Slide 1
Anxiety is the feeling of being unsettled, afraid, or overwhelmed by what might happen.

Slide 2
Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.”Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” 1 Kings 19:1-4

Slide 3
The Bible does not tell the overwhelmed to fake peace.

Slide 4
Does Elijah love God? Yes!
Does Elijah have great faith? Yes!
Does Elijah still struggle? Also yes.

Slide 5
Maybe some of us can relate to Elijah:
– Exhausted
– Lonely
– Afraid
– Struggling

Slide 6
And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.”And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.”And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. 1 Kings 19:5-8

Slide 7
God cares for Elijah’s physical needs.

Slide 8
In verses 9-14 God asks the same question twice:
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Slide 9
Elijah answers the same way twice:
“I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”

Slide 10
Overthinking is when your mind keeps circling the same fear, the same scenario, the same regret, or the same what-if, but never actually gets you anywhere.

Slide 11
The issue wasn’t whether the alarm was loud. The issue was whether the alarm was true.

Slide 12
Wind
Earthquake
Fire
Then a low whisper

Slide 13
First, the psalmist expresses their feelings, then they address them.

Slide 14
When we are anxious, we often want:
– Instant relief
– Total clarity

Slide 15
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Psalm 42:1-4

Slide 16
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvationand my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Psalm 42:5-6

Slide 17
My feelings are real, but they’re not always true.

Slide 18
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a kind of counseling that helps people notice unhealthy thought patterns, challenge them, and practice better responses.

Slide 19
Don’t trust every anxious thought! Instead, bring those thoughts before God and answer them with truth.

Slide 20
5 Biblical Principles:
1. Care for your body
2. Name the struggle specifically
3. Bring those thoughts to God
4. Redirect with truth
5. Refuse isolation

Slide 21
God meets the overwhelmed, and then He leads the overwhelmed forward.

Alright, if you are

Just showing up for the first time in a while, we’re doing something a little bit different. And that is that

You get

To pick the sermon series. So on

Easter we voted

And the the winning topic, that’s what I preached on last week.

Last week we

Voted, and this morning I’m going to preach on anxiety and overthinking. And if you’re like, man, that’s not what I want to hear you preach on. The good news is you get to vote right now. So if

You’ll pull

Out your phone if you want to, there’s

No obligation, but if you want to

Pull out your phone, easiest thing is to just open up the app. And if you open up the app

You’ll, you’ll

See, just scroll down a tiny bit. You’ll see a bunch of different options. Also you can vote with the

QR

Code in the front in the back in

Front of you. You could also tap that. Here, here are the topics that we have left.

So we’ve got eight more

Topics

That you can choose from. Next Sunday, Gary Thomas is preaching. So choose the hard one. Choose whatever you think. Man, that’s a really

Difficult

One to preach on. And whatever you vote on now, I I, I think it’s been kind of fun ’cause you get

To basically

Wake up on Monday, you’re like,

You’re starved from scratch.

What are we doing this week? It is causing a lot of anxiety in Gary Thomas’s life. And so

If you could vote so that way Fred can

Text him and say, this is what won. And, and he’s, he’s gonna start this afternoon, I guarantee you figuring out what next Sunday will be. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father,

God, as we

Unpack a difficult

Topic,

The topic of anxiety, something

That

Is so prevalent in our culture right now. God, I

Pray that you would

Speak to us in a real and a profound way. God

Help, help us have empathy for, for people that are

Walking through this right now, help us also

To see that there is a path, there’s a hope, there’s a future. Lord, our prayers that you would

Speak, help me get outta the way, is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. I want to

Start with a picture that I think

If you are going to

Create a picture

Of anxiety, this is

The picture of

Anxiety. This is a real

Picture

From 1995 from a Patagonia magazine. Now, if you’re in the room and, and you’re younger and you think, what was parenting really that different in the nineties and the eighties? The answer is yes.

Yes it

Was. And this picture sums it up because

There’s

A lot of things about this picture

That just caused

Me to have interesting thoughts. Like

For, for example why is this the easiest way to get the baby from

One side to the

Other side?

Like surely one of you could have just

Held

The baby and jumped across or, or maybe put her in the backpack

Of the backpack that dad clearly

Has behind him. But, but something about being up there. They said, you know what, the easiest thing for this six month old is,

Is let’s just, let’s just chunk her. That’s let’s just

Eat her from one side to the

Other. Then

Just imagine, imagine then somebody for Patagonia is looking through pictures and, and they’re wondering to themselves,

What’s a picture that’s really gonna help us sell

Some mountain gear? And they came across this one and they said, nothing is gonna sell me some, some jackets

Like

Somebody throwing a baby across. And, and so they said, I’m choosing that picture.

They printed it,

They sent out, but in 1995, you didn’t know what happened next.

And so they

Just had a lot of anxiety. You

Just looked at a picture

Of a baby being thrown and you say, what happened to the baby? We may never know. And that was 1995. It’s interesting what the internet does because what the internet does

A few years ago

Is they found this and, and they created a whole thing about bad parenting. And people

Started to Photoshop this photo.

And probably my favorite one is this one right here. It’s

Just, just

A flying baby.

But there

Are dozens and dozens and dozens. But,

But the reason I think it does such a good job about the idea

Of anxiety

Is

Because anxiety is not

A real fear

That’s in front of you. I,

Anxiety is a fear of

The unknown. The definition of anxiety

Is

It’s the feeling of being unsettled,

Afraid or

Overwhelmed by what might happen. And

So if there’s a

Bear in front of me that is chasing me, that

Is fear that is real.

And there’s a part of my brain that

Lights up because it is afraid of the bear.

But anxiety is the same part of my brain lighting up for fear, but there’s no bear.

It’s just a what if,

A what might happen. It is something that is out there

That you’re afraid of, that your brain

Is firing off the sensors for, and yet there’s no immediate danger. And maybe you’re in here today and you know exactly what I’m talking about because you

Struggle

With it all the time. Maybe last night you were trying to go to bed, you’re just laying there awake and you’re, your brain is just running through all kinds of different scenarios, all kinds of different issues, all kinds of different troubles and all kinds of different problems. And that is what anxiety

Is.

And all of us at some point or another, will struggle with anxiety. We’ll, we’ll have moments of anxiety

That, that if you go back to the year

2012 and you plot that on a, a chart, and then you take that from 2012 till now,

The

Studies say that anxiety, since that point has gone up and up and up and up, some combination of, of cell phones and social media and technology and the internet. We have all these messages and these messages are causing us to be anxious. So if you’re in here and you have anxiety,

The the good

News is you are not alone. The other good news is that

The Bible talks about it quite a bit.

And, and here’s what I do want you to know, that the Bible does not tell

The

Overwhelmed to fake peace.

So if you feel

Overwhelmed and you’re struggling,

The

Bible is not gonna

Give you a verse that

Says, you just need to fake it. You just need to pretend like everything is

Okay.

The Bible recognizes that this

Is a

Real challenge, and it also gives us some practical

Steps to deal with it. If you’ve got a

Bible, turn with me to one kings, one kings Chapter 19, chapter 19, starting in verse four.

It says this, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah

Had done and how he had

Killed all the prophets with the sword.

Now, if you’re gonna

Look

At the Bible, and you’re gonna take five characters and rank them as most important key

Figures

In all of the Bible,

Obviously

Jesus is number one, but then you’re, there’s

A whole lot of debate

About number 2, 3, 4, and five.

But Elijah is

Definitely in the top five.

Elijah

In the

Chapter before this, calls

Fire down from heaven and then kills all

The prophets of Baal. Elijah

Does not die.

Scripture tells

Us that at the end of his life, he gets into a flaming chariot and he ascends into the heavens. Never dies in the n testament at this moment where Jesus

Is,

Is up on this hill or this mountaintop

With his three

Best friends, you have this moment called transfiguration. And at that moment, Moses

Is there

And Elijah

Is there. Elijah is goat status. When

We’re looking at scripture, really important guy does amazing things. I I can’t even imagine how

Prideful

Or arrogant I would be if I could call down fire from the sky.

Like I, I would be, it would be a real struggle if I could just

Like, boom, fire comes down, like

Good luck

Disagreeing with me about anything. If I could just bring that down from the sky. So you can just imagine if I’m thinking about Elijah in this moment, coming on the heels of calling down literal fire from heaven,

I,

I would think that he’s just gonna

Be having

A chip on his shoulder, like carrying himself with like, yo big man on campus.

But

That’s not what happens. Verse two, then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, so may the gods do to me and more so if I do not make your

Life as a

Life of one of them, those that,

That Elijah had killed

By this time tomorrow, she’s saying, by this time tomorrow I’m going to kill

You, Elijah. What does he do with that?

Then he was

Afraid

And he arose and he ran for his life and came to Beersheba,

Which

Belongs to Judah and left his

Servant

There. But he himself went

A day’s

Journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die saying, it is enough now. Oh Lord,

Take

Away my life for I am now no better than my father’s.

You

Ever had a moment in your life where

You just, you hit

A wall and you say, it is enough, it’s too much. This burden is too great.

I can’t keep

Doing this

Because that’s exactly what Elijah faces right there,

Right in that moment. And, and, and here’s some things that I want to, to remind us about

Elijah. Does Elijah love God? Yes, he loves God. Does Elijah have great

Faith in God?

The

Answer is yes,

He has great

Faith in God. And yet

Does Elijah still struggle also? Yes.

I I think sometimes we have this

Idea that, well,

If you just have enough faith and you love God enough, then you should never have anxiety and never have

Stress

And never have struggle, and never have issues and never have problems. But

Elijah,

Who’s one of the most

Godly figures that

We see in the entire Bible, who is amazing and incredible and calls down fire from heaven who never dies.

That guy who loved

God and had great faith in God

Still struggled.

And so maybe some of us can relate to what

Elijah

Is going through right here in this moment. That

He is exhausted

And he’s lonely

And he’s afraid and he is struggling.

And if that’s you today, in this moment right here,

Whether

You’re online or whether you’re with us in the room, that

It’s okay if you have those feelings that

You are not alone. Let’s see what happens next. Look down in verse five, it says, and he Elijah, lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, arise and eat. And he looked and behold,

There was at his head a cake

Baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and he drank and he laid down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, arise and eat

For

The journey is too

Great for

You. Now. Now pause for a second on that line, because it goes against what

Our culture likes to say. Our culture has

T-Shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers

That say, you

Are enough.

This idea that, hey, you’re

Enough.

But scripture would tell us that

We are not enough, that that in fact by

Ourselves

We’re incomplete, that we need

God.

And what the angel messenger

Of God tells Elijah as he

Says, that the journey you are on right now, it

Is too great for you.

Verse eight. And he arose and he ate and drank and went in the strength of that food,

40 days

And 40 nights to horrib the Mount of

God.

And now notice what happens, because to me, what’s intriguing is God does something that’s different than I would’ve

Expected that, that,

That if I’m in his shoes,

I I treat this

Situation a little bit different.

That, that Elijah just

Called down fire from heaven, just beat up

A bunch of bad

Guys. And now this queen threatens him and he, he goes running off

Like a scared little kid.

And, and probably

The way that,

That I enter into the situation is I’m like, Hey, Elijah,

Suck it up.

Put on your big boy pants. Time to grow up.

You get back there, get back in the

Game, keep it going. But, but that’s not what

God does, that God cares for Elijah’s

Physical needs. That’s the first thing that he does. The first thing that he does, it is not advice. First thing that he does

Is he cares.

My my wife is in the process of becoming a licensed professional counselor. She’s been gonna school for a long time. She’ll be a school counselor and a licensed professional counselor. And she’s really

Good at that stuff because she’s

A really great listener and she can help process

And work through it.

People think that pastors are all good counselors, like people all the time, Hey, I just want your advice. I want you, can you gimme some pastoral counseling? And I’m a terrible counselor, and here’s why I am a terrible counselor. Because when people bring issues to me, they just seem very easy because most of the time, here’s why I want to tell people, I wanna tell people, okay, hey, I hear all your problems. You need to, to stop doing this thing over here. And you just need to do these things instead. Like the bad choices that you are making, just stop those bad choices and instead you just need to make good choices. Alright, there you go. You can just go ahead and go back and take that advice. Like that’s, it just seems simple to me of, hey, don’t, don’t do bad things, do good things that solves most of your problems.

But that’s not what God does. God doesn’t just slap him around and say, stop it. Fix it. Instead, God cares for him. And then we’re gonna see that, that God speaks to him. But it’s 40 days later, 40 days after this, after he’s, he’s cared for him and, and helped him get back on his feet, that’s when God starts addressing the issues. Physical needs are connected to oftentimes what, what our mental, emotional, spiritual needs are. That, that sometimes we can’t go to sleep at night. And, and really the issue underlying, connected to the anxiety is, well, we’ve gotta physically take care of ourselves. Like, can I just tell any teenage boy in the room? Like if you, you’re like, I can’t sleep at night. I go to bed, I’m just laying there. I’m awake and I’m anxious and I’m stressed. Like maybe don’t drink a Red Bull at 10 o’clock at night.

Like probably that is connected to, so our physical needs are connected to emotional and spiritual things. Then something really interesting happens that in verses nine through 14, God asks Elijah the same question twice, two different times. God says, what are you doing here, Elijah? Powerful because it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves when we have an issue, when we have a struggle, when you have a burden in life, can you name the thing God says, Elijah, what is going on? What are you doing here? Why have you run away from your problems? What is happening? And maybe the first step for some of us in the room is, is to identify why am I anxious? What is this struggle that I have? Have I named it? Have I said it out loud? Have I told my spouse? Have I told a close friend?

Have I sat down and written it out? This is the thing at night that keeps me awake, that causes me stress, that causes me anxiety, that that gives me a struggle. And then Elijah gives an answer to God, but his answer is identical two different times. He says this, Elijah, answers, I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars and killed your prophets with the sword. And I even, I only am left and they seek my life to take it away. Now. Now here’s what’s fascinating about Elijah’s response, is we know that what he says right here is factually not true, because in just a few verses later, God will, will be talking to Elijah. And there are 7,000 people in the nation that are still loyal and faithful to God, 7,000.

But in this moment, that’s not what Elijah feels. Elijah feels like he’s completely alone. He’s completely abandoned. This is the struggle. And so two times God asks him, and two times he gives the exact same answer. And that is a very close definition to what overthinking is. The overthinking is when our mind keeps circling the same fear, the same scenario, the same regret, or the same. What if, but it never actually gets you anywhere, and you just keep circling back to it and circling back to it and circle it back to it. Th there’s these three terms that are all related, but distinctively different. There’s stress, there’s anxiety, there’s overthinking. Now, now stress can cause anxiety. Anxiety can cause stress, overthinking can cause anxiety, but, but they’re all distinct from each other. They, they connect, but they’re all distinct. So overthinking often is what causes our anxiety that you’re sitting in bed at night and you just keep replaying the same problem over and over and over and over again.

That’s exactly what Elijah’s doing. Elijah is stressed out, he’s got anxiety, he’s overthinking God two different times. Ask the same question, and he gives the exact same answer. And then 40 days after the issue arises, God speaks to Elijah. And, and it’s this beautiful scene because you have Elijah that he’s in this cave and it says that there’s this huge wind, and then there’s this big earthquake and there’s this big fire. And God is not in any of those things. And then instead, there’s a low whisper. Come on the heels of last week’s message on, on how to hear from God. There’s two things that, that I took away from this passage this week. One is that God often speaks in a way that’s different than we expect him to, that we want him to speak in the wind or the earthquake or the fire.

But oftentimes it is a quiet whisper. But the second part I think is just as important and relevant. Can you imagine if you’re in a cave and you, you hear an earthquake and you hear wind and you hear fire like that is very noisy. And in the midst of all the noise, God still speaks through a still quiet whisper that we live in a very noisy culture. There are so many messages and so many images and, and so many things that are, they’re just fighting for my attention and your attention, our cell phones and our, our laptops and our, our portable personal devices and our TVs. And everywhere we go, there’s all these messages that are bombarding us and we think, well, it’s just too loud. I can never hear

God’s

Voice. And yet God wants to speak

To

Us in spite

Of

The loudness and a still

Quiet whisper.

I I think when we are anxious, here’s what we often want.

What I desire is instant relief

And total clarity.

God, if

You would just remove all this anxiety and give me a

Clear picture of what’s

Happening and where I’m supposed to go, what happens next? That would

Solve

All of my issues.

But

That’s not what

God does for Elijah. He

Doesn’t give him instant relief

That that 40

Days after the issue

Arises

Is when God

Speaks to Elijah. So for at least 40 days, he’s struggling

With this, he’s working through this. He’s, he’s trying to figure out,

What do

I do next? And then on the heels of

It, God

Doesn’t just give him total clarity.

He,

He doesn’t give him a roadmap of here’s what the next 10 years look like.

He

Gives him his next

Step.

And that

Is it. There’s a fascinating story about a guy that

We should all know, and yet none of us know who he is. His name is Stanislav

Petrov, Stanislav Petrov. There’s two

Pictures of him. One picture from 1983 and then one picture from about 10 years ago 10 years ago.

He

Won an award for something he did in 1983. And it’s very

Likely that that at least some of us

In this room are only

Alive because of the

Decision that

Stanis love made in 19 83, 19 83. Just just to, to remind us of some history. That’s when the USSR and the United States are in the middle of

The Cold War.

Huge tensions exist

Because the USSR

Have these intercontinental ballistic missiles, these nukes that

They

Could fire at any given moment that they could hit anywhere in the United States of America. But, but simultaneously, the United States of America also

Have the

Same missiles that we can launch that

Would hit the USSR.

And so there’s this standoff of these

Two world powers.

And at any given moment, the fear

Was either side would launch

A hundred a thousand nukes, and then this idea of mutual destruction.

Well, if you do that, then

We will instantaneously fire a hundred a thousand nukes and will just both

Be destroyed. And

So at September of 1983,

Stanislav

Is sitting in a secret command center and the secret command center for

The USSR was

This brand new, it’s called the

Oks,

This brand new radar detection system that, that was hidden and secretive,

But it could tell

If a new missile was coming way before it actually got

There.

And so he’s on duty in September, 1983. He,

He’s the

Head person in the secret command center. And all of a sudden warning lights start

To flash, red

Sirens start to go

Off. They

Look at the computer system and the computer system is telling them that the United States of America has launched five intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles

At the U-S-S-R-I.

I just want you to imagine, put yourself in his shoes, five missiles coming at your country. The,

The, there’s the

Correct response in theory

Is

That you smash the big red button. And I don’t know if there was a literal red button, but in my mind there’s a giant

Red button right there. As soon as they fire theirs,

I’m gonna smash the giant red button. It’s gonna set off the alarms, and we’re gonna just fire missiles right back at ’em. Except in the midst of, you can just imagine the panic of the alarms and the red lights and all the messaging in the midst of all that, he took

A step

Back and tried to logically think through

The situation

Because he knew that if he slammed the big red button, we send nukes, they send nukes back.

It’s bad for everybody.

And logically, he said,

Why

Would they only send five

Bombs?

Like that doesn’t make sense because they were gonna attack us

Kus. They would fire

Way more than five missiles. He also knew that their new radar system was, was relatively new

And it had had some

Issues in the past. And so he made a decision in September of 1983 to not do anything.

He said, it’s a false alarm.

He got demoted for that.

A a afterwards, his, his

Supervisors came and said, what?

You

Didn’t, you didn’t have the right to make that call. He ended up getting demoted. And it wasn’t for

Multiple decades later that we realized that

Probably that moment of inaction, of looking at all the alarms and choosing to do something contrary

To what was

Seemingly logical for most people

That

Saved millions and millions of lives. Now, now here’s what I wanna point out about that scenario. The

Issue

Wasn’t whether the alarm was loud

Because the alarm was

Loud,

The red lights were loud. The issue was whether

The alarm was true. And that in a nutshell is anxiety

That

Your mind has these alarms going off.

They’re

Loud and they’re bright and they’re flashy. And the question, it’s not whether or not

Those

Alarms are loud, it’s whether they

Are true. If you’ve got a

Bible flip with me over to some practical application coming outta Psalms. Psalm chapter 42, starting in verse one. It says this, it starts with a very famous psalm. There, there’s a PS song you’ve probably heard of that comes a psalm that comes out of this psalm. Psalm 42, starting in verse one. It says,

As a dear

Pants for flowing streams, sow pants, my soul for

You, oh God,

My soul,

Thirsts for God, for

The living God. When shall I come and appear before

God? Verse three,

He says, my tears

Have

Been my food day and night. While they say to me all the day long, where

Is your God?

Now, now pause for a moment. ’cause We, we think most scholars assume that this is King David that wrote this, that probably he’s writing this when, when he’s being chased by the King of Israel. Saul Saul’s trying to kill him. And and he’s saying, my tears have been my food day and night. So all day, all night, he’s crying and he’s saying that they’re telling me, where is your God? He’s basically struggling with this idea of God, why have you abandoned me? God, where are you? And my time of distress and my time of turmoil, struggle, pain, anxiety. God, why are you not here? Then verse four, he says, these things, I remember as I pour out my soul how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

He, he said, I remember when I would lead the parade dancing and singing and praising God headed towards the the god’s house. And he says, I remember those days, but right now he feels alone. And now I wanna point out what happens. That first David expresses his feelings, but then he addresses them. So he says, these are my feelings. This is what I feel right now. But then he’s going to address them by saying this, why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God, my soul is cast down within me. Therefore, I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Herman from the Mount Azar, that, that he’s saying, okay, these are the feelings. I feel like God’s abandoned me. I’m crying day and night.

I feel like I’m at the end of my rope. But then he addresses them. He speaks to those feelings, and he says to his soul, his own soul is his soul. Hope in God, trust in God. And now I wanna point out something that that’s very real, but but also slightly uncomfortable. And that is this, that that our feelings, my feelings, your feelings, they are real, but they’re not always true. So I, I don’t wanna discount feelings ’cause feelings are real. They’re important to recognize our feelings. But just because I feel something does not make that something true. If you are a parent that has kids, you know this because this happens all the time. My kids have all kinds of feels that are false. It happens almost every weekend because my kids feel like it is unfair for them to do chores. And, and this is just a cycle on repeat every single weekend.

It’s like, I, I feel like this is unfair. And my kids, these, these are words that come out of my kids’ mouths regularly. I just feel like I do so much. And then they’ll point to, to mom and dad and they say, you don’t do as much as I do around here. So, so tho that’s how they feel. But I can tell you objectively that’s not true. Like it’s a hundred percent not true. Like, like if you would realize you, you’re doing like this much. As a matter of fact, I I I gotta go back and do your chore after you, because you do such a bad job of that chore. Like you’re hardly doing anything. And yet they feel like they just have so much so, so their feelings are real, but it doesn’t make those feelings true. We, we have this tagline that we like to say, well, hey, my truth, your truth.

And, and that’s a good idea where we’ve taken feelings and we’ve elevated them. There, there’s no such thing as my truth. And your truth, there is just truth. There’s object. Like stand back, be objective and say, what is the truth? That’s what truth is. I, I might have a perspective about that. That’s my feelings. But that doesn’t make it true. And so what David is doing is he’s saying, okay, I have these feelings, but, but I’m going to say, even though I feel that way and the real feelings, I’m going to recognize that doesn’t make them true. It’s fascinating. In, in, if you go sit down with a licensed professional counselor, one of the, the techniques that they will use in dealing with anxiety is something called CBT, cognitive behavioral Therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the, the research would say it’s one of the most effective ways that we have to deal with anxiety.

And here’s what it says. It’s a kind of counseling that helps people notice unhealthy thought patterns, challenge them, and then practice better responses. And now, cognitive behavioral therapy is something that, that, that you need a professional helper to walk you through it. And, and let me, this is a good moment to, to take a, a side note and say that maybe for you today, if you are struggling with anxiety that is just crippling, like it is crippling who you are, it’s hard to function, it’s hard to live, maybe the right step for you is to go seek professional help, sit down with a counselor, find a counselor who is a Christian who loves Jesus, who can walk through professional practicing to do this. Now that being said, all of us can benefit from some of these biblical principles. So cognitive behavioral therapy says, recognize an unhealthy thought, address it, and then replace that unhealthy thought with more positive reinforcement, more positive pathway, a more positive approach.

That’s exactly what we see David do. David says, this is an unhealthy feeling. I’m going to recognize that it’s unhealthy. Replace it with something godly and turn towards God. So the practical application for us is that we should don’t trust every anxious thought. That don’t just assume every thought of anxiety is real. Instead, bring those thoughts before God and answer them with truth. And when I struggle with fear, when I struggle with anxiety, when I, when I struggle with overthinking, that I should name, it should bring it to God, and I should try and change my way of thinking through him. I wanna give five practical biblical principles that come from these two

Passages that will help us

Tackle and fight anxiety,

Stress,

Overthinking that, that you and I are dealing with right now. Number one is this, is that we need to care

For our body. That, that one of the ways

That we can combat anxiety is by taking care of ourselves

Physically. That’s what we see God do. God says, Elijah, I mean, you are struggling. You’ve hit a

Wall. And the first thing that he does is he says, take a nap and eat some food. And then he says, take another nap and eat some more food. So maybe practically some of you need to go home today and take a nap and eat some food

Like that could be a practical way to deal with what you are

Dealing with. So we need to care

For our body, eat right, work out. Lots of studies

About anxiety,

Stress, relief

That comes with working

Out, taking care of ourselves,

Going on a walk. We

Live in Colorado. It’s a really great place to get outside to go on walks, go ride a bike,

Do some things to take

Care of ourselves physically.

Then number two is to name the

Struggle specifically two times God says, Elijah,

What’s going on?

Elijah? Why are you here?

But we need to say,

This

Is the thing that I’m struggling with. This is the anxiety. Name it out loud,

Share

It with somebody else.

Talk through what

Is going on. Number three,

Take those

Thoughts and bring them to

God. It’s okay to be frustrated with God. We see both

David and Elijah,

They’re

Struggling. They feel abandoned. What do

They do? They lay it before God. They say, God, here’s what I’m dealing

With. Here’s my unknown. I’m not sure what to do next.

God, our God is a big God. He can handle it.

There’s no emotion that we can throw at

God that, that

God is gonna be like, oh, I’ve never, I’ve never seen that one before. You’re the

First of the

Billions and billions and billions of people I created never had this before. Not sure what to do. That’s not gonna happen.

So, so take

Our feelings, bring those thoughts to God, then redirect ’em with truth.

That, that if I have

A feeling, but it’s contrary to

Biblical truth,

And I’ve gotta decide

Which is

True, my feelings or the

Bible,

I I can give you the answer right now. It’s the Bible.

And so if I feel

Abandoned by God, I can know biblically, that’s not true. God has not abandoned me. Even though

I feel that way,

It does not validate that feeling. I know

That God is

A loving God. I know that God will not abandon me. I know that

God is

Pursuing me. And then number five is this

Refuse isolation. But Elijah, when

He’s walking out

Of hearing from God,

The first thing that happens right after this in the next chapter

Is that he gets a buddy that Elh,

It’s very confusing ’cause there’s

Elijah with a J. There’s

Elh with an SH, their, now their names sound almost identical, but

Elh

Becomes, becomes the disciple

Of Elijah.

He falls him around. He learns from him. He becomes his

Co-Labor

And what they’re doing together. And, and then when Elijah gets on the chariot and ascends into heaven,

Elijah receives a

Double portion of his blessing, the spirit of

God, the double

Portion of the anointing. And then scripture tells us he

Does

Twice as many miracles

As Elijah did. So, so he doesn’t do it

Alone.

That that David,

After pouring out his heart and this turmoil and this struggle, he doesn’t go

Through

Life alone. That he’s surrounded by people

That

Are caring for him and loving him. And you and I should not try and do it alone either. Isolation does not solve problems.

It creates problems.

Find a community that cares for me, that wants to walk with me. And then let me end with this. This

Is the hope that

God meets the overwhelmed and then

He leads

The overwhelmed forward. And maybe today, right now, you just feel like, I’m just so overwhelmed. I feel

Like

Elijah, where I’m at my wit’s in and I’ve hit a wall and I’m struggling and and I’m crying out to

God. God, where are you? The hope of scripture is that God

Is empathetic. God isn’t just saying, stop it. God wants to care

For us, but also

He wants to

Lead

Us out of that anxiety. He wants to lead us

Forward

Into

Hope.

You remember our, our

Picture of the baby at the very beginning

Picture of anxiety. ’cause Like what happened to the baby? What happens next? Did she make it? She

Scarred for life. That

Baby at six months old, her name is Jordan. This is Jordan. She’s now 31 years old and get this,

She’s totally fine. <Laugh>, she’s alive, she’s healthy. She likes to rock,

Climb

Like she loves the outdoors.

She kinda laughs

At the picture. Like that picture was

Framed in their house on a hallway. It did not scar her.

It

Did not mess her up.

The rest of us look at it and we’re like, anxious and

What happened? And Oh, poor baby.

And she’s like, what do you mean I was fine?

And and can I tell you that the same is true for most of the anxieties that we’re struggling with right now?

We’ve created this whole story

Of what’s gonna happen, how bad it’s gonna be, and all the tragedies. And, and at the end of the day, it’s gonna be just fine.

The, the scriptures

Pointing ahead to the

Future says that yes,

There’s gonna be struggle in this life. We, we live in a broken world that has sin and, and pain,

But there’s

Also eternity. And God is saying that, that in the context of forever, whatever you and I are dealing with right now, although

It feels like

Such a burden and such

A big deal,

Probably six months from now or six years from now, or 60 years from now, you’re gonna look back and you’re not even gonna remember the thing that worries you right now. But here’s what I do know, I promise in eternity when forever and ever and ever and ever and ever

Is our future, whatever struggle

I’ve got right now compared to that, it’s

Just not that big of a deal. So if I

Will take all my struggles, all my anxieties, however big they might feel, our God is bigger, lay them at his feet, trust to take one step at a time into the future. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, God, I thank you so much that you are God, that that doesn’t want us to live in a spirit of fear or timidity, but instead in a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline. And so, God, I I pray for anyone right now in the room that is struggling with overthinking or anxiety, God, I I, I pray that they would feel compassion. God, they wouldn’t feel like we’re just ignoring it. That those feelings are real. And it’s okay to feel that way, God, but I also pray that they would have hope and maybe they’re in here and they need professional help. And, and this message can be the thing that spurs them on to getting the help that they need. Maybe they’re here and, and they, they just need to start reorienting their focus, putting their faith, their trust, their hope in you. God, help us to live with courage, not because we are great, but because you are a God that is greater than all these things. It’s the name, Lord Jesus we pray. Amen.