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by Eric Hansen

Anxiety can take many forms for us. For example, I suffer from anxiety due to not surrendering all of myself to Christ. Other common themes are financial or social burdens, loneliness, desperation, and other underlying mental health issues. Through these experiences, many people will often quote 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. Paul never states the thorn exactly, and people often come up with their own version of what this is. But if we look at who Paul is writing to (the church of Corinth) and what was going on at the time (Christians living in the name only), we can get a better picture as to what the thorn may be.

In both preserved letters to the church there, Paul is critical of how they act. While they do have members and are serving to proclaim the name of Jesus, they also are still living both in and of the world. John tells us in 1 John 2:15-17 that we are to live in but not of the world. This means that we are to exist as we do to serve God and proclaim the Gospel, not to celebrate or honor prostitution, Paganism, socioeconomic separation, etc. Paul's letters to Corinth and the church there consisted of hard love. He viewed each of the churches he directly and indirectly ministered to as his babies through the power of God, essentially trying to keep their focus on God and not pleasing the world.

Due to all of this, we can better understand what possible thorn(s) Paul is crying out to God to remove. Even to this day, we still see these things happening. We have abstracted the concept of Christian obedience and love to suit the current world's demands, and those who are crying out and demanding a Biblical foundation are in agony asking God to fix this. These include professing Christian churches “marrying” homosexuals, worshiping “Caesar” over God, or treating life as valueless unless it is outside of the womb. The true, God-fearing church, and not just the building but the people making up those places, is struggling to overcome the evils that their brothers and sisters are falling into.

Christians are called to love, and love justly. We are to do everything we can to help bring the Holy Spirit to people and lead them away from the flesh and into a reborn nature. But when brothers are against brothers, sisters against sisters, how can we maintain that sense of unity? Not only do we then not express our love and joy of what God has blessed us with, but our spirits weaken and become dull due to the empathy we either don't give or receive.

The divisional state of our nation, let alone our world, is blasphemy. Our own thorns can hinder our progress if we don't keep them in check. We will struggle, and just as Paul did, to glorify God, and for people to see us, true-believing and confessing Christians, and to understand that it is not from our own will or ability but through the Holy Spirit. Our anxiety, restless nights, and torn-apart dreams, sacrificed in the name of Jesus Christ, are of no value to us but to the eternal value of Him. For this to be the result, however, we need to be united in Christ even if we are not united in our minds necessarily.

There are solutions to this problem that we can both easily and adequately perform that improve the greater good. To address the proverbial elephant in the room, one of the biggest and best things you can do is surrender your life to Christ Jesus. However, this is also more of a life-long journey for most than anything else, so we need to find ways to help steer us toward this mentality and consider it our goal.

So, how do we lower our spiritual anxiety?

Do things as milestones, not goals. When we consider an action or “end result” as a goal, we undermine the continuous effort we have to put in to keep that action going (like Newton’s first law of motion). If we stop acting with love toward others, we will find ourselves quickly loving not even ourselves. So, the best thing you can do is love who you can continuously not just by words but by actions.

Recharge yourself every now and then. Burn out is very high in my day job’s field, as it is in ministry. We are often taken advantage of without any amount of respect returned for our deeds. So we continue acting out of love, but the love never returns. The second law of thermodynamics basically states that we can only give so much energy out before we are depleted of it. The way we recharge our ability to love is receiving it as well. For example, a church elder visits a shut in and feels God’s love replenishing the elder’s love given to the shut in. Another way this would happen is by spending time with God, relaxing, and embracing the moment.

One final way we can all start to keep our love high and our anxiety (relatively) low is by acknowledging our weaknesses and finding ways to balance them out. We weren’t designed or built to take on the world; only one was and that’s God. He designed us to be in unity, taking our various attributes to be harmonious in our variety. For example, I am not the most skilled at being social, but my wife is. I love teaching, evangelizing, and being an apologetic, whereas she is more timid toward it. We utilize each other’s strengths to not hide our weaknesses, but to glorify God with them through unity.

In the end, we need to start embracing the fact we need help, that we can find it in God and His children. The stigma that as a Christian we are perfect should be disproven by our constant appeal to God for His guidance and grace. We should lower the expectations that if someone is filled with anxiety, depression, trust issues, etc. that they can’t be; instead that they are just as important to His kingdom as everyone else.

If you like this blog post and would like to dig deeper into what Eric is addressing here, we here at Worldview Warriors encourage you to read this resource: Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray.

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