Anxiety is always against you. No matter how much you give in to the spiraling, it will never give you what you truly want: assurance, security, peace. Instead, it wants to pull you down into the darkness where it resides.
To fight any opponent well, we have to know what we’re dealing with. We can’t overspiritualize anxiety by simply “praying it away.” We also can’t underspiritualize it by relying solely on physical weapons without considering any other weapons to aid our attack.
Anxiety is a puppet of the ultimate enemy, who uses the brokenness and weakness of our physical bodies to tap into spiritual realities. Modern medicine is a gift, but if you’re fighting an enemy that can affect both our physical and spiritual realities, you’re going to need some more weapons.
Based on Philippians 4:6–7, T.A.T.T. is one tool that can help you interrupt anxiety, redirect your attention to God’s presence, and fight against the enemy whose sole purpose is to destroy you (John 10:10).
What do you do if you’re drowning? You tell someone, you scream for help, you plead for somebody—anybody—to hear you.
The first blow in your fight against anxiety comes from opening your mouth and crying out to God (“in everything, through prayer”). Anxiety’s goal is to make you feel like you’re alone… that you can’t tell anyone about your fears, and you have to handle it yourself.
Instead, tell someone… and not just anyone: tell the only One who can actually do something about it. You may think you have more control by muscling through it. But, in reality, you’re barely holding on, and any extra blow from the enemy will knock you out completely.
Don’t let your fears go unnamed. Don’t let anxiety hold its silencing power over you. Tell God exactly what you’re feeling, even if you’re not sure about the details.
The second blow is dependence: asking God for something (“present your requests to God”). Anxiety wants to convince you that you’re powerless—which is true. On your own, you are helpless. But you are never unhelped.
The King of the universe has all power, all peace, all knowledge, all wisdom, and He wants us to ask Him for help. He might say yes, no, or wait, but you can trust that His answer will always be good. What do you want God to do for you?
Be bold enough to ask God for help. Be humble enough to accept His answer. Asking and receiving something else is better than not asking and never receiving. Besides, were you any better off when you didn’t ask Him?
Choosing a posture of gratitude in the middle of anxiety is one of the hardest things to do. It’s also one of the most essential things to do (“with thanksgiving”). Giving thanks is a massive blow to the enemy because it’s almost impossible to be anxious while recalling the ways God has blessed you.
Anxiety aims to convince you that God has forgotten about you and that He doesn’t care. It limits your sight to only what’s in front of you, instead of recalling what has always been true: that God has not forgotten you, He does care, and He will always care.
When we thank God, we’re not denying our hard circumstances. We’re fighting with defiant worship by truth-telling. We told the truth about the hard things when we cried out to God for help. Now, we tell the truth about the good things when we thank God for our blessings. The hard doesn’t have to cancel out the good, nor the other way around. Use both for weapons of attack.
The knock-out blow is through surrender. Now, it might seem counterintuitive to win a fight through surrendering, but the key is to whom you’re surrendering. You can either surrender to God, or you can surrender to anxiety—which one will you do?
When you surrender to anxiety, you get more anxiety, more fear, more spiraling, and a lot of rotten fruit. But when you surrender to God, you have the promise of peace and protection (“will guard your hearts and minds”).
What guards you is not the peace of this world, which changes its views and beliefs in every new cultural moment. It’s also not the peace of yourself, which evolves over the years and ebbs and flows with your feelings. Paul says what guards you is the peace of God, who never changes. This peace is so stable, so grounded, so rooted in the person and character of God Himself that you can trust it to guard you against all things.
The key is that you have to trust Him. You can’t just hire a guard to protect you while you keep letting thieves come in through the windows. Anxiety is not your companion; it is your enemy. Stop doom-scrolling, stop dwelling on anxious thoughts and feelings, stop playing out scenarios in your mind.
Stop and let the peace of God stand guard.
Want to dive deeper? Check out our sermon series guide on the book of Philippians, or watch the most recent sermon from our Philippians sermon series.
