91. Freedom From Anxiety Part 3 w/ Paul Tautges

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 Holyfield and James Saifert. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. We are thrilled to be here with a guest today. Me and John are excited about going through this month, talking through the thought of anxiety and how anxiety can cripple us, how the Bible gives us help and hope through how we can overcome anxiety. And we are excited to have Paul Tauches here with us. He just told us that it's cauches with a T, tauches is how you pronounce it. So I've been pronouncing it wrong my entire time of reading after it. So it's good to actually know how to say that right. And so we are thrilled to have you here. I'm just proud that you said it right, because I can't tell you how many people we have on our show. And James, they'll say, this is how we pronounce our name. And James continues to mispronounce it. Like Shana, you just kept saying Shana. Shana, yeah, yeah. That was a bad one. That's what I'm saying. I think when we met her live, John, I still pronounced her name wrong. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, Paul is, he serves as a senior pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. He is an ACBC member and is also a board member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Paul, we'd like for you actually to, it's easy and we tend to, I think, get distracted with all the lists and accomplishments. And I know you've wrote several books and we're going to talk about one a little bit today. But me and James sort of like to think that a man's family is sort of like really his, what is his life God has given his main stewardship to. So tell us a little bit about yourself, your ministry, and your family. Yeah, well, thanks so much. Well, the Lord graciously saved me in the early months of 1984. I had been raised in a man's works religion. And the Lord graciously opened my eyes to the freedom of the gospel. And that it wasn't about do, do, do, but it was about what Jesus had already done, done, done. And he began a good work that year in 1984. And he's continuing that. And so I'm just so amazed every day to know the Lord and to know his immense love and care for me and my family. So it was a couple months after I got saved in 1984 that I met Karen, who then became my wife in 1986. And we then moved away to the Kansas City area where I went to Bible College. And she focused on raising our fast-growing family. Over the years, the Lord has blessed us with 10 children. And five of them are married. And so we also have eight grandchildren. And so our life is very full, very busy, but, you know, filled with the blessings of God. And I've been involved now in pastoral ministry for over 30 years. And biblical counseling has pretty much been a part of the DNA of that ministry all along. That is incredible. And, you know, you said 10 children. And that's more than me and John have combined. To be a pastor and to have 10 children would be definitely a big balance there. And it's great to see that five of them are married and you've got grandkids now. I'm telling you, my man doesn't look like he's old enough to have grandkids. My man doesn't look like he's old enough to have 10 kids. Well, you know, I got my dad's aging genes. My brothers and I are envied by others because we don't look as old as we are. We just took new family photos this past weekend. And on the way there, my wife looks over and she said, James, you're starting to get a lot of white hair on the sides of your head. And I said, yeah, it's my wife and three kids. And I can only – you're sitting there with nothing like any white hair. You've got 10 kids. Oh, that's crazy. Well, this month we've been talking about anxiety. And Paul wrote a – he's done some work on this. But he also wrote a book in the series for PNR Publishing, the 31 Day Devotionals for Life, on anxiety knowing God's peace. And so we want to talk about this today. But I guess the first question – always the first question for a book and that kind of thing is why the reason for writing this. Why you writing this? You know, what was the motivation here? Yeah, it was definitely the Lord's providence in preparing me as a person in just my own struggles and also just providentially being a part of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. I knew that this series was developing and I know the editor of the series. And so when it came time to find out what the topics were, I pitched my favor toward writing on anxiety. And I was disappointed at first because if my memory is correct, someone else had already been chosen or said, hey, I want that topic. But anyway, in the Lord's providence, that didn't work out and it came to me. And I'm so thrilled because I've really been a lifelong worrier even when I was a child. But when I became a Christian at the age of 19, the Lord just began helping me and changing me so much. And so throughout my Christian life, I've been learning and growing more about how anxiety works in my heart, in my mind, and how to apply the peace-producing truth of God's Word. So there's some background there. However, even in the Lord's providence, also what led to the writing of this book in particular were some events that took place in 2012, 2013. We had some really difficult trials that kind of collided in our ministry and in our family and produced some pretty traumatic events that forced me to dig really deeply into God's Word to deal with my fearful heart. And so as I was working through the scriptures, I found that the Spirit of God was bringing peace to my heart. And I journaled a lot. And that journaling then drew in blog posts, which eventually led to the writing of this devotional. And it's one of those books that, you know, I had to write for myself. And it's only in the Lord's graciousness that He has blessed it in amazing ways. And in fact, it just came out last week. The Spanish edition of the book just came out. So I'm really thrilled about that. That's great. So if someone's listening to this right now and they're struggling with anxiety, with worry, what would be a good definition, a working definition that we could use to define what is anxiety? What is worry? How do we define this in a biblical mindset? Yeah, let me come at it from a variety of angles rather than giving, you know, maybe one sentence as a definition. But because, you know, we talk about anxiety so much, it's pretty much a natural part of our conversation. But defining it isn't all that simple. It's, I like to say, it's like trying to nail jello to the wall. You know, it's just really, really hard to do. It's an emotion. Anxiety definitely is an emotion. But it's more than that. It's more than a feeling. It often includes a physical reaction, but it's more than that as well. And so when we think about anxiety, you know, what it is, I'm driven to the scriptures. And that's where I ended up, you know, just searching, okay, what does God's word have to say about anxiety? And I found that in the New Testament, there are two different but related words that refer to this experience that we call anxiety. Anxiety, they combine the noun care with a verb, which means basically to draw in different directions or to distract. So I like to say it this way, that anxiety is to have a distracting care, to have our minds and our hearts torn between two worlds, so to speak. And we see this in Jesus' warning about the thorns choking out the word of God. Because these thorns, he says, are the cares of the world. And the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life, they choke out our faith. And so these anxious cares that we have are typically tied to our earthly lives, most often temporal, you know, not eternal. So it's where we have our mental energy divided, our spiritual vision gets clouded by these anxious cares. And we're tempted then to just keep our mind and our heart just focused on the here and now instead of the future, which is promised but not yet. And so it's that pulling apart internally. And you can even feel that, you know, if either one of you are our listeners today, you know, if they experience anxiety, especially at heightened levels, they know that there's this inner feeling of kind of being pulled in different directions. And as a result of that, then it diverts our attention from what is most important. When I'm anxious, you know, my eyes are locked in on only what I can see right now at this moment, focused on the horizontal, the things of the world rather than the things of God. And that's where I find so much help in the scriptures, especially in Jesus' sermon on the mountain, Matthew 6, where he builds on that and uses that word cares in numerous ways and in numerous times tells us, don't be anxious. So I find, you know, just, I find that the scriptures treat anxiety as a very normal, common human thing. And therefore, God, in the revelation of himself in the word, he provides what we need to work through those times. I love that perspective because I think James and I have both seen maybe, I don't know, we've, and I know some of our listeners have experienced within the church culture just being made to feel like if, you know, there's, maybe you're not saved if you're experiencing anxiety. And they'll take verses from like, from Paul, this is, or be anxious for nothing or, or, or, or Matthew, I think it's a seven where Jesus talks about what not to worry. And, and, and, and even preachers will preach that and then make them feel a guilt, such a tremendous guilt for even experiencing anxiety. But I love your perspective of just like, no, if we look at this, the Bible is actually dealing with this, that this is a very real present reality that we, we will experience at times. Yeah. Well, and even on that same thought, John, just yesterday in our good news club with our kids in our local elementary school, our memory verse was first Peter five, seven, cast all your cares on him before he's here. You know, that, that was what we were teaching them. And this is the thought of, we're going to have cares. We're going to be bogged down in life. And so what do we do with those cares? And we're going to get to it a little bit. I'm getting ahead of myself. What do we do? We cast them on Jesus. He takes those cares from us because we can get bogged down. We can begin to just look at the here and now and not at the future of what's going on. So, yeah, great, great stuff there. Paul, help us with a little bit of a, how we should view this. We want to give some hope and help in just a second, but how should we view this? Because I think there's a lot of confusion of, is, is anxiety appropriate? Is anxiety like something you're always going to live with? Is anxiety something that you need to, you know, you're going to have to take medicine for? Is anxiety a sin? And there's a lot of different voices in the church, outside the church. That there's, I think there can be a lot of confusion out of this. And I know it's, it's, it's, it's going to be difficult to sort of like sum it up in just one answer on a quick podcast. But I mean, maybe help us frame our worldview, a biblical worldview around that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, anxiety definitely can be a complicated issue and we shouldn't, we shouldn't make it simplistic and, and, and even, you know, tell people some of the things that, you know, you've already mentioned. That that's not really helpful because people know what, what real life is like. And, but, but it is a complex thing involving really both physical and spiritual. You know, we are, we are body and soul and that's how God made us. And so there are some that say, that suggest that disordered anxiety is a purely physical issue. And then there are those who remain firm that it's strictly a spiritual issue that must be repented of, that it, that it's got to be the result of some underlying sin. But, but, but I just don't really see it that way. I see the balance of biblical wisdom directing us to consider the issue in a more holistic manner as a both and rather than an either or. The, the line between sin and suffering, we, we want the line between sin and suffering to be always very clear. But it, it really isn't that way most of the time in our Christian lives. And certainly there are times where we know, okay, you know, I brought this on myself because of this sin. But, but, you know, most of our, our Christian lives, it's sin and suffering mixed together in, in somewhat of a foggy way. And, and so I think that it's better to approach this, this issue of anxiety as a both and rather than an either or. In other words, you know, it's not either a bodily malfunction or a sin in the heart. It's, it's really a mixture of, of both. In fact, that's really how the Bible paints the picture of, of anxiety. There are so many scriptures that uncover the, the anxiety that is part of human experience. They, they shed light on the effect that anxiety has on our bodies and, and vice versa. And, and they, they help us to redirect our mind's eye, so to speak, to the Lord and, and to his promises where we find security and we find, we find peace. And in the early part of the devotional, as I'm working through, you know, kind of defining anxiety, I bring to light numerous biblical examples of where you've got anxiety that is right alongside physical afflictions. And, and, and even in the Bible, you see, you see sometimes there's, there are physical issues that are provoking spiritual complications. And then there are spiritual issues that are then provoking physical complications. And so I, I just don't really think it's helpful to say it's, it's either or. And this, I had, you know, I really had to come to this understanding through some really, really difficult times. Because frankly, guys, you know, I, I used to be part of that, that, that mentality that said, okay, anxiety is, is always a sin. And, and it's always your fault. And it's, it's, it's, it's always something that you have done. It's always something you should feel guilty about. And, and there's no place for involvement of the body and no place for any involvement of medication. And, and, and God had to take me through extremely difficult trials to bring me to the place where I had to face more of a biblically holistic reality, which was, you know, twice in six months, I was in the ER with what I believed was a heart attack. I mean, I had every symptom of a heart attack. And, and it was actually, it was, it was something, ended up being, being something called broken heart syndrome is, is what Mayo Clinic refers to as. And, and basically it's a, it's a stress induced condition. So that, that mimics a heart attack. And, and for a brief period of time, my doctor actually said, you know, I, I don't really want to be a heart attack. I want to go down this route, but we really do need to, to do something to, to prevent further damage to your body. And so I was, I agreed to take an anxiety medication for a short period of time. It was not as helpful to me as other believers I know who have, who have been helped. My body didn't react well at all. And so that was a very short term. It actually made my anxiety worse, but I've got biblical counseling friends who have had the same struggles that I've had. And they've been helped with the, the short term term use of, of a medication. And I think the way for us to look at it is these, these medications that are available to us today are, they're never the full solution. Right. And they're never going to deal with the actual spiritual issues that God wants us to address in our hearts and the ways that he wants us to grow. But for some believers, they can be a help. They can be a temporary help to come alongside them, to calm them down and get control of the situation enough whereby they can process the, the biblical counsel, the biblical truth that they're receiving. And respond to God's word in a way then that leads to more of a lasting pattern of peace. Yeah. So I hope that's making sense, but it does for me. It does for me because, yeah, it totally does for me. And it's, it's helpful. I, I never, unlike you, I, I never really dealt with this until I became a senior pastor. Like, it seemed like stepping into that and even the circumstances of stepping into that, like it opened up a new world and then starting counseling regularly. And I felt like I have made the biggest mistake in my life of becoming a biblical counselor because I have this anxiety of going into the session after the session. It's just like consuming me. And I'm like, I'm crazy. And I'll tell you what helped me a lot was I was listening to Ernie Baker teach a session and he talked about a period of his life. It was fairly recent and he said for six years he had this anxiety over his counseling cases that was really deteriorate, deteriorating his health at the same time. Yes. And that helped me so much. It's sort of like the first Corinthians 10, 13 principle. You know, there's someone else has gone through this. You're not crazy and that kind of thing. And it gave me also hope that, you know, hey, I need to return to the source and to the scriptures and find, you know, truth that is just encouraging my heart and stuff. But I did like that because I was meditating a lot for a while on this subject of anxiety thinking, okay, what is the source? What is the source? And I thought like I had pinpointed like the one source. But whenever I read this last year, I mean, you spend like nine, nine days. I say nine chapters, but nine chapters. But it's the first nine days talking about all of the possible sources or possible causes that this can stem from. And so that was really good for me to look at. Yeah, I think what's so important for us, John, those of us who are in pastoral ministry, we're in pastoral ministry first because we sense a calling from God. But secondly, because we love people and we love helping people. And it's easy for us as pastors, at least for me, I fell into this for a while, to kind of fall into a fix it mentality. You know, the role of the counselor, the role of the pastor is to fix other people's problems. And you know what? God had to bring me to the place where I realized, you know, I've got problems that I can't, my own that I can't even fix. You know, and so it's helped me to become more gracious with the people that I minister to. But it's also helped me to be okay with the idea of there being mystery in the relationship between body and soul. We are created, body and soul, the way God designed us. And there's something mysterious about that. And so in our ultra clinical world, you know, that wants to be able to identify and label everything, we can say, you know what? It's enough for me to know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made in God's image. And there's no way I can even begin to understand what that fully means. But I do have the very life-giving word of my creator in scripture. And he will, in his word, he will speak his words gently into the innermost parts of my being so that I become progressively more like Jesus, which, of course, is his goal for every believer. So, you know, just remembering we're body and soul together always. Yeah. And so regardless of what physical elements might contribute to a person's anxiety, I have come to the conclusion that every mental or emotional struggle that we experience is a God-given opportunity to develop our faith. And whether we are anxious today or not, our souls are always in need of the ministry of God's grace and truth by his spirit through his word. That's great. That's good. Well, for sake of time, let's move on to this last. How can we offer practical biblical help for those that maybe someone comes to you and is struggling with something, anxiety, worry? What are some ways that you help in the counseling room or some things that you do to give them that peace that only God can give? Yeah, I would say probably the number one means of peace that I have received from God is through his word, is by meditating on his word. And the second would be prayer. So let me just begin just briefly, give you one example of what I mean by meditating on God's word. I mean, not just reading scripture, but actually interacting with it because the word of God is alive. In fact, it's the only living book on the planet. And so, and as believers, we have the author of scripture living inside of us. So as we open the word of God, the Holy Spirit promises to minister that word to our hearts. And I think that most of us as believers probably just read the Bible too quickly. And we don't just, we don't read slowly and over and over and do what the Bible calls meditate on God's word to think deeply about it. And, and so one of the passages that of course has transformed my thinking and even my level of peace is the Matthew six passage where it's the longest passage of scripture dealing with the topic of anxiety where Jesus teaches us. And, and, and, and, and it's interesting because Jesus doesn't just say stop being anxious and then, you know, move on. He, he does say that he tells us don't be anxious, but, but the context in and through and around those commands is, is just so rich with God centered truth whereby he, he, he's constantly saying, look, you know, look at the birds, look at the flowers, look at the fields. Your heavenly father cares for you. And so he, he, he, he says, don't let worry distract you from focusing on the love of your heavenly father for you. That if you meditate and focus on how much God truly loves you in Christ, that love will actually then put away that, that anxiety. And so Jesus, you know, directly links our spiritual focus to the level of our, of our experience with anxiety. And so over and over, he's, he's telling us, you know, look somewhere else. Don't be anxious, but look somewhere else. Look to the eternal matters. And of course that passage ends kind of in a, in a climax there in verse 33, which, you know, seek you first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you, which is his way of saying, shift the focus of your heart to the Lord, to the heavenly father, the, the indescribable love that he has for you. And his promise to care for you and provide for you. Um, and, and that will put your heart at peace. Um, if Paul does the same thing in, in Romans eight, you know, where he, he says, well, if God gave us his son, I mean, what is there that he wouldn't give to us? You know, if, if God gave to us the ultimate gift, which is his son, then why am I, I personalize this. Why am I worried that about this and about this and that God is not going to come through for me on this. If he already gave to me his one and only begotten loved son to redeem me, to rescue me, to begin to remake me into his image. What in the world, you know, should, should shift me away from just relishing in that love. And so that's what I mean by meditating on God's word. It's just slowly reading it over and over and asking, asking questions of the text and let thing, letting the spirit then use the text to ask questions of my heart. Like, okay, so what does Jesus say about the heavenly father's love for me? You know, and, and then there's this back and forth conversation with the word of God and, and my heart, uh, exposing my fears. And, um, you know, all sinful fear is rooted in some remnant unbelief in our hearts. That's why Jesus says, oh, ye of little faith, you know, because, um, you know, until we see him face to face, we're, we're going to be continuing to grow, um, in, in our trust in, in him. Um, so I would say, get into God's word and, and find those passages of scripture that are just rich with the promises of God and, and spend time just meditating on those and, and journaling about what you're learning in those passages. That's what I mean by interacting with, with God's word. That then leads naturally into that second priority, which is prayer. Um, because what I have learned to do over the years, probably the last 10, 10 years or so is pray more scripture than I've ever prayed before. So after I've worked through a passage, what I'll do then is I'll pray through that passage and I'll personalize it, you know, and I'll say, you know, Lord, you, you, you, you've told me here that you, you, you already know all of my needs and you love me more than you love any other part of your creation, more than the animals, more than the birds, more than the flowers. And, and you will meet my needs. Um, and so I'm internalizing that word by praying through it. Um, but then the other aspect of prayer that I think is really important is asking people to pray with you, not simply for you. I remember at a crisis moment, um, back in that time period I was referring to, I reached out to some brothers in the church and I just said, would you just come over to our house and would you pray with my wife and me? I know that I, I know that I, I can just ask you to pray for me anytime, but I actually need you in my living room with me praying for me and with me. And I think that that is a ministry that's neglected in our churches today. Um, it's something that our elders, we're trying to grow in, we're trying to change that. We're trying to stop ourselves like on a Sunday morning after the service or before the service. We're trying to stop ourselves from saying, I'll pray for you this week. After somebody shares something with us, instead we'll say, can we just bow our heads right here now and pray? And while there's all this other stuff going on in the foyer or, you know, in the church building, we can just silence our hearts before the Lord right there and pray for the sheep that God has entrusted to our care. And, and, and I just have to say that I wouldn't know the peace inducing power of that had God not taken me through a crisis of my own. And I learned how incredibly comforting it is to find myself unable to pray, but to have other people praying for me and with me and, and letting the Holy Spirit do as he does. And it says in, in Romans eight, praying for me as well, when I don't know how to pray. So those are the two aspects I would say there's a lot more, you know, as far as spiritual disciplines are concerned, but if I had to narrow it down to two, I'd say spend regular time feeding on the word of God as the bread, the daily bread that your soul needs. And then use that as a springboard for how you talk to God about the things that worry you. That's good. That's great. And I liked that you explained it because I think maybe some people have heard, Oh, read your Bible and pray. And it's just like, you know, that doesn't help, but no, it's not just picking up, reading a verse and saying, you know, your, your rote prayer before you leave. It's, it's, it's, it is really communing with God. It is. Those two avenues. And I think so many in our church don't understand how to do that. Yeah. I really appreciate you explaining that. Well, you know, I mean, Jesus defines eternal life in John 17 as knowing God. This is eternal life that you know, God and his son. So if eternal life is knowing God, then, then eternal life is about a relationship. And the only way to cultivate a relationship is through back and forth communication. And so scripture is how God speaks to us. Prayer is how we speak back to God. Absolutely. And that is the way we strengthen our relationship with him and grow in peace. Absolutely. Paul, before we, we, we finish up real, real quickly. Uh, we like to ask our guest at the end. Um, do you, could you recommend one, maybe two, uh, resources that you think are, are good resources to, to go to for, for anybody? I know we, we will be linking this, uh, 31 day devotional in the show notes, but on top of that, what, what would you recommend? Yeah. I highly recommend a little mini book, uh, written by a pastor in Southern California called Help, I'm Anxious, uh, by Philip de Corsi. It's, it's a very practical exposition of, uh, Matthew six. So it's only, you know, 60 pages and it's got, um, kind of homework, uh, assignments in the, uh, in the back of it, ways to interact, you know, with God's word in regard to anxiety. Um, I would also say I've been really helped, uh, the last 10 years in particular by the writings of Sinclair Ferguson. Um, and, uh, he's written some things on, on the Psalms. There's one called Deserted by God, question mark. And he's working through one of the Psalms and, um, that, that has been particularly helpful to me as well. Um, I love Sinclair Ferguson. That is the whole Christ heavy, but excellent. It's outstanding book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. James close us down. Yeah. Paul, I appreciate you coming, man. This has been a fantastic time for me. Uh, and I know that our listeners, I know for me and John's experience, I know this is going to help. Uh, we, I think so often you hit the nail on the head when you said we feel the guilt that we struggle with anxiety. And there is this, could be some guilt, but some of it is based on other stresses and other things that we deal with. And so I appreciate you explaining that, explaining the helps, uh, that so often we can get that we forget about this there in scripture. We forget that Jesus spent time talking about Jesus and the disciples spent time discussing this. Um, and it's there in scripture for us to help us, uh, to go through life. Uh, knowing there is answers in the Bible. There is answers that God can give us. Uh, so I appreciate you spending your time today. I know you're busy and you've got a busy schedule this week. Uh, but I appreciate you coming out and being able to be a part of this today. Well, it's been a joy brothers. Thanks so much. Yeah. And until next time guys, 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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