![]() And for the past year and a half I started to feel pretty invincible for the first time in a long time-no meds, no therapy. “I come from a severe anxiety disorder, and that has driven me to write a lot in the past. Chad Gardner, front-man of the Christian band Kings Kaleidoscope, was asked how creating his most recent album affected his personal faith, and this was his response. Last May, I read through a Relevant interview that really stuck out to me. Pride is a result of the fall, and I definitely struggle with it. Transitioning from a season of darkness, spiritual warfare, anxiety, depression, and being 100% reliant on God and his love and power in a time of trauma to a good season with peace and light, made me question where was God in the good? I always recognize my need for God while I’m struggling, but it can be hard for me to see how I need Him on my best days. I wanted to feel close to God like I had in January, but no matter what I did, those feelings didn’t come. Looking back I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it was extremely discouraging and I felt so alone. These feelings, doubt and apathy, lasted a long time. God was still there, my feelings were not. I looked high and low, and feelings were nowhere to be found. I didn’t feel like God was with me and believed it as true. One morning, I woke up and felt completely alone. However, a couple months later, everything had gone back to normal, and this traumatic experience was behind me. I was reading scripture more and I was really trying to constantly bring my focus to all of the ways that I was blessed. But, I was also comforted by God’s protection and how the darkness would not touch me in His name. ![]() It was traumatic, changed my mindset completely, and I spent that month feeling terrified by the darkness. It was nothing like I had experienced before, and it was so scary. I was experiencing intense anxiety, panic, spiritual warfare, and depression. ![]() My faith really didn’t become real to me until my Sophomore year of high school. I was totally attempting life with the attitude that I could do it alone most of the time, and just call on God when really big things came up that I couldn’t handle, especially in regards to my anxiety that always finds ways to knock me down. I was ignoring God and all that he was doing in my life. I was not in a great friend group, and they really affected me in a negative way. I would have moments all throughout my elementary and middle school, and even the start of high school, that I would either “feel like a Christian” or “not feel like a Christian.” And in my eyes, those moments of feeling a certain way were the truth that defined me (which is not true at all). As pastor and author Paul David Tripp says, “No you cannot lose your salvation, because you can’t lose what was not gained by you, is not kept by you and is, in its entirety, a work of another.” We can not work for our salvation, and thinking that I needed to invite Jesus into my heart again whenever I messed up was avoiding the incredible gift that God gives us, which is grace. I remember accepting Jesus into my heart many times on my bedroom floor, thinking that I didn’t do enough the time before or it just “didn’t work.” There is a huge difference between rededicating your life to Christ, which is always a good thing, and thinking that we need to do something to get God’s attention back on us. I think I struggled with doubt growing up a lot more than I realized. Apathy is “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.” That’s the technical definition from the dictionary, but in simpler terms, it is the lack of feeling. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of doubt is “a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction.” Apathy is a term that I didn’t hear until I started experiencing it.
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