As commonplace as it is for well-meaning Christians to refer their anxious friends to Philippians 4:6-7, don’t these verses sometimes come across as irritatingly simplistic?

As a reminder, here they are: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

If you’re an OCD person like we are, doesn’t that make you want to cry out, Oh, come on! That’s all you’ve got? “Do not be anxious about anything?” If I could, I would! But, dutifully, we sigh and follow the formula anyway, muttering, “God, please take away my anxiety. Oh—and thanks.”

Then nothing happens.

But as I’ve progressed in my OCD recovery, I’ve come to a new understanding of Philippians 4:6-7. We’re not being instructed simply to shut down anxiety with willpower. It’s not Nike telling us to “just do it.” We’re being called to look in a different direction that’ll change our expectations entirely. That’s the only way these verses will work.

Let me illustrate. Imagine your mental state as a cone, like a paper coffee filter. At the top is the big, open end, but it tapers down to a tiny, pointed end. Peace, of course, is up top where it’s spacious. OCD is at the constricting bottom. You and I are bottom-focused. OCD draws us to the extreme depths of that pointy end—an increasingly small world with no room for choices or solutions. It’s just us and the object of our obsession.

Despite feeling more and more compressed, limited, squeezed, and alone, we still look downward. And as we descend to that pointy end, we progressively jettison family, friends, freedom, and even God. Now it’s just me and one option: fussing over this anxious thought until I feel better.

Oh, we’re nothing if not focused, right? A dog with a bone. The trouble is, with our eyes locked on that pointy end of the cone, we begin to think that’s the only place to look. We’re absolutely unaware of the vastness above us, just sitting there waiting. Worse, if our consciences prick us and we try to squeeze God in, it’s just to beg, God, come down into this suffocating space alongside me and enable me to see what I must see, exactly as I need to see it.

But God is open to options we’ve eliminated, isn’t He? He’s not obliged to indulge us—to enable us. From where He’s standing, the pointy end isn’t the only point. In fact, it’s not His point at all.

There’s a potent story about the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 19 that illustrates what I’m talking about.

In verse 10, we find Elijah hiding out in a remote cave. God (who, in my mind’s eye, is invisible and secretly sitting on a nearby rock) asks him why he’s hiding. Elijah replies, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”

Having heard that answer, God essentially sighs, claps his hands on His thighs and, standing, replies, “Mm-hm. Well, you’ve made your point. Tell you what—let’s have you go outside for a minute. I’ve got something to show you, and—brace yourself—I’ll have to make a personal appearance to do it.”

Here’s how that plays out in verses 11-13:

The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face.

Elijah had been sitting self-absorbed in his cave, cut off from every possibility except misery. God came, but not into the constrained space to which Elijah had limited himself. He thought bigger. And, having just demonstrated—spectacularly—that He didn’t necessarily come to humans precisely as expected, God asked Elijah once more why he was hiding out. But Elijah, unfazed, just repeated what he’d said earlier.

In my imagination, I’ve got God slapping his forehead and saying “Oi vey” here, followed by, “Son, do you need me to draw you a picture?” So, in verses 15-18, He does. He proceeds to turn Elijah around, get the silly cave out of his head, and get him back out there doing his prophet thing and undertaking Big Plans—plans Elijah couldn’t even have considered with his eyes fixed on his own desolation.

Do you see how we make Elijah’s same mistake with OCD? We, too, run into a confining cave, the tight end of the cone, and think that’s where the answers are. And even when God calls us to back out of there—which, OCD Christians, He most certainly does—we constrain Him to intervening within the boundaries our anxiety-limited minds expect Him to. But God sees more. He sees from a different vantage point, in an unimaginably bigger space.

So, back to the Apostle Paul’s admonition to “not be anxious about anything.” Do you see how Paul’s coming from that same vantage point? Just as God did with Elijah, Paul’s not telling us to stay inside the confines of our tiny paradigm, flip a switch, and simply quit being anxious. That would be just as absurd and un-doable as it sounds like. What he’s asking us to do is back away and come into a bigger space where there’s more—much more—than the excluding thing we’ve been looking at. He wants us back at the big end of the cone.

When someone tells you to focus on Philippians 4:6-7, then, it’s not coming from a place of pat answers and triteness. It’s coming from a bigger space, a different paradigm—the paradigm that they’re in. It’s them hoping—perhaps, even, in a whisper—that you will join them there. The resolution to our OCD episodes isn’t inside the choking, airless intensity at the pointy end. God invites us out into space, to open our minds to something else entirely, and to hear him on His terms. He’s not saying, “Just don’t do that.” He’s saying, “Come out here and let’s talk. Oh—and keep in mind that I reserve the right to speak to you in ways you may not have expected.”