When we worry, we literally are going through the motions of prayer, but we're ripping all the power out of it.

We're not directing those thoughts to God and saying, hey, I'm worried about this election.

Hey, I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my infertility journey. I'm worried I'm not going to find somebody to marry.

Instead of directing that to God, we simply meditate on it to ourselves as if we can somehow

change the course of the future.

Welcome back to Verity Podcast friends. I'm Felicia Masonheimer, the host of Verity and the founder

of every woman, a theologian. I'm so excited to have you join us today, whether for the first

time or if you've been listening for a while. Right now we're in the middle of our beginner

believer series, where we talk about questions that new or returning believers in Christ are asking about their faith.

And when I was thinking about what we should do this week, I thought, oh, we could talk more about the theology of the gospel or sin and sanctification.

But I realized, you know, I recently have been struggling with a lot of anxiety.

How about we just talk about that very personal

and very real struggle that so many of us who walk with Christ are facing? And so today I want to

share with you a little of my own process of walking with Christ through anxiety and actually

finding freedom from anxiety in my daily life.

I want to start right there because I think that some Christians come to Christianity with a fatalistic mindset that anxiety is their identity.

It's who they are. It's who they're always going to be. It's always going to be present with them. And I'm here to

tell you that Christ does bring peace. He does. However, that doesn't mean that we will never

struggle with anxiety again. We live in a world and a culture that is marked by a lack of peace,

and that is always going to be assaulting us to some degree.

And yet, peace is not the absence of anxiety or the temptation to anxiety or to worry.

Peace is the ability to trust Christ in the midst of that, to trust Christ and to release that. And so that's what I'm going to share

...