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144 | Can I Beat Anxiety?
220 Plays1 month ago
Anxiety is a common struggle for Christians, but it should not define them; Christ offers peace and freedom from it. This video explores how Christians can overcome anxiety by shifting their focus from self-reliance and worry to prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving, trusting in God's sovereignty and care.
Referenced in this episode:
⦿ The Emotionally Healthy Woman: https://amzn.to/4fmRYvm
⦿ When People Are Big: https://amzn.to/4e7Bhmz
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Transcript
Introduction to Verity Podcast and Anxiety
00:00:00
Speaker
When we worry, we literally are going through the motions of prayer, but we're ripping all the power out of it.
00:00:07
Speaker
We're not directing those thoughts to God and saying, hey, I'm worried about this election. Hey, I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my infertility journey. I'm worried I'm not gonna find somebody to marry. Instead of directing that to God, we simply meditate on it to ourselves as if we can somehow change the course of the future.
00:00:34
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcast, friends. I'm Felicia Masonheimer, the host of Verity and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian. I'm so excited to have you join us today, whether for the first time or if you've been listening for a while. Right now we're in the middle of our Beginner Believer series, where we talk about questions that new or returning believers in Christ are asking about their faith.
00:00:56
Speaker
And when I was thinking about what we should do this week, I thought, oh, we could talk more about the theology of the gospel or sin and sanctification. But I realized, you know, I recently have been struggling with a lot of anxiety. How about we just talk about that very personal and very real struggle that so many of us who walk with Christ are facing?
Christian Perspective on Anxiety
00:01:18
Speaker
And so today I want to share with you a little of my own process of walking with Christ through anxiety and actually finding freedom from anxiety in my daily life. I want to start right there because I think that some Christians
00:01:34
Speaker
come to Christianity with a fatalistic mindset that anxiety is their identity. It's who they are. It's who they're always going to be. It's always going to be present with them. And I'm here to tell you that Christ does bring peace. He does. However, that doesn't mean that we will never struggle with anxiety again. We live in a world and a culture that is marked by a lack of peace. And that is always going to be assaulting us to some degree.
00:02:02
Speaker
And yet peace is not the absence of anxiety or the temptation to anxiety or to worry. Peace is the ability to trust Christ in the midst of that, to trust Christ and to release that. And so that's what I'm going to share with you today.
00:02:20
Speaker
Now of course everybody has a different process for walking through this and we all have different experiences in our life that contribute to the anxieties that we face. So some people may have had extreme trauma in their background, sexual trauma or physical abuse or a family of origin that really has affected
00:02:40
Speaker
their anxiousness. And so it's not something that's just flip a switch, pray more, and it's just going to go away. Sometimes we need counseling and therapy, and a licensed Christian counselor has been so helpful to me in my own journey. At the same time, we must take the word of God for what it says and trust that the God who is sovereign, the God who loves us, the God who died for us actually wants to do what his word says.
00:03:07
Speaker
and give us freedom from worry, freedom from control, freedom from anxiety.
Philippians 4:6-7 and Prayer
00:03:14
Speaker
And in my own life, I have seen that come true. So I'm going to share with you some scriptures, and then I'm going to share with you some practical things that have helped me in my own journey of finding freedom from anxiety.
00:03:25
Speaker
The most famous verse that speaks to this is Philippians 4, 6-7, and I think it's so interesting that Paul writes this in the letter to the Philippians because he is experiencing persecution, he's experiencing imprisonment, he's experiencing slander, people lying about him, people mistrusting him because of who he used to be. And yet in the midst of this he says, do not be anxious about anything.
00:03:50
Speaker
anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There's so much here. But I want to start at the beginning, and we'll just break this down section by section. Do not be anxious about anything.
00:04:14
Speaker
So Paul isn't saying this from a condemning standpoint. He can speak from his own experience that there's a lot to worry about. There's a lot that he was tempted to worry about.
00:04:28
Speaker
But he says, don't be anxious about anything. So what's going on in the world? Who's being put on the thrones and in the places of power? Whether or not you'll get sick? What's going to happen to your kids? Do not be anxious about anything. And it makes me ask, why am I anxious? Like why is it that I worry about these things? I feel like it's out of control.
00:04:52
Speaker
And something bad is going to happen. And I feel like I'm taking back a form of control by worrying about it. But really, I'm not. Instead, I'm putting myself in this place of constant stress. My body is kind of falling in on itself from all of that stress. And I'm forced to look outward and say, I need someone, something outside of myself, to set me free from this cycle.
00:05:21
Speaker
because I'm anxious about everything and anything. And Paul says, no, that's not the way, that's not the path. So do not be anxious about anything, but in everything. So instead, instead of anything, in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Okay, he names three types of prayer here, and we talked about this in a previous episode of the Beginner Believer series about prayer, why pray if God is sovereign,
00:05:51
Speaker
But these three he notes, prayer, supplication, thanksgiving. What's the difference here? Prayer is the overarching term to describe that relational conversation with God. That ongoing conversation with God. It's not something we just do at meals. It's not something you just do in the morning and then you're done. It's an ongoing conversation with God. And what so many people don't realize is that our anxious thoughts could be prayers.
00:06:16
Speaker
They are a form of prayer, but they're a prayer to ourselves, and we're powerless to change anything. When we worry, we literally are going through the motions of prayer, but we're ripping all the power out of it.
00:06:29
Speaker
We're not directing those thoughts to God and saying, Hey, I'm worried about this election. Hey, I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my infertility journey. I'm worried. I'm not going to find somebody to marry. Instead of directing that to God, we simply meditate on it to ourselves as if we can somehow change the course of the future.
00:06:52
Speaker
No wonder we're anxious. No wonder we're stressed. And so, in everything, by prayer, turn those anxieties upward and outward, back to the Lord.
The Power of Thanksgiving
00:07:02
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Now, what's supplication? Supplication, this is the request. This is, God, hear my heart, God.
00:07:09
Speaker
This is the desire of my heart. This is my fear. This is my worry, bringing it before the Lord and asking him to do something about it. And then the third is Thanksgiving. And this is so important, my friends, so, so important. So we know about these patterns of new age thought and in our culture, talking about affirmations.
00:07:28
Speaker
positive thinking manifestation and how people will say, well, if we practice these things, we will rewire our brain for the positive, right? And I think that's actually true to a degree, which is why secular people actually do see some fruit from it. However, they have to keep doing it and it's very self-centered. So manifestation is all about getting what you want.
00:07:52
Speaker
And prayer is not that way. Prayer is a conversation with God where you tell Him what you want, He carries you through that, and He begins to shape your heart to understand what you actually need. And then when He fulfills those desires or He shows you the path that you should walk, you know in this relationship that it's the best thing for you.
00:08:14
Speaker
He gives you discernment. He gives you wisdom. He gives you the ability to see your situation with new eyes. You don't get that with manifestation because it's just you in an impersonal universe. And so in the Christian prayer life, it's an ongoing conversation of saying, God, I'm struggling in this or God, I feel worried about this or God, this feels out of my control and giving it over to him and letting him then say, I'm the one who sees everything. And let me help you understand this.
00:08:41
Speaker
So, what about Thanksgiving? What does that have to do with manifestation, affirmations? Thanksgiving is the true form of positive thinking. The true form. The power of positive thinking, manifestations, affirmations, those are all riffing off the real thing, in my opinion. Thanksgiving is when you look at the life that you have and you thank God for His goodness in the places it is visible.
00:09:07
Speaker
even while you may be worried about things that aren't where you want them to be.
00:09:14
Speaker
So Thanksgiving, for me in the season I'm in, we're walking through secondary infertility. We have lost two babies to miscarriage this year. I have some hormonal issues that are related to that, and it also causes hormonal anxiety, but on top of that, I'm the CEO of a ministry, and I have a marriage to tend to, and I have kids to parent, and between all those things, I can be very, very worried about a lot of things.
00:09:40
Speaker
So what do I do? I thank God. I thank God for every small evidence of His care, the fact that I can afford to feed my family, the fact that we have amazing people on the Every Woman a Theologian team, the fact that He allows me to have access to the Word of God that gives me this truth, the fact that I have friends who walk with me or a church that I can go and learn about the Word and go there freely without persecution.
00:10:07
Speaker
I can look at these things and I can take God personally for them and I can thank Him for the ways He's already moving even when I have not seen His answers in other areas. And so because I look at His faithfulness and I thank God for His faithfulness every day, all through the day,
00:10:26
Speaker
When I get to a point where I am worried about something, I can go, you know what? God is faithful. He's been faithful before. He's being faithful now. He'll be faithful again, and he'll do it in this area, just like he did it in those. Now, a part of this for me is recognizing that God doesn't owe me anything.
00:10:45
Speaker
God doesn't owe me another child. He doesn't owe me fixing my body. He doesn't owe me a certain amount of money, which is what manifestation essentially teaches. The universe owes you. God doesn't owe me anything, and yet He gave up everything to have relationship with me.
00:11:06
Speaker
And so I thank him for the ways he has given me good gifts, even when I'm in the middle of temptation to worry or these anxious thoughts want to assault me and the Thanksgiving drives out the anxiety.
00:11:20
Speaker
Is it a daily choice? Yes, a lot of times. This week, a daily choice. I've struggled with this. And yet the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, it doesn't make sense intellectually rationally, guards my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.
00:11:38
Speaker
the act of prayer, the act of supplication, the act of thanksgiving, of not allowing those patterns of negativity, those patterns of worry to become who you are, but instead to reprogram your thoughts and to give those to God over and over, and most of all, to constantly focus and thank God for the goodness of what we do have, it actually rewires our brains. It surpasses, it passes by our understanding and guards our heart and guards our minds.
00:12:08
Speaker
Isn't that amazing? So it's a very physical thing, as much as it's a spiritual thing, that it is actually allowing our brains and our bodies to come to a place of peace because he is bypassing our rational brain, if you will, and he's saying, I am going to give you peace. I'm going to guard your heart. I'm going to protect your spirit, your emotions, and I'm going to protect your mind in Christ Jesus.
Holistic Approach to Anxiety
00:12:37
Speaker
That's what I offer you. And this is why Philippians 4 is such a powerful verse about anxiety. It isn't just pray more and maybe things will change. That's not helpful. We have to teach people how to pray. Not just rehearse all of the worries, although God wants to hear that from you, but to rehearse the truth. Because that's where the real change happens. That when I'm struggling with anxiety, I'm looking at my kids and I'm going, I'm not sure I'm making the right choices with parenting or I failed them or I yelled at them and now I need to repent them.
00:13:07
Speaker
and I start to worry like, oh, I'm ruining them. I can go, what's the scripture say about repentance? What does the scripture say about parenting? And I can pray that over my kids, over myself, and back to God. Thank you, God, that you give me grace when I fail and I can give grace to my kids. Thank you, God, that when I repent, you forgive me and that I have the option of reconciliation with my kids. I'm praying the truth. I'm not just rehearsing the worry.
00:13:33
Speaker
I'm not allowing that to rain in my mind. 1 Peter 5.7 says, cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. See, we focus on the casting all anxieties. Like, we make it into a rule. We make it into a checklist. But what if we focus on the last part? He cares for you.
00:13:52
Speaker
He cares for you. He cares for what you're worrying about and he wants to take it. But when we withhold it and we hold on to it, what we're really saying is, no, thanks God. I think I'm God here. I can control it. I can make the outcome better. I don't think you care about me.
00:14:08
Speaker
But what if he believed him? What if he believed he actually does care about you and he wants you to give your anxieties to him because he can actually do something with them? John 14, 27 says, peace I leave with you and my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
00:14:31
Speaker
The world gives us a lack of peace. I mean, look at consuming the news, consuming social media. It riles us up into this constant feeling that we can be omniscient. We can know all things and not be affected.
00:14:44
Speaker
but we aren't omniscient. We can't handle that amount of information. I often say that when it comes to the news, I only consume as much as I can pray for, a quote that I heard from Richard Foster in one of his books. I only consume as much news as I can pray for, and I'm not gonna do any more than that, because I am not omniscient, but God is, and He leaves His peace with us.
00:15:08
Speaker
My heart does not have to be troubled or afraid if I will actually allow him to give me his peace, instead of constantly going out and following the world's way. Psalm 55, 22 says, Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. In my office here on this wall, I have these lithographs of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
00:15:37
Speaker
If you know anything about that story, the pilgrim Christian is on his way to the celestial city and the allegory shows the path of the Christian life from entering at the narrow gate to going to the cross to walking through the valley of the shadow of death and all of these other allegorical locations on his way to meet the king.
00:15:58
Speaker
And at one point, when Christian is saved, truly saved, and repents, he comes to the cross and this burden he's carried for the first third of the book falls off, like it breaks on its own, it just falls off of his back. And then he walks the rest of the journey without the burden of his sin riding on his back.
00:16:17
Speaker
I often think of that picture when I read Psalm 55.22 that we have had a burden taken off of us. We've had this burden of sin, this burden of shame, this burden of control taken off of us, but so often we actually pick it back up and put it back on.
Living in Divine Peace
00:16:33
Speaker
And here the psalmist is saying, cast it off, throw it off onto the Lord and He will sustain you.
00:16:41
Speaker
He will sustain you. Isn't it interesting that so often the things that we pick up, we think they'll help us. They'll help us go faster. They'll help us have more control. Like we pick up the bird and thinking it's going to be a crutch or it's going to make us move faster, but instead it ends up laying us down. So he's saying the burden won't sustain you, but whatever it is that you picked up that you're rehearsing in your mind, that's not going to sustain you. But if you cast it off, the Lord will sustain you.
00:17:11
Speaker
And that's that moment of decision that we all have when it comes to our walk of faith and anxiety, is asking ourselves, am I picking up a burden that looks like control? Am I picking up a burden that looks like power or security?
00:17:28
Speaker
But really, it's weighing me down. Really, it's damaging my walk of faith. It's making me constantly stressed, constantly anxious. My body is reaping the effects of my ongoing mental consumption with controlling my environment or my relationships or trying to live for what people think of me instead of releasing that to the Lord.
00:17:53
Speaker
Now as I've shared earlier there is a physical aspect to this too and for those of you who are female who are watching this who maybe have walked through perimenopause or postpartum anxiety I've had postpartum anxiety severely and I also am currently walking through perimenopausal symptoms that are
00:18:11
Speaker
affecting our fertility journey. And one of those is hormonal anxiety. And so I just want to speak to that as an aside. I have found so much help from naturopathic and holistic doctors, nutritionists who have helped me pinpoint the underlying deficiencies, mineral and vitamin deficiencies that are contributing to that.
00:18:31
Speaker
and I know for me I know I could go in and I could get a medication to help with that and some of you that's what you've chosen to do for me I really wanted to identify that root cause underneath it and we were able to do that and so when I found out I just needed
00:18:47
Speaker
more progesterone supplementation and I needed things like chaseberry or more iron to help with my mood and to help with those anxious tendencies, less caffeine, more nutritious meal, protein of 100 grams a day, things like that that made a significant difference in lowering my anxiety levels, which then allowed me
00:19:10
Speaker
to think more rationally, to be able to actually go, oh, okay, I'm feeling a spike in my anxiety. Did I eat enough? Did I have too much coffee? Have I taken my supplements today? Have I made sure that I had enough protein? And when I've taken those wise steps, those common grace steps that God's given us through nature,
00:19:31
Speaker
I'm then able to go, OK, now how can I address this spiritually, too? So for what it's worth, that has been very helpful to me and has helped me a ton with leveling out the hormonal aspect of the anxiety that I deal with.
00:19:47
Speaker
I have one more verse for you, and I love this verse. I think it's just so beautiful. Hebrews 13.6, which says, we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?
00:20:02
Speaker
I don't know about you, but a lot of the anxieties that I will struggle with have to do with relationships and what people think of me. And the biggest learning curve of my faith walk and my leadership walk has been letting go of what people think. And really asking the Lord to show me, what do you think of me? What do you think of my behavior? How can I walk in a way that's worthy? How can I obey you? And how can I just let go of what people think? Because they're not God. And you are.
00:20:33
Speaker
See, releasing that idolatry of human approval reduces my anxiety more than almost anything else. Because at the core, what I'm doing is I'm really looking to be worshipped by people, to have their affirmation, their approval, their affection, all of these things that I want to feel good about myself. And what that tells me is I'm not really resting in the approval and favor of God.
00:20:58
Speaker
When I do rest in the favor of God, and I can say I work for God and not man, I have such a reduction in that worry. If that's you, a couple of books that have helped me are The Emotionally Healthy Woman by Jerry Scazzaro and also When People Are Big and God Is Small. I can't remember the author of that one at the moment, but I loved that book and made a huge difference for me. My hope in filming this part of the series
00:21:22
Speaker
is that you will see that Christ offers to take our anxieties, and He's not just saying that. He really is offering transformation. He's really offering hope. He's really offering peace. And I honestly think that if we just say, this is what it's going to be forever, this is how it's going to be, it's never going to change, that's a very fatalistic mindset about the God who wants to save us.
00:21:44
Speaker
Now, of course, we don't live in heaven. This world is imperfect. We will still be drawn towards anxiety at times, but we do not have to submit to it. And we definitely should not make it our identity or speak it over ourselves. I'm an anxious person.
00:22:00
Speaker
I am destined for anxiety. No, you are loved by God, you are seen by God, you are carried by God, chosen, adopted. He has taken you into His hand, and it says that no one can snatch you out. It's as if you are in His hand with God's other hand covering it. No one can snatch you out of His hand. You are covered by His sovereign grace and His love.
00:22:26
Speaker
And yes, there are still things we'll experience in this world that are hard and heartbreaking.
00:22:32
Speaker
I know what that's like. At the same time, we can trust that He is actively redeeming, actively caring, actively wanting to take the burden of our anxiety off of us. It's our choice, however, how much we participate in that freedom. And so we get to decide, am I going to use prayer and supplication and thanksgiving to make my request known to God so that His peace
00:22:56
Speaker
will protect my heart and my mind. I don't know about you, but I want to live that way. I want to live the Philippians four way, and I'm going to choose to do that every day, and I hope you do too.