Freedom from Anxiety | On Edge | Week 1

[Music] journey with us this weekend come on let's get our hairs going like [Music] join us here we go [Music] it's you [Music] to a Hopi creation [Music] to [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I sing this together [Music] [Music] [Music] you wanna be moved when the earth keys where for the reason why this overcome and for every [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he's announced I felt and I drink from oh he is [Music] be the shadow the ransom for know [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you'll never cocina [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] no see this with me we make AmeriCorps promise keep light in the darkness my god Bank of America promise keeper light in the darkness my god [Music] [Music] [Music] me say way make way man [Music] we believe you are [Music] promise my [Music] we [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] cool promise keep light in the darkness [Music] we waving me record promise keep hide in the darkness my god [Music] amen amen let me pray for us God we acknowledge today that you are a wave maker you are a promise keeper god I thank you for the ways that you've made in my life and the doors that you've opened in my life god we thank you for the ultimate way that you made for all of us for your son Jesus we died on a cross to save us god I pray right now for anybody in the room who may be in a season of waiting maybe they're doubting your goodness maybe they're they're losing hope god I pray that you restore their faith I restore their hope and you we know that you are able to do far more than we could ever ask or think nothing is too hard for you so god we trust your goodness we trust in your sovereignty we trust in your perfect timing we love you have your way in this service and pray these things in Jesus name Amen amen all right Northwest campus how we doing this morning we're doing all right awesome it's good to be here with you guys this weekend and I want to say especially welcome to any of you who may be here for the very first time and we're so honored that you chose to be here with us this weekend I know it can take a lot to try out a new church for the very first time and so it means a lot to us that you're here we just want you to know that you're always welcome here and we would love to have you back so Northwest let's show our appreciation for our first time guess also if you've been around here for any amount of time you know that one of the things we value as a church is what we like to call joyful generosity and God is doing so many incredible things around here and it's not because of your generosity so if you want to be a part of what God is doing around here you can give in three easy ways you can go to our church website you can use our church app or you can use the wall boxes on your way out the door today all right so Christmas is coming up is anybody excited for Christmas we're so excited to celebrate Christmas with you and because we want to create every opportunity for you to worship with us we're gonna have 25 Christmas Eve services across all of our campuses which is just crazy yeah you can celebrate that so 7 of those will be here at the Northwest campus and so you should be able to see the times on the screen but we want you guys to be praying about who God we want you to invite so many times we see that somebody came to a Christmas Christmas Eve service because somebody abided them and then they just kept coming back and so that's all because of that personal invitation so we have we have these invite cards for you that are spread out all around the church and we would just love you guys on your way out we'll just grab a handful of those and then the weeks leading up to Christmas if you want to just pass them out to your family your friends your co-workers your neighbors and make sure you bring them with you for those Christmas Eve services all right well hey look we're gonna ready to start a brand new sermon series called on edge but before we do that let's go ahead and turn around greet the people around you and they can go ahead and find your seat [Music] today is week three of growth track growth track is made up of four weekly experiences designed to help you grow in your relationship with God connect to the church and discover your purpose whether it's week 1 2 3 or 4 you can jump in at any time today you'll hear more about how to grow in your faith personally through spiritual disciplines if you'd like to join us follow the signs for growth track in the lobby immediately following today's service lasts about 40 minutes and if you're a parent and planning attend you can pick up your kids after the session we can't wait to meet you community is part of our design God created us to do life together in real relationships that grow our faith joining a group is the best way to meet people connect to the church and grow in your relationship with God groups meet all over the Indianapolis area at various times and locations no matter where you come from there's a group for you if you'd like to learn more visit TPCC org slash groups [Music] I don't know if any of you saw this story from Six Flags in Texas from a few years ago but there was a roller coaster that got stuck upside down mid flip any of you see this and it doesn't take much for me to just even just look at this picture and to just sort of feel on edge like I could just imagine what it might have felt like to be sitting in this position and you're just feeling stranded and fearful and vulnerable and not quite sure how you're gonna get out of this particular situation and that's just fear inducing anxiety producing for me just to look at that and I like roller coasters over the years we've taken our family to amusement parks and and often times go on a roller coaster with my kids and and then we would get done we'll go over to the little booth you know where they take the picture of you like in your worst possible moment and and we've we've purchased a few of those and this is from a few years ago this is me and my daughter Campbell she's she's 14 now she's probably six or seven in this picture she's actually having a lot more fun than what it appears all right I don't think I'm gonna win any dad of the Year awards with this image right here but actually to be fair over fall break we went to another amusement park and Campbell loves roller coasters and she says she wanted to go on one we want a really big one and we we stopped the dildo booth and looked at the picture and something strange has happened I've reached that place in my life I I'm to the age now where I was the one that looked terrified and she had both hands up in the air looked like she was having a great time but you'll never know it cuz I didn't purchase that picture all right I just just got this one and you know life can be sort of like this can't it my life is a little bit like a roller coaster with lots ups and downs and unexpected twists and turns and kind of flips this upside down every now and then and I think that what can make it even more challenging is that maybe we're on this roller coaster of life and we're sort of fearful as to what's going on around us or up ahead of but then when we look around to the people we're sort of do in life with they look like they're having a great time and it's kind of like well what's wrong with me why can't I enjoy life the way that they are and so today and next week we're just going to pause right before the holidays and we're just going to do a short two-part series of messages I'm a very heavy but very relevant subjects of anxiety and depression now before we get started I just want you two to know that one of the things that I will often do when I'm preparing a message is after I've studied and prayed and done a bunch of writing and developed some content I'll push myself back from the computer and I'll stand up and I'll begin to just sort of walk around and I will imagine what what would I be thinking or feeling or asking if I were sitting where you're sitting right now and I think even I've done that more intentionally this week with this particular message the sensitivity of this topic and so I just want you to know maybe some of you you knew we were talking about this today and you you've been ready for it you've been excited to hear what God might say to us today from it but but I'm under no illusion that all of us would be and maybe there's somebody here today you didn't know we were talking about this just this is the day you decided to come check it out come visit and right now you're sort of looking for the exits and you're like man preacher if you start saying something weird or make me uncomfortable I'm out of here can I just say I hear you I know maybe some of you came today because you've been getting this invite from somebody that you know and you're a bit of a people pleaser and so you told them yes even though you really didn't want to come and and so here you are can I just reassure you that what I want to accomplish today is really just three things first of all I just want you to feel encouraged no don't move past that too quick I want you to feel encouraged the second thing is I want you to know what God's Word actually has to say about this subject it turns out that he's far from silent on it he has a lot to say and the third thing is I want you to walk out of here today regardless of what campus you may be joining us from and I want you just to to feel some hope I want you to hold on to hope now I also want you to know that I'm not a doctor alright I'm not a psychiatrist I'm not even a very good counselor don't tell anybody I said that but those of you who've come to me for counseling you'd probably agree not so great right that's just had better advice from the fortune cookie it's actually more true than I want to admit all right so I'm none of those things I am a human being and and I'm a pastor and I just I've been through this I've experienced what we're talking about today and next week and and people around me ones that are close to me they they've experienced it I know what this can feel like I just want you to know that you're not alone and so let me let me just kind of give a definition or a description of what we mean by anxiety so that way we're all on the same page anxiety is a feeling of worry nervousness or unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome now under that definition this is all of us like we all fit underneath this on the spectrum somewhere in some way and if we were to look maybe some ask some of the questions why I think one of the contributing factors would just be the sort of high pressure fast-paced a world in which we now live my psychologist by the name of Robert Lee in his book anxiety-free says it this way the average American teenager today exhibits the same level of anxiety the average psychiatric patient did in the 1950s we live in an age of anxiety we've become a nation of nervous wrecks and I think that we look at maybe some of the reasons around us and one of it is just just stress you know Harvard Business Review says that between 90% of medical visits can be traced to stress-related issues in our lives one is I think just the the use of cell phones and social media now I'm not down on cell phones and social media I have them both and I think they're great tools I think that it's an incredible invention I love the fact that we can stay connected you know you can FaceTime your grandkids across the country and you can kind of check Instagram and see what your friends are doing but I think that all of us would agree that we sort of crossed a line not exactly sure when but it's sort of like becoming an unhealthy thing because we have never been more connected to other people than we are today and yet at the same exact time never felt more isolated and it's like this really dark place that we can go to where we're at home by ourselves on a Saturday night and we just open up Instagram maybe without even thinking about it and we just start scrolling and there we are sitting in our you know pajamas with the stain on the front and we see our friends on some exotic trip you know to Vegas or the Bahamas and all of a sudden we start to think what's wrong with me where's my life going what am I doing wrong and why am I not with them why didn't I get the invite we just get this like serious case of FOMO and I didn't cuss right there all right that's fear of missing out and it just sort of produces this anxiety that we didn't have a few years ago guy by the name of Steven LRD in his book the depression cure he says this about our lifestyles we were never designed for the sedentary end or socially isolated fast-food laden sleep-deprived frenzied pace of modern life that we now live in so what can happen is that oh stress is just a common thing wrong and experience in life there's no there's no getting out of all stress but what can happen is that stress turns into stressful days and if we don't do anything about it then stressful days becomes long term stress and then long term stress if we don't do anything about it becomes extreme stress and there's a technical term for it it's called stress induced analgesia and basically this just means that we start living with stress for so long over a certain period of time that we just begin to assume that this is our norm that it's normal to feel this way and yet it's it's not normal what it's doing is it's it's slowly depleting our mind and our mind is beginning to get exhausted and vulnerable and broken down to this place where we begin to experience painful anxiety and painful anxiety left unchecked long enough you can find yourself in this pit of depression and you're not quite sure how to get out so let me define depression for us depression is a mood disorder characterized by anhedonia that just means the inability to experience pleasure anymore extreme sadness poor concentration sleep problems loss of appetite and feelings of guilt helplessness and hopelessness and this is just rampant throughout our society today and if you are if I just read that and if you could see yourself and part of that description or maybe in all of it I just want you to know that that you are not alone and the spectrum of anxiety and depression all of us find ourselves on it somewhere we all know what it feels like to feel a little bit anxious because traffic's bad in the morning and we're gonna miss our meeting and then some of us know what it feels like to feel anxious we don't really know why we just woke up and we just feel sad or blue and others of us maybe we've been diagnosed with something much more serious and maybe we have a mental illness or disorder or we're experiencing depression due to some sort of trauma or abuse in our past and when I say trauma or abuse I'm not necessarily talking about the physical kind talking about the emotional kind which many times is it's just as damaging if not more and what I mean by emotional trauma especially for maybe those of us in our formative years in the homes of our origin and maybe somebody that you really needed in your life to give you those words of affirmation or those emotional needs sort of like nutrients to the root system of your life you really needed that person to say something to you but they never say it you just really needed your dad to say he was proud of you he would never say it you really needed your mom to say she loved you and that you're enough but she would never say it and maybe somebody said something to you and maybe it was even unintentional but it was emotionally traumatizing now here's the thing as a young child in your formative years you haven't developed the skills to evaluate and dismiss you just receive it like a sponge and it just gets imprinted onto your soul and you develop these like certain neural pathways that this is how you think and this is how you see yourself based upon the words of others or the lack of words from others and I just want you to know that if that's you I'm right there with you that you are not alone and others of us maybe you've been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness and the unfortunate thing is that mental illness and disorder has sort of been taboo it's sort of been a stigma not only in our society but unfortunately within the church and tragically it's been magnified at times within the church and so maybe you confided in a pastor or a sunday-school teacher or a group leader or a youth group leader and they just looked at you like you were crazy or they didn't know what to say or they they tried to they got uncomfortable and they tried to just explain it away with trite little responses like well just just pray more or maybe you just you just need to have a stronger faith or or maybe worse yet they kicked you when you were down and they said well is there any unconfessed sin in your life maybe that's why you're feeling all this anxiety you've got some unconfessed sin and gods trying to get your attention and none of that is held can I just tell you you're not gonna hear any of that from this stage this week or next what the stigma is done is it sort of reinforced in your mind that there's something wrong with me listen it's not a sin to be sick and we've got to put an end to that stigma in Jesus name see you would never you you would never think less of somebody that had some sort of a physical ailment like the flu or a pulled muscle or a broken leg you just go well your your your hurting or your sick but there's nothing wrong with you and the pain of a depleted mind is just as real as the pain of a broken leg and so many times we maybe think that it's shameful to go get help or to go get medical treatment and it's it's not just like if you were to I think many times whenever we find ourself in that place and maybe we say maybe others say to us we'll just snap out of it just be positive just think good thoughts and that's kind of like I can't or you were like hey God please take this from me and you've prayed that and it doesn't feel like God's taking it from you and can I just say that more than likely God won't take it from you but he will heal you from it and healing is the word now here's what I want you to know about healing healing is a process it's a pathway and so depression isn't so much a pit as much as it's a tunnel right tunnels and pits are both dark one tunnels got a way out and so God will meet you in that place and help you here it's just like if you got a broken leg you don't say God please take this from me no you're like God will heal you from it by how well by going to the hospital getting the bone reset then that that's a that's painful than getting a cast put on that's uncomfortable and inconvenient then after that then maybe walking with crutches for a while and then doing some physical therapy and then getting to this place where you build the strength back it doesn't happen overnight it's a healing process in mental illness and even just the depletion of our minds works the same way God will meet you in it and heal you by helping you walk out of it so let's do what God's Word actually has to say about this one of things that might surprise you is that a lot of who we might think would be the heroes of the faith in the Bible really struggled with anxiety and depression that that's true with heroes in history did you know that Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln and even the great preacher Charles Spurgeon they all wrestled with anxiety and depression and we see this in the Old Testament books it's actually a whole book of the Bible devoted to a guy named Jeremiah airing out his feelings of anxiety and depression it's called lamentations and the word means to lament and listen to what he how he describes the state of his mind in chapter 3 starting in verse 2 Jeremiah says he has led me into darkness shutting out all light what's he saying where anxiety and depression feels like darkness I look all around I don't know where to go he has turned his hand against me again and again all day long what's he saying this feels relentless when's it gonna ever let up and then he says he has made my skin and flesh grow old what's he saying he's saying this is aging me I feel like I got all these miles kind of put on my physical body because of these emotions that I feel and he goes on in verse 5 and he says he was besieged and surrounded me with anguish and distress in other words I'm surrounded by these emotions and I don't know how to get free from them and then on down in verse 17 and 18 he says peace has been stripped away like I've had something taken from me and I've forgotten what prosperity is I cry out now notice that Jeremiah is telling us what he has been saying to himself it's why it's in quotes my splendor is gone everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost now what he is doing here is what a lot of psychologists that have a that name for it that they call it ruminating and ruminating is like negative self-talk like what Jeremiah just said there was real because it was what he felt but it wasn't true and so ruminating is this like idea kinda like a cow that chews its cud like it eats the grass to choose it swallows it regurgitates it chews it against well as it keeps doing that process many of us can do this with a negative thinking negative self-talk and so we're just sort of ruminating on some of these like false narratives or I might even call it toxic stories that get ruminated through our mind you ever do that you ever get alone by yourself and you just start thinking why did she say that and what did he mean by that and why didn't they do this and why what was I thinking when and you just start ruminating hey listen it's real because it's emotions emotions are real doesn't mean it's true I was watching a documentary about ten years ago called the bridge and in 2004 there was a film crew that set up cameras on either side of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco for other purposes but what they unintentionally caught was several people committing suicide by jumping off of the bridge and they created this documentary where they actually told the stories of the people who jumps and obviously many of them passed away but not all of them did and there was one young man he was a teenager who had jumped off the bridge he survived and they were catching his story on the documentary and he talked about this fact that he was doing a lot of self-talk a lot of ruminating I would just call it toxic story that he was telling himself he was in pain he was depressed and he woke up one morning and he faked being sick and so his dad would let him stay home from school when his dad left he packed up his things and he bought a bus ticket and he jumped on the bus and took it to a local Walgreens where he purchased his last meal or what he thought would be his last meal it's a candy bar and a mountain Dew sounds like a teenager he gets back on the bus goes to the Golden Gate Bridge walks out to the middle it's a beautiful day but he's standing there in anguish in pain doing all this self-talk he feels so isolated and alone he's standing there trying to get the the nerve to jump and this tourist group from Asia walks up behind him to tap him on the shoulder and they just oblivious to what he was going through and they said hey would you take our picture there they are on vacation having a great time sort of like that feeling on the roller coaster why are all these people having such a great time and I'm in pain and why don't they see it he grabs the camera he takes their picture he hands it back they smile hey thanks so much they turn and walk away and right then he said man forget it actually his language was much stronger than that but he said forget it and he jumped over the rail and he said as soon as he cleared the rail and he was hurtling towards the water his mind cleared and he said right then and there he realized I don't want to die and as he's hurtling towards the water he cries out to God which he said shocked him because he didn't even believe in God and he said God if you're real if you're there please spare my life and hits the water he survived but a moment or two later he came to and he said that sea lions were bumping his body up towards the surface of the water no I don't know what to do with that all right and I'm not gonna to be the preacher who says God sends the sea lions into your life like that the gods send the said I don't know if he sent the sea lions all right that's not even the amazing thing about that story to me the amazing thing about that story is that as soon as he cleared the rail his mind clear that he was ruminating on all this likes destructive self-talk and then as soon as he jumped he could think clearly and and this is just simply my opinion you may not agree with it but especially if you were here last week where we talked about how we have an enemy who who likes to deceive and lie I think that he had him deceived and as soon as he cleared the rail ago sweet he's mine cleared the clouds and he could think see if you're in this space in place where you've been ruminating you've been listening to yourself too much and maybe it's even brought you to this place where you might even do something to just destructive can I just urge you to think again and to cry out that yes those those waves of anguish are very real but they're waves just like they come crashing they will recede and you are not alone you're not alone right now in this room even though you might feel like it and you're not alone Paul even says this to us in his letter to the Corinthians and second Corinthians chapter 1 verse 8 he says this you could say we don't want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia in other words he's like hey I just want you to know that it might appear as if I got everything together but I I don't actually gone through a lot of trouble we were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired of life itself indeed we felt we had received the sentence of death and Paul says man we were going through this pain and this anguish and from outside appearances it may have seemed like we had our life all together can I just tell you the nobody's life appears as good as it seems on Instagram what you are looking at is an image it was probably the 25th or 26th take carefully placed carefully filtered and you're comparing your low moments with their carefully crafted highlight reel now saying they're lying I'm just saying that it's not what it appears and so Paul says hey don't be mistaken don't don't allow this destructive self-talk to take you to a place that you might do something permanently damaging and I just say if I could give a definition of suicide is that suicide is a permanent attempt to solve a temporary problem is what you're feeling real absolutely it's real but that's not the answer and if you're wrestling with that right now I just want to encourage you to call the suicide prevention hotline number just just reach out get some help today don't don't stay don't stay there see these thoughts receded for Jeremiah let's let's not leave him hanging we go back to chapter 3 verse 21 he says this he goes yet even though it felt all this I still dare to hope man I love that phrase when I remember this the the faithful love of the Lord never ends now I don't know if he believed that yet but I think he said it and that's the place to begin his mercies never cease great is thy faithfulness his mercies begin afresh each morning I say to myself the Lord is my inheritance therefore I will hope in him and you might find yourself in a pit where you don't exactly know where to go but God will meet you in that pit and he will help walk you out of it a step at a time we actually see another example of this from another individual in the Old Testament by the name of Elijah and I want to just look real quickly at his story because actually we actually see how God meets Elijah in that place and helps him walk out of it and there's some things that we can learn for our lives today what you need to know about Elijah is that he was one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament and he was not a weak guy by any stretch of the imagination he was a strong guy and actually he had experienced this incredible victory in 1st Kings chapter 18 which God showed up in an incredible way I don't have time to unpack the story for you many of you know it if you want to go back and read it later today it'll be worth your time but first Kings chapter 18 Elisha gets into it with the prophets of the false god Bale they step into the Octagon and God just embarrasses them and uses Elisha to do it and it was an incredible moment of victory for him that's chapter 18 chapter 19 Elisha wrestles with fear anxiety and even depression how did he go from the mountain top to the valley so quickly and I alluded real briefly to it last week that's usually how it works I want to know the moments when I'm actually the the most prone or vulnerable to feelings of anxiety or even depression where I just begin to ruminate do a lot of negative self-talk ironically it's Sunday evenings Amanda doesn't matter like we could have 10,000 people here on the weekends we could have 150 baptisms all kinds of cool stories of people's lives being changed and some really neat inter actions and yet I'll go home on Sunday evening tired and depleted I'll I'll get alone by myself I'll turn on the football game I'm only half watching it and I just start ruminating we had a great weekend but all of a sudden I'll start thinking to myself why did I I'll pick out one little sentence in my messaging oh man why did I say it that way or why didn't I say this or maybe I had a conversation with somebody in the lobby that got awkward or maybe I had an email came in that was really cruel and critical and I'll just start ruminating on all that stuff and I've actually asked people that are the closest to me to check on me on Sunday nights and by check on me I don't mean like just like encourage me like hey way to go you preached a great message today it's just like sort of just in a very real way just go hey man how you doing and my wife's one of them cuz she'll come find me alone sitting in the dark and she'll walk in and she'll go hey babe how you doing and I'll be like in my honest moment so I'm like well I'm tired right now and I'm wrestling I'm a little I'm a little down and she'll go come over here you and I'd love to tell you the rest but gets really steamy at that point and come on now alright let's just say this way the path out of that pit is well-worn baby alright listen I've even been known to fake it every now and then I just said so here's Elijah experienced this great victory and then look at where we find him in the very next chapter in chapter 19 Elijah was afraid the reason why he was afraid is cuz Queen Jezebel threatened his life because how God had used him and she said she put a timetable on who she was I'm gonna kill you within 24 hours that'll induce some fear and anxiety he's afraid and he fled for his life and he went to bear Sheva town and Judah and he left his servant there then he went on alone that's a mistake into the wilderness traveling all day and he sat down under a solitary broom tree and he prayed that he might die I've had enough Lord take my life for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died that's not true why is he saying that that he's ruminating those that's a toxic story that he's telling himself then he laid down and slept under the broom tree and so what we see here is that we don't have a whole lot of details as to how Elijah got to this particular place in his life but this caused some stress and anxiety for him here's a few things that we just see from his story that might induce some anxiety and fear in our lives is just the fear of the unknown he didn't know what was gonna happen to him tomorrow didn't even know if he'd still be alive fear the unlikely it's unlikely to happen but you know what I'm worried and fuming over this is where a lot of self-talk goes into the negative the uncontrollable odd you couldn't do anything about it and then the last one is unnecessary comparisons he's comparing himself to his ancestors listen that would be all of us where I'll find ourselves in these moments where we might be susceptible through those things next thing that we see from Elijah is that he isolated himself it says that not only did he feel isolated because of his role and many of you who are leaders in the room right now you know that feeling of loneliness even when other people are around that intangible weight that you carry he felt that because he was a prophet but he also physically got alone he went on this wilderness trip by himself and just like mold grows in the darkness depression grows in isolation Jesus himself wrestled with anxiety I think that he was wrestling with depression in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his arrest why do you think he kept crying out to his disciples his friends the guys could you just stay awake with me he didn't need their prayers Jesus can out pray them any day of the week he needed their companionship and so do you and I says this in Proverbs it says that anxiety weighs down the heart but a kind word cheers it up which is one of the reasons why when we gather together just assume that that person that you meet in the hallway or the lobby or the parking lot even though you may not know them they're probably weighed down by something so just offer a cheerful word or an expression you never know how God might use your words to cheer up someone else and the last would just be this idea of as I've already mentioned just false narratives and toxic stories Elijah just was repeating to himself and so we left him underneath the broom tree by himself asleep look what happens it says as he was sleeping an angel touched him and told him get up and eat and he looked around and there beside his head was some bread baked on hot stones look at that baked bread all you paleo people give me some gluten in Jesus name is what I need right there God's answer to my anxiety slather that bad-boy with honey butter all right and in a jar of water and so he ate and drank and then he lay down again and so we see here that he was so depleted that the angel touched him and said hey you need to eat and he ate he was so depleted he fell back to sleep again and then the angel came to inverse verses six and seven then the angel came again and touched him and and said get up and eat some more for the journey ahead of you will be too much for you and right here it's easy to miss but we see that God was not just tending to Elijah's emotional condition but his physical one and a part of the pathway out of these feelings that he was experiencing was his physical needs namely he said you need some sleep you need some rest you need some food he didn't say it here in the passage but exercise would be the same type of things you know that some studies are saying right now that just exercising four times a week for 20 minutes has the same effects as antidepressant medication so we got to stop to examine some things here now now once again I'm not a doctor and I know this is very very complex I'm just gonna try to make it as simple as possible is that when you're in in that pit you had asked yourself okay what are the the negative thoughts that I'm sort of dwelling on and what are the chemicals that are being released because of those negative thoughts because there are and then what are the positive things that I need to begin thinking about because your body biologically responds to positive thoughts and and puts in the chemicals into your brain that can heal you from that depletion and that's not just like you know self-help mumbo-jumbo the Bible reassures us of that the Bible says that as you think in your heart so you become in Philippians chapter 4 verse 8 it says this fix your thoughts in other words your thoughts won't naturally go there you've got it and be intentional about it you've got to fix your thoughts on what is true this is where God's Word comes into play but you read God's Word and you memorize God's Word not because you're gonna get tested on it later but because when your mind starts to go down the path of the negative and you start to ruminate God's Word throws up a roadblock to say I know you feel that that ain't true turn around and go another way fix your thoughts and what is honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise why do that well this is just not think yourself into a happier place this isn't pull yourself up by your bootstraps there's a chemical thing that happens here and so many of us know that there's these things called neurotransmitters and so we've got these like chemicals that are associated with these positive helpful thoughts namely here they are dopamine dopamine we get a hit of dopamine when we do something good or accomplish something serotonin which is comes from just eating healthy foods oxytocin which is just meaningful human connection and then endorphins which get released through exercise so exercise isn't just about you know getting skinny or building muscle it really is about mental health and so we got all these things that get released into our brain that help replenish the depletion of our minds but then there's other transmitters that can actually have negative effects namely cortisol and cortisol has its purpose but cortisol is triggered by stress and so when you have open-ended stress you're not actually doing anything to manage it cortisol is just pumping in just flowing it and it's slowly depleting your mind and if you don't have those other four combating it then you find yourself over time just getting to this place where your mind gets depleted and you just can't trust what you're feeling anymore and so to begin the healing process you've got to manage some of these thoughts some of these behaviors can I just get super practical with you here towards the end just real quick and if you're wrestling with this get help but get different kinds of help not all help is equal right we need good friends we need a good marriage we need good relationships we need good interaction we need the help of a counselor or a therapist or a pastor we need a mentor we need a group we need different kinds of help in our lives and and many of us are maybe ashamed or embarrassed to reach out and say we need help can I just say that don't wait till it's too late to go get counseling there is such a thing as like preventative maintenance it's better you don't wait to change the oil in your car till after the engines blown don't wait till you're in the middle of a crisis where things have just blown apart before you go back it's don't be too proud to get counseling and to get help there's another one is that it takes time the healing process give it some time and then here's another thing you don't have to let it go some people in your life they've watching they've watched frozen too many times we're just like man just let it go let it go let it go and you're like shut up all right it's you don't have to let it go just just transfer it over see I think that where people get this is first Peter chapter 5 or 7 which is a fantastic verse but we say cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you it's like oh I just need to let it go well that's not what it says it says cast now for a long time I actually got tripped up on that word cast it's actually not a very good translation of that Greek word because I think a cast I think of fishing I thought oh well I've got this problem in my life and I just need to cast it out there you see the logical problem with that I'm gonna reel it right back in and there it is again no actually the the word the Greek word for cast is a better word it's transfer so he says transfer all your anxiety on him because he cares for you in other words you don't just pray it away doesn't just go away just transfer it over that's why Jesus would say the same thing you'd say hey my yoke is easy my burden is light let me carry it with you let me come alongside of you last thing I would just simply say is that if you're in this place in your life where you're just feeling hopeless understand that it's a chapter not the conclusion it's a chapter not the conclusion so I I don't know that I've ever shared this with you from this platform in the years that I've been here but I remember it was about 13 years ago and I was in a season of my life we're looking back I'm pretty confident I was depressed and I didn't know what to call it I was probably too proud not probably I was I was too proud to get help or to reach out to anybody but I was in this funk for a good while a lot of it was just because of I was working so hard and stressed out not getting the results that I wanted and Lindsay and I weren't connecting as well as we could have and largely it was my fault and so the cortisol is just flowing in cuz Office stress and I remember getting to this place where I was just anxious every day I was moody for about six months straight I would wake up every morning at about 4:30 in the morning just my eyes would pop open wide awake and now we lay there for two hours not looking forward to the day and I remember it was Halloween 2005 it's weird how those dates stick in your mind but I was feeling anxious all day and got home a little bit early Lindsay asked me to come home or really subway I could help with the kids we were gonna take them out trick-or-treating that night and I I walked in the door and went into the kitchen and kissed her she was making dinner and then I went straight to the bathroom dropped to my knees open the toilet and dry heaved into the toilet I didn't have any Eileen all day I didn't had anything to throw up now I didn't have a virus I wasn't physically sick in some way it was anxiety and it was confusing I'd never done that before and I remember Lindsay walked in and she was like what is wrong and I looked up at her and I said I don't know but I don't know how to get out of this this feeling I look back on that time and I can just say to you today that God God healed me from it but that's the word heal it wasn't it wasn't like the next day I got some great news or whatever and then I just snapped out of it but it was a healing process now I look back I can't exactly put my finger on when it flipped but it did you know it would have been a mistake for me to say well this is a conclusion this is the end of my story this is how it ends for for and Brockett never put a period where God puts a comma and many of that of us just simply make that mistake so that's what makes a story interesting so there's always a place in every movie or in every novel where if you were to put the book down or push pause you would go I don't know how they're getting out of this but if you were to shut the movie off that would sort of be the conclusion but actually what makes the movie or the story so good is the resolution to it right now some of you are in that chapter by the way we won't just experience one but probably several and so God wants to move you beyond it can I just say I look back on that season of my life and I'm actually grateful for it because I can see the gut hand of God sustaining me and I can see how God used it he never wastes or hurts and God used it to deepen me and to shape me and to Humble me and to give me empathy that I really needed in fact in my first few years didn't happen so much anymore but my first few years sharing all kinds of people say you're awfully young I don't really have people say that that much anymore not quite sure what to think about that but they would see how fast the church is growing and they would look at my highlight reel say wow it must be good to be you and they would say things like how do you keep from getting a big head or I don't want to compliment you because I don't want this to go to your head you're hurt every time and I didn't often say this but I could confidently just say hey listen yes I need to keep pride in check there are moments when I've gotten a little too big for my britches but every time I do God somehow flashes that picture in my mind of me on my knees bowing down to the porcelain bowl and he says you ain't you ain't all you think you are you're pretty weak you're a human being you're pretty fragile you you need me listen the cross of Jesus Christ looked like a period but it was a comma and if Jesus can come back from that you can come back from this and we want to come around you want to help you and so today I just hope that you're encouraged and today I hope you know you got a Heavenly Father who looks at you and you are more than enough he smiles and he's pleased with you and I hope you walk out of here with some hope and some resolution to say I want to get on the path towards healing and bring somebody into that journey with you let's pray father we come to you right now thank you for your love and your grace it never leaves us in that pit but provides a way out of the tunnel so god I pray that we would hear a resounding words of hope from you and by your spirit that it is not a sin to be sick and life is a struggle and none of us are immune from anxiety and depression and so we have a great amount of empathy and compassion for anyone that may be struggling with this in a more severe way than what we are we God we know that Hope has a name and his name is Jesus and we cling to you like never before and we lend a helping hand of hope to those who are wrestling and I pray that you would restore us and bring healing and hope to us that the church would lead the way because we have the truth of Jesus Christ we ask this in Jesus name and together the church says [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the atmospheres for the spirit of the evidence is on that the spirit of law Oh atmospheres change you know the spirit see [Music] [Music] that's this place hearts with your so [Music] easily to sir [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] his plan [Music] [Music] the reason we can [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] surrounded by your love Jesus we need your presence we need you [Music] of God we need [Music] sake [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] amiracle can have for the Spirit of the Lord is here [Music] evidence [Music] never come a miracle can happen nine for the scam it out [Music] [Music] amen man when once again we're so glad you guys were here with us this weekend and I know the message today was heavy and I know that a lot of us are fighting and wrestling with this issue on a daily basis so if that's you man just like Aaron said just know that you're not alone and as a church we want to come alongside you we want to walk with you we want to pray with you or if you're here today and you want to know what it looks like to start following Jesus man that's awesome we want to walk with you in that as well we would love to pray with you and talk with you so we're gonna have our response team down front right at the end of this service again these people would love to just talk with you we'd love to pray with you we'd love to answer any questions you might have or point you to your next steps all right also just a quick reminder if you're looking to get plugged in and get connected around here we're gonna have our growth tract class happening right after this service as well upstairs in the point all right it'll be 30 to 45 minutes you can leave your kids and kids in ministry we would love to see you there all right well hey look we love you guys have an awesome Thanksgiving we'll see you back here next weekend [Music]

Channel: Traders Point Christian Church

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Id: OWaIoAjpf-Q

Length: 71min 17sec (4277 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 18 2018