Killing Anxiety

Anxiety doesn’t just whisper; it coils. Paul knew that feeling all too well, writing from house arrest with chains on his wrists and a biased court ahead. Yet he tells us to be anxious for nothing—and then shows how that’s possible. We walk through his simple, demanding pattern: stop the habit of worry and start the habit of prayer with thanksgiving, a practice that reorients our hearts toward God in every circumstance.

We break down three facets of prayer that train the soul. There’s prayer as ongoing conversation with the Father through Christ, supplication when pressure peaks, and specific requests that name real needs without pretense. Woven through it all is gratitude—not a naive thankfulness for pain, but a steady thanks for God’s oversight, timing, and purpose. That shift keeps our prayers from becoming spiritualized complaints and aligns our desires with God’s will. Along the way, we share stories, images, and everyday examples—from jungle anacondas to a child helping push a heavy desk—that make the point unforgettable: control is an illusion, dependence is freedom.

The promise at the center is audacious and tender: the peace of God, sourced in God’s own character, will stand guard over your heart and mind. This isn’t manufactured calm or positive thinking; it surpasses understanding and arrives exactly when you need it, sometimes one moment at a time. If you’re ready to trade the chokehold of worry for the watchful care of divine peace, this conversation is your roadmap—clear steps, honest guidance, and a hope that holds. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review to tell us how you’re practicing prayer with thanksgiving this week.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Promise Of God’s Peace
• 0:52 Anxiety As A Deadly Serpent
• 9:09 Life’s Pressures Then And Now
• 10:55 Paul’s Command: Be Anxious For Nothing
• 16:15 Stop Worrying, Start Praying
• 18:20 What Prayer Really Is
• 24:15 Supplication And Specific Requests
• 28:18 Reorienting The Heart Toward God
• 31:30 Thanksgiving That Reshapes Our Desires
• 36:58 The Gift Of Peace That Guards
• 39:15 Resource Offer: Killing Anxiety

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:06

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. And the peace of God, this peace doesn't come from you. It is sourced from the very character of God. It's another gift of his extravagant grace as you share with God every need and every request with surrendered thanksgiving, God shares with you his character, and his character knows nothing of work.

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

Have you ever felt consumed by anxiety? Like it's wrapping around you and refusing to let go. The Apostle Paul compares worry to a deadly serpent, strangling your peace and stealing your joy. But in Philippians 4, Paul, riding from prison, chained to guards, facing possible death, commands believers to be anxious for nothing. How can anyone live like that? Today, Stephen Davie explains how God provides a supernatural antidote for anxiety. Here's Stephen Davy with the message he's calling.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39

Years ago, somebody sent me an article from the U.S. Government Peace Corps manual for its volunteers who work in the Amazon jungle. You may have heard this uh before. I tried to actually verify it and could only come up with the fact that it evidently was included in the early 1970s manual, so I don't, you know, you just never know. But it gives the volunteers ten things to remember in case they're pursued in the Amazon by an anaconda. I looked up anaconda in the encyclopedia. The snake happens to be one of the two largest snakes in the world. An anaconda can reach uh a length of 30 feet, weighing a little more than 300 pounds. When fully mature, it feeds off young crocodiles and pigs. It is a frightening creature. Well, if you're in danger of being swallowed by an anaconda, uh here are ten points to remember listed in the manual. Point number one, do not attempt to run away. The snake is faster than you are. Number two, immediately lie flat on the ground. Put your arms tightly against your sides, your legs tightly against one another. Point number three, tuck your chin in. Number four, lie still as the snake nudges you and climbs over your body. He's measuring you. Number five, after the snake has examined you, it will begin to swallow, always beginning at your feet. Lie still and permit the snake to swallow your feet and ankles. Number six, this will take a long time. Number seven, do not panic. Number eight, when the snake has swallowed you to your knees, slowly reach down with your knife, gently slide it into the side of the snake's mouth, and quickly rip upwards, cutting the snake's head and ending its life. Number nine, be sure you have your knife. Number ten, keep your knife sharp. Yeah, right. Forget it. Listen, just reading those ten points would give anybody pause about volunteering with the Peace Corps. The truth is, you happen to live in a world that is just as dangerous to your spiritual and mental and emotional well-being as a volunteer in the Amazon physically. You have plenty of things to worry about in the jungle where you live and the rat race you're in. What can consume you probably isn't going to be an anaconda, but something just as capable of swallowing whole your sense of joy and trust and courage and worship. It's a deadly serpent. I'll call it anxiety. The truth is, it's faster than you are. It can catch up to you night or day, anytime. It can slither around your heart and your mind. It isn't, by the way, simply interested in nibbling away at you. It wants to swallow you whole. It isn't any surprise, really, as you read the New Testament, to find a number of texts on the subject of worry. In fact, the Lord dealt with it in his famous sermon on the mountain side. In fact, he spent more time, more verses on this than just about any other subject. He spent on the subject of worry. And when Matthew copied the Lord's sermon transcript into his gospel account, people, keep in mind, were living in difficult, difficult circumstances. Just physically. Not to mention the stress and the pressure of being in that empire at that particular time. Water was scarce. Wasn't available at the tap, with the turn of a knob. Food was a daily acquisition. It was a daily search. The average worker was paid at the end of every day, not at the end of a week or at the end of a month, but at the end of every day, where they could then get food for what they needed one day at a time. In fact, that's why the Lord would teach them and us to pray. Give us this day our daily bread. They didn't have refrigeration. They couldn't keep milk or produce fresh. Their government didn't provide a social security. Their employees didn't offer them any kind of benefit package or insurance. There were no public hospitals. There were no pharmacies. The average worker paid as much as 40% of his income in taxes to the Roman government. And Jesus Christ preached to them, don't worry. Don't worry. In fact, look at the birds of the air. They don't build barns. If God will take care of them, he'll take care of you. It's as if the Lord is reminding us if God has the power to create our life, he has the ability to take care of our lives. Times have changed, certainly. People haven't. We might have refrigeration now, we might have a benefit package, we might have a pharmacy on every other corner. But the ability to worry about a thousand things and more hasn't changed. One author wrote it this way: worries cast shadows on our future. Stubborn anxieties work like petty thieves in dark corners of our thoughts as they pickpocket our peace and kidnap our joy. Well said. Listen, every Christian in here, young or old, is at risk. Christians are not immune from anxiety just because we have been eternally inoculated with saving sovereign grace. I'm set, I don't have anything to, I'll never worry. Now, in fact, when you get to the end of the Lord's sermon in Matthew 6, he actually ends it by saying, when he describes the subject of worry, every day is filled with things to trouble you. That's the end of the sermon. You will never master this serpent. You will never outlive it. You cannot outrun it. It comes after you every day, some days more relentlessly than other days. You cannot tame worry. You have to kill it over and over and over again. And when you think it's gone for good, it's back. It's back. Here it is. Worry is like weeds in my yard. Guess what? They're back. If there was anybody on the planet that had an excuse to be consumed by worry, it would be Paul, the apostle. In fact, as he writes his letters, we would probably all forgive him for a verse or two that says something like, you know, things haven't turned out in my life like I wanted, that I expected. I ask you and all the other churches to pray for me that I would arrive at Rome with an unhindered opportunity to refresh the churches, to be refreshed, and to have spiritually productive ministry. And here I am, I'm under house arrest, chained at either wrist, 24-7 by two Roman guards that take shifts. God didn't answer me like I prayed. And now the churches, by the way, have abandoned me in Rome. My joy and my peace have been swallowed up. Pray for me. We would forgive him for that. Instead, what he writes is remarkable as an older man. So if you go back to his letter that we're studying to the Philippian church and go to chapter 4, and you read him instead writing these incredibly challenging, convicting words. If you were with us in our last study at verse 4, we saw how Paul wrote these commands. He said, Rejoice in the Lord always. Did you get that? Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your gentle spirit be known to all men, the Lord is near. Make it, you remember, your resolution to be joyful. Make it your reputation to be a gentleman or a lady. And don't forget, the Lord is He's nearby. Now Paul drops in, if you thought that was tough, get ready. Another bombshell of a command, verse 6. Be anxious for nothing. Be anxious for nothing. Now this isn't an option for Christians who are, you know, more mellow than the rest of us. You know, for believers who aren't so tightly wound like you might be, I certainly am, or excitable or emotional. This is a command for every believer, and you notice as he's going to deal with them in this subject, he's going to give them, by way of outline, something to stop. First thing he does is tell us all to stop something. Stop worrying. You could render this text woodenly, which only makes it all the more challenging. Paul is commanding with his imperative this way. He's saying, do not under any circumstance worry about anything. Do not, under any circumstance, worry about anything. He leaves no loophole in the text. In fact, the word Paul uses here for anxious or worry means to be pulled in different directions. It has the idea of everything you and I experience. Our hopes pull us in one direction, but our fears pull us in another. The word of God and our understanding of Scripture pulls us in one direction, but our minds and our hearts pull us in another. It's instructive to track this word back to its English etymology. The English word tracks back to a German root worgen, which means to strangle, to choke. And over time the word developed to mean mental strangulation, being emotionally bound with anxiety. Now, Paul, perhaps more than anybody, knew that it wouldn't do any good. And we know it as well. Worry strangles our faith, it chokes off our praise, it crushes our courage, it silences our song. It doesn't help you get ready for anything in life. If whatever you're worried about happens, worry didn't prepare you for it. And if it doesn't happen, worry robs you of the joy that it didn't. Vance Havner, the old North Carolina evangelist, now with the Lord, used to say it in rather homespun language. I love this. He would say it this way: worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it never takes you anywhere. That's good. Now, everything I have said, we know, right? If you're old enough in the faith, we already know that worry is useless. We know that worry is destructive. In fact, you probably even know that worry lands you on the side of the enemy that whispers in your heart, God isn't worth trusting, so you better take care of that. You better stay up at night over that. You're on your own. You'd better start worrying. We know this. The Philippian believers knew it too. In fact, some of them may very well have personally heard Jesus preach that sermon a few years earlier. Most devotionals, sermons, you know, they sort of stop there. They prove the point that worry is a command, or ceasing worry is commanded. We're to stop it. And maybe, you know, if if if I spend another 20 minutes, we might come away saying, okay, I'm gonna decide to do a better job at stopping that. I'm not gonna do it, and and and and I'm gonna I'm gonna get my knife ready and I'm gonna kill it next time I see it. I'm ready. We could pray and go home. But I love the way one author put it. Worry is perhaps the greatest thief of the Christian's joy, but to tell ourselves to quit worrying will never catch this thief. And that's because worry is an inside job. The battle has nothing to do with the circumstances of life. It isn't stealing our joy because our life is worse off than someone else's. We've got more problems or more challenges than somebody else. In fact, you find somebody with terrific challenges, and you go to perhaps minister to them and you leave having been ministered to. I mean, look at Paul. He writes this while he's confined, asks perhaps for a little slack in the chain so he can move his quill. Under house arrest, unable to minister like he prayed, and the church with him. He's heading for a trumped-up court with a biased emperor. He's gonna be given a death sentence, not too distant future, and he's the one telling us to stop worrying. Okay, well, Paul, since you're the one telling us, all right, we'll we'll try to stop. In fact, we're gonna try harder. Thank you so much for this verse. And we stop there. No, no, no. Herein lies our problem. This isn't all he says about it. Notice the next phrase. Be anxious for nothing, now notice, but in everything, but in everything. Notice the contrast. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Paul in the language world begins with what we call a comprehensive negative. Don't worry about anything. But then he goes to this comprehensive positive. Pray with thanksgiving about everything. He doesn't just tell us something to stop, he tells us something to start. You have to do both. By the way, which plane wing matters the most, the left one or the right one? Which one's essential? Well, they both are. Well, if you want to kill anxiety, you don't just stop and try harder to stop, you start another habit. And you do both of them, or it'll never fly. So this is what you stop, the habit of worrying, but you have to start this, the practice of praying with thanksgiving. Now, what Paul will do here is describe this communication with God, and he's going to use three words, and I think they're instructive in the different nuances they bring. So let's look at them a little closer. The first word is prayer. This is a, by the way, general term for talking with God. It can happen anywhere, anytime. It happens to be a gift from God through his Son, Christ, our Lord. Keep in mind that by me saying that, you understand that prayer is exclusively for Christians. It's exclusively the right of the believer. All other exercises of piety are simply exercises with words that float no higher than the ceiling. Jesus Christ said in John 14, verse 4, I am the way. In that paragraph 4, 5, and 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through or by me. This not only applies to living with God the Father in heaven, but talking to God the Father from earth. We tend to forget that. No matter how dedicated or committed or intense, it isn't through the Buddha, it isn't through Krishna, it isn't through Mary. People might spend the better part of their day devoted to meditation and prayer. It's empty words. Unless it goes through Christ, the mediator to God, the living God. Devotees, a billion plus, are going to spend time, they're going to spin a wheel, and they're going to attach a piece of paper with a prayer written to that, and they spin it, and every time it spins around one time, that prayer, they say, ascends. It ascends, it ascends. Sincere people might light candles or work through a dozen Hail Marys with their beads. People might chant in some jungle clearing to their deity. Or cry out some prayer to some unknown being. It's a tragic act of piety because it's empty. No prayer offered to anybody, but God through Christ is heard. No prayer offered to God the Father, apart from a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to die on that cross to become the mediator of the new covenant through his blood, goes anywhere. It's just words. In fact, if I can just pull over on the side for a moment, one of the misguided efforts that so troubled me about the church in my lifetime has been to argue that prayer ought to be kept in schools, regardless of what the prayer is and who's praying or who's leading it. Or in the Senate or before the session of the Supreme Court or at the inauguration of the president? Let's say there is a relationship with Jesus Christ. It's a pious act of nothing, really. The real issue is not whether or not prayer takes place, but whether or not there is faith in God through Jesus Christ. If it doesn't exist, you're wasting your time. Why in the world would the church focus on the liturgy or the practice of prayer and ignore the relationship that makes prayer possible? And I say that to challenge us, by the way. There are people devoted to praying and they will go nowhere. How devoted are we? When our prayers reach our Lord and through him our Heavenly Father. What a gift we have. Let's not overlook the requirement of it. I remember years ago being invited to pray with a group of pastors downtown at the National Day of Prayer. When I arrived and walked up on the stage, and the pastors were all huddled together, and they were debating whether or not they ought to pray in Jesus' name because if they did, they're going to offend people. And I thought to myself, man, well, let's just go ahead and offend God. What do you say? He's the only conduit, the only mediator between us and the triune God. We, by the way, have a couple from China who've been with us now and delivered the gospel through the faithful testimony and ministry of a couple in our church, and several Sunday nights ago, she came down after the evening service and I was greeting people, and with tears in her eyes, she said, I now believe in Jesus Christ. We had an opportunity to talk. They went through the greenhouse class and I met with them just a few days ago. They're now finishing up, and as we wrapped up our meeting, they came from unbelieving families and knew nothing of what we perhaps have been immersed in. And after our meeting, I prayed briefly, and after they looked at me and they smiled and they said, Ah, we are learning to do that. And I said, What? I said, pray. To us. And then it is startling and wonderful. The relationship is established and now prayer. We talk to God because we're interested in developing our friendship with him. We tell him things because we want him to know them. From our perspective. Although he knows them already. Do you tell your wife you love her? Doesn't she know that? But you tell her again? And she might tell you. Well, I told her when we got married, the old joke goes, If I change my mind, I'll let her know. No, you tell her. You're going to develop this relationship that comes through words. You tell God. Talking to God openly. Not because he doesn't know it. Because you need to say it. The second word Paul uses here is supplication. Your translation may read petition. He's not being redundant. The word refers to praying with a sense of urgency. And you've perhaps done that. One of Peter's most effective prayers was pretty short, Lord, save me. And the Lord pulled him out of the water. Now, Paul used the word in this letter to the Philippians already because he and the Philippian believers were struggling for their faith or in intense, difficult times, and they prayed with urgency. The third word Paul uses here is request. This word refers to simply bringing to the Lord any specific need you might have. Bring them. Bring them to the Lord. He knows them. Bring them. Make your requests. In other words, God desires that we bring full disclosure to him. Full disclosure. Because we need to hear ourselves say the words. And in that disclosure, we have the development of dependency and relationship and friendship. And so when I take my requests to him and you take your requests to him, you are effectively acknowledging you are depending on him. Good to hear you say that, right? It's good for you to hear yourself. Depend on him. Found a wonderful illustration of this recently. A church planter wrote about learning to pray in a in a in a deeper way. He was literally consumed with planting the church and had suddenly begun to think, not just overtly, but it's going to depend on me, he thought. Became consumed with worry and uh really distrust in the Lord, anxious about the church. He writes, I got a lesson from my son the other day, and I've never I'll never forget it. He writes, When we moved into our current house, I saved the heaviest piece of furniture for last, the desk, from my office. As I was pushing the desk with all my might across the floor, and it wasn't going very quickly. My four-year-old son came over and asked if he could help. I said, Well, sure. So together we started sliding it across the floor. He was pushing and grunting as we inched our way along. After a few minutes, my son stopped pushing and looked up at me and said, Dad, you're in my way. You're in my way. So I stepped back and he tried to push the desk by himself. Of course, it didn't budge, and I realized then that's what I'd been doing. Lord, you're in the way. Let me push. It's up to me. How easy it is to lose our focus and our perspective. See, prayer has a way of getting it right, again, as we rehearse our dependency in that disclosure. I love what one linguist points out here. Notice when Paul writes, let your request be made known to God, that preposition to could be rendered toward, it pictures this orientation. It points you back to God. In other words, it refocuses the lens. It causes you to look in the right direction. We get so focused on things down here. Prayer orients us back toward God. We get troubled or enamored or worried about stuff down here. Prayer gets us reoriented toward God. We get muddled down here on earth. Prayer constantly reorients us toward heaven, as it were. Now, here in verse 6, Paul has used three words to talk about communication with God in order to overcome worry. But he makes one condition. Make all your prayers and supplications and requests. Have this attitude, and it's with thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Listen, here's the brutal truth. Without thanksgiving, most often our prayer is spiritualized complaining. Our prayer list is nothing more than whining our way through what God isn't doing for us and how we really ought to have something different or something better, and why God's timing is often our prayers are really to coach him on timing. He hasn't gotten it. No, pray with this overarching spirit of thanksgiving. I love the way Warren Wearsby said, look, even God the Father enjoys hearing his children say thank you every so often. Now listen, this doesn't mean that everything we bring to God is something we gotta be thankful for. And there's a misunderstanding. He's not saying that. He isn't saying, well, Lord, you know, this anaconda, he's got me up to the knees, and I just want to thank you for making snakes. They're so creative and so amazing. No. He doesn't mean that everything you bring to God is something you're thankful for. Maybe breaking your heart. He means everything you bring to God, you can thank him for overseeing it. You can thank him for strengthening you to walk through it. You can thank him for planning to resolve it one day according to his will. You can come thanking him for directing it, even though you can't see it yet, toward the perfect conclusion of his. Purpose for your life. Praying with thanksgiving means that you're willing to have God reshape your prayers so that you end up wanting what He wants when He wants it. One author wrote about that verse in Matthew 21, verse 22. He said, I heard a sermon on that when I was 10 years old, that if I believed, I could pray and I could get it. I didn't understand that I had to believe in God's purposes and his sovereign will, and when my prayers matched that, I certainly would. But even if I didn't, because it didn't match his will, he'd make me more like his son who learned obedience through the things he suffered. But anyhow, I heard the sermon. So I was ready to, you know, I was thrilled. I was ready to apply it. He writes, I remember running outside of my little house that afternoon and standing on our driveway and closing my eyes real tight and praying, God, I want to fly like Superman. And I believe you can do it. I believe you can do it. So I'll jump and you take it from there. I love that. I'll get off the ground and you take the rest of it. He said, I jumped four times, never went anywhere, and I was crushed. I must have said it wrong. Or maybe God wasn't listening. Or maybe I didn't have enough faith. Or maybe I didn't believe enough. Or maybe I didn't deserve it. And all those things we as grown-ups think. That's why Jesus taught his disciples we pray, thy will be done. That is submissive gratitude, because you're effectively thanking him that it's effectively going to happen, right? How is God's will done in heaven? How do a hundred million plus angels that John saw respond to whatever God wants slowly? With disagreement, with Lord, let me change a little bit there. And by the way, higher wages and more vacation. They live to obey him. So, Lord, with whatever you're putting me through today, give me that attitude of being willing to serve you as you lead me through this. Prayer is really another way of revealing whether or not we really plan to obey him. Or want to. Maybe that's why we don't pray enough. I love what one author wrote when he said this. We can be confident that God will answer our prayer in exactly the same way we would want him to if we knew everything he knew when we prayed it. I love that. We can be confident that God will answer our prayer in exactly the same way we would want him to if we knew everything he knew when we prayed it. It's only when we start praying with that submissive spirit of thanksgiving for the fact that he is in control over everything that we begin to stop worrying about anything. This is what you stop, the habit of worrying. This is what you start, the habit of praying with thanksgiving. Finally, this is what you can expect. Notice verse 7. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now watch this. And the peace of God. This peace, this serenity doesn't come from you. It isn't something you work up, it emanates from, it is sourced from the very character of God. It's another gift of his extravagant grace as you share with God every need and every request with surrendered thanksgiving. God shares with you his character, and his character knows nothing of worry. His character knows nothing of anxiety. So his peace becomes your peace. This peace then is not natural, it is supernatural. In fact, Paul says it surpasses all comprehension. One author put it this way: it transcends intellectual power, human analysis, human insight, human understanding. It is superior to human scheming and human devices and human solutions, since its source is the God whose judgments are unsearchable and whose ways are unfathomable. Romans 11, 33. So the challenge of the Christian life is not worrying on how to eliminate every unpleasant circumstance or even attempt to understand them, but how to trust your infinite, wise, powerful, gracious God who will lead you through it, who lavishes his grace on us more than we can even comprehend or know. And since we cannot generate this peace during times of suffering or pain or confusion, no, this peace is a gift from God that is unwrapped when we go to him with full disclosure and independency to trust him. And he demonstrates his grace all over again, one day at a time, perhaps one moment at a time, by giving us something of his character for the moment, his peace. I can't help but wonder, by the way, if Paul is making a play on words here on purpose, as he as he shifts in his seat, making the chains around his wrists rattle a bit, maybe causing the guards to stir from their afternoon nap. Paul writes here, and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. It's as if he says, look, I want you to know that these guys here aren't guarding me. I know it looks like it, but they're not guarding me. What is standing guard over me is the peace of God. The peace of God is guarding, notice the text, my heart, that's what I'm feeling. It's guarding my mind, that's what I'm thinking. And Paul says the peace of God will stand guard over you too. This is an audacious prayer. This is an audacious supernatural promise. Whenever you pray with thanksgiving for God's purpose over everything, Paul says you will not worry about anything. The more I stagger at this audacious promise, merely indicates how much I need to stop worrying. And how much I need to start praying with thanksgiving. I love the Puritan prayer, and I close with this from generations ago that reads, Heavenly Father, my faith is in thee, my expectation is from thee. I accept thy word, I acquiesce to thy will, I rely on thy promise, I trust thy providence, and I love this phrase. I cast my anchor in the port of peace, knowing that my past, my present, and my future are safely held by nail pierced hands.

SPEAKER_00: 38:49

When sailors want to hold a boat fast, they cast the anchor down. Christians, on the other hand, cast our anchor upward in prayer to a God who gives us peace. Our hope, our peace, our joy is all found in Jesus Christ. This is wisdom for the heart, the Bible teaching of Stephen Davy. Today's message is called Killing Anxiety. We've taken this message and turned it into a booklet. It's a great resource that you can use to read again whenever you feel anxious. Or maybe you want to get a copy to share with a friend who struggles with worry. Today, this resource is available for a donation of any amount to our ministry. If you struggle with anxiety or know someone who does, I encourage you to get this booklet. It's called Killing Anxiety. So you can go to our website, which is wisdomonline.org. You'll find it in the Featured Resource section of our store. Once again, that's wisdomonline.org and visit the section of our store called Featured Resources. You can also call us at 866-48 Bible. That's 866-482-4253. And then join us next time here on Wisdom for the Heart.