Dealing With Anxiety

(Trust, the Blood, Worship and Gratitude, Renouncing the Radio, Tree of Life!)

Thoughts compiled from private conversations from the last year - and good note-taking by the recipient.

11/1/2023

Trust:

•You are not trusting God’s character if you are afraid. Fear and anxiety are sin.

•When you are confused and anxious you say, “I don’t know about all that is happening right now, Jesus. But I trust you. I trust that you are the Master Teacher and you will make it clear to me.”

•There are going to be lots of things in life that are confusing. Turn to Jesus and tell Him you trust Him. Let go.

•TRUST is the immediate response to anxiety.

•Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water.

•“This is the work of God; to Believe in the one whom He sent.” That is your work. Do that and you shall live.

•Feelings are temptations. Truth is Truth. Renounce temptation and declare truth for the rest of your life. You and everyone else.

•Keep It Simple Stupid--KISS. Be simple. Stay simple.

•If it’s complex, it’s not Jesus. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Complexity is the radio. Be the little girl walking through the garden. Shhhhh. Stop all of the words. Take a deep breath and just enjoy God.

(“Radio” = our spinning, chattering, analytical noisy thoughts that are not of Christ -- our radio of self-indulgence, self-justification, accusation and judgment, mopey, looping, fantasies, comparison, pride, fears, and more.)

•A quiet heart, a slow walk in the meadow. Relax.... Trust our God who is “for us” and we can let it go.

•Invite the Prince of Peace to guide you and wash you.

This is pretty WOW! Eh? “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:34) He is praying for you!

•Abandonment is when you are trusting the one holding the wheelbarrow. You completely trust Him. You don’t have a checklist of “Do I trust Him with this and that, and how do I know if I fully trust Him?” No, you just trust Him. And you keep trusting Him. You trust the one holding the wheelbarrow. Don’t be like a little child who lost a marble in the wheelbarrow and is frantically trying to find it. “Oh no, I lost my marble.” It’s okay. The marble is in the wheelbarrow. We’ll get it. You don’t need to worry about it.

•“The battle is the Lord’s” means I’m little. But that’s okay because God is Big and He’s helping me. God actually works WITH us. Instead of for us or letting us just do it ourselves. That’s the act of faith that brings God into the fight—when you acknowledge that God is WITH you. The battle is the Lord’s! That’s what Job acknowledged—that God was with Him even through the difficult time he went through. And that’s what David acknowledged when he went out to face Goliath. God made the stone hit the giant, but David had to have the faith to go out into the battlefield because He knew God was with Him and was helping him. And then God worked with David.

•Chemical problems will not necessarily go away. But you can walk humbly with your God with royal poise and consideration of those around you. Those are your marching orders for the rest of your life as a disciple of Jesus.

•Don’t wait to feel like the little girl walking through the garden. Choose to BE the little girl walking through the garden.

• Just be simple. There’s nothing really to figure out. Motor is bad. Radio is bad. Life is Good : )

•He knows. He loves. And He is in control. That’s a whole lot different than “Why God?” I know you know Best. I know you are all-powerful. I know your character. You don’t make any mistakes. I know you have a reason. I trust that you know Best. It’s not about trying not to whine about your circumstances. It’s trusting and believing that God is God and you are not.

•Don’t ever say “I can’t do this anymore.” That’s satan’s language. Open your hands. Say “This hurts. But I give this to you.” Then move on.

•We are more than conquerors through Christ. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. Faith is when your eyes are on Him, not on you.

•You should not want to be free of anxiety or chemical problems. You want to be a servant of God.

•Declare, “I’m in your lap.” Not “I have to get this right.”

•Every opportunity is a chance to say “I love you” to Jesus.

•Pity and fear and drama are contagious. Be a beacon of hope and courage for others.

• Trust God’s character. God is good. He loves you. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. You don’t need to figure it out.

•Faith is trust. It’s trusting that God knows. He’s aware. God knows exactly what you’re going through. He sees the pain and believes you can make it.

•Never quote satan. He is a liar.

•Have faith. Faith is the victory. Behold Him. Don’t behold your problems. Leave it in His hands.

•Keep a soft heart. A soft heart feels so good. Go there! Baby steps.

•Every time you start feeling fearful or in doubt, you can actually turn to Jesus and trust that topic or that situation to Him and His care and His forgiveness and His teaching.

•We want to BE Jesus as opposed to doing what Jesus does. So don’t think about all the things you need to do or change. BE!

•We can trust Him to work out the details of solving whatever problems we have : )

•I think if I was on a ship like the disciples were—with Jesus on board, it wouldn’t matter how big the storm was. I’d be confident in the captain. : ) Tree of Life!

•Faith in Jesus has nothing to do with how strong you are but how much you believe how strong He is. Faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word of God. Disobedience kills faith, and loving and sacrifice and immersion in God’s words build faith.

•If you keep spinning in circles, it means you are not trusting Jesus. FAITH is the victory that overcomes the world. Christ dwells in your heart through FAITH.

•Be the best person you can be and plus one every day. Don’t be prideful or depressed. Just be the best you can be. Shoot for the plus ones, not any high or low view of yourself. And care about others more than yourself.

•You are not a victim. You are more than a conqueror.

•Jesus was clear: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” I guess it’s not him if it’s not easy. A yoke means you have given up control, but it’s not filled with guilt and rules if it’s Him.

•If you get stuck, what do you do? You say, “Jesus I don’t know. But I trust you.” And you go do something else. “I trust that you are the master teacher and you will make it clear to me.” Not panicky at all.

•Don’t think about what you need to DO. Just let that go and live the next five minutes.

•Temptations are not guaranteed to go away, but there is always a “way out” from sinning in those temptations by indulging them or defending them.

•One choice at a time is plus one. It doesn’t solve your thousand problems, but one at a time plus one is honorable to God. Plus one if you want to reach your potential.

•Lay it all at Jesus’ feet and trust that He will change you. Have a hope for where this is all going. Look at Jesus and say “I don’t know how to get rid of this awful feeling. I don’t know how to get where I need to be. But I have this moment I can respond to you, Jesus. I can’t plan for how to get from A to B, but I can respond to you in this moment.”

The Blood:

• Declare to any fear of doing something wrong: “Jesus’ Blood solves that forever.” It requires no more thought.

• Trust that the Blood is MORE than enough for however stupid we are, and make sure He knows you are His and will do whatever He wants. Then REST.

• Washed in the Blood. So do your best for Jesus and FORGET THE REST. That’s the deal.

• If you don’t trust His blood to make you whole and clean no matter how you feel or what your performance looks like with good intentions, then you don’t believe that God is good, and you won’t see so-called results.

• If one TRUSTS the Blood, it is more than sufficient. When you have abandoned to Jesus, your safety net is infinite. Failure is not an issue because there is no failure when you are in the palm of God’s hand. Just things to learn. A lot of people have never abandoned to Jesus and are only religious and want to do whatever they want to do—but “claim the Blood.” It’s not the same and THAT won’t work. The Blood of Jesus does not apply to them. But when you have abandoned, the covenant is sealed, and the rest is just working out the details of daily living with nothing at stake except growth.

• You want to experience who He is rather than try to approximate what you think you know about God and trust three pounds of goo. This is a lot more about God than it is about you. If God gave His only Son, how much more all things? He gives good gifts to His children. Trust the person who died for you. You can’t trust yourself. Trust the person who died for you.

• Facts are facts. The Blood is an immutable, all-powerful FACT. Trust it. That is called “faith.”

• The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a really stupid place to try to figure out life. It doesn’t work. The Tree of Life—the person of Jesus and His Blood—ONLY has to do with faith, not about good or bad. If you only have faith in the Blood of Jesus, then you won’t have to worry about you being right or wrong, good or bad.

• Faith in the Blood, as your only hope, and I mean your only hope, is the only way you can be saved at all.

• Read your Bible and settle your thoughts on what God said is true. The man who walked on water and raised the dead solves all problems if you truly open your hands to Him rather than analyze. Analyzing and trying to figure things out is pride. It’s thinking about yourself, not Jesus, and not appreciating the Blood. Wrong tree. Believe in Jesus’ Blood with gratitude and abandon.

• In Galatians 3:26-27 Paul writes that “In Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through Faith. For as many of you as we’re baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Therefore, everyone who has committed their life to Christ by faith has the status of having “put on Christ.”

• Jesus being Lord means that every molecule of your being trusts that His path is the right path and we will never neglect to consult Him and bow before Him on any topic.

• To be like Jesus is not a law but a goal. If we have the goal and effort without excuses, the Blood washes all shortcomings 70 x 70 x 70 x 7.

• For those who want all that Jesus is and does and want to be like Him, the Blood forgives our shortcomings.

• The Blood is for people who try and who care but fail at times.

• 1 John 1: call sin what God calls it and WANT Jesus’ Best and all the Blood in the universe covers.

• Believe in the Blood of Jesus as clothed with 100. And spend every day moving +1. Those are your only two goals for the rest of your life. Enjoy the process. The +1s are your thank you to Jesus.

• Failing is another chance to plus one. It’s about the heart and the Oil.

• Wouldn’t you think that God Himself, in the form of Jesus, giving up His life is sufficient for any sin anyone could ever think of, name, or commit if they are repentant and have faith that His Blood is enough?

• The grace of God teaches us to say “NO” to ungodliness. But it’s GRACE—not rules or your brain.

• The Blood just IS for those who are His. Gravity is real, no matter how you feel. What is doubting? Why is that wrong? It’s calling God a liar, and God’s not a liar.

Worship and Gratitude:

• Making progress is our goal five seconds at a time, not feeling good or being without temptation. Be content with making progress five seconds at a time. Be grateful. Trust that it will get better if you do the Work. Be a grateful person and trust that it will take you where you want to go. Be grateful. Be a worshipper. Think on these things.

• Come to me to have Life. Instead of being anxious about all the things you need to change, look at Jesus, and smile and be grateful. And trust that He’ll help you change those things. He’s the master teacher.

• It’s about beholding Jesus. Just looking to Him and saying “I love you. I put myself into your hands. You love me. And I’m going to go on doing good.” It’s not beholding yourself and trying to change yourself. Gratitude. Beholding. Faith. Go there! Take what you hear and say “Jesus, I love you, and I want to apply this tomorrow.” Not this anxious, frantic plan for the rest of my life. But just taking the next day in front of you and making a choice, offering a gift to Jesus. As you are planting seeds of gratitude, you don’t have to feel like a hypocrite cause you don’t feel it, and it feels mechanical or forced. Do it because it’s the right thing to do. Focus on Jesus.

• If you have chemical difficulty, acknowledge that it feels awful, but you don’t need to talk about it. You are not trying to feel good. You don’t have to care that you don’t feel good. It’s a phantom. What I need to do is different from how I feel. How I act in my emotions in the spiritual realm is different than how I feel. Feeling better is not the goal. It just doesn’t matter. My goal is to serve God and please God.

• Gratitude is the opposite of anxiety. Go there. Be grateful instead of looking at your list of problems... And you will like how it turns out.

• Read the Psalms. David had every reason for anxiety. But he chose to worship instead. Worship like David did.

• If you feel crummy, it’s okay. Treat it like a headache. Talk to God about it. Treat people with kindness and love even with your “headache.”

• Isaiah 30:15 “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” I’m tired of looking at me, and I want to look at Jesus. Calm yourself down and slow your heartbeat, and rest. Peacefully look through the glass. Turn away from self and relax. Repentance and rest—that’s what beholding is.

• You live to serve and please Him. You’re just a speck of dirt. He is the author of life and love and the universe.

• Jesus is Truth. Jesus is Righteousness. Jesus is the Father’s pleasure. The Door. The Way. To want to be like Jesus is to want to live in God’s Kingdom and Light. It has nothing to do with feelings. It has to do with the Designer of the Universe.

• I’m not after perfection, as nice as that would be. I’m after you focusing on me. You do that. I’ll take care of the rest.

• Being like Jesus is the most amazing place in all the history of the universe. God is good and does good.

• What do you do to get thrown out of hell? Worship! Sing to Jesus, even if it’s barely a whisper at the gates of hell.

• I won’t worship because I’m happy. I’ll be happy because I worship. I will be one who worships in hell until the devils throw me out.

• I’m not seeking joy or peace or fun or light burden or an easy yoke. Lucifer sought those things. Jesus has called us to abandon completely all of those things just as He did. He only sought His Father’s will with a worshipful heart all day, every day, no matter what. And Father welcomed Him to His side for a billion trillion years because He emptied Himself of His own desires. If we are worshippers rather than complainers, all day, every day, and obey without question or pause as Jesus did, Father will welcome us also to His side, the ultimate Home of peace, joy, and safety. We will do this with no takebacks or excuses.

• You can live for Jesus no matter how you feel.

• Blinders like a harness racehorse. And look at Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18)

• How do you worship when “feeling” bad? As Jesus did every day of His life in spite of all of the pain, humans put on Him. Like Paul and Silas did in prison. It is faith, not feelings. It is belief in the truth, not experiences. That’s where the Z-axis and Jesus live. It always has been. Tree of Life, not tree of knowledge.

• There’s a difference between “happy” and satisfied/content. Being “happy” is never going to be a goal, either to be pursued or to be desired. Satisfied and content is something on the inside that God grants when we’ve given everything away and not pursued anything for ourselves. Lose your life to find it.

• If you are depressed, you offer it to Jesus. “I really wish I felt better. I don’t like how I feel, but I’m gonna love others anyway.”

• People who seem so happy actually have a lot of pain. They’ve just learned to put it in its place. Feeling pain is NORMAL. If you feel good, don’t expect it to stay that way.

• “A sword will pierce your heart too, Mary.” Embrace it. TAKE up your cross.

• Expecting or wishing for it to be easy isn’t a worthy goal. If it’s easy, then you are not able to share in His Glory. The more painful it is, the more you share in His Glory and the bigger drink of Jesus you get.

• Attitude determines altitude. Your attitude towards pain determines how high you go with Jesus.

Renouncing the Radio:

• You might have bad knees, but you don’t have to jump rope. You might have anxiety, but you don’t have to allow the radio to keep replaying. Be calm. Relax. “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

• “Sorting things out in your head” is the radio. Turn it off.

• You don’t start a new radio about the radio if you’re stopping the radio. You listen to Christian music or the Bible instead! Or serve others!

• Children don’t have radios. Children aren’t worried about themselves. They just live in the moment. There are no “What about.” That’s all radio.

• Stop the radio and be the best person you can be today.

• Any thought that brings anxiety or any anxiety that brings a thought, it’s over with. You don’t let it finish a thought. You don’t let it in and then go vertical with it. You feel it, and you do not let it in. They’re screaming at the door, but you don’t have to let them in.

• Dissecting and analyzing and trying to decide something is all the radio. The goal is no thoughts. “The mind controlled by the Spirit is Life and Peace.”

• Slow the motor down in your head. Slow down your thoughts. And offer it all up to God. You are training a little bit at a time. When you are training for a marathon, you will have good days and bad days. You are working up your minutes every day and making progress every day. Don’t feel like you have to run a marathon today. You can’t. You are training and making progress every day. And the marathon is the goal. Being like Jesus is the goal.

• Ignoring your brain is always what you should be doing, a.k.a. radio stupidity.

• In Africa, there are trillions of flies buzzing around everyone’s head. After you’ve been there a week, you can ignore the fact that a fly just landed on your forehead. Train your soldiers.

Tree of Life:

• Flesh and wrong tree eating/living interfere with learning how to love.

• Don’t use the wrong tree as if that will accomplish anything. Stop the radio and stop trying to decide “good and evil.” There’s no Life and Peace there, which is proof of the wrong tree.

• Good/evil tree is all about performance, thinking you can earn something by externals or lose something by externals. Tree of Life says, “I trust that He loves me, and it’s gonna be okay.”

• Go where there is Life and Peace. If you are anxious, you are on the wrong path. Love God and Love People, and let God take care of you.

• The Tree of Life is to live to please God, not to justify yourself, or get what you want, or feel guilty. Live to please God.

• “Knowing things” and “understanding things”—that’s the wrong tree.

• The tree of knowledge kills people, which is what “I don’t understand” means! Wanting to feel justified or satisfied by understanding something is the wrong tree.

• The mind controlled by the Spirit is Life and Peace. Seek that out. Your radar is looking for Life and Peace, not right and wrong. Wrong Tree. Your first priority isn’t to figure it out. Your first priority is Life and Peace.

• Tree of Life is a relationship. Tree of Life is about trust. Tree of Life is about giving gifts to Jesus.

• Tree of Life has to do with God’s purposes. What does God want? That has nothing to do with me me me, but what does God want?

• Tree of Life: Trust Jesus to figure it out or guide or protect or _____. : )

• It is never about what you need to do or not do. Wrong Tree. Trust. Relax. Smile Big.

• X and Y doesn’t EVER yield a Z answer. HIS yoke and burden are easy and light. It’s about open hands and trust, not controlling and understanding. Any attempts to move back and forth from one side of the tree of knowledge of good and evil to the other side of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil are meant to “not work.”

• No amount of learning or reading can get you off the XY axis and off of the wrong tree. Only total trust can do that.

• Chill and care about God and others instead of yourself. Tree of Life. Love God. Love People. Thinking about yourself is the wrong tree.

• When you are confused, just put it in Jesus’ hands. That’s it. Every time. He knows, and He cares, and He will deal with it. You don’t have to decide anything. That’s the wrong tree.

• You don’t know anything, and you can never know anything. Go to the Tree of Life. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

• Read 1 John 2 and 1 John 3. A person with Jesus living inside will have a conscience and will intentionally fight their own appetites for Jesus’ sake. A person who is washed will want to make Jesus happy and will apologize when they give in to something they shouldn’t. An unwashed person won’t care. A conscience knows something or believes something is wrong but knows the blood of Jesus has already washed it in advance. We change to make Him happy, not to avoid punishment or rejection. Tree of Life.

• Z axis—YOU don’t count.

• Tree of Life is about joy in the exploration of giving in love, case by case. Give gifts from the deepest place to Jesus. This isn’t about stress to get it right. This is about giving gifts.

• I won’t offer to God that which costs me nothing. If it were easy it wouldn’t be a very good gift, would it?

• The Tree of Life is about giving gifts. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is “This is sin, and I need to repent.” The tree of knowledge kills you, and the Tree of Life is a Gift.

• Drop the wrong tree, the XY axis. Look up and out.

• Overthinking and dissecting... does it bring the peace of God and the love of God? If not, then that’s not the path towards love and spiritual prosperity.

• You have one simple task: to do all things for Jesus.

•  More on Dealing With Anxiety