Counseling Series: Anxiety and Depression

Striving for Eternity Videos

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September 15, 2024

Four ACBC counselors will gather to discuss anxiety and depression

00:14: Are you saying that someone, a believer, can go sleep with a prostitute and it wouldn't be right or wrong because he's not under the law anymore?
00:26: So if he sleeps with a prostitute but has faith in doing it, then it's okay?
00:33: Yeah, it's okay. Okay, I'm going to ask this again because I want to make sure that I heard you correctly.
00:41: Yeah, it's okay. It would be, as long as you have faith, he can do that. Wow. Okay.
00:50: You're saying that as long as we have faith, whatever we do in faith is not sin?
01:00: Yes. This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapoport.
01:18: Helps if I unmute. We are live, Apologetics Live, here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the
01:25: Bible, maybe even questions like that. Yeah, that was a real person who came in and yeah, he actually said that and more.
01:37: But we are here to answer your most challenging questions. Whatever questions you have you want to ask, we are here every, well, most
01:44: Thursday nights. Just go to ApologeticsLive .com, click on the little StreamYard icon and that is how you join us.
01:53: Now we are in a series right now dealing with counseling issues and tonight we're going to deal with things of anxiety, fear, depression.
02:02: And before we do, I'm going to do a little bit of an in the news section. I don't have one of my co -hosts with me, but before we get to the counseling of anxiety and fear and depression tonight,
02:14: I want to address some things that are in the news. And audience, I mean, this is for those of you who are watching, listening,
02:22: I want this show to be for you. So I do have a question I'm going to ask. You know, there was a second
02:28: Trump assassination attempt and I know some people would like me to go into more detail than I'm going to do tonight, but I just want to say we did deal with this previously and on an episode after the first assassination attempt.
02:45: But there is some things I'm definitely concerned about with this because there's things that folks that don't know how certain parts of our government run with security and things like that.
02:59: I'm very, I'm greatly concerned because this, this second attempt really is making me question things.
03:06: I said, I didn't believe that the first attempt was some conspiracy. I thought it was just what I've seen in the government, just incompetence.
03:15: The second one makes me very nervous because what I saw was the fact that this is an
03:23: OTR. This was, OTR stands for off the record. This was not a planned event. So there, there, when the president wants to go somewhere and do something that's not planned, it requires a little bit less prep for the security because of the fact that it wasn't on the schedule.
03:43: A lot of the things with the president, it takes a lot of time to schedule. They send out teams to check things, make sure that, you know, that there's not someone hiding in the woods, but someone that can stay, can be there when
03:56: Trump is not recorded to have to, you know, and that he wasn't going to go play golf. It was something off the record.
04:02: It was more of a last minute thing. Now, even last minute takes some planning. And so when he goes to play golf, there is a little bit more planning.
04:11: How did this guy from, from Hawaii know where to set up? That's one thing
04:17: I'm very concerned about. The second thing I'm very concerned about is he had a GoPro camera.
04:23: So you guys are going, Andrew, what's the big deal? He just wanted to record it so he could put it online.
04:29: No, that's not the reason most people that do assassinations carry cameras.
04:36: It's for proof of, well, end of life. It's for payment.
04:43: The fact that he was there, he had two backpacks sitting there with some bulletproof, you know, material and had a
04:52: GoPro. There's something with this that is not sitting right with me. So I have not been able to get enough detail of it to do a full show.
05:04: But if folks are interested, let me know. Maybe I'll dig in a little bit more.
05:10: But with my background, I just, there's certain things that I'm looking at this and going, this one looks a little different than the first.
05:19: Second thing that we have in the news that we have to unfortunately address, if folks have not heard as of yet, but the
05:29: Church, Trinity Church of Dallas put out a public statement that Steve Lawson has been removed from the pastorate.
05:39: He had a, was involved in an inappropriate relation with a woman.
05:46: And so he has been removed from ministry. The way that they did say it was that it was a permanent removal.
05:55: So they know the details. We do not. So the one thing
06:01: I would say in a situation like this is please be praying for the Church. Pray for Steve Lawson and his wife.
06:08: The goal now would be restoration, not to the pulpit, but to his wife and to family and to that Church.
06:19: So I am, I do find it quite interesting, the people that want to still try to support him and in the way of excusing something like this, even though we don't have all the details.
06:41: I'm just, I think that we have to realize that this is something that, and I'm going to say something,
06:51: I'm hesitating because I'm going to say something that's probably going to get me in a lot of trouble with some, which means at some point
06:56: I'll have to do a whole show on what I'm about to say, but I think the real issue here is that this may have been avoided had other smaller issues in his life been dealt with by people who were close to him.
07:10: There were areas that those who did not have to be around him long to see that there were some issues, but he had this big platform and unfortunately nowadays people are more interested in the platform and they excuse things that they see in someone's life because they just, they want the platform and what comes with that.
07:34: And so I think that just, and I'm not putting him, not putting
07:40: Steve Lawson in the same camp as what Ravi Zacharias did, because as far as I know it's nowhere near to the same level, but as I said when we had the issues with Ravi Zacharias after his death and things were, came out,
07:52: I said the same thing then, things that I knew of Ravi Zacharias, like the fact that he lied about his education and having a
08:01: PhD from a university, having taught at the university, the fact that the university denies all that, embezzlement things with the ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, those things, had someone come alongside
08:17: Ravi back then and Steve Lawson earlier, maybe things like this would not have happened.
08:26: This is the importance of accountability. It is the importance of making sure that we are teachable.
08:38: So, you know, we have to do that in ministry. Once we get to the point that we're not teachable, once we get to the point that people are just going to make excuses for sinful behavior we do, then you end up having issues where now people feel justified.
08:56: Hey, I got away with this. I could, they could push the envelope. And so, as I said with Ravi, I'm not saying
09:04: Steve Lawson's not saved. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that there's people who knew him that I think saw other issues and should have said things maybe when things were smaller.
09:22: And so, I know that will get a lot of people upset with me because they're idolized Steve Lawson.
09:28: Well, there's a lot of good things that Steve Lawson has taught many people, but we need to be true to God first and have accountability in our life and worry about platform and things like that after.
09:42: And we have good men who could teach us things because they've studied well the
09:48: Bible and still fall. And guess what? We can learn something in that as well. I praise
09:54: Trinity Church, I think it's Trinity Baptist Church, if I remember correctly, of Dallas for doing the right thing, what we see in 1
10:01: Timothy 5 .20, and stating when a pastor continues in sin, stating it so that the rest of us would fear.
10:11: On the show tonight, I will have my pastor. We've gotten into things where I've said things when
10:20: I was teaching where he was like, hey, you need to deal with that. And maybe
10:25: I'll ask him how my reaction was when he's told me that. But we need that in our lives, folks.
10:31: If you don't have people in your life, especially if you're in ministry, and if you don't have people in your life who will stand up and tell you when you're doing wrong, that's a problem.
10:45: Just talking to a friend of mine who I got to see recently, and I asked how things were going with ministry, and he's like, oh,
10:53: I'm so busy. I'm traveling every weekend. I said, so are you in your home church much?
11:01: And he's like, I'm never there. I said, well, you've got to change that. I said, that becomes a problem.
11:07: I started going through with him why that could be a problem in our lives. We need to be in a church where people will keep us accountable.
11:16: So those are two issues. Folks, if you want us to get into more detail on that, we're scheduling now some events out to November, and so maybe
11:29: I could do some shows explaining what my concerns are in more detail with the Trump second assassination attempt and with Steve Lawson.
11:38: I don't know if more things will come out. So with that, let me bring in, as I mentioned first, my pastor,
11:50: Pastor Dan Scogin and his bride, Robin. They are both
11:55: ACBC counselors, and I will bring in Anthony Russo, who is the host of Grace and Peace Radio.
12:06: He used to be one of the admins at the Christian Podcast Community, so I have worked closely with him for many years, and he is now one of our, well, second newest speaker at Striving for Eternity.
12:20: And so, folks, as you hear him tonight, it may be a thing where you say, hey, maybe we could get someone to come out and do some talks on evangelism or counseling, and that would be something that Anthony can do.
12:35: So welcome to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So tonight we're going to talk about my depression, my anxiety, and you guys are going to set me straight.
12:49: You know, I should say from the outset, because there are some in Christianity that would think that somebody who deals with depression or anxiety could not be saved, or that somehow they must not be walking firmly.
13:17: Let's put that to rest early. There's many people, many men, who we would study, who we would look up to, that struggled with anxiety and depression.
13:31: Let me go names maybe you guys don't know. Martin Luther. Yeah, Martin Luther, the guy of the
13:38: Reformation, Martin Luther, yeah, he struggled with depression a lot. Charles Spurgeon, the guy that everybody quotes, was known to have many bouts of depression.
13:51: I mean, there's many missionaries, many people who have struggled with issues of depression, and so, and anxiety goes along with it.
14:00: And so, right from the get -go, I would say that it is not a sign, if someone's struggling in these areas, that someone is not saved or spiritually mature.
14:13: Would the three of you agree with me? I'll jump in, and I'll say yes, and I'll go to the
14:19: Old Testament, and God kind of told Joshua not to be afraid.
14:27: So, yeah, I think there was a danger that Joshua either was or could have been afraid, and God said, hey, don't be afraid.
14:37: Yeah, absolutely, I agree. In fact, again, Old Testament reference, Elijah, right after Mount Carmel, and William Cooper, John Newton, everybody knows
14:50: John Newton and Amazing Grace. John Newton, they were best friends, and John Newton really had to try to help his friend,
14:59: William Cooper, because he had severe depression most of his adult life. And like you said, so many missionaries.
15:09: I've been depressed at times. I don't mind saying that. I think every Christian at some point encounters some struggles that just weigh them down in some way, shape, or form.
15:21: And then we have also the Psalms. David said in Psalm 34,
15:27: I sought the Lord, and He delivered me from all my fears. So, David was afraid at times, and yet we know that David was a man after God's heart.
15:39: So, yeah, I think, you know, if someone thinks that because they're afraid they're not a
15:45: Christian, I don't know where they're getting that information from, but there's a lot of information in the
15:51: Bible contrary to that. Correct. So, let's deal with the first issue that we have, which is anxiety.
16:01: And, you know, Pastor Dan, you sent me a thing today saying maybe we should also deal with fear, because that's kind of goes along with this.
16:09: So, we'll try and deal with anxiety and fear, and then get into the issue of depression.
16:15: And for folks who are watching, listening, I'd encourage you, if you guys wouldn't mind sharing this on social media, so others know about it and know to follow and listen, because there are many who struggle in these areas of anxiety, fear, depression.
16:34: And so, maybe someone on your social media needs to hear it, and will hear it because you share it.
16:41: I'll also mention while I'm at that, if you follow, if you have been following Apologetics Live and you're going, hey,
16:49: I haven't seen any new episodes, there have been some changes with Spotify and Apple that they just made some changes where people don't no longer get the feeds, they have to go and follow again.
17:03: So, if you have not been hearing it on your feed, make sure you go out to whatever app you use for podcasts and refollow.
17:14: So, let's talk anxiety. Let me ask it this way.
17:21: I'll ask it first of you, Anthony. Is anxiety always wrong? Is it always bad?
17:30: That's a good question. Some people say it's sinful, but is it always sinful? Can we have a good anxiety?
17:38: Well, I mean, it depends. You know, anxiety, as I, I'm not at all a
17:44: Greek scholar, but my understanding is the word in the Greek and pastor tell us, but it really means like becoming a part, to be, you know, you get that idea of ocean churning, that sort of thing.
18:00: So, to be divided. So, I mean, at times we can be overwhelmed with care,
18:08: I suppose. But again, you know, I mean,
18:13: God gives us our emotions and our emotions by themselves are good. But then there's a question of how do we, you know, that we can let them overflow in ways that are, that are not good.
18:25: So, I think, you know, you can be anxious for something good. Like, you know, when it's 10 minutes before you're about to get married, you're probably going to be anxious.
18:36: I would hope you are in a good way. So, there is, yeah, I think there's good anxiety, a job interview, a job prospect, that sort of thing.
18:45: Pastor, what do you think? You mean, when I was late for my wedding, I should have been anxious? Because we were.
18:53: All of our guests were at the wedding before the bride and groom. Wow. Only you,
19:03: Andrew, only you. Just wanted to make that appearance, right? Well, okay, now I probably have to explain.
19:08: So, in the Chinese culture, the groom has to pick up the bride and they go to the wedding together.
19:17: But I had to go to her house. All of her bridesmaids play games with me.
19:23: So, they made me decorate the car and stand outside. And I had to sing up the window out, you know, up to her while she gets her makeup on.
19:30: And then I had to come in the house and serve her parents tea. And so, there's a whole procedure.
19:36: And then we had to drive from New York down to New Jersey and we hit traffic.
19:41: So, yeah, we were late for our own wedding. Yeah.
19:49: Anxiety is more future looking, you know, ahead, whereas fear seems to be more immediate.
20:02: Anxiety, there are many reasons for us to be afraid.
20:08: And I don't necessarily know if anxiety is sinful, depending upon what we do with it.
20:18: You know, we could all look at various things going on here in America that could make us anxious.
20:27: But what we do is we try to then with that anxiety, I guess, would determine whether or not it's sinful.
20:36: Right. I was looking at some notes today in preparation for this, and I was reminded of the topic we talked about last week or two weeks ago, rather, anger.
20:45: You know, anger in itself is not sinful. It's an emotion God gives us.
20:50: But what we do with that anger, it can easily trip into sin. And anxiety is one of those same things.
21:02: So what would be, you know, Pastor Dan, do you have a good definition of anxiety?
21:10: Well, I, Ed Welsh has an exact definition, and he says it's like attention scanning.
21:20: And you're scanning ahead, and you're wanting to know that there's danger out there.
21:27: So it's kind of more like a radar sonar type thing. You're looking out forward, not so much immediate fear would be, you know, you're afraid of the mouse that's running across in front of you, where anxiety is what's going to happen after the election.
21:46: So anxiety is more of scanning attention, as Ed Welsh says, whereas fear is more like concentrated attention.
21:58: Okay, that's helpful. I think for a lot of people, what they think of with anxiety is tied to trusting the
22:07: Lord. And a lot of people, the reason they see it as sinful as well, you know, when you have anxiety, oh, well, you're not trusting the
22:15: Lord. This, just in general, you always get in trouble when you make generalities based on gender, but in general, it seems, and I say that, it seems like women deal with it more than men.
22:33: But I'm saying that because I actually think that men just hide it better, if anything. So Robin, let me bring you into the conversation and ask, is anxiety always a lack of trusting the
22:48: Lord? Anxiety is not, I really don't want to say it's a lack of trusting in the
22:56: Lord. But I think the solution is always trusting in the Lord when you're anxious.
23:03: So it seems a little confusing, but I would never, it seems very heartless.
23:09: The world is harsh. And there's a lot of reasons to be anxious.
23:15: So I would never want someone to feel like it was a sin and be critical of them.
23:21: But the solution is the world is hard, but God is sovereign. That would be a horrible situation, but God is good.
23:31: So it's ironic that the answer is pointing them to God and reminding them of that.
23:39: Sometimes we just forget and some people need more reminders than others. Yeah, that's a good point.
23:46: Yeah. And again, I don't think it's so much a lack of trust of God initially because, you know, life is very fragile and there are many good reasons to be, shall we say, anxious.
24:00: Maybe we could use a softer word that we're concerned about certain things. Uh, so I don't know if that's necessarily initially a lack of trust with God, but, you know, it boils down to again, uh, you know, what is the center of your life?
24:18: Uh, what is the focus of your life? You know, uh, if a child is coming late past curfew and they're two hours late and you've not heard anything, you know, we all get anxious or we all get concerned.
24:36: It's not necessarily really a lack of trust in God initially, but, you know, it's what, and as Robin said, it goes back to it again.
24:45: It goes back to, you know, what do we do with that? Yeah. Let me ask this because people in the chat are talking specifically about panic attacks.
24:54: Let me put this up. Katie is saying, um, what about panic attacks?
25:00: I am, am I in constant sin for having panic disorder?
25:06: And then we have, uh, Katie Relling says, uh, am I living in constant sin for having panic disorder?
25:13: I have panic attacks nearly daily. So, and there's others that are talking about, uh, it as well in the, in the chat, are panic attacks sin.
25:24: Let's just start with that right off the bat. Robin, you waved your head. No, no, they're not sin.
25:30: You can't control your body functions, but I, again, um, there's a lot of reason for that.
25:39: Um, I would go to a medical doctor and I would get, you know, make sure you're eating and exercising and doing all those things correctly.
25:49: Um, that will help give you some direction, but I do think like reading the
25:54: Psalms, um, I think most of the Psalms start with, um, oh,
25:59: God was good to Israel, but as for me, my feet almost slipped. And then at the end, towards the end of each
26:08: Psalm, he goes into the tabernacle. He goes to the sanctuary. He remembers God and that helps him get through his anxiety, his, through his fears.
26:18: And so I think that it would be a great help to you to, um, focus on that.
26:25: You know, I would add to that, not just, I mean, the Psalms are, is one I would always have recommended, but I was just thinking as, as a church, we're going through the
26:33: Bible together and, uh, through, through the year and we just got done with Hosea and I, I just,
26:41: I couldn't help. But as we're reading, I don't know about you guys. And I think I put this in our, in our church chat there, but I see so much of where, where God is speaking about Israel.
26:51: And I see so much of myself there, like, as he's talking about Israel being faithless and God is so faithful to Israel.
26:59: And I'm going, yeah, I kind of needed that for myself. Like, like I could,
27:06: I could see myself like being kind of faithless a lot of times like Israel was and, and needing to be reminded about how good
27:14: God is. Um, so yeah, but I mean, a panic attack, well, let me ask this.
27:22: I don't know if, uh, any of you want to answer, how would we define a panic attack for some who may not be familiar with maybe never struggled with them?
27:35: Well, I would say that it is a, it's a voluntary, yeah, kind of an involuntary biological condition response.
27:45: Uh, oftentimes there's not a lot of thought. It doesn't have to be necessarily a triggering circumstance.
27:55: It just kind of goes on and, and hits them. And there is certainly a biological component to it.
28:03: Sweaty palms, heart beating, you feel you can't breathe like you're going to die.
28:10: Uh, yeah. So there are, that would be basically it in my, yeah,
28:18: I, I would agree with that. I guess to add to that, maybe we could say it's a, a very compressed, condensed, uh, uh, what's the word?
28:29: Acute, uh, fear, uh, you know, where you just take this idea of fear and then you just squish it together, you know, and that it's a, it's a panic attack.
28:41: Um, yeah. Where you just think, you know, the, you think of the worst of something is going to happen in that moment, even though, you know, part of you knows full well, that's not going to happen.
28:51: Um, then one thing I want to say real quick, as we're getting into this, you know, a lot of the questions that come up, uh, well, you know, what about my panic attacks or whatever we just have to say to, you know, we're not medical professionals.
29:05: That's one thing. So obviously we would recommend, and every biblical counselor
29:10: I know of would recommend that somebody goes for a complete medical checkup and discuss things with their physicians, any medications or whatever, uh, that number one, number two, as far as what we answer to some of these questions, just know that we're answering generally.
29:26: We don't know who you are. We don't know what you're dealing with. We don't know what, what, you know, where you're at with the
29:32: Lord. There's so many things we don't know. So take what we say with a big, big, big grain of salt as a general, as general statements.
29:42: Uh, if you're asking specific questions like, are my panic attacks, uh, sinful or, you know, are my panic attacks sinful or something like that.
29:50: Some, some could be, and, and some might not. I mean, I, so I get,
29:57: I have a panic attack almost every morning and then I get into my ice plunge and there's the panic attack is gone.
30:06: Even this morning, my, my bride was like, she was like, you haven't gotten into your, your cold plunge yet. I'm like, no, no,
30:12: I just, it's, but it's everything past the day. I mean, I actually can break out into a sweat and feel like, you know, uh, but because I know
30:19: I'm going to do something really hard and then I just do it and it's, it's over. But, um, and that's, that's actually,
30:27: I said last week, I would, I would give a one thing that can help with, uh, anxiety and depression that might surprise folks.
30:36: But, uh, one thing that will, that does help. And I have, I've gone through,
30:42: I think, um, three or four major bouts of depression in my, in my life.
30:49: They were all tied to, uh, every one of them was tied to having to leave a church where, you know, something happened with the church where we just felt we had to leave, unfortunately.
31:01: Right. So, uh, each time that, that was, you know, that, that was what it was tied to.
31:07: So, but a thing that, that I would say is one thing that really, and I don't know if it was pastor
31:15: Dan or Robin, Anthony, which one of you mentioned it, but diet, you can have, you can have, because this is a biological thing.
31:23: It could be things you're eating. It could be things you're doing. So, you know, something that can help.
31:31: Sleep loss. Yeah. Yeah. Sleep. Sleep. Anthony, what, what does that word sleep? What? I don't know.
31:36: I'm not familiar. I've read about it when I've read about it. Overnight when I'm awake, I've read about it.
31:42: Yeah. My, my, my bride has told me I need it, but I don't know what it is, but you know, uh, there's, there's heat therapy and cold therapy that actually have shown to be very effective.
31:55: What I mean by that, getting into a sauna or a hot tub, getting into, you know, like a sauna at 140 degrees, five days a week for 45 minutes to an hour.
32:08: If you can get it up to 174 degrees, um, studies show that that can reduce, um, that could reduce anxiety and depression by up to 60%.
32:20: And yeah, I can see the screen. So, so, uh, heat therapy can be very helpful.
32:33: Uh, heat therapy can, you know, like getting in a sauna, I'm in a sauna on a regular basis.
32:39: Uh, and that, that has helped me with some of the, you know, feelings of anxiety times, cold therapy, doing cold plunges can do it as well.
32:46: Uh, both of those, I would say you want to talk to a doctor before doing it. You know, when you're going to, especially the cold plunging, it's really, studies have shown that it will help with anxiety and depression, but if you've got a heart condition, it could be a problem.
33:01: Yeah. And I know pastor Dan wants to say something and then I've got something too.
33:10: Oh, I thought you were gonna, no, I, I know you can see the screen. I couldn't see the screen at all.
33:15: So I was typing blind. I want to recommend a book while we're on this, this topic.
33:21: My, one of my top favorite books on depression is Bob Somerville's book.
33:27: If I'm a Christian, why am I depressed? And his wife had just written a book and they were traveling.
33:34: Uh, I don't remember like Russia and other countries. And they came back and he was exhausted and school was starting.
33:41: And he was a pastor in a, uh, ACBC counselor and had to plan all these lessons.
33:48: And he fell into a long bout of depression that lasted, I think up to a year. And his book is so compassionate and so loving because he lived it.
33:57: And it's so helpful with homework at the end of every chapter. And he explains just so much, so much about depression and how to help people with it.
34:07: It's a good book. If someone's suffering from depression. Yeah. You know, and he just put this up really quick because, uh,
34:16: Kate saying, uh, Andrew, I wake up with anxiety attacks. Also, I realize going to the word every morning helps set my days.
34:26: Right. And I think we'd all agree. That's that's good, good practice. Good. Shall we say medicine?
34:36: No, it is true. And again, I think one of the things that is helpful is try to, if you can identify a little bit of what generates the panic attacks, uh, you know, you wake up every morning, you know, like, why is that?
34:58: Is there something that's happening in your life? Is there something repetitive going on?
35:04: But you know, once you know, there's a panic attack, just like fear and anxiety is a wonderful opportunity just to again, remind us that we are in need of God.
35:18: So one of the things that we don't want to do is fight necessarily the panic attack and try to like suppress it.
35:29: We want to use it to drive us in a closer relationship with God. Right.
35:38: Anthony. Yeah. Um, like pastor was just talking about it.
35:43: Those are great opportunities to, to ask the Lord what's going on, right? We see that with David in Psalm 43 verse five, he says, why are you cast down?
35:53: Oh, my soul. Actually, it's not. I don't know if, I don't know if this is a
35:58: David Psalm or not. It doesn't say, sorry. Why, why are you cast down on my soul? And why are you in turmoil within me?
36:05: So he's asking his soul, what, what's going on? So he's having this conversation with himself.
36:11: I'm Italian, by the way. Sorry. I hope in God, he says for,
36:16: I shall again, praise him my salvation and my God. So just like pastor Dan was saying, it's an opportunity for us to, to do a self inspection and do an inspect ourselves to kind of in the light of God's word and say, why am
36:30: I feeling this way? Whether it is being downcast or it's anxious about something. Why am
36:36: I down? You is, is the Lord not sovereign? Does he not love me?
36:42: Is he not going to, he loves me more than he loves the birds of the air. He takes care of them. He's going to take care of me.
36:48: So it's a chance for us to, to have that conversation with ourselves and with, with God.
36:54: Another area of panic attacks and, and anxiety that's worth mentioning.
37:00: And again, this is where we have to go with that disclaimer I gave earlier, but unconfessed sin, right?
37:09: So if we have unconfessed sin in our lives, that can, that can trigger panic that can trigger anxiety.
37:15: And that's good. I mean, God uses that to bring us, hopefully bring us to repentance.
37:23: I'm not saying don't hear that and say, well, maybe there's an unconfessed sin in my life.
37:29: I mean, that's maybe, maybe there is, but for everyone who said on the chat or whatever, yeah,
37:35: I've had anxiety. I've had panic attacks. I'm just saying that's one possible reason. It doesn't.
37:41: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is a, I mean, anxiety can be sinful, right?
37:48: I mean, so not all anxiety would be, but I think. I don't mean the anxiety, but I mean the cause of the anxiety, getting to the root of it might mean an unconfessed sin.
38:00: Yeah. And that's what I wanted to bring up and ask is there is anxiety that we could have as you brought up,
38:08: Anthony, you go for a job or you're, you know, you got a job interview, you're getting married. But there's, you know, there's, those are things where we have anxiety, but we're still trusting the
38:21: Lord. But there's other anxiety that's sometimes caused because, you know, we're trying to control things.
38:28: We want things to go our way and things are not happening the way we expect them to, the way we plan them to.
38:36: I know I've counseled a lot of people that struggle with anxiety and I have come to learn that a lot of their struggle is that God's plan and their plan are not the same plan.
38:48: Go ahead, Anthony. No, I apologize. Forgive me for that. I didn't mean to step on that.
38:54: I'm trying to remember who said it. I'll think of it later, but it might've, anyway,
39:01: Vance Havner maybe or Tozer, I don't know. But anyway, somebody had said that essentially as a
39:09: Christian, if you're anxious and miserable and stressed out, it's essentially you're not trusting the
39:20: Lord and you're basically getting what you deserve or you're reaping what you sow.
39:25: And that's a bit harsh maybe or a bit blunt. So I wouldn't make that a blanket statement, but that could be part of it.
39:35: You know, you could be reaping what you're sowing. You know, you're sowing this fear and everything. So yeah, your body and everything you're doing is causing you to be anxious.
39:48: You know, Fatima says this, I agree with Dan regarding unconfessed sin, but how can an unbeliever even begin to understand the biblical concept of unconfessed sin?
40:01: Pastor Dan, you want to tackle that question? How can an unbeliever even begin to understand?
40:09: Well, I guess the, where you'd begin would be their need for salvation, I guess.
40:16: And I would try to, and again, as was mentioned earlier, you know, this is all 30 ,000 foot, you know, suggestions, but yeah,
40:26: I would try to get them to realize that they are every day accumulating sin against God that has to be taken care of.
40:36: And either they will take care of it in eternity, or they can allow God to do that for them. So I guess that's kind of where I would start.
40:44: And then if they could make that profession of faith, then we have to keep that relationship going with God, just as in any other relationships.
40:54: You know, if they've got friends who've said or did things for them over the 4th of July weekend, that has still been bothering them or over Labor Day weekend holiday, you know, that's unconfessed sin.
41:07: So maybe you could get them to realize their ultimate need against God. And then maybe you could use it, some parallel examples among their peers or family members where there's separation because of sin.
41:24: Yeah. And, you know, so one of you guys mentioned anger, you know, and there is some,
41:30: I think there's some similarities here with anger and anxiety. I mean, both of them could be good.
41:37: I mean, they could have a positive function in our lives. Both of them could be bad and sinful, but both of them could be caused by other factors in our body.
41:49: You know, we're saying a lack of sleep, things like that. Do you guys see any other similarities within those?
41:58: We started this series with anger. Do you see some similarities with the origins of that?
42:04: And is it, are there things that we could carry over from that discussion into this one? Anthony, I saw you nodding your head, so I'll start with you.
42:13: Yeah. Again, right. All of these emotions that God gives us are good in some degree.
42:21: That's why he gave them to us. Sometimes sorrow is good because it gets that emotional release out, right?
42:28: And it kind of lifts the pressure valve off. And so, but sometimes sorrow can lapse into depression.
42:37: Depression can turn into a sinful depression, right? I know we're going to talk about depression more in the next hour, but anyway, so there's that, but one of the other big commonalities in dealing with all of this is what's your perspective, right?
42:57: Is your perspective a Godward perspective or is your perspective a focus on self and on your problems and on the things that are making you anxious?
43:06: And then also, are you confronting yourself biblically?
43:12: Again, are you bringing the truths of scripture to bear into this situation, whether it's anxiety or anger or whatever?
43:21: One of the, I guess a third thing when we talk about specifically comparing anger and anxiety would be that, remember we talked about how with anger, it's a frustration that we're not getting what we think we deserve or we're getting what we think we don't deserve in this situation.
43:41: There's some kind of wrong being done or something. Well, in a sense, anxiety can, there's a similarity there, right?
43:49: We can be anxious because we think that something's not going the way it should or whatever. So yeah, definitely there's some similarities.
43:56: That's a great point. Now, before I give this to Dan, Fatima says, the
44:01: Psalms are the poetry of the soul, and just hearing those verses being read by Anthony soothes so much.
44:08: So there you go, you got to read the Psalms. But Fatima says this, Dan, as you answer that, but she says, thank you,
44:15: Dan. I think the word separation helps begin the conversation about sin, separation from God.
44:23: Thank you. So do you see, so I want to,
44:28: I don't know if you want to comment on what Fatima said here or about separation more, or if you want to help us talk about the origins or the similarities with anger and anxiety.
44:44: And to get us to get some anxiety and be angry, I will bring in Aaron Brewster. And he smiled as I, I think he knew that transition was coming, but welcome
44:54: Aaron. I saw that transition a mile away. Happy to be here.
45:01: So Dan, go ahead. I'm going to, I'm going to jump in. I have a connection between the two.
45:08: I was counseling someone so long ago that this example will give itself away. Her son was having nightmares and anxiety in school.
45:18: And after a few sessions, she was angry at God and talks about how they pray every night.
45:26: She's praying with this child not to have nightmares and anxiety.
45:31: And then he had it and she was angry with God. And I was like, what else are you doing?
45:37: And she goes, what do you mean? I pray. I go, but what else are you doing? And, you know, after talking about everything we've already mentioned, so I won't repeat the medical aspect,
45:47: I asked her to keep a journal and she found out that this is so silly, but the nights he was having the nightmares and the anxiety was when he was watching the old
45:57: Batman cartoons, the one that said, wow, pow, you know, way back then.
46:03: But our anxiety can turn to anger and they are close.
46:09: Suffering is sure, but growth is optional. So if you're suffering with anxiety,
46:16: I would try not to waste it and grow from it and learn. And I love,
46:22: I think, we mentioned the Psalms earlier, but I think that Philippians is also one of the, has so much to say about that.
46:34: And there's a lot of people to talk, so I won't list all these verses, but I could, if you want. I have them here.
46:41: Well, you go ahead and list some of them at least. Some of them? All right. In Philippians 1 .6,
46:48: he who will, he will complete what he began. In 3 .6,
46:54: in love he entered our need and is raised in glory. In 2 .13, he's working in you.
47:01: In 4 .3, your name is written in his book of life. 4 .5,
47:07: he is near. 4 .7, he guards you. 4 .9, he will be with you.
47:14: 4 .19, he will supply all your needs. And 4 .23, his grace is with your spirit.
47:21: If we could remember how loved and precious we are to God, in fact, so loved that he sent his son to die on the cross for us, that really does help with our anxiety.
47:34: Yes. Now, a number of people here are mentioning in the chat.
47:41: Let me bring some of these up. Melissa is saying, I was listening last night with lessons on the
47:46: Attributes of God playlist on YouTube. It was a great comfort to me. Strange that I find out he was doing something inappropriate.
47:56: This is referring back to Steve Lawson. But then Fatima says, Attributes of God give me peace and stability of mind because it helps me get off myself and a focus on God.
48:08: And I just want to point out, the Attributes of God are helpful in that way. And I think
48:15: I've shared this plenty of times, but there's always new people coming in. But my prayer list is literally, if I pull up my prayer app, you're never going to be able to see it, but it's going through the
48:32: Attributes of God. I mean, that's what I do when I look to start my prayer is
48:39: I go through and we have a resource for you that we list, which is really my prayer list.
48:47: It's the 31 attributes that I have listed. If you go to strivingfortarian .org in our store,
48:53: I have a little chart. It's a one page chart. I should have brought it up here if I would have thought of it.
49:00: And basically what it is, it's all the Attributes of God and with scripture verses.
49:07: And I just find it very helpful to meditate on who God is on a daily basis, to think about and pray back to him who he is.
49:18: Think about different verses that basically highlight who we are and who
49:27: God is. And so that's a thing I find helpful.
49:35: So I don't know if any of you guys, what you think about that as far as, Robin, you're nodding your head.
49:42: So anything you want to say about the, you mentioned the Psalms, but thinking on the Attributes of God.
49:49: Just that I totally agree with you and that we have to get our minds off ourselves and onto God, but our whole society tells us to self -care and to think of ourselves more than any other time.
50:03: And depression is the greatest it's ever been. I think there's a correlation. Go ahead.
50:11: I was going to say, as far as the Attributes of God too, I don't know, somebody taught me this years ago, pray the alphabet.
50:22: Think of the letter A and think of an Attribute of God. God is all powerful.
50:29: B, God is beautiful. C, God is compassionate. And you can just go from that and just think about scriptures that apply to that and help you fill in those letters as you go.
50:42: The chart handy, which there's no excuse for not having the chart handy, but I'm just saying. Well, some people have,
50:48: Fatima is saying, I want to get the chart. How? I don't have a chart. Well, both of you could go to strivingforturning .org,
50:57: go to the store. And in the store is the chart. It's not very expensive.
51:03: I think for all of our quick reference charts, I think you can get one for 25 or all three for five bucks.
51:14: Can I mention something out of Philippians since we were just in that a few minutes ago?
51:20: This is just another aspect of the conversation that's important and we teach in biblical counseling is that Philippians 4, 6, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
51:39: Well, there's a couple of things in that, that are worth considering. And we've talked about some of this before, but every command of God in scripture is there.
51:49: If we're born again, we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us to obey the command.
51:56: Okay. So there's no reason that we can't, uh, obey that command that, that in scripture, because we have the
52:05: Holy spirit and God wouldn't give us a command that we can't obey. If we're born again, the unbeliever can't, but the believer can.
52:12: So that's one thing. The second thing is that put off, put on, um, that you see in Ephesians four and, and, uh,
52:21: I believe it's Colossians three. Well, we see it here. Here's the, here's the one thing that do not, do not be anxious.
52:30: Uh, well, if there's not a vacuum there, there's not a void. The next thing says, gives you a, a, something you could put on instead.
52:38: Do not be anxious. Um, but by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
52:47: Uh, and then there's the promise of that and the peace of God, uh, which suppresses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
52:55: So again, there's that biblical aspect of put off this thing, put on this thing.
53:01: Pastor Dan, you just got done preaching through Ephesians four. Um, anything you want to add to the putting off, putting on?
53:10: Well, again, it's, I can't follow that.
53:18: Uh, Ephesians four, you know, it, it is, we can't be viewing these things as negatives.
53:26: Uh, we have to be viewing this as, you know, God really wants us to live a life that is worth living.
53:33: So subsequently, and you're exactly right about the power of God. And then in Ephesians three, he, again, gives that prayer that, you know,
53:42: God could do exceedingly abundantly above all that we could ask or think. So, you know, we need to look at some of the struggles that we are really having with like panic attacks, like worry or fear.
53:57: And we need to really identify, you know, some of the things like, you know, we're fearful of,
54:05: I guess, what we might lose. Uh, you know, there's, there are legitimate reasons for fear, but we have to try to identify what, uh,
54:17: CCEF would say what captures our heart. And then what we have to do is we really have to then confess that as sin.
54:26: And that's where, you know, Paul speaks of, you know, you got worldly sorrow, and then you got
54:31: Godly sorrow. And you really have to come to a point where this is not just a struggle
54:37: I'm having, but this is genuine sin. And that comes then a little bit with the renewing of the mind.
54:46: And then, you know, we, to put off the renew and then to put on and to put on, I know it sounds so, you know, you guys are so reductionistic, but it really is, you know, just trust
54:58: God. And you're going to have to think through various passages of scripture.
55:05: You're going to have to think through something like Matthew six, you know, Hey, listen, you're more important than birds.
55:12: You know, you're more important than flowers. So, you know, what you have to do then is, you know, every time you see a flower, you have to make a mental acknowledgement that yeah, you're important to God.
55:23: God's going to take care of you. So yeah, the putting off is, you know, it's kind of like when we have the seven days of confession from the peacemakers, you have to identify, you know, what are you putting off?
55:36: And the more time you spend identifying that and I'm recycling it, I guess, but the more time you spend identifying it and really confessing it as sin, the greater the recovery or the success will be with putting on the appropriate behavior.
55:52: Now, Aaron, I know you struggle with anxiety every time we go to a conference together, because you know, you're going to see me in person and you know, it's going to take like three, four months to get rid of the nightmares.
56:01: But, you know, what you as a, as another ACBC counselor, what do you see as maybe some of the, you know, we've already kind of covered is what could be some of the causes of anxiety?
56:14: What are some things to do with anxiety? Is it always sinful? Is it not? What thoughts do you have?
56:22: I want to piggyback a little bit on what Dan said there about reductionism. First of all, just for clarification,
56:29: I have experienced what can be defined as anxiety.
56:35: I have experienced different forms of it. So I'll throw that out there.
56:40: Sometimes it's really easy to say, you know, well, you've never experienced what I've experienced. Well, I'm sure I haven't, but you haven't experienced what I've experienced.
56:46: So what I've experienced is pretty significant. So I'm coming at this from the standpoint that I just want people to understand that this is not somebody standing in a lofty tower, ivory tower saying that, oh,
56:58: I've never experienced that and neither should you. But what I, so I'm going to clarify what I experienced in this next part.
57:06: Going to the reductionism thing, actually the world is very reductionistic in how it defines what an emotion is.
57:13: The world says that there's a, there's a stimulus. Generally they say it's an external stimulus. That's only 50 % of the stimulus that can be effects.
57:21: They mess it up there. There's an external stimulus. There's a physiological response to that stimulus.
57:27: And then there is a, a set of behaviors that grows from that physiological response.
57:33: Somebody, a spider stimulus, there's a physiological response. And then, you know, standing up on a chair and screaming, you know, would be the behavior that follows, but that's a reductionistic approach to what emotions really are.
57:48: And the reason the world doesn't understand what emotions we are, the facets of emotions is that the world reduces everything to a solely biological, physiological thing.
57:57: And that's, those are the three stages, stimulus, feeling, emotion, and reaction.
58:03: But there's a key piece that's missing and that piece is on the spiritual side. And that piece is this, and this is how
58:10: I like to explain it to people. Two individuals sitting on a roller coaster, physiologically speaking, they are both having the exact same physiological response to the exact same stimulus.
58:25: They're both sitting on a roller coaster. They both have chemicals flowing through their body.
58:31: If we were able at that moment to test the chemicals flowing through the body, the types of chemicals flowing through their body, you would find that they are both experiencing the exact same physiological response.
58:46: However, once the roller coaster gets going, one person is freaking out while the other person is hooping and hollering and having a fantastic time.
58:58: What's interesting is that adrenaline is the most common chemical in our body, the most common hormone in our body that we like to identify as being fear, anxiety, worry.
59:14: But adrenaline is also very commonly viewed as being the sensation that we get when we're exhilarated.
59:22: It's also the sensation that we get when we're physically aroused and attracted to somebody.
59:29: The same physiological response, and here's the key, can be interpreted multiple different ways.
59:38: That's where the world and their reductionist approach doesn't understand how emotions work. Yes, there is a stimulus that can come from the outside or from the inside.
59:48: This is why Jesus tells us, God tells us in Philippians chapter four, to think the right way. Because there is no real loss.
59:55: It's a perceived loss. It's not actually a loss, but I'm imagining that it's loss. Really, the stimulus isn't really external.
01:00:02: It's all coming from inside. There's the stimulus. There's a physiological response, but then here's the key.
01:00:09: There's an interpretation of what's going on here. That interpretation, that choice that we make to identify what is happening to me, what's going on is so very important.
01:00:22: I used to tell my speech students that said, well, Mr. Brewster, I have stage fright. I say, no, you don't have stage fright.
01:00:27: By God's grace, you have adrenaline. God gives you adrenaline to be used as a tool in your life.
01:00:34: When you are in a high stress situation, a fight or flight situation, God gives you this boost of adrenaline to help you think clear and to act more concisely and to move faster as is necessary.
01:00:44: I would teach them how to channel that adrenaline into their volume, into their articulation, into their gestures.
01:00:52: I would say, you're not afraid. You're just experiencing adrenaline. Recognize it for what it is.
01:00:57: People who used to say, I'm afraid on stage because I'm shaking and I feel this way, realized they just had a lot of adrenaline going through the body and they didn't know what to do with it.
01:01:07: Identifying the truth of the situation is a huge part. We need to think on things that are true.
01:01:13: Oftentimes, just to piggyback on things that you guys said and how it all ties into it, for the people who say, well, you guys are just reductionists.
01:01:20: You reduce everything to trusting God. Well, again, there's a situation in my life.
01:01:26: It's a perceived loss. Maybe it's a potential loss. Maybe it's a practical loss. There's this thing in my life and I'm starting to be like, oh,
01:01:32: I don't know what's going to happen here. My son right now is in DC. Things are getting hot around election season.
01:01:39: It'd be really easy for me to imagine a lot of terrible things that could happen to him. The adrenaline starts going, but then
01:01:46: I need to think on that which is true. When I think on that which is true, what are some things that I remember?
01:01:53: God is 100 % sovereignly in control.
01:01:59: There is nothing that any of us can do to thwart his plan. We know what the scriptures say about the futility of worry about things that we have no control over.
01:02:12: As I focus on these truths that God is in control, I don't have to fear for what might happen to my son because whatever happens to my son is in his perfect plan, is according to Romans chapter eight, designed to be in his best interest as long as he's loving
01:02:26: God and working according to his purpose. I have all of these promises in scripture. Then that adrenaline starts to cool off.
01:02:34: Why? Because it's not really a fight or flight situation. It's not really a high stress situation. I created a high stress situation that didn't need to exist.
01:02:41: By focusing on the truth, I realized that there's nothing to feel this way about. Now, after saying all that and going for a long time, there's one caveat
01:02:48: I want to throw in here and then an invitation. The caveat is this. There are physical problems a person can have that can produce an adrenaline response inside of you at inappropriate times.
01:03:01: The example that I go to all the time is when I had experienced my first real -life panic attack. That came as a result of having a fungal infection called candida.
01:03:12: Some of you have heard me talk about this. That fungal infection, one of the consequences, one of the side effects is that it will produce in your chest area those feelings that people call anxiety.
01:03:24: You can have medical issues. You can have drugs that are competing with each other. You can have poor sleep and bad diet.
01:03:30: All these things can cause physiological issues in you, so you have these feelings.
01:03:37: Technically, anxiety and fear don't exist. Anxiety and fear are the labels that we put on these emotions that we're feeling that we don't know what they really are.
01:03:48: We don't know how to really—I wasn't feeling anxious. I wasn't afraid about anything. I had a fungal infection that was causing something to go on in my body.
01:03:57: I do want to say that, yes, I always feel anxiety as a result of sin.
01:04:03: However, when I feel this thing, it is my responsibility to interpret the situation correctly and to think on that, which is true.
01:04:13: Even after focusing on that, which is true, if the candida is still causing that anxiety in me,
01:04:18: I don't have to cross the line into actual sinning up here by not trusting God. I'm trusting
01:04:24: God. God, you're in complete control of the situation. I need to get some medical attention to deal with this, but I'm not freaking out.
01:04:30: I'm not sinning. That type of thing does happen. However, admittedly, that happens a lot less often than we like to say that it all happens.
01:04:39: This is a big conversation. You guys have probably talked a lot about it, but I just want to let people know, if you go to the
01:04:44: Evermind app, I have an online course on there called The Doctrine of Emotions.
01:04:49: It's constantly being built out. My ACBC conference workshops are on there. Lots of different things that I've said about depression, anxiety, and anger.
01:04:57: All that kind of stuff is on there. It's an online course called The Doctrine of Emotions. It's on the
01:05:02: Evermind app. I go into a lot more detail about some of the things. I just really hit pretty briefly here, but I still feel like I talked too long, so I'll stop.
01:05:14: Anyone want to comment on what Aaron said?
01:05:19: If not, we can move on to depression. Just one word, and that would be it is all about interpretation.
01:05:27: That's a very key point. Yeah. One of the things, as we wrap this up, one thing we do have to recognize, it was mentioned, but there are physical things that can affect anxiety.
01:05:47: One of them, quite frankly, that a lot of people don't think about is sleep.
01:05:53: When people don't have a good sleep, what ends up happening is that they will very often be having the effects just because their body's not in a right state.
01:06:10: One thing you could do to help with that is go and get yourself a pillow.
01:06:16: Go to mypillow .com. Use the promo code SFE. Maybe it'll help with anxiety. Maybe it won't, but it'll at least help you get a better sleep and support striving for eternity.
01:06:27: It's a win -win that way, at least. I was over at your house, and your son says, he turns to me and says,
01:06:36: Andrew, your podcast is very expensive. I just looked at him because I knew something was up, and I'm like, the podcast is free, so it didn't cost him anything.
01:06:47: Then he picks up MyPillow and says - Two, two MyPillows. I meant to ask him if he got a good sleep, if he's liking them.
01:06:57: If he used your promo code, he paid a lot less than he otherwise would have, so he had less anxiety.
01:07:03: That reduces that anxiety because it's actually, right now, you can get, I think, that they're cheapest
01:07:09: I've ever seen them. I think it's like 15 bucks. Yeah, they were selling them for 25 before, and I think they're down to 19 for their standard one with the promo code.
01:07:20: Just go to mypillow .com. Use promo code SFE. That keeps them supporting us and helps you get a good night's sleep.
01:07:27: Maybe even resolves your anxiety. One thing that may not help your anxiety, though, is a good cup of coffee.
01:07:36: That may get you a little more jittery. It may increase it, but for others, they go, hey,
01:07:43: I need my coffee. Look, if you're not doing a cold plunge, you need someone to wake you up. I do a cold plunge -
01:07:48: Fatima said that the coffee is for the depression. The MyPillow is for the anxiety.
01:07:54: That's what it is. Okay, I didn't see that. Okay, she said here, let's see.
01:08:03: Then if you're depressed, you can go out. You can't get out of bed. You can't get out of bed. Andrew will talk about Squirrelly Joe's Truffle Coffee.
01:08:09: There you go. She knows me well. Yeah, if you want to get a good cup of coffee from a Christian -owned company, strivingforattorney .org
01:08:16: slash coffee will take you to our page on Squirrelly Joe's Coffee. Remember, your first order, if you use the promo code
01:08:24: SFE, stands for Striving for Attorney, you'll get yourself a discount there of 20 % off your first order.
01:08:30: Do, if you could, go to strivingforattorney .org slash coffee when you reorder your coffee so that they know that you heard about them from us.
01:08:39: I will say that if you want to get coffee for the church, you can do that. They have the big five -pound bags if you need that, or if you just drink a lot of coffee like our webmaster who ordered the five -pound bags for himself, he goes through a lot of coffee,
01:08:54: I guess. He set up a monthly supply with a five -pound bag.
01:09:00: Yeah, he likes his coffee. With that, let's get into a more depressing topic of, well, depression.
01:09:16: Anything else you want to say about anxiety, Robin? You got to mute yourself. I forgot the microphone.
01:09:22: I forget that. I'm not good at podcasting. I'm really not. I'm a teacher at heart. I want to mention something that Dave Powelson has on depression.
01:09:34: He says that, according to Dave Powelson, the most frequent command in the Bible is don't be afraid.
01:09:41: He says it's an unusual command spoken as a voice of reassurance.
01:09:47: He goes on to say that nobody chooses to be anxious and afraid. The active high -handed sin of vindictiveness and gossip and immorality are the opposite of love, but fear is a reaction to what seems overwhelming and out of control.
01:10:05: It's the opposite of trust, a kind of forgetfulness. We just forget to trust in God.
01:10:12: He goes on to say that we have good reason to be afraid, but better reasons to trust God. I just wanted to add that feelings are real, but they're not always accurate.
01:10:23: We just need to trust God and trust Him, grow in our relationship with Him, and trust
01:10:29: Him daily. Pastor Dan, today you sent me something about Gen Z and the fact that the
01:10:36: Generation Z in America have more anxiety than others. I think there's some good reasons we could see about it.
01:10:44: They basically are told, especially every election season, the world's coming to an end.
01:10:49: The world's coming to an end. Just think about this and put this in perspective.
01:10:58: When Al Gore was president, we were told that if we didn't solve global warming, there would be no earth in 10 years.
01:11:06: That was like 20 years ago. You have
01:11:11: AOC and that, I forget the girl's name, the 16 -year -old that came over from...
01:11:17: Greta Thunberg. Greta Thunberg, yeah. They're all saying, hey, 10 years, the world is going to be over because we haven't solved it.
01:11:26: Well, we're about eight years in from her claims. Haven't seen the world coming even close to an end from the things, right?
01:11:36: There's so much that we see where there's such doom and gloom, whether on social media, on the news, on the
01:11:43: TV, that I can understand where some of that comes from. That's becoming,
01:11:49: I think, Dan, there is something that might be out to say is the fact that there is a generational fear that is unhealthy.
01:11:58: How do we help when we see if it's a whole generation?
01:12:03: I mean, this is a very different generation than the World War II, the greatest generation, right? Who kept things in and dealt with things so differently than the
01:12:13: Gen Zs would. How do we handle it when it's a whole generation then of people that are afraid?
01:12:22: That's a really, it's a almost impossible task because the other thing that I think accentuates the fears is you can find anything and everything you want on the internet.
01:12:35: And I think some of that just continues to fan and to heighten the fears geopolitically and then all the various creatures that are there.
01:12:46: But, you know, we have to get them into the church and we just have to just keep teaching sound doctrine.
01:12:55: And we have to somehow, because, you know, when I grew up and I'm ending my sixth decade here of life, you know, we didn't have the news outlets as there is today, you know,
01:13:10: ABC, NBC, CBS, and that was it. And maybe there was a public broadcasting station and then you waited for the local paper.
01:13:19: But now you're going to have to somehow disconnect them from some of their sites, which is impossible almost to do.
01:13:29: And then we just have to substitute fear. Well, it'd be like this. We got to teach the whole new generation, fear not, for I am with thee.
01:13:41: But I don't really know how to do that because it's so, here we use a cultural buzzword, it's so systemic.
01:13:48: I don't know how we can help them. I guess part of the answer.
01:13:57: Yeah, I was going to ask Aaron, I was going to ask you, you know, what is, I mean, what do we do for people that are in an unhealthy fear?
01:14:07: I'm sorry, we're still talking about fear, not depression? For you,
01:14:13: Aaron, on fear, how do we deal with unhealthy fear? Yeah.
01:14:19: First of all, I had some water go down the wrong tube. So at some point I'm going to hiccup and it's going to happen and you're all going to hear it.
01:14:25: So just be aware. Turn your volume down a little bit. Well, to answer his question a little bit and then move into this one, really it's one person at a time.
01:14:38: We got to work on ourselves. We got to work on those in our sphere of influence. And we have to trust God that his church is going to be doing that same thing in every little pocket.
01:14:45: And over time we can have an impact on the generation. But I will say this, the history of the
01:14:50: Bible tells us that whatever we pour into people, barring an act of God, they walk away with less of it.
01:14:58: Robin said she's a teacher, right? If you want your kids to get 60 % of the material, you got to teach a hundred of it. Because if you only take 60 of it, they're only going to get like 30 % of it.
01:15:06: Okay. So we've got to be pouring into the individuals in our so much of God's truth that they get a lot of it.
01:15:13: And then they can pour that into the next generation. And we'll still see why, but that's how we change a generation.
01:15:19: But when it comes to fear, and I've got someone sitting across from me, first and foremost,
01:15:25: I go a very medical route. I want them to, we look at their sleep. We look at their eating. We look at their medication that they're on.
01:15:32: That's a huge part of it. Because so much of what we're doing is going to be counterproductive.
01:15:38: If we're not actually addressing the potential physical issue that may be there, right? I'm not going to put people on Medicaid.
01:15:45: First of all, I'm not a doctor, but I'm going to put people on medication because of what they're experiencing.
01:15:50: But I want to try to identify with the help of a doctor, what physical choices they need to make so that they stop doing what they're doing to their body or that they heal whatever needs to be healed.
01:16:01: Um, from there though, it really is, we have to get down to what is truth.
01:16:08: And my job, every biblical counselor's job is actually just so repetitive because we've already mentioned it a number of times.
01:16:16: It's going to get down to, okay, this is what God said. Do you believe it? And that is the place where we're all going to come face to face.
01:16:24: But since fear and depression are all a form of suffering, fear, depression, anger, any of the topics we're going to talk about is all a response to suffering.
01:16:34: And since suffering is the result of a loss, I always like to try to identify first and foremost, what the loss is.
01:16:43: And again, as I mentioned earlier, you got practical loss, potential loss or perceived loss. And, um, once we identify that,
01:16:51: I try to help the person recognize if it's a practical loss, what does the scripture say about how we're supposed to respond to loss?
01:16:58: If it's a potential loss and it hasn't happened yet, well, how does God want us to respond to that potential?
01:17:04: And if it's just a perceived loss, it's not potential, it's not practical. It's just something I've convinced myself of what is the truth of the situation.
01:17:12: So identifying type of loss and identifying God's truth that comes in and addresses that is going to be key.
01:17:18: Cause I think sometimes we biblical counselors get ourselves into a lot of trouble. Somebody comes in, I'm struggling with anxiety. Well, the Bible says, don't be afraid.
01:17:25: True. And if they say, Oh, it does. Okay. Well I won't then that a that's great.
01:17:34: B that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to take care of the medical problems they may have. But that's fantastic.
01:17:39: But most people don't know what to do with that. So helping them to drill down and to see why, what is going on in your life?
01:17:48: What do you respond to? What are you interpreting? All of that and helping them work through those details and then take
01:17:53: God's word and apply it to the unique situation that they're in, I think is the best way to help an individual. And if we're all doing that, the best way to help a culture.
01:18:05: All right. Anyone have anything they want to add to that? Okay. So, you know,
01:18:13: I want to, I want, you know, dealing with the fear before we get into depression, I do want to address one thing. Most people think fear is a negative and yet we see in the
01:18:23: Psalms, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I get asked often, what does that mean then?
01:18:31: Because we think fear is purely a negative. So let me, let me put it in a way that helps me understand it.
01:18:40: What is fear? When, when somebody you're walking down the street with your spouse, you're getting into a heated argument over what color to paint the bedroom.
01:18:53: You know, the wife wants hot pink and the husband wants the deep purple and you're both just fighting over it.
01:19:03: You guys just got done fighting over, you know, the 401k or something. You're walking down the streets in New York and well, what happens regularly in the streets in New York is someone pulls a gun on you because, well, that's, you know, why you walk down the streets in New York because you like that.
01:19:15: Only criminals are allowed to have guns there. And so someone pulls a gun on you. What is the reaction that you have?
01:19:23: It's fear. What does fear do? Fear completely captivates your attention.
01:19:31: You're no longer worried about the argument of what color to paint the room or what to do with the 401k. None of that.
01:19:37: That's all gone out the window in a split second. It didn't matter how heated that debate was that the two of you had.
01:19:44: It doesn't matter what the issue was. All of a sudden, that guy with the gun caused fear and that fear captivated all of your attention.
01:19:56: Well, that is what the fear of the Lord is. It is us having our full 100 % attention captivated by the
01:20:03: Lord so that we're not thinking about what I want, what I want to do, how I think things should work.
01:20:09: And it's not about I. It suddenly is a full attention on God.
01:20:17: And that is, you know, when we talk about the fear of the Lord, it's giving our attention 100 % to the
01:20:24: Lord, not having all the things that could be going through our mind.
01:20:30: So, you know, because this comes up a lot with folks.
01:20:39: And Aaron, I think you were commenting about a comment that was in here. I'm going to get you to be able to get the rights to put comments up.
01:20:48: Yeah, Kathy Denning quoted a song. She said, the fear of God is essential to being a
01:20:55: Christian. It was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved.
01:21:01: The two sides of that was really beautiful in that hymn. Here we go. Yep. Here. Okay.
01:21:08: So thank you for that. It just took me a bit to find it. So, yeah,
01:21:14: I mean, that is the two. I mean, fear can be healthy. Just like we said with anxiety and these others, there could be a good form of it and there could be a sinful form of it.
01:21:26: So let's talk about depression a bit. Who would like to...
01:21:37: I was actually just going to say real quick, because what you just said was super important. In anger, there's a sinful version and a sanctified version.
01:21:45: Fear is the same way. And interestingly enough, depression is actually the same too.
01:21:52: And we can unpack that as we go along. There is a sinful depression in the scriptures, and there is also a
01:21:57: Christ honoring depression in the scriptures. And we see that with anger, and we see that with fear, but we don't always see that with depression.
01:22:04: And so it'd be cool to have everyone's in the comments, their brains going about where the scriptures talk about that.
01:22:11: Well, let's... Oh, go ahead. I just wanted to point out that Aaron buzzed in before you finished the question, so he gets no points.
01:22:22: So, and I don't know who would be best to answer this one, but can we get a good definition for what depression is?
01:22:35: Anyone want to tackle that one? Pastor Dan, you look like you're ready. I'll give you the ACBC definition, which is basically it's a debilitating or weakening mood or feeling an air of hopelessness, which becomes a person reason for not handling some part of life.
01:22:56: They basically, you know, we all get down, we all get discouraged. But when we start, when we stop functioning in some area of our life, then that's what they would define as depression.
01:23:12: It's a debilitating mood or feeling of hopelessness that becomes the reason for not handling important issues of life or shutting down in a certain area part of life.
01:23:25: Okay. Some people will also tie sadness, various forms of sadness and sorrow, they'll also colloquially tie that in with depression too.
01:23:39: So, when we think about depression, I mean, when I think about people that are seriously depressed they're sitting in bed, they want it dark, they want to be by themselves.
01:24:00: One of the biggest problems with depression is that people, especially with Christians who may struggle with it, they don't want to go to church because they feel bad.
01:24:13: It seems, I'm going to leave it to you guys to answer this, but it seems like a lot of depression is based in selfishness a lot in the sense that it's, woe is me, something didn't work the way
01:24:25: I wanted it to. It's always something in the past. I often say depression locks someone in the past and they kind of spiritually stopped growing from the point that they get into a depression because they're just seeing something in the past that they can't let go of and it seems to direct everything toward that.
01:24:47: They get a bitterness or just something that they are trying to relive and it becomes something where it stunts their growth spiritually, but it also, they seem to avoid the very things they need the most.
01:25:05: They avoid the people that would be helping them. They just leave me alone.
01:25:10: I just want to sit and wallow in my depression. If someone is at that level, they're at that point, what kind of things can they do to get out of depression?
01:25:26: Anthony, I'll start with you with this. What's the stuff that we would do to avoid deep depression like that?
01:25:36: Yeah. Again, I know I sound like a broken record for those who know what a record is, our emotions themselves are not sinful, but they can lead us to sin.
01:25:51: Depression itself is not sinful, but it can lead us to sin in our depression.
01:25:59: What do I mean by that? When you get to that point that it is so debilitating or you let it become so debilitating, oftentimes that happens because, again, you've gotten your eyes off the
01:26:15: Lord and off of his goodness and his sovereignty in the situation and all of those things that we've talked about, and you've gotten them on yourself and your problems.
01:26:29: I'm not trying to make a blanket statement to everybody. I'm not saying that you, listener or viewer, were in sin when you were in depression or whatever.
01:26:37: I'm just saying that can happen. What happens is there's an illustration that biblical counselors use a lot.
01:26:48: I really don't know who came up with it, so I can't give credit for it. I think I even can show a copy here. I got this version off of our church website.
01:26:58: I'll find it as I'm talking about it, but basically it's a spiral. If you think of a downward spiral, somebody can be depressed and then they decide that, you know,
01:27:11: I'm just not motivated. I don't want to get up. I don't want to do this thing. And then they just sit there and then they start neglecting their responsibilities.
01:27:20: And it looks like this. And again, I'm not exactly sure where this came from.
01:27:26: This is from our church's website, but I've seen this reprinted all over the place. So what happens is they -
01:27:33: Describe it for the audio. Yeah. So imagine if you will, like a vortex, like a spiral going down.
01:27:40: Okay. Just draw, you know, like the loops and you would draw them like smaller and smaller and smaller, like you're spiraling down, falling down a spiral staircase.
01:27:50: That's what happens. There's some life trial. There's something that happens that you just start spiraling down this and you don't want to do anything anymore.
01:28:01: And then that leads you to you not thinking about God correctly, not thinking about your situation biblically, not thinking about others and your responsibility to others.
01:28:11: And you could even be more broad and say, even your, your responsibilities in your home and society or whatever.
01:28:17: So you go down the spiral and it brings you down into despair and despondency. Having explained all that, okay.
01:28:25: So your question, how do you get out of that? Well, at that point you are in sin because you know better.
01:28:33: You just know better. And you're, you may well be in a pity party, that sort of thing.
01:28:40: And I'm speaking from experience. So maybe I shouldn't say you, let's just say from what I've seen in my own life, you get into a pity party.
01:28:48: At that point, what you need to do is repent. You need to go to the Lord first because you've sinned because you've, you're basically saying,
01:28:56: God, you're not good. God, you're not loving. God, you're not kind. God, this trial is not right.
01:29:03: And so you need to repent and then you need to do the next thing.
01:29:09: You need to do whatever the thing is that you have to do. If it's get out of bed, if it's brush your teeth, if it's make your bed, if it's pack the kids lunch, whatever the thing is that God has called you to do in your life, you need to do that.
01:29:23: And that starts then good feelings. It starts the motivation to do things right. I'm, I'm looking to the
01:29:29: Lord now. I'm pleasing the Lord. I'm doing what's right. Obedience to God's commands are good and they give us good feelings.
01:29:37: And that kind of brings us out of that spiral. And so we start spiraling up the staircase, not down the staircase.
01:29:45: And that's how in a very simplistic way, a very quick overview way, that's really how you get out of depression.
01:29:52: You have to biblically counsel yourself out of your wrong thinking, your unbiblical thinking, and then counsel yourself biblically to think right, do right.
01:30:03: And then you will feel right. Yeah. You know, you're making me think of the illustration and I don't know if pastor
01:30:10: Dan's heard this, you know, in preaching, you use illustrations, but you know, the, when mother's knocking on the, on the door saying to her child to get up, you know, it's
01:30:23: Sunday, you got to go to church. Mom, I don't feel like going. I don't want to go. Well, you have to go.
01:30:30: Give me three reasons why I have to go. Well, for one, it's Sunday and this is what we do.
01:30:36: We should be a church with, with fellow saints. He's like, I still don't want to go.
01:30:42: Give me another. Well, you're 40 years old. It's time to grow up. Not enough.
01:30:47: Give me a third. Well, you're the pastor and you got to preach right there.
01:30:53: There's times that we, we could not feel like doing that. Right. You have a good point with the, the avoiding responsibilities.
01:31:00: Pastor Dan, what are some things that we could do if it's, even if it's made not as bad where people are locking themselves away in a room?
01:31:12: You know, what kind of, what kind of counsel can we give people that are struggling with even a mild depression?
01:31:19: Well, you know, we, we got to try to see if we can get to the, you know, the heart of the matter.
01:31:27: So what we do is just starts. And again, that's a very hard thing to do. You know, we're not very good at identifying our own height, heart idols, but we just start out generally with start examining some of the factors that may contribute to this.
01:31:43: You know, the pressures of life, physical difficulties, maybe it's guilt issues that we talked about in the earlier hour and then start identifying some of the wrong responses.
01:31:56: And, you know, I think that would be a good place to start. Depression does have a backward chain to it in the past, but sometimes depression can be because of what we presently have, cancer, chronic illness, something like that.
01:32:16: Or sometimes depression can be something that we don't have.
01:32:22: You know, here I am ending the sixth decade of my life. I don't have a sure home. I don't have a home in the
01:32:28: Poconos. I don't have what many other people have. So sometimes it can be because what we do have that we don't want, or we don't have what we do want.
01:32:40: So just start examining some of those contribute, the factors that contribute to it. So that would be a good place to start.
01:32:49: And again, it goes back to, again, the earlier hour that was the idea of interpreting, interpretation of life.
01:32:57: You know, Robin, let me ask you this. With depression, there's certain things that women have uniquely with that can affect depression, you know, pregnancy and after giving birth to a child, there's a lot of women who
01:33:13: I've had to counsel over the years to just during pregnancy and afterwards, their hormones are all out of whack.
01:33:21: And it, it brings them into a more of a depression. And that's one of the harder things,
01:33:28: I guess, for me to, to counsel when it comes up, because I'm like, well,
01:33:34: I don't even understand those emotions. I mean, I'll admit, I, when my bride was pregnant,
01:33:41: I just was like someone invaded her body. I mean, my bride and you guys, all of you here,
01:33:48: I think you know, you know, my bride a bit, some better than others, but she's not one that is known as an emotional person.
01:33:55: She, she has emotions that they're just rarely seen. But when she was pregnant, it was like, all of them came out.
01:34:04: You know, I remember once she just she was, I came home from work back then my mother in law, in order to get married, my mother -in -law made me get a job as a, you know, where I had to take a job as an employee and not a contractor.
01:34:18: And I ended up working a lot of hours. And so I decided I was going to make sure
01:34:23: I came home early one day. And my wife was already home. I thought I was going to beat her home. And I got home and I'm just like, you know,
01:34:30: I think here I am. I'm going to be this trying to do be a good husband. I'm going to be home early since that was a constant issue.
01:34:38: And she's sitting there in the bed with two empty boxes of tissues and the garbage cans overflowed with tissues.
01:34:45: I'm just like, what's wrong? She's like, I don't know. She didn't go to work that day.
01:34:50: She just stayed home crying the entire day, which I'm like, you know, with my wife, I'm like, yeah, something happened to you.
01:34:56: What like, and so with things like that, what, what can we say to women who have, who are dealing with when all their emotions are kind of all their hormones getting out of whack, and that can cause a depression?
01:35:12: I should say real quick, I forgot to tell you this, Andrew, when I was working with the teens last night downstairs,
01:35:19: I said something about Andrew, meaning, you know, our teen Andrew. And Avery said, do you mean
01:35:27: Andrew here? Or do you mean husband? Yeah, church, no one knows me by my name.
01:35:37: Anyway, in a nutshell, for time, I would just when I talk to women, in general, your feelings are real.
01:35:48: But they're not always true. And we just can't listen to our feelings.
01:35:53: We can't trust our feelings. And we just have to trust God. And I lovingly just point them to God.
01:36:01: And even the world, even I have been in churches when we're traveling when we're out of town, that I've heard churches, pastors say, listen to your heart.
01:36:13: Remember what I'm talking about? Listen to your heart. And I would say to women, don't listen to your heart.
01:36:20: Don't listen. Don't believe your feelings. Fight it. I do the
01:36:25: Bible club at our public school. And I have the kids in the room who love
01:36:31: God from all different churches. And most of them listen to their feelings.
01:36:38: They don't they think their feelings are real. Don't listen to your heart. Don't listen to your feelings.
01:36:45: Listen to the Word of God. Trust the Word of God. I don't know.
01:36:51: That's what I would say. Does Jeremiah say anything about trusting the heart? Yeah. Deceitfully wicked.
01:36:57: Who can know it? Something else she adds to the ladies too, is since it is cyclical, prepare.
01:37:04: Plan ahead. Do your diet. Do your exercise. Do all that stuff, which we've said many times.
01:37:11: But then you just have to start preparing mentally and spiritually that this is going to come around again.
01:37:19: But then also you can, you can, we also then tell the family, the husbands to be a little bit more gracious.
01:37:27: You know, we don't have to throw gas on this fire. Use that cliche. So just, and I'm not saying justifying the behavior, but just be a little more gracious to them and try to take a little bit off.
01:37:40: And it, you know, being very harsh is like, you know, this is a, this is tough.
01:37:47: It's tough for you and it's going to be, you know, tough, but you know, we have to do the hard things.
01:37:53: And, but yeah, she also says, you know, this is cyclical. This is going to happen for 12 months out of the year for many decades.
01:38:01: So, you know, we just got to adjust and learn how to deal with it. Can I ask
01:38:06: Robin real quick to repeat what you said? You tell them that their, their emotions are real, but not true.
01:38:13: Is that what you said? They're yes, they're real because they really feel it.
01:38:19: I'm not going to say you don't feel that. I know you feel it, but that doesn't make it true.
01:38:25: I might feel that she don't love me. I might feel that Dan hates me because I've put on weight.
01:38:34: That's good. I like the way you said that it's real, but it's not true. You're experiencing it, but that doesn't mean I love, I love that so much.
01:38:39: That was good. Right. It is not true. I experienced depression for the first time in my life.
01:38:47: Um, back when I got my first bout of COVID, um, and it was bad, you know, not everyone experienced it.
01:38:57: Cause obviously COVID being a man -made virus had lots of interesting effects on lots of different people.
01:39:03: But uh, for me, I did get the depression, uh, COVID and I had to self -counsel a lot.
01:39:10: And I remember thinking to myself, man, oh man, um, if I were unsaved and, uh,
01:39:17: I were cut off my family, losing my job, seeing my country falling into disarray, you know, feeling the way that I feel suicide would really be a pretty legitimate option at this point.
01:39:30: I thought that because there was no hope outside of the truths that I kept preaching and counseling myself with from God's word.
01:39:39: Um, and that goes, and I just wanted to say that just goes back to the comment I made earlier about there is a, there's a
01:39:46: Christ honoring depression, quote unquote, that relieves, um, these, these feelings of depression.
01:39:55: Uh, first Peter is a book that has a lot to do with suffering. Uh, and he mentions a lot of difficult issues in that book.
01:40:03: He mentions anxiety, lots of different things. But in, um, first Peter chapter five, verse six, it says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, exalt you at the proper time.
01:40:17: That word about humbling yourself has the word of putting yourself down, getting down, flattening yourself.
01:40:26: But this isn't just flattening yourself before somebody. This specifically says, flatten yourself underneath the mighty hand of God.
01:40:37: There is a picture here of a depression. Now the picture is not God's crushing you. Okay.
01:40:43: But there's a picture of putting yourself underneath the mighty hand of God.
01:40:50: So that was very counterintuitive. You don't, when you, when you see this, putting myself, for those of you listening, you know,
01:40:57: I have my hand on top of my other head pressing down. When you're picturing that, you're not thinking about being exalted, but God says, we humble, we put himself, we depress ourselves underneath his control, underneath his sovereignty, underneath his power.
01:41:13: Only then can we be exalted. We, the verse goes on to say, we cast all of our anxiety on him because he cares for us.
01:41:21: And so in that situation where I was struggling with that depression as a result of a virus, the only thing that I could do was to flatten myself under the truth of God, flatten myself before the sovereignty of God and say,
01:41:35: I feel this way. It's terrible, but Lord, I am depressing myself under your control. And that was the only thing that brought peace.
01:41:43: And there would be times I would, I would do that and I would be in prayer. And then I would have to, just a few minutes later, those waves would come again and the despair and the depression would sink back in.
01:41:53: I would just have to preach God's truth to myself again. I have to depress myself under his hand again. And that was the only way that I got through it.
01:42:01: And then the world has no ability to do that, which is why we need to point those people to the truth.
01:42:06: The truth is not trite. Okay, my friends, the truth is not trite. When Martha went to Jesus and she said, my brother is dead.
01:42:16: If you had only been here, the most important thing he could do, the most important thing he could say to her that was going to help her at that moment.
01:42:25: And he said this concept to her like three different times. He says, do you trust me?
01:42:31: Do you believe these things that are true? Truth is not trite.
01:42:37: When people are feeling depressed and they're feeling anxious, we don't feel like, well, I'm not going to quote this verse.
01:42:42: I'm not going to tell them this biblical truth. No, that's what they need. And because that's the only thing that's going to help them get under it as they submit themselves and they humble themselves under God.
01:42:54: Yeah. I think a lot with depression, I think one thing that I've always been taught to do first is to give hope, right?
01:43:06: Give some hope you can get out of it. Give hope for a future. Because a lot of depression is focusing on the some past event and we need to know,
01:43:16: Hey, we can move on from this. We can move forward. But we also can't when, especially if we're counseling others, we can't like what you're saying with truth,
01:43:26: Aaron, but then with what Robin said about feelings, we have to recognize, Hey, these are their feelings.
01:43:32: They may not be based in truth, but we have to recognize, I understand you feel this way, but this is truth.
01:43:41: Right? So, cause I think, I think a thing that maybe just me, it's not, you guys would never do this, but I'm probably more prone to be like, yeah, but that's not true.
01:43:51: Right? Like forget your feelings. Like, let's just, that's not true. Right. And, but we have to recognize that the feelings feel real.
01:44:01: And so we have to move them from, this is how I feel to Anthony, to Aaron, where you were saying, this is what's true.
01:44:10: And, and, and in that provide a hope that there's a future, there's, there's a future hope in this.
01:44:18: Anthony, anything you want to share? Yeah. You know, as you were talking about that,
01:44:23: I was thinking also of even the Israelites, this kind of goes into the anxiety bit as well.
01:44:29: When the Lord brought them out of Egypt, he, he purposely brought them to a point where they're, they're at the
01:44:34: Red Sea, the Egyptian armies behind them. They're, they're humanly speaking, they're trapped.
01:44:40: They're anxious. They're, they're freaking out. They're looking at Moses, you know, but the
01:44:45: Lord delivered them. And so they felt what they felt, but it really wasn't true because the
01:44:51: Lord was in control the whole time. And so it's a lot of that, what you're saying. The other thing
01:44:57: I wanted to comment on real quickly was you talked about giving hope. And that's so important because anybody watching and listening, if you're in Christ, you have hope, you have the living
01:45:10: God. He can work in you and he can work through the issues of anxiety, the issues of depression.
01:45:19: He can help you moment by moment by moment. If you're, if you've got to do that spiral thing 50 times a day, the
01:45:26: Lord is there and give you strength 50 times a day for that. And I wanted to just share as well, along with that,
01:45:35: Romans 15, 13, Paul writes, may the God of hope,
01:45:43: God, God is the God of hope. This God who you worship, who you serve, who you've, you know, repented and trusted in.
01:45:52: He is the God of hope. Fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the
01:46:00: Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.
01:46:06: Twice there, hope is mentioned and meditate on that this week. Take a look at it, study it, memorize it.
01:46:14: It's a wonderful verse about the promises of God and his nature and his goodness to us.
01:46:22: Well, let me just ask if anyone else has anything before we wrap up and I give some resources that you guys provided.
01:46:28: Anything anyone else wants to say on whether it be anxiety or on fear or on depression? I'd like to throw out a warning.
01:46:37: I mentioned a couple of times with anxiety and with depression that there can be genuine medical issues that are causing this chemical response in your body that you may or may not be interpreting correctly.
01:46:49: Okay. That physical thing does need to be addressed. Here's the problem. You walk into your average doctor and you say to him,
01:46:56: I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are just going to throw psychotropic drugs at you.
01:47:06: Just try to, you know, control your emotions. It's literally putting a
01:47:11: Band -Aid on an issue. They're not going to do the legwork necessary to try to identify if the medications you have are messing with each other or if you're not getting enough sleep or if you drink too much coffee or whatever the case may be.
01:47:23: So you've got to go in there and have an honest conversation with your doctor.
01:47:28: Try to avoid using words like depression. Try to explain how you feel without using that kind of that buzzword.
01:47:36: And even if you do have to say depression, just be really honest with them. Listen, I'm feeling depressed and I don't want just drugs that'll mask that.
01:47:43: I would like you to try to help me figure out what may be going on medically, biologically, that could be potentially causing me to feel this way.
01:47:53: And they might have to do any litany of tests or whatever else. A, get your physical side checked out, but B, don't just walk in there and say
01:48:01: I'm depressed and then take whatever they give you. Okay. Search for the real medical root of the issue and just be careful that everyone else wants to skip all that and throw drugs at you that are just going to make you feel better.
01:48:14: That's a good point. Well, I'm going to put some notes in the podcast. So if you go and get the, listen to the podcast or at least go and follow
01:48:23: ApolloJack's live podcast, I will have show notes in there with the links that our four different ACBC counselors have provided.
01:48:33: I have to say that some of these links will be affiliate links. So striving for eternity will benefit financially from some of them.
01:48:41: Under the area of anxiety, we only had two listed here. One is Anxious for Nothing by John MacArthur.
01:48:48: The other is When I Am Afraid by Ed Walsh. And so those,
01:48:56: I will have links to Amazon. If someone wants to get them at a used price,
01:49:02: I should mention if folks who go to my Facebook page, I've showed some pictures of my library and I'm selling much of my library.
01:49:10: So if folks are interested, you could go and message me there. So those two books under anxiety.
01:49:15: For depression, we have a couple more books. The book, If I Am a
01:49:22: Christian When I Am Depressed by Bob Somerville. Robin, I think that was the one you mentioned earlier, right?
01:49:28: Okay. Depression Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness by Ed Walsh.
01:49:39: Spiritual Depression by Martin Lloyd -Jones. I don't know which one of you guys added that, but I would have if you had not.
01:49:47: That's a very good book. For those who don't know, he was also a medical doctor.
01:49:53: Yeah, he was a medical doctor who became a preacher. Now, I think these, the next several,
01:50:00: I think, Anthony, you might have provided them, but these are free. There'll be a link there to get these for free.
01:50:08: But Help, I'm Depressed by Carol Tourahan. Did I pronounce that right?
01:50:15: I don't know if anyone knows. T -R -A -H -A -N.
01:50:21: Next one is Depression, A Biblical Perspective by Paul Dean. Depression, A Daily Checklist by Paul Dean.
01:50:29: And then Depression, A Study of Philippians 4 -4. I don't know who that's from because there's no author listed.
01:50:36: And then The Downward Spiral of Depression. I think those, the first one,
01:50:43: The Lady, I think that might be a Shepherd Press publication. I don't think that one would be free. But the other ones
01:50:49: I think are on our Randall House Church website. You are correct. Sorry, the first one,
01:50:54: Help, I'm Depressed by Carol Tourahan is not free. But the others are links that you can get for free.
01:51:03: So thank you for that. And one of the things
01:51:08: I was going to mention during the opening where we do our In the News part,
01:51:14: I was going to put this, I put this out on Twitter. I don't know if you guys follow politics enough to know that Kamala Harris came out today attacking
01:51:25: Trump because a woman died. And basically
01:51:31: Kamala Harris said she died because of Trump's abortion ban. And so Trump's abortion ban killed this woman.
01:51:39: So I put this out. I said, let me get this straight, Kamala Harris. Let me get this straight. Kamala Harris says a woman died because Donald Trump let states vote on abortion.
01:51:52: What did she die of? She died of an abortion. She died of the same abortion pills that Harris wants every woman to have access to without a doctor.
01:52:07: She died because, sorry, she died because,
01:52:13: I just lost my place in my own tweet here. Where did
01:52:19: I say? I think you were, didn't you say something like if, you know, if Trump banned abortion, how did she die?
01:52:26: Yeah, that's the main point of it. Okay. So let me back up. I said, she died because of the same abortion pills that Harris wants every woman to have access to without a doctor.
01:52:34: She died. She died because if, because of an abortion, therefore
01:52:40: Trump could not have banned them. Just a little critical thinking here, folks.
01:52:46: So what happened here is a woman went to get an abortion. She got caught in traffic.
01:52:53: She couldn't, she missed her appointment. She wanted to reschedule, but because of her, her date, it pushed it out to the state's law that said she couldn't have a medical procedure, but they gave her some pills to take home.
01:53:10: And so she took those pills. But the problem was, is that not all of the child came out.
01:53:15: And so she ended up getting, turning septic, going back to the hospital and dying.
01:53:22: What did she actually die from? An abortion. Like taking a little critical thinking,
01:53:30: Trump could not have banned abortion if she was able to get an abortion.
01:53:37: Okay. What did she actually die from? An abortion. So if Trump did ban, what she's saying, if Trump actually banned abortions, this woman would be alive today.
01:53:51: So by her argument, we should ban abortions because it was the abortion that killed the woman.
01:53:58: The ban would have protected this woman and the child from death.
01:54:04: So when we get into this season, a little bit of critical thinking is very, very helpful.
01:54:11: So one last comment that we have from Kathy here. Kathy says, thank you, Andrew, Dan and Robin and Anthony and AMB.
01:54:18: That stands for AM Brewster. Very helpful show. Thank you for your time and addressing these topics.
01:54:26: I would say, if you found this helpful, do us a favor and share it with friends. Maybe you know some people that are struggling with anxiety or fear or depression.
01:54:34: Maybe this could help them. Maybe you just share it with people and you didn't know they were dealing with those things and it may help them.
01:54:41: But I want to encourage you to share it nonetheless. Now, next week, we will wrap up these counseling topics with some really easy things like money, because money is never an issue for anybody.
01:54:57: And we will probably get into different issues of sexual sins, both within marriage, outside of marriage.
01:55:06: We already started this show with the fact that Steve Lawson is out of ministry, has been deemed by the church there,
01:55:15: Trinity Bible Church, to be permanently disqualified for sexual sins. So it's something that we all need to deal with or be not deal with, but be prepared to protect ourselves against.
01:55:31: Just so you know, in October, we're going to do another series. We will have a series of different apologetics views.
01:55:41: So on the 3rd, October 3rd, we're going to look at the classical apologetics.
01:55:48: Dan Kraft, who is not here this week, but you guys have seen him here, he will deal on the 10th on presuppositional apologetics.
01:55:56: On October 17th, we will have Daniel McAdams dealing with the evidential apologetics.
01:56:04: And then, and he's got a real interesting background. We're going to get into that too, a bit. And then Donald Williams will look at what he calls the cumulative apologetic.
01:56:17: Also, let you know that we will have a, I don't know, debate discussion on November, or sorry, on October 31st, on Resurrection Sunday, or Reformation Day, I should say.
01:56:34: We will be having a discussion with someone who the topic will be,
01:56:41: Jesus, God, or Son of God? He will deny the deity of Christ, but say that Jesus is the
01:56:49: Son of God. I'll just tell you right now, I told him that's going to be really interesting if you want to have that be the discussion, because the term
01:56:57: Son of God means God. So, but yeah, that should be fun. November 7th, if you want, look forward to, we're going to have
01:57:04: Rob Solberg on. We haven't had him on for a long, long time. He has written the only book
01:57:10: I really know that tackles the issue of Hebrew roots movement. His book is called Torahism. And as an author, he goes by R.
01:57:18: L. Solberg. So, that is a great book to get if you deal with people that want to go back under the law and things like that.
01:57:26: So, he had a, well, kind of debate discussion that I was asked if I would debate the person.
01:57:34: And I said, sure, why not? And so, we'll see if that ever comes to fruition, but I at least figured we'd have
01:57:41: Robert on to discuss some of that. So, that's what we got coming up on the show. Some things that, just to let you know,
01:57:49: I will be in Indiana coming up soon. Let me look at the date.
01:57:55: I will be at the Kik Church in Evansville, Indiana.
01:58:01: That will be September 27th to 29th. We'll be doing our Ambassador Evangelism training.
01:58:08: So, if you are in that area, that might be something you want to check out. And with that, we'll, oh,
01:58:15: Aaron, you had, you raised your hand. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure that, I just want to make sure my mute thing was off.
01:58:22: Yeah. Just, I'm going to be in Fort Worth, Texas in October, the week of the 6th.
01:58:29: So, if you're in that area, I'll be there for the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors annual conference, and I have the pleasure of speaking on counseling sorrowing children.
01:58:38: So, if you're at the conference or not, it'd be cool to connect if you're in that area. All right.
01:58:46: And so, with that, I think we've given you enough things to look forward to,
01:58:53: I hope, and we'll see you next time. And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God, and we'll see you next week.