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Anxiety - Get it Out of My Head Series
68 Plays1 year ago
In this enlightening episode of Grove Hill Church's podcast, Pastor Ridley Barron tackles the topic of anxiety in his sermon series, Get it Out of My Head. He explores anxiety's roots in unfounded fears and how the world can exacerbate these worries. Emphasizing the division anxiety causes, he offers practical tips for combatting it: fostering thankfulness, community service, prayer with gratitude, self-care, and finding joy in hobbies and good company. Pastor Barron's guidance is a beacon for anyone seeking peace in a worry-filled world.
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Transcript
What causes anxiety?
00:00:00
Speaker
So let me start with a question this morning. You don't have to answer out loud unless you just feel like you need to, but what causes you anxious moments? Bills and children. They kind of are the same thing, aren't they? Yeah, what else? What is it, society? Good answers.
00:00:29
Speaker
Some of you were kind and sweet enough not to say your spouse. That's good. Yeah, there's all kinds of things that causes anxiety, causes anxious moments. And don't you hate it when you have one of those moments and somebody looks at you and says, stop worrying because all that does is make you start worrying even more like there's something wrong with you. Look at this quote. The biggest business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement, and distribution of anxiety.
00:00:59
Speaker
Studies now tell us that even though we are one of the wealthiest nations on the face of the earth, we are number three in the world in treatments, counseling, rehab, medication, and trying to treat anxiety. If I asked you too many of you in here, would raise your hand and say, anxiety is not just a fleeting thing for me. It's not a sporadic thing for me. It's a daily part of my life.
Anxiety in post-COVID youth
00:01:25
Speaker
I find things to think about. I find things to worry about.
00:01:28
Speaker
And that anxiety becomes debilitating for many of us. Most common health struggle in the world today is mental health. And part of that, a large portion of that is because of worry and anxiety. In fact, research tells us, surveys tell us that one out of every five Americans currently suffers from anxiety. And the younger you are, the more likely you are to struggle with it. Going back to COVID,
00:01:57
Speaker
The time before COVID surveys there compared to now, the younger generation, the amount of
00:02:02
Speaker
anxiety in the younger generations has doubled since COVID. And it's no wonder because the young people had radical changes in their lives. They had relationships taken away from them. They were forced to
Biblical perspectives on anxiety
00:02:15
Speaker
stay at home and be away from teachers and coaches and even their peers that influenced them. They went to online learning and you and I both know online learning means online influence that is thrown at them in all kinds of different shapes and forms.
00:02:28
Speaker
So many of you may not be surprised to learn that according to Bible apps now on your phone, that the most highlighted and referenced passage of Scripture is the one that we're about to read this morning, Philippians chapter 4 verse 8. So if you got your Bibles, look at it with me very quickly.
00:02:49
Speaker
Philippians 4 verse 4 it says, rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice. Let me remind you, we did the study on Philippians back in the fall, that Paul is writing
00:03:01
Speaker
these words these encouraging words about rejoicing at one of the most anxious times of his life at least it could have been he's sitting in prison not sure what the outcome of his life is going to be and yet he tells us to rejoice and there's a strategy behind this there's a reason for this and we're going to look at this and see it very clearly as we read it says let your graciousness be known to everyone the lord
00:03:24
Speaker
is near. Those four little words for Paul changed everything and I would submit to you they can change your life radically today when you begin to recognize that the Lord is near. The Lord is present with you. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you go back to Psalms 23, the psalmist writes these words. He says, the Lord prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies. He says, I am with you even in those seasons of difficulty.
Scientific insights on gratitude and anxiety
00:03:50
Speaker
Even in the seasons of anxiety the seasons that just don't seem to make any sense Paul keeps on writing He says do not worry about anything But in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your request to God I'll give a little credit to my friend Ethan in the back back there Ethan came up to me this morning as he was walking into church and he said Hey, yeah, I saw what you're preaching about this morning. I want to tell you something. He said
00:04:15
Speaker
You know that passage, Philippians 4.6, he says, it tells us, do not worry about anything, but make your petitions with thanksgiving. He said, you know why? I said, why? He said, because science shows us that the same part of the brain that causes anxiety is the one that causes thanksgiving. And so when you're thinking about being thankful, you can't be anxious. Think about that.
00:04:39
Speaker
I went to the chiropractor the other day. Pretty cool thing. I didn't know you could do this, but in the chiropractor's office, he's getting ready to adjust me. He's going to crack my neck. Oh, I'm not supposed to use the word crack. He's going to adjust my neck. And as he gets ready to adjust my neck, he can't because my muscles are just tense. They're just tightening up. And he says, we can't do this. We got to get, you know, we got to fix this. And I was like, okay, what do we do? He said, turn your head, drop your neck and wiggle your toes. And about the time I started wiggling my toes, whack. And I went, now that was cool.
00:05:10
Speaker
And he said, physiologically, you can't think about wiggling your toes and tense your neck at the same time. I said, prove it, do it again. So he said, all right, turn to the left. And sure enough, even though I was ready and anticipated it in that moment, boom, just like that. Same thing happens with your brain. When you think about good things, when you think about having gratitude and thankfulness, it's impossible for you to be anxious about things.
00:05:36
Speaker
Let me keep reading here. Verse 7 says, The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Where does anxiety emanate from? It emanates from our hearts and our minds. And so Paul goes on to make it clear to say, you know what, this peace that you and I can't really fully understand and the world just definitely doesn't understand, that peace protects your heart and your mind so that it cannot put out anxious thoughts.
00:06:03
Speaker
He keeps on going here. He says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy. What is that next word?
00:06:19
Speaker
Dwell, dwell. He's not saying every now and then take a chance to think about it. He's not saying, you know, if you get desperate, think about it. He's saying, if you learn to dwell on these things, it will change who you are. It kind of goes back in a reference to Romans 12, one and two, where Paul says that if you're gonna offer yourself as a living sacrifice, it's gonna happen because you do not conform your ways to this world, but instead you transform your heart
00:06:46
Speaker
and your body and your life and your activities by the what? Renewing of your mind. How do you renew your mind? Because you dwell on these things. Verse 90 says, Do what you have learned and received and heard from me and seen of me, and the God of peace will be with you. Anxiety has been defined as uneasiness, fear, or dread towards what's coming, even if it is not grounded in truth.
Understanding anxiety vs. fear
00:07:16
Speaker
Listen to that. Fear, dread, anxiety, and uneasiness, excuse me, towards what's coming, even if it's not grounded in truth. And can I just tell you that I think that's probably one of the major things that causes anxiety for so many of us this day and age is because we look around us and we are constantly bombarded by changing realities.
00:07:39
Speaker
changing realities. The world focuses on taking truths and turning them into lies, right? It's constantly redefining the scale, changing the price tags, redefining what is right and what is wrong. We'll talk a little more about that in just a second. And we're hit all the time with the bad news, right? How does media sell that stuff?
00:08:02
Speaker
Bad news, bad news. We're all like people at a NASCAR event waiting for the next car to crash. We love that kind of stuff. Even this week, Lisa and I were reading an article from a Christian news source and she looked at me, she goes, why did they have to focus on the negative side of this? I said, because bad news sells. I take you back to that first comment. The biggest industry in our country is creating anxious moments so that we can sell the medications, the counseling and the therapies for those things.
00:08:31
Speaker
In many ways, it's the same kind of practice that you see governments do. It's not just about an American government. As long as you go back in history and you trace what governments do, they are infamous about creating a problem and saying, oh, we're the solution to the problem so that now they can take your freedoms away and solution as part of that solution to that problem. It's been happening since the early days of Pharaoh.
00:08:53
Speaker
It's been happening since the Roman and Greek empires. It happens all the time because men, because of the base nature that they have, their sinfulness causes them to want more, desire more, so they're constantly manipulating things so that they can be in greater control of those things. Let's create a problem. Let's say we're the solution to the problem and then we can utter the most scary words in all of human history, according to Ronald Reagan. Here, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
00:09:23
Speaker
And what does the government ever touch that made it better? Anything that the government's ever touched becomes greater chaos. Why? Primarily so that they can continue to take even greater control of our lives. These are the anxieties that are presented to us. These are the things that cause us to have those sleepless nights. The difference between anxiety and fear is simply this. Anxiety is typically a more general assessment of your environment.
00:09:50
Speaker
It's just kind of taking all things in like the future or the culture in general. It's just a very general thing. Fear, on the other hand, is a more specific concern. I am afraid of losing my job. I am afraid of our marriage coming to an end. I'm afraid for my children as they go to school. I am afraid that the snow will come.
00:10:16
Speaker
It reveals a distracted and unstable life. The word anxiety literally means to be divided, to be divided in your mind. Now I want to tell you this, I'm cautious when talking about anxiety because I am neither a mental health professional or a licensed therapist. It's a very complicated issue. But here's what I do know and I want to say this clearly to you, I stand on God's word. The Bible deserves to have a voice in our conversation.
00:10:45
Speaker
And quite frankly, while I do know that there are some severe situations that are out there, I believe that too many people hold on to anxiety as an excuse for poor living, poor choices, inactivity in their lives, lack of growth in their spirituality, because it's convenient just to say, oh, I have anxiety.
00:11:09
Speaker
Now, before you get too defensive, think about this. Would God ever look at you and say, do not eat? No, why? You have to eat to live, right? Did God look at you and say, do not be anxious for anything? Would He give a command to not be some certain way if we had no control over it?
00:11:33
Speaker
So what I'm suggesting to you this morning is based on the word that I read, not once, not twice, but 365 times, God says, do not fear, do not worry, do not be anxious. Because God says, while you may have an anxious thought, you absolutely have the ability to battle that thought, to choose to think differently. We mistreat the mind and the body, of course, but we also have to treat the soul.
00:12:01
Speaker
because the soul quite often can be left out or neglected.
Government's role in societal anxiety
00:12:05
Speaker
The soul needs a safe place. The soul needs a savior. And I believe this book has lots of things to say about our anxiety. Anxiety is kind of like a bad fortune teller that tells you everything that's wrong with the future, even though it doesn't know what the future holds. So it makes all these bad predictions. It disguises as your own voice. It sounds like wisdom and it speaks to you and it says, if you were smart, you'd really focus on this.
00:12:32
Speaker
then it demands more and more of our attention. It promises things will work out better if you just keep obsessing over the one thing that it keeps pointing out. It also comes when we listen to a world that, as I said earlier, has rearranged the price tags and has changed truth for a lie. So I want to throw a scenario at you today and just kind of get your thoughts.
00:12:55
Speaker
What if you and your spouse and your three children lived in your nice little house and you had a good life going? One day I am walking by as a member of the government that represents you and I hear you and your spouse having a disagreement about some hundred dollar bill that got misplaced. Okay? I knock on the door and I say, hi, I'm here from the government. I'm here to help you get things back to normal. Okay? Immediately should lock the door and run.
00:13:22
Speaker
But instead, you trusting me as a representative of the culture or of your government say, sure, can you come in and help us? The first thing I do is I take your entire bedroom suit and I move it out to the front yard so that what used to be private and intimate has now become very, very public and is talked about openly. As part of that, I say to you, a heterosexual marriage is not normal anymore, but what is normal is everything outside of that. It should be acceptable.
00:13:51
Speaker
I go into your three children, I literally take the life of one of them, tell the other one that they should begin to question why they are the sex that they are, until the third one, whatever you do, whatever you want to be, you can be, but whatever you do, don't listen to your parents because they're crazy. I now tell your cat that it's your dog, and I tell your dog that your dog has the run of the house.
00:14:16
Speaker
And before I leave, I walk into the kitchen, I remove all the meat products and say, you will now be eating laboratory grown meat and bugs from the backyard. And oh, by the way, if you'll open the back door, we're going to invite five people in that you've never met. No background check, no previous history. They're going to live in your house at your expense. And if you question it, any of it, anything I've done at all, you'll be called the radical.
00:14:43
Speaker
Some of you, because it's early on Sunday morning, are going, what is he saying? I don't get the connection here. Our world has literally told us that everything about us sexually has become public. Used to be private. We went on between a man and a woman, was reserved for what was behind the doors. But now it's not only put out there publicly, it's put on our children as early as three, four, and five years old. And oh, by the way, it's not the way God ordained the institution, it's the way the world wants it to look.
00:15:12
Speaker
The one child I said we took to life is because now estimates are that at least one third of all pregnancies in the world end in abortion. Another third end with the question of whether or not your child is really the sex they want it to be. So much so that literally this past week, the World Health Organization approved the election of a person to represent transgender rights in the world
00:15:41
Speaker
who is a transgender, who is literally pushing and has in previous press conferences pushed this, announced it, that from birth we should give hormone treatments to children to prevent their growth as a man or a woman until they get old enough to decide for themselves. And the parents will have no say so and whether or not it's allowed. I think you can figure out the whole cat and dog thing.
00:16:12
Speaker
But in our kitchens, they're telling us you can't eat what's right to eat, and they're telling you you got to eat what's not meant to be eaten. And oh, by the way, the five people you don't know is this question of immigration. Not that we shouldn't love immigrants, but that they are forced on us in all kinds of shapes, forms, and fashions so that we literally
00:16:33
Speaker
literally are redirecting money that should be taking care of veterans, taking care of the aging, taking care of fixing our healthcare system, taking care of all kinds of things and are saying, let's just keep pushing it out there for other people. Many of whom would be taken care of if they would take care of us. The price tags are constantly changing. The rules are constantly being rewritten and because of that, our kids are being brought up in a world where literally from one week to the next, they don't know who to believe or what to believe.
00:17:04
Speaker
Do you think that provides security for our children? Not at all. Some of you actually have just gotten anxious listening to that whole example yourselves, haven't you? Congratulations, we're done, you can leave now. So let's look a little bit closer because I do have some practical things I think the Bible says to us, things that I think can help you in your anxious moments to help to deal with these questions of anxiety. First Peter, Peter addresses the subject himself, he says in verse
00:17:33
Speaker
Six of chapter five, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him because he cares about you. The interesting thing about this verse is we hear that casting all your cares on him and that's really, really important, but that's not the imperative of the sentence in the original Greek. The imperative of the sentence is to humble yourself.
00:17:58
Speaker
to humble yourself. See, when you and I humble ourselves to acknowledge that we can't control life, we begin to turn our attention to the God we know can control life. We begin to put our confidence in the character of the one who created us and also has complete and supreme authority over the entire universe. We can't control Tamara, but he does. We can't predict Tamara, but he's already there. And because of that, we can have confidence in God himself.
Trusting God with the uncontrollable
00:18:28
Speaker
A few years ago, I was going to a speaking engagement, actually returning from a speaking engagement in Wyoming. And I had to get on a plane in Wyoming, one of those little puddle jumpers, to get from Wyoming back to Denver. As I got on the plane that day, I immediately noticed that the pilot, it was a male and a female, the two pilots were probably about the age of my college-aged children. That did not make my heart feel very settled.
00:18:52
Speaker
because I also had read that morning that there was a cold front coming through the mountain range, and because of that, turbulence was going to be really, really bad on this little plane. So did you get the full image? I went in, sat down in 13-D, and as I looked up the aisle, it was one of those that didn't have the protective doors on it. It was one with the curtain still, you know? And the curtain had been left open while we were flying, and so I literally got to look through the windshield at everything that was coming our way as we were flying this airplane to Denver.
00:19:17
Speaker
A little bit later when the flight attendants came in and she shut the curtain to prepare for landing, you know they do that like 30 minutes before you hit the ground. And I'm sitting there and I'm noticing that it's been an extremely long time since I've heard any voice from the cabin and I'm starting to go, okay, are they still there? Are they awake? Did they realize there was gonna be a problem and somehow eject themselves from the plane and we're now flying with nobody up front?
00:19:44
Speaker
At one point I really seriously for some reason got so anxious I wanted to look at the flight attendant and say, could you please just go check on them for me? But here's the reality. Even if they had jumped out of the plane and there was nobody up there, what good would it be for me to notice that? I'm just the guy in 13D. I don't know how to fly a plane. I couldn't bring that plane down. The one I needed was the one who had been in control from the very beginning.
00:20:14
Speaker
I think you see the analogy. Many of us spend so much time worrying about things we can't possibly control, and even if they were under our control, we would mess them up majorly because we're not trained for that kind of intervention. We're not trained to be in command of those kinds of things, but God is. So I was better off sitting in 13-D, praying a prayer for the people up front than I was trying to figure out how I could make my way into the cockpit and take control of that plane.
00:20:46
Speaker
We landed very well that day. Crosswind at the Denver airport. That 20-something year old little girl landed that thing like she had done it a million times. And every bit of my anxiety was pointless. For many of us, we place too much confidence in ourselves. Too much ability, confidence in our ability to handle things. Too many times we look to the heavens and go, God, I got this. I got it under control.
00:21:15
Speaker
I know that you say to trust you and somehow somewhere in the midst of all this, I think I am, but the truth is you're not because you constantly keep taking the joystick out of his hands. Now, I'm not saying you're evil because you're anxious. I hope you don't hear that. All of us, like I said, have anxious moments. All of us have things that are thrown at us many times out of the blue that can shake us for just a moment.
00:21:41
Speaker
but it is dangerous, very dangerous for us to sit in that anxiety and to resign yourself to it. So I want to talk a little bit about why I think we continue to embrace anxiety, some of us, but then I want to give you some real practical steps from scripture I think that can change your outlook by the renewing of your mind so that you get bad thoughts out of your head and put the good ones in its place.
Denial and acceptance of anxiety
00:22:11
Speaker
So, why don't we reject anxiety? First of all, because we deny we have it at all. Many of us don't realize that we have anxiety. We're those people who go, oh, that's for broken people. That's for people who are worse off than me. That's for those people who fill in the blank. Those kinds of people. I just don't struggle with that, but the truth is that any time your thoughts are moved from God to things around you, then you're beginning to experience anxiety.
00:22:38
Speaker
You're beginning to experience anxiety because your mind has been taken off of what Philippians 4, 8 tells us to dwell on. Another reason is because we get hopeless. Some of us go to the far extreme and go, I've always been anxious. That's just who I am. That's just my personality. You're just gonna have to live with it. There's nothing you can do for me. But can I just remind you that anxiety was never what God intended for you? When Jesus was here, he said, I've come that they might have life and have it more abundant.
00:23:09
Speaker
In Matthew 6, he very clearly gives us instructions, do not be anxious for tomorrow because tomorrow will be taking care of itself. You've got to get rid of those anxious thoughts. You have to be intentional. The third reason I think that we hold on to anxiety is that because of a lot of anxiety is centered in the fear of loss.
00:23:28
Speaker
There's kind of this myth that's been developed in our country, and don't get me wrong, I think it's good to try to protect life, but there's this myth that's developing that we somehow can protect all life, that we can take away every possible danger from every possible scenario that faces us and our families. I'm surprised they haven't mandated that we put our children in bubble wrap at this point. You know what I'm talking about?
00:23:52
Speaker
I mean, there's some common sense stuff, okay? We, you know, put kids in a child's seat, but I'm surprised they're not at 16 years old still being in a child's seat nowadays. I remember the days when I used to go on family vacation with my family, and I would be sleeping in the back window of the car because it was nice and sunny. I was like a cat. I would lay up there and take a nap while we rode down the road. You know, and then they came up with seat belts, and then it was child seats, and now airbags, and you know, what's next?
00:24:21
Speaker
Again, not that those things are necessarily bad. They've saved thousands of lives, but there's this myth that somehow we can plan for every possible scenario. And so now we live in a world of smoke detectors and identity protection and just all these different things. Like somehow we can make a perfect life for everybody here in this place. And I just think we have to be cautious accepting that because guess what? Every single life will experience loss.
00:24:52
Speaker
It's part of living in a broken world. Friday night, I had the pleasure of speaking at the memorial service of one of our very dear friends. It wasn't a sudden loss. She had been battling cancer for the second time for many years. We knew it was coming. In fact, she had planned out her entire service. The remarkable thing to me about that whole service was that it was worship from beginning to end.
00:25:22
Speaker
There was never a moment of regret, I don't think. I think everybody who got up and spoke, everybody who sang, everybody who was there, counted it a joy and a blessing to have known our friend Kimberly. And every single one of them spoke about the impact her life had here. You know what the Bible tells us about life? It's a mist. It's a vapor. You're here and then you're gone.
00:25:50
Speaker
Listen, 24 hours after doing the memorial service, a friend of mine texted me last night and said, give me a call. I called him. He said, have you heard from our friend Keith? Guy that I've known for years. In fact, his wife was the pediatrician for my child the day that he died after the car accident. We've been friends that long.
00:26:11
Speaker
I said, no, what's going on? He said, well, he went into the hospital for procedure related to something and they made a mistake and he's been in the ICU for the last 18 days. They don't know if he's going to make it. You kind of think that a hospital would be a safe place, right? Because can I remind you, no matter how many seat belts you put on or how many air bubbles you wrap around you or how many different ways you try to protect yourself, loss will happen in your life. I think that's why the Bible tells us to lean on to God who is never changing.
00:26:42
Speaker
A God who's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Because he's the one place you won't experience loss. He's the one place that's consistent in all areas, at all times. You can know what you're getting with God.
00:27:00
Speaker
So, how do we battle when anxiety comes? Again, anxiety will hit all of us. It hits your pastor, it hits your elders, it hits your deacons, it's hit the Pope, I guarantee you, all right? Everybody has experienced anxiety at some point. The question is, how are you intentionally retraining your brain in that moment to think the right kind of thoughts?
Transforming anxiety through faith and gratitude
00:27:23
Speaker
So let's talk about that very quickly. Number one, change your thinking.
00:27:29
Speaker
Change your thinking. What do I mean by that? Well, become more aware of the things that cause you anxiety. What is it that causes you anxiety? What is it, you name several things, bills, my career, my future husband or wife, my future children, my present children. I mean, there's all kinds of things that cause us anxiety. Acknowledge those feelings and in that moment, make an intentional choice to focus on Jesus.
00:27:54
Speaker
Make an intentional choice to focus on Jesus. Acknowledge that he is sufficient enough to help you to get through that situation, through that moment, through that season, and to free you from whatever makes you feel anxious. But you have to believe that he can do it. Do you really believe that? Do you believe God is capable of the impossible? Let me put it to you in very simple terms. Either the grave is empty or it's not. Either the grave is empty or it's not.
00:28:24
Speaker
If it's not, then you and I have much to be afraid of. But if it's empty as you and I profess to believe, then we have nothing to be afraid of. Look, I can go back to my high school years, my college years, and tell you there were anxious moments in life. I've worried a little bit about my future. I worried a little bit too much about the news, the culture around me. I worried some about those things. But one of the beautiful things I have noticed in my own maturity as a believer is that the more I get to know Jesus, the less I worry about the future.
00:28:52
Speaker
And you could say, well, maybe discuss your situation has changed. No, my wife will tell you I'm like a news hound. I read news from the minute I get up in the morning to the moment I go at night, because I just love that kind of stuff. I love culture. I love reading about historical things. I love all of that. It's not because I'm not aware. I am, if anything, more aware of the world around me than I ever have been in my life. But praise God, I'm also more aware of the Jesus around me. And that every bit of it's in his hands.
00:29:22
Speaker
every bit of it. So I can lay in bed at night and think about every possible scenario for what's going to happen tomorrow and how I'm going to change it. Or I can, as I was encouraged a few months ago, lay in bed at night and simply say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him, how I've proved Him over and over.
00:29:51
Speaker
Number two, be thankful. Be thankful. Aside from Ethan's great thing he shared with me earlier, think about this. Studies have proven that people who are thankful live longer, happier lives. Just plain and simple. When you learn to be grateful for things, so here's some thoughts. Start a gratitude journal. Take a little notebook and begin to write down things you're thankful for every single day. Oh, by the way, you can repeat,
00:30:19
Speaker
I woke up this morning, there's a good place to start. My wife woke up next to me, that's another great place to start. Be grateful for the smallest of things. Hand out thank yous generously to other people. The person who's gonna serve you lunch this afternoon, don't let them walk away from your table without knowing how much you appreciate them. The person who checks you out at Walmart, thank them for working so that you don't have to do the self checkout.
00:30:48
Speaker
For the person who repairs your car, the neighbor that brought in your trash can, the teacher who puts up with your child all day long, the co-workers who put up with your spouse all day long. Thank people generously, because it's the freest way to love on somebody. Serve a local charity. Serve a local charity. Nothing helps you to be grateful for the things you have than to help those who don't have it.
00:31:20
Speaker
And there's all kinds of places around here. If you're having trouble finding a place to serve, contact the office. We can put you in touch with a lot of great places. During the Christmas holidays, a couple of our families just made a bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and went to downtown Nashville and handed them out to homeless people. Doesn't cost you a lot, just a little bit of time. Spend some purposeful time in prayers of gratitude. You know, one of the problems that many of us have as believers
00:31:47
Speaker
is that we immediately start prayer by jumping into our prayer list. God fix this, God take care of that, God be with so-and-so, and we forget to thank God for everything he's done already. Number three, practice good self-care. In other words, just take care of yourself.
Physical and community support for mental well-being
00:32:06
Speaker
Physical exercise, you remember that from high school? Some of you haven't seen it since then, right? Some of you forgot that physical exercise is not getting off the couch during halftime to go to the bathroom.
00:32:18
Speaker
And it's not just walking down the isles of the Kroger, okay? Physical exercise. Do I have to go join a gym, Ridley? No, not at all. Take a walk around the block. We are blessed to have a great state park down here with all kinds of hiking trails. Go to your kid's practice, and instead of sitting on the bleachers watching them practice, walk around the field while they do their thing. Take your dog for a walk. Take your husband for a walk.
00:32:44
Speaker
Proper nutrition. Now, I get this one's a little bit hard because we are constantly being, again, having the rules change for us, right? One day they tell you eggs are bad for you, the next day they're good for you. One day milk's bad for you, the next day milk's not good for you. You know, it's just like sometimes even in the moment it seems like you're hearing all these competing messages about what's good for your body. Here's my practical suggestion for you. Number one, ordering a small fry instead of a large fry from McDonald's is not proper nutrition.
00:33:12
Speaker
But number two, if you want to know that you're doing it right, go back as close as you can to the original thing that God created. Sucralose, not created by God. Okay. False preservatives, not created by God. We're blessed to live in a place where you can just about go five miles down the road and find raw milk, good eggs, great meat. Go find those people.
00:33:42
Speaker
Start to eat the right things. Take the time to do it. If you don't know how to cook, find somebody who doesn't pay them to cook meals for you each week. Because I promise you, going to O'Charlie's, you are not getting a healthy meal. Nothing wrong with eating out from time to time, but you gotta have proper nutrition for your body. Third thing, sleep. Sleep matters. I know we live in a culture where we like to applaud men who work 182,000 hours a week, right?
00:34:10
Speaker
Oh, you only worked 60 this week? I worked 65. It's like a brag thing, right? Just once I'd love to hear a guy say, hey, I signed off at 35 hours and been sleeping great all week, you know? We don't brag about that kind of thing though. But it makes a difference when you sleep well, all kinds of things happen, not the least of which is that your brain has an easier time thinking good thoughts. You're not irritable basically. But you know something else that happens physiologically?
00:34:38
Speaker
Studies now tell us that when we sleep properly at night, that our body as we sleep starts to do things to repair itself and to reorganize our thinking and to make our brain relax for a second. And when you don't get enough sleep, those things aren't allowed to properly happen and you pay for it in the days and weeks that follow. And lastly, and this is really, really important, get lots of community in your life. Get lots of community in your life.
00:35:08
Speaker
Some of you have asked me, pastor, why do you hug people all the time? And aside from the snarky answer of I do it to annoy you, there's two reasons. Number one, because I grew up in a family that did a lot of hugging. So it's just natural for me. But number two, years ago I read a study and the studies have continued to be affirmed that for a normal everyday person to feel at ease with their cells, they need seven good touches a day.
00:35:36
Speaker
Now for some of you, a handshake will do, not for me. I want a good hug. Phil Branstadter, you give good hugs. Thank you, brother. So that's why I'm gonna hug your neck as much as I can. If seven's good, think about how happy I am every night when I lay down. I get 700 a day. I'll hug anybody who stands still long enough and doesn't look at me like I'm crazy.
00:36:01
Speaker
Find activities that give you joy and energy. Don't feel guilty about spending money on things like hobbies, like hiking, canoeing, fishing, golf. Why? Because you probably are saving yourself thousands of dollars in health concerns because of the fact that you're taking care of yourself. Number four, make room for joy. The Bible says laughter is what? Good medicine.
00:36:27
Speaker
It's good medicines, you know that? And it's much cheaper and more effective than the medicine most pharmacists will give you nowadays. Right? It's good for your heart, it's good for your immune system, it's good for your whole body. It literally triggers endorphins in the brain that make you feel better. Okay? Now I'm not talking about slight, polite giggles. I'm talking about the belly rolling, gut busting kind of laughter.
00:36:53
Speaker
There's two places I know you can find it. Number one, find a good, clean comedian that you can follow. They all have Facebook feeds nowadays and they're constantly posting things that'll make you laugh out loud. Number two, one of the best places to get a good laugh is in your life group with people who know you, who love you, who are gonna make you laugh because they understand you. They know the right things to say, the right places to push the right buttons to make you break up.
00:37:21
Speaker
If you really want to laugh, go find Jackie Powers. Go find Pat Robertson. Let those guys speak truth into your life and then make you laugh at it in the next moment.
Biblical approaches to managing anxiety
00:37:33
Speaker
Lastly, seek Christian counseling. Seek Christian counseling. Now, I want to be clear about this. Number one, counseling is an excellent place to get help. Sometimes it's just from the counsel of a friend.
00:37:46
Speaker
friends are important in these moments. But also there's a time when you are very anxious, very worried, maybe there's deeper things involved here where a good biblical counselor is important. And I wanna be careful to emphasize biblical counselor there. I know I said Christian counselor initially, but a biblical counselor to me is more important in this sense. There are a lot of people out there who advertise their counseling services as a Christian counselor, but they are not Christian in their beliefs. That just means that they can speak to Christian traditions.
00:38:16
Speaker
Okay? But a biblical counselor is someone who literally is basing their treatment, their therapy, their conversation, their communication of things that you're taught by the Bible. If you need one of those and you can't find one, reach out to the office. We have a great list of them and we'll be happy to connect you to them. With the help of a good big biblical counselor, you can begin to find solutions to your problems. You can find treatments and techniques for battling those bad thoughts that you have.
00:38:46
Speaker
If you need encouragement, if you're in a crisis, if you have anxiety that impacts your daily life, it's okay to go to a biblical counselor, and I strongly encourage it. Here's the bottom line. Anxiety and worry is like praying to yourself, believing that you somehow can change a future that you have no control of. And by the way, you're a bad person. Let's be honest, right?
00:39:16
Speaker
I didn't say it, the Bible did. You and I are both bad people. So why will we entrust our future to people who are bad when we have the opportunity to entrust it to a God who is good? This is the true gospel. Jesus asked us to cast our anxieties on him. We don't have to suppress those thoughts. We don't have to ignore those thoughts. We just have to be intentional about dealing with those thoughts. We don't have to bury our fears.
00:39:42
Speaker
we get to literally throw them off. That's what it means when it says casting. It's like winding up and just throwing them as far as you can towards Jesus. And the best way, in fact, the only way to really do that is by prayer. By prayer. By having a conversation with God that just says, God, I believe the future is yours and I don't have to fear it because you're already there. So that's how we're gonna close. An opportunity for you to respond.
00:40:11
Speaker
If you do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you may have lots of questions about what we've just talked about because you don't know where to begin. And we would be very, very happy to help you with that, to coordinate a conversation with that, to pray with you through some difficult things in your life. Maybe you just wanna come up here and spend some time here on this altar. An opportunity just to kneel with your spouse or with your children or even just by yourself and just give those things to God.
00:40:37
Speaker
I was telling them at the end of the first service years ago, I read a article about a house in Cleveland, Ohio. The family had moved in and probably been there like a year or something. And it was kind of tight quarters for them, but it was home and it was basically all that they could afford.
00:40:52
Speaker
Well, one day the father went upstairs and he began to do some hammering on the wall to hang something. I don't remember what the reason was. But as he did, the wall fell in and behind the wall was like an entire section of the house that had been walled up years ago. So much so that it almost doubled the square foot of the house. My first thought was, how did you not see that from the outside? But my second thought was,
00:41:19
Speaker
What an incredible thing to just one day discover that that's there, you know, just by accident. And in the article, the dad said, it's amazing. It was like there was another whole world behind that wall. Dealing with your anxiety is saying, hey, I'm going to intentionally remove the walls that are there because there's something behind that wall that I have not been able to access. There's a freedom. There's a joy.
00:41:47
Speaker
There's a hope, there's a purpose that's there, but I just have to get the wall down. For some of you, that just is being intentional and doing some of the things we just talked about, but for others of you, if you've been dealing with anxiety longer, it may be that you need a little help tearing down that wall. I would love for you just to pick up the phone and call. We've got a chaplain, Jack Balz, who's in our office. We've got Kyle, myself, others who'd be happy to sit down and talk with you to help you to begin to unravel and unpack some of those things.
00:42:18
Speaker
But Jesus said, I came that they might have life and have it more abundant. It starts by taking down the walls and intentionally choosing to think on the things that God has given us. Will you pray with me as we get ready to respond this morning? Father God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for these truths that have the power to change our lives. We thank you that today, tomorrow, yesterday, and even a thousand years from now, you will be the same and we can trust that.
00:42:47
Speaker
There's never been a promise you made that you didn't keep. There's never been a hope that you offered us that we couldn't experience if we just chose it. And through it all, you promise that you will guide us in this process. So help us to reach out to access that in this moment, right here, right now, to say, I choose freedom. I choose peace. I choose joy.
00:43:16
Speaker
It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen. Will you stand with us as we respond?