Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

By Rev Tan Eng Boo

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6)

The reformer, Martin Luther said:

“You see, he is making the birds our schoolmasters and teachers. It is a great and abiding disgrace to us that in the Gospel a helpless sparrow should become a theologian and a preacher to the wisest of men. We have as many teachers and preachers as there are little birds in the air. Their living example is an embarrassment to us... Whenever you listen to a nightingale, therefore, you are listening to an excellent preacher... It is as if he were saying, ‘I prefer to be in the Lord’s kitchen. He has made heaven and earth, and he himself is the cook and the host. Every day he feeds and nourishes innumerable little birds out of his hands.’”

(Martin Luther, “The Sermon on the Mount”)

Job reminds us that

“man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7).

But look at how Job handles it.

“As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number” (Job 5:8, 9)

Anxiety is no stranger to life. Jesus told His disciples:

“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?” (Matthew 6:25, 26)

What is making you bite your nails these days? Go back to Philippians 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything….” The four-word command can be rendered literally as “Stop worrying about anything!” The word “anxious” in the Greek means “to be divided or distracted.” Anxiety threatens to strangle the life out of us. In the most severe form of anxiety, we panic.

Charles Swindoll offers three statements on why anxiety is so wrong:

1. Anxiety highlights the human viewpoint and strangles the divine, so we become fearful.

2. Anxiety chokes our abilities to distinguish the incidental from the essential, so we get distracted.

3. Anxiety siphons our joy and makes us judgmental rather than accepting of others, so we become negative. We become negative when worry wins the battle. Inevitably we take our anxiety out on others.

   
   

I have been a pastor for over forty years. Do I struggle with anxiety, especially in the ministry? Yes! I get criticism, anonymous letters etc. I used to struggle and worry about whether I lived up to the expectations of others. But God has given me the grace to overcome it. Looking back, I see it as God’s lessons to me for my maturity in the ministry.

But what about your worries and anxieties in life?

Look at the birds, they are so free and unfettered. Don’t you think God cares more for you than the sparrows? It is always a joy for me to be in the field, watching the fowls of the air and seeing how God our heavenly Father looks after them. If the Creator cares for His creatures, how much more will our Father look after His children.

Once, I was on a birding trip along the sea coast when I met some fishermen. I enquired if they had caught any fish. One of them replied that they had been fishing for over two hours and didn’t catch any fish. Then I saw, flying above us, a White-bellied Sea Eagle heading out to sea. Ten minutes later, I saw the Sea Eagle with a fish in its talons, heading for land. God provides the wherewithal for them to feed themselves, but they have to forage for their food.

“These all look to you, to give them their food in due season. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.”

(Psalm 104:27, 28)

Beloved, are you not of more value than they? Be thankful to the Lord always.

Joni Eareckson Tada wrote that when she had health problems and had to be confined to her bed, her husband Ken had hung a bird feeder outside her window. At first, she envied the birds their freedom. Then she remembered what Jesus had said about sparrows. She wrote:

“I glanced at the bird feeder and smiled. I could understand Jesus noticing an eagle… But a scrappy sparrow? They’re a dime a dozen. Jesus said so Himself. Yet from thousands of bird species the Lord chose the most insignificant, least-noticed, scruffiest bird of all. A pint-sized thing that even dedicated birdwatchers ignore. That thought alone calmed my fears. I felt significant and noticed… If the great God of heaven concerns Himself with a ragtag little sparrow clinging to the feeder outside my window, he cares about me.”

As Civilla D. Martin’s old-fashioned lyrics from her hymn, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow”, puts it:

His eye is on the sparrow

And I know He watches me