we live in the most connected connected World in human history connected age and yet it's the most anxious generation we've ever had and part of it is because even though there's this connection that people feel online uh we live largely very lonely lives a life of isolation is antithetical to a life of deep faith and deep [Music] trust all right welcome back to dial in this is Johnny ardavanis and I'm sitting here with Hank Bowen I should say my name is Johnny ardavanis rather than this is Johnny aravanis but uh Hank we're here everything going
well today everything's going fantastic I'm excited to dive in and continue the series dive in dialing okay I like it so uh we're walking through some of the major themes of consider the lies finding perfect peace in the character of God and in this episode we wanted to talk about some of the the root causes some would say but I call them recipes or contributing factors because I don't necessarily want to make it sound like certain things cause us to be sinfully anxious but you what's the term you used I said it would be foolish
not to consider that there's fertile ground ground for from which we could be tempted yeah certain things that are recipes for anxiety um and in this episode we want to talk about some of the the physical contributions uh different things about our body or what happens with our sleep and different patterns of life that would contribute to that anxiety and I'll use a different just a personal story to start I remember I've told you before that I've uh loved to play basketball and I share this in the book but I'm not like a legitimate basketball
player I'm kind of like the wannabe LA Fitness guy like I used to have the finger sleeves like Alan Iverson you're kidding oh yeah are you kidding me that's brutal yeah like I the tattoo sleeves but I had no tattoos type of thing that's not in the book yeah no I know they they made me take that part out you know like um used to play all the time and in basketball I uh tore my rotator a couple times I've had multiple surgeries on my shoulders and one of the things that I realize quickly is
that different injuries I've told you I broke my knees I've torn my shoulders I've broken a lot of different body parts and ligaments Johnny's actually incapable of giving a high five that's actually very true I know yeah and there's a reason my nickname is Mr glass um but part of that I just begin to realize very quickly that you're physical um well-being does play a component into the way that you're just thinking mentally this is never to excuse an ungodly worry but it is to maybe Express the reality that we are Body Soul and mind
um aw toer I wrote down in the book that he he says often it takes a whole Bible to make a whole Christian and it's just the reality that no one passage of scripture provides a comprehensive framework for any particular topic or subject therefore it would be extreme and unbiblical to say that the root cause of anxiety is always physical it would always be extreme and unbiblical to say that the root causes or recipes for anxiety are always spiritual although I do believe it's much more spiritual Than Physical Martin Lloyd Jones who wrote the book
spiritual depression and I kind of derived a lot of the way I thought about this topic in particular from Martin Lloyd Jones's preaching and writing he says that we are in embodied beings and we can demarcate our spiritual lives from our physical lives so in that regard I I go into a little bit of the story whenever I preach on it about Moses and Elijah at the mountain trans mount of transfiguration you have Jesus there with Peter James and John and then it says that he was transfigured before them and then on his right and
on his left you have the two Heroes of the Old Testament Moses who is the lawgiver and you know you would argue the most important person in the Old Testament then you have the Law's greatest teacher and proclaimer and prophet and Elijah and if you had to really consider the yeah the two most bold faithful Godly characters in the Old Testament Moses talked to God face to face and Elijah is taken up the glory and a chariot of fire and yet the reality is in scripture uh those two figures that have a lot to commend
about them also the Bible includes their lapses in trust and departures from Joy and their own battle with both anxiety and depression and so I wrote down several different things uh in the book and when I teach through it I want to be fair because the Bible does speak to the condition of our heart but there's some contributing factors even physically that would uh be those recipes for anxiety anything so far no we're good so far and so I think you were going to list out maybe a few of the different situations in which we
could find ourselves maybe especially prone to kind of fall into a state of anxiety and I think if if I'm listening to this I'd be thinking through these would be often times the the situations in which I should actually be kind of proactively raising my guard um and taking almost a physical inventory of our any of these things ringing true and is is that maybe a place where anxiety is beginning to spring up yeah absolutely and the first of those and I wrote down five or six the first of those would be just your natural
temperament uh Martin Lloyd Jones talks about this a lot in his book spiritual depression but when God does save an individual he does give them a new heart but that doesn't necessarily change their natural temperament or their disposition there are people that wake up and they're extroverted and every day is great and every day is awesome and there are other people that are naturally more prone to introspection and to kind of uh calculative and analytical personalities that might be more prone to despair it says in James 5:17 that Elijah who is going to call down
fire from heaven he's going to shut the sky and there's not going to be an ounce of rain for three years he's going to heal and he's going to do a lot of Mighty things and slay the false prophets of Baal there's at one point that he is going to run for his life and in First Kings 19 he begs for God to kill him because there's just these massive swings First Kings 18 He is man this guy is a baller and in First Kings 19 he's saying God it is enough for me just kill
me he's suicidal um and you have to consider in James it says that Elijah was a man like us and I think in large part James may may be referring to the power of His prayer but is also just referring to maybe just his natural temperament he had some Monumental lows he had some deep seasons of just kind of maybe a personality or temperament that I talk about where he might be more prone to despair the second thing that maybe might be a contributing factor for anxiety uh and despair would be just physical infirmity when
God is talking to Moses at the burning bush he gives him a commission to go to pharaoh and say hey let my people go and Moses says send someone else and God responds and begins to Proclaim the mission once again and then the reason for Moses's anxiety at the thought and the daunting task of going to um to pharaoh and the mightiest Army and Empire on Earth is that he stuttered um and so there's this physical infirmity that maybe provided or prompted this social anxiety for Moses but that was the the number one thing that
he thought of I I can't do this I I I don't talk good and that's to your earlier point when you were saying when you were going through you shared with us personally just even prior surgeries I mean very practically it's one thing to struggle with a stutter but then also for those who are going through something like a reconstructive shoulder surgery being laid up in bed unable to physically exert yourself can be a very very lonely isolating position well yeah and because God made us um embodied creatures that were to made to exercise and
you know when we different things like that and so even Charles Spurgeon I talk about him he's probably most known for being the prince of preacher and being one of the most well-known expositors in history and yet Charles Spurgeon is very well known for his lifelong battle with depression that he contributed to a gout condition that would really prompt significant degrees of pain he said over the last 20 years of his life that it was a great mercy of God for him to get a good night's sleep because of his gout so whether it's a
stuttering mouth a u gout condition a thyroid irregularity there are diff different things from a physical perspective that I want to clarify never excuse ungodly worry but do provide different recipes and contributing factors or fertile ground for us to be anxious because we're embodied creatures the third would be exhaustion uh in First Kings 18 I've told you that Elijah's coming off of a three-year drought he is he really calls down fire from from Heaven he defeats the prophets of Baal they slay at least 450 prophets maybe 850 depending on the we the way you read
the passage then he runs from Mount Carmel uh 20 miles he beats King Ahab in his Chariot and he goes to the city expecting National Revival and then when he arrives he hears that Queen Jezebel is hunting for him trying to kill him and he goes from there and that's when he says oh God it is enough take my life but you just have to think about the exhaustion that comes from a 20-m Sprint after a three-year famine and drought and there's real factors that Elijah was totally wasted he's fatigued and that's never an excuse
for Disobedience but we're vulnerable creatures that's why in Psalm 103 it says that God is mindful of our frame he knows that we're dust we're not made from steel we're made from the dust God made us to sleep and sometimes you know even in that scenario with Elijah uh the main theme of the book that I I'm writing is on how God proclaims his character to those who are anxious but before God ever proclaims his character to Elijah he first gives them a nap and a snack because God made our bodies and he's mindful that
we are embodied beings and as Martin Lloyd Jones says you cannot demarcate our physical lives from our spiritual life because they're wedded together and there's an intricacy and interdependence in ways that we may not fully fathom yet the Bible speaks about with a great level of clarity the fourth thing I I think that might be a contributing factor is loneliness you know in Genesis 2 you know God looks at his creation everything is toov it's very good it's it's good and uh but in Genesis 2 it says there's something was not good and it was
not good for man to be alone and of course this passage is about Adam and finding a helpmate and Eve but I think the reality of it and the principle of it remains true uh it's not good for man to be alone you know one of the interesting things about the world in which we live we live in the most connected connected World in human history connected age and yet it's the most anxious generation uh we've ever had and part of it is because even though there's this connection that people feel online uh we live
largely very lonely lives and so that loneliness however it may feel you can live in a a crowd of people and yet live a very lonely life because you're not fully known and not transparent we live kind of Secret Lives um that loneliness is a contributing I think factor for both anxiet Y and despair and sometimes what people who are anxious and despairing think they need is isolation like Elijah he went outside of the promised land thinking that may be the solution and yet God was so gracious to bring him out of that because sometimes
what we think is the remedy for our anxiety and despair is actually just perpetuating it by prolonged Seasons of Loneliness if that makes sense yeah absolutely and especially I think today to your point about with the prevalence of social media and just constantly being connected with one another it's probably a conversation for another day that we can dive into more deeply but suffice it to say uh quick interactions on social media and hiding behind a screen is not the biblical Community or the biblical model laid out for living in community United with Brothers and Sisters
in Christ in a local church context where they truly get to know you um that's not uh the same as the social media kind of hey like from afar yeah I have 2,000 friends whatever that means yeah and I at the end of the book I have a chapter on that faith is a community project meaning like that if the remedy that God provides for the anxious is to have a greater and enlarged and magnified view of his character sometimes we read a book on it by ourself and think that we can Implement these truths
by oursel but the reality is Faith is a community project that's why God gave us the local church and so a lot of people may attend church but there's no verbiage in the New Testament for anybody attending church you belong to the church you participate in the church and so really a life of isolation is antithetical to a life of deep faith and deep trust so that would be the fourth the fifth maybe contributing factor a recipe for um anxiety and despair would be trauma and I know that trauma is kind of a trigger word
because it's become so um relative you know someone say yeah I had kind of a traumatic situation like well what does that mean but in the Bible bare minimum there are some traumatic experiences from God's people and like I would say David who Mary Saul's daughter is anointed king and then we often talk about the Psalms that David wrote when he's saying oh God you are my rock you are my stronghold you are my deliverer I will trust in you David's not writing that from a Jerusalem Palace he's writing that in the caves as David
and many people don't realize this is anointed king as a teenager and then for the next 10 years of his life he's running for his life from his father-in-law the guy that was supposed to love him take care of him provide for him and uh is the one that's hunting for his life with his army and David's in the caves with his mighty men saying oh God help me to trust you help me to trust you and there's a a a true level of trauma there you know even when you look at Elijah Elijah um
experienced real trauma because all of the other prophets of God were slaughtered that's real significant um you know tragedy and there's a lot of different other you know stories in the Bible that you could highlight but the theme that um is worth even examining is and we'll talk about this in future episodes is that God's goodness is so pervasive and his love is so sure that has the power to pervade even the darkest and most evil moments of our life and his sovereignty rules even there uh the sixth um I was a catalyst for anxiety
or recipe for anxiety is grief uh especially even for despair the the Christian life is not one high after another high after another high our lives are often lived in the valley of the shadow of death and in that Valley it's often where we experience true levels of grief you know grief because of a lost loved one a lost friendship a lost baby miscarried child um grief is not wrong uh at all prolonged seasons of grief are not wrong but when grief takes place without as its own Terminus rather than carrying that grief to God
that grief can ultimately turn into a deep level of Despair and depression it speaks to a need we return to the toer quote I feel like more than any other quote maybe in this podcast but it's there for a reason and that another reason it strikes me to be reading through the totality of scripture is that by following the stories I mean you get to First Kings 19 after first Kings 18 but if you if you kind of pick up the story in First Kings 18 and leave it you're maybe missing the fact that these
these real men and women who live these lives are facing these very real challenges that are very Akin often times more extreme but for many folks very relatable to many of the challenges people are facing today yeah well the Bible is unfailingly relevant you know sometimes we read the stories of different heroes in the scriptures and we wonder do they ever fail and falter like I do and then we read of the reality that Moses was anxious Abraham lied Noah got drunk David killed and committed adultery Elijah the prophet of boldness and faithfulness begs God
to take his life and none of these stories excuse any sin on our part but it does go to show us that God is so gracious to help and redeem all of those who are made in His image and there's no perfect people in the story that God is writing only a perfect God yeah and so yeah I'm encouraged by that and I think just even as you take those different contributing factors I think and we turn a little bit you know I always want to end with an a remnant of hope you know sometimes
even when we think about Jesus issuing the prohibition do not be anxious right in Matthew 6:25 and we'll get here in a couple weeks sometimes we imagine those Israelites sitting on the hillside of the Mount of Beatitudes that's so different than us you know what could they possibly be anxious about there's no this or this or that but we often fail to to remember that they were under the regime of Rome it was literally Rome and the tetrarch that chopped off the head of John the Baptist the greatest prophet and preacher that they had seen
in 400 years the Roman Empire was known for raping women and crucifying their enemies for 40 miles leading up to a city so that the whole world would know that you can't mess with Rome so when Jesus is telling his followers not to be anxious it's not like they're growing up in an environment that is so different than the one that we live in today there was the constant Prospect of fear and brutality and ruthlessness from the Roman regime and yet he's still going to tell them do not be anxious um thankfully and we'll talk
about this in the episodes to come he doesn't stop there he doesn't just say snap out of it um he gives them all the reasons why they should trust him and who they have as a Heavenly Father absolutely so last episode we looked first and foremost at culture today wants to tell us to look inward to kind of find the root CA of all of our anxiety blame it on them or and the general thrust of the argument you're setting up for us is actually first we need to consider our heavenly father we don't consider
our inner child we consider our heavenly father yeah um today it strikes me there's actually a lot of reasons to be anxious you mentioned the ji Packer yeah quote um basically saying the world is a mad place the natural response would be to be anxious and so the uncommon response that were gifted through Jesus is actually Joy amids suffering and peace that surpasses all understanding absolutely and so then as we go forward I think it might be helpful to delineate exactly what we're talking about you you even mention in grief it's okay to grieve for
a period of time but we don't want the grief to be an end in and of itself maybe the question practically would be can we set ourselves up to understand where does grief become sin where does worry become anxiety where do natural cares of this world start to Teeter over into a sinful attitude towards God yeah so in the next episode I think yeah delineating between you know a a grief and maybe an ungodly Joy Paul says we are sorrowful yet always rejoicing so sorrow definitely has a place in the Christian Life Paul says he's
sorrowful yet always rejoicing so how do you marry those two realities together and then secondly I would say when does care and concern become an ungodly worry or anxiety and I often use worry and anxiety interchangeably but to have care and concern those are good and godly things uh but the same word is used throughout the New Testament to Define good concern Godly care and then sinful anxiety and so we'll talk about that in the next episode awesome I'm looking forward to it all right thanks Hank yep thanks [Music]
