What if I told you that anxieties are a very specific reminder, sent indirectly from God?
We have all felt that tension building up in the nape of our necks as we read an email, realizing that there is one more thing to add to our to-do list but we are not quite sure how we will accomplish it. We have felt that nagging discomfort when we are reminded of a responsibility that we had forgotten, a meal that was never prepped, or a friend we should have checked in on, and we are stressed out by our inability to rewind time.
Anxieties can be abstract as well. For me, it is often a persisting question of how others perceive me, a fear that I didn’t say the right thing, or the agitation of not understanding my own emotions and mental state.
But what exactly is anxiety? And is it sin? Before I can share the deeper meaning behind anxiety, let’s define what it is.
Defining anxiety
For the purposes of this blog post, I am defining anxiety in a broad way: discomfort and fear stemming from lack of control, whether directed toward the past, present, or future. The biblical definition of anxiety may be different. My pastor, Tim Ingrum, pointed out that biblical commands about anxiety portray “a mental activity where we’re stewing on future possibilities and experiencing ongoing unease as a result.” For example, Matthew 6:25-34 portrays anxiety through the questions “What shall we eat?” and “What shall we drink?” and “What shall we wear?” I would just like to note that I am defining anxiety in a broader way, so that we are on the same page.
The fear, anguish, and emotional experience of the anxiety that I am describing are not condemned as sin in the Bible. In fact, Christ himself experienced overwhelming distress, fear, and sorrow in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-36). We can also read of David and countless other psalmists and biblical examples who show us what it looks like to experience emotional anxiety (fear based on lack of control) in a godly way.
“What the Bible prohibits isn’t feeling fear, anguish, or sorrow—sometimes to extreme degrees,” Pastor Tim wrote, responding to the questions I emailed him. “Rather, it’s a vain and godless stewing in those feelings. What matters is what we do with these emotions. Will we battle to pour out our hearts to the Lord in prayer (Ps 62:8), or will we go our own way with them?”
God is God, and I am not
What I am about to share, I am sharing only from my own experience. I recognize that anxieties come in different forms and severities for different people in different situations, and they are a natural part of life that we can never completely remove, especially in the context of an anxiety disorder. But what I am learning is that if I sift through the ruckus and chaos of the different voices of anxieties in my head, there is a solid truth that is as clear as a sunlit day.
I have discovered that each of my anxieties—no matter what caused it—serves as a reminder: “God is God, and I am not.”
Each of my anxieties is a fear that I am not fully in control of my situation. If I’m not 100% sure that I can complete all my tasks to perfection by the deadline, then I am anxious to attain complete control over the outcome. If I don’t know what others are thinking about me, I am anxious to control my image.
God allows my anxious circumstances, and perhaps your circumstances too, to communicate a very specific message: “I am God, and you are not.”
It is a message that should be glaringly obvious to us. It is practically like a sticky note plastered across each of our foreheads. But, of course, you can’t see your own forehead, so it takes a lot of intentionality to look past our anxieties and read what they mean. You might need to use a mirror and carefully read the message on the sticky note backwards, or peel the sticky note off your forehead to look at it with your own eyes. What should be glaringly obvious rarely is.
Reading a message on your forehead
I need this reminder because my heart is an idol-making factory. In twenty-first century America, our culture’s tendency is to take God out of the equation and put ourselves in His place instead. This is a big factor in why I feel the anxieties that I feel: I want to have absolute control over my circumstances and outcomes. I am tempted to make myself my god.
These temptations to make myself god are constant. I tend to blow things out of proportion when they are things about me. My habit of crunching on ice as I drink water is one small, lighthearted example. If I crunch ice in public, I feel anxious, because I’m pretty sure everyone is acknowledging this fact that I crunch ice. The ironic thing is that I wouldn’t care if someone mentioned it or told me it is bad for my teeth. (This is how I hydrate!) I just care about what people are not saying. But I need to realize that the world doesn’t revolve around me, and these things don’t matter as much to other people as I think they do. Even if people do care, these things still don’t matter as much I think they do, in the grand scheme of things. God is God, and I am not.
I have been planning this blog post in my head for several weeks now, based on this mantra that God is God, and I am not. And yet, even as I consciously think about this mantra, I find myself distracted by anxious thoughts about other things, and I forget to take them to God. I forget to loosen my grip over that which I am not god over. Realizing this now, I should really slap myself in the face. How can I so easily forget?
That is why I am writing this blog post. If I can forget this so easily, maybe you have this struggle too. We need to take this temptation to self-idolatry seriously. We need to learn how to reinterpret our anxieties. And with the help of the Holy Spirit, we need to develop a knee-jerk response of prayer.
Developing a prayer reflex
I was talking with a young lady in her first year of college, dealing with anxiety over an overwhelming school workload, and I was reminded of myself as a freshman. She said that she felt bad that she prayed more when she was struggling than when things were good.
“Never be ashamed of praying more,” I told her. Throughout my life as a Christian, I have been confronted with various guilts about my prayer life: I should be praying more gratitudes, I should be praying more about the government, I should be praying more for missionaries, I should be praying Bible passages, etc., etc.
No.
I mean, yes, all these things are good things to add to your prayer life!
But no, your prayer life should absolutely never feel like something you have to be guilty about or overthink and overplan. So often we get caught up in what we “ought” to be praying about, when we really just need to pray more.
God delights in His children talking to Him. It is not a matter of balancing how much we pray in hard seasons with how much we pray in happy seasons. It is just a matter of building the reflex to pray to Him constantly in whatever season we are in.
A little tough love from the Father
I think that maybe that is why I am being confronted with so many anxieties in my current season of life. God wants to keep reminding me to pray to Him, trust Him, and lean on Him, remembering that He is God, and I am not. In Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges writes, “God does not tempt us to sin (see James 1:13-14), but He does bring or allow circumstances to come into our lives that give us opportunity to put to death the particular sins that are characteristic of our individual lives.” Even with the internal struggles in my circumstances, I am thankful for the reminders to be praying to God more and constantly putting my self-idolatry to death.
When I learned how to be honest and open with God, it was a game changer. Literally. My life often seems like a single-player game where I try to achieve my own objectives. But when I remember to pray, I realize that I’m not the only player in the game—I’m not even the main character. The game isn’t even what I thought it was originally. The objective of the “game” is actually to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That’s it. When I pray, I am reminded that my objectives aren’t as big a deal as I thought they were. God is actually the one who is God and who is in control.
I’m learning to reinterpret my anxieties. I don’t need to give in to the temptations to self-idolatry. Instead, I can see them as a little bit of tough love from my wonderful Father. They are reminders that He is God and I am not. They are invitations to come to Him in prayer and trust Him with whatever is on my heart.
What do you think?
I would love to hear your perspective in the comments, whether you agree or disagree with anything I’ve said here. I’m still learning and growing, and I feel like my blog is a fairly safe place to “think out loud” and sometimes be wrong, or otherwise I wouldn’t be posting at all! Let’s have a discussion and come closer to a biblical understanding of anxiety together.
I appreciated that you put thought into explaining your definition of ‘anxiety’ as part of your post. Because when I think ‘anxiety’ I’m thinking more along the lines of ‘anxiety disorder,’ since my own experience has been when it crops up as a side-effect of seasonal depression (which, thankfully, is rare for me).
I really enjoyed the image of anxieties being sticky notes on our foreheads. Much easier for others to see than ourselves. I have way too much anxiety myself as to whether I completely missed God’s guidance or an answer to prayer because I am dense. I have to remind myself that He is the master communicator, and He knows the sincerity of my desire to obey Him (as opposed to when I’m acting like Gideon out of inferiority or unbelief).
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for reading this and sharing your thoughts, Aunt Joelle! There are so many definitions of anxiety, which can each be useful for different purposes, so I’m glad my communication came across clear enough to put us on the same page. I found it important to address these everyday anxieties that we all experience so that I could share a reminder about God’s sovereignty in this context. Thank you for this reminder and encouragement about God as the master communicator. There is a great deal of freedom in realizing that we are dense sometimes, but God is not! We just have to rely on Him to take care of us despite our weakness. His grace is abundant.
Hey Eliana, your image of a sticky note stuck to our forehead is a helpful one that I’ll carry with me. I found this insightful:
“But, of course, you can’t see your own forehead, so it takes a lot of intentionality to look past our anxieties and read what they mean.”
To handle our emotions in a biblical and healthy way, so much of the ballgame comes down to critically evaluating our feelings rather than just living inside them (e.g., Ps 42:5). Of course, this requires a posture of openness to God and submission to his word. Thanks for writing!
Hi Pastor Tim, thank you so much for the thoughtful comment and the encouraging words! I really appreciate all the insight you provided as I thought through this topic. It is so true, your point about critically evaluating our feelings rather than letting them rule. This can teach us so much about ourselves, our struggles, and what it means to submit to God.