Addiction and Anxiety: Grace and Trust Overcome All

The first key for confronting and transforming anxious and addictive emotional processes is grace. Grace, as understood in the Christian tradition, is defined by Paul in Ephesians 2:8–9: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast."

This traditional understanding sometimes obscures an important aspect of grace, which is God’s unconditional promise not to abandon us. Grace is God’s guarantee that no matter what happens, he’s always there. No matter how great or painful the loss, God will never leave. Others also share this same view of God. Indeed, it is characteristic of most spiritual systems.

The second key is trust. To trust God does not only mean to have faith in God. Rather, we can think of trust in this way: trusting God means allowing and seeking God's way—regardless of the pain, the inconvenience, the cost, the sacrifice—even if it means death.

Highly anxious churches plagued with separation anxieties do not evidence the elements of healthy churches: vision, relational warmth, the ability to sacrifice, and the capacity to experience joy. Why? Because they are held hostage to their fear of being separated from the things and people they depend on in the material world. And what kind of emotions do hostages show? Those who have given up and become cynical, depressed, despondent, unresponsive, blaming, introspective, bitter, and cold. Congregations held hostage by their fears demonstrate these and other symptoms of anxiety.