Overcoming an Anxious Mind - Part A

If you don't live with an anchor of faith, you're going to drift in a sea of anxiety. And most people in the world, they don't have anything to anchor. They have no real grand scheme or purpose in life. So if you just think that you're dangling in some inexplicable universe with no rhyme, no reason, no design, no plan, no God, so all we are are fortuitous occurrences of accidental circumstance. We're here by chance. Well, that's a very lonely place to be, isn't it? You're going to feel very isolated, very lonely, and that's a scary place to be. Stress and worry are a hallmark of our modern culture.

But the good news is that you don't have to let anxiety overcome you. Connect with Skip Heitzig today as he explores the problem of anxiety and shares how you can find peace for your soul through the truths of scripture. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that shines light on the rapidly shifting landscape of the Middle East and shares why this impacts you. New York Times bestselling author Joel Rosenberg is now based in Jerusalem, and he's releasing the new nonfiction book, Enemies and Allies.

I've traveled with Joel to Middle East cities to meet with kings and crown princes. We sat together on the east lawn of the White House for the signing of the historic Abraham Accords, and I previewed his new book, Enemies and Allies. I can tell you, it contains never before published quotes from behind closed door meetings with some of the most powerful and mysterious leaders in the Middle East. You will want to read this book. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world.

This is the first book of its kind. Almost nobody's ever had that chance to not just meet one of these major leaders, but to meet almost all of them, and then to get to tell the story in first person language, come with me into the palace, into the motorcade, and come meet the most interesting, consequential, and controversial leaders in the entire Middle East. Enemies and Allies by Joel Rosenberg includes insights and analysis from the author's conversations with some of the most controversial leaders in the world. We'll send you a hardcover copy of Enemies and Allies as thanks for your gift of $35 or more.

To give, visit connectwithskipp.com or call 800-922-1888. Now, we're in Philippians Chapter 4 as we get into the message with Skip Heising. I want to talk to you today about one of our greatest struggles, and that is anxiety. Anxiety is a thief. It steals your thoughts, it steals your peace, it steals your confidence, it steals your joy.

And in this theme of the book that is overridden with joy that Paul expresses, at some point we're going to have to deal with the topic and the issue of worry and anxiety, which Paul does in these two verses. Now, for many years, a woman couldn't sleep because she worried that her home would be broken into by a burglar. It was just a thought that plagued her thinking for a long time. Day after day, and week after week, and month after month, for a number of years she had this plaguing thought. Well, one evening she and her husband both heard a noise downstairs. Her husband got up, went downstairs to find out what the noise was, and it was, can you guess? It was a burglar. The husband saw the burglar and said to him, could you come upstairs and meet my wife?

She's been waiting 10 years to meet you. The point is simple. A burglar can steal from you once. The burglar of anxiety can steal from you for decades. Now, it's sort of humorous to me what we as Americans worry so much about, what concerns us, what stresses us out. We put filters on our faucets, we put air ionizers in our home, we lather ourselves with antibacterial soap, we get worried about avian flu, we get worried about getting E. coli bacteria. At the same time, 20% of adults smoke, 20% of drivers don't wear their seat belts, and it's estimated that 75% of those who own mobile devices text while they drive.

What that tells me is that we worry about perceived dangers while we ignore real ones. Now, this is the holiday season, this is the Christmas season, and this is the time when all of those anxieties and worries go away. This is the time when we don't experience anxiousness and stress. Oh, this is the time of peace on earth and goodwill toward men, right?

Well, wouldn't that be nice? But you know that that is not the truth. What you know is what we found out that 64% of Americans say during this season, their anxiety level goes up and not down. And there's reasons for that. There are contributing factors. One of the things that psychologists say is a reality is called seasonal affective disorder, given the initials S-A-D, SAD. Seasonal affective disorder is brought on by shortened days, less sunlight, more darkness.

That does something to sort of a generalized gloominess that we experience. Another factor is during the holiday season, Americans travel. 72% of Americans will travel from Thanksgiving through New Year's. Right in between there, a lot of people are mobile. Well, going to airports, missing flights, weather, snowing people in, et cetera, all of that raises, not lowers, the stress level.

And what are we traveling to? Well, we want to gather with family, which brings another level of stress, getting together with family members, some of which we don't really want to get together with, perhaps. There's always that weird uncle that shows up or something like that. We worry over buying the right gifts. Will I offend them?

I bought them this size. I hope that fits. Was it enough money that I spent, et cetera?

Did I spend too much? All of those things contribute. So what we're going to do is look at two of the most significant factors that we're looking at two of the most significant verses in the New Testament that deal with your mental health. They are familiar verses. I would dare say some of you have even memorized these verses. You know them.

We know them by heart. In Philippians chapter 4, verse 6 and 7, it's part of a lineup of exhortations that we began to explore last time. Just to refresh your memory, if you look back at verse 1, he begins with the style, stand fast.

He commands them. Verse 1, that's verse 1. Verse 2, I implore the two ladies that he mentions. Verse 3, I urge. Verse 4, rejoice in the Lord always.

I'll say it again, rejoice. And now with that same sort of approach and style, he writes the next two verses, and that's all the verses we're going to look at today. Verse 6 says, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Perhaps, I can't prove it, but perhaps some of you read that and you go, oh, well, that's nice. It's simplistic, it's naive, it's unsophisticated, but that's nice. Well, I want you to know it is not simplistic, though it is simple. And one of the things I love about God is he's not complicated. Most truth you will discover is simple truth. Not simplistic truth, simple truth. It is simple, but it is also needful. I say it's needful because some of us are stuck in verse 6. We live in the world of worry and anxiety, anxious thoughts, stress.

We never get out of it. So it's simple truth, it's needful truth, but I also believe it's radical truth. If you can somehow get out of the first part of verse 6 into the second part of verse 6 into verse 7, it could revolutionize your life.

It could give you a whole new lease on life. Let me tell you the story about George. George was a busy executive in Pittsburgh.

George worked about 75 hours a week. George had a heart attack. His doctor after the heart attack said, George, I'm giving you a year to live.

You probably won't last longer than a year if you keep this pace up in your style of living. And so all of that stress and all of that busy schedule and all that high blood pressure in George's life finally caught up with him. So now he's listening very carefully.

He's listening differently to his doctor than he was before after the heart attack. He goes home to recuperate. And so while he's recuperating, he goes to his back porch with the pad of paper and he writes a letter to God that said, Dear God, I hereby resign as general manager of the universe.

Signed, George. And he always tells his friends, wonder of wonders, God accepted my resignation. I'm going to suggest that before the end of this message, God might be tapping you on the heart saying, I want your resignation. I want you to resign from trying to control everything or trying to worry about everything and be controlled and consumed by anxious thoughts. So what I want to give you, what I want to do today is, and I'm confining it to these two verses, I want to unpack these verses.

I want to drill down. I want to sort of dismantle these two verses into parts, look at each part and put it back together again and see how it all fits. What I want to do is give you a fourfold approach to understanding anxiety and overcoming anxiety. So let's begin with the problem. The problem is shown in the second word of the first verse we are considering. It's the word anxious. That's the problem. Anxiety is the problem.

It's a problem all human beings at some point have to deal with. But I want to tell you about the word that is used. It's translated into English anxious, but the original word in Greek is the word merimnaō.

And merimnaō appears 19 times in 17 New Testament verses. It is translated into three English words primarily, worry, anxious, care. Worry, anxious, care, merimnaō. So when Jesus said, do not worry about your life, that's the word he chose.

When Jesus speaks to Martha who was so distracted and busy when Jesus came over while Mary was sitting at Jesus' feet, Jesus said to Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. That's the word Jesus chose. And it's the same word Paul used in 1st Corinthians 7 when he wrote to them and said, I want you to be without care. That's the word merimnaō, concerned, worry, anxious, care.

But given that, I now want you to know where that word came from. The word merimnaō comes from two Greek words stuck together. And when I tell you what they are, you're going to get a full understanding of what worry in the Bible describes. Two words put together, meridzo, which means to tear or separate, to tear or to divide, and the second word naōs, which means the mind.

So you put those two together, meridzo and naōs, and you have merimnaō, which means literally to divide the mind. It's an apt description of anxiety. Anxiety is when your mind is divided between legitimate thoughts and destructive thoughts. Anxiety takes your mind in two different directions. It tears your mind. James put it this way, a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Now, I believe that of all the times in history, this is the time when these verses are more appropriate than in any other time in this culture. It speaks to this culture in our country more than any other.

Let me explain. We're told that anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in America. And they will say, they estimate that 40 million, four-zero million Americans suffer some form of anxiety disorder. That is 18 percent of all American adults. In 2015, Boston University reported that anxiety has now surpassed depression and all other disorders in our country.

And then I found something terribly interesting. They took 14 different countries around the world and studied them. The World Mental Health Survey stated, Americans were the most anxious people the most anxious people in the 14 countries that were studied with more clinically significant levels of anxiety than people in Nigeria, Lebanon and Ukraine.

If you know much about those countries you know those are troubled spots. What that tells us then is the United States of America is the undisputed champion of anxiety and worry. We win the Olympics when it comes to anxiety and worry. Recently the New York Times put out an article where they stated, in America we have developed an ethos of relentless worrying and agitation. And did you know over the last three decades anxiety disorders have jumped more than 1200 percent?

Amazing. One psychologist Robert Leahy said, the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as an average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. That's our country. Now I hope by now you're wondering, well what are we so worried about in America? What are we so anxious about?

Well I don't want to get into all the factors but let me just sum it up by telling you what the Gallup organization found out. Top things that concern us the most. Number one, personal income. Will I have enough money to survive whatever happens in the future? Second, social security system which sort of ties into the first.

Will the social security system be able to provide for me when I get old? You know that it's had a lot of problems over the last couple decades. Third, possible terrorist attacks.

Will I become the victim of some hostile act of terrorism? Health care availability in the future and finally race relations. All of those are top concerns of Americans. On one hand I want to say I understand. From the perspective of a believer looking at the unbelieving world, I get it. I understand why their anxiety is so high.

I understand why they're panicked, why they're anxious. If you don't live with an anchor of faith, you're going to drift in a sea of anxiety. And most people in the world, they don't have anything to anchor. They have no real grand scheme or purpose in life. So if you just think that you're dangling in some inexplicable universe with no rhyme, no reason, no design, no plan, no God, so all we are are fortuitous occurrences of accidental circumstance, we're here by chance.

Well, that's a very lonely place to be, isn't it? You're going to feel very isolated, very lonely, and that's a scary place to be. If you don't know why you're here or where you're going, that's scary.

So one website, and I found several of these, I always like to kind of dig around and get some statistics and background, but in studying for this this week, I found several websites that said this, but one just sort of articulates it quickly. It said, this is a psychiatric website, our goal then shouldn't be to dismiss anxiety entirely, but just to make it a healthy, manageable part of our lives. I want you to hear what they just said to you. The very best the world can do for you is to just manage your anxiety. Now are you good with that? Because the Bible offers you a chance to eliminate it. Keep reading. So the problem is anxiety, anxious. The prescription is this, verse 6, be anxious for nothing.

Now stop right there for just a moment. If you didn't pick up on that, that's a commandment. It's put in the present active imperative. In other words, here's Paul writing his letter.

He's writing from a Roman prison to a church in Philippi, and he writes this in a very strong manner. I command you stop worrying, which sounds absurd if you're a worrier. It sounds unreasonable. It sounds naive. It sounds idealistic to tell a worrier, hey, stop it, quit your worrying, because you're going to say, what planet are you from?

How unrealistic can you be? Now to make matters a bit worse, if you're a worrier, in the Greek language, this is stated in a very emphatic way so that it could be best translated, stop worrying about even one thing. Now, before you get mad at Paul for saying that, let me ask you a question. Did Jesus Christ say something like that? Ah, he did, didn't he?

In fact, almost exactly the same thing. But with Jesus, though he said the same thing, he gives us reasons not to allow anxiety to rule over us. Listen to his words. This is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter six. He says, do not worry about your life. Same word. Do not worry about your life.

What you eat, what you drink, about your body, what you will put on. It's not life more than food, and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither reap nor gather into barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more are you not of more value than they?

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? Don't misunderstand what Jesus is saying. He's not saying, kick back and be lazy. Go outside and open up your little beak and expect a worm to plop in. Birds don't do that, by the way, because it doesn't rain worms, last I checked.

They've got to go be very busy and diligent about finding them. So he's not saying be lazy. When he says don't worry, he's saying don't have an anxious over-concern about life that divides your mind.

That's what he's saying. By the way, he uses the example of birds. Let me ask you something. Have you ever seen a worried bird?

Think back now. Go back to all the times you've looked at birds. Have you ever seen one?

We have a blue jay in our backyard. We've just spotted it. I spotted it the last week. It's beautiful.

Sort of like hangs out between these two little areas. I was looking at him the other day because Jesus said, go look at the birds. Behold the birds of the year.

So I did. And it wasn't like, it didn't have its little head in its beak and its claws going, oh man, how are we going to pay for the rent on this nest? There was no stress at all.

It looked carefree. So Jesus says, behold the birds. Now, in Jesus' words that I just read to you, he gives us three reasons we should not worry. First, because it's unhealthy. Second, because it's unbecoming. And third, because it's unproductive.

Let me explain those. First of all, it's unhealthy. He said, it's not life more than food. You know that worry and stress and anxiety can actually harm your life, your physical life. It can hurt you. It can ruin your body and your mind. A few biblical examples. King Darius signed a decree and he was so stressed over what he signed that it says his sleep went from him, neither did he eat. That's Daniel chapter six. And if you keep that up, not sleeping and not eating, you'll die.

So it's not healthy. King David in Psalm six, it says that he turned to God and said, I am weary with my groaning. All night I make my bed swim.

I drench my couch with tears. That's depression and anxiety. Then there's Moses, Numbers chapter 11. So stressed out about Israel that he complained. Now listen to Moses' prayer. My burden is too heavy for me. Please kill me here and now.

Kill me here and now. That's anxiety when you're praying like that. So it's unhealthy.

Harvard Medical School says those who are gripped by anxiety have a greater risk for developing a number of chronic medical conditions. It will affect your GI system, respiratory system, and has been linked to heart disease. So it's unhealthy. Second reason Jesus gives, it's unbecoming. It's unbecoming of a child of God. It is not fitting for a child of God. For a child of God to be always anxious and always worried is in effect saying, I don't trust you God.

You said some pretty cool things that make me feel good for a little while when I read them. But then I go out and live my real life and I don't expect that you're really going to make good on any of these things. So to be consumed with worry and anxiety betrays a lack of trust in God caring for you. So Jesus says, and here's why it's unbecoming, look at the birds of the air. They don't reap, they don't sow, gather into barns, but your heavenly father feeds them.

Mark the language. He didn't say their heavenly father feeds them because he's not their heavenly father. They don't have a personal relationship with God, but he's your heavenly father. You have a personal relationship with the father. Your father feeds birds with bird brains.

If your father feeds birds, then your father is going to feed his children and take care of his children. That's Skip Heitzig's powerful message for you from the series Technicolor Joy. Now here's Skip to share how you can keep these teachings coming to you while connecting others to God's word. The apostle Paul said that all scripture is God-breathed, meaning God inspired it and wants us to understand it even in today's day and age.

That's why I teach line upon line through every book of the Bible. And that's why this radio program exists to share biblical teachings with friends like you across the country and around the world. You can help further that mission by sharing your gift today.

Here's how to do that. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give a gift. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888. 800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. Come back again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares why you can trust God to set you free from anxiety. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.