Dealing with Anxiety
The Storms of Life
Anxiety
CCCAG June 16th, 2019
Scripture- 1 Peter 5:6-11
(“Problem” on Whiteboard versus single sheet of paper)
Intro:
In an issue of the AARP Bulletin, readers were asked to respond to the question: What’s your strategy for coping with stress? The answers ranged from "Eat a chocolate chip cookie" to "Have a stiff drink." But Don Betz of Oakdale, Minnesota, offered his own unique solution. Every January 1st, Betz says, "I give my wife $1, and she worries about everything for both of us." That is not the end of the entry, Betz added, "If someone else wants to be worry free, they can also send her a dollar."
It's Father’s Day, so I get to pick on the ladies a little don’t I?
Anxiety is the cause of worry, and worrying about things can cause serious physical problems, such as ulcers, heart attacks, and high blood pressure.
I had my physical this week and Dr. Anderson knows enough about me to ask the right questions about stress and anxiety. Both blood pressure and cholesterol are in the slightly elevated range , and although he is pleased to see things like blood pressure and cholesterol heading in the right directions, he counseled me to make sure to keep my stress under control otherwise even a decent level of either of these things can cause problems down the road when coupled with constant stress.
Another interesting fact about stress and anxiety-
A few years ago George Barna did a survey on American’s favorite sins.
What is the top sin of Americans?
Might think of pornography, overeating, or greed.
Top sin is anxiety and worry.
60% of Americans say they are often tempted to worry because of anxiety.
Anxiety and it’s byproduct of worry are the tools of fear.
We talked about fear last week, and today will tackle both the tools and the byproducts of fear in confronting the roots of this spiritual killer in our lives.
Because God has a better way for us to live
and we find some life changing truth in 1 Peter 5:6-11.
1 Peter 5:6-11
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
10 And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 11 To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Prayer
What is anxiety? Let’s define it
Anxiety is distress about future uncertainties.
It is characterized by mental agitation and uneasiness. It primarily has to do with what may happen in the future, whether near or distant, whether real or imagined.
What causes anxiety?
Anxiety is caused by real or imagined threats to our wellbeing. It causes us to feel vulnerable and inadequately protected against these threats.
Threats such as social rejection, physical injury or disease, poverty, death, and a wide range of other threats.
Anxiety has 3 main elements.
Insecurity: The belief that something bad is going to happen- it has everything to do with not feeling secure about something
Helplessness: There is nothing I can do to help the situation
Isolation: There is no one to help me even if I ask for it
All three of these things have one thing in common, and we saw it in verse 8- the devil is a roaring lion searching for whom he may devour
Anxiety and it’s consequence of worrying is listening to the lions roar instead of trusting your father.
Let’s talk about the devils roar
If you were not here last week, I purposefully scared the heck out of everyone here by using my sergeant’s voice to roar “Fear Not!”.
I did that to illustrate the three reactions to fear- freeze, flee, or fight. The vast majority of people will freeze or flee when confronted with an unexpected negative experience.
The devil uses the same tactic with his roars of fear, his roars of doubt and roars of unbelief. His goal is to get you to freeze or to flee.
That’s why the bible uses what would have been a common occurrence to people living in the middle east in the 1st century AD to describe satan’s tactics- a lions roar.
Lion’s roar to intimidate. They want you to freeze in place so they don’t have to expend a lot of energy to run you down.
Just like a lion in the wild will do that to bag a gazelle, satan does that to freeze us in place and switch our focus off of God and onto the problem that is presenting itself.
He wants to fill you with insecurity- is God there to help me?
He wants you to feel helpless- God isn’t going to come through for me
Finally, he wants you doubting God so much, that you feel alone and without hope.
For a Christian, anxiety and worry become sin because you are doubting God’s power and goodness.
Anxiety handicaps us, and worrying keeps us there.
Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives us something to do but gets us nowhere.
That’s the problem of living in stress which produces anxiety and worry, let’s look at God’s solution
Last week I said that God wants us to unlearn freezing and fleeing as a response to the devil’s attacks.
God wants to teach us to fight in His power and in His way.
God’s way is seen in verse 9- “Resist him (the devil)”
Webster defines resist as-
“to exert oneself so as to counteract your defeat”
That is a good definition and it speaks to the choices we make about dealing with stress and anxiety.
We need to exert the truth we find in God’s word to help us deal with the enemy’s attacks. God gives us several tactics in here in 1 Peter and the first one is to-
“Be Sober-minded”
This isn’t necessarily speaking to avoiding mind-altering substances- although that’s part of it.
I want you to hear what I’m about to say with an open heart, and know I’m saying this in love for you and in humility because I can be guilty of this as well-
When stress and anxiety come and the first thing you reach for is a medication, a drink, a smoke, food or any other substance or thing of this earth, you are not following God’s plan in resisting the enemy- in fact you are playing into the enemies hands.
I’m right there with you as food can be my comfort, but it’s a placebo that doesn’t attack the root of the problem. It affects our ability to confront the problem and to find the right solution.
Being sober minded means to be able to view the problem facing you with a clear mind.
This is why this is bad-
If you cloud your mind with an artificial comfort that God didn’t intend for you then you give the enemy that open door into your spirit that he can open whenever he wants by triggering your stress level to produce anxiety.
I’m going to share something God showed me about myself this last year about one of my anxiety’s
It’s a sense of insecurity that comes to me because I dropped out of high school. I didn't drop out because I didn't understand the content, or because it was too hard for me. I dropped out because I wanted to live the party lifestyle and more lascivious kind of life that many of my friends were living. Much of my mindset at that time of my life came from that I didn't want to live under anyone else’s authority than my own.
Obviously I’ve turned around since then, and God was a huge part of that. I served in the military and have gotten my GED then my high school equivalency diploma as well as they've taken several college classes for paramedic and critical care paramedic, firefighter, community paramedic as well as all the classes I had to take through Global University to become an ordained minister.
Now I'm in school for nursing, and over the last year have taken some very difficult science courses. When I started this process, I gave myself a goal- to graduate with high honors.
At my college, there are three honors levels. They are based on Grade Point Average, with a 4.0 being the highest you can get, and it’s roughly equivalent to an A+ -
The First honor level is Cum Laude Latin phrase meaning “with honors”. For that you need a GPA of 3.25- letter grade equivalent is B+
Next is magna cum laude which means with great honor- for that you need a GPA of 3.5- Letter grade A-
I had a goal to graduate Summa Cum Laude which means with highest distinction- 3.75 grade point average, or straight A’s overall.
So far, my GPA is 3.85, so I achieved my goal so far.
However, this self-inflicted goal had me living in a constant state of anxiety since last fall.
Of course I spiritualized it- it’s amazing what you can talk yourself into when you want to make an excuse to do something or feel something that you know you shouldn’t.
“I want to honor God and do my best”, but in honesty I was feeding my insecurity, and the consequence of that was isolation- I was always studying and when I got overwhelmed from working 48 hrs a week, preparing for Sunday, and on top of all that I had a heavy course load. Because of stress, anxiety and isolation, I reached for a quick comfort which was food and gained 30 pounds. I’ve only recently come to terms with God speaking to me about this issue in my own life, and I’ve had to humble myself and admit He is right, as always.
I share this to show I’m not standing up here condemning anyone who deals with anxiety and stress.
I’m not saying you are weak, or worthless or need to cowboy up and deal with it on your own. WE can all fall into these harmful patterns, and that’s why it’s important to recognize them early and give it to God.
So hopefully next semester, I can be sober minded and see the stress for what it is, and then I can do the second thing that Peter tells us to do in regards to stress and anxiety-
“Be watchful”
there is a popular buzz word in our society today and that is the word triggered.
We see this phenomenon in our culture when people say something that is not politically correct. You will see a flood of outrage, ridicule and even hatred toward people who don't think a certain way or meet a nebulous certain criterion that many in our culture believe that we should have.
We call that being triggered.
Let me give you an example of this. If you were to go on a college campus in California, say UCLA, and loudly start proclaiming that global warming is junk science based off of sloppy hypotheses and theories that have no basis in fact, many people there would be triggered to shout back all kinds of insults and in some cases even become violent toward you.
That’s what being triggered means.
I’m not just picking on those with a liberal mindset because all of us have trigger points. For many of us who are veterans, if you were to stomp on an American Flag, we will be triggered to stomp on you. Right?
I saw a funny poster once that says stress is you fighting your minds overwhelming desire to choke the life out of someone who desperately deserves it.
That’s why Peter says to be watchful. Be aware of your trigger points because your enemy the devil knows them better than you do and will tailor his roar to push those buttons.
I once heard a preacher say when the devil comes a knocking ask Jesus to open that door.
That’s being sober and be watchful. That's how we handle stress and anxiety on the front end.
But what happens when we give into it?
What happens when the ability to resists goes away and we dive headlong into worry and anxiety?
God doesn't abandon us, but gives us different ways of dealing with it.
1st- He reminds us of a promise-
Verse 10
And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.
How many people here read the word suffered and turned off?
Suffering has a spiritual purpose.
Most people have heard the story of the father who caught his son smoking cigars. The father went out and bought a box of cigars and locked his son in a closet and said you don’t get to come out until you smoke every single cigar. The idea was to make the boy so sick of cigar smoke that he would never touch them again.
Sometimes our heavenly father has to do the same thing with us.
Many times we fail to resist the triggering of the enemy because of fear, or because of doubt, or because of unbelief and the worry takes over and produces anxiety.
The reason the enemy is successful at triggering us is This comes from not disciplining our minds
2 Cor 10:5 to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Jesus.
I can’t emphasis enough the importance of that principle
Not being disciplined in our thoughts will cause us to enter into that time of suffering
So we might have to spend some time walking through that Valley of the shadow of death.
Suffering brings clarity when nothing else will work.
Nothing makes you appreciate a good meal like hunger.
Most of us don’t even appreciate electricity until there is a power outage.
Most of us doing appreciate good health until we are sick.
All of us don’t appreciate God’s presence, power, and provision until He with holds it.
That’s what the goal is of God allowing suffering in our lives.
Instead of asking “Why Me?”, ask God “What can I learn from this that will make me more like Jesus?”
2nd way to deal with worry and anxiety is humble yourself
Verse 6
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
God wants our problems.
Isn’t that a strange thing? Most of us avoid drama in our lives, but God asks for you to trust him and to give him all of your drama.
That’s an incredible truth and insight into the Father heart of God
God loves you in spite of your drama, and even wants to walk through it with you and lead you out of it into His will for your life.
One of the strangest things about people is that we have this strange masochistic need to hold on to our pain. We would rather spend all of our time in a condition of worry and anxiety that will ultimately kill us spiritually and physically then to simply to give it to God who is practically begging us to give it to him.
If you have problems with anxiety and worry- Make a note of this next verse on the back of your bulletin, go home and write it out and put it on the fridge as a daily reminder.
There is a very powerful verse in Isaiah chapter 30 in verse 15 that says
This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
Most of us would rather keep staring at our problems than to give them to the one who died to carry them.
I’m going to close today with a demonstration of how we should see our problems, especially when they produce anxiety.
Problem illustration
Staring at the paper (large problem) until you can’t see anything else
God’s view (flip side)- small problem
Do you want the key to victory over anxiety?
Follow God’s way- drop the paper and raise hands in worship.
Altar Call
