Overwhelming panic seized me.

My senses screamed in terror.

Danger was near.

I was not safe.

I couldn’t breathe.

Except that I was completely safe. I was in my kitchen, just home from work. The sun was shining. There were no monsters. There was nothing to be afraid of. Still the terror paralyzed me as I sobbed and shook. This nightmare became a routine that was repeated for days and weeks.

I remember looking at my pastor, my dear friend, and asking him if having anxiety was a sin. “The Bible says ‘do not fear.’ So is it a sin to have anxiety?”

He stared at me blankly. I think he said no after a few minutes, but I don’t remember. He knew the issue was far more than choosing to be afraid, it had deep roots in my own identity, what I believed about myself and therefore what I believed about God. These things would take years to unpack with many more to go.

Still, the Bible says not to worry. It doesn’t add a day to your life. It doesn’t change the circumstances. Realistically, we know this. We are fully aware. But when we are facing a terrifying foe, we let the commands and promises of Scripture slip through our fingers so that we can cling tightly to control.

This year, two days before Lent, I received some difficult news. Feelings of terror, loneliness, inadequacy, and overwhelm began to drown me. Texting a friend, she said, “We don’t worry until we know what to worry about.” Immediately I was reminded of the Sunday School lesson I had taught just the day before.

The topic?

Worry.

I felt like a failure of a Sunday School teacher. How could I teach these things one day and forget them the next? So I recalled the memory verse for the week, Philippians 4:6: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God.” The next verse is a promise for those who place worries in God’s mailbox: “And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” When our hearts sink and our minds buzz, we can rest in the promise that God’s indescribable peace will stand guard like the British guards at Windsor Castle.

On Ash Wednesday, I went to church to participate in prayer stations. While I was there, I contemplated fasting from something to help me focus more on Christ as I prepared my heart for Easter. A still, small voice whispered to me, “Fast from worrying.”

I wanted to reply, “But God… this thing I’m worried about is really big and scary. It’s going to impact a lot of things. I don’t have the capacity to deal with this right now. I thought we were finally on a plateau. I just want a flat place to rest for awhile.” But I said, “ok.”

What does it even look like to fast from worrying? How would one make that happen? Fortunately God has given us all of the answers to this in scripture. Did you know that the most frequently repeated command in the Bible is a variant of “Do not fear”?

1. Every morning I pray the same prayer. “Holy Spirit, fill all of my empty places. Fill me so that your love and grace pour out of my brokenness.” As I say this prayer I breathe in and imagine the Holy Spirit filling me to every little toe and the tip of each fingernail. As I do this, the aches of desire and hurt and fear fade away. When God commands us not to fear, he promises that He will be with us. As believers, we have the Holy Spirit, but so often we are unaware of his presence in our lives. More and more I pray less for God to do something or give me something, but that I would be increasingly aware of Him in my life. Similar to a child being comforted simply by his parent’s presence, so are we comforted by our Father’s presence.
2. Philippians 4 provides a brilliant outline for neutralizing fear in our lives. The first step is to pray about it. Failing to pray is equivalent to a hungry child crying while her mother is in the kitchen. All she has to do is ask! The mother is happy to provide a snack. In the same way, our Father is happy to provide good gifts for us. What about when God doesn’t answer our prayers, especially not the way we want him to? We have to remember God’s goodness and his unending love for us. Every circumstance we face is ultimately for our good. He will bring blessings even from the darkest circumstances.
3. The next step is to realize that we are in a war. 2 Corinthians 10 reminds us that our battle is not against flesh, but against spiritual beings. The war for our souls is largely in our minds. Our enemy desires to debilitate us with frantic helplessness. However, we have the weapons necessary to take every thought captive, making them obedient to Christ. This isn’t going to be easy at first. Our thoughts have been running wild like untamed beasts in our mind for so long. Sometimes we aren’t even aware of what they are saying to us. We can train our minds to identify thoughts and beliefs that are contrary to the truth. When we identify them, we stop them and identify the truth.
4. In order to exchange the lies running amuck in our heads, we have to know the truth. This means spending significant time in God’s Word, knowing it and memorizing it. Scripture is described as a sword. It is the only offensive weapon we have in our armor (Ephesians 6). We fight the lies that feed our worry with Scripture. Here are some examples:
   • I am alone –> He will never leave you. (Dt. 31:6)
   • I don’t have enough –> He will supply all your needs (Phil 4:16)
   • I am unloved –> He has loved you with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3)
   • My health is failing –> To live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil. 1:16)
5. Finally, in addition to replacing lies with the truth, we can simply flood our thoughts with good things. Focusing on the positive, intentionally being grateful, giving compliments to others, and rephrasing our statements in a positive way will block out the negative thoughts of worry. Philippians 4:8 says to think about what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of praise. With our minds busy focusing on the good, we won’t have the opportunity to focus on what is negative.

Panic attacks and constant worry are rooted in the identity I believe about myself. The lies that mark my heart reveal my misunderstanding and mistrust of God. The only way to rightly remove worry from the constant flow of traffic in our minds is to fix our eyes on Christ, to discover who He is, and then discover who we are, as one beautifully created in His image. So while I don’t believe that having anxiety is necessarily a sin (and sometimes it’s actually a chemical imbalance), I do think that worry is an indicator of our relationship with Christ and lack of trust in Him.