Discovering God in the Middle of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety

Russ Ewell

What if I told you that sometimes the only way to find God is to admit we’re lost? That the breakthrough we’re looking for, peace, clarity, purpose, begins not with control, but with surrender. Let me tell you about a time I had to admit I was lost, completely lost, before I could truly experience God as personal, powerful, and purposeful in my life. I didn’t just need answers, I needed him, and maybe you do too. 

In Ezekiel 3:15 it says,

 I came to the colony of Judean exiles in Tel Aviv beside the Kibar River. I was overwhelmed and sat among them for seven days. 

The first turning point in my spiritual life came when I considered leaving God and the Church. I didn’t like how my life was going. On the one hand, I loved the person I had been before I came to church, and I missed him. I also loved who I had become with God and longed to be that person too. I felt torn between both worlds, and I was experiencing a crisis of faith. I was overwhelmed like Ezekiel, who sat by the Kibar River. Interestingly enough, I found my own river.

One spring night in my sophomore year of college, I walked out of my dorm room and took a walk that overlooked the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts. I told God that I didn’t much like where my life was at and that in my mind I needed to make a decision. Either I was going to remain in the church for the rest of my life or I was going to leave now. It was a long walk. There was no one on this walk with me except God. I didn’t consult with any family members or friends about this decision.

As young as I was in the faith, I realized that God was my reason for being there. This was not a decision about membership in a human organization, but a question of how I would treat God, He and He alone, would be most affected by my leaving the Church. I decided to stay. But that was the most important thing to happen on that warm spring night in 1980. The most important thing was that at a crucial turning point, I established a pattern of going to God for an answer rather than to people. This lesson has served me well throughout my life and I encourage you to do the same. Today, we’re going to talk about relationship with God. More specifically about the fact that our relationship with God should be personal, it should be powerful, and it should be purposeful. The account I read to you was from the book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is, that if you’ve looked at deep spirituality you’ve seen it already. But it was a story about the river. And everyone has a river in their life, or can. Why do I bring that up? Because as I said, What if I told you that sometimes the only way to find God is to admit we’re lost? I was lost. Now not everybody knew I was lost. Jeremiah 6 13 answers why.

Jeremiah 6:13-14, 

From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain. Prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace. From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain. Prophets and priests alike all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace. 

Today, as we go through a series of podcasts that we’ll be working on, and I’ll share about my guests in just a minute, we’re gonna be talking about finding peace. But to find peace, there’s three challenges, I think, three obstacles that we have to face and deal with. Anxiety, stress, and fear. And I’ve found in my life that those three that put a stranglehold on not only my faith, but it’s put a stranglehold on my life, and oftentimes I didn’t even see it because I didn’t look below the surface of what was going on in my life. I didn’t address or want to look at the dysfunction. I didn’t address or want to look at the deficiencies, the limits of my life. I didn’t address or want to deal with the emotions that were suppressed. I didn’t address or want to deal with the sins that eroded my faith and made me more captive to fear. 

Something that I see going on in the church sometimes and certainly in society is we don’t want to go below the surface. In order for God to be personal, we have to go below the surface. We have to, as you would might say, we have to open up the hood of the car. That means something different now than it meant back in the 80s when I was driving. But we have to open up the hood of the car. We have to, you know, take a look at maybe what we haven’t been looking at because this passage in Jeremiah 6 is not just about like not having conviction. It’s about telling people that they have peace when they really don’t have it. Telling people that everything is okay in life when they know it isn’t. One of my favorite songs right now is by Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll, what’s the name by Jelly Roll. I had to check with Nathan. I just listened to it yesterday. It was by Jelly Roll. They’ll edit all that out. By Jelly Roll. One of my favorite songs is by Jelly Roll. And he sums it all up with these words, I am not okay. That’s what the song’s, it’s just a great song, he goes, I’m not okay. Peace Peace is telling us when we’re, overwhelmed by anxiety, when we’re overwhelmed by stress, when we’re overwhelmed with fear, that we’re okay, when we’re not okay. A series of podcasts we’ll be delivering to you is going to be helping each one of us be able to say, am not okay, but at the same time know that God can make it okay.

I talked earlier about what if I told you we have to be lost and discover and admit and be aware we’re lost before we can truly experience God as personal and powerful and purposeful. 

What does it mean to be lost? It means we feel powerless. We lack the ability to overcome. It means we feel purposeless. We’re drifting through life without clear meaning. It means we feel guilty. Every day our joy is stolen by a conscience that’s burdened. We feel lonely, disconnected and distant, lacking deep relationships. We ultimately feel lost, wandering directionless and unsure of our identity. 

These podcasts that we’re gonna deliver to you, I think are gonna help. Not because we’re gonna give you all the answers, we don’t have them. Because we’re gonna get you involved in the conversation. It’s a conversation I’ve been having for a while now, as I’m working on the qualities of my life in the way I need to live in order to maximize and fulfill the potential God has given me. The guests that I have today are two great friends of multiple decades, Ray Kim and Stone Eliazer, and I want to welcome them in. And I want to really get started by asking them, how do they look at life when it comes to God being personal, God being powerful, and God being purposeful?

Ray Kim

Well, Russ, thanks for having me a part of this podcast. As I listened to you, the biggest thing that stood out to me is I never saw God as personal. In fact, I grew up somewhat of a religious background, but I always thought God was about me being a good person. I thought it’s me trying to act right and not get in trouble and comply to my parents, comply to what my teachers are saying. But there was nothing personal about it was, actually became more like a chore than it was something that was personal. And it wasn’t until a friend of mine had, I went to Cal and a friend of mine had said, Hey, let’s come on over. Let’s hang out. Let’s grab some coffee or some, and some pizza. And of course, pizza always motivated me. So I’m like, I’m there. And, and over the pizza, he said, you know, have you, do you ever, you know, you say you believe in God, right? But do you ever believe that God is a relationship? I said, what do you mean a relationship? mean, I believe God exists. I believe he’s there, relationship. And it was a very foreign concept to me. at that time, first time, I think I’d ever really thought of that. This is a God that is not just a theory or something I was taught to believe in, but there was an actual relationship that could be had. And that’s when I was like, I have no idea what to think about that, how to even pursue that. And that was the first time ever someone actually described God as a relationship. And from there, I thought, okay, I have no idea how to begin. And so that was that started my journey of get me it got me curious. Now, I wasn’t excited about God, it just got me curious, because it’s something I never thought nor did I even put any energy in thinking about. So that’s the thing that really grasped me when when you say that God is personal.

Russ Ewell

It sounds outstanding. Stone?

Stone Eleazer

Yeah, well, you know, I grew up in a family we moved around a lot because I was in the military and I and my whole life was about shaping the outside on how people looked at me and viewed me. So when I got in, you know, and I also was going to church every Sunday because that was what we did in our home. 

So I got really focused on always the outside and making myself look like what I think people wanted me to be or should be. And I did that when I viewed God. I was like, get myself to do what I think God wants me to do. But I very rarely worked on the inside of my heart. My heart was all over the place. I was deceitful, fearful, super selfish. And I knew that on the inside, but I didn’t know how to get my inside and my outside together. And it wasn’t until someone started to actually help me by actually looking at the scriptures to look at the inside. And I was terrified. I thought if anybody got to know me, they’re not going to like me. And that was kind of the big fear that I had to overcome. And I think I’ve had to struggle with that all the time. One of the things that really helped me was Isaiah 43 when God says, hey, whatever’s happening in your life, I’m with you and I’m going to be with you.” And it really helped me to calm down. 

But I think my journey has and still exists is trying to get my personal relationship with God by working on the inside instead of being just focused on what I look like on the outside. That was always the big detriment to me. And getting confident and comfortable with God enough to be myself, that’s always the thing I long for, work on even today.

Russ Ewell (22:17.294)

Well, in three of the things I mentioned, anxiety, stress, fear connect with that passage I read in Jeremiah 6. They dress the wound of my people as though we’re not serious. Peace, peace they say when there is no peace. As I get older and I see that, know, let’s talk to, I don’t know, 50 plus year old people or 48 plus or whatever Ray is, Ray’s the youngest. I just want us to talk a little bit about how how we feel about the idea that it’s easy to let the world’s superficiality into the church, and we end up not really helping people. 

Jelly Roll’s song, I’m Not Okay, I think sometimes when we see people not being okay, we run the other way. Or we don’t know what to do with them because as you guys have alluded to, we don’t know what behavioral thing to tell them to do. We don’t have a cookie cutter solution to their problem. When we get into problems that are deep marriage problems or dysfunction problems, things that have happened to people in life or coping mechanisms that they’ve gotten attached to and used, I know those things are all true of me or sins that they just can’t overcome. Sometimes I think we want to wash our hands and just go, you’re okay, you’re okay, don’t worry about it. We want to make them not feel guilty in the moment. We want to make them not feel bad in the moment. Or we want to encourage them, which are all good things, but we don’t actually solve the problem. And as we talk through these podcasts and we go through this series of people, and we’ve done some that are previous on self-awareness and really being willing to look deep into the heart and life and believe that we can grow, believe that we can change, believe that God is that powerful. I was just wondering, have you had moments in or out of the church where things were peace peace? Because I know for me, in college, I suppressed things. I never told the truth of what was going on inside of me. And it wasn’t because people were, I was afraid what people would think. I’m sure that was there, but I didn’t know how. And so when I came into church and I started to behave better, people said, oh, he’s doing better. But they didn’t ask the questions that would have drawn me out to get me to begin to deal with the things that eventually I was going have to deal with because I think that what God does because He loves us is He makes certain that we end up dealing with everything going on in our life. Not because He’s trying to punish us. God doesn’t gain anything, we gain everything from the relationship. 

When we think, God’s punishing us, or He’s sending this storm, or He’s making this bad thing happen, because God doesn’t gain anything from that. And He doesn’t do those things. He’s not motivated by anything but love. He’s trying to get us someplace. But sometimes I think as human beings, we can interfere with what God is doing in people’s lives by coming in and saying, you’re already at peace, you’re already at peace when they’re not at peace.

Someone can have a health problem, or a marriage problem, or a parenting problem. And we go, that sounds good, it’s fine, but what we’re really saying is peace, peace, and they don’t really have peace. They don’t have the answer, maybe they don’t have the faith, they don’t have the help, they don’t have the support, or just simply, they don’t have anybody to talk to to say, my life’s out of control, there’s nothing you can do to help me control it, but maybe you can be here with me in the middle of the whirlwind, so that I can survive it and come out, you know, safe, secure, and successful through the learnings and training that God gives me. 

But I’m just wondering if you guys understand or have any thoughts on the idea that we can create cultures that are peace peace cultures, not where we don’t confront, not talking about confronting anybody, but where we don’t talk about things that are really at depth. We don’t get into, hey, this is a really deep thing that’s going to take years to overcome. Does that make any sense?

Stone Eleazer (26:00.906)

Yeah, I’ll say you had me at superficiality. I go that superficiality is my go-to place. That’s how I used to deal with stress is just to be superficial. As long as I didn’t think about anything too deep. If I stayed on the surface, if I pretended that things were okay, if I lied to myself, then I could at least cope with it, right? 

So even today, and I can’t remember who said it, but somebody said it sometime and I go that superficiality is my junk food, my spiritual junk food. Where I like to go when I want a quick feel good is get up on the surface and stay there. And so when you live that way, you never really solve anything on the inside. So it’s really hard to help someone else saw something on the inside or to help them to go to that place where get some depth where they can get a real connection with God. 

But I think you know I think you had asked the question too about have you ever had peace? Most of my life no because I never allowed myself to be known and I remember multiple times when I had a good enough friend and both of you have been that to me at different times where, you know, in conversation I was just forced to deal with some truths about who I was. It was painful at the time, but I remember those were the times I walked away with the most peace. There was a level of, oh, okay, I have a better understanding of who I am and why things in my life or relationships are challenged or why I’m insecure so much. Those are the things that I think that have helped me the most. There’s times when I had a friend who helped me see truths and accept them and then be able to walk away knowing that’s the issue, that’s the problem. And those are the times when I felt more peace.

Russ Ewell (28:02.638)

Have you ever been in an environment, Stone, where there was peace peace? Because I don’t think it’s, I don’t even know if people know they’re in a peace peace environment. Have you ever been in an environment like that and then upon reflection you went, man, you know, because I lost some years of growth because of the peace peace thing. Because sometimes I think we talk about following rules. A lot of people complain that church is about rules. But nobody talks with the fact, well, maybe the reason church is about rules is because of how superficial we are in peace, peace. That it’s the rules are where we go to, to not have to go deep. 

But I was wondering, have you been in an environment like that? What’s it like and how can people identify, hey, we’re in a community of relationships, whether it’s six relationships or 600, where we’ve got to start taking a look and saying, maybe we’re overlooking every deep thing. And that’s why we’re becoming more rule oriented and that’s why we’re becoming more behavior oriented, and that the rules and the behavior are a way to be peace, peace. Does that make any sense? And can you relate to that or recall any times in your life maybe they could help people that are listening? Because I know you have a lot of experience, you’ve been a lot of different places, you’ve traveled, you’ve been in different churches, you’ve led churches, you’ve led small groups, you’ve done everything, and you’ve been around a long time, helped a lot of people including me, and I think it might benefit them to have some insight from you about, hey, here’s how you know, and this is what you can do.

Stone Eleazer (29:33.954)

Yeah, I think the thing that I relate to the most is having or using rules.

And maybe there’s a different way of saying rules, using certain formulas on how to think when I am detached from God or when I’m detached in my marriage. And I’m easily detached because I am superficial. That’s where I like to be. I think when peace, peace are times when

I’m around other people who want to be superficial as well.

The opportunities to be able to do that are real. We get together and talk and you just avoid the elephant in the room. Maybe you know that for me, my wife was always a great indicator of how superficial I was because she did not value that and would eventually, I would rather fight than be superficial.

And so you can’t always, I couldn’t always avoid that in my marriage, right? And she would say a lot, good.

Russ Ewell (30:45.77)

Well, you know, one of the things, what do you mean you say rather fight than be superficial?

Stone Eleazer (30:55.072)

So, Marilee would rather fight than for to be detached or distant. And she goes, no, I need to feel like we are…

we are working on things. She can’t do superficial. She can’t do superficiality like I can. I do. I use superficiality out of managed stress and all the other areas of my life. goes, that doesn’t work for her. And so when I am distant and detached from her, a couple of days go by like that. And then pretty soon it’s conversation like, yeah, this isn’t working for me. And we’re going to have to have a conversation and we’re going to have to deal with what’s going on because you’re surfacy and detached. And where are you? So I can do that. I can get in relationships where we’re all comfortable with being surfacy and I think that’s the danger. And so you rely on rules like we show up, we read our Bible today, we’re going to church, give our contribution, and we hang out.

Russ Ewell (31:58.65)

Ray, one of the things that I remember in becoming a Christian, and I’m really glad I became a Christian at 19, but in the ensuing years, there were a lot of things I saw in my life that weren’t dealt with. My suppression of emotion, my inability to love, not knowing how I could maybe learned outwardly to be it, but I didn’t value it. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand myself. I didn’t have a lot of self-awareness, although I was very socially outwardly that way. There were very few people when I was coming up in church who I, there were some I could engage with, but we didn’t really operate on that level that much. And so, what I found is that the more traditional the church I’m in is, the more, the less deep we go. And so, that, I look at my life and I go, there’s a lot of baggage and a lot of fails that I had in my spiritual life, because I wasn’t making sure that I was engaged in relationships of depth. What God did for me is find best friends, and I write about this in the book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is, find best friends who many of them weren’t in leadership at any high level, but they were more real. And I guess what I think can happen a lot of times is we can go to church and we can think, I’m in a spiritual environment and this is this I’m going to be in a healthy situation. But because no one, including the person speaking in the sermon, wants to talk about anything that’s deep, that anything that’s uncomfortable. And when I say uncomfortable, I don’t mean painful, because I don’t think everything’s painful. Like when someone tells me, hey, Russ, I think the reason that it’s hard for you to be loving is because it’s difficult for you to be vulnerable. What is it that makes it difficult for you to be vulnerable? And then I look with my eyes and go, I don’t even know what you’re talking, are you speaking a different language? Because that’s where I was at that time.

But I think sometimes when we’re in church, we don’t even know it because when I first went to church, I was so busy trying to stay out of sin and follow the rules of reading my Bible and praying that I never looked at myself internally and said, what’s going on until I crashed and burned, until I got overwhelmed, until I got guilted out, until I was lost.

And so I’m kind of trying to get a sense of helping people out there understand that just because we go to church, read the Bible and pray doesn’t mean we’re getting to the level of depth we need to be at. And it can be because maybe the person speaking doesn’t want to go there. Maybe the person leading our small group doesn’t want to go there. And so the thing that saved me is I had friends who were willing to go there. I had friends who were willing to get into it. And I just think it’s easy to, it’s like being a part of Gold’s Gym. Just because you go doesn’t mean you’re actually working out. You know I’m saying? Doesn’t mean you’re actually benefiting.

But if you have some friends who go, hey dude, I think you can lift more than two pounds. You know, and then you’re like, what? Two pounds? I thought two pounds was a lot. And if you don’t have that friend, it won’t work. And I’ve been fortunate in my life to have different friends, especially my wife, but you guys too, but many people who weren’t in a major leadership position, but were in a major influence position to help me start to go, Russ, you’ve got a lot of character issues, a lot of emotional issues, a lot of blind spots that you’ve never dealt with, and going to church isn’t going to solve it. We’ve got to get past peace, peace, and into real peace. Go ahead.

Ray Kim (35:36.106)

Reminds me of when I was when I first became a Christian, I just thought, this is the greatest thing I’m free and I’m on the path from going to get to know God. And then a lot of people believed in me early on and said, Hey, Ray, you have some ability, you have some talent, how about you start leading and helping make a difference in whether it’s the ministry or on campus, start a club. And so I was taught a lot in the peace peace was if you show up,

And if you’re contributing on the outside and if you’re pretty active and busy and you have a generally a good attitude, you’re doing well with God. You’re doing well in your faith. And probably after about the first four months of that, I woke up one morning and my roommates knew exactly what I was doing. They were all around me and everything. I mean, like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m done.

I don’t want God, I’m done, I want to date the girl, the pretty girl I see in my class. I’m totally done. And I’m actually even sure I want to go to church anymore. And this is after I’m the one telling my friends, you got to come to church. Hey, I didn’t see you last night. Where were you? You know, we had a great midweek service. And literally, I woke up thinking, what happened to me? And my roommates were just like, oh, you’re having a bad attitude, man. Just get with it. We all go through that.

And I was like, enough is enough. And it wasn’t until my sister had called me saying, hey, how are you doing? My sister had become a Christian a couple of years before me. And I said, well, I believe in God. I believe that’s the right thing. I actually really like the church, but I’m totally done. And she was trying to encourage me. 

It wasn’t until her friend later on, he wasn’t a leader, he just said, you know, you really don’t understand that you have a hard time building any level of attachment to anybody. And he dug in and he said, your whole motivation has always been to achieve and succeed. And it was the first time that someone stopped me and they weren’t getting on my case because I was not acting right or I was not more motivated or still with energy enthusiasm that I always thought I’m supposed to come to the table with. And it reminded, it was a scripture,

It was a long time, a Psalm 94:19 that said, 

anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. 

And I didn’t realize I’m high anxiety. And I thought my drive was because I’m going to achieve my, he’s like, no, you’re really driven by anxiety and you think your joy and happiness does it come from achieving it and getting the accolades and getting attention saying, wow, Ray is really reliable. He’s a great leader. And, and they said, Ray, you’re missing a whole point of God and Christianity. It’s about enjoying the attachment. 

And then he dove into, these are just other friends. And my friend at that time, was saying, you know, I think this is how you were in your family. It’s like, you’re not really close to your dad. Your parents never divorced, but it’s not like you guys were really close. And he started going there. like, oh, me and my dad are fine. We’re good. Like I call him once a week.

Ray Kim (38:51.542)

But he’s like, but do you ever miss your dad? I’m like, no, not at all. I don’t miss him at all. They’re just happy that I’m studying. They’re just happy that I got some friends, but I’m good. That was the first time I realized I have an attachment problem. And I’m trying to, I’m trying to live as a Christian. I’m trying to do what’s right, but I’m completely missing out on, I have no idea how to be loyal and attach and be emotionally vulnerable was friends or peers. I’ll share with this last part, because he reminded me, hey, when we studied the Bible with you, I remember what you did in relationships. He said, you were people’s friends as long as they helped you get ahead, as long as they helped you get the grade, as long as they helped you get closer to the girl you liked, as long as you got to soccer. But as soon as it was done, you were like done with the friendship. You’re done with the relationship. And I brought that same stuff into being a Christian and in relationship with God.

And that’s why I would get so discouraged. I wouldn’t have that joy that Psalm 94:19 is talking about because my joy was contingent on, did I get the result? Did I get the achievement? Did I get the attention? And so that was a huge turning point for me. And that was the, that was way back in December, right before my birthday, my freshman year. And that changed me. said, I have no idea what it means to have a relationship with God still. 

And I think that there’s a lot of people out there. They decide to really change their life and live by the Bible and become a Christian. But they think that was going to fix everything. And that was my mistake. I didn’t realize that that was just the start of me getting to know God and getting to know what real love and relationship were. And for 18 years of my life, I thought, I just got to show up, do what I’m told, at least be compliant and obey. But no one ever taught me, Ray, don’t know how to build intimate, vulnerable relationships and there’s probably a lot more insecurities and a lot more motivations that are not really the ones that God wants you to have. 

And so that was the first time ever it kind of reopened my door. I’m like that iceberg, like I’ve got the little tip above the water and there’s a two thirds below the water that I had no idea. And I didn’t think it was really relevant in my life until I got to the point where I’m like, yeah, I think I’m done. I’m out of here, I wanna give up. And that’s when some friends were willing to help you stop me and say, let’s dig in a little more and figure out why.

Russ Ewell (41:25.284)

You know, that sounds like what I went through with the river. And I think that’s when you said something there, one, you’re real, two, you said something about real love. And that we can’t get there, we started out with talking about you can’t discover God being personal, being powerful and purposeful unless you’re willing to go into that territory where you experience the lack of control that is lostness. The lack of control of what people think of us, the lack of control of whether we’ll be successful, the lack of control of what people can know about us that makes us vulnerable to them using whatever we share against us. But I think when we get to that space, it’s like Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32, that’s when we experience God’s love. And so I appreciate that. 1 John 4:18, 

it says,

“Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we’re afraid, it’s for fear of punishment, and this shows that we’ve not fully experienced this perfect love. We love each other because He loved us. 

You made God personal, but you also made God powerful. In Romans 5:3, 

And we are also happy with the troubles we have. Why are we happy with troubles? Because we know that these troubles make us more patient. And this patience is proof that we’re strong, and this proof gives us hope, and this hope will never disappoint us. We know this because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts through the Holy Spirit he gave us. 

Romans 5:3-5, in the ERV translation. It’s talking really, I think, about God being powerful, but it doesn’t use the term powerful. It uses the term love, because love is powerful. When we tear down our walls and allow God to tear down our walls, when we open up our hearts and stop suppressing, church becomes real. It becomes, as some people like to say, it becomes messy, it becomes vulnerable. But that’s when we experience the true transformation, which that’s what being purposeful in our life is all about with God. In Psalm 63 and verse 1 in the NIV it says,

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.

When the three of us talk about quitting or walking away or being satisfied with the superficial, we’re in a parched land, we’re in a dry land and somebody out there may be feeling like, I’m like Ray and Russ, I want to quit, I’m bagging. I want to find the girl in the classroom or whatever it is, whatever it is you’re looking for, the career path, the job, the money, the house, the apartment, the car, whatever it may be, I want to find that.

Actually, if we get to a good place, actually realize, hey those things are dry, those are parched, it’s why I’m internally dissatisfied. And then the psalmist in chapter 63, 1 to 3, 

I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. For those of you listening, we appreciate you listening to the podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share the podcast. You can also be able to, if you want to know more about the book, He’s Not Who You Think He Is, you can pick up a copy of that on our website at Deep Spirituality.

It’s the same time I want to thank Ray and Stone, and we’re going to continue to be talking about all of these things, about getting us started by realizing that a relationship with God is personal, a relationship with God is powerful, and a relationship with God is purposeful, and that’s the foundation of our life and the joy of our life.

Russ Ewell 

Today, I have Stone Eleazer and Ray Kim in here to help me discuss, navigate, and talk about an important topic which is developing a spiritual culture. As we talk about developing a spiritual culture, we’re going to talk about and we’re going to begin to unfold more about how do we deal with three of the most challenging things we face every day, anxiety, stress, and fear. And when we talk about that, we’re entering into realms that are beyond spirituality or at least they’re not directly addressed by spirituality. They’re indirectly addressed by spirituality, is how do I deal with things when I’m facing, and we get these questions, I’m facing a mental health challenge and I’m also trying to be a Christian and be spiritual. 

Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear. This discussion is not about rejecting therapy, psychiatry, or psychology. Personally, I deeply respect these fields and have seen countless people, including those in my own church and community, benefit from therapy and mental health treatment. Therapy, like medicine, is a tool God provides to help us navigate life’s challenges.

But just as we pray for God’s guidance when we seek medical care, we must also seek Him in our emotional and mental healing. My concern is when therapy is seen as a replacement for God rather than a tool he can use. Faith and therapy are not at odds. God should simply remain at the center. If you’re in therapy or receiving treatment, please do not take this as a reason to stop. That’s not the message.

This conversation is about restoring confidence in God’s power to transform lives while embracing the wisdom he provides through the resources around us. This episode is part of the Best Life series, as was our previous episode. And the Best Life series is about developing spiritual life skills to be able to conquer, challenge, and fulfill our potential, take on our challenges and overcome them, and conquer whatever weaknesses we have by letting God turn our weaknesses into strength.

When we explore at this level and develop our spiritual life skills at this level, then we’ll be able to thrive in every area of our life, including one of the best life series areas, self-care. So let’s dive in and let’s talk about it. And I want to share a scripture with Stone and Ray and then get them in on this discussion. In Proverbs 25-2 in the message translation, it says, 

God delights in concealing things. Scientists delight in discovering things.

And some people are going to say, well, doesn’t that say kings and a translation other than the message it does? But those traditional translations, and all translations can be helpful, those traditional translations highlight wisdom, leadership, and responsibility, and governance. The message translation shifts the focus to scientific exploration, making it accessible to a modern audience interested in discovery and knowledge. In other words, the message is saying, how do I help someone who’s not familiar with the Bible? How do I help somebody who hasn’t read it for years and decades or studied it in college or seminary? How do I make this make sense to them by sharing with them that God is trying to say, delight in having things concealed. And when those who are scientists and those who are researchers reach out and discover, I love that. And that’s what we get

medical advances. That’s where we get our psychiatric and psychological advances. That’s where we get our technological advances. One of the books I’m looking forward to reading is a book called Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. And they do a beginning first three pages. They talk about a future where you can fly, I think, from the West Coast of America to London or New York in two hours. And we’re not inventing and we’re not building the things we need. I think what everyone should understand when we talk about spirituality, is the more spiritual we are, the more discoveries we can make in science. 

And so as I talk about this subject of developing a spiritual culture, we’re going to address the temptation sometimes we have to turn a spiritual culture in the fellowship into a therapeutic culture, and how we can avoid that, leveraging the tools that God gives us, medically and scientifically, at the same time, not diminishing who God is, but instead exalting Him as a God who wants us to discover the tools we need to have the best life, which is what our series is about, in one of those parts, like I mentioned already, is self-care, using those tools, but never neglecting the fact that what’s driving everything, if you believe the Bible, and you believe in the resurrection, and you believe in the cross, it’s the power of God moving in our lives. 

So just maybe you guys can give us an idea of where you stand, or what you think, or how you process these ideas of spiritual culture, and then I’ll go on to talk a little bit more and get us into discussion about what we can do to be able to grow a more spiritual culture. 

And so what I want to do now is I want to bring in Stone Eleazer and Ray Kim because both of them know about spirituality and both of them know about the spiritual culture. Both of them had an extraordinary journey in their relationship with God. Ray, what does it mean to you to build spiritual culture?

Ray Kim (01:03:16.875)

For me, a spiritual culture has always been understanding that I can’t control everything. And in my own human ability, in my own human effort, I still cannot control outcomes. And there’s a whole other spiritual realm and that’s called God. And that’s called the scriptures and the truth that the scriptures illuminate about what’s making me do the things I do or what’s making me react. And so something that’s really challenging because I don’t like thinking spiritually. In fact, I like thinking, what can I do? How can I control?

And I see this a lot, even in my own family. As Amy and I, both can get stressed out or anxious or afraid. I don’t first think that the issue is not just our personalities are different or we have a culture clash or it’s the circumstances in our, in our day-to-day schedules. I think a spiritual culture is understanding why I’m responding this way, and where is God in all this? How has God helped me shape or frame?

Russ Ewell (01:05:01.112)

Ray, that’s a really cool insight about spirituality that you just gave us. Hey Stone, what do you think the key to being able to, or one of the keys you’ve seen, at being able to make sure we develop a spiritual culture as opposed to a religious culture. And by that religious culture, I mean one where maybe we’ve got our behavior right, but we’re not experiencing the power of God in our lives. And so we end up feeling stuck even though we’re committed. What do you think the key is to making sure it’s spiritual and it doesn’t become behaviorally religious?

Stone Eleazer (01:05:34.222)

Well, I definitely think that unless we are getting to the heart of the matter, Our heart condition. I’ve always found that it’s my heart condition that creates an understanding God cares about our heart condition and not just our behavior.

Russ Ewell (01:05:54.724)

Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by heart condition?

Stone Eleazer (01:05:57.696)

I think that God wants us to know, I think God already knows, but He wants us to know what’s really in our heart. What’s motivating us? What’s driving us? And I know for me, I’m often deceived by what’s driving me, what’s motivating me.

Russ Ewell (01:06:02.776)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Russ Ewell (01:06:12.28)

Are you deceived? Are you deceived or are you unaware?

Stone Eleazer (01:06:16.888)

Both, I think. Both. Both. Yeah.

Russ Ewell (01:06:18.392)

Both. What do you see as the difference between being deceived and being unaware? Ray, you can jump in on this one.

Stone Eleazer (01:06:24.012)

Well, when I think of unaware, I think of lack of experience, know, training to understand what drives me. And I think when deceived is just purposely wanting to avoid something that deep down I understand is an issue with me, right? Whether it’s selfishness.

Russ Ewell (01:06:44.174)

Yeah, you know for me, unaware is when I was playing basketball, I was convinced I was going to be going to the NBA. And I was sure of it. But I was on the bench. I wasn’t even in the starting lineup. And I was talking to a friend on the phone one day and I was telling him, yeah, I want to be a chemist and I want to go to the NBA.” He started laughing. I was unaware. You could say I was deceived. I think sometimes in my religiosity, I’ll say I’m sinful, but really I’m not sinful, I’m unspiritual. And to me, there’s a difference between being unspiritual and being sinful. A lot of people go to church a long time, like we do, and have been going for decades. We can get even programmed into our heads perfectionism, which I have a big problem with that. And so we always think we’re wrong and we’re sinful and we’re bad, when sometimes we’re unaware. And so I’m just wondering if, you we’ll take what Stone was talking about, is that part of building a spiritual environment, a spiritual culture, I think, is being determined to be aware of where we are in time and place, be aware of who we are. Does that seem reasonable to you, Ray?

Ray Kim (01:07:48.651)

I think that’s very reasonable. A lot of times I think, because I’m so concerned about somebody, like this was a big, I’ll share a quick story. My son just got braces last week and I went thinking I really care about him. He’s got some sensory challenges. Long story short. When I’m at the appointment, I’m getting angry, impatient, irritable towards this person. And it really came down to it. I’m not concerned about my son.

I’m concerned about what’s the aftermath for me and is this inconveniencing and it’s stressing me out my schedule and completely unspiritual. But I was unaware thinking, oh, it’s because I really care about my son when later on it’s, man, I don’t know how I’m going to recover from this or how it’s going to help. How is this going to affect me after that?

Russ Ewell (01:08:41.272)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I find, what I find in life is I find that usually I’m unaware of how I feel, I’m unaware of how I think because I’m moving too fast, and that part of spirituality is having enough confidence in God

to be, and I think you talked about this earlier, Ray, having enough confidence in God not to try to take control of everything. I think you pointed out, if I remember right earlier, you said that part of spirituality is not needing to be in control of outcomes, not being in control of what’s going on. And I know for me, whether it’s taking the kids to the dentist or whatever, any time I’m not having my schedule according to my plan, I feel out of control. And when I feel out of control, the three beasts come into my life of anxiety, stress, and fear. And then it’s, you know, I’m not sure it’s that you don’t care about your son as much as those three demons jump on you and they begin to get you distracted from what you’re there for. And I’ve found that in my life. And I think some of that is because spirituality is the key to being able to handle what I would say is, you know, crisis and difficulty and pressure. And I think it’s important we understand that because crisis, difficulty and pressure are things that can affect us just as average, everyday human beings. But then it can also affect us in our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health. It can affect us in all kinds of ways. In Proverbs 24:10 it says,

 if you do nothing in a difficult time, your strength is limited. 

Then it goes on in the NLT, that was the CSB. It goes on in the NLT, says, 

if you fail under pressure, your strength is too small. 

And then in Proverbs 24:10, the voice says, 

if you fall apart during a crisis, then you weren’t very strong to begin with. 

And all those things hit me as, again, anxiety, stress, and fear. Those things come at me, and the next thing you know, I mean, I’ve been in situations where my son is having a health challenge and then I faint. You know, I remember taking Jordan, he was gonna get his wisdom teeth removed, and they talked about, oh, I hope we don’t have to go to the hospital and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. I had to do a lot of things with my electrolytes and my hydration, but the reason is, is I fell apart under crisis. My wife, Gail, she didn’t faint, it was me. And I had to face in that moment that there’s something missing internally in me, and that’s the spiritual strength to be able to handle crises, handle pressure, handle difficulty. And it’s funny, is I can handle it in certain areas very easily.

But when it comes to my kids and them being in pain or them having difficulty, man, I am just like, out. And the reason I mention this is because it’s so important to be spiritual and that involves getting the kind of internal strength we need to be able to handle whatever life gives us. And understanding that as the Bible says, the rain falls in the just and the unjust. We’re not getting anything worse or better than anybody else. It’s just different.

It’s just different. We’re not getting worse or better. It’s just different. And so when you think about all that Stone and you think about difficulty, crisis, pressure, and the importance of being spiritual in that, how do you process that as someone who’s raised kids or out of the home, who building their own families and building their own lives? Are you able to reflect a little bit and go, hey, if you’re out there, you’ve got young children or you’re young married, here’s why spirituality is good.

And this is what a spiritual culture in your small group or your church can do for you. Do have any thoughts on that? Just, you know, something brief or concise you can throw at people that they can use as a takeaway and we’ll come back to later.

Stone Eleazer (01:12:28.322)

Yeah, well I think what I love what you said about facing, facing reality. I think sometimes what happens to me is I’m a fearful person. I get anxious under stress and I get afraid. But I tell myself, here’s the problem that I have is, in my head, I’m not a fearful person. I tell myself I’m not a fearful person. I’m not supposed to be afraid. I’m old enough not to be afraid, whatever the thing in my head that keeps coming at me. And yet I am really afraid, which I go into denial mode. And so I get very disconnected from my heart and I start acting and behaving in a way I think is what I’m supposed to do.

Well, my heart is in a very different place. But the problem with that is, as sort of raising kids, I would always lead to things like anger, right? Anger was concealing fear. So I would go into, the funny thing was my kids could tell I was angry when I was trying to fake it. I would walk into a room and go, I know I’m angry and I’m gonna walk in this room and I’m gonna just be really cool. And so I may walk in and go, so how do you even go? One of my kids will look at me and go, especially the one most insightful, why are you so angry? And I would be like, how do you get that? I’ve tried to fake it as best I can. But anyway, you know, being a fearful person who tries to fake it all the time, always ends up disaster. Other emotions come out that are…

Russ Ewell (01:13:59.598)

Yeah, that reminds me of Rocky III. Do remember Rocky III? It’s one of my favorite movies. When Silvester, Rocky goes into the ring with Apollo and Apollo tells him against Clever Link, says, keep your cool, keep your cool. And then Apollo loses his cool, right? And he starts getting ready to get in a fight after he told him to keep his cool. It reminds me of that. But again, I want to come back to this idea, which we were talking about before. I think in those moments, I would question, whether you were faking it as much as you were unaware. Because a lot of times for me, I’m unaware that I’m angry. I’m not aware of it. And so I think spirituality is about developing our awareness. And we create those podcasts on self-awareness people can go back and listen to because that’s part of spirituality. So creating a spiritual culture then could be defined as creating a culture of awareness. And the, you know, one of the people I talked to, because I got to a point where I was like, I don’t understand how spirituality and therapy, psychiatry and psychology work together. Because I thought they have to work together because we have people in a church, our church that I’m in, that have emotional health challenges and they’re trying to be spiritual. And sometimes I found it running in conflict. There would be people who would go and say, hey, just you know, the real solution for you is go out here and get this treatment. Or the people who say, you don’t need treatment, you need a better relationship with God. And I went, wait a minute, these two things should work together. They shouldn’t work separately. And I went and spoke with one of my friend’s brother who was a professor at Fresno State, Ron Kiyuna. And I said, hey, can you help me understand how to think about this? And at that moment, I understood that the therapeutic tools that God has blessed us with are a complement to the spiritual power God gives us. And just as we have, you know, medical conditions, I’m going to go see an orthopedic surgeon just to make sure my knees are in shape. I don’t need surgery or anything, but to make sure my, you know, find out why is this aching and why is that aching, which those who are young out there, you’ll learn about that in the future. But by the time you learn about it, you won’t have to remember this podcast. But, I go see him. I don’t go to see the orthopedic guy and forget about God because I think that God put it on my heart to go see him. And I think that that guy is going to help me with my body because God blessed him with the talent and ability and determination to become the guy he is. And so I think when it comes to spiritual culture, it’s important that we address something that I think goes on in society, which is the temptation that to replace God, instead of keep God in his place and add the tools. I want to read a scripture, Romans 12:2 

do not allow this world to mold you in its own image. Instead, be transformed from the inside out by renewing your mind. As a result, you’ll be able to discern what God wills and whatever God finds good, pleasing and complete. 

I think when we keep our mind renewed, meaning we’re open to what God is doing in our life, it becomes easier to recognize when the world is trying to conform. As Stone, you’re talking earlier about, you know, you know, trying to parent the kids and all that. I think for both of us, we come from a period of time from when we were born and we were raised where boys were definitely not taught to search inward. We were not taught introspection. And introspection and reflection are part of how we become aware. I think the younger generations have a little bit more of this than we do. They, they’ve, for boys particularly, there’s a little more friendliness to boys having emotion.

There’s a little bit more, not enough, but there’s a little bit more friendliness to boys talking about their emotions, how they feel, what they’re going through. But for people like you and me, we weren’t never given that as an option. So we grew up, at least I can speak for myself, I grew up unaware because that’s how culture raised me. That’s what culture told me, be tough, don’t crack, don’t fall apart, don’t show weakness.

And I’ve had to, through God and marriage and life, be able to tear those walls down so that I could get there. But in doing so, I credit God and I’ve benefited from other things. Like I mentioned in earlier podcast, reading the book, The Adult Children of Alcoholics. That’s a psychological, social work type of work. That comes from people being involved with people on that level.

And I learned a lot about myself, and I that’s a value. But the Bible teaches in the message translation of Psalm 146:3-9. You can read all that, but I want to read a part of that. 

Don’t put your life in the hands of experts who know nothing of life, of salvation. Mere humans don’t have what it takes. When they die, their projects die with them. Instead, get help from the God of Jacob. Put your hope in God and know real blessings. 

David Brooks writes in an article, a column of his a year or two ago, in earlier cultural epochs, many people derive their self-worth from their relationship with God or from their ability to be a winner in the commercial marketplace. He goes on and says, but in a therapeutic culture, people’s sense of self-worth depends on their subjective feelings about themselves. Do I feel good about myself? Do I like me? He goes on and writes, for many people, trauma became their source of identity. People began defining themselves by the way they had been hurt. 

When therapeutic culture replaces God, and I think is really important, some things can happen to our relationships and they become unspiritual. And sometimes I think people who are in the church can get into a place where they don’t keep God at the center. Because the reality is I’ve benefited a lot from reading tremendous books. One of my favorites is Jonathan Haidt’s new book, relatively new, The Anxious Generation that addresses the psychological, emotional, and social impact of iPhones, Android phones, social media on people that’s had a tremendously negative impact on mental health. I believe in all that. But I also believe, and he writes in his book about this, that spirituality, religion, and God is a key component to giving people self-worth. In fact, in his book he talks about the fact that the people most resistant to the comparison culture of social media are those with some type of faith or religious belief that gives them an anchor against all that’s coming against them. It’s not saying you shouldn’t use the tools of therapy, but it’s saying, or he’s not saying this, I’m saying this, do not devalue God. And I think one of the things we have to be careful about in our relationships as Christians, in our small groups, in our churches, is when therapeutic culture replaces God. 

Number one, when it does, we become self-absorbed, craving public affirmation to feel good about ourselves. We use social media to beg for attention and validation, where, as David Brooks talks about, we end up finding rejection instead.

How many times, and this is documented, especially with young girls, where they go online and they get rejection, they get ridicule for how they appear, for weight, and it’s super destructive. And I think when we start to have a therapeutic culture replace God, and people start to become really focused on looking to the world or looking to some kind of a thing outside of God to make them feel good, they fall into a trap.

Brooks writes about all these things. He writes about once trauma referred to brutal physical wounding, not upsetting experiences. When we begin to say, I’m upset, and then we start to label that as trauma, one, that’s not respecting people who had incredibly serious trauma. It’s not respecting the fact that me being hurt, even in an emotional way, is not the same as a Vietnam vet going into war and coming back after four years or three years of serious impacting or someone who was abused significantly growing up in major ways. 

I think we can end up labeling things as trauma that we really shouldn’t, that don’t qualify as that. And then the other thing he writes about is the flip side of the fragile victim mindset is telling the snowflakes of the world to toughen up and stop whining.

So what some people do in response to therapeutic culture is they start telling me, stop saying you’re a victim and shut up and get with it. Well, I don’t think that’s solution either. But therapeutic culture puts us in these places where spiritual culture is so much healthier. And then the instability of the self has created an immature public culture where people become impulsive, dramatic, erratic and cruel.

I think that because so few people have spirituality at the forefront of their lives, especially spirituality based on the Bible, when I, Jesus talks about this, when you don’t remove the log from your eye, you can’t help your brother remove the speck. I think there’s a, when you go on social media, there’s a lot of logs being flung. And even in society, I was reading a book last night called The Anxiety Culture. It’s an academic written, a

book written by academics. And they talk about all the things happening in society. And then there’s also some statistics on this in Pew Research, Gallup, and others do these polls, talking about how political conversations have increased people’s anxiety by 74%, 72%, just having to hear it all. And I think all that comes because people become very absorbed in this is what I feel, this is what I think, this is my opinion.

We get upset by politicians, we get upset by business people. I do it. What I have to do sometimes is just turn it off, because I can’t, know, in your mind and heart you start arguing with someone you don’t even know that you probably shouldn’t even take seriously. But I think some of that happens when we become self-absorbed and wrapped up in ourselves. And so I think it’s essential that we spend time, you know, addressing the tendency of even believers to come in and start to label things therapeutically. When they’re not therapists, they’re not psychiatrists. I’ve talked to lot of psychiatrists and therapists. I’ve never met any of them who say, hey, God’s not a value. They may not even believe in it, but they believe the support people get is incredible and will only help their mental health journey. But I’ve also told people in church who think, we’re not talking enough about this. Well, the reality is, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a psychiatrist, reading a book doesn’t make me an expert. What I’ve got to do is lean into what I know how to do. Talk about being spiritual and then encourage people to use those amazing tools that God has given us in psychiatry, psychology, and regular medicine. And so those are some of the things I’m thinking about and I want to just discuss a little bit more before we end to be able to help people go, all right, we’ve got to get into a spiritual culture and I will get into a little bit more details of how we can do that. Go ahead, I know you guys have a lot of thoughts on that.

Stone Eleazer (01:26:09.614)

So, you know, I think both therapeutic and spiritual culture, I think God and therapeutic, sort of want to help us understand what’s happening to us. Right? When we’ve gotten to ourself in a place where, you know, either life is stressful, we can’t get along with, you know, family members or we are discouraged, can’t get ourselves out of it, a lot of anxiety, that God wants us to understand what’s happening. think Therapeutics’ goal is to try to help you understand what’s happening to you. But I think with God, God offers solutions that are broader, meaning that some of the things that I have to put in perspective like, that’s something that happened to me maybe by someone who wasn’t aware of what they were doing, or maybe they were aware and they were just unkind or acting out of anger. Well, God has a way of helping us work through that and understanding the sinful nature and understanding the heart condition and how that can affect the way that we treat people. And so I have a much better ability through spirituality not just to understand what happened to me, but now how do I respond so that I can get healthy? How do I respond in a way that allows me to understand the pathway forward, which provides us much more, I think, the ability to be able to see God’s plan and how he can turn those weaknesses and hardships into strengths and opportunities. And it really does help us in that perspective.

Ray Kim (01:27:49.995)

I want to jump in there so because I think this is really relevant when it comes to relationships that there are times where we can hear this is what’s wrong with your relationship or here’s how you have to change or here’s some tools to to help build a relationship. But what I also found was I couldn’t I never learned how to actually I could identify my anger and bitterness whether it’s towards my dad whether it’s towards my wife at different times. I didn’t know how to have actually forgive. And that was a spiritual thing. Meaning, I looked at the Bible and scriptures like James 5:16 about when I confess my sin, so I’ll be healed, there was a spiritual element that no matter how many times I tried to change my relationships for a good result, I kept responding and reacting the same way. And it wasn’t until I started understanding God’s love or how much God had a vision or a plan for my life and how God viewed relationships. It had to change my mind from the way the world and my friends or peers would teach me how to think about relationships.

Russ Ewell (01:28:58.83)

Yeah, one of the things that’s interesting about what you guys talk about is that, and I want to make sure people can of grasp, when God is involved, He’s working on things that are transformative based on his power. And I think we can forget that. That God is powerful. Resurrection proves his power. We can change anything. And what you mentioned Ray about forgiveness, that’s a tool that is not really a tool. That’s a power. The ability to forgive is a power. And it does not come from anybody explaining anything to you. The thing that is uniquely amazing about being a Christian is that we receive from God extraordinary unconditional love, which then allows us to respond to the unjust and the cruel in a way that is as amazing as the cross. And it’s what I think makes Christianity so attractive to people. If we don’t, and we get into what the world is into, being fragile and

 I think it was Brooks writes about being a fragile narcissist. When we avoid the mental health crisis, when we don’t go like to me, if we really want to attack the mental health crisis and help, we’ll start talking about social media and its impact on our lives. We’ll start talking about, we’ll start talking to our teenagers and our middle schoolers about not just restricting it, but understanding what six hours on TikTok will do to you. Instead of getting into safetyism, and safe spaces, we’ll start talking, get into deep relationships, trusting relationships. They can only come when both individuals obey the Bible. Instead of, you know, rebuking people or shaming people and calling them to be rugged individualists, why aren’t you tough it out? We’ll have empathy and understanding. And I’ve had to learn that. I’ve had people tell me after I’ve delivered a message or a talk, hey, I have this particular challenge or condition in my life, this particular mental health issue and because of that when I hear you talk this is what I hear and that’s how I learned to put in disclaimers or to explain I’m talking about a human condition of anxiety I’m not talking about the anxiety that’s clinical and in doing those kind of things we can be respectful of the fact that people have it without taking the spirituality of God out of it and I think when I look around in society today I see a lot of immaturity in public life, a lot of impulsiveness, a lot of drama, a lot of being erratic and a lot of being cruel. And I think that’s just because people don’t have the benefit of a relationship with God. They don’t have the benefit of God giving us enough love to anchor us in life. And so one of the things I just want to encourage people to do is when they’re looking at all of life, when they’re going through life, is to make sure that they sit down and say, am I approaching this spiritually? How do we know if we are? We’re using the Bible. The Bible becomes our standard for truth, not how we feel, and not something that doesn’t have God as the basis. When prayer becomes the thing we focus on, when we turn to prayer for the things that are unjust, the things that are unfair, because the reality of the matter is, the world at large is going to hurt us. It’s hurt all three of us. And our challenge is to rely on God to become spiritually resilient. 

We look at the pages of the Bible. There is so much pain inflicted on so many people of God by unjust nations and unjust people. But their answer was to go to God. But we have an unusual benefit. Not only can we go to God, but when our physical bodies require a tool that allows us to manage other things, we have medical advances and psychiatric advances that are extraordinary. And so I want to encourage people as we’ll begin now to talk in a little bit in our next podcast about how do we conquer stress, anxiety, and fear? How do we tackle those? And the reason we had to talk about this early is we’re not talking about all of us becoming

professional psychologists because we read a book or an article. We’re talking about all of us being spiritual people who also know how to say, have these incredible tools over here we can use for those who need them. But for the majority of us, I think the number is 32% of people have some kind of a psychological or anxiety disorder. Okay, that’s 32%. The rest of us have anxiety too, and spirituality can knock it out for all of us.

For that 32%, they’re gonna need to use those tools that God has given us. And I wanna just say this, no one should be ashamed or embarrassed to say I have a mental health challenge, especially not a guy. Because to me, I remember when I went in and my doctor said, you’ve got high blood pressure, and this is before I got off the high blood pressure drugs, he said, you need to take these medications that I’d never done before. I said, I don’t wanna do it. I said, I don’t wanna be on drugs. He goes, okay, I see you have an obstacle here. Why don’t you just think about it as a vitamin for the heart? I think more of us need to get excited about the idea that we have tools that are just vitamins for the brain, vitamins for the heart, vitamins for the knees, or all kinds of things we can do to keep us going. It’s why we can live longer and we’re grateful to God for that. But we cannot replace God with any of that because of the extraordinary things he does. Thank you for listening. We hope this starts a conversation. There’s nothing here that we think we’re exactly 100 % right about, but we do believe it’s a conversation we need to have so we keep God at the center as we deal with the different trials and challenges of daily life.

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