You give me strength for the battle and victory over my enemies. 2 Samuel 22:40

 The Lord gives strength to his people and blesses them with peace. Psalms 29:11

God is my saviour; I will trust him and not be afraid. The Lord gives me power and strength; he is my saviour. Isaiah 12:2 


As some of you may know, I've written previously about living with anxiety/panic attacks. Today, I want to share something with you that happened this past weekend at church.

*some of you may have already heard this story but I felt  that it needs to be repeated.

I stand amazed at how God works.

There are days when I get blindsided with things that weren't at all in MY plans and I grumble at the disruption; and then there are days when God steps in and blindsides me with these divine appointments to test and see if I will follow through.

I totally followed through on this and all I can do is shake my head and smile in amazement.

Saturday night, during praise and worship, our worship leader (who is a beautiful young mama with an amazing voice) spoke up and I believe she spoke out in faith to share with us. She had been absent the past couple of weeks "due to some health problems" and began to tell us that she suffers with anxiety and panic attacks.
She had one so severe that she thought she was having a heart attack and ended up in the hospital.
 These episodes only seem to occur when she sings praise and worship. She immediately recognized that this was a spiritual attack from the enemy and was ready to do battle with some powerful music.


As the sanctuary swelled with praise, music, and worship, the Holy Spirit showed up and poured out his loving presence all over the place.

I stood in awe watching her declare with her music that she would not give up and she was a fighter.

The rest of the service, I sat listening intently to our pastor preach in Philippians about Paul and how he was in chains for the gospel. I started taking notes and it started hitting me, the heavy chains clanking around me are my anxiety/panic issues.

I had this strong unction from the Lord to go and find our worship leader and talk to her just for a moment. I got a little nervous and started thinking "She'll probably think I'm some crazy church nut. Maybe, I'll just try to find her email on the church website." But He kept after me. I saw her talking to a group of women at the front of the church and tried to walk over but my feet began to feel heavy and the "what ifs" started in again.

I finally found my chance to speak with her and at first I think I may have taken her aback.
You see, I'm not the type to rush over and talk to someone I don't know. I'm terrible at confrontation.
I'm the one at parties that will sit and wait for someone else  to start the conversation.

I walked towards her and introduced myself, told her what she had said really resonated with me and  I wanted her to know she is not alone.
Anxiety and panic attacks are terrible. It's nothing  you would wish upon anyone but, it's comforting to know that someone else experiences them too.
I told her that I would lift her up in prayer and  after I told her it was great meeting her, she seemed... oh, I don't know, maybe a little relieved that I wasn't crazy  she wasn't alone in this battle.

 I felt such a release after I shared briefly with her. I knew God was in the middle of this somehow.

Rewind about a few weeks ago, I was asked to join a group of women to help promote a very special book. For some reason, I was prompted to share this experience with the group.

Not even knowing how large the group was, I sat and typed it all out and hit "post" without batting an eye. Then I realized how large the group was and thought "what have I done?! These ladies are surely going to think I'm a nut!" (OK I AM a Buckeye fan so I guess that does define me as a nut!)

I stepped away and had almost forgotten about my post when I heard my phone buzzing. I was getting comments from others (in the group) that suffer from anxiety/panic attacks and they were sharing their stories! It turned into this amazing "OH you go through that too?" Type of conversation.

This started me thinking. You know the phrase "strength in numbers"?  What if, what if...  we started praying for each other? What if we encouraged each other and helped each other walk through this together?

Some of us are a little more seasoned in dealing with this and some not so much but, if we start praying we could start something big!

The devil doesn't like it when we pray. He obviously doesn't like it when we try to sing and worship either. But he can't stop us!  Because there is strength in numbers.

"For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them" Matthew 18:20 GNB

Who knows what might happen when we all come together and pray! (I am smiling the biggest smile right now!)

Stay tuned. Next week I"m going to share a bit of my story.

Linking up today with Bonnie, The Faith Barista as she shares with us her brand new book Finding Spiritual Whitespace.

***Ive been chosen to review this book, Finding spiritual whitespace before it hits the shelves June 3rd. I'll be reviewing the book and taking part in some special blog posts coming next month!
                                                         
                                                          

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/susieq3c/4044933922/">susieq3c</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>


5 Comments

  1. How awesome!!!! Some of the most powerful and community strengthening words in the English language are, "me, too..."

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    1. Thank you! I couldn't agree with you more!
      Thanks for stopping by! :)
      Blessings to you,
      Krista

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    2. What a wonderful post, Krista. The enemy sure showed his hand when he went after your worship leader when she sang praise music....And how wonderful that you found so many supportive people on your journey of healing. This book we are reading is quite amazing isn't it and helping so many of us as HS speaks through Bonnie's words just what the readers need to hear. Loving it!

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    3. Thank you Renee!
      The book is amazing! I can't wait to share it with my friends :)

      (((Hugs)))
      Krista

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  2. Love the 'strength in numbers' word picture, Krista! And your beautiful experience with your worship leader is a real life version of CS Lewis' quote 'Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself...' So glad I found your words via Bonnie's Whitespace link up. xo

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