Don't Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

We're starting a new series of messages this week.

It's going to be three weeks.

I'm just calling it the top three.

And what what I've uh what I did was I actually did a word study in uh the gospels, so Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, of the things Jesus talked about most often.

And it's more than just one specific word.

It's actually it kind of developed into concepts.

And so I actually got a list of the concepts, some of the main themes that Jesus talked about.

And uh within that I kind of looked and prayed about which ones are most relevant to us.

And so over these next three weeks, that's what we're gonna be doing.

We're gonna be talking about the things Jesus talked about most.

All right.

Um I'm gonna go ahead and uh open to John chapter 14, verse 1.

John 14:1

If you have your Bibles, you can turn there.

If not, don't sweat it.

It'll be up on the screen.

Jesus says this in John 14, 1.

He says, Don't let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God and trust also in me.

In the same chapter, he says this again in verse 27.

He says, I'm leaving you with a gift.

Peace of mind and heart.

And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give, so don't be troubled or afraid.

So I'm gonna build this talk out of the statement, let not your hearts be troubled.

Fear not.

If you look throughout the scripture, you'll see that actually the phrase, do not be afraid or fear not, is found 365 times in the Bible, which is kind of convenient, because now we have one for every day of the year.

Uh but we need to kind of deep dive into this because how many of you know it's not enough to just tell somebody not to be afraid?

Have you ever had somebody tell you not to do something and it made you want to do that thing more?

Right?

Have you ever been getting worked up and somebody says, just relax?

Like, is everyone relaxed because someone, has anyone ever relaxed because someone told them to relax?

I don't know about you, but if I'm getting worked up and you tell me to relax, I get twice as worked up.

Okay?

Uh if you're afraid of something or you're dealing with fear and somebody just says, Oh, fear not.

Uh, don't worry.

Everything's gonna be fine.

You know, it's like, come on, man, like what are you talking about?

Uh it's it's actually quite aggravating.

And so the good news is Jesus doesn't just say it this one time in this one chapter.

He gives us some really good stuff, and he's we're gonna look at a few of the places Jesus talks about this, and actually we're gonna learn how to do this.

Uh, I want to start with uh a concept I've I've touched on, I've done a deep dive in this before, and I'm I'm not gonna do a deep dive.

I'm gonna give sort of the summary of this concept because I think this will help us work off of it.

I if you think about um in the Bible, there's really three concepts.

There's uh when it comes to how we're made up, it's body, soul, and spirit.

Body, soul, and spirit.

You know what your body is.

Um your spirit is the eternal part of you that will uh live forever.

And then there's the soul.

What's the soul?

The soul is the your mind, will, and emotions.

Your mind, your will, and your emotions, and how those things work together.

They often will cause this to spiral up or down.

Your mind, your will, and your emotions.

They're related to one another.

So you think about soul care, you think about soul health, you think about scriptures like uh when David says, Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me.

Bless your holy name.

What's he talking about?

He's talking about his mind, his will, and his emotions, blessing the Lord.

Um let's look at these three things.

Let's start with the mind.

Uh, there's a large conversation happening all over the world now about mental health.

It's an important conversation.

I think for years and years it was stigmatized.

People were afraid to talk about it, they didn't want to be put in a category, and I'm sure in some places it's still stigmatized, but it's become much more normalized.

People are talking about what mental health is and means and what it takes.

And it's a really broad conversation.

I don't have time to do it justice today, but I want to give you an aspect of mental health for you to think about.

All right, so let's let's pick a different organ for a minute beyond the brain.

Let's just pick, let's go with the heart.

Okay, there's a few different times, a few different ways you could have an unhealthy heart.

One is that you could have a genetic issue, right?

So, like the Ford family, my grandpa Ford had a heart attack.

My dad had a heart attack.

Okay, so I'm the next one coming down the pike, right?

If I'm not wise about my heart and I'm not checking things and it can't sneak up on me because it my dad and grandfather, something uh was handed down.

And then some people have really major issues, right?

Like I had a friend whose daughter was born with a hole in her heart.

Um, and so that they had to do surgery, right, right away.

Um, you know that uh a lot of people there are different types of uh birth defects related to the heart that's handed down.

But let's just say you had a perfectly functional heart, like a totally normal, the heart had everything it needed.

You know, based on your life decisions, you could end up with a heart disease, right?

Your heart was fine, but you maybe smoked, or maybe you you ate really poorly, or you didn't exercise, or even things like stress can lead to heart disease.

So the decisions we make or don't make, the things we do or don't do, can take a perfectly fine organ and make it unhealthy.

And so it's kind of the same with your mind.

There are some things genetically that are handed down.

Okay, you look back at mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and generations, you know, it's there's whether it's depression or you know, things that come down the pike, uh addictive behaviors, all of that.

Um, but then also there are some people whose brains are uh that they don't have a genetic issue, it's it's it's a habit issue, it's a behavior issue, it's it's a diet issue, what I diet on, what I eat, ingest, digest, think about.

Okay, these things can often make a normally fine organ unhealthy.

And I think now, more than ever, ever, ever, we are, we have a tendency to allow our brains to kind of go all over the place.

And when Jesus is saying, don't let your heart be troubled, or your so your mind, your will, your emotions, okay, how do we get control of this thing?

Because there are more catastrophes out there than we're supposed to know about.

There's more stuff going on.

You have more threats and predators out there than you know about.

The other day I was walking through the kitchen, and my wife has one of those Alexa things.

You know what I'm talking about?

The robot.

She's in there, and my wife is talking, having a dialogue with Alexa.

She's like, Alexa, put paprika on my uh shopping list.

And Alexa answers her and they go back and forth.

And after they've had a dialogue, Shaylin says, Thank you, Alexa.

I was like, You just thank the robot, you know.

And Shaylin looks at me and she goes, When the robots take over, I want Alexa to be able to vouch for my character.

She said, You, my friend, don't even speak to her.

You walk through this kitchen every day, you don't even acknowledge her presence.

And you reap what you sow.

Don't come crying to me.

Or Alexa.

When you're all strung up and the robots are trying to figure out what they're gonna do with you, and Alexa has no defense for you.

I've been walking through the kitchen like, morning, Alexa.

Is that a new hairdo you have?

You look lovely today.

I mean, we've never been more aware.

Our brains are all the time.

So this whole, don't let your hearts be troubled, okay?

How do we do this?

All right.

Have a little brain conversation, okay?

Let's we're we're gonna talk today about what's actually going on in our heads when we experience fear and threats and stress and anxiety, and we're gonna look at some science and we're gonna look at some scripture and we're gonna figure out what to do about this.

What causes fear?

Okay, if you look at it from a from a biological standpoint, you look at brain science, you you you know that actually what happens is your amygdala, okay, which which is in your temporal lobe, all right?

They're little uh about almond-sized clusters of nuclei in the temporal lobe, those are triggered with a the awareness of a threat, of a fight or flight.

From there, okay, that that that it's part of your limbic brain.

It basically lets you know something is bad, something's a a threat.

And by the way, that's good, right?

That's what would make you run out of a burning building.

Okay, that was what would make you look both ways before you cross the street.

This is designed to help keep you alive.

But what happens is it triggers in your prefrontal cortex now, you you have a it's a network between your uh the various parts of your brain.

So you have your prefrontal cortex, um, which is where you come up with plans.

It's where you process this information.

It's it's actually between these different systems of your brain, um it's it's memory consolidation.

It works where you basically take all of your life experiences and you're taking that and measuring it compared to what's happening right now and coming up with a plan of what you should do.

And then on top of that, you have your neocortex, uh, your thalamus, which is up here, which is capable of imagining things, of thinking about things.

And so when when your uh amygdala is triggered, okay, it puts you in that state of fight or flight.

I listened to a book one time called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

It was the name of the book.

It's a good great book.

Why zebras don't get ulcers.

And the basic concept of the book is that zebras don't get ulcers for this reason.

They have the amygdala, just like we do, right here.

And when they perceive a threat, their fight or flight kicks in and they do everything they're designed to do to survive when that threat hits.

But they don't have the ability to imagine and sit and fixate on threats before after.

In other words, the zebra doesn't go, you know, I wonder how many lions there are in a 10-mile radius.

And they don't go Google it in, you know, and find out.

They don't sit around and go, you know, I wonder how many beasts are predators to me.

They don't have that number.

What they're doing is they're eating, you know, off the land, they're in their herd, they're together, and all of a sudden they hear something.

And their amygdala is like, and they're like this.

And they see a lion come out.

And the amygdala goes, run, run, and so they start running, they're zigging, zagging.

Okay, they're doing everything they can.

Why?

Because the threat's there, and so the amygdala is kicked in, and now they're doing all the things they have to do to survive, and the herd comes together, and often the herd will will uh fend off the predator.

I did a message a couple years ago actually of a herd and talk about how actually zebra are designed to put the older and the weaker and and and the ones that are um sick in the middle, and they actually do concentric circles, they'll do this, and and their and their stripes will cause often their their um their predators to get dizzy, okay, because it is doing like like they they have all these instincts for survival, but here's the difference they don't sit around before imagining every possible scenario, they wait till it's there.

When it's there, they spring into action when it's a true imminent threat.

They don't sit and think about every possible thing that's out there that could be.

And then by the way, when the threat is neutralized, they don't sit and fixate on what just happened.

They actually move on.

They go right on with their day.

Now, here's what's interesting: the same Jesus that said, Let not your hearts be troubled, in another text, when he's trying to teach us, okay, cool, Jesus, you said, Don't worry, don't be let my heart be troubled.

How would I do that?

He actually points at the animal kingdom.

He he says this in Matthew 6, 25.

He says, That's why I tell you not to worry about everyday life, whether you'll have enough food and drink or enough clothes to wear.

Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing?

Look at the birds, okay?

Look at the birds.

So he obviously we have these brains that are more developed than the animals, and so we have the ability to imagine.

Thank God, it's awesome.

You can be creative and and you can imagine a preferred future, and you you've got this, but but there's also a shadow side to having uh, you know, this neocortex and this prefrontal cortex and all of this development is that you can now fixate on this.

And so he said, when you're dealing with things that would cause you anxiety, you need to actually look to the zebra, look to the birds.

He said they don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly father feeds them.

And aren't you more valuable than they are?

Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

Verse 31, he says, Don't worry about these things, saying, What will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear?

These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers.

But your heavenly father already knows all your needs.

So get busy doing this.

Verse 33, seek the kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he'll give you everything you need.

Verse 34, be more like the zebra.

Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.

Today's trouble is enough for today.

When the lion shows up, run, kick, circle it up, get the herd, do what you gotta do, survive the day.

And then when you go, don't sit around and fixate on that lion and imagine how many more there are out there.

Otherwise, what happens is you end up losing your life to worry.

So you lose minutes and hours and days and weeks and years googling and and looking and thinking and considering and imagining and worrying about all of the threats.

Now, we're not ignorant of threats, we know we're finite creatures, right?

Even think about David, right?

He says in this 23rd Psalm, uh, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, remember that?

I'll fear no evil, for you're with me.

Well, David eventually succumbed to death.

1 Kings chapter 2 tells the story when David died.

1 Kings 2 · chapter mention

So one day, David would be in a valley of a shadow of death that would eventually take him into death.

His physical body would die.

But what David is saying in Psalm 23 is he's encouraging us, hey, you're gonna be in a lot of valleys of shadows of death.

One of them's gonna get you at some point.

At some point you're gonna go, but what you don't want to do is spend your whole life in every valley of every shadow of death, and you're in there in upheaval, you're in there uh in turmoil, you're in there stressed out, oh, this is gonna be the big one.

He he said, Look, look, deal with the threats as they come, but he said, When I'm in the valley of the shadow of death, I'm not going to live in fear, for you're with me.

And so we've got to be able to move through this.

Uh, he says, Look, tomorrow, it'll have plenty when you when you get there.

Um, okay, let's really think about this now.

Let's think about what we're really worried about.

Let not your hearts be troubled.

Let's think about what really troubles our hearts, okay?

Because the way we're gonna get our hearts out of trouble is by using our whole brain.

We have to we we we have the amygdala, thank God it's there because it warns us when we're threatened.

But we have to figure out how to make this network work together between our imagination and our making of plans and and and what we fix our minds on and what we think about.

So let's just go a little deeper into why our hearts are so troubled.

Um as human beings, God has wired our brains and and even our our we are psychologically wired to desire to be in community, to be in relationship.

And the reason is actually a big part of it, is because that's a part of how you survive, right?

Just like a a zebra survives with a herd, because it's it has its liabilities and weaknesses, and the herd can protect human beings the same way.

It's why we we want, we we know we need community.

One of the reasons, even one of the impulses to want to become more successful or more influential in the work in the world or in the community, is because the more influential you are, potentially the safer you feel because I more people have my back.

If somebody's attacking me and I'm influential, I've got a bunch of people that are that are here for me that will help protect me.

But here's the reality now.

Let's get in the real world and in real life.

When you're in a community, whether it's a family, a church, or a city or a job, you're in there and you understand this reality.

The same group of people that can help me be safe can also turn on me and be very dangerous.

Okay, we know that.

You know that in your family.

Your family should be a healthy, functional family, is designed to go, look, if the rest of the world turns on you, if everybody turns on you, we're here for you.

You're safe here.

But if you're one of these people that's actually had your family either cast you out or even worse, attack you, come after you, it's terrifying because these the herd or the people that were supposed to keep me safe now become my primary threat.

And this is why your response to that's critical, because if when you have that happen, the tendency is to want to isolate yourself because you go, the close people, whether it's my family or my friends or my community or whatever, um, they could turn on me and they become my primary threat.

So you feel the safest when you're by yourself, but you still don't feel safe because you know you're by yourself.

The the me against the world thing is always a reaction to the people you thought were gonna make you safe actually attacked you or expelled you and made you feel afraid.

So now it's me against the world.

Me against the world is no good because ultimately you are alone, you are exposed.

But this is the stuff we've got to work through when we've been attacked by the people around us.

This is why, by the way, we we experience this in church all the time.

People come into church, they walk in, and theoretically, this should be a community of love.

This should be a place where you're safer.

This should be a place where we come around you, we circle, right?

But imagine coming into this place.

You don't know any of these people.

It's scary.

Especially there's a bunch of them.

And and your brain is wired naturally for survival to go, what would it take to get me kicked out of here?

What would it take for these people to turn on me?

For these people to expel me?

What would it take for these people to not just expel me but to attack me?

And and based on how safe you feel, that will affect how you feel about the environment.

That affects your amygdala.

Okay, let's keep going.

What's happening from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex and the neocortex, what's going on?

What happens is your brain, when it perceives a threat, you start doing, you start storytelling in your in your mind.

Your mind starts making up stories.

For example, imagine this.

You get a text from your boss right now, and it says, Hey, meet me in my office first thing, 9 a.m.

on Monday.

Don't be late.

All right, you get that text.

If you have any sense at all, you will reply to that with, is everything okay?

Am I right?

And they reply, you know, she replies back to you, just don't be late.

Amygdala.

Ah.

Prefrontal cortex, neocortex.

They all start networking.

What happens?

You start telling stories in your brain.

So you start thinking, maybe they want to give me a raise.

That's one story.

Another story is you start thinking, you start thinking, what could this possibly be?

And you start imagining every scenario.

Well, maybe, you know, that person I had a conflict with a few weeks ago got in her ear and was talking to her and got her on her side, whatever, and so now they're gonna come do this.

Or maybe the fact I've been late to meetings, I've been warned a couple times, or maybe, you know, maybe somebody form formed uh complain on me, or or or something's on the line, right?

I've been underperforming my numbers.

You so what you do is you start imagining everything the meeting could be, and you start making up scenes in your head and your imagination of how you would, and this is part of how you start to prepare yourself for survival.

Is it well if she says this, she'd probably say something like this, and if she does, then I'll say this, and then she'd say that, and then I'll say this, and then she'd say that, and then Yeah, yeah.

Am I am I talking to anybody?

Or is it okay?

So what happens is you start imagining scenes.

Okay?

By the way, I read an article recently that was talking about post-pandemic television consumption.

When the pandemic first hit, everybody wanted something new, so they started watching The Tiger King and other dumb stuff like that.

But since then, there's been a huge rise in reruns.

The Office, Seinfeld, Martin, things like rerun type stuff.

Why?

Because as human beings, actually, stories are part of what our brain does, and to latch onto a story I'm familiar with, it's actually quite comforting.

And so when I have all of these threats in my amygdala of like, what's gonna happen?

What's gonna happen, all this uncertainty?

There's actually something quite comforting about a story I already know, about something that's familiar.

Our brain is trying to latch on to it.

Alright?

Well, Greg, what does this have to do with the Bible?

Everything.

Philippians 4, 6 through 8 says this.

Don't worry about anything.

Instead, pray about everything.

Don't worry about anything.

Instead, pray about everything.

Look at this.

Tell God what you need.

Look at this.

And thank him for what he's done.

Don't miss that.

Thank him for what he's done.

Thank him for what he's done is saying, play reruns of God's faithfulness in your mind.

Go to the receipts of God's faithfulness when your amygdala is flaring up.

What are you gonna do in your prefrontal cortex and your neocortex?

What are you gonna do?

You start playing reruns of God's faithfulness.

Or you can sit and think about every single predator that could hit you and every way that it could go wrong.

Or you can go back and revisit the story of your life and the time you thought that predator was gonna get you, and God brought me through.

Okay, so one, I'm gonna give you some quick actions.

One is go back to the faithfulness of God and think about that's what it says in Philippians.

Thank God for what he's done.

Play the rerun of his faithfulness.

But we've got more than that because some of you would say, maybe you're like new in your faith, or you don't have any faith at all, or whatever, you're brand new to this, and so you don't have all these receipts of God.

Okay, well, there's two other things you can do.

Another thing is as part of this herd, one of the ways that we overcome is by the blood of the Lamb, but also the word of our testimony.

So sometimes I can live vicariously through God's faithfulness with you that will inspire me to go, you know, if he did it for her.

If he did it for them, if he did it for him.

And so it's often actually by sharing our stories of God's faithfulness that what we're doing is putting a story into the prefrontal cortex, putting a story into the thalamus that will allow me to imagine the faithfulness of God.

Now, I'm not ignorant.

I know that at some point a valley of a shadow of death is gonna take this body, but if I don't want to live, if I want to live like the zebra in this sense, I'll deal with today's trouble today.

There'll be more there tomorrow.

I'm not going to live my life being absolutely smothered by anxiety and stress and letting the amygdala just kick me all around.

The amygdala does what it does, but now the prefrontal cortex does what it does.

You need to trigger that and you need to begin imagining and thinking back on the faithfulness of God in your life, the faithfulness of God in her life and his life, and we share this stuff with each other.

And then also in God's word, think about in Ephesians 6 when it talks about um putting on the armor of God, right?

It says, you know, you gotta you gotta stand firm against the enemy's schemes.

The battle's not against flesh and blood.

There's a lot of stuff going on all in here.

And so he's like, one of the things is you take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

And within the word of God, again, we have stories and narrative and realities of God's faithfulness.

So that's what I'm gonna fix my mind on.

Look what it says in uh let's keep going in Philippians 4.

So it says, uh, tell God what you need, play the reruns of his faithfulness.

Verse 17, then when you experience, uh then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.

Fix your thoughts, your prefrontal cortext, on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable.

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

If that's what I fill my mind with, okay, that's going to affect the anxiety that I live under.

You know, think about, again, back to Matthew 6, when Jesus is saying, don't worry about what you eat or what you wear.

When you're when you get a call or a text from the boss going, come in here, and you think the worst case scenario, they're gonna run me out of here.

Really, that's what you're worried about.

That's what you start thinking, like, man, if I lose this job, how am I gonna feed my kids?

How am I gonna pay my bills?

How am I gonna do this?

And and so it starts to get down to this really primal fear about not only abandonment, but but not being able to eat.

And he's like, look, that's what you're worried about, and ultimately you have to go, look, God's gonna bring me through this.

And even if my herd turns on me, the people that were supposed to be there circling, keeping these predators off me, even if they turn on me, even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I'll fear no evil, for I know you're with me.

God, even if it's just you and God, He'll bring you through.

But this is why we talk about community a lot.

Because you one of the ways that we live uh with the proper amount of stress, but not too much, and letting our amygdala just keep going, is that part of it that we do circle and protect each other and to help bring each other through.

I'll end with this story and I'll be done.

Uh this last Easter, like a few weeks ago.

I'm getting ready to come out to preach this service at the 10:30.

I'm getting ready to walk out.

In between services, I'll go get off my feet, I'll get some water, rest a little bit.

And we were doing five over Easter, so I'd already done a few.

I was a little bit tired, but I was excited for this service, and good things were happening.

And I'm about to walk into service, and one of our team members, staff members, comes up and says, Hey Pastor, before you go in, just want to let you know, um, because you're gonna find out at some point.

You think you ought to know that um in the pre-service playlist there was a song with a terrible word in it.

I was like, what?

Like, yeah, there was a song with a you know in the pre-service playlist with like a really bad word.

And I was like, what word?

And they told me, and it was bad.

I was like, what?

Are you stinking kidding me?

It's Easter, dude.

It's Easter.

Like if you're gonna put foul language in the pre-service playlist any any week other than Easter.

I mean, I don't think it should ever be in there.

I need to go on record, but I'm just saying, if you're gonna screw it up, do one of the other 51 weeks.

This one, come on.

This is when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.

This is when folks that never come to church come.

This is when somebody that goes to the family member, like I know you don't like church, but come this one week, I promise you, it's gonna be great.

That's the one week, but one shot.

75 thoughts jump in my head, you know.

Who the heck made the playlist?

You know, who I gotta talk to?

How can this happen?

Tell you exactly what happened.

In a moment, I literally, all the power went out of my body.

I sat down in a chair and I had about 75 thoughts, and this is what these are these are the thoughts I had.

Craig, shrink your life down small.

Shrink it small.

Your life's gotten too big.

You've delegated too many things.

There are too many people that can hurt you.

It's a playlist, dude.

You delegated a playlist to somebody, I don't even know who made it, but somebody they put this song in.

But that's just one thing.

How many other threats are there out there?

My brain just starts going crazy.

I start thinking, well, well, if we'll put swear words in the in the playlist, what are what's happening?

Are they following protocol back in kids?

How do I know they're doing this right with the money?

How do I know that I can trust this guy?

How do I know I can trust this lady behind closed doors?

And my brain starts to go to every single threat, and all my instincts said, shrink your life down, it's gotten too big.

Play small, be small, and everything, and nothing, no one can hurt you.

You don't have to delegate anything, you just get it so it's small enough you can get your hands on it and your arms around.

No wonder Jesus says, Don't let your hearts be troubled.

Because my amygdala caused me to start telling stories and imagining scenarios that was causing me to choose a perceived safety over living my purpose and going all the places and doing all the things God wanted because of what could go wrong.

So so the the the impulse to shrink.

Well, here's the reality.

Found out that word wasn't in the song, but they cut that song out anyway, just in case anybody thought they heard the same thing, it wasn't even there.

But here's here's the here's the reality.

Let's say it did happen.

Let's say it did happen.

Some point, I gotta stand up here and go, hey guys, uh I gotta apologize.

Really sorry.

Uh turns out, honest mistake.

Somebody put the wrong song in the playlist, it had this thing, shouldn't it happen, but it did.

I've greatly apologize.

Some people might go, that's scumbag, he you know, he's no good as a leader, and he, you know, he let whatever, and they walk out and they go, I'm never coming back to that place again.

Probably somebody would do that.

But I think for the most part, right, it's not as much of a threat as it felt in the moment.

I think probably most of you would go, you know, I got that song on my playlist too.

You do, you know, so many of you do.

So many of you.

You work out to that song.

You you you know you do.

There's a but there no, there's a bunch of you that would go, you know, I'm gonna we're gonna give grace, man.

We understand those things sometimes happen.

You got a lot of moving parts, and a lot of people, in fact, some people, frankly, would probably be appreciative that someone apologized for anything ever.

Thanks for apologize, it's all good, man.

We get it, and would circle the wagons and would circle the herd, and we would move on.

But in the moment, friend, I felt so discouraged, and my amygdala was just wreaking havoc on everything else to the place that it made me want to shrink my life down, make short-sighted decisions, and felt degrees of anxiety that I didn't need to feel.

So I want to encourage you today.

I want to encourage you today.

Don't let your heart be troubled.

Get your heart out of trouble by using your whole brain.

Don't worry about anything, pray about everything.

Tell God what you need.

Run the rerun of his faithfulness.

Encourage each other with your story of God's faithfulness, your testimony.

Get into God's word and look at his faithfulness over generation to generation to generation of his faithfulness, and let that cause you to be steadfast and you can experience his peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

And this peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, brothers and sisters, one final thing.

Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.

Think about these things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

We thank you, God, that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Lord, we don't walk alone.

You are with us.

Lord, help us to continue to develop and morph into the type of community people don't need to be afraid of.

Lord, that they find support, that they find the body of Jesus.

Lord, help us to be a safe place.

Lord, help us to help one another through threats and challenges and fears.

Lord, may we not live with troubled hearts.

Help us in our mind, will, and emotions to find rest in you, to find faith in you, our confidence in you.

And Lord, in this world that seems like every time we open up an email, every time we open up a news app, every time we open up anything, it seems like we're reminded of three more lions that are out there and some predator we didn't even know about.

And yet, Lord, you have put us in the world in this time, and Lord, it's your desire that we would live in it in a healthy way.

So help us, Lord, to use our whole brain.

In Jesus' name.

All God's people said, Amen.