An Operation for Anxiety (Frontal Lobe Friday)

Hey Lisa. Hey Lee. It's good to see you today. It's good to see you too.

Will you help me with something? Of course. I can't remember what day it is.

It's Frontal Lobe Friday. Good morning my friend. I hope you're doing well.

Dr. Lee Warren here, your favorite internet brain surgeon and your host for today's episode

of Self Brain Surgery. We're going to talk about anxiety today.

We're going to talk about that moment when the bottom drops out and the fear rises up

and the hair stands up in the back of your neck and you're like, I'm going to die.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

Anxiety today. We're going to talk about that moment when the bottom drops out and the fear rises up and the hair stands up in

The back of your neck and your heart races and you feel the acid coming up on your throat and something is happening,

or is it and You feel something that says anxiety is back.

Now maybe there's actually something happened I got an email yesterday from a woman who was on her way to the hospital to meet her daughter who had overdosed again

and he was trying to get help for a drug addiction and that crisis was happening in real time.

And yes, there is anxiety. I remember standing outside on the street

with Lisa and our family as our son had died

inside that house. And we're standing there waiting for the police to tell us what happened.

That's real anxiety. The things you feel can point to something that's really happening.

And sometimes they point to something that isn't really happening.

It's you're anxious because of something that might happen. You're anxious for something that may happen

or did happen in the past. and you're worried about it.

But nevertheless, how do we deal with anxiety? And what do we do when we don't know what to do?

That's what we're gonna talk about today because at the end of the day,

there's really only one question. Hey, are you ready to change your life?

If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place for the neuroscience

of how your mind works, smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.

Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

After it, hey, sometimes I'm shocked and amazed and always grateful when we get emails from people

who are listening to the podcast.

And yesterday we got one, and it's amazing what God does sometimes, how he puts something

in front of you at exactly the time that you need it.

It's happened in my life millions of times, it's happened in Lisa's life millions of times,

millions, maybe not, lots of times it's happened to both of us, so I'm sure it's happened to you.

This woman, I'm gonna leave her anonymous for now, I didn't reach I didn't have time to reach out and give her permission to share her name or the details

but the punchline is she sends an email yesterday that said right when I needed it a,

Podcast episode of yours called what to do when you don't know what to do started playing in my car.

Oddly enough it wasn't on the list of recent episodes. It just started playing as I started driving

So imagine this she's in the car. She start to drive She pulls up her podcast app and the first episode that plays is one that I released several weeks ago

And somehow it shows up and here's what she says,

Let me tell you where I was driving to be by my homeless drug-addicted daughter's side who checked herself into the ER,

Due to massive hallucinations and deteriorating mental health. I placed her and myself on the prayer wall a few weeks ago

I've been so incredibly encouraged each time. I'm notified that someone is praying. Thank you for that platform,

This journey is most likely far from over, but God is moving.

She's remembering him and wanting something different. I feel like I'm literally on the front lines

of a battle for her heart, mind, and soul.

A little bit lower, she says this, "'Anyway, I feel like I don't know what step to take next

"'most of the time right now, so I am worshiping.'".

Hear that again, "'I feel like I don't know what step to take most of the time right now, so I am worshiping.

Listen to that. That is the punchline to the episode, What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do.

It's gratitude, it's worship, it's turning yourself from the problem to the problem solver.

That sounds so trite, but let me tell you today in this next few minutes why that is not trite.

I'm gonna tell you about a book that I'm reading called Rest and War by a pastor named Ben Stewart.

Ben Stewart's part of Louis Giglio's church. He's the campus pastor of their church.

I think it's called Passion City Church in D.C.

And he's written this incredible book. I'm working to get him on the podcast at some point,

but this book, Rest and War, were created for two states, basically rest and war.

We're always having to be in the middle of a fight or we're in a moment where we're in between those battles.

And sometimes that's wonderful. What do we do when we're in the battle?

So, Ben Stewart talks about this idea that you can learn to relinquish anxiety and pursue intimacy with God.

Now, let me tell you something I do sometimes.

I don't know how you spend your quiet time in the morning. I hope you spend some quiet time in the morning.

We've talked about that before.

One of the first things, if you want to get a superpower for getting your days under control,

getting your mind under control, and starting to win this battle between your ears where

you're not always a slave to the limbic things that fire up and the feelings that you have

And you're always bouncing around reacting to one thing or another I feel this way

So I am that way and I got it from my parents and I can't change it if you want to get control over that,

Then I would suggest get yourself up a few minutes earlier in the morning Don't check email email is a powerful tool to let someone else set your agenda for the day

So don't start with email don't start with social media,

Social media is a great way to make yourself feel worse about your own life in comparison to other people

So don't start with email. Don't start with social media.

Get a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or whatever you drink in the morning, some water.

Make sure you're hydrated.

And get up and get yourself to a place that's quiet.

I've got this office that Lisa's created. And right from where I'm sitting,

I can see four pictures that mean a lot to me.

There's a picture of Mitch and our family off to my left.

Our son that passed away in 2013. You've heard me talk about him many times before.

And a picture of Mitch playing his blue Rickenbacker guitar, bass guitar.

And then there's a picture of Jesus smiling and laughing. This incredible photograph, somebody did pencil and ink,

I think, or maybe pen and ink. Pen and ink.

A drawing, is what I'm trying to say, of Jesus smiling and laughing.

And Jeff Nelson, our old worship pastor, good friend of mine and Lisa's for many years,

gave me that years ago.

Just love it, smiling Jesus. in front of me on the wall, there's a painting of Lisa

that Darren Legallo, our good friend that Lisa grew up with,

who's married to Amy Adams, who's an actor.

Darren painted this beautiful picture of Lisa that sits right across from my eye level, I can see.

And to my right, there's a five by four big painting of Jesus, and he's walking down the road.

He's wearing a white robe, and he's looking off into the distance,

and you can see the back of his right hand in the nail hole,

And it just reminds me that Jesus rose from the dead,

and he was healed and restored and resurrected, but he still had his scars and his wounds.

And that's important.

He lives a life in front of us and he's wounded. And he says, if you want to know me, know my wounds.

I'm not presenting this picture of a person who's never had anything bad happen to him.

I'm presenting a person who's overcome those things.

And scars, as my friend, Jarrett Stephens says, scars tell better stories than trophies do, okay?

And then immediately to my right is the picture.

Prince of Peace, it's a picture of Jesus that was drawn by a young girl named Akiani

who had a dream of what Jesus looked like and and painted this picture and he's just looking right at me and I often pray

with Jesus looking into my eyes and

My look me looking into his because you can't really hide when you look somebody in the eyes

You can't really hide and so those are the things that I see so get yourself some quiet time in a quiet place,

Where you can get your head together and the first thing I do is turn on my Bible app.

Bible.com. I'm doing this one-year Bible study called One Story that Leads to

Jesus. I put the audio book of it on and I listen to somebody reading me the word

and then I send an email. One email. I don't check email. I send one email every

morning after I've done my Bible study and my quiet time, worship music, usually

something Tommy Walker or Paul Belash or somebody that ministers to me. I send one

email, my daily email that I've been sending every day to Lisa for many years

now and I just want her to know when she wakes up and when she finally gets

around to checking email that she has a message from her husband that I was

thinking of her and praying for her and encouraging her I want her to start her

day after she spent some time with the Lord just knowing that of all the things

that I have to do today she's top of mind for me and she's out there so so I,

do those things I have quiet time I spend some time with the Lord I look at

those pictures to kind of ground and center me and then I look at you know.

I read my Bible. I listen to the word I send one email and then I get after whatever my tasks are for the day and that includes,

Checking some emails from people that that need to hear from me some emails that I know from the day before I need to respond

to Preparing my thoughts for a podcast or something. I'm writing.

Preparing for my workday to take care of patients that yesterday I was blessed to be able Damon and I and Alan Kristen the team be able to

to minister to somebody who needed brain surgery.

And so I spend some time reading articles and studying and preparing for my job.

My job as a neurosurgeon to minister and bring about God's healing in that person's life.

So those are the things I do in the morning. And I'm starting all that just by saying,

if you are struggling with anxiety, if you're struggling with stress,

part of that might be that your brain is overloaded and you're letting other people or other circumstances

set your agenda for you, okay?

If you can get your head around the idea that you can control your thought life,

that 2 Corinthians 10, five thing, take captive every thought.

If you can get yourself and your thought life under control,

then you can say to yourself ahead of time, something is gonna happen today

that's going to threaten to throw me off course.

And I need to be mentally prepared for that because remember Chris Voss's book,

The FBI Hostage Negotiator I've told you about before, never split the difference.

His quote that I've stolen, I borrowed, and I've used in dozens of talks to football teams

and other people, I've said it on a podcast, I quoted it in my book, his quote changed

the way I think about this.

When the pressure's on, you don't rise to the occasion. Okay?

Brian Lola, Lisa, Tata Jeff whoever's listening to this today Charles, whoever you are wherever you are,

Juliana, okay, whoever you are and wherever you are in the world,

You don't become some superhero version of a person who is able to solve problems and handle things,

Perfectly when you're under pressure you don't you fall to the things that you have prepared for you

don't rise to the occasion, you fall, Chris Voss says, to your highest level of

preparation. That's why chair flying is so important. That's why repping things

in your mind ahead of time, engaging those mirror neurons. It's so important.

What am I gonna do when I get that phone call? Like Lucky Chuck in my recent

book, Hope is the First Dose said, if you haven't read it, please read Hope is the

First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and

other massive things. It will give you some tools to help you maintain resilience when the bottom falls out of your world and what will you do then and

there's some wisdom in preparing your mind for having a plan in place for what

you're going to do when you are falling apart when things are hard what do you

do when you don't know what to do the email we got yesterday said I don't know

what to do I'm stressed I'm anxious your episode came on I'm driving to the ER

and I'm gonna worship for a minute to get my brain ready to handle whatever it.

Is. Now let me tell you something else I do in that quiet time in the morning.

This is very relevant to today. One thing I do is sometimes when I read a scripture, and by the way let me just take a short aside, you've heard me say

on this show a few times that I have some baggage in my past related to my upbringing around the church and the, I want to say denomination, but they don't

say they're a denomination, around the group that I grew up in worshiping and

going to church, this group that was pretty fundamental and had some ideas about how we live the Christian life

that I no longer particularly ascribe to.

And I've got some baggage around some things that happened as a child that made it hard for me

to deal with real life when things got hard for me later and I went through a divorce and a lot of hard things.

And it was Philip Yancey's writing really that rescued me from that fundamentalist idea.

But even though I've said those things and even though there's some truth to them,

I wanna make a really strong point right now because if you're a parent or a grandparent,

you need to hear me with this.

Although the group that I was raised in, in the way that we thought about the Bible and Christianity,

had some issues that I had to recover from.

My parents taught me.

The answers to the problems that you have in your life come from the Word of God that to find those answers

You need to be in the Word of God and my dad taught me a method of,

Deeply studying the Word and I remember he had a book called Strong's Concordance way before the Internet.

He had a book called vines expository dictionary of Old and New Testament words

He had a book called Strong's Concordance and you could use those books to take a verse and look up a word that you might

not fully understand. Like when Paul says in Philippians 4 verse 6, do not be

anxious about anything. Other translations says be anxious for nothing.

I remember my mom would have two different Bibles. She'd have like a New American Standard and a New International or two different versions

or translations of the Bible. My parents taught me about the importance of going

deep into Bible study. Not just reading a sentence, but saying what does that sentence mean? What does it mean in the context in which it's written? What.

What does it mean in the historical and cultural context?

They taught me to think deeply and not just listen to what some preacher said.

So even though we were with this group, my parents gave me some tools that you can use

in your life and you can teach to your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren

and other people that you have opportunity to influence because that has turned out to

be part of the, when the pressure's on, I don't rise to the occasion, I fall to my preparation

and it's amazing how many times in my life something hard has happened and I've fallen

back on that idea of I need to go to the Word of God and find a tool for this moment.

This morning I found myself doing that again. I was reading that woman's email, had another long email from a man about some struggles

he's having in his life.

We got the prayer request yesterday about the guy who's trapped in a pornography addiction

that's now led him to...

Almost destroying his marriage and getting in trouble with the law and all kinds of things

I've got all the stuff bouncing around in my head on what do we do when we don't know what to do?

And I find myself back in Philippians chapter 4 and Ben Stewart's book rest and war.

Talking about how to relinquish anxiety and pursue intimacy with God and here's what Philippians 4 says 4 6,

Don't be anxious about anything and it sounds so ridiculous.

On the surface. In fact, I've had an argument with somebody I love about this

one time when I made the mistake of sounding like I was preaching. I didn't

mean to sound like that, but they're struggling with something hard and I said, hey, be anxious for nothing. The Bible says be anxious for nothing. Don't

worry about this. You can't control it. Stop worrying. And they get offended

because it sounds like I'm preaching when they want me to be listening. Okay?

And that you got to be careful with that, right? Don't preach. Don't do that. Don't

preach when somebody's hurting, listen.

But so here's the bottom line, it does say it, don't be anxious about anything.

And we say, based on our world and our experience, that's impossible, how do we not be anxious about anything?

Well, the answer to something that doesn't seem understandable or doesn't seem possible is to go deeper.

And so when I was growing up, my dad would have gotten out Strong's Concordance, which will take you to other places

in the Bible that deal with similar things or have keywords and you can go to other places where that word shows up

and what it looked like in Greek or Hebrew, and what the word actually means,

and all that sort of thing.

And then, vines would have definitions of the word in multiple translations,

and you could really figure out what a word was supposed to get at.

And there's some danger in picking one verse and trying to pick it apart too much.

You have to stay in context. But in Philippians chapter four,

if you go to an interlinear translation, this is one of my new favorite Bible study tools, okay?

This is something the internet made possible. Because before the internet,

if you were doing Bible study and you didn't have a library of books,

if you were not blessed enough like I was, I have parents that have gone out and purchased books

and valued reading and all those things.

If you don't have that tool, before you just basically had to trust somebody else

to tell you what it meant or go talk to a preacher, you know, find somebody to help you understand something

or just read it and take it at face value and not even think that there might be

another way to look at it.

But now with the internet, the phone that you're holding in your hand that you're listening

to my voice on or the computer that you're using or the iPad or whatever it is that you're

using to access this content, you have the ability to go to Google or go to Safari or

go to some search engine and type in interlinear, one word, I-N-T-E-R-L-I-N-E-A-R, interlinear.

Here.

Hebrew, or I'm sorry, interlinear translation of Philippians chapter four.

You type that in and you'll find multiple websites where they list the English next

to the Greek or Hebrew, depending on if it's Old or New Testament.

And then there often will be articles or links you can use to read stuff about those words.

And my favorite one is one called ABRM, it's A-B-R-I-M-publications.com, ABRM-publications.com.

ABRM Publications is an organization, I have no affiliation with them by the way, this

is not a commercial, but they have translated the entire New Testament in an interlinear

fashion and you can read about almost every word in every scripture of the entire New

New Testament and they've written long articles about what these words would have meant in,

culture and Context and in other places where they show up in the Bible and other places sometimes where they show up in literature from the period

And it's an incredible resource and it often find I often find that in reading that I'll go down these rabbit holes

And I'll end up spending an hour of 30 minutes or 45 minutes reading about one word that shows up in the New Testament or Old

Testament and it's incredible and so this morning I went there to say what does it really mean when he says be anxious for nothing and here's the thing that I was shocked.

About the word Anxious or anxiety that's translated here that as the word that's translated as anxious

Some translations say do not be concerned about anything,

Don't be anxious for anything. Don't be worried about anything. That word is turns out to be Miro's M-e-r-o-s,

and I'm not gonna give a long exposition about this because I want to just get right to the point here, but the bottom line is that word,

refers to this this.

Feeling that we have where we are pulled apart or we are distracted in multiple different directions the word,

Translates out to this idea that that we're being pulled in multiple directions that our brains are being

divided, that our thought processes are being distracted.

And so it's not really anxiety in a clinical sense that Paul is talking about here.

When we have, we've put a diagnosis on something we call anxiety, and it's this cluster of

physical symptoms that we feel when we're under some sort of stress, or when our brain

tells us that there's something to be worried about.

We have this physiological reaction that we call anxiety, and now we treat it with medication, right?

Paul's saying it's something quite different here. This word is basically this idea,

that all things are connected and that we somehow subconsciously in our mind

think that the things that we think about can control or influence the outcome of things

that we aren't directly in front of or directly have our hands on.

Like we're somehow plugged into this computer system that we're on the way to the ER

and our daughter's overdosing or our daughter's in some kind of mental health crisis,

and we can worry about it and somehow influence the outcome.

That's the lie that the devil gives us, that we can control something outside of ourself

by thinking about it. Now, we talk a lot about it on this show,

about how important your thinking is and what you actually can and can't do with your thinking.

But this idea about anxiety is that we get this feeling that if we chew on something hard enough,

we can influence it in some way.

Or that if we think about it, it's going to create a reality

of all these negative things that are gonna happen.

And we start spinning into this thing where all we can see is the problem and not any of the solutions.

Okay, so that's a very tip of the iceberg kind of thing. There's a whole article about this word miros.

And ultimately it means that God says, I want you to be so focused on me.

I want you to be so convinced that I can handle whatever comes along in your life.

That you can't have room to worry about anything else, that you can learn literally to worry about

giving me your problems and letting me help you and not worry about anything else.

So back to Ben Stewart, he says this.

Think of for a moment about this concept that Paul says, don't be anxious about anything.

That's a command, it's not a suggestion. Hey, it would be better for you

if you weren't worried about anything. He's saying command.

It's saying, literally, anxiety is never godly. It's never from the Holy Spirit.

It is never given to you as something that you are responsible for.

There is never a circumstance in your life which you are obligated to worry.

Ben Stewart says this, the Bible says no to that. There is no value in anxiety. That's why Paul

commands, do not be anxious about anything. And then Ben Stewart said this, which is what led me

back to the interlinear translation of why I went down that rabbit hole this morning. This is a.

Quote from Ben Stewart. The root of the word translated as anxiety in this verse means to draw

in different directions or to distract. And I don't know about you, Ben Stewart's saying, but

But this is where my mind often goes as I lie in bed at night and when I wake up in the morning.

Focus is an ever more rare commodity in our world today. Our minds naturally pinball among multiple issues with the inability to lock onto any

one issue for a significant period of time.

See what he's saying there is exactly what the Iberian interlinear translation is talking

about how this idea that God wants you focused on one thing, Him.

And if you're not focused on one thing, you will focus on everything.

You will be distracted and torn into many, many different areas of thought at the same time.

What if this happens? What if that happens? What if she overdoses?

What if the medicine isn't effective? What if the cancer comes back?

What if I run out of money? What if my wife leaves me?

What if, what if, what if? That's anxiety. Okay?

The root of it is not having your mind focused on the one person who can actually help you

with this impossible situation.

So Ben Stewart again, Paul followed up, do not be anxious about anything with this,

but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Philippians 4, 6, note the parallel, be anxious for no thing, but in everything,

let your requests be made known. Here's a brain surgery tool for you,

a cell brain surgery tool.

When you're feeling anxious for something, do a quick transplant and give thanks for everything.

The woman that wrote in, I don't know what to do, so I'm gonna worship the rest of the way to the hospital.

I'm gonna let God have this problem, and I'm gonna say, you are worthy of my worship

because you're the one who can help me with this situation. You are worthy of my praise.

You are worthy of my gratitude.

I can't handle this, but I know that you can. See, that's the Aberram translation idea

is that this word miros means our minds are fragmented into everything we can't actually control,

with the lie that maybe thinking about it some more will help us control it in some way.

That's the lie. And instead, we give thanks because in giving thanks,

we focus ourselves and hone our mind in, my mind's in on one thing,

and that's the problem solver who can actually help us.

Anxiety, Ben Stewart says, should be applied to no thing, but prayer should be applied to everything.

This is incredible superpower. And Paul turns out to give us three steps

in handling this goal of getting rid of anxiety

replacing it with intimacy with God.

Number one is to release your worry. First, we release our worries to the Lord,

and Ben Stewart points out that in the Greek, this is a passive voice.

It's just opening your hands, like Richard Foster said, just open your hands and turn your palms down,

and in your mind, see yourself just letting go of that problem, and then turning your palms up

and asking God to fill your hands with something that will actually help you in that situation.

Paul says, release your worries to the Lord, Let your requests be made known and be thankful.

You just let him know what it is that you need and be grateful. Now, why gratitude?

This is, it sounds funny. I never thought about it this way until Ben Stewart said it.

Why do we have to be grateful? Why do we, why does gratitude help us here?

Well, it's not just a general sense of being thankful for the things you have in your life.

It's a gratitude that you've been invited to give your requests to the God of the universe.

That he said, hey, Angie, hey, Lisa, hey, Brian, listen, listen up, look in my eyes, as my dad would say.

I'm inviting you to give me the things you're concerned about and let me help you.

Stop worrying so much and just come to me and say, hey, can you help me, God?

Let me tell you what it is that I need.

And he's saying, we should be thankful for that. What if you had a free pass to walk into the governor of your state's office any time you

wanted to and he promised you or she, depending on where you live, promised you that whenever

you walked into their office, that whatever you put on their desk, they would take action

on it and do something to help you, one way or the other, help you think about it differently,

solve it directly, fix it, eliminate it, put that person in jail, you know, forgive your,

pardon your, commit your crime, whatever.

If the governor said, I promise you, you can show this card to the gate guard

and they will walk you right into my office anytime, wouldn't you be grateful for that access?

Wouldn't you revere it a little bit? Like, holy cow, I need to be careful.

I don't wanna blow it up and I don't wanna do something wrong

and have them revoke this access, right?

Well, the nice thing about God is he said, hey, friend, hey, Karen, hey, Mitch,

Anytime you have a problem for the rest of your life, you can come directly to me.

You don't have to go through an intermediary. You don't have to ask for permission. You can come right then and I will drop what I'm doing and I will help

you with your problem in real time. I will answer your prayer. I will communicate with you. I will help you and I will help you solve this issue for the

rest of your life, I promise I will never revoke your access.

Wouldn't it be something that you would be grateful for? Wouldn't that be something that you would be filled with awe, like holy smokes,

I can walk right into God's throne room and I can say, God, I'm on my way to the ER right now,

and my daughter is in serious trouble, and I don't know what to do.

So instead, since I can't control that, I'm just going to walk into your office and say,

hey, God, can you help me with this?

And that would produce gratitude. So what Paul is saying is not that we ought to just not worry about anything

We ought to just be thankful that we have breath and all those things that we ought to just be somehow sort of joyous

The Christians talk about don't worry about being happy. Just have joy, right?

That doesn't help you when you're on your way to the ER Okay, what helps you what you can be grateful for is that you can walk into God's office in?

Your mind and he promises that he will be on the case and he will help you in some way,

Does that mean everything goes away? No. Does it mean the cancer always gets cured?

No. But what does he do?

He'll help you. Guard your hearts and minds, Paul says. He will help you get your thinking under control.

He'll help you get your brain state under control. He'll help you turn thoughts into things.

He'll help you restore relationships and repair. He'll help you hold on to hope and purpose and meaning in the midst of whatever it is

that you're going through.

Jesus said it plain, you're going to have trouble in this world. You are.

But he also said you can have abundance and this is the secret my friend is,

Learning how to utilize the tool and the access that we have to God and being grateful for it,

Rather than being swallowed up and being divided in our minds in the ten thousand things

We have to think about you have either you have two choices. You can think about everything.

Or you can focus on God and be grateful for the access and he promises you He will guard your heart and your mind and he will relieve anxiety and restore your mind your mental state so that you can make better

Decisions and rise to the occasion by falling on your preparation,

And by the way that promise that we have access to him.

God actually longs for you Isaiah says in Isaiah 30 18 God of the universe who created you,

longs to be gracious to you. He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a

God of justice, blessed are all who wait for Him." That's Isaiah 30 18. And that

That word wait, by the way, that's the same word that's often translated as hope.

This idea that you can hold on tight to the rope that God is going to use to pull you up out of this situation,

that kava, that tension, that holding on, that waiting for Him will help you have the strength to rise up

because He's going to help you rise up.

And what a power to recognize, what an incredible blessing to recognize that God is just waiting for you

to give Him an opportunity to get up out of His chair and come help you.

So if you need a life verse, if you need a verse to hang on to right now, my friend,

Isaiah 30, 18 and Philippians 4, 6 would be two good choices.

So I'm highly recommending this book, Rest and War by Ben Stewart,

because I think it'll help you. I told you he gave us three things,

that Paul gives us to use to turn our minds around.

And I wanna just give you one real quick. So he says, scripture can guide us

towards our twin goals of relinquishing anxiety and pursuing intimacy with God.

Scripture can guide us toward our twin goals of relinquishing anxiety and pursuing intimacy with God,

and Paul gives us three steps. The first one, release our worries.

So he says, let your requests be made known to God.

Tell God what you need. He already knows, of course, but he says,

and Jesus did this in the New Testament.

He walked right up to the man and said, what do you want me to do for you?

He already knew, he wants you to say it. He wants you to tell him,

just like you want your spouse to say I love you, even though you know they love you.

You wanna hear it, right?

So Paul says, release these worries. Tell me what you want me to do.

Tell me what you need. Tell me what you're going through, okay?

That's the first thing, release your worries.

There's some examples in the Old Testament that Ben Stuart lays out really nice.

And he says, intimacy requires honesty.

So if God longs to be gracious for you, gracious to you, He wants you to release and tell him what you're going through,

what you're dealing with. He needs you to be honest about it. Okay.

That's not the time when you're on the way to the ER. That's not the time to be trying to make it better than it is trying to pull the

shade over God's eyes and not really tell him what's really going on.

David got real with God in the cave and watched his worry become worship. Psalm 57 and 142.

Abraham vented his pain to God in prayer and walked away gripping God's promises.

Genesis 15, I'm quoting Ben Stewart here, by the way. Elijah lamented his loneliness and God fed him,

cared for him, and showed him his protege, 1 Kings 19.

Jesus poured out his soul in the Garden of Gethsemane and found the strength to say,

not my will, but yours be done, Luke 22, 42.

Intimacy requires honesty. So if you really want to learn how to not be anxious for anything,

but to instead with Thanksgiving, present your request to God,

This is the first step, being honest, being intimate by being honest.

The second one is embrace God's word.

Like Lucky Chuck said in my book, Decide before the TMT happens.

That you're going to make some decisions about who you know God to be.

That's not the time to be trying to figure who He is out. You need that prehab, that time ahead of the massive thing.

But the problem is if you're already in the massive thing, like we talked about

yesterday, sometimes it's a trauma situation.

The massive thing happens and you weren't ready for it. Remember at least that there are answers. Like my parents taught me, and I'm so grateful,

whatever you face, the answers are in the Word. So Go to the word, find you somebody or some resource

that will get you in the word,

because scripture, Ben Stewart says, leaves no questions about where we need to turn our focus.

And Paul says, don't worry about anything.

Fix your thoughts on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable.

This, my friend, is self-brain surgery, by the way.

Paul says, think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

We know, without any doubt, with 21st century neuroscience, that when you think about better things,

you make better synapses, you turn those into better proteins,

you turn those into better signaling proteins to turn genes on and off and make your body better,

when you think better.

Changing how you think changes how you live. My friend Susie Larson says,

what happens in your soul happens in your cells.

Psychiatry or psychology becomes biology, Curt Thompson said.

The things you think about turn into your life. And that's why Paul says,

if you're anxious, change how you think. He said in 2 Corinthians 10 5, take every thought captive, learn how to be a self-brain

surgeon.

And we saw Jesus say the same thing. Don't worry saying, what do you eat?

What will we eat or what will we drink?

But rather seek first his kingdom and his righteousness." Matthew 6, 31 through 33.

The word has the answers and if you embrace that when you're in trouble, you'll find some power,

And the last one is live out what you've learned start actually doing something

Remember we talked about how hope is memory and movement that those two things

so not just remembering that there are answers in the word not just,

Remembering that the lord longs to be gracious to you not just thinking about it

it, but actually do something, live out what you've learned.

If he says, don't be anxious and give your request to God, then on the way to the ER,

start saying it, start living it. God, you said you long to be gracious to me.

Get up out of your chair. I need you to meet me in the ER, God.

I need you to get there ahead of me and help my daughter. I need you to be there, Father.

I need you.

Paul says, what you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things

and the God of peace will be with you, Philippians 4.9.

This is important, okay?

We call it practicing medicine because we don't ever become perfect doctors.

We don't ever become perfect nurses or perfect EMTs or perfect emergency room nurse practitioners.

We practice because in practicing, we get better.

And in practicing, we learn things that we can teach to students.

And in practicing, we learn lessons from the last time when something didn't go as well as we wanted it to.

We practice, we go back and we review. I've got a meeting this morning at seven o'clock,

it's called peer review, and we look at things that happen in the hospital,

and we dissect them to figure out

how we could do them better next time.

What can we learn from this case?

What can we learn from this situation so that we can teach other physicians

how to do it better next time so we can have better outcomes for our patients?

That's the process of practicing, remembering, rehearsing. Now notice what we're not doing.

It's not a meeting where we go beat each other up and yell at each other and shame people for outcomes that weren't perfect

It's a meeting designed to make next time better

By understanding the past in such a way that we can learn from it and move forward and that's the secret,

To not having shame but rather having learning Okay

Paul says what you learned and received and heard and saw in me practice these things and the God of peace will be with you. When we release

our anxiety, God's peace will guard us. And when we walk in his steps, Ben Stewart says, the God of peace will be with us. Friend, you have an opportunity,

to choose peace over anxiety. You have an opportunity to flex the muscles of hope

in whatever situation you're in. It's frontal lobe Friday, okay? And this is the

part of your brain that you use to engage this type of thinking. It's when.

You feel something. I'm telling you when you're on the way to the ER, when you get

the phone call, when the massive thing happens, when you clutch your chest and

you're having a heart attack, you're going to feel neurotransmitter events,

and limbic events that feel like anxiety. But the power is you get to attach the,

meaning to those feelings and you get to say wait my physiology is telling me to

be anxious but my faith tells me to be grateful and present that case I'm gonna

I'm gonna use my all-access card and I'm gonna walk into the office of the God

who longs to be gracious to me who promises he will get up out of his chair

to help me and I'm going to take that access and use it right now and replace

fear with faith, replace anxiety with gratitude, replace not knowing what to do

with worship because focusing, remember that word Miros, I'm gonna focus my mind,

not on the million things I could worry about in this moment but on the one

person who can actually help me because if I do that I can change my mind and if

I do that I can change my life and I only have to remember one thing, I just have to start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren podcast is brought to you

by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.

It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio book

if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

and go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014,

helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life,

until you change your mind and the good news is you can start today.

Music.