89. Freedom From Anxiety Part 1

I found my freedom in you I found a joy I can't lose And thank God it's true You wrapped your arms around me And heaven broke through From the moment you found me I found my freedom in you Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, John Hollingfield and James Safer. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Podcast here to offer hope and help and encouragement in your daily life and struggles that we go through. John, we have enjoyed going through the last two months of parenting and marriage and talking through those topics. But we're starting a brand new topic and discussing today. What's our topic, John, as we jump into it here just a little bit? We're going to be covering freedom from anxiety, freedom in anxiety, however you want to say it. And if we sound a little different, that's because we are in the same room today. Hey. And James is traveling with his family on vacation and they stopped in to see us here in Tennessee. And so we're trying to record together and it seems like everything's working against us. Yeah, it's right. Microphones aren't working, cords aren't. So we got the one microphone hooked up, trying to pick us up both. So if we sound like we're not in a microphone, it's just because we're trying to use one together. But, yeah, we're excited. We don't normally get to record in the same room, so we're looking forward to doing this. And if you hear background noise, it's because we have all the kids. What, seven kids running around? Seven kids here playing around. Plus Isaac, which is a big kid. So, hey, that's eight. But, yeah, and then our wives and a friend of ours, Lindsey. So we've got a lot going on and we've had a great couple of days with me being here in Tennessee and got a couple of things going on up in Kentucky, going to the ARC to enjoy it with the family. But, yeah, we've had a great couple of days and looking forward to what else we have going on as we're away from school for a little bit. But, yeah, anxiety. John, this is a topic that is overwhelming. In today's day and age, I believe a statistic, which you can find a statistic for everything you want, but I want to say like three quarters of all teenagers and younger are on some type of antidepressant drugs, antidepressant anxiety medication, something to inhibit their abilities to process depression, anxiety, or to help them feel better. And so if that many people are struggling with it, it's got to be a problem. It's got to be something that's major in our society today. And so we want to talk through some things and how to give that help, how to give that hope. But what are your initial thoughts as we jump into anxiety? Why are we struggling right now? Has this always been a problem in America and we're just now seeing it? What are you thinking there? Well, when you give personal opinions on sensitive topics like the anxiety or depression, people tend to get very upset because they think that you are belittling or downplaying what they experience, what they go through, and that's by no means what I intend to do, what we intend to do. I do have personal opinions about some things. I think that anxiety is something that humanity always, and you're going to understand why when we get into the scriptures about this. I think this has always been something that men struggle with. You go to the Psalms and you see the psalmist writing about anxieties. Paul talks about some anxieties that he had. But do I think that it's more prevalent today? And I know that I can be guilty of a product of our culture, and I'm thinking our culture is the worst it's ever been. I do think anxiety is really, really bad in culture because with the proliferation of young people with social media and all of the different things. I mean, when we were in high school not so long ago, I mean, you had bullying a lot. Bullying was a huge problem in schools. But now you have bullying in a different area. You have bullying going on online and bullying going on on social media. And it's a vicious type of bullying. And, you know, whether... I remember watching a documentary on social media, and it's not from a Christian perspective, not people with a biblical mindset or worldview. And the guy that... One of the guys they were interviewing about... Whenever they were working on creating Facebook, and were working on Facebook, and they said when they had a think tank room and they were developing the like button that you see on Facebook, he said they approached it as trying to think of some way they can add positivity in the social media platform. Yeah. He said... And then the guy said this, I never dreamed it would become a monster that causes a 13-year-old's anxiety to rise up because they're not getting as many likes as they want to. Oh, yeah. And you see this as a youth pastor. Man, yeah, I see it all the time. I see it even as myself. You know, I'm not on social media a whole lot, but there's times where I'll share a post, and I'll tell Allie, man, I've got 100, 150 people that like this picture or like this post or like this statement. And I just... Even in myself, it's tough even to see that and to know how do I balance this in my life. But it was interesting. Just the other day, we were sitting at a school board meeting or a health awareness meeting council for our public schools, and one of the ladies was giving a talk on social media and some other things, and she made the statement. She said, everyone in this room was in school before social media, before cell phones, before all that. And she said, if you can imagine back to when you were in those school days, if there was a fight that happened at school, if there was something that happened, drama, anything that happened in school, when you got on the bus and got off at your house, all that drama left at the bus and left at school. Yeah. She said, when I had a boyfriend that I liked that wanted to get a hold of me, the way they got a hold of me was by calling the house phone. Mom picked up and said, why do you want to talk to my daughter? And interrogated this boy. And you know what? If she didn't want to talk to me, you know what she did? She hung the phone up. I had a mom do that one time. So she said, all of a sudden, as I'm thinking through this and processing through, nowadays, a fight happens at school. By the time you get on the bus, you've already got a video circulating through the bus of the fight that just happened. You get off the bus. The drama still is there because the kid's holding this device that they're talking to every one of their friends with. They go to their room. They go to their house. Their best friend calls them. Their boyfriend calls them. There's no parents, you know, filtering these phone calls. And they're inundated with all the drama of school 24-7. Where we didn't have that. We had parents that filtered that stuff for us. But because of the day and age we live in, there is never a time, we say disconnecting, but there's never a time where they're not disconnecting from even the drama of life. Yeah, unless they have parents that are very particular and very on purpose about it, they don't. Yeah, I mean, the kids we pick up for tutoring, we pick up about 25 or 30 of them. Every single one of them have a cell phone. Every single one will have access to internet 24-7. How many social media accounts? Yeah, Be Real, which is this new one that just came up. I don't even know. I haven't even heard it. Yeah, some new thing. Just constantly something that's coming up that teenagers are jumping on because another teenager said, hey, jump on it. And so, they're never disconnecting from social media, but they're never disconnecting from life. Where we used to just go out and play, we didn't have any worries. We're now inundated of these other worries that are constantly there. You know, did you hear about so-and-so breaking up? Did you hear about whatever happens? And it's instantaneous information and instantaneous drama as well that causes these emotions, that causes these thoughts of fear and anxiety that come up in our life. So, I think we've established the problem and what we want to do is sort of, you know, our goal is to bring the sufficiency of Scripture to bear on for real Christians with real issues. And so, we've established the problem. So, let's talk about this thing where the Bible can fit in to help anxiety. And we'll even talk about some of the hang-ups that people have with saying, oh, the Bible can't help with anxiety and some of the trite things that have been used to say this that really have not helped and try to do that. You know, talking of anxiety, it can come out of nowhere. It plagues, somebody who suffers with this, it plagues them daily. It can snap you out of your sleep. It drains joy. It exhausts your energy. Oh, yeah. John, it can cloud your thinking. It can wreck your relationships. And then the part that I think that we sometimes fail to even realize is that it aggravates our physical body. Very much so. You know, the emotions are not just in our brains. They're not just a part of our life. They can affect every area of your life. It can become heart problems. It can become blood pressure problems. It can become stress eating. All of a sudden, your physical body begins to take a toll of not sleeping. And all of a sudden, now you're sleep deprived and your body's not functioning properly and your brain's not working right because you don't have this sleep that you need. And your physical body begins to have this immense amount of drain because of this little thing called anxiety. And God created us to have mind and body. Okay? So, it is connected and it does influence the other. Just like, if you're sick with the flu, it can real easy affect your mind and get you down. Okay? And that kind of thing. If your prolonged sickness from body can affect that. But your mind can affect your body. So, what we want to do is, is there hope? We like to bring hope and help from the scriptures to this. All right? So, and people object. It's like, oh great, here it is. Here's the answers. You Bible people, you don't understand, you know, anxiety. You don't understand that. And like, if you're just going to tell me to read the Bible and pray, I don't want to hear it. I'm going to tune you out. James, is this stuff we've heard before? Absolutely. You know, how can, how does, how does the Bible help us? How can we, you know, something that was written 2,000 years ago and social media wasn't even around. How, does, Paul doesn't even know the struggles I'm going through with social media, with anxiety, with depression, with whatever it may be. How can he relate to me? How can the scriptures relate to me? And I understand those objections because people have done a poor job of trying to use the Bible to help in this area. They say things like, don't worry, be happy. Yeah, that's not helpful. Yeah. This is going to pass. This too shall pass, right? That's, that's that common. And that's, is it true to an extent? Yes. But it's so dismissive. Yeah. It's not helpful. No, no. In the moment. You know, all of a sudden we bring in our, our modern day lingo, think positive, you know, thinking to yourself a better you. And all of a sudden it's this inward all about you, thinking about you. And there are some things that even in some of the things we're talking about that is thinking, changing the way we think, but it's not thinking about how I can be a better me. It's how God can change. Which although that has influenced the church, I'd say that's more of a secular answer. Yeah. And then the other one, one of the other common answers is just think on the good things of life. Just dwell on the good. Don't think about the bad, just dwell on the good. But what happens when we just dwell on the good, John? we're not being, we're not living in reality. Yeah. We're in this false perception of what life really is. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are going to be ups and downs. There are going to be bad parts. And when you have somebody who is just like, there's, like the whole world has ended and it's just like one thing after the other, you know, they're probably thinking it's really hard to find something good here. Yeah. But, we want to look at a passage of scripture. We're going to, today we're going to cover our first point in Matthew 6 and next week we're going to finish the discussion with Matthew 6 and then go to Philippians 4 and then in week 3 we want to, we have an interview that we did with Paul Talches who wrote the 31 day devotional about PNR publishing Anxiety, Knowing God's Peace, a 31 day devotional for life. And so, that interview is going to be fantastic. But let's jump into this. Matthew 6, 19 through 34 is what we sort of want to analyze today as this subject. And let's just look first of all at verses 19 through 24. Yeah. And we're getting a lot of our thoughts today from a little booklet called Why Worry by Robert Jones. We'll have that in our show notes as well. But just wanted to give him some credit on some of these thoughts and things that are going to help us. So, Matthew 6, 19 through 21, you said, John, do not store for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroys and where thieves break in and steal. But store for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. And before we jump, go a little further, I want to make a comment on just this section. You may be thinking like, this doesn't have anything to do with anxiety. I think it adheres to the thing that we need. If you're curious about this, you need to understand this. If you're sort of like, I've heard this before, this is where we want you to jump on board with this because I think this is the key that you must understand. And the difference between we're not just saying take two Bible verses and call me in the morning. Okay? This is the difference because I use the illustration of James when I explain this, like I draw a tree, right? And I draw the ground level and then I put roots. And on the tree you put a little fruit and you put up here. Now, when you're talking about anxiety, people think, the problem I'm struggling with is anxiety. Yeah. And so, what I guide them to is that, no, the problem you're struggling with is not actually anxiety. That is a fruit. The real problem lies underneath. It lies at the heart. All right? So, what is the heart issue? Where is the heart issue? And we call that root issues versus fruit issues. See, so many people come in and say, this is my problem, but they're describing the fruit issue. Anxiety is the fruit. What is underneath? What is, and I may not, I don't know that when you come in. You may not be aware of it. And so, there are processes that we go through to work at, to see what it is that is going on. But I think Jesus gets at it here. The Savior gets at it here in verse 21. He says, where your treasure is, there what? Your heart will be also. And so, this is the question you need to ask yourself. What is it that you treasure most? What is it that you value the most? What is it that you have deemed as the most important thing you're afraid of losing? Where is your treasure? Okay? And so, this then, with this in mind, Jesus then goes into his discourse on this subject of anxiety and his followers. And so, he's going to talk to those who do struggle with worry. Now, Dr. Jones in his booklet deals with sinful worry. I do want to make a distinction. There are some in the Christian world that believe that all anxiety, all worry is sinful. And, I would say this, and this is where we're probably going to lose some people. I would say this. The vast majority of it is. Yeah. I think there are some aspects, and Paul, wait for our interview with Paul Talches. He goes into this a little bit better than I do. But there are some aspects where I don't think the believer is in sin when struggling with anxiety. But here's what happens, James. All of us want to say we're that exception. Yeah. My worry is okay. Yes. Yeah. And so, I want to We legitimize what we worry about because, well, I'm worried about my family. I'm worried about, you know, we can somehow justify what we worry about based on the causation of that worry or the effect of that worry. You know, I'm worried because of this. And it's a good cause. And we want to justify that in our own mind because we don't want to think it's sin. Yeah. And I want to encourage you, if you're listening to this, not to turn us off, but to just consider, we're not saying it's not a struggle. Yeah. We're not saying it's not a struggle. It is a struggle. And we understand that this is not easy and you wish that you didn't do it. Okay. But I want you to consider first for just a little bit, number one, Jesus' words that we're going to look at. And if maybe you fall into this biblical category here. Yeah. So as we begin to expose and look at these sinful roots, the first thing we're going to look at is worry is idolatry. simply worshiping something else is the definition that Dr. Jones gives us here. Worshiping something else begins to be this thought of idolatry. It is the thought of I am focused on or so consumed in my mind with this area that it becomes an idol in my life. This means to give yourself to some person, goal, idea, or even an object other than Jesus in our life. In some ways it's signaling that you are trusting in self rather than God. We begin to get to this point in our life where we are so consumed of this thought. And it could be a good thought as John said, it could be a bad thought, it could be an overwhelming situation in our life, it could be a decision that we've got to make in our life that becomes so consuming of our mind that everything around us begins to worry and worship on this one simple thought. Your anxiety indicates that your heart allegiances are temporarily divided. And this is where Jesus says here in verse 25 as John just read, no man, or we haven't got there yet, but therefore I say unto you, take no thought about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, but what you put on. Is not life more than food and the body than clothing? And so he begins to, Jesus begins to say here, as we look through this, he's pointing back to the first verses that we read, 19 through 24, and he shows how worry can impact our relationship with God. Yeah, I have found, I found a lot of people, and many of us, and I can say that I can become guilty of this as well, is that we misappropriate what is a need and what is a desire, what is something that we just want. And we have convinced ourselves of so many things that are needs that are not necessarily needs. So here's what happens. If we believe we need it and we don't get it, we've raised that desire to a level where it shouldn't be. And what happens is when we are threatened that we may not get that thing that we've convinced ourselves is a need, things like anxiety, anger, lashing out, those things can just rear their ugly head in our lives. And so what we need to do, need, what we must do is reorient our thinking to what actually are biblical needs. because here in verse 25 it says, therefore, Jesus is talking here, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on, is not life more than food and body more than clothing. so what is Jesus telling us here? He's telling us that these are things that he is going to take care of you. What is he not saying? He's not saying that we should not work and we should not do these, we should not try to provide these things for ourselves. He's not saying, que sera, sera, whatever will be will be and just live and let go and let God. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, go get a job, work, provide for these things. He said, do the process that you do to get these things. What is he saying, though? Don't worry about those things because if you're doing those, listen, he's going to take care of you. Alright? I had written this down, or this is from Paul Talch's book. He says, your heavenly father feeds his creatures. And then in verse 27 he says, consider the birds. And you see this word look in some translations, and some translations it's consider, and that's what he wants you to think. Your thinking is so focused on these things. He says, I want you to do this. Change your thinking by considering this. Here's the first thing to consider. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather in the barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? Your heavenly father feeds his creatures. You are more valuable than any non-human creature. Therefore, your heavenly father has a plan for your life. Yeah. As I was even thinking through those verses, John, I wrote down, we begin to look at our life through the wrong lens of humanity. We begin to use our evil, sinful eyes, our human nature eyes, instead of you looking through the eyes of a redeemed, and glorified person who loves Jesus and is seeking to follow after him. When we begin to do this, we begin to look through our own eyes, we begin to see the frailty of humanity, we begin to see the struggles of life around us, and those things are going to bring us down. Those things are going to hinder our thoughts of what has Jesus done for me? I was talking to a dear friend of mine just the other day who's in ministry and he's struggling and he said this, he said, I struggle with what's going on in life, he said, but I have to just step back and say, you know what, God's in control. God is sovereign over all and he has ordained this to happen and I just have to trust him and his plan. As hard as it is for me to trust him, I've just got to say, God, if this is what you have for me, I'm going to trust you. I don't understand it right now. I may never understand it, but I'm going to trust in your ways better than my ways. Hebrews 12 2, it's that, looking to Jesus, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Think about Peter, right? Peter steps out on the water, storm raging around him, while he's looking at who, he's good. When he looks around at his circumstances, what happens? Everything falls apart. And here's the thing, listen, we're not saying oh, it's just simply this. What we're trying to get across to you is that what, and I believe it was J.I. Packer or A.W. Tozer said this, what you believe about God is the most important thing about you. what you believe about God is the most important thing about you. That's why having a healthy theology proper, an understanding of God, knowing God, having a close relationship with God, because when God is big, the things that cause me anxiety is small. I found this in my own personal life, James. I didn't understand quite, I knew people that struggled with anxiety, I didn't quite understand this until I became a pastor, like a lead pastor. And just being transparent, I have experienced in the past few years anxiety. And it's when I am focusing on these things and not, and getting my eyes off of God that that happens. Dr. Jones says it like this, we begin to have competing masters in our life. We are balanced, it's a balancing act, and we begin to master, okay, in this area I'm going to trust God, but in this area I'm going to trust myself. And he really breaks it down, he says, who is your allegiance to? Is it to yourself, bondage, worry, fear, or is your allegiance to God the one who offers freedom, peace, and redemption through our life? He said this, when we recognize these things, it leads us to repent of the sin of worry and turn to the Lord in forgiveness. Then it begins to lead us to hate the sin that we have, the sorrow over our sinful worry and not trusting in the Lord. And then the last thing it should do is it should lead us to a desire to forsake our sin, to change our ways, put off the sin, and put on righteousness. And so recognizing what's done, leave the sin and the sorrow that were in our life, and then begin to say, God, I want to put on righteousness for your sake. I want to put on the thoughts of allowing you to be the master of my life, not myself to be the master of my life. Yeah, and again, don't get so guarded and shielded up because we're saying the term sinful worry or encouraging you to turn and repent from this. I want you to think about the kind of worry and anxiety that we've been speaking of, and then honestly self evaluate, look at your own heart, Psalm 139, 24, 23 and 24, search me, O God, know my heart, see if there be any wicked way. Have that kind of heart that you go to God and you are honestly seeing, is this in me? And then if you find that, yeah, this may be the case, then, you know, that's the thing. I really believe, like going back to God, and we're going to close with this for today, going back to an understanding of God, James, you know me, I'm a sovereignty of God guy, I believe strongly in the sovereignty of God, I'm around people in the Reformed world, and here's what I have noticed, that people who have a strong belief in the sovereignty of God don't struggle when life is hard, or when things come into their life with the sovereignty of God. They still hold strongly for it, they still say it, but why do they struggle with anxiety and anger or sins or forgiveness and stuff like that? It's not because they struggle with believing the sovereignty of God, they've got that down. Here's what they struggle with, they struggle with another attribute of God, the goodness of God, because they are so rock solid that he is sovereign and that he has ordained this and that he is in control and all of these things, but what they struggle with is, I know he's done this, I just don't think he's good. Now they won't say that out of their mouth, but their actions are speaking that. They struggle with whether he is good, and here's what it is, because we have already established in our minds and in our hearts, what is good for us. And so when bad things happen, and there are bad things that happen, we automatically reject that because we subtly buy into this health, wealth, lie. We don't ascribe to it, but deep down, our American Christianity still has a smidgen that plagues us that says that, no, God's blessing be upon me, nothing bad should happen. Yeah. And we don't see that through these incidents of suffering, of hardship, that God can bring about a good and greater purpose. Right. And this all comes down, I think somebody said it one time, I believe God is sovereign, I just don't trust him that he's good to me. Yeah. And so that's where it comes down. And how do you say, well, okay, I'm with you, you're being very considerate for the talk that James and I, how do you get to the point where you say, okay, I want to trust him, so how do I trust him that he's going to be good when the hardships come? My answer to you is, you need to know who God is. I'm going to go back to that. You need to do a deep, thorough study. of God. Read heavy reading, thicker reading, read J.I. Packer's Knowing God. Yeah. A little bit simpler reading, starting beginner reading, read A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy. Knowledge of the Holy. Start there. Read The Holiness of God by Sproul. Yeah. Get reacquainted with God. That's great. That's sort of a closing word for today. We're going to come back to this subject next week. James, anything before you read that. Father, that's great, John. I think you did some definitely there at the end. We've got to get back to what is our knowledge of God and who He is. That's a great thing there. Guys, thank you for joining us today. Can't wait to get back to you for next week. Until next time, to God be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face when I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. 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