Turning Fear Into Faith

Hello!

Do you have things that scare you? Not the everyday jump scare but the deep dark scares. I am one to say that I do! I have something that causes me to be super anxious and sometimes paranoid. I am finding out that what you do to help ease the anxiety feeling matters. I am going to be honest and up front with you all. I struggle with sleep paralysis. It is something that I am currently working through.

I have been struggling with this for a while and didn’t know what it was. I thought it was just intense nightmares. I started seeing a therapist to talk through some other things and she told me that, that is not a normal everyday thing that should be happening. So of course, we started to break down what was going on and through this long process, I am able to sleep good majority of the time now. I still have moments and things trigger it that I am still learning about. My therapist asked me something that I never really thought about before, “What is your go to protection verse in the Bible?” During that time, we were talking about turning this over to God and asking him to take away the nightmares.

For a couple of days, I sat on what she asked me and decided to do some digging into the Bible for being afraid and finding protection from the darkness around. I started reading verse after verse on how God is the light in the darkness, He will protect you from harm, and He will watch over you. I knew God was my protector and he will help me but I didn’t think about going to Him and asking Him to help with my sleep. I tend to do this a lot where I am afraid of something or stressing over something and I just hope that things will be okay. Instead, I should be going to God and asking Him to take over and asking for protection over the situation. I hope one day I can be disciplined enough to immediately go to God and not struggle for so long.

Psalm 91 (NLT) and Psalm 121 (NLT) is one of my favorite go to protection chapters in the Bible. My nightmare will usually happen more in the mornings when I am trying to wake up. At night, when I am getting ready for bed, I sometimes get anxious and worry if I will have an episode in the morning. If I get super anxious, I will have a hard time going to sleep because I don’t want to fall asleep to wake up. Psalm 91 and Psalm 121 is something I read in bed and I pray over it and ask God for His protection.

Prayer is such a powerful tool. During this season in life, I am learning just how much I love to pray and be with God and building our relationship closer. I still struggle with sleeping but God has made it so much better. So I ask, when you are anxious and worrying, what is your go to thing? Do you immediately go into prayer? Do you immediately read the Bible? Do you have a safety net already built?

Here are some examples of passages that I also enjoyed while looking for more comforting verses: Psalm 23 Psalm 27 John 14 Philippians 4

Created for a Purpose.