Bible Verses About Anxiety

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

“Careful” here means full of care, anxious. Paul’s instruction is to convert every anxiety into a request, and the promise is peace standing guard.

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

The shortest, most complete answer to anxiety in the Bible: God’s care for you is the reason He wants your cares.

“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”

Jesus’ longest teaching on worry. His two arguments: your Father demonstrably feeds smaller creatures, and worry has never once changed an outcome.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”

David wrote this while betrayed and hunted. Sustaining grace, not vanished trouble, is the promise.

“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Five first-person promises in one verse. God answers anxiety with Himself.

“In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.”

A verse for the crowded mind: God’s comfort is at work inside the multitude of anxious thoughts, not waiting for them to clear.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Jesus bequeaths His own peace to His people. It differs from the world’s version by not depending on circumstances.

“What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.”

Eleven words that make a plan: fear will come, and when it comes, it will be redirected into trust.

“Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.”

An honest diagnosis of what anxiety does to a person, and the healing power of the right word at the right time.

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Jesus confines worry to today, where grace actually lives. Tomorrow is not yours to carry yet.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;”

The psalmist imagines the worst case imaginable, mountains falling into the sea, and still concludes: therefore we will not fear.

“The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”

Written from the middle of catastrophe. Waiting on God is not passivity; it is where anxious souls find He is good.