Encouragement Heals Anxiety // Wisdom That Works, Part 18

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

We all have the odd panic attack from time to time. Or anxiety gnaws away at us and grinds our bones into dust. But there’s an antidote. There’s a cure. And whilst sometimes we can’t administer it to ourselves, we can give it to others. That cure - is called … encouragement. Costs nothing, but gives so much.

Most of us, well if the truth be known, all of us have experienced anxiety. For some people it happens now and then, for others it happens rather a lot more. And it's just not a nice thing to be anxious about something. I went to my dictionary to get a definition of anxiety and this is what it said:

A feeling of worry and nervousness, unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

And I thought, man what a great definition. It's typically about something imminent, something with an uncertain outcome. We just don't know how things are going to turn out. Is this going to turn out well or is it going to go badly? And so we turn it over and over and over and over and over in our minds and we imagine all the bad things that can happen if it goes wrong.

Ever done that? Of course you have and it's not that we don't want to have faith in God at the time, for His provision and His protection, not that. It's just that, well this thing just eats away at us and it's as though it grinds our bones into dust.

Fear, anxiety, worry, they all come knocking on our door from time to time and it's only as we overcome them each time with faith that we grow ever stronger. My faith has only grown as I've experienced anxiety and then seeing God’s faithfulness come through again and again and again.

And I'll be really honest with you here because I was in a position of deep anxiety over something when I actually prepared this message. Normally, normally I do all my preparation early in the morning. I'm one of these crazy early risers, you know up at 3 or 4 in the morning.

And I actually love reading and praying and writing and preparing radio programs at that time of the day when everyone else is in bed and it's just God and me. Peace and quiet, phones not ringing, wonderful. But this program, it was prepared around 11.30 at night.

Now I can tell you I almost never, very, very, very rarely work at the end of the day because I'm a morning person and not a night person. Over the last 5 years I've maybe worked that late at night, I don't know, once, twice, three times maximum. And why was I up late?

Because I couldn't sleep. Again that's an absolute rarity for me. And why couldn't I sleep? Because I was anxious over something. My wife Jacqui and I felt called to step out into something in faith and it was something right at the time I was preparing this message that didn't seem to be going that well.

There was an uncertain outcome ahead and all the evidence seemed to point to failure rather than success. At the same time a whole bunch of other things, not directly related but deeply impactful on our finances, they were going wrong as well. Have you ever had that happen? You step out, you go follow God in faith.

Like Peter, you step out of the boat to follow Jesus and all of a sudden you notice there's a storm raging around you. Fantastic. So here I was preparing messages at the wrong end of the day, stepping my way as we have been these past three weeks, through the Book of Proverbs and the verse that leaps out at me is the verse about anxiety.

God is good isn't He? And here is that verse. Proverbs chapter 12, verse 25:

Anxiety weighs down the human heart but a good word cheers it up

And I thought, "that's exactly it". The thing with anxiety is that it weighs down our hearts. Anxiety is draining, it's exhausting. It's like a heavy load that we have to carry around until the situation that's making us anxious is resolved. It feels like we're carrying a heavy weight around in our hearts.

It's bad enough to have to carry a heavy weight around on our shoulders, that's tiring enough but when we carry it in our hearts it weighs down our emotions and our spirit. See that's why anxiety drags us down to rock bottom. That's why it can feel so unbearable.

I don't know about you, when I'm anxious I feel completely isolated. It's as though there's no one else who can lift the load. But here is Gods wisdom, there it is, let's listen to it again, Proverbs chapter 12, verse 25:

Anxiety weighs down the human heart but a good word cheers it up.

A word of encouragement is just what we need when we're anxious because our most natural tendency is to try and cope with anxiety on our own. To let it stir around on the inside instead of going to a dear and trusted friend who will give us a good word to cheer us up and lighten the load.

Now at this point you may well be thinking to yourself, "Oh come on, there's more to it than that. You can't get rid of anxiety that easily. It's not that simple". And my response to you, if that's what you're thinking, would be this. That I would encourage you at this point to remember that God’s wisdom is the sort of wisdom that actually works. It does.

So let's give God the benefit of the doubt here and just stop and chew it over for the moment. We know that anxiety weighs down our hearts. It pulls us down and down and down and the one thing we need at that point is some encouragement. Because what does encouragement do? It lifts us up again.

I have a good friend, Keith, who is such an incredibly good encourager. Whenever I have a chance I love to sit down with him and chat over coffee. I always walk away feeling that whatever I'm facing I can now take on the world again. We may not even talk about the things that are bothering me. It's just that he is such a natural encourager, his encouragement lightens my load.

Friend, God doesn't mean for us to go this alone. That's why He uses friends and loved ones and we can choose to shut them out. Many people do when they're anxious. They just isolate themselves and they crawl into a hole and it's like the whole world is coming to an end and the sky is falling down.

But it's to our loss that we do that. It's to our loss that we isolate ourselves. Or we can go to our friends, our loved ones and let them encourage us. And by the way, when the shoes on the other foot, if we just go and encourage someone else who's anxious and worried, that is about the greatest blessing we can give anyone.

But what if there's no one to encourage me? What if no one else cares or understands? What if this anxiety is so deep rooted that nothing anyone else says or does makes just an iota of difference? Well you know, that happens. Sometimes things are so bad, they're so dark we feel so alone. I've been there.

The problem is so big and so deeply worrying that, well no ones kindness and no one's encouragement seem to make even a dent on the darkness and the heaviness and the load that we're carrying. Well there's an answer for that too and it comes from the lips of Jesus Himself.

So if you happen to be in that place at the moment please listen carefully to what Jesus said. Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 to 30:

Come to me all of you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

When all is said and done in Jesus we discover rest for our souls. When it's all too much and too burdensome and too wearying, when nothing anyone else can say or do makes a difference, then Jesus is the answer. I don't care what the problem is, how big, how daunting, how potentially catastrophic Jesus gives us rest for our souls. Peace.

And when we can't push anymore so long as we're yoked up with Him He'll take the load for a while. He'll do the things that we can't do. He'll be alongside us shoulder to shoulder and my friend it doesn't get any better than that. That's why a relationship with Jesus is such a fantastic investment.