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here Well everybody Welcome to Prairie Lakes Church this weekend no matter where you're joining us from if you're one of our physical locations all across Iowa or online campus all across Iowa and Beyond welcome. We're glad you're here and we are one Church on many corners getting to do this thing together at Prairie Lakes church. And hey your weekend host already said this but I want to repeat it because I think it's important today. We're a no matter Church. Okay, we all need to know matter church. We are messy people in need of God's grace and a Prairie League church. We don't hide that or run from that. So we kind of wear that like a badge because it's who we are. We're no matter people and we need to keep that in mind this weekend every weekend, but especially this weekend as we continue to talk about this message series called mindset. So if you miss last week's message this week, too over three weeks series called mindset and here's what we say mean when we say mindset. He said what is mindset here's what it is. It's how we leave our thoughts into attitudes beliefs and stories in order.

Make sense of ourselves and the world around us. That's what a mindset is. We all have them. In fact, we all have them very strongly that when someone else's mindset or perspective seems to clash with ours. We feel a little bit a little bit threatened or a little bit challenged because they challenge our narratives are our own mindset and stories and last week Pastor Jesse kicked off the series by talking about soundtracks. The soundtracks are the tapes or the narratives that play in our minds about ourselves our world and others around. It's one of the things he talked about was having a growth mindset and here's one of the big ideas from the message.

You can change your mindset when you shift your focus. you can change your mindset when you shift your focus and I'm going to demonstrate that this weekend as we talk about a significant topic that impacts a lot of us and that I'm very familiar with it is anxiety And some of you just got anxious because you heard that we were talking about anxiety and Hey, listen, I have personally wrestled with anxiety most of my life and as a pastor, I've walked a lot of people through there seasons of anxiety, and I'm well acquainted with this topic, but before I talk about my story and before we talk about how to manage anxiety and navigate it, well, I want to level set and just talk about what anxiety is so we can start in the same place.

But before I do that, I want to give a quick encouragement to you. You may have just heard me say we're gonna talk about anxiety and you may not wrestle with anxiety. And so you go. Hey, this message isn't primarily about me. And even if you're in that spot, this message is for you. Even if it's not about you it's for you. So please don't tune out there are many people in your life and many people in your little Iowa that wrestle with anxiety.

And this message may be the very thing God needs you to hear right now. So that you can learn how to love and encourage the people that's put around you maybe this message is for you to gain some empathy and understanding for the people in your little Iowa that God's placed around you who do wrestle with anxiety. This message is for all of us. Okay.

So here's what I want to begin with this question. What is anxiety we're gonna talk about two types. And here's the first type of anxiety. Anxiety is temporary or chronic feelings of fear restlessness or unease now, we all experience this all of us feel this at times in our lives. We feel anxiety. It's a normal part of our humanity and the human process and human emotional range anxiety is a part of it. Okay now, We all experience this but sometimes it becomes more serious and it's what we call clinical anxiety and here's what clinical anxieties it's lasting or chronic feelings of fear restlessness or unease which disrupt a person's daily activities for an extended period of time. It's more intense than regular anxiety and it lasts longer than typical anxiety that is clinical anxiety because listen we all have bad days, we'll have anxious thoughts and a time that's disrupted but clinical anxiety is when anxiety happens enough and deep enough that it becomes disruptive to our lives and clinical anxiety is diagnosable. In fact, there's five different anxiety disorders that we can have based on symptoms and it often requires medication counseling or therapy and intervention.

It's often unmanageable without help. That's what clinical anxiety is. Now when we feel anxiety often, we have physical symptoms. So some of you may be thinking like well, I don't struggle anxiety. I don't I don't feel that. Well, here's some things physically that happen in our body that may be clues that you are experiencing anxiety.

Here's the list right? It's a really fun list of things to experience muscle tension physical weakness poor memory sweaty hands fear or confusion inability to relax constant worry shortness of breath heart palpitations upset stomach and panic attacks. Isn't that a fun list? It sounds like a Pepto Bismol commercial or it sounds like the end of a prescription drug commercial or the list all the side effects and they're like and death right? Like it just feels like oh my goodness so many things and here's the problem with all of those. We do not like to feel any of those and often anxiety produces physical symptoms like that in our lives.

So we learn to fear anxiety we want to run from it. And especially if we're in public. We're like, I don't want to feel any of those things. So the question is this where does anxiety come from like why do we experience anxiety and I'm just gonna give you quickly the four top reasons why we experience anxiety in our lives today. Here's the first one it's biological factors. You may have a hormonal imbalance vitamin deficiency.

You may have poor diet and exercise. There may be chemical imbalances in your body things that are contributing to you experiencing anxiety that have nothing to do with the world around you but it's about what's going on inside of you for some of us we experience some anxiety because of Life stressors school work kids finances your spouse social media, like all different kinds of things that press in on us that cause us to feel anxiety and for some of us it's not those two it's it's unresolved trauma.

For some of us our past in the past things that we've walked through that have been difficult inform our present in ways that we're not necessarily aware of and it's coming out in our lives as as anxiety. And then lastly some of us experienced anxiety because of our personality type and I'm in this Camp. I'm Type A few more type A than type B, you're kind of hardwired to have anxiety. And if you're in Enneagram follower, if you are in Enneagram one three or six congratulations, you won the anxiety Lottery now, I'm a one. Okay, so I'm saying that as a one who knows but those are some of the sources of our anxiety and where they come from there's a lot of different ways we can experience anxiety. Now, here's what I want to give you. I'm gonna give you a few statistics on anxiety and I think this is really really important to look at these come from the National Institute of Mental Health, which is a part of the National Institute of Health and this is from last year. So here's the stats you ready here. They are 19.1% of us adults. This is last year had an anxiety disorder.

19 Point that's almost one in five adults had a diagnosable anxiety disorder. Not somebody that said I feel anxious but they actually got it checked out and were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. And here's the backside of that statistic. It's this prevalence was higher for females 23.4% been for males 14.3 now listen, I don't think the Gap is that wide and here's why I'm a guy and here's what I know about guys guys don't like to go to the doctor. So I guarantee you that this is actually closer than it looks okay, but that's just adults. Now. Let's look at adolescence real quick. This is crazy. 31.9% of adolescents had an anxiety disorder in the last year. The prevalence was higher for females 38% then for males 26.1% Here's what that means.

Almost four in 10 adolescent girls 12 to 18. Have a diagnosed anxiety disorder. And here's what you'll find when you dig into statistics, the younger you go throughout Generations, the more the prevalence of anxiety Rises. There's a direct correlation between age and anxiety level amongst people and it's crazy how prevalent that is right now and I give you those statistics because I want you to see and know if you struggle things anxiety my friend you're not alone.

There's a lot of co-suffers. And if you don't you just need to know that a lot of people around you wrestle with this personally. Which I'm going to share with you right now a little bit of my story. Okay, so here's my disclaimer. I've been a Christ follower for 25 years. I've been at vocational Ministry my entire adult life. I've got a master's degree in counseling. So if anybody should be able to manage their anxiety, it should be me if anybody is not anxious or stressed. It should be me. But here's what you need to know. I've always been a pretty nervous High Strung High achieving person. I work hard. I like to perform. Well, I put a ton of pressure on myself and some of you're nodding because you're like that sounds just like me.

So I started having physical symptoms of anxiety when I was a senior in college and at the time it wasn't a big deal. It was pretty manageable and it kind of went away. But but anxiety really revealed itself in my life in 2006. I had my first full-blown panic attack and I thought I was dying. Literally if I was about to go to the ER.

And it was so weird and foreign to me and at the time I had no idea what was going on physically with me or emotionally with me. But as I look back here's what I realized. I had all kinds of reasons to feel anxious. That was a new youth pastor at a church starting in a youth program. My wife and I recently moved from Colorado to Nebraska. Our son Xavier was one year old we were brand new parents trying to figure out what that man. And my wife Amy was struggling with postpartum and all these different things and I didn't have good outlets for this dress and anxiety in my life and the check engine light on my body started going off and I didn't know what was going on.

And so I did what most 26 year old men would do. I ignored it. And I swept it under the rug. Until I started getting panic attacks almost daily sometimes multiple times in a day. So on the advice of my wife I sucked it up and I went to the doctor. My general doctor said hey, everything was good your Labs look good. I'm gonna send you to a Cardiologist just in case so I went to cardiologist. I had to wear a heart monitor for a month. They gave me every test Under the Sun except for like a mammogram. It was crazy. Right all these tests done and at the end he looked at me and he said hey blood works good your heart structurally good electrically, it's good. I don't think anything's wrong with your heart.

And he didn't say what he needed to say or could say because he couldn't diagnose me with an anxiety disorder. But here's what he did. He gave me some medication and he said hey if you ever feel this way again take one of these. So I put them on the shelf and then about a week later. I pulled him down. I was curious. So I did a quick little Google search and found out he gave me anti-anxiety medication because he couldn't diagnose me with it. But he knew what was going on.

And for the last 17 years of my life, I have struggled with anxiety disorder some days. It's not very present some days. It's like that annoying little thing running in the background of my life and some days. It feels all consuming and overwhelming. And here's the most important thing.

In the last 17 years that I've learned about anxiety that I want to share with you today that I think might help many of you and here's what it is. It's a mindset shift. And here it is. Here's the shift anxiety is neutral as an emotion anxiety is not bad.

How we respond to anxiety can either be helpful or unhelpful and I'm gonna say that again. This is really important the mindset shift. Is this that anxiety is neutral anxiety is not bad how we respond to anxiety can either be helpful or unhelpful now here's the thing.

Anxiety is like a tool. So I've got this pipe wrench here with me. It's used it's been beat up because I've used this at about four houses that I've owned throughout my life. It's been very very helpful. Now, this pipe wrench is a tool. It's not good or bad. It's neutral right? Like I can use this to fix the pipes in my basement or I could use this to assault somebody which would be an awesome headline right like Pastor assaults church member with wrench But this is a tool.

It's not good or bad. It's a matter of what I do with this makes this good or bad and anxiety functions a lot in the same ways in our lives where it is a neutral tool and let me explain how I got to this spot. Understanding this honestly is completely transformed the way I view anxiety and the way I manage it. Here's what I used to believe about anxiety.

You ready? It was a bad emotion caused by bad things in my life. So when I felt anxious, what did I do? Well, I felt ashamed so I hid I said, hey, I'm a bad Christian and I'm a bad pastor and I'm a bad person and why can't I just feel good and feel normal and something is deficient about me. I'm less than but then I remembered Jesus.

And I remembered the story about Jesus in The Garden of Gethsemane right before he was crucified. And it changed the way I view anxiety because I remember that Jesus was anxious. He was stirred up. He was stressed. In fact, here's what it says in Luke chapter 22. It says Jesus went out as usual meaning he went a lot to the Mount of Olives and his disciples followed him on reaching the place. He said to them pray that you will not fall into temptation and withdrew about a stone's throw Beyond them and he knelt down and he prayed now. Look what happens.

He says father if you're willing take this cup from me yet not my will but yours be done in the cup means the Suffering The Wrath of God that was going to be poured out on Jesus on the cross. And angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him and being in anguish. He prayed more earnestly. And his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Jesus was praying.

It's such anguish that he sweat drops of blood now that that's anxious and that stressed and remember my friends. Jesus is fully God and he's fully human and his Humanity was anxious and stressed and even anxiety. Jesus allowed that to drive him to prayer to his father to his knees Independence upon the father strength and the father's comfort and here's what you need to know.

What Jesus felt that anxiety what Jesus experienced in the garden was not sinful? How he felt and then responded to Stress and Anxiety was not sinful and here's how I know that to be true. Here's what Hebrews 4:15 says about Jesus. This is for we do not have a high priest meaning Jesus who was unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet. He did not sin.

He did not send Jesus never sinned. Not one thought not one desire. Not one action. Not one emotion that Jesus felt was ever a sinful even in his anxiety and his turmoil in the garden in Luke 22. He allowed his anxiety to help him in that it drove him to dependence.

To prayer to ask others to pray for him to model for the disciples. What a to do in situations where we feel like anxieties overwhelming when anxiety comes his anxiety wasn't sinful and neither is your feeling of anxiety and here's what this means.

Feeling anxiety is neutral. It's a tool. That presents us with an opportunity to examine our lives and here's what else this means. Don't miss this. God understands how you feel.

God understands your anxiety and he knows it because he's felt it. And because Jesus has felt that he can empathize with us when we do he knows what it's like to be in the spot that we're in when we feel anxious and that is so important my friends and that changes everything.

Now to be sure anxiety feels awful, but let's be honest. So do a lot of things that are very very helpful and good for us exercise getting in shape doesn't feel good in the moment, but it's very very helpful. surgery definitely does not feel good before during or after but but it's helpful dealing with conflict in a relationships doesn't always feel good.

But it's very very helpful and necessary a lot of things that feel uncomfortable that feel bad are actually very helpful to us. And so let's go back to this main point again to reiterate this the mindset shift is this anxiety is neutral anxiety is not bad, but how we respond to anxiety can either be helpful or on helpful.

Some of you are going like yeah, but I'm not buying it yet. Okay, I'm gonna give you two scriptures. That I draw from a lot when I'm talking to people about anxiety to helpful passages and I know that some of you may be here this weekend because you heard that a church is going to talk about anxiety and you're like, I don't know about Jesus and I know about the Bible. Okay, if you're in that spot just hang with me. Okay, because I think these two verses give us a lot of help and here's the first one is Philippians chapter 4 verses 6 through 7 Paul wrote these words about 2,000 years ago to the churches around Philippine. Here's what he says.

He says do not be anxious about anything now. I'm just gonna stop there. Because when I first started being anxious and feeling anxiety, and I read these words I felt condemned. I was like great right? I feel anxious the Bible says don't be anxious but I feel anxious. So something's wrong with me. I gotta figure out how to get rid of this. But that's not what Paul's saying. He's not saying don't feel anxiety that's impossible.

He's saying don't sit in it. Don't stay in exit don't just sit in anxiety. And the reason why he says it is there's a better option and it's the way of Jesus in the garden. He says don't be anxious about anything but in every situation do what well by prayer and petition with Thanksgiving present your requests to God and when you do the peace of God which transcends or passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ. Jesus Paul doesn't say that anxiety is bad. He doesn't say that it's sinful. He doesn't say that you you can purposely always avoid feeling anxiety. He doesn't say that but what he says is this don't sit in it because there's a better option and that better option is prayer.

Going to God with your anxiety like Jesus did in the garden and he says also with Thanksgiving like even when you're anxious, even you're in the midst of a panic attack to say God. I trust you God. I know you're good. Even when even when even when?

Now you need to know this. I've done this many many times where I feel anxious and say okay. Here's what Philippians 4 says. I need to give this to God and sometimes by the grace of God a miracle happens in my anxiety is pretty gone right away like it helps. And there's other times when I feel anxious or I'm having a panic attack and I'm praying to God with Thanksgiving and I still feel anxious. So then I pray to God again and I still feel anxious I pray to God again and I still feel anxious and in those moments. Here's the beauty of what's happening. I'm going to God even when I don't feel good. I'm going to God even when I'm anxious. I'm going to God even when I'm panicking just like Jesus did and I'm training myself.

To trust God with whatever's going on inside over and over again, even when I don't feel better. I'm doing the right thing and that's what Paul is saying when you feel anxious. There's a better option. Don't just sit in it. Go to God go to God go to God go to God.

That is a helpful way to manage anxiety. And then here's another verse. It's Romans 8:28 a lot of us know this verse. Paul says and we know that in all things all things even anxiety God works for the good of those who love him who've been called according to his purpose and some of you right now like wait a minute. Wait a minute. You mean God can use my clinical anxiety for Good in my life and I would say yes.

Wait for those around me like God can use my anxiety to benefit people around me. Yes. You mean to tell me the very thing that I prayed for God to take away from my life. My anxiety. The thing I want to be free from is actually the thing that God wants to use for my good. Yes.

You mean when I feel like I'm dying in the middle of a panning attack and the world is closing it around me that God can use that for my good and the answer is yes. and I say that if somebody who's experienced that personally and I've witnessed that in the lives of people around me as well. God can even use your anxious heart. You're anxious thoughts for good.

So the question is how right and some of you've been the spot where anxiety has been a part of your story and a part of your life for a really long time and you're like, I've tried a lot of different things Okay, so I need you to hear me on this. There are ways that you can manage anxiety and helpful way with God's help and listen, if your father Jesus awesome these work. If you're not a follower of Jesus yet these three steps working. I'm gonna give you three steps to manage your anxiety in a helpful helpful way.

So here they are say Hey, how do we manage anxiety and helpful way number one reframe your anxiety. Step one in managing anxiety and helpful ways to reframe your anxiety. So here's how anxiety typically goes for us. We start to feel anxious kind of feel it welling up in our body go. Oh, here we go again, right. I feel awful. I don't like it. So we try to sweep it under the rug or bury it.

And when we do our anxiety often turns into more severe things like depression addiction or clinical anxiety. So we begin to see anxiety is the enemy I don't like it. I don't want to feel it. I can't sweep it under the rug. So it is bad. I need to avoid it. I need to get rid of it as fast as I can and run away from it.

But that only works for so long if it even works at all, but remember anxiety is not good or bad. It's neutral. How we respond to anxiety can either be helpful or unhelpful. So the question we ask when we reframe anxiety is this how is anxiety informing you?

How's it informing you? Because it's neutral. Feeling anxiety is like the check engine light of your car on the dash starting to go off. It's saying hey, you need to pay attention to something under the hood. Something isn't right. You need to look at that thing because if you don't there's going to be a bigger problem and I've literally known people in my life that put tape over the check engine light on their car because they don't want to fix it and they don't want to deal with it and a lot of us do that with anxiety, but when we reframe anxiety Here's what we believe.

Anxiety is an invitation to live differently. And it's an opportunity for growth. It's an invitation to live differently in an opportunity for growth and when our mindset shifts about anxiety and we believe this. We start to navigate through seasons and days of anxiety differently.

Sometimes when I experience anxiety I call this shaking hands with anxiety. But I don't run from it because it's not the enemy it's neutral. So shake hands with it and just kind of go. Hey, why are you there? What's going on? In fact, sometimes I'll even say out loud when I make this. Hello old friend.

Right because not the enemy feeling anxious is not the enemy even when it feels like it is and reframing anxiety means I'm gonna listen to my anxiety. I'm gonna start asking questions like this. How is anxiety speaking to me. How can I grow from this?

How is God speaking to me through my anxiety? And how is God inviting me to live differently Step One is mind-set shift by reframing anxiety. It's not bad. It's neutral. I don't need to run from it. I can grow through it. It's not bad and somehow I'm not deficient or defective when I feel it. It's a normal part of life. But the first part is reframing anxiety the second step is this Second step is to session identify the roots of your anxiety.

Identifying the roots of our anxiety figuring out where it's coming from. I call this being curious about your anxiety. When did anxiety start for you? Trace it back what situations are experiences cause anxiety or panic attacks in your life. This is where keeping a journal and writing things down is really really helpful. And here's why when you start to journal about your anxiety and write down things like when did it start what happened?

What was the intensity of my things? Here's where you're gonna find you're gonna find patterns and you're pretty soon you're gonna be able to identify here's situations that cause me to feel anxious. Here's a person that I feel anxious around. Here's what triggers my anxiety in ways that I wasn't aware of before when you start to explore them. You begin to identify those types of things and one of the things I want you to identify is this what self talk do you attach to your anxiety?

Because here's what I used to do with my anxiety. I would attach guilt. And shame and that somehow I was defective or a bad person and I would attach those things to my anxiety. So when I felt my anxiety, I could not see it as neutral. I could not see it as something to grow through or that could be helpful in my life. All I saw was it is bad. But remember anxieties like the check engine light of your car. It's letting you know that you need to pay attention to something and finding what that something is is incredibly important.

And one of the things you'll discover those anxiety triggers those things that cause you to feel anxious and here's mine. I've got performance anxiety when I feel out of control and situations I get anxious when I don't have enough alone times. I'm an introvert. I get anxious failure even talking about money. Sometimes those things trigger me and I know that because I've been able to discover what's underneath my anxiety and what's causing it.

And here's a powerful phrase that I want you to grab a hold of about this when you discover the why behind anxiety you gain freedom and more control over it. When you discover the why you gain more freedom and control over anxiety, you get a sense of control knowing here are the situations and here are the ways that I often feel anxious. And here's why this is important. A lot of times anxiety feels nebulous. It just feels like it comes on out of nowhere and it attacks us but when we start to figure out the wise we gain freedom and we gain control and here's my last encouragement with step number two with this assessment step. Go to a counselor.

If you're wrestling through clinical anxiety or some lingering anxiety that you just don't know what to do with go see a counselor. I've seen the same counselor almost every month for 13 years and she is phenomenal. She has helped me identify a lot of the roots of my anxiety. It's been incredibly beneficial. I would not be the person or the pastor or the the man I ended date without her guidance and her wisdom and her Clarity because counselors see things in us that we don't see.

And my friends you need to know this. It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to not be okay. Just don't stay there. Just don't stay there. Take a step seeing a counselors a great way to assess where anxieties coming from that's step number two. Here's the last step. Step number three. Is this practice self care?

So, how can I allow anxiety in my life to inform my life in helpful good ways by practicing self-care listen to me friends ready self-care is not selfish. I'm gonna say that again. Self-care is not selfish.

Somewhere in the church. We've got this idea that taking care of ourselves is somehow wrong or bad or selfish. But listen Jesus took care of himself. Jesus rested he said no, he took naps. He spent time alone. He asked for help. He asked for prayer. He took a weekly Sabbath. So my friends how well are you taking care of your body with exercise and diet sleep rest vacations? What about your caffeine or alcohol intake?

Do you have trusted friends that you can talk to that? You share your heart with? Are you growing spiritually are you talking to other people about your emotions your inner life what's going on inside of you? Here's why that's important. One of the least helpful ways to manage anxiety is what I call the anxiety box. And here's what it looks like. It's a box that closes in.

Because all of a sudden we do life but we get triggered and we feel anxious by something. So we stop doing that thing. For instance. We feel triggered by physical exercise. So we stop exercising the anxiety box gets smaller. So we feel ashamed about that and so we don't go out as much with friends and the Box gets smaller so that we isolate and we don't like to go out at all in the Box gets small and pretty soon our life.

Looks like a tiny little box of anxiety. And why self-care is so important and self-care says I'm gonna push the the walls of head anxiety box out. I'm gonna exercise I'm gonna see a counselor. I'm gonna talk about what's going on. I'm keep pushing the walls of my anxiety out because when you do here's what's gonna happen, you're gonna find Victory and confidence because you're gonna realize that anxiety doesn't win. It doesn't have to have the last say and that you have a measure of control and freedom when it comes to feeling anxious that you can actually do practical things to make it better.

Now here's what I want to encourage you to do this week. I want you grab a piece of paper do a quick assessment. And here's what I want to do on the top of the paper write these four things physical emotional relational spiritual four areas of your life. In terms of how will your practicing self-care then? I want you to rate each one of these for one to ten one being your horrible at it 10 being Jesus level. Okay, and then list some of the reasons why why did you rate yourself that way and there's any ratings below a seven if you get six or below you need to look at that area of your life and go hey, God's probably trying to get your attention somewhere in there and there's some ways you need to be caring for yourself for your soul for your emotional life more than you currently are in a way that will help you.

Here's my last encouragement with self-care. Taking medication for an anxiety especially clinical anxiety is often a necessary part of self-care. Medication can be very helpful and it doesn't mean that you're less than or deficient or helpless. Medication is often necessary short or long-term.

So make sure you don't believe the lie that somehow you're sinning if you take medication. Don't try to tough it out on your own take care of yourself. Sometimes medication is a part of self care. So those are the three steps. Now to go back to the main idea one more time and just see this again.

The mindset shift that can change everything in terms of how you experience anxiety. Is that anxiety is neutral. Anxiety is not bad how we respond to anxiety can either be helpful or on helpful. Now, here's how I want to close friends. God can redeem your anxious heart.

And God can bring good through your anxiety. If your relationship with anxiety right now feels hopeless my friends. I want you to borrow my hope. I want you to lean into the truth of my story and the countless other stories of people's lives that I've been able to minister to and see them grow and gain victory over anxiety because change is possible.

Freedom is possible and growth is possible. Now you can't completely rid your life of anxiety. That is an impossible Journey. And you may battle with clinical anxiety for part or all of your life, but anxiety does not need to Define you. It does not need to control you. It does not need to be harmful. It can actually be.

Helpful, and I want you to always remember this no matter how bad your wrestle with anxiety is. Because Jesus experienced anxiety. He knows how it feels you are safe with him. You can go to him with your anxiety and know that you have a God who loves you and perfectly understands you and how you feel.

Let your anxiety drive you to him. Just like it did for Jesus. Hey, let's let's close by praying together right now. He got thanks for being a God. Who knows? You know how we feel because you felt it. You know how we feel because you're aware of the intimate details of our lives and Lord. We know anxiety is so prevalent in our world and in our lives today.

So God, would you help us to have a mindset shift to see anxiety as a neutral tool? something that points to something else and not just something to be feared or run from God give us courage to face anxiety and grow through it help us to take steps to change and grow and more than anything Lord. I lift up those walking through season of anxiety right now God. Would you give them Comfort? Would you give them peace? Once you give them hope to all who are in that spot God remind them today that you're with them and that you care for them. It's in Jesus. Mighty name.

We all pray together. amen