How to Address Your Financial Anxiety

Anxiety creeps up on us, often in ways we don't expect. However, one area of our lives where we do expect it is our finances. Just the very topic can usually create a physical response in us. Is this just the way it is?

This weekend, I taught about anxiety in our finances and explored Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6. I also unpacked the tricky question of how much time we should spend thinking about finances. 

This message dives into:

• attachment theory
• the difference between money in your head vs your heart
• systemic inequality in generational wealth
• practical atheism
• birds and flowers
• and how to run after Jesus moment by moment

It turns out that fear isn’t dependent on your financial situation. This means you can still have enough and be afraid, or you can decide to follow Jesus differently regardless of how much you have.

As the late author Dallas Willard wrote, 

Today I have God, and he has the provisions. Tomorrow it will be the same. So I simply ask today for what I need for today or ask now for what I need now. This is how children do it, of course. A mother who discovers that her child is saving up oatmeal, pieces of toast, or strips of bacon for fear of not having food tomorrow has cause to be alarmed. The world being what it is, we can all too easily imagine situations in which the child’s action would be reasonable. But in any normal situation parents will be astonished and pained that the child does not trust them to provide for it day by day.