Resource list for my sermon series on anxiety

Resource list for my sermon series on anxiety

Last month I preached a sermon series that I had been working on for months, if not nearly a year. In 2019, I decided to only preach out of the 4 gospels. As I was preparing for this series in late 2018, I knew I wanted to collect a few of these passages and preach on anxiety. Little did I know that I would go through a major health crisis in just a few months, and one of the main causes of it would be my ability to process anxiety and stress in my own life.

I finally preached the series in November of 2019.

Here are the messages on anxiety

What is Anxiety

The non-anxious presence of Christ

Filling the gaps in our mind

Resources Used

I wanted to make sure I had a good grasp on the theological idea of anxiety as well as what some Christian pastors AND mental health practioneers had to say. I also interviewed a good friend who is a Doctor and professional, licensed mental health practitioner. I knew the church had done some pretty bad job of talking about depression and anxiety before. I wanted to try to avoid those mistakes.

The Christian and Anxiety – Hans Urs von Balthasar
This is a theological treatment of anxiety and Christianity. It is a deep, but short theological aesthetic of anxiety and how it relates to the Triune God. It is an academic text, but was extremely valuable.

Balthasar and Anxiety – John Cihak
Because Balthasar is a rather complex work, I ended up also using this book that digs into the ideas in Balthasar’s own writing and explains it a bit.

The Anxious Christian – Rhett Smith
I picked this up on title alone. It was a good book, but over the course of my study, I found it to not be exactly what I was looking for.

My Name is Hope – John Mark Comer
I was reading Comer’s book below and enjoying it. I was doing a quick Kindle search to find a book to read in the deer stand and came upon this book. It was a fantastic glimpse into anxiety and super practical. It gave great tips for understanding and overcoming anxiety.

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry – John Mark Comer
I was excited about this book releasing, and it came out right before I started preaching the series. I quickly devoured it and found it to be a fantastic companion to the practical side of these messages. It was extremely helpful for the last message.

Thanks for checking out these resources. I hope they and the messages are helpful for you.

The Officials Son | Behind The Sermon Vlog

The Officials Son | Behind The Sermon Vlog

Earlier this summer I spent a week recording what I thought would be a fantastic vlog in the behind the sermon series. And it just got posted. This was the vlog that would never end, and I probably uploaded it around 12 times before everything was good.

In other words, this might be the last one, because it was a massive headache. Or not.

If you want to catch the whole sermon, here it is.

 

Behind the Sermon | Everybody is a Neighbor

Behind the Sermon | Everybody is a Neighbor

I’ve started a new experiment. I’ve been thinking of vlogging these last few weeks, and ultimately, after pouring over youtube, realized I wanted to start working through an honest week of sermon writing. I couldn’t find pastors regularly vlogging, so I am curious how this all works out.

So without any added fanfare, here’s the first episode of Behind the Sermon. If you dig it, please subscribe on youtube.

 

 

And here is the sermon this week produced.