A very simple strategy for beginning to deal with anxiety is simply to take a page and begin to list things for which to be grateful, followed by ways in which God has provided and protected in times past. The simple exercise of “looking back” at God’s prior faithfulness emboldens us to face todays trials and troubles.

Paul commands the Philippian believers to “Be careful (anxious) for nothing (Phi 4:6).” Jesus taught, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on (Mat 6:25).” In both instances the word for careful/thought is merimnaō. Very simply it means one’s cares or worries. Biblically, anxiety is caring about something to the point of distraction. Anxiety and fear tend to go together. When you are anxious over something it can very easily lead to a whole host of largely irrational fears. When we begin to carry a worry to the point where it consumes almost our entire attention we have grown anxious.
Anxiety can cripple a person to the point of almost entire inaction. Fear can breed more fears, which breeds fear of fears. Anxiety can lead to severe health issues, and fear can lead to severe relational issues. The stress of anxiety can cause heart attacks, high blood pressure, whereas fear can result in being unable to function normally in our relationships. Headaches, sleeplessness, and difficulty concentrating on one’s responsibilities are often the result of merimnaō taking over someone’s life.
We all have responsibilities and “weights” to carry.
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Written by T.M. Suffield |
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
We must keep returning to the Cross. We gather there to weep over our sin and our wayward hearts, we gather to rejoice that the Lord God Almighty—he who knew no sin—has become sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5). We can be cleansed and forgiven, even from the worst of things.

No. That was easy.
Except, I think most readers will expect me to say “yes.” Aren’t we all without excuse before the wrath of God (Romans 1)? Yes, we are. Yet this is not saying the same thing.
Having been fed—mostly evangelistically—on the (true!) idea that even the smallest sin is the enough to damn you, that even the smallest sin needs redemption, we start to think this means they’re all the same. I encounter this fairly regularly.
It’s not right, as I’ll explore in a moment, and it prevents us from being able to say that some things are worse than others. We need to be able to tell people the truth.
In Numbers 15.22-31 we have “intentional”—called here “high-handed’—sins laid against “unintentional” ones, with different sacrifices and conditions needed for atonement. High-handed sin cannot be atoned for at this point in salvation history. We could, more simply, look at the way that the various Laws in the Old Testament ascribe different punishments to different crimes, clearly not everything that is wrong should be considered in the same way.
In Ezekiel 23, the prophet draws a parallel between two sisters in their sin in graphic terms. He makes it clear that they are allegories for Samaria and Jerusalem—the capitals of the two kingdoms. In verse 11 he says that the sins of Jerusalem are worse than those of Samaria, and that she was more corrupt. In Jeremiah 16.10, the prophet lambasts Judah for being worse than their fathers.
In 1 John 5.16-17, the Apostle makes a distinction between sins “leading to death” and those that don’t, which probably scares us a bit: I understand this to be the sin of refusing to repent and turn to Jesus. He moves on to say that all wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. There are different kinds of sin.
For a small aside, I’ve known people who would say something to the affect that “it was wrong, but it wasn’t sin,” as though sin only was the very worst of things. All wrongdoing is sin. Which means that we all sin all the time. Everything I think that’s not the truth is sinful—because thinking wrong thoughts after God is sin. It’s very possible that this post contains sinful statements. I don’t think so, and I would remove them if I did think so. If there are, I should repent. It is unlikely that I haven’t sinned in my writing so far, for all I’m not aware of where that would be. This is the nature of being fallen beings: ontological sinners made saints. As I’ll expound a little later, it’s also the wonder of grace: despite this the Lord loves me and has called me to be his chosen possession (1 Peter 2). I’m the apple of his eye (Deuteronomy 32). If you trust him, so are you.
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When a generation waivers on gender, sex, and identity to the peril of God’s design, we are setting up future generations for destruction. Christians date, court, marry, reproduce, and raise up families based on a worldview regarding gender.

I want to give you a framework for conversations about gender. We can often get flustered or reactive in conversations about LGBTQ issues so it’s important to have some calm, clear, and biblical thoughts. This equips Christians to engage people who may hold different views with more intentionally, more love, and more truth.
The culture you live in regards truth as relative — not absolute. The problem is, by saying there are no absolutes people are claiming an absolute. When people say, “I don’t feel like it’s my right to tell someone if they’re wrong,” what they aren’t saying is that they would, of course, tell someone who said that gender was “absolute” that they are wrong. Perhaps more than any other topic, the truth about your gender is under assault from the culture.
How Culture Defines Gender & Sex
Culture defines gender as different than your sex. According to culture, sex is the biological difference between males and females. In other words, what you’re born as (or with) is your sex. Gender, on the other hand, is defined by Medical News as being different than your sex:
“In general terms, “sex” refers to the biological differences between males and females, such as the genitalia and genetic differences. “Gender” is more difficult to define, but it can refer to the role of a male or female in society, known as a gender role, or an individual’s concept of themselves, or gender identity.
Sometimes, a person’s genetically assigned sex does not line up with their gender identity. These individuals might refer to themselves as transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming.”
As you can see, while sex is scientifically and biologically verified to be 100% genetic — as in, binary and set — modern culture has now chosen to work around that truth. Yes, there are some cases in which a baby is born with both sets of genitalia and parents have to make a decision what sex the baby will be. In some rare cases, chromosome counts vary, but most commonly, women have 46 chromosomes including two X’s and men have 46 including an X and a Y. The Y chromosome is dominant and carries the signal for the embryo to begin growing testes. Both men and women have testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone. However, women have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone, and men have higher levels of testosterone.
Biology lesson over.
There are major differences between the male and female sexes, but culture wants to make a gender something more fluid. To the culture, gender is about how you feel. A transgender person will describe that they were born a boy but feel more like a woman. For some, they will say that they were born a girl, but they feel like a boy, so they identify as a boy. Based on the cultural norms of today, we are giving people the freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they want and for that to be okay. When this ends at its logical conclusion, you end up with men who identify as 7-year old girls and use the same bathroom as actual little girls, and that man can molest or harm those girls.
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