How Anxiety Transforms into Joy and Love (Session 3: Anxiety)

There’s something about weakness that is the sphere in which power from outside is able to be expressed. There is no simple fix to dealing with anxiety – the question is, how do you live in the midst of distressing situations? The situations themselves can become the ingredients that open the door to God and other people in the midst of the situation. When Jesus left His disciples at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, he promises that He will be with them always. Powlison covers several ways that anxiety can be transformed: 1. Anxiety remade becomes your friend, rather than isolating you – it becomes a door to a deeper knowledge of God – and 2. Anxiety that is remade makes you a friend to others – you love them in the reality of their lives. The goal is not mere relief of feelings, but rather we want to engage with anxiety in a way that turns us towards God and others. The Christian, unlike the stoic, gives expression to his joy and sorrow. Anxiety remade becomes an actual expression of the fact that we have learned to care about other people.

(This audio is part 3 of a 5 part regional conference titled Anxiety: How God Cares for Stressed People)