Does anybody have a drawer of tangled cords in your house? You know what I'm talking about? You? Like at least me that I have, well, probably several. Uh, but it's common for you have a drawer somewhere in your house that is just filled with old chargers to different devices or things there and you, you have good intentions, right? Because you don't want to throw it out. Well, we'll use this again. I might need this for this appliance or this smart device or this thing. But what happens when you place the cord in the drawer, it magically tangles up and gets twisted in a tougher knot that even boy scouts can't undo. You know what I'm talking about? Like you have that and if you don't have a cord drawer, I'm guessing you have a junk drawer somewhere that has receipts or keys or notes or random things in there that you're like, I don't know what to do with this. So I'm just gonna place it in here. Right? I think for many of us we have a tangled cord drawer or junk drawer when it comes to mental or emotional stability. And that is something happens in our life or we have an anxiety, um, issue or worry or a stress or something, we don't know what to do with. And so we just kind of place it in a drawer hoping it'll resolve itself. And what happens is we get tangled up pretty quickly, don't we? Anybody come to church with some issues today? Anybody come to church with that particular issue. Right. Ok. Uh, for the, I'm worried about the ones who didn't laugh at that one, right? Because you were nervous to laugh, right? The ones that laugh like ha ha. Well, here's what we wanna do. Ok. Um, to give you a little quick preview in the fall here. So in September, we're gonna jump into the Book of Acts and we're gonna be spending the fall in the book of Acts showing how the church began and how it applies to us. So, super excited for that. But before we get there, the next couple of weeks, what we wanna do is we wanna help you live a christ- centered life to really find balance in a hectic world. And so our next couple of weeks is gonna be a series entitled Centered. And so we want to try to detangle some of the chords that might be in your mental and emotional drawer. And so how it's gonna look is that in week one? So that's today, we want to try to calm the chaos and, and, and really talk about what does scripture have to say about anxiety and stress. And then we're in week two here, we're, we're gonna talk about what does that mean to have a biblical sense of self-awareness? And that once you understand stress and become self aware, then in week three, we're gonna talk about how that plays into your relationships. And then in week four, there on Labor Day weekend, we're gonna jump into how that plays into our work life as well. So we're going from stress, stress to being self-aware to then into our relationships into our work life, all of which we want to be centered on scripture and on Jesus Christ himself. OK. So we're gonna go jump into that. So, uh let me just share with you a verse to kick things off this morning and it comes from Proverbs 12, verse 25 and it says anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad anyone ever been weighed down by an anxiety just felt heaviness on their shoulders because they were stressed out or overwhelmed. Ok. Well, what I want to try to do today is to offer a good word and see what does scripture have to tell us that we can actually manage or detangle some of these anxious chords in our mental junk drawer. And so to start things off here, I want you to think about the old school car radio that had the dial on it. So let's, let's kind of back up before, you know, you had every song known to man available to you at instantly. Uh Before that right. We had anyone remember the Walkman days, right? We had C DS and we had the CD Walkman and then that was a great time, wasn't it? Because you had to bring with you the book with like the sleeve of C DS that you made and everybody burned C DS. Like you only had one person in your friend group that bought the CD and then everybody else burned it. And let me tell you, don't underestimate the value of a good mix tape. You know what I'm talking about? Like if you get the right mix put in like you're fired up for that sporting event or that game or if you are interested in somebody, you're like, oh, I made you this mix tape, right? And before C DS you had the cassette tapes and, and going through the, and they like, if you want to listen to the song again, it's like rewind. No, no, no. Oh, wait, it's on the other side. Take the right, you had a tracks, you go back further, you got some vinyls or 40 fives, but you can't take those in the car. So I want you to do right now is I want you to picture yourself in the car. A song comes on the radio and you don't like it. So, what do you do? Change the channel? Right. Well, if you're with somebody who likes the song, what you try to do first is you try to, like, turn down the volume. But if you can, if you're in control of the radio station, you're gonna change the dial to a song that you like, I'll tell you what you're not going to do is you're not going to hear a song that irritates you and then crank it up. Now, I say that because isn't that exactly what we do with stressful thoughts? Something comes into our mind that overwhelms us that stresses out stresses us out that we worry about and what do we do as humans? We turn it up and then put the song on repeat. We have like a soundtrack or something that is stressing us out and we think that if we repeatedly worry about that, that it's gonna get better and just me maybe. OK? Um So here's what I invite you to do today. OK? If you have an anxious soundtrack in your life, I invite you to do two things first to turn down the volume of anxiety and then second, tune into a better channel. You can't stop anxious thoughts from entering your mind. Like there are different frequencies out there, like there are stressful things happening in the world. And while I'm grateful for the technology that we have, we also have access to every stressful event across the globe. And so it's very easy to feel, overwhelmed, isolated, stressed out and alone. And so while you can't control the incoming of anxious thoughts, what you can do is number one, turn down the volume and then number two actually tune into a better channel. And I think this is a biblical concept. And so we're gonna walk through this together. But first, let's understand anxiety a little bit better. There are a few different types of anxieties. We say anxiety in a singular sense, but there's really a variety of them. Uh A few of them, grief is one grief is when you experience loss and it usually comes from a real physical loss of a loss of life, a loss of a relationship, a loss of a job, a loss of finances. And so it's a very real thing that comes in. Another thing that comes in is, is trauma and trauma happens when something happens to you in the past that then you carry physically with you in your body, in the present and then it impacts the decisions you make for your future, right? An example would be if you were hurt, reuse, you're gonna have some issues in the present and then also you're gonna have some issues trying to trust new people in the future, right? So it's something that happens in the past that lives with you in the present that also impacts your future. Uh Another form of anxiety comes through depression. Depression is more than just simply feeling sad. It's more about experiencing sadness. It's, there's like an overarching dullness to it. You know what I mean? Like, we just, things don't, feels high like a numbness to it. It's like a sadness that you just can't get through. Uh Another type of anxiety is what's called acute anxiety. And this is where your body feels in danger. Have you ever been driving along in a car and somebody cuts you off and all of a sudden, man, you are heightened like wh why? Because it's your body's response to perceived threat. Now, in these first four, I want you to understand a few things that number one, it is OK and actually encouraged to get help that we will, we were not meant to just bottle up these things alone. And so if you're dealing with grief, if you're dealing with trauma or depression or acute anxiety or even diagnosed positions like generalized anxiety disorder, like talk to somebody, talk to an expert, like we as a church, we have to not be afraid of medicine, of things in there. Like I'm glad that we live in a culture now where mental health is becoming a regular piece of conversation. In fact, my own wife is a mental health psychiatric nurse practitioner. And so I unders I, I've come to see the value in, in things like therapy and, and, and medication and things through that I'm not saying it's the answer for everything, but I'm just saying be willing to take a step because your chemistry is not your character and grief is not something you just bypass. They're really something you carry with you. Like, if I lost my hand to like an accident, I can't just like, oh, well, you know, grow back like, well, this doesn't like I have to adjust to a new normal. Like when you walk through a hard situation, sometimes we need extensive help and conversations and maybe even medication, but it's ok to understand that your chemistry is not your character. That what happened to you doesn't define your identity, that your struggles and issues are not something that you have to deal with alone. And so to have therapy or to talk to a doctor or uh or encourage is to be human and actually to be welcomed and to be encouraged because there are people who can help you. And so grief is something that you can be going along fine for a long time. And all of a sudden like a sight, a memory, a smell and boom, it's right back up with you, right? You can almost feel like a tornado that just comes in out of nowhere and just destroys things in its path. And while it's challenging, understand like we're not gonna be able to just solve this in like a Bible verse in like 30 minutes. Does that make sense? So on the deeper things in life, I want you to know it's OK. And in fact, I want to encourage you to seek the help that you need to seek a community and a connection point to go deeper and to process the things that hurt you because the things that have hurt you don't have to define you and that we can actually grow and become stronger on the other side of that. That makes sense. So what I wanna do though, the rest of our time together is actually address another type of anxiety called chronic anxiety, chronic anxiety. And this is really um based on assumptions or expectations or things where like you're wrestling with what we'll call false needs today. And what's challenging about chronic anxiety is that your body doesn't really know the difference between chronic like feeling you need something and then acute like something actually happening to you. And so there can be a reality and then there can be a perceived reality and your body's response doesn't necessarily know the difference. And so uh a lot of self reflection today, I want you to think about this here as we process together. First thing I want you to think about is what are you carrying today? What it, what stressful, anxious thought did you bring with you into the room? Another way to think about it. If it's really big, what is actually carrying you? It just comes and really takes over right. It's the largest piece of the pie chart if you will and you're just battling all right to give you a definition for it. So, chronic anxiety is, is your response to not getting what you think you need. That's key there because this is this is like under the surface stuff of like not just a physical need, but actually what do you think you need and then your body's response to that. So, as you think about, OK, what are you carrying today? Another question to process here is what are, what are signs of anxiety? How does your body physically respond to stressful situations? A couple of options. Sometimes it might be a spinning mind. Other times it might be a racing heart or it could be a tightening of the gut. You feel nauseous or struggling there, maybe it's not the gut, maybe your shoulders tighten up. And for me, it's the racing mind like I can't turn my mind off and it's just like I somehow think if I just repeatedly think about the issue over and over and over again, it's somehow gonna get better. Um other people like they get super productive and they think I just go, go, go, go, go, go, I don't have to deal with the issue. Does that make sense? Or maybe you're like, I just don't feel good but you can't explain why, right. And so how does your body respond to anxiety? Uh Henry cloud put it this way that when bad things happen, oftentimes we do three things. Number one, we make it personal, right? Why me, it always has to be, of course, it's me right. Then we make it pervasive. That's number two, like if one area is stressful, then you bring it to all areas. Um And then number three, we make it permanent. It's always going to be this way, right? We make it personal, we make it pervasive and then we make it permanent, but we know that we can take a step back that those aren't necessarily true. Right? Uh Another way to think about it is that when we get anxious, we tend as a person to get bigger or smaller. Do you get bigger or smaller when you get hit with anxiety? So picture you have like a little goldilocks, the perfect temperature bowl of porridge. OK. There is the human size. Uh but when we get stressed out, we get bigger, which means maybe we get louder, we talk faster. Uh We take control, we give orders anybody ever taken a stressful work day out on a loved one at home. Right. That's called getting bigger. Well, I can't control this but I can control you, right. We come home and we deflect our issues onto somebody else, right? It's getting bigger or we tend to get smaller walls. Go up ice cream comes out uh mental fetal position taking place, right. Leave me alone. I don't want to talk to anybody. And what happens is a lot of times the people that get bigger and get smaller, they marry each other. Right. And then you get somebody who's getting louder or like one that I do, for example, I definitely get louder. It's probably no shock to anybody. Um, but I will try to fix it or I will try to tell a perfectly ok, actually not perfectly timed joke, right? So instead of if I can make a joke about something, I don't actually have to deal with it. Is that it's tracking with anybody? Ok. So, so think about for yourself. Ok. Spinning mind, racing, heart, tending gut. And if you don't know, this is a great conversation piece to have with friend coworker loved one. And what do you notice? How do you know when I'm stressed? Right. Do you buy stuff? Do you binge watch? Do you scroll? Do you um stress clean? Do you stress unclean? I don't know. Right. Um How do you respond? How do you and I ask them think through, do I get bigger or do I get smaller? Do I dive in? Do I isolate? All right, because once you identify that the next step then is to identify what is the false need that you're trying to answer. So this comes from a guy named Steve Cuss. Uh A lot of some of a lot of these points today uh are taken kind of from some of his resources. He's a pastor psychologist. I highly recommend this book. It's called Managing Leadership Anxiety, both yours and theirs. Uh So, Steve Cuss, managing leadership anxiety, he's also got another great book called The Expectation Gap. And so anyway, Steve cuss who is a pastor, he worked as a hospital chaplain for years. He works in mental health. He works in therapy too. And so he's seen a wide gamut of res of people's response to stressful situations. And he realized that that people typically in responding to chronic anxiety are trying to answer five false needs. And so the five false needs, these are needs that appear real but actually aren't real are number one control. Number two, perfection. Number three, knowing the answer. Number four, being there for others. Number five, approval. So we'll leave these up on the screen for a minute. We'll walk back through these. Uh What do I mean? So have you ever felt out of control and then felt anxious? Right? It's because sometimes we like to be in control. So what happens there is if there's a situation in your life that you cannot control, you turn around and try to control another situation or sometimes a person in response to something you can't control, maybe it's perfection and that something is never good enough. I need one more iteration, I need one more try, I need one more thing and it's like we're trying to reach a, a standard but yet the goalposts on the end zone keep moving. Right. And maybe that comes even from childhood, like if you didn't feel enough growing up that like as an adult, you're still trying to meet somebody's approval. Um A third thing there is being, is knowing the answer. This one just being dishonest with you. This is one of mine. Uh, where if I'm in a room and I know the answer, I need everybody in the room to know that I know the answer. Anyone like me in that way or if you don't know the answer, you will change the topic to something that you do know the answer or you will make something up. I'm, you know, on the surface it, none of these are bad by the way, like in the sense of like these are human natural responses and typically you have more than one of them, you probably won't have all five, but you probably have more than one another. One for me is being there for others. See, being there for others sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds altruistic and like and oh yeah, I want to help people. It's compassion like Jesus. But there's a difference when you feel like I have to be the one to do it. And this is really hard, especially for people in ministry because ministry work is never done. Like if you reach 50 people, there's another 50 if you write 100 emails, there's another 100 to go. If you write 1000 sermons. Well, there could be 1000 more. And so like, there's like I need to do one more if I need to go. So, the difference here is that it's not, it's not compassion to meet the needs of others. It's compassion so that you can satisfy your own needs. Does that make sense? That's when it crosses over and the last one there is, are you doing things for the approval of others? Um What's fascinating about these five things too is that if you look at them false needs actually point to characteristics of God. So what happens to us as humans when we get anxious? We try to become God and we try to take the spot of God see how this plays. This is how this plays out if you're craving control. It helps to understand that actually God is in control. If you are needing perfection, it helps to understand that actually God is perfect. So I don't have to be perfect. If you are struggling with not knowing the answer to something, you can rest in the fact that God knows the answer. If you are struggling with, be like I need to be there for more people and do more things for that. Actually, God is there for everyone. It strikes me as fascinating that Jesus could go into a town and heal people, but not everyone. Did. You ever think about that. He healed people, but he didn't heal everybody in the town and yet he remained peaceful. Why? Because he was accomplishing his mission that ultimately take him to the cross and provide salvation for everyone. But along the way, he wasn't worrying about who he did and didn't reach. And so if you struggle, it's like, well, I need to do, I need to, I need to do more. I need to do more like you might come from a healthy intention. But the practice doesn't land in a healthy spot, right? And it's really an anxious response. The last one there is approval that when you rest in God's approval, you don't have to seek that from man. It goes all the way back to the garden. If you think about it, the Adam and Eve, the very first sin, the very first temptation was that they wanted to be like God, which ironically, they already were like God. Why? Because they were created in His image and they were given domain, they were given jobs, they were given stewardship, they were given relationship, they were given an identity and most importantly, they were given relationship with the God who made them, who was all knowing all perfect in control there for them and ha and approved. But when they try to put themselves in the God position, that's where things took a turn for the worse. And so that happens to us with anxiety Well, if we're struggling with stressful situations and we try to play God, that's not going to end well for you. So what's the key? I think the key as it actually comes from Steve cuss is actually an interesting one is that the key to managing chronic anxiety is simply curiosity. Can you get curious? In other words, can you identify slow down, be present in the moment, not focus on what is yet to come and all the possible outcomes, but to be present and acknowledge where you are, how you're feeling what the signs are and go from there as we dive into some scriptures. I want you to notice something here from our big idea is that you're gonna see where scripture is gonna encourage us to turn down the volume of anxiety cause it's gonna come. It doesn't say it's sinful to have anxious thoughts. It says when anxiety comes, OK, turn it down and then ultimately tune into a better channel and he's gonna give us some examples. Let's jump into it here. First Peter chapter five verses six and seven. Peter who was a fisherman by the way, becomes an apostle. I think it's interesting because of his word choice. He says, humble yourselves. Therefore, under the mighty hand of God, OK? Turn down, bring down the pride level, humble yourself. It says so that at the at the proper time, he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. Not a great word from a fisherman casting, all that word actually wasn't used even in scripture to describe fish. But actually the other time was used to describe when they cast a blanket onto a donkey that Jesus was gonna write in. But the image is actually found throughout this idea of casting it on to someone else who can carry it. So if you take a note, you can write this down that cast your anxiety, carry your responsibility, not the other way around. See, we live in a culture that actually does the opposite, don't we? We say cast your responsibility. It's you're a victim. It's somebody else's fault. It's, it's this party's fault. It's that party's fault. It's the government's fault. It's this person's fault like we place the blame on everybody else, don't we? And then what do we do? We hang on to our anxiety. We do the opposite of what scripture tells us to do. Scripture says, cast your anxiety and then carry your responsibility. What do you have control over? What, what are you responsible for? How can you be present in the moment and respond? OK. Notice that exchange turning down and then tuning in. All right, Philippians four Paul from prison. Mind you, if anybody had reason to be anxious, it would be a guy in prison about to lose his life. But he writes these words, rejoice in the Lord. Always again, I will say rejoice let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand, do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds. In Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Now, growing up when I read these verses, I used to feel guilty or shameful for these because uh because I see this list of what you're supposed to think about. And if I wasn't thinking about those things, I'm like, oh, I'm failing. Does that make sense? Like, oh man, I'm not a good Christian. Oh, I've failed again. But studying this further. What if this wasn't a position of, here's the list to show you your failing. But rather here is the path to a restful soul because here he is in prison has every reason to be stressed out and anxious, but he's not. He's actually worshiping God and rejoicing. He says, let me tell you how I got there. Do not be anxious, turn down the volume of those anxious thoughts. Give those requests before the Lord allow the peace of Christ to come into your soul and then tune into a better channel. What is good? What is worthy. What is honorable, think about these things? See, Paul has actually given us the solution or the path forward on how to respond to, to anxious thoughts, turn down the anxious thoughts, take the request before the Lord and then tune in to a better channel of all that is good and worthy and honorable and you will experience peace for your soul. We know this to be true because the very words of Jesus Jesus in Matthew 11 verse 28 and 29 says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. A yoke was a, a piece that was arched that you put two animals in to plow a field. Well, if you're sharing a yoke with God who's carrying that weight, God, you know, it's just like it's like moving furniture in the house with like an infant. You know what I mean? Like you, I want to help daddy and like, oh, we did it like like the infant's not doing like we're not carrying a lot of the load there like he's saying like no, take my yoke upon you, let me carry the weight and you're going to find rest. Jesus is speaking to his disciples in Luke chapter 12 verse 22 to 31. He says, and he said to his disciples. Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat nor what about your body or what you will put on. He says, for life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the Ravens, not just the football fans, but the actual Ravens. Um they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn and yet God feeds them of how much more value are you than the birds? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to the span of his life? Oh, that is a tough question. We go whole sermon off that one verse. It's almost like God saying like, how is that working for you? Like, did anyone ever spend a day worrying and anxious and stressed out and got the end? Like that was good. I feel better. I'm younger now, you know? No. What do we say that took years off my life, right? There's a reason it spins in our heads and, and we binge eat and we scroll and we feel tired and exhausted and we turn to things like drug and drink and distractions. Why? Because it's not helpful. He's saying like, who's gonna, how are you gonna add to your life? Like, how is that helping you? He's not saying that it's uncommon. He says, how is that helping you? He says, if, then you are not able to do such a small thing as that. I love how God calls adding a year to life. A small thing. Um Then why are you anxious about the rest? Verse 27 consider the lilies how they grow. They neither toil, nor, nor spin yet. I tell you even Solomon in all His glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so close the grass which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, how much more will he clothe you? O you of little faith do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink. Nor be worried for all the nations of the world. Seek after these things. Look, it's common, everybody's doing this and the father knows that you need them instead seek His kingdom and all these things will be added to you. The things of God, the person of God, the kingdom of God is the better channel to tune into. So let's get practical here. How can we calm the chaos? What is the process that those couple of scriptures laid out for us? I believe there's three steps for us that we can take to. And this is not something that you're just gonna solve overnight by the way, but it's something you can manage as you go through daily life. Three things we can do when anxious thoughts, stressful thoughts come into our life creep into our life and they will. Ok? And they will. I'm just telling you they, if they're not already there, they're about to be. And so what do you do when they come into your life? Number one is to pause to notice and name your anxiety. Can you notice and name your anxiety? Because when you go through that, what you realize is that it loses some of its power over. You think about shocks on a car or shocks like on a bike or vehicle. Have you ever ridden in a car that has bad shocks? Every little you feel every bump, don't you? That's what happens in life here is that it's not gonna avoid the potholes and the bumps in life. It's just, do you have the biblical shocks built in so that your life can absorb it a little bit so you can be a little more resilient than you were before. Can you notice and name the anxieties in your life? What's the false need that you're trying to answer? What are, is your head spinning? Is your heart racing? Is it, is a tightening of the gut? Are you getting bigger or are you getting smaller? Can you identify the stressful response of your loved ones or can they see it in you? Can you identify that? Right? Ok. Number two then is you can pray to take your request to God, take your request to God. That's what we see over and over in scripture. He says, don't be anxious. He doesn't just say stop it, don't do it. And then moves on. He says, no, take your requests, give them to God, take the request, give them to God when you do that, you know what happens, you take worry and it turns into worship. This uh one of my rhythms is on Sunday mornings. I get up early and grab some coffee. I sit in my little little chair in my living room and I look over my notes and I pray through it and I just kind of keep going through it until I feel like it's into my spirit and, and ready to go and then I come into church. And so I was doing that this morning and then I print copies of my notes and I for myself, for the tech team, for the, for the band. And what I forgot to do was I have one of those printers that has the little tray to hold the papers, but you gotta pull it out. You know what I'm talking about? I forgot to pull the tray out. So I'm feeling like, OK, I'm ready, like I'm, I'm running a little late. That's OK. It took a little extra time to get ready for this morning and, but I'm locked in, I'm ready to go. And it's funny that like when you're writing a sermon on anxiety, like, and you feel anxious about writing a sermon on anyway, this didn't help by the way. And so what happened was I went in and I printed multiple copies without a tray. My paper just did this. And so literally my garage was just spread out with papers like great. This is great. Here's the thing though. It's like when we pray that puts the tray out. So we take our anxious thought and we have a place to put it right is a place to set it. It's like I'm gonna receive this interest thought and now I'm going to turn and give it to God. So pause, notice, name, get curious, right? Why am I having that thought? Where is this coming from? What's the need? I'm looking for. Pray, take the request humbly before God cast your anxieties on him. And then the last one here is replace with something from your life giving list, replace it with something better as a concept too, comes from Steve cuss. I started doing it this last year. Uh And it's actually helped me a lot. And so it's helped me. So maybe it'll help you. What is a living life giving list? Glad you asked the question. Um It is when you create a list of people, places and activities that fill you up. It is an active living document of gratitude that also you can continually experience right? There are some spiritual disciplines, write scripture, prayer, worship, music, solitude, fasting community. Um but also make it personal like God wired you in a certain way. Right. So who are the people that fill you up? Like for me, family, I have some friends, have some pastors that are out of state that we talk and connect. I mean, like three different pastor cohorts that we like, share um ministry and life together. I have friends that don't necessarily even go to church, but we talk sports. Right? Like who are the relationships that you can connect with that fill you up right now. Think about the places that matter to you. Ok? The places that matter to you, it can be something like big, like something specific. So I think about the Moon rim trail up in Pinetop lakeside where God called me to start the church. I can think about uh eating steak at Duke's in Maui at sunset with my wife with a sailboat going by great memory. Right? I think about hikes in Flagstaff near a condo that we would stay. Uh our family. I think about family trips. But besides like the big things, it can be little things, right? It's the leather chair in my living room where I drink coffee. It's, uh, you know, it, it's the golf course or driving range or the, or the broken hoop in our backyard and the sound of a swish when the ball goes in. Right. It's watching my kids jump on a trampoline. It's, when you think of activities, it's, it's petting. I, my dog Sophie's head. Right. It's going for a walk in our neighborhood in a loop. We have a little loop around where we live. I just walk. Um, I love audio books and podcasts and I weirdly nerd out and listen to it twice the speed, which is dumb, but I just do it and it, and I love it. Right. Um, or it's, it's cranking my favorite worship song of the day and just blasting it and singing it out loud alone in my car. To the point. I look weird to the car next to me. Right. It is a date night with my wife that we routinely do. Like just going out for dinner. Like, yeah, it might be steak one night. It might be Chipotle and Target right the next. Or it might be like a driver coffee shop or something like that. Like a place for me. Like when we started the church is Saddle Creek coffee. Like, uh, it became an office space for me. Like, what are the places for you that you can go to and be filled up? I love going to suns games. Right? I love, but I also love moments like when my daughter, uh, wakes up in the morning with big messy hair and crawls in my lap. Like, what are the little things that bring you joy? Ok. And you start replacing that with the word of God, the power of God, the people of God, the things of God and you can find calm in the chaos, turn down the volume of anxiety and tune into a better channel. And you can find that through the people, places and activities that God's placed in your life already. And it's a way to fight the anxious thoughts that come into your life. Will you pray with me dear? Only father? Just thank you for who you are and what you've done. God as we process all that you're doing now, whatever stress and overwhelm is in people's lives, I pray that we can turn down the volume that comes in that we can humbly give our requests before you that we can pause, notice what is going on in our lives. Pray, give our request before you and ultimately replace it with who and what and where you've placed us in this life. Let us walk in the stance of gratitude and humility. And so we give our families and our lives up to you in a sense that we pray. Amen.