My Story......

I am a male in my mid twenties. I have a wife and two kids. I've been an anxious person since I was born, somewhat of a castrophizing thinker. I was around a lot of sickness and death growing up, 17 funerals by the time I was 17 years old. By age 12, I developed health anxiety, sorda like a hypochondriac. It's pretty common that I get panic attacks several times per day.
When I was 21, my anxiety was almost non existent, but I used sin to cope. Now that I have repented of my sins, and turned to Jesus Christ to be my Savior, things have gotten worse.
My anxiety is very bad, I fear Jesus/God, which totally doesn't make sense because he is a God of love. I really don't understand love and relationships. The whole thought of dying and going to a new place and really not having control of anything, causes my anxiety to increase. It is crippling. You never know when your time is up, and I can't stop thinking that each moment could be my last, so that it just cripples me. Fear is not rational. If God through Jesus Christ chooses to heal me, He will. This serves some type of purpose for me, that I do not understand. The absolute worst thing of all, is that it's hard for me to keep turning to God/Jesus when it causes me fear/anxiety attacks.

1Peter5:7 wrote:

I am a male in my mid twenties. I have a wife and two kids. I've been an anxious person since I was born, somewhat of a castrophizing thinker. I was around a lot of sickness and death growing up, 17 funerals by the time I was 17 years old. By age 12, I developed health anxiety, sorda like a hypochondriac. It's pretty common that I get panic attacks several times per day.
When I was 21, my anxiety was almost non existent, but I used sin to cope. Now that I have repented of my sins, and turned to Jesus Christ to be my Savior, things have gotten worse.
My anxiety is very bad, I fear Jesus/God, which totally doesn't make sense because he is a God of love. I really don't understand love and relationships. The whole thought of dying and going to a new place and really not having control of anything, causes my anxiety to increase. It is crippling. You never know when your time is up, and I can't stop thinking that each moment could be my last, so that it just cripples me. Fear is not rational. If God through Jesus Christ chooses to heal me, He will. This serves some type of purpose for me, that I do not understand. The absolute worst thing of all, is that it's hard for me to keep turning to God/Jesus when it causes me fear/anxiety attacks.

Welcome to the forum 1Peter5:7, and that is a great verse. You are right: fear is unrational. Fear is ungodly. It seems obvious to me that Satan or demons are trying to keep you from coming close to God and they are using fear to do it. If when you come close to God and your fears get worse, that seems to me that Satan is behind that. God promises that the opposite will happen when you come and submit to him.

The bible says that we are in a war and it is not a war between us and other humans. Ephesians 6:12 says, "Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." Basically that is saying that the battle we fight is against demons and not against other people. If people is somebody's problem, it is really the demons that are influencing the people that is the real problem.

Since our battle is a spiritual one, we need to use spiritual tools to fight this battle. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 reads, "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."

Here again, Paul says we are in a war, but not a physical one, but a spiritual one. And we need spiritual weapons to fight this war. These weapons are powerful because they are God's weapons he gives us to use. They are capable of demolishing stronghold. Our anxiety is a stronghold. A stronghold is anything ungodly that has a control over your life. Notice that we have to take captive ungodly thoughts. These thoughts are not your thoughts, but they come from Satan. There are two parties in this verse: your thoughts, and the thoughts that are not your thoughts that you are to take captive and make obedient to Christ. Satan was rendered powerless through the cross. His only power comes through his lies that he tries to make us believe. That's all he can do to us is lie and through his lies he hopes to defeat us. We have to take captive those ungodly thoughts, call Satan's bluff and pray that God's peace through Jesus takes over our lives in place of those thoughts.

My final thought here is that death is not something we should fear. When we drop this flesh, we will be in our perfected spirits because Jesus perfected our spirits already, we are just stuck in this imperfect body with our imperfect thoughts while we are alive. But all of that load will be lifted off of us if not this life, definitely the one to come. There will be no fear in the next life. There will just be joy and peace. I typed out a series of what heaven and hell is like and I'll post it on here soon. But I want to say here that heaven is a joyous place, it is a place Paul got a glimpse of and he said that he would rather be there than here.

I ask that you fight this spiritual battle because Satan doesn't want you to overcome and see the truth of the peace that God gave you through Jesus Christ.

Galatians 5:1, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery (slavery to fear)."

good post. thank you. It is true, the closer I try to draw to God/Jesus, then worse my anxiety/panic attacks get. I find it ironic that the time in my life that I had almost zero (I won't say none) with anxiety/panic attacks was when I was living in sin. Now, that I am trying to draw closer to God/Jesus, the worse it becomes.
I really get depressed because then I start questioning my salvation. Do I really honestly believe? Am I trusting Jesus? Then I look at the spritual condition of my heart, and I don't have the love for others or God like I should.
It is true, I lack the confidence of my salvation which I believe is a major contributer for me. It's not that I question what Jesus Christ did, or who He is, it's that I question myself. What I mean by that is did I say the prayer the correct way? Am I trusting Jesus Christ enough? Why don't I hear his voice? Maybe I do hear His voice and I do not recognize it. Then I get concerned because Jesus says my sheep know my voice.

1Peter5:7 wrote:

good post. thank you. It is true, the closer I try to draw to God/Jesus, then worse my anxiety/panic attacks get. I find it ironic that the time in my life that I had almost zero (I won't say none) with anxiety/panic attacks was when I was living in sin. Now, that I am trying to draw closer to God/Jesus, the worse it becomes.
I really get depressed because then I start questioning my salvation. Do I really honestly believe? Am I trusting Jesus? Then I look at the spritual condition of my heart, and I don't have the love for others or God like I should.
It is true, I lack the confidence of my salvation which I believe is a major contributer for me. It's not that I question what Jesus Christ did, or who He is, it's that I question myself. What I mean by that is did I say the prayer the correct way? Am I trusting Jesus Christ enough? Why don't I hear his voice? Maybe I do hear His voice and I do not recognize it. Then I get concerned because Jesus says my sheep know my voice.

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Anyways....I am a firm believer that we cannot lose our salvation. Once saved, always saved. What I see in scripture is that God often disciplines his own harshly, but he never disowns them from his family of saved children. Salvation is not by our merits or by anything we can possibly do, it is by faith alone. Keeping salvation is also not by anything we can do or not do. Our faith alone keeps us saved.

I have twin 18 year old boys that suffer from depression,anxiety and panic attacks.
Two pills that have helped are Pexeva and Coreg. We have been to numerous Doctors and
finally found one that would be confident enough to try different medications. They are
also on extended Xanax and Gabpentin. They started college this year and have battled this
mental illness since 6th grade. One of the twins is still struggling with depression and
the Doctor prescribed some kind of Light made by Apollo that is supposed to help with depression.
He has only tried it for a week so we are not sure if it is going to help. Before u run out
and buy one wait to hear from me because it cost $ 150 dollars and I am skeptical.
Mental Illness IS A CHEMICAL PROBLEM PERIOD. So do not let anybody convince u otherwise and if left untreated it can become worse and Doctors have a real hard time finding medication that will help.
http://www.mikerblount.com/anxiety

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