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God's Surfboard on the Waves of Anxiety
A sermon by Dr.
James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, April 30, 2006
A friend of mine
who has a distinguished career behind him said to me recently, “I don’t know
when I have felt such anxiety coming into our culture as I do right now.” He
paused a bit, and then he said, “It just seems to keep piling up like the
National Debt. You’ve got Iraq, and Iran, and Afghanistan, and North Korea, you
have the economy, scandals on all sides, the price of gasoline…” And with that
he quit as if “I have had enough.”
It is almost as if
high anxiety is a surprise to us. The world has always been a world of high
anxiety. But it catches us by surprise, doesn’t it, sometimes?
It reminds me of
one of my favorite stories, coming out of the life of John Ortburg. What
happened was, his wife arranged as a birthday present that they would take a
ride in a hot air balloon. And they went to the field where the balloons
ascended. They got in the little basket with one other couple. They got
acquainted, talked about they did… what they did for a living and then the pilot
began his ascent. It was a beautiful day, southern California, which is where
he lived at the time, crisp, they could see the Pacific Ocean, they could see
the skyline of Los Angeles, Pasadena, and other places. The higher they got,
the attitude began to change.
They had
anticipated that this hot air balloon would have sides that came up about to
their chest. Instead, the sides came up to their knees. John looked over at
his wife and discovered that there was one person aboard who was more frightened
than he was and that it was… and it was his wife. So he decided to get some
confidence by talking to the pilot, picturing that he might be a neurosurgeon
who was doing this in his spare time for fun, or an engineer, or maybe even an
astronaut who was just trying to get closer to earth. But he knew they were in
trouble when the pilot responded, “Well, dude, it’s like this”
The pilot did not
even have a job, he was mostly a surfer, and the reason he got into flying hot
air balloons was because he had been driving around in his pickup, been drinking
too much, crashed the truck, and badly injured his brother. His brother had had
a long time of recovery, but he really enjoyed watching the hot air balloons.
So he took it up in order that his brother could see him. By the way, the pilot
said, “If things get a little choppy on the way down, don’t get surprised. I
have never flown this particular balloon before. And I’m not sure how it’s
going to handle the descent.”
John’s wife looked
over at him with this kind of blanched, frightened look and said, “Let me see if
I’ve got this clear. We are a couple of thousand feet up in the air, with an
unemployed surfer for a pilot, who started flying hot air balloons because he
got drunk, crashed his truck, and has an injured brother who likes to watch
him. Is that what we are looking at?” And the wife of the other couple looked
at John and said, “You’re a pastor. Do something!” So he took up a collection!
You may not be
aware but the Bible, and particularly Jesus, puts anxiety center stage. It’s as
if Jesus says, “If you can’t handle your anxiety, you can’t learn to trust.” It
is as if he understood anxiety and trust, anxiety and faith, anxiety and moving
ahead with God, are at war with one another. That if anxiety is behind the
wheel, trust is in the back seat. If trust is behind the wheel, anxiety is in
the back seat, although it keeps trying to backseat drive! Which is to say, for
Jesus anxiety was not a head cold. Couldn’t be cured by an aspirin. Anxiety
was center stage. How are you handling it? Let’s face it. Our church is
facing some anxious moments. I have been your pastor for almost twenty-three
years. And before the end of the year, I will be stepping down. And some of
you have never had a pastor except the one you’ve got right now. And running
around in your soul as well as in your head is the thought, “What in the world
is it going to be like not to have Dr. Flamming up there? Not to have Dr.
Flamming as the pastor.”
Anxiety. And it
can get up to earlobe level. Well, let me give you the other side of that
picture. I have been a pastor for over 50 years. Except in my younger days,
high school and college, I have never done anything but be a pastor. And I have
loved every minute of it.
One came up to me
and said, “Oh, I treasure the fact you’re retiring.” And I didn’t quite know
what to make of that! Then she went on and said, “You know I have been working
at my job for over 40 years and I have hated every minute of it.” And I thought
to myself, “How sad that is.” Because I’ve loved every minute of it. Can you
imagine having been a pastor over fifty years and then all of a sudden, you are
looking at not being a pastor? So anxiety is on both sides.
How are we going to
handle anxiety? Jesus addressed it fourteen times, Paul handles it often in his
letters. If we think we are the most anxious generation on the face ever of the
earth, we are wrong. All you have to do is read the New Testament and you are
going to understand that the writers of the New Testament took this very
seriously. And I want to point out two verses, the first one of which is found
in II Corinthians, ninth chapter, eighth verse. “And God is able to make all
grace abound to you. So that in all things, at all times, you will have all
that you need. And you will abound in every good work.”
All things at all
times. Mike Brimm says that faith is a four-letter word. Now, faith has five
letters, right? But he sure got my attention. Four-letter word? He says faith
is made up of what we are sure of – S U R E. What are you sure of? That’s the
key to your anxiety. Because if it is the wrong thing, let me tell you what’s
happening. It’s feeding your anxiety. And if it is the right thing, it’s
deflating your anxiety. The fact is, God has chosen to put us together in such
a way that our anxiety provides for Him an open door into our soul. See, we get
to depending so much on our competence and our ability to handle things and our
own intelligent ways that bless us, we just leave God out of it all together.
And then all of a sudden something crops up and anxiety comes in and we turn
around and say, “Oh, God, I need you now.” It’s like the skit earlier – the
Holy Spirit comes, wants us to listen and instead, we are kind of deaf. But
anxiety takes the stoppers out of our ears. Friends, there is another way that
I can illustrate this.
Some years ago,
Shirley and I had gone to Virginia Beach and we were going to get away for a
couple of days and lo, and behold, when we got there, we discovered there was a
storm brewing. And it was going to hit Virginia Beach full force. So we decided
we would cut our trip short. But before we left, we went down to have lunch at
one of our favorite places that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. And when we got
out there, sat down and looked out there, the waves were huge. That was not so
surprising – what was so surprising was the number of surfers out there. They
were like water bugs. I wouldn’t have been caught dead out there and there they
were – a lot of SeeBees from the base not far away, and I said to the waitress,
“What in the world are those people doing out there in those huge waves.” And
she said, “Oh, that’s the best time to surf.”
It’s the transition
between calm and the storm that the surfers love. The waves are huge. And they
get on top and they are really able to ride the waves. God does that with
anxiety. It is as if anxiety is the wave producer between the calm times,
orderly times, of our lives, and the crisis terrible storm times. And in the
anxiety, God, like a surfboarder, rides into our lives, into our souls. Are
there some things that we can help because we are always partners with God? I
think there are. Turn to First Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter. “Therefore,
my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give
yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the
Lord is not in vain.”
The first thing:
stand firm, don’t be moved. The promise is that God will make things happen but
He needs us to be in place. In the Old Testament, this is the word that is used
for God’s throne. It’s there. Not going to move. You can anticipate it. What
God needs is some of his people who are going to be there. They are going to be
in place. You can count on them. It is the word that stands for stability.
For not moving. It’s not the mobility word. It’s the firmness word. Life
needs places and people who stay put; who are not like leaves caught in the
breeze.
This last summer
when we attended the Baptist World Alliance meeting in England, our group did a
good bit of touring around and one of the things we toured - castles,
cathedrals. In the middle ages, they were crucial. They offered protection.
Sometimes a village, all of the people of the village would take protection in
the castle, while the war was taking place outside the walls. Cathedrals,
sometimes they gathered in cathedrals for protection. They were crucial. They
were there; they were in place. But you know, there is one thing about
cathedrals and castles in our day and time. Mostly, they are tourist matters.
When we were in
Halifax, Wales, we visited the castle where the Duke of Wales which is Charles,
in line to be the next king, he lives there some. And I asked the guide, “How
often is he there?” And the guide said, “We wish we knew.” “What does he do,”
said I. And the guide said, “We wish we knew.” He said, “I am sure he has all
kinds of property and things to take care of, and so he spends a little portion
of every year here. But mostly, it is inhabited by tourists.”
You see, the world
has moved them by. It isn’t enough to stop with being firm and in place.
That’s crucial; that’s the first step; that’s first base. But the next is more
important. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord. One of the
things that really matters when you are going through anxiety – do you have a
clearly defined direction in your life? Do you know what God is trying to do
for you? Give yourselves to the work of the Lord. This is translated in your
version with four English words – it is really one Greek word, the language of
the New Testament. One word which basically can be translated lots of different
ways, many times it is simply translated abundantly. Peterson translates it
this way:
“Don’t hold back.
Throw yourselves into the work of the Master.” The Living New Testament puts it
like this, uses the word, enthusiasm, “Always be enthusiastic about the Lord’s
work.”
Daniel Goleman
writes from the perspective of emotional intelligence. Having hope that one
will not give in to the overwhelming anxieties of life. And have a defeatist
attitude, a depressive. One study, by the way, took one hundred and twenty two
men who had suffered their first heart attack. They gauged them on whether they
were optimistic or pessimistic. They took 25 of the most pessimistic and within
eight years, of those 25, twenty-three were gone. The most optimistic – of
those twenty-five most optimistic, six were gone. It matters how you view
things. And it matters whether you have a direction and can give yourself
enthusiastically to it. Friends, what this means is… It is better to eat
Twinkies in hope than broccoli in despair.
Gordon McDonald
says the secret is the deep belief that the best is yet to be. Even for older
ones, that’s true. Because there’s some things that can happen to us
spiritually that couldn’t happen in younger years because we were too busy. The
best can yet be. For those who may be going through a very anxious time, can
you really trust God to believe that the best is yet to be?
John Keegan,
historian, says: “Something happened to England after World War I. Two hundred
and forty thousand had either lost their lives or been wounded.” And when
England took such a hit, Keegan says, “They quit believing the best was yet to
be.” I want to ask you something: Do you believe that your church – the best
is yet to be? That’s crucial. Is that true of your life? Can you really grab
on and say yes. Yes, I can believe that God can show me how the best is yet to
be. Now, Paul concludes with a promise. He says, “Because you know that your
labor in the Lord is not in vain.” You’re going to be used of the Lord, you may
think nothing’s happening, but it is happening.
Dr. Lorraine Monroe taught high school students in Harlem
for many years. In the school in which she taught as a calling, when they
spotted an outstanding person with high potential, they always enjoyed teaching
that person. And there was one young man who when he got to be a Senior and
took advanced English, she was so looking forward to it. And he just never
measured up. His grades all during the year were just barely above failing.
And it didn’t matter what she tried, it didn’t work.
Ten years later, she was walking to work one day. A young
man came up to her, suit on, tie on, said, “Doctor Monroe?” “Yes.” “Do you
remember me?” She looked him over and said, “Oh, sure I do. You were my
student in that advanced English class and I had such hopes for you and you just
never measured up. And in some ways, you were the greatest disappointment of my
whole teaching career.” How would that make you feel?
He smiled and said, “I don’t blame you. But I want you to
know one of the reasons that I have been able to sustain myself and keep moving
is because you believed in me.” He said, “You tried everything that year that
you knew of, because you really believed I had the potential. What you didn’t
know was that was the toughest year of my life. My father was in prison, my
mother was a prostitute, my brother was not only on drugs but selling them, and
I was responsible for the two little ones at home. And I gave you all that I
had. But what I heard that year, here is one who really believes in me. I got
into college, I graduated, I went to graduate school and I am now one of the
editorial assistants for TIME magazine and I had always hoped I would be able to
find you and say ‘thank you’ for believing in me.”
I want to ask you something. Do you believe God believes
in you? You hear from this pulpit, “Believe in God.” Do you understand this –
God believes in you.
One more question. Do you believe God believes in this
church? Its future, and that the best is yet to be. Oh, I hope so. And if the
Holy Spirit rides a surfboard into your soul and heart this day, say yes.
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