Responding to Your Questions On Spiritual Anxiety
On October 15, 2022, CCCRD counselors took part in a conference on anxiety. During a breakout session on spiritual anxiety, we fielded questions from the audience. Here are some questions we received.
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In this seminar, we focused specifically on anxiety in relation to one's relationship with God. Is God mad at me? Should I be trying harder in my relationship with Christ? Am I really enough for God? So, spiritual anxiety involves persistent worry, fear, and/or doubt about God’s love and attitude toward us.
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Like most things, this all depends on the individual. But a few consistent indicators are:
Excessive focus/rumination on shame
Difficulty moving on from mistakes
Patterns of hiding, lacking of vulnerability with others due to fear of punishment
Instinctual focus on following the rules
Lack of grace given to self or others for their failures
Feeling of distance from God; not present or real in day-to-day life
Finding yourself stuck in habitual sin patterns (1 John indicates that some sin issues are the result of us not truly knowing God or being unsure of our stance with him)
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Absolutely! Here they are.
Reflecting on your own view of God:
What is spiritual anxiety in your own words? What does it look like in your life?
What are behaviors or responses you have had to your own spiritual anxiety?
What does it make you feel emotionally?
What visual image of God do you have after processing some of these questions? What kind of God are you portraying? A God of condemnation, or a God of grace and love?
What would it look like to change your view of God?
Where do you feel you stand with God?
For parents, here are some questions reflecting on your child’s spiritual anxiety:
What does your child’s spiritual anxiety look like?
How do you react to your child’s spiritual anxiety?
Do your kids know where they stand with you?
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During the session, one of the points we spoke on was that often our parents are our first representations of God to us when we are children. Say your parents were critical, reprimanding, or judgemental; you might have a hard time, then, seeing God as good, gracious, and loving. Thus, one of the first steps in growing closer to the Lord as a loving Father is grieving and feeling the loss of the kind of parents we wish we had. But what do we do after we feel these emotions?
One place we can begin is to look at what our parents were not. If we look at what our parents were not, the flipside may give us an idea of what God is. Were your parents quick to anger? God is not. Did your parents lord your mistakes over you? God does not. Maybe your parents did some things well, too, and this gives an incomplete picture of God’s characteristics. This gives a track to begin to learn what God is like.
Another place to start would be to examine good and healthy attachments. Is there anyone in your life who has been Jesus to you? Someone who has shown what it is like to be loved as God loves us? Consider ways God’s love is like the love this person shows you. It will of course be an imperfect example, but it points us in the right direction.
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It takes courage to recognize spiritual anxiety, and it takes even more to talk to someone about it. It’s a step of vulnerability into what will likely be an uncomfortable topic.
First, find someone who you see as inviting, patient, and caring—it’s important that you feel safe to speak openly with the person! From there, express what the anxiety has been like for you and what emotions you have felt in the process. If the person embraces and engages your experience warmly, you can likely trust them to help you work through spiritual anxiety.
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We all have unconfessed sin—blind spots within our hearts that we don’t see. If unconfessed sin kept us from God, then God wouldn’t hear any of our prayers. Thankfully, he does despite our sinfulness! (Even despite the sin we don’t see in ourselves.) Also, this question seems to have the underlying assumption that “I need to clean myself up before I can come to God.” Hebrews 4:16 gives us comfort for this: since Christ paid for all our sin already, there is no need to “clean ourselves up” before we can come to Him.
This second question follows from the first. Based on the first question, no, God hears our prayers and listens intently even if there is unconfessed sin. But it is possible that He will ask you to approach this person and ask for their forgiveness.
Let’s look at another helpful passage. Jeremiah 29:12-13 says, "Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."
This scripture answers that God always hears our prayers, unconfessed sin or not. The sin does not have to be confessed to the person you sinned against for God to hear you. There are circumstances when this is actually unhealthy or dangerous (for the confessor or the person being confessed to).
There are other times when it is helpful to speak to someone we have sinned against. God may be asking us to reconcile with someone or push us to examine our sin more deeply through discussing it with someone else. But it is not a requirement to be right with God. Ultimately this is a works-based mentality. We serve a grace-giving God. He comes for the broken, not the perfect. We would not need the gospel and Jesus to die on the cross if we “had all things figured out”.
One more passage for our reflection here. Psalm 51:17: “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.”
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This is a difficult and vulnerable question, and it deserves a personalized answer. We invite this person to reach out at info.cccrd@gmail.com or cccrd.org/contact. That would be the best way for us to respond.
That said, we would like to give some thoughts here on grace and forgiveness, and whether or not God punishes us.
When we think about grace and forgiveness, or “getting what we deserve,” it’s important to remember an important moment in Jesus’ ministry. John 8 depicts Jesus, the Pharisees, and the woman caught in adultery. These religious teachers bring the woman to Jesus and say, “This woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” The implications are clear here—the Pharisees expect him to bring judgment down on her. And yet, he does the opposite, saying, “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” The Pharisees leave, and Jesus says to the woman, “Didn’t even one of them condemn you?… Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
This is a very important passage to remember because it conveys the only one who could condemn does not condemn you.
If he doesn’t condemn, he certainly doesn’t punish us through suffering. One of our counselors wrote, “suffering is not directly proportional to our sin. God is not purposely afflicting us. Jesus suffered and died for us so that we do not have to pay the penalty of our sins. Think about it: if we can perform our way through life by doing good works, then what is the point of the Gospel?” God is not in the business of making us pay for the things we’ve done.
Again, this is a difficult question and there is certainly more to say on the subject. Hopefully, this provides a start.
We at CCCRD believe that questions are always answered best in the context of relationship. Do you have questions about spiritual anxiety? Interested in talking about your view of God or your spiritual formation?