My Battle with Anxiety, pt. 2

The Breakthrough Continued:

I knew I had to start dealing with my fear, my anxiousness, my distrust.

I was a butterfly stuck in my cocoon; I knew what He wanted me to do but I was hesitant to step out or even stand up. How can you minister to people if you can’t show up?

One day I was tormented because I was fighting the dream that God had put on my heart.  I wasn’t being obedient to His calling on my life. I went out on a prayer walk around my property and very clearly I heard Him.

He said “I trust you why don’t you trust me?”

El Roi – The God who sees – Hagar calls God this when He talks to her in the wilderness after she ran away from Sarah, when you suffer from anxiety you feel invisible, or you want to feel invisible. This is a coping mechanism for anxiety. I had to get in my heart that He saw me – not just the anxious me but the me that He intends me to be. The God of all creation Elohim trusted me (because He knew what He could do with me) yet I didn’t trust Him.

Think about this – as a parent, think about when your child is scared or hurting, and you tell them ‘it’s going to be ok.” Or “don’t worry, I’m here with you” and you know that you love this child so much that you would give your life for them but they look at you like “I don’ believe you mom” “I don’t believe you know how to look for monsters under the bed” or maybe as teenagers when you get that blank look from them and you know they are thinking “I don’t believe you know what I am going through.” They doubt what you are saying.  Now think about how we treat the Lord, He is telling us “Don’t be afraid” He is telling us “I know how you feel and it is all going to be ok” and He already died for us, He already gave His life for us, and we still don’t believe Him, we still struggle with trusting Him.

He gave me a gift, a gem called Psalm 46:10 – Be still and know that I am God

Through a process – the butterfly left her cocoon.  A process of surrender, a process of taking one step at a time and trusting Him to be there with every step, a process of believing Luke 1:45 “You will be blessed because you believe the Lord will do what He says He will do.”

I had breakthrough, I am no longer coping with anxiety – I have tools and strategies in place to defeat it.

Our God is a God of breakthrough and He will fight for us – He will physically fight for us. When I start getting anxious, I close my eyes and picture Jesus clearing out the temple, He was so angry that they were defiling the Temple, that’s how He feels about us, we are precious in His sight and hates the sin that corrupts us and holds us back.

(1 Cor. 3:16) “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”  Allow Him to clean you, allow Him to turn those tables of greed, pride, insecurities over and destroy that which is keeping you from breaking through.

The Complete Jewish Bible reads 2 Samuel 5:20 …” Adonai has broken through my enemies for me like a river breaking through its banks.”

In Ezekiel 47 we read about going deeper in a river. Think about this, when we go deeper in the river – when we get to that point that we are relying on the Holy Spirit instead of trying to do things on or own, Adonai can break through the banks of the river – He can do exceedingly abundantly more than we can imagine.  And that is what God has been doing in my life since my breakthrough

God has been blessing me ever since because I am trusting Him to do what He says He is going to do in my life. I still have moments – our flesh is our worst enemy. But each time I surrender and am obedient to Him, I am blessed. I remember to trust – I remember what He has already done in laying His life down for me.

By His stripes we are healed – this is a gift He gives us, but we still must accept that gift.  I always felt like I was held captive in my cocoon when in reality, there came a time when I was making a choice to stay there. I needed to choose to accept His gift of healing and trust Him. I needed to surrender to Him and allow him to mold me and make me, and that made me very vulnerable, yet it was a beautiful process in my life. It wasn’t easy by any means, but I still had to be the one to decide each step of the way to take the next step. And with each step it became easier and easier.