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Foreign. Friends of Jesus Sowers for a great awakening. It's Monday, January 12th, in the year of our Lord 2026. I'm John David Walt and this is your wake up call. Now before we dive in today, I want to remind you that tonight we begin our class with Tarabeth Leach. You remember Tarabeth from the the days between Christmas and New Year's. She's doing a course for us the next three Monday nights, probably about 90 minutes a night, and it's on her great morning Revolution book. And it'll really be encouraging to you, nourishing, helpful, and I just want to encourage you. It'll be in the PS today. It's not too late to sign up and if you need a scholarship, we'll help you there. But just want to make that reminder now, it being Monday, I think Monday may be the most important consecration day of the week. Maybe not, but it is going to be today. So wake up sleeper. Rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you. Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you. And we're praying in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, today's entry is entitled why the cause of your anxiety is not the cause. And our text we're reading today, Proverbs chapter 12. I'm going to focus on verse 25. Hear now the Word of the Lord. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. The Word of the Lord. Now consider this. What is anxiety? Everyone knows what anxiety feels like, and many of us could identify what we are anxious about, but few could actually tell us what anxiety is. Anxiety originates from the broken state of a person's inner life and world, which, left untreated, leads to disordered affections and ambitions. Anxiety, a condition we all have in common to a greater or lesser degree, comes from a perennial and sometimes pervasive sense of insecurity at the core of one's being. Anxiety is so challenging because it isolates us from its antidote, which can only be found in healthy relationships with other people. Anxiety's obvious manifestation is withdrawal from relationships. Its less obvious expression can be seen when people unhealthily enmesh themselves with others, also known as codependence. Because we are all broken people, we all struggle with anxiety to a greater or lesser degree. Though not intended by God, anxiety has become a normal way of existing and in the world. Note in chapters 1 through 3 in the book of Genesis, anxiety does not arrive on the scene until deception, mistrust and disobedience appear. One more thing. Anxiety is highly contagious. It is curable, but most of us opt instead to cope with it. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. There are a plethora of unhealthy ways we try to cover over our anxiety. People typically, and often unknowingly, self medicate their anxiety through strategies of accumulation, achievement, anger, avoidance, abdication and addiction. That was alliteration. Anxiety typically goes in one of two directions, aggression or apathy, both of which commonly present themselves through some dimension of depression. There is a far more helpful and enduring way of dealing with anxiety. Check this out. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. That's Philippians 4, 6 and 7. Note this is not a simple trite prescription that says to just pray about it. This is all about a complete reorientation and renovation of one's innermost self. The peace of God transcends it actually breaks through the hard shell of anxiety and creates an alternative environment in our inner world. The environment is called the peace of God. This is not a keep calm and carry on kind of peace, but a supernatural peace, an unexplainable peace. This peace guards our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. Ironically, until our hearts and our minds are under the guard and watch care of the peace of God, we are forced to guard them ourselves, which is where so much anxiety comes from in the first place. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. I've just identified the long game strategy. It takes time and a very intentional Holy Spirit empowered soul work. One more thing. It's impossible to work through it alone. That's why I'm always pointing you toward banding together with a couple of other souls. In the meantime, we all carry around an everyday kind of antidote that can alleviate the anxiety of others. Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. The prayer Our Father, because you are peace, your presence brings peace. Jesus gave us his peace and the Holy Spirit carries peace to and fro all day long. I am anxious, open up a new way in my soul that I might begin to lay down my anxiety and become a carrier of peace. I pray in Jesus name, Amen. The journal prompts today where does anxiety come from? Note I'm not asking what is causing anxiety in any given moment, but where it comes from. And what would it look like if I began dealing with the root causes of anxiety in my life rather than trying to escape the symptoms of it? How might we help one another to deal with our anxiety and not just placate the symptoms and not doing things that escalate it, like being upset with each other for being anxious. Come on. People can't help it. They need help. Well, we're going to sing in a minute, but I wanted to just make a couple of closing comments before we do. And this is a very serious issue. I mean, parents out there, you know, we know what it's like when our kids become seized with anxiety. It's just like they. They're gone. They go somewhere and we can't seem to reach them. And oftentimes the first thing we do is reach for some kind of medication. And I'm not knocking medication for anxiety. A lot of people are on that and need that. But I am pressing for something more and something deeper. I think the epidemic of our time in all generations is loneliness. I think that's driving so much anxiety in the world. People feeling alone. And that's real. It doesn't have to be that way. And that's what's so fascinating about the text, right? Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. We need friendship. We don't need just a kind word. A kind word is a fruit of friendship. But we need community like we never needed it before. We are shielded from each other. And in fact, our young are growing up in the most isolated generation in a. A long time because of our phones. These phones keep us ironically so called connected to the whole world and completely disconnected from the people around us and ourselves. We desperately need a reset. We need each other. And that's why the Christian faith is a team sport. It is not a solo pursuit. We need each other. I've talked about banding. I think today a little bit. If I didn't, I should have. But we've got to find one another. We got to find one another, friends. That's the antidote to anxiety. Deep, abiding, personal, honest, real human relationships.