Don’t Be Anxious: Pray Like This
We know Scripture offers prayer as God’s prescription for anxiety (Philippians 4:6). We’re promised God’s peace will be the result (Philippians 4:7). But does that verse really mean any kind of “prayer” will bring down God’s peace to guard our hearts and minds? I think not. The Bible is actually full of commands and examples of how not to pray.
Thankfully, the most important passage in Scripture about prayer and the most important passage in Scripture about anxiety are in the same chapter of Scripture. They’re in Matthew 6, the heart of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
This has been one of the most practical and fruitful insights I’ve gleaned from God’s Word in some time: the connection between how Jesus taught us to pray (Matthew 6:9–13, “the Lord’s Prayer”) and how He taught us to turn from anxiety (Matthew 6:25–34). The connections go much deeper than simply the proximity of the passages.
Praying to Our Father
When Jesus taught about prayer in Matthew 6, He told his disciples not to pray like the Gentiles. The reason? “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8). Shortly thereafter, when Jesus taught about anxiety, He told his disciples not to be anxious like the Gentiles. The reason? “Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (Matthew 6:31–32). The same truth about God is necessary for praying rightly and for putting off anxiety—the sovereign God is our attentive, caring Father. God is not like the gods that the pagan Gentiles believed in, whom you (maybe, hopefully) might be able to manipulate into caring about your needs. If that’s who God is, then I understand why you’d feel the need to “heap up many words” (Matthew 6:7) to increase the likelihood that your prayers might be heard and answered.
How many people try to respond to intense anxiety by praying like an anxious Gentile? As if they need to coax God into caring and meeting their needs? “God, please don’t let _____ happen. Please don’t let _____ happen. God, please don’t let _____ happen. Oh God, don’t let _____ happen!” Do you think that anxious heaping up of words is the kind of praying that leads to God’s promised peace? I doubt it, but our prayers often devolve into something like that when anxiety seizes us. I know mine have.
How different the way Jesus taught us to pray! It begins—before we ask for anything—with a theologically weighty recognition that God is, in fact, not as the pagans imagine, but is “Our Father, in heaven” (Matthew 6:9). That’s who God is for all who are united to Christ by faith (Galatians 4:6). He is our Father, so He cares in a very personal way about our needs. He is our Father in heaven, so He knows our needs already and can meet them with ease. If your praying begins with a reflection on, and confession of, that truth about God (as Jesus indicated it should), how different might the prayer that follows be? And how much more likely might that prayer lead you to God’s peace?
Seeking First His Glory
The connections in Matthew 6 go deeper. Jesus tells the anxious to “seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things (your earthly needs) will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Likewise, the Lord’s prayer shows us how to seek first (in prayer)¹ God’s kingdom and righteousness, before we seek from God anything related to our earthly needs. “Thy Kingdom come” and “Thy will be done”² precede “Give us bread” (Matthew 6:9–11). The order of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer matters! It’s supposed to help our hearts care first about God’s glory, kingdom, and will, even more than we do our own earthly needs.
Track the pronouns in the Lord’s Prayer, and you’ll see it. Contrary to our natural tendency, perhaps especially when we’re anxious, before we pray about us, us, us (our bread, our debts, our deliverance), the Lord’s Prayer prompts us to pray about Him, Him, Him (your Name, your kingdom, your will). We see the same tilt even if we focus only on the second half of the Lord’s prayer, about our needs. Even there, the little petition for earthly provision is followed by two longer petitions asking for God’s forgiveness and spiritual direction/protection. Again, the priority of God’s kingdom and righteousness predominates.
Sinful anxiety loses its grip on our hearts the more we return to caring first and most about the things of God (as the Lord’s Prayer models and Matthew 6:33 commands). Put another way, we uproot sinful anxiety when we turn from our idols to treasure God above all. Notice how Jesus roots his instructions about anxiety (Matthew 6:25–34) in his warnings about idolatry (Matthew 6:19–24). The “therefore” in 6:25 grounds the following verses on anxiety in the preceding verses on idolatry/treasure. He’s showing us that our anxieties grow out of our idolatries. Where our treasure is, there our anxiety will be also (cf. Matthew 6:21).
Now apply that insight to how we pray when we’re anxious. Turning to God in prayer should be an expression of turning from our idols. But how many prayers of the anxious actually might be further expressions of the heart idolatry that’s driving the anxiety in the first place? That is, they seek first and most fervently in prayer whatever they might be treasuring more than God’s kingdom and righteousness in that moment.³ (The book of James warns about idolatry-driven prayers; see James 4:3–4.) If we pray like an anxious Gentile, whose main treasure is temporary, losable, and earthly, then we may feel even more anxious and less peaceful after we say “amen.”
Bonhoeffer said, “The richness of God's Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”⁴ When we’re sinfully anxious, we don’t need to pray whatever words might come up out of the overflow of our anxious/idolatrous hearts (cf. Matthew 12:34). Instead, when we’re anxious, we need to pray in the way that Jesus taught, which opposes every idolatry that might drive our anxiety. Very clearly and powerfully, the Lord’s Prayer encourages us to treasure first and last God’s kingdom and glory. Praying after the pattern of that prayer is active obedience to Matthew 6:33.
Focusing on Today’s Needs
There’s another connection between these two passages in Matthew 6. Jesus finished his instruction about anxiety by telling us not to be anxious about tomorrow, because today has enough trouble to worry about (Matthew 6:34). No coincidence, Jesus’s model prayer models the exact same heart, teaching us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). He didn’t say, “Give us tomorrow our daily bread.” He didn’t say, “Give us this day our weekly bread.” Instead, twice-over this request in the Lord’s prayer related to earthly needs emphasizes it’s the trouble of today we should focus on. The Lord’s prayer puts our focus on the actual needs of today, not the potential needs of tomorrow, which is what sinful anxiety fixates on.
This fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer also adds to the prayer’s push against the idolatries that underlie sinful anxiety. When we’re led to ask for daily bread, the petition disciples us to be content with having our basic needs met.⁵ That’s often what bread represents in Scripture (cf. Psalm 37:25; Proverbs 30:8⁶). The petition is not, “Give us this day our steak and caviar.” Likewise, in the portion of Matthew 6 that addresses anxiety, the basic needs of life are Christ’s focus: what you’ll eat and drink and wear. He circles around the basic needs of food and clothing three times, in 6:25, 6:26–30, and 6:31. It reminds us of what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:8, “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (cf. Genesis 28:20). Contentment and sinful anxiety are scriptural opposites.
Re-focusing our view of our true earthly needs deals another blow to our idolatries. An idol is something that we come to believe we need to be happy, safe, or significant. It’s when something “I want” (that’s not God) becomes something “I need.”⁷ The Lord’s prayer helps reorient our understanding of our needs, so the covetousness of idolatry (cf. Colossians 3:5, Ephesians 5:5) can be replaced by the godly contentment that undermines anxiety (cf. Philippians 4:6 and 11).
In Conclusion
When you’re anxious and remember you need to pray, remember that it matters how you pray. The solution to worrying like an anxious Gentile cannot be praying like an anxious Gentile. Instead, when you’re anxious, pray like Jeus taught, to a Father who already knows all you need, whose glory is better than all you desire.
In case it still isn’t clear what I’m proposing, I’ll end by giving very direct and specific counsel. Next time you feel your heart and mind seized by anxiety, pray about whatever you’re worried about as each line of the Lord’s prayer guides you. Use the six petitions in Matthew 6:9–13 as the outline of your prayer time. Go in the order Jesus gave them. Don’t skip any. (See footnote 3 for a little example.)
Further, be sure not to gloss over the opening address, which identifies the God you’re praying to (and your relation to Him, in Christ): our Father in heaven. Try to keep that view of God in mind through the whole time of prayer. Resist the temptation to start speaking only in the form of prayer. Sometimes anxious people try to “say prayers” as a kind of self-soothing religious relaxation technique. Don’t do that; truly pray. Try to keep the whole prayer time a sustained, conscious personal communion with your Father, wherein you entrust yourself and all your needs to Him.
If you are a follower of Christ, make it habit of responding to anxiety in this way. Don’t pray like a “Gentile,” because that’s not who you are anymore. Pray like someone who knows God, and knows Him rightly. Pray like one who has been adopted in love by the Father of our Lord Jesus.⁸ Pray like a disciple of Jesus, who is learning to obey all He commanded, including “do not be anxious” (Matthew 6:25) and “pray like this” (Matthew 6:9).
Show me someone whose heart is being pressed into the mold of the Lord’s Prayer, by the Spirit, and I bet I can show you someone who is being led out of anxiety into God’s peace.
¹ The only other time this command “seek” is used in the Sermon on the Mount, just 8 verses after 6:33, it very clearly refers to prayer (Matthew 7:7). In that light, should we understand Christ’s preceding instruction about anxiety, “Seek first the kingdom…” to be calling us to pray in a certain way? Or at least to include that?
² I understand this petition to be instructing us to ask God to help us (and others) do his moral will (i.e. his righteous commands) more so than asking God to do his sovereign will. The qualifier “on earth as it is in heaven” is the main reason why. God’s sovereign will is already done on earth just as equally as it is in heaven. Not so much with his moral will, hence the need for this petition. As the Heidelberg Catechism says so beautifully: “’Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means: Help us and all people to renounce our own wills and without any back talk to obey your will, for it alone is good. Help everyone carry out his office and calling, as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven” (Q&A #124).
³ For example: imagine a girl is tempted to idolize her boyfriend. If so, she will also be tempted to be anxious about his commitment to her. How might her anxiety tempt her to pray? “God, please don’t let him break up with me. Make him keep liking me. Help me not be awkward or seem desperate around him. Please don’t let him break up with me. Oh, please don’t let him break up with me…” How different might her heart be led if she prayed instead as the Lord’s Prayer guided? “God, you are my Father. You know my needs. You care for me. First of all, I want to pray: glory to Your name. Whatever may happen in this relationship, may Your name be glorified. Please help me submit to the rule of King Jesus in all things. And come, Lord Jesus! Until then, give me grace to obey every command of Your Word that could pertain to this relationship. I want to do your will in this situation. I want to please you, even if I don’t or can’t please my boyfriend. Would you please meet all my needs today? Help me to trust that you always will. Sustain my life. I also ask that you would forgive me for this anxiety. Please forgive me for idolizing this relationship, for believing sometimes that my happiness and security is ultimately found in this guy. Thank you for forgiving me, because of Jesus’s work in my place. And before you now, Father, I commit to forgiving him (and others) for mistreating me in ____ ways. Would you please lead me (and him) towards whatever you know would most protect me (and him) from temptation and evil, and whatever you know would most promote my (and his) holiness and communion with you. Father, I trust you with all these things. I pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.”
⁴ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible. A wider quotation is worth reflecting on: ““Lord, teach us to pray!” So spoke the disciples to Jesus. In doing so, they were acknowledging that they were not able to pray on their own; they had to learn. “To learn to pray” sounds contradictory to us. Either the heart is so overflowing that it begins to pray by itself, we say, or it will never learn to pray. But this is a dangerous error, which is certainly very widespread among Christians today, to imagine that it is natural for the heart to pray… Praying certainly does not mean simply pouring out one’s heart. It means, rather, finding the way to and speaking with God, whether the heart is full or empty. No one can do that on one’s own. For that one needs Jesus Christ… Perhaps it is precisely the case that we must pray against our own heart in order to pray rightly. It is not just that for which we ourselves want to pray that is important, but that for which God wants us to pray. If we were dependent on ourselves alone, we would probably often pray only the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. But God wants it otherwise. Not the poverty of our heart, but the richness of God’s word, ought to determine our prayer.”
⁵ As DA Carson well said, “The prayer is for our needs, not our greeds” (Carson, Matthew, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 8, p.171).
⁶ The Hebrew of Proverbs 30:8 says, “Feed me with the bread that is needful for me.”
⁷ As explained, for example, in Ken Sande, The Peacemaker, chapter 5, “Conflict Starts in the Heart.” A version of the material in that chapter can be found free online at: https://rw360.org/getting-to-the-heart-of-conflict/
⁸ J.I. Packer famously said in his classic book Knowing God, “What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father… If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all… “Father” is the Christian name for God.”