Take Your Anxiety To Church

We don’t like to admit we’re scared. No one wants to be thought a coward. Admitting fear or anxiety feels like admitting weakness, and we constantly encounter the powerful message that weaknesses must be camouflaged and compensated for. Our surrounding culture prevails on us to be self-reliant, self-confident, independent.

Even in the church, we can be reluctant to share what might make us appear weak in faith or somehow less spiritual than we hope others think we are. Perhaps we confide only in counselors or therapists because it’s safer to be vulnerable with someone who doesn’t know us and is duty-bound to keep our confidence.

Professional help can be good and even necessary. But if we share our fear and anxiety only in the therapy room, we’re missing out on many blessings and encouragements God intends for us to receive in community with other believers.

Shared, Not Shameful

For 10 years, my husband and I have lived in Southeast Asia, where our ingrained cultural values of independence and individuality have been constantly challenged by values of interdependence and conformity. Living in a communal Eastern culture has profoundly influenced the way I read the Bible. I’ve come to notice how many scriptural exhortations are addressed to Christians not individually but as a community.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 declares community’s benefits directly:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!

Moreover, we find communal exhortations specifically related to fear. In the Bible, wrestling with fear and anxiety isn’t shameful; it’s assumed. It’s a shared human experience that Jesus anticipated among his disciples. He lovingly encouraged them as a group, saying, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And he was speaking in the plural when he said, “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).

In the Bible, wrestling with fear and anxiety isn’t shameful; it’s assumed.

Paul wrote to Timothy that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7, emphasis added). And the writer of Hebrews explains that it’s “we” who “confidently say,” “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Heb. 13:6). We, the family of believers, call each other to this confident faith. If your struggle with fear and anxiety has become too heavy for you alone, it’s time to expose it to the full strength of your Christian community.

Share the Struggle

How, then, does Christian community help us when we struggle? Proverbs 12:25 explains, “Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” We can’t receive a “good word” from another to ease the burden of anxiety unless we first share the struggle. We need to share our fears and anxieties so we can face them together. As we share our burdens and encourage each other with God’s life-giving Word, it lightens the load of carrying them alone.

The apostle James also points to the help we receive from other believers as he exhorts us, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16, NIV). Breakthrough comes when a struggle with sin is brought into community, because our mutual intercession is powerful and effective. Fear and anxiety aren’t necessarily sinful, but we can reasonably assume prayer is similarly effective. When we share our struggles in community, we have access to the collective strength of our fellow believers’ prayers.

Share the Encouragement

But admitting our fears isn’t for our benefit alone. As God helps us and our faith and courage grow, everyone else’s does too. Why is David’s account of his experience walking through the darkest valley but fearing no evil in Psalm 23 included in an anthology of corporate worship songs? Because we all benefit from his testimony—it encourages the whole community of faith.

As David Gibson writes in The Lord of Psalm 23, “What God has done already for his people . . . shows me there are more than sufficient grounds to believe that he can do the same for me: God has a track record I can rely on because he’s already done it for my family in the faith.” This is also why we keep telling long-ago stories of martyrs and missionaries and heroes of the faith.

We can’t receive a ‘good word’ from another to ease the burden of anxiety unless we first share the struggle.

We need the whole community of believers, dead and alive, bearing witness to God’s faithfulness amid our struggles. When we share our struggles in Christian community, we not only find encouragement for ourselves but also serve as an encouragement to others.

So don’t mask or bury your fear and anxiety. Don’t reserve them exclusively for the counselor’s office. While professional help can be valuable, it’s not a substitute for the collective strength and encouragement we find in the community of believers. Expect God to work amid your struggles with fear and anxiety. Expect God to work through his people as you share your struggles in community.