Thoughts

WELCOME

Pastor Grant Bowdish:

Welcome again to St. Mark. If we haven’t met yet, my name is Grant Baudish and I’m the director of Care and Connections here and just get the privilege of being able to speak to you today on behalf of Pastor Chris as he gets a well-deserved Sunday off after sharing the word on Christmas Eve with us all. It has been a great season here, but a lot going on and a lot of things to worry about, a lot of things coming up, which brings us to our new series, this overbeing anxious series, where we’re going to be looking at different biblical principles to get over being anxious and how God’s word can help us to calm our minds. And as we start delving into this, just kind of a quick little starter. I want you to raise your hand if this image makes you anxious.

Raise your hand if this image makes you anxious. Okay, you can put your hands down. We got one more. Raise your hand if this makes you anxious. And we’ll do one more. What about this one? Okay. So anxiety is more than just these images and things. So it kind of gives us that little uneasy feeling. But as we move on, some of maybe your anxious thoughts are, it’s so hard to take a vacation. Every time I leave, the housework piles up and these job projects don’t get done. I might as well just not leave at all. Or man, I’m looking at my calendar and I’m trying to think of every scenario that might come up this week or, oh, I forgot that car payment. Maybe you’re sitting there and that comment that someone made, you just can’t get it out of your head.

Or maybe if you’ve ever been there and it’s that moment at 2:00 AM where you just can’t sleep and all the thoughts are coming and you know you’re going to be tired the next day except for it’s 2:00 AM. So tomorrow is today already and you’re going to be tired of doing everything and you forgot to get the dog food and you just remembered, oh, did I switch the laundry? And I think I locked the door and did I turn the oven off? And if that’s ever been you, then this series is for you. And if you have been luckily enough not to be there, there’s still worries in each of our lives that we get to deal with. So,we start to go through this over being anxious series over the next few weeks here and looking at how we can get beyond it. And today specifically, we’re going to be looking at our thoughts and how our mind these anxieties are.

THESAURUS

It was interesting as I started researching for this and I’m reading things and I went to thesaurus.com and I looked up just synonyms for the word anxious. There are 26 close synonyms for the word anxious and an additional 37 similar words. We have 63 words like worried, like nervous, uneasy or troubled. 67 words to explain how we are feeling anxious. And on the other side, the opposite words are antonyms. Thank you, Pastor Chris. On the other side of it, there are only 13 words opposite of anxious. We have way more ways to describe being anxious and we have so many ways that we create anxiety in our head. We’re ordering the gift late. Is the gift going to arrive on time? I know, bud. Is the gift going to arrive on time? Is my fantasy football team going to win? And am I going to make it home and back to the gas station without getting gas?

All of these things that we can create anxiety in our heads for that we’re worried about. Some of them outside of our control. I mean, kids in here, teachers in here. How many of you have ever worried over whether school would be closed the next day? Parents, how many of you have ever been worried about whether school would be closed the next day? We have so many things to be anxious about. Sometimes it’s maybe just, “Oh, let me ignore it. ” Maybe if I don’t check the bank account and I just, I’ll go buy this thing anyways, it’ll be okay. The money will be there. We can avoid it. Maybe if I just don’t open the closet door, I’ll forget that there’s a mess behind it. I’ll avoid these anxieties in life, but putting things off is not the answer. If you’ve ever tried to do it, you found it out pretty quick.

And we need an answer, which is why we turn to scripture to find our answer because we have to take care of ourselves. Anxiety is part of our body. It affects our body. If you’ve ever had those truly anxious moments or you’ve been in those panicky times, your neck tenses up and your back gets stiff and maybe it’s harder to breathe. We can’t sleep as much anymore. And it keeps going on and on the list of how we are affected by anxiety. All of it starting with our mind and our thoughts. And we know we have to take care of ourselves. We drink water, or at least we should. We eat food. We take showers, or at least we should. We sleep. We do these things to take care of our body. And so we have to take care of our mind as well. And as we find an answer for all of us that are dealing with this problem of anxiety and try to break the curse, the answer we will find is prayer.

THE ANSWER WE WILL FIND IS IN PRAYER

Now, before we get to our exact solution here, I do want to take a little time just to say, “I am sorry if any of you have had these thoughts before.” If you’ve had the thought, “Man, I’m dealing with this anxiety and these worries. Am I still a Christian?” Or if you’ve ever had the thought before, “I prayed and I’m still worried, what’s wrong with me? ” Maybe you’ve heard the phrase of, “Well, anxiety just means you don’t trust God enough.” And then they walk out of the room and you’re left there now worried about whether or not you trust God and with no answers of how to fix it.

Many of us have been there and if you are feeling broken because of these things or you aren’t sure what’s right or wrong there, I hope that we can change that throughout this series and that we can start on it today because whether it’s looking at the big decisions of 2026 or just the decisions of the week ahead, we all have worries and anxieties. Studies have shown that one out of every two American today deals with some form of anxiety. One out of every five American today is taking some form of medication to help deal with that anxiety. And as we look through the generations past of these, the generations born in the 20th century are three times more likely to deal with anxiety and depression than the generations before them. All of us today are three times more likely than our ancestors to deal with these anxieties.

And so when we look for the answer, there are different ways we can look at scripture and that’s what we’ll do today, but there are other things. There’s medicine in science. It’s not a sin to deal with anxiety. As we go through these times, again, one out of five of us are taking medication for some form of anxiety and no other medication do we look at the way we look at these kind of anxiety meds or mental health things. I’ve never looked at someone on blood pressure medication or someone on pain meds for a broken leg or someone taking an antiviral after a cold or a cough and said, “Do you just not trust God? You’re trusting this medicine. Haven’t you prayed about this? ” And so if you’ve ever felt that way again, I’m sorry as we set this whole thing up of where are our answers.

NOT A SIN

Max Lucado wrote a book called “Anxious for Nothing” that I was able to read through as I was preparing for this. And in more than just my words, he reminds us that it doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian because Christians battled anxiety. We see it in scripture. So far as Max Licato states that Jesus battled anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed three times that he would be delivered from the cup he was about to be given and his heart pumped with such ferocity that the capillaries broke. He was anxious, but he didn’t stay anxious. So we have a Lord and a savior that came down to us that went to a cross for us that had anxiety in the moment, but he didn’t stay anxious. He entrusted his fears to the heavenly Father and then went and carried out his mission. So as we look for this answer, we’re not alone and we’re not hopeless because we’ve seen it.

And as we kind of move past these lies for today, what I hope we take out of today is that our big anxieties are made up of smaller ones, so we have to break them up. We have all these small piles of anxieties or the little things that come up one by one and they continually tax our brain and they grow and they grow till they’re so large that we don’t even know what to do. Maybe we begin shutting down because there’s so much going on and we have to be able to fix that, which brings us to the writings of Peter. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Cast all your anxiety on him.

                        Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

And this book of one Peter is where we get scriptures like:

So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure trials for a little while.

1 Peter 6

“There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure trials for a little while.” And he’s writing as it seems they always are to Christians amid persecution and Christians in exile that are scattered around looking for the answers of how to live in a pagan or non-Godly world. And he writes to cast all your anxieties on him before he writes: “Peace to all of you who are in Christ.”

Peace to all of you who are in Christ.

1 Peter 5:14

So how do we get this peace and we look back to our answer, cast it to God. Maybe if you read this word cast everything, you might think of fishing. When we go fishing, we cast a net out, especially they would have cast nets over the boats. They would have been large nets. They could hold lots of fish. They’re trying to drag them all.

Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.  

                                                                                                                                    1Peter 5:7

We even have stories of times they were so big they couldn’t even pull them into the boat. And sometimes maybe that’s what it feels like in our brain that there’s so many anxieties we can’t even get the net back into the boat. We want to just let it go, give them all to God at once and just be done with them and move on and forget they ever existed. But that’s not quite going to work. We can’t just hand them all over at once.

CAST – FISHER – DISHES

And so, as we try to do this, it brings us to a different analogy for our day, that of the dishes. The dishes pile up day after day. Each and every one needs clean, each and every one being a separate problem. And the small piles of dishes become larger piles. If you’re wondering what larger piles in the sink look like, it’s my sink right now because my dishwasher’s here.

They pile up. They get worse and worse. And anxiety is a process just like the dishes. We have to take each dishwasher one at a time and load the dishwasher. Each one has to go in and we’re dealing with it one at a time.

OUT OF CONTROL VS ANXIETIES

So, what are these anxieties we have to deal with? Some of them are in our control, some of them are out of our control. If you’ve ever applied for a job and you’re waiting on the response, it’s out of your control. If you’ve ever applied for school and you’re waiting on a response, it’s out of your control. If you’ve ever taken a test, after that test is done, you were in control during the test and now it’s this waiting game. We have these anxious moments and there are ones that we’re in charge of, whether it be finishing a project around the home, finishing a project at work.

We know the steps that have to take place. But no matter what type of anxiety we are facing, the answer to peace in our mind, the answer to calm will be prayer, turning it all over to God. Because in order to break this curse of anxiety, the battle is going to be long … Sorry, I’ll start that over. In order to break that curse of anxiety, the battle will begin within our mind. In order to get that neck less tense, it’s going to start in our mind. So as we look at this scriptural principle of being over being anxious, it means casting our anxieties on the Lord and giving it all to Jesus is not going to be a one-time thing. Max Licato again writes that the presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional. We get to decide whether or not we’re going to stay in this chasm, anxiety and fear, whether we rid ourselves of its grasp because it’s going to keep on coming.

It’s going to continually be there and we’re going to have to be ready for when they come. Large anxieties are going to come sometimes when we expect them like, yes, we know that the mortgage is due or yes, we know we’re going to have projects at work, but I think to a time in my life, Miranda and I were at … We were over at the hospital for a 40-week appointment when she was pregnant with Riley and conveniently Miranda had her water break right in the hospital at the doctors. We just walked up to the birthing suites. But we get up to the birthing suites and it’s hours of Pitocin and hours of meds and they’re trying to keep monitors on Riley, trying to watch his heartbeat be able to monitor everything with them as this goes along. And at some point in time, they kind of got to the point, “Hey, we can’t monitor Riley the way we want to.

He’s okay, but we’re not sure how much longer we want to go on with this. We’re going to call the OB.” So the OB walks in 20 minutes later and in a very calm voice and with all the confidence says, “Hey, because we can’t monitor Riley and things aren’t progressing, we’re going to go ahead and do a C-section.” They’re prepping the room. So they go very calm on her end, not very calm on my end of this moment that I’m out of control. And so they take Miranda back for the room and I’m waiting in the room. It was just after COVID, so I was able to actually go back for the procedure and they’re bringing me a robe. And the nurse walks in and can tell my face is starting to get pale. They didn’t know the room was blacking around me, but all these things are hitting me of this being out of my control.

And they assured me very well that Riley was okay. They just couldn’t monitor him. And all I could think about was like, “Yeah, but my wife’s about to go into surgery that I was not prepared for. ” And logically, it would make sense to look and say, “The doctor’s in control. The doctor’s done this before. There are C-sections that take place every day, but in our anxious, fearful moments, it’s not logic that’s control. It’s that fear.” So we have to be ready for these moments of what are we going to do because I couldn’t find any peace and solace in my own in that moment.

ESCAPES AND CRUTCH

It was all in a peace that only God could give because I think we’ve all looked at different maybe crutches of what to do in these anxious moments. Do I go scroll my phone to get the mind off of it?

Do I go for a run? Do I go grab a drink? Do I grab a nice cup of tea and a nice book and I sit in the corner and I just run away from all the things, but no matter what, it’s going to find this temporary relief, but at some point it’s going to stop working. At some point, we won’t have dealt with the anxiety itself and it’s going to creep right back in. So we have to turn to God. We have to turn to a God that not only has told us to cast our anxieties, but has given us promises that remind us it will work. We have a God that is with us wherever we go.

Fear not, for I am with you…

                                                                                                                                    Isaiah 41:10

                        For the Lord is with you wherever you go.

                                                                                                                                    Joshua 1:9

We have a God that is our strength, helping us to do all things.

                        But God is the strength of my heart

                                                                                                                                    Psalm 73:26

                        I can do all things through him who strengthens me

                                                                                                                                    Phillipians 4:13

                        God is our refuge and strength, a very pleasant help in trouble

                                                                                                                                    Psalm 46:1

We have a God that is our help. No matter the situation, we have a God we can turn to for help.

I lift my eyes up to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord…

                                                                                                            Psalm 121

And that same God is where our love comes from, that “Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God.”

                        Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.

                                                                                                                                    Romans 8:39

So, as we turn to this helper who is our strength walking with us in love, it brings us to casting our anxieties on the Lord, that our peace will come from the Lord when we put our request to him.

                        Cast your all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

                                                                                                                                         1Peter 5:7

When we give it all to him is when we will find this peace that transcends all understanding, that will guard our hearts and our minds, that he will help us through the situation.

And the peace that transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ.

                                                                                                                                    Phillipians 4:7

OUR PEACE COMES FROM THE LORD

So, we turn in prayer. And how do we pray?

SO HOW DO WE PRAY

There are two different things that we need to remember.

The first is to use specific prayer. Luckily, we’ve gotten to hear about specific prayer here quite a bit, but when we talk about these anxieties, Max Lucato again in that “Anxious For Nothing” book writes that many of our anxieties are threatening because they are ill-defined or vague. So we have these anxieties, but we haven’t made them exact. And so we have to take it into prayer specifically. It’s not just, Lord, help me with my presentation tomorrow. We have to break it down. Lord, I have a presentation at 11:00 AM tomorrow for work. And as I’m presenting this new topic to the staff and to the board, I know that there’s lots of things for our finances to go to. Bring me clarity. Help me sleep tonight so that my mind is ready. Let the technology work that I’m using so it’s not a distraction. Open the minds of those that I’m speaking with, that they might be open to my ideas, that we may have good discourse afterwards on how to move forward.

And Lord, may this outcome be to bring you glory, reminding me in that moment to take a breath. Remind me in the morning to grab my water before I go into the room so I don’t get parched. Help the coffee maker work so that when I wake up, I can grab it and go. Thank you for letting me put my clothes out so I’m ready. And we break this issue down into a specific thing that we say all of the worries we have because yes, we’re worried about the presentation, but there’s so many different parts of this presentation we can be worried in. And then beyond this specific prayer, it takes us to our second point and it brings us back to our dishes because we have lots of dishes that need to go in and each one represents an anxiety that I need to take time on.

Each and every anxiety that I have has to be prayed over and some of them are going to be small. Lord, help me remember to take the trash out in the morning. I already forgot last week and it’s full. I got people coming over this weekend. Just help me remember in the morning to take it out. Or Lord, I pray that on my lunch break, I get away long enough I can run to the store and get dog food. So when I get home, I’m not giving them leftovers. Help me remember to get the dog food on my lunch break. These simple, small, but specific prayers, giving it all to them. Some of them are going to get a little bit weightier. Lord, I have that car payment coming up and I’m not sure exactly where the money’s going to come from. It’s not all in the account right now.

So help me trust you that it’s going to come. Give me peace, but just show me away. Show me where this money’s going to come from, Lord. And then it goes in the dishwasher.

And you’re going to keep going on through every single one, specifically praying. Lord, help me with this anxiety. Help me with this problem I’m having. And some of them, again, Lord, I have a job opportunity. What about that job opportunity do you need? I want to be excited about my day, Lord, and I’m less fulfilled than I used to be. Help me have the right conversations that show me which way I’m supposed to go. Should I stay where I’m at? Should I move in this new position? Lord, I am sad that I might lose relationships that I have and I am comfortable now. Help me to break that comfort. Tomorrow, Lord, put someone in my life that just gives me words of wisdom that I don’t expect, that help me down this path and we pray about it.

Lord, I’ve been having headaches lately and I’m not exactly sure what the answer is. So if it is medicine that I need, Lord, give me that medicine. If it is the right doctor with the right answer, Lord, give me that. Remind me to drink water throughout the day to stay hydrated and the right food that I get the nutrients that I need. But Lord, I just want to be fully present at the dinner table again and not focused on this pain. And we take it and we put it in the dishwasher. And some of them, you’re going to have dishes that are dirtier than others that are stained in here. Maybe it’s that family member with a health issue.

Lord, my mom’s having a health issue right now and I’m so worried about her. They aren’t sure what’s wrong, so bring her comfort and take away her pain. Give us just a supernatural healing, but give us answers, Lord, knowing how to move forward. Bring her peace that she may be fully present when we’re in the room tomorrow. And just take away our fear that we may be present with her in these moments and you continue to pray every anxiety and it goes in and we keep on going over and over until every single dish goes into the dishwasher. We keep on going until the entire sink is empty and all of them have been given to the Lord.

And I know some of you right now are thinking that your first anxiety is how I’m loading the dishwasher. I promise I do it differently at home, but that can be your first prayer. You can pray that Grant learns how to load the dishwasher. That’s your first try. But no matter what it is against and getting back to all seriousness, just because the dishes are in the dishwasher doesn’t mean they’re clean yet. The work is still going to be there to do. The stress causing thing is not gone yet, but as we read in his word that when we cast the anxieties on God, then the peace of our Lord will be with us. So if you’re praying and you’re still anxious, it means you keep praying. You keep taking those dishes one by one over and over and you give them to God. And as we go through our day, when that same stressor comes back up, we can remind ourselves, “Hey, I prayed about this.

I already gave it up. The dish is already in the dishwasher. And when I come back to that dishwasher after I run it, the dishes are clean. I have to wait for the dishwasher to do its job just like we’re going to have to give it to God, the God who has authority over all and say, Lord, I trust you. Remind me that I have given this weight to you that you now are the bearer of my anxiety and my fear. Thank you for being a place that I can find solace and peace.

And once we’ve already given it to God, we get the reminder that we’re not alone, that we’re not hopeless, that we have given this fear to a Lord that has felt anxiety, that has felt pain before after walking on this earth and then sent his spirit to be with us each and every day because we can allow our anxiety to control everything and shut us down. You can walk into the kitchen and see the dishes and just keep on walking, or you can take the time to set each one individually in here and say, Lord, I trust you. So as we get into the new tasks and problems of 2026, rather than waiting, take it to the Lord right away. Begin your process of dealing with your problems by going to the Lord in prayer first, that you may give him your anxieties before they pile up.

But as they pile up, each and every one can go to the Lord. Trusting him like we trust the dishwasher that when we come back, I’m still going to have a step in the process. When the dishes are done, I’m going to have to put them away, but they’ll be clean and they’ll be taken care of.

PEACE IS HERE, NOW

Because all of these scriptures in one Peter, where he’s talking about finding peace, all he is preparing people to do is get ready for heaven. You’re dealing with the problems of life now, but the heaven is coming, but we don’t have to wait for heaven to find peace. We don’t have to wait for a later day to find comfort in God because we can take all of our anxieties and cast them on the Lord, knowing that his peace will guard our hearts and our minds each and every day. Let us pray.

PRAYER

 Lord, I thank you for the moments like this where we get to come together in your house, where we get to turn to you our anxieties and our fears, but help us to remember and show us exactly how it is to just lay them all down at your feet. Help us to present our request to you in trust that you will take them away.

Entrust that there will become an answer. Show us the way that we can be a part of our own peace, Lord. And as we go out from this place, thank you for the words that we can help others with, that they may grow closer to you by growing closer to peace, just as we are able to as well. I thank you for each and everything that you teach us. We lift up to you those moments where we didn’t trust, Lord. Those moments when we weren’t sure and we didn’t look to you, we look to the rest of the world and we say, I’m sorry and thank you for focusing and centering my eyes on you. Thank you for teaching us and walking with us each and every day. It’s in your name we pray. The words that our father has taught us saying,

Our Father who art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespassed against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil,

For thine is the kingdom,

And the power,

And the glory,

Forever and ever. Amen.