Clearance: Restocking Your Emotional Inventory – Anxiety

Clearance: Restocking Your Emotional Inventory – Anxiety
Sycamore Creek Church
September 11, 2011
Tom Arthur
Proverbs

Peace, friends!

Today we begin a series about emotions called Clearance.  We’re running a clearance sale on emotions and restocking our emotional shelves.  Today’s clearance sale: anxiety!

If you know me at all you will have begun to notice that I have something of an emotional poker face.  What I’m feeling inside rarely shows on the outside.  That’s not to say that it never does, but it is often very hidden or subtle.  What I look like on the outside on an average day, bad day, and good day is almost identical.  My wife of fourteen years still occasionally looks at me and asks, “Are you angry with me?” when I have no anger in me at all.

But the truth is that I am full of emotions under the poker face.  We went to the last Harry Potter movie and I cried through almost all of it.  We were watching Amish Grace, a movie about the Amish school house shooting, and I cried so much I was exhausted by the end of the movie.

There are also a lot of things that cause me anxiety.  I worry about money.  Are we saving enough?  Are we giving enough?  Do we have enough to begin with?  I think this is something we all struggle with at times.  I was shocked to read recently in a poll that a lot of young people worry about money too.  Forty percent of 8-12 year olds, 57% 13-17 year olds, and 68% 18-24 year olds worry about money.

Then there’s anxiety around time.  Do I have enough time for my family?  Do I have enough time for each person in my family?  My son?  My wife?  Do I have enough time for church?  What about having some time for my broader community?  And then what about me?  Do I get any time to myself?  I had at least five conversations this past week with people about time issues in their life.

Now that I’m a dad, I’m finding all kinds of other things that cause me anxiety.  My nine-month old son, Micah, is getting faster and faster at crawling.  I stopped paying attention to him for a minute when I was watching him the other day while Sarah was away.  Soon I realized he was gone. He had crawled into the office because I had neglected to close the door as we usually do.  I went in and grabbed him and brought him back out to the living room.  I closed the door.  Then it hit me.  In the office is the ironing board with the iron sitting on it.  All of a sudden my mind starts whirring.  What could have happened?  What would I have done?  How would I have told Sarah?  What scars would Micah be left with?  Could he have died?  I kept thinking about this over and over and over and over.  I couldn’t get the images out of my mind.  Poker face on the outside.  Inside a mess of anxiety.  Joyce Meyer says, “Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have.”  Amen to that, sister.

While preparing for this message, I was looking at men’s and women’s magazines to get some ideas of what causes men and women anxiety.  I was surprised to find that men and women pretty much have the same anxieties.  They just use different language to talk about it.  Take healthy bodies for example.  Men worry about having muscles, being buff, having  six-pack abs and gut, and having the right set of buns and guns.  Women, on the other hand, worry about weight, fat, their thighs, their butts, “healthy” skin, and aging.  Same anxieties.  Different language.

But we don’t just have individual anxieties.  We also have communal or national anxieties.  Today is the anniversary of 9-11.  That brings up a lot of anxiety, doesn’t it?  This past week we’ve replayed over and over the images of ten years ago.  We worry anew as a nation about our safety and security.  I was reading in the last Newsweek magazine how much all this anxiety over safety and security costs us. The answer is 3.2 trillion dollars!  That’s a big price tag for anxiety.  We also worry about our economy, job growth, and the direction of our government after 9-11.  Then there are the worries about radical elements of various religions.  Are there Islamic terrorists out there planning something today or in the future?  Don’t forget about our own tribe.  Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who threatened to burn a Quran, visited Lansing this past week, and that brought up a lot of anxiety.

What exactly is anxiety?  Here’s my own working definition: anxiety is worry, disproportionate focus, or rumination about the wrong things.  Sometimes we focus a disproportionate amount of our energies on things that are out of our control.  Or we replay something over and over in our head like a broken record or like a cow chewing the cud.  Chewing the cud is good for cows, but bad for humans.

What do you worry about?  What do you spend a disproportionate amount of energy focusing on?  What do you ruminate on and just can’t let go?  What anxiety do you need to run a clearance sale on today?

Wisdom about Anxiety

The Bible is full of wisdom about anxiety.  When we’re talking about wisdom, the book of the Bible that comes immediately to my mind is the book of Proverbs.  It’s not the only wisdom book in the Bible, but it is the most well known.

A friend of mine who is an Old Testament scholar says that Proverbs:

shed light on things all of us worry about, for ourselves and for our children, the things people regularly consult their pastors about: how to avoid bitter domestic quarrels, what to tell your children about sex and about God, what to do when somebody asks to borrow money, how to choose the right friends and be a good friend, how to make a living that is decent, both ethically and financially.  In short, the proverbs are instruction in the art of living well (Ellen Davis, emphasis mine).

The proverbs are often very witty sayings that hold wisdom that is applicable to most of our situations most of the time.  Part of learning wisdom is knowing when to apply what wisdom to what situation.  There are some real zinger proverbs in there.  Take these for example.

It is safer to meet a bear robbed of her cubs than to confront a fool caught in folly.
Proverbs 17:12 NLT

Anyone have a fool in their life?  Yep.  Don’t mess with that fool.  It’s better to turn around on the trail and go back the way you came.

Even fools are thought to be wise when they keep silent; when they keep their mouths shut, they seem intelligent.
Proverbs 17:28 NLT

Some of us, me included, could learn the wisdom of knowing when to keep our mouths shut.  We’ll seem more intelligent that way!

It is better to live alone in the corner of an attic than with a contentious wife in a lovely home.
Proverbs 21:9 NLT

I love that last one.  So true.  But it’s also true about husbands, isn’t it?  Who wants to live with anyone who is contentious or as some other translations put it, “quarrelsome”?

Everything looks good on the outside.  Nice home.  Nice car.  Nice yard.  Bickering relationship.

So those proverbs aren’t directly about anxiety, but they give us a good feel for the kind of wisdom the book of Proverbs has to share with us about our life situations.  So what kind of wisdom does Proverbs have to share with us about anxiety?  Here’s a key verse:

Worry weighs a person down; an encouraging word cheers a person up.
Proverbs 12:25 NLT

Run a clearance on worry and restock with encouragement! Let’s unpack this proverb a bit more.  It seems to me that there are at least two kinds of encouraging words: words others tell us or we tell others and words we tell ourselves.

When you share an encouraging word with someone, it’s like you help them run a clearance sale on anxiety.  This past week a friend of mine gave me a little booklet about myths of being a pastor.  Here’s my poker face: I don’t have any anxieties about being a pastor. Here’s what’s underneath: am I a good enough preacher?  Am I working hard enough?  Is our church growing enough?  And on and on and on.  This little booklet was a refreshing encouraging word.  I read through it and my spirit immediately lifted.  The weight was gone.  The clearance sale had been run.  “Words satisfy the soul as food satisfies the stomach; the right words on a person’s lips bring satisfaction” (Proverbs 18:20 NLT).

Those are the words we tell others or others tell us.  But what about the words we tell ourselves?  You know.  The dialogue you have within your own mind and heart.  What does that kind of dialogue sound like?  You’re not good enough.  You’re stupid.  You really messed that one up.  You’ll never amount to anything.  You are worthless.

Paul, one of the authors of the New Testament wrote to encourage us to have a different set of things we think about.  He says:

Don’t worry [Greek: merimnao. This word will be important in a moment] about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God’s peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:6-7 NLT).

What would our inner words look like if we followed Paul’s guidance?  Thank you, God!  I’m loved by God!  I’m forgiven by God!  God shows me mercy and forgiveness!  I’ve got a role to play because God gave me specific talents and gifts!  I’m priceless!

Now which set of words do you want to run a clearance sale on?  The first set.  Run a clearance sale on “You are worthless” and restock with “I’m priceless.”

Practice

Did you notice that Paul told us to “practice” all this?  That means we don’t have to get it right the first time.  There is room to improve.  You may not clear out all the anxiety right away, but over time you’ll slowly restock your emotional inventory.  I’d like to suggest a couple of ways to practice running a clearance on anxiety and restocking with encouragement.

First, practice before you get to the thing that causes you anxiety.  That is to say, practice every day.  You can’t expect to have no anxiety when you step up to the plate if you haven’t practiced before the game is on.  With practice, you may still have some anxiety, but the encouragement of the practice will overwhelm the anxiety of the moment.

One great way to practice before you get there is to spend time in the proverbs seeking the encouraging words God has to give you about your everyday situations.  I’ve been practicing over the last several months a daily proverb.  I’ve been reading one chapter of Proverbs a day (there are 31 chapters so you can cover Proverbs in a month) and picking one proverb from that chapter to write on a 3×5 card and put it in my pocket.  I contemplate this proverb throughout the day.  I’ve even come across several situations where I’ve taken the card out of my pocket to see if God’s wisdom can give me any direction for the situation I find myself in currently.

If you’re not a big reader, then there are several websites out there that make this whole thing automated.  www.dailyproverb.net and www.facebook.com/pages/Daily–Proverb/279306469078 put up daily proverbs. EHYP Productions makes a smart phone app called “Psalms Proverbs Daily Inspiration” that I’ve also been using.  You get one verse or proverb each day from either the book of Proverbs or the Psalms.  If you’re looking for a specific issue to seek wisdom on, here’s a website that lists the proverbs by topic: www.knowgrace.org/proverbs/proverbs.html.

Next, once you find a proverb that speaks to your situation, memorize it and carry it with you in your mind and follow its wisdom.  Let’s look at some proverbs about money to give you an example.  We all carry at least a little if not a lot of anxiety about money.

If you find yourself anxious because you’re not making as much as you think you should, consider this proverb:

Do not wear yourself out to get rich; be wise enough to desist. When your eyes light upon it, it is gone; for suddenly it takes wings to itself, flying like an eagle toward heaven.
Proverbs 23:4-5 NRSV

Remember that the thing you think you have to have to be happy will soon become uninteresting once you’ve got it.  You can probably be happy and less anxious if you learn to live with what you’ve got.

Or what if you are getting anxious about debt?

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.
Proverbs 22:7 NRSV

How about you take that proverb and wrap it around your credit card?  Then as Dave Ramsey says, “Live like no one else now [by working super hard and paying off all your debt], so that you can live like no one else later [being generous].”

Or perhaps you get anxious about giving money to the poor.

Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.
Proverbs 22:9 NLT

Proverbs gives us practical advice and counsel, wisdom, for doing what we can do to live in non-anxious ways.  Running a clearance sale on anxiety isn’t just about sitting back on your heels.  There is some stuff you can do.  As Steve Furtik, a pastor in North Carolina, says, “Work, don’t worry, ‘cause worry don’t work…I’ve been learning that if there is something for me to do then do it, but if there is nothing for me to do then worship through the worry.”

Maybe your own anxiety goes deeper than the kind of worry we’ve been talking about.  Maybe you struggle with clinical anxiety or panic attacks.  The proverbs know about your situation too:

The human spirit can endure a sick body, but who can bear it if the spirit is crushed?
Proverbs 18:14 NLT

This kind of deep anxiety is certainly spirit crushing.  I’d suggest that the wise thing to do with this kind of anxiety is to see a doctor.  If your bone is broken, you can’t fix it just by thinking differently.  If you’re clinically anxious, you can’t just insert some encouragement and hope it all turns out better.  I know this because I have at times struggled with a mild form of this kind of anxiety.  While I was in seminary I experienced the strongest anxiety I had ever experienced.  It wasn’t crippling, but it concerned me enough that I decided to see a counselor about it.  This counselor connected me with a psychiatrist.  This psychiatrist told me about six non-drug practices that have been proven to reduce stress and anxiety.  I found them all very helpful and was able to manage my anxiety without the need for drugs.  I’d like to pass these practices on to you:

1. Take a day off.  Does this sound familiar?  Yeah.  The Ten Commandments: “Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”  This wasn’t a Christian psychiatrist, but it was amazing how many of the practices fit with wisdom right from the Bible.
2. Get enough sleep.  How much is enough?  If you’re anxious, then “enough” is probably more than you’re getting.
3. Do enjoyable exercise.  Your body is a temple of God’s Spirit.  Keep it healthy and it will be less anxious for you.  But pick an exercise that you like.  If you try to exercise with something you don’t like to do, then it will cause more anxiety rather than being an anxiety reducer.
4. Journal briefly each day.  Don’t fill up pages and pages about your anxieties.  Try a half or one page a day.  Get it out of your head and onto paper.  Journaling has been a Christian practice for centuries.
5. Pray.  Remember, this was a non-Christian psychiatrist who was telling me this.  She said that prayer has been scientifically shown to reduce stress and anxiety.  Duh!  “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.”
6. Practice breathing.  Practice breathing?  What’s that?  Some kind of mumbo jumbo, right?  Nope.  The diaphragm that inflates your lungs is attached to the nerve that goes to the part of your brain that processes stress.  When you exercise your lungs, you’re exercising the stress reducing part of your brain.  I practice breathing ten minutes each morning.  I also turn it into mediation.  I breath in, “Be still and know,” and breath out, “that I am God” from Psalm 46:10.

Good Worry

What would life be like without anxiety?  Peace.  Rest.  Ah…  Yes, internal peace and rest.  Isn’t that what we’re all looking for?  Peace.  But what does that internal peace let us do?  It lets us focus our energy rightly on being at peace even more with those around us, spreading that peace to others.

As we saw earlier, Paul told us not to worry (merimnao) about anything.  But in another place he tells us to “merimnao for one another” (1 Corinthians 12:25 NRSV).  Merimnao can be translated either as “anxiety” or “care.”  Care for one another.  Anxiety can be worry, or it can be care.

If we ran a clearance sale on anxiety and restocked our emotional shelves with encouragement, then we could spend all that energy that we were using on anxiety and “worry” about caring for one another.  Earlier I said that anxiety was worrying about the wrong things.  That implies that there are some right things to worry about.  I see that kind of good worry happening all the time around here at Sycamore Creek Church.  Just this past week I saw people in our church “worrying” about providing school uniforms for a family in need.  I saw people “worrying” about caring for marriages that are struggling.  I saw people “worrying” about helping someone unemployed find a job.  I saw people “worrying” about being real with one another and taking off the poker face.  I saw people “worrying” about encouraging one another to get through their current anxieties.  These are good worries.

Today, run a clearance sale on anxiety and restock it with encouragement and care for others.

I’d like to pray for those who are struggling with anxiety. Here’s a prayer I found this past week.  May God help you clear out your shelves of anxiety and restock them with encouragement and care for one another:

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and set apart a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be well prepared for service to you and others, and that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord.