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The One planting the seed sowed the Word. Clearly the Sower would be Jesus and His teaching, but the reference would also include anyone sowing truth through teaching or preaching. The soil would be the hearts and minds of all who hear the truth as it is being sown. Anxiety sprouts like weeds and thorns, grows up around the truth of God's Word, choking away the life and peace it can bring. In a graphic lesson, Jesus makes a direct connection between the devastating effects of anxiety and those of strangulation. It chokes us!

I have my own definition for anxiety. Anxiety is the painful uneasiness of the mind that feeds on impending fears. In its mildest form we simply churn. In its most severe form we panic.

Why is anxiety so wrong and spiritually debilitating? Here are three statements that help answer that question:

1. Anxiety highlights the human viewpoint and strangles the divine, so we become fearful. When we worry, we have such a high level of awareness of the human events surrounding us that God's perspective gets choked out. Worry strangles the divine perspective from our daily living, which puts us on edge.

2. Anxiety chokes our ability to distinguish the incidental from the essential, so we get distracted. In the midst of the worrisome details, we add endless fears, doubts, tasks, expectations, and pressures. Eventually we lose focus on what matters. We become distracted by incidentals and, at the same time, neglect the essentials. Fruitful people are usually relaxed people. Unproductive people, on the other hand, are tied up in knots, having allowed incidental worries to entangle their minds like a thorny vine.

3. Anxiety siphons our joy and makes us judgmental rather than accepting of others, so we become negative. We become negative when worry wins the battle. Inevitably we take our anxiety out on others. Worry works like bad cholesterol, hardening the arteries of our spiritual hearts and clogging the flow of love and grace toward people.

When anxiety creeps in, filling our minds with fear, distraction, and bitterness, we must turn to the One who offers an unexplainable peace. Thankfully we're not alone in this struggle. And neither were those closest to Jesus while He was on earth. There is one biblical scene where Jesus appears as a gentle and compassionate Teacher offering perspective and correction to a fretting friend.

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