How to Overcome Anxiety
5 Stages on the Faith Journey to Better Mental Health.
The inner drive to succeed, achieve, and always do more, has contributed to us being labelled as the ‘Anxious Generation’. Almost 1 out of every 5 people are affected by an anxiety disorder. As a Pastor for over 20 years, I’ve led many people in the search for freedom from fear and anxiety. The ancient story of Elijah tells of the surprising journey he took to rebuilding a healthy inner world. If you’re struggling to overcome anxiety, here’s 5 Biblical stages to journey through, that will help you live free from chasing external achievements, take control of anxious thoughts, reset your soul, and rebuild towards the future God has for you.
Discover Freedom from Anxiety
Based on the life and struggles of Elijah, this free video series will help you take control of anxious thoughts and reset your soul, so you can rebuild towards a bright future.
Stage 1: Busy lives hide many issues
There is this great myth that if we can climb the career ladder, achieve our personal goals, and reach our highest aspirations – our lives will feel complete. Yet, many of us are left with a gnawing feeling– something’s amiss.
Chasing external achievements is exhausting.
We pick up the story of Elijah atop the mountain, Mount Carmel. Elijah was a prophet, and the mountain top setting represents a point in his life where it SEEMS he’s reached the pinnacle of public success. You can read more in 1 Kings 18, but the highlights reel includes winning an unwinnable battle and saving a nation stricken from drought through prayer. Yet despite so much outward success, Elijah’s inner life was dangerously close to complete collapse.
It led me to realising the first stage in the process of overcoming anxiety – shedding the persona.
We often don’t want to deal with pain – so we bury it deep in our souls and busy ourselves with activity.
But pain is patient. Sometimes it’s only when we go through a significant disruptive moment - a job loss, a relationship breakdown – that it reintroduces itself into our emotions and nervous system as crippling anxiety or worry.
Could there be a way to live that wasn’t about faking it and wasn’t about what other people thought of us? What would it look like for God to rebuild you from within?
At first glance, we may think the greatest formative experiences of Elijah’s life were those victories celebrated on Mount Carmel. The truth is his most climactic moments happened in solitude when he was at his lowest. It was in those hidden moments that God was creating something new in him. Elijah had to learn that his public success didn’t fix the problems in his life, and that his outer achievement would never solve his inner dysfunction. To be strong, healthy, and whole, he needed to go through a process of rebuilding from within.
And so do we.
“Are you being pulled by a healthy sense of purpose, or pushed to exhaustion by striving for success? What would the abundant life Jesus offers look like, practically, in your world?”
Reflect: Spend 10 minutes writing any thoughts that come to mind as you ask: What issues is my busyness hiding? Allow God’s Spirit to guide your reflections and pray for an increased desire for authenticity.
Discover Freedom from Anxiety
Based on the life and struggles of Elijah, this free video series will help you take control of anxious thoughts and reset your soul, so you can rebuild towards a bright future.
Stage 2: You can’t succeed your way out of a healthy inner world.
I remember driving home from the hospital after my first son was born. It was one of the greatest days of my life, but simultaneously I realised that for the first time I couldn’t control or protect somebody I loved so much. It’s strange to think that I could experience joy and anxiety together in the same moment.
I asked myself “How can I have confidence when I don’t know what my life will look like tomorrow?” That’s the second stage of overcoming anxiety – confronting your anxiety. This juxtaposition between elation and anxiety makes me think of Elijah. He's just defeated his enemies, and God has made him the living answer to prayer. We expect the story to go on to say, and Elijah lived with incredible confidence, and never doubted God again. But in a moment, the air comes out of the balloon. Emotionally he comes crashing down. He comes to the shocking realisation.
His outer achievements didn’t solve his inner dysfunctions.
Within hours the man travels from the mountain top to sit alone under a solitary tree – the very environment reflecting his inner world. He withdraws from his community, and feels like there’s no way out. It seems like an overaction, considering the victories he’s just been a part of.
Elijah didn’t know it, but God was about to take him on a process of rebuilding. God provided instant miracles prior, but the battle for his mind would not be solved in an instant. Maybe you feel like you’re sitting under that lonely tree. But know that even within your anxiety and fear, the spirit of God is beginning to bring about your human flourishing in new ways.
“Have you ever felt like your deepest soul work has been done in times of solitude?”
Reflect: The prophet Jeremiah wrote a whole book about challenges and anxiety. Spend time meditating on Lamentations 3:22–23 in a few different Bible translations. Read these verses out loud, prayerfully speaking them over the situations in your life currently causing you anxiety. Pray for the courage to push pause on your outward activities if necessary, so you can begin intentionally and deliberately rebuilding from within.
Stage 3: God is already at work in your brokeness
Are you in a wilderness season of life? It can leave us feeling isolated, confused, disoriented, and wresting with unanswered questions towards God.
Wilderness seasons are common in scripture, and in fact, where often used as tools in the hand of God to weave something very special into the fabric of people’s destinies. But if God can do anything, why doesn’t He just instantly improve my mental health? This is where the story of Elijah get’s even stranger…
God encounters him under this solitary broom tree. But instead of sending Heaven’s instant fiery miracle, Elijah’s given bread and water and sent on a 40 day journey through the wilderness (that is through his depression and anxiety). You might be saying, "So, let me understand this… God can both work in a moment and also through a process, and both equally are God at work in our lives. I know which I’d prefer"
We live in an era where we don’t want to talk about THE PROCESS.
Or the wilderness. And often that is why we ignore our internal life in pursuit of outward success. The God who sent fire from heaven could have healed Elijah of depression, instantly and miraculously.
Instead, God provided bread and water as symbols of His provision for the journey.
If we can start to reimagine our Christian faith and look at the bread and water as sacred, beautiful, holy symbols that God is with us every step of the way, it can change us. God is as much at work in the quiet of the persons soul under the solitary broom tree as he was with fire and dramatic miracles on Mount Carmel. God right now is providing everything you need for the steps that are ahead of you in life.
“What kind of provision has God given you, to set you on a path of inner healing and change?”
Reflect: Look back over the past month or year. You’re not where you once were, and you’re not yet where God has you headed. Take a moment to fill up a page of your journal with all the ways God has shown up with fresh bread and cool water, healing past hurts and strengthening you for the journey ahead. Make a new habit of thanking God before meals reminding yourself of the metaphorical food He constantly provides.
Discover Freedom from Anxiety
Based on the life and struggles of Elijah, this free video series will help you take control of anxious thoughts and reset your soul, so you can rebuild towards a bright future.
Stage 4: Embrace the process of rebuilding your inner world.
We have more technology in our cell phones than was in the original spacecraft that sent man to the moon, but most of us lack the tools to process the emotional challenges of life.
The idea of process is something we must explore more deeply.
So Elijah has just come off his greatest success in life, but he finds himself in a place of inner exhaustion. He sits under a solitary broom tree and is crippled by anxiety. God shows up in an interesting way – He doesn’t magic wand Elijah to perfect mental health – rather He gives him bread, and water, and encourages Elijah to journey through the wilderness to the mountain.
We come to the fourth stage of the journey - a quiet place of divine reinvention. You see on the way, Elijah retreats to a cave. Some things are only revealed in the quiet and introversion of the cave. Sometimes it is only when we get away from the constant noise and distractions that we can start to listen to what’s happening inside of us. Caves may feel dark, but they are often used by God to give us the margin and seclusion we need to renew our souls. We don’t like to talk about concepts like maturity, depth, inner growth.
We prefer events, not processes.
We like TREES, but remember, God works in SEEDS. Personal reinvention happens through a collection of changes that combine to provide enough momentum to nudge you onto a different path.
Your human flourishing is a PROCESS – and it doesn’t just happen in Mount Carmel moments – it sometimes is forged in you during times in quiet caves. We need to plug PROCESS back into our theology of faith.
Just because it takes a journey and there are steps, doesn’t mean it’s not a miracle. Be encouraged - seasons of soul searching (whilst dry, barren, bleak) are still progress towards reinventing our inner worlds and discovering our authentic selves – a God version of ourselves that is not built on achievement, busyness and, activity.
“Are you currently in a figurative cave? How might it be a place of divine reinvention? Can you trace the ways the cave experience is recharging, refining, and releasing you?”
Reflect: Read Matthew 27:57–28:10 and meditate on the truth that it was from the dark cave of Jesus’ tomb that God released into history the resurrection power of the risen Saviour. Get in touch with someone currently also in a ‘cave experience’, encouraging them to trust the process of reinvention and rebuilding God is taking them through. Keep each other accountable to the process of rebuilding your inner world with patience.
Stage 5: God’s gentle whisper can give you direction, destiny, and discernment.
Caves can become prisons if we stay too long. The cave is not your destiny – the mountain at the end of the journey is.
The mountain is the fifth and final stage of the journey out of anxiety - where God gives us a new Grand Perspective of our lives, career, family and aspirations. It’s where the whole journey starts to make sense and we see the purpose in the pain we have endured. Our past now becomes a part of what sets us up for the future. On the mountain, Elijah experienced a hectic period of winds, an earthquake and a fire. But God taught Elijah to look past these miraculous, mighty, theatrical and obvious moments in life, to listen for His whisper of direction, destiny and discernment.
Like Elijah, we have a choice to make
– will we stay in fear and live out our days in isolation in the cave? Or will we boldly step into the new season God has for us, trusting that you’re not leaving empty-handed?
To experience and feel fear and anxiety – that’s normal. Often our lives bring us to the foot of a solitary broom tree. We all go through times of isolation, where all kinds of internal insecurities, fears, and anxieties, and seem to bubble to the surface.
The 5 stage journey from the mountain, to the solitary tree, through the wilderness, to the cave, and then the mountain are all a part of God’s plan to help us hear His voice in a new way, replenish our souls, and build a better future.
“A gentle whisper from God can cause a gigantic shift in our future.”
Reflect: Read Ephesians 4:22–24 in a different Bible translation from the one you usually use. Read these verses over and over and listen for God’s gentle whisper. What is He saying to you about old habits you need to shed and new habits you need to put on? Spend some time journaling about what God has revealed to you in this season, about where He’s taking you in the next. What lessons did you learn in the cave? How has God turned down the volume in your life, so you’ve been able to hear His gentle whisper?
God is a master rebuilder
Between our mountain moments and our cave experiences there is often a wilderness. But God always provides for the journey. And it is in the journey that we can begin to overcome anxiety and rebuild a healthier inner world.
