Anxiety attacks

1 October, 2008 (John)

Have you ever had anxiety build up to the point where it feels like you’re going to completely crumble? Where you have a permanent headache and there is a sickening sensation through your whole body? Where you do the things that normally get rid of stress, and yet it just keeps building and building? Anxiety attacks are probably different for everyone, but perhaps you have an idea what I mean.

When it happened to me I knew that it was completely out of proportion to the problem, yet I just couldn’t shake it. As it got worse and worse, my anxiety about the problem was compounded by anxiety about my level of anxiety. Was I going to have a nervous breakdown? Surely not, but…

I woke up in the middle of the night with a feeling of being overwhelmed by stress. It felt like something inside me could just snap causing me to fall into a helpless vegetative state. I’ve seen the results of someone having a nervous breakdown and it both made me more afraid and more determined to dig deep and fight it. If something like this ever happens to you in the night, do what I did - get up! Somehow lying in bed with your head going round in circles is the worst. I got up, sat in the lounge in my favorite spot and just prayed. I really don’t know exactly when or how the lights started to go on inside me, but a few things slowly dawned on me as I sat there praying and thinking. First, that there must be some deep underlying fear in me to feel this overcome by anxiety. What was I really afraid of? I knew getting to the bottom of the fear would help me sort things out. But also I realized it was a spiritual attack, made possible by an underlying root of fear. In Hebrews 2:15 it talks about those who through the fear of death were subject all their lifetime to bondage. I’m not sure I intellectually understand the connection, but intuitively I totally grasp how fear provides footholds to the devil. In my case the fear turned out to be in a broad sense the fear of man. Fear that I would be seen to fail in the eyes of others, especially my wife. I guess the fear of what others think is common to the human condition. Even if we can stomach failure or loss ourselves, it’s often harder to bear being seen as a failure by others. But such anxieties are a great hindrance to serving God (Proverbs 29:25).

So rooting out where it was coming from did show me where to counter it in my thoughts and spiritual life. But the greater and more general power in dealing to the problem lay in recognizing that it was a spiritual attack and both praying against it and refusing to be subject to its despondent thoughts. The verse came to me from Revelation 5:5 about Jesus being the lion of the tribe of Judah. Yes, he is the lamb; gentle, peaceful and bringing forgiveness. But he is also the lion. And the lion is courageous, strong and masculine. Adapting the verse that talks about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14), I repeated to myself ‘put on the lion of the tribe of Judah’. ‘Put on your strength’. And here I discovered something I wish I’d understood from the start of my Christian walk. That there is a big difference between humility, recognition of our own weakness, sinfulness, etc and allowing depressive thoughts. Depressive thoughts can masquerade as being “spiritual”. For example we can be depressed about the world and think it’s just because we’re so non-worldly, when in fact it’s an excuse for non-engagement. Depressive thoughts are in fact a spiritual attack and if we realize that and recognize them when they come then we can quickly counter with prayer and faith, and turn around the downward feeling inside us into and upward one. We can rejoice in God’s strength and the fact that his strength is in us.

Of course, we can’t draw on this power of God if we are allowing ourselves to be captive to sin. If you’re harboring a root of sin, no amount of understanding will save you from the natural consequences. Sin creates fear which in turn brings bondage and makes us open to depression. In this case though I hadn’t been able to understand what was going on because I was walking as purely as I could before God and still things were spiraling down. OK, the fear of man is actually a sin, however beyond that it was my lack of ability to recognize and counter depressive thoughts that was proving to be my greatest problem.

The night before God sorted all this out my wife and I prayed together. While we were praying it came to mind quite clearly the impression that I would come through this and it would be transformative. It was. By the time I went back to bed I felt 100% better. In fact I felt joyful, and totally accepted the problem that was at hand including any consequences , all without any stress at all. A couple of days went by with me feeling fine about the problem then I just said to the Lord. “Well, you know I accept this, but can you please just solve it anyway”. I actually had no expectation that God would move so swiftly, but through about 3-4 different steps the entire (financial, career related) problem was solved within a week. I believe God held all the solutions back to test and strengthen me, and then when the work had been done opened the way.

It’s interesting, because now I have a much better understanding of the ministry of one of my friends, who ministers quite a bit to Christians on the subject of motivation. You see, I’ve found it hard to separate that from seeming like some kind of prosperity doctrine (which he’s always assured me it isn’t). But he went through a time of testing when he was new to the country that was far more major than anything I’ve been through, and went through his own experience of finding hope and courage in the Lord¹. I understand now that when you’ve been there and found God’s strength, you’ve found something that’s of great value to share with others. So many Christians are bogged down in some form of negativity, yet God did not intend for us to be in a disempowered stupor. He intended for us to be empowered through the Holy Spirit to serve him. We live in a very genteel Christian society that likes to emphasise the lamb, but we need the lion in us too.

Still, some caution is needed. It could become prosperity doctrine if allowed to develop into over self-confidence. We need to get the balance right; knowing that God upholds and strengthens us and will provide for our needs regardless of outward circumstances, but at the same time recognizing our own absolute need for God’s grace and protection day by day. We are weak, but God is strong. As long as we know that we’re only wearing HIS strength we can avoid being puffed up by it. Besides, even when everything is going well for us, we don’t have to look far in this world to find a cause that breaks our heart and brings us back on our knees before God with a deep awareness of need.

I pray that if you ever face the same kind of thing that these thoughts will help you overcome by faith.

Go to full blog list