Anxiety

Ben Stuart emphasizes that rest is a form of faith—that when we stop, we trust, as King David did in Psalm 23, that the Lord will provide and sustain us in the meantime.

Join us as Ben Stuart sits down with the highly accomplished Olympian Andre Ward to discuss adversity, pressure, and the gifts that God gives us through the Church and His Word in those times.

Dan and Jo Watson tune in from Passion City Church Trilith to discuss God’s promise to provide everything we need, honing in on Luke 12:22-31.

Grant Partrick joins us from Passion City Church Cumberland to bring a message of confidence around God in times of worry, stress, and anxiety.

This Mother’s Day, Brittany Jones emphasizes the need for trust in our relationship with God, validating our worries and fears while reminding us of the promise of His ultimate provision for our lives.

Join us as Ben Stuart starts a brand new series on money. This week, he teaches what Jesus has to say about the root issue and how God wants us to live differently than the world when it comes to our possessions.

In week two of the collection, “Anchors,” Ben Stuart focuses on the glory of God and how it is tangible in the greater narrative of our lives. All of us ask why questions, but God gives us the overarching and the detailed answer: Himself. Join us as we search the Scripture and begin to understand why we love and are anchored in His glory.

Continuing in week two of All Consuming Fire, Louie Giglio focuses on three truths: Jesus is in the midst of the Church, reigning Jesus looks different, and because of Him, we can live without fear of the future.

Continuing in our Epicenter collection, Louie Giglio shares more on Romans 8, highlighting the importance of our minds being transformed by the power of the Word rather than the pattern of the world and emphasizing the importance of knowing and understanding our identity in Christ.

As we navigate life in a technology-centric world, it can often be difficult to find formative friendships and live in intentional community with other believers. In this talk, Ben Stuart shares the biblical definition of community and gives us practical steps to find it in our lives today.

Adapted from Louie Giglio’s talk, The Anxiety Exchange. His peers balked at the claim and offered a wager where Hemingway would reap the profits if he could make good on his claim. Undaunted, the man who would go on to write A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea scribbled six words on a napkin and handed it over. “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” Words matter, and often, it’s not the number of them but the quality of them. Take 1 Peter 5:7 as an example. 11 words that can change the entire direction and quality of your days: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Said another way: Release what you are concerned about so that you can receive that God is concerned about you. Of course, this falls securely into the easier said than done category. How? How do we actually do this? How do we take those fears and anxieties that occupy our minds and turn them over to God so that we can live in the peace He has for us? Looking at the context in which 1 Peter was written, we can see that while the sources of anxiety may have changed (for those of us in places where our faith will not lead to our death), the promise has not. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your Anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 5:6-11 This text wasn’t written to belittle our anxieties today; instead, we have to read it and understand that God is powerful enough to carry His people through all circumstances, even ones of life and death. 1 Peter is calling us to cast our anxiety not on some weak or incapable God but upon the chief shepherd (5:4), the one who is leading us to green pastures and who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and who laid down His life for his flock, for us. You see, unloading our anxiety isn’t about us at all; it’s about the chief shepherd, it’s about Jesus. It’s not pushing your anxieties to the side and trying as hard as you can to ignore them; it’s depositing them with Jesus once and for all because while we are concerned about any number of things, Jesus is concerned about us. So then, if we believe that, how do we go about this anxiety exchange? What is the key to releasing those concerns into the hands of Jesus? The key is humility.  Notice that Peter starts this with an observation about our anxieties: In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud     but shows favor to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5 Our anxieties, for the most part, revolve around our pride.  They spring up out of our haughtiness inside of relationships. Friendships and family connections give way to anxieties when we feel tension because we’ve forgone extending grace. In the same way, the areas of our lives where we have placed our dreams and desires above the will of Almighty God give birth to, honestly, terrible worries and anxieties as we wrestle for control where we have no rightful claim to it. And in these exact places, humility is the key. Humility among one another and humility beneath God is not devaluing yourself; it’s elevating your confidence in God. It’s not listening to the enemy when he tells you you’re a worm. Knowing that you are the prize of a great shepherd, of God, and seeing God as king. Humility is a matter of the heart. It springs up when we spend time with God, reminding us that we are a work in progress. We have ground to cover and mountains to climb.  “Anxiety is a self-contradiction to true humility. Un-belief is, in a sense, an exalting of self against God in that one is depending on self and failing to trust God. Why worry, therefore, if we are His concern? He is more concerned about our welfare than we could possibly be. In it all, He is concerned about us, therefore again, why worry?” – Kenneth Wuest  God’s mighty hand is open for you today. It’s not the closed fist of a tyrannical ruler. The Chief Shepherd calls for you with hands that bear the scars of nails driven on your behalf. This great anxiety exchange is possible because of a great exchange of grace, and if He was willing to bear all of your sin and shame to rescue you from death itself, surely He is willing to carry through on the promise to restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. Put another way, in 11 incredible words: Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

I used to think I was immune to the effects social media could have on you. I wasn’t someone who scrolled through Instagram feeling less than because of what I was seeing. I wasn’t comparing myself to the random strangers on my discovery page. But I was wrong. Here is what I’ve come to realize: comparison is not just the feeling of “I am not enough” or “I don’t have enough.” While it is that, it is so much more. Comparison is “a consideration or estimate of the similarities or dissimilarities between two things or people.”¹ In other words, the moments when I scroll through social media and identify the similarities I have with other people or the things they have that I don’t. Or the places I have the upper hand because I have things they don’t have. It is the moments where I want to be able to feel better about myself, not just the moments I feel worse. The reality is that I was holding up my life and evaluating it based on the image of other people’s lives. I had a gut-wrenching awareness that I had fallen into the trap of comparison on social media more often than I had even realized. So, what now? What do I do now that I know this can be something I partake in? At the end of the day, I do not want it to be true of me that I spend my days considering the similarities or dissimilarities I have with the people I see on a screen. I don’t think you do, either. The starting line for all of us is the humility to admit that apart from the Holy Spirit, at any moment, we can fall into a mindset on the flesh. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.  Romans 8:6 (NIV) The mind governed by The Spirit leads to peace. When I get off social media, do I feel peace? Or do I feel jealousy? Resentment? There is a beautiful invitation for us all to slow down before we scroll and ask Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, to govern our minds. In this, we can depend fully on Him to replace our feelings of comparison with feelings of peace. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we can all fall into the temptation of measuring our lives by society’s standards. Society tells us the number of likes, and the blue check mark beside our name indicates we are seen.  Yet, Scripture tells us in Psalm 33:13 (NIV),  From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind.  Nothing that is or is not on social media gets to determine whether you and I are on God’s radar.  There are so many different and untrue feelings that may arise as we scroll through social media. What we must do is take each of these thoughts we may have and hold them up to Scripture to see what the real truth is based on what God says. Here are a few things you may be feeling and how Scripture counters these.  1. You feel left behind in life in a never-ending season of waiting. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Romans 5:6 (NIV) 2. You feel the unhealthy urge to match someone else’s appearance and achievements. Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10 (NIV) 3. You feel the pangs of lust. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. 1 John 2:16 (NIV) 4. You feel despise the things God has given you because you covet what He hasn’t. For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.  Psalm 84:11 (NIV) 5. You feel like you should turn to social media for numbness rather than God’s word for nutrients. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold, they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb. Psalm 119:9-10 (NIV) 6. You feel ashamed to admit your online habits. Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.  Isaiah 54:4 (NIV) 7. You feel online is the place to get affirmation instead of from your Holy Father and community. But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.  Isaiah 43:1 (NIV)    If comparison is carefully thinking of the similarities or dissimilarities we have with people, then there must be a shift in what we are considering. A shift in what we are thinking about. Comparison is us considering the wrong things.  We must consider the Gospel.  Think carefully about the gospel. Think carefully about a God who left heaven, came to earth, gave His life on the cross, and conquered the grave, all so we could be reconciled to Him. When I think carefully about that, I consider that—there is no room for comparison; there is only room for gratitude. The Gospel reminds me that all that I have is already more than I deserve. The gospel reminds me that grace and mercy are the headlines over my life.  One of the greatest weapons we can have against comparison is to consider the gospel. The action we can all take today is what the writer of Hebrews tells us to do—fix our eyes on Jesus.  Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2 (NIV) ¹Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Comparison,” Accessed September 11, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comparison