What triggers anxiety in your life? For me, it is stress that is self- induced by taking on more projects than I can possibly handle. It is difficult for me to tell others I can’t do that, be there, or help you solve your life dilemma.

A close second in the stress arena is being a passenger in a car on the expressway. Sounds crazy, I know, but anxiety grips every part of my being when I don’t have control of the driver’s seat. Your anxiety triggers may differ from mine, but the feelings of angst are the same and can have crippling effects.

Scriptures gives us the following solution to our anxiety woes:

“Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell him every detail of your life, 7 then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will make the answers known to you through Jesus Christ.” Philippians 4:5-7 (TPT)

“I can do that!” said no one ever.

It’s the application of the above scripture that proves problematic and challenging. Let’s take a look at what this scripture is really suggesting we need to do to overcome the anxiety issues we encounter daily with or without meds.

1. Accept Jesus as your Savior is the first step. Without Him, you are powerless to overcome anxiety or anything else that impairs you to live life to its fullest.
2. “Be saturated in prayer throughout the day…”
   Yep, that is what the scripture tells us to do. Really, God? Who has time for that when life is happening and I barely have time to put a meal on the table when the kids get home from school. Read these words carefully, you don’t have to be on your knees to pray. God is Omnipresent, He is everywhere you are. He is with you in your drive into work, at your kid’s baseball game, while cleaning the house or hanging a light fixture. ‘Saturated’ in prayer means talking to God on the go.
3. …” offering faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude.” OK, so God is telling us to have gratitude and faith when pulled into the abyss of anxiety. It looks that way. Gratitude reduces a multitude of toxic emotions. Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., a leading gratitude researcher, has determined that gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression.
4. “Tell Him every detail of your life.” Are you suggesting I make God my personal therapist? Absolutely! As we communicate and admit to God that we need His help, He will orchestrate every detail of anxious moments. He will make the violins of our workplace and the flutes of our home life make perfect harmony. God’s wonderful peace transcends human understanding but only to the degree that we allow Him to work without our obstruction. The anti-anxiety cocktail is dependent on our dependence on Him.
5. “Then, God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding will make the answers known to you through Jesus Christ.” WOW! That scripture alone should make us want to seek God in all things. For some, meds help with anxiety issues, me included. However, saturating myself in communication with God in daily prayer and seeking to find gratitude in all things helps me find peace when anxiety overcomes me.

Prayer for Today:

Dear God, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? But you do God and for that I am thankful.

You stand ready to battle against every anxiety that seeks to destroy my peace in you. Help me to immobilize any anxieties as I talk to you in the moment. No one knows me better than you. I trust you to redirect every arrow of anxiety I experience to the throne room in Heaven.

Thank you, Jesus, for caring about every detail of my life.