At this point, the prevalence and causes of anxiety in the current generation are common knowledge. The books have been written, and the podcasts have been recorded. No stats are necessary to convince you that it’s an epidemic. While I am hopeful that natural cultural cycles (such as a departure from social media) and supernatural grace may turn the tides of internal turmoil, stress and anxiety have become pillars of Western living.
So, while we gnaw at the root in classrooms and science labs, the fact remains: People live overwhelmed lives, and they require shepherding right where they are. Their pastors and elders are shepherding them — but the royal priesthood of believers has also been given sufficient wisdom from the Scriptures to love one another through the thick of it. If anxiety is everywhere, we need everyone’s help.
What follows is an alliterative arrangement of principles that God has taught me through my own feeble shepherding of the super-stressed (a.k.a. college students) over the past couple decades.
What Is Anxiety Really?
Before I get to the principles, however, I must confess that I have two simultaneous (though not completely equal) fears in shepherding the stressed. On the one hand, I fear that I will inadequately express to an overwhelmed brother or sister the priestly presence of Christ our brother, who took on flesh to know our weakness and stress. I worry that my words, my presence, or both will feel less than comforting, even callous, to the one who’s tied in anxious knots. I worry about statements of truth or exhortations to change that appear to undermine Jesus’s sympathy.
On the other hand, I fear that my shepherding, when expressed in listening, affirming, and validating emotions without challenging, will enable self-focus, self-absorption. And while the first fear likely would have been weightier twenty years ago, it’s this second fear that keeps me up at night now.
In the current moment, people who deal with anxiety are typically apologized to. There was a time when anxiety was considered something to apologize for. The actual reality is less black-and-white. In one very biblical sense, anxiety (to be used interchangeably with “stress”) is sin. It is God-belittling fear and worry. It is mistrust of God’s goodness or sovereignty (or both). God’s commands to “fear not” abound in the Scriptures. And if you are apt to distinguish between fear and anxiety, then Philippians 4:6–7 gives that prohibition as well. Where God commands that we not be anxious, it seems that the appropriate response to our anxiety is repentance — which means we should call for that repentance in those who are fighting it.
At the same time, anxiety is also affliction. Sin itself is affliction, causing pain and distress in all who are in its clutches, even as we (sometimes) relish it. But anxiety is also affliction in the sense that it can arise in us as an indirect neurological result of sin’s curse rather than as a direct and conscious perpetration of unbelief.
The wisdom required here, in employing both priestly care and prophetic speech, is profound. So we begin this shepherding process with . . .
Prayer
Whether I’m dealing with my own anxiety or that of someone in my care, my helplessness is palpable. I’ll give a flippant but very real example. A few summers ago, I was with my family at SeaWorld. We approached the Mako, a hyper coaster with a two-hundred-foot drop that hits 73 miles per hour. My daughter hopped on the Mako as if she were simply plopping down on the couch. She waved her arms with glee and trusted every mechanical safeguard implicitly.
I, on the other hand, ascended the first hill with barely controlled apprehension, staring daggers at the one screw at the foot of my lap bar, trying to remember the layers of engineering precautions and reciting the stats to myself (“There is a 1-in-760-million chance of dying on a roller coaster, making the ride itself a safer place to be than anywhere else in the park . . .”). But my heart rate wasn’t obeying. Primal screams escaped my lungs the whole ride. The inevitable layer of adrenal sweat glistened on my face as we slowed to a halt.
I was telling myself the truth, but my body wasn’t listening. For so many in daily life, the visceral experience of anxiety is the same. I have watched a family member stare into my eyes with panic, desperate to be rid of a seemingly perpetual struggle. And despite my efforts, no tone, no arrangement of words, will itself heal the anxious heart — at least, not without the Spirit’s accompanying power.
We cannot simply harness that power, even as we pray, so we beg the Lord for . . .
Patience
In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul exhorts us to “be patient with them all,” whether idle, weak, or fainthearted, just as Jesus has been unendingly patient with us. After all, exasperation does not achieve the righteousness of God (James 1:20, generously paraphrased). So we wait, remembering our own sin, for God to work. For my part, patience means reminding myself that the battle against sin is lifelong, so not every moment is a teachable one.
Sometimes, the most necessary thing in shepherding a stressed person is . . .
Presence
Yes, I mean your presence, and not just physically. This person needs to know that you inhabit the same overwhelmed world in one way or another, that you are very much with them. But your acknowledged presence is vastly secondary to that of the One who is peace itself. The natural thought, and even foregone conclusion, for all who are anxious is that he is not near. A wise shepherd brings them consciously back into the presence of the God who never left. With patience and wisdom, one of the most helpful questions to ask an overwhelmed person (eventually) is, “What do you think God is up to in this?”
But that requires offering some . . .
Perspective
These last two p’s are where we move squarely into the realm of the countercultural. They each require something beyond sheer validation of a person’s experience.
Perspective is crucial because the anxious often feel as if their stress is the pinnacle of human suffering, and few things will be as helpful as simply zooming out to look at the big picture. A college student who has two exams on the same day is experiencing a privilege as much as a trial. A new church member who hasn’t received ideal relational initiation in her first three months may need to be reminded that she is experiencing normal human relationships and busyness.
On the other hand, some who feel dismayed by their anxiety may need a clearer perspective on their suffering or the signs of God’s grace in their lives. A mother who is pregnant with her third child after two miscarriages is dealing not just with anxiety but with a brutal result of the fall of mankind. A longtime church member who is overwhelmed with conviction over his own anger needs to be encouraged with the hope of the Holy Spirit’s work.
And for each category, the big picture of a promised eternity, combined with our relative insignificance, is generally a balm for an anxious soul.
But when the anxiety remains, a good shepherd, with all prayer and patience, has to do some . . .
Pressing
I wade into this last piece delicately — but in every category of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm (biblically warranted or not), the call is to come out of it. Somewhere in the twenty-first century, a respectable resentment has developed in the modern pseudo-Christian mind against “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). But the timeless practice of godly shepherds in the church has been to speak the happy, hopeful truth of the gospel to those who are overwhelmed (no matter their circumstance), to see them repent of any misplaced gaze, and to see them believe afresh. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
To put it another way, if Philippians 4:6–7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything,” and piles up all sorts of promises, we have warrant to humbly and happily use those same words. With wisdom in our timing, it’s okay to tell someone, “It’s time to feel differently now,” as long as it’s clear that the way they feel is not in line with the truth of the gospel. It would be unloving not to do so.
The final aim, however we shepherd, is to bring a person to a place of true and lasting peace. This happens only through the shift of one’s gaze to the person and work of Jesus Christ: “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3). So, even as we embrace the truth ourselves, let us prayerfully and patiently speak the truth to the anxious.