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Chapter 4: The Fireproof Heart: Finding the Peace of God

Some problems are long-term. A wayward child, cancer, a troubled marriage, financial trouble. You can’t just pray about it once and put it to bed. But you can’t live in a state of constant anxiety either. This chapter is about how to protect your heart and mind from both good and bad anxiety with the peace of God that transcends understanding.

Protect Your Heart and Mind

So far we’ve looked at God’s intended purpose for anxiety and the way it’s supposed to work. A crisis arises, anxiety forces you to deal with it, you take action, and the anxiety subsides. That’s good anxiety.

The rest of the book will focus on bad anxiety—the causes and cures. Almost all bad anxiety comes from one of three spiritual causes. Scripture offers a clear solution for each of the three. Once you identify the spiritual cause or causes of your anxiety and apply the corresponding remedy, you will see immediate results. You’ll be amazed how effective it will be to apply the right cure for the cause.

There are also some physical causes of anxiety, like hormonal changes or problems in the nervous system. We’ll examine that as well.

But before we delve into the causes, it’s important to put protections in place. All anxiety, even the good kind, burns like a fire in your soul and body. It will burn you out from the inside if you’re not filled with the fireproof substance called the peace of God.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

How Calm Is God?

The “peace of God” is not merely peace from God. It’s the very peace God experiences in his own being. God is at peace. He cares deeply about important things and he is emotional about them, but he isn’t flustered. He isn’t worried. He has perfect peace, and when you pray the way this passage prescribes, you’ll enjoy that same peace.

Beyond Understanding

This peace transcends understanding. It’s beyond the reach of human thinking. You can’t talk yourself into it. You can’t get there through therapy, reasoning, optimism, medication, or reading books.

Peace beyond understanding is quite a claim because we can understand a lot. We can understand the sense of security that comes from a huge retirement account that’s more than you will ever need. We can understand job security, health insurance, lifetime warranties, deadbolt locks, police, and a strong military. We can understand dozing in a hammock on the beach in a breathtaking paradise. But God promises a peace that transcends anything we can comprehend.

Paul might have had Jesus’ words in mind when he wrote Philippians 4:7.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

All the world’s protections have limits. Your 401K gives peace of mind until the stock market crashes, then it brings you anxiety. Apparent job security gives peace until they lay you off. You can have a Cadillac health insurance plan, but it won’t calm your heart when someone in your family says, “I hate you. Get out of my life.”

Nothing in this world can give you peace when you need it most—when everything falls apart and all that is stable in your life crumbles.

God’s Peace

But the peace of God will.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging” (Psalms 46:1-3).

Even in the most extreme calamity imaginable, when everything you’ve counted on dissolves beneath your feet, the peace of God will quiet the internal chaos with an ordered, divine calm.

Consider the promises God makes about our anxieties. Contemplate each one and let them wash over your soul.

He offers to make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside quiet waters (Psalms 23:2).When anxieties within us are many, his comforts delight our souls (Psalms 94:19).With a mind set on him, he will keep us in perfect peace (Isaiah 26:3).He invites us to cast our cares on him so he can carry them for us (1 Peter 5:7).Well over a hundred times in Scripture God assures us that we need not be afraid. Usually, it’s some form of “Fear not, for I am with you.”Only for God’s Children

This peace isn’t offered to everyone. It’s only available to those who are in Christ.

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

“In Christ” is Paul’s shorthand throughout his writings for those who are intimately connected to Jesus because they have placed their faith in him. They follow him because they trust him more than they trust themselves. And following him always begins with repentance—turning from sin to embrace God’s will.

No promises are made to those who are not in Christ. They can have some peace, but not the peace of God.

If there is a question mark on whether you have placed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and have all your sins forgiven, then anxiety is the least of your worries. When you’re on a sinking ship, that’s not the time to work on reducing anxiety. Use your anxiety to drive you to the most important action you can ever take—bow the knee to Jesus and enter a relationship of trust with the only one who can ever give you real peace.

Why Isn’t It Working?

Perhaps you read that and think, I’ve been a Christian for years. And I pray for peace every day. Why don’t I have the transcendent peace of God?

The peace is only for Christians, but it doesn’t come automatically just because you’re a Christian. It comes through prayer, and not just any prayer. That peace comes when we follow the model of praying that Paul lays out for us in Philippians 4.

Anxious Prayer

The wrong kind of prayer only makes anxiety worse. If your prayer is merely a repetition of all the thoughts that got you anxious in the first place, fixing your attention on them rather than on God, it will only throw more gasoline on the fires of anxiety. By the end of your prayer, your problems will seem bigger than ever and God will be the last thing on your mind.

Greedy Prayer

The same is true for praying with wrong attitudes. For example, suppose your anxiety is caused by an attitude that sees something in this world and says, “I must have that in order to be happy.” It could be a relationship, a circumstance, a family or job situation, good health—anything in this world.

Any attitude that requires some earthly circumstance in order to be happy in life will cause anxiety because no earthly treasure comes with any guarantees. There is always a possibility you won’t get the object of your desire, or, if you already have it, that you might lose it.

When you bring that “I can’t be happy without this” attitude with you into prayer, then prayer will only make your anxiety worse because there’s always the possibility God may say no.

And not just a possibility that he’ll say no. More like certainty. That attitude makes it certain God will say no because God refuses to assist us in our love for the world (James 4:3-4).

Another reason this kind of prayer aggravates anxiety is that it rises from a false conception of God. This kind of prayer casts God in the role of a servant—a cosmic bellhop. Bellhops only bring peace of mind when they do what you want and make your life easier. Bellhops with a plan of their own are an annoyance.

Most people, when they are in bad enough trouble, pray for help. But often the goal is to use God, not to seek him. They have a solution in mind, and the goal of the prayer is to use God to get the thing they really want. If they end up with only God and not the solution they wanted, it’s not enough.

The Nearness of God

So what are the ingredients for the good kind of prayer—the kind that will bring the transcendent peace of God? Paul is going to lay them out for us in Philippians 4:6, but before he does that, he lays the foundation for all true prayer in verse 5.

This is easy to miss because the verse divisions (which were not in the original) can be distracting. The most important key to true prayer appears just before Paul says, “Do not be anxious.”

The text reads this way—“The Lord is near. Do not be anxious” (Philippians 4:5b-6a). The peace of God only comes through the presence of God. And seeking that presence is the foundation for all true prayer.

God’s Presence

Why does the Bible speak of God being near or far when we know God exists everywhere? It’s because existence and nearness are not the same thing. God’s nearness, or presence refers to his favorable attention. The Old Testament word translated “presence” is the normal Hebrew word for “face.” God turning his face toward you means he is giving you his favor and drawing near to you relationally. If he turns his face away, he is withdrawing his favor and becoming more relationally distant. Less accessible. God exists everywhere, but he doesn’t turn his favorable attention everywhere.

Where does he turn it? To us. To whom is God accessible? To his children who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul says the Lord is near, that means when we are in trouble, God will come alongside us to provide strength, comfort, enablement, and encouragement.

And the nearer God is to you, the more of that you get. So Scripture teaches us how to draw even nearer to him. But the point here in Philippians 4 is about simply realizing the nearness we already have. Much of our anxiety comes from simply ignoring God’s presence and favor.

If you would like to explore the concept of how to enjoy God’s presence more deeply, consider the “Loving God with all Your Heart” sermon series and the daily devotional Deeper Knowledge of God.

Personal Help

God’s remedy for anxiety provides what no drug can ever give. Personal comfort. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, the Lord is called “the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles.” The word translated “comfort” literally means to approach, or to be next to the person. When God encourages you, he does it by drawing near to you.

For most dangers, isn’t the refuge we seek usually personal? A frightened child runs to his parents. If you’re lost in the woods, a map is nice, but much more comforting is if a person finds you and leads you to safety.

If someone threatens to hurt you, a defensive weapon might bring some comfort. But ideally you want someone bigger and stronger who can simply step in and deal with the attacker.

While driving a Safety Patrol truck for the Colorado DOT, my son Josiah stopped on a vehicle on the left shoulder of the Interstate. The teen driver was so terrified she could hardly speak. Out of gas, stranded, cars whizzing by at 90 mph, she was trapped and alone.

Josiah assured her, “I won’t leave until we get you to a safe spot and you’re okay.” She began sobbing with tears of relief. She didn’t know Josiah from Adam. But the assurance that she wouldn’t be alone was all the comfort she needed.

There’s something about personal comfort that we need in times of anxiety. While the world offers pills and practices, God reminds us of his nearness.

“When anxieties within me are many, your comforts delight my soul” (Psalms 94:19, author’s translation).

At Home with God

“If you make the Most High your dwelling … then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent” (Psalms 91:9-10).

The word “dwelling” means home—where you live. Think of the last time you uttered the words, “I can’t wait to get home.” Why was your desire for home so strong? It’s a place of rest, safety, and familiarity. It’s where all your stuff is—everything you need.

It’s good to venture out, go to work, go on a vacation, travel the world. But you always venture out from somewhere, and it’s the place to which you return when the adventure is over. Is there a more comforting word in the English language than home?

When Psalm 91 promises that God will take care of us if we make him our dwelling, the idea is that God is your home base. He’s your place of safety and refuge. When you need comfort, rest, resupply, or you just need to be re-grounded in a place of familiarity, you go to him.

That is the highest goal of prayer. It’s not to get through your prayer list so you can tell people you prayed for them. The starting place of prayer is to go home.

Do that, and you’ll have no reason for anxiety because the Most High God will protect you from harm.

God’s Watchcare

Does that mean you’re exempt from trouble? No. Psalm 121 is a whole psalm on the promise of God’s watchcare, and the psalm begins with trouble.

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains– where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth” (Psalms 121:1-2).

He’s in trouble, and so he’s looking to the mountains, which was the place of supernatural help. And what does that help look like?

He will not let your foot slip– he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The LORD watches over you– the LORD is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will keep you from all harm– he will watch over your life; the LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore” (Psalm 121:3-8).

Did you notice how many times he repeated the phrase “watch over”? Six times in the span of six verses. It’s a beautiful concept. The Hebrew word appears the first time in Genesis 2:15, where it is used to describe Adam’s responsibility to watch over (tend) the Garden of Eden.

It’s used again in Genesis 4:9 where Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain was asking, “Am I his guardian, protector, and caregiver? Am I supposed to keep track of him and watch over him every moment?”

To translate this word “protect” is inadequate. You can protect someone without really caring about that person or tending to their wellbeing. This word is a combination of protecting and cherishing. Perhaps the best translation is “watchcare.” Six times in six verses God promises his watchcare.

To be free from anxiety, you don’t need a promise of no trouble. You don’t need your problems to be solved. You don’t even need to see light at the end of the tunnel. You only need a Caretaker.

When Suffering Comes

You don’t know what the future holds. It may be a whole lot of hardship. But if you make the Lord your home, God will be your protector, your guardian, and your keeper who watches over, cherishes, and takes care of you.

Will you suffer hardship and trouble? Yes.

“In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33).

But…

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship? … No. … Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

That thing you’re so stressed out about—you don’t have to be afraid of it. Whatever it is, it cannot separate you from the love of your Caretaker. And his love is better than life at its best, which means even if the worst-case scenario happens, you will still have access to a happy life. You will never be sentenced to be miserable as long as you make the Lord your home.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells” (Psalms 46:1-4).

Shade at Your Right Hand

Back to Psalm 121. Notice the promise in verse five.

“The LORD watches over you– the LORD is your shade at your right hand” (Psalms 121:5).

Having God at your right hand means he will be immediately accessible. God’s comfort is never out of reach.

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Psalms 139:7-12).

Jesus promised, “Behold I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 24:3). You don’t have to go through anything alone. For the Christian, there is no such thing as alone.

When you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is right there with you (Psalm 23:4). No matter how far down you sink into the pit, he will stay with you. No matter how pitch black it gets around you, your Guide and Caretaker can see just fine. Maybe you can’t see him in the dark, but he is as near to you as your breath.

God has his purposes for delay, but when the time is right, the movement of his hand to save you will be like lightening. Remember when Peter walked on water but then looked away from Jesus and started to sink (Matthew 14:30)? How fast did Jesus’ hand move? If you step out on water, it takes less than a second for you before your head goes under. But in that fraction of a second Jesus had Peter in his grasp. That’s what it means to have the Most High at your right hand.

Constant Attentiveness

He who watches over you will not slumber” (Psalms 121:3).

Sleep is used as a figure of speech describing inattentiveness. Saying “he will not slumber” means God is always, at every moment of every day, paying close attention to exactly what you are going through. He is alert to what is happening to you, how it feels, and what you are thinking about it.

He does allow times when it seems like he isn’t there. He’ll even allow you to feel forsaken on some occasions (Psalms 22:1). But even in those times he is acutely attuned to exactly what you are going through.

“When I awake, I am still with you” (Psalm 139:18).

Have you ever awakened to see your spouse was watching you sleep? You have to love someone quite a bit to want to watch them sleep. And even if that has happened to you, chances are, they weren’t watching you very long. Certainly not all night. But God was. If you’re a believer, every time you wake up, he is already with you, paying attention to you. The problems you couldn’t stress about because you were unconscious—they were on his mind all night.

David loved that about God. He loved it that every time he woke from sleep, he awoke to God’s presence.

So many times we wake up in the morning battling stressful thoughts right off the bat. It’s like Sampson waking up with the Philistines already upon him and having to fight the moment he opened his eyes. Yesterday’s problems, today’s challenges, upcoming worries—you’re barely awake and the enemy is all over you.

No doubt David had plenty of problems that needed his attention. But before thinking about any of that, he took a moment to say good morning to God.

Imagine how much better equipped you would be to face the day’s troubles if your first conscious thoughts were on God. Instead of groping your night stand for your phone first thing, let your heart grope heavenward to wake up to God’s presence. Let your first conscious thoughts be a personal exchange with the one who watched over you all night.

The Who Question

One of our most natural responses in times of trouble is the “why” question. Why is this happening? Why would God allow this?

That’s natural, but it’s not helpful. We think we need to know why, but most of the time, we don’t. If you lose a child and cry out, “Why God?” would it really help you if he gave the answer? Suppose he laid out all his reasons. Wouldn’t the loss hurt just as much?

And what if you couldn’t understand all the reasons because your mind isn’t large enough to fathom the complexities or vastness of all God’s purposes?

How much better to shift from the “why” questions to the “who” question. Prayer protects you from anxiety by forcing you to contemplate the nature of the one to whom you are praying.

Focusing on what God is like puts your problems in perspective, it reorients your attention, and it corrects misaligned priorities. It sets this big scary crisis you’re so worried about alongside God, so you can see how relatively small it is in comparison.

That saying, “I don’t know what the future holds but I know who holds the future” is not just a clever Christian line. It’s the core of what it means that we worship a personal God. We get our comfort not from knowing all the answers, but from clinging to a Guardian and Caretaker and Shepherd and Father who not only knows all the answers, but who also loves us as his own children. You don’t have to know the why’s when you know the Who who knows them all.

Jesus Catched Me

Max Lucado tells the story of the day two-year-old Noah Drew was run over by a car.

The Drew family was making the short drive to their neighborhood pool. Leanna, the mom, was driving so slowly that the automatic door locks didn’t engage. Noah opened his door and fell out. Leanna felt a bump and braked to a quick stop. Noah was on the pavement, legs covered in blood and he was convulsing. Incredibly, tests in the ER showed no broken bones. Only cuts and bruises.

That night Leanna stretched out on the bed next to Noah, thinking he was asleep. As she lay beside him in the dark, he spoke. “Mama, Jesus catched me.”

“He did?”

“I told Jesus thank you, and he said, you’re very welcome.”

The next day Noah gave some details. “Mama, Jesus has brown hands. He catched me like this. He held his arms outstretched, cupping his little hands.  When she asked for more information, he said, ‘That’s all.’ But when he said his prayers that night, he said, “Jesus, thank you for catching me.”

I don’t know if Noah had a dream, a vision, or a physical encounter with Jesus or an angel. but I do know that his description is very close to what Scripture promises.

“He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart” (Isaiah 40:11).

Sometimes when Jesus catches you, you still get run over. But there is a world of difference between being run over without Jesus’ watchcare and being held close to his heart during the ordeal. The reason we don’t have to worry about future events is the promise that no matter how painful things get, even if you lose your life, you can bank on his promise to always be there to catch you.

Conclusion

How do you fireproof your heart to protect it from both good and bad anxiety? Focus on the nearness of God. Suppose you have a big, long-term problem, like cancer or a wayward child or troubled marriage. You can’t just take action today and be done with it. You need that good anxiety to pressure you to think hard about the situation, to pray hard, and to take necessary action every day for months or years.

But you can’t live in a state of constant anxiety or you’ll destroy yourself, even though it’s a good anxiety. So what do you do? Well, if it’s 2:00pm and it’s a good time to pray or to think through your next steps, let the good anxiety do its work.

But what about when it’s 3:00 and you have to go to an appointment? Or it’s 10:00 and it’s time to go to bed and you need some sleep? Or it’s 6:00 a.m. and you need to get breakfast for your family and start them out well for the day? If it’s not the right time to focus on the problem, shift your thoughts from the problem to the nearness of God. You can put those worries on hold for the next few hours by enjoying his presence.

Godliness Training ExercisesPick your favorite promise of God’s presence in times of trouble and memorize it. Consider Psalms 46:1-3; 23:2-4; 139:7-12; 139:18; 91:9-10; 121:1-8; 46:1-4; Romans 8:35-39; Matthew 24:3. Choose the passage you think is most likely to calm your heart in times of anxiety.God designed your brain so that the anxiety centers can override your rational brain in an emergency. If you’re talking to a passenger in your car, and the sound of squealing tires coming toward you hits your ears, your subconscious brain will throw your whole body into a state of readiness. Your heart rate will speed up, breathing will become quick and shallow, muscles tense, you will stop in mid-sentence, grip the wheel, and hit the brake—all before your conscious mind even knows what’s happening. That’s great for emergencies, but it can be a problem when you need your conscious mind to regain executive control. The higher your anxiety level, the more difficult it is to think clearly. But you need clarity of thought to recover from the anxiety.

To prepare for this, write a note to yourself. Make it a letter from calm you to anxious you, reminding yourself of the principles from this chapter you most want to remember the next time anxiety takes over. Those principles seem simple right now, but in the turmoil of anxiety, they will be next to impossible to recall. Keep the letter in a place you can grab it the next time you feel bad anxiety coming on. The earlier you catch it, the better.

Share the principles from your letter with at least one other person. Do it in casual conversation (“I’ve got to tell you some things I’ve been learning …”), send them an email of encouragement, mention it in family devotions, tell it to your pastor—whatever opportunity you can find to verbalize the principles. Abstract ideas become much more solidified in your mind when you put them into words and communicate them to another person, especially if it turns into an extended conversation. That process of converting idea to words has an effect even on the non-rational emotional centers in your brain, such as the amygdala.Be alert to the next small anxiety that arises in your life over the next 24 hours and practice calming your soul by enjoying God’s presence. This is for practice, and you want to make sure it’s a success, so the smaller the anxiety the better. You don’t start getting in shape by climbing Mount Everest. Watch for a very minor fear to arise and get a win by soothing your soul with promises to be with you.

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Links

For the video of this session, click here.

Part 1 of this series here
Part 2 of this series here
Part 3 of this series here

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Footnotes

Grammatically, it is possible to take it as a Genitive of source (peace from God), but given the emphasis on the transcendent nature of it, it seems more likely Paul meant it as a Genitive of description (peace that describes what God is like).

It’s usually assumed that that phrase “the Lord is near” belongs with the rest of verse five. “Let your gentleness be evident to all (because) the Lord is near.” That is a possibility. There is a very similar statement in James 5:9.

However, I believe it is more likely the phrase belongs with what follows. “The Lord is near (so) don’t be anxious about anything.”

There are only two other places where the Bible says the Lord is near using these same words (Psalms 34:18; 145:18). And they both have to do with comfort, not warning. Also, taking the phrase with verse 6 fits the context of Philippians 4, forming a sandwich.

The Lord is near (verse 5) Do not be anxious about anything (verse 6) The God of peace will be with you (verse 9)

https://www.treasuringgod.com/loving-....

https://drichardferguson.com/books/de....

Hebrew shamar.

For example, see Psalms 44:23.

Max Lucado, Anxious for Nothing, audiobook, ch.8 at the 21:35 mark.

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Anxiety & The Peace of God Pt.3 Bad Anxiety

Part 1 of this series here
Part 2 of this series here

Most of us know the physical and emotional ravages of anxiety. But those are nothing compared to the shocking warnings Scripture gives about the spiritual dangers. To overcome anxiety, we must be able to discern good anxiety from bad anxiety, and we must understand the spiritual dangers of the bad kind.

You Need Protection

Imagine a late-night knock on your door. You open to find a SWAT team in full gear. The commander tells you, “Don’t worry. You’re safe now. We’ll stand guard and protect you from what’s coming.” Your first question would be, “Why? What’s coming that I need protection from?”

That’s the question we should be asking when we read Philippians 4:7, because in that verse, God offers to guard us.

“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds” (Philippians 4:7).

Guard my heart and mind from what? From the threat he just mentioned in the previous verse—anxiety.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but … let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds” (Philippians 4:6-7).

The threat God’s peace will protect your heart and mind from is anxiety. And where is anxiety produced? In your heart and mind. God’s peace is like a SWAT team sent to protect your heart and mind from your own heart and mind.

Anxiety is like spiritual cancer. Cancer is when the body destroys itself with out-of-control multiplication of cells. The bad kind of anxiety is when your soul destroys itself with out-of-control multiplication of thoughts and negative emotions.

Deadly Adrenaline

We found in chapter one that anxiety is a gift from God. It’s a byproduct of love, it’s a sign of a healthy soul, and it shows that you care. It’s the spiritual adrenaline that powers us through life, provides the energy and motivation, supercharges our prayers, and mirrors the passion in God’s heart. Anxiety is essential for doing God’s will.

But it’s also dangerous. If you don’t have protections in place, it does damage. Even the good kind of anxiety wreaks havoc—physical, emotional, and spiritual havoc.

The physical effects are well known. High blood pressure, ulcers, cardiovascular disease, weakened immune system, muscle tension, insomnia, fatigue, respiratory problems, skin conditions—anxiety affects every system in your body.

We are also familiar with the emotional aspect. Distraction, mood swings, depression, panic attacks, irritability, obsessive thoughts.

Far worse than all of that, however, is the spiritual devastation. Ulcers and panic attacks are bad, but they are nothing compared to what runaway anxiety can do to your soul and your relationship with God.

Paul says both your mind and your heart have to be guarded. Both need protection because both can be damaged by anxiety. And for an example of how the mental distraction can cause spiritual harm, Jesus’ friend Martha is a good case study.

Case Study: Martha

“Mary … sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made” (Luke 10:39-40).

That’s understandable. You have an important guest coming, a big meal to prepare, there’s a lot of work to do to get ready—no surprise if you’re a little distracted. Perfectly normal. No one would consider Martha’s anxiety a mental disorder.

But it became a spiritual disorder because the stress she felt over the meal pressed her harder than her desire for personal, direct interaction with the Lord Jesus Christ. As a result, she forfeited what could have been the greatest experience of her life.

Out-of-bounds Anxiety

We found in chapter two that one way anxiety goes bad has to do with timing. When it comes too soon or stays too long.

The term for anxiety that comes too early is worry. Worry is when we import future trouble into the presence.

If a future problem requires planning or preparation today, then it’s today’s problem and we need to face it. This is good anxiety, pressuring us to take the action of planning.

However, if we don’t have enough information yet to plan properly, anxiety about it will do us no good. Jesus instructed us to leave future problems in the future.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).

If it’s too soon to make preparations, today is no place for tomorrow’s trouble. Nor is it a place for yesterday’s trouble. Once you’ve taken the action you can take and prayed hard, it’s time to let the anxiety go. Anxiety that arrives too early or stays too long is off limits. We could call that out-of-bounds anxiety.

Out-of-balance Anxiety

There’s another kind of bad anxiety that’s even worse—out-of-balance anxiety. Caring too much about the wrong things. That is what Martha had.

Anxiety rises from caring, so your anxiety is a good barometer of your heart. It reveals what you really care about. A man who is grumpy and short with his wife because his team lost a game cares too much about sports and not enough about loving his wife. And if you’re more driven by earthly things than by the things of God, you love this world more than you love God.

Out-of-balance anxiety is the worst kind because godliness and sin are both defined more by what you love than by what you do. A righteous person loves what is good, and an evil person loves sin. And your anxieties tell the truth about what you love.

If a man has more anxiety when his secretary is unhappy than when his wife is unhappy, it shows his heart belongs to another woman. And if the things of this world move us more than eternal matters, our heart belongs to this world. This is why out-of-balance anxiety is the worst kind. It’s spiritual adultery against God.

What moves your emotions more—gaining a lot of money, or doing God’s will? Receiving praise from your boss, or pleasing God? Getting bad news about your health, or discovering a persistent sin in your heart? What do your anxieties tell you about what matters most to you?

Eclipsing God

Out-of-balance anxiety can ruin your life because it blocks your view of God. Hold a quarter close enough to your eye and it can block the sun. And anxiety over little things can eclipse the glory of God.

That’s what happened to Martha. She had to get the kids’ toys picked up. She was running out of flour, a broken dish—all the little worries that come with preparing for company. And she misses out on one of the greatest opportunities in all human history.

The preparations for Jesus became more important than Jesus himself.

If Satan can trigger high-level anxiety over low-level problems, he can distract you from seeking God because you’re perpetually hogtied with earthly issues.

Attitudes

Notice the effect Martha’s idolatrous, out-of-balance anxiety had on her attitude.

“Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (Luke 10:40)

Her bad attitude turned what should have been the greatest moment of her life into a giant irritation. An anxiety-driven attitude can take the greatest vacation, the best family get-together, the sweetest blessings from God, the most wonderful things in life, and ruin all of it for everyone.

And it will spoil your service to God. Martha was irritable about making a meal for Jesus Christ. Anxiety will turn the grand privilege of serving the King of kings into a drudgery and burden that saps your joy and ruins relationships.

Anger

To make matters worse, attitude problems inevitably become anger problems. This is why we become irritable when we’re stressed.

It sounds like Martha was irritated with both Mary and Jesus. Selfish attitudes turn your attention inward, and you find yourself annoyed at anyone who isn’t on board with your agenda, which is usually the whole world.

This is why big anxiety over little (earthly) problems is so spiritually damaging. God designed anxiety to get us moving and drive our lives. So when the anxiety rises from the wrong sources, it steers the wrong way and can accelerate the trajectory of your life away from God’s will.

Warnings

Twice Jesus gave direct warnings about how dangerous the everyday anxieties of life can be.

Choked Out

In Mark 4, Jesus told a parable about seed being sown in various kinds of soil. He said the seed represents the Word of God. The soil is your heart. And the goal is for the Word to penetrate your heart, germinate, and produce an abundant crop of righteousness in your life.

But anxiety kills that process. Consider this shocking statement:

“The worries of this life … come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Mark 4:19).

Unfruitful? God’s Word is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, dividing soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12). God said, “The Word that goes out from my mouth will not return to me empty but will accomplish the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11). Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:35). Acts 19:20 says, “The word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.”

What could possibly be powerful enough to render God’s Word unfruitful in your heart? The normal, everyday anxieties of life. They can choke the work of God’s Word right out of your life, like weeds choking out crops.

Four Crop Killers

Jesus spoke of four different ways the Word can be prevented from producing a harvest in your life. The first is lack of understanding. In that case, the Word never even enters the heart.

The next two, trouble and persecution, cause you to doubt the Word.

But anxiety is different. It doesn’t make you doubt or reject the Word. Instead, it occupies a huge space in your thinking so there isn’t room for the truths of Scripture. The anxiety takes up all your emotional energy, a giant portion of your time and attention, and consumes your internal resources so there’s nothing left for God. His Word gets choked out.

The Cares of This Life

The ESV translates it, “the cares of this life.” How many cares do you have in your life? We’re worried about our relationships, family, daily chores, homework, friendships, all our stuff, health issues, shopping, finances, vacation plans, personal goals, the next election, cultural decline, traffic, what kind of hair day you’re having, problems at school, trouble at work, concerns about the kids—you could spend every waking hour thinking about the cares of this life.

Most people do. But those seemingly harmless cares can choke out the work of God’s Word in your life. All the time you spent reading your Bible, listening to sermons, and learning the truths of Scripture won’t do you any good.

Buried by Anxiety

Another place Jesus warns us about the anxieties of life is Luke 21:34.

“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap” (Luke 21:34).

“That day” refers to Judgment Day. That’s the one day that you absolutely do not want to close on you unexpectedly like a trap.

And notice the three culprits. Dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life. Does that seem like a strange list? Does anxiety fit with those other two?

“Dissipation” is an extreme term. It refers to excessive carousing and debauchery, the most disgusting extremes of sinful excess that go along with drunkenness.

The word translated “weighed down” is used in contexts of being incapacitated by grogginess or sleep. A depraved, debauched lifestyle will put you in a spiritual stupor so that Judgment Day will spring on you like a trap. You won’t be ready.

And the normal cares of daily life can do the same thing. Jesus places anxiety with debauchery to wake us up to how dangerous anxiety can be.

No matter who you are or how much money you have, life is packed with anxieties. And Jesus’ warning is that those everyday cares can have the same effect as being buried under a mountain of vile immorality when Jesus returns.

A Sin Garden

Anxiety is one of the greatest spiritual dangers we face. It can distract you from God, cause bad attitudes, irritability, it can choke out the power of God’s Word in your life, and put you in a spiritual fog so that Judgement Day springs on you like a trap.

And that’s not all. It can also weaken your faith, sap your spiritual strength, dampen your joy, cloud your hope, diminish your perseverance, and drive you into prayerlessness, doubt, self-pity, and ingratitude.

Anxiety makes all our negative emotions worse. Insignificant difficulties feel like catastrophic setbacks. Little offences become massive assaults. Minor disagreements erupt into major conflicts.

The anxious heart becomes the soil out of which countless other sins arise. Worry about money can tempt us to covet or steal. Anxiety about what other people think of us tempt us to fear men above God. Performance anxiety can tempt us to elevate ourselves above others. Relational anxiety can make us withdraw or feel indifferent to the needs of others.

If you want to reduce your anxiety for health reasons, that’s fine, but realize there are much bigger issues at stake than your physical health. The spiritual side of anxiety is far more deadly.

What God Promises

That’s a lot of bad news, isn’t it? You picked up this book to get rid of anxiety, but all this chapter did was make it worse. Now you’re even more stressed than you were before because you realize the problem is even worse than you thought.

It’s important to understand the severity of the danger. But there is good news. Great news. You can protect yourself from all this danger. Remember the SWAT team? In Philippians 4:7 God provided something that will protect your heart and mind from the ravages of your anxiety. But in order to appreciate that protection, we must understand how deadly the threat  is.

So what can protect us? The peace of God.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

The Peace of God

If we follow the steps in Scripture, the Owner’s manual for the human soul, God will give us peace that transcends human understanding.

That’s saying a lot because the human mind can understand a lot. We can conceive of what calmness feels like. We can imagine a relaxed vacation, job security, money in the bank, high self-confidence, the ability to sleep like a baby. This world offers countless remedies for anxiety, but what God promises here goes far beyond anything in this world. It exceeds anything we can even understand or imagine.

This is a peace that will not only protect your body and your mind, but also your heart. It will give rest to the troubled heart when nothing in this world can. God promises to lead you beside quiet waters, to make you lie down in green pastures, and to restore your soul.

The peace of God refers not just to peace that’s from God, but the peace that God himself experiences in his own being. This peace is a participation in the very nature of God.

How do you get that peace? We’ll take that up in chapter four. But first, it’s important to let the warnings sink in. To have success in finding the peace of God, we need to understand what’s at stake. So I urge you not to skip the godliness training exercises for this chapter.

Godliness Training ExercisesMake a list of your anxieties that are arriving too soon, before you are in a position to act or prepare.

 

List your anxieties that have overstayed their usefulness. You’ve taken all the action you can take, but the pressure isn’t going away.

 

Jot down some out-of-balance anxieties. Something is bothering you more than it should.

 

Are there any anxieties that are choking God’s Word out of your heart or that threaten to dull your sensitivity to spiritual things because they are taking up too much space in your mind?

 

Note any good anxieties in your heart that, though they are good, they are causing problems for you.

 

The purpose of all these lists is to make it crystal clear in your mind where the bad anxiety in your life is. Before we learn the principles for eliminating anxiety, it’s crucial that we understand which anxieties are good and healthy, and which are deadly and sinful. Don’t be discouraged by what you’ve written. This is the first step toward the peace of God that transcends understanding.

 

Begin memorizing Matthew 6:25-34. These are some of the most soothing words in Scripture for the anxious heart. You’ll be amazed how comforting it can be to simply speak these beautiful words from memory in times of stress. What you say verbally can steer the direction of your whole life (James 3:3-5). For now, begin with verse 25.

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For the video of this session, click here.

 

 

Greek merimna, the same word normally translated “anxieties.”

The post Anxiety & The Peace of God Pt.3 Bad Anxiety appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

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Anxiety Pt.2 How to Use Your Anxiety to Take Spiritual Action

For part 1 of this series, click here.

God’s design is for anxiety to rise to energize you to take action to handle a crisis, then to subside once you have taken action. But what if the anxiety remains even after you’ve taken whatever mental and physical action you can take? It may be because you have not yet used your anxiety to help you take spiritual action–the most important kind of action for dealing with a problem.

Lingering Anxiety

In chapter one we learned God’s design for anxiety. The purpose is to pressure you into taking action to deal with a problem.

We also found that anxiety is a byproduct of love. The more you care about something the more energized you become when that thing is threatened. And so God commands us to have anxiety for one another—to feel pressure in your own heart when your brother has a problem.

But if all that is true about anxiety, why did Jesus say, “Do not be anxious” (Luke 12:22)? Evidently, there’s a good kind of anxiety and a bad kind—how do we discern the difference? What’s the definition of bad anxiety?

Jesus gave us a clue in Luke 12:25.

“Do not be anxious … Which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his life’s span?’” (Luke 12:22,25 NAS).

Anxiety is bad when it’s useless. When it doesn’t accomplish anything. Good anxiety energizes necessary action. Bad anxiety flails uselessly against problems outside your control.

Soul-English

If you want some cheap entertainment, go to a bowling alley and watch what people do after they release the ball. Bending, twisting, jumping on tiptoes—every kind of gyration trying to keep that ball out of the gutter. Does body English work? No.

And neither does soul English—twisting and writhing on the inside trying to control outcomes over which you have no power is useless. Once the ball is out of your hands, no amount of internal flailing can change the trajectory of events.

A student uses her good anxiety about the final exam to energize her to study. Great. Now the test is over and all she can do is wait for the results. But she’s still losing sleep worrying about her grade. To apply Jesus’ logic from Luke 22—Who of you, by worrying, can improve the grade on a test you already took? Jesus’ point is that kind of worry has no power. It’s useless, so it qualifies as bad anxiety—the kind you want to eliminate.

Anxiety is to get you to take action, so if there’s no action to be taken, then it’s useless anxiety. Even if you have power to take action, if you don’t have that power right now then there’s no point in having the anxiety right now.

Healthy anxiety rises only when it’s time to take action and subsides after you’ve taken action.

Spiritual Action

But what is “action”? It’s not always physical. Many times, the purpose of anxiety is to push you to mental action, such as planning or problem solving.

You feel anxious about an upcoming conversation. That anxiety forces you to think through the best way to respond if the interaction goes one way or another. You’re taking action by planning.A child is going astray or you have an impossible situation at work, and you take action by examining the problem from every angle to figure out a solution.

But suppose you have taken all the mental and physical action you can, but the anxiety still won’t go away. Has it now become bad anxiety? Not yet. You have one more question to ask: I’ve taken mental and physical action, but have I taken spiritual action?

What is spiritual action?

Intensive Prayer

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6, ESV).

Spiritual action begins with prayer. You haven’t taken action to solve a problem until you’ve prayed. You can do more than pray after you’ve prayed, but you can never do more than pray if you haven’t prayed.

Take spiritual action with prayer, and not just prayer, but intensive, earnest prayer. Notice the phrase, “let your requests be made known.” When the Bible speaks of making something known (as opposed to simply “telling”), it’s emphatic. It’s like taking the person by the lapel and pressing your request.

Another way to make something emphatic is to stack up synonyms. Notice how many words Paul uses for prayer.

“… in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 1:6, ESV).

Prayer is talking to God. Supplication is asking God for things. Requests are the things we ask for. Thanksgiving is another facet of prayer. And the phrase “in everything” adds even more emphasis. Paul is pulling up every word he can think of to describe earnest, impassioned prayer.

When you have runaway anxiety, the purpose of it is to push you not just pray, but to pray hard. Don’t merely mention your requests. Grab hold of God and let them be made known to him. Use every form of prayer. Hit it from every angle. Be passionate. Be persistent. Be energetic and earnest and fervent and bang on the doors of heaven. That’s taking spiritual action.

How to Energize Your Prayers

But fervent prayer is hard. We all struggle with lukewarm, low-energy prayer. Maybe you’ve tried for years to get serious about prayer, but your prayer life is anemic. It’s mostly quick, one-line requests or expressions of thanksgiving through the day that rarely go longer that a few seconds.

You’re not alone. Prayer is difficult. And praying hard is even more difficult. It takes a huge amount of emotional energy.

Where will you get all that energy? There is a power pack you can plug into that will make energetic, fervent prayer 100 times easier. It’s called anxiety. Remember, anxiety is emotional energy.

All the worries and anxieties in your heart are like a bunch of rubber balls submerged in water. They want to bubble up to the surface. Let them. Let them bubble right up to God in prayer.

“Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders” (James 5:13-14).

When you’re sick, you do one thing. When you’re happy, you do something else. But when you’re in a big crisis, the most fundamental response is prayer. Don’t waste that emotional adrenaline. Use it to pray hard because nothing can send a prayer rocketing into heaven like anxiety-fueled pleadings.

When you don’t have any anxiety in your heart, you can try to pray hard, but the earnestness isn’t the same. That’s just the way God designed the human soul. We need anxiety to drive our prayers. Thumb through your Bible and you’ll see—the most impassioned prayers rose out of the deepest trouble. Even Jesus needed anxiety to pray his hardest.

“And being in anguish, [Jesus] prayed more earnestly” (Luke 22:44).

Why didn’t Jesus pray that earnestly to begin with? The human soul—even a perfect, sinless human soul, in this fallen world, needs anxiety to stimulate the most passionate kind of prayer. That’s God’s design.

When Jesus had more anxiety, he prayed harder. And he didn’t ask God to relieve his anxiety. The idea isn’t that you feel anxiety and then you pray hard asking God to take it away. The point is that you spend that anxiety on intensive prayer about the problem that’s causing your anxiety.

God’s Response

Remember, the more passionate the prayer, the more likely God is to answer it (James 5:17). So don’t let your passion (anxiety) go to waste. It is when anxiety boils that our hearts explode with strong, passionate engagements with God. And those are the kinds of prayers that move God’s heart.

I routinely ask God for greater anxiety. It’s often how I begin my prayer time. “Ignite my heart, Lord. Don’t let me flatline. Light up my heart to care a lot about something that’s big in your heart so I can pray with a passion that’s in sync with your great heart.” I begin my prayers that way when my heart is dull. If you already have the anxiety, you have an advantage.

Extended Prayer

Anxiety can tell you when more prayer is needed. If your normal daily prayer routine is handling your anxiety, that’s great. But when the anxiety lingers in your bloodstream, it’s calling for more prayer. If you normally pray two minutes, get alone somewhere and pray for ten. If you normally pray twenty minutes, make it an hour. In an extreme crisis, God may fill your soul with a dose of anxiety that won’t dissipate until you’ve spent a full night in prayer or set aside a whole day alone somewhere to seek hard after God.

We send up little sentence prayers all day long—“God, please let this work out.” “Don’t let me get laid off.” “Don’t let it be cancer.” “Please, help my marriage.” When was the last time you prayed at length over a matter of great importance?

When Peter fell asleep in Gethsemane, Jesus said, “Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray” (Mark 14:37-38). He says, “one hour” like that’s a small increment of time. Sometimes Jesus prayed all night.

He didn’t do that every night. Or even most nights. But the more important the issue, the deeper the anxiety, the longer the prayer. Times of excessive stress call for excessive prayer.

Sometimes people in trouble are so busy they begrudge a ten-minute prayer time and then wonder where God is. The question isn’t, “Where is God?” God is right there in your prayer closet. The question is, “Where are you?”

Intensive Prayer Depletes Anxiety

Once you’ve spent your energy on intensive, thankful prayer, you’ll find your anxiety level will drop. If it doesn’t, keep praying until you burn it off.

Think of your anxiety like money in the bank. If you wonder why all that money is still in there, it’s because you haven’t spent it. When anxiety lingers in your heart and stays in your bloodstream and refuses to let up, it may be because you haven’t spent that energy. Spend your anxiety on action, especially the action of fervent prayer.

Are there certain times when your anxiety level tends to be higher, like after watching the news or dealing with certain people? Maybe the best time to plan your prayer time is right after those events, when your spiritual adrenaline level is highest.

This is God’s preferred way of accomplishing great things in his kingdom. When he wants to bring about a great work, he will often put a driving anxiety in the heart of one of his people. That anxiety drives that person to passionate prayer, then God answers that prayer by carrying out his marvelous plan.

Godliness TrainingFrom your lists of good anxieties from the previous chapter, choose the two strongest—the anxieties that boil the hottest inside you. Carve out some extended time to pray hard about those two issues. Use the prayer guide below.Continue to review Romans 12:11 and begin memorizing Matthew 6:25-34. It contains some of the most soothing words in Scripture for the anxious heart. You’ll be amazed how comforting it can be to simply speak these beautiful words from memory in times of stress. What you say verbally can steer the direction of your whole life (James 3:3-5). For now, start with verse 25.Prayer Guide

How do you pray hard about something? You start out, “Please God, please, please, please . . . ” But then what?

First, do what Jesus did and get away. Go for a long drive or walk. Solitude makes a big difference, especially if it can be out in nature somewhere. And bring your Bible because that’s how God speaks to us.

Talk the issue over with God from every angle. Here are some examples:

What is God’s will in this matter?

Explore God’s heart. Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done.” So always begin by seeking God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will. Ask him to help you recall what his Word says about situations like this.

Keep in mind, the primary goal is not to find a solution to the problem. The goal is discovering which responses would be righteous or unrighteous.

A big mistake people often make when they are seeking God’s will is to say “Show me your will,” but what they really mean is “Show me what I could do to solve this problem.”

God’s will is that we be holy, and seeking his will is seeking what path we could take that would be holy and righteous. If you’re responding righteously, you’re where you need to be, regardless of whether the problem is solved.

Ask God opens your eyes to the righteous path, ask him to enable you to take it.

What is your will?

Talk to God about your desires. What are you passionate about in the matter? And what do the feelings you’re having say about your values and priorities? It’s the passions of your heart that are driving your anxiety. Are they the right passions?

Is there anything you love too much (judging by your emotional responses when it is threatened or lost)? Is there anything you love too little?

Ask God to enable you to conform any wrong values, priorities, or passions to match his. Use your good passions to empower earnestness in your prayer.

In a ballroom dance, sometimes the man advances, and the woman steps back. Other times she steps forward, and he gives ground. Prayer is like that. Sometimes we ask for something and God yields to our request. Other times, when our request can’t fit into God’s perfect plan, we must yield and say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Ask God to show you whether this is a situation like Moses pleading for the Israelites, where God relented and granted the request. Or if it’s like Jesus in Gethsemane, where his request was not possible, and Jesus had to yield.

Ask God how you could put some of his attributes on display in this matter.Ask how you could show humility in this situation.How could you show kindness?Gentleness?Self-control?What would patience look like?Courage?Faith?What are some ways you could love your neighbor as yourself in this situation?Pray through a psalm or two, watching for attributes of God stated or implied and pray about the implications of those attributes for the matter at hand.Ask God to show you a good next step.

When you have used your anxiety to intensify your prayers, then you can use your prayers to relieve your anxiety.

Ask God to comfort your soul.Lay each of your concerns on God’s shoulders one-by-one, asking him to take the burden from you.

“By casting all your cares on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7 NET).

Working through them one at a time is a more effective than trying to cast your cares on God in one giant batch (“Lord, just let it all work out”). Naming each anxiety and intentionally casting the weight of it onto God trains your soul to trust God for each one. George Mueller described how he handled all the stresses of the massive responsibilities that were upon him.

I do not carry the burden . . . It is not only permission, but positive command that He gives, to cast the burdens upon Him. Oh, let us do it! My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee.” Day by day I do it. This morning, sixty matters in connection with the church of which I am pastor, I brought before the Lord.”

The heartache you feel from that broken relationship, that nagging anxiety that rises when you hear that weird sound in your transmission, the gut punch you get every time you see that bill on the counter that you know you can’t pay—each of those problems creates a different kind of anxiety and they must be handled individually. Roll each one onto God.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Agitated Christians, do not dishonor your religion by always wearing a brow of care; come, cast your burden upon the Lord. What seems to you a crushing burden would be to him but as the small dust of the balance. See! the Almighty bends his shoulders, and he says, ‘Here, put thy troubles here.’ ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.”

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Watch the video presentation of this material here.

Interested in More?

This post will be chapter one of my next book, Anxiety and the Peace of God (tentative title). If you would like to be notified when future chapters are posted and when the full book is available, sign up for my Readers List here. For  videos of this content, visit FoodforYourSoul.net or  TreasuringGod.com.

 

 

Interpreters debate about whether Jesus was referring to life span or height. Since a cubit is a unit of length, not time, I believe Jesus is referring to height. But either way, it is not a result that can be achieved by being anxious.

George Mueller, “Real Faith,” http://hopefaithprayer.com/?page_id=4919

Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, January 6th, Morning Reading.

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Anxiety & the Peace of God part 1 – Good Anxiety

Watch the video presentation of this chapter here.

 

Anxiety is forbidden in Philippians 4:6, yet it is commanded in 1 Corinthians 12:25 using the same Greek word. Imagine a medicine that, if taken improperly, it could kill you. But without it, you’ll become paralyzed. That’s anxiety. Out of control, it will make you miserable. But if you lose it altogether, you might become suicidal.

In this chapter we will learn from Scripture how to take advantage of good anxiety.

Good Anxiety Bad Anxiety

Hospitals, divorce courts, and cemeteries are crowded with evidence of the ravages of anxiety. Americans spend billions every year on medication, counseling, alcohol, pot—anything we can find to help us survive our own stress.

Why does this deadly emotion even exist? Is this God’s design? Or is it a result of the fall of mankind and the curse, like cancer?

No. The ability to experience anxiety is a gift from God. It’s a feature, not a bug, an essential tool for health and success in life. But at the same time, it can destroy your body, your relationships—even your relationship with God. Jesus warned that anxiety can render God’s Word powerless in your life (Mark 4:19).

Anxiety is forbidden in Philippians 4:6 and Matthew 6:25, yet it is commanded in 1 Corinthians 12:25, using the same Greek word. When something is both forbidden and commanded, that tells us there is a bad kind and a good kind. The Bible teaches us how to avoid the deadly kind and grow in the healthy, life-sustaining kind.

The Poisonous Medicine

You won’t have much success fighting the bad kind if you don’t understand the purpose of the good kind because you won’t know which anxieties to fight and which anxieties to embrace.

Most people take a simplistic approach to this issue. “Anxiety is bad, so just give me something to deaden the intensity of it.” That’s a dangerous approach because you end up deadening both the bad kind and the good kind which can do more harm than good.

Imagine a medicine that, if taken improperly, could kill you. But without it, you’ll become paralyzed. That’s anxiety. Take it at the wrong time, and it makes you sick. Fail to take it when it’s needed, and your life will grind to a halt and you might become suicidal. You’ll be calmer, but unhappy and unproductive. Proper use of anxiety is an essential key to a healthy, happy, powerful life.

God’s Purpose for Anxiety

Why did God design us with a capacity for this harmful emotion?

At the most basic physical level, anxiety is necessary for emergencies. When there is danger, God designed your nervous system to instantly throw your whole body into a state of anxiety—quick, shallow breathing, tense muscles, release of adrenaline—all designed to put you in a heightened state of readiness that enables you to fight or flee.

Caring and Apathy

But anxiety isn’t only for emergencies. It’s for anything you regard as important. When something you care about is threatened, you will feel pressure to do something about it—physical, mental, and spiritual pressure.

Physically, you might get a knot in your stomach. Mentally, your thoughts are distracted by this problem—you can’t think about anything else. Spiritually, you might feel pressure from your conscience.

But it only happens when you care. You’ll never feel anxiety over something you don’t care about. The root meaning of the Greek word for anxiety in the New Testament is “to care.” Anxiety happens when you care. It’s the feeling you get when something you care about is threatened or lost.

Your team is down by six, 4th and goal on the 5-yard line with seconds to go in the game—if you’re a big fan, you’re all twisted up inside watching to see if they make it. But if you don’t care about football, you’re as calm as can be. No caring; no anxiety.

Apathy

The opposite of anxiety is apathy. And apathy about important matters will ruin your life just as thoroughly as unchecked anxiety. When you stop caring, life is drained of joy. You have no motivation, no drive, nothing to get you out of bed in the morning. Without the good kind of anxiety, you really do become paralyzed. Even the simplest tasks feel impossibly difficult because you simply don’t care.

If you think anxiety is a curse, be thankful you don’t have the opposite problem. It’s much easier to gain control over runaway anxiety and learn to use it to your advantage than it is to make yourself start caring when you’re apathetic. When you know something is important, it should matter to you, but it doesn’t—how do you make yourself care? It’s possible, but very difficult.

The Object of Anxiety

Sometimes apathetic people pat themselves on the back for not being worriers. “My wife worries so much. I don’t know why she can’t just trust God and calm down and be even-keeled like me.”

His wife knows her anxiety is a problem. But she doesn’t want to become like her husband because he seems like he just doesn’t care. He’s indifferent about things that matter a lot to her.

Is that the solution to anxiety—indifference? Who’s right, the husband or the wife?

It depends on the object of her anxiety. If she is up all night fretting about whether some pop star is getting along with her latest husband, the husband has a point.

But if their teenager is going astray, and the husband is apathetic, maybe that he needs to be more like his wife.

Apathy is great for trivial matters. You could even call it a virtue. But apathy about important matters is sin.

Is God indifferent? Is he apathetic about important matters? No. He cares deeply, even to the point of getting emotional. And so we should care.

If it’s about the wellbeing of people or the purposes of God in his Church, if we don’t care enough to get stirred up inside, we are in conflict with the nature of God.

The Lord’s Affairs

This is one area where single people have an advantage over married people

“An unmarried man has anxiety about the Lord—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man has anxiety about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:32 author’s translation).

If you’re married, pleasing your spouse takes up some of the time and energy that could have gone into pleasing God.

So singles have an advantage, but all people must strive to increase our good anxiety for the things of God.

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord (Romans 12:11).

“Fervor” is another word for good anxiety. The Greek word means “to boil.” When you’re roiling on the inside—that’s anxiety. God doesn’t want us to go through the motions; he wants us to have passion.

Unconcerned

Passion is especially important when the needs of people are the issue. What matters a lot to God should matter a lot to us. And people matter a lot to God. Ancient Israel was punished for being apathetic about poor people.

“She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).

“Unconcerned”—that’s apathy. They didn’t care about the suffering of the poor. And Ezekiel connects that sin with pride. Refusing to allow yourself to be touched by the pain of others is a mark of arrogance. It shows a heart that cares only about self.

Timothy is a model of the good kind of anxiety for people.

“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon … I have no one else like him, who will show genuine anxiety for your welfare” (Philippians 2:19-20, author’s translation).

When he says, “I have no one else like him,” he’s saying, “Of all the people I have with me, not one is qualified because none of them has enough anxiety. Except one man. I have one I can send because he has sufficient anxiety.”

Anxiety and Love

Why was anxiety for the Philippians’ welfare such an essential qualification?

Remember what causes anxiety? Caring. Only Timothy cared enough about the Philippians to be qualified. Or, to put it another way, only Timothy loved them enough. Caring deeply about a person’s wellbeing is love.

Why is good anxiety for people so important? Because it’s the byproduct of love, which is the most important virtue in the whole Bible.

Paul’s point is that this was an important task. He couldn’t entrust it to just anyone. It had to be someone who loved them so deeply that he cared to the point of anxiety.

Only someone whose stomach knotted up over a struggling brother was fit for this work. Or some one who would lay awake thinking about a believer who was drifting from the Lord. It had to be someone preoccupied with the problems that threatened the church, such as disunity, quarreling, or false doctrine. It had to be someone who loved them.

Others may have had more experience, better education, sharper skills, or was more gifted than Timothy. But without that gnawing anxiety, without caring to the point of distraction about spiritual threats, they were disqualified.

So anxiety is a function of love.

“There should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal anxiety for each other.” (1 Corinthians 12:25 author’s translation).

God calls us to have anxiety for our brothers and sisters in Christ like Timothy did for the Philippians. And when he expands on that a few verses later, he gives us the most famous chapter in the whole Bible on love—1 Corinthians 13. Paul wrote that chapter as an explanation of what he meant by having anxiety for one another. Anxiety is a byproduct of love.

Why Is Anxiety so Painful?

We usually associate love with pleasant feelings. But there are also hard feelings that come from love. Anger is what you feel when the thing you love is harmed or taken. Jealousy is what you feel when love that belongs to you goes to someone else. And anxiety is what you feel when something or someone you love is threatened.

And it’s miserable. Paul included his good anxiety in a list of agonizing hardships. He mentions beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, deprivation. Then he caps it all off with the biggest one of all.

“Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28 author’s translation).

Why is anxiety so miserable? It has to be or it wouldn’t work. Anxiety is designed to force you to address the problem. It’s like a rock in your shoe. You don’t feel like taking the time to stop and untie your shoe, but pain has a way of forcing the issue. Left alone, the stone would damage your foot, so God mercifully designed our feet so that rocks hurt enough to make us remove them.

Emotional pain is the same way. Anxiety is painful. And for any kind of pain to do its job, it must be unpleasant enough to force you to act.

Emotional Energy

Not only does it force you to act; it equips you to act. It gives you the energy you need to act because that’s what anxiety is—emotional energy. It’s the boiler that powers us into motion when action is needed. Anxiety is a fire that causes our thoughts, emotions, and everything inside us to run hotter and faster so we have the motivation and energy to do what needs to be done. That tightness in your stomach, the pressure, the feeling of unrest—that’s what moves you to do important tasks you don’t feel like doing.

Other problems, such as depression, can hinder that energy, but the anxiety itself is emotional energy.

This is why anxiety is so distracting. When you have anxiety about something, you can’t stop thinking about it. Anxiety is designed by God to hold an issue right in front of your face so you can’t ignore it.

A student doesn’t have energy to study for a big exam, but anxiety about his grades moves him to crack the books. You’re relaxed in your favorite chair watching TV. You’d like a drink but you’re too lazy to get up, you don’t have any energy. Then you smell smoke. “Oh no—the rolls in the oven!” Instantly, you’re on your feet, dashing into the kitchen. You went from no energy to an Olympic sprinter in one second.

That’s the purpose of anxiety. It’s the adrenaline of the soul.

Point the Hose at the Fire

That’s why it’s a mistake to deal with your stress by just trying to deaden your anxious feelings. You can deaden anxiety with chemicals, but those chemicals don’t know the difference between good anxiety and bad anxiety. They deaden everything. And if you deaden the feelings before they accomplish their purpose, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Internal tension over the problems of life is like the water pressure in a fire hose. Let it go, and it will whip around and spray water everywhere. Chaos. That’s what the inside of an anxious heart looks like—emotions spraying every direction like a loose firehose. A whole lot of energy accomplishing nothing.

What should you do? Pinch off the hose so there’s less pressure? No. The purpose of that water pressure is to put out fires. The purpose of anxiety is to energize you to deal with the problem at hand.

When the hose of anxiety is whipping around in your heart, don’t try to pinch it off. Grip the hose, take aim at the fire, open the valve, and use the pressure to extinguish the fire. Use your anxiety to propel yourself into action.

Anxiety Is Your Friend

As I write this, tomorrow is the deadline to file my taxes. After the sale of my house and some bad tax advice, I’m now in a situation where I have a huge tax bill that I can’t even begin to pay. So I have some hard decisions. Should I take out a loan and pay on time? Or file an extension and hire a company to negotiate with the IRS in hopes of reducing the bill? Either option risks getting in even more financial trouble than I’m already in.

I became aware of this a few days ago. From then until now, I’ve had a gnawing feeling in my stomach over this issue. I hate working on taxes, I hate reading instructions, and I hate making phone calls. But guess what I’ve been doing the past several days? All three. My natural tendency is to procrastinate tasks like that, but I feel so much pressure from the anxiety, it’s kept me working on this.

It has also kept me thinking about it. If I didn’t have that knot in my stomach reminding me of it every ten minutes, I would probably forget about it for hours at a time. But as it is, my mind is churning away, trying to figure out the best solution, which is good, because it’s a complex problem with many factors to consider.

As miserable as it is, this anxiety is my friend. It’s forcing me to work on getting that fire out.

Lingering Anxiety

Suppose I make my decision, commit to an action, and send off the paperwork. After that, it’s just a waiting game to find out if I made a good decision. But what if the knot in my stomach doesn’t go away?

That’s one way anxiety can go bad—when it overstays its usefulness. How do you handle anxiety that won’t go away?

And what about when you have good anxiety, but it’s tearing you up inside? Maybe you’re worried about your wayward child. That’s a good anxiety. But what if it’s giving you an ulcer? What if it’s ruining your marriage? Or your relationship with God?

Good anxiety is virtuous, it’s godly, it mirrors the character of God, it’s essential for a healthy, successful life, and it’s an essential byproduct of the most important virtue there is—love. However, even good anxiety is dangerous. Even good anxiety can do a lot of harm if you’re not protected from it.

Paul had constant anxiety for all the churches. That was good, but if Paul let that fire just burn out of control inside him, it would have destroyed him. We handle our good anxiety like a blacksmith using fire. He uses it to his advantage, but he also wears gloves to protect himself from it.

But how is that done? How do you protect your heart and mind from the ravages of good anxiety?

The Double Cure

Here’s the good news—in the chapters ahead, as we go through each of the major passages in Scripture that teach us how to eliminate bad anxiety from our hearts, we’ll find that the very same actions that eliminate lingering anxiety and other kinds of bad anxiety will also protect you from being harmed by your good anxiety.

Not only that, but they will also protect your heart and mind from the bad anxiety that you are unsuccessful in eliminating. We’ll never be perfect in avoiding bad anxiety. But these practices will protect you from the harm caused by those anxieties while you’re still working on getting rid of them.

The Key to Lasting Change

Growing and progressing in the use of good anxiety is the foundation for winning the war against bad anxiety. But how does one grow and progress in a virtue?

Not by reading a book. Reading this book will be like reading a book on weightlifting or nutrition. The information is important, but no changes will happen without daily training.

“Train yourself to be godly” (1 Timothy 4:7).

We grow in godliness the same way we build muscles—repeated exercises. Reprograming emotional responses never comes from simply deciding to do it.

At the end of each chapter, I will provide a list of godliness training exercises. This is training designed to make deep, lasting changes. They will strengthen your soul to use good anxiety to your advantage, and to replace harmful anxiety with the peace of God that surpasses understanding.

Over decades of helping people overcome problem anxiety, my observation is that people who are serious about the exercises enjoy marked improvement in a short time. But those who merely listen without engaging in the training make little progress. I urge you, commit yourself to the exercises. Train yourself to be godly.

Godliness Training ExercisesIdentify several good anxieties in your life and write them down.

I urge you not to only do it in your head. Having a written list will be helpful later on. Jot down several important issues that move you deeply, as they should.

If you’re not sure whether a particular anxiety is good or bad, that’s okay. It will become clearer as we go. Just jot down the ones that are clear to you now.

Ask God to increase anxieties in your heart in areas where it is lacking. For example, maybe you really wish you would spend more time in Scripture, but you can’t seem to discipline yourself to do it. If you had some good anxiety over missing out on what God has for you in his Word each day, that would help you.

 

Take a moment to thank God for your good anxieties. If you have driving anxiety that pushes you to work hard, like Paul, praise God for that. It’s a gift from God that many Christians would give their right arm to have more of.

 

What good things should each of these anxieties drive you to accomplish in your life before you let go of them? Try to identify the next step in accomplishing those goals.

 

Next, ask yourself if any of those anxieties are stalled inside you because you haven’t taken the action they are designed to drive you to take. If you feel pressure to make a hard phone call you know you need to make, but you refuse to do it, that anxiety just grinds away at your soul. Are there any actions you need to take?

 

Memorize Romans 12:1. It helps to jot down the first letter of each word. When you can quote it using that, try quoting it from memory. Say it aloud six to eight times today and once a day going forward.

 

If you find memorization difficult, I recommend using https://biblememory.com. That site makes Bible memory and review easy.

******

Click here for part 2. 

 

Interested in More?

This post will be chapter one of my next book, Anxiety and the Peace of God (tentative title). If you would like to be notified when future chapters are posted and when the full book is available, sign up for my Readers List here. For  videos of this content, visit FoodforYourSoul.net or  TreasuringGod.com.

Greek merimnao.

Greek merimnao.

Greek merimnao.

Of course you can please God by loving your spouse, but the point here is the single person doesn’t have the same distractions

Greek merimnao. This is the same word Paul uses two chapters later when he says, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Philippians 4:6).

Greek merimnao.

The post Anxiety & the Peace of God part 1 – Good Anxiety appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

The post Anxiety & the Peace of God part 1 – Good Anxiety appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

Good Anxiety

Good Anxiety Bad Anxiety

Hospitals, divorce courts, and cemeteries are crowded with evidence of the ravages of anxiety. Americans spend billions every year on medication, counseling, alcohol, pot—anything we can find to help us survive our own stress.

Why does this deadly emotion even exist? Is this God’s design? Or is it a result of the fall of mankind and the curse, like cancer?

No. The ability to experience anxiety is a gift from God. It’s a feature, not a bug, an essential tool for health and success in life. But at the same time, it can destroy your body, your relationships—even your relationship with God. Jesus warned that anxiety can render God’s Word powerless in your life (Mark 4:19).

Anxiety is forbidden in Philippians 4:6 and Matthew 6:25, yet it is commanded in 1 Corinthians 12:25, using the same Greek word. When something is both forbidden and commanded, that tells us there is a bad kind and a good kind. The Bible teaches us how to avoid the deadly kind and grow in the healthy, life-sustaining kind.

The Poisonous Medicine

You won’t have much success fighting the bad kind if you don’t understand the purpose of the good kind because you won’t know which anxieties to fight and which anxieties to embrace.

Most people take a simplistic approach to this issue. “Anxiety is bad, so just give me something to deaden the intensity of it.” That’s a dangerous approach because you end up deadening both the bad kind and the good kind which can do more harm than good.

Imagine a medicine that, if taken improperly, could kill you. But without it, you’ll become paralyzed. That’s anxiety. Take it at the wrong time, and it makes you sick. Fail to take it when it’s needed, and your life will grind to a halt and you might become suicidal. You’ll be calmer, but unhappy and unproductive. Proper use of anxiety is an essential key to a healthy, happy, powerful life.

God’s Purpose for Anxiety

Why did God design us with a capacity for this harmful emotion?

At the most basic physical level, anxiety is necessary for emergencies. When there is danger, God designed your nervous system to instantly throw your whole body into a state of anxiety—quick, shallow breathing, tense muscles, release of adrenaline—all designed to put you in a heightened state of readiness that enables you to fight or flee.

Caring and Apathy

But anxiety isn’t only for emergencies. It’s for anything you regard as important. When something you care about is threatened, you will feel pressure to do something about it—physical, mental, and spiritual pressure.

Physically, you might get a knot in your stomach. Mentally, your thoughts are distracted by this problem—you can’t think about anything else. Spiritually, you might feel pressure from your conscience.

But it only happens when you care. You’ll never feel anxiety over something you don’t care about. The root meaning of the Greek word for anxiety in the New Testament is “to care.” Anxiety happens when you care. It’s the feeling you get when something you care about is threatened or lost.

Your team is down by six, 4th and goal on the 5-yard line with seconds to go in the game—if you’re a big fan, you’re all twisted up inside watching to see if they make it. But if you don’t care about football, you’re as calm as can be. No caring; no anxiety.

Apathy

The opposite of anxiety is apathy. And apathy about important matters will ruin your life just as thoroughly as unchecked anxiety. When you stop caring, life is drained of joy. You have no motivation, no drive, nothing to get you out of bed in the morning. Without the good kind of anxiety, you really do become paralyzed. Even the simplest tasks feel impossibly difficult because you simply don’t care.

If you think anxiety is a curse, be thankful you don’t have the opposite problem. It’s much easier to gain control over runaway anxiety and learn to use it to your advantage than it is to make yourself start caring when you’re apathetic. When you know something is important, it should matter to you, but it doesn’t—how do you make yourself care? It’s possible, but very difficult.

The Object of Anxiety

Sometimes apathetic people pat themselves on the back for not being worriers. “My wife worries so much. I don’t know why she can’t just trust God and calm down and be even-keeled like me.”

His wife knows her anxiety is a problem. But she doesn’t want to become like her husband because he seems like he just doesn’t care. He’s indifferent about things that matter a lot to her.

Is that the solution to anxiety—indifference? Who’s right, the husband or the wife?

It depends on the object of her anxiety. If she is up all night fretting about whether some pop star is getting along with her latest husband, the husband has a point.

But if their teenager is going astray, and the husband is apathetic, maybe that he needs to be more like his wife.

Apathy is great for trivial matters. You could even call it a virtue. But apathy about important matters is sin.

Is God indifferent? Is he apathetic about important matters? No. He cares deeply, even to the point of getting emotional. And so we should care.

If it’s about the wellbeing of people or the purposes of God in his Church, if we don’t care enough to get stirred up inside, we are in conflict with the nature of God.

The Lord’s Affairs

This is one area where single people have an advantage over married people

“An unmarried man has anxiety about the Lord—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man has anxiety about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:32 author’s translation).

If you’re married, pleasing your spouse takes up some of the time and energy that could have gone into pleasing God.

So singles have an advantage, but all people must strive to increase our good anxiety for the things of God.

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord (Romans 12:11).

“Fervor” is another word for good anxiety. The Greek word means “to boil.” When you’re roiling on the inside—that’s anxiety. God doesn’t want us to go through the motions; he wants us to have passion.

Unconcerned

Passion is especially important when the needs of people are the issue. What matters a lot to God should matter a lot to us. And people matter a lot to God. Ancient Israel was punished for being apathetic about poor people.

“She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy” (Ezekiel 16:49).

“Unconcerned”—that’s apathy. They didn’t care about the suffering of the poor. And Ezekiel connects that sin with pride. Refusing to allow yourself to be touched by the pain of others is a mark of arrogance. It shows a heart that cares only about self.

Timothy is a model of the good kind of anxiety for people.

“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon … I have no one else like him, who will show genuine anxiety for your welfare” (Philippians 2:19-20, author’s translation).

When he says, “I have no one else like him,” he’s saying, “Of all the people I have with me, not one is qualified because none of them has enough anxiety. Except one man. I have one I can send because he has sufficient anxiety.”

Anxiety and Love

Why was anxiety for the Philippians’ welfare such an essential qualification?

Remember what causes anxiety? Caring. Only Timothy cared enough about the Philippians to be qualified. Or, to put it another way, only Timothy loved them enough. Caring deeply about a person’s wellbeing is love.

Why is good anxiety for people so important? Because it’s the byproduct of love, which is the most important virtue in the whole Bible.

Paul’s point is that this was an important task. He couldn’t entrust it to just anyone. It had to be someone who loved them so deeply that he cared to the point of anxiety.

Only someone whose stomach knotted up over a struggling brother was fit for this work. Or some one who would lay awake thinking about a believer who was drifting from the Lord. It had to be someone preoccupied with the problems that threatened the church, such as disunity, quarreling, or false doctrine. It had to be someone who loved them.

Others may have had more experience, better education, sharper skills, or was more gifted than Timothy. But without that gnawing anxiety, without caring to the point of distraction about spiritual threats, they were disqualified.

So anxiety is a function of love.

“There should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal anxiety for each other.” (1 Corinthians 12:25 author’s translation).

God calls us to have anxiety for our brothers and sisters in Christ like Timothy did for the Philippians. And when he expands on that a few verses later, he gives us the most famous chapter in the whole Bible on love—1 Corinthians 13. Paul wrote that chapter as an explanation of what he meant by having anxiety for one another. Anxiety is a byproduct of love.

Why Is Anxiety so Painful?

We usually associate love with pleasant feelings. But there are also hard feelings that come from love. Anger is what you feel when the thing you love is harmed or taken. Jealousy is what you feel when love that belongs to you goes to someone else. And anxiety is what you feel when something or someone you love is threatened.

And it’s miserable. Paul included his good anxiety in a list of agonizing hardships. He mentions beatings, stonings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, deprivation. Then he caps it all off with the biggest one of all.

“Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my anxiety for all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28 author’s translation).

Why is anxiety so miserable? It has to be or it wouldn’t work. Anxiety is designed to force you to address the problem. It’s like a rock in your shoe. You don’t feel like taking the time to stop and untie your shoe, but pain has a way of forcing the issue. Left alone, the stone would damage your foot, so God mercifully designed our feet so that rocks hurt enough to make us remove them.

Emotional pain is the same way. Anxiety is painful. And for any kind of pain to do its job, it must be unpleasant enough to force you to act.

Emotional Energy

Not only does it force you to act; it equips you to act. It gives you the energy you need to act because that’s what anxiety is—emotional energy. It’s the boiler that powers us into motion when action is needed. Anxiety is a fire that causes our thoughts, emotions, and everything inside us to run hotter and faster so we have the motivation and energy to do what needs to be done. That tightness in your stomach, the pressure, the feeling of unrest—that’s what moves you to do important tasks you don’t feel like doing.

Other problems, such as depression, can hinder that energy, but the anxiety itself is emotional energy.

This is why anxiety is so distracting. When you have anxiety about something, you can’t stop thinking about it. Anxiety is designed by God to hold an issue right in front of your face so you can’t ignore it.

A student doesn’t have energy to study for a big exam, but anxiety about his grades moves him to crack the books. You’re relaxed in your favorite chair watching TV. You’d like a drink but you’re too lazy to get up, you don’t have any energy. Then you smell smoke. “Oh no—the rolls in the oven!” Instantly, you’re on your feet, dashing into the kitchen. You went from no energy to an Olympic sprinter in one second.

That’s the purpose of anxiety. It’s the adrenaline of the soul.

Point the Hose at the Fire

That’s why it’s a mistake to deal with your stress by just trying to deaden your anxious feelings. You can deaden anxiety with chemicals, but those chemicals don’t know the difference between good anxiety and bad anxiety. They deaden everything. And if you deaden the feelings before they accomplish their purpose, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Internal tension over the problems of life is like the water pressure in a fire hose. Let it go, and it will whip around and spray water everywhere. Chaos. That’s what the inside of an anxious heart looks like—emotions spraying every direction like a loose firehose. A whole lot of energy accomplishing nothing.

What should you do? Pinch off the hose so there’s less pressure? No. The purpose of that water pressure is to put out fires. The purpose of anxiety is to energize you to deal with the problem at hand.

When the hose of anxiety is whipping around in your heart, don’t try to pinch it off. Grip the hose, take aim at the fire, open the valve, and use the pressure to extinguish the fire. Use your anxiety to propel yourself into action.

Anxiety Is Your Friend

As I write this, tomorrow is the deadline to file my taxes. After the sale of my house and some bad tax advice, I’m now in a situation where I have a huge tax bill that I can’t even begin to pay. So I have some hard decisions. Should I take out a loan and pay on time? Or file an extension and hire a company to negotiate with the IRS in hopes of reducing the bill? Either option risks getting in even more financial trouble than I’m already in.

I became aware of this a few days ago. From then until now, I’ve had a gnawing feeling in my stomach over this issue. I hate working on taxes, I hate reading instructions, and I hate making phone calls. But guess what I’ve been doing the past several days? All three. My natural tendency is to procrastinate tasks like that, but I feel so much pressure from the anxiety, it’s kept me working on this.

It has also kept me thinking about it. If I didn’t have that knot in my stomach reminding me of it every ten minutes, I would probably forget about it for hours at a time. But as it is, my mind is churning away, trying to figure out the best solution, which is good, because it’s a complex problem with many factors to consider.

As miserable as it is, this anxiety is my friend. It’s forcing me to work on getting that fire out.

Lingering Anxiety

Suppose I make my decision, commit to an action, and send off the paperwork. After that, it’s just a waiting game to find out if I made a good decision. But what if the knot in my stomach doesn’t go away?

That’s one way anxiety can go bad—when it overstays its usefulness. How do you handle anxiety that won’t go away?

And what about when you have good anxiety, but it’s tearing you up inside? Maybe you’re worried about your wayward child. That’s a good anxiety. But what if it’s giving you an ulcer? What if it’s ruining your marriage? Or your relationship with God?

Good anxiety is virtuous, it’s godly, it mirrors the character of God, it’s essential for a healthy, successful life, and it’s an essential byproduct of the most important virtue there is—love. However, even good anxiety is dangerous. Even good anxiety can do a lot of harm if you’re not protected from it.

Paul had constant anxiety for all the churches. That was good, but if Paul let that fire just burn out of control inside him, it would have destroyed him. We handle our good anxiety like a blacksmith using fire. He uses it to his advantage, but he also wears gloves to protect himself from it.

But how is that done? How do you protect your heart and mind from the ravages of good anxiety?

The Double Cure

Here’s the good news—in the chapters ahead, as we go through each of the major passages in Scripture that teach us how to eliminate bad anxiety from our hearts, we’ll find that the very same actions that eliminate lingering anxiety and other kinds of bad anxiety will also protect you from being harmed by your good anxiety.

Not only that, but they will also protect your heart and mind from the bad anxiety that you are unsuccessful in eliminating. We’ll never be perfect in avoiding bad anxiety. But these practices will protect you from the harm caused by those anxieties while you’re still working on getting rid of them.

The Key to Lasting Change

Growing and progressing in the use of good anxiety is the foundation for winning the war against bad anxiety. But how does one grow and progress in a virtue?

Not by reading a book. Reading this book will be like reading a book on weightlifting or nutrition. The information is important, but no changes will happen without daily training.

“Train yourself to be godly” (1 Timothy 4:7).

We grow in godliness the same way we build muscles—repeated exercises. Reprograming emotional responses never comes from simply deciding to do it.

At the end of each chapter, I will provide a list of godliness training exercises. This is training designed to make deep, lasting changes. They will strengthen your soul to use good anxiety to your advantage, and to replace harmful anxiety with the peace of God that surpasses understanding.

Over decades of helping people overcome problem anxiety, my observation is that people who are serious about the exercises enjoy marked improvement in a short time. But those who merely listen without engaging in the training make little progress. I urge you, commit yourself to the exercises. Train yourself to be godly.

Godliness Training ExercisesIdentify several good anxieties in your life and write them down.

I urge you not to only do it in your head. Having a written list will be helpful later on. Jot down several important issues that move you deeply, as they should.

If you’re not sure whether a particular anxiety is good or bad, that’s okay. It will become clearer as we go. Just jot down the ones that are clear to you now.

Ask God to increase anxieties in your heart in areas where it is lacking. For example, maybe you really wish you would spend more time in Scripture, but you can’t seem to discipline yourself to do it. If you had some good anxiety over missing out on what God has for you in his Word each day, that would help you.

 

Take a moment to thank God for your good anxieties. If you have driving anxiety that pushes you to work hard, like Paul, praise God for that. It’s a gift from God that many Christians would give their right arm to have more of.

 

What good things should each of these anxieties drive you to accomplish in your life before you let go of them? Try to identify the next step in accomplishing those goals.

 

Next, ask yourself if any of those anxieties are stalled inside you because you haven’t taken the action they are designed to drive you to take. If you feel pressure to make a hard phone call you know you need to make, but you refuse to do it, that anxiety just grinds away at your soul. Are there any actions you need to take?

 

Memorize Romans 12:1. It helps to jot down the first letter of each word. When you can quote it using that, try quoting it from memory. Say it aloud six to eight times today and once a day going forward.

 

If you find memorization difficult, I recommend using https://biblememory.com. That site makes Bible memory and review easy.

Interested in More?

This post will be chapter one of my next book, Anxiety and the Peace of God (tentative title). If you would like to be notified when future chapters are posted and when the full book is available, sign up for my Readers List here. For  videos of this content, visit FoodforYourSoul.net or  TreasuringGod.com.

Greek merimnao.

Greek merimnao.

Greek merimnao.

Of course you can please God by loving your spouse, but the point here is the single person doesn’t have the same distractions

Greek merimnao. This is the same word Paul uses two chapters later when he says, “Do not be anxious about anything” (Philippians 4:6).

Greek merimnao.

The post Good Anxiety appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

The post Good Anxiety appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

Review of Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry by Catherine M. Pittman

Review of Rewire Your Anxious Brain

Anxiety is a phenomenon that involves the whole person—the brain, the nervous system, the mind (thought life), and the heart (spiritual aspects). I found Rewire Your Anxious Brain extremely helpful in one of those aspects. The brain. The authors provide an excellent summary of findings of neuroscience as it relates to anxiety. And the instruction on how to retrain the brain and create new neural pathways are very helpful.

I found the tips on how to change your conscious thinking less helpful. And there is no instruction at all on the spiritual aspects of anxiety.

Amygdala (Subconscious) Anxiety

At the core of the physical aspects of anxiety is the amygdala, a part of the brain that stores emotional memories that aren’t processed in the cortex, so you have no conscious awareness of them. Most people would refer to this as subconscious anxiety, though the authors don’t use that term.

They cite the example of a woman suffering from memory loss in a hospital. One doctor shook her hand but had a pin in his palm that pricked her. She withdrew her hand. The next day, because of her condition, she had no memory of that doctor at all. But when he extended his hand to shake, she withdrew. They asked her why and she had no idea. The memory of that pain stored in her amygdala but was forgotten by the cortex.

The authors tell another story of a girl who became panicky in some social situations but not others. Someone quizzed her about it and helped her realize it only happened when people were seated in a circle. Finally, she remembered a time when she was a child and was humiliated at school in a circle of students. Her amygdala recorded the negative feeling in association with the circular setting. So that arrangement became a trigger to the amygdala without the cortex knowing it.

Panic Attacks

This is why panic attacks often make no sense. The amygdala does not have the capacity for logic or reason, only association. Neurons that fire together wire together. A soldier had recovered from his PTSD, but then inexplicably began to relapse when he showered. He finally realized his wife had switched the soap brand to one that he had used when he was in combat. It wasn’t that he smelled the soap and thought, “Wow, this reminds me of that horrible time in my life.” It was not a conscious memory—just an association in the amygdala. He changed soap brands and the panic attacks went away.

The Body’s Alert System

The amygdala’s job is to set off the red alert signals in the nervous system to enable the body to deal with danger—increased heart rate, rapid breathing, tense muscles, adrenaline release, etc. It doesn’t go through the cortex because reactions to danger sometimes need to be instantaneous. If an object is flying at you in your peripheral vision and is about to impact your head, your amygdala can set your body in motion to duck or brace before your cortex even knows what’s going on.

This is why you can’t talk yourself out of a panic attack. You can tell yourself (or someone else can tell you) all day long that you’re not in danger, and that the feelings of panic are unwarranted, but the amygdala doesn’t respond to logic or reason. Talking yourself out of a panic attack with reason is like using logic to tell your heart to stop beating. It won’t listen. The responses of the amygdala are essentially a mechanical action, not a rational one.

In fact, logical reasoning during a panic attack can make matters worse. If you have thoughts like, “Am I having a heart attack?” or “Am I going crazy? What’s wrong with me?” can cause negative emotions that only strengthen the amygdala’s panic response.

Retraining the Amygdala

The best way to think during a panic attack is to simply remember, “This won’t hurt me, and it will soon pass. My amygdala is simply responding to some trigger, and my nervous system is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do when the amygdala signals an alert.”

And while the amygdala doesn’t respond to logic, it does respond to physical actions. When it sets off the red alert, if you respond with calming actions, such as slow, deep breathing, muscle relaxation, pleasant social interactions, and physical activity to burn off the adrenaline, it can retrain the amygdala to stop setting off alarms when that trigger arises. But if you do what comes naturally (fight/flight/freeze), that only reinforces the amygdala’s association of that trigger with danger. So it’s important not to withdraw or become aggressive.

The amygdala can’t be retrained unless it is in an activated state. So it’s important to respond in calming ways, especially with slow, deep breathing, during the panic attack.

It’s not necessary to discover what caused the negative memory. If people sitting in a circle triggers panic attacks, it doesn’t matter how the circle configuration got associated with danger in the amygdala. The retraining will work just as well regardless of whether you are aware of how the association first began.

No Retreat

While retraining the amygdala, it’s crucial that you behave in a way consistent with not being in danger. For this reason, anything you do as a safety mechanism, like retreating to a safe space, clinging to a trusted friend, or even clutching some soothing object–those actions will train the amygdala in the wrong direction, affirming the idea that the trigger really is a threat. To create new neural pathways in the brain, it’s necessary to expose yourself to the frightening trigger and remain in that situation until the feelings of anxiety are gone. This teaches the brain that the situation is not dangerous. Leaving while you still feel anxious only solidifies the fear.

This principle guides the authors’ discussion of medications. Benzodiazepines (drugs that have a tranquilizing effect) can interfere with the retraining process. For the retraining to work, the amygdala must be activated (generating an anxious response). Tranquillizers calm the amygdala, preventing it from becoming activated. This makes you feel calm, but it prevents any rewiring in your brain. Rewiring can only happen while in an anxious state.

On the other hand, SSRI’s can assist in the retraining process. These drugs promote growth and change in neurons. Care must be taken, however. The SSRI drugs will strengthen whatever activity is taking place in the brain. So if you are thinking in good ways, SSRI’s can strengthen those neural pathways. However, if you are thinking in bad ways (worrying, fretting, negativity, etc.) those bad pathways will be strengthened.

Cortex-Induced Anxiety (Your Thought Life)

Another section of the book addressed the thought life, offering tips on how to avoid excess worry or fretting. This section may be helpful to some who haven’t given the matter any thought. Personally, I found most of it merely observations of common sense. Nothing especially profound.

Catastrophism

I did like the section on catastrophism (overreaction to a negative event, such as yelling and pounding on the steering wheel when someone cuts you off, as if that were a catastrophe). Very often I dislike the terminology coined in the psychology world because they tend to be misleading. But the term catastrophism is, in my judgment, both helpful and humorous. The idea that I’ve suffered a catastrophic setback in my life because someone pulled in front of me on the highway is a funny way to highlight how irrational the response is. And simply asking myself, “Why am I reacting to this as if it were a catastrophe?” may be enough to change my reaction.

Cognitive Fusion (Mistaking Your Thoughts for Reality)

I also liked the section on cognitive fusion, which is when we confuse our thoughts about a possible event with actual events. A boyfriend doesn’t respond to a text, and the girl imagines he has lost interest in her. Her emotions react as if that were actually true, even though it may be his phone battery is dead. When worrisome thoughts take over, it’s good to remind yourself, “These are only thoughts, not actual events. Don’t respond to them as if they were events.” This calls to mind the saying, “Don’t believe everything you think.”

Reminding yourself that thoughts are only thoughts, not reality, is helpful. We can analyze our own thoughts. “Oh, here comes that pesky thought again. I’d better be careful with it. Too much time on it and it could activate my amygdala.” They compare our thoughts to channels on TV. Getting stuck on the anxiety channel is harmful, and the solution is to turn to another channel. The circuitry in the brain that is used the most becomes the strongest. Circuitry you don’t use becomes weaker and less likely to be activated.

Nothing on Good Anxiety

One glaring omission in the book is the fact that very little is said about purpose of anxiety and how to use it properly. With a few exceptions, the authors mostly assume reduction in anxiety is a good goal. But Scripture condemns the lack of anxiety over important matters (Philippians 2:19-20; Romans 12:11; 1 Corinthians 7:32; 12:25-26; Ezekiel 16:49). Anxiety is a gift from God and is crucial for a healthy, vibrant life. It’s designed to motivate us and give us energy to handle problems. If you have not yet used your anxiety for its intended purpose, and you take steps to deaden the intensity of that anxiety, you may be harming yourself.

The authors speak of “activating the amygdala” like it’s always a pitfall to avoid. But God gave us amygdalas for a reason. The authors acknowledge it is valuable for situations of high dangers or when instant reactions are necessary, but anxiety is also important for situations that are not emergencies, but that warrant an emotional response. If I hear that my child is being bullied at school and that doesn’t affect me emotionally, something’s wrong with me. I wish I had far more anxiety than I do over lost people going to hell. There are plenty of situations where it would be wise to use our cortex to think rationally in ways designed to activate the amygdala so that we have the anxiety we need to function properly in life.

Devoid of Spiritual Content

Completely missing from the book are the most important principles regarding anxiety—spiritual truths from God’s Word. Our goal should not be to simply reduce our anxiety. Our goal should be to use all anxiety in ways that please God. That will be the path to the healthiest life.

Instead of exploring God’s purposes for anxiety, the authors speculate as to evolutionary “purposes” (as if natural selection of a series of random birth defects could have anything accurately described as “purpose”).

This is not to say no biblical principles are present in the book. There are several cases where science catches up to Scripture, and biblical principles are presented as scientific discoveries. One example is the “put on, put off” principle from Ephesians 4. The idea is that sin cannot simply be eliminated. It must be replaced by the corresponding virtue. Thoughts are the same way. Anxious thoughts cannot be eliminated without replacing them with different thoughts. Examples in the book are somewhat simplistic, but they do follow the Ephesians 4 principle.

New Book

I am currently writing a book on what the Bible teaches about anxiety–how to make good use of good anxiety and how to replace bad anxiety with the peace of God. The basic content of this book is available in this podcast series: Stress and Anxiety Podcast Series | SermonAudio.

For more info on the podcast, see the podcast page.

The post Review of Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry by Catherine M. Pittman appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

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Marriage Planning Retreat

We all tend to go through life with a vague awareness of things that need our attention.  We think I need to get organized; our marriage needs attention; we have to get our budget together; I need to exercise; I must spend time with the kids; etc. These things never get done because we fail to plan strategically. Most couples spend more time planning a remodel or a vacation or even a family meal than they spend on planning spiritual changes.

Biblical Theology of Planning

When the book of Proverbs teaches us how to go about making our plans succeed, the implication is that it is wise to make plans.

Pr 20:18 Make plans by seeking advice
Pr 15:22 Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.

God requires us to be good stewards of our lives and to live wisely.  And part of living wisely is making plans.  In Proverbs we find that wise people make plans, and generally speaking it’s a good thing when they are realized.

Pr 21:5 The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.

It is not wise to fly through life by the seat of your pants making all your decisions on the fly.  God has given you a life.  That is a gift of immeasurable value.  Our lives are in our control but only as stewards.

Your life doesn’t really belong to you, it has just been entrusted to your care.

So as Christians, our duty is to live in the most excellent way possible.  Just as you should brush your hair and not be a slob so you glorify God in your appearance, in the same way your life should not be disheveled.

Pr 16:3 Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.
lit: “be established” or “made firm”  One way God blesses us is by causing our plans to be realized.

Amazingly, even God makes plans.  I’m still trying to understand why.  I’m not sure what the difference is between God pre-planning something and doing something off the cuff that He knew He would do for all eternity past.  But nevertheless Scripture is full of references to God having made plans.

2Ki 19:25  Long ago I ordained it.  In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass.

Schedule a Planning RetreatMake Your Spouse’s Job Easier

1 Corinthians 7:5 teaches that you are responsible to satisfy the sexual desires of your spouse enough so that your spouse won’t be unnecessarily vulnerable to temptation. That principle applies to every aspect of marital love. If you don’t show affection, hold hands, give compliments, show respect, show interest in what your spouse is saying, listen, trust your spouse, try to be attractive for your spouse – if any of those kinds of things are lacking, and someone else comes along who does do one of those things for your spouse, then you’ve placed your spouse at risk of being vulnerable to unnecessary levels of temptation if someone else comes along and does provide those things.

But how do you know which of those things your spouse needs in order to be protected from temptation?  Everyone is different.  The things you need to avoid temptation aren’t the same things your spouse needs. There are things you could go without for years that your spouse needs every other day. And when you do finally figure out all those things your spouse needs to have fulfilled in order to be protected from temptation, about the time you finally get that figured out, your spouse changes. All through your life your desires and cravings change.

So how can you stay on top of this? There is an expert in this field that I would like to recommend to you. This particular resource will be extremely helpful for you, and I highly recommend that you consult this particular expert on a regular basis. The expert is … your spouse. Ask your spouse, “What could I do to make our marriage more of a delight to you?”

Instructions

Pick a weekend for this retreat. Put it on your calendar, set that time aside, be very intentional.

If possible, go to a hotel for a couple days and focus only on this. Don’t think of it as a vacation. It will be hard work. But we put a lot more effort than this into much less important things. It will require effort, but it will be worth it!

I recommend you only work on this during meals. In between meals, just relax, go for a walk, play some games, enjoy each other.

First Meal

Find a restaurant that is quiet and comfortable. You should each bring a notebook.

The goal for this meal is to discover which areas need the most attention at this time. Resist the urge to discuss the issues in depth at this point. Don’t argue, don’t get offended. If you don’t agree with something, this isn’t the time to mention that. At this point you are simply brainstorming.

Both of you ask the other, “What could I do to make this marriage easier for you to delight in?”

Husband, God gave your wife a very difficult job—to honor you as the church honors Christ. The least you could do would be to do what you can to make it easier. If you love her, you’re going to want to know how you could make it easier. So you ask her, “What could I do that would make it easier for you to respect me and submit to me?”

Now again – watch your motives. The goal here is not for you to be respected and honored so that you’ll be happy. The goal is to help your wife obey God so that she will be happy.

Wife, think about the command your husband has received. God requires him to love you like Christ loved the Church. As lovely as you are, that’s very difficult, because his heart is shot through with sin and selfishness and so is yours. Loving you like Christ loves the church requires a tremendous amount of self-sacrifice, giving up his very life for you. If you love him you’re going to want to make that easier for him. So you ask your husband, “What could I do to make it easier for you to love me? What could I do to make it easier for you to be attracted to me? What could I do to make it easier for you to live with me in an understanding way and to function as the spiritual leader in the home?”

And again – you do not ask those questions so that you can get your husband to love you more so that you will be happy. You ask them so that your husband can obey God and he can be happy.

If your marriage were the ideal biblical marriage – you spouse were the ideal spouse, and you were the ideal husband or wife, what would your contribution to that ideal marriage look like? What would have to change in you before you could be that person?

Take turns asking these questions, and write down as many things as possible. And don’t worry about how many things your spouse says.  You’ll be whittling the list down to the most important things. So if your spouse has 75 things, go ahead and write them down.

Put the notebooks away and order dessert.

Second Meal

Now you have a long list of things you need to change. But no one can make 3 dozen major life changes all at once. Even one major life change is hard, and so 2 or 3 would be the maximum that you would want to attempt. The goal at this meal is for each of you to select 2 or 3 items from your list that are the most urgent.

In my experience, if you pick the right 2 or 3, which people generally do, then dealing with those 2 or 3 will eliminate a whole host of other problems.

You and your spouse each have 10 points to spend on your list and 10 points for your spouse’s list. Begin with the husband’s list. Both of you assign points to the items according to how important you feel that item is. If you really want to make sure an issue gets resolved soon, you can spend all 10 of your points on that one item.  Or one point on 10 different items. When you’re done, a total of 20 points should be assigned for the various items on the husband’s list.

Now add up the points for each item. For example, if the wife gives 4 points to the “be more romantic” item, and the husband only gives that 1 point, then that item has a total of 5 points.

Once the points are all added up, find the items with the 2 or 3 highest combined scores. Those are issues you are going to work on.

Now both of you follow that same process for the wife’s list.

At the end, you both have 2 or 3 items you will be working on over the next six months.

And don’t worry—all those other important things will be addressed. But not until the next planning retreat. It’s important that both of you agree that ALL the other items are tabled until the next retreat. If you want real change, you won’t try to bite off too many items. In fact, on your first retreat it may be wise to choose only one item each.

Agreeing to table those other items means no nagging about them and no resenting your spouse about them. You simply agree they are set aside for now.

When you select your top items, put your books away and order dessert.

Third Meal

The goal now is to take an organized approach to addressing the 5 issues.  We all tend to go through life is a vague awareness of things that need attention and we mumble things like, “I need to get organized, our marriage needs attention, we have to get our budget together, I need to exercise, spend time with the kids” etc. Those things never get done, because we never make specific goals.  The purpose of this session is to set the goals.

BE SPECIFIC. The more specific the goals the better.  Try to avoid vague words like “improve, cut back, give more energy to,” etc. The goals should also be measurable. Don’t set goals that are so vague that you never know for sure if you’ve reached them.

Poor goal: Get in shape.
Good goal: Begin working out 20 minutes 5 days a week.

Poor goal: Spend more time with the kids.
Good goal: Devote a full hour beginning as soon as supper is over just to the kids.

Poor goal: I need to be more romantic.
Good goal: If we haven’t gone on a date by the last Friday of the month, we will do it on that day.

BE REALISTIC. Don’t set yourself up for failure. If your ultimate goal would be unrealistic at this time, take it in steps. For this six months, take the first step. Then next time you can take it further.

For each item on your list, you might set 2 or 3 goals. Other items may only call for one goal.

Fourth Meal

Plan the action steps to reaching your goals.

In this step, do your best to think through your strengths and weaknesses. Is one of you more creative? Someone better at record keeping? Someone more organized? Better at research? Better at shopping? More biblical knowledge? God made you a team. Don’t be a like a basketball coach who has the short guy playing center. God gave you each unique gifts to make your contribution to this marriage. Don’t ignore that when you think through who will be doing what. In fact, if you have time for another meal, it might be worth devoting a whole session just to thinking through your strengthens and weaknesses, gifts and skills, things you enjoy and things you hate, etc.

If your goal entails a significant life change, it’s very unlikely you’ll reach it in one step just by deciding to do it. If it were that easy, you would have done it a long time ago. So plan very specific action steps.

For example, if your goal is to have a family devotions every night, decide:

Who will plan it and lead it?Where will it take place?How are you going to find good material to use?By what date will this material be purchased?Who will be in charge of getting the family together?What will you do when the phone rings during devotions?What about nights when you are out or have guests over?

If your goal is to go on a date once a month, you will need to determine:

Who will plan the date?How will you make sure that money is set aside?What has to take place on the date for it to be successful? How will that be achieved?If the date will be on the last Friday of the month, on what day will you plan it?

Even if your goal is to study the Bible for thirty minutes each morning, several decisions need to be made:

What will you study?What materials will you use?What about days you oversleep?

Writing down your plan of action will help clarify your thinking and enable you to modify or eliminate unrealistic goals.

Very Important Final Step

When my wife and I did this the first time, we had all kinds of great goals and actions steps all written down. When we got home from our weekend, we put our notebooks away thinking we would remember everything. Soon we forgot all about them and nothing happened for several weeks.

The last step is to decide how you’ll get this all started. When you walk in the house when you get home, where will you put these notebooks? And on what date will go back over these lists together to see how you are doing?

Finally, put it on your calendar right now the date you will have your next retreat. I recommend no more than six months when you’re first starting this process.

 

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The Parkland Verdict

For the audio or video version of this post, click here.

The Shooting

Gina Montalto, a beautiful 14-year-old girl, member of the marching band winter guard at school, woke up on a Wednesday morning, Valentine’s Day, got up, got dressed, and headed off to school. She had no idea that she would never make it home again because she would be shot to death at school.

And not just Gina, but a dozen other students and three faculty members, one in his 40’s and two in their 30’s. Seventeen innocent people shot to death by a savage, maniacal, murderer whose name I don’t know and I wouldn’t say it if I did know it because becoming famous is often a motive for school shooters.

I’m talking about the Parkland, Florida shooting in 2018. I’m talking about it because last week the shooter was sentenced. The jury had to decide if he would get the death penalty or not.

Standards for the Death Penalty

Most murderers don’t get the death penalty. That punishment is reserved only for murders that were premeditated and had at least one aggravating circumstance.

Was the Parkland slaughter premeditated? Yes. The shooter plead guilty to doing it, and he admitted that he planned it for five years ahead of time. He talked about how he strategized about how to kill as many as possible. He watched video coverage of other school shootings. He said, “I did my own research. I studied mass murderers and how they did it. What they got and what they used.”

He said from researching those he learned things like this:

Watch for would-be rescuersKeep distance from your targeted victimsAttack as fast as possibleWear clothing that blends in so you won’t be spotted as an intruder.

He said, “I’d have a small opportunity to shoot people for maybe 20 minutes.”

He said the reason he finally stopped was, “I couldn’t find anyone to kill … I didn’t think anyone else was in the building.”

Premeditated? Yes, for years.

Planned or in the heat of passion? It was carefully planned.

Did he know it was murder? Yes, he said he studied other murderers.

And yet the jury decided not to give him the death penalty. Evidently, they felt the death penalty is only for murderers who are worse than this guy. Worse than massacring innocent children for kicks.

This sentencing has sparked debate about the death penalty, and I felt the need to say something because I’ve been hearing Christian commentators who have spoken against the death penalty for murderers. They say they are pro-life, and that includes the lives of murderers. They say, “How can I be against abortion on the grounds of the sanctity of human life and also be in favor of the death penalty?”

What is the answer to that question? Why is it that most people who are pro-abortion and anti-death penalty? And most who are anti-abortion support the death penalty? Is that a contradiction?

No, it’s not. And I’ll explain why in a moment. But first, let’s look at the most important factor. The most important factor in deciding if something is moral or immoral isn’t whether we can harmonize it with other standards or how it seems to us. The only important factor in determining morality is what God says.

God’s Word on the Death Penalty

So what does he say? God was very clear on this point.

Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

Someone might say, “Wait—that’s the old, Mosaic law. But we’re not under the law anymore. We’re under grace.”

That’s not part of the Mosaic law. God gave this law long before Moses was a gleam in his father’s eye.

“But that’s part of the legal code for ancient Israel. Not for us today.”

Wrong again. This law was given way before there was any such thing as Israel or Jewishness. God said this to Noah in Genesis 9.

And it’s reaffirmed in the New Testament as well. In Romans 13 Paul tells us to obey the secular governing authorities because of the fact that God has given them the sword.

Romans 13:4 … if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.

God has given the sword to governments. The sword was not for spanking people. It was an instrument of death. It was the most lethal weapon of the day, which is why they used it to fight wars. This verse is very clear that God gave governments the authority to put people to death.

So it shouldn’t be a debate among Christians. If you believe the Bible, you should be in favor of the death penalty for murderers.

And, I would argue, not just the worst of the worst murderers. All murderers.

So how is that in harmony is the concept of the sanctity of human life? Answer: the whole reason why God requires the death penalty is because of the sanctity of human life.

Listen to God’s argument.

Genesis 9:6 Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.

Why do we put people to death for killing humans but not for killing animals? Because humans are in God’s image, and that has to be taken seriously. If you let someone murder a human being and you don’t give him the death penalty, you’re saying that person he killed is like an animal. Maybe he should have murdered that person, but the murder victim wasn’t so important as to warrant the death penalty.

The Pro-Life Position on the Death Penalty

Why do pro-abortion people tend to be against the death penalty? Because they don’t have a high regard for human life If people are just highly evolved animals, then killing them isn’t really that big a deal.

Why are pro-life people in favor of it? Because they see that murder victim as bearing the image of God. So slaughtering that person is a strike against God himself. If I take a photo of your wife and spit on it and rip it up, that’s an act of hostility against you. And murdering the image of God is an offense against God that is so serious that God says, “If you do that, you forfeit your right to live.”

When they read the sentence, the parents of all those kids were mortified. Some have said it must be because those parents were unforgiving, vengeful people. It’s possible some of them are—I don’t know them. But I certainly wouldn’t assume that about them just because they were upset by this horrible miscarriage of justice. It may be they were upset because they believed their murdered children’s lives had value, and by not requiring the life of the murderer, they were being treated like animals.

It’s possible to be forgiving in your personal relationship and also desire justice to be done. You can put away vengeance and animosity from your heart, which all those parents should do, while at the same time respect the importance of societal justice and the image of God and call for the murderer to receive the death penalty.

Blook on Their Hands

I hope the Parkland shooter takes advantage of the mercy he’s been shown. I hope he repents and places his faith in Christ so his sins can be forgiven by God and he can spend eternity in heaven. That would be a wonderful outcome. But even if that happens, it doesn’t erase the fact that the jurors who voted against the death penalty in this case have the blood of all those children on their hands.

 

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How to Pray Hard Over Pressing Anxiety

How do you pray hard about something? You might start out, “Please God, please, please, please . . . ” But then what?

Using Your Anxiety

Begin by asking, what are your one or two greatest anxieties right now? Carve out some extended time to pray hard about those two issues. It is anxiety that gives us the internal energy we need to really pray.

If your normal daily prayer routine is handling your anxiety, that’s great. But when the anxiety stays in your bloodstream, it calls for an extended time of prayer. If you normally pray two minutes, get alone somewhere and pray for ten minutes. If you normally pray 20 minutes, make it an hour. It may be a situation that calls for a full night in prayer or taking a whole day alone somewhere to seek hard after God. The more important the issue, the longer the prayer. Use the prayer guide below.

First, do what Jesus did and get away. Go for a long drive, or a walk. Solitude makes a big difference, especially if it can be out in nature somewhere. And bring your Bible because that’s how God speaks to us.

Talk it over with God from every angle. Here are some examples:

What is God’s will in this matter?

Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done.” So always begin by seeking God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will. Ask him to help you recall what his Word says about situations like this.

Explore God’s heart. “What do you most desire in this situation, Father? My family member is angry. They hung up the phone and won’t talk to me. I have all this turmoil inside and I don’t know what to do. What kinds of responses could I have that would be pleasing to you?

The more God opens your eyes to the responses that would please him, ask him to enable you to do those things.

What is your will?

Talk to God about your desires. What are you passionate about in the matter? And what do the feelings you’re having say about your values and priorities? It’s the passions of your heart that are driving your anxiety. Are they the right passions?

Is there anything you love too much (judging by your emotional responses when it is threatened or lost)? Is there anything you don’t love enough?

Ask God to enable you to conform any wrong values or priorities or passions to match his. Use your good passions to empower earnestness in your prayer.

In a ballroom dance, sometimes the man advances and the woman steps back. Other times she steps forward and he gives ground. Prayer is like that. Sometimes we ask for something and God yields to our request. Other times, when our request can’t fit into God’s perfect plan, we must yield and say, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Ask God to show you whether this is a situation like Moses pleading for the Israelites, where God relented and granted the request. Or if it’s like Jesus in Gethsemane, where his request was not possible, and Jesus had to yield.

How could you respond in a way that would put God’s attributes on display?How could you show humility in this situation?How could you show kindness?Gentleness?Self-control?What would patience look like?Courage?Faith?What are some ways you could love your neighbor as yourself?Pray through a psalm or two, adjusting the psalm to fit your situation.Ask God to show you a good next step in the matter.Getting Rid of Anxiety

When you have used your anxiety to intensify your prayers, then you can use your prayers to relieve your anxiety.

Ask God to comfort your soul.Lay each of your concerns on God’s shoulders one-by-one, asking him to take the burden from you.

“By casting all your cares on him because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:7 NET).

This is a lot more effective than trying to cast your cares on God in one giant batch. “Lord, just let it all work out.” Naming each anxiety and intentionally casting the weight of it onto God is much more effective. When asked how he could handle all the stresses of the massive responsibilities that were upon him, George Mueller, a missionary to England in the early 1800s, replied very simply:

I do not carry the burden . . . It is not only permission, but positive command that He gives, to cast the burdens upon Him. Oh, let us do it! My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee.” Day by day I do it. This morning, sixty matters in connection with the church of which I am pastor, I brought before the Lord.”

The pressure you feel from that relationship problem, that nagging anxiety that rises when you hear that weird sound in your transmission, the gut punch you get every time you see that bill on the counter that you know you can’t pay—each of those problems creates a different kind of anxiety and they must be handled individually. Roll each one onto God.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “Agitated Christians, do not dishonor your religion by always wearing a brow of care; come, cast your burden upon the Lord. What seems to you a crushing burden, would be to him but as the small dust of the balance. See! the Almighty bends his shoulders, and he says, ‘Here, put thy troubles here.’” “Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.”

George Mueller, “Real Faith,” http://hopefaithprayer.com/?page_id=4919

Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, January 6th, Morning Reading.

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Depression & Rejecting God’s Love

James 1:2 “Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds.”

How do you consider it pure joy when everything’s going wrong?

Self-Pity

The opposite of God’s command in James 1:2 is a deadly spiritual disease called self-pity. God says consider trials pure joy; self-pity says consider them pure misery.

When you fixate on the pain in your life, you blind yourself to God’s kindness. You become like a lawyer building a case for how hard you have it. “This happened to me, and then this, then this, my car broke down, stubbed my toe ….” Why the list? You’re building a case.

And to make that case, you make much of the supporting evidence and ignore counterevidence. You focus your thoughts on everything that’s hard, unfair, and painful, and you ignore blessings on your life that would spoil your argument. Who’s going to feel sorry for you if you talk about three things that went wrong along with thirty good gifts from God?

Self-pity holds God’s kindness at arm’s length. Someone points out a blessing, and your instant response is, “Yeah, but…” and you turn right back to the negative.

This is why when someone is wrapped up in self-pity, you can’t cheer him up by pointing out blessings. He won’t let thoughts of God’s kindness sink into his heart because that would weaken his “woe is me” case.

Refusing Joy

We need joy to fuel our lives. It’s what keeps you going. So the Lord provides streams and tributaries of happiness to pour continually into your heart from his blessings. Self-pity dams them up. It lets in every painful thing while filtering out anything that would bring happiness. Then it magnifies those painful things.

Once your orientation is locked into a focus on the negative, it doesn’t matter how many blessings God sends your way. Each one will be rebuffed by the impenetrable happiness-blocking shield of self-pity. Self-pity refuses to be comforted. It rejects God’s kindness.

How could a person who receives thousands of gifts from God every day believe “everything” is going wrong? How could someone who enjoys eternal salvation and forgiveness of sins have no joyful gratitude? Only by willful blindness to all God’s gestures of love.

How Would You Feel?

Put yourself in God’s shoes. How would you feel if you showered gifts on your child every day and he kept holding those gifts at arm’s length and then complained to everyone that you never gave him anything? Would you want your children to reject your love because they didn’t feel they deserved it?

It’s a Lie

Wallowing in self-pity is not only a rejection of God’s love, it’s also a lie. When we pretend we’re receiving only hardship and no grace, we’re lying about God, we’re lying to God, and we’re lying to ourselves.

When we say, “Everything is going wrong,” that’s false. Everything is only going wrong if you don’t count all the thousands of things that are going well. And why would you ignore those? Especially when they are all gestures of God’s love designed to bring you joy?

The Fruit of Self-Pity·      Drowning in Your Troubles

The result of self-pity is pretty easy to predict. Depression. At the beginnings of self-pity, you can decide, “Okay, enough of this. I’m going to focus on the blessings” and it works. But if you wait too long, you can drop into a hole of discouragement so deep there’s no way out. It feels like you’re drowning in your troubles.

But it’s not really your troubles that are overwhelming you. In fact, it’s not a suffering problem at all. It’s an interpretation problem.

Instead of interpreting trials as good things sent from God to change you, you see them as bad things sent to destroy you. Rather than seeing God’s purposes in those trials as big and the trials themselves as small, the perspective is reversed. Only the bad part matters to you. The hardship, the pain, and human fault captivate your imagination, leaving no room for thoughts of what God is doing.

·      Breakdown

If this continues long enough, something snaps and you suffer what the world calls a nervous breakdown.

But as usual, the world’s labels are unhelpful. The problem isn’t with your nerves. What broke down was your will. Your steadfastness and perseverance. Your resistance to defeat. There comes a point where your will lays down its shield and yields to every defeating attitude. “This is too much from me. I can’t take anymore. I’m done.”

This happens when we don’t exercise our perseverance muscle on the small things. We live a spiritually sedentary lifestyle and our perseverance grows weaker and atrophies.

Without strong perseverance, the storms of life toss you like rag doll. The winds of hardship might blow you into panic attacks, depression, fits of anger, or withdrawal. No wonder James tells us to consider it pure joy when something happens that can strengthen our perseverance!

hard to Give Up

Self-pity is not your friend. It will do nothing for you. Fight it.

And it is a fight, to be sure. Letting go of self-pity is hard,–which is baffling. Why would it be hard to give up something that makes you miserable? It makes no sense, but there is something in us that clings tenaciously to self-pity.

Maybe it’s because we want people to feel sorry for us. Or we want to use our trouble-filled life as an excuse for some indulgence we think we deserve. Or even to justify our anger at God.

Whatever we think we might gain from self-pity, it’s nothing compared to what we lose. If you want compassion, seek it from God. He’s the only one who understands what you’re going through anyway. Self-pity is miserable. Gratitude feels great.

Application

Keep your finger on the pulse of your orientation today—which way you’re facing. Face your troubles only when necessary. The rest of the time, keep your back to your problems and square your shoulders in the direction of God’s kindness. Fix your attention on all the gifts he has been showering you with today. Each time you’re tempted to grumble in your heart, stop and consider God’s kindness. Consider it deeply. And keep thinking about it until a spark of real, heartfelt, joyful gratitude arises.

For two podcast episodes on overcoming self-pity, click here and here.

The post Depression & Rejecting God’s Love appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.

The post Depression & Rejecting God’s Love appeared first on D. Richard Ferguson.