Post by Admin on Feb 13, 2020 20:46:43 GMT
Our last night of the five sessions on anxiety opened with the question: does technology help us manage our anxiety, or increase it? This was the introductory thought for Max’s video, which showed a person obsessed with the information – news, social media, messages – that she can expose herself to on her phone. In the video, the person suffered increasing anxiety caused in part by the constant comparison of her life with everything others seemed to enjoy (and share) and the increasing sense that she didn’t measure up. The simple solution, for Max, was that she needed to connect with God in that same consistency as she had the phone and disconnect herself from hanging onto the nonstop input of the world. This final video considered the last verse in the Philippians scripture, in which Paul tells us what to think about. More precisely, Paul is making clear to us that we are in charge of what we think about, whether we let outside influences and endless what-ifs compound in our minds, or if we select to focus on God’s love, guidance, and blessings. He gave two powerful analogies. One is that our brain in like an airport and we are the air traffic controller; we decide what planes (thoughts) land and we send planes (guilt, regret, fear, hurt, failed expectation, and so on) to take off. Another word picture was of a father holding the hand of his small son as they cross the road; the father doesn’t explain everything about traffic, or ask the son to take over their path, instead he just tells the son to hold on to him and follow as he leads.
In discussion, we talked quite a bit about Satan after reading several verses in which he is described as our enemy, a liar, invisible, prowling around us at all times looking for a way to attack. Why spend this time on understanding Satan? To be sure we believe in him. We need to recognize and accept that evil is real and that it is constantly bombarding us to find fissures that can crack us. If we think evil is just a metaphor for human nature, or that we can defy evil by looking away from it, we delude ourselves and have given Satan power over our thinking. The way to more effectively resist Satan’s manipulation and lies is to be ready for them and to arm ourselves so that we diminish their power. And why is Satan so dedicated to tripping us up, what is his mission? He is in opposition to God, as we know. As we talked about it a more specific goal became clear. Our lives as God’s children should be to glorify God in what we say and do. When Satan worms his way into our thoughts and behavior, he degrades us; by corrupting and weakening us, he imagines he is unglorifying God, since Man is the apex of God’s creation.
In the video, Max used the story of the woman who had been bleeding for years and healed just by touching Jesus’ cloak, to illustrate two points. We read the scripture and discussed it in more detail. One of the points was to imagine the thoughts that Satan would have sent to the woman before she tried her healing strategy, and of course those types of thoughts come to us in our daily live as well: why bother, it won’t work; I’ll have too much trouble getting there, maybe I can’t even get there; maybe God doesn’t want me healed; something bad will happen if I try; this is just the way I am. And apparently, she dispelled these or didn’t entertain them, instead focusing just on faith: touch Him and it will be okay. Can we just shake off all our ego and doubts and Satan-planted-ideas, reach out, touch him and stay connected?
At the conclusion of the evening, Linda returned the envelopes into which five weeks ago we wrote and sealed up three anxieties. We opened them along with sharing our thoughts on two group questions: are they still anxieties, and have we cultivated new skills to help us with the anxieties?
In discussion, we talked quite a bit about Satan after reading several verses in which he is described as our enemy, a liar, invisible, prowling around us at all times looking for a way to attack. Why spend this time on understanding Satan? To be sure we believe in him. We need to recognize and accept that evil is real and that it is constantly bombarding us to find fissures that can crack us. If we think evil is just a metaphor for human nature, or that we can defy evil by looking away from it, we delude ourselves and have given Satan power over our thinking. The way to more effectively resist Satan’s manipulation and lies is to be ready for them and to arm ourselves so that we diminish their power. And why is Satan so dedicated to tripping us up, what is his mission? He is in opposition to God, as we know. As we talked about it a more specific goal became clear. Our lives as God’s children should be to glorify God in what we say and do. When Satan worms his way into our thoughts and behavior, he degrades us; by corrupting and weakening us, he imagines he is unglorifying God, since Man is the apex of God’s creation.
In the video, Max used the story of the woman who had been bleeding for years and healed just by touching Jesus’ cloak, to illustrate two points. We read the scripture and discussed it in more detail. One of the points was to imagine the thoughts that Satan would have sent to the woman before she tried her healing strategy, and of course those types of thoughts come to us in our daily live as well: why bother, it won’t work; I’ll have too much trouble getting there, maybe I can’t even get there; maybe God doesn’t want me healed; something bad will happen if I try; this is just the way I am. And apparently, she dispelled these or didn’t entertain them, instead focusing just on faith: touch Him and it will be okay. Can we just shake off all our ego and doubts and Satan-planted-ideas, reach out, touch him and stay connected?
At the conclusion of the evening, Linda returned the envelopes into which five weeks ago we wrote and sealed up three anxieties. We opened them along with sharing our thoughts on two group questions: are they still anxieties, and have we cultivated new skills to help us with the anxieties?