Welcome to better today with your host Shawn Maguire and with over 25 years of counseling experience. This is the Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast. It inspires you to create both an amazing family and marriage. This is the Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast that helps you to navigate the challenges of modern life. In this Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast, you will be given the same tools, techniques, and stories that Sean and his team have used to help thousands of people to transform their lives. If you’re ready to make real progress, that will change your marriage, your family, and your life. Then get ready because better today starts now. Here we go again.
What’s a real talk? Real walk. Here we go, man. I’m excited. We have our, one of our favorite guests we cover had on the show. Let’s go Ryan Waller. Come on. Ryan Waller. Come on out. If you haven’t got that formal introduction, that means you did not listen to the last episode. I need to go back, back to the last episode and engage it because there was so much wisdom, so much knowledge and insight coming from these two counselors. Boom, the influencer need to get out the way. Now. Let Rob Ryan step on the scene. Yachts out. Watch out. He’s coming after you. Yeah. Here we go. I hope y’all already already, I’m ready. All right. Well Hey guys, welcome back
Ryan. Welcome back. It’s exciting to be back. [inaudible] back from Texas all the way so far. So far. So far, so glad to have you here. Welcome to my house. Thank you. It’s beautiful here. Happy to be here. You’ve got a massive backyard. Yeah. Incredible. Yes. Bobcat’s deer. All kinds of hawks on my heart. No, I’m getting scared. Yeah, you sit, you sit. Rashawn Rashawn doesn’t come after after dark. He’s a little bit scary. He’s in a kind of urban fellow. Yeah, it doesn’t do the wildlife. Does he? Not much of a wildlife guy. I mean he has a goldfish. Is that cow? No, that’s it. Okay. Just making sure. I just spent too much time. A bunch of time and the dog has ever done like we’re guys, we’re excited cause we are on our fourth segment of how to overcome anxiety. The secret to a life well lived and may not feel like we dove into one of the two traits last time.
If you have not listened to our previous Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast, it’d be well, you’d be well served to go back and check them out because they’re great. I think we tell the stories we just helped you understand that we are with you. You are not alone and suffering through anxiety that, I mean God has made a way to practical steps and that you don’t have to live. I think that’s part of the challenge is in our society, instead of dealing with the root issues that cause anxiety, that cause fear. We take a pill now in Oklahoma you can smoke, you can smoke some pot. Yeah, and or you divert your attention to the media. You go to social media, you go to Netflix, you do something other, your workaholism. Maybe you serve too much at church. Yeah. Great. Could it be anything? Yeah. There’s so many different ways to numb the anxiety instead of, as you say, getting to the root of it and there are times, look, life is hard and
anxiety is going to be there and there are things that we need to do at times, right. To help us get through that, that that’s fine, right? A little bit of Netflix or whatever it is, but the reality is if we continue to live in that space where we’re only ever just numbing, right? Going for that quick fix, we’re never going to get to that place where the anxiety lives and we’re never going to actually find peace. Right. We’ve got to understand that these other ways that we do these things, it’s just they’re just temporary fixes, but if you want to live into a place of peace, right? You’ve got to go to the root.
Wow. Yeah. Man. This guy you are [inaudible] brother were, Sean was right about, I think he’s a seasoned counselor. It sounds like from what we’re talking about, and we’ll get there. Look, Greg, in a lot. You’re bringing a lot to the table. Thanks Sheila. Two traits that mark a life that’s living by the love of God. Do you remember those two traits?
Yeah man, we’re fearless and free.
Free. So fearless we talked about is not the absence of fear, but it’s the refusal to be bound by it, by making your decisions and by living your life. Right? So it doesn’t mean you won’t fail. It doesn’t mean you don’t have this fear. It means you’ll press through it and then you’ll take steps forward and not allow it to control and handcuff your life. That’s right. Yeah. So then the second one is free. A mark, a life marked by love, by God’s love is free. He says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And it goes on to talk about the law of Sandal up life. And we are set free to live for Christ. And when we choose to live out of his love, and that is our identity. Because when we live as a son or a daughter that already has all the love that God can give, well then we can take risks. We can have the freedom to make mistakes because we’re not putting our identity. We’re not betting our identity by our decisions. We’re not betting our identity because we’ve taken a risk. We’re not betting our identity because I’ve made a phone call or because I’ve confronted an issue with somebody like a friend or a church member or an employee. I’m not bending my identity. My identity is safe and secure in Christ. That’s right.
All the identities that we try to wrap around ourselves, we have to realize other than our core identity as beloved child of God, they can all go away, right? So if I try to, if I try to have my identity in that I’m a good decision maker, or that I’m a counselor or that writer or whatever it is, you’ve just got to understand like life goes up and life goes down. All those can go away. But if we can found and really understand that God has chosen us to be his beloved children, and there’s nothing we can do to change that, right? This is what he’s chosen. And when we hear God say to Jesus, you are my beloved, or we can hear those words to us, then we can know who we are and then that puts us in a place to go and live in and be free. But we’ve got to know that that’s our actual identity. None of this other stuff,
none of that stuff matters. Does matter. No. Galatians five one says it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Let us no longer be bound again by a yoke of slavery. Yeah. So think about what freedoms do you want to live out? What freedoms in your own life do you feel like you would love? But it’s just a, it’s just a dream that’s in a distant land and how free really are you? How free are your kids? How free is your spouse? How free is your family? How free or the people that you work with, what areas of your life where you bounding? Are you bound because you don’t want to confront somebody because you’re a people pleaser? Are you able to say no? You have the freedom to say no or do you wait? Maybe the other side, maybe you don’t have the freedom to say yes because you’re so afraid to say yes because you may be vulnerable. Maybe you’ve lived a life of knows and everybody’s in the outside of the boundaries. Think about it.
I struggle with people pleasing for sure. I don’t want to let anybody down, right? I want to be all things to all people all the time. And so I get afraid, right? To say no. And what I’ve got to understand or when I’m really getting it, is that I realize, Oh, I’m grounding my identity in making this person happy in this moment. And I’m not living into the reality that I’ve already been accepted by. The only one that really matters got, is chosen to let me and said, I’m, I’m your, I’m his child. And instead I’m trying to be a, I don’t know, he could look at it that way. The child of everybody else. And I realized that I’m just, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s exhausting and it’s false.
You know, we couldn’t have scripted that any better. Check this out. We don’t really not preplanned any of this, but are you think about your own life. Are you still living under the jurisdiction of your parents? Is your identity capable, able? Have you chosen to step beyond who the people from your past said you are? Are you willing to grab hold of the identity that God says, man, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and now we’ll give you a rest. When you start to rest. I know on vacation I get all these grand ideas. When I have space for my brain, my heart, and I’m safe and I don’t have all these expectations and pressures to make big time decisions. I start to hear from God. I start to hear my kids and my wife through a different lens of peace rather than anxious. I need to get to the next thing. Yeah. So think about that. Who’s jurisdiction do you live on? Under still to this day?
Boy, that’s powerful because that’s gonna determine ultimately what you’re capable of doing, right? So if you know that you’re under the jurisdiction of God and you’re living into that freedom, right? The Christ has freed us from the tyranny, right? The slavery of Sin. Not For us to come in and and be slaves to something else, but be slaves to the freedom, right. That he offers. Right? And so that’s going to dictate everything that you do. Whether or not you’re free or not.
That’s so true. I think about this. Do you look like the version of you that your past circumstances, people back there or even some of the currently in your life say that you should be, or do you look like the version of you that insight deep? Maybe it’s really deep within you that God called you to become. Yeah,
but Sean, that’s so hard. I mean, how do you, how do you get past for the folks who have had people in their past really tell them that this is what you are like, you know, you’re, you’re a failure, right? Or you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re never gonna amount to anything. You’re no good. You’re not worthy. How do we get beyond that? How do we remove those labels to be open to accepting the label that God has for us to live under his jurisdiction? How do we do that?
That is an amazing question. This guy is on point. I love you. You need to take the train from Texas every week guys, come down and see it. I love it. So I think it’s what you choose to bring into your life. You know, some people, they come in, they’re not even able to hear what we’re talking about at a level that they’re willing to make a decision on it yet. And that may be you listening today. And so bringing into your awareness identity, the Bible books on this, books that are audible, Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcasts, choosing to bring other people in your life that are life givers, like your life Giver Ryan, or Sean’s a life giver, you know? And that starts to give you a new message that starts at some level when you do it longer and longer and persevere and daily. Let this be your new renewing your mind through the washing of God’s word, through the washing of positive messages to positive and godly people.
It starts to compete and then it starts to win over the messages of your past and just like those messages were the dominating force in your life. These new messages start to rewire, start to come in and crowd out because light and darkness cannot share the same space. When there is darkness and I turned the light on, what happens to the darkness goes away. It always goes away. It never happens a different way. You know, this is a great thing. I’m taking my daughter in September on her 13th birthday trip. Now I do trips for our birthdays. She said, well, my kids, not just to remember that they’re special, that we did something cool. I mean that’s nice, but the w the money, the investment, the time is, I want her to remember that she is beautiful, that she is the reflection of God’s personality here on Earth, that she’s a reflection of God’s beauty and no man should ever be able to adulterate that.
That she has such a high level value character person and what I do a month before that is I inundate, I bring all this stuff about women’s identity, teenage girls. I will immerse myself, I will forego all the other habits that I do, relate it to learning new things at a high level I’ll probably do 80% of that and so when you, when you bump into me, you’ll hear what little girls are beautiful. You’ll hear suddenly about teenagers, about becoming a woman. I will just, I will just ever invest it. It’ll just come out of my pores because I’ve so diverse, myself or Dow dove and into these areas of identity with girls, how to show value of how to help her feel beautiful and just in normal conversation because it’s on my mind and in my heart, it will naturally and fluently start to come out.
It’ll come out of you because you’ve been intentional about what you’re allowing to come in, and I think that’s so important. If we’re going to replace that dominant narrative that we have, we’ve got to understand that whatever it is that we’re consuming, and we’re all consuming a lot these days, all of the time through all the mediums that you mentioned, right? If you had a Netflix or a Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast or it’s a book or it’s an audio book or whatever, we’ve got to know that the narrative that’s going to end up playing in our mind and in our heart is going to be dictated by whatever narrative we’re open to, and so we’ve got to be intentional to being open to the narrative that God has. If we’ve got any hope of replacing a narrative or a false narrative that’s been given to us in the past.
That’s exactly right. He knew a great place that you can find exactly what it looks like to be free and not be a slave is toddlers. I want you to think about toddlers. They don’t care what they say. They don’t care who they say no in front of it. You know if you go to youtube and you watch it put in toddler videos dancing, you will see some of the craziest dances. They’re out there with their diapers. They are unaware. It’s not even that they’re choosing to not think about what people consider or how they’re looking at or judging them. They are unaware of Bolivia’s that there even is this shame culture, this, these things that really make you slaves to these fears, to these anxieties. What does this person think? How are they going to react? They don’t care. Toddlers will say the craziest things. They’ll do the craziest things they’ll be on. They’ll be upset about something at a sprouts or natural grocers or whole foods, wherever you shop. And there’ll be on the ground freaking out. You know what? Because they’re not happy. They don’t care. Who knows?
That’s right. That’s right. I’ve got a three year old right there. Yeah. Right there. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got a three year old and he loves music in the moment that any music comes on, he starts dancing and he’s just, he just can’t help it. Right. Cause it’s his thing. Yeah. And you can tell like he, you’ve been there, right? Yeah. You know, but he just moves because obviously there’s something in him that really resonates with music and he likes to dance where like I’m the same way, but I hear music, I don’t always start moving. Why? I’m worried about what other people think already. You know, it could be weird for a 37 year old man to start dancing and [inaudible].
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s that, there’s a beauty in that though, right? Of, of, of knowing no. Like he’s not worried cause he’s just living in the reality of, of, of who he is. Right. And who God made him to be. And he hasn’t had all those sort of, um, that, that those critical voices come in yet. And this is why I think Jesus talks a lot about us returning to this sort of childlike state. It’s not that we, um, yeah, not the word diapers again necessarily, right? Or, or, or necessarily, I think some people look at and say, Oh, you’re, you’re just supposed to be ignorant. Where it’s like, no, no, children aren’t ignorant. Right? They don’t have the experience. They’re unexperienced, but there are fully human beings. Right? And there’s this sense in which there’s a beauty at place that they live from an authenticity that oftentimes we forget as we grow old because we begin to listen to false narratives about who we are. That’s so true. You know,
you know, I think about when you think about kids and you think about your three road kids, how do you feel when your kids start dancing?
Oh, unadulterated joy.
And I think if we can embrace and live for the pleasure of one, then we can start liberating ourselves from the slavery to all.
Hmm. Amen.
And so when I live for the pleasure of one, like your daughter, your, you have two sons, your sons start to dance, you feel this unadulterated, pure bliss because they’re just going for it and there’s their anemia hindered and you’re just goofy laughing, having a great time. There’s a scripture and I think Zephaniah says the Lord will sing over you loudly, loudly. Now, my kids don’t so much appreciate this at their stages that I sing loudly. They do in our house, but not on public as much. Right? And I think about if we can start realizing, if valuing that God is, has this unadulterated Tshirt, joy when we live.
Hmm, okay, we’ll be released. Yeah, that’s right. I think we don’t think about that enough to realize that the Lord delights the light in our living, right. When we’re living and understanding from the Lord’s love and into the Lord’s love that brings the Lord Joy. I mean, think about that, that your life is that valuable, that the god of the universe cares and loves and is interested in what you’re doing and you have the ability to affect God. Right. He brought us into existence to be into relationship with him, that that matters. It’s not just that we’re doing what he says or whatever it is. I’m trying necessarily to to please him. Like we bring God joy. That’s right. Right? Think about that. If you’re ever feeling down or you think, do I matter or whatever that is. Oh yeah, you matter so much. The God created you and is affected by you. Hey Man. And
you know, and I think about our own kids. If you guys have kids out there listening, how do you feel when your, your kids are free? How do you feel when you see them going forward? Whether it’s in sports, whether it’s with a relationship, whether it’s doing something silly or trying out for a play or whatever the case may be. Sharing the gospel, praying for somebody that needs help. Think about the joy that you get and think about how blessed they are and how they are pushing back the darkness that would seek to overcome them. Because that effort, that living free is also a muscle. The more real estate that you engage in, the more that you push back the darkness, that fears and all the things that would come upon you, the more that real estate that you can live in and how big of a life do you want to live?
Do you want to access all the identity that God has for you or do you want to stop short and just get part of whatever is easy? Whatever’s in that the closest proximity to you, which is your past people. I know people that come to counseling and there’s 50 60 seventies that still have the same relationships from high school, and I’m not saying it like it’s a good thing. It just never transcended beyond and consider what was possible if they trusted God and said a little bit of the comfort, even if the comfort was toxic of their past. And I think about the other thing of living fearless. How do you feel when your kids live fearless?
Oh yeah. You feel fulfilled. You feel like, oh, this is what’s supposed to be happening, right? This is life. And you know, when you’re looking at it that their limits don’t exist, right? That the possibilities we don’t even know. And that’s what God wants for us, right? We limit ourselves right by our past and we think, oh well I can only do so much or be so much. Or God wants to say, no, no, no, no. You are my beloved child. You have no idea, right? You don’t know the future that I’ve got planned for. You don’t know the things, right that I can do. And so the way that I look at it, a lot of times I asked myself, well, how much life to I want to live? Right? God doesn’t necessarily promise us particular, like, like, uh, specifics, right? Or necessarily outcome. But he does say, right? Jesus says clearly I came to bring life and to bring life in abundance, right? And so if we want that abundant life, which there’s no cap to what that can look like, if we want that life, right, we can have that life, but we’ve got to be willing to go for it to go for it.
That’s so good. And the guys, I want to encourage all of you listening. We do this Christian and premarital counseling in Edmond podcast because we believe that God has an abundant life for you. And I know in our counseling practice that he was in counseling that live. We see so many people come in the door and they are just stuck believing what their past has said, what the people say about them. If they work in a job that doesn’t value who they are as a person or recognize or give them an opportunity to access the gifts and use those gifts to further the kingdom. And that kingdom could be a teacher in a public school. That can be how God’s called you to live. It could be anything. I would just encourage you to go back and listen to all of these episodes before this, this episode to just realize that Ryan and I and even Rashawn, we’re not any different than you are, right?
We may look different. Ryan looked like he’s a professional athlete, but we are not any different ballerinas or whatever. [inaudible] they are professional athletes. Let’s be honest. Michael Phelps, you know, he’s a professional, slimmer. Uh, but there’s nothing extraordinary about us except for that we have trusted God more than we’ve trusted our past more. We’ve trusted our fears and we’ve taken risks that a lot of you out there are on the precipice or on the very border of, maybe I should trust God navy. My life could be more impactful if I would just, and that’s where you jump in to fill the blank. And guys, maybe this has been blessing to you. Share it with your friends. Share with people in your life. Go back rate, review us because it gets the word out that God can change your life. And you know, if you need more, we have a counseling practice.
It’s called nuvision counseling.live. That’s new. Visit counseling.live live in Ivy. Leave it out and we would love to partner with you. We marry biblical principles with cutting edge casting techniques to join you in your story, to help you discover what better looks like for you. And that equipped me with the tools to create it. Create it. Whew. Well guys, I want Ryan to tell you where you can find him at because this guy, I’m praying and believing. My wife and I prayed last night. There might be a, he might be the answer to our prayers and uh, just we got to fellowship with him at paint Pandora, which some people call up in naira. Just few, just a few Texas probably calls. We’re down there. You’re big and you’re weird. But really like Texas. Yeah. Gotta maybe opening the door for us to write something. How can they get ahold of you? What are you, this guy’s an extraordinary writers written for some top level people. He’s helping Rashawn right now with his current books. Start with you.
Boom. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You can find me online. Ryan Casey Wall or on Facebook. Ryan seawall or an Instagram. Got a new website that’ll launch soon. Rank Casey waller.com so find me there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dot Com. That’s a big deal. And I bought that a long time ago, so I’ve held onto it. Six years old. You just went for it. That’s right. Asked my mom, you had to get on the non-existent Internet.
Al Gore didn’t invent years later. Matt was using it. That’s right. Somebody, somebody, yeah. Well guys, God bless you. Access these resources and tools. Thank you for writing of UNSC reviewing us and create an amazing week and day one decision at a time. God bless.How to Overcome Anxiety-The Secret to a Life Well Lived Part 4