Calm My Anxious Mind

Connection/Tension

Open with prayer guide:

For world situations…

For our nation…

For our church/sick…

For the lost…

For Alpha…

For forgiveness…

We’re finishing our series today called Winning the War in Your Mind. I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback, so I know this has been hitting home for many of us - me most of all!

What do we know so far? That most of life’s battles are either won or lost in our mind. And that it is almost impossible to have a positive life with a negative mind. And that the solution is not some kind of positive reinforcement therapy, but instead applying God’s word and truth to our minds.

Does anyone ever have their thoughts just run away with them. Like a worry pops into my head, and then my mind just goes crazy with irrational thoughts. Anyone relate? For instance, you worry about getting a bad grade on a test, and that causes you to have anxiety that you won’t be able to go to college, and if you don’t go to college you’ll probably wind up marrying the wrong person, and marrying the wrong person will cause you to have wrong kids. And these wrong kids will have crooked teeth and need braces, but you can’t afford braces because you didn’t go to college. And because you can’t get your kids teeth fixed they will probably resort to crime and have to go to prison. And all this worry is giving you a headache, which probably means you have a brain tumor.

Or like this commercial from DirectTV… will go back to title slide when done

That’s what our brains do sometimes, right! It is so easy for our minds to race into fear and anxiety, and what we’ve been trying to do in this series is to learn to stand on God’s word. I want to read a passage from Philippians this morning, and just as context, remember that the apostle Paul is writing this from prison facing possible execution.

Philippians 4:6–9 “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

This morning’s message is called Calm My Anxious Mind.

Text and Context

Let’s talk this morning about worry, anxiety, and our mind. Remember that one of our bigs ideas in this series is that Your life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. This is really good news - if your thoughts are good. But it’s really bad news if you are consumed by negative thoughts. We’ve been talking about what both scripture and science tell us about our brains. God is the God of science. So why do our minds tend to race ahead with anxious thoughts?

In our brain there is this little almond shaped piece called the Amygdala. Your Amygdala is the part of your brain that is wired for survival. It is where your fight or flight response comes from. So anytime you sense danger, you Amygdala kicks in and sends this strong dose of Adrenalin to your body. So you see a poisonous snake - or any snake - and your brain say’s “Run!”. Or someone is texting the the car beside you and starts to swerve into your lane - “Ah! Honk!” Or you are sound asleep in a hotel and the alarm goes off.

The Amygdala is a blessing. But the problem with the Amygdala is that it is not objective. It is hard-wired to protect you, but when it goes off it can easily create a trigger in your mind. For example, for about 3 years my family lived in a trailer house. My dad was in the oilfield, and we moved around a lot following the oil rigs he supervised. Mobile homes aren’t particularly safe in the first place, but because we moved so much, my dad never bothered tying down our trailer. He just parked it and hooked up the utilities. We lived in western Oklahoma. Also know as Tornado Alley. Violent storms would come through, and since our trailer wasn’t tied down, it would rock like a ship on the North Sea. And then the tornado siren would go off. It it just filled me as a 5 & 6 year old child with absolute fear. It created a trigger, and to this day - even thought I live in a house that is firmly fixed to the ground and have a shelter nearby - any time I hear a tornado siren my heart rate jumps. I go into fight or flight mode.

So our Amygdala needs help, and so God gave us the Prefrontal Cortex. This is the logic part of your brain. You wake up to a noise at night. Your Amygdala says, “Someone’s in the house. You’re going to die!” But then your Prefrontal Cortex steps in and says, “No, it’s just the stupid cat.” Without our Prefrontal Cortex, our Amygdala just responds according to its preprogramming. Tornado siren - Ah!!

We all have these triggers associated with certain people (police), certain places (dentist), certain events (public speaking) - these triggers are often the source of our feelings of fear and anxiety. Let’s go back to Paul - in prison.

Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV): ”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.“

(*) - Big test coming up, job interview, financial fears, upcoming medical test, tornado sirens

(**) - EVERY situation - if it’s on your mind, it is on God’s heart, because he loves you

The truth is that, as Christians, we so often undervalue and discount the power of prayer. I don’t know about you, but I have been guilty of saying, “Well I guess all we can do now is pray” - as if prayer is some kind of last-ditch effort after we’ve done everything we can do! Anyone else?!

We ignore the truth of God’s word that prayer is powerful! That Prayer is not the last line of defense - it is the first line of offense. The author of Hebrews tells us to boldly go before the throne of grace. James, the brother of Jesus, says that we do not have because we do not ask, and that the prayers of a righteous person are powerful and effective.

And here is a truly amazing thing. Here is the answer on how to get control of our anxious mind. Not only does prayer move the heart of God. Prayer actually changes the chemistry in your brain.

For decades, neurologists believed that our brain didn’t change after adolescence. I don’t know about you, but I am thankful my brain didn’t get stuck when I was 15 years old. Although my wife sometimes still wonders…

But now they know that our brains are continually changing. They constantly rewire themselves. It’s called neuroplasticity if you want to big word. It’s why someone who suffers a traumatic brain injury that causes them to forget how to do certain basic things like walking or eating or even talking can re-learn how to do those things. The brain works around the damaged area to form new neural pathways.

With the understanding of the brain has come a new branch of Christian studies called Neurotheology, or sometimes referred to as Spiritual Neuroscience. This science studies the relationship between the brain and our belief about God. What they have found is that prayer changes your brain. One of the leading scholars in this field is Dr. Caroline Leaf. Listen to what she writes:

“It has been found that 12 minutes of daily focused prayer over an 8-week period can change the brain to such an extent that it can be measured on a brain scan.” Dr. Caroline Leaf, Switch On Your Brain

Just as our toxic, negative thoughts can hurt our brain, prayer can actually heal and transform our brain and renew our mind. So why do we worry, or panic, or experience anxiety? Many reasons. Science would say that we are experiencing an Amygdala Hijack. Save yourself!

God would say that your mind is being dominated by sinful thinking. That instead of giving every situation to God, we worry about it instead. What is worry? Worry is the sin of distrusting the promises and power of God. And when we hold on to worry - and this is hard to hear - we essentially say “God I don’t trust you.” So instead of letting our sinful nature control our mind, we must choose to let the Spirit direct our thinking.

Romans 8:5-6 (NLT): ”Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace.“

This is part of what Paul means when he says we must take every thought captive and give it to Christ. Our Prefrontal Cortex must grab our Amygdala by the tail and give it to God. And the most powerful way we can do that is through prayer.

Prayer Box

We have all these worries: teenagers, job, financial security, health. But we also know we serve a good God who tells us to cast all our cares on him because he cares for you. As followers of Jesus, what do we hopefully do when we’re worried? We take our worries and concerns and give them to God. And then you wait. And wait. And it’s been five minutes and nothing has happened, so you take it back from God and say “God I don’t really trust you with that.”

Why do we do this? Because your God is too small and your worries are too big. And what we need is a bigger God and a smaller worry (turn boxes around). We’re going to do at that point is the whatever it is that is worrying you, whatever it is that is dominating your mind, and cast our cares upon God. And that we are not to be anxious about anything, but to give it all completely to God in prayer.

Maybe a good idea would be to get your own God box at home. And any time you begin to feel worried or stressed or anxious, just write down that worry on a piece of paper, and then put it in your God box as a visible reminder that you are giving it to God. And then move on with your life trusting God. And, if you decide you’re going to worry about it again, then you need to go to your God box and take out the worry you put it there to symbolically remind yourself that you are choosing in the moment to not trust God. That kind of puts it in perspective, doesn’t it?

What worries me? It’s embarrassing to admit. I struggle with a lot of fear about Julie and my kids. Julie works at school, and very often she works late. But I text her and call her and she doesn’t answer. And then my mind starts to worry that someone got into the school after hours and has hurt her. Or she has fallen and injured herself and can’t get to the phone. Or when my kids when were first driving, and sending a 16 year old out in a car. Or just the burden of leading the church. These are some of my worries. What do I need to do? Instead of just giving my worries to God, what I want to do even more is give my life to God (worry box goes into God box), so that I am hidden with God in Christ Jesus. My whole life belongs to him. He’s good, and loving, and always faithful.

And someone might say, well that’s just irresponsible. That’s living in denial. You have to be more responsible than that. Let me offer three big thoughts:

Centered, coming in one at a time

Do what I can do. Study for exam. Eat better for health.

Give God what I can’t do.

Trust God no matter what. Because of his character and nature.

Gospel/Response

Here’s what I want you to do for a moment. I want you to imagine your heart at peace. Imagine a life filled with unending joy. Imagine peace of mind trusting God. I want to tell you it’s possible. And it’s also a choice. Minds dominated by the sinful nature, or dominated by the Holy Spirit. It’s a choice.

Let’s review what we’ve looked at over this series. One of the big ideas has been, Life is always moving in the direction of your strongest thoughts. Do you like the direction your thoughts are taking you? I don’t! Too often my thoughts are dominated by negative, self-defeating thoughts. “You’ll never be good enough, you’ll never get your weight under control, you’re pathetic, don’t measure up”.

If you don’t control what you think, you’ll never control what you do. So we talked about identifying the strongholds in our life, these negative thoughts that keep us locked up in a prison. And what do we do? We identify the truth from GOD - we’re not talking about self-help advice - that takes those thoughts captive to Christ. We need to do four things:

Centered, coming in one at a time

Write it.

Think it.

Confess it.

Until you believe it.

We have to declare these truths over and over until it renews our mind. What does God say is true about you?

You are not a hostage to your unhealthy thoughts. The weapons you fight with are not the weapons of this world.

You have divine power to demolish strongholds. Demolish every pretension that sets itself up against knowledge of God.

Worry is not your master. You trust in God. His peace guards your heart, guards your mind, and guards your soul in X Jesus.

Not slave to ur habits. Not prisoner to addiction. Been rescued from the power darkness brought into kingdom of God’s light.

You write it, think it, confess it, until you believe it.

We also talked about You can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you frame it (sun/storm picture). Because what is true is that we always find what we’re looking for. You can look at life from a negative perspective and see everything as bad and hard. OR you can look at it from a different perspective and say God you are good, you are faithful, and you are true. And when we do this, we stop interpreting God through our circumstances, and we start to interpret our circumstances through the goodness of God.

Then, as followers of Jesus, we Cover everything you do in prayer. We’re not going to be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and petition, we take our cares to God. And the peace of God, that transcends all understanding, will guard you hearts and your MINDS in Christ Jesus.

As followers of Jesus, we are going to let God the Holy Spirit empower you to win the war in your mind. We are stepping out of the lies of our spiritual enemy, and we are stepping in to the truth of God’s word. Because when you know the truth, the truth will set you free.

Invitation… Jesus is the truth that sets us free. (next steps slide)

Ministry…