Week 6 | See: From Anxiety to Silence

Releasing anxiety is not about getting rid of it. In fact, we can’t entirely eliminate anxiety from our lives. This would be dangerous. Studies of people who have experienced brain trauma and do not have the capacity for fear are severely limited because they do not have an alertness to danger, such as a car speeding down the street. We need the ability to fear for so many reasons.

Staying in a state of anxiety and worry – holding anxious thoughts close to our hearts – is not inevitable. Nader Sahyouni, author of Anxiety Transformed: Prayer That Brings Enduring Change, argues that we should not completely avoid our anxieties. It is through “incremental exposure of some type” and then learning to accept our anxieties that their hold on us will lessen.

If we can experience our anxieties and accept them in the context of our relationship with the Father, our hearts will shift to seeing that He is indeed holding our lives. God most often does not take the dangerous situation away, but we begin to see that He is with us in it. It’s been said, “If you know how to worry, you know how to contemplate.” The same capacity that allows for worry is what allows for contemplation.

In worry, we sit with anxious thoughts and turn them over and over in our mind. As we fixate on a thought, we can spiral out of reality as our thoughts becomes bigger and bigger. Jesus invites us to contemplate the bird and flowers (Matthew 6:25ff). Jesus invites a contemplation of nature so that we are led into contemplating God. And, He’s not inviting a logical assessment of a situation to which we’d say “Ok, I can see now I have nothing to worry about.” Our lives are not about having a different mindset but a different focus of our meditation or contemplation.

Isaiah 26:3 describes the result of contemplating God: “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on You.” Sometimes – perhaps most of the time – it is difficult to go straight from anxiety to fixing our mind on God. This is the genius of Jesus in Matthew 6. He gives something physical and usually within close range upon which to fix our attention. Numerous studies have shown how contemplating nature affects our nervous system. It calms us and slows us down. Contemplating the birds and the flowers leads us past thoughts, words, and logical arguments to our hearts – which is the place where we can experience God.

When in a state of anxiety, we often get stuck in our desire to understand what is happening and how things will turn out. Through quiet, wordless contemplation of nature leading to contemplation of God, we find a peace. Notice how the Apostle Peter encouraged a humbling of our hearts because God delights in us.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.  (1 Peter 5:6–7)

The epitome of humility is silence. Silence enables us to see God’s presence and provision in our lives. When all the other voices are calmed and we are at rest in God’s gaze, we access what God sees. This is why Paul wrote that “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

We don’t make it happen, but we are challenged to get out of the way. Notice how the role of the Holy Spirit is described:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.   Romans 8:26–27

Today, trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, leading you to see God as your mind becomes fixed on Him. Sit quietly in His presence. Let all other thoughts go – do not cling to them. Trust that the Spirit is at work in places too deep for words.

Prayer: Lord, help me to release my grip on anxious thoughts. Help me to rest in Your presence with me in all things. I trust that, in You, I have enough. Amen.