<< Back To Strong Minds - Merry Hearts

Sent by Jo

It's not an easy thing to go through depression & anxiety in ones life. So many do suffer from these things and need compassion..love ..truth on the promises of God's Word to aid them back on firmer ground.

Fear is a reality of life. It is true for believers and anyone else. However, those who are grounded in faith and spirituality, find that they have God to lean back on when the going gets tough.

We don't have to let fear defeat us. We can triumph over it and feel safe.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7

Countless multitudes have ridden themselves of their fear knowing the power in God's presence

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.
Psalm 23:4

Henry Ward Beecher says the Twenty-third Psalm is the nightingale of the Psalms. The nightingale sings its sweetest when the night is darkest. And for most of us death is the most terrifying fact of life. Death makes us afraid. We feel so helpless and alone.

Of course, "the valley of the shadow of death" refers to more than the actual experiences of physical death. It has been translated, "the glen of gloom." It might refer to every hard and terrifying experience of life.

The Basque Sheepherder describes an actual Valley of the Shadow of Death in Palestine. It leads from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea and is a very narrow and dangerous pathway through the mountain range. The path is rough, and there is danger that a sheep may fall at any moment to its death.

It is a forbidding journey that one dreads to take. But the sheep is not afraid. Why? Because the shepherd is with it.

And so come those dark places in life through which we are compelled to pass. Death is one. Disappointment is another. Loneliness is another. Phobias, compulsions, obsessions, and reliving traumatic experiences fill us with fear.

If you feel you are in "the valley of the shadow," get off to a quiet place. Quit struggling for a little while. Forget the many details. Stop your mind for a little while from hurrying on to the morrow and to next year and beyond.

Just stop, become still and quiet, and in the midst of your "glen of gloom" you will feel a strange and marvelous presence more powerfully than you have ever felt it before. Many have felt that presence-they have heard the nightingale sing in the darkness.

Wherever my pathway leads, I will not be afraid, "for thou art with me." There is power in His presence. Countless multitudes have ridden themselves of their fear knowing that eternal truth.

Excerpted from: God's Psychiatry by Charles L. Allen