A Survey of Anxiety

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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All right, well, today, Sunday School will be taught by my friend, Pastor Tim Mullett. He is a pastor at Providence Church somewhere in Alabama.

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What's that? Mottovello. That's near Birmingham. Yes, he has a wife and five kids, and is also the host of a podcast called

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Bible Bashed. So, and he focuses a lot on pastoral counseling, biblical counseling, and today's lesson is going to be on worry, anxiety, and fear, things very much related to biblical counseling.

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So, go ahead and take it away, Tim. I didn't bring my phone, so you guys are going to have to give me a ten -minute warning here.

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Yeah, and I forgot to open this up in prayer, so you can do that. I can do that, too. Why don't I, the primary passage we're going to read is

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Philippians 4, 6 through 9, and I'm going to be addressing a lot of other passages, as well. It'll be a little bit topical, but mostly we're going to walk through Philippians 4, 6 through 9 at the end, and give a brief survey of what

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I might describe as a solution to anxiety, but I'll go ahead and read that, and then we'll pray and get started.

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Philippians 4, 6 through 9. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

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What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

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Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to think about your word,

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Lord. We thank you that you've given us a word that is sufficient for life and godliness. We thank you that you haven't left us in the dark, but you've given us answers to the common problems that we face.

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I pray that you bless our time here today and help us to learn wondrous things from your word. In your sense, I pray. Amen. Now, what

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I wanted to do today is I wanted to talk a little bit about anxiety, because anxiety is a very common problem that I'm sure that everyone in this room is familiar with to some degree or another.

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And for some, anxiety is a life -dominating issue that really affects every single day of your existence.

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And, you know, for others, it's a periodic thing that seems to come and to go. But when you talk about anxiety, one of the things to realize about this word is it's a word that everyone knows what you mean in some sense when you use that word.

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And yet, at the same time, it's such a broad word that you could mean a broad variety of things when we're talking about this topic in general.

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Meaning, like this is a word that's thrown around. It has like a specific, you know, psychological, quote -unquote, medical use.

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It's a word that has a very common use as well. But, as I said, I mean, it can mean a wide variety of things depending on the individual who's using it.

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So, what I wanted to do today is just give you a brief survey. And I'm really going to, this is going to be really brief. I'm going to give you a brief survey of the different types of fear that you're going to encounter in the

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Bible, because anxiety is a word that is closely associated with fear in general. So, I'm going to give you a brief survey of those different types of fear that you're going to find in the

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Bible. And then I'm going to try to describe different types of anxiety, like different senses in which this word is used.

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And then after we do that, what we're going to do is we're going to try to walk through Philippians 4 and provide just an overview of a solution to this topic.

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Now, I mean, I'm used to giving classes on this that last about 10 lessons.

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So, I'm probably trying to accomplish too much today. But we'll see what we can get done with here.

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So, when you think about fear in general, as I said, there's six different types of categories of fear that you're going to find in the

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Bible. Most of them are just somewhat neutral kind of fears when you think about the nature of what we're talking about.

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So, a good example of this would be Ruth 3 .8, okay? So, I'm sure that some of you are familiar with this one.

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This is what you might describe as like a startle kind of fear, okay? So, Ruth 3 .8, at midnight, the man was startled and turned over, and behold, a woman laid at his feet.

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So, when you think about like having a startled reaction to a particular danger, most people don't understand that to be some sort of morally culpable kind of fear that you're having.

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So, when God says that he has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power of self -control and a sound mind, that's not typically talking about like a startle reflex.

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Unless you're the kind of person who has trained yourself over long hours to be paranoid about every encounter that you're going in, then maybe perhaps you could work yourself into an inappropriate startle reflex that seems to trigger unnaturally.

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But, in general, that's one type of fear that you could be talking about as it relates to fear in general. The second type of fear that you might be more, that you might, when you're referring to fears that you have or anxieties you have, this might be a more common word that we use as it relates to that.

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But, there is a concept in the Bible of a concern which is legitimate. Okay? So, in the

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Bible, when you see the word anxiety show up in the Bible, often there's the same word that's being used.

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So, it's the word in Greek, merom nao. And, that word can show up in the sense of like sinful anxiety that we should repent of.

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But, then it can also show up in a neutral sense of like what you might describe as a legitimate concern.

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A passage for that is Philippians 2 .20 where Paul says of Timothy that he has no one like him who will be legitimately concerned for the church's well -being there.

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So, in general, concern, we conceive of concern as a good thing.

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Normally, if you're a Bible -believing Christian, you think of anxiety as a bad thing. But, then it can also be a little bit difficult to tell the difference between what might be described as a legitimate concern and sinful anxiety.

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And, often when we're worried, we are the type of people who are going to say that I'm not worried, I'm just concerned.

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Because, we know that concern is kind of the safe word that you can use to get yourself off the hook. No one's going to rebuke you for that.

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Right? So, concern, it is a legitimate category in the

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Bible. And, we're going to try to talk about how you distinguish that from sinful worry. But, yeah, concern is typically a good thing.

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So, concern involves a response to a situation. And, sometimes, yeah, as I said, it's a word that we use to mask our worry.

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So, you have startle as one type of fear. Concern is another type of fear. A very common type of fear in the

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Bible that we often use is the idea of respect. Respect is a word that's often associated with authority relationships.

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So, whether you're talking about the fear of the Lord, you're talking about children honoring their father and mother, a wife respecting her husband.

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Church members respecting and esteeming very highly their church leaders. So, this is often a word that it describes inappropriate kind of fear.

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So, this is distinct from other kind of fears that we're going to talk about, like terror, which I think we're going to talk about next. But, a respect is not like a terror kind of fear.

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It's just an appropriate kind of deference that's shown to an individual who's in authority. So, you have startle.

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You have concern as types of fear. You have respect. And then you have, well,

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I jumped the gun. You have cowardice or fear of man. And, you know, often in terms of like psychological labels, when you're thinking about the different psychological labels, like social phobia would be a word that maps very closely on to the idea in the

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Bible of a cowardice or fear of man. Proverbs 29, 25 says, The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the

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Lord is safe. So, this idea of cowardice, I would say that this, the idea of cowardice has probably gone the way of the dodo bird.

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Meaning, like, it's a word that we've utterly erased from our vocabulary at this point. We don't even really think about things in those terms anymore.

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Meaning that we have a, like, that courage is a responsibility that we have. That we, that God expects a certain level of fearlessness from us.

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In fact, I mean, we live in a psychological culture that wears victim labels as badges of honor. So, we live in the kind of culture right now, in the kind of society right now, that fear, like paralyzing fear that we might experience is conceived of as a virtue.

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Like, it's almost something that you, like, you can look at people on social media and they'll put their psychological labels in their profile name or something along those lines.

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It's like badges of honor, like this is who I am, you know. And, so there's a lot of currency in our society by adopting any one of these labels.

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But, I mean, we just went through a major world event a few years ago that just happened where a lot of us didn't seem to have the requisite courage that we should have had.

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And, then we used, we viewed that not through the lens of some sort of moral failure on our part. We viewed that through the lens of, like, a situation where, almost as if we, like, having an absence of courage is something to be praised.

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So, cowardice is a real thing. It's the kind of fear that causes you to, or that you use as an excuse, essentially.

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It's the type of fear that you use as an excuse to fail to fulfill your responsibilities that God has given you or your responsibilities to your fellow man.

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And, this is a, you know, something that we need to regain. Like, a sense of, that cowardice is a bad thing.

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And, that courage is, like, a virtue that we should be aspiring towards. So, you have cowardice, fear of man.

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You have, you also have the concept of terror in the Bible, okay. Now, you know, the reason why

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I'm bringing all this up is because you notice how if you have any one of these different types of fears, there's going to be different solutions to each one of these types of things.

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You can't talk to people unless, like, if you're trying to help people, you can't, you can't take one solution and map it on to any of these other kind of problems.

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And, some of these things are kind of neutral, as I said. But, terror, yeah, terror is a, basically, frequently presented in the

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Scripture as a response to divine judgment, okay. So, you know, when the

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Lord returns, the kings of the earth will hide themselves under the rocks of the mountains and, you know, basically say to them,

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I pray that the rocks in the mountains would fall on them to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of the wrath of the

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Lamb has come and who can stand before Him. And, this is the kind of word that really is a response to just overwhelming danger, if you want to think about it along those lines.

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And, this is the kind of word that the Bible would describe as inappropriate for the Christian in general.

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Meaning, like, we know the terror of the Lord from experience, meaning we know that kind of experience before we come to Christ.

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But, after we come to Christ, perfect love casts out fear. So, like, we don't have the kind of relationship after we become a

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Christian that's characterized by a terror of God anymore because now we have a familial relationship with Him.

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He's adopted us into His family. He loves us as a loving Father. There's nothing that can separate us from His love.

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So, you know, terror, as a Christian, you don't relate to God in the sense of terror.

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But, then you also don't really relate to the world with terror as well because you know that God is sovereign over every single thing that happens.

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And, He has a plan to use it for your good. And so, this type of fear, like this terror type of fear, this is the kind of thing that is characteristic of unbelievers who are held captive by the fear of death.

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It's not the kind of thing that should be characterized by Christians. So, let's see. Let's survey what we've done so far.

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We have startle, concern, respect, cowardice, terror, and then you have anxiety in the

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Bible. Now, as I said, anxiety is one of these words that the Bible will use in different ways.

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So, Jesus will say, hey, why do you worry about your life, what you eat, what you drink, your body, what you're going to wear, the food that you're going to eat.

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Is not life more than these things? So, you can think about, there are passages like that.

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There's passages like the one we're going to read in Philippians. We have read in Philippians 4 where Paul tells us, do not be anxious about our life.

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But, this is a word that, as I said, it shows up in a wide variety of ways. It's a type of fear in the

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Bible. But then, we could be using this word in a wide variety of ways. In fact, probably the primary way that this word is used right now is in the quasi -medical language of psychology.

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So, when people use the word, when they say that they're suffering from anxiety, they're packaging the way that they're wording that in the language of medical illness.

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So, if someone says they're suffering from anxiety, what you're immediately trained to think is that they're suffering from some sort of quasi -medical problem, like as if they're suffering from cancer or something like that.

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In the minds of many people, if you suggest that they're responsible for their anxiety, that God has a solution for their anxiety, that you don't have to be held captive by anxiety, like you don't have to be characterized by that your whole life.

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If you say that sort of thing, people in our society are so predisposed to take offense by that and think that you're just kicking a victim while they're down or something along those lines, instead of seeing that as a positive statement and a hope -filled statement that God has different things for the

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Christian than that. As I said, there's different types of what you might describe as anxiety in the

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Bible. There's different ways that we use this. I'm just going to give you four categories.

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I know this is a lot, but I'm going to give you four categories of what people might mean when they say they're anxious.

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Does that make sense? I'm going to give you four different things that they could possibly mean when they say that.

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Now, there's a lot of overlap in the Bible. When you see words like anxiety and worry, they can be used interchangeably as synonyms, but it might be helpful just for the sake of a teaching tool here, just to try to distinguish the two in a way that might be helpful.

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It may help you understand what's going on in your own heart if you're tempted with worry or anxiety or fear.

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I'm going to try to give you a distinction that's an easy thing to remember, but then, as I said, the biblical language is a little bit more fluid than this.

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When you think of anxiety, you might want to think about anxiety in this way, as a fear of judgment that results from a defiled conscience.

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Let me say that again. When you think about anxiety, think of anxiety as a fear of judgment that results from a defiled conscience.

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The Bible says, The Israelites, in the judgment, when

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God was going to exile them, the Bible says that they would be put to flight at the sound of a leaf.

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So, Adam and Eve, after they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden, what do they instantaneously do?

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They hide themselves from God. They try to hide themselves from God. Then they try to hide themselves from each other.

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Their instantaneous response is they know they're guilty. There's this sense of judgment that they expect.

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Whatever you describe that as, that's anxiety proper. You understand? That fear of judgment.

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Often, when people are anxious like that, when they're on edge, if you were to ask them, hey, what are you anxious about?

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They say, I don't know. I don't have any idea. If you ask someone, hey, what are you anxious about?

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They say, I don't know. I feel on edge all the time. You're probably dealing with this fear of judgment that results from a defiled conscience.

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Meaning, when we fail to... The issue is, when you sin against the

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Lord, whether a sin of omission or a sin of commission, when you sin against the Lord, that affects you.

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You need some sort of answer to that. Now, Jesus has come to die on the cross to provide us a solution for our guilt, and our shame, and our condemnation.

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But then when you're walking in sin, like in an unrepentant way, whether you're failing to do the things that you know

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God calls you to do, or you're intentionally violating his word in open, unrepentant rebellion, that's going to affect you psychologically.

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That's going to destabilize you. You're going to be looking over your shoulder. You know, if you're the kind of person who's looking at things on the

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Internet that you shouldn't be looking at, what do you think that you're going to experience with that?

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Do you think that you're going to be nervous if someone looks at your phone? You're going to want to give them free access to your phone?

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If you're at work and you're stealing from your boss, you're stealing from your employer, how do you think that's going to affect you?

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You're going to be constantly looking over your shoulder. Imagine that you did the unthinkable and you killed someone. You're going to have to spend the rest of your life waiting for the cops to knock on the door.

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Do you think that you're going to be a stable person emotionally? Do you think that you're going to be a person who's standing firm, who's confident?

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The issue is when we sin in unrepentant ways, there's this fear of judgment that Christians often have.

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When you're describing that in the language of anxiety, that's often what they're experiencing, this fear of judgment.

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They don't know where it comes from. If you ask them, what are you worried about? I don't think I'm worried about anything. I don't really know.

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But there's this low -level kind of fear of judgment that's going on in the background. That's one thing that you could be describing when you're talking about anxiety is this fear of judgment.

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The second thing could be worry. Worry is a little bit different than that. When you think about worry, if I were to ask you, what are you worried about?

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It's like, well, I just lost my job. You notice how you have an answer to that? People know why they're worried.

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There's something that's happened that they're afraid of. It's often like you're afraid of something that's going to happen in the future.

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It's like, yeah, I'm worried because I lost my job, right? I'm worried because I'm going to go on a date with a girl, and I don't know how this is going to go or whatever else.

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I want it to go well and put my best foot forward and all that.

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But typically, the issue is with worry, there's something that you're afraid of that you can identify with your words.

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So you could say, hey, I'm worried about that, like X. So you have fear of judgment.

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You have worry. But then, as you interact with people online and you say, hey, as Christians, we shouldn't be worried.

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You interact with people in the real world. You interact with them in a counseling situation. You say, hey, God has provided a solution to worry in Jesus Christ through the

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Scripture. Typically, they're going to point to medical problems that could be producing certain anxious feelings that we're not responsible for in certain ways.

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So there's a third category of anxiety that I want you to try to keep in your mind as distinct.

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So fear of judgment, worry, third category, anxious feelings. So the way

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I often describe anxious feelings is something along the lines of physiological distress resulting from pathology.

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So I know that those are a lot of big words, but physiological distress resulting from pathology. Pathology in medical sense is when you have tissue damage or malfunction in your body.

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So the issue is there's a variety of medical problems that a person can have that can result in anxious feelings.

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So like a heart attack. You have a heart attack, you're going to have stress on your body.

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The issue is you can have a heart attack and not be worried at all. You notice how worry and having this physiological stress do not necessarily go hand in hand?

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Hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, asthma, arrhythmias, irregular heartbeats, all of those kind of things can produce the sensations of anxiety without necessarily having any worry there whatsoever.

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So there's medical things. A person can go to the doctor and take medical tests, and there's things like this.

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You can have heart problems, heart disease, hypothyroidism, hypoglycemia, asthma, arrhythmias.

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All those can produce anxious feelings, but that would be distinct from worry. When I was in Bible college and seminary,

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I simply tried to do more than what I was able to do, and there was times

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I got two hours of sleep at night or something like that, particularly when I was studying Greek. I got about an hour of sleep at night for an extended period of time.

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I was so delusional at that point that I had trouble communicating. I could feel the words floating above my head, and I had to try to figure out how to grab them and put them in the right order.

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But the issue was I was also, in order to maintain that, I was so hyped up on caffeine that my eyes twitched.

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Now, I mean, you imagine when you drink two or three energy drinks a day or something along those lines, you're going to feel jittery.

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You're going to feel nervous. Your heart's going to feel weird. You're going to feel all this kind of anxiety, these anxious feelings, but that has nothing to do whatsoever with worry, right?

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So when I was in college and I was doing that, I mean, that was wrong. You shouldn't do that. God gave us sleep as a gift.

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Don't follow that example. That's a bad example. But the issue, though, is that during that time,

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I wasn't worried at all, but I felt on edge all the time. So there's a variety of medications that people can take that can make them feel on edge.

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If you abuse certain substances, it can make you feel nervous and anxious and on edge and everything else, but that would be physiological reasons for anxious feelings that you're talking about as distinct from worry.

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Does that make sense? So types of anxiety, fear of judgment results from a defiled conscience.

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That's the wicked plea when no one will pursue. You can also be thinking of worry like proper, meaning like you're sinfully not trusting in the

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Lord to provide you what you need. You could be talking about these anxious feelings, and you could also be talking about these psychological categories.

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And I do want to go through one of these for you just to help you to understand what people are talking about when they're using these words, okay?

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So with the psychological categories, you have the big five anxiety disorders. So you have something like GAD, which is general anxiety disorder.

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When people say that they're suffering from anxiety, they're mostly talking about GAD, general anxiety disorder. That's what they're talking about, okay?

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So you have GAD. You have panic disorder. You have social anxiety disorder, specific phobia,

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OCD. These are the big five anxiety disorders, and I'm putting them in quotes because one of the things to realize is that these are labels that unbelieving psychologists have developed in order to persuade you that you have some sort of medical problem.

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And so if you look at the DSM, one of the things you're going to realize with the DSM is that every single category of negative behavior, thought, or mood is categorized under the language of disorder.

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And it's done so because, I mean, they're materialists. Like they don't believe that there's a soul. They don't believe that we're moral beings who are created in the image of God who have a responsibility before our

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Maker for how we handle life. They don't believe in anything like that. We're just complicated machines.

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If we're behaving or thinking or feeling in an abnormal way, there must be some sort of physiological problem.

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That's the assumption that undergoes modern psychology. And then to the extent to which we as Christians buy into that assumption, when you look to the scriptures, it says, hey, do not be anxious about anything.

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That is meaningless. It's meaningless to the kind of person who says, yeah, but I'm suffering from cancer, right? Can't help that I'm suffering from cancer.

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So the Bible can't have anything to say about that because you persuaded me that this is some sort of medical problem. But what

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I want to do is I want to help you to understand what this language means, and then we're going to provide a solution.

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So this is what this language means. When a psychologist is going to diagnose you with general anxiety disorder, this is what they're going to do.

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And I'm going to go through this checklist, and I want you to ask what's medical about it.

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What's medical about it? What's actually happening here? So look, if you're an individual who experiences excessive anxiety and worry about a variety of topics or activity, that's a criteria for this.

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So first criteria, you experience excessive worry. So the individual experiences excessive anxiety or worry about a variety of topics, events, or activities, and worry is often about everyday matters.

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So you go to a psychologist and say, hey, I have excessive worry. Check. So nothing medical yet.

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They're just asking you, are you worried? You say, yes, I'm worried. Number two, difficulty controlling the worry.

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So I'm worried. I'm worried, doc. I can't stop it. The person finds it difficult to keep their worrying under control.

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Number three, the duration. Anxiety or worry are experiencing more days than not for six months. Nothing medical yet.

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You understand? Nothing medical has happened. So I'm worried, can't stop it, it's been more days than not for six months.

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All right, four, associated symptoms. The anxiety and worry are associated with three or more of the following six symptoms.

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So notice how it all sounds medical, but nothing medical has happened. So look at the symptoms. Restlessness, feeling on edge, becoming easily fatigued, difficulty concentrating, mind going blank, irritability, muscle tension, sleep disturbance.

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So difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. Now for kids, what's interesting about this is they only have to have one of those.

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And I guess that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But the issue is these symptoms, they're packaged in the language of medical illness.

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All that's being said is, hey, you're restless, you're easily fatigued, difficulty concentrating, right?

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Difficulty going to sleep, falling asleep. Did anything medical happen so far? So so far we're worried.

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I can't stop it. It's more days than not for six months, period. And then it's affecting me.

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I'm just difficult to concentrate, difficult to pay attention. So nothing medical has happened so far. Now, number five, clinically significant distress or impairment.

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The anxiety or worry or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

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What does that mean? That means that, yeah, I can't clean my house. Why can't you clean your house? Because I'm anxious all the time.

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I can't go to work. Why can't you go to work? Because I'm anxious all the time. I can't concentrate. I can't think, right?

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I'm stressed out. Did anything medical happen yet? You're just, so far, you're just experiencing life -dominating worry.

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That's what you're talking about, right? And then number, I think we're on number five now. Not attributable to a substance or a medical condition.

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Meaning, like, this isn't the result of you drinking a lot of caffeine. This isn't the result of drugs. This isn't the result of medication.

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This isn't hypothyroidism. This isn't hypoglycemia. This isn't atrial arrhythmia. This isn't a heart attack that you're having.

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There's no medical explanation for what's going on other than you're worried for six months. You can't stop.

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And it's mastered your life. Your life is dominated by worry. That's all that we're talking about so far. And then, you know, the last one, not better explained by another mental disorder.

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So, it's not better explained by another one of those, particularly one of the big five that I mentioned before. So, notice, like,

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I've had church members who go to the doctor, and they tell them that they're suffering from general anxiety disorder. There's no medical tests that are being run to tell them that they're suffering from any kind of illness.

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They go to the doctor. They put them on their drugs. They put them on their tranquilizers or whatever they're going to put them on in order to, like, fix this worry problem.

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But then here's the issue. The Bible has actual answers to this. And we have scriptures that tell us don't be anxious for anything.

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Don't be worried about anything. And so, what I want to do with whatever time I have left is just walk you through a brief solution to this problem.

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And I'm not trying to say that it's, like, an easy solution or a trite solution or something that's just, you know, like, follow these steps, and it's all going to be done right away, instantaneously, although it could.

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If you trust by faith what God says is right and believe His Word is true and that He's given you a path, you could be done with worry quickly.

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I mean, it doesn't have to be a life -dominating kind of thing, but what I want to do is just give you just a brief overview of what

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Philippians is talking about here and hope that that'll be somewhat helpful.

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So, how do we fight worry? I got seven points. How do we fight worry? First, you take responsibility for it.

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You say, this is my fault. It's not anyone else's fault. It's my fault. It's not my background. It's not my environment.

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No one's making me worried. This isn't a medical problem that we're talking about. I don't trust the Lord. Like, this is my fault.

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I have a heart that is refusing to trust God. This is about me, right?

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It's not about my situation. Like, it doesn't matter how big the trial you're in.

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God put, you know, you read through the Bible. The story of the Bible is the Israelites are going through trial after trial after trial, and God has a plan to deliver them, and they complain every step of the way, right?

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The issue is not how big the trial is. It's how big God is. In the first step, if you want to fight your worries, you say, this is my fault.

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Where do I get that from? What does the Bible say? It says, do not be anxious about anything. That's a command.

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It's an imperative. It's not a suggestion. It's a command. God says, do not be anxious about anything.

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Do not, right? And you're not going to take that seriously if you're going to blame this on other people, if you're going to blame this on your situation, your home life, your parents, your background, your stressful job situation, you know, difficult circumstances.

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None of that matters. God says, do not be anxious. It doesn't matter what your situation is. The issue is, God says, do not be anxious about it.

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It's your fault, right? So, this is on me. I mean, there's been times in my life where I was,

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I spent my whole childhood being characterized by sinful anxiety and worry, okay? I mean, there's been times in my life where I've gone through trials, and there's a peace that God is in control, and I can trust

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Him. And then I go through another trial, and I'm worried, right? Whose fault is that? It's my fault. It's my heart that's worried.

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There's no one else's heart. I feel my own feelings. This worry is coming from me. It's coming from my heart that wants to be just like the

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Israelite's heart, who doesn't trust the Lord. So, the issue is, how do we fight our worry first? You take responsibility. The text says, do not be anxious about anything, right?

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Second thing, identify the object of your worry. What does the text say? Do not be anxious about anything. That's what it says.

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Do not be anxious about anything. So, what you need to do is identify the object of your worry, meaning, what is my anything?

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Do you understand? What is my anything? It says, don't be anxious about anything. What is my anything? What am

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I worried about? A helpful question along these lines is, like, what do I want that I'm not getting? Because often, like, we're worried about situations, but the issue is, like, the issue about worry is, it's not about the situation.

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It's about the nature of your heart. What does your heart want in that moment that it's not getting? Like, what is it?

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I just want to be loved. I just want peace. I just want comfort. I want safety. I want security.

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I mean, that can get you a little more information than, I need to get a job, or something like that.

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You understand? So, like, what do you want that you're not getting? And often, those things are not a terrible thing.

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Another question, like, if only I had X, then I would have peace. So, when you think about your worry, you're thinking about your anxiety.

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That's the question you should be asking. If only I had X, then I would have peace. What does that think? So, do not be anxious about anything.

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What is the anything? You understand? Like, evaluate the object of your worry, or identify the object of your worry. Third, evaluate the object of your worry.

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So, the text says, do not be anxious about anything. What does God say about that anything? Do you see what

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I'm saying? What does God say about it? So, you know, often the objects of our worry can be good things.

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They can be neutral things, or they can be bad things. So, we talked about the difference between anxiety and worry in that way.

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Oftentimes, if you're holding on to sin, if you're holding on to sin, you have this fear of judgment that's resulting from a defiled conscience.

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If you have some sort of secret relationship that you shouldn't be having that's happening behind the scenes that you don't want anyone to find out about, what does

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God say about anything? Well, I have a lot of anxiety. I have a lot of stress over this situation because I know I'm doing the wrong thing.

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What does God say about it? Like, what does God say about that thing? Well, sometimes it's a bad thing like that that you need to get rid of, in which case you can't do the next step, which is ask

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God for it. You know, there's no way you can ask God for something you know that you want that's wrong. So, that's often a filter for you.

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But then, often the things you want to find... Yeah, I want peace and quiet. I want my husband to love me and to cherish me.

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I want my wife to respect me. I don't want to be constantly arguing with my wife and fighting with my wife.

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I want my parents to be nice to me, to pay attention to me. Right?

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Like, the issue is a lot of the things that we want, they're fine. Like, they're neutral things.

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They're not bad things. It's not bad to want, like, to have love, to have peace, like safety, comfort.

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All those things are fine. They're good. I mean, they're good. They're neutral things. The issue is you want them so bad, you're willing to send to get them.

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And you want them so bad that you're not willing to trust God to give you what you need. You think you know better than what God does.

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And you think that somehow, in order to get all these good things, you have to take matters into your own hands and just stress out about it.

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Even though everyone knows that worry and anxiety are absolutely pointless. And no one can add a cubit to their stature with worry or years to the life.

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But, like, the issue is evaluate the object of your worry. What does God say about this thing?

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Right? And so often it's just neutral things like food and clothing and, you know, jobs and safety and all that kind of stuff.

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And then what do you do? So after you evaluate it, is it something you can ask God for? Then step four is just to ask him.

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Do not be anxious about anything but in everything with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. Bring it to God.

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Like, God's a good Father. He's a good Heavenly Father who delights to give his children good gifts. He knows that we have need even before we ask.

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Right? He's not going to withhold anything that you need, anything that you think that is good for you. He's the creator of the universe.

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He spoke this world into existence out of nothing. Whatever silly little problem that you're experiencing, it requires absolutely no work or effort on his part at all to resolve it.

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His hand's not shortened. Like, he can fix whatever through, like, normal means, through ordinary means, through miraculous means.

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He can fix it. Like, the issue is, if he hasn't given you that thing you think you need, there may be a reason why he doesn't think you actually need it.

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You understand what I'm saying? Like, he can fix it. He can do it instantaneously. It requires no work, no effort, nothing on his part to solve even the, you know, the biggest problems that are absolutely and totally impossible to you.

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You serve that kind of God who has sent his Son to die for you and given you every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

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He's sent his Son to die for you, to provide you forgiveness of sins. Like, he's adopted you into his family and made a commitment to take care of everything that you need.

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You know, for as long as God wants you alive, you're absolutely immoral. There's nothing that can happen to you that won't happen to you apart from God's sovereignty.

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He knows what you're going through. He can fix it instantaneously. You serve the kind of God that says, hey, come to me with what you need, and if you need it,

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I'll give it to you. And that's the kind of God that we serve. So, it says, do not be anxious about anything, everything, with prayer, supplication, with thanksgiving.

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Let your request be known to God. Bring your request to God. And you're not just bringing your request to God as if he's some genie that exists to grant you wishes.

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Like, the issue is the Christian life should be characterized by thanksgiving.

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You know, in the times where I've been most tempted to worry and be stressed out in my life, like, there's always a sense in which

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I'm forgetting all the other times I've been exactly in this situation, right? And if you want to know, like, we're going to talk about the path out of this, you know, but, like, the issue is, like, thanksgiving is good medicine.

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I've never met the thankful person, the content person, the grateful person who's stressed out. Those things are antithetical.

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They're opposite. There's no such thing as, like, a person who is filled with thanksgiving and praise to God for all of his wondrous works, who knows what

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God has done for them in the past, who rehearses that. You've met people like this who everything that comes out of their mouth is

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God's so good and God is so merciful and God is so kind. And you know what? Those people aren't anxious and those people aren't depressed because those things are opposite.

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And what does the Bible say right here? It says, but everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.

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A thankful person remembers all the ways in which God has given them so many things that they don't deserve.

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And, like, these two things are opposite. Worry and thanksgiving are just the opposite. So present your request to God accompanied by thanksgiving.

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Five, trust God to give you what you truly need. Verse 7, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

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What is the peace of God? It's the peace that comes from knowing that God is good. He knows what you have need of even before you ask.

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He's a good Heavenly Father, delights to give you good gifts. I mean, the way that we live the

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Christian life, we live the Christian life by faith. We're trusting in the promises of God. We're trusting in the character of God.

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God's a good God. He's going to do what he says that he's going to do. He's not going to withhold anything that you need.

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And that peace, like, the peace that results, like, that's the byproduct of a heart that trusts the

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Lord, it'll keep you stable and it'll keep you, like, secure in the Christian life.

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Like, your life doesn't have to be the kind of life that is characteristic of the pagans. It's just, you know, going from one bad circumstance to another bad circumstance and having no security.

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Like, not having a, you know, being like a wave that's tossed to and fro within the sea.

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Like, if you trust God to give you what you truly need, the natural byproduct of that is going to be a supernatural kind of peace.

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Really, you know, the world doesn't understand, and it is a great witness in the midst of a fallen world.

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Number six, finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable.

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If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Number six is replace anxious thoughts with God -honoring,

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Christ -exalting thoughts. You know, throughout Paul's letters, Paul has these principles of putting off and putting on.

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And, you know, I wish that more Christians understood how these things actually work. Because, like, we can be, as Christians, we can be the kind of individuals who are just trying to stop doing the bad stuff.

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And if you've struggled with worry for any length of time, you know what I'm talking about. Like, you just say, I know I shouldn't worry. Well, either you're blaming it on a label or something like that, but if you're actually trying to fight it, you're just like,

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I know I shouldn't worry. I know it's wrong to worry. That's a good sign. But then what you can end up doing is you're just fixating on trying to stop worry.

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You know, I have a son that we had a conversation, we've had several conversations with about this recently. I've been trying to teach him what the

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Bible says about, like, putting off, you know, bad thoughts and putting on good thoughts. What it means to renew your mind.

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And, you know, he's got himself in this mode where he's really just trying to stop thinking certain bad thoughts.

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And so the analogy I gave him, and it's kind of a funny analogy, but I want everyone in the room to not think about a pink fuzzy elephant.

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Like, don't. Like, just, like, don't think about the trunk and the ears, you know, and all the pink fuzziness and the horns.

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Like, definitely don't think about those, you know. So, but, like, the issue is if I'm telling you not to do that, what do you think is going to happen in your brain?

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You're going to think about it, right? Well, a lot of people are doing that with worry. What they're trying to do is they're trying to stop thinking about the thing they're worried about.

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I need to quit worrying. Lord, help me please, like, not worry about my financial situation, which is hopeless at the moment.

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And I don't know what I'm going to do. And, you know, all the bills are coming due and I don't know how to pay. But, Lord, help me not to think about that. Help me to trust you.

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And I don't need to be thinking about how impossible it all is and how I don't know what to do. And, you know, so that's what people do when they're trying to fight worry.

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But then the issue is, like, what is Paul telling you to do? He says, don't be anxious. Ask God for it.

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Then what does he say? He says, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

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You know that if your heart is filled with thanksgiving, if you remember God's mighty acts in history, if you remember all the, like, if you had a journal, like, think about it.

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If you had a journal that you've written down of all the different situations that God has got you out of and every time you're tempted to worry, you go and you, like, read that journal and you rehearse

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God's mighty acts of history. They correspond with your life, even. What are you going to do? You're filling your mind with thanksgiving.

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You're filling your mind with trusting thoughts. Do you understand? Like, the more that you think about the goodness of God, the character of God, the worry goes.

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You see what I'm saying? Like, so the issue with worry is you're not just trying to stop worrying. You're trying to rehearse, like, these

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God -honoring, Christ -honoring thoughts about, you know, how God has interacted with you.

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Like, dwelling on the promises of Scripture that you see in the Bible. Like, you know, you read through the story of the

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Exodus. What do you see? You see them grumbling and complaining the whole time. Like, what did they do? They forgot, like, every step of the way what situation they were in before.

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And all that would have been fixed if they could have, you know, recalled to their mind, you know, the fact that, you know what?

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We thought it was hopeless to get out of Egypt. And you know what? We thought after we got out of Egypt that it was hopeless when we were on the

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Red Sea, that Pharaoh was going to kill us. But God did the miraculous. And then, you know what? We thought it was hopeless when we were about to starve to death.

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And he sent manna from heaven. And you know what? We thought we were going to die of thirst. And he calls the rock to bring forth water.

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But the issue is, like, when you get fixated on the problem and you're just focused on trying to stop, you know, it becomes very difficult to turn from that.

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Some verses on this, Ephesians 4 through 24. But that's not the way you learn in Christ. Assuming that you've heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.

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To put off your own self, your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

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Second Corinthians 10 .4. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

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And to take every thought captive to obey Christ, and to be ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete.

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Replace these anxious, you know, thoughts with God -honoring, Christ -exalting thoughts. And then finally, replace irresponsible actions with God -honoring,

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Christ -exalting actions. Verse 9. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the

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God of peace will be with you. What do you think about the kind of person who's worried about a job and refuses to put out a resume? I don't imagine that they're going to probably have a whole lot of success in stopping, you know, worried about that if they refuse to take responsible action.

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What do you think about an army who is afraid about the enemy invasion and they refuse to put out a guard?

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What does the Bible say? Nehemiah 4 .9. We prayed to God and we set out a guard as protection against them day and night.

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Like, what is Paul encouraging them to do? He's not just encouraging them just to sit there in idleness, doing nothing, right?

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Just trying to stop, like, to fight their worry. He's saying, what you've heard, or what you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and what the

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God, like, you want that peace that passes all understanding? What is he saying? What you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the

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God of peace will be with you. Meaning, like, a lot of times, like, we're filled with anxiety, we're filled with stress because we don't have any, like, good productive things that we're doing with our life.

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We're wasting a lot of time. We're sitting there staring at walls. Like, if you want a recipe for how to worry, just, like, don't do anything productive with your life.

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Just sit there and stare at the wall. And so, like, the issue is that you need to replace these irresponsible actions with God -honoring,

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Christ -exalting actions. And that's problem -specific kind of actions. It's like, if you're worried about a situation, what responsible steps do

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I need to take in this situation? But that's just general Christian faithfulness, okay? Paul's talking about the whole manner of his life.

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Like, look at Paul's manner of life and ask yourself, like, how did he live his life, right? And so, this includes, like, just the means of grace, church attendance, prayer,

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Bible study, serving other people. It's really hard to have a pity party amongst yourself when you're constantly serving other people.

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You understand what I'm saying? Like, God has given us any number of productive things to do in our life. The things that honor and glorify

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Him. And a lot of times we experience anxiety. We experience all these worries because we get sidetracked. You know, maybe we're not engaged in the mission that we've been called to like we should.

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Maybe we're, you know, filling our minds with just garbage. You know, garbage in, garbage out.

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Spending all of our time in entertainment, pursuing worthless pursuits. And then you feel all the guilt and the shame and everything else that comes from that.

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But, anyways, needless to say, God's given us a solution to anxiety and worry. And it's a solution that really the world doesn't understand.

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But if you do want to show the world what it looks like to trust in the

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God who made you, like, one of the ways is, like, learning how to fight your anxiety and worry.

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But then we know that the only hope that we have of doing this at all is if we have the creator of the universe come to justify us, to clear us, not guilty of our sin.

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And then to come to live inside of us and give us what we need in order to fight these battles. And so this is a brief, brief survey of anxiety.

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And how much time do we have left? I don't know if we have time. All right. So I left some time for questions if you have them.

47:21

Yes, sir. Yeah, I mean,

47:47

I would think that I describe what's happening with Christ in the garden as under the lens of legitimate concern.

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But then most people get offended by that because they think concern is a word that's too trivial to describe what's happening.

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But the issue is not, like, the issue is not, right, the issue is the nature of what's actually happening there, if that makes sense.

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And so, like, legitimate concern as a category is an appropriate response.

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It's proportional, right? So you think about, like, if you try to contrast, like, general anxiety disorder.

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So a lot of people will say, hey, yeah, Jesus was suffering from anxiety in the garden. The issue is, like, general anxiety disorder is six months of worry, more days than not, which is affecting your ability to handle life, right?

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And causing you to engage in irresponsible actions. Whatever that was for Christ, this isn't six months of persistent anxiety and worry that's totally destabilizing him and has become his excuse to not handle life.

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It's like a legitimate concern, but it's proportional to the nature of what's happening. And it's not indefinite and out of control.

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So, like, the end result is it's basically, like, if you think about it that way, it's just a, it's, he had a legitimate concern.

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But it's not, like, whatever it is, it's not anxiety in the psychological sense.

49:20

Does that make sense? Okay. Yes, sir. Right.

49:43

Well, there's no medical test that's being done to show. So basically, in order to get that diagnosis, all the medical tests have to be ruled out.

49:52

Does that make sense? So you're saying that the rigorous medical testing has not been for those symptoms?

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I'm saying that when the medical tests come up empty, then you get the label.

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Do you understand what I mean? So when, like, when the physiological explanations are exhausted, that's kind of a, let's see.

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So after they run all the panel of tests and realize that there's nothing, like, biologically wrong with you, then they turn to the disabled.

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So it's not attributed, not attributable to a substance or a medical condition, basically.

50:37

Does that make sense? So, like, the issue is, like, yeah, if you're worried, all right, let me take a step back.

50:44

Like, the issue is they're called symptoms, and that makes you think medical problem. But then what are you talking about?

50:52

You're talking about difficulty sleeping. When I've been characterized by worry, I have a difficult time sleeping.

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The issue is what's happening there. Do you understand what I'm saying? Like, if there's no medical explanation for why

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I'm restless, then what's left over is there's, like,

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I have a heart that doesn't trust the Lord. Like, what's going on in my mind in that moment when I'm having it?

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And I've been stressed out and, like, have a hard time sleeping. But the issue is what's happening is my mind is going over and over and over the worry.

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So, yeah, of course I can't sleep. But then I can't pretend, like, that the reason why

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I can't sleep is because I have a disorder. Like, what I have is I have a problem where my heart doesn't want to trust

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God. Do you see what I'm saying? So, now, if there's, like, a real medical problem, you're going to get the other label.

51:43

Do you see what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, so, like, if you have hypothyroidism, then they're going to say you have hypothyroidism.

51:50

You know, if you're hyperglycemia, if you have asthma, you know, like, you're going to get the medical label.

51:55

This is the label they give you after all the tests come up empty. Yes, sir.

52:12

Sure. Sure. Yeah, I mean,

52:26

I think the issue is when they're actually diagnosing this, they're not actually seeing.

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Part of what's happening is there's, like, an equivocation about the nature of what a physical manifestation is, if that makes sense.

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Like, meaning, like, if your blood work were to come back bad, then you—so, like, you've got to—put it this way.

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Like, if you were to—if you have cancer, you can go to a doctor, and they're going to run a series of medical tests to say, hey, yeah, your white blood count levels are low or whatever else.

53:02

And so there's something they can point to to say there's a problem within the body. It's not handling certain things well. What's happening here is you have a series of, like, thoughts, behaviors, or moods that are not being diagnosed by medical means in that way.

53:16

So then, yeah, you're restless. Well, that just means that you are having trouble sleeping.

53:24

But then, like, are we just kind of biological creatures? Right? Like, is everything just about, like, a structural problem within our biology, or is there something going on in our soul?

53:35

So, like, the issue is, like, yes, like, related to what you're talking about, like, the way you think can affect the way you feel.

53:45

So I remember, like, during a certain time in my life, I was so depressed over a certain series of events that I thought

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I was sick. Like, I thought I was sick. I thought I had something wrong with me. I went to the doctor, and I was like, there's something wrong with me.

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You've got to figure—you've got to help me doc. Tell me what's wrong with me. They ran all the tests. There was nothing wrong with me. And then they looked at me, and they said, hey, are you depressed?

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I said, yes. They said, well, that's what it is. And it's like—so, but that's what David says, you know, when he was—he kept silent about his sin, his body wasted away.

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But then the issue is, there wasn't actually anything physiologically wrong with me. I just felt terrible.

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And the reason why I felt terrible was because my soul was in a terrible place, basically, if that makes sense. So, but yeah,

54:28

I don't know. Any other thoughts? Yes, sir. Right.

54:43

Sure. Well, yeah, the entire category of mental illness was created as a—I mean, those categories were—that's what the

54:52

DSM is. Like the DSM is the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

54:58

And what you have is you have some 500 labels now or something like that.

55:03

They vote on them every year to add new ones to the list, and a lot of them have to do with— there's a lot of money to be made with pharmaceutical companies to create new illnesses or whatever.

55:15

But, like, the issue is, like, these labels that are—they're simple descriptions of thoughts, behaviors, and mood.

55:22

So, like, I ran through general anxiety disorder. Most people think that there's more to it than that. There's not. It's just a simple description of thoughts, behaviors, and mood.

55:30

I mean, they—and they label everything that way. So, I mean, like, if you have a kid who's disrespectful, they call it oppositional defiant disorder.

55:35

If you have a temper problem, they call it intermittent explosive disorder. You know, so, like, every kind of conceivable category of human thought and behavior is worded in this, like, quasi -medical language, basically.

55:49

So the issue is, as you go through these labels one by one and you look at how they're diagnosing it, you realize in every case they're going to say it's not attributed to a medical condition, right?

56:00

So they're just going to ask, like, subjective questions about thoughts, behaviors, and mood, and then they're going to give you a label at the end of it.

56:06

And that's kind of the way it works. But, I mean, that's why even the pagans will describe the DSM as psychology's

56:12

Bible, is because that's what it's doing. It's just giving you an alternative categorization of every phenomenon you're looking at, if that makes sense.

56:24

Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, there's a few in there without maybe providing an exhaustive list.

56:50

I mean, you can have, like, Alzheimer's and dementia, but then things like Alzheimer's, dementia, and things like that, you can run objective medical tests and you can see that the brain is deformed, you know?

57:00

So I would just encourage people, when they're interacting with these labels, to just ask basic questions, like, what medical tests did you run to determine that I have this problem, right?

57:09

Because, like, the vast majority of these labels are basically just, they're just alternative explanations for human behavior.

57:17

That's what they are. And if you just, like, if you go to the Bible and try to understand your problems, you're going to see the

57:23

Bible characterizes it one way and the world characterizes it another way. But any other thoughts?

57:30

Do we have, what time do we have left? Okay. Sure.

57:47

Sure. Yeah, so, like, a good example of that would be the barren womb is never satisfied.

58:10

So, I mean, that would be, like, the Bible is very realistic about the nature of the human condition, like, in the sense that God gives us desires for good.

58:20

You know, you can think about, like, Hannah going before the Lord, crying, begging God to give her a child or something like that.

58:26

Like, there's, like, if God's made us in certain ways, he's given us desires to serve him, that he may never, like, sometimes maybe even never fulfill in this life, you know.

58:41

So, you kind of have to interact with why he would do that. But a lot of the patriarchs, you know, they look forward to their time in the promised land, like, observing it as far off, even though they never actually obtained it themselves.

58:54

And so, you know, part of the Christian life is learning to have God's priorities and desire the things that he wants you to desire.

59:00

So, like, the idea of, like, hope deferred makes the heart sick or whatever. I think it's just a generality.

59:07

It's just a general statement about the nature of life, that life is often filled with unmet desires.

59:14

And you have to process that in certain ways and learn how to handle that and give them over to God, you know, if that makes sense.

59:23

There's too many. Alright, yeah, so with, like, the hope is often, like, in good things, you know.

59:37

So, like, if you're single, for instance, like, if you're single and you want to get married, I always encourage single people, don't try to mortify that good desire.

59:46

Don't try to get rid of that, you know, because if you have that good desire, it can be oppressive, you know.

59:52

It's like, I want to get rid of this desire. I don't want the pain that comes from not having the fulfillment.

59:59

But the issue is, it's like, yeah, that may be a natural way this goes.

01:00:05

But what you need to do is keep on, like, giving it to God. You wrestle with God for it, right? You don't let, don't surrender it.

01:00:13

Like, don't try to kill a good desire. But you don't have to view, like, the pain that comes from it as if it's a bad thing.

01:00:20

But it does need to be in proportion. It needs to be proportional. It doesn't need to be all day long. And so in the categories

01:00:25

I gave, you have, like, worry, and then you have legitimate concern. And the difference between legitimate concern and worry is that legitimate concern is proportional to what's happening.

01:00:36

It rests in God's sovereignty in that way, right? So you can hold on to those good desires.

01:00:42

You can give them to God. You can regularly give them to God, but it needs to be filled with hope, right? Hopeful in that way.

01:00:48

And not just, like, despair, like going on for days. Yes, sir?

01:00:55

Okay. Okay.

01:01:05

Okay. Yeah, feel free to e -mail me. Lord, we thank you for the chance we have to think about your words that you've given to us and think about this topic.

01:01:17

We know that none of us are strangers to worry and anxiety and fear. We know that you provided a solution to that in your word through Jesus and what he's done for us.