The Cure for Care

“In nothing be anxious” (Phil. iv. 6).

How exacting is the ideal! Harassing care is to play no part in the believer’s life. Worry is an alloy which always debases the fine metal of the Christian character. It mars and spoils it. And so the counsel is unconditional, and covers every period and sphere in human life. Anxiety is to be banished from everything. It is not to be permitted the smallest foothold in the Kingdom of our Lord. We are not to be anxious for money. We are not to be anxious for comforts. No, and we are not to be anxious for holiness. No, and we are not to be anxious for converts! Just here is the secret of so many failures. We banish anxiety from our homes, but we keep it in our churches. We do not worry about our daily bread, but we worry about the bread of life. We are not harassed about our business, but we are harassed about our Christian service. And so the destructive spirit is not completely and finally exiled. We allow it a single room, we do not refuse it the house.

Now we are clearly taught in the word of God, that anxiety is ever a ruinous minister even when it is employed in the highest service. I impair my power for winning converts whenever I become anxious about them. Anxiety never reinforces my battalions, it always weakens them. And for this reason: the channels of communion with the Highest are open to me through faith. Nay, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that faith itself is the channel through which the forces of the Highest pour into my life. The greater the faith, the deeper the channel; the deeper the channel, the vaster the flood. “According to your faith shall it be done unto you.” Now, anxiety means the shrinkage of faith. The shrinkage of faith implies the narrowing of the heavenly channels. The narrowing of the channels inevitably results in the impoverishment of the flood.

Anxiety is an obstacle to the heavenly, and therefore it can never pay. And this, I say, is true of the very highest types of service. A minister who is anxious and worried about his ministry is choking up the very channels of his power, and he is therefore multiplying the chances of ultimate defeat. I am perfectly sure that this great law is frequently and even commonly forgotten, with the consequence that the forces of the kingdom are most pitiably reduced. I am persuaded that if the spirit of harassing anxiety could be cast out of the Christian Church we should be amazed at the voluminous energies which would course through her services. “The river of God is full of water.” Why, then, does it only trickle through our labours? It is because the channels are choked by great boulders of anxiety, and by ten thousand petty cares. Only remove the impediments, and the glorious, invigorating waters would fertilise all our work.

But how is it to be done? The Apostle gives us the answer, and in that answer we find the antidote to care. And here is the first secret —” by prayer.” The word which is here translated “prayer” refers not to the petitions, but to the mood of the petitioner. It describes a frame of mind. The soul can be in a prayerful attitude, even if it refrains from making requests. All real prayer begins, not in words, but in moods. The great mystics have ever been experts in the knowledge of this secret. They have disciplined their souls to a reverent and receptive pose, until, at all times, their souls have been frankly open to the Divine. They have bowed in silence before the Lord, rejecting, in the first place, the clumsy expedient of words, and they have quietly drawn in breath in the fear of the Lord. It is here that we find the explanation of Paul’s counsel to “pray without ceasing.” If essential prayer be a matter of words, the counsel is impossible; but if essential prayer be a spiritual posture, it is possible to obey the counsel throughout all the changing hours and moments of the years. Happily, we can school ourselves to this exposure. The Lord has made it graciously possible for us to acquire a prayerful spirit, and it is in this fundamental, speechless prayerfulness that the Apostle finds the first defence against carking care.

But the spirit of prayer will not displace the ministry of definite speech. The inbroken mood will express itself in humble request. “By supplication.” The intimacy of silence breaks into the intimacy of speech. Instead of worrying about things, quietly talk them over in the secret place. “Tell it to the Lord in prayer.” And let us see to it that no well-dressed unbelief be allowed to limit the circle of our holy intercourse. “In everything ... by supplication.” Such is the amazing range of our privilege in the Lord. In whatever sphere of life the problem presents itself, let us not address ourselves to its solution in anxious and lonely application. Let us quietly bring it into the holy place, and set it in the light of God’s countenance. Yes, let the sacred light fall on it. Let us patiently await the revelation of the Lord.

“With thanksgiving Paul would never omit that element from his receipt when giving his cure for care. Half our worries would immediately melt away if we began to sing a psalm of praise. Some anxieties can resist everything except thanksgiving. When that begins, they melt away like icebergs in tropical seas. The life that is ungrateful is very cold and icebergs abound in its atmosphere. Let us raise the temperature and we shall be amazed at the results. A really thankful heart is so crowded with the sense of God’s mercies that it can offer no hospitality to worry and care.