Reading “Consider the Lilies” from beginning to end, the reader quickly senses that it is meant to be more than a book about anxiety—it is an invitation to reorient the heart toward Christ. Ardavanis writes not merely to inform the mind, but to shepherd the soul into quiet confidence in the One who holds all things together. Each page draws the reader from reflection to worship, teaching that true peace is found not by mastering fear but by fixing one’s gaze on the sufficiency of God. This is not a book to rush through; it is meant to be dwelt in, allowing its truths to shape prayer, thought, and perspective until trust in God becomes the reader’s natural posture before every care.
Book Review
What lingers most is the book’s call to keep one’s gaze fixed on Christ through every uncertainty, hardship, anxiety, and care that marks our pilgrimage. Ardavanis shows that peace is not achieved by escaping the world’s pressure but by abiding in the presence of the One who has overcome it. When the believer turns attention from the turmoil of circumstance to the constancy of Christ, a quiet transformation occurs—the birth of godly detachment. This is not cold withdrawal from life but the freedom of a heart no longer enslaved to its outcomes. In that freedom, the soul discovers the calm of divine governance, the serenity that belongs to those who trust that the Father’s will is both wise and good.
This Christward focus is the book’s enduring gift. It teaches that peace is not found by mastering emotion but by beholding a Person; that serenity is not stoicism, but surrender. To keep one’s eyes on Christ is to find stability that neither success nor suffering can disturb. In this way, Consider the Lilies leads the reader beyond temporary comfort to the permanent rest of faith—the stillness born from knowing that the God who governs all things is also the God who loves without change.
The Burden of the Book
In a culture saturated with anxiety, Jonny Ardavanis turns the reader’s attention away from the fretful interior world toward the face of God Himself. His theme is drawn directly from Christ’s command in Matthew 6: “Consider the lilies of the field.” The Lord’s words there are not sentimental; they are theological. Christ calls His disciples to peace through contemplation of the Father’s providence, not through the management of circumstances. Ardavanis takes this text as both diagnosis and cure, contending that anxiety, at its root, is a failure to remember the character of God. The book’s task is therefore not to soothe emotions but to re-educate faith—to bring the reader’s imagination, mind, and affections under the rule of divine truth.
Tone and Readability
The tone is pastoral, unhurried, and gentle. Ardavanis writes not as a clinician or strategist but as a shepherd who has walked beside anxious souls. He draws from Scripture with steady confidence, quoting entire passages rather than fragments, allowing the reader to linger. Each chapter closes with reflection questions that serve as prompts for prayer rather than academic review. His prose is warm yet doctrinally clear, shaped by a Reformed evangelical heritage that values the sufficiency of Scripture and the sovereignty of God. Readers unfamiliar with theological vocabulary will find his explanations accessible; those seeking substance will find more theology than they might expect in a book marketed for personal growth.
Doctrinal Substance and Use
The book is built upon one unshakable truth: peace is not a mood achieved but a Person trusted. Ardavanis insists that anxiety is displaced only when the believer meditates on God’s unchanging perfections—His wisdom, omniscience, power, goodness, and Fatherly care. This is classical theism in pastoral form: God is not divided into attributes but is wholly Himself in every act, immutable in love as in sovereignty. Such doctrine is not presented abstractly but devotionally: each attribute becomes a doorway into worship.
Pastors will appreciate that Ardavanis refuses therapeutic reductionism. He does not deny the physiological dimension of anxiety but refuses to treat it apart from the soul’s relation to God. His counsel is deeply ecclesial: believers are urged to seek corporate worship, the sacraments, and fellowship as the ordinary instruments of peace. The text thus restores the means of grace to their rightful place as the Spirit’s appointed medicine for fear.
Christ and Spirit in Life
Though the book centers on the Father’s character, its theology is implicitly Christological. The “lilies” passage belongs to the Sermon on the Mount, and Ardavanis often returns to Christ’s own trust in the Father as the model for ours. He might have developed more explicitly the theme of union with Christ—the believer’s participation in the Son’s filial confidence through the Spirit—but what is present points in that direction. He shows that genuine peace is the fruit of adoption, not the result of technique. By meditating on the God who has already loved us in Christ, the heart learns to rest in the same security that sustained the Lord Jesus Himself.
Strengths
- Scripture-saturated: every claim is anchored in explicit biblical text; proof-texts are not decorative but structural.
- Pastorally realistic: the author knows the weariness of anxiety and writes with compassion rather than condemnation.
- Doctrinal integrity: consistent with confessional Protestant theology; no drift into mysticism or self-help moralism.
- Practical guidance: provides habits of daily meditation, prayer, and community life without lapsing into rigid formulas.
- Suitable for group study: the reflection questions can be used in small groups, family devotions, or counseling settings.
Limitations
The reader should understand that Consider the Lilies is a devotional theology, not a systematic treatise. Those seeking historical or philosophical treatment of divine attributes will need to supplement it with more technical works (for example, Stephen Charnock’s The Existence and Attributes of God or Thomas Watson’s A Body of Divinity). Likewise, the book rarely enters the mystical dimension of union with Christ that grounds the believer’s participation in divine peace. Pastors using it in discipleship may wish to connect it to Pauline texts on union and the Spirit’s indwelling (Romans 8; John 14–17) to complete its trinitarian arc.
Pastoral Intent
This book models a reorientation of care: it restores doctrine to the center of counseling. Where modern approaches often begin with the self, Ardavanis begins with God. The believer’s emotional life is not ignored, but it is healed by truth rather than managed by distraction. The pastoral vision is that peace is not found by mastering circumstances but by beholding the Father’s constancy through the Son’s example and the Spirit’s work.
Concluding Thoughts
Consider the Lilies should be read slowly—perhaps a chapter per week—alongside prayer and Scripture reading. It pairs well with psalms of trust (Pss 23, 62, 91, 121) and with Christ’s own prayer in John 17. For the overwhelmed by uncertainty, it offers a simple yet profound remedy: to know God as He is. In a world that markets peace as a product, Ardavanis reminds the Church that peace is already given—a gift rooted in the immutable character of God, received through faith, and sustained by the Spirit’s indwelling presence.
Author: Jonny Ardavanis; foreword contribution noted by Sinclair B. Ferguson.
Publisher / date: Zondervan, October 8, 2024; c. 256 pp. ISBN: 978-0310368243.
Purpose: freedom from anxiety by lifting the gaze from “problems and pressures” to the changeless character of God; practical counsel, reflection questions.
