care your heavenly father has for you. Some of you have something in your past, a failure, that you can't seem to shake. You swore that you would not go back to it, but it keeps finding you. Some of you have a thing at work that your chest is tight and all the symptoms we were just talking about, and you don't know what to do with it. Some of you have a thing going on at home that you're kind of embarrassed to share it with anybody, but man, it's crushing. Some of you feel this pressure to be perfect. Some of you have a fear about something that quite honestly, it doesn't even make sense. You don't really have any indication that it's gonna happen that way, but you can't shake it. What do we do? I say we seek the kingdom. We keep seeking God's way. Let's keep learning from him how to do this. It's okay to ask for help. Sometimes that's clinical help. Sometimes it's just, hey, you're my friend. Can we walk together? It might be just showing up with a pastor and saying,

can I just tell you my story? For some of us, I cannot stress this enough. We've gotta check our thoughts because oftentimes we go down roads that we just don't need to go down. And this might mean that we do get somebody to kind of help us with our perspective. But then this one is for each of us. We've gotta come back to scripture. It's what will renew our minds. It's what will protect us from some of this. It will remind us of this God who loves us so. My friend Nicky Gumbel says, if you know how to worry, you know how to meditate on scripture. Instead of taking that problem and just turning it over and over and over, take that scripture. It's Zephaniah 3. It's Psalm 4. I mean, I could give you a ton of them. In fact, what we're going to do is we're going to put some scriptures together and put them out on the socials this week that many of us have found to be helpful in times of anxiety. But memorize one. Chew on it. Meditate on it. Let it remind you of who He is.

People remember there at the end, or at the beginning, I mean, of this whole thing when I said that Jesus took a deep breath and began to teach? Those are His words that we're listening to. Go back to His words. In fact, I want to give you a chance here at the end to go back to His words. I want there to be the truth of scripture. I want you to have a chance to consider this. I want you to just be honest with yourself, and maybe then you'll be honest with the person sitting next to you. By the way, some of you are now getting nervous about the parking lot. Some of you are having anxiety about the parking lot right now. I just need to call this out. Honestly, honestly, you're worrying about this, and you're going to miss it. You're going to miss it. You being in a parking lot full of friendly people is about the easiest challenge you're going to have all week. But if it's too much, and you need to go, I get it. But I want you to rest in this. Oh yeah, and one more thing.

Even while this song is going on, pray and keep praying, keep praying, because this is what we are called to do. We're going to talk about this next week. We pray and we keep praying. It's why Peter says, cast all of your anxieties on Him because He cares for you. It's why Paul says, don't be anxious about anything, pray about everything. And then He gives us this last promise, this promise of a peace that transcends all understanding. And that peace will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.