Ron + Hope: Unfiltered - I Feel Numb (A Heart That Cannot Feel)

Foreign.

Hey, everybody, it's Ron and Hope. Unfiltered, real, raw, relevant. And we are so glad that you are here today.

My voice is hoarse.

Is it because you preach so much?

I preach so much.

You preached so good, though.

Preached in Dallas at the business thing with Pedro Odal and then preached in Minnesota at Creative church, Jonathan Bronson. 118 times is what we told Jonathan.

No, we preached 10 times in a row and it was awesome.

It was a great, great weekend with great people and a great church. And then I've been doing stuff and pre taping today and my voice is tired.

Bless his heart.

I might just let you take it. Just let you take it.

Just run with it.

WISD and theological understanding and Greek and Hebrew background. I can do it and just run with it.

I can do it.

I know you could. I know you could.

So I've been to the school of hard knocks. I didn't get a seminary cemetery degree.

I ain't been to seminary. I went to a small Bible college.

Okay.

Seminary is too cultured for me.

Is it?

They wouldn't accept me in seminary.

But your hair looks good.

But I. So it didn't look good yesterday.

It's different. You did it different today.

Gotta keep.

What?

To have the proper drip, you have to keep mixing things up, baby. Your drip will get dry. Oh, your drip will run dry. That's it. But somebody.

You can't let it run dry.

My clothes, I'm like, I come in here one day with, you know, the sneakers, and I come in here one day with the suit.

Yeah.

You just got to mix it up. You got to drip in different ways in different places.

Okay.

And be honest with you, I get tired of maintenance. Follow me around a mop anyway.

Oh, my Lord.

Drip coming up.

Well, I'm about to take you down to the altar and put some oil.

I gotta be honest with you. They may have to hand me a towel.

Oh, my God. Y' all do know he's playing, right? He is not cocky or prideful, but he is coming across that way right now. Oh, but anyhow, I do like your hair.

I'm sorry. You know, I do get silly when I'm tired.

You do? But I like your hair, Ron.

You like my hair?

Yeah.

Well, good. Cause she helped fix it.

Yeah, I like it.

She helped fix it. She came in there, she didn't like the way I was doing it, and she took her hands and just started doing it wild. And then sprayed it before I had a chance to respond.

Sure did.

So it kind of is what it is today. If I look like I'm 11, it's the kind of way we fix our grandkids. So today it's good to laugh because what we're going to talk about ain't funny.

Yeah, well, it's not funny, but it's very common.

And before we say what it is, I don't want people to run off because I'm going to tell you why I got burned out on this. I mean, hope you remember I started complaining to you. Every YouTube, every Instagram, every preacher, every series. I'm like, man, man, you know somebody. I mean, I'm like, it's so depressing. Somebody gives. Give the life of God here. We're talking about anxiety.

Yeah.

And dealing with it. We are in an anxiety epidemic. The millennial generation is the most prescribed generation in history by far, far and away. And there is, there is this generational numbing effect.

Yeah.

And let me tell y' all something. Let me tell you guys something, because I want to be. I want to walk a fine line here.

I'm going to look up a statistic while you're doing that.

Do that. She's really buying something on Amazon.

No, I'm not. Oh, my word.

She brings it up by now.

But if I see something, I'm sure.

It'Ll show up on my doorstep. I'm sure. Anyway, I have had overwhelming anxiety in about a. It's about a three year span of my life. I took medicine and I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to be hypocritical. I'm going to be very, very forthright. I would have people come to altars for years and say I'm having panic attacks and things. And I. I couldn't relate. Does that make sense, baby? I couldn't relate. You know, I thought it was maybe a hypernervousness, you know, undue stress, undue load on somebody's life, you know, until I had one.

Yeah.

And you remember when I was having them very bad time in our life and they were triggered out of that very difficult time in our life. And I'm going to tell you what. I know the word and I love Jesus and I try to walk in the spirit, you know, my life. Nobody knows my life like you. But getting that thing to under my feet to date is one of the most difficult battles I have ever had in my life.

Yeah. Because it's so multifaceted.

It has a lot of tentacles.

It does. It has so many connections and tentacles. It has a root system but then it's a thought process and then it affects your physical body. Then it burns out adrenal cortisol and.

It'S like you gotta unwind it all.

So many things.

You said something good. I didn't think about it. There almost has to be a holistic approach to remedy.

Yes, it's true.

It's not one thing.

No.

And it's certainly not appealing because we've.

Tried just one thing.

Yep.

And we've tried appeal.

Yeah. It's not that there is a reason. It is that it's there. But the word tentacles. I love the word tentacles. It is a holistic approach to undoing what it's done. And I'm gonna tell you something. If you don't get it under your feet, you will have to live mummified and numbed with medicine every day or you will feel like your insides are on fire. And so I talked today letting you know there was a time where I really didn't understand and I really didn't get it. And so I really probably didn't have a lot of empathy or sympathy for it until these things came about in my life. And I mean to tell you here again, top three battles in my lifetime was overcoming that and trying to get it where I managed it and it don't manage me.

That's huge for you to say that. I mean, you're 59 years old. Just kidding. You're almost 55.

I'm not almost 55.

Yeah, you are.

I'm a very solid 54.

Ron. You're closer to 55.

Baby. I am not 55 till July.

Right.

You're closer to that closest June.

You're on the other side of the hill going down to 55.

Listen.

Double nickels. So for you to say that so many years of your life, that's top three issue that you've had to deal with. That's pretty profound, Ron. And. And for me, I'm a solid 54. Just turned in in January. Okay. Just turned it in January. And so for me, I like that.

We're solid, by the way.

Okay. Anyway. Had no idea what I was feeling in my life up until age 35 when I had an emotional breakdown when was anxiety. Had no idea. Nobody talked about it, nobody explained it. All you heard about in those days was like mental. Mental cases. Like being in a straight jacket person who really struggled with anxiety. But I had lived with such a. With a level of anxiety in my life for so long that I was completely burned out at 35 years old and couldn't deal with any amount. Not one little feather drop on me another day. And then the years of coming out of all that. It was a battle.

It's a battle.

It was a battle.

It's a battle. And we're going to talk about what we did and we're going to talk about what you can do. But I want to go way back. If we have the most, you know, Valium prescribed, benzo prescribed generation ever time 10. Why?

Yeah, I was just looking at the statistics. Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect nearly 30% of adults at some point in their lives. Over 40 million adults in the US that's 19% have a diagnosed anxiety disorder.

That's not even talking about the people who don't.

Yeah.

Who don't have the resources to even go find that out. They're just living with a generalized anxiety every day. And I feel for that. I'm going to tell you, I really feel for it. I got a lot of ways I can go here. We're not scripted, we're not reading off notes. But I want you to stay with us because I really believe it'll be helpful. Because the greatest thing I can ever do is tell you my journey.

Absolutely.

Be vulnerable. Real, raw, relevant. Be vulnerable and tell you my journey.

And as a man and woman who loves God, who is pursuing godliness, who is pursuing a life of holiness, who's pursuing righteousness. Yes. So these are people who have really struggled with these issues. And we're not on the world side.

We're.

We're on God's side and we're trying to do this God's way. And there's so many people in the church, spirit filled, who are completely broken and we got to deal with it.

I told you I wanted to start off by telling everybody that I do believe there is a clinical. I do believe there are people whose endocrine system is messed up. If your body is producing too much of this and not enough of that, you can feel like you got a demon and it needs to be cast out. And so I did find out that in my unbelievably stressed life, high paced, where I took no break, no sabbaticals, no nothing. That and some testing that I did. My. My serotonin glands were fried. Those are the ones that manage you and balance things out. And he said I was running off pure adrenaline. He said, so your adrenaline is telling you house is on fire 24 hours a day? He said you need adrenaline to tell you the house is on fire. So you get your stuff and get out. Then it's got a background, you're sitting on a couch, nothing's going on. And he said, you're having that same.

There is no fire.

There's no fire, but you feel like there is. And so I had to go into a whole. Not a rehab, not a rehab center, but I had to go into this holistic approach. How did I get where I am and how am I going to undo this? Because I can't live this way, right?

And I'm sure there's a lot of people listening saying, that's me, that's me, that's me. And before we jump into it, we're going to just talk about our amazing sponsor, Bolen Branch. Listen, we're officially finally, thank you, Jesus. In spring. Yes, here we are, it's March and we are gearing toward warmer weather and longer days. Listen. Which all start with one thing to enjoy all that beautifulness. It's a great night's sleep. You can wake up feeling rested and refreshed with the softest, literally the softest, most luxurious sheets from bowl and branch. They are the bedding experts making the highest quality sheets with incredible craftsmanship. Each sheet set is slow made for an unmatch softness with 100% traceable organic cotton that gets softer every single time that you wash them. You know, we're on the go all the time so sleep is so important to us. And these sheets are so amazing. Listen, they get softer over time but we've started even packing our pillowcases. I think I'm gonna have to start packing my entire sheet set. I love these crisp white, white sheets but they also have 10 other colors to choose from. You can get a 30 night risk free guarantee with free shipping and returns on all U.S. orders. So make the most of bedtime with bowling branch sheets. Call to action right here. Are you ready? Sleep better at night with bowl and branch sheets. Get 15% off your first order when you use promo code Ron and hope@bolandbranch.com that's Bole and Branch. B O L L A N D branch dot Promo code Ronandhope.

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Not having a good night's sleep. So if you're battling anxiety, maybe you need some bowling branch sheets.

I want to, I'm going to do the split now. Right here. We are halfway through our program and we hadn't gone. The answer. I want to get the answer. The fact is there is a clinical time, okay? We are not doctors.

No, we're not.

So I don't want to talk about that kind. Okay? I don't want to talk about that. That's not my level of expertise. And the fact is I'm going to tell somebody something's wrong and they're going to be upset about it. I do not know a lot about clinical anxiety and depression and how it is diagnosed and how it's treated. So we're going to take that kind off the table because I do not believe it's either or. I believe there are several different factors playing into it. The spiritual side, the traumatic side, the soulish side is what we want to talk about.

Well, there are reasons, number one, that you have it. So you've got to take the time to investigate. Why am I feeling the way I'm feeling? What is the root cause of this? Is it because I was raped? Is it because I have no money? Is it because I have a. An abusive marriage? You know what. What is causing this anxiety in my life? And there are. There. There is no life, there's no one's life where you will never have anxiety. Yeah, there's going to be some, and some of it's good, but it does. You have to learn how to manage it.

Doctors always, when they check my blood pressure, say, you need to lower your stress level.

How?

I got three kids, you know, I got three kids, all toddlers. I got an exploding church. I got an unbelievable schedule. I don't know what. What do you mean, lessen the stress on your. That's not. It sounds nice in a doctor's office. It's just not possible because life is life.

Yeah.

And life. And no matter who's living it, it has its stressors and you have to learn how to manage it. It ain't that you get rid of it, it's that you manage it. Number one, let's go back to how spiritually can it get there. The Bible says, let no bitter root spring up among you and defile many. Let no bitter root spring up among you and defile many. Most anxiety on the spiritual side is usually something that's been carried a very long time, that is unresolved. It's not a short time because we are built for anxiety. In the short term, we're built for that. I had a psychologist, a secular psychologist say, if you didn't have some anxiety, you'd never get nothing done.

Right.

You know, it's that. That makes you get up out of your chair and do something. But these people who live paralyzed by it, that's not normal. And so normally you've had a long period of time hope there's something traumatic yet unresolved that has been internalized and then years later has called devastating effects. And a lot of people, sadly, hope don't connect this with that.

I didn't. I didn't. I mean, there were so many years where I'm like, I know I'm feeling like I'm bubbling over with hot steam on the inside. And I don't know why, because I'm looking around at my life that I'm living now, the life I'm in right now. Beautiful kids, wonderful husband, Church is growing. You know, we have a house, we have a car. We can go out to eat on Friday night. It all looks so good right now. So why am I feeling like this?

Yeah, it just didn't look good. It was good.

Yeah.

I was a very happily married.

I talk about this when I do a lot of my testimony is the beautiful house example. You know, you can have a beautiful home. I mean, your dream home can just be built. Your wallpaper matches your curtains. You know, that kind of house. And everything looks great on the outside. But if the plumbing wasn't put together properly behind the walls and if there's cracks in the foundation, eventually that beautiful house is going to have trouble. And that's what we do when we keep adding weight and weight and weight and pressure and pressure and pressure on top of these broken things is that you end up cracking. And that's what anxiety does.

Permission to speak freely? I've told people I knew from the time I met you that.

That I was wonderful, amazing.

I thought you blew me away. Nobody ever made. Had ever made me feel like you. And you still do to this day. But I knew there was something very fragile about you. And I can't explain. Don't ask me to. I can't explain it. I just knew. And it brought out a ton of protective instincts in me. You remember me? I think sometimes you saw it as overbearing, But I was not going to let anything hurt you. I was not going to let anybody hurt you. I was not going to let anybody put you in a compromising position. I think sometime during the days you may have misunderstood what those actions were, but it was, there's nobody going to hurt my wife. Because even though I didn't know, I knew.

Yeah.

Does that make sense? And I covered you. And I covered you hard. And may not have helped, but I did it out of love and out of protection. When you started cracking because of this generalized anxiety you had had from your youth, from trauma, over trauma, abusive house, abusive surroundings, severely abusive at times. And then a rape that happened that you internalized, never told a soul, you walked in silence about and all these things. It was when you landed in my lap. God gave you to me. Knowing that those things were there, I didn't know, but God gave them to me. And you did in your early 30s, you started cracking. Now when I saw that happening in you, it increased my stress level because by that time we were on a very large stage. So you were sitting there and you were doing everything you could to manage your life. Now you can speak to this. You were trying to be a mom. You had three tough kids. Our kids kind of weren't normal. I walk around just seeing all these kids holding their dad's hand and obeying. We were chasing our kids. You know, they were just. They were a handful. We had. We were building, building, building. I mean literally building buildings.

Just.

And we were in the exploding. So all of our biggest stressors were happening at the same time. And I saw that far away look in your eye. I saw it. I saw it coming. I had no idea what it was. I know nothing about anxiety. I didn't come from a background where we even went to doctors and we certainly didn't go to any therapist. And so everything takes place on an altar. And if you can't take place in an altar, I don't know what to do with it. And.

And I'd been to the altar many.

Times, so it was sowing you not doing good. Seeing me, seeing me not seeing. Did I say sewing? Like sewing somewhere.

It's the word of the podcast.

You saw you can solve things.

Yeah. But you didn't sawing them. You run.

Why are you trying to find my weaknesses in front of everybody?

It's fun talking about the words that you.

Seeing what was happening to you. I tried to buffer you from the opinion of the masses, but that still.

Didn'T get me the help I needed.

No, we didn't get you any help.

Nope.

We didn't get you any help. So then of course, things started to fall apart and you started to fall apart in your personal life, which led falling apart in our marriage. And I remember. I'll let you talk about yours. My. My first stint with something's wrong. This is not normal. Is laying in bed. I remember it well. We're at the lake laying in bed.

With you personally dealing with that.

This is my Experience. And I thought I was having a heart attack. I thought my heart was going to beat outside of my sternum. And we went to the doctor.

Because you thought it was your heart.

And they put me on acid reflux. No, that was the time I got hospitalized. They gave me acid reflux medicine. They gave me previsit. I remember what they did, and actually, it helped a little bit. But when everything really fell apart, I got hospitalized for the anxiety, had created insomnia. And that was when they did all the heart tests. And they were going to do four of them. They quit after two. They said, your heart's fine. Then they brought in a therapist to start talking about anxiety. And I'm like, anxiety. I'm not in a hospital because of anxiety.

Because the symptoms were the rapid heart.

Rate, the heart rate, can't breathe, you know, and elephants are paralyzed with fear. Feels like something sitting on your. Yeah, I had all of that. So he came and put me about anxiety. But I will be honest with you, Hope. And he prescribed me medicine, which I got on, but I was so desperate.

Yeah.

I didn't know what I had. Didn't know how I got there, didn't know how to fix it. And I was so desperate for just a night's sleep. I remember, Hope, when I got to the hospital after that, two weeks of not sleeping a wink for two solid weeks. And I remember. I don't even know what it was. I guess some kind of benzo. I remember they immediately got something in my arm. I was having a heart attack. And they put something to calm me down in my heart. And I remember I had not felt calm in so long. I sit there and tears were rolling down my face.

Yeah.

I know how somebody could get addicted to a pill.

Right? Because it's a. I think they.

I would have done anything.

It was Xanax because they said they.

Gave me something in my vein.

They said it hit quick.

I just remember sitting there and. And finally I wasn't on fire and I could breathe. And I sat there and I remember my eyes filled up with tears. So these people who. You don't understand. Well, how could a man of God get addicted? Oh, how could a woman? I know how they could have, because after, I felt peace again. Now, it's not God's peace. It's medicine peace. And it's temporary. If it's not God, it's always temporary, which means you need another one in four hours. Now. Now, I knew that. I knew I was in a dangerous place. I did not want to be the next preacher pill popper.

Yeah.

And so I knew I was desperate to quench the fire on the inside of my body. But I also knew that what they had given me, they began to tutor me and tell me it's highly addictive.

Addictive.

And so I took it. But I went to war with it as soon as I took it because I did not want it to be a lifestyle.

Right.

Tell them about your situation. Was yours ever sprung up like mine or just. Was it like a five or six your whole life?

Well, I didn't know what it was, so I guess it was probably five or six, my whole life. But then after I got married to you and the weight of ministry, another type of weight hit my life and finances and adulthood.

Okay, I'm going to interview you. How did it make you feel?

Like I describe it in my book. Like. Like a pressure cooker on the inside. Just anxiety. Anxiety just building, building, building, building, building. Yes. And at times I did want to run. I would want to run away, want to be alone, get out of town, do what, do all of those things. Just thinking that if I left the situation that it would make me feel better. And temporarily it did. But you can't live like that. And so my whole life I felt that level of. Medium level of anxiety. But then it just got to a certain point where it just beat me down. I could not manage it like that anymore because I did not know what it was. Because, you know, you have to know the name of what you're dealing with. Strongman, what's his name? You have to know the name.

You have to first bind the strong man.

Yeah, you gotta bind it first, so you gotta identify it so that you can deal with it. And I had not had any teaching, coaching, wisdom, mentorship, anybody in my life to see that and talk me through it, to be able to bind it so that I could deal with it until at age 43, when I ended up at Living Waters, our marriage was almost over. It saved my life because we delved into all of these things that I was feeling since I was a child and things that I had to deal with. Did I get on medicine? I sure did. I got on Lexapro.

Lexapro.

I remember Lexapro for two years. And I didn't wanna take it, but they said, you're so far gone off the spectrum of. Of anxiety and breed, they wanted a breed and a post traumatic stress disorder. They said, this will get you back to baseline.

Now, you were clinically diagnosed with ptsd, yes? Correct.

They said it will get you back to a baseline to where you can, Your. Your body, your physical body can learn to regulate again. And then they started, after two years, weaning me off, and I was healthy enough physically and spiritually that I knew how to deal with it. I could recognize it. I could recognize a trigger, I could recognize a feeling.

But the generalized anxiety went down as you unraveled your soul.

Yes.

As you went in and said, how did I get here? Why do I feel this way? And how did I end up in this state? When you went and got ministry and got help and you started unraveling it all. Look, temperature goes down.

Yeah, but they felt like my temperature was so fried that I wouldn't even be able to receive the ministry till I got that down.

Our time is really left. But let me go here. So you had. You were getting spiritual help. Yes, help for your soul. But we went to an endocrinologist and had your blood work done. I was there with you. I remember they had all these different things. They were testing in your blood to test your glands.

Yes.

And the guy came out, he said all of it. He said this first number right here. I remember he showed you your numbers and said, this first number right here is enough to throw you in a full blown depression before he even got to this long list. So the holistic approach, but it's almost.

Like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Because he said this number can throw you into depression. But the truth of the matter is, after much study, is that stress saps your testosterone. So I had very low testosterone. He said having low testosterone will throw you into depression, but anxiety is what, from the whole time? Sex. So it was like, what comes first? So I think it's. It is a holistic approach.

You got it. You got to look at it holistically because the spiritual stuff going on inside of you affects your body.

It affects all of it.

It affects your body. So that's why the Bible says, work out salvation. If something in you needs saving, it has to begin in you.

Yeah.

You don't begin working outside in what is wrong with me? Why do I have these feelings? Why do I feel this way? Now I'm interviewing you and I'm asking you. I know the answer, but they don't. When it crumbled, it crumbled bad and it crumbled publicly. And a lot of these people probably remember it. Was there anything in the deterioration that could have stopped it? In the deterioration when you were just falling, you were reaching, you were anything to survive? Because, see, I watched that and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't know what to do.

Well, if I had had somebody who had wisdom and knowledge and all of these things, who could grabbed me up and prophetically said, this is, this, this is that, you know, a man of God, a woman of God, somebody who was hearing from God for my life.

And I remember when you first did seek help, that counselor came out of a room with you and I was worried about you, babe. I didn't. It was bad. I didn't know what was going on. He came out and told me, he said, don't ask her to do anything for six months. He said, no sex, no housework. I'll let you get somebody in your head. In other words, he said, right now, nothing needs to pull on her. Nothing needs to make it.

Yeah. When I tell y' all it was bad, listen, it was really, really bad. It's by the grace of God sitting here today in a style. It was bad, Ron, seriously. Okay, we're stopping right here before we wrap this up and we are going to talk about our amazing sponsor fabric. Listen, are you looking to get your financial future? Is that a stress on you? Well, if you don't have life insurance yet, that should be at the top of your list. Fabric by Gerber Life is the easy one stop shop you need with life insurance and other family finance solutions all in one place. Fabric by Gerber Life was designed by parents for parents to help you get a high quality, surprisingly affordable term life insurance policy. In less than 10 minutes.

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We're going to take about four to five minutes and wrap it up. So.

Okay, what did I do? How do you come out?

What I saw you do? I didn't. I kind of stayed back and managed our life that we had built and allowed God to incubate you and heal you. So I had a different way. What y' all managed it. I got a little bit of what you got when I could Participate in it. I had a deep personal pursuit of God.

Yeah.

I knew where to go, I knew how to cry out and I did a lot of it. And God through a lot of different mechanisms and even medicine bridged me. I'm going to be honest with you, people are like, do you take medicine? It was an angel for me for a little time in its time, it was an angel to me. So if you don't like that, you can email me. But I'm just going to tell you.

For Ron Carpenter, we going to say.

Back to you, it helped. It helped at the time. And this is what I would say. You've got to attack it spiritually, physically, soullessly. You have to attack it because anxiety is an epidemic, because it deals with all of three dimensions of our person. But yet when you run straight to the medical field, they will try to do one dimension. And if they can get that soothed.

Out, especially if you're a believer, if you're a spirit filled believer, you have to attack it all three dimensions.

I will say this as we end. Paul deals with this powerfully in Philippians. And you do have to understand feelings follow thoughts. It is very difficult to have great thoughts and feel terrible.

It's true.

It is very difficult to have negative thoughts and feel great feelings. Follow thoughts. You say, I can't control my feelings. Hold on. You can control your feelings if you control your thoughts?

Yes, Ronald Carpenter, you can control your.

Feelings if you control your thoughts. And whenever I am having a negative feeling or a bad feeling, I'll tell Hope. I say, I just need a minute to flush it. What am I flushing? I'm not flushing the feeling. I'm flushing the thoughts that released it. And say, I've learned to pull down a stronghold, anything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Because scientific proof is that 30 seconds after a thought, a feeling is accompanied with it. So you got 30 seconds to say, where did this originate and didn't come from God? You got to pull it down and make it obedient to Christ. So Paul says this, and I think you got one. You gonna read. He says this. He says, make your petitions, be made known to God with thanksgiving, and the peace of God that passes understanding shall guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. So what do you bring it to God with Thanksgiving. You're not saying, thank you, Lord, that I'm anxious. You're not saying it with Thanksgiving means what you're bringing to him. You know he already has a remedy for it.

Yeah, with Thanksgiving. Let your request Be made.

Be made known to God.

Yes. And then Philippians 4, 8, I stood on this. And even when our son, when he was young, remember, he struggled so bad with anxiety and OCD and obsessive thoughts and, you know, turned the stuffed animals around. They were looking at me. And we'd have to go through a ritual every single night of scratching back and praying and singing a certain song. And if you missed one verse, you'd have to start all the way over. And food can't touch. I'm talking about. It was bad, but we did this. We did this little thing with him. We took this scripture. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, what's noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever's admirable, if any, is excellent or praiseworthy. Think on these things, those eight categories. I wrote them up on a writing board for him. And I would ask him, I'd say, now, Chaz, what's right in your life? What is right? And we would write it down. What is pure? What are things that are pure? We'd write it down, Chaz, what is lovely? What is so beautiful in your life right now? Chaz, what is admirable about your life? And I said, and the Bible says these are the things that we're supposed to think about. These things right here. Not everything that's bad, not everything that's scary, not everything that might happen to you in the future, not the way you feel right now. I'm talking about the good things, the things that are praiseworthy, that are of a good report. And you start thinking on these things. It totally transformed Chaz's life. It transformed my life. And it's all about what you place your belief system in. You know, we all got.

And Chaz overcome it. And Chaz is not on anything to do.

We all have terrible things in our life. Not enough of this, too much of that. You know, not enough time in the day. You know, life's whatever. But if you focus on that thing, that is what grows whatever. You said something the other day in church. You said, whatever is in front of you will be your master. Whatever you focus on two things.

Whatever you look at tends to get in you.

Yes.

And then whatever has your focus eventually becomes your master.

Yeah. And I don't want the bad things in the ancient society to be my master. I want the good things of God. I want. I want my cup to be half full, not half empty. And I know we had. I know we had to do this today because I know there's so many People struggling with this very thing called anxiety. But you can overcome it.

You can't overcome it, but it's worth. What would I do? I've not seen it leave quickly, but it is a battle that can be won. And I believe it has to be hit holistically. I believe. Not everything deals with every part of your person. Anxiety does. It does. It does. So it has to be responded to in same fashion.

But it's work. It's not just a quick fix. And it takes time to heal those issues in your body, the adrenal glands, the patterns in your brain of thinking negatively quickly.

Like Carolyn Leaf said, you can retrain your brain and have different grooves patterns in the actual brain organ.

Yeah. If you're prone to thinking negatively all at once, are you prone to being intrusive thoughts? Yeah, intrusive thoughts and scary things. And that's the way you go first. It's going to be a journey, but you can do it. You can retrain your brain to think the way God wants you to think and overcome anxiety.

We got to get out of here. We love you guys. And I hope that maybe just us being kind of vulnerable about our journey will help you start your own. Maybe we didn't tell you anything that will fix it, but maybe we inspired you that we took the steps. And I want you to take the steps because I can tell you something God does not. He is not a God of anxiety and fear.

No.

He is the God of faith.

He's not giving it to you.

No. He's the God of faith. So if you got it, you didn't get it from God. It's come from somewhere else.

Yeah.

And it can be taken down.

Power, love and a sound mind can be yours in Jesus name. So until next time. We love you, God and hope unfiltered.