Facing Anxietyنموونە

EVERYBODY HAS IT

Listen to me very closely…everybody deals with anxiety. Everybody! Some of us are better at coping or hiding it, some of us deal with higher levels than others, but everybody experiences it. So, if you’ve been feeling like you’re crazy because you’re constantly struggling with anxiety, you can stop being anxious about how anxious you are…it’s a normal thing. 

And the reason I can so confidently declare that everybody has anxiety is because God hard-wired this mental state into our human brains. You see, anxiety is actually one of your brain’s greatest tools for self-preservation (in other words: it keeps you alive). Anxiety was designed as a response to a threat of some sort. For example, if you were walking through the woods and suddenly came across a gigantic grizzly bear (to make it worse, he’s also carrying a flamethrower), you would experience a sudden jolt of anxiety. Your brain would send all sorts of signals to your body telling you it’s time to either fight for survival or run like crazy. Your body tenses, your heart-rate and breathing increases, and you’re ready to do whatever it takes to survive. God built this tool into our brains so that we could escape these well-armed bears and keep ourselves safe…in that way, it’s actually a gift from God to the human race. 

The problem many of us experience in our modern society (where bears with flamethrowers are a rare sighting) is that this tool in our brains has been hijacked. Now, the “threats” that trigger our anxiety are on social media, they’re in the classroom, they’re at home…frankly, a lot of the time they actually exist only in our minds. We imagine a threat, and our brain and body respond as if we’re in actual danger. For some of us, we can’t seem to snap out of it and we feel like we’re facing one of those flamethrower bears all the time.

But, is there anything we can do about this? Is there anything God can do to take this natural part of our brains and get it under control? In this reading plan, we're going to explore some key truths the Bible gives us about anxiety and fear (which are basically emotional cousins), and learn some really practical and simple ways to overcome this part of your brain when it gets out of control.