Who’s Driving?

Have you ever found yourself in a season that could best be described by the well-known saying, “When it rains, it pours”?

Last year, I found myself in that kind of season. I had just moved across the country from Los Angeles to Boston, my job had become extremely demanding and was requiring a significant amount of travel, and within my first two weeks in a new city, my parked car got just about totaled in a hit-and-run. I could hardly find time to call insurance companies and repair shops in between back-to-back work meetings. Not to mention, I ended up at urgent care not one but two different times within that first month. Anxiety and overwhelm were the first and last feelings I had every day —and so many moments in between.

Perhaps you, like me, have found yourself wide awake in the middle of the night, riddled with anxiety. Your mind swirls as your to-do list pleads for attention and your work begs to be accomplished. There have been days where I have fallen victim to the enemy’s lie that spending time in communion with the Lord is impeding the many more urgent and important items on my lengthy to-do list. I open my Bible only to find myself unable to focus, so I give up, walk away, and start my day. Despite pursuing God for over two decades, I have given anxiety the driver’s seat far too many times. However, it’s no surprise that anxiety only knows how to drive me to one destination—more anxiety.

In Matthew 6:33, Jesus draws our focus to a necessary priority shift, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Directly following these words, Jesus urges us to “not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself” (Matt. 6:34). I find it notable that Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God within the context of anxiety. Perhaps it’s because Jesus knew that in our humanness, anxiety and worry are capable of not only stealing our attention but holding us captive in their prison—so much so that they can keep us from experiencing the purest, most perfect, and lasting source of peace: King Jesus.

I have heard it said that anxiety is interest paid on problems yet to happen. Unfortunately, for many of us, anxiety isn’t a switch we can just turn off—although I’m sure we all wish it was. While we may not escape anxiety’s knock at the door, we can avoid becoming its prisoner. To do this, we must first ask ourselves what we really believe about the sovereignty of God. You see, if our anxiety is always bigger than our conception of God, we will continue to get trapped in a vicious cycle where every challenge we face compounds our anxiety. By taking an inventory of our perception of God’s power against the perceived weight of our problems, we might come to realize how big, or perhaps how small, our honest view of God is.

In that hectic and stress-inducing season of life, I began to wonder if I was the limiting factor. Was I minimizing God’s sovereign nature over my life? I can be so tempted to think that checking items off a to-do list is a better way of solving anxiety than putting it into the hands of the King of all Kings, Lord of all Lords, and Creator and Sustainer of all things. When I fall into this trap, however, I am not allowing God to grant me his peace that far outlasts checking a few boxes on a list. So, not only must I remind myself of God’s greatness over my circumstances, but I must also scale his greatness against my view of self. The more I see God’s magnitude, the more I must accept my own transience and frailty. Naturally, the more I think of God, the less time I will have to think of my problems. Solomon recognizes the very magnitude of God as he exclaims, “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you” (1 Kings 8:27). Yet, giving God his rightful authority over my life would require a spectacular undoing of pride and would take a diligent and daily pursuit of not seeing myself more than I ought. For while we are like flowers that wither and shadows that continue not (Job 14:2), God is “the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28).

I came to faith in Jesus with an understanding that God is, in fact, very great. It would seem unreasonable to me to trust a god who is smaller than the enemy’s every attempt to fling stress, fear, and anxiety my way. So why is it that the very truth I once declared about Jesus’s Lordship quickly comes crashing down when stress builds up, circumstances get hard, and anxiety sets in? I know and believe God is great, that he is Lord, and that he reigns and rules over all; yet, in the middle of the storm, it just doesn’t feel true. It could be that my spiritual depth perception has become skewed. I have increased the size of the circumstances and decreased the power, majesty, authority, and Lordship of Jesus. Rather than reminding myself of Jesus’s sovereignty, I shrink God. I go on loving and serving my very limited conception of who God is. As C. S. Lewis puts it, “We are far too easily pleased” (The Weight of Glory).

The very great news is that our God is not small! The even better news is that God’s greatness, power, and authority do not change based on how we view him. He is not a “pick your fighter” god where it’s up to us to craft his size, power, and prayer-answering speed. No, God is far better than anything we could ever construct or imagine. He conquers enemies, fulfills promises, brings life from ashes, performs miracles, and defeats death! And that isn’t to say that our troubles are insignificant. God cares to meet us in every strife, every worry, and every fear, no matter the size.

I thought I needed to come to God stress-free so I could enjoy peace in his presence. I tried to pull myself up by my bootstraps and “get it together.” Yet, the Apostle Peter reminds us to cast our cares on the Lord because the Lord cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). God doesn’t want us to come to him after finding a shallow substitute of peace from the world; no, he desires that we come to him, anxieties and all, and seek “the Lord of Peace himself” (2 Thess. 3:16). He desires to be our source of peace in the storm. It’s this very act of falling at the feet of Jesus that allows him to plant peace, joy, and contentment in a garden that was once overgrown with the weeds of anxiety.

As we make space for the Lord of all, our worries will grow fainter, and we will find a richer dependency on Jesus than we ever imagined there could be. Ultimately, once we discover that God is everything he says he is, we can slide into the passenger seat of our lives and experience a soul-level rest. We can rest because we know Peace himself is driving us home. He is in control; we don’t have to be.