Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 6, 2019 | Women's Summer Thrive Series - Faith Over Fear

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August 6, 2019 | Women's Summer Thrive Series - Faith Over Fear · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good evening.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: So both my parents grew up in really small towns in Kansas.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you might know those kinds of towns, the towns where they have probably less than a hundred people, maybe one stop sign, but no one to police it.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: People leave their doors open.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: They go down to the grocery store and they say, just put it on my account.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody gathers in the church basement for dinners, that kind of small town.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they don't have to worry about school shootings or lockdowns because everybody knows everybody.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, one time my husband and I were driving out to see my grandparents in my 20s, and I got pulled over late at night, and I'm pretty sure I was pulled over just because I had an out of state tag.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Where are you headed this time of night?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, It's my grandparents.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We were still probably 30 miles away.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Who are your grandparents?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I told him, and he said, Okay.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like everybody knows everybody, right?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So early 1950s, uh, Irene and Nim were living on the outskirts of one of these little towns, farm town, with their two children.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: They married in their 20s, two children, ages five and three.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Irene stayed home with her children, and Nim was a farmer.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he gets up one morning and he's going out to do his chores.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, something just didn't feel quite right that day.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So Irene got in her car and she went out to the road where she found her husband dead.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: He'd had a massive heart attack.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that was before Social Security, before farmers insurance.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So she was left not only widowed with two young children, but no way to support herself.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So she moved into town.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: She did get a job at the Postal Service and remarried within a couple of years.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And she went on to have three more children.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the youngest of those three children, at the age of five, five or six, I believe, got very sick and almost died.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Irene spent many weeks away from home with this child who was very critically ill.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: She had juvenile diabetes, but that was before the time where they could control it very well.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so she was very sick much of her childhood.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then about 10 years later, she experienced another devastating loss through an unexpected divorce and a really difficult set of circumstances.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: So her life wasn't an easy one, despite the safety of her environment.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So great financial strains, being widowed, betrayed, having a critically ill children for many years.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Irene had a hard life.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you would think that those kinds of circumstances would set someone up to think, gosh, when is the next bad thing gonna happen?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: To be suspicious of people and to be on guard and anxious, but that is not how I remember my grandmother.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: She was a person who could relax and enjoy the moment.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting at her table for hours, playing cards, eating cinnamon rolls.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: She was generous beyond her modest means.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: She raised five children who loved her, loved the Lord, and loved one another.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one time we were supposed to go to Christmas at my grandmother's house, and the winter storm came in, and we lived about four hours away, and so my parents looked at the roads, travel conditions, and said we just can't go because it's too dangerous.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a few hours into the day, who shows up at my house but my grandmother?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess maybe when you've lived through things like that, snowstorms aren't so scary to you.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I share this because we live in a society where we have a great deal of anxiety among us.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of fears.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I give this story as an encouragement that our circumstances don't have to dictate a spirit of fear.
• 4:01
  unknown: Right?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That we can overcome really hard things, we can go through really tough seasons, and we can still have hope and optimism, we can still hope for the best.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: My grandmother also didn't lock her door, and as her adult children got older, they'd say, Mom, you really need to lock the door.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she'd say, But why?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why would I need to lock my door?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because they just didn't.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were traveling from western Kansas one time and we stopped through to my grandmother's house and no cell phones.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know if she was gonna be there or not.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a note on the door and it said, kids.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they had opened the note and it said, The door is locked, the key's under the mat.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So my mom says, Mom, why would you why are you gonna leave the key and lock the door and tell people where it is?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Well, if they weren't my kids, they wouldn't open the note.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody would do something like that, right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to have spirits like that.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be fearless.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: We want to expect the best.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to become bitter or jaded by the hard things that we encounter in life.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be able to take those things in and have those written into our story in a way that makes us less afraid, more willing to risk, more willing to be authentic.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: We want those circumstances to free us from some of the things that hold us back.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Victor Kankel, who survived the Holocaust, said the last freedom that we have is the freedom to choose our attitude.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is someone who lost everything, lost everyone, saw horrific tragedies that we'll never know.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, the last freedom we have is to choose our attitude.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So faith over fear.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Faith over fear, living in the present, accepting the realities of our past, and looking toward the future with hope.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're going to be discussing tonight.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: 40 million Americans have anxiety.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: 18% of our population has some form of anxiety or depression.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are really hard in our society.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're not to be taken lightly.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of things that contribute to them, but we don't want to make the mistake of thinking that it's so common that it's just normal, that we have to live that way.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so tonight we're going to be talking about what fear is and what it looks like and how we can not live in a chronic state of anxiety or some things we can do to combat that.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so first of all, um, fear.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: What does that look like?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: In our bodies, what that looks like is that a threat comes in from the outside, something bad happens, something scary, and this lower part of our brain, our amygdala, sends out alert.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've probably repeated some of this in my first talk.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens is blood rushes to our extremities so that we could run away really quickly.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Cholesterol floods into our bloodstream so that it thickens our blood so that we would bleed to death less quickly if we were under attack.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our pupils dilate, we get on high alert, we're watching for everything that may be dangerous around us.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our digestion stops, our thinking pretty much stops, and our system prepares to get out of danger.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And God made us really adaptive in this way so that we could survive and we could get away from the wild beast or out of the burning building or whatever that may be.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it turns out that the things that are really great for us in avoiding danger are really detrimental to us when they're in our systems chronically.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this adrenaline that helps get us out of danger is hard on our system if we lived under a state of chronic stress.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this statistic is exactly accurate right now, but I read a study back in 2012 that said chronic stress increases your odds of cardiovascular disease by 27%, which is the equivalent of smoking five cigarettes a day.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when we have all this adrenaline in our system, we get things like GI issues, we get ulcers, we get obesity, we get, you know, hypertension, cardiovascular disease.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just over, it makes us prone for addictions.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really not good for us.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we've kind of become a society that accepts that as a little bit our norm.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many ways do we have of describing anxiety?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: We say, I'm stressed out, I'm overwhelmed, I'm coming out of my skin, I'm jittery, I'm panicky, I'm on edge.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of ways of describing this feeling of not being at ease, right?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Not being at rest.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And as well as anxiety contributes to health conditions, I also want to just say there are other contributors to anxiety other than the things that I'm going to be talking about here tonight.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to say that because I think it's so important for us to understand that when we're wanting to treat something, we have to peel back the layer sometimes and see what's beneath it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so when we're looking at anxiety, we can look at things like we know trauma has a huge impact.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: How our brain is wired and fired together, trauma has a huge impact on our propensity to have anxiety.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that we can't work on it, it doesn't mean that we can't reduce it or that we need to be in bondage to it, but we just need to know that contributes.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, general medical conditions.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some general medical conditions have, as a symptom, anxiety.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So someone may say, well, I've never had anxiety before, and yet maybe they have an underlying thyroid disease or something like that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's an there's a whole host of things.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Our gut, you know, our GI system is a huge contributor, and food sensitivity is a huge contributor.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: What happens in the microbiome?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's like this Bluetooth connection between our brain and our gut.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: If someone's paralyzed from here down, do they still digest food?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they do.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because even when there's a spinal cord injury, our gut and our brain are so closely connected that one impacts the other.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So on your uh sheet, there is my website.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to go there and get more free resources on some of this, you feel free to go there, but I can't talk about all of these things in depth tonight.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are outside the scope of my expertise.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know that they're there because you know, it's there's been times where I've been working with people and we're working on anxiety, working anxiety, and then you know, it's this other thing that was contributing, and we just have to know that those other reasons are there.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's things that influence us.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The things we're going to be talking to now about tonight are kind of our thought patterns and how we get habituated into anxiety, how it becomes how we are.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not how we were designed, but it can become how we are, the way that we are, the way that we approach life, kind of our status quo, our homeostasis.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Carl Meninger from Tobeka Meninger Clinic, everybody knows Meninger Clinic, said fear is educated into us and can be, if we wish, educated out.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: So can, if we wish.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give the education and you're gonna do the wishing, hopefully the doing, because it takes more than a wish, right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: We can wish for it, but then we have to go another step and say, and what am I gonna do about that?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we're talking about changing a brain pattern, it's not an overnight decision.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to work on it just like we would have to train our body, just like we would have to train our children.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we can be deliberate in these things, but it absolutely is within our power to go from someone who lives on edge all the time, in this state of alert, or we can get to a place where we are more relaxed, more able to focus and enjoy the moment, more able to sit and just be with our experience, with our circumstance, even if that happens to be a very difficult circumstance or a very difficult season.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so living in the present, accepting realities of the past, and moving forward in the future with hope.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna start with the present.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: You would think we would say past, present, future, but we're gonna start with the present because that's where we are and that's where we have control over initially like calming our system.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so when we talk about an anxious state or fear, we're talking about our autonomic nervous system.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this is our lower brain.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this in the other talks before.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't have to tell ourselves, I think I'm gonna digest dinner now.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's been 30 minutes since I'm right.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to tell ourselves to do that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: We don't make our heart beat, we don't make ourselves breathe, we don't say, Oh, my temperature went up a little.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: 98.6 is where I want it, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even a smartwatch won't do that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um our autonomic nervous system, but that regulates us.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's regulating us, and that's the part that we're gonna really try to change and that we can change, and that's why the breath is so important.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the one thing that we can say.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We can't say don't digest dinner, but we can say, ah, I'm holding my breath.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let me relax, let me take a deep breath in, let me focus, let me pay attention to how that breath feels coming in.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let me breathe in for four seconds and hold, and exhale and hold, and really notice that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And these tools we talk about, we're talking about mindfulness, we're talking about relaxation, and these are things that are nice to have in your toolkit in case you start to feel anxious or panicky.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But when we talk about really changing mindfulness, this is a way of being.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is not, I'm gonna do this when I feel scared.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I want to try to do this all the time because I want this to be part of my norm.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: So regulating our breathing, paying attention to what's going on in our body is the first step in kind of slowing things down and calming and living in our body.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we say that, and it sounds like, well, of course we live in our body.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where else could we live?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we live up here and we live out there, and we have so many distractions, so many ways of not paying attention that most people will find that they are not aware of that.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're not aware of that they're clenching their buttocks, they're not aware that they're not taking deep breaths or holding their shoulders back or doing the things that we need to do to be present.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna talk about some ways that I want you to just focus on a new way of being.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, 20 minutes a day of breathing will change your brain scan, but doing this, these are things you can do as you walk through your daily life, okay?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So being in the present means you're paying attention to what's going on in that moment.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to work this into taking your shower, okay, noticing how it feels as you, you know, scrub your hair, noticing how the water feels as you go down your back, noticing how it feels to put lotion on your skin.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So these things that we do that were just on autopilot.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Autopilot's what we want to fix.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we are anxious or we're depressed, then your autopilot is, anxiety is overfiring in your midbrain and it's saying, what if, what if, what if, what if?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're depressed, your autopilot is 70% of the time your mind wandering and it's not going to good places.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a feeling of hopelessness or worthlessness.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: We want to get out of autopilot.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're paying attention, whether we're doing dishes, we're taking a shower, we're walking, pay attention to what you're doing.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the sensations that you have tactily.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how it feels in your body.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how your thoughts affect your feeling.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Notice I just had this thought, I just had this memory about my grandmother, and here's how I felt inside.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we pay attention out here, we also start to notice what's going on in here.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Exercise is wonderful for stimulating these parts of our brain, upper parts of our brain.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So 30 to 40 minutes a day, you know, three to four times a week is incredible for changing your brain structure.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Additionally, if you walk outside, you get more benefit.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have this GPS system in our brain, upper brain activity.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when we go outside and we kind of walk different paths, our brain has to kind of say, where was I?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: How long have I gone?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I return right here?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: And activates our GPS system.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really healthy for our brain to walk outside.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Also, our brain loves novel experiences.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So looking at the, you know, smelling the grass, noticing the trees, noticing the dimension of the leaves, noticing the flowers, noticing the architecture, noticing how the sky looks and how it changes from one point to another as you're on your walk.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: These are all ways of just being present and staying in the moment.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: As you're eating your breakfast or your lunch or dinner, or any time in between, notice what it feels like when you take a drink.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how it feels going down your throat, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: One thing at a time.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mind wandering is not our friend.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Multitasking is not good for us.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I recently, I recently heard this MMA fighter talk, you know what that is?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mixed martial arts, where they get in this cage and they can just do anything to one another.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said, it's very meditative.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when someone's trying to take your head off or choke you out, you can't think about anything except that one present moment.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's very zen-like.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he said.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking, well, you know, he's right.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: When someone's gonna choke us out, when we're anxious, when we're panicky, we can't think about anything else, which is part of the problem with anxiety.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: We get tunnel vision, right?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're worried about that problem, that circumstance, and we can't think about anything else.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't want to be single-focused attention on our fear, as he suggested.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't want to be an MMA fighter, try these other things because they're gonna help you focus on one thing at a time.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh multitasking, you know, multitasking is not good.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as I think about people who, you know, in previous generations, I think maybe they had, I don't know, maybe they combated this a little bit less.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can be on my computer doing my session notes, and then I think, you know, I haven't, maybe, maybe it's a new session, and I'm like, oh, I'd have to do the intake, that's kind of a long process.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think I haven't checked my email.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been like 20 minutes.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I should check my email again.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: So check my email.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Then email, I go to my email, time to enroll for school.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I go to my kids' online school enrollment, and I get there and I think I still haven't ordered shoes before that.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So then I go there, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: How quickly do we focus on one thing and then another thing, then another thing, then another thing?
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's really not good for our brain because what it does is it keeps us disconnected from how we're experiencing what it is we're thinking, what if what is it we're doing at that time.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and the example I just gave is a small one, but we combat that because we have so much stimulation coming in from different places.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't seem like it would be harmful, but it keeps our mind in an unfocused state, and in that state, we really can't calm ourselves.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is we don't know what to do with our feelings, right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if I felt overwhelmed because I don't want to do this intake, right?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to, I don't want to go through the process, I just avoided a feeling by switching over to do something else rather than just saying, you know what, I can do this.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just I don't I have to do some things I don't want to like.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I have to do some things I don't like.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: We do this a lot, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: A feeling comes up and we don't like it, and so we're on to the next thing.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds us of something, and so we move on.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So being present, being in your body is something we can practice.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can start today, you know, you can practice all throughout your day, and just notice do you allow yourself silence, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you pray, can you even keep your mind on your prayers, or is it off in a million different directions?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to solve a problem, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to get to safety rather than just be.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I would challenge you to think about a way, and maybe you start with three things a day.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you say, or I'm just gonna start in the shower, or I'm just gonna start when I'm eating, or when I'm driving, I'm gonna turn the radio off, and I'm just gonna feel the vibration of the wheel and notice what's going around me, and really be attentive because that's where we start calming our body.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: As you do this, if you notice, if you're quiet and you're tuned in, you're gonna notice I'm holding my breath.
• 20:45
  unknown: Right?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Clients will say that all the time, sometimes I just realized I was holding my breath.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well that's good because you realized it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was a part of your brain that said, Oh, I was holding my breath, or oh, my mind wandered.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we're activating another part of our brain, the singulate, that says, Bring it back, bring it back.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you can deal with what you need to deal with in the moment and be freed up for the next thing that comes your way.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: So living in the moment, I'm giving you a sheet there, I would like you to, I would like you to just think through and maybe jot something down, you know?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe jot something down, maybe make a commitment to doing one thing different.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is good for all of us, even if we don't have anxiety, even if we're not depressed.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: All of us benefit from being present, from being calm, and from just living in our experience, okay, whatever that may be at the time.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Accepting the realities of the past, okay?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we're in the present and when we're working on calming our bodies, hopefully what's gonna happen is our mind is gonna start to observe.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna observe what's happening in here, it's gonna observe what's happening there, and it's gonna observe our thoughts.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we will often think, well, you know, I just don't like dealing with stuff in the past, and what's the point?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's already over.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing we can do to change it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be absolutely right.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is nothing we can do to change anything that happened two minutes ago, two years ago, 20 years ago, 25 years ago.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So why do we worry about dealing with the past?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because our brain forms a template, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that we've experienced influences how we experience the other things, right?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: If I've been attacked by a dog, that attack influences how I feel when a stray dog comes up to me on a walk, right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Our template influences not only our memory, not only our feeling about ourself, but it influences what we forecast into our future.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So anxiety is very forward-thinking, right?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anxiety wants to protect us from anything that could possibly hurt us.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So what we've experienced has everything to do with what we expect in our future.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when the Israelites had been wandering around in the desert for 40 years and they get to the edge of Canaan and they're getting ready, you know, to go into this promised land.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: 12 of them went in to survey for 40 days and came back out, right, to say, what's it like?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Of the 12, 10 were fearful and they spread the fear, right, based on their expectation of what was going to happen.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, they didn't get to go into the promised land.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: They missed out on what God had for them in there because they were afraid.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in their past, they had had some hard things, right?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, like, oh, we should have just died in Egypt or we should have died in the desert.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Surely we're going to die by the sword now, and our women and our children are going to be taken as plunder.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: They lived the whole thing out, right?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were they forgot the rescue.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: They forgot the part where he freed them from slavery and where God had provided for them in the desert and where he had parted the Red Sea.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the meaning we attach to our past has everything to do about what we expect is going to happen next.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: The other way our past influences our fears is this.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we were to make a list of things, if you were to just Google like 10 most common fears, you would get things like airplanes, closed spaces, spiders, snakes, public speaking, right?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of those things would list, okay, as our top fears.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: But those are really not our fears.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the symptoms of what we're really afraid of, okay?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this has to do with our template.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So our brains will throw out things it sees as irrational.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: So if I don't feel like something fits in my template, I just dismiss it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone has maybe been torn down their whole life and made to feel like they're no good or they're not worth anything, how easily do they accept a compliment?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not very, they'll rebuff it because it doesn't fit.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: So our template has not only to do with what we're expecting, but it has to do with how we receive what we experience in our world.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if you ask that person, okay, well, um you're afraid to fly.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been in an airline crash?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I've never been in an airline crash.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that you've not experienced that.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Has anyone you know ever died in an airplane crash?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, I've seen them on TV, but no one I know has ever died.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so why would that person have a fear?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because the fear is not the airplane.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: The fear is what you're going to feel when you're on that plane.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you say, what is the thought you have about yourself when you get on that airplane?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not in control.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hate it.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can't stand it when I'm not in control.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the fear, right?
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is the fear.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the airplane, it's not the spider, it's not the crowded space, it's not talking in public.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's what is the feeling that you can't tolerate, right, that you want to avoid.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: To say, okay, you you don't like to not be in control.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was there ever a time in your life where you were not in control and you were not safe?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And chances are the past, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, I was never in control.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a raging alcoholic, and I got scared every time he would come home.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like I had to do everything perfect because any little thing could set him off.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the fear.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we get scared of something happening to our kids?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because we feel like we are not going to be able to handle it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it important to us that people we love make decisions that we want them to make?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because it brings up a feeling in us.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when we understand the past and when we can accept the reality of what has happened and realize that we have the privilege of assigning whatever meaning we want to that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: So our brain stores in categories.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we have the betrayal category, and we have the helplessness category, and we have the victim category, and we have, you know, we can we and we file those things in our experience.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens when we take them out by being present, by noticing, by kind of uncovering, noticing those connections between our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences, is we get the chance to put them back in a different file.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe we pull that out of the weak, helpless victim file and we store it back under resilience.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I survived.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Or we store it back under the provision because I remember that one teacher who saw I was hurting and took a special interest in me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe that I can't trust anyone, right?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because people have hurt me.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: We take that under and we say back, you know, I have discretion.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: I choose who I trust now.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get to choose who I'm in relationship with.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the past is critical.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we accept the things that have happened to us and we attach meaning to them.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: We see the other side of the story.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have no idea what God is weaving through the fabric of our hardships and our successes, all those things, right?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: But we can look for additional meaning.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that has everything to do with what we choose to see and what we choose to assign.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And if we find that there's meanings there that don't connect or that don't fit, and again, I've mentioned this before in a previous talk, but if we wouldn't say it to a friend, if if the person feels worthless or you know weak or helpless, we would say, would you say that to a friend?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that how you would want a friend to store that experience?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And most oftentimes it wouldn't be.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when we take those feelings out and we work on them, and if it's been something really traumatic, um, and and by traumatic, it doesn't have to be that you remember this horrific event.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Things that happen in childhood are traumatic because there wasn't appropriate, um, there wasn't appropriate care given to helping the child feel the feelings.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the situation may have felt extremely overwhelming because there wasn't adequate support for resolving it.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the child stored it away as this is unmanageable, this is beyond my control, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or I just don't think about it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when we take those things out, you know, if they're if they're too hard to think about, too hard to work through, you know, there's ways of doing that, but um, but knowing that it's there, and knowing that if there's something I'm too afraid to feel, that I have to keep avoiding, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because as long as we're avoiding, if we avoid the airplane so that we never have to feel out of control, we never feel any more in control.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: We have to feel it to overcome it.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Self-esteem and confidence comes from going through that hard thing and getting to the other side and knowing that it didn't kill us.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So as long as we avoid and we try to make our life so safe, right?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: The things we fear are not the things out there.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: The things we feel, the fear are really the feelings in here.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to fear rejection, we don't feel rejection, we don't want to feel inadequate, we don't want to feel like we don't belong.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to feel embarrassed, we don't want to feel scared, we don't want to feel lonely.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to deal with that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we find things out there and we say, if I avoid that social situation, if I avoid the airplane, if I avoid the spiders, if I avoid all these things, then I can give myself some predictability, I can give myself some safety, and then I don't have to feel anxious anymore, right?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to feel anxious.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a terrible feeling.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever had the misfortune of experiencing a panic attack, people think they're gonna die.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: They end up in the emergency room, right?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what it feels like.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Who wants to feel that?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: No one wants to feel that.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Our brain says that's terrible.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Our brain, the amygdala, the fight or flight, does not distinguish between a real and perceived threat.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: So when we feel that kind of distress, that kind of anxiety, that kind of panic, our brain says, you are going to die, right?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna get away from it.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So when we manage our anxiety at these lower levels by being present, by noticing our feelings, by dealing with the what's underneath, right?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's underneath, and we allow ourselves to feel it, we regulate it.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Stuffing emotions is very hard for us.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if we've ever done that, or if you've ever done that, we know that it's protective in nature, right?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we stuff feelings, sometimes we put feelings away because there is no safe place to express them.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: But just like a splinter that eventually will fester and work its way to the surface, these things that we don't resolve, these fears, these traumas, these hurts, these things that we're so diligent about keeping away from, they will push their way to the surface in ways that we don't want.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when someone says I had a panic attack and it came from nowhere, it did not come from nowhere, right?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know where.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to find out where.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It came from somewhere.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it may be maybe nothing related to what I'm talking tonight.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: It might be, well, you've got this medical thing going on, and and or you know, you've got this extreme hormone imbalance, or I don't know, but it can be something else.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it has to be always that you're not thinking about or you're not dealing with it, but it came from somewhere.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Find out.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't accept that this is just the way I am.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is not just the way you are.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's a reason and there's a way to get out of it.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So accepting the realities of the past is not about getting stuck.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about living in regret, it's not about living in bitterness, it's about assigning meaning, about seeing the resilience, and it's about opening ourselves up to experience something different in the future, right?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't work through these things, what happens is we will experience the same thing again and again and again, you know, wash, rinse, repeat.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: We will do that.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Our mind, our body, we want homeostasis, we like predictability, so we will just keep getting more of the same, more of the same, unless we alter it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: But when we do work through it, then we our brain says, okay, now we can do something different.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Intentionally we can do something different.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the process of change goes like this, okay?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the first stage, and this is not on your sheet, so unconscious incompetency.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we don't know that we don't know.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Unconscious incompetency.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even realize that we were doing this.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't even realize that we were avoiding this, or that we felt anxious about this, or that we were living the high stay of alert.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: The next is conscious incompetency.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: We start to pay attention and then we go, oh yeah, now I realize like I'm tense all the time.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always holding my shoulders like this.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: I have to constantly tell myself to relax, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I know now.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do always to get out of it, but at least I'm recognizing it.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Conscious incompetency.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or we say, you know, I realize I just totally lose my cool in this situation, but I don't know how to stop it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first stage of kind of this awareness.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have conscious competency.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am working really hard to get it right.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I am biting my tongue off before I explode.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am, you know, taking deep breaths and I'm doing all the things, but I have to work so hard at it.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually stay there for quite a while because the new has to become the norm.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: We have to get it from here down.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: That needs to become our new autopilot.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to get the new information down to where it becomes the automatic thing.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the final stage, we have unconscious competency.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: I just do the right thing and I don't even think about it.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way I am, right?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's just how I handle stress, it's just how I operate.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to work really hard to get there.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of intentional change that goes to getting to unconscious competency, right?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Unless we've just kind of learned it, right?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And all those things that we're doing are helping us be aware of that process.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: We may not think that connecting to nature is a direct line into calming our anxiety, but when we connect to God's creation and we appreciate beauty and we're noticing that and we're breathing it in, makes us aware of not only what's there, but what's in here.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: My grandmother loved red birds, you know, and and she appreciated nature.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that helped her.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that she were still living.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, you know, by the time you're middle-age and you wish that you could glean all the wisdom from those older than you, some of them are passed away and you can't ask them.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I know she appreciated nature.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know she did one thing at a time.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know that she sat and enjoyed.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if she had to work really hard to get to that stage, you know, or if that's just kind of how she adapted through that.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that's how we want to adapt, is to that, you know, unconscious competency where that's just what we do is we just remind ourselves of our breathing and where we are and just being focused.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed that in my job, you know, I really try to block out everything going on at home or anything else.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: If a thought comes in, I forgot to put lunch money in my kids' account, I can't do it right now.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just try to like let that thought go away.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we have to do, is just notice the thoughts and not judge them and let them go away.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm really good at that when I'm in session with clients because I have to be engaged and I have to remember, and they'll say, I can't believe you remember that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's because I'm really engaged at the time.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I've noticed how relaxed I feel on those days.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: If I've got something hard going on in my life, at the end of that day, because you know what, I've been focusing on the here and now, not trying to fix that problem.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a time for fixing the problem, but there's a time for just being in the moment.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you do that, if you I'm not good at it at home.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: I get too distracted.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, that's why I can never find my keys.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: My husband's like, how do you remember anything?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know where your keys are.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, because I'm focused at my job, I'm focused.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not focused at home, I'm distracted.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it takes work to get there, but we can do it, and when you do it, you're gonna notice, okay?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's gonna get to be more normal for you in in the in wherever it is that you practice it, okay?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then facing our future with hope.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of our biggest fears, if I had to say, just based on my own heart and what I've heard from others, is we just really don't like uncertainty.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody else not like to know?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like we want to plan.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if we think about this, this makes sense, right?
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because everything hard that's happened in my life was completely unplanned.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like we know some bad things are gonna happen, but we don't put that on our 2020 calendar.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when the car wreck comes or the sickness comes or the job loss comes or the divorce comes or you know, the move comes.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: When those things come, we didn't plan on any of them.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And by contrast, our plan doesn't include anything bad, right?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: We plan the vacation, we plan the kids, we plan the home, we plan all these things.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: We never say, and I think I could use a little suffering.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I need to sprinkle in some hardships here, I think I'm really gonna test myself, right?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: So which plan is better?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: The plan we've planned, right, in our mind, or the uncertain plan that says, you know what, there's a 50-50 chance that's gonna work out.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, we don't get our plan.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because God has a better plan.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And his plan does include uncertainty for us, not for him.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: He knows exactly what's in our plan.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he knows that it includes suffering, and he knows that it includes a lot of good stuff along the way, too.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when we try to control our life so that we don't have the uncertainty, that we try to manage it so much, and I'm guilty of this, I think many of us are.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we want things to work out this way for our kids and this way with our job, and this way, and we think we have it lined out so that we don't have to go through any of that bad stuff.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's good to be intentional with our choices, and it's good to be wise and to and to try to plan accordingly, but the Lord's plan prevails, and there's uncertainty, and we need to accept that there's uncertainty, and that's what being present, living in the moment, saying, I can deal with this moment.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: I know what's happening right now.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And right now, this is all I have to deal with, right?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is all that I have to overcome, this is all I have to be present for, this is all I have to trust him with is the right now.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we can't accept uncertainty in the future, we work really hard to protect ourselves from it.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: So when we face the future with hope, we have to be hopeful in the uncertainty.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have to see opportunities and not obstacles.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when those spies came back, you know, the ten are saying they're giants, the city's fortified, you know, doom and gloom, it's bad.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Caleb says, we should go take possession of it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because we certainly can do it, and the Lord will be with us, right?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: They saw the same giants, they saw the same obstacles, they saw the same cities.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: But they saw, Caleb and Joshua saw the opportunities, the rest saw the obstacles, and God punished them for it.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: He said, These two chose to follow me wholeheartedly, and you did not.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so trusting is going into those uncertain places and remembering what he's done before.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we remember and we're thinking back on the hard things that are happening, we're wanting so badly for those things not to happen again.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: Those things that we think I could not handle it if that happened again.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: If I have another day like this one, I just can't take it, right?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: I should really Google an answer, right?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: WebMD should be shut down after 10 p.m., I think.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um, you know, we're not allowing that in that uncertainty are the blessings that we can't even ponder, that we can't see how that story is gonna unfold down the road, right?
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: That there's an abundance that we can't even fathom.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when we resist against uncertainty, we block ourselves off from the promised land just like they did.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were sent back to their certainty of the desert, of wandering.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Go back, okay, go back to what you know and you can die there.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: I had this plan for you, but you don't want to go.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we can do.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: We can block ourselves off from trying new things.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: We can shut ourselves off from new people, new experiences.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can miss the opportunity of knowing I was scared to death and I thought I couldn't make it, and I walked through it and I did it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: We can shut ourselves off from feeling the power of his provision that was stronger than we thought it could be.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: But when we trust, when we face the future with hope, we're not relying on there being a predictable path.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: What we're relying on is the fact that even though I think I can't handle this, or I don't want to face this, he's gonna be there.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: His promises, you know, be strong and courageous.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you will go.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will hold you with my righteous right hand.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: That he doesn't just promise, I'm with you now.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, I will be with you.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we need to trust that he is bigger than our uncertainty.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: He's bigger than that thing that we don't want to go through.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's bigger than that thing that we're going through now that was completely opposite of anything we had planned.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't need to know how it's gonna work out.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: We just know, we just need to know that we're gonna be provided for.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the things that we're fearing, this is why this fear thing is so important, because fear is meant to preserve our very life, to preserve our breath, to get us out of danger.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Almost all of the things that we fear will not kill us.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: They might scare us, they might make us uncomfortable, they might break our hearts, but they will not kill us.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are facing something that could potentially kill you, and you have life in Christ, then you know the answer to that too.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: That even in that, even in that, He promises He will be with us.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we do not have the strength for that day yet because we have not faced that day.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: But in that day, we have that strength that we need to get through that thing.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: So as you face your giants, right?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what they are.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that I'm really afraid of?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that consume my mind?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that, you know, make me feel tight in my chest?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: What are the things that keep me up at night?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: And challenge yourself.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Challenge yourself to see walking into that.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: With him there with you.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how brave and strong you are for allowing yourself to feel what you don't want to feel.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And condition yourself to always be trying to feel a little bit more, do a little bit more.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Stretch yourself a little bit more, grow.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to grow.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what our challenges are designed for, right?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: To grow us, to strengthen us, to deepen our faith so that we can be perfected in love.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what even Christ says he learned obedience through what he suffered.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: So move into your fear, right?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And by doing so, I think we let go of a lot of the other fears because then we see, you know what, I can handle it.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard, but I got to the other side of it and I grew.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I met this person along the way, and that person along the way, and I saw this and I experienced this and I felt this.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we get the fullness that we were designed for, right?
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than our boxed in, predictable, certain, very limited, safe life that's not the one God designed for us.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't bring anything to us, he didn't want us to walk through.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right, okay.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: So living in the present, accepting the realities of our past, and moving forward in faith.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you'll go home tonight.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you'll write a couple things down on your sheet.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that if if this uh resonated with you at all, if there's any amount of anxiety, if there's anything that you could gain, if there's any way that you feel like you could um do life better, bigger, more at ease, you know, would it allow you to just be?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Would it allow you to maybe you'd live the exact same life that you're living now, but would you sleep any better at night?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, would you would you be able to be alone?
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be able to engage more?
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the things.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: If we have a compelling why, we can always do the how.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: So think about the why, think about the how and move forward with less fear.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.