Overcoming Anxiety - Leaders' Talks

Proverbs 1225.

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down.

Never feel that like a thousand pounds.

Just a minute.

You just feel yourself getting under the wave of anxiety.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on the road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message.

Good morning.

I appreciate you coming.

Let me go ahead and pray.

I, you know, I've been doing this for about 40 years, but I always get a little bit nervous.

I think it's a good thing.

And prayer just kind of helps me to settle down.

So, Heavenly Father, again, we just come to you in the name, that wonderful and majestic name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And we thank you, Holy Spirit, that you are here.

You're not here as a casual observer.

You are here as a change agent.

And I pray that as I open your word, that as I speak to these wonderful people, that you will help me to communicate in a way that is easy to understand, empowered by your spirit, bless our time together.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

When Pastor Steve asked me to speak, I mean, as soon as he asked me, the Holy Spirit quickened my heart, and I knew what I needed to talk about.

So I'm going to be talking to you this morning about how to deal with worry and anxiety.

Most of you have never had to face that, but for the few of you that are here, this message is for you.

So let me just start by saying, you know, in the past few weeks, Pastor Steve has been talking, well, we've been going through the book of Revelation, and in going through the book of Revelation, we're talking about end-time prophecies and the things that are actually taking place that would suggest to us that we are in the last days.

So just a quick survey.

How many of you believe that we are in the last days?

Can I see your hands?

Oh my goodness, I'm preaching to the right crowd.

I believe that.

I really do.

We hear daily about the increase in lawlessness, wars, pestilence, famine, natural disasters, the threat of economic collapse.

You're supposed to be buying gold and silver, right?

You know, we hear those advertisements all I'm buying canned ham.

I think it's going to be easier to use as a commodity than gold coins.

And then we add to that just the very real pressures that we all face concerning just our personal lives, our families, our jobs, and those kinds of things.

I mean, it's it's easy for all of us to be anxious.

The Apostle Paul spoke to this in Philippians 4, 6 when he said, be anxious for nothing.

Now it's interesting I want to talk about two words, anxious and nothing.

Nothing is easy.

In the original language, it really does mean nothing.

The word anxious, a little bit more difficult.

So let me take some time to explain to you contextually what Paul is talking about.

Now understand, Paul's the guy who people are chasing him, wanting to take his life.

He's been shipwrecked.

He's the guy that said, I know what it is to be naked, to be clothed, to be hungry, to be fed.

Paul has suffered of all of the apostles, Paul has suffered to the greater degree of any of them.

And he's the guy who is saying to the Philippian church, I don't want you to be anxious about anything.

So the word anxious means to have concern, to be troubled with cares, a distracting care.

Ellicott's commentary to the English readers, the prohibition is of that painful anxiety which is inevitable in all who feel themselves alone in mere self-dependence.

It's an important statement.

If you feel alone and the only hope that you have is internal, the only hope that you have is you, you're in really big trouble.

If you think you can face the pressures of this life without Christ, God help you.

Matthew Henry says there is a care of diligence, which is our duty, and agrees with a wise forecast and due concern.

But there is a care of fear and distrust, which is sin and folly, and only perplexes and distracts the mind.

Constables notes, the resolution of this problem lies in viewing anxiety as concern that may become fretful and inappropriate if taken too far.

We all deal with concern.

We all deal with anxiety, but when it's taken too far, when it's not dealt with appropriately, it is absolutely debilitating.

Webster puts it this way, and I really like how he defines anxiety.

It is a painful or apprehensive uneasiness of the mind, usually over an impending, anticipated ill, fretful concern of interest, an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear, often marked by physiological signs, by doubt concerning the reality and the nature of the threat, and by self-doubt about one's capacity to cope with that.

Can you relate?

Ever had that feeling where I just don't think I can handle this?

I've had so many people say, you know, God says that He won't allow us to be tempted above what we can handle, and I'm there.

And I can't handle it.

So either God is a liar or we have more strength than we think that we have.

But the strength is not in us, the strength is not in our ability to cope.

Some of you have greater abilities than others.

It's not in your capacity to analyze and to handle a situation.

It's in your relationship with Christ.

If your relationship with Christ is weak, you will be overcome.

You will be overcome.

So the apostle, well, let's see, let's look at Jesus first.

He talks about all the common anxieties in Matthew 6, 27, 28, verse 31 and 37.

And which of you being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Here's my counsel to you.

If anxiety helps you, go for it.

If that empowers you to overcome, God bless you.

And why are you anxious about clothing?

Consider the lilies of the field.

And he just kind of goes on and on and he covers four topics.

He says, Why are you anxious about what you eat?

Why are you anxious about what you're going to drink?

Why are you anxious about your body?

And why are you anxious about how you're going to clothe your body?

Now, is there anything in that that we haven't struggled with?

I mean, I'm getting older.

Time and gravity are my major enemies.

My hair is gray, I wear hearing aids, I have bifocals, and my knees are bad.

And I could probably stand to lose about 20 pounds.

Now, I can be anxious about all of that and probably not get any better.

I doubt that my hearing would improve or that I could finally throw away my glasses.

There have been times in ministry where we've had more month than money.

I remember one time in particular where, and I may have shared this story, where we didn't have the finances to pay our rent, we didn't have the money to pay our utilities, we didn't have the money to buy food, and there was maybe one or two meals left to cook.

And it was raining outside, it was nighttime, and I said, you know, sweetheart, I just, I'm gonna go and walk and pray, and I'll be back whenever I'm done.

Because I was anxious.

I was very concerned, not just for myself, but I'm married to a wonderful woman.

We've got little children, and our situation is affecting our entire family, and I was anxious.

And so I went out and just started walking in the rain.

I don't even know how long I walked.

I walked and I prayed until there was nothing left to say.

I walked and I prayed until I just had that knowing deep inside that somehow something changed.

And I went home.

I got up the next morning to a phone call.

George, the Lord spoke to me last night.

This is a man who never came to our church.

This is a man I met one time a year ago, and he said, The Lord has impressed upon my heart that I need to help you financially.

Can you come to my home?

And I said, Yes.

Probably broke the speed limit getting there.

And I'm thinking, man,$20 would be so helpful.

And he opened the door and he gave me a folded check, and I hugged his neck and I thanked him, and I drove until I knew he couldn't see me anymore.

And I pulled over it and I opened up the check.

It was for$1,000.

That was almost 30 years ago.

$1,000 was humongous.

It paid our rent, it filled our cupboards, the lights were on.

It was amazing.

The guy never came to our church and I never saw him again.

God has a way of dealing with anxiety.

And then, for those of you who are single, and it's amazing how many single people I talk to, most of which seem to be women, and everything from 16 to 60, who either have never been married or have been widowed and want to be remarried.

And it is amazing how anxious single people are, male and female, about marriage.

I'm getting older, the clock is ticking.

Do you hear it?

She hears it.

And then we get married, and and now we're anxious over different things.

How am I gonna feed my family?

Oh no, there's a layoff coming.

I mean, goodness gracious.

Does it never stop?

And then I probably shouldn't mention this this morning, but I'm feeling rather brave, so and then we've got our election coming up.

And I want to tell you the mistake that you that you'll be tempted to make is to not go and vote.

And that's a terrible, terrible mistake because too many men and women have suffered and died so that you can have the privilege of casting your vote.

So don't stay home.

Pray and seek the Lord and vote for the person that you believe can put the right people into legislative office, into our court system.

Vote for the people that are going to try to do things according to the scripture.

So now we'll move on.

Proverbs 12, 25.

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down.

Ever felt that?

Like a thousand pounds, just I mean, you try to walk and it and you just you just feel yourself getting weak under the weight of that anxiety.

The Hebrew word for anxiety is anxious care, heaviness, anxious fear.

A scripture that really portrays this well is in Jeremiah 49, 23.

It's in the Amplified Version.

Concerning Damascus in Syria, Hamath and Arfad are perplexed and shamed, for they have heard the bad news.

They are disheartened, troubled, and anxious like a storm tossed, a sea which cannot be calmed.

Does that register with you?

Emotions so stirred that they can't be calmed.

You've heard the bad news.

Maybe it's a medical prognosis, prostate cancer.

The company's just been bought out.

We're going to be downsizing.

It's amazing how bad news our daughter's cutting.

Our son is doing drugs.

It's amazing how bad news is like a rock in your gut that just simply won't go away.

And we've all experienced it.

We've all experienced it, and we will experience it yet again.

The important thing is how do we deal with it?

How do we deal with it?

Here's some of the common signs, just in case you're wondering, am I experiencing anxiety?

Increased heart rate, unexplained sweating, shaking, inability to breathe deeply, hyperventilating, feeling cold for no reason, having flashes.

Anxiety is real.

So how do we deal with it?

Proverbs 5, verse 6 and 7.

Proverbs 5:6

Well, let's see, before we get there, let's do Proverbs 423.

Very familiar scripture.

Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

And I think this is God, this has to be the foundational scripture.

It really does start with guarding my heart.

Now, it's important that you understand when he's using the word heart, he's not talking about a body organ.

What he's talking about is your mind, your emotions, your will.

He's talking about the whole person.

He's saying you've got to guard your heart above all things.

That's an amazing thing.

He doesn't pray about all things.

He doesn't say fast about all things.

He says, guard your heart above all things.

So that's a great scripture.

Well, how do we do that?

What does guarding my heart really look like in a practical way?

Well, 1 Peter 5, verses 6 and 7 says, humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, verse 7, casting your anxieties upon him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:6

Now, this is such a simplistic point, but sometimes it's the simple things that escape us.

The first way that I guard my heart is I have to humble myself.

How many times have you been in trouble and you don't talk to anybody?

I mean, here's what happens in church.

Hi, Steve, how are you doing today?

And what does Steve say?

Oh, I'm fine, thanks.

How about you?

While inside he's just dying.

We are so good at wearing masks.

We are so good at pretense.

But the scripture says that if I will humble myself, if I will humble myself, so how do I do that?

How about reaching out after this service during the time of worship and communion?

There'll be prayer teams on both sides.

It's a humbling thing to walk up and say, Hi, I need you to pray for me about this or pray for me about that.

It's a humbling thing to break the code of silence.

If we humble ourselves, then we are at a place emotionally and spiritually where we can actually give God our burden.

But here's the trouble that sometimes I struggle with.

I give it to him, hmm, nothing's happening, I take it back.

And then I'm convicted and I give it to him, and I get prayer from Don or somebody else, and nothing's happening, so I take it back.

We've got to cast.

Oh, I can't do what I'm thinking.

I shouldn't throw the pulpit.

Um we have to cast our burdens upon the Lord, and we need to leave our burdens with the Lord.

So how do we do that?

Pray, pray, and if all else fails, just keep on praying.

Philippians 4 and verse 6 in the Amplified says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything, there's that word everything again, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.

Paul is saying, Paul is the guy who started in a verse earlier who says, Don't be anxious for anything.

Okay, so you don't want me to be anxious.

You don't want me to be burdened down, to be heavy, to be sinful in the way that I'm thinking and approaching life in my own flesh.

So how do I not be anxious about anything?

Pray about it.

Reach out to people that you know that care about you, that love you, that will join with you in prayer and continue to pray about it.

And don't forget to be thankful.

God doesn't exist to serve you.

If you're going to go to the Lord in prayer, always go with an attitude of gratitude.

I was talking to a person this week.

How come God's not answering my prayer?

My husband's working full-time, I'm working full-time, I'm going to school, our financial needs are not being met.

I don't want to get a part-time job because that'll interfere with my employment.

And I said, ma'am, let me ask you a question.

When you pray, are you thankful?

And it's almost like she didn't hear my question, because she just kept going on about how anxious and uptight and stressed that she was.

I said, ma'am, at the risk of sounding hyper-spiritual or simplistic, can I just ask you a question?

Well, yeah.

When you got up this morning and you opened your eyes, could you see?

Oh yeah.

When you went to your closet and you opened the door, did you stand there wondering what you were going to choose and what you were going to wear?

Well, yeah, I did.

When you went and you opened your refrigerator, how long did it take you to decide of all the food that was in there what you were going to eat?

I said, before our conversation ends, there's a high likelihood that a brother or sister in Christ will give their life up for the cause of Christ before we conclude our conversation.

Are you thankful for what you have?

Because I have friends that when they open their eyes, all they see is darkness.

I have met people in third world countries that the only clothes they have are the ones that they are physically wearing.

When you pray about those things that you're so anxious and heavy about, are you thankful?

For what the Lord has already done, for the mercies and the grace and the forgiveness of sin that your name is written in the Lamb's book of life.

Are you thankful or just focused on what you don't have or what you fear you're going to lose?

I have to confess to you, she didn't get it.

Ephesians 6.18, pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication also for the saints.

The emphasis that I want to draw to is in the Spirit.

The Apostle Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 14, 15.

I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also.

What he is saying is I'm going to pray as the Spirit of God gives me the capacity to pray in probably a language that I don't know, but then I'm also going to pray in the language that I speak.

I am Pentecostal, for those of you that may be wondering.

I am filled with the Holy Spirit, baptized in the Holy Spirit, and I am so grateful for the gift of being able to pray in the Spirit because there are times when I do not know how to express my heart to God.

I don't know what to say anymore.

I've exhausted my vocabulary.

And I slip into the spirit, and man, something supernatural happens.

We need to pray.

We need to pray with others.

We need to have people pray for us.

We need to pray in our given language, and we need to pray in the spirit.

This is a gift for every child of God.

And every good and perfect gift comes from the Father.

And if you haven't received that wonderful gift, I want to encourage you to seek the Lord.

Because I guarantee you, there are times in life when your common language just isn't going to suffice.

And you're going to need to press into a supernatural realm where you can receive the comfort and the consolation of the Lord.

Is that okay?

Psalm 62 and verse 8.

Trust in him at all times, O people.

Pour out your heart before him.

God is our refuge.

How do I guard my heart when I'm facing the death of a loved one?

How do I guard my heart when I have a prodigal son or daughter that's living a lifestyle that just scares me to death?

How do I guard my heart when my house is in foreclosure and my entire family is at risk?

How do I deal with the cares and the concerns that are very concrete, very real?

How do I do that?

God is my refuge.

So let me give you some very specifics.

First of all, just take one, just take one day at a time.

And one day at a time is too much, take one decision at a time.

Sometimes we just got to break the day down into do I have enough of God to face just the next decision?

Matthew 6, 34.

So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own.

Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.

But how many of us keep borrowing from the future?

Oh my goodness.

It's so easy.

I mean, what's gonna happen?

I mean, boy, what's gonna happen next week?

What's gonna happen in six months?

What's gonna happen next year?

Oh my God, the world is coming to an end.

It's a trap of the enemy.

Jesus, I think he was a pretty smart guy.

I think he understood the human heart, and he is saying with this incredible understanding of the human heart, today is all you can handle.

Don't be borrowing trouble from tomorrow.

You will sink.

I think that's pretty good counsel.

Number two, have faith in the moment.

Luke 12, 11 and 12.

And when they bring you before the synagogue and the magistrates and the authorities, do not be anxious beforehand how you shall reply in defense of what you are going to say.

Verse 12, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that hour, in that very moment, what you ought to say.

Just have faith in the moment.

As I am facing, you know, I get the call from the collection agency for the 150th time demanding payment.

Can God give me what I need in the moment?

When I got the telephone call that my father had died, I needed the Holy Spirit in that moment.

God loves you.

His love for you is so incredibly intense, it is so incredibly personal that he will speak to you in the moment when you are called to the boss's office and you're kind of anxious about, oh my goodness, what does he want to talk to me about?

Because the only time he ever calls me into the office is when something is not good.

Or worse, you get a call from Pastor Steve, and he wants you to come to his office.

Oh my goodness, anxiety off the chart.

What have I done now?

What am I going to say?

I think God will give you the words in the moment when you actually need them.

Can we trust him to do that?

Can we do that?

Worship.

Philippians 4 and verse 1.

Rejoice in the Lord always.

Does he mean always?

I mean, does he mean when I'm fighting cancer?

Does he mean when I've just been sued for divorce?

Does he mean always?

Yeah, he does.

Here's the reason why.

As human beings, we're really pretty simplistic.

And for those of you who are offended by that, I'm sorry, but you're simplistic too.

We can give full thought to one thing at a time.

We can't give our complete attention to more than any one thing at a time, complete attention.

And so if your attention has been arrested by the cares of the world, by anxiety, by worry, and your thoughts are captivated by that, it's an amazing thing that worship does.

It's like the Holy Spirit gently puts his hand under your chin and lifts your gaze so that you can look into the hope that is in Christ Jesus for eternity.

Worship helps me to refocus.

And that's one of the reasons it's so important.

When I worship the Lord, it's hard for me to continue to focus on my anxieties and my fears and my concerns.

And it's not that I don't have to give attention to those things.

But I have to be careful that they don't progress to such a point that I'm debilitated.

And worship helps me.

Worship is that shot on the spiritual arm that just all of a sudden returns my joy and gives me a fresh perspective, and I probably won't die from this.

I've gone through forced terminations, terminations, more than one.

And boy, you begin to wonder if you're worth anything.

And then I go into worship.

And oh my goodness, the joy that just floods in and washes out all the junk.

And we're gonna have an opportunity to really practice that today.

If we will do those things, then we can hang on to Philippians 4.7.

This is one of my favorite life scriptures.

I have about a hundred or so life scriptures.

I've never been able to dial it down to one.

But this is one for sure.

Philippians 4.7 in the amplified classic version, and God's peace shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Man, I need that.

I need to experience that shalom, that peace that quiets my heart, that gets rid of the rock in my stomach.

If anxiety is a real major, major problem, you may need to be on medication.

But here's the thing the medications were never designed to heal.

Never designed to heal.

Only designed to help you cope.

This prescription is not designed to help you cope.

It's designed to heal you.

And it takes practice.

We have to practice the presence of God.

We have to become disciplined that when anxiety comes, when when that arrow is shot out of the darkness and pierces our heart, that we do the things that we know that we need to do.

See, that's that part about humbling.

When you are hit and you will be.

This is the world we live in.

It's fallen.

You will be betrayed, you will be hurt, you will be disappointed, you will suffer financial hardship.

You know, bad stuff is going to happen to you.

Aren't you glad you came to hear this today?

Praise God, we're going to go into worship.

When those things happen, humble yourself.

Humble yourself.

Give God your care, your concern, your anxiety, and he will do for you what no medication can, what no therapy group can, he will give you his peace.

That peace that takes you to a new place of hope and security.

You've been listening to The Road.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.

Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.

Thank you for tuning in today.

Be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road.