Sermon Tone Analysis

What are: Anxiety, Anguish, and Fear

These three from the psychological world are three different things, but are they really?

They may be related and regarded of as three different degrees of the same state; the one that people experience when their sympathetic nervous systems impels them to act, but action is in fact impossible (Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health, and Addiction).

Anxiety- is a vague, unpleasant emotion that reflects some apprehension, distress, and diffuse fears about no one thing in particular.

Can be caused by: too much information that you cannot process it, not having enough information that you feel helpless, having trouble accepting certain events (death of loved ones, unpredictable or uncontrollable circumstances).

It can also result from a specifically human and hence neocortical process: imagining situations that do not exist but that you are afraid of it.

Fear- is a strong, intense emotion experienced in the presence of a real, immediate threat.

It originates in a system that detects dangers and produces responses that will increase the individual chances of survival.

It can also arise out of mere thought of potential danger.

Anguish- anxiety and anguish comes from the same Indo-European root (angh, meaning to tighten or compress), the two conditions different in that anguish is always accompanied by physiological changes such as sweating, a racing pulse, and a feeling of suffocating, while anxiety does not.

Anguish stems by an intensity of the psychic discomfort experienced, which results from extreme uneasiness, a sense of being defenceless and powerless to deal with a danger that seems vague but imminent.

The attacks are very hard to control.

When anguish onset happens the person can only focus on the present and are unable to perform any other tasks.

Anxiety-Depression: These two can trigger one another, they effect each other.

If either one is not controlled they will bring the onset of the other.

Anxiety affects 40 million adults in the U.S. 18 and over that is equivalent of 18% of the population.

It cost the U.S. 42 billion every year.

Depression is the leading cause of disability World Wide.

The median age onset for depression in 33 in the U.S. It is more prevalent in women than in men.

What does this have to with Psalm 55?

The Psalmist goes through each one of these three to get to depression.

Anxiety: 1-2

Crying out to God: Listen God, take heed, hear what I am saying God.

Asking God not to hide from him (Anxiety)- the Psalmist is imagining a situation that does not exist!

The Psalmist thinks God is concealing Himself.

NONE OF US HAVE EVER FELT THAT WAY, HAVE WE?

Plea (supplication): compassion, mercy, pardon, pleading

Heed: listen attentively, pay attention> How he wants God to stop everything and hear him and to answer him.

Restless: tear loose- the Psalmist wants to tear himself loose from the taunting that has encompass him.

Anguish: 3-4

The Psalmist sees an enemy who is using words and pressure to attack him.

Words (voice): noise that comes from the lying lips of the enemy.

Usually they are vague attacks but the Psalmist and we too see them as imminent danger.

Pressuring: persecution, Psalmist feels the persecution coming from the wicked.

He can feel the trouble bearing down on him, he feels the anger of those who are harassing him.

He thinks all is a disaster waiting to consume him.

It causes his heart to anguish within him.

The Psalmist is explaining that his heart is writhe (twisted into pain).

Terrors: horror of death has overtaken him, there is no escape.

This produces the next ingredient.

Fear: 5-6

Trembling: Quaking, shaking uncontrollable due to fear.

He believed death was at hand

Anxiety produced great fear and trembling

We should only tremble and fear One, Ps. 119:120

The horror of death covered him like a blanket, like a net that he could not maneuver out from it.

Fear produces two responses: Fight or Flight

There is a time for fight and a time to for flight

Fear causes him to flee

He wants to find rest from his adversary.

Anytime we are in a prolong battle or seems like we battle just to get to the next battle, we find ourselves wanting to find rest.

PROBLEM is still there when we come back from rest.

What if the thing we are trying to flee from is in us?

Depression:

This follows if anxiety, fear, and anguish overcome us.

We stop living as conquerers in Christ and flee to isolation.

We see our problem and tell God how big it is instead of telling our problem how big God is.

We try to find shelter from the storm in wordly things instead of finding our shelter in Him.

Matthew 14:29-31

Conclusion:

David is the Psalmist

Man after God’s own heart is overcome with anxiety, fear, anguish, and depression.

Man who slew Goliath

One who penned Psalm 23

The anointed one of God’s

How about you, do you allow yourself to go through what David did?

When you came to Christ did all this flee from you?

It did not flee from me.

God got Israel out of Egypt in one day but it took forty years to get Egypt out of Israel!

Masking the problem is not the answer, giving it to God is the answer.

Find your shelter in Him, this is where are rest comes from.

He has overcame everything for you and I, but it does not mean the symptoms don’t show up now and then.