Even after more than twenty-five years of preaching, every time I walk on the platform to preach, I feel a twinge of nervousness. It feels awkward to admit that in writing, but it’s true. I suppose there are some preachers who do not experience this, but many I have talked to experience what they might call nervousness, amping up, or anxiety before preaching. I often tell new preachers not to be surprised that they deal with nerves when they first begin preaching but also after several weeks or even years.

It is not only our own sense of nervousness that grips us with anxiety these days. It is also the broader societal context. In 1947, the poet W. H. Auden described the mid-20th century as “the age of anxiety” in which a sense of fragmentation following two world wars left those inhabiting the modern era feeling rootless and disillusioned.[1]

It might not be too great a stretch to describe our own day as a sort of “the new age of anxiety.” Living through COVID, waves of racial injustice, the challenges of regional wars and environmental pressures, as well as the pervasive uncertainty of the political climate leaves us soaked in a sense of anxiety, as recent studies have clearly shown.[2]

As preachers we are not immune to this. We not only deal with our personal nervousness about the act of preaching but also an environment of anxiety around the globe. What does it look like to preach through anxiety?

Two Aspects of Anxiety in the Bible

Several years ago, as I prepared a sermon series on human sexuality for our congregation, I felt tremendous amounts of stress. I wrestled with how best to faithfully preach what I understood as scriptural teaching on the matters, while also pastoring our congregation with clarity and charity.

My weeks of study and sermon writing were filled with little prayers for God’s help and peace that led into deeper experiences of tension as I stepped up to preach my sermons. All throughout that experience I wondered if there was any way to avoid this.

When we turn to Scripture to better understand anxiety, we are apt to readily think of Jesus’ words not to worry about life (Matt. 6:25) or the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to “not be anxious about anything” (Phil. 4:6). Well, we might say to ourselves, just stop being anxious then. But even if we know those exhortations, we may miss the point of what our anxiety is telling us and also how to relate to God through that anxiety.

In the Bible, there are two large categories of anxiety that are relevant to us in the task of preaching. I would like to call one everyday anxiety and the other holy anxiety.

Everyday Anxiety

Everyday anxiety is what we usually refer to as anxiety within our current world. Everyday anxiety is the nervousness we feel around certain actions, like standing up before others to speak, going out on a first date, or going somewhere we have never been before. The nervousness we feel in these times is normal and tells us that we need to be more alert and attentive to what is happening around us. This everyday anxiety serves as a sort of guardian over our lives.

During these sorts of situations, the biblical exhortations from Jesus and Paul enter in, encouraging us to trust God with our fears and worries. The God described in the Bible is capable to help us and is faithfully present with us in each and every one of these situations.

It is helpful to know that Paul’s words about not being anxious in Philippians 4:6 encourage us as believers to convert our anxiety into prayer, the means of ongoing, trusting conversation with our God who is also our Father. We can trust that God, even as we have appropriate concern about what is before us.

This is also true for us as we preach. When we feel everyday anxiety in our preaching, it is helpful to know both that it is normal and that God is there with us. God in Christ is with us as Immanuel as we tremblingly proclaim God’s message. God is able to use humble, fumbling messengers, whether they be Moses—“I have never been eloquent” (Ex. 4:10), Paul—“I did not come with eloquence” (1 Cor. 2:1), or others. God can use humble, fumbling messengers like us, too.

Now, there are times when our experience of anxiety can become so amped up that we cannot think our way out of it. This is often where anxiety requires more intensive help or therapy that I cannot fully address here. It is nothing to be ashamed of that sometimes we may need help from others with our anxiety, especially in light of the past ten years of world events.

Holy Anxiety

But there is something else beyond everyday anxiety that we see in Scripture that is relevant to our task as preachers. It is something I would like to call holy anxiety.

On the one hand, we are encouraged by Scripture to not be afraid, to not worry, and to not be anxious about our lives. Concurrently, we see that human experience within Scripture is often marked by a sense of deep anxiety before God. It is voiced by the question asked as the ark of the covenant is returned to Israel: “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God?” (1 Sam. 6:20).

When we think about our lives as people marked by sin and brokenness, we understand there is something we need to receive from God and yet to stand before God is a fearful thing.

As preachers, realizing that we stand before others speaking to them from the very Word of God may lead us to a sense of holy anxiety. How can it be, we may wonder, that an unholy sinner like me can stand before others and presume to speak of God? Even more, we may be gripped with the fact that we also stand before God as we stand before others.

The Apostle James’ words may heighten this sense of anxiety when we read: “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (Jam. 3:1).

The Transformation of Anxiety through Jesus

So, when we consider the life of the preacher, it should not surprise us that we sometimes deal with anxiety. Yes, we deal with the anxieties of our own person, the sort of everyday anxiety that grips us and our society today where we worry, feel afraid, and feel ill at ease in our own skin. We pray and hope that God will speak through us, and for some of us that involves a tremendous amount of effort, leaving our anxieties in the hands of God. I can think of many times when I have trembled, and my own sense of personal everyday anxiety has overcome me as I stood up to preach.

But it’s not only this everyday anxiety that we deal with but also this holy anxiety that grips us. It is truly a humbling, and sometimes anxiety-inducing, act to preach the Word of God. It should lead us into holy fear and trembling. And yet it is an awesome privilege.

If we only live with these two aspects of anxiety in our minds as preachers, the everyday anxiety that grips human existence and the holy anxiety before the presence of God, we will miss out on how anxiety can actually be a pathway to an encounter with God. It was Jesus, in fact, who carried all our burdens into the presence of God.

All of us will remember Jesus’ night in the Garden of Gethsemane before his arrest where he wrestled in prayer before the Father. Jesus, in fact, became the locus of all human anxiety, bearing it at the Cross and transforming it through his death and resurrection. Because Jesus has born and redeemed our anxieties, we can now live free in the presence of God, not weighed down by everyday anxiety or dreading God through holy anxiety.

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection radically change our encounter with both everyday anxiety and holy anxiety. We live by faith through Jesus in a way that radically drains away our anxieties at this level, echoing what the Apostle John writes: “perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18).

Still, knowing we are saved through Christ by grace, we do live with a sense of holy reverence in our lives with God, as the Apostle Paul writes, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Thus, our encounter with anxiety, whether everyday or holy, can move through that anxiety to a new place. And because of this, our preaching is freed from the burden of anxiety even though we may wrestle with it as we step into the pulpit to proclaim God’s message to a congregation.

Because of Christ, our Immanuel, who ministers to us the mercy and faithfulness of God, we can now preach freed from anxiety while with a sense of deep trust and reverence before God and others. Our preaching will inevitably be marked by our imperfections as human messengers, but God can handle that and carry us through that.

[1] W. H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue, W. H. Auden Critical Editions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

[2] Bethan Ackerley, “Anxiety really has increased over the past 10 years – but why?”, NewScientist, 3 April 2024, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234851-900-anxiety-really-has-increased-over-the-past-10-years-but-why/.

Matt Erickson serves as the Senior Pastor of Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.