Biblical Insights Relating To Emotional Health—Anxiety

 

Anxiety defined: 

 An emotion that a person experiences in the face of a perceived threat or danger, characterized by an unpleasant anticipation of misfortune or doom.   OR…  A disturbed state of mind produced by real or imaginary fears.

~  When the danger is real, anxiety can serve as a healthy warning.  But when the danger is imagined, anxiety serves as negative baggage that saps emotional and physical energy, robs people of happiness and peace, and keeps people from functioning as God had intended.  In its most severe forms, anxiety can paralyze a person physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Pathological Anxiety

~ One of the major sources of anxiety

              The fear people have of looking inside of themselves, examining negative and conflicting emotions, recognizing sins, and dealing honestly with what they find there.  Rather than courageously dealing with the anger, guilt, lust, greed, envy or resentment within themselves, some bury, suppress, deny, or ignore (employ defense mechanisms) those moral and emotional realities.  At some deep level, they know these emotions are there, but they have shoved them out of their conscious minds.  The conflict that results between the conscious and unconscious mind  often manifests itself as anxiety.

             Anxiety is actually a God-given alarm system designed to expose our unhealthy emotions and thoughts so that we can think, feel, and behave in a manner consistent with how God had intended.  So then, the antidote for anxiety is often facing the truth.

 “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is to lay a straight ruler along side of it”

– Dwight L. Moody

Truth defined:  That which agrees with final reality.

  Where do we find the truth?  In God’s Word (Psalms 119:142-160;  John 17:17-19)

                                                     In Jesus Christ (John 14:6)

                                                     In the Holy Spirit (John 14:17)

                                                     In the Gospel (Galatians 2:5,17)

What is its purpose?      To make us free (John 8:31,32)

                                                    To sanctify us (John 17:17-19)

                                                    To purify us (1 Peter 1:22)

                                                    To establish us (Ephesians 4:15)

~ Remember that God knows the true motives and thoughts of our hearts (Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 139).
how to spy on a mobile phone