Overcoming Worry: Finding Peace in God's Promises

Down and you would see him go from the screen. You're like, "Oh, that's it." No, there he is.

How many of you ever felt like you just went down and like, "Oh, that's it. I'm down for the last time. There's no getting by."

I just... and then, "Okay, oh well, here I am, above my head, above water again."

The word "anxiety" is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

So, anxiety deals with things that are outside of us that we cannot control. It deals with things in the future that we try to control or we try to put our hands on, but we cannot.

And so then we stress about it and we worry about it.

Listen, if you're like me, then normally what you do is you think of every worst outcome that is going to happen. And listen, I don't know about you, but in just about every scenario, none of those things really ever happened, do they?

Our minds... how many sleepless nights have you had over things that you have worried about, thinking, "Is this going to come to pass?" And it just doesn't.

But the devil keeps you so bound up that you can't see clearly anything else but just that thing.

Anxiety affects more than 40 million adults in the United States. That's 36.9 percent who are prescribed treatments.

Anxiety and depression are linked. Half that are diagnosed with depression are diagnosed with anxiety.

Women, ladies, are twice as likely to be affected. 25.1 percent of teenagers fight anxiety.

Anxiety is always worrying about the future, while depression is always tied to the past.

I'm going to deal a lot with depression today. We're going to talk about anxiety and worrying.

Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength.

Philippians chapter 4, verse 6 in the Amplified says, "Do not be anxious or worried about what?"

What was that word? But some stuff, right? No, like you said, I'm pretty sure this says, "Do not be anxious or worried about a few things."

No, about anything! But in what? In what?

Everything! Every circumstance and situation by prayer and petition with what?

With what? There we go! This can be interactive. You guys gotta get going with it.

Okay, continue to make your specific requests known to God.

Do not be worried or anxious about anything. Not a thing! Not one thing! But in everything.

Okay, so here's the worry, here's the anxious, here's the stress, here's the thing that's coming up against me.

So when I look at that thing, now what do I got to do? I got to be thankful.

And with Thanksgiving in everything, I got to start to pray.

And I need to pray specific. See, a lot of times we can't pray specific because all we're doing is concentrating on that, and that's all we can see.

And we're thinking of an outcome that really has never even taken place.

So we get bound up with it, and we look at that, and that's all we do.

And we think, "This is going to happen, that's gonna happen, this is going to take place, that's going to take place."

And we're kind of like Mario, just almost down.

"Oh, okay, up, up, almost down."

Traveling down the road of worry never gets us to our desired destination, which is peace.

Does worry ever, or anxiousness, or stress, does that ever...?

I don't know about you, but when we talk about sleepless nights, that doesn't sound like peaceful nights to me.

And I bet you've had a whole lot more stressful nights and sleepless nights than you've had peaceful nights when facing certain things.

When we worry about anything, we should pray about it.

And here's the key to it: we've got to give Thanksgiving.

Why? How? Thanksgiving brings joy, gives hope, allows us to stand on something solid, right?

Because when we talk about anxiety, it's something that you cannot... there's an outcome to it that we can't see.

"I don't know how this is gonna... I just don't... I don't know, God. I don't know how this is going to take place."

Well, guess what? God is our solid rock in which we stand.

It has an ending in sight. When we give Thanksgiving, it has an ending in sight.

That's what Thanksgiving does.

1 Peter chapter 5, verse 7 in the Amplified: "Casting..."

How many of your cares?

All! Casting all your cares.

What else?

All your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns.

How many?

All! That's... I mean, that's... what?

It's weird! He's using the word everything and all.

Does that leave any gap at all in there? Is there any even this much room for anything?

If he's saying, "Listen, everything and all," he's in company.

He said, "Listen, this is it. This is it. All your anxieties, all your worries, and all your concerns once for all on Him."

Why? Because He cares about you with deepest affection and watches over you very carefully.

So it's not like you're going through something and God goes, "I can't handle that. You're on your own. Good luck, dummy."

God's like, "Go over here and shoot pool over here for a while or something."

You know? No, that's not how this works.

God's watching. He sees it. He's already given us the answer.

He says, "Hey, just do these things. Just pray about it specifically. Just give Thanksgiving that I've already dealt with all of it."

Matthew chapter 6, it's in the Amplified, verse 27: "And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure, cubit to his stature or to the span of his life?"

And why should you be anxious about clothes?

Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow.

They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence, excellence, dignity, and grace was not arrayed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you?

Oh, you of little faith!

Therefore, do not worry and be anxious, saying, "What are we going to have to eat?" or "What are we going to have to drink?" or "What are we going to have to wear?"

For the Gentiles, heathens, wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows well that you need them all.

But seek, aim at, and strive after first of all His kingdom and His righteousness, His way of doing and being right.

And then all these things taken together will be given you besides.

So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own.

Sufficient for each day is its own trouble.

How much time can you add by worrying? None!

So anxiety always takes. Worry and stress always take.

Mary Hemingway said, and had a very famous saying, "Worry a little bit every day, and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years."

If something is wrong, fix it if you can, but train yourself not to worry.

Worry never fixes anything.

Solomon, call him the Elon Musk of his day, had more money than any human ever.

Like, just listen, you don't believe me? Go read about Solomon. Tell me that he did not have a little bit of money.

Okay? And Jesus said it didn't hold a candle to what God had dressed the grass.

Can I ask you a question? Do you feel like you are more important than grass?

I do! I feel like I'm a little bit more important than grass.

Yet God clothes it, right? God takes care of it.

So why do you think that God's just given up on you and left you high and dry in the middle of your worst time?

And listen, listen, I know. I'm right there. I understand. I get the feeling.

I know I used to worry. I would... listen, I understand. I used to worry about worrying.

That's all I could do. I just constantly worried about just... "Oh, more! I'm worrying so much! Let me worry about that now!"

And I would just find myself over and over and over just constantly in this anxiety and not knowing the outcome of something.

And I just didn't know how.

And man, the devil would just... he would just torment me so bad.

The very worst! Like, just like death was coming. You know? It was the worst possible thing ever.

"Here it comes! Oh, this is for sure gonna happen!"

And guess what? None of it ever happened.

But it kept me so tore up, and I would be sick, and I'd find myself in the hospital.

Come on, just me? It's probably just for me preaching to myself.

Verse 31: You use the word "distracted."

When we allow anxiety and worry to be part of our everyday lives, we become distracted.

We're not at our best. We cannot give fully to what is in front of us.

We can't be the best spouse we need to be.

We can't be the best father or mother that we need to be or called to be.

We can't be the best worker or boss that God wants us to be because all we can see is the problem.

So anxiety just takes, and it not only takes from us, but now it's taking from our spouses, it's taking from our children, it's taking from our job, it's taking from every aspect.

And that's all it does. It just keeps taking. It just keeps taking.

We feel empty. We feel alone.

How many of you in worry do you feel alone? Like you're the only one?

Like, "That's it! I'm the only one! I'm going through it! Nobody else is going through this! I'm the only one going through this!"

I would say over this entire place, there are people right now, you're stressed and worried, and you have anxiety.

You may be on medication for it, and I'm not... I'm not, listen, not down to any of you that are on medication.

That's not what this is about. This is about giving you hope.

This is about giving you a way.

We was on vacation, man, I got hit with something with our business. It just boom! Just hit.

You know what I did? I went out. Everybody was asleep. This was like super early.

I think it was like 5:30, 6 o'clock in the morning.

I went out, shut the door, went out to my vehicle.

I just started... and listen, I don't know about you, but worry comes on like a blanket.

It just floods you, like just overwhelms you.

I went out to the truck. I got out there, and I just started declaring God's word.

Why? Because it's the infallible truth. It is the rock-solid truth.

And so I just started to declare it. If you don't know it, you can find it. Go ask the Google, it'll tell you.

And I just started to declare God's word, and then I just started to declare His promises.

And then I reminded God of all the times of the things that He had done for Moses.

Why is Moses any better than me? He's not, right?

I mean, let's just call it like it is.

I started to declare the things, and I reminded God of what He did for David.

Is David any better than me? I don't see that in the word.

So I just reminded God. I said, "God, You did it for this one, and You did it for that one. You was the fourth man in the fireball. That was about perfect, right? Fourth Man in the Fire, huh?"

If He did it for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, would He not do it for me?

Yes, absolutely!

And guess what happened? All that worry and the stress and all that stuff that had come on me so quickly and just almost consumed me, I just felt peace immediately.

It just came. I was just like, "It's all good. It's fine."

And I haven't thought about it since.

Proverbs chapter 12, verse 25 in the New King James Version says, "Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad."

Anxiety always equals depression.

A good word... what good word do we have?

How about the Bible? That's a good word!

I'm not talking about like, "Hey man, you look... hey Pastor Ron, you look... you're dressed very... not... not, 'Hey, I like your hair this morning.'"

Not, you know, or like out there for me, but anyway, okay?

So not that kind of good word, but the real good word.

The word that stands. The word that has stood the test of time, right?

Because it's immovable, it's unshakable.

People have tried to destroy it, it's still here.

That good word!

But a good word makes it glad.

Anxiety... depression... okay.

1 Samuel... let me go. I'm good.

Listen, we're probably not going to read all this because this is... but if you don't know the story of David, you should know the story of David.

I'm going to read some of it. Most of you know David and Goliath.

You ever heard that story?

Listen, there's some of these words that... no, listen, if you... as a Bible scholar, you could read it.

So I'm going to interpret it, Jason, okay?

The Philistines gathered their armies for battle, and they were gathered at Pitcher, Oklahoma, which belongs to the Gorillas, and encamped between Pitcher and Commerce in North Miami.