Handling Anxiety (Part 2) – Philippians 4:6-7 Series

We will call his name Mike. He was eleven years old when I started working with him. His parents brought it to me because he had some extreme anxiety issues. I’ve told you about Mike before because Mike is this young man who had severe anxiety that prevented them from going out to lunch at Costco. That's what they liked to do. He was afraid that his siblings would get abducted. This fear that he had paralyzed him and caused him to get really upset when his siblings weren't in proximity to him. When they went to church, they had to all be in the video room, TV video room together so they could go to church. In their home, they had to install interior locks on the interior doors at night so the kids couldn't go in different rooms because he was so afraid that they would get abducted. This challenge that he had was just crippling the family, as is always the case. You just got to remember, the person with the most anxiety controls the family or any group. That's just what happens. Anxiety dominates the interaction and can hinder whatever the family wants to do.

Well I worked with Mike for eleven weeks with his parents right there. So I was sending them home with assignments every week. We talked through things like triggers that caused this and techniques to manage it, like breathing, and we talked about anxiety itself and what it is so he would understand more about these things. After eleven weeks he told his mom, “My anxiety is gone.” Now if you have any challenges with anxiety, you know that that's a miracle in this young man's life. His anxiety is gone.

So when I saw him at the next session, I said to him, “So I hear your anxiety is gone.”

He says, “Yeah, it's gone.”

I said, “Well I want to learn from you so I can share with other people what you learned. Over the last eleven weeks, what was it in particular that stuck out to you that helped you overcome your anxiety?”

He said, “It was when you taught me about the Holy Spirit.”

I'm going to share with you now what I shared with Mike so that you can understand the process of what happened in his heart. I started with him and I said something like this. I said, “I'm going to give you a list of nine things that come from Galatians 5:22-23 and I want you to pick one of those things off that list that you wish you had.”

He looked at the list and he says, “Peace.”

I said to him, “I'm not surprised that you chose peace. I think peace is a really important quality. And I think that's what you need here. But do you know what that peace comes from? Just look in the passage. Do you see where it comes from? Notice it comes from the fruit of the Spirit. It is from the Holy Spirit. Are you a Christian, Mike?”

He says, “Yeah.”

I said, “Oh good. Because when you're a Christian, there are so many more resources available to you than if you're not a Christian for dealing with emotional challenges. This is really great.”

“Let me tell you about the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit isn't just a plaque on the inside of your heart that says ‘I'm a Christian.’ He is that. He's a confirmation that we're a Christian. But He's much more than that. He's moving around in there. He's got this fruit basket. And there's all these parts of the fruit basket He could pull out, but you need them. It's all part of God's big grace package that He gives. And when you pull out peace and He puts it in your heart and you experience God's peace, then what it does is like a sponge and it sucks up all the energy. You know what I mean by energy, right, Mike? It’s when your mind starts racing and you think if this happens, that's going to be bad. If that bad things happens, this is going to be terrible. And if that terrible thing happens, it’s going to be disastrous. And your mind just kind of runs with that. You know what I mean, right?”

He says, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“And also your heart starts fluttering and getting upset. That energy that happens inside of your heart, the peace that's there just sucks that energy out and gives you the peace that you need. That's what you want. Right?”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “Well I need to explain something else to you about the grace of God because all of these things fit under the category of the grace of God. And God wants to give it to you. In fact, there is a shower. I mentioned your shower in your house. There's a shower of God's grace that's available to all of us. Now if you go in your bathroom and you turn on the water and the shower starts going, do you get wet? No, you don't get wet. How do you get wet?”