Knowing when you are in anxiety's grip is not as easy as we might think. One sign is that you no longer notice God's presence.
Chronic Anxiety has a gospel, various forms of 'its all on you' along with some messages of doom. Your inner critic is often the messenger boy.
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If you can begin to notice when you no longer notice God's presence, when you act like it is all on you, you can pause, talk a deep breath or five and remember two great realities:
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1. It is not all on you. God is with you.
2. Better yet, God is already at work in the situation you're anxious about. You will enter a situation where God is and is already at work.
So often we think we're 'bringing God with us.' Nope. God is already there.
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I live in the Denver area, also known as 'a church planter's favorite place to try.' The unchurched % around here is high, so lots of church planters come. Almost all of them, very sharp and decent people. Gospel people.
A handful of them send their flyers ahead of time.
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I get a flyer in my mailbox about an upcoming church launch. Great! We need more Gospel churches.
3 or 4 of the flyers have actually said, 'We are bringing God to the Front Range of Colorado.'
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But God has been here a good while already. Philip and Janet Yancey moved here in the 90s. I think we can agree that God has been here at least since Philip Yancey arrived.
Richard Foster has been here since the 70s, I think. Don't you think God showed up at least then?
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Tongue in cheek of course. Church planting has enough pressure without the false pressure of carrying God.
God is unfettered and free and sovereign. As you plant that much needed church, you can relax in the knowledge that God has been at work here for a while.
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What pressures are you carrying? How do you know if you are not well? Sometimes you need to ask a friend.
Tending to your soul, relaxing into the presence of God will make you more effective, more present to what God is doing in your midst.
Peace be with you.
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We get reactive when we don't get a false need that feels like a real need.
What do you think you need that you don't really need?
We all have dozens of false needs and when we don't wrangle our many false need, they pile up and get the better of us and wear us out.
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Some of my false needs: 1. I need everyone I meet to like or approve of me. 2. I need to be understood. 3. I need to make the person in front of me feel better. 4. I need to always know what to say or do in any situation. You MUST see me as a smart person.
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We end up getting bigger or smaller than human sized.
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Some of us, when we are reactive get 'bigger.' We must have the last word. We no longer listen to learn, we now listen to advise, fix, correct, or mansplain. We get aggressive, we dominate the space. Some of us literally make ourselves bigger.
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Some of us get smaller than human sized. We no longer feel safe to be exactly ourselves in that space. We do not speak up in the meeting, we flatter rather than tell the truth, we get quiet.
Some of course get bigger or smaller, depending on the circumstance and people.
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A gentle reminder that your inner critic is telling you a gospel. It just happens to be a gospel of condemnation and shame.
I fired my IC, but he kept coming to work, like Milton from Office Space. I've learned to quieten it by containing it with God's first and last word.
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This is slow transformation work, not one and done. I started in 2016, noting how often I called myself 'stupid' or a 'moron.
50-100 times per week. Lord have mercy.
I vowed to treat myself the way God treats me. It was harder than I thought it would be.
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It turns out, I believed the gospel of 'self' and inner critic over the gospel of Jesus. And it took much faith and patience to relax into the gospel of Jesus.
One of the most powerful ways to lower reactivity in you and your people is to learn to notice it.
Noticing is sort of a reactivity power tool. It builds your immunity and you're less likely to catch and spread it when you're working on noticing.
What situations or types of people tend to generate reactivity in you?
How can you put yourself in those situations this week so you can practice noticing what goes on in you?
Then, after a few reps, as you walk into those situations, how can you pause to get your noticing radar set?
I'll give an example from my own life:
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A surefire generator of reactivity for me is when people ask me questions and I don't know the answer. I am a recovering 'stupidholic' and when I don't know something, especially if it is within my responsibility, and someone asks, I feel exposed.
*This, of course, is a false need.*
So in elders meetings which are monthly for our church, it is common that an elder asks me about, say, the children's min budget trend from the last few years.
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Now that elder isn't expecting me to know it right away. He or she is very happy for me to get that info later, but in the moment, I lose all reality because reactivity puts us in a false reality.
In the moment, I HAVE to know the answer for the world to be ok.
Reactivity is CRAZY. It is always selling ARMAGEDDON in the moment. That which is crazy suddenly feels eminently reasonable.
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