Jesus says, “Don’t worry” three times in Matthew 6:25-34.
Now, in 25 years of marriage, telling my wife to calm down has worked exactly zero times. Telling yourself or someone else to stop or chill out doesn’t work. It never works. So maybe when you read these words of Jesus, they feel kind of trite: “Don’t worry.” We know, though, that Jesus doesn't treat us with trite cliches. We know that He doesn't dismiss us. Something deeper must be happening beneath the surface.
Jesus isn’t flippantly saying, “Calm down!” Instead, Jesus is giving insight into waging war against worry. Notice how He starts: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.” Jesus starts by speaking to our minds, applying logic with questions to assess things rationally. “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life” (6:25-27).
He says, essentially, that we worry about small things. We worry about things that don't matter compared to life as a whole and especially to our relationship with God and His Kingdom. He asks if you have ever added a single hour to life by worry (6:27)? Has worrying ever worked, He asks? Think this through logically. I bet the answer is “No.”
Jesus finishes by saying, “Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt. 6:34). Those who wrestle with worry might misunderstand Jesus here, thinking, “Oh no! What’s coming tomorrow!” But that is the opposite of Jesus’s point. Instead, Jesus means that in our world we will always have something to worry about, so don’t borrow worries from tomorrow. Some have said worrying brings the same pain into your life two times. You bring pain by worrying, and then you experience pain when difficult things do happen. Don't double your pain by worrying. Don't borrow worries from tomorrow.
After Jesus wisely applies logic to our anxiety, speaking to our minds, He speaks to the depths of the soul. He speaks to the heart, because He knows stopping our anxiety will require more than reason and logic. He goes after the heart by twice referring to God as Father—your heavenly Father. First, He describes the power of the Father. Speaking to a crowd filled with worry and anxiety like we are, Jesus brings wonder to attack worry. Your heavenly Father feeds the birds. Look around. Hear them chirp. They don’t know where their next meal is coming from, but your heavenly Father feeds them. And He loves and cares for you much more than for them.
“And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that’s how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won’t he do much more for you—you of little faith?” (Matt. 6:28–30). Jesus invites us into wonder: If you belong to Him, you have a heavenly Father. Your heavenly Father clothes the flowers in the field with a beauty that can stun us into silence, and He loves you much more than the flowers.
The great wonder of our heavenly Father can drive out worry from our hearts. Think about a moment when wonder filled your heart and mind, and you stopped worrying about whatever else was bothering you. Maybe you stood in front of a sunset, seeing it drop beneath the horizon. As those around you clapped or awed or took pictures, the beauty stunned your worry into silence, even for just a few moments. Maybe you saw an incredible basketball dunk, and everyone in the arena around you stood and cheered and high-fived and chest bumped. For just for a couple of seconds, the wonder of that moment silenced your anxiety.
Wonder attacks worry. As wonder increases, worry decreases. Jesus says that if you are in awe of your heavenly Father, worry will go away. As wonder for your Father increases, worry decreases. You have a heavenly Father who is powerful. He has the power to feed every bird and clothe every flower. We stand in awe of the power of our Father and rejoice in him as a personal Father.
The Father is personal. He has the power to feed every bird, and the love to care for them. The Father is sovereign, knowing every flower, and he’s also sensitive, caring for every flower. He cares about everything He created, birds and flowers included. He cares much more about you, because He created you in the image of God. He loves you. He longs for you. He sent the Son Jesus to this earth to die for you, to reconcile you to Himself. Consider that name, “Heavenly Father.” Let your heart fill with wonder. “Heavenly Father.” He is both heavenly—sovereign, creator, ruler—and Father—personal, loving, caring, compassionate.
Jesus fills the crowd's mind with the wonder of their heavenly Father to silence their worry. So we, too, should fill our minds with wonder rather than with worry. Imagine how this could affect your life if you re- placed worry with wonder. When your mind starts to take a single point of data and write the script for an entire motion picture, spiraling you into anxiety, what could happen if you replaced worry with wonder? When you sense that gnawing spiral, what if you stopped and said, “No. Right now, I will wonder over my heavenly Father who loves me rather than worry”?
Doctors and scientists are now showing that wonder can help treat anxiety. We can actually train our minds to think about things differently. Dr. Carolyn Leaf has said that what we set our minds on contributes to 75% or more of our struggles with mental health and even physical health. Likewise, Dan Siegel says, “Where your attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connections grow.” You can train your mind to worry more, or you can train your mind to wonder more. You have a choice. You can fill your mind with worry, or you can fill your mind with wonder.
You can set your mind on things that cause more worry, constantly creating more complex motion pictures, or you can set your mind on wonder, encouraged by a heavenly Father who loves you. You can set your mind on things that create wonder. Maybe you’ve heard someone say that peace comes from emptying your mind. Scripture, though, actually says to fill your mind. Fill your mind with wonder.
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Excerpted and adapted from My Anxious Thoughts: And What the Bible Says About Them, a 5-week Bible study from Eric Geiger, Christine Caine, and Kenton Beshore. We invite you to download a free sample of the study.