Anxiety and Prayer

One of the helpful points Paul Miller makes in A Praying Life is that we should monitor our anxieties to know how to pray.

He writes:

What does an unused prayer link look like? Anxiety. Instead of connecting with God, our spirits fly around like severed power lines, destroying everything they touch. Anxiety wants to be God but lacks God's wisdom, power, or knowledge.


This is simply what is said repeatedly in the Bible: anxieties are to be replaced with prayer (see Philippians 4:5-6 for example). But what I find helpful here is thinking of anxieties as "prayers left unprayed."

I think it's true. Instead of letting those prayers go unprayed, we need to take those cares and turn them into prayers, lest they destroy the whole neighborhood.