FREEDOM FROM ANXIETY….THE SPIRIT OF FEAR!

Over the weekend God showed me that I had not fully surrendered myself when it came to dealing with my anxiety! All this time I thought I was truly free, I thought anxiety was a thing of the past! Technically it was as I hadn’t suffered with it for so long that I fooled myself into thinking I was truly over it, but the catch was I was still heavily relying on medication for it! before we go forward let me take you back to 2018.

Its important for you to know that I had no history of anxiety or depression before 2018, I didn’t even know what anxiety was until then, anxiety wasn’t something really talked about, it’s one of those things that people seem to suffer with privately. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and like a child of hard hearing I ignored doctors advise to use medication, in my defence I had tried some medication back in 2015 when I was first diagnosed, but I had an extreme reaction to it that resulted in me going to A&E with symptoms that were similar to someone going into cardiac arrest (oh the drama of it all!) So after being told to try something else I am sure you can understand why I was reluctant to and decided I would try to manage it myself! Well clearly I failed because by 2018 I found myself back in A&E, same symptoms as before but with blood pressure so high I was told I could have a stroke at any moment! To top it off on that same trip to A&E after having the routine blood test that they give you, when my results came back I was told they had found what looked like a blood clot on my lung!(again, the drama of it all!) After having a scan, being prodded and mishandled by the NHS, and having to inject myself with blood thinners for 3 days, when I received the results of my scan it came back as normal. It was at this point anxiety reared its ugly head! The fear of “what if…” started to set in, I remember my biggest question about my health being “if I don’t have a blood clot, what was up with my first results that said I did??” then it morphed into “I must have something wrong with me, it’s just not a blood clot!” I spiralled out of control at that point, and after numerous visits to my doctor who at the time was THE WORST, I was dismissed and told I was fine without further investigation. I fell in to a dark place from that point, every time I had a palpitation it set me into a panic! I remember one week being in A&E three times because of panic attacks! I was scared to sleep because I feared I wouldn’t wake up, it got so bad that I needed my mum to stay with me because I couldn’t sleep in bed alone. My doctor ended up signing me off work for two months because I was mentally unfit for duty! That’s how bad it got.

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It was at my next doctors appointment that I was offered anti-depressants, now I knew enough to know I didn’t want to take them, as I heard they could be quite addictive, plus I knew I wasn’t depressed! I was just sure I was dying (so dramatic lol) I remember after that appointment I was convinced it was my GP surgery that was the true villain of my story so I found a new practice and spoke to someone new. At this point the severity of my anxiety had reduced where I could sleep alone and was ready to return to normality, even though I was still easily triggered! I remember going to the cinema with friends one night and having a complete meltdown at the start of the movie because it was so loud it caused my seat to vibrate and that, for some unknown reason triggered my anxiety! The only way I could sit through it was to put my headphones in my ears to reduce the sound, after that I didn’t go to the cinema for a very long time out of fear! My new doctor suggested medication I could take that would help to prevent the physical symptoms I was experiencing, since I was assured they would have no affect on my mood, I started to take them! They worked, they reduced some of my physical symptoms so I was able to get a better control of my anxiety. But it never left, I still suffered, I was still triggered, and sleep became a myth because I still carried this fear of dying in my sleep. I just accepted that this was my life now, and I would just have to get used to it! PROVERB 12:25 “ANXIETY IN A PERSON’S HEART WEIGHS IT DOWN, BUT A GOOD WORD CHEERS IT UP.” My anxiety began to control me, I always had to consider my anxiety when doing anything social, I missed out on a lot of things because the fear of “what if…” I just wasn’t the same person! Now let me just say it’s normal to experience anxiety, Life can be like that, but it is not meant to control you!

When I first came to Christ in 2019 I was still sure anxiety was gonna be apart of my life! I was getting to know God and as I got to know Him, TRUST began to build (like it does in any good relationship!) Fear causes us to doubt, and that has been the enemies tactic since Eve in the garden of Eden! 2 TIMOTHY 1 “FOR GOD GAVE US A SPIRIT NOT OF FEAR BUT OF POWER AND LOVE AND SELF-CONTROL.” This verse is what put things in to perspective for me on my journey! I realised that if I was calling myself a child of God, there was no way I should be letting anxiety control me, because what was really going on was that I had allowed the enemy to control me! That scared me but it was the scare I needed to realise I couldn’t have this bondage over me anymore! The enemy might have had control before, but now because of the mighty name of JESUS I had the authority to get rid of that spirit! I had to really start getting into my bible, I had to start a spiritual discipline for myself to get into the habit of reading everyday, and it wasn’t anything major to begin with, it could of been a chapter a day, but I was making the effort to feed myself spiritually, just like you feed your body daily to survive we must also feed our spirits daily to survive, because after all we are in a spiritual battle! JESUS said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God.” (Matthew 4:4) If we are honest there are a lot of mal-nourished Christians out here, and that’s not a judgment but an observation, even I could do better in that department!

I started to notice that my anxiety started to lessen, we went from being best friends, joint at the hip, to friends that got together occasionally for a life catch up and gossip. The more I began to TRUST and BELIEVE in Him, the more I discovered my identity in Christ and what that meant for my life, I started to sleep easier, and before I knew it six months had passed without a whisper from my old pal anxiety! Death was no longer a concern for me, because I had a greater understanding of what eternity meant for me now I was a believer! JAMES 4:7 “SUBMIT YOURSELVES THEREFORE TO GOD. RESIST THE DEVIL, AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU.” That’s exactly what happened! It’s really that simple but we tend to make it much harder than it need be.

Now lets fast forward to present day, like I said before I haven’t suffered with anxiety for a long time, and that’s saying something considering we all just experienced and are still experiencing the most trying time of our generation! This has anxiety alert written all over it! Yet I have not folded, not even once. My mind has been the most sound and at peace considering I have had to go out everyday to work consistently while a potentially fatal virus rages around me, and it’s because of this I know God orchestrated everything leading up to this pandemic because honestly I don’t know how I would have managed if I was still bound! He called me when He did because He knew I would need Him now the most! I say thank you, and thank you some more to Him daily! During my claim to freedom, God showed me that my faith was not complete! Well this whole time I had still been taking my anxiety medication, to be clear I take multiple medications for various things because I am literally falling apart lol So it’s become a habit to pop my pills without thought. I order my meds online because that’s the “thing” these days, and because I take so many I have a repeat prescription. Now please tell me why, of all times my meds were delayed?! Causing me to run out and be without! And please tell me why the only medication I ran out of was my anxiety pills!?! Bare in mind I receive the same amount of meds each delivery, so the fact that I don’t have these particular pills gave me the “Ah hah!” moment, a revelation that I still had trust issues! The Holy Spirit revealed that I had a little more work to do in that department! JAMES 2:22 “YOU SEE, HIS FAITH AND HIS ACTIONS WORKED TOGETHER. HIS ACTIONS MADE HIS FAITH COMPLETE.” This verse refers to Abraham being shown to be right with God because he offered his son to be sacrificed, trusting in God fully, a true act of faith! As I lay in bed feeling the stress of the unknown start to build in my chest, I broke down into tears at the realisation that I wasn’t truly free because my actions were not in line with my claim to faith! But I knew deep down in my heart that I was gonna be ok because I knew that God was testing me, He was asking me to truly let go and trust him! And after a tearful and heart felt prayer after reading that James verse, I some how let it all go! Its been a week without any anxiety pills, “we did it Joe!” (insert Kamala Harris meme here)

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I know now that I didn’t need them, I was hanging onto them like a “break in case of emergency” safety net! But it was all in my sub conscious, because honestly it didn’t register that I was still relying on them! This is why we have the best helper, the Holy Spirit! My heart is in the process of restoration, it is hard, it is making me truly deal with my traumas and I am receiving healing! It is difficult but remember the things that are best for us tend to be. What I was reminded of was faith = action! We can’t claim to believe in God and his promise for us, but we still hold on to fears, we let these fears control us, letting these fears cause us to doubt our Father who doesn’t lie! Now we start to second guess and start trusting in our own feelings, rather than the Word of God! Remember in my previous post I mentioned how our feelings were not facts and how we can’t always trust our hearts, as the bible refers to our hearts as deceitful! Remember faith is acting like God is telling the truth, so take a moment, do a heart check, and ask yourself these important questions, do you live like you believe God is telling the truth? Do your feet move in sync with your faith? This walk with God is impossible without true faith! Our Father is reliable! Our Father is faithful! Our Father is trustworthy! And most of all our Father LOVES us! So whatever you are holding on to, let it go today! It will be the best thing you ever do!

THE CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING….IT’S YOU!

First let me start off by saying Christians are not perfect. Did you catch that? Let me say it again for the people in the back, CHRISTIANS ARE NOT PERFECT! Ok now I’ve got that out of the way I can move on. That took me a while to grasp myself, for a long time I assumed Christians were meant to be perfect people, holding themselves to a standard that us mere mortals could never achieve! I thought “CHURCH” was this building where all these perfect people came together to praise God and look down on all the unsaved people who weren’t apart of this members only club! When that is your view of church, it doesn’t sound that appealing does it? So it’s no surprise that I never saw myself as a church goer. I can count the times I stepped foot in a church in my life on one hand (before I came to Christ) Like I said before I had urges to know God, but unfortunately the one time in my adult life I found myself attending a service, I left feeling unmoved. I remember feeling that everyone was fake and the only thing that seemed to matter to these people was who was wearing what! I never expected church to feel like a fashion show, or a parade of wealth that didn’t seem to give any glory to God! Nobody seemed particularly welcoming and I left feeling like church was full of hypocrites! Imagine Monday through to Saturday your neighbour Mary or John from up the street supposedly being Christians, but nothing about their daily lives reflected a Christ like nature, they weren’t loving to their neighbours, they gossiped about everyone, they only helped themselves, but come Sunday morning they were the first arrivals at service?! When your expectations of church involve the word “perfect” when you meet the John’s and Mary’s you can’t help but feel the idea of church is pointless and not worth getting up for. That’s definitely how I felt about it, I was one of those people that said “I don’t need to go to church to praise God, I can do it from my home” But I didn’t say that because I really knew what I was talking about, remember I had no biblical knowledge at that point, I just used it as a way to validate my reasons for not getting up early, and I found other people just as clueless as myself to strengthen my opinions, talk about the blind leading the blind!

So imagine my surprise when two months into confessing my allegiance to Jesus that I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to find a church! At first I tried to ignore that pull, but you can not ignore God, which I learned very quickly! The more I continued with my Bible study the more I was convicted that I NEEDED a church! Ultimately what I was really craving was a sense of community. My coming to Christ wasn’t your typical story, I had built relationships with fellow believers that lived overseas! It was ok when it came to the odd Whatsapp call or message but I still felt lonely and isolated. Having friends but feeling lonely is a trip! All my friends I had here were not religious, or not believers. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THEREFORE, IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THE NEW CREATION HAS COME: THE OLD HAS GONE, THE NEW IS HERE!” When you accept Christ and allow the change that comes with it, it’s impossible to stay the same person! You naturally start to feel the need to be around people who have the same core beliefs and things in common (That’s another blog post cause we need to discuss how hard those changes can be)

People make up a community, people make up a church, church is community! Church wasn’t designed to be just something you “Do” on a Sunday, church wasn’t meant to be something you do in a list of things, which really is just you doing works to secure a place in heaven, to avoid eternal damnation. How many Christians have you come across that actually believe if you don’t go to church that means you are not saved? I’ve heard people say that they have been told this! These same people who are quick to tell you about your salvation might feel righteous because they attend church every Sunday but all week they live in the spirit of unforgiveness and pride, but you’re the one with a salvation problem! The minds of some baffle me! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “FOR IT IS BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED, THROUGH FAITH- AND THIS IS NOT FROM YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD- NOT BY WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.” So now we know that your attendance at church is not dependant on your salvation, lets talk about why we should go to church.

God didn’t create us to be lone ranger Christians! Our Triune God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, designed us to be in relationship with Him and others! It’s no coincidence that the whole Bible or law is summed up to this, love your neighbour as yourself! (GALATIANS 5:14) When Covid hit in 2020 and lockdowns were implemented, I felt the church was truly tested, churches had never closed their doors before and we were tasked to think outside the box so that we could still find ways to do community worship. I realised then that church was more than a building, here I was watching online services on a Sunday from the comforts of my bedroom, technically in attendance but the feeling was definitely different. Congregations gathered in outdoor spaces, like public parks in some countries, they had their whole services like this, not enclosed in brick and mortar but they were still a church! What made the church was the congregation! The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of that body! The body is made up of believers of Christ, and Christ is the head, the One that leads us! (EPHESIANS 1:22-23)

Think about YOUR body, every part of your body is functional and has a purpose, some parts would have more impact on your life if they were to stop working than others but every part is just as important! Now if we transfer that analogy to the body of believers that make up the church, the body of Christ, that should tell us that we have a responsibility to be more than just church attendees, we all have a role to play, and its not exclusively just for the pastors, church leaders and worship teams! As believers we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, He distributes gifts to us, and we are called to use these gifts, whether it be the gift of healing, wisdom, words of encouragement to build faith, knowledge, or prophecy to name a few, we are called to use them to edify the church, and these same gifts help us to share the Gospel! So our presence when we attend church should be felt, we should be active members within our churches, and when I say active I mean taking part in fellowship with each other, reaching out to other members, building relationships. If we all operated in this way, when someone new shows up on a Sunday, we would naturally make them feel welcomed, showing them what church is really about, giving them a feel of what community is meant to be, now church becomes something you look forward to, not something you numbly experience.

Life is hard, but life is even harder when you accept Christ! So why would you want to do it alone? We need a community of believers who we can come to for wisdom, counselling, encouragement, knowledge, a place where we can communally worship and honour God and really sit in his presence, not like we can’t sit in His presence on our own but there is something powerful about being in a group of people all calling out to God and praising his name, it really changes the atmosphere of the room! This world is designed to lead us astray, to make us question our faith, it’s very easy to let culture infiltrate the standards that God expects us to hold true, we start to compromise ourselves, then instead of walking like Christ, we start to live like everyone else and the light that Jesus called us to be starts to dim, our views start to become worldly and worldliness is just the absence of God! Once we start down that slippery path it becomes very easy for us to fall away from the faith, because the moral of the story is we need a community, we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep us on this narrow road which is not easy to tread! This is why WE NEED CHURCH!

Like I said before we are not perfect, the bible tells us in 1 JOHN 1:8 “IF WE CLAIM TO BE WITHOUT SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.” So bare that in mind when dealing with your fellow brothers and sisters. I know there is a lot of church hurt out there, and there is a lot of unsavoury stories when it comes to the history of some churches, but to me that is just confirmation that perfection doesn’t exist, only Jesus can hold that title! I urge you to find your community, it makes such a difference to your walk. Since I found my Church it has really become a family to me, don’t be mistaken, I prayed over finding a good church, every time I went, my prayer was always for God to plant my feet firmly at my church if this was where He called me to be! I listened intently to the word given and made sure it was God’s word (the importance of Christians knowing their word is also another blog post I need to explore) In no time God ushered me into my church and I am now a part of my worship team, even a few weeks ago I had the privilege of giving my first sermon/word of encouragement, which still baffles me to this day! God has really been present in my life and he is definitely present in my church! I have grown so much more in my faith because of my church, I definitely wouldn’t have experienced the growth I have without it! We need Church like the sick need the hospital, we can bandage ourselves to a certain degree at home with our first aid kits but if we want true healing we need our doctors, and hospitals are where we find them, we need our check ups from our GP’s! So think of the church like going to see our GP for a weekly check up, or think of Church like going to hospital because we are sick and need heart surgery, and our surgeon is King Jesus! Just like we can’t do without hospitals, in that same way know we can’t do without churches!

BACK IN NOVEMBER 2019…

Before I start on this journey it is only right that I start from the beginning. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Cerise, I’m a black single female who found Jesus in November 2019. Now my story is not extraordinary, and for that reason I suspect some might find it relatable, or maybe not *shrugs shoulders* but before you understand where I am at present, you need to know where I came from.

Its funny how God reaches out to you from the most unexpected of places! At 38 yrs old I was enjoying a karaoke app named “Smule”. Now I had been on that app for a solid 5 years! If you enjoy singing, and enjoy meeting new people then this app is very addictive and it consumed a lot of my free time. But still God found me…. I started singing regularly with a guy from the USA ( yes there is always a guy involved *rolls eyes*) not only did we sound great together, we got on very well and became fast friends. Our friendship blossomed very quickly that we started to communicate outside of the app. Now I know you are thinking where does God come into this, well my new friend was a Christian! We had a long distance friendship as I am from the UK, but we spoke everyday! Every so often my friend would share stories from the bible, sounds very random but the way he told them always brought them into the 21st century. He was well aware that I was not a Christian, but he never treated me less than, or made me feel like I was excluded from some special club. He didn’t preach at me, you know like how you see some of the street proclaimers who aggressively scream in peoples faces about repenting, or meeting your end in a pit of flames! He actually never went out of his way to evangelise me like you might think either, what he did was so much better! What he did was share what God had done in HIS life, the life he used to live, the man he used to be, the freedom he found that only comes with following JESUS!

I believed in a God, I knew there was no such thing as evolution, I knew that there had to be something more in this world, the intelligence that comes from constructing this earth was no accident! But even though I believed in A God, I didn’t know what that meant to my life! Who was God, and what did he want from me? In the past I have had strong urges to want to find God, but being that I had nobody around me that subscribed to any kind of doctrine I never knew what to do about it or where to even start! So I carried on and everyday life became a distraction (the enemy is crafty like that)

ACTS 2:39 THE PROMISE IS FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN AND FOR ALL WHO ARE FAR OFF- FOR ALL WHOM THE LORD OUR GOD WILL CALL. When the Apostle Peter was addressing the crowd telling them what they needed to do for forgiveness of their sins, that last part struck me! GOD CALLS YOU! There are plenty of verses that talk about Gods calling that are probably better examples like MATTHEW 22:14, I’m just currently reading the book of ACTS right now. But really consider that, he calls us! Do you ever find yourself drawn to know God? maybe you are a believer maybe you are not, but think back in your life, have you ever felt the pull/call of God? I realised in that moment that those random urges I felt in the past to know God was actually God calling me! But I never answered. The enemy is like bad reception on a phone call, God rings your phone, and you try to answer but the enemy runs interference and now the call is breaking up and you can’t hear a thing, so you hang up! Well praise JESUS I finally answered!

Now I had a very distorted view of what the Bible was, it’s purpose and what it said. Ask me where these ideas came from, I can’t even really tell you! I guess I would say it was a mixture of other peoples OPINION, what I FELT, and what the CULTURE we live in told me! I felt so strongly about these feelings/opinions that didn’t even originate from my thoughts, how strange right!? I always considered myself a fair person, never made judgments based on other peoples opinion before, so why was I doing it now? The problem was anytime I had biblical questions I always found Christians clueless! Now I’m not saying all Christians lack knowledge, I’m just saying I could tell by the response I got when asking questions that there was a disconnect. Unfortunately all that did was make me feel I was right, and my feelings were justified.

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Now where was I? Oh yes, my friend was a Christian! Not only was he a Christian, he was a Christian who read his bible, spent time in Gods word and knew more than any Christian I had ever come across before! He was able to provide so much clarity to my thoughts, always giving context to scripture he presented! Having a new take on the bible I wanted to know and understand more! I always had this impression that the bible was boring, dated text that had no relevance to life as we know it, oh how wrong I was! So the beginning of November I made the decision to purchase my first bible. My intention was to just read it, I wanted to see what else it said, I still had other thoughts and feelings that needed answers! If I’m really honest part of me was reading it to still validate what I thought I knew to be truth. I didn’t read it to come to Christ, but to satisfy my own need to be right! Well God sure showed me! With the help and assistance from my friend I started reading it everyday. By the end of November I told my friend “I think I might be a Christian!?!”

I can’t explain the power of God! I just know its real! In that moment I had never felt so sure about anything, never felt so convicted before! I decided that I needed JESUS! I guess the rest is history. Here I am almost 2 years in my walk with Christ, still learning so much (do you ever really stop learning?!) feeling like a real toddler. I am learning that being in Christ is nothing to do with religion but its all about relationship, and just like any relationship, what you put in is what you get out! It’s not been easy, but JESUS warned us the righteous road would be narrow, I just underestimated how narrow it would be. The narrow road has brought me so many blessings, blessings that have made the journey worth it! I could never go back to my old life, I wouldn’t even want to! I lived in so much bondage in my past life, not to say life is peaches and cream now, I still have strongholds that I am battling with, but I know that I will overcome them in the mighty name of JESUS! So welcome to MY CONVICTIONS. This is a safe place where I share my thoughts and feelings on my new life with Christ, how I am constantly convicted during my restoration, basically a journal that nobody asked for! Lets normalise being honest with our walks! If it inspires one person to seek their Father, then my work here is done!