The Problem With Making Yourself the Subject
Anxiety will undermine your spiritual condition
Here is a pattern worth recognizing, because it is common enough that most people reading this have probably experienced it without having a name for it.
A person becomes truly concerned about the state of their soul. They want to be sure they are truly saved, truly growing, truly in the right relationship with God. So they turn their attention inward and begin examining. How confident do I feel? How consistent has my obedience been? What does the track record of the last month suggest about my standing? Is the faith I have genuine faith or is it a more comfortable substitute that I’ve been calling by the right name?
The examination is not wrong in itself. Scripture encourages honest self-examination. Paul tells the Corinthians to examine themselves to see whether they are in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). The problem is not the examination. The problem is when the examination becomes the primary occupation, when the self becomes the permanent center of attention, and when the anxiety that the examination generates begins to feed on itself in a way that produces more examining rather than more confidence.
Because here is what the inward turn produces when it becomes the primary posture: it turns the soul away from the Source of strength. This is the specific harm the text names. Not that concern about salvation is wrong in itself, but that anxiety and fear indulged as an ongoing condition, with the self at the center of the gaze, redirects the attention away from exactly the thing that would actually address the condition. It is like a person who is thirsty spending their energy studying their thirst rather than moving toward water. The study of the thirst does not quench it. The water does.
Philippians 4:6-7 is one of the most practically important passages in the New Testament on this subject: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (NKJV). The alternative to anxiety is not resolution of the circumstances that produced the anxiety. It is prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving, which are all forms of turning toward God rather than staying turned toward the problem. And the peace that follows is described as guarding, which is military language. The peace is not passive. It is actively protecting the heart and mind from the very anxiety that had been consuming them.
The anxiety that makes self the center is operating on a false premise about where the solution is located. It assumes that the right amount of inward examination will eventually produce the certainty it is looking for. But certainty about one’s standing before God is not produced by the quality of the self-examination. It is produced by the object of the faith, which is the One whose character and promise are more reliable than any assessment a person can make about their own interior condition.
“I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day” (2 Timothy 1:12, NKJV). Paul’s confidence is not located in his assessment of his own faith. It is located in his knowledge of the One his faith is in. The keeping is God’s responsibility. The committing is Paul’s. And the confidence that flows from knowing the character of the Keeper is more stable than any confidence that could flow from monitoring the quality of the commitment.
The self that is always turned inward, always measuring and assessing and worrying about its own condition, has located its hope in the wrong place. Not in the One who is able to keep, but in the self’s ability to evaluate whether the keeping is truly occurring. That evaluation will never produce peace, because it is not the kind of question that self-examination can answer. It is the kind of question that is answered by knowing who is keeping.
Where the gaze goes, the posture follows. And what the gaze that has turned toward Christ rather than remaining turned toward the self finds waiting there is something anxiety cannot manufacture and self-examination cannot produce. The peace that surpasses understanding is not a reward for having resolved all the questions. It is the guard that takes up position over a heart that has stopped trying to resolve them on its own terms and has brought them instead to the One who holds the answer.
“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, NKJV). It guards. It does not arrive after the heart has successfully defended itself. It arrives as the defense. And it arrives through Christ Jesus, which means the peace is inseparable from the relationship, not a product the relationship occasionally delivers. The person who remains turned toward Him is the person in whose interior the guard is posted.
Focus Verse: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” — Philippians 4:6 (NKJV)
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