Do Not Be Anxious

Why the Gospel We Preach Leaves the Weight Where Jesus Never Intended

By Josh Singleton | Founder, serving as Lead Cultivator, The Neighborhood Garden Project

We have extracted Jesus’ words about anxiety because they stand in direct contradiction to the Gospel most commonly preached today. When the Gospel is reduced to the statement that Jesus died for us, it becomes incomplete. Not because that confession is false, but because it is insufficient to form a different way of living. Belief becomes the destination instead of the doorway. Salvation becomes a settled concept while the structure of daily life remains untouched. In that narrowing, the life Jesus lived and taught is quietly detached from the Gospel itself, and faith becomes something that explains eternity while leaving the present largely unchanged.

The fruit of that detachment is no longer subtle. The average Christian life carries the same amount of worry as the unbeliever, and in many cases, even more. This is not an accusation. It is an observation that demands honesty. If the Gospel we are receiving does not meaningfully alter how fear operates in our bodies, schedules, finances, and futures, then it is not functioning as a lived reality. It may be believed sincerely. It may be defended passionately. But it is not ordering life.

In fact, believers often carry greater anxiety precisely because they are attempting to live inside two incompatible systems at the same time. The unbeliever knows they are responsible for sustaining their life, so their anxiety, while heavy, is at least coherent. The believer often claims that God is responsible, yet continues to live as if everything ultimately depends on them. They carry the pressure of self-provision while also carrying the quiet guilt that they should not feel that pressure. This internal contradiction is exhausting. Faith becomes something that should relieve anxiety, but instead intensifies it, because responsibility has never actually been transferred.

This is why anxiety is so often spiritualized rather than confronted. When worry persists in the life of a sincere believer, it cannot easily be explained. Instead of questioning the order of life itself, the assumption becomes personal failure. “I need to trust more.” “I need to work on myself.” “I need better habits.” Anxiety is treated as a flaw to be managed rather than a signal pointing to misplaced responsibility. The self becomes both the problem and the project, and the burden quietly remains where it has always been.

Jesus speaks directly into this reality:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,
what you will eat or what you will drink,
nor about your body, what you will put on.”
Matthew 6:25

These words are almost always treated as emotional advice offered to overwhelmed people. They are framed as comfort for fragile moments or spiritual encouragement meant to calm the nervous system. But Jesus is not addressing emotions in isolation. He is describing what life looks like when it is ordered correctly. Anxiety, in this passage, is not a personality trait or a mental health category. It is a symptom of misalignment.

Jesus immediately names the precise places where anxiety lives. Food. Water. Clothing. Body. Tomorrow. These are not abstract fears. They are daily, material needs. Jesus does not shame people for caring about them, and He does not deny their importance. Instead, He reframes the entire issue with a question that reaches all the way back to the foundation of creation:

“Is not life more than food,
and the body more than clothing?”
Matthew 6:25

Life, as God designed it, was never meant to be organized around consumption, protection, or survival.

Genesis makes this unmistakably clear. Before humanity ever works, produces, or manages anything, provision is already present. Light exists before labor. Land appears before cultivation. Seed-bearing plants are created before anyone is commanded to tend the ground. Humanity is placed into a garden that is already producing. The work given to humanity is relational and responsive, not anxious and securing. Sustained life begins with trust in an ordered world where provision precedes responsibility. Anxiety only becomes logical when that order is reversed.

Anxiety enters when survival becomes central. When provision is no longer received but must be secured, vigilance feels wise. Control feels responsible. Hoarding feels prudent. Jesus interrupts that logic by restoring the original definition of life. Life was never meant to be organized around survival alone. When provision becomes the center, anxiety becomes inevitable.

Jesus exposes this reversal by pointing back to the created world itself:

“Look at the birds of the air:
they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they?”
Matthew 6:26

This is not poetic abstraction. It is observable reality. Birds gather daily provision, but they do not stockpile fear. They participate in life without carrying responsibility for sustaining the system itself. Anxiety often disguises itself as responsibility, but Jesus exposes it as misplaced trust.

He then asks a question that dismantles the illusion entirely:

“And which of you by being anxious
can add a single hour to his span of life?”
Matthew 6:27

Anxiety feels productive. It feels like planning ahead. It feels like being responsible. But it produces nothing. It does not extend life. It does not secure the future. It only consumes attention. In living systems, pressure applied outside of rhythm damages what it seeks to protect. Too much water rots roots. Too much fertilizer burns plants. Pressure without order weakens life. Anxiety is pressure without wisdom. Faith is attention aligned with trust.

Jesus turns again to creation:

“And why are you anxious about clothing?
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they neither toil nor spin.”
Matthew 6:28

Lilies grow exactly as Genesis describes. According to kind. In season. Within limits. Without striving.

“Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.”
Matthew 6:29

Accumulated wealth and control cannot reproduce what alignment produces naturally. Lilies do not rush their season. They do not compare themselves to neighboring fields. They do not extract more from the soil than the soil can give. Their beauty flows from placement, not effort. Accumulated control never outshines aligned life.

Jesus continues:

“If God so clothes the grass of the field,
which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
will He not much more clothe you,
O you of little faith?”
Matthew 6:30

This is not condemnation. It is diagnosis. Faith here is not belief that God exists. It is trust in God’s ordering of life. Anxiety reveals where trust has slipped from alignment into self-reliance. After Genesis 3, humanity begins to secure what was once received. Jesus is restoring the pre-fall posture, a life where provision flows from trust rather than control.

This is why Jesus draws such a sharp distinction:

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying,
‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
For the Gentiles seek after all these things,
and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”
Matthew 6:31–32

This is not an insult. It is a contrast of operating systems. A life organized around provision first will always chase provision and never arrive at rest. When believers seek in the same way as the world, it should not surprise us that they experience anxiety in the same way as the world, or even more intensely, because they are carrying both fear and expectation at the same time.

Then Jesus offers restoration:

“But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.”
Matthew 6:33

This is not a transaction. It is alignment. Seeking the Kingdom first restores original order. Identity before labor. Relationship before production. Trust before management. In Genesis, Adam tends what already exists. In the Kingdom, work flows from provision, not toward it. Fruit follows healthy roots. Anxiety is removed as the engine of effort.

Here is where the insufficiency of the modern Gospel becomes impossible to ignore. When the Gospel stops at forgiveness without formation, unresolved anxiety does not disappear. It gets redirected. People are quietly sent into self-help. If peace has not arrived, the assumption becomes, “I need to work on myself.” Anxiety is treated as a personal flaw to be managed rather than a burden to be released. Fear becomes something to optimize away through habits, techniques, and insight. The self becomes both the problem and the project.

This sounds spiritual, but it reinforces the very independence Jesus confronts. It trains people to become more skilled at carrying weight instead of learning how to set it down. Responsibility for provision, outcomes, and tomorrow quietly settles back onto the individual. The nervous system remains activated because the posture of life has not changed. Faith explains why anxiety should not exist, but never removes the conditions that require it.

Jesus offers something fundamentally different. He does not invite people to fix themselves. He invites them to release what was never theirs to carry. “Do not be anxious” is not a call to emotional control. It is a call to relinquishment. It assumes anxiety persists because we are holding responsibility that belongs to the Father. No amount of self-work can resolve a burden that was never meant to be borne by the self.

The created order is one in which provision precedes effort. Trust governs work, not fear. Rest is not earned. It is built into the structure of reality itself. Evening and morning appear before productivity. Limits protect life before expansion occurs. Anxiety thrives in a world where rest must be earned. Faith flourishes in a world where rest is assumed.

Jesus closes His teaching by restoring time itself:

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Matthew 6:34

This is not avoidance. It is presence. Anxiety violates time by trying to live tomorrow before it arrives. Faith lives fully inside the day God has given.

The birds still live this way because they have never exited the created order. They gather daily provision without hoarding tomorrow. They move, eat, rest, and repeat without attempting to secure permanence. They do not live irresponsibly. They live accurately. The lilies never stopped because they have never mistaken effort for alignment. They grow where they are planted, within the limits of their design, receiving what the soil and sun provide. They do not rush fruit. They do not compete. They do not strive to justify their existence. Their beauty is the byproduct of remaining in place.

This was not theory for Jesus. It was the life He lived. His focus was singular, oriented around what the Father was asking of Him in each moment. He did not organize His days around securing provision. He organized them around obedience. Because His life was aligned, resources found Him without being chased. Food appeared in homes and on hillsides. Support came through relationships. Rest came through withdrawal. Nothing about His life was careless. It was deeply ordered. That order kept Him physically sustained and spiritually free.

Jesus did not introduce a new idea because the Kingdom is not an innovation. It is a restoration. What He calls people back to is older than fear, older than toil, older than scarcity. Anxiety is not the default human condition. It is the post-Fall condition. His words are not aspirational. They are corrective.

So the question is not whether Genesis is true as a story. The question is whether it is true as a pattern. Whether we will continue to live as though provision must be secured, the future must be managed, and rest must be earned, or whether we will risk trusting that life is sustained by an order deeper than our effort. To live as though Genesis was true all along is to release responsibility for what was never ours, to let trust replace urgency, and to allow work, rest, and provision to fall back into their rightful places.

Anxiety does not disappear because we fight it. It disappears when it is no longer needed. That is the life Jesus is describing. That is the life He lived. And that is the life He is restoring, not by telling us to feel calmer, but by inviting us to step back into alignment with the way life was designed to be carried.