Mind Control | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

I want to welcome you to Venture Church. Thanks for

coming Sunday after Easter.

You're here.

Many of you came your first time last week, and

you're here again this week.

Good job.

If I have not had the opportunity to meet you yet,

I'm Brandon.

I'm the lead pastor of the church.

If you're new to Venture, I'd love the opportunity to

say hi.

I'll be hanging out.

After the service right outside those doors over there.

Please swing by say hi to me.

I'd love the opportunity to meet you, greet you. You

can yell at me for wearing a Vegas Nights jersey.

I'm fine after the service, but I did warn you

on Easter that I was going to do it. We're

starting a brand new series today that is going to

last us the next month.

What we're going to do is address what the.

Bible has to say about battles in our mind, and

our challenge is that many of us have with mental health.

So over the next few weeks, you're going to have

several different speakers that will cover the topics of worry, stress,

and anxiety. And I want to warn you up front

that this series is not going to cover every topic exhaustively.

But our hope is that it will lead to honest conversations,

and that if you're someone you struggle with mental health,

that overall you'll have some really practical steps on how

to navigate through some of the challenge you have. But

most of all, that you're going to find out you're

not alone. That the Bible actually has an extraordinary amount

of wisdom.

To say about these topics.

Now, during worship, leaned over to Pastor Morgan. I said, Hey,

I think I'm going to make a bunch of people

mad today, Morgan, he looks around, looks at the crowd. Probably,

So let's just start off with this. I love you,

Let's agree that you love me, that we're all friends,

and that all of this is going to be in

the grace.

Of relationship as I share this morning. All right. Two Corinthians,

Chapter ten.

Verse four, Bible says this, the weapons we fight with

are not the weapons of this world. On the contrary,

they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments

and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge

of God.

Now here's the key. We take captive.

Every thought and make it obedient to Christ.

I want to ask.

Everyone to buy your heads, close your eyes. I want

you to repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say, Dear Jesus,

speak to my heart, change my life in Jesus' name.

Amen. This morning, I want.

To share with you three steps on how you can

navigate through abnormal stress, anxiety, and worry. Let me preface

all of this by saying, stress, anxiety, and worry in

themselves are not abnormal feelings, emotions, or responses. There has

become this thought that any sort of stress, any sort

of anxiety, any sort of worry is bad. These are

actually very normal emotions and feelings in many different circumstances.

You see, when you're in a point where the tension rises,

the stress increases, the pressure comes around, your anxiety wells

up within you. It triggers your hypothalamus and your pituitary glands.

They begin to produce endorphins that allow you to navigate

these high stress, anxiety filled situations. If you've ever experienced this,

those endorphins give you a runners high. They give you

a jolt of emotion that is sort of a sense

of euphoria. This is the way I personally describe it.

When that happens when my hypothalamus my pituitary glands kick

in produce these endorphins.

It gives me the mental.

Energy to grit and grind my way through.

The circumstances that I'm dealing with. Church. This is normal,

hear me.

Not all stress, worry, anxiety is bad. There is this thinking,

this prevailing thought that anything that causes you stress is bad.

Anything that stirs up anxiety is bad. Anything that causes

you to worry is bad. So we're quick whenever there's

any worry, stress, our anxiety to prescribe medication for you.

Uh, here we go, Here we go. PB. I knew it.

I saw the topic. It's another type a leader.

Trying to give me advice on how to deal with.

My mental health challenges.

It's another person perched up on their ivory tower, suggesting

how I should think and feel.

PB.

You're just another person who doesn't understand what it's like

to go through this, trying to tell me how I

should cope with what I'm dealing with.

I know you're thinking that I am not here.

Talking about these challenges as someone who doesn't understand. I'll

take your stress and anxiety and I'll show you my

hospitalization because of it. I am someone who eight years

ago had anxiety to the level that it was so

abnormal that.

It caused me to be hospitalized.

I've been very transparent over the last several years about

my challenges with anxiety. My anxiety was so bad, so paralyzing,

that my doctor, who loves me, looked at me and said, Brandon,

you have two choices.

You either need.

To learn how to cope and navigate through your anxiety,

or my advice to you is to find a new career.

My anxiety at its worst was paralyzing and made me

barely functional. It manifested itself in health issues where my

body was producing stroke like symptoms.

Mentally, it caused me.

To have massive social anxiety.

And now some of you are like social anxiety. I

get it. I understand, Brandon.

Imagine struggling with paralyzing social anxiety when you have to

preach and lead five services a week. That's how many

services we did back then. Most people, whenever they struggle

with mental health circumstances, they shift into fight or flight mode.

It's one or the other.

Some of you were thinking, well, I know how you

dealt with it, Brandon, You're known.

As the fight pastor. You probably just.

Put on your combat boots, put up your dukes, said

let's fight. It's actually the opposite of the way that

I responded. I shifted into massive flight mode. All I

wanted to do is run away. All I wanted to

do is leave. I will remember, I'll never forget the

lowest point at my lowest point. By the way, if

you've ever struggled with these issues, you've probably said this, well,

it can't get any worse, and.

Guess what it does.

And then you say it can't get any worse, and

it does. The worst and lowest moment that I had

in the middle of all of this, I was laying

down on a street corner, sobbing in Las Vegas seems appropriate,

on the phone with my wife, telling her I don't

know what to do because I had just totaled two

cars in one week. I didn't trust myself. I didn't

like the way I was thinking. I didn't like the

way I was responding. I didn't like the way I

was acting. And to be blunt, no one understood, no one,

you guys didn't.

I had spent up to.

That point, the previous fifteen years of my life helping

you with all of your anxiety problems. When you had

stress and were overwhelmed, you came to me and I

coached you through it. Then when I went through it,

no one understood me. I remember several months after I

was kind of gaining my bearing, I actually shared with

the church what I was struggling with. And back then

I was on video at all of our campuses, and

I remember one of my campus pastors calling me two

days later telling me how upset everyone at his campus

was that I was so honest and transparent about my

anxiety issues. Yeah, awesome, I'm being real and you're causing

more anxiety. No one understood my wife, who is the

most selfless, loving, compassionate person I know.

She didn't understand my board that deeply loves me.

We're so understanding for two weeks, then they kept looking

at me. Why haven't you snap back to normal? I

don't know something in me broke. Well, you probably got

help from your denomination, well, my denominational oversight, so didn't

understand what I was going through.

Fast forward to today.

I am well over this that I've navigated my way

through it. I lead one of, not just one of

the largest churches in the state of Washington, but I

lead one of the largest churches in our entire denomination.

And I have asked, why don't you guys at least

have me on a committee.

Seems like I kind of know what I'm doing.

And the response was, well, when we had you on

these committees, you didn't follow through. And I was like,

that was eight years ago and I had an anxiety break.

So that's how much people got what I was going through.

All of the different medications did people prescribe you when

you have anxiety?

I've been on at some point.

Prozac, hydroxyzine, adavan, xanax, zoloft, lexipro, you name it, I've

been on it. So let's take a moment as an

expert to talk about medication. And I know there is

an enormous stigma about medication, is especially in the church

when it comes to these types of medication. And I

want to say, first off, I am not anti medication.

I am not. I also know.

That there are some of you here today that love me,

that are god fearing, passionately in love with Jesus people,

And you were shocked hearing I took those medications because

Jesus should heal me. You theologically think God takes care

of all of that. So I'm going to stretch your

theology a little bit, and I'm going to tell you,

first off, I am a charismatic, fully charismatic.

I prayed for people to be healed. I've seen God

heal people.

God has healed me in numerous different settings and circumstances.

But theologically, I also believe that the creator of the

universe is able to give someone a sharp enough mind

to scientifically create something that helps this insomniac sleep at night.

I think both can happen.

But the problem with medication, especially when it comes d anxiety, stress,

worry type medications, they only.

Mask the problem.

It removes temporarily the systems the symptoms, but it doesn't

teach you how to work through it and cope with it.

And I think what can happen with these types of

medications is you can develop unhealthy dependence on these meds

because whenever you think I need to get off of

these meds, you realize the world around you has not changed.

Everything is the same.

In fact, when you're off the meds, the world seems worse,

and that's because you never developed tools to help you

deal with stress, anxiety and worry. I took medication initially

and it helped temporarily, but I refuse to take medication now.

I had to.

Develop skills that help me navigate those moments when I

have abnormal stress, anxiety and worry. Most of the time,

the stress, anxiety and worry you experience, hear me, it's normal.

I know we've created a culture where any stress, anxiety

and worry is bad. But for example, the pastoral staff,

we just finished Easter. It is normal for Easter to

be a heightened time of stress, anxiety and worry. There's

tons of people that are going to come. It's normal

to worry about parking, adventure.

It's normal to.

Be anxious as a pastor. Did we advertise enough? Did

we have enough services? It's normal to be stressed about

everything that needs to be done so that.

The services are done effectively.

Now here's the crazy part is no matter how much

you plan, how many obstacles you prepare for, it's never enough.

Something always goes wrong.

How many of you came to one of our Easter services, Razerrant,

all of you just about if you didn't listen online, Well,

if you came to one of the Easter services you

noticed that I lost my voice, you were probably thinking

he preached way too much. He lost his voice by

the time he got to this service. No, we couldn't

have planned for this. Five minutes in to the very

first Easter service, my voice gone. We didn't plan for that.

Another crazy thing. We showed up for the first Easter service,

and I have a handheld mic and a headset that

is only for me, and it's in the prayer room

in the back, just so that I can use. I'm

kind of a germophobe, to be honest, So none of

my MIC's worked.

They just stopped working. We couldn't figure out.

So they're running around at the last second trying to

find a mic that would work for me. The monitors

were struggling. That's how I know not to yell more

than I normally do, because the monitors are yelling back

at me, and I'm like, oh, I'm yelling at everybody.

Probably should stop.

Uh. But it all stopped working and then I lost

my voice. Of course, the whole staff was stressed and

worried about this. All of our hypothalamusis and pituitary glands

we're producing dorphins on steroids.

We were amped. We were all on this euphoric high.

We all had the runners high, we all have the

mental energy that said, we're gonna figure out how to

do this. We're gonna grit, grind, we are gonna make it.

Here's what happens, Die, Morgan and Christian. They're talking behind

the scenes. Okay, I know PB wrote an Easter sermon.

That's his personal testimony. Do any of us have a

testimony similar that we could share While that is going on, Heather,

David Diaz, Kevin Baker, They're thinking, we are gonna make

some sort of weird concoction that fixes Brandon's throat. So

I go back to the prayer room and there is

like five different things that I'm supposed to drink.

Gargle.

I don't know what smell all. I don't know what

I was supposed to drink, what I was supposed to gargle.

I swallowed what I was supposed to gargle. I gurgled

what I was supposed to drink. It was brutal. Poor

Pastor Claire, she's running around. She's in charge of guest care.

Tried doing guest care on Easter, you got ushers, greeters,

you got follow up.

She's running around. It's crazy. It is all normal.

At the end of that sixth gathering that we'd done

that week, all the staff kind of gathered on that

new underneath patio area.

We have over there, and we were just jassed.

We were high five in each other, We posed for

pictures together. We were like so excited and energized by

everything that happened.

And what comes up must come down.

By about three o'clock in the afternoon, you know what

we all did, fell asleep.

Totally normal for me.

I had to figure out how do I deal with

abnormal bounts of stress, anxiety, and worry? How do I

develop skills that would help me navigate through it?

So here are the three steps.

That I take that I've learned and utilized for the

last eight years that has allowed me to not use

medication but navigate through my stress, anxiety, and worry.

Three things. Are you with me? Do you still like me? Okay? Good?

Number one? Thank you.

This is gonna seem so silly, but when you feel

it coming, breathe. This is what I do when I

sense the anxiety stir I do this.

Ask my wife.

There's many times her and I are sitting in the

car and she hears me, what am I trying to do?

I'm trying to gain my bearings, trying to gather myself,

trying to calm myself down. That's me acknowledging, not denying.

I sense my anxiety stirring up. I gotta prepare myself

for it.

Number one. Breathe Number two, and this one's the most important.

Immediately start correcting your wrong thinking immediately. Now when my

anxiety creeps up, I am likely to think, believe, and

feel something that is actually not true. My feelings most

of the time are not appropriate to the circumstance and

situation that I'm dealing with. That is actually stirring up

my anxiety.

Now here's the reality.

I spent I have. I've gone all the way in school.

I have every degree you can get. When I was

doing my graduate level studies in the nineties early two thousands,

a third of my grad studies was on marriage and

family therapy because I knew as a pastor I was

going to do a lot of counseling, and it was

super helpful. But the nineties was the height of teaching

a therapy strategy that's all about people getting in touch

with their feelings. There was this thought that you can't

argue with someone's feelings, that this is the way someone feels,

and in the end you might have caused someone to

feel this way. Thirty years later, thousands of meetings with

people where I've done counseling, sometimes your feelings are not justified.

Sometimes my feelings are not appropriate to the situation that

I'm dealing with. And when all of a sudden someone

gave me the freedom to think no matter what I

felt was appropriate for that situation, they actually gave me

really bad advice because I wasn't thinking right. For example,

when your boss corrects you because you're not you're doing

a good job and hurts your feelings, sometimes it's not

because he's a bad boss, it's because you're a bad employee.

I know, we raised you in.

A world that told you just because you showed up,

you're awesome. As soon as we started giving you a

trophy just for playing, we created this monster that we have.

Now. I'm a gen xer. I grew up.

You got a trophy if you won. But kids got

their feelings hurt, so they go home and they cry

to their moms, and so their moms became the team

moms that thought every kid should get a trophy for playing.

We created an entire culture that thinks when their boss

corrects them or their pastor holds them accountable and their

feelings get hurt, those people caused it and are bad versus.

Step back self, reflect and think, do I need to

work harder at work? Do I actually need to improve

the skills so that I can play more on this team? Now?

I was a coach until my forties. I coached everything.

I coach wrestling, I coached football, basketball, baseball, soccer, track,

I've coached it all. You know what every coach has

in common. We want to win. Is it possible that

your kid doesn't get as much playing time as you

think he should not because he is the most extraordinary

player possibly gonna be a major League.

Baseball player someday And the coach, for.

Whatever reason, has it out against your kid and is

thwarting his future baseball desires because he's just not that

good and nicle which wants to win, and if he

plays your kid at shortstop, he's going to lose.

Every coach high five me on the way out TB.

That is so harsh. How do you know? Because I

am a living example of this.

My feelings are rarely right when I am in a

heightened moment of anxiety. When I'm going through anxiety, If

you text me without even reading the text, I assume

you're mad at me. When I'm in a heightened moment

of anxiety. If you request a meeting with me, I

assume you're leaving the church.

When I'm in a heightened moment of anxiety.

If my staff says, hey, PB, I need to touch

base with you, I assume they're quitting. That is the

way my anxiety works. It is not your fault because

you texted me. It's not my staf's fault because they

wanted to meet with me. I am not thinking right

and I have to correct my wrong thinking. You always

need two types of people in your life too.

Number one, you need the.

Person that feels all the feels with you.

You need that person.

You need the person that you can go to even

if they disagree with you, just feel bad for you.

You can put a head on their shoulder and you

can cry. You need that person. The problem is we

think that is only the person that we need. You

actually need the other person too, that looks at you

and tells you to knock it off. You need the

person that says you are not thinking right. I love

you enough to tell you the truth.

Stop the way you're thinking.

You are not looking at that situation through the right lens.

You are allowing your anxiety, your worry, your stress to

not allow you to see things the right way. You

need that person too, By the way, if you couldn't tell,

you know which one I am.

I love being the.

Person that tells you the truth. If you need a

good hug, go to Morgan. You gotta change your wrong thinking.

The next thing I do that helps me change my

wrong thinking is I always quote versus that give me

staying power.

So I'm going to.

Give you today three verses that you are assigned to

commit to memory this week. Now, why do I say

you need to commit it to memory Because there's nothing

worse than knowing there's a verse that gives you staying

power and not knowing what it is when you need it.

So you need to know what these verses are when

you are in that moment of heightened anxiety, stress, and worry,

and you need to remind yourself to think right. So

in my Bible I have verses highlighted and in the

margin written gives staying power that if I allow this

verse to penetrate the fabric of my life and my heart,

it allows me to stay the course and not give up.

So here's three number one. Commit this one to memory

Psalm one, p. Thirty nine, twenty three, and twenty four.

I have these memorized differently than the translation that's up there,

but follow along. These are the words of David, and

he says, search me, oh God, test and know my

heart and my anxious thoughts, and see if there's any

wickedness in me, and if there is, lead me in

the way of everlasting. Nothing triggers anxiety more than not

being right with Jesus. In the moment when anxiety creeps

up and I'm thinking wrong, the first thing I do is,

Jesus are me and you good.

Lord.

If there is anything in my life that will keep

me from my relationship with you, bring it to my mind.

Forgive me of it right now. Because hidden sin will

destroy you. Unconfessed sin will rotch you on the inside out.

Don't give the enemy a reason to justify your anxiety.

You be right with him. Here are some quickly some

sins that trigger anxiety in people.

The sin of not tithing.

Some of you, your anxiety is all attached to your finances,

but you don't tithe, and you cannot figure out why

there's all this financial pressure and worry that's triggered by

your disobedience in this area. Another sin that triggers anxiety

is when people are living immorally. If you are messing

around with your girlfriend or boyfriend, it's going to trigger anxiety. Uh.

There's a review that I got recently, love of these

and Uh.

I ended up getting a hold of the dad that

did the review and he said, you made my daughter cry.

I said, what did I do? And he said, you

said this while you preached. And I was like, first off,

I think that was Sean that said that. And I said, secondly,

all he did is.

Tell you what the Bible says. Well, it made my

daughter cry.

I said, maybe your daughter's crying because she's living in sin.

Maybe she's crying because she's being disobedient from God's word

and God's plan for her life. And it's not feeling guilty.

Maybe it's the conviction of the Holy Spirit. So instead

of blast me on a review, why don't you look

at your daughter and say, why don't you step back

and evaluate your life instead of give her a stinking

trophy for just showing up.

You're live in morally, that's gonna mess with you. Another one.

If you lie, man, If you lie, you are gonna

be an anxiety And.

If you are a liar, be ready to be stressed.

And it's your own fault because you can't keep track

of who you lied to and who you said.

What to and who you did what.

So when anybody texts you, calls you, you're wondering, oh

my gosh, is my charade still clear?

Here's another one. If you've wronged.

Someone, you know it and you have not repented to

that person.

Anytime you see that.

Person talking to someone else, you're gonna think they're talking

about you. Search my heart, O, God, testing on my

anxious thoughts, see if there's any wickedness in me, and

if there is, lead me in the way of everlasting.

When my anxiety creeps up, I ask, is everything good

Jesus with me and you? Is there anything I need

to repent of? Is there someone I need to repent to?

Is there anything I need to confess? Lord help me

second verse that will give you staying Power's David again. Psal,

I'm thirty seven, twenty five.

I love this.

David said I was young and now I'm old. What

is he saying? He's saying, I have life experience. Now

I've walked with Jesus enough. I've been through this enough

to know. Don't respond the way I did when I

was young. He said, I was young, but now I'm old,

and I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their

children begging bread. Worry and anxiety in particular come from fear.

Fear is a trigger. There's something that you're afraid of.

Sometimes you hear about a war and Iran and you're afraid.

Sometimes you see gas prices and you're afraid. You see

the job market in Western Washing and all these major

tech employers laying people off, and it stirs up fear.

My advice to you is easy. When I was young,

I used to worry about all of that stuff. Now

I've been through the housing crisis, I've been through a

stock market crash. I have seen people lose their jobs.

I was young, but now I'm old, and I'll tell you.

Through everything I've seen fifty five years of life, I've

never seen the righteous forsaken or his children began bread.

So when the devil.

Tries to stir up anxiety and fear, I remind him

that I've never seen the righteous forsaken or the seed

baging bread church.

I lead a megachurch. I lead a church with.

Multiple campuses, fifty staff, five six million dollar budget.

There's always someone mad at me.

Someone is leaving the church, someone's moving, someone on staff

is transitioning.

No matter how.

Amazing Easter was, something is going wrong. But I've never

seen the righteous forsaken or the seed bacon bread.

I am convinced.

Through the twenty one years that i've led this church.

I was young, but now I'm old. I'm convinced of this.

God's got this. God loves me, God called me. God's

got this. Finally, third verse that'll give you staying power

Philippians four to eight.

The beginning, I quoted Paul.

Who said, take captive every thought again, except you're not

thinking right.

I know you.

You had a therapist that said get in touch with

your feelings. Most of your therapists are right, but this

one is wrong. Sometimes you feel your feelings aren't appropriate

to the circumstance. Sometimes you need to change the way

you're thinking. Impulsive this, he said. Whatever is true, whatever

is noble, whatever is right, whatever's pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent and praiseworthy.

Think about such things. When I breathe, No.

God's got this. I refuse to be afraid of that.

I refuse to worry about that. Nope, God loves me.

I'm his child, he called me.

I can do this to captive every thought. My mom

when my mom got.

Saved, she had this sort of cheesy mental health exercise

that she did, and whenever a bad thought would come

in her mind, she would say, rebuke that.

Thought in the name of Jesus.

As cheesy as it is, try it.

It works.

Finally, breathe correct wrong thinking.

Number three. Release the pressure.

Easter's pressure packed.

So my whole staff knows. Take a vacation right after Easter.

If you wondered where was the staff last week, they

were all on vacation except for me, David, and Die.

We're all going on vacation this week. What do you

think I'm gonna do after this third service?

I'm gonna bounce. I'm gonna post like.

Crazy on social media all the fun stuff I'm doing,

and it is gonna irritate you, so.

You might want to mute me for a week. But

I'm doing that because I'm releasing the pressure of the stress.

I worked this week so my staff could take this

week off so that we can come back in three weeks.

Great guns, ready to finish the school year. Release the stress,

work out, pray it out, walk it out, go to

a movie, go on vacation, do something that you love

that relieves stress.

Let me give you permission.

Go to Hawaii. Sit on the beach, just stare at

the water, God's creation. Not now because it's raining, but

once it's not raining anymore.

Go there.

Release the stress, all right, breathe, correct your wrong thinking,

release the stress. Over the next three weeks, staff are

gonna come and they're gonna teach. Next week, Morgan's gonna

talk about stress. I'm gonna come back teach you about anxiety.

Pastor Connors and then are gonna talk about worry.

And we want to give you tools that will help

you