FREED | Anxiety

You can remain standing for the reading of God's word. Go ahead and bring it back. I'm gonna read our teaching text from this evening. It comes from Matthew chapter six and Philippians chapter four. But right before I read the teaching text, keep you on your toes for that one. Hey, tonight we have a real treat. We get to hear from the one, the only Reagan Griffith tonight. Yeah, there it is. There it is, the appropriate response. Hey, anytime someone brings the word, what I'm always asking is, is character and integrity of heart? And with Reagan, it's of the highest. And so just to, those of you who know Reagan, you just know like the more you get to know her, the more you see her love for King Jesus. And so just her heart, it comes out in this word, it comes out in everything she does, whether it's a preaching or if she's talking to a student, like whatever it is, it is all of Jesus flowing out of her. And so we get to hear from her tonight. I'm gonna read the teaching text. You guys were gonna cheer anyway, but I'm gonna give you a chance to do that when she comes up. So we're gonna honor her and make some noise.

Okay, so the teaching text tonight is from Matthew chapter six, verses 25 through 34, Philippians four, six through seven. Matthew six reads this. Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? So do not worry saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. Philippians 4, six and seven, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord. You guys can take a seat. Give it up for Reggae. Yeah. Hello, it is such an honor to get to stand here this evening and teach the word. I just two days ago got to celebrate eight years in New York City. And those eight years have been so profoundly marked by this church community. I've been here in the church for eight years and I have been so marked by the people of this community, by the prayer culture of this community and by the teaching of this community. So I'm humbled, I'm honored to get to be here tonight and excited to dig into the word of God. We are in a series called Freed, where we are joyfully looking at the reality that we are not just saved by Jesus, though that is beautiful. We are also freed into the good life that he has designed us for. And tonight we're gonna talk about

how we are freed from anxiety. In this topic, it is deeply near to my heart because this has been one of the most profound and beautiful ways I've seen God show up in my life. Some of my earliest memories of life are memories of being anxious. From a very young age, I wore this as an identity statement. I would say I'm just an anxious person, it's who I am. I remember as a young kid getting trapped in anxious thought spirals. I remember having panic attacks and looking around and wondering why everyone else around me was calm. By the time I got to middle school, I was officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. And this diagnosis helped me make sense of the years of anxiety. However, this diagnosis paired with a growing narrative in the culture around me that anxiety was just normal, that it was something to be accepted and so many people were getting diagnosed with anxiety disorders. This combination made me just think that this was something I would always experience, something I should just expect. It's part of who I am. There would never really be any freedom from it. I remember believing that God could meet me in my anxiety. He could comfort me in it. He could be near to me. But I had very little faith in.

he could ever free me from anxiety. Which is why I will never forget the first time that I read Philippians 4, verses six and seven, which you just heard in the teaching text. It says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And then the peace of God, which transcends understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. I remember reading this, reading, do not be anxious about anything, and thinking, yeah, right, no shot. I thought to myself, this certainly could not have been written with people with anxiety disorders in mind. Like, maybe this is possible for some people, but this will never be my reality. And I just think God probably knows that and kind of gives me a free pass here. And I remember reading about peace that transcends understanding and thinking, that sounds really nice, but I just don't think that's my lot in life. I don't think that will ever be my reality. And what I've come to learn over the years is that while many of you may not have an anxiety disorder, I think that there's actually so many things that we can hold up to this passage and say, here's the reason why this could never be my reality. Here is the reason why I am exempt from this command.

Here's what I'm going through, and why not being anxious about anything, it's an impossibility for me. While I used my anxiety disorder as my reason for exemption from this command, I think we can use many things to exempt ourselves, to say, no chance I could ever not be anxious about anything. Maybe for you, you've excluded yourself from this command because you live in New York City. And if you could move to the suburbs, if you could have your own car and an acre of grass, then maybe you would have a shot at a peaceful life. But surely, God did not write, do not be anxious about anything with New Yorkers in mind. That's not our reality, could it be? Maybe you are desperate to find a new apartment, or your finances are particularly tight, or you just lost your job, or your kids are in a particularly tough phase, or you desperately wish you had kids, or your marriage is in a tough phase, or you desperately wish you had a marriage, or your roommates are particularly tough. There are so many circumstances we can hold up to this passage and say, no, look, I don't have a chance at living a non-anxious life. Look at what I'm going through. Surely, God understands why I'm anxious.

But what if, by exempting ourselves from the command to not be anxious about anything, we are forfeiting the promised peace? What if a peaceful life was actually meant to be a part of your inheritance as a Christian, and we are allowing our permissed anxiety to be the thing that robs us of this? Because I think the thing is, is I think that we have just normalized anxiety as a culture, and I don't think the church sees this much differently. We've started to think it's just an expected part of our lives. Honestly, people that aren't anxious are kind of treated as weird. They just don't care about things enough. So I think we've begun to normalize this, and then we read this passage, don't really take it that seriously, and in that, we forfeit the promise of peace. So as we get into this, I wanna diagnose this problem. I wanna talk about how big of a problem this is, but first, I wanna ask, what is anxiety? Let's define this term, because we may all have different things that come to our minds. The American Psychological Association says that anxiety is an emotion characterized by apprehension and somatic symptoms of tension in which an individual anticipates impending danger,

catastrophe, or misfortune. Anxiety may be distinguished from fear both conceptually and physiologically, although the two terms are often used interchangeably. Anxiety is considered a future-oriented, long-acting response broadly focused on a diffuse threat, whereas fear is an appropriate, present-oriented, and short-lived response to a clearly identifiable threat. So anxiety is this experience of worrying about an impending threat, something that could happen. It's the thought spiral of wondering, what if AI takes over my industry in the next five years? It's the preoccupation of what if this behavior in my kid turns into this in the future? It's replaying a conversation in your mind over and over, thinking, what if they thought this when I said this and now they're thinking this? How am I being perceived? It's not an immediate threat, like smoke filling your apartment from the hallway. It's fearing, it's worrying, it's sitting in a. anxiety about something that could possibly happen. And I wanna make a quick side note about who I believe these passages are for. Who are we speaking to today? I today will mostly be talking about general anxiety that I wanna argue actually all people experience to some degree. But I do wanna recognize that there are people in the room

who experience anxiety disorders like myself. And for you, this experience of anxiety that I just defined, it might feel very far out of your control and very overwhelming. Due to a broken nervous system, it may feel like a very intense, common, and overwhelming experience. And if that's your experience, I just wanna say I see you. I feel the pain of that deeply and I believe that God sees you. But I also wanna say that I believe there is freedom for you. I think it's very easy when you have a diagnosed disorder to sort of check out of a sermon like this. To say, I just don't think they understand the intensity of my experience, this can't be for me. I share it, that's what I initially did when I read this passage. But I really believe that God has freedom for you tonight. So I encourage you to lean in. But I also wanna talk to the person in the room that maybe you know people with anxiety disorders, you see the intensity of anxiety around you, and you think, I'm not really an anxious person, this isn't really my struggle. And I just wanna invite you to lean in as well. Because I actually think that apart from the freedom of the Holy Spirit, this is just a part of the human experience. And it may look different for you than it does for someone that experiences panic.

Maybe for you, it's just preoccupation, you find yourself just over and over thinking through scenarios. Or maybe for you, it's the thing that you complain about the most, or you feel the most angry or frustrated towards, that behind that is actually worry. So it's okay if you're like, I don't know if I experience it the way another person does, I just invite you still to lean in, to ask the Lord what freedom is available to me tonight. What peace do you wanna bring into my life? Because the reality is, and we'll see this in the statistics in a moment, for most Americans, we find ourselves in this state of anxiety far more regularly than we would like to admit. Whitney Colson of Psychology Today explains the way that this experience of anxiety, it's become a crisis in our society. She says, every morning brings a new headline, a fresh worry and a creeping sense that the world is shifting beneath our feet. From rising costs and social tensions to 24-7 news cycles that never rest, Americans are feeling it at our cores. Anxiety has become a part of our daily lives. More than half of adults report clinical levels of anxiety. One in five adults is living with a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Across the country, millions struggle

with restless nights, racing thoughts, and a deep feeling of unease. It's as if the air itself is charged with uncertainty, leaving the American people more anxious than ever. She goes on to share these statistics. 73% of American adults report experiencing elevated levels of anxiety related to the US political climate. 67% report feeling anxious about global events, including concerns about the economy, safety, and climate change. 70% report experiencing high levels of financial anxieties. Somewhere between 67 and 73% just on these three issues are saying, yes, we are anxious. We are living in a crisis of anxiety. This generation is called the anxious generation because it is showing higher levels of anxiety than any previous generation. And unfortunately, I think we're just used to this. I think we're familiar with anxiety. I think we're really not all that bothered by it. It's the water we swim in, and we've become too accepting of it, and I think the church, unfortunately, doesn't always live that differently. And unfortunately, the more that we go on having these unchecked anxious thoughts, the harder and harder it gets to live free. Studies have shown that anxious thoughts actually have the power to change your brain

through something called neural pathways. Neural pathways are the response of your brain to create pathways that make it easier for you to have the same response to a situation in a future event, which means that as you respond to a situation with worry and anxiety, the next time you experience that same thing, your default response will become worry and will become anxiety. So as we go on having unchecked anxious and worried thoughts, this actually hardwires a worried response into our brain. The. Default response of our own brains becomes worry, and this is leaving us exhausted. This is leaving us physically sick, and it's trapping us into a cycle that we cannot get out of, and it's robbing us of a peaceful life. We are being consumed by anxious thoughts, and it's trapping us in a way that we cannot get out. And unfortunately, this issue of anxiety, it's not simply a physical issue, it's a spiritual one. Anxiety is not only robbing you of peace in your life, but it is also wreaking havoc on your faith and on your walk with God. Unfortunately, as Christians, I think we sometimes brush this issue under the rug. It's really not that big of a deal. It's just normal to worry, but I actually think it's deeply harming our walk with God.

Jesus warns us about this in Matthew 6. What Jesus reveals to us in this passage is that anxiety and lies, they go hand in hand, and they're pretty inseparable. We talked a couple weeks ago about freedom from lies, and I wanna argue that if we don't get freedom from anxiety, we're not going to be able to live free from lies. Your anxious thoughts, they tend to contain in them lies about God, your identity, and your purpose. At times, a lie you are believing, it will cause you to feel anxious, and then that anxiety will fuel that lie. Other times, you may start by feeling anxious, but that anxiety's gonna speak a lie to you, and that lie will just fuel your anxiety. It creates this cycle that's very hard to get out of, and as we know from what we understand about neural pathways, this is extremely dangerous, because not only then does worry become the default response of your own brain, but lies about God, your identity, and your purpose become your default response, and this makes it harder and harder to live free, to live in the truth. Matthew 6 asks a series of questions that illuminate to us these three core lies that anxiety is speaking to us. Let's walk through it. It says, therefore, I tell you, do not worry. This word for worry, it's the same word in Philippians 4. Do not be anxious.

Do not worry or be anxious about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field, they grow. They do not labor or spin. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? There are three questions in this passage I wanna highlight. We're gonna work backwards. The first is in verse 30. It says, if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, tomorrow is thrown in the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith? This question illuminates to us the first lie that anxiety speaks to us, which is about the nature of God. Anxiety and worry causes you to believe that God either has no power over your situation or he simply does not care to act. Meditating on anxious thoughts begins to undermine the reality of who God is. When you meditate on anxiety about your finances, you are undermining the reality that God is a good provider.

When you meditate on anxiety on what's gonna happen in the next five years in my life, where will I be in my career? You are undermining the reality that God is a good shepherd who's able to guide you in your life. Assurance of the truth of who God is is without a doubt the most effective weapon against anxiety. Tim Keller says it this way. He actually defines peace. He says, peace is confidence and trust in God's wise and good control of your life. He's saying that's what peace is. It's trusting who God is. Jesus says, oh you of little faith. He's identifying the direct link between anxiety and little faith in who God is. So first, anxiety lies to us about the nature of God. Secondly, it also lies to us about who we are. It lies to us about our identity. Jesus asks, are you not much more valuable than they? He's highlighting that part of the problem of anxiety is that we start to believe that God does not see us or care about us. So often in moments of worry, the subtle question comes to our mind. Does God even see me? Does he care about me? Will he show up for me? And the enemy wants to form a belief in your heart through anxiety that if you don't jump

to fix this problem on your own, no one's gonna care. No one's gonna show up, no one's gonna help you. And as we meditate on thoughts of anxiety, this belief that undermines our identity in Christ, undermines our value to God, it gets more and more sown into our hearts, into our minds. Lastly, anxiety lies to you about your purpose. The third question Jesus asks, he asked, isn't life more than food and the body more than clothes? Jesus is trying to pull us out of the trap of worry that says that our lives hang in the balance over these small and momentary concerns. In our belief that our lives don't matter to God, we end up feeling like we have to grasp and control for the solution to our every problem. And then our lives begin to get trapped in these small and momentary concerns. But God cares about the small needs of our lives. He wants us to entrust those to him so that we can be freed up to care about kingdom things. Before and after the command not to worry, Jesus tells us to seek first the kingdom of God. This is deeply tied to anxiety, that when we worry, we start to get trapped in these small and momentary troubles and we miss out on the kingdom purpose that we were created for. The enemy wants to pull you down into obsession over small and momentary things

and get your eyes off of the kingdom. When you fixate on things like food or clothing or filling the blanket, whatever it is you worry about, even the things that maybe don't feel that small to you, when you fixate on them, we become consumed by those things. And I find that whatever it is we're worrying about, we're likely giving it most of our attention. It starts to consume us. I find that most of us don't sit around worrying about the kingdom of God coming to earth, about God's righteousness being known on the earth. We aren't preoccupied with thoughts of, how could I bring the gospel to my coworkers or love my neighbors better? How could I care for the poor in my neighborhood? Instead, the enemy traps us in concerns about finances, relationships, job security, what we will wear, how we are being perceived. And these worries, they begin to hardwire our brain to believe that these things, they're the most important things. And Jesus is saying, look up. Isn't life more? Unfortunately, as we fall prey to lies about our purpose, we get robbed of kingdom purpose. You have been invited to participate in a grand kingdom eternal story, and your worries, they're trapping you in a much smaller story. So these three lies about God, about our identity,

and about our purpose, as they get wired into our neural pathways through daily meditation on anxious thoughts, they are robbing us of the lives we were created for. They're robbing us of intimately knowing the reality of who God is, of living in our identity as children of God, and of leveraging our lives for kingdom purpose. And we're stuck. We are stuck in a cycle that is consistently lying to us, but is just accepted as totally normal by the culture around us. So how do we get out of this? How do we get out of living anxious lives and truly live out God's command to not be anxious about anything? Is this even possible? As I shared at the beginning of my story, this can feel like an impossible feat. I remember reading those words and thinking, no shot. There's no world in which I could live that way. But thankfully, God did not allow me to sit in that lie forever. I can so vividly remember reading this passage, thinking, no chance, but then continuing to wrestle with it and hearing the kind but convicting voice of the Holy Spirit saying, Reagan, I'm not gonna ask you to do something that I'm not going to empower you to do. I vividly remember this moment as a young person

because it didn't feel shaming. I didn't feel ashamed of my anxiety disorder. It felt like hope. For the first time, I remember thinking, maybe it doesn't always have to be this way. Maybe there is a chance that I could live free. C.S. Lewis says, the command to be ye perfect. It's not idealistic gas, nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. In the same way, the command to not be anxious. It's not idealistic. It's not God setting us up for failure. It's a command that he fully intends to make us into creatures that are able to obey, that are able to be faithful to this. And in that, I believe that our inheritance as believers is a life guarded by peace, is a life free from anxiety. How? How is this going to happen? Well, I believe that God gives us two clear tools in the scriptures. He doesn't just command us not to be anxious and leave us to figure it out. He gives us two clear tools. One in Matthew 6 and the other in Philippians 4. So let's start by staying in Matthew 6. The first tool to freedom from anxiety found in Matthew 6 is to meditate on the truth. If you want to be free from anxiety, you have to recognize and stop the cycle of lies that your anxiety has spoken to you. Thankfully, Jesus in Matthew 6, he doesn't stop with just identifying the lies we're believing, but he actually reminds us of the very truths that rescue us from that anxiety. Here's the thing. You can be free from anxiety because those three lies we talked about earlier are lies.

If it were true that God was not powerful or that he did not value you or that there was no purpose beyond this life, then honestly, you should be anxious. The most reasonable response to the state of the world if those things were not true would be anxiety. I should tell you to leave this room and just go be anxious. It's probably the only hope you have. But Matthew 6 makes it clear. If we do have a sovereign and good God who intimately loves us and cares for us and has created us for a future beyond this present life, then we do not need to be anxious. And I really believe that if we walked around fully believing this, then our anxieties would grow dim. And I think it's a pretty fair guess to say that if you're consistently anxious, there are probably lies about God, your identity, and your purpose that you've begun to believe. Even for those of us with anxiety disorders where the anxiety feels so out of our control, I still believe that anxiety is speaking lies to us. I will say when I'm having a panic attack, I am so susceptible to lies about God, my identity, and my purpose. I catch it more quickly now, but it shocks me, the lies I will believe in moments of panic. We have to recognize this, begin to take those thoughts captive. But thankfully, God did not design our brains to just form one neural pathway and get stuck there forever. He designed our brains with something called neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to form new neural pathways, to change. So what this means is that as we meditate on the truth and stop the cycles of lies we're believing, we can actually form new neural pathways that cause us to most quickly go to the truth and then to peace rather than to the lies and then to anxiety. We have the ability through meditation on what's true to rewire our brains. So what are these truths? What are these three truths that rescue us from anxiety? They're pretty self-explanatory.

They're the opposites of the lies, but I think they're worth repeating. The first truth, and I just invite you to receive these into your spirit, is that God is all-powerful. If you feel like behind your anxiety is the lie that God just has no power over your situation, I invite you to memorize Colossians 1, 16 to 17. It says, for by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. We have 24-7 access to the God who holds all things together. The God from whom every authority and power, the thing you're anxious about, it's all under his feet. He has power over all of it. How would it change things if you read the news with this in mind? Secondly, You are intimately loved and cared for by that God. And it's important that we first understand God's all-powerful, to fully understand the weight of this. You are intimately loved and cared for not by some weak God who can't really do anything for you, by the all-powerful God. That God says, are you not much more valuable than they? That God looks at you and says, you are valuable to me. I know what you need and I care to provide for you. Matthew 6 tells us that we can have freedom from anxiety when we truly understand this and live in it. How would it change things if you went into every job interview with this in mind? And lastly, your life has kingdom purpose. Isn't life more?

It is. It is more. So often, the things we are anxious about were just simply never meant to be our primary concerns. Again, right before Jesus tells us to not be anxious, he tells us to store up treasures in heaven rather than on earth. They're eternal treasures that you were meant to give your life to storing up. You are invited into participation with the God of the universe in his work of redeeming, restoring, healing, and the thing that threatens your ability to participate in what you were designed for, it's your small and momentary concerns. It's the worry that fills your mind. But we were meant to release those concerns to the all-powerful God who cares for us so that we could be freed up to live in a bigger story. I want you to see that you were invited into a greater story than what your anxiety is trapping you in, than what your anxiety is speaking to you. How would it change things if you woke up each day and thought about that day's events, thought about the work meetings you had, the things you had to do with this in mind? I really believe if we can truly grasp and live in these three realities, anxiety will begin to grow dim. Dallas Willard says it this way.

Soberly, when our trust is in things that are absolutely beyond any risk or threat, and we have learned from good sources, including our own experience, that those things are there, anxiety is just groundless and pointless. It occurs only as a hangover of bad habits established when we were trusting in things like human approval and wealth that were certain to let us down. Now, our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving. Have you learned from good sources and from your own experience that God is fully trustworthy? Have you learned this to the extent that your worries and anxieties have just become groundless, become pointless? Or have you fallen prey to lies about God that are leaving you trusting yourself and the world? And I would invite you to actually let your anxieties answer this question for you, because I think it's really easy for us to say, yeah, I trust God, but then our habits of anxiety often beg to say something different. We could say that with our lips, but then our habits of anxiously or obsessively checking our bank accounts or budgeting apps, the stock market, StreetEasy, our fitness apps, or rereading old text conversations,

analyzing what was said, these habits, they beg to say something different. Do your anxious thoughts reveal any lies that you are believing about God? If they do, I invite you to meditate on the opposing truth and give your mind a chance to rewire itself. This takes me to the second key to freedom from anxiety, which is prayer with thanksgiving. Here's the thing. We worry a lot. Meditation on worry has become a part of our daily lives. So to truly rewire our brains, we have to begin to fixate on the truth more than we fixate on anxiety and the lies that we're believing in our anxiety. We have to meditate on the truth. We have to consistently return to it. Willard says, now our strategy should be one of resolute rejection of worry while we concentrate on the future in hope and with prayer and on the past with thanksgiving. He's referring here to Philippians 4, 6 and 7. He is highlighting that we need to do something more than just recognize the truth once on a Sunday night and go out and it suddenly becomes. The default response, right? We need a strategy for actually living in this truth. And that strategy, he argues, is given to us in Philippians 4, 6. And it's prayer with thanksgiving.

And this strategy may feel frustratingly simple to you, but I just wanna invite you to take God at his word here. When God commands us, do not be anxious about anything, he doesn't stop with just the commands. He gives us a strategy. And I think many of us ignore this strategy and just go on living anxious lives. He says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And then the peace of God, which transcends understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Pray, talk to God. For every time that you feel anxious, bring it to him immediately. And what does this constant prayer tell your mind? It tells it the truth about God. Prayer is active agreement with the truth of who God is. Because we're saying, I'm gonna bring this to you, God, because I believe that you're powerful enough to do something about it, that you care about me, and that my purpose doesn't belong in this situation. Each time we choose to pray, we choose to partner with the reality that God's powerful, that he values us and that he has good purpose for our lives. Prayerless worry is partnership with the self-reliant lie that we need to control all of our own concerns. And prayer in the face of worry is defiance against that lie in partnership with the reality of who God is.

And I will tell you that this habit will pull you out of the spiral, of the preoccupation. This habit will set you free. It will silence the voice of worry. Not only because it takes you into the presence of God, who we see in scripture is peace, in his presence is peace, but also because it brings your concern to a God that could actually do something about it. How many of us have spent hours in anxious thought spirals only to get to the other side and be like, well, I've got nothing. I've got no solution to my problem. And in prayer, we bring our worries, our concerns, to a God who's all powerful, who values us, who could actually do something. But I will say that this habit, this response to anxiety of prayer with thanksgiving, it does cause you to release control. It does force you to say, okay, God, I'm gonna give this to you and I'm gonna trust whatever you do with it. I'm gonna trust the answer you give to me. I'm gonna trust that your control over my life is better than my own control over my life. This can be hard. It is an act of faith, but it is partnership with the truth that God's control is better than our own. And I wanna note that for those of us with anxiety disorders, we may have brokenness in our bodies and our nervous systems

that predispose us to anxiousness and panic and make it really hard to live free. But God is a healer. He does restore broken things. And I just want to say, I believe for us, the answer is still the same. Prayer, bring it to God. And I will say, this may really require us to become people of prayer. We may get the closest to understanding what it means to pray without ceasing. We may have to become really dependent, but maybe that is a gift. Maybe that is a gift. And I do believe that as we seek God, as we bring every anxiety to Him, He will begin to bring healing and freedom. And I wanna say that I believe God does use medication and therapy as a part of our healing at times. But I do believe that He first wants us to come to Him, to seek Him, and that He wants to be the one to guide us in to the tools we need for our freedom. I believe that medication can be a good tool to bring health to a broken nervous system. I believe that therapy can be a good tool to help us unwire lies we've believed and even see where they began. But I believe God wants to be the one to lead us there. In 2 Kings 20, King Hezekiah seeks God for healing from an illness.

And God actually leads him to a medicinal answer. He leads him to a medication that helps bring healing. But in contrast, King Asa in 2 Chronicles 16, he gets sick and he only consults physicians. that says that he doesn't consult God, and he ends up dying. And I think what we see in these contrasting stories is that God actually does use medicine, and I believe he does use therapy, but he invites us to consult him, to go to him first, to not just go grabbing and reaching for earthly tools for the freedom from our own anxiety, but to seek him and let him lead us into holistic freedom and healing. All of us, every anxious person, we are invited to pray, to bring it to God. But it doesn't just say to pray, it says to pray with thanksgiving. And this part is deeply important. When we bring our anxieties to God with thanksgiving, we are going to war against the lies of the enemy with the most powerful weapon. We are staring anxiety in the face and saying no matter how hard my circumstance is, I will remember who my God is and what he has done for me. Thanksgiving confronts anxiety with evidence of who God is, of his goodness in your life. It reminds your heart that his faithfulness actually doesn't hang in the balance over his response to this present concern. He is good, he does love me,

he does have purpose for my life. As he's been in the past, I believe he will be today, and this allows us to wait on him, to bring our anxieties to him, to trust his wise and good control in our lives, reminding our spirits of who he is through thanksgiving. This is the tool given to us in scripture for our freedom from anxiety. It's prayer with thanksgiving, and in this we see that this begins to unravel the lies that we've been believing about God. And this tool, to pray with thanksgiving, it comes with a promise. God promises when we do this, that peace, which transcends understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus, will literally go with us like a guard, like a protector. Do you walk around feeling like peace is protecting your heart like a guard? When you receive hard news at work, when you go through a relational hardship, when you start a new job, when you wait for a new apartment, when you tighten your budget, do you find that peace is guarding you? If the answer is no, that can change. This was so far from my experience until the Lord convicted me with this passage. And over time, as I have committed to dismantling the lies I had believed about God, my identity, and my purpose,

and as I have committed to bringing my anxieties to Him in prayer, I have truly experienced something that has transcended my understanding. I really think if the young person that first read this passage and thought, no shot, that could never be my reality, if she saw me today, she would be shocked, absolutely shocked at the peace I live with now. And this happened because I took God at His word, because I began to bring my anxieties to Him, and He began to heal and free me. I had moments in prayer with God where God healed me instantly from a deep-seated anxiety. I've also had things I've had to bring to Him over years consistently, and He has slowly started to unravel lies in my brain and bring me freedom. And I have not been fully healed from panic attacks. It's still something I deal with. However, I will say, as I have followed this command, I've seen God bring deeper healing to my nervous system than I truly ever thought possible. In my life, God specifically revealed to me an idol of time that had become a consistent trigger of my anxiety. A couple of years ago, He highlighted this to me. He showed me that I had this idol of time and timeliness, and it had become this constant trigger of anxiety in my life. And it was rooted in the lie that God wasn't in control over my life,

and also that my identity was in some way found in this. And I had this moment in prayer where I was just crying out to God, asking for freedom from this trigger, from this anxiety. And He healed me. He brought so much freedom into my life in that moment surrounding this issue of time. And I remember, over the next week, there was a day where I was running late to a meeting, and I was skipping to the subway because I was so amazed at the freedom I was living in. I remember sitting with a woman and getting to share the gospel with her, share the love of Jesus with her, and I realized, as in that moment, this conversation's gonna make me late to the next meeting. And I was amazed and so filled with joy because before the Lord took this from me and healed me, I honestly would've just stopped that meeting in its tracks, I would've stopped that conversation. I honestly probably would've never started that conversation because I would've been so aware of the fact that I didn't have time for it. I was getting to participate in the kingdom purpose God had placed me there for, to participate in kingdom things, all because he had freed me from this anxiety around time. Truly, there are days that I hardly recognize myself because of the peace I walk in now.

And the Lord unlocked this in my life through causing me just to take him at his word, to begin to bring every anxiety to him in prayer. And in that, he began to unravel the lies that I had believed that are walked through in Matthew 6. And I believe this is possible for you. I believe that there is a deeper peace available to you tonight. I wanna invite you, if you are in the room and you struggle with an anxiety disorder or you struggle with anxiety to an extent that you're like, I just don't think I could ever live free, I believe there's peace for you tonight. I believe there is freedom for you. I think the Lord wants to awaken hope in your spirit for what's possible. There are people in the room who you just can't sleep at night because you're just meditating on thoughts of concern or worry about something going on in your life. I believe there's freedom for you tonight. I believe God longs to heal you. And the invitation is just come to me, bring it to me, tell it to me. I'm gonna invite Pastor Billy up here to bring us into our response time. But I did just wanna share a quick just thing I sensed in prayer for this room tonight, then he'll also give us some response prompts. Another thing I was deeply freed from,

a trigger for anxiety that the Lord highlighted to me in the last few years is a trigger of self-hatred. And I just had this deep-seated generational lie that if I was not perfect, then my response needed to be one of anxiety. This was deeply seated in the lie about my identity. God has brought deep freedom in my life from this trigger of anxiety that was self-hatred. I just felt led to share that. I didn't share that this morning, but I just think if you're in the room and you feel like you often get triggered into anxiety and worry because you fear your own lack, you feel like you're not enough, you have thoughts of self-hatred or of perfectionism, I just think there might be something the Lord wants to do for you tonight. He might wanna bring you healing and freedom in that area. So I'm just gonna pray for us, and then Pastor Billy is gonna lead us into our response. But I just invite you, don't walk out of here with the worries and anxieties you walked in here with. Holy Spirit, we welcome you. You are the spirit of peace. You are the spirit of truth. We just welcome your presence into the room tonight. We ask for your peace. We ask for your presence in the room. God, I just pray that you would begin to reveal to people the lies they've been believing about you,

about their identity and about their purpose. Would you begin to call to mind the worries, preoccupations, thought spirals people in this room have been living with? Would you guide us into healing and freedom tonight? We trust you, God, amen.