 loves you this day. He has hope for you. In fact, that's why this program exists. It's called Hope Today. I'm Tom Hollis. I'm here with Sydney Goldman and we are gonna talk about hope even in the midst of struggles and difficulties, Sydney. Yes. Anxiety is at an all-time high in the U.S. So how do we overcome it? Do we just simply pray it away or go to therapy? Well, you don't wanna miss our conversation with Theologian and podcaster Curtis Chang who's discovered an alternative way to facing untrusive thoughts. He's gonna break down why getting rid of anxiety is not the answer and how he gained a renewed sense of peace when he started to view worry as an opportunity for spiritual growth. I think this is going to be such an eye-opening conversation. It's gonna be life-changing because there's so many things that are happening in our world and our society. We see even the news that are going on right now, I think a lot of us are dealing with anxiety. You know, one thing I love that Curtis brings up in his book. It's called Anxiety Opportunity is that we're all in the spectrum of anxiety, whether we wanna realize it or not. So it's really important for us to just see there's a different way that we can deal with this and even bringing Jesus in the center of it. I'm gonna love this discussion because you know, I even checked with Monica, our supervisor of our prayer line here, the calls for about anxiety, Sydney, and about just those types of difficulties went up exponentially during COVID and have sort of stayed there. And you know, again, we're not talking about praying it away here. We're talking about what God is wanting to do while we, you know, I've been a slider on that scale where I've seen anxiety be much more prominent at certain portions of my life because of the situations we might be going through. I think for all of us, we can agree that, you know, anxiety has been exasperated in different parts of our lives where you have like this ongoing stress, these ruminating thoughts. We're like, oh my goodness, it just won't go away. And so we just wanna say that we are here for you today and that as always, just like Tom mentioned, that a lot of our prayer calls that we get are about anxiety, are about the things that people are walking through and just we wanna let you know that we are here for you 24 seven. So give us a call at our prayer line, any point of the show today, like you're listening to something during the conversation, maybe something that's triggering you, maybe something that you need to just talk about, give us a call at our prayer line at 888-665-4483. Well, according to the American Psychiatric Association, anxiety is the most common of mental disorders in the US and affects nearly 30% of adults at some point in their lives. Curtis Chang, a theologian and podcaster, knows what it's like to be plagued with a barrage of never-ending and intrusive thoughts. Chang says, through his personal experience, he's come to realize God uses anxiety as an opportunity for us to discover our best selves in Christ. Curtis, we are so glad to have you with us today. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. You know, Curtis, like we said, you know firsthand what it's like to deal with anxiety. So can you sort of paint the picture how it came up in your life? Well, what I've realized is that anxiety was always present in my life, even as a child. I just didn't have the language for it because I grew up in an immigrant family, also in a conservative Christian upbringing or in a church and it just, we didn't have the language back then for anxiety. So I would just have all sorts of coping mechanisms that would make anxiety kind of work in my favor by having me plan ahead, always look out for possible threats and so forth. But it gets to a point, I think for many people where all of our coping mechanisms for dealing with anxiety break down. And that's really what happened to me in my adulthood. I took over as the senior pastor of a large growing church out in California and I started not being able to sleep. You know, so we went from sleeping seven hours to six to five to three until I went through a two week period where I did not sleep at all, at least consciously. And that kind of experience is devastating, that deep anxiety that comes to just completely disrupt your life. And I ended up having to resign as a pastor. And that's why I'm now a former senior pastor of an evangelical covenant church out in California. I still attend that church, but that ended my career as a pastor. So I know firsthand the ways that anxiety is a problem and it is a problem that many of us experience. But the message of my book is that even for me, as somebody who has his life so disrupted by anxiety, it is not just a problem, it is also the most profound opportunity we have for spiritual growth. You know, I love Curtis what you're talking about is even though a lot of us, we deal with anxiety, it's just taking a different approach, taking a different look at it. And you know, one thing I just wanna talk to you about is that can you take us back to like your experience with anxiety because there was a moment that you share in your book about, even with your family, that you just couldn't even get out of the car. Can you share with us that moment? Yeah, so well, this was during the two weeks of when I was really having a breakdown. And I started having panic attacks at all sorts of random moments. I was with taking my children, my two young daughters of my wife, we were going to a pumpkin patch. And I could not get out of the car to go into the pumpkin patch. The thought of that was just so overwhelming. My heart started beating quickly. The world felt like it was closing in on me. I was just paralyzed. And I had to tell my wife, you know, you've gotta go do this because even something as simple as that suddenly felt so overwhelming. So that's when anxiety becomes a true anxiety disorder. And it's probably helpful for us to distinguish those two things. The difference between anxiety, which is a natural human emotion. It is normal for human beings to feel anxiety, even as I show in my book, even Jesus experienced anxiety. It is a human experience. So the difference between anxiety and an anxiety disorder, which really is how we no longer can cope with anxiety. We no longer can actually go through the experience of anxiety in a healthy way. I love that so much. And so Curtis, tell us, how did God spark you on this journey to look at it as like, okay, I'm going through this really challenging time. I'm dealing with it, those thoughts, those ruminating thoughts are going on. How did that shift occur for you to say, you know what, I'm gonna look at this as an opportunity for Jesus to step in. It grew out of the sense of being stuck, stuck in the experience and being stuck with the options that as a Christian, it seemed like were available to me. So one standard option is that you pray it away and your anxiety in this view is viewed as a character flaw, as a lack of faith, maybe even as a sin. And this is what kept me as a pastor from being able to really deal with my anxiety more healthily, because I just thought, I'm not supposed to feel these things. I'm supposed to somehow pray it away. And that I not only got stuck, but I got into really dark places with that particular approach. The other approach, which is not necessarily pray it away, but to prescribe it away, it's sort of where as Christians, we, and as churches, we think we outsource anxiety to secular mental health. And so I think there's some real value in prescriptions for medication and therapy. I've taken anti-anxiety medication. I've done hours and hours of therapy. There's something helpful about it, but it doesn't actually open us up to spiritual growth. It can manage the symptoms, but it doesn't actually transfer truly at a deep, deep level, especially as followers of Jesus transform us. So it was my frustration at the options of pray it away or prescribe it away that led me to go back to scripture and realize that actually scripture depicted anxiety in a really different way, which is as an opportunity for spiritual growth. So that's why I wrote the book. Yeah, I love that so much is just like looking at it, having a different perspective of how to look at anxiety. And one thing I really like that, you know, from your personal experience and even research that you dive into is that you found that loss is at the root of anxiety. Can you take us down that road? Yes. So anxiety is at the essence, the fear of future loss. You know, the fear of future loss. We think we're going to lose our job, our relationship, our relationship with our children or something else. It could be a thing, it could be emotion, could be experience, loss of our own faculties, you know, that we're going to get old and lose our health, lose our memories. All of those things, that's the fear of a future loss and it creates anxiety in us. So this is why we have to view anxiety as a normal part of human life and not something we make go away either through prayer or for prescriptions. Because if anxiety equals loss, then when we are trying to avoid anxiety, when we're trying to make it go away, at the essence, what we are saying is we want to make loss go away. We want to avoid loss. And that is simply not in the cards for human beings. No matter how much you pray, no matter how many prescriptions you take, if you've lived any amount of life, you know that even the most devout praying Christian goes through loss. And so this is why I have a formula in there that I call anxiety equals loss times avoidance. So loss is unavoidable, but if we try to avoid loss, we get into all sorts of behaviors mentally and physically of avoidance that are at kind of like a hamster wheel, like we're turning over and over and over again because we're basically, we can't get anywhere. We can't get to loss avoidance, but we get stuck in our head through things like turning thoughts over and over in our head or other behaviors of avoidance that actually drive up our levels of anxiety and lead us into anxiety disorder. You know, I love so much when you had the formula. I was like, oh my gosh, that makes perfect sense because I think we can all agree that anxiety equals loss times avoidance and something else that you just mentioned about, sometimes we are so stuck in our head and there's a moment that you share about the time you had with your therapist that was eye-opening about this whole concept of being in our head instead of our body. Can you take us to that? Well, I was with my therapist and I was talking about my way, my particular manifestation of an anxiety disorder, which again is when I, when avoidance ratchets up and I was talking about rumination and rumination is when you turn a thought over and over in your head. And what I realized what I was doing in that session with my therapist is I was trying to look for the one scenario or the one way of thinking or the one way of looking that would avoid loss. But because that didn't come up, I couldn't, you can't find that one scenario. My head, my head is in a loop and my head is in rumination loop going over and over looking for that one final turn that will avoid loss for me. And that's when my therapist said, you know, can you get out of your head? Cause your head is trying to avoid loss and just get into your body. And she, she really invited me to that. And it took me a while, but I realized what I was really craving was just some physical experience that would get me out of my head and it's my head's drive to avoid loss. And I realized, and I think this was from God that, you know, I sort of did this thing where I just took my hand and I reached across my body and I just started patting myself and giving myself a little squeeze. And then I found myself telling myself, it's okay kiddo, it's okay. And I think that was my way of hearing from God at a deeper level, at a physical sort of tactile level, you can go through this. You can go through the experience of loss. It's gonna be okay. But it took me getting out of my head into various practices. And that's, my book talks and it recommends a number of practices including physical practices to get out of our head into other parts of our bodies that allow us to actually just go through loss rather than avoid it. You know, Curtis, that was such an eye-opening moment. I remember with my therapist as well, she was just talking about sometimes the trauma or whatever you're just so stuck in your head that it's important to just be in tune with your body. And there's certain things that you even share that things that we can do to help us get back into that place because anxiety, those thoughts, they just take us somewhere and we're in a completely different world. But I love what you say is that there's two ways. There's like getting present and connecting with the here and now. So can you share some ways with our viewers that they can get out of that anxiety space and then just come back into the God and just know of being present with themselves and with God? Yeah, being present, finding different ways of being present is a very powerful initial response to anxiety because what anxiety is doing, again, remember, anxiety is the fear of a future loss. Something happening, it's not happening now in the present, it's happening in your minds in the future. It's like anxiety is like a hijacker. It hijacks our mind into the future. So rather than staying in the future and trying to battle anxiety in this future where we're coming up with, well, I'll do this or what if this happens or maybe I'll do that and that's where we get into this rumination. Rather than getting hijacked into the future, God invites us to respond to anxiety by walking away from the future and getting present, getting into here and now. And this is really what Jesus is recommending in the Sermon on the Mount. For tomorrow has enough worries of itself. He's inviting his disciples to get back into the present and Jesus did that in the Sermon on the Mount through inviting his disciples to get present to nature, look at the lilies of the field, look at the birds, pay attention to nature and creation and God's provision in creation. Another practice that I talk about in the book is mindful breathing, which has been co-opted by many secular movements, which is fine, but really has its origins deeply and biblically in Jesus giving his Holy Spirit to his disciples through the act of mindful breathing. And I'd write about that in my book. So those would be two very accessible practices, getting present to creation, going into nature and also the practice of mindful breathing. And my book kind of walks people through how to do that for themselves. You know, I love that part about the breath this is so important is just like to breathe. Sometimes we're walking through things and we forget we're like, we're not breathing and I like how you brought up it's like Ruhak Elohim, the breath of God, that's what he breathed into us. And something else I really like that you do is you actually talk to your anxiety and you name it. Can you just explain the way that you name the anxiety and you talk to it and you deal with it? I thought it was absolutely clever. So can you share with our audience that? Yes, it's a process that I learned both from therapy but especially from scripture, the power of naming, especially in the Bible over and over again, authority is expressed through the act of naming, like when Jesus gives nicknames to all of his disciples, he's saying, I know who you are, I know who you are, you're the rock Simon, you're Peter. And so we actually can, we are authorized by God to have that same relationship over our anxious thoughts. It's because it's when we're unconsciously getting hijacked by our thoughts, that's when we lose our authority. But if we can stand a little apart from our thoughts, observe them and actually give names to them, like, oh, there you are again, you're being a bad parent anxiety thought. We actually kind of assume our authority over those thoughts and we can actually then hand them over to Jesus and let Jesus deal with them. I write in my book about the Jesus' interaction with the demoniac and where he requires the demon to name himself. So I'm not equating all of our anxious thoughts to demons, but I'm saying there's a principle there where the exercise of authority over what's going on in our heads is exercised by naming it and by asking Jesus to help us name these thoughts. Curtis, I love this discussion and I love the eye-opening sense of what you're sharing with us. Let me ask you about peace, about the end game of what we want here is peace in our lives. How have you been able to experience that once you realized that some of these practices that we do so often in the church, we're not really working. Some of these new things, new understandings have helped you achieve peace. What's been the result? Well, I think it's really helpful and important to understand what true Christian peace is because if we misunderstand peace as the absence of anxiety, then we're going to be looking for something we can't ever find because, again, anxiety is a normal part of human life because loss is a normal part of human life. So peace is not the avoidance of the sensation of anxiety or the avoidance of loss. It's the peace is being able to go through it, not around it or not away from it, but through loss, through anxiety that accompanies loss. And it's actually going through it and that we're actually able to experience Christian peace which is rooted not in an immediate sort of sensation, but it's rooted in the confidence of the future, the true future. Because as Christians, we're giving this amazing promise that if we're willing to go through loss on the other side, in the end, Jesus will restore us to all things. That's the Christian dynamic of going through death in order to, and in the hope of the resurrection. So it's not that we go around things this life and on all the things we may lose, it's that we go through life and all of its losses, even the loss of all losses, which is death itself. It's only by going through death we get to resurrection. And it's the hope and promise of resurrection that's really the anchor of true Christian peace, not avoidance. You know, I'm so glad that you brought up that point about the resurrection because I remember going through like what you wrote, and there's actually an exercise that you ask us to go through is our thoughts, just like a one minute exercise of writing eternal perspective and just what comes out and just this realization that we really like, we don't have any control and just trusting in Jesus. And so can you talk to us more about how important it is to have an eternal perspective when it comes to dealing with anxiety? Right, because, you know, again, if anxiety, the essence of anxiety is the fear of future loss. And what I'm saying and what life says and what the Bible says is that you cannot avoid loss. Then the question becomes, well, whatever, what are you supposed to do with that sense of loss and the fear of loss? And again, if you can't avoid it. And again, the Christian answer, which is distinctive, which is unique in all religions, world religions, is that there is coming a day when your losses will be restored to you. And that's when after we go through death and we are resurrected in the final day, we get the things, the experiences, the people that we have lost return to us, restore to us in the great restoration which is the Jesus' wedding feast of the Lamb, the final day. And so that's really where we anchor our hope, we anchor our peace and we anchor our perspective about the future, not by engineering or asking God to engineer some scenario where in this life we can avoid all losses. It's by going through those losses and by actually developing and growing our faith in that future restoration of loss. And this is why anxiety is an opportunity for spiritual growth. It's a doorway because it invites us to not go around or avoid loss, but to go through loss and therefore go to the final restoration. Yeah, Curtis, can you just take a moment just to pray for our viewers that are out there right now because so many people I know we all identify with this that is really going through anxiety and it's rocking their boat. Can you just take a moment and pray for them? I'd love to do so. Thank you for that invitation. Father, we ask that you send your spirit out to all of the watchers, listeners, the audience of this show right now that you would just take whatever words that we have shared in the last several minutes and you would sift out the word that you have for the particular listener and audience right now and you would bring through those words your very presence to their lives this very moment. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Curtis, thank you so much for what you just brought, like your wisdom and insight and the alternative approach to dealing with anxiety. I love it so much that it is truly a doorway. It's an opportunity to allow Jesus to step in to allow him to come into those deep parts of our heart and our soul, not to run away from it, but so that we can grow. Thank you so much. The book is called The Anxiety, Opportunity, How Worry is the Doorway to Your Best Self by Curtis Chang. Thank you so much for joining us all the way on the West Coast this morning. Thanks for having me. Well, we are so glad that you were part of this conversation and don't go away because we have much more in store for you. We're gonna speak directly to your heart so stay tuned with us. We'll be right back. No matter your age or circumstances, God wants you to move forward. Join bestselling author and teacher, Dr. David Jeremiah in a masterclass, revealing how to live fearlessly. You'll discover that it's never too late to find your purpose. Dr. David Jeremiah reveals powerful ways for people of any age to live a life that's meaningful. Inside forward, you'll uncover strong Bible teaching coupled with incredible real life stories and practical biblical insight. Learn how God wants to expand your dreams, give you divine direction, equip you with tools to overcome fear and much more. Request your copy of this life-changing book when you support Cornerstone Television. Call 888-665-4483 or give online at ctvn.org slash donate. Find air times for a turning point with Dr. David Jeremiah at ctvn.org. Donate and request his book forward. Thank you for your partnership with Cornerstone TV. What a good discussion that we had with Curtis Chang about anxiety and that sense of loss that we are all going to go through. You know, I have a scripture, I was reminded of a scripture that is a very famous one and you might have it on your refrigerator or somewhere and it's Jeremiah 2911 and we use it a lot on this program but it says this, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and I hope now I know that was written to Israel and some people say, wow, you can't apply. Well, yes you can because it's the heart of God. You can apply the heart of God and for you today, God has a plan, a future and a hope for every one of us and so many things crowd around that to cause us to get our eyes off of that future and a hope and on to the issues and the problems. As Curtis said, we are all going to experience loss. We are all going to have fear of loss and God helps us Sydney in so many ways to deal with that. Yeah, I think it's something a lot of us, it's like the avoidance that is totally me. I do not like to deal with anxiety. You know, one thing, even another tip that I do, like recently I've read that like lavender, if you just put a little lavender in your water it actually releases stress and anxiety. So that's something I do. And another thing that actually Curtis mentioned in his book that he has a God box. So he has a box and anytime there's a worry, he puts it in the box and doesn't touch it. And I was like, this is genius but I think these are practical ways where it's like, we are all slammed with things all the time. And I think it is so easy to start ruminating, to start actually like worshiping and bowing down to those thoughts. We don't even realize that can be idolatry. I remember I was in a meeting one time and the minister was just saying like, some of us like worship our pain, like it just overly consumes us. But I think what is so important and what we're saying is knowing, okay, God in his word is saying, I have a plan for you. I have a future for you. I have a hope for you. And sometimes suffering is part of that, right? We all have to suffer. We all have to go. We are not, you know, not excluded from that. And I think it's so important that we have our eyes set on Jesus. And this is even coming up to me. I was watching TikTok and then it was actually, Robert Colbert, the Colbert report. Am I saying his name right? Yes. Yeah, so he was. Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert, so sorry, I called you Robert. Stephen Colbert, he was just saying this whole thing about suffering that we all walk through it. We all go through it but through the suffering, right? Through our anxiety, through the things that we walk through, there is goodness in that. That God is in the midst of it. He wants us to learn. He wants to share things with us. And I think when we shift our perspective and saying, you know what? I'm going through this, but God is with me. Jesus is on my side. It completely changes our perspective. Well, Stephen Colbert has even taken made bold statements about his faith in God and his faith that has helped him in these times. But you know, one thing that was so important that Curtis said to me was this whole idea of anxiety as a natural thing that we go through even Jesus went through versus anxiety as a disorder. And we've been there, some of us have been there at times where we're paralyzed as Curtis was. God has an answer for you today. Whatever you're struggling with, God has an answer. He has a doorway. In fact, the subtitle is How Worry is the Doorway to Your Best Self. God can, in however he miraculously chooses, he can work in through those things that you're struggling with right now. God does not want us to be in a disorder situation. He wants us to have the victory in Christ. So reach out to him right now, reach out to him. We're not talking about praying away, but we're asking for God's assistance, God's fullness of the spirit in us to walk us through this and out the other side to where God has us in a place of peace. Even realizing there's going to be loss but having peace in that. And I just, I'm so grateful that we've had this conversation because it's something that we all go through anxiety. I deal with it, Tom deals with it, you're dealing with it. And I love that we're able just to come together. This is like a huddle up and we're like, all right, this is what we're walking through. This is what we're going through. But Jesus, you're gonna come and be on this anxiety boat with me today. And I'm gonna give it all to you. I may not understand what I'm walking through. I may not understand what I'm going through, but I know that you are faithful. I know that you are true and that your word guides me and carries me. I wanna share this with you. Something that God told me is that he is our keeper. Just remember that he is keeping you in the midst of the affliction and the suffering and what you're going through. And guess what? Jesus is on your boat. We love you and we're with you too. Have a great day. On tomorrow's Hope Today, it's time to rise up and declare war on fear. Pastor and author Jeremy Johnson shares how you can be delivered from the shackles of fear and live the radically fulfilling life you were created for. Don't miss tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.