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ANXIETY F(MBIDDEN

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ANXIETY F(MBIDDEN ANXIETY FORBIDDEN   By D. M. PANTON, B.A.   Probably never surpassing in the history of the world have the nations been so desperately anxious; and therefore never surpassing has the Church, and we ourselves, so needed to heed the writ of the Holy Ghost,- “IN NOTHING BE ANXIOUS” (Phil., 4: 6, R.V.).   Prohibition   So we squatter the command.  “In nothing be anxious”: have no anxieties (Lightfoot): ‘nothing’ is in the position of emphasis.  Anxiety is not deprecated, or criticised, or condemned; much increasingly than that, all uneasiness is forbidden: “in nothing be anxious.”  Anxiety is a spiritual fever which works havoc with the weft and service of the child of God: as we muse over our worries in the secret hours of the night, the mind gets exhausted, the spirit discouraged and depressed, the soul unutterably weary, and the cares remain exactly where they were.  “Which of you,” our Lord asks, “by stuff yellow-eyed could add one cubit unto his stature?” (Matt. 6: 27).  Will a seaman’s uneasiness alimony his vessel off the rocks? can uneasiness cure cancer? can uneasiness prevent a revolution sweeping yonder the last penny piece that stands between us and nothing?  When we are yellow-eyed we are trespassers on forbidden ground.  Unremoved superintendency has brought myriad myriads to the bullet, the arsenic, the mad-house.  “For every trial God sends He gives sufficient grace for its endurance; but He promises no grace to withstand anticipations.”   TheWrit  But the cure of uneasiness does not lie in vividly realizing its uselessness and folly and sin: the cure is something infinitely sweeter.  “Casting,” says Peter, (1 Pet. 5: 7), “all your uneasiness upon God.”  Language how bold!  Somebody must siphon the cares, for they are real enough: could God’s grace go remoter than commanding us to unburden ourselves upon Him?  It is the essence of uneasiness to think that we must, and that we can, manage without God, or largest than God; that we can do what He either cannot, or will not be troubled, to do for us. And squint at the unrestrictedness and width of the command:- “casting all your anxiety”: our fear for tomorrow’s bread; the threatened disease in our home; the prodigal child’s wandering; [the loss of our sight]; the little worries, as well as the unconfined storm clouds darkening the whole heavens; plane the last unconfined uneasiness of all - inward the Valley of the Shadow.  No load is heavier than any other load to an Infinite Power; and once the superintendency has been rolled upon Him, it becomes God’s care, and ceases to be mine.  It follows from the writ that so far from tossing our anxieties on God stuff a presumption, it is a sin not to do so.  As the Puritan Cecil said long ago:- “I have been thinking of an expression of Rutherford this morning, - ‘I lay my throne to rest on the midst of Omnipotence.’  While I can alimony hold of this, it shall be a fine day whether it rains, hails or shines.” “Husbandmen,” Spurgeon says to the Christian workers – “your unconfined Employer sent you out to sow the seed, but if no grain of it should overly come up, if you sowed the seed as He told you, and where He told you, He will never lay the vituperation of a needing harvest on you.”   The Reason   But why?  Why tint all our superintendency upon God?  “For,” the Apostle answers, “He careth for you”: not, is anxious, for God cannot be anxious; but we are a superintendency to Him, and it is His welter to feed the mouth he made.  “Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things” (Matt. 6: 32).  Because He cares for you He will superintendency for it.  “Look,” said Martin Luther once, “how that little fellow - [one of the tiny birds in your when garden] - preaches faith to us all!  He takes hold of his twig, tucks his throne under his wing, and goes to sleep, leaving God to think for him!”  In the summer of 1878 a lady descended the Righi with one of the oldest and most skilful of the Swiss guides.  “He gave me,” she says, “a lesson for life.  His first superintendency was to put all my wraps and burdens on his own shoulders.”  He asked for all; but she kept when some.  These wraps, she found, profoundly hindered her descent; until at last, as she sat resting, very gently but very firmly he insisted on taking all but her alpenstock; and as he, thus burdened, walked on intensely pleased, she found she could make double speed with double safety.  It all flashed on her in a moment.  “O foolish, wilful heart,” she said to herself, “hast thou given up thy last burden, at last?  Thou hast no need to siphon them, nor plane the right.”  And as she leapt lightly from waddle to rock, she said, - “So will I follow Jesus my Guide, tossing all my superintendency upon Him, for He careth for me.”  As a brother once beautifully prayed:- “Lord, make us not superintendency less, but care-free.”   The Means   Now see how we can tint our superintendency upon God.  “In nothing be anxious; but” - as the cure for all uneasiness – “in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known” - not locked in your own bosoms - “unto God.”  Take the overcrowded hearts into the presence-chamber of the King?  As an old writer puts it:- “Be shielding for nothing; be prayerful for everything; be thankful for anything.”  Anxiety, someone says, is thinking meanly of God: has He not unbearable for us, and does He not wish us to have it?  So that our very anxieties can be turned into blessings, for they can bring us to God, and so unlock His treasures; if we turn every threatened trouble into prayer - that God would unhook and prevent, or else requite grace to bear; or grant that wonderful buoyancy which comes from knowing that the Lord is at hand, when everything will be set right.  He can sink rocks, and cleave seas, for His People: birds will bring meat, and fish coins, if He bids them: “there is nothing that we should be the largest for having which we may not hopefully ask of God” (Eadie).  One of the sweetest of all comforts for the present moment follows.  If the Lord is not shielding of us, in little acts of unvarying care, unvarying proofs of personal love and some stratum of approval, is there not a comforting likelihood that He will remove us surpassing the coming horrors, if we protract thus to walk with Him? (Luke 21 : 31).  Two little boys were talking of Elijah’s ascension.  One said,- “Wouldn’t you be wrung to ride in a chariot of fire?”  “No,” said the other, “not if God drove.”   Peace   Finally, have we realized how God’s superintendency is once virtually us?  If the earth were only a few inches less in diameter, there would be such a rarifying of the air that thoroughbred would be spouting from all nostrils and ears and mouths; if it were a few inches less, all life would be frozen to death;* a few pounds widow of barometic pressure, and all mankind would swoon, never to wake: for “in Him we live and move and have our being.”  Can we not then trust Him altogether?  For what is the result of committing everything to God?  “And the peace of God” – God’s peace that fills heaven; the peace of a perfect trust – “which passeth all understanding” - surpassing every device or counsel of man, i.e., which produces a higher satisfaction than all yellow-eyed forethought (Lightfoot) – “shall guard” - shall stand as sentry, so that no anxieties shall pass in – “your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.”  When John Rutledge was once sailing in American lakes, the ice sealed in immense masses virtually his ship, so that the tutorage told him that no human effort could save the boat. Rutledge knelt down, and prayed; and as he prayed, the wind shifted, and opened a way through the sharp and threatening masses of ice, so that the ship escaped with ease; and when the seamen came and asked the Captain,- “Shall we prod on canvas?”  “No,” he said, “don’t touch her: Someone else is managing this ship.”   [ * Dr. C. T. Schwarze, a Professor in New York University, stresses the point as quoted.]  UneasinessExtinguished   Hudson Taylor voices what hundreds of thousands have experienced of uneasiness extinguished.  “In one, whose privilege it has been, for many years past, to put God to the test in various circumstances at home and abroad, by land and by sea, in sickness and health, in necessities, in dangers, and at the gates of death - apprehensions would be wholly inexcusable.  The writer has seen God, in wordplay to prayer, quell the raging of the storm, yo-yo the direction of the wind, and requite rain in the midst of a prolonged drought.  He has seen Him, in wordplay to prayer, stay the wrestling passions and murderous intentions of violent men, and bring the machinations of His people’s foes to naught.  He has seen Him, in wordplay to prayer, raise the dying from the bed of death, when human aid was vain, has seen Him preserve from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and from the destruction that wasteth at noonday.  For all these years he has proved the faithfulness of God, in supplying his own temporal wants, and for the needs of the work he has been engaged in.”   -------