Fighting to Win Against Anxiety | Josh Weidmann
It was a late-night call I was not expecting. A frantic mom told me that her teenage son had gotten out of the car in traffic on a busy road, and she didn’t know where he was now. She asked if I would try to call him. “He respects you,” she pled. “Can you see if he’ll pick up your call?”
So I dialed his number, only to hear a tearful voice on the other end of the line with the noise of traffic in the background. In moments like these, my training and tendency tells me to have an hour conversation about deeper things going on, but there was no time for that. This teen had been suicidal before and, for all I knew, he could be standing on a bridge over the highway waiting to jump. So I went straight for it.
After asking if he was safe, I said, “Are you fighting to win, or are you laying on the mat, hoping to lose?” I told him that my dad always said that there are only two positions in life: you are either fighting, or you are getting back up.
He wasn’t doing either.
Anxiety had gripped him. He was not fighting for anything—to save his relationships, his values, his dreams, or even his life. He had lost perspective and didn’t want to get back up. Anxiety has a way of blinding us from reality, at least momentarily.
Fight for it.
I have been in the boxing ring many times with my anxiety. Emotionally speaking, I’ve had many bloody lips, black eyes, and nearly been tapped out. Anxiety is relentless. For those of us who battle it, we know that it often chooses to pick a fight when we least expect it. It can make us do crazy things, think crazy things, and even feel crazy. But, there is hope.
In fighting with anxiety, we have to choose to get back up. Thankfully, we don’t have to get back up in our own strength. Left to our own resources, we will lose. Yet, with God’s strength, we can get back up and keep swinging.
Let’s take the Apostle Paul for example.
Paul, the apostle and great missionary in the New Testament, was not afraid to speak of his anxiety. He said that part of his suffering was being anxious over the churches he had planted (2 Corinthians 11:28). He mentioned his anxiety in Philippians and how he was hopeful it would lessen when he knew someone cared for his loved ones (Philippians 2:28). I would also assume that his instruction about “being anxious for nothing” came from a place where he had personally been anxious over something yet found victory through prayer and renewed thinking (Philippians 4:4–8).
Paul was a model fighter. He pressed through the hardest circumstances to carry on his mission for Christ. He didn’t just lay down and give up. He was either fighting or getting back up.
The fight against anxiety begins with determination.
You and I must make a conscience decision to keep pressing on when our emotions become overwhelming. Christ will be our strength (Psalm 46:1–3), but we must decide to embrace His strength and keep fighting.
After one of my worst panic attacks, I was laying in my bed the next day trying to recover physically and spiritually. There was a moment that afternoon where I knew the decision before me was to either get back up and keep fighting or lay and wallow in emotional turmoil. Only the first of those options would glorify God, and with that as the goal, the second option was eliminated. We must resolve to keep going—but not with a ‘grin and bear it’ attitude. Rather, we must rest on the might of God, through the presence of Christ, to persevere.
Some attributed Charles Spurgeon with saying, “By perseverance, the snail made it to the Ark.” In the same way, it may take a lot of perseverance to keep pressing on through anxiety. With Christ on our side, we can make it through the slow and, sometimes, tedious journey toward the end of our anxieties.
We must keep our eyes fixed on Christ.
The reason that Paul, and millions of Christians before us, could make it through suffering and anxiety is because he kept his eyes on Christ. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians and said that ‘while he was with them, he resolved to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified’ (1 Corinthians 2:2), he was dispelling any notion that he found strength outside of Jesus. The fight with anxiety doesn’t leave room for false comforts or self-help gospels.
Keeping our eyes fixed on Christ means we will steadily and consistently consume Scripture. We will allow Christ’s divine organization, the Church, to be an essential part of our lives. We will pray and speak with God and allow God to speak to us. Christians who battle with anxiety needs to keep the spiritual disciplines close. We must be men and women who pray and partake regularly in Bible reading, Bible meditation, Scripture memory, journaling, and fasting. The goal of our spiritual disciplines is not to be more spiritual but to get more of Christ.
Finally, we must not fight alone.
There is no way I would have been able to get back up and fight against my anxiety if it wasn’t for Christ being made known to me through faithful friends. I have several friends, in particular, who were not afraid to get in the ring with me. They fought with me and fought for me. They brought emotional support, biblical truth, and endless encouragement. They showed me Christ in their actions and pointed me to Christ in their words.
While anxiety is a personal struggle, it should not be an individual battle. One of the greatest mandates and blessings of the Christian life is that we do not do life alone. If you are struggling with anxiety, I encourage you to find a few Christ-followers who will be there for you and point you to Christ, who is your only source of true strength.
Either fight or get back up, but don’t just lay there. In the strength of Christ, persevere with His glory as your goal.
Josh Weidmann serves as the Senior Pastor of Grace Chapel in Englewood, Colorado. He is a certified biblical counselor with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and holds a Master of Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of “The End of Anxiety”and writes regularly at joshweidmann.com. Josh is married to Molly and has five children.