Well Done for Surviving One More Day

Seventeen percent of Australians lived with an anxiety disorder last year, and the number keeps climbing. Fuel prices, the cost of living, the price of eggs at Woolies, a sudden round of redundancies at work. There is no shortage of reasons to lie awake at 2am running the numbers. So when Jesus says "do not be anxious," it can feel like he is asking us to flip a switch that has been jammed for years.

At our Melbourne campus this Sunday, Josh stepped up to preach the third sermon in our church's weekend on Matthew 6. Where T.Y. in Sydney tackled treasure and the divided heart, and Augustine in Brisbane sat us under the birds and the lilies, Josh took us underneath the symptom of anxiety to the root system that feeds it, and to the surprising tenderness of God's response.

Anxiety is a symptom, not the disease

Josh started honestly. "I see myself going, I'm very anxious. In fact, very anxious. Maybe every second of my life is being anxious." That is a hard thing to say from a pulpit. It is also the door Jesus walks through.

The world offers us ways to manage the symptom. Meditation, medication, breathing exercises, sleep hygiene apps. Some of these are good gifts. Josh was careful not to dismiss any of them. But he warned against treating them as the whole answer:

"Anxiety creeps at our door and it's ready to pounce upon us at any given sign of vulnerability. Today's message points to something much more underlying than the symptom of anxiety itself."

Read Matthew 6 in context and you notice something. Right before Jesus tells us not to worry about food and clothing, he tells us not to store up treasures on earth. The two are connected. Anxiety, Josh argued, is rooted in three habits of the heart that Jesus is trying to uproot: self-preservation, self-dependence, and self-satisfaction. We are anxious because, deep down, we know our own limits. The more we try to secure our own future, the more our hearts feel exposed.

The Israelites, the manna, and the urge to grab one more

To make this concrete, Josh walked us back to Exodus 16. Israel is out of Egypt and in the wilderness, complaining about food. God responds with manna from heaven, with a strict rule attached: gather only what you need for the day. On the sixth day, gather double, so the seventh can be Sabbath rest. If you try to hoard any leftovers, maggots will grow in it overnight.

And yet some of them went out on the Sabbath anyway. Just in case. Just to grab one more day's worth. Just to have something on the side, in case God somehow forgets.

"You see the heart condition the Israelites are showing," Josh said. "I used to point the finger at them, but I think I probably would be worse if I'm in their shoes."

He confessed his own version, smaller and sillier. At Costco, when a free sample of steak is on offer, he is first in the queue. Wife, kids, dignity, all forgotten for a tiny cube of meat he does not actually need. The instinct to grab extra runs deep, even in the trivial things. Then he added the line that landed:

"Storing things or having things is not necessarily bad. But God's instruction is having things for the sake of having things is bad. The more we want, the more we consume, the more we detach ourselves from a reliance on God to reliance on ourselves."

The realestate.com email

Then came the testimony that gave the sermon its centre of gravity. Earlier this year, Josh and his wife Sergey opened one of those realestate.com emails. One click. Then another. By the afternoon, their ChatGPT prompts, Google searches and YouTube algorithms were flooded with property jargon, suburb analysis, investment lingo.

They told themselves the right things. It is for the kids' future. So we can give more later. So we can be generous. But Josh noticed something:

"The more we searched, the more we brainstormed and did the number crunching, the only thing that grew in our hearts was anxiety. Because nothing would be enough. The numbers just wouldn't add up."

Then came Monday morning. He arrived at work to find eight of his colleagues being made redundant on the spot. Into the meeting room before lunch, out the door by the afternoon, no time even to say goodbye. Josh came out unscathed. But he heard God in it. Quietly. Not shouting.

The future he had been frantically trying to build the night before could be undone by a single email he never sent and never asked for. He had been trusting his own capacity to plan. God was reminding him that the only sure storehouse is the one secured in Jesus.

Know who we are: recipients, not earners

From there, Josh moved into God's response. Matthew 6:26. Look at the birds. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them.

The instinctive read goes like this: you are so much more valuable than birds, so of course God will take care of you. Josh pushed back gently. He thinks the comfort runs the other direction.

The birds do not produce anything worth God's investment. They feed their chicks and live their lives. The grass of the field is here today and burnt tomorrow. From God's eternal perspective, the gap between a sparrow's lifespan and our own is not as enormous as we imagine. So what is Jesus actually saying?

"God's care for us does not hinge on our ability to be worthy of it. It does not hinge on our ability to be able to work for it. It is simply because God cares for his creation."

This was the first hinge of the sermon. We are not anxious-free because we have earned safety. We are loved, kept, and sustained simply because we are his. Existence is enough. The Christian life is the long, slow work of unlearning the urge to earn.

Know who God is: tender, not impatient

The second hinge: God is not the impatient parent we sometimes imagine. Josh took us to 1 Kings 19, where Elijah has just defeated the prophets of Baal in one of the most dramatic showdowns in the Old Testament. Fire from heaven, water-soaked altar consumed in seconds. And then Queen Jezebel sends one threatening message, and Elijah collapses. He runs into the desert, sits under a broom bush, and asks God to let him die.

Watch how God responds. No high horse. No "toughen up, you just saw fire from heaven, what is wrong with you?" Just an angel, twice over, with bread and water:

"Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you."

Josh sat with that line. God is not embarrassed by our exhaustion. He meets the burnt-out prophet with food and sleep. He meets Adam and Eve, in their first panic about being naked, not with a lecture but with garments of skin, an animal sacrificed to cover their shame. Their fig leaves would have shrivelled by the next afternoon. God's covering lasted, and pointed forward to the one final covering in Jesus.

To picture the texture of God's care, Josh reached for an image close to home: an Asian mother trying to feed her child one more spoonful of rice before they leave for school. Grace going in before the world starts throwing comparisons and worries and demands at us. He admitted he did not enjoy this growing up. He just wanted his toast and to be out the door. But that is the posture God takes with us. One more spoonful. One more bit of provision. Before you face the day.

"Well done for surviving one more day"

Josh is turning 35 in about ten days. He told us this year began with crippling uncertainty. Sleepless nights, racing thoughts about whether he had enough contingencies left, whether he could be enough for his family. He shared the struggle, of all places, at work, with a Sri Lankan colleague who is twenty years ahead of him in life and is, by his own description, "a bit larger than life."

She listened. Then she said, blunt as anything: "Josh, there will be one time you feel completely at ease. That's when you retire, probably. And you know what happens soon after? You die. Perfect peace."

Josh laughed and thought, thank you, maybe I should head back to the office. But then she kept going:

"This life will provide every reason to be anxious whether you're 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. But remember, Jesus says look at the flowers, look at the birds. They live, and so will you. Enjoy the journey. This world is not our final destination."

He almost cried at his desk. He told us he is still wrestling with these doubts. He has not arrived. But this is where the sermon landed:

"When God says do not be anxious, do not be worried, he's inviting us into his arms and into his rest. In his arms we experience a glimpse of Eden. Perfect harmony, perfect provision, perfect care. Not a single worry."

Challenge: come and rest

If you read Matthew 6 this week and the instruction "do not be anxious" feels like one more demand stacked on top of an already exhausted heart, hear Josh's reframe. Jesus is not handing you a discipline to muscle through. He is uprooting the part of you that thinks the whole house depends on your strength.

So this week, try a few things.

Notice your storehouse. What are you trying to gather extra of, "just in case," that has become the soil anxiety grows in? A property search. A second income calculation. A career plan you re-run every night before bed. Name it. Bring it to God honestly. Not to bin it, but to loosen your grip on it.

Eat something. If you are burnt out, do not start with a productivity hack. Start where the angel started with Elijah. Sleep. Eat. Let someone feed you, literally or in prayer or in the simple act of showing up to House Church. The journey is too much for you on your own steam, and God is not surprised by that.

Receive before you earn. Tomorrow, before you check the news or open your inbox, sit with this sentence: I am his because he made me, not because of what I produced yesterday. Let that be the spoonful of grace before you face the world.

And at the end of the day, when your head hits the pillow, let God say what Josh believes he is saying over every weary saint:

"Well done for surviving one more day. Well done, my son. Well done, my daughter. That's all I ask of you. Exist. Survive. Sometimes you'll flourish, sometimes you'll just survive. And at the end of the day, rest in me."

You are not entitled to tomorrow. But your existence today is proof that he cares for you. Come and rest.