Welcome to Monday Morning Men

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Okay, welcome back to the Monday Morning Men podcast. My name is Josh Swart here with Thomas Dellinger. And for the third time ever, we've got a guest. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

And we're sitting beside each other. We're sitting beside each other. Do you love that? You're incredibly close. Our thighs are almost touching. That's a that's a yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

I love it. Way to take it there. I love it. Good job. All right. Uh our goal with this podcast is to bridge the gap between your Sunday morning service and your Monday morning real life. We all know there's real stuff that we deal with as men. Yes, we do. Yeah. And so we're our goal is to help unlock the word to help you walk through that on a daily basis. That was good, wasn't it? I loved it so much. No, wasn't it why don't you take over and introduce our guests?

SPEAKER_04 1:06

All right, and today, so um I we've talked about this before multiple times. The goal is for practical faithfulness and obedience, is the hope that we're taking the scriptures and we're practically applying this. How does those apply to Monday? We appreciate the sermon that's preached on Sunday, but if it's not changing on Monday, then it's almost a waste of our time, right? Because God, the gospel is transformative in our lives, and it should represent itself by the obedience in which we're walking every single day. So, in that, when we have guests and we have certain topics that we want to talk about, we've said this before and we'll say it again and again. It's not just that people are great communicators or have a knowledge on a subject, but it's something that they're actually doing, that they're walking out that obedience, that transformative gospel. We were just in Matthew chapter seven, like that are walking out the will of the Father, which is to walk as he walked, to live as he lived. And so, in that, we have uh Drew Taylor who's with us today, who is uh yet got a great uh topic that we're gonna be discussing, which is anxiety, which we talked about even last podcast that like we knew how loneliness is something that we all deal with. I believe anxiety is something that every human being deals with, to which level you deal with it. Um, I don't know, but it is something that I believe every person does. And so he's got a great grasp on that topic, but even better, and this is kind of the highlight we've always mentioned with our guests, is that Drew has been a faithful pastor, I believe, for 20 years, correct? Yeah, a little over 20 years. You've been married now for you said, I think almost 25. 25. Wow, that's amazing. All right, that's the goal. And then he's got three kids that are all adults that are uh following and loving Jesus, which is the ultimate, one of the ultimate prizes right there. So walking out what our our aspirations are. Our aspirations are always Jesus, but then the fruit of our lives should be seen in the way that we are loving other people and to see that fruit with our kids walking with Jesus and our marriages and and the beauty of serving our community. So on that, he's gonna be talking about anxiety today. Personally, it's something that I, like I said, I think everybody struggles with. But for me, maybe my O A-type O C D personality is something that I have always struggled with. Um and Drew's given and shed some light and in a really beautiful way. So we're gonna turn it over to him and I'm gonna stop talking

Why Anxiety Is Everywhere

SPEAKER_04 3:11

and quit yapping and let the but the person in the room that is the actual expert on this discuss it. So, Drew, welcome and thank you for being willing to share and and talk with us today.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

So happy to be here and happy to share and always hopeful when I get a chance to speak about anxiety that I may say a thing or two that could really help someone. Um I used to be trapped and um and that sort of thing. And so the possibility of speaking something that would help somebody is always a genuine encouragement to me.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

And do you care as we start? Um, is that if you're fine with it, maybe a couple times we may interrupt you with a question or a thought if that if that would be a good idea. I would love that. All right, beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah. Well, you said just a moment ago that um everybody struggles with anxiety. I don't know that everybody used to, but I think everybody does now. There's been a spate of books that have come out in the last few years just chronicling the things that have given rise to anxiety. And um and I think the things that cause anxiety come at us at cultural levels. And so we all live in the same culture, and the pressure of culture has turned up to such a degree, and a lot of things have happened in culture that are good and bad, and all of those things play into uh the epidemic of anxiety. It's certainly the case, especially among our children, that levels of anxiety have risen uh significantly highly um among girls and boys, probably a little bit more among girls. So if you read a book like Jonathan

The Connectedness Epidemic

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Heights, The Anxious Generation, he's gonna chronicle some of the things that have happened. And it's amazing as you read more and more of these works and think about it more and more, it does tend to come along a couple of lines. Um, and and that first is cultural, that we just live in an anxious generation. And what I like to do is describe three epidemics that have given rise to really anxiety at a culture level. The first is um a connectedness epidemic. And I always try to think which of the three of these epidemics is worse. And I'm kind of in the season where the connectedness epidemic is the worst. Uh we we know too much and we're too connected, and we have our minds engaged in too many things. And um, you you may think that it's a difficult statement to say, how can you care about too many things? But if you're a limited human being and if you're not God, you have a bandwidth, and we're constantly being called uh out of our bandwidth. There was a book written in 1985 by a guy named Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And one of the things that he said, and this was when he was just worried about television, is that we face now, because we're overconnected, and I'll define that in a second, we our ability to act upon the things that we know, the ratio is all off. So let's say 200 years ago, before the telegraph, um, you knew things that you could do something about because you only knew things within a certain radius. Um, like for instance, if I heard that so-and-so's barn burned down, I would I would mourn that fact, but then I could get on my horse and ride over there and bring my tools and help the guy. And so information to action ratio was probably at a human level. Um and what Postman argues is that with the advent of the telegraph, you now knew about things that you could do nothing about. Now amplify that by television and then amplify that by internet, and then amplify that by internet being in your pocket. You know about more things in a day than people a thousand years ago would have known in a lifetime. Like we we double information now because of um internet and AI, we double information about every fact check me here, but about every 12 hours.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

And that used to be decades, even hundreds of years before information would double. And so now you know about things that you can do nothing about. And um and so culturally, just being connected, like you know, I was at a meeting last night and they brought up the fact that an earthquake had happened in Bogota and one had happened last week in Venezuela. Now I don't watch the news. That's just the choice I've made because of my anxiety and struggle with it. Um it's not just that we know about those things, it's that because we do have more reach than we've ever had, there's just a a pull to do something.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Or have an opinion about it.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Correct. You know, so I vote every couple of years. That's the that's every two years, there's something I can do about politics that's actually in action that I know will be effective. And yet I hear about politics 24 hours a day. And so we run into something where uh there's all of these things that we know about that we can do nothing about. And what happens is you begin to feel subject to forces rather than a person who has agency who can make a difference in the world. And when when that tipping point happens in a person's life or in a culture,

You Can't Fix Everything

SPEAKER_01 8:29

they're worrying about things that they can do nothing about, and they're not doing anything about the things they can do something about. That's the that's the that's the problem. So um, you know, the the old phrase, everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to do the dishes. Well, uh the world being changed is screaming at you and the dishes don't scream. But what happens slowly over time is your dishes pile up and that becomes another source of anxiety while you're hearing about all the things that are happening. Everybody sets their hair on fire, like that's the only way to get people's attention. And so culturally, because we're connected, we've reached this point where um we just know too much about too many things. And and and we know too much about too many things that we can do nothing about. And so one of the main ways that we can try and fight, especially if we're a person given to panic attack and anxiety, is actually just really limit our vision and look at areas of life where we can actually fix things. So, like um family, neighbor, church. Like you're a human being. I I live my life all the time in a two square foot uh plot on the earth. And uh I know for me, because I'm given to anxiety, that my draw is I'm sensitive. So I'm I'm always gonna be pulled to things like that. And it's not the fight is not to be insensitive, it's to tune my sensitivities to the things I can actually affect. Um I'm a pastor of a a church. Um so I've got a a number of souls that I have to answer for before Jesus. It's a one of the ways that I fight anxiety in my mind is just to keep my focus on on the place that I'm called to, on the things that I'm called to, um, and not let myself get pulled in a thousand directions. I mean, I can give money, you know, to the people in Bogota, and we certainly as a church and individually can pray. But just remembering, as a human being, as a single person in this wide, wide world, I've got to focus my attention on the things where I can actually use my agency to make a difference. And then what happens is you begin to see, all right, I can make a difference in little things and in little areas, and those can add up over time to be big things. But this, like, I'm gonna give you an example. Um, just speaking of this pull to help, uh if you were to search the Harvard Library system, and there's an author I love, Andy Crouch, who did this a few years back, and you just search the title Change the World, like before, and again, I can send in the actual facts, like before 1850, there was never a book title about Change the World. And then from like 1850 to, you know, nine throughout the whole 1900s, there was like 150. And then from 2000 to 2005, there were like 200, 2005 to whatever, there's like 500. So, like, we know more about the world and we feel this burden to change the world. And then we end up actually looking at situations we cannot affect, we get compassion fatigue, right? That I'm just being asked to care about too many things. Yeah. And I can't do it. And if you if you can't care about all the things that everybody cares about, like even as a pastor of a church, man, there are needs everywhere, like legitimate needs everywhere that that could be met. And there are as many ministries that could be started in my church as there are people in my church, and as there are people within a two-mile radius of my church, but we we simply can't do them. Yeah. I mean, we can't do them. And so um one of the biggest words to learn if you struggle with like anxiety and just fretful thought all the time is no. And like feel a good godly impulse to say, I that needs to be done. I can't do that. I'm called to this, I'm called to these people, I'm called to this time, I'm called to this place, I can do something here. You know, so for me, uh churches have different gifts, pastors have different gifts, and just having the humility to lean in and go, I wouldn't be any good at that. And and like that's okay. I'm I'm pretty good at these things, and and this is my focus, and those are important things, somebody should care about them. Um and you know, the church can help Bogotaw, but Drew can do beyond a very limited amount of things. I I'm I'm kind of stuck. And so if you want to overcome a pattern of just anxiety and just stress and just get out of the pot where the water is constantly being turned

The Busyness Epidemic

SPEAKER_01 13:21

up, I think disconnecting from a lot of things is probably very, very helpful. And just learning to think daily through what can I actually affect today, what can I do today, and and aim your resources at less things, and you can make a bigger impact. So that that's the connectedness one. I think uh related to that, the busyness epidemic um is massive. And uh just related to that, uh, there's one cultural uh trend that needs to be noted. That 200 years ago, the way that you showed cultural importance is by having lots of leisure time. You were culturally important if you were not busy. Uh you had staff and people to do the things. The people low on the totem pole were the ones who were busy, and those who were how to tame things in society were not. And now it's 100% flipped. The way that you show um your cultural power is by the fact that you are busy. And one of the things we mentioned at your Bible study last week is that the number one answer anymore to the question, how are you doing, is like busy. And I do it all the time. Yeah, that's right. And so um, and a book that was really helpful in in in kind of seeing this and understanding the impact on the human soul of this is the book Ruthless Elimination Hurry by John Mark Comer. I think that's a helpful book to read. Uh, simply if for no other reason than the the people he points you to. And there's this Japanese theologian in there um who talks about uh the speed of love and that God is a three mile an hour God, and that if we're busy, uh fretful, we're moving at a speed that's too fast for love. Um, and the other thing is I think like one of the reasons that we're busy uh is because we just think more of ourselves than we should. I'm not advocating for a lazy life. Goodness no. I work hard. Like I went yesterday, you know, 7:30 to 9. Uh uh it's just uh focused and uh actually productive and you know within the limits of who I am as a human being, I think we should work hard, but I actually think it's sinful to be busy. And I think we're teaching our kids to be busy. Um and I think we're letting the world raise the temperature such that uh, you know, we just create a franticness within us. And if if we can't actually take a day off and have a Sabbath of some sort, um, on someday, I mean, like for me, Sunday cannot be it, but I do have a day of the week where my wife and I just focus on not accomplishing a lot and going and doing something fun and resting and having a good meal and spending two hours cooking something like every week. Um and I just find that that's just a wonderful reset for my soul. And so, like busyness and constantly being moving, I think just contributes to this state of frantic worry. And I feel like the church is trying to keep up and I feel like we should actually be trying to create uh cultures and places that are actually human. Um and we don't we we just kind of baptize what the world does, and then we have you know eight days a week of uh activities and things. Um and I don't think that that's actually gonna eventually serve the world. I mean, the world needs to be taught to be human. Um Martin Luther said, if you're not attacking the world at the place where it's most denying the gospel, you're denying the gospel. Um and I think the place that the world is most denying the gospel right now is the doctrine of anthropology. What does it mean to be a human? What does a good human life look like? And so as a church, we need to be building cultures where good human lives are demonstrated and modeled and like healthy practices are put in place.

SPEAKER_04 17:34

I think I think when you even said that the last Bible study, it really like I like it impacted me. The fact that you were like, I'd like to submit to you that if you're too busy, it's sin. Yes. It's like, oh my gosh, it's like it not only am I sinning, but it is, and it and it comes from a place. Some of it, yeah. I mean, life can be just there are there are things that we have to do. You that doesn't mean you're not working hard. Yep. Um, but maybe there's a priority system that is messed up in my life. But even the thought of just like, I think I'm superhuman, which is me being God in that moment. Yeah. And I I I if I were to be honest with myself, the reason I'm busy is because I do, I think highly of myself that I am so needed and wanted and so fulfilling to everybody and everything, as opposed to just slowing down and realizing I'm gonna let God play his role and I'm gonna simply be human in those moments, is a hard place to be sometimes. Um, because our self-worth, especially if you're if you're someone like me, you got you're listening to this, you know, I'll never forget. It was, I think your podcast on your other one with Chris Evans said that. When you said something about Captain America? Yeah, no. What? Yeah, Captain America's here. Uh, speaking of superhuman, uh, he said to you, you said something about you felt like um you felt like you had to be constantly doing something. Do you remember this? I don't know if you remember this with Chris. And he said that that you, and he even mentioned, he's like, you find fulfillment in being active, that it was like your self-worth is built on that. And he's like, that's problematic. And I remember hearing that on your other podcast, and I was thinking, uh, that's me. I I find my self-worth by the fact that how busy I am, I must be accomplishing something, as opposed to letting God be the accomplisher and simply the vessel in which he wants to work through. So that's really good.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

And it's interesting. I mean, what what does it mean that God is blessing you? It means that there's more coming out of what you do than can be explained by what you did. Amen. Right? That's all. And so, um, so interestingly enough, one of one of the two things that's blessed in the Genesis creation account, yeah, the man and the woman are blessed, and it said, be there God blessed them by saying, Be fruitful and multiply. And so something about the union of the man and woman was fructifying, it produced fruit, it produced life. The only other thing that God blessed was the Sabbath. In other words, taking that off is brings more out than would have happened otherwise. It gives life. And so withdrawing, taking a day off actually is the thing that gives you the strength to uh go the other six days. Uh and so, yeah, busyness, and then the thing that reflects that is the hurriness epidemic. Uh, if busyness is what we're doing outside, hurry

The Hurry Epidemic

SPEAKER_01 20:13

is the frantic thing that we feel inside. And um hurry epidemic is massive. Colmer deals with this as well in his book. You know, if you're the kind of person who is constantly looking for the shorter line at Walmart or even on my way over here today, like if there's two lanes, if this lane is shorter before the red light, then you scoot over here. You just we're just always like pushing and going. That's me. Yeah. And the the and and that that's that, you know, and you you probably don't mean to be in a hurry, and you probably don't mean for all the things that that says are true to be true. Um, but but just learning to take breaths and and and breathe and move slowly, again, focused, um, hardworking at it, but not in a hurry, because 1 Corinthians 13, which my wife and I are memorizing right now together, because we just need to, because we find ourselves kind of pushing against this as well. I mean, the first thing that Paul says about love is love is patient. And so if you don't have room in your soul for uh a breath and for patience and just for being where you are in the moment, uh, then you don't have the capacity for divine love. Wow. And so, like, and that's that book, The Three Mile an Hour God, like God moves at the speed of love, which is slow. Um, and you know, for me, uh we're we're all in a hurry and we all do that. I still do that, even though I know I shouldn't do that. It's like I I've gotta be where I'm not. I've just gotta be where I'm not. And it's like, nope. Uh being a human being to some extent means at least being where you are. Um and so my my my body won't catch up to my soul if I'm always moving. I just feel separate from myself, and so I have to fight that and just slow down. Um and so those are like the the cultural epidemics, and I think especially with our uh the thing about anxiety is we want to reduce it. Oh, anxiety is a sin. It's like, yeah, it is a sin. Um, no doubt. Or anxiety is a body problem. And that's why, you know, so we we give techniques and breathing techniques and medicines and uh supplements. And it's like, it is that, but don't just reduce it down to that. Or anxiety is a cultural problem. Like it is that, but don't reduce it down to that. Anxiety, actually, like most sins uh and struggles are system wide, and you have to, if they're besetting sins that dominate your life, uh, you need to look at all three facets and not reduce your struggle down to one thing. It's system-wide, you need more than one plan of attack. Um, even if it's porn, there's cultural issues to that. There are embodied issues to that, and there's a sin issue. If it's lying, there are. And so if you're gonna overcome a besetting sin, which for me was anxiety, you have to look at all these levels. And that that cultural piece is those epidemics, and you have to have the humility to go, you know what? There are some people in this world who can stay connected to Twitter and be okay. My wife is one of them. Like she can watch it for, you know, 25 minutes, get from it what she wants, put her phone down and go to work. I can't do that. I get caught in the riptide and I get sucked in, and then I'm thinking about, and all of a sudden I'm caring about things that three minutes ago I didn't even know about. And so I, you know, my wife has the capacity to handle that better than me. So for me, I just gotta go, I can't do that. Um, and then culturally, like I just I have a friend who was my associate pastor for a while in South Carolina. And when we worked together, I went to counseling because I thought something is wrong with me. I can't just operate at this pace this guy operates at. And and like he's in Rock Hill, he's one of my best friends in the world still, and he runs the entire North Americas for a church organization. And I was talking to my counselor friend. I'm like, Am I lazy? He's like, No, that guy's a V8. You're a four-cylinder. God made him different. Don't who are you? And that was just so helpful to be released. Like four cylinders have their place. You know, I'm efficient when I get after it, and I can go for a long, long time, but I can't carry heavy loads. And so, like, underneath all of this is the real source, the sinful source of anxiety, which is pride, which Peter and Jesus attack, but cultural pieces, and then the second thing I always try to tell people is um you're you're also a creature in a body. And if you don't respect that, then you're not

Living as an Embodied Creature

SPEAKER_01 25:02

uh respecting the way God made you. And we don't respect the way God made us. Most Christians are effectively uh followers of not Isaiah or Jeremiah, but the philosopher Plato. You know, and I hate to get nerdy, but um Go for it.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

I'm a nerd.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

All right, so we're in it. Um Plato believed that the fleshly embodied existence was the result of sin. And so what he was trying to do in his philosophy is escape this fleshly world and make it up to the world of the forms. And so there came this idea from Plato that the spiritual is good and the earthly is bad. And I think Christians, by and large, have kind of just absorbed that and believed that to be true. And so for most of us, our view of the end times is being disembodied souls in heaven floating on a cloud, playing harps like Bugs Bunny. Like I think that we get most of our end times view from Bugs Bunny cartoons and 12th century Catholic art, you know, where we're just spiritual beings, and they were very influenced by those sorts of things as well. The Bible is completely different. In the end, we don't all go to heaven, heaven comes to earth, and we are given new bodies like Jesus, and we will always be embodied. Like God likes earth, dirt, flowers, bodies, stuff. And we're always trying to escape that and get beyond the limits of being embodied. And um, it's a problem because if you're embodied, then you need things like water, sleep, vegetables, rest. Um, and you need limits that you appreciate and live by. And again, if you try and live outside of the limits of being a body, now do the best with your body you can. Like my son and I are training for a running race. I like to run. I like to do, I'm 50. I can't lift weights, man. I'm all body weight, so I don't shred my joints anymore. But you, you know, you do you do body weight or or you lift weights, you eat good things, you get good sleep, you you drink lots of water. Um it's amazing when I feel a panic attack coming on, you know, the first thing that I do anymore is of course I pray, but the first thing I do is just drink a liter of water. Because when you're dehydrated, like your brain shrinks and and it starts to freak out. And it's amazing how just drinking water, like you can feel it just go through your body and wash things out. Um, I really prioritize sleep in a way I never have. Do you know what the average amount of sleep the average human being got before the advent of the light bulb?

SPEAKER_04 27:54

Yes. I know. I've already heard it. Yes. You guess. I don't know, 10 hours?

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Is 11 hours. Wow. 11 hours. That would be life changing. It would be life. No, quite literally. Yeah, yeah. And so, no, but no, no, nobody wants you to sleep. Yeah. Nobody wants you to sleep.

SPEAKER_04 28:11

Uh just a pause on that for a second, because it's like, it's like even when you think about these courses and these, these, I call them the what the jocko's of the world that are it's like, let's we gotta be four hours ahead of everybody else and better than everybody else. I'm not saying you, like you said, we should be, we should work hard. Uh we should we should count the time and and and be intentional, but realize like this weird, it doesn't sell courses to tell people to be human and to let God be God. Yeah, it doesn't, I mean, every even your Christian worldview of what you know, uh prosperity, gospel, whatever, it is all about empowering you to be, whether it's supernatural or to all of a sudden make money or whatever it is, is for you to be better as opposed to letting God be better and you simply to play your role. And that that just doesn't sell. It's not it, it doesn't sell courses, it doesn't sell books, it doesn't sell anything like that. It's not motivating. For me to hear someone say, aspire, what I think it's Thessalonians, right? Aspire to live a quiet and godly life. What? Yes, like that doesn't sell anything. Like, what are you talking about? To live in obscurity and to let him reign supreme, that doesn't put me in a great place.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Even in uh, I believe it's in Psalms, it says, in in vain you rise up early and stay up late, toiling for what you eat. Yeah. God gives rest to those he loves. That's so good. It it I'm summarizing it, I don't know it verbatim. Yeah, it's pretty close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

Is that Psalm 127? But yeah, I think you you're exactly right. Um and what the church tends to do is baptize it and publish it. Yeah, right? And um instead of actually setting up cultures that show what true humanity should be, which I think should be one of the callings of the church, not just to preach the gospel and to be on mission and to disciple people, but actually to we are enculturated people. Like we need we don't just need to get ourselves straight, we need to be in a context of a group of people who are all living together human life. Um and churches should at least have that on the map of their aspirations. Uh, and so many of us don't. We just bab, but yeah, sleep. Um, you know, there's Christian versions of that. Like Martin Luther would get up at four in the morning and say, I'm so busy today, I had to take an extra two hours to pray. And we think, goodness gracious, how did he go to bed at 11 and get up at four? He didn't, he went to bed at seven. You know what I mean? Like he just he there weren't light bulbs, right? You know, and there's something to that cycle of day and night. Like even Andrew Huberman will say this, you know, you slow down at night, work hard during the day. And I know that providentially there are some people who can't do that. My mother was a nurse, you know, and she worked overnight. Those sorts of things happen. And even with busyness, as you said, there are seasons where in God's providence, that's just the way that it is. You just got to work through it. The problem is now we are always the way we should only be sometimes. And um, and if you stop and look at it long enough, underneath all of that is um pride. So good. Yeah, and that that really is that is the the the sin. Um, I would say love being embodied because God loves that you are embodied. And one day he's gonna give you uh a body like Jesus's, and you're like, yeah, but Drew, it says spiritual body in 1 Corinthians 15. That in Greek that's pneumaticos. That means we will have a physical body that, like Jesus', is controlled by the spirit. But it'll still be a body, it's not a spiritual body in the sense that it's floating. We'll be on earth, we'll be working. Like everybody will have a job except for me and doctors, right? Because there's culture to build to the glory of God and all that kind of stuff. And so just really loving and respecting being embodied, and that means eating better things. Don't eat, you know, if C.S. Lewis one time said, uh, sometimes I have a bad night, and I don't know if it's because I'm sinful or because I ate too late. Right? And it's just like, yeah, if you eat like the blue flame Takis at 1230, like you wake up at 2 30 with a panic attack, like there's an easy explanation there, like why coffee in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Uh so yeah, like with coffee, there's a point where it helps me function, and then there's the point where there's an existential crisis. Right. And and it's just like that wasn't

The Problem With Certainty and Control

SPEAKER_01 32:38

that I'm uh, you know, uh that I just had too much coffee. You know, and so like just learning those things, but then also not only that you're embodied, but also that you're a creature. There are certain things that God has that you can never have. Um, and two of those things are certainty and control. Um, like as human beings, one of the things that the church says a lot, and I understand it, and it's right in what they mean, is we believe in absolute truth. I believe in absolute truth. Um, you know, and there's this idea of like you should know that you should know that you should know that you should know. And there's this pressing for certainty. Uh, that is not within the realm of creatures. And and what I what I don't mean by that is that we can't have confidence that we know the truth. I'm confident enough in the gospel and in the scripture that I would die for it. I hope, right? And I let it control and dominate my life uh and I try to grow in its teachings. But the only one who knows things absolutely is God. The only like if you are a scrupulous, anxious person, it is a fool's errand to try and feel certain about anything because you've got that uh prosecuting attorney that lives full-time in your head, and he or she can question anything. And so it's interesting that I've realized actually, we so absolute means knowing things without relation. I know a lot of true things, but I know it relative to listening to God. Does that make sense? And there's a certain point for me, because I love to read, I love to think, I love to dig down into things. I just like to break up ideas and analyze and all I just want to know so much. But if the driving force behind all of that is to have certainty, then that's me wanting to know some things that I don't even need God to know. And that's not possible. Like, um I have to at some point look at my own brain and pull it back off the cliff and go, you're just a creature, man. You you do the best you can. Uh and by God's grace, the best I can is I am I am I'm convinced and I am confident that Jesus is God's Messiah and the Lord of the world and the Bible is true. But I can't but the search for certainty is a fool's errand. And I hope that makes sense. I'm not trying to say don't delve into things. I'm trying to say underneath all my searching was this desire for certainty. And I've come to the conclusion that faith has two opposites. One opposite of faith is doubt, the other opposite of faith is certainty. Because that's me wanting to know things without having to depend upon God as a creature. And so I have to, even as I search and read and want to know more and listen and do all this stuff, I've just got to constantly chastise my own hopes and expectations and go, I'm just doing the best I can as a creature. And there's no, there's no way I'm going to swing out into eternity that doesn't require that I'm just trusting that something is true that I can't know for certain is true. And what that does is that actually relaxes me to then pursue and read and grow and change and learn. I just do it from a state of rest rather than some frantic search that's impossible for me. And so, like, that's the embodied creature part of it. So we have the cultural part, we have the embodied creature part, drinking water, getting sleep, living as an actual human being creature, not a creator. And then the third part, of course, is the sinful parts of anxiety. And I just tend to go to two

Casting Your Anxiety on God

SPEAKER_01 36:34

places in the Bible to help think through the sinful aspects of anxiety. The first is 1 Peter 5. Um, and this is one of the things we covered at at the Bible study that we had last week, where Peter says, humble yourselves, therefore, um under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. And so this is where knowing a little bit of grammar is helpful because at the beginning of verse 7, uh you have that word casting, which is a participle. And a participle is a verbal adjective, and I know that's nerdy, but uh it's just nerdy. Uh it's but grammar is important. It is. Um so casting is a participle that's telling you how to do something. Right? So if I were to say, um, son, drive straight down this road holding the steering wheel as straight as you possibly can. Uh by telling him, holding the steering wheel as straight as you possibly can. I'm telling him how to accomplish the command of driving straight down the road. Um, what Peter's doing here is he's telling us with that phrase, casting all your anxieties on him, he's telling you how to obey the main command, which in this case is to humble yourselves. How do you humble yourself before the Lord? How do you humble yourself under his mighty hand so that at the proper time he may exalt you? The way you do it is by casting your anxieties on him. Now let me say this uh for a scrupulous, catastrophizing worrier, there's never gonna be a point in your life where that doesn't feel like a risk. I just wish that it felt risk-free. Or if I just it just felt natural for me to cast my anxieties on the Lord. What I've come to realize after 30 years of struggling is there's always gonna be a hump. I just have to get over the hump of actually taking this thing that's on my brain right now and just going, Lord, I've done the best I can. Here you go. I I can't hold on to this anymore. What that means is if if humbling myself before the Lord is the way I do that is by casting my anxieties, then what Peter is telling us is that if you hold on to your anxieties, you are doing the opposite of humbling yourself, which is you're being arrogant. You're thinking, you're, you're, you're holding on to these worries as if you're the one in charge of them. And as a pastor, you see this in people all the time. I have had uh mothers, especially in in some of my pastoral contexts, who just worry all the time about the health of their children. They just do. I mean, they stay up at night thinking, what if they catch this? What if that this happens? And it's like by by holding on to that, what you're saying is, I've got to make sure that they stay safe. And I've got to put things in place, and I've got to, and I've got to. And you want to do the best you can. My goodness. But at the end of the day, you have to go, I'm not God here. I I didn't give them life, and I can't sustain their life. And thinking about it this way is taking my life. And there's like not a magic formula. It's just you really do have to go, I'm not God. And so you have to take something that you've built up a habit of worrying about, and you have to rehabituate yourself to entrusting it to God's care. And it's not like I'm over this. So this past week, I fixed the CV axle in my daughter's car. I've never done that before. Uh, and so she, you know, and it's a Honda Pilot that has 211,000 miles on it. Like we're just making that thing work. Um, and I changed the CV axle and I just watched her on, I did the best I could. I followed all the instructions. I have some mechanical now so I can do it. Um, I checked, there's no transmission. I'm sorry, I'm talking about this, but like there's no transmission spilling. All of my cotter pins are still in after I drove it, test drove it, everything. But I was still thinking to myself, what happens if that thing lets loose and my daughter dies or gets that's a catastrophizer. I immediately attached to the worst thing that could possibly happen. And I found myself like following my daughter on fine my on the phone, just making sure everything was fine. And I was just like, what am I doing? I did the best I could. I think it was fine. I test drove it. I checked for leaks. It is what it is. I've done the best I can do. Now I have to entrust my daughter to God's care. And that, you know, by watching her on Find My, well, I'm not doing anything productive, but it the problem with worry is that worry feels so productive. It does. It feels like you're doing something, and that's the great lie. I'm doing something. It's like, yeah, here's what you're doing. You're thinking you're God.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

It's a lie of control. Yeah. When I worry about something, at least for me, I'm thinking I'm still in some sort of control, even though I'm really not. Yeah. Like I think to myself, I'll be ready for when the bad happens, even though I can't even control that bad. It's like, even just the thought of me being able to control my emotional response to it being bad is somehow putting me in that place of God. Um, and that's something that I think that a lot of men will naturally do. Yes. Because we want to be in control. Even as you were talking about, I was thinking about it. It's like our even as casting care, we all we all want our confidence in our knowledge and our knowing. We want our confidence in the fact that we're driving the car as opposed to my four-year-old who doesn't worry about the destination because he knows the person driving it. If I know that God is getting me to the destination, I worry free. I'm getting the car and I trust that I'll get there. Instead, I'm like, now how about you let me drive? Then I'll really be confident we're gonna get there, which is an incredibly naive, prideful thought. Yep. But this is but this makes us feel, but it also makes us feel productive. It makes us feel good to our friends. Like, look at what I'm controlling and look at what I'm doing. It's it is always birthed out of pride. You said something I do want to just want to go back through you. You'd said this at the Bible study. I just kind of want to, you'd said something that um anxiety, whatever makes us anxious, is usually the God of our life. Can you just break that down just a little bit? I don't want to get ahead of where you are.

SPEAKER_01 43:06

No, but that so that that's where we're going

Anxiety Reveals What You Worship

SPEAKER_01 43:09

next. Okay. Because um anxiety, one of the things if you're an anxious sufferer, the the first way to battle it is to listen to it. Because it'll and I forget who said this first, like maybe Ed Welch or one of those guys at uh Westminster Theological Seminary. Um, one of the first things you need to do with anxiety is listen to what it's teaching you. And the first thing it's teaching you is it's teaching you where you think you have control that you don't. And so you got to humble yourself. The second thing that anxiety is teaching you, and the second sin it reveals, is what your idol is. And for that, Matthew chapter six is the place to go. Um and I I know I don't need to argue for this, but like and you hear old men say things like this all the time, but it's like the more you listen to Jesus, it's like, man, he was a genius. He was a genius. And like the more you struggle and just pour over things. And so I've recently at my church been preaching through the Sermon on the Mount, and I noticed this again like Jesus speaks about anxiety in Matthew chapter six, verse twenty five. And so he says, Therefore I tell you, do not be anxiety. About your life, what you will eat, or what you'll drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. And then he just goes through that list. Hey, the body is more than uh clothing and life is more than food. He says, like, look at your father. He cares for you. He takes care of birds and they're not as important to you. And like all that stuff is there, and there's just gold in them, their hills, right? But the thing that struck me the most as I was looking through this last time is the first word of verse 25, which is the word therefore. Because therefore is a connector word, right? You you know the old saying, when you see a therefore, you need to go back and ask what it's there for. Um, and and basically it's pointing back up to what he just said. And the interesting thing is uh the thing that Jesus just said was about money. And he he calls money a god, right? The only idol that Jesus ever named was Mammon. And so he says, No one can serve two masters, and that word serve is uh a Greek word that has worship aspects to it. That's where we get our word liturgy from, okay? Uh no one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money, therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you put on. And so Jesus says, You cannot serve both God and money, therefore, don't worry about the things that money can get you. Okay. Um, which to me is a helpful diagnostic tool. If I worry about the things that money can get me all the time, then that tells me, Jesus is teaching me that money is to some extent my God. All right, which is helpful because I don't actually worry about clothing. Drew doesn't, and I don't worry about food. I worry about uh losing my mental capacity. I worry about dementia and Alzheimer's. But what is Jesus, what would he say to me then? He's like, you worry about dementia, you worry about Alzheimer's, you go to all these things to avoid it. Uh he's like, that should tell you what your God is. Your God is your capacity to think clearly. You worry too much about um how smart you are. So you cannot serve both me and your mental capacity, therefore I tell you, don't worry about Alzheimer's. Or uh for that mother who's always worrying about the health of her children, you cannot serve both God and your kids. Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about their health. Right? Whatever, does that make sense? Yeah. Like whatever you're worried about is a direct funnel to tell you the competing idol in your life. Like if you're constantly worried about your business, Jesus would say, you cannot serve both me and your business. And John Piper was really helpful with this back in the day. I I had never put this together, but uh you cannot serve two masters. And he said, Nobody thinks they serve money. Right? Nobody thinks that. He's like, so what does serve mean? Like, I don't serve money. Money serves me. I work for it, I make it, and it serves me and I spend it. What does he mean, serve? When he says, no one can serve both God and money. You serve the thing that you think is going to fulfill you. Right? So why do I work for money? I work for money because money is my fulfillment. And what Jesus would say is, okay, that's cool, and that's fine when it's working, but when you don't have enough, that means all your fulfillment is uh on the line, and that's when you start to freak out. He said, instead, what you need to do, this is Piper speaking, Jesus is saying you need to serve God. You need to look to him to meet your needs and to be your fulfillment. And if you think he's the one that can fulfill you, then your life is just naturally going to go in the direction of serving him. And if if God is the one who you're serving, you're gonna experience a whole lot less worry because he's not going to let you down. Like anxiety not only tells me what my God is, it's also letting me know that my God is failing me. That's good. Right? And so if I go after my, you know, if I'm that young mother who finds my identity in my children, who finds my life in my children, the idea of losing them devastates me and I have an existential crisis. Um, and that should let me know I'm putting too much investment in their well-being. And the other thing about worrying about your children is that also puts a pressure on them. They begin to feel that they are your world. And what kid needs to feel that pressure, right? But but you see my point is that whatever you worry about is a direct upward line to the thing that you are worshiping. And so good, anxiety, uh, fight the cultural problems, uh, separate yourself from the things that cause you anxiety, slow down, be productive, but slow down, live as a creature in a body, and then don't worship idols and don't try to have control. I think, and and that is a lifelong fight. But if you can begin to just see that I need to take a season and address each of these things, you will eventually find yourself more and more at peace. Because I can say this uh 30 years ago when I had my first panic attack, I never ever thought I'd be normal again. And I never ever imagined Drew not having constant panic. Drew has not

Practical Application: Give God Control

SPEAKER_01 50:05

constant panic now. I'm awesome. The Lord is I mean, I could have an awful season of tomorrow, but by and large, the Lord has just delivered me and I live at rest. Wow. Yeah, and I'm grateful for that.

SPEAKER_04 50:16

That's fantastic. Yeah. I think for you guys as we as we as we wrap it up here, I think this is something that as men, we we have other gods, whether it's our knowledge or our confidence in our our our money or our confidence in our success or our confidence in what we can control, we're naturally fixers. I think men are just geared that way. God made us that way, which is okay. The problem becomes when we become the fixer of all and the controllers of our life. So a lot of great takeaways. Thank you, Drew, so much for speaking on this. And then for us, I think practical application, at least for this week, if you know, there's so much to take away from this. But one of the things for me, I I would just diagnose what is the anxiety in your life that you are currently serving as your God. And as we always encourage you, find someone in your community to keep yourself accountable to. We believe that you should be walking in accountability and in community. So for you guys to confess that sin to one another, something that you can pray about, that you can come over as you cast those cares back on him, as you humble yourself and allow God to take control over your life as opposed to you being in control, because as someone who does control his own life, it is miserable and it is not fulfilling. And I should not be the pilot of that plane. It will eventually crash and burn, and giving it back to God. But any other last thoughts before we wrap this up.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

No, I I think some of us may want to just be relieved of that anxiety and do whatever it takes to get rid of it. So, like, we want to hit that quick medication or self-gratification through activity or whatever it is. But like embracing that sanctification process takes you on this journey of trusting God so much more than you ever would if you just medicated or went to therapy, whatever it is that is like your escape from it. So I think I mean you just laid it out so beautifully, just how at the end there you're like, Drew is not, I'm not panicking, right? All the time. And that's just a testimony of God's goodness over your life.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

And probably something daily that you lay down as well. Like daily, you have to die to yourself. It says scripture says you're dying to yourself every single day and be like, you're back in control, God, not we.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

Yeah, like even you could say, like, I'm on medication every day and like this is what I do. Like, you're in control again, right? But to release that control and let God do a work in your life, like what a beautiful testimony that is. So love it. Yeah. Thank you guys for listening. Um, we'll see you next week.