Dealing With Anxietyಮಾದರಿ

Why does God allow anxiety?

That’s a really great question. I wish I had a good answer for you. I can throw out some reasons God might allow anxiety, but they would all just be guesses. So, instead of trying to answer the question of why God allows anxiety, I want to look at what God can do through our anxiety. 

I love this quote: “The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional.”

Sometimes, asking the question “why” can leave us frustrated, lost, and stuck. Why, you might ask? (See what I did there?) Because there are some “why” questions we can’t know the answer to. So, let’s move past “why” and start asking “what” God can do through our anxiety. 

On Day 2 of this Plan, I shared a little about the experience with anxiety that my wife and I have had. And let me tell you, there have been lots of “why” questions asked in the process. For example, “Why would You let this happen to us? We both love You and are serving You the best we can. We are praying and praying for healing from this. Why won’t You answer our prayers? We’re doing everything we know how to, and the anxiety still hasn’t gone away. Why are we still afflicted by this anxiety?” 

Those questions just led to more frustration and caused bitterness to set in. But when we started to ask the question, “Okay God, what are You doing in this?” we started to see some pretty cool things that we probably would have missed otherwise. We started to see that God was using the pain of anxiety to bring us closer to each other and closer to Him. My wife and I had to learn how to communicate with each other effectively, to serve each other humbly, and to support one another when one of us was struggling. We also found ourselves praying to God with more honesty and passion than ever before. 

We started to experience the very real truth that what doesn’t kill us made us stronger. Our faith grew stronger, our hearts grew larger, and our relationship grew closer. 

“The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is optional.” 

When you feel like you’re locked in a prison, it’s really easy to become so focused on the cage around you, that you miss what God is doing inside you. 

Paul is someone who knew the challenges of being imprisoned in a cage really well. How you might ask? Because he literally spent years locked up and imprisoned because of his faith in Jesus. What is so powerful about that detail in the story is it allows Paul to empathize with us when we feel like we are imprisoned by our anxiety. He felt it too. He experienced it. He lived it. And because of that, when we read his words, we are not just hearing someone who has all the answers, but someone who can truly empathize with us. 

Challenge: Start asking the question, “God, what are You trying to do through my anxiety?”