Fighting Anxiety with Prayer

4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

God does not want us to dwell in anxiety. Anxiety is to be resisted, like other temptations. And the weapon we are given to resist it is prayer.

But isn’t anxiety normal? What is the big problem with anxiety?

Normality is not an especially helpful category for Christian thinking. Because of sin, much of what is normal is very, very wrong. Anxiety is normal, but it is neither good nor helpful.

In fact, anxiety kills. Anxiety paralyzes. Anxiety drains away our strength. Anxiety is taking our eyes off of Jesus, just as when Peter, walking on the water, grew anxious about the raging waves and took his eyes off of Jesus. Because of his anxiety he sunk, and so do we.

There is a great God to be feared. But when we fear other things, we are telling the world that those are the things to be feared, not God. We are saying that those things are big and God is small. We are lying to the world about God.

Anxiety sends the message that God is not worthy of being trusted. Just as godly children silence one’s enemies (Psalm 127:5), so godly Christians silence the enemies of God (1Pet.2:15). But that means that cowering, worried Christians give fuel to the enemies of Christ. It gives them opportunity to say, "What kind of God is it that has such worried children?"

Not only this but anxiety hurts other Christians as well. Our brothers and sisters need inspiring examples of believers who put full trust in God, who count the pressures and difficulties of this world as not worthy of being compared to the weight of glory in eternity (2Cor.4:17). In their weakness they need saints who will count it all joy when they face various trials, knowing that the testing of faith produces endurance and maturity (James 1:2).

And so anxiety must be resisted and opposed and combated. And the weapons of God’s choice are prayer, supplication, and letting your requests be made known to God, which are three ways of saying the same thing (probably for emphasis). The message here is: Fight anxiety: Pray! Pray! Pray!

Lord, for some reason I don’t usually approach anxiety with the same sense of danger and seriousness that I approach other sins like lust and anger and idolatry. I see that I am more vulnerable to Satanic attack because I am not alert to this danger. Please help me to see anxiety for what it is. Instead of worrying, help me to use troublesome circumstances as an opportunity to show Your surpassing trustworthiness by bringing my needs to You and resting in You. May my life point others to Your great faithfulness.