God & Anxiety: Turning to Him for a Deeper Connection

In this episode, CCEF faculty share personal experiences of anxiety and consider how it manifests in many different ways. They share insights from Scripture and talk about how anxiety is a continual opportunity for conversation with the Lord.

Mentioned in this episode: Check out the CCEF Blogcast, where CCEF authors read their own blogs. Find it on your favorite podcast app: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcast | Amazon Podcast

00:00 Introduction to Anxiety and Growth
01:11 Personal Experiences with Anxiety
04:43 Understanding Anxiety Through Procrastination
10:00 Scriptural Insights on Anxiety
13:48 The Role of Thanksgiving in Anxiety Management
17:44 Faithful Anxiety: A Christian Perspective
24:35 Reframing Anxiety as Opportunity
29:19 Ambition Over Anxiety

Hi, welcome to Where Life & Scripture Meet, a podcast of CCEF, the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation. Our mission is to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. I am here with our core podcast team. My name is Alasdair. I'm here with Esther and Darby and Gunner. And today we wanted to talk about, how have you grown in the face of your own anxieties? What has been helpful to you in your anxieties? 

Before we dive into that though, I just wanted to let you know about another resource closely connected to our podcast that we're doing here which is what we call our blogcast. So last year we had launched a podcast called the CCEF Blogcast, where we have our authors read their own blogs. And we release new episodes about twice a month. So if you like to read but don't always have the time and want to put something on in your car and get content that way, you might want to check it out. And you can find it in all the podcast apps out there, just search for CCEF Blogcast, all one word. Hope you enjoy.

Guys, welcome. Hope everybody's doing all right today. I'm really looking forward to this conversation and getting a sense from each of you of where has the Lord grown you? What's been helpful? How have you faced anxiety and what has been the centerpiece of that? Whether that's something from your significantly distant history, whether that's yesterday, how would you speak to that?

I'm happy to kick us off. You know, when I think about my own anxieties, I'm actually not somebody who would identify anxiety through much of my history. I didn't think that I felt much anxiety growing up or even in my 20s. I think becoming a parent was the thing that showed me there actually was anxiety in my life. And then once I saw it there, I began to be able to see it in lots of places and to be able to sort of go back and find it in many spots in my life even before that. So I still probably wouldn't put anxiety as a front and center, like “this is the big thing in my world,” but I do see it a lot. And it's funny, when you say parenting anxieties, I suspect that sounds fairly common sense and reasonable to most people. And I have lots of anxieties about the welfare of my children and it's funny to sort of notice where they gravitate. Anything where my children were—when they were younger, anything around water, like bodies of water where you might be in them, that had a pretty good way of getting my heart to clench a bit. But honestly, and this is a bit embarrassing to admit, but if I were to say like, what were you most anxious around with your children or most often anxious around? It would actually be inconvenience. I'd be like, you know what, if you keep jumping on the side of the trampoline like that, you're going to fall and break your arm. And I don't have time for the emergency room today. So I was realizing there was a level of like, wow, I love my children and I care about them, and I also love my own comfort and convenience. And I'm anxious that you're going to do this thing that's going to spill milk all over the couch, and then it's going to be a process and it's going to smell for six months if we're not careful. So it was interesting to me how it just pushed me to identify some things in myself that I probably wouldn't have seen, certainly not as clearly, if I hadn't. I'm interested to hear—I've thought a bit about what's been helpful and I'll say more about that maybe in a minute. But for you guys, what would you identify? Where are the places where you feel like the Lord's been working? What's been helpful?

I really appreciate your example because it was the “what if, what if…” And I think that's the one place that I've really located my anxieties in my imagination. When I was young, my dad nearly died of a stroke. So when I was a little kid, I remember being in the backyard. He'd be out mowing and he wouldn't come in soon enough. So my imagination would say, well, what if he's in the yard and he can't get up or what if he's really hurt? So my imagination tends to fill in the blanks. Like even last night, we got a call, really unusual, a family member we don't hear from regularly, and it was 10:30 at night and they were calling my husband. I was like, you better pick this up, something bad probably happened. So it's just funny that it's the “what ifs” for me and how my mind tends to fill in the gaps. It's usually someone I love being really hurt or harmed or going to the doctor and hearing one piece of a diagnosis and filling in all the “what ifs” and “what it could bes.” And that's typically how it manifests for me.

When I look back, I think my first significant struggles with anxiety, I would not have called them that. And I think it was because it was primarily procrastination. And when I started asking, why was I procrastinating so much in middle school or high school? I started to realize that there was just a sense of perfectionism that I really wanted to feel like the thing that I was turning in was completely satisfactory to me, and often it felt like it never could be. And so therefore I had to just keep moving it back and moving it back because now looking back, if I had turned it in or submitted it or said it was complete and it didn't feel like it was, that seemed like some kind of failure. And so it was just this mysterious struggle with continuing to delay and delay and postpone that I look back and realize there was significant anxiety there. I just didn't identify it in that way.

Esther, what about you?

Yeah, I find that really interesting just how anxiety comes out in different ways or even procrastination. I remember it was a huge realization for me. I always equated procrastination with laziness, with slothfulness. And I think it was my own growing edge with doing work where I was like, why am I so unproductive? Why is this such a struggle? But actually the procrastination, Gunner, as you were saying, there's a lot of anxiety underneath that and I was trying to avoid that anxiety and therefore I'd keep putting things off rather than tackling it and doing what I should be doing. 

But I think another example where I was surprised like oh, this is anxiety. I thought it was something else and I named it something else. For me, it was a season where I was really struggling with anger and I was like, okay, I'm a really angry person. Why do I keep losing my temper? Why am I judging these people? Why am I condemning them? And it took months for me to really slow that down and start to reflect and realize that underlying even my anger was deep anxiety. I deeply cared about the outcome of certain relationships. And so the anger was trying to control people to try to maximize my desire to be loved, my desire to secure a relationship that I wanted. And I was trying to, I couldn't tolerate the uncertainty. I couldn't tolerate the ambiguity. And therefore I was trying to control myself. I was trying to control other people when they weren't on my plan. I saw it come out. And really where I saw progress was addressing the root issue, which was I'm really scared of being unloved. I'm really scared of being abandoned. And how does the Lord meet me in that? And that was a completely different trajectory of wrestling with the Lord than addressing purely anger. So I just find it fascinating that anxiety actually comes out in so many different ways in so many different people in different seasons of life even. But naming it feels important.

Yeah, it's funny. I mean, our question to ourselves is what has helped you? And we've all started by saying, well, here's what's been hard. But I feel like part of what helps is the naming of it. Part of what helps is saying, you know what? I am actually anxious about this. I fear this or I'm feeling off around this or whatever the case might be. And all of us are counselors and have experience with people who would say, it's not about anything that I'm aware of. I just feel that awful flood of anxiety in my chest or in my neck or in my stomach or just my limbs tense, however people may describe it. So there's certainly even even there there's a variety of things, but I think always we're going to be able to say, yeah, there are roots for each of us that these things are at least intersecting with at the physical level. I'm actually struck, Gunner and Esther, you guys both spoke about procrastination. I actually have had a historic significant struggle with procrastination, but for the exact opposite reason. I had two parents who I called them perfectionists. It might be more fair to say that they just had a really strong value for excellence, but it was more helpful for me to define them as perfectionists. That gave me more leverage, so that's how I've chosen to think of them. But I procrastinated because the earlier you start on a project, when you have parents who have a high value for excellence, the more work you end up doing. And so my fear of having more work to do led me to start as late as possible so that I could get just as little done as I absolutely had to to get the thing across the line. And I think I have probably not been as honest with myself as I need to be. Like, okay, you actually do care about how this goes and if you fail or succeed. But probably for me, the stronger driver has been, is this going to have to be more painful? Are you going ti have to do more labor in order to get this across the finish line? So it's funny, even different people saying, I can be anxious and that leads me to procrastinate, might be doing it with different sort of driving instincts.

As I think about what's been helpful to me, I think there's probably two moments I would highlight in my life. Number one, when I had finished seminary and was getting ready to plant a little counseling center up in New England for CCEF. And I remember going up and visiting with a bunch of pastors and trying to get a sense of, do you guys see this as a valuable ministry to be here? My entire livelihood and vocation for the coming years was on the line with these meetings. And I remember just feeling that sense of anxiety. And it was probably beginning, I was getting close to a place where I would have had that word to use for it. But I remember reading Psalm 27 the night before I had like four really significant meetings. And it was the first time a psalm had ever come alive as my psalm. I was electrified by it. was dependent upon this psalm and the words that it was speaking to me. And I think the particular thing that struck me was in the first couple of verses where David is talking about the Lord being his light and his salvation and his help and having no reason to fear, and realizing he was speaking to himself in his own fears. And then particularly the line, “though an army encamp against me” and realizing he actually had that. That's not a metaphor in the life of David. He has had actual people with pointy objects trying to stick them in him and he was running away and hiding in caves. If that guy in that situation can say, I have good reason not to fear, the Lord is my protector, he is my shelter. If I on the far side of the cross know that even if someone does literally kill me, I have a hope that cannot be quenched because of eternal life with the Lord. That's really helpful to me as I think about going and meeting with these guys and having, you know, decade-defining kinds of conversations and the Lord's kindness, the answers, they're actually really easy conversations and they were like, yes, please come, this would be wonderful to have something like this here, we've been praying for it. But going in knowing that I was dependent on the Lord who could deliver people from literal armies was different than going in feeling like I've got to figure this out. What about for you? What are you finding most helpful?

I think it's just those sweet promises in Scripture. Isaiah 41:10 talks about, fear not for I am with you. We hear that a lot and I just love the way it goes on to explain what that means, right? You know, I'm your God and I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you. And to me, it's really having to make it really concrete because often I'm imagining that I can't handle what's next. Like the thing that's coming my way feels too big for me, feels too overwhelming.

I feel ill-equipped, very aware that what I want to happen or what should happen is something I can't make happen. So the fact that the Lord is telling me that he is doing this, that he will strengthen me, and that he is my helper. I often joke around my house saying, I really do not enjoy understanding how dependent on the Lord I am. But it is beautiful, I do want to be beautifully dependent at the same time. So for me, my anxiety is really tended to when I recognize how much the Lord is at work and how actual little that I'm carrying. So it's actually just that mental shift that he's the one strengthening, helping. And it's really less of me is required. It's really freeing. Not to say it's comfortable, at the same time.

Darn it Darby, I was looking for comfort and you almost had this perfect solution.

Over time my, I guess, object of anxiety, if you will, or category of life has shifted. I remember early in my 20s, it was in college ministry in the dorms, having to have a lot of different discipleship conversations, sometimes policy enforcement, conversations that were about very sensitive or delicate things, or that might make the other person upset. And during that time, I really wrestled with more of a fear of man, of what are people thinking about me and how can I be faithful when faithfulness often feels like it costs me the comfort of this stress-free relationship, and now there's gonna be injected some tension into it and the difficulty of that. Then I think it translated sometimes to parenting where I was really wondering, can I do this the way that God calls me to? And the weight of that responsibility, the joy of the opportunity, and that became more of the challenge.

But I think that something that really helped me in all of it was when I became a pastor. Just a few years ago when I was a pastor, I preached through Philippians. And when I got to Philippians 4, I realized that in this classic passage on anxiety, there was this very straightforward process that God had given us. And the two words that have stood with me ever since then were translate and saturate. Because when Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God,” and then he says, “The peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” I realized he was basically saying, take the anxiety that you feel about anything and turn that into a prayer, which helped me realize that these swirling thoughts and feelings could actually be put into words and they could be put into words to the Lord.

And so I realized if I translate my anxious feelings into actual words to the Lord, they're being named, they're being brought to him, and they're being rested upon him, if you will, and there's always some kind of response. But then Paul also says, “with thanksgiving,” and I realized that process of turning those anxious thoughts to the Lord should also be saturated with thanksgiving. And so when I'm communicating my worries and concerns to the Lord, but then also turning my heart to say thank you for all sorts of different things in my life, particularly most of all who he is, but also many other gifts and blessings, it shifts my focus to the gracious provision and character of the Lord, and it puts all of those things into perspective. It doesn't cancel the source of all the concerns, but it does put them in perspective. And so that idea of translate and saturate has really helped me since that time. And I was so grateful for the opportunity to try to teach others from Philippians 4 in a way that I absolutely received the most teaching from the Lord.

That passage has really helped me a lot too, Gunner. It's actually going through that phase of “with thanksgiving,” because I think one way I've applied that is just remembering his faithfulness to me. So even in my thanksgiving, when I'm anxious, I'm trying to remember all the ways that the Lord's steadfast love has showed up historically. And it refocuses me off of the current circumstances. It kind of shuts down my imagination. But it also reminds me the Lord always is faithful. He has shown up. And it's that thanksgiving part that has been really helpful in my discipline of prayer to recall to mind who he is because of what he has done. And that really reduces that anxious swirl in my mind.

It really reminds me of the placement of Deuteronomy between the Exodus, which it looks back on and says, here are the amazing things the Lord your God has done for you and you are his people and he is your God. And then right before Joshua, now you're going into this very intimidating thing that, in fact, another generation backed away from out of fear and anxiety, but he's calling you into it; look back on this history and remember, and then move forward with my presence and my promises.

One of my favorite lines from Paul Miller's book on prayer, A Praying Life, well, he has a couple of books on prayer, but that is what I'm thinking of, is he says, anxiety is wasted prayer. And I just found that such a helpful line for exactly what you guys are saying, that sense of you get to turn your words to the Lord, you get to turn your anxieties to the Lord, you can pray your anxieties. It's not praying, O Lord, help me not feel anxious. It's not praying, O Lord, help me be a better person who wouldn't deal with this. It's actually saying, Lord, here is where I am anxious. This is what is troubling my heart. This is what I'm afraid will happen. This is what I am. This is what I'm dreading. This is what could be. And if it did, here's why I would be deeply troubled by it. There's just such freedom to actually engage the relationship that the Lord so clearly invites us into. Come be my child. What do children do? They come to mommy and daddy and they say this is what hurts. This is where the owie is. I'm scared. I don't want to go in there by myself. The black basement is dark. Can someone walk with me? And the Lord is so delighted for us to be his children. On the backside of it, it's shocking to me how long it took me to realize that that was the obvious way to live every day of my life.

I feel like I'm learning so much just listening to the three of you reflecting. And I think it's making me think about the other ways I tend to address my own anxiety. I try to fix things, I try to control things, I try to change circumstances to be favorable ones. I try to muster up strength and willpower to be better and therefore I won't have to fear failure. Like there's so much inward looking, there's so much I'm looking at myself, I'm looking horizontally at other people or circumstances, thinking that that will solve my anxiety or make it better and more manageable. And yet what I'm hearing from all three of you again and again is this turning to the Lord and this Lord turning towards us. And I think that's just a really helpful corrective when I'm busy looking at myself and looking at other things that there's someone here, like we live in a world where God is real and God is present and God is truly who he says he is. And I'm just really grateful that when we struggle with anxiety, it's not how do I get over it or how do I overcome it? But it's the question of who do I turn to in the midst of it? And we have someone who hears those cries and receives them graciously and walks with us in it, not just waiting for us to get over it. And so, I think as a Christian, I’ve felt a lot of shame experiencing anxiety, feeling like I shouldn't if I had more faith. And it's just been beautiful hearing you guys reflect and being reminded that we can turn to him and he has compassion for us in our struggles with anxiety.

I think it's probably just part of our human nature as limited beings is that we're going to be beings filled with anxiety because there's so many things we long for, we love, and in our limitations we don't have the control. And praise God we don't, right? Because the things that we long for and we hope for aren't necessarily the best things. But I think just something about naturally being a limited person who loves good things and wants good outcomes, anxiety is just so natural of a place to go.

I think of what David Powlison once said, there are many reasons to be anxious, actually. We live in a broken world. We're finite beings like you're saying. We have better reasons to trust our God in the midst of that. I've always really appreciated that.

If you've spent any length of time listening to this podcast over the years, you've heard us talk before about the idea that there actually is a faithful anxiety, there's a godly anxiety. There's an appropriate time and place to look toward the future and say, that will actually be bad if that happens. The centerpiece for me is always 2 Corinthians 11, where Paul lays out all this terrible stuff that had happened to him physically, you know, shipwrecked and hungry and cold and naked and beaten and you know, every problem you could think of in its severest form. And then he says, on top of all that, I bear daily the weight or the burden of my anxiety for the churches, 11:28. And it's not a confession, it's a statement of love. It's a statement of, because I love the Lord and his church, because I bear these people on my heart, I am burdened for them. I have an appropriate, loving, Christian weight of concern. And I am keenly aware that where we tend to go with our anxieties as sinners is a very faithless place. It is either, you know, an eject and get me away and I just want to, you know, forget about it, or it's a seize control and, you know, wrangle the world into whatever I can manage to shape it into. We don't tend to run and turn to the Lord and walk in obedience that's faith working out through love in the face of anxieties. That's very hard, and it's very good, and it's one of the key pieces of the Christian life. But just that idea that actually at the center of anxiety is not always, but often a good thing, a godly desire, a right thing to be concerned about if it were to be broken. That's been really helpful to me as well to realize there's actually, there's a right love for my children. There's a right love for how community group is going to go this week. And what if I say something really dumb as our leader or what if we get into an argument and get off track or what if somebody is really hurting and they don't feel comfortable speaking or like you were saying, Darby, the what ifs. And those are appropriate things to be concerned about, but they're not appropriate things to be driven by. They're not appropriate things for me to say like, well, they get to take control and I need to find a way to absolutely control the evening or to be like, you know what, I guess I'm just going to be sick and make somebody else go and do it. And so I find, I just find it helpful to acknowledge the good instinct that is there. Again, not all anxiety, there are plenty of anxieties where you're like, okay, that's just bad that I even want that. It's bad that I'm worried about that. That's not a healthy concern. But there's a lot of really good concerns that grow in God's people's hearts over time and that are just native to human beings being together with other human beings. How we turn those to the Lord is I feel like so often the question.

Well, I think even just recognizing that some good things can be underneath those anxieties help us turn to the Lord quicker, right? Because we recognize these are things he actually wants to help us with because they ultimately could be kingdom priorities, right? Like Christ in his goodness has overcome evil. That's why he came. So often the things that we fear are things that he has already conquered. Death, right? Loss. All sorts of grieves are things that he has already put to pass. So I think it's just helpful to remember the power. Those things were on his heart when he came here to care for us. It's easier to talk to him about them. We're not just selfish people with selfish desires, even though we are, right? But that's not always what's fueling our anxiety.

Right. I feel like it'll be remiss if I don't share one more personal application here. I said earlier there were two things, two key moments in my life. The other key moment was driving home from a CCEF national conference. I was in the car with a couple of dear friends who were both counselors. And I was on a whim, was like, you know what guys, I need a little counseling session. And we had a 12-minute counseling session that changed my life. And I'm actually not really even being tongue-in-cheek when I say that. I was like, why am I so anxious when I travel? Because that is the most consistent place where I feel a pretty significant anxiety. I have travel anxiety that just hits pretty hard. I've never, I hadn't understood what that was. So in 12 minutes, my two friends, not that they fixed me, but they diagnosed me. We got to a place right away where I realized it's money. When you travel, especially by air, the opportunity for you to make one small mistake, like taking the wrong exit on your way to the airport, can mean that you miss your flight and that then there's this huge financial consequence. And there's other things—I don't want to have to sleep on the floor in an airport and I don't want to miss; there's a number of things that swirl around. But I realize how much of it is, I don't want to be a financial burden on the institution, I don't want to be out a bunch of money myself. There's just something scary about it. So for me, travel anxiety is actually a place where I, what I have to turn to the Lord with is, Lord, it's your money. And there's actually this really direct way in which the Lord deals with my heart around finances every time I go to an airport or a train station or drive somewhere where there could be traffic, like New Jersey. No offense out there to you New Jersey, we love you. But yeah, it's been amazingly helpful for me to actually have this place of anxiety become this highly intentional, the Lord's been clear with me like, okay. Every time you travel, you're going to talk to me about where your true safety and provision comes from in finances.

I think it's a really helpful analogy because I think all of us, or maybe most of us, could relate to having some anxiety during travel. For me, I'm not worried about the money, I'm worried about the vulnerability. It's like the vulnerability of my children, are they going to have a need when I'm not there? Am I going to have a need and I'm going to be alone? It just highlights for me, travel, the anxiety behind that I've learned it's actually my pure vulnerability for my well-being or my children in particular.

I'll take care of your kids and you pay my missed plane ticket fees and we'll be good.

There you go.

I love that idea of the struggle with anxiety almost being reframed as this opportunity. Like this is going to be the continual touch point between me and God for us to have a conversation, that this area of anxiety that I am now named as a pattern, as a consistent thing, this is a struggle and it can be really painful. I know a lot of people who struggle with anxiety that's deeply, deeply painful on a daily basis, and yet there is a sense in which those places become invitations and opportunities that your vignette, Alasdair, highlighted. And I appreciate that shift. It reminds me of Psalm 56:3, it says, “when I am afraid, I put my trust in you,” and just that ongoing conversation. It's not if, it's when, and each time it comes up is another occasion to have that conversation with my God, my Lord, the one who is good, the one who hears me, the one who loves me, the one who knows what's best for me, who I can entrust myself to.

I think one thing that I've just found myself longing for is to have some of those anxieties replaced with a greater ambition. I love how in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about just this calling to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And that's right in the middle of this passage on anxiety, saying that when we're increasingly filled with and consumed with a desire to advance his kingdom, to love others, to bless and to benefit our neighbors, to spread his word and his comfort as far as we can, as far as the curse is found, there's something in us that slowly gets squeezed out over time. And I just find that to be more and more of a longing, to have those ambitions and that restedness in him as Esther shared to really squeeze out some of those other concerns. Not that it ever completely silences them, but just helps them fall into their proper place. And so grateful for a God who says to us, be about my business, walk with me, trust me. And I will fill in all of the gaps that you see that you wonder about how they'll get filled, all the needs you wonder about how they'll be provided, all the dangers you wonder about how they'll be encountered and how they'll be silenced and dealt with. And I'm so grateful for that.

Well, thanks guys. This has been rich for me and I sense has been for you guys as well. For those of you listening, you know, we do have a lot of resources on anxiety. And if you go to ccef.org and type anxiety or any other topic you might be thinking about into the search bar, a lot of things might pop up that could be really helpful to you. I know an enormous number of things that I've taken in from CCEF have been helpful to my soul, but even more important, even more foundational than ccef.org, is the living God himself and turning to the Lord in prayer. So Darby, would you mind just taking a moment here to pray for our friends as they listen?

Father God, we thank you that when we are anxious, when our minds are swirling or our bodies are feeling anxiety, that it matters to you. The burdens that we are carrying, the things that we are afraid of, our thoughts, all those things, that you know them and that your Word says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. And so we do, we pray to be an anxious people who cast our anxieties upon you so that you give us rest and that we can rest that you are a God who is strong, who helps us, and who calms our minds and our bodies. And so I do, I pray that we can turn to you, grappling with where we are and expecting to be gifted rest. We pray these things in your name. Amen.