Anxiety is a common struggle for Christians, but it should not define them; Christ offers peace and freedom from it. This video explores how Christians can overcome anxiety by shifting their focus from self-reliance and worry to prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving, trusting in God’s sovereignty and care.
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Transcription:
When we worry, we literally are going through the motions of prayer but we’re ripping all the power out of it. We’re not directing those thoughts to God and saying, hey, I’m worried about this election. Hey, I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about my infertility journey. I’m worried I’m not gonna find somebody to marry. Instead of directing that to God, we simply meditate on it to ourselves as if we can somehow change the course of the future. Welcome back to Verity podcast friends. I’m Phylicia Masonheimer, the host of Verity and the founder of Every Woman A Theologian.
I’m so excited to have you join us today whether for the first time or if you’ve been listening for a while. Right now, we’re in the middle of our beginner believer series where we talk about questions that new or returning believers in Christ are asking about their faith. And when I was thinking about what we should do this week, I thought, oh, we could talk more about the theology of the gospel or sin and sanctification. But I realized, you know, I recently have been struggling with a lot of anxiety. How about we just talk about that very personal and very real struggle that so many of us who walk with Christ are facing. And so today I wanna share with you a little of my own process of walking with Christ through anxiety and actually finding freedom from anxiety in my daily life. I wanna start right there because I think that some Christians come to Christianity with a fatalistic mindset that anxiety is their identity. It’s who they are.
It’s who they’re always going to be. It’s always going to be present with them. And I’m here to tell you that Christ does bring peace. He does. However, that doesn’t mean that we will never struggle with anxiety again. We live in a world and a culture that is marked by a lack of peace and that is always going to be assaulting us to some degree. And yet, peace is not the absence of anxiety or the temptation to anxiety or to worry. Peace is the ability to trust Christ in the midst of that.
To trust Christ and to release that. And so that’s what I’m gonna share with you today. Now of course, everybody has a different process for walking through this and we all have different experiences in our life that contribute to the anxieties that we face. So some people may have had extreme trauma in their background, sexual trauma or physical abuse or, a family of origin that really has affected their anxiousness. And so it’s not something that’s just flip a switch, pray more and it’s just gonna go away. Sometimes we need counseling and therapy and a licensed Christian counselor has been so helpful to me in my own journey. At the same time, we must take the word of God for what it says and trust that the God who is sovereign, the God who loves us, the God who died for us actually wants to do what his word says and give us freedom from worry, freedom from control, freedom from anxiety. And in my own life I have seen that come true.
So I’m gonna share with you some scriptures and then I’m going to share with you some practical things that have helped me in my own journey of finding freedom from anxiety. The most famous verse that speaks to this is Philippians 46 through 7, and I think it’s so interesting that Paul writes this in the letter to the Philippians because he is experiencing persecution, he’s experiencing imprisonment, he’s experiencing slander, people lying about him, people miss trusting him because of who he used to be. And yet in the midst of this he says, do not be anxious about anything, anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. There’s so much here. But I wanna start at the beginning and we’ll just break this down section by section. Do not be anxious about anything. So Paul isn’t saying this from a condemning standpoint, he can speak from his own experience that there’s a lot to worry about.
There’s a lot that he was tempted to worry about. But he says don’t be anxious about anything. So what’s going on in the world, who’s being put on the thrones and in the places of power, whether or not you’ll get sick, what’s gonna happen to your kids, do not be anxious about anything. And it makes me ask why am I anxious, like why is it that I worry about these things? I feel like it’s out of control and something bad is gonna happen. And I feel like I’m taking back a form of control by worrying about it. But really I’m not. Instead, I’m putting myself in this place of constant stress, my body is kind of falling in on itself from all of that stress and I’m forced to look outward and say, I need someone, something outside of myself to set me free from this cycle because I’m anxious about everything and anything. And Paul says, no, that’s not the way, that’s not the path.
So do not be anxious about anything but in everything. So instead of anything, in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Okay. He names 3 types of prayer here and we talked about this in a previous episode of the beginner believer series about prayer. Why pray if God is sovereign. But these 3 he notes prayer, supplication, thanksgiving. What’s the difference here? Prayer is the overarching term to describe that relational conversation with God. That ongoing conversation with God.
It’s not something we just do at meals. It’s not something you just do in the morning and then you’re done. It’s an ongoing conversation with god. And what so many people don’t realize is that our anxious thoughts could be prayers. They are a form of prayer, but they’re a prayer to ourselves. And we’re powerless to change anything. When we worry, we literally are going through the motions of prayer but we’re ripping all the power out of it. We’re not directing those thoughts to god and saying, hey, I’m worried about this election.
Hey, I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about my infertility journey. I’m worried I’m not gonna find somebody to marry. Instead of directing that to God, we simply meditate on it to ourselves as if we can somehow change the course of the future. No wonder we’re anxious. No wonder we’re stressed. And so in everything by prayer, turn those anxieties upward and outward back to the lord. Now what’s supplication? Supplication, this is this is the request, this is, God hear my heart.
God, this is the desire of my heart, this is my fear, this is my worry. Bringing it before the Lord and asking him to do something about it. And then the third is thanksgiving. And this is so important, my friends. So so important. So we know about these patterns in new age thought and in our culture talking about affirmations, positive thinking, power positive thinking, manifestation, and how people will say, well, if we practice these things, we will rewire our brain for the positive. Right? And I think that’s actually true to a degree which is why secular people actually do see some fruit from it. However, they have to keep doing it and it’s very self centered.
So manifestation is all about getting what you want and prayer is not that way. Prayer is a conversation with God where you tell him what you want, he carries you through that and he begins to shape your heart to understand what you actually need. And then when he fulfills those desires or he, shows you the the path that you should walk, you know in this relationship that it’s the best thing for you. He gives you discernment. He gives you wisdom. He gives you the ability to see your situation with new eyes. You don’t get that with manifestation because it’s just you in an impersonal universe. And so in the christian prayer life, it’s an ongoing conversation of saying, God, I’m struggling in this or God, I feel worried about this or God, this feels out of my control and giving it over to him and letting him then say, I’m the one who sees everything and let me help you understand this.
So what about thanksgiving? What does that have to do with manifestation affirmations? Thanksgiving is the true form of positive thinking. The true form. The power of positive thinking, manifestations, affirmations, those are all riffing off the real thing, in my opinion. Thanksgiving is when you look at the life that you have and you thank God for his goodness in the places it is visible. Even while you may be worried about things that aren’t where you want them to be. So thanksgiving for me in the season I’m in, we’re walking through secondary infertility. We have lost 2 babies in miscarriage this year. I have, some hormonal issues that are related to that and it also causes hormonal anxiety.
But on top of that, I’m the CEO of a ministry and, I have a marriage to tend to and I have kids to parent and between all those things, I can be very very worried about a lot of things. So what do I do? I thank God. I thank God for every small evidence of his care. The fact that I can afford to feed my family, the fact that we have amazing people on the every woman a theologian team, the fact that he allows me to have access to the word of God that gives me this truth, the fact that I have friends who walk with me or a church that I can go and learn about the word and go there freely without persecution. I can look at these things and I can take God personally for them and I can thank him for the ways he’s already moving even when I have not seen his answers in other areas. And so because I look at his faithfulness and I thank God for his faithfulness every day all through the day, when I get to a point where I am worried about something, I can go, you know what? God is faithful. He’s been faithful before. He’s being faithful now.
He’ll be faithful again and he’ll do it in this area just like he did it in those. Now a part of this for me is recognizing that God doesn’t owe me anything. God doesn’t owe me another child. He doesn’t owe me fixing my body. He doesn’t owe me a certain amount of money which is what manifestation essentially teaches. The universe owes you. God doesn’t owe me anything and yet he gave up everything to have relationship with me. And so I thank him for the ways he has given me good gifts even when I’m in the middle of temptation to worry or these anxious thoughts want to assault me and the thanksgiving drives out the anxiety.
Is it a daily choice? Yes. A lot of times. This week, a daily choice. I’ve struggled with this and yet the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, it doesn’t make sense intellectually, rationally, guards my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. The act of prayer, the act of supplication, the act of thanksgiving, of not allowing those patterns of negativity, those patterns of worry to become who you are but instead to reprogram your thoughts and to give those to God over and over and most of all to constantly focus and thank God for the goodness of what we do have, it actually rewires our brains. It surpasses, it passes by our understanding and guards our heart and guards our minds. Isn’t that amazing? So it’s a very physical thing as much as it’s a spiritual thing that it is actually allowing our brains and our bodies to come to a place of peace because he is he’s bypassing our rational brain, if you will, and he’s saying I am gonna give you peace, I’m gonna guard your heart, I’m gonna protect your spirit, your emotions, and I’m going to protect your mind in Christ Jesus. That’s what I offer you.
And this is why Philippians 4 is such a powerful verse about anxiety. It isn’t just pray more and maybe things will change. That’s not helpful. We have to teach people how to pray. Not just rehearse all of the worries, although god wants to hear that from you, but to rehearse the truth. Because that’s where the real change happens. That when I’m struggling with anxiety, I’m looking at my kids and I’m going, I’m not sure I’m making the right choices with parenting or I failed them or I yelled at them and now I need to repent them and I start to worry like, oh, I’m ruining them. I can go, what’s the scripture say about repentance? What does the scripture say about parenting? And I can pray that over my kids, over myself, and back to God.
Thank you God that you give me grace when I fail and I can give grace to my kids. Thank you God that when I repent you forgive me and that I have the option of reconciliation with my kids. I’m praying the truth. I’m not just rehearsing the worry. I’m not allowing that to reign in my mind. 1st Peter 57 says cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you. See, we focus on the casting all anxieties like we make it into a rule, make it into a checklist. But what if we focus on the last part? He cares for you.
He cares for you. He cares for what you’re worrying about and he wants to take it. But when we withhold it and we hold on to it, what we’re really saying is no thanks God. I think I’m God here. I can control it. I can make the outcome better. I don’t think you care about me. But what if you believed him? What if you believed he actually does care about you and he wants you to give your anxieties to him because he can actually do something with them? John 1427 says, peace I leave with you and my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled neither let them be afraid. The world gives us a lack of peace. I mean, look at consuming the news, consuming social media, it riles us up into this constant feeling that we can be omniscient. We can know all things and not be affected, but we aren’t omniscient. We can’t handle that amount of information. I often say that when it comes to the news I only consume as much as I can pray for. A quote that I heard from Richard Foster in one of his books.
I only consume as much news as I can pray for and I’m not gonna do any more than that because I am not omniscient, but God is and he leaves his peace with us. My heart does not have to be troubled or afraid if I will actually allow him to give me his peace instead of constantly going out and following the world’s way. Psalm 55:22 says, cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved. In my office here on this wall I have these lithographs of Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. If you know anything about that story, pilgrim the pilgrim christian is on his way to the celestial city and the allegory kind of shows the path of the Christian life from entering at the narrow gate to going to the cross to walking through the valley of the shadow of death and all of these other allegorical locations on his way to meet the king. And at one point when Christian is saved, truly saved and repents, he comes to the cross and this burden he’s carried for the first third of the book falls off. Like it breaks on its own.
It just falls off of his back. And then he walks the rest of the journey without the burden of his sin riding on his back. I often think of that picture when I read Psalm 55:22 that we have had a burden taken off of us. We’ve had this burden of sin, this burden of shame, this burden of control taken off of us but so often we actually pick it back up and put it back on. And here the psalmist is saying, cast it off, throw it off onto the lord and he will sustain you. He will sustain you. Isn’t it interesting that so often the things that we pick up, we think they’ll help us. They’ll help us go faster.
They’ll help us have more control. Like, we pick up the burden thinking it’s gonna be a crutch or it’s gonna make us move faster but instead ends up weighing us down. So he’s saying the burden won’t sustain you. Whatever it is that you picked up that you’re rehearsing in your mind, that’s not going to sustain you. But if you cast it off the lord will sustain you. And that’s that moment of decision that we all have when it comes to our walk of faith and anxiety is asking ourselves am I picking up a burden that looks like control? Am I picking up a burden that looks like control? Am I picking up a burden that looks like power or security? But really it’s weighing me down. Really it’s damaging my walk of faith. It’s making me constantly stressed, constantly anxious.
My body is reaping the effects of my ongoing mental consumption with controlling my environment or my relationships or trying to live for what people think of me instead of releasing that to the Lord. Now as I’ve shared earlier, there is a physical aspect to this too. And for those of you who are female, who are watching this, who maybe have walked through perimenopause or postpartum anxiety, I’ve had postpartum anxiety severely, and I also am currently walking through perimenopausal symptoms that are, affecting our fertility journey, and one of those is hormonal anxiety. And so I just wanna speak to that as an aside. I have found so much help from naturopathic and holistic doctors, nutritionists who have helped me pinpoint the underlying deficiencies, mineral and vitamin deficiencies that are contributing to that. And I know for me, I know I could go in and I could get a medication to help with that. And some of you, that’s what you’ve chosen to do. For me, I really wanted to identify that root cause underneath it and we were able to do that.
And so, when I found out I just needed, more progesterone supplementation and I needed, things like chasteberry or more iron to help with my mood and to help with those those anxious tendencies, less caffeine, more nutritious meal, protein of a 100 grams a day, things like that that made a significant difference in lowering my anxiety levels, which then allowed me to think more rationally to be able to actually go, oh, okay. I’m feeling a spike in my anxiety. Did I eat enough? Did I have too much coffee? Have I taken my supplements today? Have I made sure that I had enough protein? And when I’ve taken those wise steps, those common grace steps that God’s given us through nature, I’m then able to go, okay, now how can I address this spiritually too? So for what it’s worth, that has been very helpful to me and has helped me a ton with leveling out the hormonal aspect of the anxiety that I deal with. I have one more verse for you, and I love this verse. I think it’s just so beautiful. Hebrews 136 which says, we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? I don’t know about you but a lot of the anxieties that I will struggle with have to do with relationships and what people think of me.
And the biggest learning curve of my faith walk and my leadership walk has been letting go of what people think and really asking the Lord to show me what do you think of me? What do you think of my behavior? How can I walk in a way that’s worthy? How can I obey you? And how can I just let go of what people think? Because they’re not god and you are. See, releasing that idolatry of human approval reduces my anxiety more than almost anything else. Because at the core, what I’m doing is I’m really looking to be worshipped by people, to have their affirmation, their approval, their affection, all of these things that I want to feel good about myself and what that tells me is I’m not really resting in the approval and favor of God. When I do rest in the favor of God and I can say I work for God and not man, I have such a reduction in that worry. If that’s you, a couple of books that have helped me are the Emotionally Healthy Woman by Jerry Scazzaro and also When People Are Big and God is Small. I can’t remember the author of that one at the moment but I love that book. It made a huge difference for me. My hope in filming this part of the series is that you will see that Christ offers to take our anxieties and he’s not just saying that.
He really is offering transformation. He’s really offering hope. He’s really offering peace. And I honestly think that if we just say this is what it’s gonna be forever, this is how it’s gonna be, it’s never gonna change, that’s a very fatalistic mindset about the God who wants to save us. Now, of course, we don’t live in heaven. This world is imperfect. We will still be drawn towards anxiety at times, but we do not have to submit to it and we definitely should not make it our identity or speak it over ourselves. I’m an anxious person.
I am destined for anxiety. No. You are loved by God, you are seen by God, you are carried by God, chosen, adopted. He has taken you into his hand and it says that He has taken you into his hand and it says that no one can snatch you out. It’s as if you are in his hand with God’s other hand covering it. No one can snatch you out of his hand. You are covered by his sovereign grace and his love. And yes, there are still things we’ll experience in this world that are hard and heartbreaking.
I know what that’s like. At the same time, we can trust that he is actively redeeming, actively carrying, actively wanting to take the burden of our anxiety off of us. It’s our choice, however, how much we participate in that freedom. And so we get to decide, am I going to use prayer and supplication and thanksgiving to make my request known to God so that his peace will protect my heart and my mind. I don’t know about you, but I want to live that way. I want to live the Philippians 4 way and I’m going to choose to do that every day and I hope you do too.