Ambassadors in an Anxious Age w/Ron Hutchcraft

Anxiety has a way of sneaking into normal life until it starts running the whole show. We’ve all felt that tight-chest, racing-thoughts pressure, and lately the reasons stack up fast: nonstop headlines, financial stress, parenting fears, comparison culture, and that nagging sense that control is slipping through our fingers.

Doug, Ron and Jesse sit down for a candid, faith-forward conversation about anxiety, everyday stress, and what happens when worry becomes the loudest voice in your mind. 

And then there's a lot of the episode focusing on steps to overcome anxiety, and how to find peace in a stressful world.

If you’re tired of feeling on edge, come listen and take one step toward peace today. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with five stars if you can.

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Thank you for listening and Go M.A.D. today!

Transcript

Welcome And The Missing Co-Host

SPEAKER_04 0:06

Hey everybody, welcome to a brand new episode of Go Mad with Doug and Brad. Don't be confused today because it's actually Go Mad with Doug and without Brad and with Dad. But it still runs. It still runs. Brad got lost on the way to the studio today. We've sent out a search party. Not the first time. Not the first, probably not the last. I hope he doesn't listen to this. We have released the hounds. We have released the hounds. We are talking about something today that affects everybody's lives. It either affects you right now in a season you're in, maybe you live with this every day. You certainly know somebody that is going through this. We're talking about anxiety today. We're talking about stress and what happens when we live a life, even it some of us are living day to day. We might not even realize it, but with this quickened heartbeat, this this um this just sense of foreboding that that something bad's about to happen. And yes, many believers do too. Um there is uh it's tax season right now. And uh yeah, it's perfect if you could say now I've got an anxiety problem. Excuse me. There was this great commercial. HR Block had it on, boy, I don't know, many years ago. And so set the stage here. It's a completely quiet home. Quiet peace, a few shots. There's a child in the corner playing quietly with the teddy bears. And there's mom in the corner, another corner. I don't know why everyone's in a corner, but um but she's doing her knitting. It's so quiet, you can actually hear the clock going total quiet, total peace.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

I'm dozing off.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

Then dad appears at the po top of the stairs and says, Daddy needs quiet. Well, that hurts. Nothing going on internally, there sure is. Oh my goodness. He's doing his taxes, but it's really a perfect picture of how a lot of us are going through life these days.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

By the way, I uh I uh uh every time I do my taxes, I come to the same conclusion. I am a nonprofit organization. So once again, I'm gonna prove I am a nonprofit organization.

SPEAKER_04 2:39

But yeah, like with the we're going through life with the full glass of stress from what life brings our way. And it doesn't take much to to tip over into full-blown anxiety where where it can without us even really knowing it, all of a sudden we've got a life being robbed of joy and run by anxiety instead. So we're gonna get into this in a minute. We're gonna talk about again whether this is you right now, um, maybe you've experienced this, you'd like to know how to deal with it better in the future, or you know somebody that you know is just living in in is just miserable because of this anxiety. This episode is for you today.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Aaron Ross Powell The social research is showing that I mean that just all of our anxiety levels have gone up. Oh, I mean, the it it just seems like everything is blown up, everything is broken, nothing is working, every solution creates a new problem that needs a solution that creates another problem. And and so you've got the world situation, you've got the national anxiety, and then you've got all of the uncertainty that comes into our lives just on a daily basis. Just stuff happens. And the the combination of it all, and the like the serial nature, one thing after another after another after another. And uh you've done a little on the research there of just what's happening in mental health with all of this.

SPEAKER_04 4:12

That's so true, Dad. I mean I mean, the problem is real. I so you could probably guess at this point what the number one most common diagnosed mental illness is anxiety disorders. Probably not a surprise. But get this, I did a little research into this. I always like to try to sound smart at the beginning of these things. And I think it goes downhill rely on and then it really does. I rely on Google. But over 40 million people in our country each year, just check out a few of these statistics. These are very sobering. Um, just to back up what Dad was just saying, over 40 million people in our country each year will be diagnosed with an actual anxiety disorder. Approximately one in three of us, U.S. adults experience an anxiety disorder at some point, not just feeling stressed, but a disorder at some points in their lives. There are so many kinds general anxiety, social anxiety. Get this panic disorders are experienced by six million people in our country every year. And finally, get this 2025 big poll, national poll, found that nearly 70 percent of us, 70 percent of adults feel anxious about the state of the world. And like Dad said, why wouldn't we have wars, rumor of wars, financial worries, health problems. What else? Why do you guys think anxiety is such a huge part of our lives these days?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Well, Jesse's looking extremely worried right now. Let's let's ask Kim. Let's ask Kim.

Why We Feel Out Of Control

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah. Uh yeah. Thanks for that list, Doug. I was feeling great. I was okay till now. Oh, it's feeling great. Thanks, Doug. Yeah, well, uh obviously there's there's the world out there and then there's the world in here. And um I do think we live I mean, we obviously live in a time where we're able to know more about what's going on in the world than we ever have. And an increase in information, especially when a lot of that information is disheartening, it can only lead to uh an increase in anxiety if it's not put in its proper place. Uh that's one aspect, and the other aspect is um seasons of life that uh we weren't expecting, we weren't planning. We've we don't have any map for. And you combine those two things and man, uh it's it's a recipe for uh for anxiety.

SPEAKER_04 6:26

That's a great point. You you it's not enough. I mean, you know, it's 1952 and there's a report, hey, there's a uh big war going on over there, and now it's like you can know every injury, every every um evil thing that's happening because of it. That's a good point, Jesse. Dad, why? Why are we experiencing so much stress these days?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Well, you know, I think that uh what really makes us individually anxious is loss of control. I am losing control of my life. And so um there's um financial things that are going on all around us that we look, I had things figured out, and now I mean just to talk about the price of gas like is a current issue right now.

SPEAKER_04 7:13

Just to bring stress drive and buy the gas.

Worry Versus Peace In Scripture

SPEAKER_00 7:16

I've lost control. Uh but seriously, and then uh if you've got children and they're especially because of social media and so on, they're constantly bombarded with comparisons of I'm I don't measure up, and and so our kids uh young people particularly are uh having huge mental health issues, and so that affects the parents, and so there is just so many unknowns, so many loss of control issues financially, socially, um, business. You're you're like, what just happened to the stock market today? What? Uh and so the from the Dow Jones to the weather forecast uh to what's what what what what my kid is is is carrying around with them and they're they're falling apart. Um and it puts stress on marriages, it puts it's just uh it just seems like the fear factor is growing. And here's what anxiety does, uh among other things. It and and worry, let's say, is it it is like a microscope. No, it is like a telescope that suddenly enlarges the problem. And the more you dwell on the problem, the more of your mental and emotional you is taken over by it. And it's so it's like it starts to look it's this big really, but it starts to look huge as you dwell on it, and so it's growing, which then pushes out the wonderful alternative, according to the Bible, to anxiety, which is peace. If you take biblically, the opposite of anxiety and worry is peace, and they're constantly fighting for what's going to run our heart and run our mind and our thoughts. So anxiety pushes out peace. Peace pushes out anxiety. You've got this great statement in Philippians chapter 4 in the Bible that says, be anxious for nothing, don't worry about anything, in other words. But you say, well, that's easy to say. How does that work? But in everything, with Thanksgiving, thinking about how God's taking care of you up to this point, he isn't going on vacation now just because the headlines were bad today. But with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. You unload this, and there's a place to and a person to unload it to, and the peace of God, who it comes, he will replace anxiety with peace. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, like this does not make sense. There are so many things going on I've lost control. He has not lost control. And so the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your heart. There's my emotions, and your mind, and your thoughts, my your mind, your thoughts in Christ Jesus. So it is possible there is a way to move out anxiety with peace, but we're more likely, unless we have no know the cure, yeah, to push out peace with anxiety. And so now that thing looks bigger today than it looked yesterday. It's gonna look bigger tomorrow than it looked, and now it's I it's it's now I'm I'm cracking up here.

SPEAKER_04 10:42

You know, in a minute, those are that is so good, Dad, man. Uh awesome perspective. The the um in a minute, we're gonna get to more specifics about how you can't. Yeah. So God says, don't be anxious about anything. We go, uh cast your cares on me. You go, yes, great. Uh how? We're gonna get into that in just a minute.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

I'm glad because I'm really worried about anxiety.

When Anxiety Turns Us Inward

SPEAKER_04 11:05

You know, you know the thing is, um, so if the joy of the Lord is our strength, so what gets us through the day, what uh is our our the epicenter of our strength is the joy of the Lord and the enemy comes to to rob, to steal, to kill, destroy. He's the joy robber, and this is how he does it. Um dad, you you uh you alluded to this. It's this um when we're anxious, um there is this great unhealthy level almost of self-focus. Um look, part of the essence of the believer is going outside ourselves and bringing Jesus to the ones that need him. One of the scariest things that the Bible says that Jesus said happens the closer it gets to his return, is that the love of most, including believers, he's talking to believers, will grow cold toward others. This is part of that increase of wickedness, and it's this overfocus on self, this kind of, I got my family, we're in our home, we're staying here, the huddling up, the bunker mentality. But Jesus' final orders, I'm memorizing this scripture with my son right now, go and make disciples. It all starts with go, make disciples of the world. But anxiety and stress, this is what is why they're such killers, not just of us, but of the people who need Jesus around us. The anxiety and the stress make us so self-focused that we say, Go, no, I got too much me to worry about here. So, how do we bring the gospel to the ones we love then? It's why we gotta figure out how to get a control, get control, let the Lord get control in our lives of our stress and anxiety levels.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

You know, as you're talking about this, it makes me think that the anxiety sentences almost all start with I. The peace sentences almost all start with God. What I I can't, and I'm worried, and I won't and or God can. God is. It depends on what how you start your sentence. What's the subject? The the verbs all might might be the same, the the rest of it, but who's the subject? And uh Isaiah 26, 3 says, You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you. So to the extent you can laser focus on God. Now, anxiety is gonna do everything it can. Fear, fear pushes out peace. Anxiety, we can say fear, because anxiety ultimately is I'm afraid, I'm afraid because I'm losing control. But maybe that's not all bad that I'm losing control because guess what? I any control I thought I had was the illusion of control. I don't decide if I take my next breath. What do I control? And maybe losing control helps me find who really isn't in control, and I can rest there. I can't rest with my control.

SPEAKER_04 14:27

Wow. Jesse, man, why else is it is it dangerous that we're going through life here kind of in this a lot of times without even realizing it, in this state of anxiety and fear and stress.

The Stress We Spread To Others

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Well, one uh one aspect of the anxiety that we experience is how it affects others. And you know, we talk a lot about on this this show how to be an ambassador for Christ. Um I know personally when I am uh the most stressed or the most anxious, uh it doesn't stay internal. It's it affects the people closest to me. Um and that that's not to throw guilt on us, to make us feel bad about feeling anxious, but what we do with it really does matter for the people in our lives. Everybody knows that, but I do think that um it it's a a helpful motivation to know God, what am I going to do with this anxiety? Because I care about the people around. I want to be Christ's ambassador to the people around me. Like you were saying, Doug, like it's hard to focus on other people when we're inward focused. Um but as Christ's ambassadors, man, how am I going to leverage this anxiety for the good of people around me? How can I point it back to Christ?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

You know, we all make people feel some way. We all leave a trail. And uh and we're not we're not aware of it, but they are. Yeah. And people how do they feel when you come into the rooms like Big Pen, Big Pen and Charlie Brown with the big dark clouds over him and the you know, the dirt falling off of him? Uh uh, you know, are you more Eeyore? Are you Tigger or somewhere? I'd rather be clo toward the Tigger side. But the fact is, when you are all caught up with your fears, you become, and your glasses full as you described it, Brad. What's your name? Doug? I'll go check. Hang on.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

Yeah, it's Doug.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

What you do is you start to get edgy and you should get short-tempered, and uh you start to get mean-spirited, and because you're all about you, people aggravate you all the time, and guess what trail you're leaving? On the other hand, if somehow we can get a handle on this Ambassador Friend, Ambassador Ron, Ambassador Doug, Ambassador Jesse, if we can figure out how in this sea of fear and anxiety we all live in, if we if the vibe we leave behind is peace, and they're like, I feel like when they were here I could breathe when they came in the room, you know? There's something about them. That peace will be a giant announcement of the of a the reality of a living, resurrected Jesus, the the Jesus difference that uh twenty sermons might not impress him as much as one pre peaceful person in a sea of stress.

Community, Honesty, And Journaling

SPEAKER_04 17:36

Wow, truth bomb right there. Um we love on uh on the go mad with Doug and Brad podcast to not only now that we have sufficiently scared everybody with the going through life with anxiety, they were fine till we got the bad news. But we always like to make sure that we're offering some uh practical ways to to uh conquer this. And the great news is boy, anyone who thinks the word of God is is boring and uh for the olden days isn't reading the word of God because there's so much amazing practical advice in there. Uh I'm gonna I'll start us off here because I want to ask us guys, what can we do about it? The bottom line, so what can we are there changes we can make that can that can help battle this stress, this anxiety wave going through life? I'm gonna start with this with community because and specifically being part of church, a local gathering. I I bring this up because I for too long in my life had this sense that I think a lot of Christians do these days. We're in individualistic society. We go, okay, church, fine. I don't need church. God and I have our own thing. You know, we've got this thing cooking, and that's all fine. I got my family and everything. But boy, is that a danger zone when you say, I'm gonna do life on my own. There's a reason the Lord in his word says, don't stop gathering together.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Does the Lord's Prayer say, my father who out in heaven? Oh, good point. My kingdom, thy kingdom come uh, and then um give give me this day my daily bread. No, it's our father, give us this day. Hmm.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

Yeah, great point. I mean, that's that do not stop gathering together. It's just some random bomb uh uh God drops there. It's practical advice. James says, are any of you hurting? Pray for one another. Oh, there you go. We aren't supposed to do this life alone and insulated, even if you're going to church. Are you part of regular communities somehow in a prayer group in Bible study? There's probably never been a more important time in history as a believer to be part of a local gathering of believers.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Will it be me or will it be what we call church? Or will it be we? And we is so much stronger than me. In fact, Ecclesiastes said, I'm paraphrasing, me can be overpowered. We can prevail.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

So what else can we do, guys? I mean, what what some practical steps.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Go, Jesse. Okay. Uh well Doug, you mentioned confessing your sins to one another and praying for one another that you may be healed. Uh that, just to take that step further, involves coming face to face with the reality of your own anxiety, meaning um you can't gloss over it. And and this is this is something I battle daily. Like, how are you doing fine? Okay, how are you really doing well? I have, you know, I have you know, uh a few struggles, but no, being completely dead honest with my own anxiety. God, I am feeling anxious about this and not pretending like I'm not, and not pretending like it's not a big deal. It is a big deal. God, this this matters to me. There's so many of the Psalms that are absolutely raw in their language about God, this is how things really are right now. Not pretending like they're not. Just like we have to confess our sins to God and to others in order to be to be healed, we have to confess our fears and our anxieties. It when we first get that first uh anxious feeling that that's not a sin. What we do with it matters. Am I going to confess it and be honest about it with God and with others, or am I going to gloss over it or try to stuff it away? Um in order to let others pray for me so that I might be healed, I need to be honest about how it really is internally.

Praise First And Leave It With God

SPEAKER_04 21:56

Man, that's good stuff, Jesse. Let me give a quick one and then when I I really want to ask Dad here about because he has such a great prayer life. I want to ask him about the prayer and the aspect, that aspect of um how we battle anxiety and stress. I got a quick thing. Um, if it maybe you've never tried this before, my son just started doing this. It's great advice I've gotten from dad in the past, and it makes a bigger difference than you think. Even if you just write a few things on your phone, don't let the word journaling scare you. But the we have to do something that helps us recognize specifically what the triggers are in our life, what keeps coming along. Don't just assume you'll figure it out. You might be surprised. Real quick, two types of journaling. Kind of just what am I thankful for? What are some blessings? You know, the Bible says to set your mind on things above, things that are pure, that are lovely, that are praiseworthy. Think about those things. So we're setting our mind there. Something that we write it down, even if it's just the word on all the blessings, the time God has delivered us from things we were worried about. Go, why was I so worried? And help set our mind on those things. And one other type of journaling, just what I would call kind of what are our anxiety triggers when you kind of go, okay, I'm freaking out right now. I am stressed out right now. I'm gonna write down, maybe, and again, just talk it into your phone so you can go and look later. A list of the things that are getting you worked up. It helps you identify the patterns that don't do us any any good. This is a great way to obey God's direction. Dad, you brought up earlier. Guard your heart. How? Know what the things are that you need to guard your heart from. Guard your heart. It's the wellspring of life. Everything you do flows from it. So that anxiety monster gets in there, that fear and worry monster gets in there, and uh all of a sudden you got that junk in your heart that's uh stirring things up that's gonna result in if that verse, and it is true, that everything we do flows from it, that anxiety will make its way out if we're not guarding our heart. Dad, talk to us, just talk to us about how we do this. The Lord says, Cast his cares, our cares on him. Uh how?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Well, I think that uh one of the three key words for me in handling fear and anxiety is the word praise. Uh I'm gonna start there. That uh Psalm 11 is a fascinating, ask a fascinating question. It says, When the foundations are being shaken, now hello, doesn't it feel like all the things that never moved are moving all of a sudden? When the foundations are being shaken, what shall the righteous do? Now there's an anxious question. What are we gonna do with all of this? Answer it doesn't sound like an answer. The next verse says, God is in his holy temple, the Lord is on his heavenly throne. Well, how is that an answer? Because everything isn't moving. Everything we around us, everything human is moving, yep. But I will tell you, and you know, we're coming up on another anniversary of the day our world was shaken like no other, when your mom was suddenly gone. I can tell you that to know that the throne of God had not moved one inch, that he was still in control, even though my whole life was suddenly felt like it was out of control. But the one who holds my life, the one who ultimately is the is the deciding factor in my life, nothing has moved there. And so to begin, and I'm suggesting waking up in the morning, I do this a lot of times, wake up in the morning. Congratulations, Rod. Really, that's good. Um to say, Jesus is Lord. To wake up with literally wake up, don't grab your phone, stop with the phone, all of that, just say, Jesus is Lord. When I sometimes when I turn on the news, I say three or four or five times Jesus Christ is Lord. Wow. Before I watch, Jesus Christ, what I'm about to watch, I don't even know what's gonna, it's gonna be, oh no, Jesus Christ is Lord. So you start, and this is important, I'm saying this is the beginning of your day. If you start, not with please, but with praise, you can get to the please part, but you start with praise and remember what a big God you have and celebrate him. What that does is like take an elevator in Manhattan from the jungle on the street to the top floor of, say, the, you know, Freedom Tower or the Empire State Building, and suddenly it's the elevator to the top floor, and the whole view looks different. Everything looks different from the throne room than from your own room. And that's why praise, that's if you're gonna have that kind of prayer that puts it in God's hands. Now, one thing about prayer, we say, Well, I t I did, I prayed about it. I prayed, okay, fine. That if that means all you did was inform God, let me tell you, he is omniscient. He already knew you can't inform God. So if I have problems with my car and I go to the mechanic and I say, the blakes are a little mushy and it's shifting kind of funny, and there's this noise, and and then I I say, You got all that down, and then I drive away and I go, Well, that dumb mechanic, he's no kind of mechanic. I told him all my problems, and the car's still got. You have to leave it with him, not just tell him about it. So you the prayer has to be the kind that says, I am literally transferring this. The scriptures say, cast your care, and it means roll them over on God. I was carrying it. So when you come into the throne room of God, you come in like this, all people are just listening. Okay, you can't you can't see this, but you're all bent over when you come in and you got this big backpack full of rocks. That's fine. When you leave, are you still all bent over with the backpack of rocks? Or did you leave it in the throne room? And that's that's there's somebody who do you remember that incident when Noelle was she probably three years old coming in the living room with her backpack, she packed full of books. Yeah. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_04 28:38

That's great. So Noelle, our daughter being, you know, the firstborn, even as a three-year-old, four-year-old, she's she's uh uh she wants to carry it herself. I'm like, honey, why don't you let dad take some of those daddy? She said, No, I can do it, daddy. I I got it, I got it. Honey, please just let me. How about I just take a couple? Okay, okay. So I I take a few of them. Said, is that any better, honey? She goes, Daddy, that's a lot better. Uh what a great picture of handing over what is weighing us down every day. Dad, as you're talking about prayer here, I'm remembering um uh a scripture you taught us when we were very young. You do not have because you do not ask. This is such a startling scripture to me because you think about it, if like there's a bunch of blessings sitting on God's uh cabinet there or in his church, and he wants to to uh give them to us, but how many of them are being withheld? If that scripture is true and it is, you're not getting something because you're not asking me, we're not approaching him about it. And also how you would tell us that um be specific in your prayers because remember, Jesus, when he goes to, we were just talking about this yesterday. Jesus, when he goes to the man um at Bethesda and and the guy can't walk. Jesus knows that, but he still asks him, What is it you want me to do here? Well, the man couldn't walk. What do you think he wanted you to do here, Lord? But Jesus wants to hear from us. The Lord wants to hear from us, even though he knows. So prayer time is a great time to focus on his promises, memorize. This is what I do. I memorize in the especially the hardest times in life, and we've had some. Memorize, find the scripture about how he cares for us, how we're his masterpiece, how he goes ahead of us into battle. These are all scriptures, how he will deliver us the kind of peace that goes beyond human understanding. Pray those back to God. Jesse, man, you got you got anything else here before we wrap up? Uh, what what can we do about this? Well, a practical step.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

You know, I've heard uh I've heard this advice before, and I've been trying to implement it in my life when there's a specific anxiety or fear or hurt is to find a verse that directly addresses what you're feeling, thinking, experiencing, and just make it the wallpaper of your life. Uh cling to it, hold on to it. Uh that one verse, make it your lifeline, make it your your flotation device, uh, and and and believe it. I'm I've been trying to do that like with saying like Lord, what what do I need to believe right now that my heart is prone to not believe? Where is that? Let me hold on to that with everything I've got.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

You know, when stress knocks at the door, send scripture to answer the door. And you know, one thing we haven't talked about.

SPEAKER_04 31:43

Turn that on my fridge. That's good. That's good.

The Power Of Daily Trust

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Well, so I I praise is one key word. Turnover, not the apple and cherry kind, although that's those help sometimes. But turn it over, completely get it get it out of your hands and into his. The outcome for a child of God is decided not by a disease, not by a disaster, uh, not by uh uh any more D's, just all of the things that come at us. It is decided by Jesus Himself. All authority in heaven and earth is given to me, he said, and as a child of God, he will decide your outcome. I don't care what it said on the news. I I mean, I don't care, I care, but I mean I don't know what the doc what the doctor said, what the Dow Jones said, those aren't going to decide your outcome. One last thing. There's a key word here, and it is the word daily. Take today, we were built by God to do a day, and when we borrow from tomorrow, we absolutely sink ourselves. He said, uh, give us this day our daily bread. Take up your cross daily and follow me. The Old Testament says, your strength will equal your days. He says, He bears your burdens daily. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. His mercies are new every morning. Had duh. Get the idea. What are you doing in tomorrow? And you know, Corey Tanboom said something like this is not an exact quote. She said, Worry does not lessen tomorrow's burden. It uh it steals today's strength. And it really does. He has promised grace for today, strength for to match. If you have a 50-pound day, he will give you 50 pounds of strength. If you got a 150-pound day, suddenly your bench press will increase, and you will have 150 pounds of God's strength. He will meet your moment with strength to meet it. So praise, filling up right away and getting your Jesus glasses on early in the day. Start with praise. The turnover, it was in my hands, it's now in yours. Leave it with the mechanic, don't drive away, just having told him about it. And thirdly, do this one day at a time. It's when we may which when we try to deal with next week and next month. Do not worry about tomorrow, Jesus said. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Sleep, Caffeine, News, And Counseling

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Wow. Oh wow. Uh that's that is a lot to chew on here. Um I think that's a great place to wrap up here, I think. Um a couple of quick things here. Uh make sure you're not getting too much caffeine. If we want to get real practical, it could just be too much caffeine. Are you getting enough sleep? It's a huge, it's called cortisol. It's like the what how much you get, how much you need. If you're not getting enough sleep, it's a huge issue with this. Are you spending too much time on social media with all the negativity? Maybe too much time watching the news. A lot of practical things to keep in mind. And I I do want to say also here, too, that um, even though there can be a real stigma with this sometimes, uh sometimes uh our anxiety is so steeped in things from our past. Um in um things we have had done to us that were so awful that it is time to go see a professional.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Uh that keeps our glass really full all the time, that past life.

Prayer, Hope, And A Simple Ask

SPEAKER_04 35:44

That's right. So if you're a believer, go find a Christian, Bible-focused counselor. Forget the stigma, what anyone would think about it. This is important stuff. Don't be afraid to do that. Um Dad, would you uh I I we don't always do this, but uh we like to sometimes I I feel a weight that we should pray for for the folks who are listening to this, and we'll wrap up that way. Would you pray for those who are in the past?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

It's funny you should say that because I was just gonna ask you. I have a biblical prayer. The words are right out of the Bible, and I would like to pray for us and for our friends.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Oh, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

This is out of Romans 15, 13, and it is for you. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is our prayer today, Lord, that we may allow you to replace our fear and our anxiety and our self-focus with a heart full of hope, so full that we got plenty for us and plenty to give away. In Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Amen. Hey, as always, we're so glad that you spent some time with us here. Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast, would you share it with somebody? Maybe leave a review. Uh and uh, if it's a place you can leave stars, leave five. Even if you can only leave four, leave five for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

If you want to just say bring back Brad fast. Yeah, but come on, Brad.

SPEAKER_04 37:30

We'll see Brad next time. So until next time, we're gonna say go ahead.