Notes from Study on Anxiety

Anxiety: root comes from word for "choking"...painful uneasiness of the mind as it works over impending fears... "to be divided...distracted."

Anxiety:
You are not losing control - because you never had it to begin with..
Nothing happens to us unless God allows it to happen to us (His control)

Scriptures:
Ps. 46 (Be still...or "cease striving!" and know that I am God)
Jer. 6 (God invites His people on a path of rest - they say, "we will not walk in it")
1 Peter 5:7 (cast all your anxieties...your "chokings")
Phil 4:4ff (Peace of God which "surpasses all comprehension" will guard hearts minds in Christ Jesus...what is it that guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus?...the peace....
Hebrews 4:1-11...

Sower...anxieties of the world - the desire for more...- "CHOKE" the Word..
We are an anxiety ridden society because we do not know how to rest.
Find one place in the New Testament where Jesus worried....or....hurried....

Matthew 11
"Come...to me.." not, "come to church." ...doesn’t say, "come to the doctor.."
"...all" ...everyone struggling...EVERYONE....me.
"weary"...those struggling to find the truth, the way to go on...relief...the exhausted...
"heavy laden"...overextended...overcommitted...
"give you.." Not, "you’ll earn it..." or... "once you reach an understanding"....just, "give."
"rest" also translated, "cease..stop."...also - "relief, refreshing - of the spirit"
"yoke" - submission to something/someone - "yokes were called "easy yokes"... "it just fits"
(enter into...with Me...be yoked with Jesus)
"learn from me" ...learn how he coped/what he did, His connectedness to the Father...to pray...learn to forgive...learn to live with great disappointment.
"I am gentle/humble in heart"... easy to live with.. "God is easier to live with then most of us...He’s easier to please than our parents/spouses/etc.."
"find rest for you souls" ...

Explaining 4 reasons why anxiety is "destructive"
1. Anxiety highlights the human viewpoint and strangles the devine - we become fearful...
2. It chokes our ability to distinguish between the incidental from the essential - we get distracted
3. It twists so many worries around us so that we cannot relax - we become unfruitful...
4. It siphons our energy and joy and makes us judgmental - we become negative...we are the worrying "animal" - unable to take in dying...

I worry when I add, subtract, multiply and divide

Add
add more things to an already full schedule...
add your expectations to my agenda...
add to what I already have to be...
Subtract
subtract God’s presence from my crisis -
subtract his timing from my desires -
subtract prayer from my day -
subtract perspective from my difficulty
multiply
my problems by inserting my solutions too rapidly...by looking for a way out instead of the way through
multiply my fears with imagination
divide
divide life into the secular and sacred...divide my day into thinking this is the Lord’s part and this is my own business