90. Freedom From Anxiety Part 2

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 Hollenfield and James Safer. Welcome everybody to the For Freedom Podcast. This is the podcast that we desire to bring the freedom of the gospel freedom of Christ and the sufficiency of scriptures to real people with real issues of life. And so we've gone through a couple of subjects. Our subject for the month of April is Freedom in Anxiety. And we covered last week a little bit. James, how are you doing this week? John, it's been great. We had a wonderful time there with you. We're still recording this on the same day of recording, but I know that we're Come on. We are going to love the ark and things are going well. And just trying to... John, we had just such a great time on Easter with our sunrise service that we did. And then I was able to give a little talk there at the very end. And then we had our great massive breakfast that we have every year. Our wonderful Sunday school and then the worship service that we had. It was just a great overall time. We're just worshiping the Lord. I was reflecting even when I was giving some things to our main church as I was closing out the service. And I said, I don't want us ever to forget that three years ago, we were isolated and trying to figure out church. It could not meet. We were not meeting. We were having people come to the church to pick up Easter things and doing Easter at your home and trying to do church in our home. And I said, it was just a hard time in church. And I said, three years later, we're back meeting. Things are great. God's blessing. I said, I don't want us ever to get to the point where we forget what we were at three years ago. I said, because we take that for granted and we come back and we're just in the norm of life again when it's not guaranteed that this is how it's going to be. And I just wanted to encourage them. Hopefully I'm encouraging you as well in understanding that just a couple of years ago, we were struggling. We were in a place where we did not know what was going to go on. This podcast started out of that place. We had some free time. We thought, let's talk in a microphone and see if people listen. And we've had more downloads than we ever imagined having. And it's been a blessing to be able to help people. The responses that we've got on Facebook, private messages, even people that disagree with us and said, hey, I don't agree in this area. It's been a good time of conversating with people. My dear brother, Raybold, out in, I believe it's Texas, who started a military chapel service. I think he's actually called it the For Freedom. He's used the name Freedom in it, which has been great. But just being able to see the thoughts that we've been able to share through God's word and the lives we've been able to impact has been an amazing thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And we are going to jump into the second part of this subject today on anxiety. And next week we'll be dropping an interview with pastor and biblical counselor Paul Tauches. And he wrote a 31-day devotional on anxiety. And so we encourage you to listen to that. It's a really good interview. Much better than what James and I are doing here. But hopefully we can get ourselves out of the way and just point you to the scriptures. And that's our desire. We walked through a little bit of the subject of anxiety and got into, just very briefly, into Matthew 6. And Jesus is speaking here to his followers about worry and anxiety. And so we now come to this. And so last week I sort of ended with talking about what do you believe about God. And this comes to what Dr. Robert Jones in his little booklet on why worry points to is the second root of worry, which he says is unbelief. And so, James, why don't we read from verse 25 to 34 there. 25 to 34. Therefore, I say unto you, be anxious or take no thought 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 than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. For they do not sow, nor do they reap, nor do they gather in the barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more better than they? Who among you is, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature? Why take thought about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field. How they grow. They neither toil, nor work, nor spin. Yet I say unto you, even Solomon, in all of his glory, was not dressed like one of these. Therefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is here and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? O you of little faith, therefore take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For Gentiles seek after those things. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. But seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you. Therefore, take no thought about tomorrow. For tomorrow will take thought of the things of itself. Sufficient to the days is the trouble thereof. Okay. And so, he comes here, and one of the things that we see is that those who struggle with this, he says, have little faith. Which means they have some faith. Yeah. Which helps us, and I find this, don't find this discouraging, I find this a little encouraging, that this is the idea that Christians struggle with this. Yeah. We do struggle with this. Okay. As we saw earlier, Jesus prohibited worry, but he then also gives us reasons not to worry. God values and cares and provides for his children. We talked a little bit about that last time. I mean, if he's going to care for the creatures, he's going to care for you. Yeah. Yeah. If God provides for the plants, he will provide for his own children. Did he redeem and die on the cross for the plants? Don't think so. Okay. But he did for us. And so, that means that we are more valuable. We are cared for more than the plants. Verse 27. I like this. James read it in a different translation than the ESV. It says, which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And basically, the idea is this. Okay. Tell me how much productivity you're worrying has. What has your worrying produced? Yeah. What has your anxiety produced? Tell me the positive results. Give me the data sheet, the statistics of this is where you worried about it. This is how that paid off. Yeah. And I remember our former pastor used to tell a story about a guy and his wife were talking. And he said, honey, you know that 80% of the stuff that you worry about never comes true. And she said, that means it's working. And I guess that's a way you can look at it. But I don't think that's a very wise or biblical way to look at it. Worry, when it comes down to it, and I'm not trying to say this harshly, I want to say this with a heart of love, reflects a mindset of unbelief. Yeah. And really, when you really think about it, John, if you are in a state of worry, gets back to what we talked about last week. You are trusting in self rather than trusting in God. What can I do to change the situation? Because oftentimes that's what it boils down to. God, you're not fixing this fast enough for me. You're not taking care of this the way I want it done. And so just get out of the way and let me do it. And we begin to put ourselves in the place of God. And we say, I can do it better than you. And so I'll just take it over from here. Yeah. And we get this mindset of unbelief. I like how Dr. Jones says he goes on to say that worry is the characterization of pagans and those who do not know the Lord. The Gentiles, as he said there, it says the Gentiles seek after all these things. They seek after the clothing. They seek after the worry of the day, the worry of the time. He said this is what the Gentiles seek after. But as they're ultimately saying they are seeking after temporal things, but believers should be seeking after the things of God. That's verse 32. Yeah, verse 32. Yeah, and that's the thing. I think that we have, and let me ask you this question, listener. Now, strongly consider whether you are looking to temporal things or things of this world for security. Or do you look to your Heavenly Father, to the God who loves you, to provide the security He deems best? Right. That doesn't mean check your brain at the door and just like open up your doors and your windows and say invite anybody to come in and they can come. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying there's wisdom and there's a point where the wisdom ends and becomes where you're worrying about things. And you know, James, I think women get a bad rap with this in churches. Everybody thinks that women are worriers. Women worry all the time. Men do too. Yeah. And it manifests itself a little bit differently in men, I find. Men tend to just like go overly prepared about things. Yeah. Because we can't, they can't have the option of the unknown happening. Yeah. And a lot of that's due because of anxiety that's going on in the inside. Mm-hmm. And I said it this way one time. I said, whenever you're talking about what's going on in your heart and protecting that, I said, we don't check wisdom at the door. Think of it this way. Okay. We do need to have a protection there. But it's sort of like setting up an alarm system in your home and going full on doomsday prepper. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, my dad's there. He's a doomsday guy. Okay. But as it regards wisdom in your own heart, it is not unwise to have like that inner alarm system that you would protect your home with. Mm-hmm. But if you're thinking, I've got to do this, I've got to do this, I've got to do this, and you're going like doomsday prepper in your own heart with anxiety, I've got to cut myself from all of these things. Yeah. You're out of balance. Right. You've gone over into the thing of like you don't believe God anymore. You don't trust God anymore. You're trusting in your own strength. Yeah. I like how Mr. Jones says, he says, four statements to ask yourself, which of these statements is hardest to cling on to? This is good. Listen to this. Which of these four statements is hardest for you to accept or grasp to? The first one is this. God, my Father, knows what is best for me. God, my Father, number two, is more than able to bring what is best for me. Mm-hmm. God, my Father, deeply wants what is best for me. And the last one, God, my Father, will always give me what is best for me. Mm-hmm. Those are hard questions. And listen, this is the thing. You have got to just take some time and mull over those questions. James, read them through one more time. Yeah. And we begin to relate to our relationships with our Father to our relationship with our Heavenly Father in these areas. And we begin to see these attributes come out in our life. That's good. That's good. And we've been talking about the subject of trusting God. And if we could say it this way. We're talking about putting off sinful worry, sinful anxiety, and putting on trusting in God. And we see this in the text. He's saying, consider this. Consider this. Don't be anxious for this. What has anxiety done for you? What has worry helped you? Consider this. And then he comes to this aspect, I think, in verse 33. And it carries the idea of orienting our life around the priorities of God. He says, here's what you need to do. This is what you should be doing in verse 33. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And these things shall be added. So what is it that you need to occupy yourself with? Instead of worrying, instead of anxiety with these things, what are we doing about kingdom business? Yeah. Exactly. And simply put, the opposite of worry is trusting in God. We must replace anxiety with growing our focus on God's provisions and His priorities in our life. The kingdom priorities, as you said, as the scripture says here. And how we can begin to focus our life around what is it that I'm doing. Is worry adding to the kingdom of God? Or is worry taking away from the kingdom of God? That's good. Is it hindering us from actually working the kingdom, you know, doing things for the kingdom of God? Yeah, that's really good. Because if it is this, if it is, I'm worried and I've got to make money, I've got to work. And your worry is making money to provide for your family, to provide for the kingdom. It could be a righteous worry. But if your worry is, I just don't know how we're going to take this vacation. And our worry begins to focus on things that aren't productivity toward our needs, that are biblical needs that the Bible says we should do to provide for our families. And it begins to go towards worry of something very, very else than that. All of a sudden, we're taken away from the kingdom. So we come to this final plea in verse 34. And he says, do not be anxious about tomorrow. And is it that where a lot of anxieties come through? Of what, yeah, it's what could happen? What might happen? What is this person going to do? What is this person going to say? What is this situation going to bring about? What could these people, it's all about what hasn't happened? And who holds tomorrow in his hand? Yeah. God. All right. So his final plea is, do not be anxious about tomorrow. And I love Jesus' wording here. It's very like matter of fact. Tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Yeah. That's ESV. What does yours say? For tomorrow will take thoughts about the things of itself. Yeah. Listen, leave tomorrow to tomorrow. It's going to take care of itself. It's going to be what it is. It says, sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Yeah. What is this thought? He said, listen, you got enough going on today. Right. To be worrying about tomorrow. Yeah. And why can't worry improve the future? Yeah. Because if we are only focused about the future, it diverts us from our responsibilities of today. That's what you were saying earlier. The things of right now begin to get put off. The times that we're supposed to be impacting the kingdom right now and today are gone because we're only focusing about tomorrow and three days from now and five years from now, what's going to happen. And we never can see the waitress in front of us at the store that needs our help. The grocery store manager that's checking us out on the line that's taking a little bit longer because maybe she's had a hard day and she just got reamed out because her kids are having a bad day and she should have late to work and she got rode up. And, you know, her bills aren't being met that day. And all of a sudden, she's not going fast enough for us. And so we're worried about the things that are going to happen 10 minutes from now. And we are not living in the moment and impacting the person right in front of us. Well, there's one example. I give you a personal example with me. Like I've got a short time to do study for sermon prep and that kind of thing. When my mind is filled with anxieties, here's what happens with me. I find it very difficult to focus on what I need to study and read for what I need to prepare for the flock of God. Instead, I'm sitting there looking at words, but my mind is filled with the anxieties. And that's what it's doing. It's taking me away from the responsibilities of today. It drains our energy. It saps our vitality. It leaves us barren. Ultimately, John, it makes us miss the present joys of today and God's daily provisions. It does. God provides for us every day. And when we worry about tomorrow, we are not focusing on the here and now and what God is doing right now. And so some passages for you to reflect on, some homework for sake of a better term. Psalms 2410. I'm just going to mention these. You can look them up before we get some closing thoughts here. John 1632, 2 Timothy 4, 16 and 17. And really the things we need to ask ourselves are this. What are the one or two concerns in your life? They could be legitimate concerns. Concerns about good things that most often become areas of worry or anxiety for you. And then secondly, what specific truths about God and the promises of God do you find it difficult to embrace fully? And James, I want to quickly sort of look at Philippians 4 and look at, again, the put off. If we're putting off anxiety, putting off sinful worry, what can the Holy Spirit empower us to put on? And I want you to see how Paul addresses this in Philippians 4, starting in verse 4. He starts off with worship. He says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Rejoice. He starts off. He says, let me ask you a question. Where's your worship at? And not just we're talking about Sunday. We're talking about your daily worship. Yeah. Not daily devotions or something. If you call it that, that's fine. But I think so many people from our background get hung up with the... I like to call it daily worship. Are you worshiping God on your own, by yourself, daily? Yeah. And almost even in that same sense, John, are you worshiping God like you would on a Sunday morning, Easter Sunday, music's prime and good, the Spirit of the Lord is there, you're with the believers, you're praising God together. Is that looking like that in your daily life every day? Or is it looking like, let me read three verses and pray and move on with my life? Yeah. We wouldn't do that in church. And here's another passage in verse five. In the next verse, it sort of goes along with that, you know, being about the kingdom responsibility, being about kingdom business. He says this, Let your gentleness or graciousness or forbearance be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. He's saying this. He said, listen, you need to let where your lines are, where your patience is, where your forbearance, where your graciousness, be gracious to people. And you need to be about the Lord's work because the Lord is at hand. Verse six. Here's where most people focus on verse six, but you can't avoid that from the... He's asking you first about your worship. You need to be rejoicing. Then he says this, Be anxious for nothing. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything what? By prayer and supplication. By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. Oh, here it goes again. Here's how I fight anxiety. Pray and read my Bible. In short, yes. In long form, no. Because what you've probably been told or taught on praying and read your Bible isn't going to work. Yeah. But what we're going to talk about and what Paul Tauches explains in the next episode about how you pray and how you read your Bible. Yes. Yeah. And what does he say here? What does Robert Jones say about prayer in this aspect? Simply put, he gives four basic attributes, things that you should do in practical life because we want to be super-ooper-duper practical in everything we do. Simply put, he says, pray. He defines this as this. Seek the Lord. Admit the sin of anxiety. Ask God to help you with it. Repent of the various ways that you have sinned. Okay, so think about prayer this way. Not just, God, help me with my anxiety today. God, I just need you. God, will you be in this situation? That's not what we're talking about. No. I'm talking about starting off with worshiping God. Yeah. Spend about five minutes just praising God in your own prayer time, worshiping God for a different attribute each day. Say, maybe Monday you're going to praise God and say, think about how faithful God has been and then write down the ways God has been faithful in your life. Then you're going to go to him in confession and say, God, you're such a great God, but I have been such a sinner in my own life, in my heart, and these are the ways that I have sinned against you. I'm confessing my sin to you to seek your forgiveness. And so you're going to him in confession. And what does he say in verse six? He says, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. So then you're going to thanking God. Yeah. And you're thanking him for his forgiveness, for his mercy, for his grace, for his provision in your life. Yeah. And then you're supplicating. You are asking him for thanks. God, there's this situation. And it's causing this problem. And it's causing me to get my eyes off of you. Will you help me? Will the Holy Spirit please empower me not to go down this road again? And see, that's prayer. Yeah. And it's not just some quick 30-word prayer. You're communing with your God. Absolutely. You're communing with your God. So pray. And you're getting specific. You're saying, God, I'm... You're getting specific. God, I am struggling in this area of worry. I'm struggling in this area of anxiety. I need you to help. So pray and then turn. Turn back to the Lord and worship him. So after you've worshiped, after you've focused on his attribute, after you've specifically prayed, now we're turning back and saying, God, let me worship you for today. Let me worship you for another moment of my life. Getting up and being able to do that. And then the last, the third thing, not the last, but the third, respond to the Lord with the appropriate steps of obedience. By faith, act on what you know and trust the Lord and continue to overcome your anxiety in that area. Okay. So I want to look at verses seven and eight of Philippians four with that thought. All right. Verse seven says this. After you are rejoicing, you're worshiping like James was talking about, you're being gracious to others, you're putting off anxiety, you're putting on worship, prayer, thanksgiving, going to God with your heart, with your requests. And that's what he says. What do you think anxiety robs you of? Your joy. And peace. And what does he say? He says, verse seven, and the peace of God. Not the peace of you. Not what you would desire is peace. See, because a lot of times in our minds, we've set up peace as quiet. Yeah. And that's not quiet. That's not peace. Peace isn't necessarily serene, meadow, quiet, nothing going on. That's not how God answers our requests of no anxiety. He doesn't change the circumstances and gets rid of people and gets rid of problems so that now we can have peace. No, what does he do? He changes our hearts so we can have peace in the circumstances. I heard an illustration one time. I think I heard Tony Evans say it. He said that he was going through an art gallery, and he was walking through this art gallery, and he saw this picture, this portrait of painting of a serene meadow, and just like the wind blowing on the grass, and beautiful flowers, and all of the sun shining, and the beautiful trees, and everything like that. And he said, it just said, the title of the portrait was Peace. And he was like, huh, interesting. And he kept on walking. He turned a corner, and he saw this other painting. And he first looked at the title first, and he said that the title of that painting, that portrait said Peace. And he's like, well, I just saw that one. Well, let me look at this one. And he said, the painter painted a portrait of a stormy sea, and you could see land on the side. The trees were blowing. It seemed like there's a ship off in the distance, and the waves and water is crashing in on the ship. And it's dark clouds or dark lightning striking at one of the points, and it's like all turmoil, storm going on in the water. And in the middle of the portrait, there is a rock that protrudes out of a low part of the water. And on the rock is a little bird that is resting on the rock, and the sun shines down on it. And he said, that's peace. Because peace doesn't have to do with our circumstances. Peace has to do with where God, we have seen God in our circumstances. Which means that whenever life is crazy, trials, hardships, suffering, things that are not going our way, we can still have peace in those situations. Because this is what it is, listener. What did he say? It passes all understanding. This is something that doesn't make sense to the common person. It doesn't make sense. And we're not talking about health, wealth, prosperity, gospel kind of crap. Forgive my language there. But we're talking about this is what God does in changing your heart and orienting it to him. Because on the onlooker of that illustration, John, the bird, by all accounts, would not be peaceful. Someone looking on that bird, like, how can that bird just sit there and not be worried about what's around them? And in the same way, we can look at people in their life and say, how are they going through those situations that I could never imagine going through and still be serving the Lord and still be peaceful in their life? Yeah. The guy in my church specifically, his name is Jerry Dermeyer. I have some of the utmost respect for Jerry. Faithful man of God. One of our deacons in our church. And Jerry, when he, when him and his wife were just recently married, they had a three-year-old boy and they had gotten pregnant and they had still birthed a baby daughter. And they had to bury that baby daughter. And so when I first got there, I was asking about his family. And he said, he said that when his son was 18 years old, he was working, making money, and on the back of a truck reading some water meters. And the guy thought that he was on there and he wasn't. And he went to take off. And as he took off, he fell on the back of the truck, hit his head on the concrete and died. So now within 16 years of each other, he's lost his daughter. He's lost his son. And he said, for those next couple of years, me and my wife, we just loved the Lord. We served the Lord together. And then she got diagnosed with a disease. And within three years, she had passed away. And I did not know this. I mean, he's every Sunday, he's sitting on the front row. So he's worshiping the Lord. He's praising the Lord. And he understands the goodness of God in a way where I would not, if I lost a child when they were 18 or 2 or whatever age, I don't understand how I would be able to go through that. But yet he's lived through those things. And he's coming up on those anniversaries of the death of his son, the death of his daughter, the death of his wife, all happened within a couple of weeks of each other, different years apart. And the anniversary of their marriage is all within a month. And he always tells me, pray for me. It's a hard month for me. But he's there. He's faithful. And the onlooker, the storms are around. He's the bird on the rock. How does he see peace in that? Because of where his eyes are at, fixed on Jesus. Yeah. Putting off this, putting on this. And I think Jerry probably figured out verse 8. Yeah. Because this is what Paul says in verse 8. Finally, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there's any virtue, there is. If there is any praiseworthiness, there is. Think or meditate on these things. And this is what I encourage you to do, listener, if you struggle with this. When you have time, make a list of the good things that God has done for you. Make a list of noble things that God does in his justice. Make a list of just things. Make a list of pure things that God does. Make a list of things of God and of God's nature that are lovely. Make a list of things that are good news that God has provided. And then when you feel those anxiety attacks or that anxiety coming on, carry that list around in your back pocket or in your purse or something. Pull that list out and start recounting and thinking on those things. Yeah. Very good. The very last thing that we're going to say, and I think this gets back to also looking at Jerry's life in that little illustration, is he comes up to me and he says, Pastor James, pray for me because the part that I'm going to go through in these next couple weeks and months is tough. And what he's doing is he's involving others. Absolutely. We are not alone in this battle. You are not on an island. I don't know how many people have told me, coming out of fundamentalism, I felt like I was on an island. I was by myself. I felt like no one was around me, and I'm fighting this battle alone. You have to surround yourself with believers, brothers and sisters that care about you, study God's word together, pray together, have fellowship together, have an intimate relationship with those that are around you and involve them in your life as you go through this journey. Because they're going to be the ones you can call when anxiety hits and you are focused on whatever it may be that is sinful and you're able to call them and say, Hey, I need just some help. Talk to me through this. Pray with me. Yeah, pray with me. Talk me down off this cliff almost. And that's where we get to this point where we are involving other people in our life. So pray, turn back, respond to the Lord, but then bring other people into this relationship, into this journey with you so that you're not alone. Absolutely. And so that's a great word, James. And so this is just scratching the surface. There have been some really good resources written about this, which I think Paul even mentions. I've mentioned Paul Talch's book that we're going to get to interview him next week on. So we invite you to come back next week to listen to that. James mentioned the booklet by Dr. Robert Jones on this. There is a much lengthier work on this by a guy named Dr. Ed Welch called When People Are Big and God Is Small. And that is a fantastic resource about this. If you want to dig into it a little bit more, we are thankful for your attention. And we understand there have been people that have been hurt in church and that kind of thing with just trite and quick bad advice when it comes to worry and anxiety. And we don't want to downplay that. But we want to point you back to the truth of the Scriptures, the truth of the Savior, the truth of Christ, and how that good news can even bring you freedom in the midst of anxiety. That's good. Well, John, 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. If you enjoyed the content of the podcast, please do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing the podcast on whatever podcast platform you listen to.

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