"Then you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free."
As a pastor, I counsel a lot. And a current theme is worry and anxiety. Here's what I've been telling people lately ... and it deals directly with knowing the truth and being set free.
When we say we're feeling anxious, what do we mean? Symptomatically, people sweat, their chest gets tight, their heart hammers, etc. And I remind people that those are good things. It's adrenaline kicking in. And adrenaline is good. If a bear jumps out at you in the forest, "fight or flight" is a healthy natural reaction!
What's happening, though, is that our "feeling brain" -- or "worry brain" -- is trumping our "thinking brain." (Different areas of the brain legitimately control different aspects of life and personality -- thoughts, feelings, senses, etc.)
Have you ever been with a pregnant woman, and all of a sudden she squirms uncomfortably, running out of the room, saying something about the baby standing on her bladder? It's sudden. It's urgent. It's real.
Well, worry is the baby (the feeling part of the brain, the temporal lobe) standing suddenly on the bladder (the brain stem, the part which controls heart rate, breathing, and temperature) and suddenly we feel like we must run to the bathroom (fight or flight).
Alright, that's an analogy that probably doesn't work exactly like that physiologically, but you get the point, right?! The feeling of anxiety comes when our feeling and worry brains are overactive.
And the antidote is going back to our thinking brain (the frontal lobe). The antidote, indeed, is truth!
Jesus says, "know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
I heard writer Beth Moore speak once about "The Shield of Faith." Think about these truths and how they might set even a worrying person free:
1. God is who he says he is -- God is powerful. He is loving. He is forgiving. Thus even your mistakes can't drive a wedge between you and him.
2. God can do what he says he can do -- God can provide protection from whatever you're worrying about, he can provide clarity when all you see is he can see is confusion, he provides hope when all you see is despair, light in the midst of darkness, and most of all peace in the face of life's battles.
3.
You are who God says you are -- You are God's child. He loves you. He forgives you. He will protect you. He is the Good Shepherd. You are his.
4. You can do what God says you can do (which is all things through Christ who strengthens you) -- You can battle the trials boldly for you are more than a conqueror through him who loves you.
5.
God's Word is Alive and Active in Me -- If you tend to worry, those steps above provide a college level education. Indeed, keep diving deeper and deeper into the truth (of God's love and provision) and you will be set free. And how we keep mining the depths of God's love and discovering more and more of God's peace is through making all of God's truths -- found in his Word -- more and more real.
In Christ's Love,
a guy who knows that these truths
help most worries and worriers
(at least to get them to a manageable level) ...
but if you know these things, "work" these truths,
and keep getting swallowed by anxiety,
come and talk to me and we can embark
on graduate level studies in God's peace
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