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Ask Pastor John

Anxiety: Sin, Disorder, or Both?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.83.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2014

⏱️ 8 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are the various anxieties in our lives sinful? Are they simply disorders? Are they neither? Are they both?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We give a lot of questions and emails about anxiety disorders and attention deficit disorders,

0:09.6

ADD, ADHD.

0:12.2

One listener asks, if these are merely disorders or are they also sin?

0:16.6

Is it either or or both and over the years, Pastor John, as a pastor, how did you process

0:21.5

these questions over panic attacks, anxiety, and ADD?

0:25.4

Well, as I've tried to think about them and I have over the years, they really are pretty

0:32.3

distinct issues.

0:33.3

So let me separate them out and maybe we can do ADD and its own podcast, but with regard

0:40.6

to anxiety, the answer is yes, Paul and Jesus explicitly command us not to be anxious,

0:49.0

so being anxious is a sin.

0:52.0

Jesus says, do not be anxious about your life, what you are to eat, what you're to drink,

0:57.8

about your body, what you shall put on, and then it gives eight reasons in that paragraph

1:02.2

in Matthew 6, why we don't need to be anxious and shouldn't be anxious.

1:09.6

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself, Matthew 634 or

1:15.8

Matthew 1019.

1:17.6

And they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say,

1:22.9

and Paul and Philippians 4, 6, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer

1:28.7

and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

1:33.3

So yes, worry, anxiety is a sin, God wants us to trust His sovereign, all wise, all good,

1:41.6

all providing, all protecting, ever assisting, care.

1:47.7

This is a trust issue, and he wants us to do it so deeply that death itself is not the

1:56.0

ultimate threat, death cannot separate us from the level God or rob us of our joy.

...

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