Bible verses for anxiety, and how to actually pray them

Twelve verses for the racing-thoughts kind of night, grouped by what the anxiety is doing to you, with a short prayer to write for each.

Anxiety does not usually arrive as one clear worry. It arrives as a hundred half-formed ones, all talking at once, most of them about things that have not happened. Praying through it is hard for the same reason: you cannot get a sentence out before the next thought interrupts.

The verses below are the ones people actually reach for. They are quoted word for word from the World English Bible, and they are grouped by what anxiety is doing to you right now, because the verse you need when you cannot sleep is not the verse you need when you are bracing for a phone call. Each group ends with a short prayer you could write down as it is, or change until it is yours.

One honest note first. These verses are not a technique, and they are not a substitute for a doctor when anxiety has become an illness. They are what people have prayed for a very long time when the thoughts would not stop, and they still work the way they always have: slowly, by being returned to.

When you need to hand it over

Most anxious prayer stalls at the first step, which is admitting the thing is too heavy. These are the verses that give you permission to set it down. Notice that none of them promise the problem goes away. They promise that you are not holding it alone.

When the thoughts will not stop

There is a specific kind of anxiety that is not about any one thing. It is the mind running, checking, rehearsing. Two of these verses are about tomorrow, because that is where the running mind lives. The third is about the noise itself.

When you are afraid of what is coming

Some anxiety has a date on it. The scan, the meeting, the conversation you have been putting off. These verses are for the days before. They were written to people who were also waiting for something hard.

When you need to be still

The last verse is the one most people know, and it is worth reading in full rather than on a mug. It is not a suggestion to relax. It is a command from a God who is going to be exalted regardless, which is exactly why you can stop.

Write it down, then let it come back

Anxious prayers have a particular problem: you forget you prayed them. The thing you were terrified of on a Tuesday in March resolves, or does not, and either way the prayer is gone, and with it the evidence that you were carried through. Six months later the same fear returns and you meet it as if for the first time.

This is the reason to write prayers down rather than only think them. A dated prayer is a record you can be shown again. Prayed does this on purpose: write the prayer, and it brings it back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year, so you can see what you asked for beside what came of it. Nothing you write leaves your phone, which matters more for this kind of prayer than for most.

If you only take one thing from this page, take the habit. Pick one verse above, write the prayer beneath it in your own words, and date it. Then let it come back to you.

Write the prayer. Prayed finds the verses.

Prayed is a private prayer journal for iPhone. Write what you're praying for and it matches three verses from the same Bible quoted above, on your phone, then brings the prayer back to you at three days, a week, a month and a year so you see what came of it. No account, no server. Writing is free forever.

Get Prayed on the App Store