So it's on battling anxiety and Brother Isaac had mentioned earlier that while we had the same topic and we even have the same text out of Philippians 4, that his take and my take on it were not different in the sense of they were opposed to one another, but they were hopefully they build on each other. So the approach that I'm taking tonight and that I took when I put this together is more of a big picture approach. One of the reasons that I wanted to do that is because the year before I did this talk at Fight of Faith, I did another talk on fear, which overlaps anxiety in a lot of different areas. And one of the things that I've grown to appreciate about anxiety or any other sin issue that we're trying to work through, or issue of suffering, as far as that goes, that we're trying to work through, is the complexity of these things. The reality is, and tonight's prayer request was a pretty good example of that, we are more than just a label, right? We may be struggling with things, but the complexity of our struggles is far more than just one issue. It's far more than just a... trying to hit something with all that we have in one particular area, and hopefully that helps it. When we think about something like anxiety, we could be talking about something with four, five, six, seven different emotional struggles that are going on in that. And as I say that, I don't want to say that because I'm trying to get psychologized or I'm trying to get secular and trying to pull in things that aren't that aren't biblical or whatever. I'm just saying that because that's just the way that it is. We are a body and soul complex. We are made up of a physical outer man, spiritual inner man, And when we talk about and think about things like anxiety, both of those things are at play. You are never just functioning in your spiritual man without any outside influences from your body. That's why when you're tired, you're more likely to be grumpy. right? Your physical condition affects your spiritual reactions to life. And that's why when you're sick and whenever you don't feel well, that's probably not when you're having your mountaintop experiences, right? It's hard. It's difficult. You're more prone to be down in the dumps whenever you are physically sick or there's some sort of an ailment that you have whenever you're hindered in some sort of way. And so as we look at anxiety in this talk, it's not going to contradict anything Brother Isaac said, but I want to kind of step back and and look at it from a big-picture sense. I think both are helpful. One of the things that I want to think about here is anxiety exists on a scale. One of the things I mentioned at the conference was I was hoping that Brother Mike would give me this topic. very few times in life that I've been anxious, or that I would say I was anxious. I'm not an anxious person. I don't really worry about a lot of things. I don't remember a time that I was paralyzed by fear. There are very few times that I care what anybody else thinks about what I'm doing, gonna do, or thinking. And so I'm not an anxious person, but And you know this, because we've prayed for this. 16 years ago, I married someone who has struggled with severe anxiety. And as I was putting this together, I was talking to Abby. And we've mentioned this before. And I'm not going to say anything today that she doesn't know that I've said or going to say and that I'm using, because I think it's a good illustration at her expense. We've talked about this. But she's had, you know, severe bouts of anxiety. And so there are very few topics, counseling wise, that I've tried to wrestle with and think about any more than I have the topic of anxiety. Now, that doesn't make me an expert. It just kind of makes me invested. I've done a lot of stupid things whenever it comes to trying to minister to her and understand. anxiety and then hopefully along the way the Lord has blessed me with a little more wisdom scripturally and biblically as I think about trying to minister to someone who is anxious on the scale of regular panic attacks, anxiety to the point of having some real physical symptoms there. And so That's what I want to think about as we think through anxiety, or at least I want to make sure we hit that side. We didn't come close to that when we were talking about fear last time I did that talk. And I don't think you always have to come close to that, because not everybody in here is going to experience those things. But the reality is, some of you do, some of you will, some of you are. And I think the scriptures have something to say about that. particularly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. So that's where I'm going to try to focus as we go through anxiety. First, just the experience of anxiety. I think it's I think it's worth noting and realizing that just because you've been anxious before doesn't mean that you understand what someone else's experience of anxiety is like, okay? It's kind of like hunger. Just because you've been hungry doesn't mean that you've, you know, it's not always the same intensity. I get hungry, I'm hungry about 24-7 to be honest with you, but I'm more hungry at 1 o'clock when it's time for me to take lunch than I am at 10.30 when I'm ready for a little snack or something like that. The intensity is different, and it's the same way with anxiety. The experience of it, and the reason I come up with that, the reason I even say that is because really, what is anxiety outside of the experience? Well, it's nothing. Anxiety is a word that we use to describe an experience that we have. It's been a little bit, it's a couple of different sides of the scale that we can get a little imbalanced on. On one side, we can try to make anxiety just completely scientific and biological. Make it so complex that unless we're neurologists, we can't understand what's really going on. Well, the truth is, honestly, in the scientific field, And we'll get into some of this. We're going to talk about medicine probably next time. The truth is even in the scientific neurological kind of thing, most of the language is figurative type language. You hear stuff about chemical imbalances in the brain. There's not a test that's out there that can measure the chemicals in your brain. That just does not exist. Now there are synaptic responses and they can see how this goes here and this goes there and kind of take a guess. then when you start looking at studies then- those even make it even more confusing and I know you're not gonna. Catch all this but just to just to prove the point on the biological part. You know some people talk about the happy hormone, the serotonin. Some say you just need more serotonin. And so there's a study that says, if you're low in serotonin, we give you more serotonin, then you'll be more happy, it'll help you with your anxiety. Well then there are also studies that say, if we can just lessen your serotonin levels, then that'll help with anxiety. Studies in France that showed it was a big breakthrough, that if you could just drop those serotonin levels, you could help people with their anxiety. And then there are studies that say, It doesn't matter what level of serotonin you have, that doesn't have anything to do with anxiety. Now, this is not somebody who lives out in a tent somewhere that just decided to take a poll. These are legitimate research things that contradict each other, okay? I don't say that to say medical science is ignorant and they don't have anything to say when it comes to anxiety. I say that to say even they don't really have it all figured out, okay? So we could look at it and think, this is such a complex issue that we have no business saying much of anything to someone who's in the throes of it, in the sense of these panic attacks and they're paralyzed and it's affecting them in a very serious way. We have nothing to say because we don't know all about neurology. On the other side, we could be way too simplistic. And we could think about anxiety and think about it in the sense of, well, you know, we know what Matthew 6 says. So if God takes care of the birds and he loves them, is he not also going to take care of you? Oh, you little faith, you know, muster up a little bit more faith and come on. Well, that's not it either. That's not it either. And so, You know, the reason, again, I think about experience is because it's one thing to preach a sermon or to tell somebody what Jesus says about a particular topic. It is another thing for you personally to grasp the truth of God's word and have that truth make a difference in your own experience. And very rarely, if at all, has it ever happened because somebody said, Oh, you're worried? Don't you know Jesus said you shouldn't worry? Worry is a sin. And then you have that eureka moment and you say, oh, you know what? It is a sin. I think I'll stop. It's oversimplistic, right? That's not what we're after either. And that's not what the scriptures lay out. And so we're looking for, and again on the, on the, uh, on the scale of speaking into someone's experience, we're looking for what's biblical, and whatever's biblical is gonna be accurate, and it's gonna speak to where we are. So before we do that, as we think about just being anxious, experiencing anxiety, if you just think about for a minute an experience that you desperately want to avoid. an experience that you desperately want to avoid. That's what anxiety is typically all about. It's the thought of, you know, whether it has to do with health, you know, the fear of cancer. The fear of I'm going to fail this test. The fear that work's going to go bad. The fear that everything's just going to fall apart. Whatever it is, think about an experience that you desperately want to avoid and some of you, most of you aren't going to hit this. Finding out there really is a monster in your closet or under your bed. That would be a pretty bad experience. I said this at the conference and I still say it here. This kind of thing is funny until you go to bed at night. and then you hear the wind and the creeks and all that. It's not so funny. Somebody post embarrassing pictures of you online. Unless you're involved in social media or something, you're probably not too worried about that, but that could be anxiety driven. experience or a friend or a loved one is in danger and the only person there to help is you. So I'll tell you the one of the few times and I wasn't really anxious in the moment, but as I've thought about it, the feelings of anxiety have has come up where I have experienced anxiety. Um, several years ago, this was back before David was born. Lily was, I don't know, two or three. We were at a beach trip with the streebles and the Ewing's and I think it was just Charlie and Lily at that point. They were playing on the beach and they would play a little game. We were sitting on the beach and there were seagulls that were walking around doing their thing. The girls figured out that if they stormed into the thing of seagulls, they'd just go flying. They loved it. They spent most of the afternoon waiting for those seagulls to get settled so they could storm straight into the middle of those seagulls and they'd go flying. Well, that evening, we had a picture on the beach. The girls wanted to get a family picture on the beach, so we got our stuff together, found a different spot, and we were headed to the spot that we were gonna get the picture made, and there was a really big crane-type bird that was there. And so the girls saw it, They looked at each other and they started giggling and they started running toward it. And so I looked and I thought, oh yeah, yeah, you know, that's funny. And then it hit me, I realized, this bird is big enough to pick one of these girls up and take off if it wants to. And so I got Lily, told Charlie to come back, the bird took off. Okay, well in the moment, that wasn't too bad. But there are times where I think about that. when I'm mowing my yard, something like that, that thought will just come back, you know? And I think, what would I do? What would I do? What would I do if a bird, if a big bird like that had clutched Lily and took off over the ocean? Would I jump in? Now, in my scenario, this is what happens. The bird takes off over the ocean, gets way out, and just drops her, okay? She hits. I'm swimming. By the time I get so far out, there's no way for me to get back, I realize, even if I was over, there's no way for me to know, because the ripples have stopped by that point. So she drowns, I drown, and that's it. Now the other scenario is, the bird takes Lily over the ocean, and I stand there. And because I'm a logical coward, I watch her die. That's a lose-lose, right? Now, there are not good feelings that spring up from that story, right? There's an anxiety. I can experience anxiety thinking about that. Probably some of you are experiencing some anxiety thinking about that as well. So let me say this. There is no other appropriate response to a situation like that besides anxiety. What am I supposed to feel? And what are you supposed to feel? Are you supposed to feel numb at the thought of a two-year-old being dropped in the ocean and her daddy dying trying to help her? Are you supposed to feel numb at the thought of a family watching a two-year-old? Now, this is a fictional thing. This never happened. But you can see just by the retelling of it and by me thinking about it, it can really affect the way that you think and it can affect the way that you feel. Your experience can be changed. So you try to imagine whatever that experience would be like, the things that you would think, the things that you would feel. And again, based off of that sort of scenario, one of the things that's very common is if you talk to an anxious person, a lot of the times the things that they are thinking about and the things that they're telling you about just don't really make a lot of sense. They're silly. They seem silly to you anyway. You know, if I were to tell you that I were having- repetitive anxiety attacks thinking about this crane taking off a lily over the ocean and a or B happening- you know as I told it the first time you know you're at your the tenth time, you're thinking, oh my goodness, come on, it didn't happen. That's not the end of the story. Why do you keep going there? You know, after a little bit, it loses its, loses the suspense. but not for the person who has it replaying in their mind again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And not for the person who is experiencing that again, and again, and again, and again. So what am I saying? Am I saying it's OK for that person to be doing that? No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if we're going to minister to somebody who's legitimately having this sort of experience, based off of the same thing that they're thinking about and going through again and again and again and again, I think the first thing we're going to have to do if we try to minister to that kind of person is realize and recognize, okay, this is legitimate. It's not legitimate in the sense of it's okay to keep doing it. This really is what you're doing. It's not that there's something else you're not telling me about. You're stuck in some sort of a mental spiritual cycle to where you continue to go over this again and again and again and again and again and again. And So this is where we have to stop and say, who's sufficient for these things, right? And we're talking about the complexities of anxiety. Not everything's going to be like this, but some things are. I've met with several people who fit the bill of what I'm describing to you. Some things are. And so at that point, just to try to think about it in a compassionate way is, in my opinion, I think we have to think about, What is this experience like before we move in? You know, and I'm a little late on this, but as I tell the story, as I've told the story, you know, some of you experienced low-level anxiety, maybe. Maybe you didn't, but the point that I want to make is anxiety's, you know, it's on a scale. It's on a scale. We all experience it to some level. Sometimes, and Brother Isaac brought this out in his talk before this, but sometimes anxiety comes out and is expressed in anger. It's things are uncertain, things are unsure. It's not that you're replaying the crane moment again, but maybe it's what am I going to do about work? What am I going to do about my job? Things aren't going well. What am I going to do about my kids? What am I going to do about this? What am I going to do about that? Something that you want to avoid, that you've come face to face with, continues to repeat itself in your mind. We all know what that experience is like. And it either leads to, I'm down in the dumps, or it can lead to, I'm angry at anybody and everybody that I come into contact with, or it can come out in all kinds of other ways. We've just seen this. One of the ways that it can come out on the higher end is just a full-blown panic attack. And when we think about a panic attack, that's something that is a physical response to a spiritual issue. And so you have both going on at the same time. And that's, again, where we get into one of those complex things. It will probably do you no good to try to quote scripture to somebody who's in the middle of a panic attack. They cannot grasp a word you're saying. They've got a thousand things in their head at one time. They may nod while they're breathing or whatever, but it'll do you no good to do that. There are other things. Typically with something like that, you may not come across anybody in the middle of a panic attack, but you may come across somebody who's really frail. And in those types of situations, usually something like hymns or even just being there with them is a whole lot more effective than the other. Now here's something for us to understand on a physical side. The Lord has blessed all of us with this reaction, this response to danger that we call fight or flight. Maybe you've heard of that before. Maybe you haven't, but when we perceive danger, we perceive that something is wrong, that we're in danger, we are blessed with a natural response of fight or flight. Now, this response is an involuntary response. What that means is you have nothing to do with it. It happens. It's ingrained. It's something that's an automatic reflex, if you will, of your body. So when you feel like you're in danger, then things happen like you have a heightened sense of awareness of what's going on in and around you. Your heart begins to race. Your heart will start to pound. Your energy level will go through the roof because your body is producing lots and lots of adrenaline. And that adrenaline, as it's being produced, is dumping into your stomach. So has anybody ever felt nervous to the point that you thought you just might throw up? Most people have at least been nauseous when they're nervous. That's because you have a lot of adrenaline dumping into your stomach and probably nothing else in there. That's part of this fight or flight thing. Now, if we're in actual danger, then fight or flight is a real blessing. There have been a lot of people that have done some miraculous things. So you can hear of these tales of, you know, small or ordinary men who have been able to lift cars off of family members who were stuck under them, that who normally couldn't have done any of that. You can hear stories of small framed women who were able to fight off bigger attackers who were attacking them or their children, who typically couldn't have done any of that. As this kicks in, this energy level and all these other things that go along with it are there because they are very, very helpful. It's almost like it's your God-given superpower in the moment. You can do things that you wouldn't dream of being able to do or that you wouldn't dream that you would even try to do in moments like that. and it can be and has been a real blessing. But when we think about fight or flight in a fallen world or in a world gone wrong, the problem is with fight or flight that it tends to kick in when we perceive danger, whether it's real or not. Now when I say danger, I don't mean always that there is a threat to your life. Now that obviously could be, but I just mean there's some sort of a threat of you having to experience something that you don't want to experience. You feeling like you are being threatened in some way. And so when that happens, that's why You do feel sometimes like whenever you get nervous, whenever you put too much stock into, so you may be nervous about a test, and before you know it, that test is the most important thing going on in your life, and you can get queasy, you can feel nauseous, so forth and so on, and there's a real explanation for that. It's because your body is producing chemicals and dumping adrenaline into your stomach and you're not fighting and you're not flighting, you're just sitting. And the only thing it can do is make you queasy. And if you dump enough, then you really will throw up. So, that's a physical response, okay? That's not a, now your perception has to do with your thinking, but the way all those things are happening whenever you're going through all that, that's happening in your physical body. That's not your spiritual reaction to what's happening, and it's important to understand that. So, I'm not gonna get too far into this, but so as we think about that, we also need to think about the fact that While those physical things are there, they have to do with things like how we think, how we perceive things, how we respond to things. And while there are plenty of things physical that we're talking about, anytime we get into the realm of how we think, and anytime we get into the realm of how we are responding, Those are spiritual realms. That has to do with your inner man. That has to do with the heart, the thoughts of the heart. And so, again, you can't divide them out. You can't make it one or the other. It's both and. And so here's the question. How do you win the battle and what should we expect? How do you win the battle with anxiety if all that being said is true? I would say this, and I think we can back it up with scripture and we'll see it in a minute. Victory over anxiety is not defined as the absence of anxiety. Okay? Victory over anxiety is not defined as the absence of anxiety. And that's an important point to make. Because, and we'll see as we go, the way the scriptures talk about anxiety and the way we respond to anxiety is just that, that anxiety is something that we are to respond to. It's not something, and as we grow and as we mature, we can eliminate some, but there are times where, you know, maybe you're more prone to anger or to a poor temperament than anxiety, maybe you're more prone to lust or vanity or whatever. A realistic view of the Christian life is that until the day that we die, we're going to be struggling against sin, some kind of sin, okay? And the doctrine of sanctification is that we can grow in grace, not that we can eliminate sin entirely, or at least the temptation to sin entirely from our lives. The Bible assumes that we're going to experience anxiety. The scriptures assume that. A couple of different ways we'll look at that. The first way that we see that the Bible assumes it, the most common command in scripture, over 300 times. Anybody want to guess what it is? Yeah, fear not. Fear not. The scriptures assume that we are prone to fear. And I heard this, and I thought this was good. I thought it was a different way to think about it. But you know, a lot of times, We can quote a stat like that as if God is saying, fear not. Come on, dummy, quit worrying. Quit being so scared. But you know, if we believe that Christ is touched with the feelings of our infirmities in the sense that there's a compassion there, I heard somebody say that it may just be that as God says, fear not, it's almost like you would tell your child as they, you know, 16, 17 years old and they want to go out and drive and you say, be careful, right? Be careful. Why? Because you think they're a moron? No. Because you care about them, right? I care about you. Be careful. Be careful. You're young. You're young and you're prone to making mistakes. You're not an experienced driver. Be careful out there. You need to be careful. It's a really sweet thought to me to think that over 300 times God is saying, be careful. Don't fear. Don't fear. There's going to be a lot for you to fear about. There's going to be a lot to fear about. Am I failing as a husband? Am I failing as a wife? Am I failing as a parent? Is my job going to go to pot? Am I failing here, there, everywhere? Am I going to lose my health? Am I going to lose this, that, whatever? God says, fear not. Fear not. Be careful. There are so many circumstances out there. There are so many things that will bombard us. And God says, fear not. Fear not. Now, there's more than that that lets us know that God assumes. Just the sheer number would be. would be a pretty good indication that God assumes we're gonna be fearful. But look, we have things like this, and you know this passage, Isaiah 41.10, fear not, be not dismayed. The word dismayed there just means to look about anxiously, look around anxiously. So he says, don't be afraid of what's in front of you, and don't look around inventing a bunch of things to be afraid of either. Because we do that, don't we? We get past one problem, And what do we have? We got 30 more that we're working on, right? They haven't gotten here yet, but we know they're coming. We don't know when, we don't know in what order, but we're pretty sure they're there, okay? Fear not, and don't look around anxiously. Here's one, 1 Peter 5, 7, where he says, a familiar passage again, casting all your care upon him because he cares for you. The word care there is the word for anxiety. Casting all your anxieties upon him. Now think about this. Think about this. It is impossible for you to obey that if you don't have anything anxious in your life. The scriptures assume that you're gonna be anxious about something, okay? And the question is not, and the goal is not to get rid of By the way, the reason the goal is not necessarily to get rid of all anxiety is because sometimes you're just kind of overwhelmed with things that you don't plan to be overwhelmed with. It would kind of be like saying that the goal is for you to never be hungry again, okay? Anxiety plays on your desires, and I think Brother Isaac hit that in his. And so I'm not saying there's this I can't help it kind of thing, but what I am saying is that the scriptures are more concerned with how you respond to your anxiety than whether or not you happen to be anxious. The assumption is that you will, and the response is, with that anxiety, as that anxiety comes in, respond in faith. Cast that anxiety, cast that care upon me. And that's what we say, a victory's determined by how you respond. Questions like, where will you turn for help? And this is gonna be helpful as we think about the whole medicine issue. Where will you turn for help? Who are you going to believe? Where are you going to seek peace and rest? This is what David says in Psalm 56, 3. What time I am anxious, I will trust in thee. You see it there? David doesn't say, I'm no longer anxious, so I don't have to worry about it. He says, at what time I am afraid, I'm going to trust in you. Aren't you thankful for that? I am. I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that the Bible speaks into reality on these type issues. And while I'm not trying to paint the picture that you always have to be a hyper-anxious person for the rest of your life, I do want to paint the balanced picture that anxiety exists on a scale and that the scriptures are more concerned with how you respond to that anxiety, not how many episodes of anxiety you happen to have. And so let me, and I'll end after this. And so let me, let me talk for a few minutes about, you know, what we're, again, how do we win? What are we looking for? Um, we said earlier, uh, in the Psalms at what time I am afraid I will trust in thee. One of the things that scripture does again and again and again and again is that it points us to, and this, this should be you know, you're gonna, this is a very obvious thing, but it's not always obvious in the moment. The scriptures will time and time and again point us to the person of God, the person of Jesus Christ. Now, here's why that's important. I want you to think about this for a minute. Let's go back to, you can go back to yourself or you can go back to your own, to your kids. Let's go back to thinking about being afraid at night. That's fairly common. Whenever I was little, I used to be terrified at night. If I woke up in the middle of the night and I had to use the bathroom, I would go wake mom up and tell her I was going to use the bathroom. Then I'd go use the bathroom and go back to bed. But I wanted her to know that I was up, just in case something got me. Now, by the time she finally got stern enough that I was afraid to wake her up, I would break records running to the bathroom and running back. I would fly. I don't even know what I was afraid of, but I was afraid of something. And so I would fly there and back. And so think about this scenario. Let's think about if I were scared of a monster, that there was a monster under my bed. Maybe you throw a monster in my closet or whatever. So I get up in the middle of the night, and I go and I wake my mom or my dad up, and I say, I'm scared. There's a monster under my bed. And they say, there's not a monster under your bed. There's not a monster in your closet. Go back to sleep. And then my response is, oh, OK. Well, thanks for clearing that up. See you in the morning. No, typically not the way that works, is it? Here's the scenario that is realistic. There's a monster under my bed. No, there's not a monster. Well, I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid. And I don't get relief. And more than likely, your children didn't get relief. until you either invited them to sleep with you or you went to sleep with them, one or the other. I want to be near a person. I want to be near someone. I don't need my logic rearranged. I'm too scared to even focus on that right now. I want somebody close to me, okay? Now, when we're talking about how do we win the battle with anxiety, At what time I'm afraid, I will trust in you. I'm going to be casting my cares upon you. The battle against anxiety is one as that experience drives us to a person. It drives us to the person of Jesus Christ. Now, we're gonna use scripture to do that, but we're not gonna use scripture in a way as if it's a magic trick, okay? There's nothing magic in and of itself about me giving you a passage on anxiety that will make you not scared anymore. But if that scripture opens up, if the spirit of God uses that to open up a reality about the person of Jesus Christ, well then you found something, right? So many times, and I've done this plenty of times, we can look at scripture and we can use it in a really impersonal way as if we're saying, you know, take this Tylenol, and by the way, take Matthew 6 in the same way, and what's wrong with you? I already told you what Matthew 6 said, right? and you say I'm still scared because you haven't made it to the person yet, right? You've just tried to have your logic rearranged. At what time I am afraid I will trust in you, a person, a real person who hears me, who cares about me, who loves me, and who is with me, right? Now there are There are a lot of blessings that we have to help us in that, and I'll go through this fairly quickly, but number one, God has provided brothers and sisters in Christ to help encourage and strengthen us in our struggles. If we're going to win the battle with anxiety, we are not going to do it on our own. Not going to do it on our own. Now, I understand it can be embarrassing, and I don't mean you have to get up and tell everybody all about it, but you need you need brothers and sisters in Christ that are helping. Look at Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 10. It says, two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up. This is a really sweet verse to me. As a matter of fact, whenever I was working on this for Huntsville, I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I was putting that in. And I was just thinking back over the last five, six years. And I just started crying as I was putting that in. And Abby says, you OK? And I said, yeah, I'm OK. She said, what are you crying about? And I said, listen to this sweet verse and think about all the times that we've had folks come and pick us up whenever we've fallen. I could go through and name hundreds of times where people have ministered to my wife in anxiety in some of the most inconvenient times, but they've been in Ecclesiastes 4, 9 through 10 for him. I could go, and I don't know all these, but I know. could name hundreds of prayers that have gone up on her behalf. And we're just talking about anxiety here. There are hundreds of prayers that have gone up on both of our behalf for this. And that's just a blessing. It's a blessing. One of these days, whether it's anxiety or not, you're going to fall down. And you're going to need somebody to pick you up. And in his wisdom, in his goodness, in his grace, and in his mercy, God has placed you in a body of like-minded believers who love you and care about you. I just, I can't say enough about the brothers and sisters that we have in Christ that have been given to encourage and strengthen us in our struggles. All right, and then what about medicine? You'll have to come back next week to find out. Thank you for listening to this message. Our prayer is that you've been blessed by the messages and the daily devotional blog on sermon audio from Ripley Primitive Baptist Church. We would love the opportunity to be of greater service to you and your walk with Christ. In other words, we would like to get to know you better. 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