Combating Anxiety and Depression with Max Lucado - Just In Case You Ever Feel Alone

0:00 Max Lucado, it's great to have you here and to be able to talk about your brand new book, just in case you ever feel alone. And I got to say that I love this book. I love this whole concept of we are not alone, that God is always with us. And that as I'm not a parent yet, but I believe that that day is coming very soon. My wife and I are believing for children. And knowing that there's the papa bear that is or the mama bear that is telling their child that they're never going to be alone. That is such an important thing. And it has been in my life too. So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. It's really a really a joy to see you and to hear you and trust that all is going well. I agree with you. I just think the challenge of parenting today is more intense than it was when I was raising my daughters. My daughters all have kids of their own now.

1:01 And I watched the challenges that young people face. There's a unique set of circumstances that are making it difficult for parents to parent, as well as children to grow up with a sense of peace about them. Yeah. So I mean, you've written so many books. What made you decide that you wanted to write a children's book specifically? Because there's other ways you can address with this. But I think you could write a book to the parents, but you just you chose to write a book to children. And it was just a beautiful book. The illustrations are very, I can't wait to read this to my kids. So tell me about your inspiration for this book.

1:45 And I'm confident that you will someday. You know, many years ago, about 25 years ago, I wrote my first children's book, and it's called Just in Case You Ever Wonder. And it really resonated with parents. It gave parents a pledge that they could recite or read to their children. And it has had a wonderful, wonderful life continues to be used and sold. And so this idea is to create a more specific pledge that we can articulate to our kids in this felt need, a very real felt need of feeling lonely. There are statistics that are just mind boggling right now. I read one the other day that everybody that showed young people born since 1996 are facing unprecedented levels of anxiety and loneliness and depression. The challenge of creating community in our social media day and our technology day. You know, every single one of us has had the situation where you go into a restaurant and you look over and there's four young people sitting at the same table, but they're not talking. They're not talking. They're they're all on their phones. And so this phone generation that we've created, this social

3:15 media generation, what's going underdeveloped, what's going under cultured and cultivated as they spend so much time interacting in this unusual day of keyboards and images, you know. So the one of the downsides, one of the products is you can't hug a phone, right? You can't find intimacy or comfort in a laptop or a video screen. And so the result is we have a population of just lonely kids. And so one of the things that we parents, we grandparents, we aunts and uncles, big sister, big brother, what we need to do is to articulate for our children this promise that though you feel alone, you're not alone and articulate that to them. I think that's the that's the objective of this book. And that's one of the assignments that parents have today.

4:20 Yeah. You know, Max, as I was just thinking about this book and knowing that, you know, just in case you ever feel alone, you know, that that whole concept of being alone, I went through a lot of fears as a kid. One of the biggest fears that I had was that my house was going to burn down. I had seen a video like a child safety, you know, fire safety video, and really traumatized me for some reason. And my mother shared this verse with me. And it's Isaiah 41 13. At least I think it was this one. There's probably other versions in the Bible that says something similar. But it says, For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear, I will help you. Now, my mother turned that into a little song. And that song has continually come to me whenever I've needed that gentle reminder that still small voice. Tell me about a time where you felt alone, but then you felt the presence of the Holy Spirit reminding you that you're not alone.

5:24 Right. And what a beautiful thing your mother did. What a beautiful thing. You see what happens, and I'll answer your question here in just a second, but just to unpack what happened to you. Okay. So there was an event, you saw a video of a burning house. Okay. Our default reaction is to turn any event into an untruth. To say, Okay, since I saw that video, it's just a matter of time until my house explodes. And that's not true. That's not true. But we have a default assumption that something bad is going to happen. That then leads to a false narrative. My house is about to burn down, right? Or just a matter of time until I die in a fire. And then that leads to an overreaction. And these thought cycles would get in. We can't get out of them. And so what your mom did is she interrupted that process. Always call it the UFO because it's untruth leads to false narrative, which leads to an overreaction. This UFO landed in your world, and you did what we all do. You reacted to it. Now what your mom did, which is so great, is she interrupted that cycle. She gave you a tool, a verse, a Bible verse, and said, now every time those thoughts surface, just think about this verse. There's no greater thing she could have done for you.

6:58 Books like the ones I write, they're intended to do the same, to speak truth into these untruths that come into our world. It's not hard for a young person, for a child to assume I'm all by myself. You know, my daughter, who lives just 10 minutes from me, she has for many years cared for foster children. And you just see the fear on their faces. You know, these little precious children who've gone through such trauma that is of no fault of their own. And they always come with, you know, inhibited speech patterns or self harm. There's some way this is playing itself out in their lives because there's this fear of being alone. And it's a major challenge and a major assignment that parents have to speak truth into that untruth and allow God to do his work. Jesus said, you shall know the truth and then the truth shall set you free. But you got to know the truth first, right? Right. Right. And that's what mom did. And that's why that's a perfect illustration of what I'm hoping will happen as a result of this book. Yeah. So tell me a story about your own life where you needed that. And then the Holy Spirit reminded you of the truth. Okay. How about two or three days ago? You know, I we in full disclosure here, I'm battle wanting people's approval.

8:31 And don't know exactly where that came from. But I have made great progress with the help of the Holy Spirit, but it still flares up. And for some reason, one day last week, and it had to do with social media, there was a discussion going on on a particular topic, and I realized I was not included. Some colleagues of mine were organizing an event and I was not included. Now, John, I'm, my next birthday has 70 count candles on the cake. Right. I should be beyond this by now. But I reacted like an adolescent, you know, well, why didn't they include me? Did I make somebody mad? No fair. I'll make a nose set of friends. You'd have thought I was a middle schooler the way I was reacting.

9:18 The difference is I went to the Lord and I said, Jesus, tell me where's this coming from? What's the root that's causing this sour fruit? And he revealed to me that I still continue to base my confidence upon the applause and approval of people, which is disastrous because you cannot control the applause and approval of people. Absolutely. And so I needed that reminder. And I confess that to Jesus. And the next day I was fine. I was back to normal. It was a really gift, a wonderful gift on his part. Again, the key is to try to get as quickly as possible where we apply truth to whatever it is has stirred the feelings that we have. Feelings are feelings are just emotions. And they can be created by a lot of different things. Our physical bodies, the health, I'm sorry, the weather or the way people are acting around us. We can control that, but we can control the opportunity we have to speak truth. And that's what this book is intended to do. So you just mentioned about social media and there was a conversation that was happening kind of outside of you. And that caused a feeling of loneliness in a way, because you were feeling excluded. I know there's so much of that that's happening in our online world. What can people do that are active on social media and things like that? How can we actually use these tools for good?

10:52 How can we make sure that people are benefiting from the things that we're putting out there? Yeah, because I think social media is not going to go away, but there's a way that we can use it for the glory of God. For the individual, let's address this first individual, then parents. And then what we can do for others. As an individual, I think it's important for me to be careful how often I'm on my social media. Don't get sucked into that Bermuda triangle of Facebook, or Instagram, or TikTok, and spend minutes after minutes, hours after hours, like many people do, just reading and reading and reading. Limit yourself. We limit our kids, hopefully. Limit yourself. Give yourself five minutes. You can check everything you need to check in five minutes.

11:52 Beyond that, you're just stirring up a lot of concern, or possibly even engaging in negative thought patterns. So put a limit on yourself. And then of course, we've got to put a limit on our kids. Our kids just are not emotionally able to manage what they can access on a phone. I mean, parents, if you're not limiting what your kids are seeing, you're really not doing your job. You have got to help them process. And you've got to be strong here. They're going to say, oh, I want to, I need to, I have to. No, they don't. No, they don't. There's a lot of wonderfully healthy kids growing up today who have never seen a social media feed, believe it or not. And so you've got to be really strong. And then those of us who are engaged in posting or sending out messages, let's send out good words, just good words, words of encouragement. Yeah, social media can be damaging, but you know what? You follow the right people and you're hearing words of truth from preachers, from songwriters, from singers, from ministers. You can hear, get some good stuff in your head through social media. So those of us who are involved in posting these messages, let's take full advantage of that and use it as a way to lift the spirits of the people who are reading what we post. Yeah. You know, Max, one of the things that I'd like to ask you is how has this book been received by your own children and grandkids? Well, if I can be honest, I've not had

13:26 it just released today. Okay. Yeah. I can't wait to read it to them. I think they'll, I think they'll like it. Yeah. But I'm taking a copy home today, it'll be my first opportunity to share it with them. That'll be, that'll be great. That'll be good. And so when you're writing books like this, tell me about the process that you go through and how you are, tell me about the person you're writing this for. Yeah, I love writing children's books. You know, my other writing career is writing more hefty books for adults. I just finished a book on end times. And so those kind of books, you know, 20 times more work, 100 times more work, the children's books, and I've written a bunch of them by now. You just need one good idea. One good thing. Just in case you ever feel alone, there, I can work with that. And so I just get over in my corner in my office with a legal pad. I piddled with it. Should I, should we, you know, make the verses rhyme or should it just be a story? Where do I want the book to end? How do I want it to end? How many words do I get? I call the publisher. How many pages do I get? You know, get all the kind of the details, get the landscape figured out. And then I, then I start writing. And once, once I have the idea, it really, it's

15:03 once I have the idea, it really doesn't take a long time to write. But I love to write for these little three, four, five, six year olds. That's typically the age for whom, for which I write in these, in these children's books. And I work with a tremendous publisher, the, the Laura Menchew and her team at Harper Collins Christian Publishing, they, they just do a masterful job and they find artists, right? I'm not charged with the design. And I think the artwork on this particular project really, really turned out great. Yeah. You know, Max, we've talked about loneliness in this whole conversation and how we can battle that and be by speaking the truth to it that we want to overcome those UFOs for sure. You know, and that just a couple of minutes that we have here, would you just pray for the people that are watching and listening that they would be impacted by knowing that they are not alone? It's a great honor to be with you today, by the way. I feel to say that earlier. Thank you so much for this privilege and God's riches. I know you work really hard. May the Lord give you a lot of energy and strength and hear the prayer you're praying for children.

16:21 Father, I ask you to bless our brother, John, to hold him up, to lift him up. I know that he's got many demands on his time. Help him, Father, to sense your presence. We do pray, Father, for our children, our grandchildren, our nieces and nephews, those blessed children. You know, on one hand we see there's so much challenge happening and then we see these revivals break out on college campuses. They give us such hope and I'm hearing new statistics that the young generation is hungry for Christ, hungry for hope. So that gives us great. Lord, you're forever in control, forever in control. We may feel overwhelmed by this social media era that we live in, but you're not.

17:06 You saw it long before it came and so we thank you knowing that you're the one in control. And today if anybody feels alone, help them to know, Lord, just in case you feel alone, that there is a God who cares for you and he will bring supernatural comfort, comfort that every person needs. Thank you, Father, for hearing our prayer today. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Max, thank you so much for talking to you, John. It's been a pleasure to have you too, Max. Thank you very much. All right. And just in case you ever feel alone by Max Lucado, check it out and get it for a kid that you really care about.