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Speaker 1: Good evening and welcome aboard with me on the phone tonight.
Speaker 1: Is one of my all time favorite authors. Love your
Speaker 1: preaching and now you've got Max Uh an inspiring book
Speaker 1: that is so timely with me as Max Lucado, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about um your new book that
Speaker 1: that the timing could not Sadly, the timing could not
Speaker 1: be more perfect. There seems to be, by the way.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for for the opportunity. I think
Speaker 1: so highly of you and uh, just hearing your voice
Speaker 1: warms my heart. So I'm so grateful to be to
Speaker 1: be with you. There's there's so many causes for anxiety
Speaker 1: in the world. It just seems like we're at a
Speaker 1: fever pitch uh and uh and and people are struggling
Speaker 1: to find a way to calm down and to uh
Speaker 1: and to take a deep breath. Uh. Some of these
Speaker 1: are natural disasters, some of these are political concerns. There's
Speaker 1: threats from you know, North Korea. There's there's conversations about conflicts,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's difficult, uh to find a way
Speaker 1: to kind of settle down and calmed down. And when
Speaker 1: I wrote this book about I guess I finished it
Speaker 1: seven or eight months ago. I thought, well, it'd be
Speaker 1: good to have this book coming up now because of
Speaker 1: all the anxiety over politics. And now I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing is coming out right now because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that about natural disasters and politics,
Speaker 1: and so I guess anytime you talk about anxiety, it's
Speaker 1: a needed topic. Well, we do we we do have
Speaker 1: the natural disasters, the largest hurricanes to ever hit US,
Speaker 1: and wildfires out of control, and as you said, that
Speaker 1: conflict going on with insanity in North Korea and trying
Speaker 1: to understand that, but Max, I think just our lifestyle,
Speaker 1: just our lifestyle is so anxiety producing. You know that
Speaker 1: the tablets and the you know, the devices that kids
Speaker 1: now have, little kids, little kids, not just you know,
Speaker 1: teenagers who need to call home or do homework, but
Speaker 1: little kids. And and the way we are constantly bombarded
Speaker 1: with images. Yeah. I read someplace, uh that the average
Speaker 1: American and spends between six and eight hours a day
Speaker 1: either consuming TV or media on a device. Wow, how
Speaker 1: can that be? Yeah? And if you compare that with
Speaker 1: two or three generations ago, our ancestors, you know, they
Speaker 1: shut down when the sun went down. They they went
Speaker 1: as far on a given day as their horse or
Speaker 1: camel would take them. But we don't shut down when
Speaker 1: the sun goes down. And we see uh night as
Speaker 1: a great time to take the red off lot so
Speaker 1: we can be at work in the morning. And it's
Speaker 1: a hectic, hectic time. And I believe we're starting to
Speaker 1: really pay the price for that, Tolna. You know, we're
Speaker 1: we've learned that that this the United States is officially
Speaker 1: the most anxious nation in the world. Uh, And that
Speaker 1: this generation is the most anxious nation since anxiety, you know,
Speaker 1: has been measured, and so the land of stars and
Speaker 1: stripes has become the land of stress and strikes, and
Speaker 1: and we find ourselves just wrapped tighter than mummies and
Speaker 1: not knowing how to handle, uh, the challenges that come
Speaker 1: our way. So you said something that just struck a
Speaker 1: chord to me. You said, the presence of anxiety is unavoidable,
Speaker 1: but the prison of anxiety is optional. Absolutely. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody in the world escapes anxiety. I'm confident of that.
Speaker 1: And if anybody says they're never anxious, then I've got
Speaker 1: another book I once wrote on honesty. But you know,
Speaker 1: even Jesus in in the in the stories in the Bible,
Speaker 1: even Jesus felt anxiety on the night before the crucifixion.
Speaker 1: Is that powerful, poignant story of Jesus in the Garden
Speaker 1: of Gestimony, uh, praying asking to be delivered from what
Speaker 1: he was about to face. He was overwhelmed by fear. Now,
Speaker 1: the difference is he didn't let fear win, but he
Speaker 1: did face fear. So so I think anxiety comes with life,
Speaker 1: but it just simply doesn't have to dominate our lives.
Speaker 1: And I think there are ways we can learn to
Speaker 1: talk ourselves back off the ledge to calm ourselves down.
Speaker 1: There's certain UH tools we can develop to help us
Speaker 1: move from people whose lives are characterized by chaos to
Speaker 1: become people who's really their lives are characterized by calm.
Speaker 1: And I really think we need a quorum of people
Speaker 1: who will simply calm everything down. You know, I'm almost
Speaker 1: hesitant to post anything on face hoo can you more, Lalla?
Speaker 1: Because it seems to stir up an argument from somebody
Speaker 1: somewhere that there there there, there are, There are trigger
Speaker 1: points that I didn't know existed. And I think it's
Speaker 1: because we're anxious and we we don't. We don't. We're
Speaker 1: starting to lose our ability to have reasonable conversations and
Speaker 1: to be civil with one another. Can does that make sense? Oh?
Speaker 1: Does it make sense? Come on? Max? I I can
Speaker 1: put up the sweetest, most simple little picture or just
Speaker 1: a little quote, you know, a post about hope, and
Speaker 1: people attack me. I'm like really, come on? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say this because I'm a pastor, but
Speaker 1: sometimes Christians UH can can come across as harsh and
Speaker 1: dogmatic and sometimes as if sometimes sometimes being generous sometimes
Speaker 1: and I hope I want to say it's a minority.
Speaker 1: But but I do think that there is a you know,
Speaker 1: to be able to sit down with somebody and disagree
Speaker 1: agreeably requires a certain level of confidence and uh and
Speaker 1: and and in peace within yourself. But if I'm an
Speaker 1: agitated person, if I'm an anxious person, I'm going to
Speaker 1: have a hard time having a disagreement with somebody agreeably.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get defensive, I'm gonna withdraw, I'm gonna polar
Speaker 1: I'm going to create an island upon which I live
Speaker 1: and not let anybody else in. And I think what
Speaker 1: we're seeing in our country today now see hold on,
Speaker 1: just hold on just a second here, because you just
Speaker 1: painted a picture of my sister, you did, you painted
Speaker 1: them When she's anxious, when she's stressing, she withdraws, she
Speaker 1: goes to the island. I when I get anxious, when
Speaker 1: I get exhausted, I'm the one that storms your island,
Speaker 1: demanding that you see things my way. It's true. And
Speaker 1: when I get anxious, and for me, uh, if I
Speaker 1: don't take care of first things first, if I don't
Speaker 1: get enough sleep, if I don't need healthy, if I
Speaker 1: don't get some exercise, those three things, that's when my
Speaker 1: anxiety starts to build. And this past summer, my husband
Speaker 1: and I took ten kids in a year old RV
Speaker 1: to Yellowstone, Um and some somewhere along the way. We
Speaker 1: thought that was a good idea, you know, to sleep intense.
Speaker 1: They slept intents. We slept in a year old r
Speaker 1: V with orange cheg carpeting, and so sleep patterns were interrupted.
Speaker 1: Kids were cold at night, everybody was grumpy, and I
Speaker 1: found myself going ballistic over a bag of peas that disappeared.
Speaker 1: I bought a bag of peas at a farmer's market
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find him, and I was a screaming
Speaker 1: maniac in the campground over a bag of peas. Anxiety
Speaker 1: can can turn us all into crazy folks. It does,
Speaker 1: It really does. My godson actually said, Mom, I think
Speaker 1: if you had a videotape of yourself right now, you
Speaker 1: would be really embarrassed. Yeah. Well, I don't know who
Speaker 1: told you it was a good idea to take ten
Speaker 1: kids on a camping carpalogy. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: You've got to bear some of the consequence of that yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what did we once we got some sleep, what
Speaker 1: did we have fun? You did I bet you did.
Speaker 1: You were intense in a different way. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 1: was intense in a different way. The kids were intense,
Speaker 1: and so was I. Okay, back to steps we can take.
Speaker 1: Number one, don't take ten kids camping in a year old.
Speaker 1: But other steps we can take, Max, and you outline
Speaker 1: these so sweetly in calm uh to find that that
Speaker 1: I of the storm, that place of peace. A favorite
Speaker 1: book of mine in the Bible for many many years
Speaker 1: has been a little four chapter letter called Philippians. And
Speaker 1: it was written by the apostle Paul while he was
Speaker 1: in prison. Uh. And I say that to say that
Speaker 1: when you read the letter, you'd think he's on a
Speaker 1: Jamaican beach, sitting on my time, because it's a happy letter.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's full of joy, it's full of hope.
Speaker 1: And yet here's a guy sitting in a Roman prison,
Speaker 1: and odds are he's going to be executed in the
Speaker 1: any day now. And yet he pens this beautiful epistle,
Speaker 1: and right in the middle of it is that phrase
Speaker 1: from which we got the title of the book, be
Speaker 1: anxious for nothing. And so I took that passage in Delilah.
Speaker 1: I just divided it up into four sections. And here's
Speaker 1: his way, he says, to deal with anxiety. First, he
Speaker 1: would say, celebrate God. He says, rejoice in the Lord. Again,
Speaker 1: I say rejoice. So we celebrate God's goodness, we celebrate
Speaker 1: God's strength, we celebrate all the wonder whole things about God.
Speaker 1: And then we celebrate the things we don't know about God.
Speaker 1: You just say, Lord, we trust that you're in control.
Speaker 1: But then the second thing he says is ask the
Speaker 1: Lord for help. He says, be anxious for nothing, but
Speaker 1: in everything, let your uh. Let your prayers and petitions
Speaker 1: be men known to God. In other words, just pray
Speaker 1: about it. So, rather than react before your troubles get
Speaker 1: a hold of you, give your troubles to God. And
Speaker 1: then the third word, third key word is uh, the
Speaker 1: letter L. Leave. Leave the problem with God. Paul says,
Speaker 1: do this with thanksgiving. So you do so. With thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: You trust that it's in his hands now and now
Speaker 1: that you don't have to worry about it. Then Paul says, now,
Speaker 1: meditate on these things, and he gives us a list
Speaker 1: of nine virtues to think about. It's basically, whatever is true,
Speaker 1: whatever is honest, whatever is good, whatever is hopeful. In
Speaker 1: other words, quit focusing on the messiness of life. Make
Speaker 1: an intentional decision to look at the rainbows, to look
Speaker 1: at the unsets and and it's very practical. Counsel So
Speaker 1: you celebrate, you ask, you leave, you meditate, calm. It
Speaker 1: literally calms a person down. And I think everybody who
Speaker 1: finds himself in an anxious situation, rather than to give
Speaker 1: in to the anxiety, can step in and and and
Speaker 1: hold it back and begin to react in this way,
Speaker 1: and they'll find themselves calming down. Okay, So see a
Speaker 1: l M. Celebrate, ask, leave, and meditate, and meditate, Celebrate
Speaker 1: God's goodness, ask God for help, leave the problem with him,
Speaker 1: and meditate on good things. This is good because it's simple.
Speaker 1: I need simple. Yeah, you and me both like the
Speaker 1: term kiss keep it simple, silly, Yeah, I need. I
Speaker 1: need these little simple tools to get me through. We
Speaker 1: all do, we all do. And anxiety is you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a challenging thing, it really is, and I
Speaker 1: sure don't want to minimize it. If your anxiety has
Speaker 1: gotten to the point where you need pharmaceutical help or
Speaker 1: counseling or pastoral visit, do whatever it takes. I believe anxiety, Uh,
Speaker 1: perpetual anxiety, de Laila, this, this lifelong anxiety can really
Speaker 1: bring a person down. It it can, It can just
Speaker 1: suck them into a well of despair. And I believe
Speaker 1: that there is a good God who will help us,
Speaker 1: who doesn't desire that we live in this state of
Speaker 1: perpetual anxiety. We let fear do its work. Fear is
Speaker 1: God's idea, that's what keeps us from, you know, stepping
Speaker 1: out into traffic. But we don't let fear turn into
Speaker 1: this perpetual anxiety that keeps us from ever getting in
Speaker 1: a car and going out on the road again. So
Speaker 1: we let fear do its work. But then we let
Speaker 1: ourselves rest, We recover, We try to think clearly, and
Speaker 1: most of all, we ask God for help. And I think,
Speaker 1: I think there's this, there is a way out of
Speaker 1: this anxious pattern that people find themselves. There's something in
Speaker 1: this this new book Anxious for Nothing Max That, Uh,
Speaker 1: that was so beautiful. You wrote it so beautifully. What
Speaker 1: you just said, that there's nothing we can do to
Speaker 1: earn God's loves. Yeah, and he'll never be mad at
Speaker 1: us again. That blew my mind. I mean I know that,
Speaker 1: but the way you wrote it, so simply and so
Speaker 1: sweetly blew my mind. And it's hard because we do.
Speaker 1: Everybody else treats us with conditional love, even our best,
Speaker 1: best people. They love us more when we're better, They
Speaker 1: love us a little bit less when we're less. Think
Speaker 1: you know, they love us more when everything's great, they
Speaker 1: love us less when we're all in Yellowstone. But you
Speaker 1: know that's that's that's human nature. But there is a
Speaker 1: perfect love. There is an unconditional love in the universe.
Speaker 1: Into this, cover this, and live in the shadow and
Speaker 1: the overflow of that. That's that's just really last changing,
Speaker 1: it really is. Well. I would love to get some
Speaker 1: more copies of this so I can send them out
Speaker 1: to my listeners, because you know, when I'm interviewed, when
Speaker 1: I'm interviewed by radio or TV or whatever, one of
Speaker 1: the questions I get asked a lot is, Delilah, you've
Speaker 1: been doing this show for many years, many decades at
Speaker 1: this point, have you seen a change in the kinds
Speaker 1: of calls you get each night? And Max, I take
Speaker 1: sixty calls a night, And the biggest change I think
Speaker 1: I've seen, especially the last five years, is in the
Speaker 1: level of anxiety in my listeners, people call, and God
Speaker 1: bless them, they sent on hold for five minutes to
Speaker 1: get to talk to me. And nine percent of the
Speaker 1: time when they call with a Delilah dilemma or whatever,
Speaker 1: it is, this anxious mess in their heart that a
Speaker 1: five minute phone call in us four minute song isn't
Speaker 1: going to fix. And and I spend as much time
Speaker 1: counseling as them as I can, sharing you know, my faith.
Speaker 1: But if, if, if I could send or encourage every
Speaker 1: person listening to go pick up Anxious for Nothing. If
Speaker 1: you are dealing with anxiety, if your teenager is getting
Speaker 1: into drugs, if your husband is being unfaithful, if your
Speaker 1: wife just walked out the door, if you lost your job,
Speaker 1: if your house was affected by the hurricanes, if there's
Speaker 1: a wildfire near your home, if there's uh you know,
Speaker 1: being bombarded by social media, the political climate, whichever you know,
Speaker 1: left or right, or fighting you're doing with your best friend.
Speaker 1: Spend a few hours reading Anxious for Nothing and find
Speaker 1: that calm, that calm. Are you gonna go crazy? I
Speaker 1: lose you? No, I'm doing my favorite thing. I'm listening
Speaker 1: to Thelima. But really, I mean and and don't you
Speaker 1: think that, like mental illness and heart disease and cancer,
Speaker 1: the core roots. You know, if you were a surgeon
Speaker 1: and you could cut that tumor out, the core of
Speaker 1: that tumor often times I think is anxiety and anger,
Speaker 1: because in me, anxiety always produces anger, always it does.
Speaker 1: I would encourage people don't don't beat yourself up for
Speaker 1: feeling anxious. I've been surprised how many people in this
Speaker 1: conversation say, oh, I feel so bad about being so anxious.
Speaker 1: Now you're worrying about worrying. You know, it's it is
Speaker 1: a hard laugh, it is, so don't beat yourself up.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, don't assume that you're going
Speaker 1: to spend the rest of your life living in this
Speaker 1: a petrol state of anxiety. There are ways you can
Speaker 1: learn to talk to yourself, back off the ledge, there
Speaker 1: are ways you can learn to calm down. There are
Speaker 1: ways and uh, and most of all, I believe there
Speaker 1: is a good God who loves you and who will
Speaker 1: help you. And and there are people who don't live
Speaker 1: in anxiety. That's what's encouraging. There really are pockets of
Speaker 1: people who are finding peace. They're they're not naive about life,
Speaker 1: but they're they're peaceful about the future, and they're trusting
Speaker 1: in the presence of God. They're not antagonistic, they're not devices.
Speaker 1: They're just good, healthy, hopeful, hope filled people. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what our country you need, and really that's
Speaker 1: what the world needs. Just the passage that this book
Speaker 1: unpacks has a neat phrase in it. The Apostle says,
Speaker 1: let your gentleness be made evident to all, and gentleness
Speaker 1: there is a word that really means even tempered, nous
Speaker 1: or level headedness. Couldn't we you is a fresh batch
Speaker 1: of even tempered, level headed people helping us navigate our
Speaker 1: way through this world. Who who can build bridges, who
Speaker 1: can help us communicate better? That's what we really need.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the kind of person that that
Speaker 1: faith can build. Uh. And that's this even tempered person.
Speaker 1: And then the other promise in that passage is that
Speaker 1: God will give you a peace that passes all understanding. Amen?
Speaker 1: Can I get an amen? Amen? Amen? Amen? Amen? And
Speaker 1: don't we need that? Max? Thank you You're so kind
Speaker 1: Galilah and uh to some of my happiest moments or
Speaker 1: back when I had a community, I don't have one anymore.
Speaker 1: I work at home too, but I used to listen
Speaker 1: to you every evening driving home, and just hearing your
Speaker 1: voice now it brings back such great memory. So thanks
Speaker 1: for what you've meant to me and millions of us
Speaker 1: through the years. Thank you, slow down and less amer
Speaker 1: which you lie. Love,