Ep17: Have No Fear, God is Here!

Richard and Pat discuss the common emotions of fear and anxiety that most of us deal with throughout our lives. They talk about the harmful effect that it has on us, and how putting our trust in Him, and reminding ourselves of His faithfulness can give us the life of peace, joy, and boldness that He intended for us to live.  

Transcript

Pat: 0:23

And welcome to the two Unlikely Christians podcast. I am recovering Slacker, pat McCool and comedian. And now across the Atlantic Ocean to the beautiful British Isles to the man who once stole David Beckham's first girlfriend at Aland and Rave, just to prove that he could renowned psychotherapist and addiction specialist Richard Turrell.

Rich: 0:49

Thanks, pat. What an intro man. I mean, like, just for like context. Um, and this may be hard to believe, yeah. But back in the nineties when David Beckham was, you know, making his, his splash, um, and appearing on the, on the scene, I, I was not in a position to be still in anyone's girlfriend. You know, it's, it may be hard to believe Pat, but actually back then I wasn't, I wasn't that cool. Which, which,

Pat: 1:14

which makes it more amazing that you did. Yes.

Rich: 1:19

Yes,

Pat: 1:20

pat. Yeah. That's my, that's my story and I'm sticking with it. That's

Rich: 1:23

your, that's your reality, pat. Yes. I live in

Pat: 1:25

my world, Richard.

Rich: 1:28

Yeah. My role is to understand your reality and not force mine on you, you know? So, however, distorted or disturbed that that may be, so, yeah. Yeah. But none.

Pat: 1:41

It's all working for me. So, uh, the, you know, I panicked, uh, just a minute ago because, or what, so you guys fall back in time.

Rich: 1:53

The, yeah, we fell back in time. Yellow box went back. Yeah. Yeah.

Pat: 1:59

Well that's what happens. You know, I mean, we pop it back in hour. Oh,

Rich: 2:03

it's simple lock.

Pat: 2:07

I'm in the bathroom and my wife yells at me and she says, does England. Change their time like we do.'cause if not, you better get up into the studio'cause you're about to be late. And I went into full fledged panic.'cause I didn't know if you, the guys did the same thing We did.

Rich: 2:21

Yeah. We traveled back in time. I, I tense traveled back in time. Yeah. Yeah. Are, are you, are

Pat: 2:25

you a fan of going, are you a fan of the darker days or the lighter days?

Rich: 2:30

Well, there's an argument, right, that they, so they, the, the time change is supposedly to support farmers, right? So they get more, more light at the start of the day. But I'm not a farmer. So what that means is that it gets dark much earlier or an hour earlier. And then obviously it continues to get earlier and earlier as we progress into the winter. So I don't love it. I'm not someone that. Deals amazingly. You know, I, I prefer having more sunshine. It's better for my mental health. Um, so, but it is what it is, isn't it? You know? Um, it is what it is. You can't do too much about it.

Pat: 3:07

I didn't think of the mental health, but I like it the darker the days that, that's good for me. The sooner it can get dark, I can close the curtains, pop up in the bed. I'm, I'm more the, I'm the only person I know that's like this, but, but I literally like, and the whole moving the time up to give farmers more time makes zero sense because the farmer just has to get up when the sun comes up. The, we have a saying over here, it's called, I work from CAN to canned. Or in the south we say can. Can, can, we're working, can to can't. But you get up in the morning when, so what difference, what the clock says, the sun comes, you have the same amount of daylight.

Speaker 3: 3:48

Yeah. Just

Pat: 3:48

get up. Don't say, well this, the daylight, if they would move that time back, I would go ahead and get up an hour earlier. So the whole thing that make any sense. But I, I am one of the few outliers that, uh, you know, I got a little Dracula in me, I guess.

Rich: 4:01

Yeah, well, thinking about it as well, and I, I know that obviously I'm, you know, it's not uncommon for me on this podcast to poke a little bit of fun at the, the culture, uh, that you live in. But, but in that part of, you know, having spent time in Mississippi when we, as you know, pat, when we met. Actually the summers for you guys are like, they're, they're pretty unpleasant, you know, like with the, like the humidity and typhoons and you know, and all this kinda stuff. So like, I can actually understand the attraction of winter. Whereas here, like our weather goes and we actually had quite a nice summer, you know, summer, we can really enjoy summer here, you know, for the, for the most part. So I can't understand why wouldn't are. Um, and darker and cooler may be a little more attractive to you than it is to us.

Pat: 4:44

Seven degrees. I just don't like it getting dark at eight, you know, eight or eight 30. I like to go ahead and slide up in the rack. So, uh, anyway, let's get on to our topic and, welcome to everyone that's joining us and today, we want to talk about, have no fear. God is near, but. Because I believe the majority of people go through life anxious. They go through life with fear. They go through life. You're always expecting something bad to happen. God didn't make us to live that way. He gave us everything we need to trust him. He's shown us all through our lives, to trust him over and over again. And this is an important thing for people to master, to live a much better life. As I said once before, fear not is said over and over in the Bible that God tells us to fear or not. It is not said 365 times, which I said in an earlier episode. I should have researched that because as. Albert Einstein once posted online that half of what you read on the internet is just made up. So, uh, 365 times is not true, but it's 74 times in the King James version to be exact. But there's a reason that it has said over and over and over, and if you pause with me one second. But it's said so many times because fear is the opposite of faith and learning to trust God in all aspects of our lives. One of the most important things we can do to live a life of peace and joy and the repetitive verses are there to offer reassurance and emphasize that God is in control always present in our lives. As he says in Isaiah 41 10, God says, do not fear for I am with you. Do not. Be dismayed for. I am your God, right there. He's saying, do not fear. I'm your God. I'm always with you. What are your thoughts on that,

Rich: 6:42

rich? I mean. It's hard, isn't it? I mean, I find it hard to be, you know, to live in completely, not to live by faith alone. I, I met this woman, but I was at church a couple of weeks ago and they had a, a lady who was leading a mission in Guatemala. And the mission itself, it was working with kids from, you know, hard backgrounds. Um, and the mission itself was funded by a charity, but she, her presence over there, her living situation, her housing, her food, her water, her electricity was not, was not funded. And, and she lived entirely on faith, you know, so like, somehow for the whole duration of her time over there, she'd been over there for some years. Uh, she was. Everything that they needed had to like, come to them somehow. You know, like, and, and you know, the house had turned up, the, you know, money for this had turned up, money for that had turned up. You know, like, so she, she lived, she lived completely on faith. Right. And I just thought that was so amazing. You know, like, you know, like to be able to do that is really, you know, is something I I, I, I don't embody, you know, but, um. You know, that kind of absence of fear and that the presence of that kind of faith I found incredibly inspiring. I think that you look at the disciples, you know, and the boat when the storm blows up, you know, and um, and Jesus just quiets the storm. And I, I think that's the metaphor for what we're talking about really, is that like, if we've got that faith, then the storm, it doesn't have to be a scary thing. It doesn't have to be a scary thing. Um, and you know, like I, and what I try and do more so, and sometimes I better at than others, but when there's uncertainty, so, you know, we went through a bit of an uncertain period in my, my home recently where my other half was, um, no, her, her employment situation became quite unstable. You know, and actually what I was able to do and she was able to do, and we were able to prompt the other two do it when, you know, when we were, you know, maybe one or one of us was struggling with it, is just like, do you know what, it's okay. You know, like, we'll, we'll be okay, you know, we'll be provided for. And, um, and actually things have, you know, have turned out. For the good. Very much so. But yeah, so basically, what am I saying? I, I don't find it a really easy thing to do every single moment of every single day. But it is, you know, having that faith and not, uh, being, you know, dominating with anxiety about what might happen and what might not happen or what could happen or what's gonna happen, you know? I do have something to like return to, I can return to my faith. You know, I can remind myself, oh, okay, it's all right. It's gonna be okay. Gonna be okay. You know? So those are initial thoughts. Patrick, comment emanating from my, the large brain that you believe that I have.

Pat: 9:41

South of Hadrian's Wall and you brought up a point that I didn't really think about'cause I'm kind of, I always try to relate things back into my life. The woman you're talking about. We kind of had no choice. Mm-hmm. You know, maybe, I mean, I've been in situations when my, in my life when I had no choice. So it, you know, it's, it could possibly be that we, we turn and completely trust God. When we don't really have any choice, but the more comfortable our lives get, maybe the easier we get, the more these fears we pop up in, you know, that we pop up into our head. Because if this one, this woman doesn't have any choice, she's not over there just making up an irrational fear that they may not have, uh, food or they, because they may not, she doesn't know where it's coming from. She's just literally having to, to trust God to provide, and he does it over and over again, and then when he does it over and over again, it solidifies you. That's what's happened in my life. In my life. We'll talk in a minute. The, um, the more he's done it. The more you've seen it happen, the more it gets into your, into your mind, the more it gets into your heart that you know God is there. But it's one of the most difficult things that we do in life. I don't know if it's human nature. I don't know if it's just Satan that's attacking us doing this. I don't know where the fear came from. Um, but it's a real thing that everybody has and if they can learn to master that, you can live in a lot better peace. I know I am in. Far, far better shape than I used to be in that regard,'cause of what I've learned. Is there any kind of clinical aspect do you see in your practice? You know, when you're talking to people with addictions and in therapy where they, they're afraid of things or scared? I, you know, I know it's not a spiritual thing, but do, do you see where fear plays into? Into people's lives that, that, you know, might affect them in addiction, might affect them in, in some of the problems they're having in their lives.

Rich: 11:43

I mean, yeah, for sure. There's so many different ways to slice that up. So, I mean, if you come from that 12 step kind of aa na perspective, you know what, you know, I've heard addiction referred to as a fear-based illness, you know, um, there's a bit in the Narcotics Anonymous literature where it talks about. You know, when you strip back, uh, the symptoms of the disease of addiction, what you'll find underneath is a swamp of self-centered fear. So it's revert, you know, fear that's all based around the self. I won't have, what about, you know, what, what about me? You know, I'm not gonna get what if this happens to me? You know? So, yeah, I mean, fear plays a massive role in it. I mean, when people are carrying trauma, they often, they will project or distort their reality. And see things differently because of their past experiences. And so things might appear scarier than they really are. Um, you know, anxiety is, it goes hand in hand with, with a, with addiction, you know, anxiety, you know, anxiety, depression, and addiction. They're also. You know, closely kind of entwined and come along together. And for some people they're me. They might be medicating the anxiety or the depression. For other people, the anxiety and depression is purely a re you a much more purely a result of their addiction and the impact that it has on the brain, so on and so forth. So like yeah, it's like it is, it's, it is live in the therapy room for sure. From a cognitive behavioral perspective. You would perhaps sit with someone and get them to like, analyze their fears, start to think about them, you know, how likely is this gonna happen? Has it happened before? What evidence do you have that this is gonna happen? And there may be some evidence that it's gonna happen, but there's probably lots of evidence that it won't. So yeah, fear, I mean like fear, anxiety, all of those things. Definitely kind of very much alive and, and present in the, in the therapy room for sure.

Pat: 13:43

Followers of Jesus are equipped with something to, to overcome that fear and wipe out that fear.'cause I've all it, it just seems like most everything we fear is actually irrational. You know, 99% of the things you thought were going to go, or probably even more don't actually happen, but we bring up fear in our mind. We create a lot of it. It's like I, I remember when I first became, I. A comedian, uh, you know, I had the fear of public speaking just like everybody else, and for whatever reason, think about the fear of public speaking. I mean, nobody can physically hurt you, but we're all, we're all scared of it. So it's, to me, that's an irrational fear. Before I went on stage, the very first time, uh, two weeks, I was just doing a five minute open mic in front of people that would never see me again. Mm-hmm. It was at a pretty nice club, but. I was sick to my stomach for like two weeks. I wasn't even talking to people. My daughter looked at my wife one time, like, what's wrong with him? Just leave him alone. I, I get over to this place, I get to the hotel and I'm trying to drink a cup of coffee, and my hand was literally doing that for people listening. My hand was just shaking and coffee was spilling out of the cup. I was so, I was so frightened of this fear and I, um. I had spoke, you know, when I was in the corporate world for 20 years, I'd had to get up and speak a lot of times and I was always nervous about that, but it always worked well. But I was just very, uh, very nervous about it. And I get over to the place and I started praying. I walked in like, God, you know, help me get through this, and. When they announced my name, when I got back there, it was kinda like with the hand grenade. Remember with the hand grenade? I told you how nervous I was. I heard the boom and I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I really wanna be John Wayne. And then when I got the hand grenade in my hand, all of a sudden this complete calm came over me. I'm like, there's no way I'm messing this up. Uh, it was the same way all of a sudden, a calm. Came over me. They announced my name. I stepped out. Somebody, a place three and a half hours away from me went yay pat. Like they knew me. You know, like I, like I had fans there and all of a sudden kinda gave me a calm, I got to the microphone, my leg was shaking my right leg, kind of doing on an Elvis, you know how Elvis, you know, gave a little bit of a. They obviously couldn't see it because the owner of the club later said, yeah, you looked really relaxed, you know, and you got good stage president. I'm sitting there thinking I was mortified, but anyway, I calmed down, did five minutes, that place exploded. It was almost like God carried me out onto the stage. I still refer to it sometimes, like, God, thank you for carrying me out on that stage. The point was I was just mortified. I mean, probably one of the scaredest I've been in my life to walk up and talk to people. It was all basically irrational. I mean, it, it didn't warrant that kind of fear. Uh, and, and that's kind of a stretch of an analogy for most people in their lives, but I think everything that people fear in life, most everything that they think that they're constantly worrying about is something irrational do. Do you see it that way? Do you see that it's irrational?

Rich: 16:55

I mean, there's lots of things we can be scared of that are irrational. Not all of them, like they, you know, fears, uh, you know, emotions evolve. You know, like they're evolutionary, you know, like they all, they serve their purpose like anger. Anger gets a bad rap, but actually anger's what tells us, like, something's not right. It's not okay for us. Our boundaries have been crossed, but it gets our hand and becomes problematic, you know, but we need some anger, guilt, and shame. Also get a bad rap. Not bad. Actually. Imagine a world without guilt and shame. Like when no one had any guilt, no one had any shame. They're like, uh, their emotions that really govern human behavior, you know? And if we lived in a guilt is shame in this world. Then if people would just do exactly what they wanted all the time, you know, their, you know, their most basic, basic human animal instincts would, they would be acting upon them, right? So they're important emotions to have. And fear is as well, you know, we evolve to feel fear. Fear, fear of public speaking. That's about needing to belong. Like we evolve to belong. We evolve to be in groups, right? Like, you know, if we are in groups, you know, tribes. Yeah. Keeping it biblical, right? If we are in tribes, you know, when the other tribe comes along or when the, you know, the animals come along that wanna try and eat us. If we are in groups, we have a much better chance of survival than if we're an individual. So we, we, we kind of evolved to belong. So that fear that one might feel in public speaking, it's like, whoa, if I get this wrong. Yeah. Or you know, whatever, wrong men, or if I bomb on stage and you know, these people are gonna reject me, right? And if they reject me, then they're not part of the group. So that's why that's very scary for people, you know, for, you know, for many. Right? So, I can't remember exactly where we started Pat, but like fit, yes. Right. So fear is, fear is fear com a completely irrational thing? Not always, you know, but often, you know, often it's irrational, you know?

Pat: 18:56

Reminded something, uh, when you're saying that because I think it's fear of embarrassing yourself.'cause now that I think about it going back to childhood, we all embarrassed ourselves as children. And you remember how mortifying that was when everybody laughed at you. Not like happened at you at a comedy club, but when that happened, boy, that was probably one of the worst things that ever happened in your life.

Rich: 19:15

Yeah, I still got. I still got memory seared into my brain of those kind of things, you know, like for sure, like when you're a kid. Absolutely.

Pat: 19:25

Yeah. I didn't really think about that. But the, the fear of the public speaking was a little bit of, a little bit of a side joggle, but, uh, but that is a really good point. I didn't really think about that. But a lot of times we go through, we're afraid of. Uh, of embarrassing ourselves, which is, and I didn't think about the whole group, the whole group thing, but, um, in general though, people fear things. They, it, it's financial things with family, things going wrong. And to me, in, in many cases for the Christian, it's a complete lack of trust. God, it's putting your faith in God and realizing he's there, realizing he's able to take, he's going to take care of us and we're going to come through it. Okay. Um, is a way to eliminate the fear or really tamp it down. And a lot of times fear, in my opinion, can cause problems, uh, that wouldn't have happened. I mean, it can also, it can cause us to be deceitful. You know, even in marriages, things like the fear of sometimes telling people the truth, for example. Um. One, like in in, in business, as I've mentioned to you before, you know, when I was in the corporate world, when I was, I was a believer in God, but I wasn't a follower in Jesus and I was, you know, I wasn't letting the Holy Spirit take control of me, and my thought process wasn't putting my trust in God. Something came up on a business deal. Boy, whatever it needed to come outta my mouth just came out. And my wife would be like, is that true? I'm like, well, not exactly, but it's like, well, you're not putting your trust in God. You're thinking that you gotta bend the truth to get what you're trying to get. Which that, to me, if you're lying in life in any way, shape, form, or fashion, that is a display of a lack of trust in God, in my opinion. And it can also lead to things like in marriage, not. Not telling, you know, bad news about a child or about, uh, I don't mean bad, bad news. I mean, there's just things that you hold back or you don't wanna say, or something that's financial and you hold it back and then whereas if you just always told the truth or upfront, put your faith in God that. Always going to take care of everything. You're going to have that peace because when you're being a little deceitful or you're holding back information, it's eventually going to blow up. It's eventually going to cause a problem. And a lot of times the problem of not telling the truth, not being straightforward is going to be a lot bigger than what the original problem was. Uh, what are your thoughts on that?

Rich: 21:58

Uh, I agree. I think we can often be the architects of our own doom and we create, we, we can often create the very thing we're trying to avoid. You know, like I, I often come back to, you know, you'll get a pattern in relationships where say, one partner's very insecure and like. You know, frightened of, you know, that the other partner's gonna leave them or cheat on them, or, you know, whatever it might be. So that, so the, the frightened part, the insecure one, is constantly, where are you going? Who are you with? Dah dah. Who's that on the phone, you know? And. And then what that does is it actually pushes people away. And you know, so you can kind of end up in that serious role. If I'm being accused of doing all these things, then I might as well, you know, this is a very simple example. Um, there's a line, right, that's just in, it's from Matthew and, um, it's, it echoes through my head sometimes when I'm like, you know, wrapped up and, you know, look, but financial insecurity is a thing for me, and it doesn't make any sense. It is irrational, you know, without. You know, like, God, you know, my, in terms of, sorry,

Pat: 23:02

did you say financial insecurity?

Rich: 23:04

Yeah, financial insecurity. You know, it's like, ah, I'm get kind of bogged down and,

Pat: 23:08

you know. Well, it's in your brain'cause you've been there, you've been, you've been broke.

Rich: 23:12

Yeah, I've been broke and, and you know, and I work for myself. And so like you pat, like, you know, like, you know, one day the phone might stop ringing. Right. But, um, um. I've

Pat: 23:21

been in, not to cut you off, but I've been in situations Oh yeah. That the biggest thing in your, in a person's mind is a fear of all of a sudden not being able to provide, not having things. That's is the point was I've had examples over and over and over where there were moments like that throughout my life, but God came through in just these incredible ways. Just like you're talking about the woman. Down in South America over and over, but those fears come from, it's like being embarrassed as a child. Those fears come from we have been there.

Rich: 23:52

Yeah. And then the, the, the line of the, of scripture that always echos through my head is like, well, Jesus says the disciples, are you still so dull? Are you still so dull? Right? It's like, don't you get it yet? You know, like, it's like, I bought you this far, right? Like, don't you get it yet? Like, you're gonna, you're gonna be okay. You know? And I really believe that. And, you know, I don't think Okay. Always looks like what we want it to look like. Yeah. But like, I'll be Okay. A friend of mine, you know, a, a guy, a real kind of old timer in, in, you know, in my recovery world, you know, my 12 step recovery world and interesting guy, lovely guy. I spent a lot of time with him over the years and, um, and he had some. You know, issues around money and stuff is a bit of a compulsive spender and, and all that kind of stuff. But he, he said, when he said this beautifully simple thing to me, and he said, you know, when I get wrapped up in the fear around money and I think about my relationship with God, it's like I've always been looked after, right? They said I might not have had everything I wanted, but I've always had a roof over my head. I've always had a, been able to get a hot meal and I've always had somewhere to sleep. That's it. You know, and it's like, so it's like being, you know, whatever Okay. Is it might not look like what I want it to look like. You know, it might not have the zeros in it at the end of it, like I want, but it's like, you like, it's like, are you still so dull? Like, don't you get it? Yeah. You know? And um, it's like, it's having that faith. I've been in John six a bit recently, right. And, um. This, you know, I read it, I kind of, I got really stuck into it. I read it over and over and over again and it's where like Jesus, he feeds the 5,000 and then he, you know, he has a little wander about on the water, sails about a bit, and the crowds follow him, right? And he says to him like,'cause they're like, rabbi, where have you been? And teacher, where have you been? You know? And, and he's like, well, you like are only here. I've got it here. Alright, lemme see if I can just find it quickly. They found him on the other side of the lake. They said to him, rabbi, when did you come here? Jesus answered them very truly. I tell you, you're looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. And I really kind of looked into that, right? And, and, and kind of meditated on it, I suppose. It's like sometimes we, you know, we, or I, I speak for me it's like I, I wanna, well I, Jesus must have my back because look at all these things I've got, you know, look at my nice new house and my, you know, my nice. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right? But actually that's not, you know, having faith in him and, and knowing it will be all right. Is it about having faith in him? Not what he can, might or will do for us, you know? But if you've got that faith, you'll be all right. You know? I know. I'll be all right. It might not be all like I want it. But I know that I'll be all right. And that's, and I think that's what it really, when you boil it down to like its essence, that's what this is about, right? It's like, I don't know what it's gonna look like, but I know I don't need to be scared of it, you know? Um, yeah. That's what I think. And I think where we live in this, like that, you know, I think the reason we get so, um. You know, in the, in the, in the west, maybe we get so focused on the loaves is'cause we're surrounded with them. Right. We have a lot, you know, we have a lot of loaves and even people. Of course there's poverty in my country. There's poverty in your country, but our idea of what poverty is, is, is very different to what it might be in another country. Right. You know, in other parts of the world. Right. And um, and I was reading this article recently. It was about an African country and, um, there were these guys, you know, there was a revolution in this country. They locked a lot of people up, a lot of like, uh, people that. You know, post revolution became, they were like the enemy, like, you know, they were on the wrong side of things, right? And they locked them all up in these makeshift cells and like, you know, they'd have 30 of them in this tiny room, like the size of them that we're in now. They didn't even have room to lie down. They're just in there all squashed in like side thems. And they were singing Psalms, you know, that's what they, they just sung Psalms, you know, like all, you know, that's what they lived on. That kind of faith, you know? And that's being, you know, that's like, that's living on faith. Do you know what I mean? It's like being willing, you know, to have that kind of faith in Jesus. And it's like, I'll be okay. Might not be what I want it to be, but I know that I'll be okay if I've got faith in Jesus. You know? And that, you know, that's, that comes up for me talking about this.

Pat: 28:29

And that's a great way to end it because that's it. I, again, I think a lot of times the more comfortable we have, the more fears we bring up in our heads. Exactly That, that we create all these in our mind. When God has given us, select a woman in South America, she didn't have any choice. She relied on God and always happened. The reason why I feel like I could have a little experience here,'cause I've had moments and I can remember laying down in the bed going, God, you're all I have. And then a voice came to me, not a loud voice, but I heard this is all you need. And I've had many situations where I thought, this isn't gonna work out, and it didn't work out. What did work out actually turned out to be a lot better. The main thing is. God has you. God is here and he's here in our lives. And if you can put your faith, it's not easy to do. This is what we're talking about. Everybody has it. Me and you have it. We just have it a lot less because we put our faith in God and we're, we're quick to go back to the word of God and think about the things. I personally just have such a track record of him being in my life and taking care of me and everything working out good and most of the time working out even better. And like you said. You're always taken care of. So, uh, people listening, I just hope you get encouraged by that. And just remember, just remind yourself of all the times you were afraid that and something didn't happen.'cause that goes to everybody that's listening there. If you look back on your life, you've been afraid of things over and over again. That did not happen, or when it didn't happen, as we talked about, um. It worked out fine. Yeah. And all you did was make, all you did was made yourself miserable. And uh, and you're kind of showing God you don't fully trust him. And the more you show God you trust him, the more you're going to feel his peace in your life. And you can do that and show you trust him by praying and talking to him, on a daily basis. Just fill your head with what he tells us in that instruction manual called the Bible. And there are so many verses in there. And we will just leave with a few of them. Joshua one, nine. Have I not commanded you? Be strong enough of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Again, he's saying, I am right there with you. It's just up for you to, to acknowledge his presence and know that everything's taken care of. John 1427. Peace. I leave with you. My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and once again, do not be afraid. And Tim two Timothy one seven for the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. Think about that. He gives us power. He wants us to be bold. He wants us to be strong in our faith, and we let these things in our mind come in that aren't really rational and we should live in strength. We should live in power. Um, choose faith over fear. And that's the way to go through life and make sure your life is filled with peace and joy and not anxiety and stress, which is what we're trying to help people do there. Rich. And we will, wrap it up and leave it there. Do you have any final thoughts?

Rich: 31:44

Just, um, from the sermon at church last night? Uh, there was a, the, the preacher, the pastor, he said, uh. He said, this thing really stayed with me, and I think it's relevant. He said like, prayer isn't a practice, it's a posture, you know, and it's like, it's, it's a, it's a posture of the heart, you know? So it's like when these things come along, can we, like, can we turn to him? You know, like, is that, you know, can we make that our first. Reaction. You know, like, okay, this, this, this has happened, or it could happen, or it might happen. Okay, turn to him, you know, this has happened. It could happen. It might happen. Okay. Can you turn to him? You know, can that be, can we develop that as a reflex? You know, to, and I thought that was really cool. And then the other thing I would say is, um. For those who are involved or you know, have some knowledge of the 12 steps. You know, the third step is like we made a decision to turn our will in our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. You know, and it talks about, you know, some of the 12 step literature. It says, you know, we make this decision as often as we need to. You know, we might need to make him multiple times a day. But it's just like, am I, do I believe that I'm in the care of. Yeah, I do. Sorry. Yeah, that's me, pat. That's, that's what I've got. That's what I've got for you brother.

Pat: 32:57

That's all we need.'cause those are excellent points and I hope everybody listening,, can remember what Richard just said. That is make it your reflex. You make it your reflex. Trust God. And you'll find that peace and joy and start eliminating that fear and that anxiety. Alright Rich, see you next time man. Y'all take care over there. Patrick, happy hunting. See you later.