Did you know that anxiety plagues one out of every thirteen people worldwide, causing a variety of physical and mental health problems, which include depression, headaches, high blood pressure, and extreme fatigue? I don’t have to tell you that we live in a pressure-cooker world that treats anxiety as if it were a common-place disorder. The world tells us that we must learn to live with it. However, that’s not what God teaches us in Scripture.
Years ago, when I was going through my divorce, my anxiety kept me in a constant state of loss. I was a Christian, but I had more of a practicing religious attitude than a personal relationship with God. God had to turn my world upside down to turn my heart right side up. There was no place or person who could “fix” my situation. No matter how hard I tried to make my life better, I reached a point where I could no longer deny that my world was falling apart. What I didn’t realize at the time was that God was trying to teach me to set my anxiety aside and put my trust in Him. That’s when I found my “God chair” and learned to get intimate with God through prayer.
When I learned to pray and let go so God could handle my concerns instead of me playing “Miss Fix-it,” I began to enjoy the full richness of God’s plan for my life. Not only did my life make an incredible turnaround, but I began to actually hear the voice of God. I would lose myself in prayer, surrender myself to Him, and He would speak to me. Well, His voice didn’t come from a burning bush or a thundering rumble from the sky. It was not nearly so dramatic. Instead, it was more of a whispering about something that would pop into my mind, seemingly out of nowhere.