Anxiety is needless because God is near.
Disaster was as close as the press of a red button. Four Russian submarines patrolled the Florida coast. US warships had dropped depth charges. The Russian captain was stressed, trigger-happy, and ready to destroy a few American cities. Each sub was armed with a nuclear warhead. Each warhead had the potential to repeat a Hiroshima-level calamity.
Had it not been for the contagious calm of a clear-thinking officer, World War III might have begun in 1962. His name was Vasili Arkhipov. He was the thirty-six-year-old chief of staff for a clandestine fleet of Russian submarines. The crew members assumed they were being sent on a training mission off the Siberian coast. They came to learn that they had been commissioned to travel five thousand miles to the southwest to set up a spearhead for a base near Havana, Cuba.
The subs went south, and so did their mission. In order to move quickly, the submarines traveled on the surface of the water, where they ran head-on into Hurricane Daisy. The fifty-foot waves left the men nauseated and the operating systems compromised.
Then came the warm waters. Soviet subs were designed for the polar waters, not the tropical Atlantic. Temperatures inside the vessels exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The crew battled the heat and claustrophobia for much of the three-week journey. By the time they were near the coast of Cuba, the men were exhausted, on edge, and anxious.
The situation worsened when the subs received cryptic instructions from Moscow to turn northward and patrol the coastline of Florida. Soon after they entered American waters, their radar picked up the signal of a dozen ships and aircraft. The Russians were being followed by the Americans. The US ships set off depth charges. The Russians assumed they were under attack.
The captain lost his cool. He summoned his staff to his command post and pounded the table with his fists. “We’re going to blast them now! We will die, but we will sink them all—we will not disgrace our navy!”
The world was teetering on the edge of war. But then Vasili Arkhipov asked for a moment with his captain. The two men stepped to the side. He urged his superior to reconsider. He suggested they talk to the Americans before reacting. The captain listened. His anger cooled. He gave the order for the vessels to surface.
The Americans encircled the Russians and kept them under surveillance. What they intended to do is unclear as in a couple of days the Soviets dove, eluded the Americans, and made it back home safely.
This incredible brush with death was kept secret for decades. Arkhipov deserved a medal, yet he lived the rest of his life with no recognition. It was not until 2002 that the public learned of the barely avoided catastrophe. As the director of the National Security Archive stated, “The lesson from this [event] is that a guy named Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.”1
Why does this story matter? You will not spend three weeks in a sweltering Russian sub. But you may spend a semester carrying a heavy class load, or you may fight the headwinds of a recession. You may spend night after night at the bedside of an afflicted child or aging parent. You may fight to keep a family together, a business afloat, a school from going under.
You will be tempted to press the button and release, not nuclear warheads, but angry outbursts, a rash of accusations, a fiery retaliation of hurtful words. Unchecked anxiety unleashes an Enola Gay of destruction. How many people have been wounded as a result of unbridled stress?
And how many disasters have been averted because one person refused to buckle under the strain? It is this composure Paul is summoning in the first of a triad of proclamations. “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:5–6 NIV).
The Greek word translated here as gentleness (epieikes) describes a temperament that is seasoned and mature.2 It envisions an attitude that is fitting to the occasion, levelheaded and tempered. The gentle reaction is one of steadiness, evenhandedness, fairness. It “looks humanely and reasonably at the facts of a case.”3 Its opposite would be an overreaction or a sense of panic.
This gentleness is “evident to all.” Family members take note. Your friends sense a difference. Coworkers benefit from it. Others may freak out or run out, but the gentle person is sober minded and clear thinking. Contagiously calm.
The contagiously calm person is the one who reminds others, “God is in control.”
The contagiously calm person is the one who reminds others, “God is in control.” This is the executive who tells the company, “Let’s all do our part; we’ll be okay.” This is the leader who sees the challenge, acknowledges it, and observes, “These are tough times, but we’ll get through them.”
Gentleness. Where do we quarry this gem? How can you and I keep our hands away from the trigger? How can we keep our heads when everyone else is losing theirs? We plumb the depths of the second phrase. “Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:5–6 NIV).
The Lord is near! You are not alone. You may feel alone. You may think you are alone. But there is never a moment in which you face life without help. God is near.
God repeatedly pledges his proverbial presence to his people.
To Abram, God said, “Do not be afraid. . . . I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward” (Gen. 15:1).
To Hagar, the angel announced, “Do not be afraid; God has heard” (Gen. 21:17 NIV).
When Isaac was expelled from his land by the Philistines and forced to move from place to place, God appeared to him and reminded him, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you” (Gen. 26:24 NLT).
After Moses’ death God told Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9 NIV).
God was with David, in spite of his adultery. With Jacob, in spite of his conniving. With Elijah, in spite of his lack of faith.
Then, in the ultimate declaration of communion, God called himself Immanuel, which means “God with us.” He became flesh. He became sin. He defeated the grave. He is still with us. In the form of his Spirit, he comforts, teaches, and convicts.
Do not assume God is watching from a distance. Avoid the quicksand that bears the marker “God has left you!” Do not indulge this lie. If you do, your problem will be amplified by a sense of loneliness. It’s one thing to face a challenge, but to face it all alone? Isolation creates a downward cycle of fret. Choose instead to be the person who clutches the presence of God with both hands. “The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” (Ps. 118:6 NIV).
Isolation creates a downward cycle of fret. Choose instead to be the person who clutches the presence of God with both hands.
Because the Lord is near, we can be anxious for nothing. This is Paul’s point. Remember, he was writing a letter. He did not use chapter and verse numbers. This system was created by scholars in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The structure helps us, but it can also hinder us. The apostle intended the words of verses 5 and 6 to be read in one fell swoop. “The Lord is near; [consequently,] do not be anxious about anything.” Early commentators saw this. John Chrysostom liked to phrase the verse this way: “The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety.”4 Theodoret of Cyrus translated the words: “The Lord is near. Have no worries.”5
We can calmly take our concerns to God because he is as near as our next breath!
This was the reassuring lesson from the miracle of the bread and fish. In an event crafted to speak to the anxious heart, Jesus told his disciples to do the impossible: feed five thousand people.
“Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, ‘Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?’ But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do” (John 6:5–6). When John described this gathering as a “great multitude,” he was serious. There were five thousand men, plus women and children (Matt. 14:21). Imagine a capacity crowd at a sports arena, and you’ve got the picture. Jesus was willing to feed the entire crowd.
The disciples, on the other hand, wanted to get rid of everyone. “Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food” (Matt. 14:15). I detect some anxiety in their words. I sense a tone of aggravation, frustration. They don’t call Jesus “Master.” They don’t come to him with a suggestion. They march as a group to Christ and tell him what to do. The disciples see a valley full of hungry people. Growling stomachs will soon become scowling faces, and the disciples might have a riot on their hands. They had every reason to feel unsettled.
Then again, did they not have equal reason to feel at peace? By this point in their experience with Jesus, they had seen him
• heal leprosy (Matt. 8:3),
• heal the centurion’s servant without going to the servant’s bedside (Matt. 8:13),
• heal Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt. 8:15),
• calm a violent sea (Matt. 8:26),
• heal a paralytic (Matt. 9:6–7),
• heal a woman who had been sick for twelve years (Matt. 9:22),
• raise a girl from the dead (Matt. 9:25),
• drive out an evil spirit (Mark 1:25),
• heal a demon-possessed man in a cemetery (Mark 5:15),
• change water into wine (John 2:9), and
• heal a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years (John 5:9).
Did any of the disciples pause long enough to think, Well, hmmm. Jesus healed the sick people, raised the dead girl, and calmed the angry waves. I wonder, might he have a solution we have not seen? After all, he is standing right here. Let’s ask him.
Did it occur to anyone to ask Jesus for help?
The stunning answer is no! They acted as if Jesus weren’t even present. Rather than count on Christ, they had the audacity to tell the Creator of the world that nothing could be done because there wasn’t enough money.
How did Jesus maintain his composure? How did he keep from looking at the disciples and saying, “Have you forgotten who I am?”
Finally a boy offered his lunch basket to Andrew, who tentatively mentioned the offer to Jesus.
Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. (John 6:10–13 NIV)
Not one coin was spent. They started the day with two hundred coins. They ended the day with two hundred coins. In addition, they filled twelve baskets with leftover food. A souvenir for each apostle, perhaps? The people were fed, the bank account was untouched, and we have a lesson to learn: anxiety is needless, because Jesus is near.
You aren’t facing five thousand hungry bellies, but you are facing a deadline in two days . . . a loved one in need of a cure . . . a child who is being bullied at school . . . a spouse intertwined in temptation. On one hand you have a problem. On the other you have a limited quantity of wisdom, energy, patience, or time. What you have is nowhere near what you need. You have a thimbleful, and you need bucketloads. Typically you’d get anxious. You’d tell God to send the problem packing. “You’ve given me too much to handle, Jesus!”
This time, instead of starting with what you have, start with Jesus. Start with his wealth, his resources, and his strength. Before you open the ledger, open your heart. Before you count coins or count heads, count the number of times Jesus has helped you face the impossible. Before you lash out in fear, look up in faith. Take a moment. Turn to your Father for help.
Before you lash out in fear, look up in faith.
In his fine book The Dance of Hope, Bill Frey remembers the day he tried to pull a stump out of the Georgia dirt. He was eleven years old at the time. One of his chores was the gathering of firewood for the small stove and fireplace of the homestead. He would search the woods for stumps of pine trees that had been cut down and chop them into kindling. The best stumps were saturated with resin and therefore would burn more easily.
One day I found a large stump in an open field near the house and tried to unearth it. I literally pushed and pulled and crowbarred for hours, but the root system was so deep and large I simply couldn’t pull it out of the ground. I was still struggling when my father came home from his office, spotted me working and came over to watch.
“I think I see your problem,” he said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’re not using all your strength,” he replied.
I exploded and told him how hard I had worked and for how long.
“No,” he said, “you’re not using all your strength.”
When I cooled down I asked him what he meant, and he said, “You haven’t asked me to help you yet.”6
This business of anxiety management is like pulling stumps out of the ground. Some of your worries have deep root systems. Extracting them is hard, hard work. In fact, it may be the toughest challenge of all. But you don’t have to do it alone.
Present the challenge to your Father and ask for help.
Will he solve the issue? Yes, he will.
Will he solve it immediately? Maybe. Or maybe part of the test is an advanced course in patience.
This much is sure: contagious calm will happen to the degree that we turn to him.