We have just completed our series on anxiety and depression at Grace Baptist Church! My hope and prayer has been that our time reflecting on and wrestling with these emotions together would help each of us to examine our circumstances and emotions, realize we are not alone, and begin to see the magnitude of help that God offers in His Word!
I want to encourage each of us as we move forward, don’t close the door on this area of growth! Submitting our emotions to the Lord to find His strength to cling to hope, joy, and peace is an ongoing struggle and need in the Christian walk! You will find as we continue that God is still speaking about our emotions and our trust in Him; be prepared as we talk about happiness, anger, and worry in the Sermon on the Mount, and the frustration and sulking of Jonah, and more!
Before I provide some recommendations for further reading, let me exhort you to remember the following in your fight for emotional growth:
1. Review!
For the last two months, we have worked through 8 passages with powerful applications for wrestling with emotions and the triggering circumstances. We have talked together in small groups about what that should look like in our lives. That investment into emotional victory should be a helpful start… but don’t leave it behind! I know I need to cycle through things repeatedly for them to sink in, and especially for them to be second nature as my instinctive response in the right situations. Let our memory verse, Philippians 4:6-8, continue to resonate within you!
2. Pause and evaluate!
One dominant theme throughout our study has been to transform our thinking habits. How we view ourselves and our circumstances shapes and influences what emotions we feel in response to them! Ephesians 4:23 tells us to be renewed in the spirit of our minds; Philippians 4:8 tells us what things we ought to dwell on and take into account.
That thinking needs to be direct and specific. Stop yourself when emotions run aflare, and ask yourself what expectations, desires, and thoughts about yourself and those desires have provoked your emotions. Check your “binoculars” to see if you are magnifying your circumstances without taking into account God’s character, will, and work, or if your perspective properly sees how comparatively small your circumstances are in light of eternity.
Then, learn to catch your thoughts, desires, and expectations earlier, so as to avoid the ensuing emotions!
3. Know your goal!
There is need for seeing what Scripture says about our anxiety and depression, and applying that to our daily walk. However, if your constant pursuit in Scripture is merely emotional victory, you will miss the riches God reveals in His Word for knowing and following Him. Emotional victory flows out of a pursuit of knowing and following Jesus, learning to trust and depend on Him for all of life and that which He calls us to do. In fact, if we are seeking emotional protection, we may be inclined to disobey Him when it comes to vulnerably stepping out in faith to do His will. Grow in your emotions, but don’t obsess by making them supreme. That can lead us to the spiral of being anxious about our anxiety and depressed about our depression!
So pursue knowing and following Jesus by plumbing the riches of God’s Word! Dig into the Old Testament and see Jesus foreshadowed! Wade through the Psalms and feel the emotional struggle of David and others who had to redirect their focus and hope on the Lord! Gaze upon the earthly life, words, and ministry of Jesus in the gospels! Find that hope exploding in Acts and the epistles with the founding of the church and the spread of the gospel! And put that hope into practice with Jesus as your daily pursuit!
4. Value community!
The Christian life is not lived in isolation! Your church and small group are valuable means of growth and care in your life, through which God’s love and truth is expressed! But don’t just show up… engage with people! Take time to know and be known by them. Invest yourself in people’s lives, and make room for others to pour into yours. Don’t forget to have the proper thinking and expectations. Other people are not meant to be our Savior… people fail and people hurt us. The risk of vulnerability is worth the reward of the relationships. Don’t self-protect in isolation, but get involved with church!
5. Be faithful!
In other words, don’t give up! Life was not meant to be easy. God gives each of us a different context from which we live life and serve Him. What will you do with yours? What will you do when things seem to fall apart? God gives strength that we will only find as we depend on Him and exercise faith in doing His will despite difficult circumstances. As Paul says, “in any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:12-13).
Keep going! Resolve to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:12). Do you believe God is good? Have you trusted in Jesus as Savior, with an eternal and unshakable hope of eternity in His presence? Then what will you let steal your joy? Cling to Christ, and celebrate His truth and love, displayed on the cross for you and for me, and live for Him. When you fall, get back up again, enduring and growing through it.
Recommended Reading:
Because He Loves Me by Elyse Fitzpatrick
Depression: A Stubborn Darkness by Edward T. Welch
Down, But Not Out by Wayne Mack
Finding Peace by Charles Stanley
Overcoming Fear, Worry, and Anxiety by Elyse Fitzpatrick
When People are Big and God is Small by Edward T. Welch
Will Medicine Stop the Pain? by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Laura Hendrickson