Today we are going to be talking about fighting against anxiety. This is something I’ve written about before on my blog so if you’ve been hanging out with me for a while, some of it will feel familiar, but I wanted to come back to this because honestly, right now, I’m struggling with anxiety and I need this reminder for myself. So as much as this might be for you, I want you to know that I’m right there in the mess of it with you and I am wrestling my way through.
My family is going through some big changes this year and while they’re exciting, it’s also been hard not to let the anxiety overshadow the excitement and possibility of it all.
When this post comes out, I’ll be just weeks away from having our daughter. Along with the fun and joy of preparing for a new baby, I’ve been met with all of the anxiety and fear from my experience with my son.
As we face these circumstances that cause anxiety, it is so important that we continue to learn how to fight against anxiety and for our peace. Anxiety is on the rise like never before so we need to be equipped and prepared for how to fight against it, prepare our minds, and take on this battle.
A lot of times when we encounter anxiety, it’s brought on by something you’ve gone through before. You’re going through something that has happened to you before and the anxiety of this new situation is being brought on by your past.
Maybe you lost your job and you’re having to go through the process of trying to find employment again and feeling anxious over every email and call you get. Maybe you’ve struggled financially in the past and are going through it again. Maybe your last relationship didn’t go so well and you’re afraid of getting hurt again.
When I was pregnant with and gave birth to my son, I was pretty blissfully ignorant about all of it. I had normal concerns and worries, but I wasn’t afraid or anxious about going to the hospital, giving birth, or bringing home a newborn. I knew it was going to be hard, but I also knew that people do this every day and I was excited for my baby to be here!
This time with this new pregnancy and baby, it has brought up all of the feelings. My excitement over this new baby came right alongside fear and anxiety over giving birth again. While it won’t be exactly the same, I now know how I’ve experienced all of those things before, and having to think back to my son’s birth has caused me to experience a lot of anxiety about this next one.
I know exactly how it feels to be reliving a hard thing over again and not want to be where your feet are today.
Maybe it’s not even the life situation that’s the same, but the physical manifestation of your anxiety that you’ve become all too familiar with. It’s the knot in your stomach, the sweaty hands and shaking fingers, the tightness in your chest.
If you’re like me and have struggled with anxiety for years, it can start to feel like it’s just a part of life, but I fully believe that we do not have to live this way. We don’t have to feel weighed down with anxiety and fear in our situation.
One thing I’ve learned to be true is that you cannot have peace and anxiety simultaneously. If you have peace, then you are not anxious, but if you have anxiety, then you do not have peace. So fighting against anxiety and fighting for peace really go hand-in-hand.
If you search, “Bible verses about anxiety,” you will find almost every site lists Philippians 4 verses 6-7. This is where Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
While this verse is probably the most well-known and prominent verse on anxiety, we really don’t take it seriously enough. To be honest, when I am feeling anxious and trying to fight against anxiety, this is a little more accurate for me.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by distraction and maintaining control of every situation, nodding occasionally to God when you remember, and the momentary comfort of having a good plan and solid work ethic will give your heart and mind false security in yourself and your own abilities”
That’s what I tend to do when I’m anxious. I turn to distraction, taking control, making a plan, and pushing back in my own strength against the thing that is giving me anxiety. Let me tell you, friend, it doesn’t work. We cannot rely on our own strength and efforts to fight against anxiety.
That’s why we need to take this verse seriously and intentionally apply the instructions Paul is giving here. So that we can fight against the anxiety when it arises.
In order to do that, we are going to dig through this verse line by line and really unpack what this means and how to apply it to our lives.
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything
This is not a harsh command. For a long time, I took it to be just that and would try to coach myself out of the anxiety saying, “Don’t be anxious, Lindsay. The Bible tells you not to be anxious, so don’t be.”
But this isn’t a harsh command, but rather a set of instructions that we can follow to fight against that anxiety. The rest of the verses are going to tell us how to do this.
The Bible doesn’t just say “Do not fear” but tells us why we shouldn’t: “For I am with you.” In the same way, we are not just told, “Do not be anxious about anything,” as a harsh command, but it is followed by all the things that will help us accomplish that. There is so much more to this verse, so we don’t want to stop at, “Don’t be anxious.”
How unhelpful is that? Have you shared your struggles with fear or anxiety with someone and their response is, “Just don’t be anxious! You’re worrying for nothing. It’s going to be fine. You’re wasting your energy. It’ll all work out in the end.” Is there anything less helpful in a moment to be dismissed like that? To have your feelings shut down and quieted when you’re struggling?
Well, God isn’t doing that here. He isn’t shutting you up with a command to not be anxious. It is followed by instructions that will enable you not to be anxious.
It also says, “but in everything.” There aren’t exceptions here. Nothing is so big that you should be anxious about it and nothing is so small that you shouldn’t bring it to God. If you’re stressed about a test that seems like no big deal to anyone else, God cares about it. He cares about your family, your kids, your job, and your future. Nothing is too small that you shouldn’t bring it to God and nothing is too big that isn’t powerful enough to handle it.
By prayer
This is the part of the verse that I felt called out by. There are so many times when I start feeling anxious and I turn to everything else but prayer. It is not often my first response, and instead, I turn to distraction, taking control, or making a plan instead of going to prayer.
We have to get better at praying. If you’re like me and grew up in the church, maybe it’s because we’ve gotten so comfortable with the empty prayers. When we pray, we need more real connection rather than rehearsed comments.
We pray a lot of prayers like, “God, help me to have a good day,” “Keep me safe,” or “Protect my family.” All of those are good prayers, but how many times has our heart been so heavy and burdened, and all we ask for is that God would bless our meal?
We need to get out of those rehearsed prayers that we’ve prayed our whole life and get real with God.
But sometimes when you’re feeling a lot of anxiety, you don’t even know what to pray. You don’t know what to say or where to start, but that is such a good time to pray scripture. I love this because you are speaking truth. Not getting wrapped up in feelings and emotions that are fleeting and unreliable, but reminding yourself through prayer of who God is and what He does.
My favorite is to pray Psalm 23, “Lord, you are my shepherd, I have everything I need, I lack nothing, I shall not want. You make me lie down and rest in green pastures. You lead me beside quiet waters. You restore my soul.”
Praying the scriptures and knowing that everything you’re praying is truth about God can help you remember who He is in the midst of the anxiety.
And supplication
I always thought supplication simply meant asking for your basic needs; food, shelter, health, and water. Just the necessities. The Oxford English dictionary actually defines supplication as, “the action of asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly.”
This is desperation. This is not a fluffy prayer or a, “bless my meal.” It’s “God I don’t know what to do right now. I don’t know how this is going to work out. I’m at the end of myself. I can’t push any further.” It’s an honest cry from a place of desperation for our Father to come and rescue us.
This is the point we need to get to with our anxiety. Instead of trying to take control, we need to recognize that we’re at the end of ourselves. We need to get to the point of relying on God and trusting in Him.
I honestly think this is harder than trying to work it out ourselves. It’s so hard to get out of the way, hand over the control, and just trust God to step in and take care of it.
But when we allow God to step in and take over, that’s when we see Him move.
The Israelites at the Red Sea with the Egyptians chasing after them to kill them had nowhere to turn. They were completely out of options, with nothing to control or try to work out. They were totally at the end of their abilities, and it’s when they reached that point, that God opened the sea.
If we never hit that point, God doesn’t need to do the miracle. If they brought their own boat to the Red Sea, God wouldn’t have needed to open it up.
A lot of times, we ask God for provision or a miracle, but then we take care of it ourselves so we really don’t need the miracle at all.
That challenges me so much to want to see the miracles of God and have to be uncomfortable in the places they come. I have to accept that I can’t control the situation and see the miracle.
We have to cry out to God by prayer and supplication, instead of trying to take care of it ourselves.
With thanksgiving
Maybe this seems out of place to you. Honestly, it did for me too. Like am I really supposed to be thankful that I’m in this hard situation again, feeling extremely anxious, crying on the floor of my closet? I’m supposed to be thankful right now?
But I realized that this thanksgiving is not to make God feel good. I’m not saying, “Thank you that I’m in despair right now.” I’m saying, “Thank you, God, for what you’ve done before.”
I love that in Philippians chapter 1, the same letter that Paul wrote this verse about anxiety in, as he sat in a prison cell writing these words to the Philippian church, he says, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.” (verses 3-5).
Paul didn’t just write, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving…” He is actually living it. He is actually thanking God as he sits in prison for the Philippian church as he thinks about and remembers them.
Thanksgiving clears our minds to reflect and remember the things that God has done in the past. It makes us realize the things God is doing now outside of the current struggle that is causing our anxiety. It shifts our mind from our current trial and anchors us to truth.
It reminds us of the miracles God has worked. It reminds us of God’s character and the way He has shown up and provided for our needs and made a way through an impossible situation before. It anchors us in truth.
Let your requests be made known to God
You are invited to ask. I love that. I love that God opens the door for us to come straight to Him and let Him know what we need. To tell Him how we’re feeling and where we’re at.
I think there’s also a challenge with this. It makes me think of Mark 10 where Jesus is speaking to a blind man. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
How obvious, he wants to see.
But it seems like the bigger question was, “Do you have big enough faith to say it out loud? Do you actually believe that I can do it? That I can give you sight that you’ve lived your entire life without? Do you actually believe I can work this miracle, and you’re willing to say it out loud?”
I’m so challenged by this because I’m not going to ask for something that I don’t think God is going to give me. I’m not going to ask for the impossible if I truly think it’s impossible. It challenges my faith to say that if I ask for this, I actually believe God can do it. That He is big enough, strong enough, powerful enough, sovereign enough to step in and change the situation. I don’t know how, because it seems completely impossible to me, but God works miracles. I believe that, so I believe that He can do the impossible here.
It shows how much faith we have. So this invitation to ask is also a challenge to have your faith grow a little. To believe that God can do the impossible in your life.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I heard it once, “In order to have a peace that surpasses all understanding, we have to give up our right to understand.” It’s so true that it’s okay for us not to understand why we have peace even when our situation has not changed. We have to accept the peace without always understanding how it came, why we feel better, or why we have security in the midst of a storm.
This also reminds us that it isn’t a one-time fix. We don’t pray once with supplication and thanksgiving and then never again feel anxiety. This is a battle we have to fight every time the anxiety starts to creep in.
We don’t just sit back and believe that anxiety won’t try to sneak back in. But we know how to fight against it now. We can train ourselves to go to prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, and make our requests known to God. These actions put Jesus, the Prince of Peace, front and center in our minds, and it is His peace that surpasses understanding and guards our hearts and minds.
So every time you start to feel that anxiety, get ready to fight. It truly is about fighting against the anxiety and fighting for your peace.
Looking for more? Check out the latest blog posts below!
- How to Read the Bible and Actually Understand It
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Five: Gratitude
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Four: Community Support
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Three: Service
- How to Practice Self-Care as a Christian | Part Two: Scripture
