Talk

Finding Up When Anxiety Weighs You Down

Louie Giglio
February, 26, 2023

Louie Giglio speaks on the issue of anxiety by exhorting us to direct our attention “upward.”

Anxiety is a massive weight and it drags people down year after year. However, there are offensive tactics we can take, says Louie. We can “gaze upward,” turning our attention from an issue to a Healer and experience progress and healing even in a pit of despair.

The Process of Lifting Your Gaze:

1. Remember the narrative we are in.

2. Inject a song of praise into the darkness of night.

3. Exercise your right to hope in God.

“If you can’t jump up out of the hole you’re in, look up out of the hole you are in.”
Louie Giglio

Discussion Questions

  1. How do you answer the question, “To what extent do you rely on a doctor when it comes to the need for healing”?

  2. Louie Giglio shared about the issue of “Text Neck.” Do any of you know any practical exercises or keys to preventing this bad habit?

  3. What are your thoughts on the article, “The Surprising Joy of Raising Your Gaze”? Were you surprised to hear about these results?

  4. What might physiological and psychological discoveries like these suggest about our faith and the instruction in Scripture?

  5. This may be strange to do as a group – and you will need to do this when it’s dark outside - so feel free to skip this step. Take 10 minutes of group time to get up, go outside, “look up” and find the Big Dipper, Little Dipper, and NorthStar.

  6. Let’s talk about the process of lifting our gaze. What will you think of when you choose to “remember the narrative we are in”?

  7. Louie Giglio mentioned listening to “Speak Jesus” about 1,000 times during a difficult season. Do you have a season like this? Do you have a song of praise you played through it?

  8. What does it mean to “exercise your right to hope in God”?

  9. Where does your “help come from” in times of need? The biblical answer is “The LORD” but try to unpack just how “the LORD” helps you (Ps. 121:1). For instance, did He use a doctor or therapist?

  10. Where has “help come from” that was not a healthy source? In other words, who/what have you turned to for help - in the past or recently – that you should not have turned to?

Scripture References

1I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

where does my help come from?

Book II

Psalms 42–72

Psalm 42

,

For the director of music. A

maskil
of the Sons of Korah.

1As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, my God.

2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When can I go and meet with God?

3My tears have been my food

day and night,

while people say to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

4These things I remember

as I pour out my soul:

how I used to go to the house of God

under the protection of the Mighty One

with shouts of joy and praise

among the festive throng.

5Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.

6My soul is downcast within me;

therefore I will remember you

from the land of the Jordan,

the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7Deep calls to deep

in the roar of your waterfalls;

all your waves and breakers

have swept over me.

8By day the

Lord
directs his love,

at night his song is with me—

a prayer to the God of my life.

9I say to God my Rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about mourning,

oppressed by the enemy?”

10My bones suffer mortal agony

as my foes taunt me,

saying to me all day long,

“Where is your God?”

11Why, my soul, are you downcast?

Why so disturbed within me?

Put your hope in God,

for I will yet praise him,

my Savior and my God.


Louie Giglio
Louie Giglio
Louie Giglio is the Visionary Architect and Director of the Passion Movement, comprised of Passion Conferences, Passion City Church, Passion Publishing and sixstepsrecords, and the founder of Passion Institute.