God can perform more good for his beloved while they're asleep than they can perform for themselves while they're awake through anxious toil.

So for goodness' sakes, go to bed and rest in the Lord.

So how does relying on God's presence and guidance in her lives enable us to overcome anxiety?

That's the question John Piper answers from Psalm 127 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This Sunday evening sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on July 28, 1980.

People whose hearts are not fretful or anxious or in a kind of resentful frenzy, but instead our full of tranquility and peace and are taken up as much with the affairs of others as with their own little world, the world sits up and notices.

Such people, and rightly so, because in all likelihood where there are such people, something out of this world is at work.

The world is full of anxious people.

I'm most aware of students at this point, having spent six years with students, anxious about what other students are going to think of their new pair of shoes, anxious about an oral book report and having to stand up in front of a group, anxious about whether they can make the grade that will get them the GPA to get out of here, and on the anxiety goes.

And there are anxious adults. It is not something that only students have.

I made a list here of things, anxiety about pleasing the boss, not losing a client, finishing a report on time due tomorrow morning, getting out of this foolish investment I got into before it breaks me.

The strange pain in the chest that keeps coming back.

From time to time there settles over every one of us that dark, gray, heavy blanket of depressing anxiety.

Sometimes you can't even put your finger on what it is that's making you just feel crummy and afraid about tomorrow.

The experience is so common that when there are a few people around who live in the joy and the peace and the freedom of Christ, they stand out like stars in the night.

The few people who have learned how to obey Jesus' command be anxious for nothing, they're the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

You know, for most of us, when that blanket settles down, life becomes tasteless and dark, and we need the saver and the light of some people who have learned not to be anxious for anything.

One text has functioned repeatedly more than any other text to blow away more fog of anxiety than any other, the text is Psalm 127 verses 1 and 2.

Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

It is vain for you to rise up early and go late to rest eating the bread of anxious toil because he gets to his beloved in his sleep.

The main point of this text, I think, is don't eat the bread of anxious toil, or like Jesus put it, don't be anxious for what you shall eat.

When we grow up, we all have to work for our bread.

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