Matthew 6: What Worry Is Stealing From You

Introduction

"What is worry stealing from you?" That is the question behind this second episode of Foundations, the series from Christian Fellowship Church. After "What am I building on?", the conversation turns to Matthew 6:24-34 and to a subject that touches everyone: worry.

Charlotte is back. The guest is Zara, a pastor of a church planted this year. Zara struggled for a long time with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and an anxiety that made her a prisoner in her own home. Charlotte, too, has been through a long story of anxiety.

Before getting into the text, the host invites viewers to pause the video and read the passage, because it gives all the context. The team has no illusions: many people in the church struggle with the same thing. So this message does not take anxiety lightly.

Message outline

1. "Therefore": worry and the two masters

• In verse 25, Jesus says: "Therefore I tell you, don't be anxious for your life" (Matthew 6:25). The host remembers a question heard in Bible school: when you see "therefore", you have to ask what it is there for.
• That "therefore" points back to verse 24: "No one can serve two masters. [...] You can't serve God and Mammon" (Matthew 6:24). There is a link between being enslaved by something and worrying.
• Charlotte goes back further. Jesus has just said not to store up treasures on earth, where moth, rust and thieves destroy (Matthew 6:19-20). It is not that the Lord doesn't want you to own things: it is that those things are fragile. You can't build any assurance on them.
• She ties this to the previous episode: it is like the rock and the sand. These possessions are a very poor foundation.
• Then comes that "a bit strange" verse about the eye being the lamp of the body (Matthew 6:22-23). It is about the direction of our gaze. The whole passage is connected: treasures, the gaze, the two masters and worry.

2. A master who enlarges, a master who shrinks

• For Charlotte, at the heart of the passage there is a battle for every human being. On one side, a very good master: God. In the beginning, he gives a vast garden to cultivate, to keep and to explore, where people even give names to the animals (Genesis 2:15, 19-20).
• And God does not want us to stay in the garden: "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28). His promises and his invitations are always expansive. They make your life bigger, more beautiful, stronger and healthier.
• On the other side, another master wants the opposite: to shrink you, to take from you, "to steal, kill, and destroy" (John 10:10), to reduce you to the narrowest possible life.
• What happens to your life often shows which master you are leaning toward. Charlotte testifies to this: "The more anxiety I had, the smaller my life became." It shrank until she could barely leave her home.
• God, for his part, wants to enlarge the place of your tent (Isaiah 54:2) and make you fruitful.

3. When money becomes your master

• The enemy of your soul comes in many disguises. In this passage, it is money.
• Being enslaved to money means asking it for your security. Where you would look for God's protection, you turn to money: "If I have enough money, I will be safe. I will have a good life. I will be able to flourish."
• Then money drops: a lost job, a layoff, a fluctuating economy. You feel less and less secure, more and more unstable, more and more afraid. Worry and anxiety take over, because this master is neither safe, nor good, nor solid.
• Charlotte recognizes the tension many people live with in the West: loving the Lord with all your heart and feeling that pull at the same time. Since primary school, the culture keeps repeating: good grades, a good job, money in the bank, and you will have a good life.
• As an adult, you discover that this master does not give what you need, real security. It can give the impression of being sheltered for a while, and then that security slips away. The anxiety that comes with such a master reduces you to almost nothing.

4. When someone quotes the Bible to a person who is hurting

• The host recalls that fifteen or twenty years ago, if this passage had been presented to Zara, she would have gotten angry.
• Zara experienced her first OCD symptom at age 8, while checking the taps at her grandmother's house. She warns that you don't get rid of it by simply not thinking about it. "It is like a machine you feed, and it keeps growing and growing." Life shrinks because you lose control of it.
• As a teenager, she would go to the front of the church to receive prayer. It took everything she had. At the time, nobody talked about anxiety. Well-meaning people prayed for her by quoting "In nothing be anxious" (Philippians 4:6) or "casting all your worries on him" (1 Peter 5:7).
• She was boiling inside: "If they only knew. I have several panic attacks a day, I can't leave my house, it took everything I had to get here, and you quote Scripture to me as if that were what I needed to do."
• To people living with this today, Zara says the church carries real hope for them. A professional had stated on television that you never fully recover from OCD. "That is not my experience. I don't recognize the person I was." When the Lord heals, he does what the natural can neither explain nor give.

5. A life reduced to four walls

• In her early twenties, Zara was shut in at home. She believed that everything she touched would catch fire. At the supermarket, if she touched an item, she had to bring it home.
• For their first wedding anniversary, she and her husband went to Edinburgh. The photos posted on Instagram made people say: "That looks wonderful." In reality, her husband carried her on his back all around the city, because she could not put her feet on the ground.
• She could not drive: at every pothole, she thought she had killed someone. In the evening, her checking could last fifty minutes, and it had been that way since she was 9.
• Nobody knew. Even her husband, who knew she was anxious, did not realize the scale of the problem. "You fall apart in the dark, you come home drained, and everywhere else you wear a mask." She felt ashamed and guilty for not managing to control herself.
• Little by little, the confident, passionate woman she had been disappeared: "I became the anxiety and the OCD. Zara was lost."
• OCD sold her a lie: "you are in control". In reality, trying to control everything produces anxiety. It is by surrendering that to the Lord that peace comes, that freedom comes.

6. The day she asked for help

• One day, she told her husband: "I think I need help." He answered, very simply: "Maybe so." Today, they laugh together at the craziness of their first years of marriage.
• She found a counselor. Without setting down her bag or taking off her coat, she told her everything since the age of 8, ready to leave and never come back. The counselor took off her glasses and said: "I am sorry you have been going through this for so long. But if you let me, we will get better together."
• At that moment, the Lord broke something in her, like a blindfold being removed from her eyes. The enemy wanted her to live small, while God can do infinitely more (Ephesians 3:20). "How dare the enemy keep me bound?"
• She had prayed for a long time for a "brain transplant", an instant deliverance. The Lord did not do it that way. But a fire was lit: she took up again the verses that had made her angry and decided to fight alongside the Lord.
• She went through cognitive behavioral therapy. Week 1: walking into the supermarket alone while her husband waited outside. They cried and celebrated in the car. Week 3: she was driving herself and doing her own shopping.
• "It is the hardest thing I have ever done." Every day, she had to choose freedom. Healing is not linear: one day you step back, the next day you move forward two steps. Three months later, she never saw the counselor again.
• She is now grateful to have walked that road. Without it, she would not be as strong or as resilient, and she would not have discovered the goodness of the Lord who walked with her.

7. The anchor at the bottom of the sea

• The host notes a link with the previous episode: building on the rock is much harder than building on sand. Taking Jesus at his word in these confronting words takes real work.
• During her healing, Zara heard Christine Caine tell the story of her Achilles tendon surgery. Her surgeon had told her: "The extent to which you are willing to face the pain of rehabilitation will be the extent of your recovery."
• Sitting under a blanket in their tiny first house, Zara decided: "I am going to be fully healed." Jesus did not die so that she would be a little better, but so that she would have full access to freedom.
• The Lord gave her an image: a boat on the water, anchored to the bottom of the sea. On the surface it may rock, but it does not drift from its place. "You need roots so deep that what happens on the surface no longer matters. I am your fortress."
• Her rituals gave her the illusion of being safe. She had to take off those "training wheels", feel exposed and vulnerable, and ask the Lord to rebuild her as a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), without everything she had added to protect herself. "It was brutal. But I know it can be done."

8. Look and see

• To close, Charlotte returns to the text. After the eye being the lamp of the body, Jesus says: "See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap [...]. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?" (Matthew 6:26).
• Then: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow" (Matthew 6:28-30). It is God who clothes them. In other words: look, and see who I am.
• In money-related anxiety as in the kind that shuts you in at home, part of the freedom comes from the direction of your attention.
• At the height of her own anxiety, Charlotte knew three chords on the piano and played all day long, in A minor: "God, it is so hard, I can't leave my house." Until the day she told herself: "I can't live like this anymore. This can't be my future."
• So, every day: look at Jesus. Look at his goodness, look at his beauty. Turn your eyes away from money, from whatever dominates you right now. Something grows stronger in you, and you give yourself to another master, truly good, who gives you back the ability to widen limits that had been narrowed.
• The host ends with an invitation: if Zara's or Charlotte's story speaks to you, talk to someone about it, reach out. It does not have to stay this way.

Key takeaways

• In Matthew 6, worry is tied to the master you serve: you cannot serve God and Mammon.
• God enlarges life; the other master shrinks it. What your life becomes shows which one you are leaning toward.
• Money promises security but cannot deliver it. When it drops, fear takes over.
• Quoting a verse to someone who is hurting is not enough. Freedom often comes through a real journey, with help and hard work, and the Lord walks it with us.
• Part of freedom comes from the direction of your gaze: looking at the birds, the lilies, and above all at Jesus.

Personal application

1. Which area of your life has shrunk lately, and what has worry stolen from you there?
2. Where do you look for your security: your bank account, your job, your rituals, or the Lord?
3. Have you ever quoted a verse to someone who was hurting without trying to understand what they were going through? How could you listen differently?
4. If you struggle with anxiety, who can you talk to this week: a friend, a pastor, a professional?
5. Concretely, how will you "look and see" Jesus every day, rather than whatever dominates you?

Verses cited

• Matthew 6:24-34
• Matthew 6:19-23
• Genesis 1:28
• John 10:10
• Isaiah 54:2
• Philippians 4:6
• 1 Peter 5:7
• Ephesians 3:20
• 2 Corinthians 5:17

Frequently asked questions

Why does Jesus connect worry with serving two masters?

In Matthew 6:25, Jesus begins with "Therefore", which points back to verse 24: you cannot serve God and Mammon. For Charlotte, there is a link between being enslaved and worrying. If money becomes your master, you ask it for your security. When it melts away, fear and worry take over, because that master is neither safe nor good.

What does worry steal, according to this message?

It steals space. God enlarges: he gives a garden and invites us to be fruitful and fill the earth. The other master does the opposite: he steals, kills and destroys (John 10:10), he shrinks. Charlotte and Zara both describe an anxiety that reduced their lives to the four walls of their home.

How do you get out of anxiety according to Matthew 6?

Jesus says: look at the birds of the sky, consider the lilies of the field. For Charlotte, part of freedom comes from the direction of your gaze: turning your eyes away from whatever dominates you and looking to Jesus, every day. Zara also testifies to real work, with a counselor and therapy, and invites everyone to talk to someone about it.