Conquering Anxiety Through Faith and Mindfulness

I still remember it like it was yesterday. Man, it was Christmas, and we were at my mom's house before we moved down here. We would travel down for every holiday, and we stayed at my mom's place. I remember we had just put the kids down for naps, and it had been a busy Christmas time.

So, we put the kids down for naps, and a little while later, my mom comes down and says something along the lines of, "You've got to look at your child." Now, if you know, that's never something that you want to hear your parents say because you don't know what's coming after that, right?

We had traveled down numerous times, and I don't know what happened in this moment, but this child of mine decided that it would be a good idea, as I walked into the room, to take a blue Sharpie and use their body as a giant canvas. So, I walk in, and there's this child of mine just covered in blue Sharpie.

Immediately, my mind, beyond the sheer frustration that I was dealing with, goes to, "Oh my gosh, what else did he color?" I've got so many other things that are running through my mind: how much is this going to cost me? Because I can't ask my parents to pay for the mess that my child made. So, what is it? What do I gotta repaint? Do I got to get new floors? Like, what is this going to cost me, this terrible decision that this child of mine made?

And so, I'm sitting there. Now, you got to understand this, right? I'm a pretty even-keeled person. All right, my highs aren't super high, my lows aren't super low. I just kind of am pretty steady for the most part. But this one, I was through the roof. I was so upset, I was so mad and so frustrated. I just started rolling through the list of questions, right? Like, why in the world would you think to do something like this? What made you think it was okay to go into your grandma's writing drawer and pull out a Sharpie? What was the purpose of that?

We've had conversations over and over. I mean, I was going after it, right? Not my finest parenting moment. We talk with our kids about not coloring on anything except for paper, and it's paper that we supply you with because I've got paper I don't want you coloring on. There's books I don't want you coloring on. So, you can color on paper that is supplied to you, and this was happening. I'm like, "Oh my!" I'm fuming.

The only thing that was able to bring me back to a level state of mind was my mom laughing. She couldn't stop laughing. She thought it was humorous that this child decided to take this blue Sharpie and fill their body as the most perfect canvas, apparently. So, I finally started settling down, and all I could get out at that point was, "What in the world caused you to think that this is okay? What was running through your mind?"

And I said, "What were you thinking?"

Today, I want to talk to you about your thought life. That's why I titled the message, "What are you thinking?"

We're starting a series today called "When Anxiety Attacks." There's a prevailing sense of anxiety in the world around us, and for many people, anxiety is a daily struggle. Anxiety has been escalating so quickly that the graphs aren't just going up and to the right; they're going straight up and down. Just about the average poll shows that over 40 million U.S. adults are affected by some type of anxiety disorder.

Some people blame genetics, other people blame biology. Some people think that anxiety is exaggerated and fake, but the truth is, anxiety is real. Anxiety is powerful. Anxiety hijacks our thoughts, and it can be incredibly crippling.

There's a lot of people that can relate. While outwardly they're still showing up, they're still smiling, they're still trying to get through their job, but inwardly they are battling a depression. They are battling a chronic kind of anxiety. They feel stressed out, like there's just too much, like they can't handle it, like they're too overwhelmed. They just might snap.

If you find yourself there today, I want you to know that you're not alone. You're not alone.

Before we get too far into this topic of anxiety, I need to address something for you. I'm a pastor; I am not a mental health professional. All right? So, I don't claim to be a mental health professional. I am not a Christian therapist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a doctor, I'm not an expert on those elements of it. But what I can speak to is I can speak to the spiritual side of this challenge.

So, I want to set the foundation for the rest of this series as we talk about overcoming anxiety today. But I want to first do is just let you know that I am not a mental health professional. All right? Just so you don't hold me to things of that nature because I don't have the studious time on the science pieces of it. I did study a lot of the science of it in preparation for this series, but I'm not an expert on that end. I want to speak to the spiritual side of it.

Before I do that, I've got to acknowledge what mental health is, right? Mental health typically includes at least three things: it includes the emotional, it includes the social, and the psychological well-being of an individual. That's at least those three things. It's very important because our mental health—we've got to understand that our mental health isn't static, meaning it doesn't stay the same.

We can be doing great for a period of time, and then all of a sudden something happens, whether it be something in our health changes, a traumatic event changes, and something changes in our mental health. So, it can't be static; it's always fluid and moving. It can impact the pieces of our life. Our mental health impacts how we think, which impacts how we feel, which impacts how we act.

What I want you to see today is what we think shapes what we become. What we think shapes what we become. Often, our lives follow a trajectory of our thoughts.

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Philippi, and he talked about thoughts and the importance of your thoughts. He says this in the book of Philippians, chapter 4, verse 8. He says, "And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing: fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me, everything you heard from me and saw me doing."

Then he says, "The God of peace will be with you."

In three sentences in this passage, Paul does an incredible thing. He moves from thought—he says, "Fix your thoughts"—he moves from thought to action because he says, "Keep putting into practice." He moves from thought to action to experience because he tells us, "The peace of God will be with you."

Paul is saying what we think shapes what we become. Our thoughts shape our lives. Paul says that peace comes from positive thinking; it comes from putting your thoughts in the right place.

That word "think," if you look at it in the original Greek language, means to consider, to reflect, to reason, even to ponder. The idea is that focusing on our thoughts helps us shape our behavior because the truth is, what we think shapes what we become. Where we've kept our minds is where we are. Our thoughts form our behavior.

The reality is that everyone feels anxious at some point or another in their lives, from making a big presentation at school to having to tell somebody bad news to situations in everyday life that can cause temporary worry. Temporary stress levels of anxiety can fall anywhere on a broad spectrum, from momentary nervousness to paralyzing disorders that can interfere with normal life functions.

Anxiety.org defines anxiety as this: it's a physiological and emotional response to a threat that the brain perceives. Fear, on the other hand, is a response to real danger. Differentiating that is necessary and realistic from chronic and problematic anxiety. It's necessary, but it can be tricky; it can be challenging because anxiety and fear both send the same types of messages to our brains, and they can be interpreted as a potential threat, which causes that fight or flight emotion that we deal with in our bodies.

Michelle Garrett, she's a licensed marriage and family therapist, writes, "Think about it like this: healthy fear is in response to a specific event. For example, the fear of a hot stove keeps us from touching it. But unhealthy fear that triggers anxiety is about something general—an overwhelming sense of worry or fear that you can't stop thinking about."

So, what happens when anxiety becomes an all-too-familiar companion in your life, interrupting your thoughts, interrupting your relationships, interrupting your sleep, your health, your well-being? Many people experience anxiety from time to time, but repeated bouts, continued bouts of anxiety may indicate some type of anxiety disorder.

We notice anxiety when we feel stressed, when we feel tense, when we feel overwhelmed, when we worry. We can often experience the physical symptoms of anxiety, like a racing heart or a tight chest or high blood pressure or even, at times, uncontrolled sweating.

All of us experience anxiety, and for many people, it's a daily struggle. In 2018, Medical News Today reported that anxiety disorders in individuals and people is one in five. One in five U.S. adults has some type of anxiety disorder. For children, the CDC says that they found an increase in anxiety disorders that was written in 2018. This is now five years later, after the pandemic, after social media continues to be on the rise. The anxiety things that are continuing to creep up have only skyrocketed since that was one in five adults.

Anxiety is something that is challenging on a regular basis.

Have you ever been, you know, whether you're working at home or working on homework or watching your favorite movie, only to find yourself continually interrupted, whether it be by kids, by a sibling, or a spouse? Right? It can be frustrating. That's how anxiety can feel. It can feel like everything's going fine, you're being productive, you're getting stuff done, you feel like you're winning at life, and then all of a sudden, the door opens in your mind, and anxiety comes rushing in because you've left the door of your mind open.

Just like when a sibling or a grandchild or child comes running in your door, continuously being annoying, or when your kids fight over the same toy or whatever that thing is that causes you a lack of peace. When that peace vanishes, it feels like everything is going haywire. Your heart rate spikes, and you launch into that fight or flight mode.

It would be nice if we could stop anxiety from ever happening, but we can't because we can't control people, and we can't control the circumstances that are around us. So, anxiety is something that we have to work through and work around. We can't control the people; we can't control the circumstances. But what we can control is the thoughts that we think.

You see, we're the gatekeepers of our thoughts. We're the gatekeepers of our minds. We allow things into our minds that continue to come, and we're the ones that determine what thoughts are the thoughts that we dwell on.

In his book, "Winning the War in Your Mind," Craig Groeschel writes this: "I wonder if you feel locked up or being taken captive. He says if you feel locked up by your thoughts, taken captive by the things that keep your mind busy, or if you feel that—he says if so, have you considered that you might be trapped in a self-made prison? You may feel held back from living the life you want to live, not experiencing the relationship with God that you want, with little to no hope for the future. But are you?"

He says, "If you think you're trapped, if you believe there's a locked door, you've bought into a lie, and it is the lie—nothing else that's holding you back." He says, "Yet if you identify the lie, then you can remove it. You can replace it with truth, and you can be free."

He talks about your liberation being a two-step process, and the first step in the process is to simply remove the lie. The first step in liberating yourself from dealing with this crippling anxiety is identifying and then removing the lie.

Your mind is a battlefield. There's a war that's raging. Your mind is where the battle for your life is either won or lost. If you're going to win the war for your mind, you've got to begin to change the way that you think. You have to remove the lies that you allow yourself to believe.

You see, Satan wants to win the war for your mind. Satan wants to win the war for your mind, so what he does is he uses the thing that he's best at. There's a reason Satan is called the father of lies. So, Satan will take lies, and he will place them into your mind. He will try and get you to believe these lies about yourself. He is called a deceiver. There's a reason that Satan has these names because he uses the tools that he has to try and affect us in our lives.

Satan uses these lies; he implants them into our minds, and sometimes these lies might be half-truths. They might sound or seem believable. He wants you to believe what he says about you. He wants you to believe what he sees you as. But the truth is, a lie believed is truth will affect your life as if it were true.

A lie believed as truth will affect your life as if it were true. People used to believe that the Earth was flat; some people still do. That's a lie. You see, there was a lie that was believed years ago that the Earth was flat. What that did, that lie that people chose to believe, affected the way that they lived their lives because instead of venturing out into the vastness of the ocean, they only would venture out so far because they were concerned that if they went too far out, they were going to literally fall off the face of the Earth.

So, they chose to believe a lie, and it affected the way that they lived their lives. What about some lies that we tell kids, right? If you chew gum and you swallow it, it's stuck in your gut for seven years. And if you swallow too much of that gum, it's gonna block everything up down there, and you're gonna have some bigger issues, so don't swallow the gum. That's a lie that affects how kids live their lives.

What's another lie that we believe as young people, right? When we swim, you're supposed to—after you eat, you gotta wait, what, an hour, right? You're supposed to wait an hour after you eat before you go swimming again. That's a lie. Eat the food and get back in the pool.

The lies that we choose to believe as true affect the way that we live our lives. Mental health anxiety, it's not just a personal issue; it's a spiritual issue. Mental health anxiety is a spiritual issue, and I believe the church has to be available to support people that are struggling with anxiety.

If the church is to be the hope of the world, then people who are hopeless should be able to come in here and express and share the things that are causing them to be hopeless. It shouldn't take a ton of effort; we just have to acknowledge the issue and be there to support with love and care.

Yet the message in the church can often be, "You just need more of God." And it's true; you do need more of God. But you also probably need a little bit of sleep. Is that unspiritual? You need more of God, and you probably need some better friends. Are you connected with the men on Tuesday morning? Are you connected with the ladies on Tuesday mornings and evenings? Are you surrounding yourself with people that are going to support you?

There's a reason that you're choosing to feel isolated and alone and disconnected. You don't have people that are around you supporting you, praying for you. When the worries of the world rise up, and we look around and wonder how we're going to make it through the mess of brokenness and pain, what do we do? We look to God.

When the world is going crazy and our minds are going berserk over the things that everybody else thinks to be insignificant, what do we do? We go to God. And there are going to be times when you need to go to God, and there's also going to be times when you need to go see a professional, when you need to go to a therapist or medical professional to help you unlock the physical and psychological components of our anxious brains.

And it's okay. There's a stigma in the church world at times, and it's not as much now, but it has been in the past, that there's this stigma that if you go and see a counselor, if you go and see a mental health professional or a professional in that sense, you're broken. Can I tell you something? If you don't go see them, you're broken too because every one of us is broken.

God gave every one of us a gift, and so why would we not go and see people that God has given a gift to that could help us get out of the thing that we're struggling with? Instead, we allow our pride because we think we just gotta be a better Christian; we gotta go to God more, which, yeah, go to God for sure, but go get some help too.

There's a reason God has given people who are Christians the ability to become psychologists and therapists. They're here to help us. And can I tell you something? God came, and he sent his son to help you. He sent people into the world that have gifts to help you.

So, quit trying to pretend like we're holier than thou and go get some help. And if you see somebody going to get some help, quit looking down on them.

I wasn't going to share this, and my wife doesn't even know because she reads all my sermons, but I just feel led to tell you this. As your pastor, I go get counseling. So, if you're trying to be bigger and more spiritual, I'm not saying that I am because I know I'm screwed up, but I go and get help because I know that I can't make it better by myself.

You can ask my wife; there was a season in my life where I tried to do it by myself, and I walked home to her, and I had zero emotion. I didn't feel anything, and I looked at her and I said, "I can't do it alone anymore. I think I need to go talk to somebody."

And I spent five years every other week talking to a counselor to get the help that I needed. So, get help. There's a reason God has given people gifts to help those of us that need to get help.

One practical way, a way that all of us can combat common anxiety is to practice mindfulness. Now, I'm not talking about anything weird, anything voodoo, New Age stuff like that. I'm not talking about that, all right? I'm just simply saying mindfulness is merely a practice of reminding ourselves what's true in the moment. That's what Paul's saying in this passage: talk about what's true.

We can calm our anxious bodies by first beginning to acknowledge how we feel, what we see, what we smell, what we're thinking, and then we can look to the truth of God and his faithfulness in the past in our lives. We can look to the truth of God that will help us in our future because he's promised to be with us in the future.

You guys, when anxiety rushes in, invite God to the party. When anxiety begins to rage, welcome God into that party because the moment that you admit you're hurt, God can begin the healing process. We just have to first be willing to take down the walls that we're hiding behind.

You see, the brain—it's a really neat part of our bodies. The brain has an incredible ability to make these connections. When you were born, there were connections that were taking place all over in your mind. They're called neural pathways. These neural pathways are connecting back and forth, and in the first couple of years of your life, they're connecting at a rate of 1 million connections per second.

So, these pathways and things are being developed in your mind at such an early age. But what happens as you get older? These connections begin to shift because your brain begins to get more efficient. Your brain begins to think in patterns.

In other words, you'll begin to think a thought, and it's easier to think that thought again, and then it's easier to think that thought again. It becomes like this mental rut because it's already made the connection, so it thinks efficiently. So, it goes in and makes the next connection and the next connection.

And so, that neural pathway continues to dig deeper and deeper in, and what happens is we find ourselves in these mental ruts, and it makes it really easy to continue to think these thoughts. That's really good news if you're healthy because you continue to think that great thought about how healthy you are. But man, it's a challenge if you're struggling because you're stuck in a rut.

So, what we have to do is we have to identify the lies that we believe, the ruts that we're living in, and remove those lies because the enemy wants to keep you in the rut. The enemy wants to keep you going in that same neural pathway.

We have this incredible ability, the way that God created us, to rewire our brains. If you didn't know that, there's news: you can rewire your brain. You can rewire the neural pathways, the connections that happen in your brain.

And the enemy wants to keep you in that rut, but if we're going to defeat the lies of the enemy, we've got to define what those lies are. Because you can't win the battle in your mind—excuse me—to win the battle in your mind, you have to define it. You can't defeat what you don't define. You can't conquer what you won't confront.

If you want to win the battle in your mind, you have to confront it. You have to identify it, and you have to remove it. Satan's greatest weapon is lies, so if his greatest weapon is lies, our greatest defense, our greatest counter-weapon is truth. Our greatest counter-weapon is God's truth, his word. That's our greatest weapon.

If we're going to liberate ourselves, we have to remove the lie. That's step one. But step two is we have to replace the lies with truth. You remove the lie, and then once you've removed it, then you replace it with truth.

Jesus tells his disciples in John chapter 14, he says, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

The peace that Christ gives is not like the peace of the world. He doesn't give it the way the world gives it. You see, the peace of the world is shallow; it's unsatisfying; it's temporary. But the peace of God, the peace that he gives, it rests deep in the heart. It is completely satisfying; it will abide with us forever.

The world offers peace through outward means, but God offers peace that dwells in the heart. Psychologists will talk about having a peace of mind, right? But with God, you have peace with God. It's not just a peace of mind; it's a piece of life.

Peace with God is different than that. Here's a verse that I want to share with you that can help you kind of disconnect and help you begin to remove that lie. What to do and how you can connect it to that right way, that peace of mind, it's Isaiah chapter 26, verse 3. It says, "You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you."

I love this. It says, "You will be kept in perfect peace." Perfect peace. You will be kept in perfect peace, not just occasional peace when things are going well, not just temporary peace, not just momentary, not just circumstantial. It says, "You will be kept in perfect peace when you look at that."

That Hebrew language, perfect peace, peace is "shalom." But when you look at it in the original text, it says "shalom, shalom." And when you look and you understand part of the Hebrew—which I'm glad that there are commentators that know about stuff because I sure don't—but when they look at it and there's the same word repeated back to back, it means there is an incredible emphasis being put.

So, when Isaiah writes "shalom, shalom," perfect peace, as we translate it, "shalom, shalom," it means peace exponential. You will be kept in peace exponential if you fix your thoughts on Jesus.

The answer to anxiety, while it's easier said than done, is to replace the lies with truth. Remove the lie, replace it with truth because the things that we think shape what we become. They shape how we act; they shape how we live.

And one of the best ways to do that is through praise. It's through praise. Christ-centered music reminds us of the truths of God that are found in his word, and it not only helps us to celebrate who he is, but it helps us to fight the doubt. It helps us to fight the unbelief in our lives.

There are songs that are so rich and full of truth, and it anchors us in the assurances of Christ. There are songs that are full of the love and the mercy of God, and so we praise to combat our anxiety.

Romans 8:6 says, "So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death, but letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace."

This isn't something that you do once; this is something that you're going to do over and over again in your life. Some days you're going to do it a dozen times or more a day. I'm not saying that I'm perfect at this; I hope you understand that because there are days when I have to combat and fight the lies that the enemy wants to tell me.

And I suspect that there are days when you battle the lies that the enemy wants to tell you. But these battles between our lies and God's truth are worth fighting. They're worth fighting because if you can change your thinking, you can change your life.

If you can change your thinking, you can change your life. Replace the lies of the enemy with God's truth. If you're struggling today, can I encourage you? Don't walk out of this place without telling somebody, without talking to somebody. Isolation is a lonely place to be, and you're not going to get help in isolation.

Open up; talk with somebody. And maybe you're sitting here today, and you're new, and you don't know anybody. There's a great website called the anthemofhope.org, where you can talk; you can chat with people who are there to listen to you. They're there to help you, guide you.

The blessing of the body of Christ is the relationships and the help and the support that we get. You don't have to do it alone. You don't have to be afraid to get help. Replace the lies with truth. Get yourself out of that rut.

Jesus came to be a stepping stone for us. No matter how deep that rut is that you're living in, you can take a step and another step and another step. And maybe you got 20 steps to take to get out of that rut. Jesus is with you every step of the way.

Replace the lie with God's truth. It's a battle of your thought life. What are you thinking?

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we thank you that you came into this world, sacrificed your life on our behalf. We thank you that we can turn to you, that we can look to you in our moments of anxiety, whether it's momentary or whether it's a chronic anxiety that we're dealing with. God, we can look to you.

We ask today that you'd help us to replace the lies that the enemy is feeding us, and God, that we will replace them with your truth. God, that we would use scripture, your word, the truth that it is to remove the lies. Now, that we would have confidence that you are walking alongside us.

God, I ask you would help us to get out of the ruts, no matter what rut it is, what pathway is connected. We ask you to help us to step out of those ruts. We thank you, Jesus, that you are a stepping stone for us, that there is hope for us because of the work that you did on the cross, the love that you showed that day as you sacrificed your life. You paid the penalty for our lives.

If you're here today, as we keep praying, you've never begun a relationship with Jesus, or maybe you've wandered away, and you need to be set right. You need to get back on track with Jesus. In a moment, I'm going to ask you to simply slip up your hand on the count of three. Just say, "Yeah, I need that stepping stone to get out of the rut that I'm living in."