Editor's note: Enjoy today's devotion from Heal Your Hurting Mind by Craig Groeschel with Dr. Wayne Chappelle.
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Is it even possible to avoid anxiety altogether?
Yes, God put it in the Bible, which I believe is his Word. But we have all these financial pressures today, along with the difficulty of trying to raise godly kids in a world that has mostly forsaken God, and relational issues and health issues and job issues and political issues and racial issues. You might also have kids in diapers or aging parents in diapers. You might be trying to determine what college to go to or career to pursue. You could be trying to figure out whether you should start dating someone or how you’re going to keep your marriage together.
If you feel like there’s an avalanche of things to be anxious about, you are not alone. Psychologist Robert Leahy writes, “The average child today exhibits the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the 1950s. We’ve become a nation of nervous wrecks.”1 A 2017 study revealed that forty million adults eighteen and older were battling an anxiety disorder, making it the most common mental health concern in the US, with most people developing symptoms before the age of twenty-one.2 In 2019, the American Psychiatric Association found that two in three Americans said they were somewhat or extremely anxious about safety, finances, and health.3
That was followed by crazy 2020 and a global pandemic, which created lockdowns that isolated everyone and only accelerated our anxiety. And it was worse if you were younger. One study found that 88 percent of undergraduate college students experienced moderate to severe stress, with one-third to one-half dealing with anxiety and/or depression.4
Overall, prescriptions for medications such as Xanax, Librium, Valium, and Ativan, commonly used to treat anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks, quadrupled between 2002 and 2015, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.5 Additionally, the misuse of prescription drugs has become a global problem. In 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime released a report that stated, “The non-medical use of prescription drugs is becoming a major threat to public health and law enforcement worldwide with opioids causing the most harm and accounting for 76 percent of deaths where drug use disorders were implicated.”6
I recognize that anxiety is a complex subject, that I am not an expert, and that we’re all on different points of the anxiety spectrum.
For some, anxiety might be a minor sense of uneasiness and discomfort that occurs occasionally, based on circumstances, such as when you’re about to walk into an awkward social situation or have to give an important presentation or realize that text you sent yesterday autocorrected with a really embarrassing word.
For others, anxiety is debilitating. You may feel like you can’t function because of a constant and crushing sense of overwhelming and unbearable dread.
Wherever you are on that spectrum, I want you to know
God cares about you. He cares about what you care about, and He wants to help carry what you are carrying.
He will lead you and love you in a better way than you ever thought possible.
I promise I’m not going to throw a Scripture verse at you, but I do want to show you someone in the Bible who experienced circumstances that would produce crushing anxiety in anyone and see what we can learn from how he dealt with it.
In recent history, there have been some famous Kings.
- Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.
- B. B. King played the blues.
- Larry King interviewed many guests.
- King Kong swatted airplanes from the top of the Empire State Building.
- Carole King reminded us that it’s good to know you’ve got a friend.
- Billie Jean King was great at tennis.
- Stephen King writes books that give us all nightmares.
- King James is pretty good at basketball.
But way before all those Kings, the nation of Israel had a series of kings, some good and some bad.
Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of Judah in the southern kingdom of Israel. He was one of the good ones who genuinely loved God and tried to honor Him by leading faithfully. Unfortunately, Jehoshaphat’s nation of Judah had some enemies who were on the attack:
- The Moabites
- The Ammonites
- The Meunites
We read in 2 Chronicles 20 that the Moabites, Ammonites, and Meunites decide to combine forces to make a massive conglomerate army to wage war on Jehoshaphat and overtake the nation of Israel. Sounds like a very bad day. The king gets word they’re coming in verse 2:
Some people came and told Jehoshaphat, ‘A vast army is coming against you from Edom, from the other side of the Dead Sea.’
You’ve got to believe that report produced a lot of anxiety.
ANDXIETY
Have you ever invented a word? Me neither, but I’m going for it. Andxiety.
Pretty cool, and coming soon to a dictionary near you.
Here’s my guess: If it was just the Meunites attacking, Jehoshaphat might have given a knowing look and winked, as in, Yeah, they’re attacking, but we’re awesome and we’ve got this.
If it were just the Moabites or just the Ammonites attacking, Jehoshaphat might have been annoyed, but not worried. “It’ll be a good fight. We may lose some men, but we’ll win.”
Unfortunately, the attack was from the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Meunites, and that threat avalanched an abundance of anxiety.
Isn’t that the way anxiety can be for us? If it were just one thing, we could handle it. But we’re often dealing with lots of things. We could deal with one enemy force attacking. Right? We could handle one difficult boss. But when you add a kid who’s struggling in school and a car that breaks down, on top of financial issues, which create more stress in your already stressful marriage, and someone decides to bring donuts to work when you just started a diet... why?!
Like I said, andxiety.
To make matters worse, you’ve got well-meaning Christians who say, “You shouldn’t feel anxious if you’ve given your life to Jesus. You should be full of peace and joy!” Which makes you feel even more guilty, which just compounds your anxiety. It makes you feel like you must be doing something wrong and that you have no safe place to talk about any of it.
I want to pause here and acknowledge that anxiety is not a sin.
We should all be able to agree on that. Why? Because Jesus never sinned, but Jesus did experience anxiety. Remember when He was in the garden of Gethsemane? He knew He was about to be betrayed and abandoned by His closest friends and be physically tortured and be crucified on a cross and take on the sins of the entire world and be separated from His heavenly Father. Jesus, being God in the flesh, knew all of that was coming and His response wasn’t to stand in the garden singing, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!”
No, Jesus falls to the ground in emotional distress with His face in the dirt (Matt. 26:39) and cries out,
Father, if You are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from Me. — Luke 22:42 NLT
Definite signs of andxiety.
What was Jesus’ disposition? Complete peace? Umm, nope. Not even close. The Bible says,
He was in such agony of spirit that His sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood. — v. 44 NLT
Agony.
Blood-sweating agony.
Anxiety is not a sin, it’s a signal.
If you’re driving and a red light flashes on your dashboard, it doesn’t mean your car did something wrong. That flashing light is a warning signal letting you know there’s an internal problem that needs to be addressed.
When that red light comes on, do you hide your car in the garage, hoping nobody realizes your car has a problem? No, you take it to a mechanic, who is an expert at discovering what that flashing light is pointing out and knows how to fix what’s wrong.
In the same way, from a spiritual perspective, anxiety is not a sin. Spiritually, anxiety is a signal alerting you to three actions you should take.
1. Robert L. Leahy, Anxiety Free: Unravel Your Fears Before They Unravel You (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2009), 4.
2. “Anxiety Disorders,” National Alliance on Mental Illness, reviewed December 2017, www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-conditions/anxiety-disorders/.
3. Glenn O’Neal, “Americans’ Overall Level of Anxiety About Health, Safety, and Finances Remain High,” American Psychiatric Association, May 21, 2019, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-americans-anxiety-health-safety-high.html.
4. Jungmin Lee et al., “Stress, Anxiety, and Depression Among Undergraduate Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Their Use of Mental Health Services,” Innovative Higher Education 46, no. 5 (April 23, 2021): 519–38, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-021-09552-y.
5. Ashleigh Garrison, “Antianxiety Drugs — Often More Deadly Than Opioids — Are Fueling the Next Drug Crisis in US,” CNBC, August 3, 2018, www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/antianxiety-drugs-fuel-the-next-deadly-drug-crisis-in-us.html.
6. “World Drug Report 2018: Opioid Crisis, Prescription Drug Abuse Expands; Cocaine and Opium Hit Record Highs,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, June 26, 2018, www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2018/June/world-drug-report-2018_-opioid-crisis—prescription-drug-abuse-expands-cocaine-and-opium-hit-record-highs.html.
Excerpted with permission from Heal Your Hurting Mind by Craig Groeschel with Dr. Wayne Chappelle, copyright Craig Groeschel.
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Your Turn
If you deal with anxiety, don’t add to it by feeling bad about it like you’ve done something wrong! Anxiety isn’t a sin, it’s a signal. Pay attention to it! ~ Devotionals Daily
