Don’t Wrestle, Just Nestle

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. PHILIPPIANS 4:6–7

Corrie ten Boom wrote a little booklet with the title Don’t Wrestle, Just Nestle. It went out of print, and in one of her recorded addresses she mentions hoping to see it reprinted. The title sums up her teaching on worry better than any summary could. Most of us wrestle with our anxieties — argue with them, try to reason them away, lie awake rehearsing them. She urged her hearers to stop wrestling and nestle instead: to bring every care to God and leave it with Him, as a child rests in a parent’s arms.

The bag of burdens

Her most vivid teaching on worry comes from Ravensbrück, and she tells it in both Power in Prayer and Total Surrender. One morning a great crowd of new prisoners arrived, and her heart felt so heavy she could hardly breathe. She opened her hidden Bible at the fourth chapter of Philippians, and resolved to do exactly what it said.

So she began to tell God every detail of what was weighing on her. She brought Him the newcomers and the suffering that awaited them. She brought Betsie, far too weak to be a prisoner. She brought her friends in Holland, and the queen in exile, and the people of the German cities being bombed night after night. She brought her own hatred, which had risen that morning, and confessed it. She went on and on until she had nothing left to bring. Then she said Amen.

To illustrate this on the platform, she would hold up a handbag. Before the prayer it was heavy; after it, empty. That, she said, was good. That was praying. But what she did next, she confessed, was not good. She took all the burdens back again. Her heart was heavier after her prayer than before it.

Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved. PSALM 55:22

Her point was simple and searching. Prayer is not only the handing over of burdens; it is the leaving of them. Many Christians pray faithfully about their anxieties and then carry them out of the room again. That is not trust. It is a religious form of worry.

Worry as a sin

Corrie took a stronger line on worry than many modern Christians would. In Total Surrender she borrows the words of a teacher she names only as Trumbull, who called worry a sin that defies God and rejects Christ, and she adds that we will never be rid of it unless we treat it as sin. We know what to do with sin: confess it, and be cleansed.

She was not harsh about it. In the same breath she admits, to laughter, that she had not yet graduated in the science of not worrying, and expected to need a postgraduate course. But she insisted that the command not to worry is a real command, meant seriously, and not merely good advice.

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. MATTHEW 6:34

In the same address she gives the substance of a well-known passage from her booklet. Worry, she says, is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength. It does not take the sorrow out of tomorrow; it only takes the strength out of today. It does not help us escape trouble; it leaves us less able to meet it when it comes.

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? MATTHEW 6:27

The tightrope and the escalator

She had other pictures, too. In Total Surrender she compares anxious Christians to tightrope walkers, carrying in one hand a sack of the undigested past and in the other a sack of the anticipated future, always balancing between hope and fear. The surrendered Christian, by contrast, is like someone standing on an escalator: relaxed, and carried steadily upward. A surrendered life, she says, is a relaxed life.

And in Tribulation she uses a saying she did not claim as her own, but loved: look around and be distressed, look within and be depressed, look at Jesus and be at rest.

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. ISAIAH 26:3

All her pictures come to the same place. Worry is a matter of where we are looking. The anxious Christian is looking at the circumstances or at himself. The peaceful Christian is looking at Christ.

A caution about anxiety

A pastoral word needs adding, because Corrie’s strong language about worry as sin can wound people she never meant to wound. There is a difference between the ordinary, chosen habit of fretting — which Scripture does command us to lay down — and the kind of anxiety that is an illness, rooted in the body or in trauma, which no amount of resolve will simply switch off. A Christian suffering from an anxiety disorder is not thereby a worse Christian, and should not be told that more faith would cure it. The command to cast our cares on God still applies, but for such a person it may include accepting help from doctors and counsellors, which is one of the ways God carries His people.

What Corrie was attacking was something else: the settled habit of rehearsing tomorrow’s troubles, of carrying burdens God has offered to carry, of taking back what we have handed over. Most of us know that habit well.

My times are in Thy hand

Behind her teaching on worry lay a large conviction about God, which we will explore in the next chapter. God has no panic. He is working out a plan, and our times are in His hand.

My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. PSALM 31:15

A woman who had stood at roll call in Ravensbrück had every reason to worry. That she could teach the laying down of worry, and laugh at her own failures in it, is a witness in itself. The peace she spoke of was not the peace of someone who had never had cause for fear.

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. PSALM 46:1–2

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Take an empty bag or box. Write each of your present worries on a slip of paper, pray over each, and put it in. Then leave the bag where you cannot easily reach it.

2. When you catch yourself taking a burden back this week, confess it simply and hand it over again.

3. Learn Philippians 4:6–7 by heart. Notice the words with thanksgiving, and include thanks in every prayer about your worries.

4. Ask yourself where you are looking most of the time: around, within, or at Jesus. Choose one habit that will turn your eyes to Him.

5. If your anxiety feels beyond your control, speak to a pastor, a trusted friend or a doctor this month. Accepting help is not a failure of faith.

A PRAYER

Father, I have wrestled with my worries long enough. Teach me to nestle in Your care.

Here are my burdens, one by one: I name them to You and I lay them down. Help me not to pick them up again.

Forgive me for carrying tomorrow with today’s strength. Give me strength for today, and trust for tomorrow.

My times are in Your hand. Keep my mind stayed on You, and guard my heart with Your peace. Amen.