christian meditation anxiety

There was a time in my life when anxiety did not visit occasionally but seemed to take up residence within me. It was not vague unease but a sustained inner pressure that followed me into the morning and lay down with me at night. My thoughts circled endlessly around a single unfolding situation that felt beyond my control, and no amount of reasoning or prayerful effort seemed able to quiet the mind. In this page I share the story of that situation, not as confession but as context, because it was within that deeply anxious experience that the words of the Master Jesus Christ—“Take no thought for tomorrow”—ceased to be familiar scripture and became living instruction. What unfolded from that encounter reshaped my understanding of Christian meditation and revealed, in a way I could not have anticipated, how anxiety begins to loosen when thought is no longer obeyed.

At the time of writing this in 2026, I am seventy-five years old, or as I sometimes say to friends and family, “seventy-five years bold.” I am in good health, yet like many of my contemporaries I take medication for cholesterol. This requires that once each year I undergo blood tests to monitor cholesterol levels and kidney function. What should have been a routine medical appointment became, for a number of years, a source of disproportionate anxiety.

The pattern was predictable. Some weeks before the test, the doctor’s assistant would telephone to say it was time for Tony to come in. From that moment, something tightened within me. My thoughts would begin circling around the upcoming appointment as though it were an approaching crisis. For months beforehand there was a background hum of unease, but in the final week it intensified. For three days before the test I would sleep poorly. On the night before the procedure I would not sleep at all. By the time I arrived at the surgery I was physically exhausted, my body worn down not by illness but by anticipation. After the blood had been taken, I would return home and collapse into sleep for the remainder of the day and often through the night.

It reached the point where I sought help through hypnotherapy and spent a considerable amount of money attempting to resolve what felt irrational and yet utterly compelling. The intervention did not work for me. The anxiety remained. The annual telephone call carried with it an inner disturbance that seemed entirely out of proportion to the event itself. It was as though the procedure had become larger than life, occupying mental space far beyond its actual significance.

Today, when that same telephone call comes, it passes through my day almost unnoticed. I do not look forward to the procedure, but it no longer occupies my mind. On the night before the test I sleep as I normally do. I arrive rested. The event takes place, and life continues. The outer circumstance has not changed. What has changed is my relationship to thought.

In this article you will discover how anxiety is sustained by identification with thought, what the Master meant when he said “Take no thought,” and how a simple daily Christian meditation practice can loosen anxiety at its root. This is not theory. It is lived experience grounded in the words of Jesus and tested within ordinary life.

Christian Meditation and Anxiety

Before I unfold the practice that led to this easing of anxiety, I acknowledge that this particular situation may not mirror your own. The circumstances that provoke anxiety differ from person to person. For some it is health. For others it may be finances, relationships, work, or an uncertain future. Yet beneath these surface differences there is often a common movement of mind, a recurring habit of projecting tomorrow into today and living as though what has not yet happened is already upon us. It is this movement that I began to question.

What I share here is not a technique for managing symptoms, but a practice rooted in the words of the Master himself. This page forms part of the wider Christian Meditation series, grounded in the sayings and directions of Jesus, where repentance, entering the secret place, giving no thought, and abiding in ME unfold as a coherent path of contemplative practice.

What Did Jesus Mean by “Take No Thought”?

When the Master said, “Take no thought,” he was not offering casual advice about trying not to worry. Many hear those words as impractical and dismiss them without investigation. Yet the invitation cannot be understood at the level of behaviour alone. It requires a deeper recognition, one that most people pass through life without clearly seeing.

Let me state it plainly, and it may evoke resistance. Let the resistance arise if it does, but do not immediately believe it. The statement is this: you are not your thoughts.

If I am aware of a thought, then I cannot be identical with that thought. This is not a philosophical abstraction but something that can be observed directly in the quiet of early morning before the day gathers momentum. Anxiety persists when thought is mistaken for identity. Freedom begins when awareness is recognised as prior to thought.

The Practice: Watching Thoughts Like Clouds

Let me take you into the practice that I began to follow each morning, and at times during the day, which you may adapt to your own circumstances. It begins immediately upon waking, before I rise from the bed. I do not reach for the phone. I do not turn on the radio. I allow the quiet of the morning to remain quiet. There is something tender and unformed in those first moments of consciousness, and I have come to treasure them. Often I remain there for some time, sometimes for an hour, though more commonly until there is a natural sense that it is time to enter the day.

In that stillness, thoughts begin to appear. Some are practical. Others are projections. The anxious mind may begin rehearsing the future. Here the practice unfolds. Awareness is like the open sky. Thoughts are like clouds passing through it. Some clouds are light and barely noticed. Others gather density and appear dark and threatening. The anxious thought about a medical test, or about any imagined tomorrow, can seem like a storm forming on the horizon. Yet the sky itself is not disturbed by the clouds that move within it. The sky does not chase them, nor does it resist them. It allows them to pass.

Anxiety arises when the cloud is mistaken for the sky, when the passing formation is believed to define the whole. The practice begins to alter your relationship to life at precisely this point. You discover that you do not have to attach yourself to every thought that appears. You can allow it to arise and dissolve without entering into its narrative. When attachment occurs, the body responds as though the imagined future were already real, and anxiety is the result. When awareness remains as awareness, the cloud moves on, and a deeper steadiness is revealed.

Deny Himself: The End of Anxious Identity

This is the practice to which the Master points when he says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.” The denial spoken of here is not self-rejection. It is the relinquishing of mistaken identity. In the context of anxiety, it is the quiet refusal to believe that you are, in essence, everything you think about yourself.

For many years I was attempting to save my life through thought. I was trying to secure outcomes, anticipate danger, and protect myself from imagined futures. Yet the Master also says, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it.” The life we attempt to preserve through anxious control becomes constricted. When that effort relaxes, space opens for a deeper LIFE to move through us — a LIFE not governed by fear of tomorrow.

To deny oneself in this sense is to deny that the anxious narrative is the truth of who you are. It is to see that thought is passing content within awareness, not identity itself. As this identification loosens, anxiety loses its foundation. What remains is steadiness, Presence, and a quieter participation in the day that is actually before you.

Guided Christian Meditation for Anxiety

For many who read this, what I have described may feel unfamiliar. You may have been taught to manage anxiety, to analyse it, or to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. The invitation here is quieter and more radical. It does not ask you to fight thought or improve it. It asks you to see that you are not confined to it. That recognition alone can feel new. If resistance arises, let it arise. If questions surface, let them surface. This is not a system to be believed but a practice to be explored. I welcome your reflections and your questions, because this way unfolds not through persuasion but through lived experience.

In the weeks ahead I will record a guided Christian meditation based on the instruction that changed my relationship to anxiety: “Take no thought for tomorrow.” That meditation will allow you to enter the practice directly rather than merely read about it. Sometimes understanding deepens not through explanation but through participation.

If what you have read here resonates, I encourage you to explore the full Christian Meditation series, moving slowly through the unfolding invitations: repentance as inner reorientation, entering the secret place, giving no thought, and abiding in ME. Together they form a path of contemplative practice grounded in the words of the Master and tested within the ordinary circumstances of human life.