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Taking Aim at Angst

A lady in Ohio by the name of Joan Marie Arbogast wrote this story about her young daughter:

Our daughter was terribly anxious the first time she flew in a plane. "What if the plane falls down?" she asked as we boarded. "What's that sound?" she questioned as the engines revved. During take-off she squeezed my hand till her knuckles turned white. However, once we were above the clouds, she released her grip and announced, "It's okay now. I'm not afraid. We're above the clouds ... and next to heaven." Citation: Joan Marie Arbogast, Ohio. "Small Talk," Today's Christian Woman

We've been talking a lot about lifestyle worship; that is, making worship a way of life. If we're serious about living that way — and that IS the way God wants us to live - we need to address the very common problem of anxiety. Anxiety sometimes nips at our heels - but other times it actually disables us, keeping us from making worship a way of life.

Far too many people are being crucified these days. Their cross is often made of two rugged beams: anxiety and stress. This cross drains their time, their talent and their treasure without mercy. Satan, our accuser, loves it.

And what nails us to such a dreadful cross? Two stakes, each full of malicious barbs. One stake is made up of yesterday's regrets and the other stake consists of tomorrow's worries.

Today, let's talk about tomorrow's worries. Our society is soaked in anxiety. It is estimated that anxiety is a major player in psychophysiological diseases that afflict more than 20 million Americans. Anxiety is widely regarded as society's number one mental disorder.

This problem shows up in our lifestyles, which are often frantically paced products of one anxiety or another. In urban areas, children are chauffeured from soccer games to piano lessons, then back home for schoolwork assignments. Turbocharged supermoms drive these kids around town. And in addition to that time-consuming role, the moms work 30 hours a week at an office, keep the house presentable, feed the family and sing in the church choir. It's tiring just to imagine such schedules!

The anxieties that motivate such schedules are our own doing - and they are also our un-doing. If we don't recognize this problem and deal with it properly, we can drown under wave after wave of anxiety crashing down on us like pounding surf. The good news is that we only put up with this situation for 70 or 80 years. Can you imagine living in today's world for 969 years, as Methuselah lived in his?

Webster's Dictionary defines anxiety as "uneasiness and distress about future uncertainties." We sometimes call it 'worry.'

When anxiety is continued too long or at too high a level, it generates harmful stress. It affects our minds, clouding our understanding. It affects our emotions, causing us to lash out at others with angry words. It affects our bodies, intensifying our fatigue and reducing our resistance to disease.

In fact, research has revealed sobering information about the effects of stress. Here are some of the possible consequences on a person who experiences excessive stress over a prolonged period of time: Panic anxiety attacks, higher cholesterol, increased blood pressure, heart attacks, physical exhaustion, insomnia, strange body sensations, unexplainable pain, skipped heart beats, irritability, accidents, alcoholism, drug addiction, strained relationships, apathy, poor judgment, reversals in usual behavior, headaches, indecisiveness, withdrawal, loss of perspective, paranoia. And this isn't even a complete list!

Our marriages are affected, too. Each spouse brings his or her anxieties to marriage. That in itself creates quite a dynamic environment! As they then interact with each other - and with each other's baggage - the anxiety climbs as they "bear one another's burdens." These anxieties generate compound anxiety.

This buildup of anxiety grows like compound interest earnings. However, the results are taxed at a much higher rate: Untreated anxiety can kill a marriage.

We'd like to think that we adults are the only ones affected by anxiety, but that isn't true. Our children are also affected. We are their role models, like it or not. We can be good models or we can be bad models, but we cannot be non-models. They watch us daily and absorb us daily. What goes in will eventually come out in their lives, in one form or another.

A dramatic example comes from a clinical psychologist and professor at DePaul University. An eight-year-old boy was referred to her because he would become easily and extremely anxious if his class work did not match his expectations. And he was only in 3rd grade!

Eventually she discovered what caused this unusual behavior. He should have spent only about 30 to 45 minutes a day on his homework. Instead, he was putting in three hours per day. Why? Because he was afraid he would disappoint his parents. He reread and rewrote his assignments over and over.

His parents were shocked, since they had never told him to put himself under such pressure. That made no difference to the boy. This young, uptight overachiever simply saw his parents as his models. Dad was a business executive, a successful perfectionist. Mom was highly educated, but had left her career to pour herself into her children.

Their son not only followed their example, but also worried that they would emotionally disown him if he failed to excel at everything. Without knowing it, they modeled an expectation that they never intended. That's the power of parental example.

What can we do about this? Quite a bit, as you will discover if you join us again for tomorrow's broadcast!

For today, here are two recommendations:

When you become anxious about some particular matter, ask yourself, "What is the worst that can happen if I take (or do not take) this action?" If you identify the worst-case scenario and decide that you can probably handle it, you'll expose anxiety to the truth, which tends to chase worry away. God doesn't want us to be crippled by worry. When worry is gone, you have more energy and more focused attention to devote to the things God wants you to think about.
Set your mind on God's Word. For example, listen to Isaiah 26, verse 2, with which we close this message today: Speaking to God, Isaiah says, "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You."