Managing Chronic Financial Anxiety With Steve Cuss

The Playbook for Chronic Anxiety

It's generated by assumptions, expectations, false beliefs, and false needs. So, if we can uncover false needs, we can learn to die to them and relax into God's sovereignty. This is a compelling way to grow in our relationship with faith. We can use our anxiety triggers to open our souls up to God's presence. 

What is an assumption you hold about yourself that's unreasonable? 

If you’re a perfectionist, almost every assumption you hold about yourself is unreasonable. Think about it. When was the last time you looked at your work and said, "That was well done." Perfectionism is always chasing a carrot we can never reach. It’s a treadmill to nowhere. 

Anxiety has a competing gospel. The idea out of all of the gospels is that this is the only gospel where God pays and the human benefits. In every other belief system, the human pays and the god benefits.

If you think about ancient sacrifice systems, even in the Roman Empire and the Egyptian Empire back in the days of Moses, humans paid, and the gods benefited. In the Roman Empire, Caesar Augustus's nickname was the son of god and the most profound confession of faith in Rome was Caesar is lord. And along come Luke and Paul, and they say, "Nope."

The people paid and paid, and Caesar got all the benefits. For perfectionists, this message will free you when you realize that perfectionism is a gospel that makes you pay for its benefits.

The Treadmill To Nowhere

God is not asking you to be perfect. God is asking you to be human-sized. You're expecting yourself to be perfect. You are living out of a gospel of self. Whether you’re a perfectionist or a people pleaser, you’ll realize you can never please people enough because it is forever a carrot out of reach. Or a treadmill with no end in sight. 

Chronic anxiety is like a personal trainer tapeworm. If you’ve ever had a tapeworm, you usually don’t even know you have it because they are so small and feed off your energy. That’s how they grow. 

That's what anxiety does. It grows by consuming you, and like perfectionism or people pleasing, it puts you on a treadmill to nowhere. As you run, it’s pushing the incline and go-faster buttons into burnout, and you're not getting anywhere.