The first forty years of my life were rough. I struggled with the basics. I lived with social anxiety and had few friends I barely stayed in touch with. I struggled with anxiety from what life handed me. I made poor decisions, which led to regret and more anxiety, but somehow through it all, I lasted 40 years on planet earth. That was ten years ago.
Today, I live a life free from paranoid thoughts. I still enjoy my alone time with my writing pad and canvas and brushes, Bible,s and creative material. Mostly, I spend time getting to know God and gaining knowledge while coming on the mend.
This, after I sat down with a literal pen and journal, ready to rewrite my subconscious. It sounds crazy, but bear with me. I did discover real steps to healing because of this, and because of God’s undeserved faithfulness. The last ten years has been real, has had some hard parts, but has mostly been healing from what was making me anxious.
All this to say life on Earth can seem hopeless, even while we’re grinning, surrounded by friends and family. But we do not have to suffer forever. There is a lot of hope we don’t get because of the way we live.
The healing begins
While everyone can benefit from this; it take having a measure of faith to believe God for the steps I will share today to be the most effective. It was from God my healing started and ended with God. One day I prayed and asked if He was there I needed help.
I don’t exactly remember how much time passed before I heard a voice that said, “A tender heart should not be wasted”. But that prayer and that answer changed everything.
Steps to healing from almost anything
ü Prayer
Every believer understands how powerful prayer can be. Not every believer understands how to pray. Prayer is an effective remedy for everything, I have discovered. When we pray and believe, things begin to move that we could not understand without prayer. The most effective prayers are those of thanksgiving and praise. No doubt.
Since walking away from a godless life I have heard and used to mimic those prayers for material things. But it was when I started giving thanks and praising God and paying attention I noticed that weight would lift during the time of healing.
As I matured in prayer and started moving away from asking for things, instead focusing on gratitude, the thought to pray over the things I thought of praying about the anxiety and the other problems in my life, my decision-making came into my heart.
Then I asked the Lord to remove them. But found myself facing fears and panic attacks. One night about four years ago, after I had been studying and praying, I had a panic attack during the night over the direction my life seemed to be taking. But that night changed me forever.
I was determined that night was not going to end like others. I commanded the feeling to go away, and it persisted, so I commanded it to go away and don’t come back in Jesus’ name. Something slithered from my belly, and from that night, things began to change.
Prayer and faith, believing the words we find in the Bible, can have powerful effects on all of our lives. The best effects come when we put away our old selves and sit with the Lord. I have not left, as you can see. There is nothing compared to being in the presence of God. Especailly after He made sure I knew He was always there with me. 40 years, and it took a drastic turn to realize God had never left.
ü Believe God
Believe in Jesus. There are many things we could believe in. But here is something very true. Before I became a writer in full, I used to be a member of the SDA church. But there were things I did not understand. No matter what or who I asked I could not get the answers and I was searching. Then I fell away and fell hard.
I was in an emotionally desperate state when the Lord said “a tender heart should not be wasted”. Then He filled another longing I had since I was a child. No matter where I was I wanted to go home. In a dream, I was told to stop passing my house. Needless to say, today I understand my longing. And out of His own kindness, I have found myself constantly in the presence of Jesus.
Understanding everything I had spent my years in church asking anyone I thought could answer. That home I’d been searching for was in Jesus Christ, walking before God and believing every word. Each day I find comfort in asking questions and getting answers. But most importantly, I have faith and believe I am home in the presence of God and don’t have to doubt.
For those who believe God, believe in Jesus Christ and open the Bible there is powerful relief from everything that bothers us. It is a lifelong process of maturing in the word of God and in His Spirit.
ü Change Your Environment
You don’t have to move to do this; plenty of experts get it wrong. You see, wherever we go we bring our thoughts and our habits and our behaviors with us. Moving just brings you to a new place and soon, you may see your old habits and anxieties waiting to greet you.
And so, the gist of your environment is this: the things you listen to, the things you watch, the books you read, the people who influence you; these all shape the way you speak to yourself and the things you do. These also shape how you respond to the world around you.
The best way to change your environment, then, is to change the movies you watch and the music you listen to, the books you read, and how you respond to your friends and who influences you.
Changing the music I listened to from regular R&B and hip hop shifted my mental state. The best thing that happened to me was finding artists who sang about healing instead of ways to break up or treat women certain ways. That drifted into gospel music as well as other types of music that spoke healing into my heart.
I also cleaned out some of the books I used to read. That first got traded for the Bible; reading the Bible inspired the way I thought, and it changed A LOT of things. I first noticed that instead of focusing on what I used to think and overthinking what people thought about me, I would focus on what God said about His people.
The Bible helped me understand that I am a son of God and what it means to be a son of God. That shifted my whole focus in life and altered how I even view the world. The word of God drove out lust, bitterness, hatred, among other thoughts that used to rule my day. Now I spend time thinking about the people God has put in my life and those I minister to,
ü Make Time to Reflect on Life
One of the most important things you can do for yourself is not to achieve great success. It is actually taking time to pay attention to your life. To reflect on things you’re doing. If you are a praying person who reads the Bible regularly, this will make sense. It is written in Scripture, “Be still and know that I am God”.
We spend a lot of our lives battling our thoughts. That can bring a lot of anxiety and reasons to feel low. But those who pray and study scripture are given a new way, a sense of peace that we can clock into as often as we give ourselves time. Busyness can destroy your rhythm in life every single day.
But, being someone who was used to alone time and reliving my life, grumbling about how unfair life was taught me something. When we put the energy into becoming better people, along with prayer and the word of God; we learn how to move mountains. In reflection, we find a peace we couldn’t have on our own. If you pay attention, you will begin to lear,n and you will pray and continue in prayer.
In reflection, we can spend a great amount of time in worry, or in the presence of God in prayer or in thought about His word; what He’s said.
As a man who lived a godless life for several years, I will tell you plainly, believing in God and seeking Him wholeheartedly brings us a lot of joy when He reveals Himself to us. I was pretty much minding my business after that prayer, writing books, and doing stupid things quiet guys do. But after I learned to add prayer and faith to my reflection, I started seeing things from a spiritual view. It is a much better view than what you see through despair.
ü Give Your Traumas to God
The day I learned what to ask for, I went all in. I told the Lord I needed help with my anxiety and social anxst. The Lord showed me who I was; I asked him to remove the grumbler from me, and the Lord showed me my unforgiving heart. I asked the Lord for clarity, and the most interesting thing began to happen. My heart got a deep interest in studying the Word of God and asking questions.
Turns out all that knowledge I had spent time chasing needed refining for truth’s sake. In the study of the Bible, I found answers to questions. I found out that the best way I could really help people, which I love to do, was to introduce God to them. I get to do this through the way I live and through ministering.
God also poured something into my heart that turned me from a cold fish to a man full of real empathy, not just a desire to play hero. Love. Actual love. No lust attached to it. I will testify that there is no better feeling. I am also learning not to judge myself. Instead, I’m learning how to love myself so that I can truly love others. Work in progress, but I get better at it as time goes by.
The Bible tells us to “cast all our cares on God because He cares for us” in 1 Peter 5:7. It’s very true. The prayers I prayed for God to remove things turned my life around and prepared me to live the life I’m beginning to embrace.
The interesting thing I’ve learned these years is this: God did not change my circumstances. When I sat down to rewrite my subconscious and He spoke hope into me, I paid attention. God instead changed me from my heart to my thoughts, which reshaped every response I give and the things I do. He empowered me to live and taught me how to respond to life with love. Instead of trying to fix myself or situations, I have had to take a hard look at myself, at what I was doing. Being reshaped, I don’t try to fix anymore. Instead, I have learned that when I practice what God wants His sons to do, life changes. I now get to shape a lot of the environment in my life.
The best thing we can do is believe in God and give our struggles to Jesus and let Him lead. He is our savior, after all.
ü Be humble
This is easier said than done. But humility gets us far with God. Being humble, we are also able to let the healing we receive touch others. Humility is a piece of cake when we submit ourselves to Jesus and walk in the word of God.
But it takes time to be humble because we want to defend everything about who we believe we are. The day I gave up and said, If the Lord finds anything to defend about me, great; that is the day I started responding to people differently. Over time, the edge I had in my voice when I felt slighted in the least went away.
ü Ask for Freedom
You will never know how good it feels to make a decision, rather than have your feelings make decisions for you. While I won’t tell you about freedom, Jesus tells us rightly, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”.
Asking God for freedom and thanking Him for freedom produces some great thoughts.
ü Change your Mind
The way you think & speak about yourself and others will change your perspective. The thing to understand about believing God is, when you change your mind and begin to think about you and others in the way He speaks about us, a lot of things in your heart will move, which will allow you to change your circumstances.
When we learn to choose the new responses, rather than entertain everything our minds throw at us, life changes. We change. The way people respond to us also changes. It is like a domino effect.
The Bible calls this repentance. Repentance is to change our minds about God.
I will thank the Lord for giving me this to write for the eyes that will see. While driving home, I had another topic in mind, but this seemed more important. If you want help with anything you read in this article or have questions, feel free to contact me. I don’t charge anyone for sharing what I get for free, so just contact me.
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