Gifts for Moms, Dads, and Grads
$5 Book of the Month (May 2026)
The Root of Anxiety and How to Fight It
The Associates of Anxiety
I have learned much about the fight against anxiety. I have learned, for instance, that anxiety is a condition of the heart that gives rise to many other sinful states of mind. Think for a moment how many different sinful actions and attitudes come from anxiety. Anxiety about finances can give rise to coveting, greed, hoarding, and stealing. Anxiety about succeeding at some task can make you irritable, abrupt, and surly. Anxiety about relationships can make you withdrawn, indifferent, and uncaring about other people. Anxiety about how someone will respond to you can make you cover over the truth and lie about things. So if anxiety could be conquered, a mortal blow would be struck to many other sins.
The Root of Anxiety
I have also learned something about the root of anxiety and the ax that can sever it. One of the most important texts has been the one I underlined when I was fifteen—the whole section of Matthew 6:25–34. Four times in this passage Jesus says that his disciples should not be anxious:
Do not be anxious about your life. (Matt. 6:25)
Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matt. 6:27)
Do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” (Matt. 6:31)
Do not be anxious about tomorrow. (Matt. 6:34)
Anxiety is clearly the theme of this text. It explicitly identifies the root of anxiety: “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matt. 6:30). In other words, Jesus says that the root of anxiety is inadequate faith in our Father’s future grace. As unbelief gets the upper hand in our hearts, one of the effects is anxiety. The root cause of anxiety is a failure to trust all that God has promised to be for us in Jesus.
Battling Unbelief
John Piper
John Piper demonstrates that God’s gracious promises are the power by which we overcome everyday sins and honor God more fully.
I can think of two kinds of disturbed responses to this truth. Let me tell you what they are and then give a biblical response to each of them before we look more closely at the battle against the unbelief of anxiety.
Is This Good News?
One response goes something like this: “This is not good news! In fact, it is very discouraging to learn that what I thought was a mere struggle with an anxious disposition is rather a far deeper struggle with whether I trust God.” My response to this is to agree but then to disagree. Suppose you had been having pain in your stomach and had been struggling with medicines and diets of all kinds to no avail. And then suppose that your doctor tells you, after a routine visit, that you have cancer in your small intestine. Would that be good news? You would say no, emphatically! And I would agree.
But let me ask the question another way: Suppose the doctor discovered the cancer while it is still treatable, and that indeed it can be very successfully treated? Would you be glad? You would say yes, you would be very glad that the doctor found the real problem. Again, I would agree. So finding out that you have cancer is not good news. It’s bad news. But, in another sense, it is good to find out because knowing what is really wrong is good, especially when the problem can be treated successfully.
That’s what it’s like to learn that the real problem behind anxiety is unbelief in the promises of God’s future grace. In a sense, it’s not good news because unbelief is a very serious cancer. But in another sense, it is good news because knowing what is really wrong is good, especially because unbelief can be treated so successfully by our Great Physician. He is able to work in wonderfully healing ways when we cry out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
So I want to stress that finding out the connection between our anxiety and our unbelief is, in fact, very good news; it is the only way to focus our fight on the real cause of our sin and to get the victory that God can give us through the therapy of his word and his Spirit. When Paul says, “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12), he calls it “good” because the fight is focused exactly on the right cancer: unbelief.
How Can I Have Any Assurance at All?
There is another possible response to the truth that our anxiety is rooted in our failure to live by faith in future grace. It goes like this: “I have to deal with feelings of anxiety almost every day, so I feel like my faith in God’s grace must be totally inadequate. I wonder if I can have any assurance of being saved at all.”
My response to this concern is a little different. Suppose you are in a car race and your enemy, who doesn’t want you to finish the race, throws mud on your windshield. The fact that you temporarily lose sight of your goal and start to swerve does not mean that you are going to quit the race. And it certainly does not mean that you are on the wrong racetrack. Otherwise, the enemy wouldn’t have bothered you at all. What it means is that you should turn on your windshield wipers and use your windshield washer.
When anxiety strikes and blurs our vision of God’s glory and the greatness of the future that he has planned for us, this does not mean that we are faithless or that we will not make it to heaven. It means that our faith is being attacked. At first blow, our belief in God’s promises may sputter and swerve. But whether we stay on track and make it to the finish line depends on setting in motion a process of resistance by grace—whether we fight back against the unbelief of anxiety. Will we turn on the windshield wipers, and will we use our windshield washer?
The root cause of anxiety is a failure to trust all that God has promised to be for us in Jesus.
Psalm 56:3 says, “When I am afraid, / I put my trust in you.” Notice that it does not say, “I never struggle with fear.” Fear strikes, and the battle begins. So the Bible does not assume that true believers will have no anxieties. Instead, the Bible tells us how to fight when they strike. For example, 1 Peter 5:7 says to cast “all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” It does not say, “You will never feel any anxieties.” It says that when you have them, cast them on God. When the mud splatters your windshield and you temporarily lose sight of the road and start to swerve in anxiety, turn on your wipers and squirt your windshield washer fluid.
So my response to the person who has to deal with feelings of anxiety every day is to say, “That’s more or less normal.” At least it has been for me, ever since my teenage years. The issue is how do we fight them?
The Two Great Faith Builders
The answer to that question is that we fight anxieties by fighting against unbelief and fighting for faith in future grace. And the way you fight this “good fight” is by meditating on God’s assurances of future grace and by asking for the help of his Spirit. The windshield wipers are the promises of God that clear away the mud of unbelief, and the windshield washer fluid is the help of the Holy Spirit. The battle to be freed from sin is “by the Spirit” (Rom. 15:16; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2) and by “the truth” (John 17:17, 19): the work of the Spirit and the word of truth—especially the foundational truth of the gospel that guarantees all the promises of God. These are the great faith builders.
Without the softening work of the Holy Spirit, the wipers of the word just scrape over the blinding clumps of unbelief. Both are necessary—the Spirit and the word. We read the promises of God, and we pray for the help of his Spirit. And as the windshield clears so that we can see the welfare that God has planned for us (Jer. 29:11), so our faith grows stronger and the swerving of anxiety smooths out.
This article is adapted from Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure by John Piper.
Related Articles
How to Pray When You’re Feeling Anxious
Anxiety may misdirect us, or, properly grasped, may point us to the right path.
John Piper on Theocracy, Igniting Revolutions, and Patriotism in the Church
Christ claims in every family, and in every business, and in every school, and in every church, and in every political party, and in every nation a superior allegiance, a superior love.
4 Prayers to Pray When You’re Anxious
Read four prayers from church history along with passages from Scripture, and be encouraged to know the Lord hears you.
Podcast: The Story Behind ‘Desiring God’ (John Piper)
John Piper looks back on almost 40 years since his book Desiring God was published and the ministry it has served.
