Overcoming anxiety and depression

 Phil. 4:6-9

I’ve titled today’s message “overcoming anxiety and depression.”  God gave me the outline for today’s message about 15 years ago, but this is the first time it has been preached.  By way of introduction of this topic, about 17 years ago, I was a fairly successful antique dealer. I had finally found something in life that I enjoyed doing, and was pretty good at doing, and that also enabled me to make pretty good money doing it.  It was a unique situation I enjoyed which I believed I was blessed by God to have.  I believed I was living for the Lord, and I also thought that my job, my family and my finances were indicative of God’s blessings on my life and were somehow connected to the fact that I was a born again Christian who was trying to serve God.  I began to get more and more involved in my church and was teaching Sunday School and participating in various ministries the church was doing.  Life was pretty good. I built a big, all brick, Colonial Williamsburg reproduction style home on eight acres out Harford County Maryland and proceeded to acquire all the nice things that you would associate with that comfortable kind of life.

It wasn’t long though before I began to have a series of medical issues that seemed to be innocuous enough at first, but over time seemed to start snowballing.  I think the first thing I got was lyme disease.  I had it for a while before it was properly diagnosed.  Not long after that, I found out I had strep throat and because it had gone undetected for some time it was thought to have caused a more serious disease.  That was followed by several other illnesses that I dealt with during that time, but I will spare you all the details.   The end result was that after several months of being sick that at one point I was anxiously awaiting yet another blood test for yet another weird disease and during the ten days or so that I was waiting my anxiety reached the boiling point, and I started experiencing extreme panic attacks.  If you have never had a panic attack then it is kind of hard to imagine what it was like.  It is a feeling that overwhelms your senses as completely and suddenly as if you were really high on a drug trip, but rather than feeling euphoric, you feel absolutely panicked.  Sometimes it may feel as if you are having a heart attack.  It might be combined with other symptoms like  shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing, feeling dizzy, claustrophia, headaches, rashes and stiffness in the neck and shoulders.  I had all those symptoms and more and it seemed to get worse day after day.  In a relatively short time I became more or less completely traumatized.  I lost 35 pounds.  I developed psoriasis over much of my body.  My toenails at one point turned black and fell off.  I reached a point where I couldn’t function, couldn’t really drive or fly or be alone.

I went to the doctor and he listened to all my symptoms and determined that I was suffering from a form of depression.  I was surprised to find out that in the medical profession they considered panic attacks a form of depression.  The doctor prescribed an anti-depressant drug that he assured me would help my condition.  He also counseled me on some other things I could do, such as with my diet and so forth that he thought would help my condition and multiple symptoms. Initially, I was very relieved.  I purchased the medicine and went home and told my wife all that had transpired at the doctor’s office.  But when I told her about the medicine, she expressed concern about the possible side effects.  She has a sister that is bipolar, and so she had first hand experience in how certain psychological medicines can cause both short term and long term adverse side effects.  So after prayer and deliberation, we decided not to use medicine to deal with my condition.  The long and short of it was that over next few years I immersed myself in the Word of God and prayer.  I also began eating better and exercising regularly, but my primary prescription was found in the Word of God.   In particular, this passage that we are looking at today in Philippians was one of the principal scriptures that God most effectively used to get me through that time.  But let me stress that it was a process.  I would have loved to have been instantly healed but it did not happen.  In fact, during those  years I suffered from this I ended up losing my career, losing my house, my cars, all my antiques.  For a long time I was unable to work and having no financial back up we sold off just about everything we owned.  We found ourselves at the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.  We went through an extended time when there was great difficulty in keeping food on the table for my wife and three kids. The genuineness of my faith was tested to the very limit.  I didn’t understand why God allowed all this to happen in my life.  And I seriously began to fear that I was losing my sanity.

Now I tell you all of this reluctantly, but to express the dire situation that I was in, in the hope that my story will help you realize that if there was hope for me, then there is hope for you.  You may not be going through anything similar to what I went through.  You may not ever have had a panic attack.  But I will say that it is very likely that at some point in your life you are going to come to a point when like the song we just sang says, “when all around my soul gives way.”  Things you thought you could count on fell apart.  People you count on fall away.  Stress becomes overwhelming.  Sickness or even death comes knocking on your door in a way that completely tears your world apart.  And when that day comes, then maybe this message will have helped to prepare you. Some of you, however, know exactly what I’m talking about today and have been looking for answers.  And the first place most of us go is to the medical profession looking for help.

Depression in America has reached epidemic proportions. According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, there are a number of different names that are associated with these disorders. Here are just a few  examples; Generalized Anxiety Disorder affects 6.8 million adults, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder affects 2.2 million people, Panic Disorder 6 million people, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder affects7.7 million, Social Anxiety Disorder 15 million, Specific Phobias 19 million, Major Depressive Disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults. And that’s just for starters.  According to the CDC 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 12 take antidepressant medication.  There was also another study that shows 1 in 10 Americans suffer  from depression.  Another government study revealed that antidepressants have become the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. They're prescribed more than drugs to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma, and headaches.  Unfortunately, these drugs don’t cure a person of these disorders, they simply treat the symptoms, and in many cases are putting a band aid on a condition that will continue and in many cases get worse.  Often we try to self medicate ourselves with alcohol and drugs in an attempt to calm our anxieties or make ourselves feel more comfortable or to be able to go to sleep.  And yet, sooner or later that backfires.  We end up addicted to substances on top of the psychological problems that we have and it just exacerbates the whole problem.

But regardless of what type of fear or stress or anxiety or depression that you may be suffering from,  this message today is for you.  I can tell you with all confidence that these principles in this passage we are looking at today will work because they get at the root of the problem and just don’t treat the symptoms.  They probably won’t result in an instantaneous healing, or an instantaneous righting of all your circumstances, but if you apply these principles in your life, as if your life depends upon them(which they do) then God will not fail to perform according to His promises.  This passage offers us hope for a true deliverance.

Now let’s look at the passage.  It says in vs. 6, “Be anxious for nothing.”  That is the principle.  You could even say that is the command.  It is certainly the ideal pattern for the Christian walk, to have no fear, whatever the circumstances may be.  And Paul speaks from a lifetime of experience, which by contrast puts my paltry experiences to shame.  He suffered so much, from shipwrecks to prisons, to beatings, to even being stoned, and in fact was writing from prison at the time of this letter.  He knew what he was talking about.  And so the principle is overcoming anxiety.  Overcoming fear.  Overcoming depression, stress and a whole host of  related circumstances you may find yourself in.

But thankfully he doesn’t just leave us with the statement “Don’t be anxious.”  Nothing used to tick me off like someone that would just glibly dismiss my anxieties with the advice “don’t worry, it will all work out.”  But rather, Paul gives us 4 steps to overcoming fear, overcoming anxiety and depression.  And they are found right here in this passage.  Number one, the first step is to pray, in vs. 6.  Number 2, is to ponder, or to think, and that is found in vs. 8.  Number 3, those things you have pondered, Paul says you now need to practice, vs. 9.  And number 4, after you have prayed, pondered and practiced, God promises peace, vs. 9 again.

So let’s look at number one, prayer.  Vs. 6; “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  The first thing needed is prayer.  From a human standpoint, we don’t understand prayer.  It is one of those mysteries of our faith that requires just that – faith.   Faith in believing that God hears you and that He loves you and wants what is best for you.  Some people want to approach prayer with some sort of formula. If you say it in just the right way, with just the right amount of thanks in it, and by all means be sure to say, “In Jesus name Amen” at the end, and if you muster up all your will power and believe with all your might that God will do what you want Him to do, then God will give you exactly what you asked for.  They think prayer is a procedure by which we tell God what to do and if we do it correctly, God is obligated to do it.  It’s an attempt to manipulate God from a position of control.  But the correct posture of prayer is that of a supplicant, realizing God is in control.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to say all that I would like about prayer this morning.  This verse shows three ingredients of prayer; supplication, thanksgiving, and requests or petitions.  But Paul isn’t giving us a formula here.  He is merely telling us that in everything we should pray to our Heavenly Father.  We have instant access to the Creator of the Universe.  I’ll tell you the secret to effective prayer.  It’s found in James 5:16 “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”  The reason your prayer is effective is predicated by the fact that you are made righteous by the shed blood of Christ.  Be sure that there is no sin in your life that is hindering your prayers.  But once you have cleared  your conscience of anything sinful in your life, then it says be fervent about it.  Energeo is the Greek word, and you can hear how that sounds like energize.  Listen, I can tell you how I learned to pray in those days of my meltdown, and I still pray that way a lot of times today.  I go to a place where I can pray aloud, and I get on my knees before the throne of grace and I grab on to the legs of the throne and I begin to call out to God with all my energy.  I hold onto that throne and I say like Jacob “Lord, I am not going to let go until you bless me.”  I remind the Lord of all His promises that He has written in His Word, and I recount every aspect of my situation, and I talk to Him like He is literally standing in front of me.  I beseech Him.  I cry out to Him.  And I don’t stop until I can’t pray anymore or until He answers me.  Many, many nights I was up until 3am praying, freaking out, holding onto that throne with all my grip, pleading with God to help me.

Folks, we need to learn to pray like that.  We need to pray for our kids like that.  We need to pray for the salvation of our loved ones like that. We need to pray for revival like that.  I routinely pray now when I run.  And most of the time I am running through this long road that goes through a wooded area.  And I just pray out loud.  Sometimes I am calling out as I’m running, sometimes I am crying out to God, sometimes I am even angry about something that I don’t understand and I am letting God and the squirrels and the deer and everything else that is out there in the woods know about it.  But folks, I believe that is how we should pray.  Fervently.  There isn’t some formula.  Just pray with all your energy.

Jesus gave a parable in Luke 18 about a king and a widow that kept coming to him asking him to help her with her opponent.  And I like what the King said. “Yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.'" And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?”  Listen, we need to pray until the cows come home.  We don’t pray to an unrighteous judge, we pray to the righteous King Eternal, who also happens to be our heavenly Father. Jesus prayed all night on several occasions. So much more should we. Let’s get fervent about prayer.
Number 2, ponder. Vs. 8 “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.”  These disorders that we are talking about today are all disorders of the mind, aren’t they?  These disorders are the result of wrong thinking.  And so what Paul is saying here is that we need to reprogram our minds with the truth.  When I was suffering from panic attacks, the constant refrain that my mind was stuck on was “what if…what if…”  It was like a having one of the old 33 rpm records that had a deep scratch in it.  And once it got stuck in that scratch, it would play the same thing over and over and over again.

There are a lot of things that can contribute to that scratch if you will, in our minds.  This rut of wrong thinking is many times the result of the kind of garbage we are feeding our minds on hour after hour, day after day.  The world is constantly shoving it’s propaganda to us, via our televisions, our computers, our mp3 players, our car radios.  We are plugged into the polluted message of the world all day long.  Some people even sleep with it on.  And then we wonder why we  are overwhelmed by these negative thoughts.  But folks, the answer is not just a good dose of positive thinking, but proper thinking.  And proper thinking is found in God’s word.

Paul starts off with think about “whatever things are true,”  and he ends up the verse with if there is anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.  Ponder these things.   You know, before I developed this disorder, I went to church twice a week, tithed 10% and I read my Bible every morning before I went to work.  I read at least a chapter every morning.  Boy, I thought I was killing the whole Christian thing. But let me tell you what.  After I found myself in the throes of never ending panic attacks, I started to really read the Bible.  I read multiple books of the Bible in a single day.  Sometimes I read most of the New Testament in one day.  I read the entire Psalms almost every night aloud, crying and praying each verse out loud to God.  By the way, I believe King David, a man after God’s own heart, who wrote most of the Psalms, I believe that very David suffered from depression.  I believe he suffered from anxiety attacks.  And so I would encourage you to read the Psalms.  Read them aloud and deliberately reprogram your mind.

Listen, you have to start telling yourself the truth. The mind is the battleground between the spirit and the flesh, did you know that?  Man was made at creation in the image of God who was a triune being and so we were made spirit, soul and body.  Some people confuse the soul and spirit and don’t know what the difference is.  The spirit of man is the divine spark that God gave us originally that allowed man to have fellowship with God.  It was what made us alive spiritually, able to commune with God.  But the soul is the essence of man, the mind, the will, the seat of the emotions.  And of course, we know what our body is.  Now at the fall, the spirit of man died because of sin.  And our fellowship with God was broken.  We could not know God through our mind (our soul) or through any actions of our body.  So in our fallen state, the order of creation was reversed, and we became governed by the passions of our bodies, which controlled our minds.  We became enslaved to our passions.  Our spirit was dead.  Salvation then resulted in being born again, not of the flesh, but of the spirit.  And the spirit is life.  We are made righteous through faith in Christ, and made alive in our spirit by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Now though the spirit is born again, we are alive in Christ, yet our minds, our soul, is still in our body.  And our fleshly body is still corrupted.  However, that is why Romans 12 tells us that we are to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds.”  And that the will of God is that we are to present our bodies as a sacrifice to  God.  So, in the new order of becoming a Christian, I submit my mind to the Spirit of Christ,  renewing my mind by what the Spirit teaches me through the Word, and I discipline my body, sacrifice the desires of my body, crucify  the passions of my body and make it my slave.  No longer am I to be a slave of my body.  But I am to make my body the slave of my mind, my mind being obedient to the Spirit.

But the battleground continues to be the mind.  Even once your are a Christian Satan is going to attack you in the flesh, and try to deceive your mind through your flesh once again.  And so our defense is the truth of God’s Word. Eph 6:12 says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH.”  The truth is found in God’s Word.  His promises are sure and will not fail.  And you need to deliberately,  constantly putting God’s word, this truth into your mind.

When I was under attack, I took note cards and wrote down on each card a verse of scripture that was a promise from God to keep me and protect me.  I had about 30 of them wrapped in a rubber band that I carried all the time in my pocket.  I can remember many times having to pull over on the side of the road and read through my cards a few times until I was able to go on.  I remember the first time after I had become sick that I tried to fly in an airplane.  I was wearing those cards out, I can tell you.  Every phobia I had was in full alert and I was fighting back with everything I had, which was the Word of God.

Thirdly, practice.  Vs. 9; “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.”  Listen, faith isn’t knowledge, it’s not wishful thinking, it’s obedience to step out and do what is commanded of you to do.  The scripture is not meant to be a bunch of words like hocus pocus, we just say them and poof, magic happens.  No, the Word of God is instructions.  It tells us how to act, what to say, how to think.  It tells us promises of God that we are to believe in and act upon.  Before your mind is in a rut.  Now we have to reprogram our minds through practice, going over and over again the truths of God.

You know, if you want to get good at basketball, you go to the gym and practice.  You work at your foul shot.  You dribble.  Now you do all this stuff before the game.  You don’t just show up to the game and expect to play well.  You practice whether you feel like it or not.  You rehearse how you should think.  You act out how you are supposed to act.  In other words, you don’t wait till you feel like it.  You begin with actions, and the feelings will eventually catch up.  You begin to act in faith to what God has promised in His word.  It may be small steps at first.  You might be frightened half out of your mind.  But believing in what God has promised, armed with your verses in your pocket, you begin to step out in faith regardless of how you feel.  Let me tell you something.   Feelings lie.  Don’t listen to your feelings.  Listen to the truth of God’s Word and then act in faith as if you felt like it, and soon enough you will find that you will have faith.  I’m not telling you to believe you can jump off a 5 story building or something foolish.  I’m telling you that you have to act on the promises of God that are written in His word.  Don’t act on what some well meaning friend may have counseled you.  Act on what God has promised to you and written down so that you might  know his instructions. And by acting on God’s promises, we cut a new groove in our minds of proper thinking according to what God has said.

Finally, number four, if you pray, ponder and practice and you will know peace.  And listen folks, this isn’t just some peace found in a sleeping pill, or bottle of whiskey, or even the peace that comes through a prescription, this is so much better than that.  This is the peace of God, he says in vs. 7; “which surpasses all comprehension, which will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  I love that verse.  Because what it says is that He will give you a peace that passes understanding.  You can’t understand it, but there is a sense of peace that God gives to those that really put their trust in Him.  You may have to learn to trust in Him.  Learning to trust in Him is a process that sometimes can take a long time.  We learn to trust Him when we pray, we read His Word, we ponder His Word, then we obey His Word,  and we practice His Word, then we get peace because we have proven His Word.  See, it’s one thing to say something is true, and intellectually believe it, but it is another thing to prove something is true.  And in these kinds of distresses, as we go through them we end up proving that God is true, that He can be trusted.  And that equips us for tomorrow.  Because more difficulties are going to come again tomorrow.  Jesus said, everyday has difficulties.  But what you have proven to be true today will make tomorrow’s difficulties easier to go through.

Jam 1:2  “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” When you run, you increase your endurance by pushing through the pain, stretching yourself.  And the next day you find you can run further.  One of the reasons that I think we have such an increase in psychological disorders today is because we somehow have been taught to think that life is supposed to be free of trials.  Everything is supposed to be easy, everything is supposed to work out. Especially if you are a Christian.  I don’t know how we were taught this, but it’s false.  Maybe we can blame it on Disney.  The truth is, life is difficult.  We don’t always know why, or the source of our difficulties.  We sometimes don’t even know if God is doing it to us, or if Satan is doing it.  

James 1:13 “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.”  But it goes on to say we are tempted by our own lust. In other words, it goes back to that fallen body again, that is pulling at us, tempting us, calling us.  And then Satan is called the Tempter in scripture, isn’t he?  Satan tempts us, and sometimes he is given liberty to test us.  Job went through a great deal of trials that were brought about through no fault of his own, but through Satan.  However, one thing we can know  is that God promises to use even evil for our good. Rom. 8:28, “And we know that God causes ALL things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  And what is God’s purpose in calling us?  The next verse says He predestined us to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. God is using these circumstances to prove you, to mold you into the image of Jesus Christ.

Listen, I’ll say it again.  Your mind is the battleground between the Spirit and the flesh.  You are going to have to choose who you will listen to. Are you going to submit to the lies of the flesh or the truth of the Spirit? There is an interesting word that is found in vs. 7, in the Greek it’s phroureo, which means kept in a garrison.  God will guard your mind and heart in a fort, a garrison.  Your mind is a fort.  And the Holy Spirit stands watch over it.  But  you have control over the gate.  You can either submit to the Spirit or to the flesh. Every bad thought that comes we are to take  captive to Christ.  Listen to 2 Cor. 10: 3 “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.  We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.”

Well, I must close.  There is so much here that I feel that I could go on for another hour.  But I will just close by saying that here in Phil. 4 God confirms to us twice that He is able to give us peace that passes all understanding if we are obedient to the instructions that He provides in His Word. In vs. 7 we see the peace of God, and in vs. 9 we see the God of peace.  It’s like two pieces of bread that make up the sandwich. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of mental disorders and fears and phobias.  I know the seriousness of them.  But I also know the peace of God that comes from having proven God to be faithful to the promises found in His Word as I walk in obedience to those promises.  One day Jesus is coming back for those that are His, and He is going to wipe away all tears, and dispel forever all fears.  He is going to replace this fallen body with a body that cannot be broken, that is no longer fallen, but remade in His likeness.  That’s the ultimate purpose of God, to make us into His likeness, and restore our fellowship with Him the way it was originally intended in the garden.  Until then, let the Spirit guard the garrison of our hearts and minds, let’s take every thought captive to obedience to what Christ has promised us, and let’s destroy those speculations that undermine our faith.  And the peace of God will encircle the garrison of our minds like a moat surrounds the castle.