While planning for my third trip across the country in as many weeks to help with an aging parent, I contemplated my luggage. Why, I thought, do I travel with so much stuff? Am I afraid I will run out of some essential item: medicine, hair goop, writing paper? Am I traveling to some hinterland in which I will be unable to buy any missing item?

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I think longingly about the Lord’s instructions to His 12 disciples before the first of their assigned missionary journeys: And he said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics” (Luke 9:3). But I, to the contrary, seem to plan for every contingency with “just in case” clothes and toiletries.

“What is going on?” I asked the Lord. Perhaps the answer lies in what all that stuff means to me. Though I’m not a Depression-era baby, my grandparents lived through those meager years. Only one side of the family suffered from the proclivity to hoard, but oh, with what excellence did they hoard: Two houses filled to the brim with stuff, stuff, and more stuff!

As a trained mental health counselor, I know that hoarding and overall “stuff” collection can be a sign of anxiety: that is, a compulsive drive to stave off the bad feelings of anxiety and worry by burying them in the collections of a lifetime. I don’t have to dig too deep to understand that “stuff” equals “safety” for many people, myself included. But what does my stuff say about my relationship with the Lord? Is He my security, or is it the stuff?

Paul wrote: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7). This counsel is pretty straightforward, but it can be difficult to execute.

I have become adept at plowing forward regardless of my feelings, allowing them to bottle up, and failing, therefore, to enumerate them before the Lord in prayer. Instead, they live on as unarticulated worries and anxieties in the back of my mind until something bursts — like my luggage, purse, or temper.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in America. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, nearly 20% of U.S. adults suffer from anxiety disorders, and more than 30% will have endured some sort of clinical anxiety in their lifetime.

I don’t have a clinical anxiety disorder, but as my luggage testifies, I carry my share of concerns. For me, worries are easy to list, but anxiety is more elusive. Often it is generalized — a pervasive feeling seemingly unlinked to anything in particular, but vaguely connected to the future. And yet, even in this, our Counselor, the Holy Spirit, is faithful to help me understand the root of my anxiety. At times, a good friend, counselor, or spiritual mentor has helped me sort the generalized anxiety into categories that then became easier to set before the Lord.

“Worry is prayer to the wrong god,” one of my spiritual mentors once said. This truth arises in my mind regularly, spurring me to undertake the prayer work Paul advises in Philippians 4.

Sadly, worry can masquerade as answered prayer to the real God. Since most of the things we worry about never happen, we can deceive ourselves into thinking that our worry has staved off the concern. We fool ourselves — possibly aided by our demonic enemies — into believing that our worry was the agent of change. But this type of “fake prayer” will never yield “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.”

Worse, “worry prayer” is an evidence of a lack of faith in the Lord’s ability or desire to hear and act upon my concerns. It’s almost as if I don’t believe this powerful passage: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:27–29).

If God is concerned about my clothing and food, He is surely concerned about my future and that of my family and my country.

As a young believer, I had to learn to pray instead of worry. We learn what we rehearse, and many of us have rehearsed worry; we learned this from our parents, our role models, and even our own experience. Neural networks supporting the habit of worry have been built and reinforced in our brains. We have to allow the Lord to disable those networks and then to build new ones — and new habits, through the reinforcement of godly patterns.

Recent research on brain function supports the revelation the Lord gave Paul so long ago: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

Most counselors would tell us it takes about a month to form a new habit. In a way, building biblical patterns entails applying Paul’s words: … But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13b–14). Paul is talking about maturing — being increasingly conformed into Christ’s image. Building godly habits is essential to spiritual maturity. Forgetting — or dumping — old baggage is key to attaining that goal.

It’s easy to say, “Dump the baggage of worry and anxiety,” but it’s much harder to do it. Our resistance to change tends to be high anyway, and our Enemy makes the level of that resistance soar. Sometimes, we just don’t want to change.

I faced this when the Holy Spirit convicted me of resentment. I lived with a continual low-grade, but easily stoked, resentment. I had repented of this many times but found myself falling into the sin regularly. The Holy Spirit revealed to me a disturbing truth: I liked my resentment. I felt it was “owed” to me. I didn’t want to change.

So I had to start at the beginning of the change process: I had to pray to be willing to be willing to change. And so that is how I prayed, and eventually there came a day when the Lord whispered to me, “You’re ready.” That’s when the repentance, the change, took hold. I still fall occasionally into resentment, but it no longer has a death grip on me. I had changed.

As intercessors, we stand between heaven and earth, pleading the Lord’s case for change over many situations. We know that the prayers of the righteous are of great effect (see James 5:16b). And though we are righteous only because of Christ’s work on the cross, it is our joy, duty, and privilege to be conformed into His image. The apostle Peter wrote: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:14–16). Dumping our spiritual baggage of anxiety, depression, resentment, or desire to control — whatever the issue — all this is part and parcel of the process of transformation.

Here’s what I do myself, and it’s what I help my counseling clients do when they endeavor to build new, godly patterns. These same steps will help you:

• Pray for the Lord’s conviction and for identification of the spiritual baggage you are carrying.
• Ask for specific prayer for the change process; for example, do you need to be made willing to be willing? Or are you ready for the change now?
• Pray as the Holy Spirit leads.
• Ask the Spirit to show you the relevant scriptures that counter your baggage.
• Ask the Spirit to pull down the old neural networks and build new ones that support the truth.
• Ask the Spirit to convict you each time you fall into old habits.
• Rehearse the truth of the Scriptures. Remember that it took you years to learn the old habits; it will take some effort to learn the new ones.
• Praise and thank the Lord for the new patterns in your life. Thank Him that you can leave worry, anxiety, resentment, and all the old baggage behind.

Let’s pray together now:

Father, thank You for the transformation we have in Christ and for the counsel of the Holy Spirit and Your word as we move into the image of Your Son. Help us leave old sin patterns behind and form godly new patterns, so that our times with You in intercession will be pure, holy, and effective. In Jesus’ name.

How has the Lord changed you? Share your praises and prayers below.

New York City–based Joyce Swingle is an intercessor and a contributing writer for IFA. With her husband, Rich, also a contributing writer for IFA, Joyce shares the gospel of Jesus Christ around the world through theater, speaking, writing, and film. Prior to going into full-time ministry, Joyce worked for about 20 major magazines and now works in pastoral ministry and Christian counseling. Photo Credit: Canva.