Your marriage can be healed. A hope-restored marriage-intensive from focus on the family can transform you and your spouse's relationship in just a few days. We'll go to this thing, but this is it. If this doesn't work, we're done. What we have now, it's way more than we ever had before and that I ever even dreamed of in the marriage.
Discover more at hoperestored.com. That's hoperestored.com. For me, anxiety. It's kind of a constant thing. I fight it a lot, and it's just that persistent feeling that something's wrong, but I couldn't really tell you what it is.
When I'm anxious, I think about the situation over and over again, and I notice it more so in my chest with my heart racing a little bit. When I get anxious, it's like I drank too much coffee. I mean, my mind is racing and I'm jittery. When I worry, I get butterflies in my stomach.
So, at times when I get anxious, I get a little bit of heartburn that just kind of builds up in my chest and Just kinda makes me feel a little sick and nauseous.
Well, I wonder if you can relate to any of those comments. And if you or someone you know does, and you're dealing with fear or worry or anxiety, hang on because we've got some great help for you today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. John, you can just look at the news.
It seems like there's been a can of anxiety opened up. And I think, spiritually speaking, it's true. I think we are a more anxious culture than we've ever been. And everything is causing us worry and doubt. We've got to, as the Christian community, we've got to get a grip on this.
I had a friend of mine who's a non-believer say, if you guys are worried, we should be really worried as the non-believers. Isn't that interesting? What are we projecting as the church in terms of our faith, our hope? And I don't mean that to sound like a guilt thing because we have to deal with anxiety. We have it in our extended family.
So we deal with this as well, like many other people are. I think the CDC report was as many as 50% of 15 to 25-year-olds are dealing with anxiety and depression.
So this is something that is hitting almost everybody. And I think it's going to be a topic that will really equip you or help you directly.
So stick with us today. Yeah, this affects our family as well, Jim. And I just want to tell our listeners and viewers, we do have caring Christian counselors here. And I really want to encourage you to connect with them. Reach out to us.
We'll schedule a time for them to give you a call back. And that's a really good starting point if this is something you haven't really tackled personally. That number is. 800A family. And Jason and Tori Benham are here.
We love having them here. They're going to share their own stories and experiences about dealing with anxiety, about the deep dive they've done into the Word of God in order to really provide hope and practical help. They're coaches, speakers, and authors, and they have a podcast called Beauty in Battle. They've written a number of books, and the one we're talking about today addresses this topic. It's called Unshakable: A Proven Plan to Crush Anxiety, Defeat Overwhelm, and Conquer the Fears That Freak You Out.
And we've got the book, and you can learn more about getting a copy and our guests when you click the link in the show notes. Jason and Torrey, welcome to Focus on the Family once again. Good to have you, as always. Love being with you guys.
Now, just for the viewers and listeners, you've been married how long? 25 years. 25 years. My wife would say this about watching football. If I just knew things about the player, I'd be more interested.
Like, are they married? Do they have children? Yes.
So, how many kids do you have?
So true. We have four kids. Our oldest is 23, and then the baby is 15. All right.
So you're still got action. Two and a half years away from empty nesting. Yes.
So you think. Yeah. Let's let them think that they're on. They're a bounce back. We're just going to let you live in that ideal.
It's still my hope. You know, anxiety, I set it up there. It does touch everybody and just about every family directly. And we've had it in our family, in our extended family. First of all, when we're looking at anxiety, it's not fear.
I mean, God gives us a sense of fight or flight. That sometimes is survival.
So, what's that difference between fear and anxiety? Kind of debilitating anxiety. Oh, yeah, and I think you had such a great question. You had like a burglar or something. Oh my gosh, we did.
I'll tell you that story in a second. Actually, I'll have Tori tell you that story. She lived it probably even greater than I did. But fear is about a present or a past threat. Anxiety is a future threat.
Anxiety is projecting fear into the future. And the specific fear is honestly the loss of control.
So as we define anxiety in our book, Unshakable, we talk about how fear is projected powerlessness. It's projecting powerlessness into the future. And we got that from the story where Jesus, remember when he was teaching the disciples and then he tells them, hey, let's get in the boat and go to the other side? And then he goes in to take himself a little catnap. And then the wind and the waves, all of a sudden, this massive storm comes up.
And what do the disciples do?
Well, they freak out. They're like, we're gonna die. And you gotta remember, these are professional fishermen. These are dudes who made their living on the sea, and yet they thought, we are going to die. And they woke Jesus up and they're like, come on, man, get up.
And Jesus, what's the first thing that he does? He rebukes the wind and the waves. Then he turns around and he rebukes the disciples. Why? Because they required him to calm down what was on the outside before they were calm on the inside.
And what they said to him reveals to us that they were operating not by fear alone, but by anxiety. They said, We are going to die. What does that mean? That means that we're not dead right now. But here's what's going to happen.
This boat is gonna tump over at some point, and we're all gonna end up in the ocean. And we are going to sink to the bottom, we're gonna black out, and we're gonna drown. Like they're projecting powerlessness into the future. We're not going to be able to control it. Jesus, don't you know this is happening to us?
And so Jesus is like. Stop all that. Can you imagine if Jesus woke up and He found the disciples rebuking the wind and the waves? Hmm. But and then he would have commended their faith.
So those guys were projecting powerlessness into the future, and Jesus actually rebuked them for it. And I like that definition, but Gene and I have fallen into this little trap of binging on I was prey. Oh, this cable show. I'm not familiar with it. Was it PREY?
Yeah, P-R-E-Y.
Okay.
So it's about human beings that are out hiking or they're in the ocean and all of a sudden they're being eaten by a shark or they're gnawed on by a bear.
So I would say, yeah, that's true. You wake up with the storm and you know you're freaked out for something the Lord knows. It shouldn't be something you're freaked out about. But I've watched enough of these shows with Gene to say if a grizzly is gnawing on my head, I am freaking out. And this is fear time.
For sure.
So there is time for fear.
So take us to your story of your burglar. Yes.
Okay.
So this was years ago. The kids were really small. And we, um, it was at the time we had our master bedroom on the top floor. And we had an alarm system because Jason traveled often. And I'm a naturally fearful person.
And so I required that if he was going to be on the road, that we had to have an alarm system. And so we had this alarm system. Jason's home. And in the middle of the night, I think it was like 2 a.m., we hear glass shattering. Your worst nightmare, right?
And just this huge bang, followed by the alarm going off. And in that moment, Jason and I, you know, jump to our feet. Your adrenaline is just kicking. And sounded like a fire truck in our living room. That's how loud the alarm was.
And Jason's reaction was to yell downstairs, get out. Like, cause that was like coming for you. You know, like, we're here. Like, you know, speaking. That was good.
That was good. You get points for that one. But then the funniest part was what followed is that this, I don't know, it was like a primal instinct. And he just like growled. He was literally like, oh, like a scream.
This is a prerun for the real deal someday if it ever happens. I mean, this was real, real legit fear. We were both freaking out. And so Jason makes out this huge scream. And then he kind of like literally gets on the floor and kind of army crawls to get the kids.
Yeah, it's almost like he was trained for this moment. And he tells the kids to get into the bedroom. I'm already called 911 telling them what happened. We heard this loud bang, and now the alarm's going off. They said, get into the master bathroom.
So we lock ourselves in the master bathroom. We're on the phone with the police. We're like, okay, intruder is in our house. I mean, it's so scary. Police show up, like a bunch of police show up, all the lights, everything.
And I'm looking out the window, watching them. They've got their flashlight. They're looking through the windows, trying to find where somebody came in. And then they. Did they call up to the window?
We had the window open and they said there's no sign of intrusion. Yeah. I had to give my man card over to them, and I'm up in the window, you know, on the second floor. And I'm like, hey, we good? They're like, no signs of forced entry.
You can come down.
So I'm like shaking, walking down the steps. He walks down the steps. to find that the motion detector had just Mm-hmm. Like, just fall to the ground and it shattered. Yeah, that was the classroom.
It fell off the wall and it shattered. Yeah. And so I'm upstairs. I'm like, I see Jason walk outside and start talking to the police. I'm like, are we safe?
And everything's fine. False on the farm.
Well, some listening or watching probably has they've had the real deal where there's been an intruder.
So those things do happen. But what you took away from that is.
Well, our bodies are wired with an internal alarm system that should alert us to danger.
So that alarm, had somebody truly broken in the house, the alarm would do its job. The problem is that when something else trips that alarm. And so, what we say is that God created us to have fear, like we should.
Okay, so, Jim, going back to your example, if I'm walking in the woods and I see a grizzly bear, healthy fear. Deal with it. Like, run.
Well, I don't know if you're supposed to run from a grizzly or not. I think it's play dead with a grizzly. Play dead.
Okay.
Or you're supposed to get big and scream really loud. Oh, yeah. I don't think so. I'm joking. That's a disclaimer for anybody listening.
Oh, yeah. Or, you know, you're in Florida and you see an alligator, then maybe run. Right? That's a healthy fear. But what anxiety does is anxiety doesn't play on reality, it plays on imagination.
Okay.
It plays on whatever's in your mind.
So anxiety then says, Hey, I'm walking in the woods. There's going to be a grizzly. I bet you there's going to be a grizzly. And now all of a sudden, you're not walking through the woods anymore. You're leaving the path because of what anxiety is doing.
It's now imagining that that fear is there. Or in worst-case scenarios, that anxiety has gripped a person so badly, they won't. Go to the woods because they're already projecting, or they won't leave their home. They won't go grocery shopping. I mean, that is severe.
But I do want to pick up on that because I think the spiritual implication there of what you're saying is when real things happen, you know, whether they're assumed or actual, like you're Indicator, your sensor falling on the ground. You guys didn't know, and you're reacting out of that adrenaline. Or if somebody's actually an intruder, those are normal things where anxiety and fear are pretty understood. But the spiritual problem is when you're projecting out in the future, your future will be detrimental or horrific or something like that. Speak specifically to the spiritual connotation of that because that's crippling in so many ways.
Satan wants to do everything he can to keep you off the path that God put you on.
So he is going to do to you what he did to the disciples when they were in that boat.
So here's the thing, you know, and I know at Focus on the Family, we talk to a lot of God followers. You have Jesus in your life. And if you don't, I just talk to them too. Yeah. And I just ask you to get on your knees and ask Christ to come into your heart and have God as your father.
And you're going to find that not all things just work themselves out magically. You got some work to do, but God will definitely do something for you. But when we're talking to God followers, what you need to know is: is Jesus in your boat? First, is he in your life? You know, is he on the path with you?
Secondly, is he freaking out right now? And thirdly, who's really in control? But Satan wants you to not think about any of that. He wants you to focus on what could be. In your life, and all of that is ruled by fear, not faith.
So, what faith does is it projects power into the future because we know who's on our boat. We know that we're walking according to what God wants us to do. I mean, Jesus told the disciples, let's go to the other side.
So they were walking in obedience. Look, if you're walking in disobedience, you should be freaking out about some stuff. But the spiritual connotation of this is all Satan is going to use projected fear to keep you off of the path. But you need to know, Jesus isn't in your boat. And if he's not freaking out, you shouldn't either.
I think it's important. We've kind of laid the groundwork, but the hope there. It's hard for people that have chronic anxiety to hear, yeah, just don't. perpetuate that anxiety into the future. It's easy to say, it's easy to hear, it's hard to do for people that have anxiety.
So especially for the Christian community, I think you look towards 2 Corinthians 12 and the promise God is making us there. Which is our only hope. I mean, when you get down to it, if you have that kind of stifling... Crippling anxiety, you've got to get it into your heart that you're okay, that the Lord's going to take care of you, even through death. May I say?
That's right. That regardless of what happens, and it is quite freeing to understand that, that not even death has a grip on us because we have a life, eternal life with the Lord after this. It's good to hear, it's comforting, but do we really believe it? I mean, that's the core thing.
So, how does 2 Corinthians 12 comfort us? Let me read it because I don't want this to be a pop quiz on you, but it starts with, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Man, when I was at the height of my anxiety battle, the Lord brought that scripture home to me to just let me know it's okay. Like, yeah, you're in a weak spot right now. And, you know, I felt like sick, very sick.
And we'll get to share the story here in a little bit of what that all looked like. But when God came in and was like, you know what, my grace is sufficient. That my strength is made powerful in your weakness. Like in that moment, I was in such a weak state, and I really did find hope and comfort in that. You know, we've talked about this before on one of your other podcasts, where trust is a choice that you make, and hope is the feeling that follows.
You can't have hope if you don't first make the choice to trust. It came to a head for me in Vidalia, Georgia. I remember that town in particular because it's the home of the sweetest onion ever made-vidalya onions or whatever. And my brother and I, at this point, I had been speaking professionally for like a decade. Public speaking was not a problem for me.
Just before I was to get on stage, about five minutes before, all of a sudden I started having hot flashes. I started sweating. My head started spinning. I honestly thought that I was going to pass out. My heart was racing like out of my chest.
I had no idea. Did you think it might be the flu? I didn't, I thought. I felt like I was having kind of a miniature stroke or heart attack. Yeah, right.
No, I'm serious. I mean, you start really, this isn't me. What's happening right here? Yeah. And I'm sitting there and I'm literally holding on to the table.
And I remembered somewhere in the confusion of all of this that if you feel like you're having low blood sugar, eat some sugar. And there was a piece of chocolate cheesecake.
So I smashed that cheesecake. That's my solution for everything. Yeah. Well, that didn't work. And I just started praying.
And the only verse that I could think about was the Philippians 4 verse, where it says, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything about prayer and petition with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And I'm like, God, I got to go up here and speak in front of all these people. I can't pass out.
So I was having this fear that I was gonna pass out. And I walked up there on stage. And fortunately for me, I have a twin brother. And he was speaking with me that day. And I brought my glass of ice water up there with me.
And I stood on stage, and David opened up, and I had my glass of ice water, and I started pressing it onto my head. And I was just to get recovery. I'm going to pass out. Like, either I'm going out voluntarily or involuntarily. Like, I have got to control myself.
And I was taking sips of water, and my knees were shaking. And it got to my part, and I started speaking, and it started to wane a little bit. It started to calm down. And I felt like the Lord was giving me some reprieve. We were able to get through a 45-minute talk, and I walked off of there.
And I was wondering, what in the world did these people think about me drinking this cold water and pressing the glass against my head? We got done, and David was like, Man, you look like a ghost up there. What was wrong with you? And I was like, I think I almost had a heart attack or something. I don't know.
Well, I began to look back at that. And I realized that it was a panic attack. It was a full-on anxiety attack. Which you've never had before? Never had before.
Yeah. Never. Ever. And I was not nervous to speak in front of people or anything like that. But the very thing that I was called to do, now I was struggling to do.
And it hurt. It felt like somebody poured boiling lava on my chest while I got dropped 10 stories in an elevator. Wow. Like a feeling like that. And it was just awful, and it was a cluster mess.
That was my first bout. With anxiety. Yeah. And then Tori, pick it up. I mean, you're like.
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't the Jason that I knew. Like, it was scary. It's scary to be someone who has never seen that before. And Jason is always, he's a very strong leader.
And I look to him for a lot of security in my life. And he's always the strong one. I'm usually the one more crippled with fear and anxiety. And then I'm seeing this happen. And it's a little bit scary at first.
You're like, oh, what is going to happen? And you can easily start to think to the future, like, how long is this going to last? What, are we going to be okay? Is he going to be okay? And I remember just going to the Lord.
One of the things that. I will never forget in that season was how Jason fought. He fought so hard to break free. And this is where the book came from: that fight. The book was birthed out of a fight to come free from this.
And so I was watching him. He was waking up early in the morning and going out in the sunlight and just getting before the Lord and just hands open to the Lord, crying out to him. And I'm watching this. And I'm fighting with him inside, you know, in prayer and asking the Lord, what is my role? What do I need to do?
How do I do that? Because those feelings kept coming back. I kept like for the next like three months. I kept feeling like I'm going to pass out. I got to a point where I didn't even want to drive anymore and I didn't want to public speak.
I didn't want to do anything. And so she was watching me spiral. This is a really personal question for you, Tori. But I would think you mentioned how much. Confidence you had in Jason, how much you depended upon him for that stability and being the rock, which allowed you a little bit of sway to, you know, have those emotional feelings.
In this season, How did you process uh-oh? My rock is not so solid. And how did that impact you personally? Like, did you have more fear? Like, what is happening?
And what does this mean for me? Yes.
Yeah. I think it was a moment for me, though, where I knew that I had no other option but to depend on the Lord. Thank God that I knew where my strength comes from. And of course, in that moment, there were moments of shakiness, like, oh, what is this going to look like? But it was.
A place of desperation to where I knew I knew where the only place to turn was be to the Lord. What's so good about that? And what people need to understand is that that is how the Lord works. Yes.
We think it's all about Jason. Right. But what a great recentering for you, too. Yeah, it really was. I'm so thankful for that.
But yeah, it was definitely a moment where I turned to the Lord and I was like, I've got to support him. I've got to be there for him. He is really struggling. And so I felt like the Lord's like getting the fight with him. And so we began researching it together.
We began reading everything we could on anxiety and all the symptoms that we could think of. We're trying to figure out what is this. And one of the things that. That we quickly learned was that it's projected powerlessness. And I saw that.
Coming through time, like every day, there were little things that Jason would say, What if I can't go to Trey's basketball game next week? What, you know, it was all these projections of powerlessness.
So it like built on itself. It was awful. Yeah. It was the worst feeling of my life. Yeah.
And so as I began to see, okay, this, what was exactly what was happening? And I began to ask the Lord, like, what, what are you saying through this? What do you like? We need you to tell us what to do here. And I remember one morning, Jason, he looked so frail.
He didn't, he looked like a shell of the man that he was. And he was sitting in front of our fireplace because he was really cold. Like even like his temperature, everything was off. And he was sitting in front of the fireplace with a blanket. And it was just not, it didn't even look like Jason.
And I. I kind of get a little teary-eyed thinking of it because it was hard to see him like that. And I can relate to so many other people out there that you're watching your loved one go through this. And it's sometimes I think it's almost harder for the person watching it from the outside because It's not the person that you know.
Well, and it's scary. Yeah, it's what is happening. And I have no control. Exactly. And neither does he.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly. This man that is usually so in control and takes such rein of our home, it felt like he was slipping away. And so I was just before the Lord, God, what, what is going on? What do you need me to say to him? What are you doing?
What are you saying? Speak. And I remember very clearly the Lord saying, you need to let him know that this soon shall pass. Like this is not going to last a long time. You're going to be okay.
And it's not going to be that much longer. That takes a bit of courage. Yeah, because I didn't know. I'm like, you got to say this to him in a time when he's not himself and is feeling that. Yeah.
And there's kind of a part of me that's like, I hope, I hope I heard that. I heard that. I hope that was the Lord. I hope that's just not me. But I did.
I went to him. I said, babe, I just, I really feel like the Lord just said, this is not going to be much longer. This is, this too shall pass. You're almost through. It don't let go, you keep fighting.
You're almost through it. That's incredible. How'd that make you feel? You made me hope. I felt literally, I felt something lift in my spirit.
Now, I had a lot of work ahead of me, and I want to tell you guys about it. But that day, I mean, when she offered hope to me like that, I felt like a lightning bolt. In my body. You know, and you know, we were raised Baptists. We're not like, you know, the prophetic, all that kind of stuff.
But I'm telling you, I felt like that was a prophetic word for me. And I just felt it in my body. And it was like the Lord was saying, there's a finish line to this. And that's when the Lord began to really do some stuff. And that's why I began taking notes, writing everything down I could about anxiety.
But let me just tell you about how bad it got. Those feelings that I had before I was speaking at that place, it happened so bad. I passed out once in church, literally just sitting there.
Somebody was giving a testimony, and they started talking about some accident that they had. And I'm not good with talking about bodily fluids, specifically blood. They started talking about that. I literally just passed out right in church. And so then now I started having a fear of passing out.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I almost passed out when I was on stage. I was speaking at Liberty University. And I was on stage there and at one of their business classes. It wasn't in the big chapel, but it was at one of their business chapel classes. Almost passed out there.
I had to have them bring me a chair. I had to sit on it.
Now, remember, I had already been speaking for a decade. I'm confident. I'm not scared to speak in front of anybody at any time. I'm not scared to drive. And now I don't want to do either of these, but it got to a point where.
I didn't even want to travel to Nashville, Tennessee from Charlotte to go see my son's basketball game. Like there was no when my family would go out to dinner, I'm like, there was all of my feelings were gone. It was like it was burnt, it was charred. I wasn't mad or angry. I was just.
Done. And for the first time in my life, I understood what depression must feel like. Wow. And I. I had a lot of money.
At that point, I had businesses that ran themselves, investments, happily married, healthy kids, financial freedom, everything that you could want. And yet, I felt done. And I just want to encourage some listeners right now that you feel done. That's exactly where God wants you. Because he's going to build you right back up.
And I felt at that moment: if, if, if, I continue to feel this way. I would rather not live. That's dangerous ground. It's very dangerous ground.
Now, I wasn't ruminating on suicidal thoughts or anything, but I did feel like I just don't want to continue to feel this. And it was at that moment I was in front of the fireplace, shell of a man. Tori came up and gave me hope.
So that's why we speak to people who have somebody in your life that's got anxiety. Give them hope. That's the thing. Be patient with them.
Well, this has been a great start. We're going to come back next time, keep the discussion going, and bring more of that hope and structure and how to think through these things.
So if you're in that spot, I think we've laid the groundwork as to what might be occurring in your heart and your soul and in your life. And we want to be here for you.
So get in touch with us. Get this great book, Unshakable, A Proven Plan to Crush Anxiety, Defeat Overwhelm, and Conquer the Fears That Freak You Out. I can think of 10 people that need this just in my life. And I'm sure you're very similar. And it may be you.
Get in touch with us. Yeah, call today. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, 800-232-6459. Let us know you'd like to speak with the counselor, and we can schedule a time for them to give you a call back and help you make some healing progress. You can also request Jason and Tori's book, Unshakable.
Make a monthly pledge of any amount today, and we'll send a copy of that book to you as our way of saying thank you for helping us strengthen and support families around the world. And if you're not in a spot to make a monthly pledge, we understand that. Make a one-time gift. That certainly makes a difference as well. And here's why your financial support is so important.
A woman named Annie is a stay-at-home mom raising three teenagers. She wrote to us and said, I listen almost daily to your broadcasts. The variety of your shows provides guidance and encouragement to me as a mom and wife, but also as a Christian. God is really working through this ministry. And I just love that comment, John.
That's what we're aiming for, to give people hope and help in Christ. And when we work together, marriages are strengthened, parents are empowered, pre-born babies are saved through option ultrasound, and so much more.
So please be generous with your giving to focus on the family today. And again, our phone number 800, the letter A and the word family, or donate and get the Venoms book when you click the links in the show notes. And thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we continue the conversation with Jason and Tori Benham and once more, help you and your family thrive in Christ. Live your truth.
A lot of people say that, don't they? But truth isn't something we decide. God has decided it for us. And it's our job as believers to share his truth with a world in need. I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly.
I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion, cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others. Listen at refocus with JimDaily.com. Yeah.
