Chapter 3: 1

The Road to Healing

A practical exercise for the treatment of anxiety from Psalm 27
If you meditate on the last verses from Psalms 27:7-14, you will find there are four verbs that God does with us in His presence, in order to treat anxiety and tension.
When you know how to benefit from this, then you will enjoy the Christian treatment for fear and anxiety. These four verbs are:

He hears me: 
Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice!  Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

He takes care of me: 
When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me.

He teaches me: 
Teach me Your way, O LORD, and lead me in a straight path

He strengthens me: 
Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!

This represents four Biblical Christian strategies the Lord uses with the believer, and the believer learns this from the Lord, for healing from fear and anxiety.

The Lord Hears Me
“Purging Prayer”

“Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice! Have mercy also upon me, and answer me.  When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”  Do not hide Your face from me; do not turn Your servant away in anger; You have been my help; do not leave me nor forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take care of me.”  (Psalm 27:7-10)

The first step of treatment in the presence of the Lord is to pour out our hearts and unload the burden before Him.

The main reason for anxiety is severe and negative internal dialogue or self-talk. When we think with ourselves of our circumstances or fears, these fears will increase and inflate and multiply.

For example, when David thought in his circumstances and told himself:  “Now I shall perish someday by the hand of Saul,” his fear increased, and as a result of that, he made a wrong decision and said:  “There is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape to the land of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 27: 1).

And when Elijah thought about the threats of Jezebel, he was afraid, and he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, LORD” (1 Kings 19: 4).

Therefore, the treatment of our fear starts with turning our negative inner self-talk to positive talk with our Lord.

That is what the Lord does with all of his weary frightened people. When the Lord said to Elijah, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19: 9), the Lord wanted Elijah to open his heart, and pour out before Him all that was inside of him. 

When we present our concerns to the Lord and talk with Him, we calm down and rest. 
This spiritual and psychological emptying before the Lord is not only from our mouth but also from the heart. “My heart said to You,” means to not only open your mouth, but open your heart to the Lord also.

The prayer of purging is not from my mouth to the Lord’s ears, but from my heart to the face of the Lord.  “When You said, “Seek My face,” my heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.”   You do not only pray to let the Lord know your fears and to let Him hear your problems. But you also pray to enjoy the light of His face and the wonder of His presence. When the light of divine fellowship shines, the darkness of fear and anxiety and the clouds of tension and panic dissipate, because in His presence, sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Look at Hannah, the mother of Samuel.  When she was sad and bitter of soul, she went to the House of the Lord.  In the presence of the Lord she was praying, and only her lips were moving, because she was talking in her heart, and her voice was not heard.  Eli the priest rebuked her, when he thought that she was drunk, but Hannah answered and said, “I am a woman of sorrowful spirit… but have poured out my soul before the LORD.”  When she came out from the presence of the Lord, “…her face was no longer sad.”(1 Samuel 1: 15, 18).

We need to learn to cast our burdens before the Lord and on the Lord.  “Cast your burden on the LORD, And He shall sustain you” (Psalm 55: 22).  There is a difference between telling your burden to the Lord (when you say and declare it) and casting your burden on the Lord (shed and surrender it), and not returning to take it back.

Prayer is the Greatest Cure for Hardships

Magdy Samuel