E-motions Part 5: Dealing With Anxiety, Worry, And Unmet Expectations by Pastor Kingsley Okonkwo: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

Why Anxiety Is Dangerous

Anxiety and worry are not neutral emotions — they are destructive. God treats worry almost like sin because the Bible expressly commands us not to worry, and disobeying an explicit command of God is sin. There are four key reasons God does not want us in anxiety:

• It affects your health. Proverbs 17:22 — a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones. Medical science confirms that most serious illnesses have anxiety as their foundation. Joy and happiness are literally healing to the body.
• It makes you act out of fear. Those who believe do not make haste. Fear-driven decisions produce negative outcomes — Abraham and Hagar is the classic example. Acting from anxiety produced Ishmael instead of waiting for Isaac.
• It causes you to harm yourself and others. James 4:1-2 — wars and fighting come from lusts and unmet desires. Jealousy, bitterness, and conflict in families often trace back to anxiety about not getting what others have.
• It blocks your ability to hear God. When you are anxious about a problem, you cannot quiet yourself enough to receive God's guidance — even though that guidance is exactly what you need.

Unmet Expectations

Much of our anxiety comes from unmet expectations — and most of that comes from putting hope in people rather than in God. Proverbs 13:12 — hope deferred makes the heart sick. When people disappoint you, it is often because you expected from them something only God can reliably give.

People have their own agenda. They may see you as a permanent feature in their life; they may see you as temporary. You cannot control that. Jesus himself lost thousands of followers in one message in John 6 — they came for bread and fish and left when the teaching became hard. His response to the Twelve: Will you also go away? He had already settled that God was his source of people, not people themselves.

Put your eyes on God, not on your uncle, not on your promise, not on any man. You will only be disappointed by what is outside God.

Four Steps to Managing Anxiety

All four of these steps come from Philippians 4:6-8.

1. Trust God. Anxiety happens when attention is removed from God and placed on the problem. Trust is the antidote. Matthew 6:25-34 — your heavenly Father knows what you need. Trust means you depend on, rely on, and expect from God alone. Every disappointment in life has come from trusting men for what only God can provide.
2. Pray — with faith, not complaint. Philippians 4:6 — be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God. Prayer is not a complaint session. It is an exchange — you give God the burden and he gives you peace. Hannah prayed and when she left, her countenance was no longer sad — before the answer came. That is the pattern. Pray until peace comes.
3. Praise. Philippians 4:6 adds: with thanksgiving. You cannot worry and worship at the same time. The moment you begin to genuinely thank God for what is already working, the spirit lifts. Try it: start listing what is going right and see how long depression can survive. Joy is actually superior to peace — the joy of the Lord is your strength. It energizes movement. It pulls you forward.
4. Take charge of your thought life. Philippians 4:8 — whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report — think on these things. All your feelings are controlled by your thoughts. 100%. If you can control your thoughts, you can control your emotions. Matthew 6:25 — Take no thought for your life. Jesus knew that the root of worry is the thought patterns that feed it. What are you exposing your mind to? News designed to generate fear? Negative conversations? What you think about, you feel about. Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

The Connection Between Thoughts and Sexual Purity

This same principle of thought-control applies to sexual emotions. Those who struggle with sexual purity are almost always struggling with sexual thoughts first. The most important sexual organ is the mind. Purity starts inside, not with rules. If you are constantly exposed to sexual material — in media, in your associations — your emotional state will match. The same is true in reverse: guard your thought life, and your emotional life will follow.