What to Do With All the Anxiety

By Sarah Thomas Baldwin

I don’t know about you, but there are things in the world that seem incredibly frightening, traumatic and anxiety-producing. These things keep you up in the middle of the night, make you want to skip the news, and cause you to be fearful of a surprise phone call. I find myself avoiding certain posts altogether, sailing over the terrible plight of people in various countries of the world, and skipping past the latest assault scandal or child abuse story. Whatever the latest news is about the political landscape, it makes me want to both look and look away.

What does it mean to be a person of God when the way of the world seems so riddled with violence and pain — emotional, spiritual and physical? In addition, all of us carry wounds and our own personal fears, and many of us hold trauma in our stories.

I ask myself all the time, what does it mean to show up as a Jesus follower at such a time as this? How do we even keep walking ahead when the world is groaning in such pain?

There are many answers to that question, but one is clear: the way forward is always on our knees. Prayer is the means of grace to relationship with Ultimate Reality and Truth — the Divine Being of the Universe — God. God defines and holds reality. So the more we know God, the more real we become. God is the “most real” thing in the cosmos. Prayer is the means of grace to hold and let go of the vast amount of spiritual grief we carry.

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“Prayer is the catalyst that bends our motives and desires to align with the will of God, bit by bit, moment by moment.”

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As people of God, we are called to stretch up to God and out to others through prayer. “The Christian life is prayer right through” as theologian Evelyn Underhill said. There really is no other way.

Through prayer, we consciously lift up our minds and hearts to God. This is an ongoing habit of a true Christian. To set our minds, hearts and wills toward the Eternal-Being-Who-Holds-All-Things is our best work as a follower of Jesus. Prayer is the catalyst that bends our motives and desires to align with the will of God, bit by bit, moment by moment. The feelings that come alongside prayer are helpful and a gift, but not the goal. The outcome of our intention is for our human nature to increasingly abide with the divine nature. This comes through time and practice. Practice not like “practice makes perfect,” but like a doctor or an artist practices their craft.

Three thresholds of prayer are: ask, seek and knock.

Ask

I bring all of my cares and concerns, no matter how small or how big to God. I dig deep, asking for what is at the root of my care and anxiety. Even when I think I have found my deepest petition, I ask for more clarity:

What is it I am asking of God?

What is the deeper thing that I want and need?

I remember when I was a kid, a dear woman saint prayed on the way to the store while I rode in the backseat: “God, help me find the right purse at the right price!” I scoff at that a bit in my spirit as I look back, but then the Holy Spirit reminds me, “Is this how a child would pray? Asking for everything and anything from their Creator?”

The heart of the Christian is to bring all things to God without worry or concern about the smallness or grandiosity of the request. It is God’s work to direct our hearts and shape them over time. Our own process of prayer becomes our personal refining fire. When people pray for things that seem unaligned to the will of God in our eyes, we can trust that the Holy Spirit is using their very prayer as a tool of formation for them (or for us).

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“When I see something of great grief, it is an invitation to pray.”

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At times I am overwhelmed by the plight of suffering children around the world. It feels paralyzing and even somewhat traumatizing (although certainly not to take away from the actual trauma that the children are going through). I feel overwhelmed with the hopelessness and suffering. The Holy Spirit says to me, “Sarah, this is your prayer list. Carry them to Me one by one, nation by nation.”

And so this gives me a very practical way to intercede and a way to manage my spiritual emotions. When I see something of great grief, it is an invitation to pray.

Ask and it will be given to you. What does this mean? Surely we know by now that not everything that we ask for is given to us. There is a deeper truth here. When we ask, we do receive — we receive the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God may not even be recognizable to us at first. We may not hear, or see, or feel anything. But the Presence of the Spirit of God is actually removing the scales from our eyes and lifting the veil to help us become more aware of the True Reality.

Seek

When we pray, we seek God — we recognize that we want God more than we want any of God’s gifts. The seeking prayer keeps us centered on the relationship with God. Instead of seeking our own will, our own preferences or rights, or seeking our own self-focused instincts, seeking God takes us to God. The act of prayer — seeking — is a transformative act. We seek God, not our own will. And even though we may be at first really seeking our own will and personal benefits, the habit of turning to God and seeking God is an act that changes us.

As we seek God, we learn a lot about ourselves. The “housekeeping woman” in the parable of Luke 15 did quite a search to find the missing coin. No doubt, as she cleaned, she discovered some grime and dirt on the floor, in the corners and under the table. When we seek God, our own being and heart is revealed to us with increasing clarity. As we seek God, the grime of our own heart is revealed so that it can be cleaned out.

The more we seek God, the more we find the real life of grace and goodness, and our own soul becomes more spacious for the God we are seeking. We find God, but we also find ourselves most truly alive in the Spirit. We are never more ourselves, as God intended, as when as we come alive in the Spirit. As we seek, we are found.

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“The trauma of the world may rage on, but dwelling with God is what holds us.”

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Knock

When we knock, the door is opened. When the door is opened to us, what do we experience? We have a picture of Jesus knocking at the door of our lives, calling out to us with the voice of God, and then, inviting us to a shared meal — the essence of dwelling together, abiding with one another. The opened door is to step into the shared intimacy of God and mortal, the space of true life in the Spirit. The ask, the seek and the knock lead us into the holy grace between human and Christ.

In a world filled with trauma, hardship and violence, dwelling with God not only anchors us, but gives us hope and the courage to be a lifegiving, God-bearing presence for others.

We have no reason to believe that the world will get better on its own. We humans become less real all the time, as we trade in reality for all manner of used cars. But in the midst of where we work out life, we do have the way of prayer as a grace and gift to us.

All this to say that as we face such huge challenges as humankind, as countries, communities and families, the way of prayer changes us and thereby changes the events of the world. As many have said, prayer does change things and God does choose to intervene, but the heart of prayer really changes us. The work and habit of prayer is by its nature formative for us.

Prayer opens us to the True Reality. The trauma of the world may rage on, but dwelling with God is what holds us.

Ask, seek, knock: the work of a real Christian.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20).

 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7–8).

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