There’s a thief in your house. You probably let him in.

Greetings,

Last week I wrote about the man who waits to feel ready before he obeys. This week I want to name what is often keeping him waiting.

My pastor preached through Matthew 6 recently and opened with an image that resonates more than I’d like it to. He described meeting a thief. On the surface the thief seemed genuine — caring, even. But there was nothing caring about him. He was deceptive and patient and he was after something specific. And what made him particularly dangerous was this — he didn’t break in. He was invited.

The thief is anxiety.

And what he steals is more than peace. He steals joy. He steals thankfulness. He steals wisdom — foolishness tends to be all that’s left in the room after he’s been there. He steals biblical love, replacing genuine care for others with a consuming focus on self. He steals kingdom-mindedness, ministry usefulness, faithfulness. Because when anxiety is present, it wants all the attention on itself.

It doesn’t care how it gets in. Sometimes it uses finances. Sometimes a health issue. Sometimes a relationship, a child, a work situation, something on the news. It doesn’t discriminate. It just needs an opening. And the uncomfortable truth is that most of the time, we open the door.

Jesus knew this. In Matthew 6 he doesn’t mention anxiety once. He addresses it three times. Verse 25, verse 31, verse 34. He camps there. Ten verses devoted to it. Which tells you something about how seriously he takes the struggle — and how well he knows us.

But what he says about anxiety is not what most men expect. He doesn’t primarily address the feeling. He addresses the root. And the root, he says, is almost always one of two things.

In our anxious moments, what we are actually saying to God is: I trust me with me more than I trust you with me.

The first root is misplaced treasure. Jesus connects anxiety directly to what a man is serving. You cannot serve two masters. And when a man has quietly elevated something — his finances, his children, his reputation, his health — to a place in his heart that only God was meant to occupy, that thing becomes the source of his peace. When it’s stable, he’s stable. When it’s threatened, he panics. The anxiety is not the problem. It is the signal. It is telling him what he actually trusts.

Pastor Justin put it this way — and I want to credit this to him directly because it landed too precisely to paraphrase. He said that in our anxious moments, what we are actually saying to God is: I trust me with me more than I trust you with me.

That one cuts deep.

The second root Jesus names is a deficient view of God. Little faith, he says in verse 30. And this is where a lot of damage has been done by certain streams of Christianity — the idea that little faith means not enough faith, and that the solution is to conjure up more. But that is not what Jesus means. The issue is not the quantity of your faith. It is the object of it. A man with a thin, uncertain, shrinking view of who God is will always be anxious. Because his confidence is resting on a God too small to actually hold anything.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Both roots are heart issues. Which means no external remedy reaches them. Not a breathing technique, not a productivity system, not even a medication — though there are physiological realities that sometimes require medical attention and there is no shame in that. But the misplaced treasure and the deficient view of God beneath the anxiety require something different. Repentance. Reorientation. A returning of the thing you’ve been gripping to the hands of the One who was always meant to hold it.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. That is not a formula. It is a reordering. An invitation to go after the root rather than keep swatting at the symptoms.

The thief gets in because we open the door. And we open the door because something in us still believes we can manage what only God was designed to carry.

What are you currently gripping that was always meant to be in God’s hands?