The world is filled with stress and strife. Thousands suffer from a broken mind that is often classified as an anxiety disorder. Among other symptoms, one of the greatest markers of an anxiety disorder is a fear of things that are not as though they are things that are. Medicines designed to control anxiety attacks are sold over the counter, behind the counter, and under the counter. A multitude of medical and psychological terms are used in an effort to isolate and identify the areas of the sicknesses, but they are, in the end, all components of a broken mind.

Medicines often merely cover up the symptoms of a problem. Brain-dumpers are what they are, pills that rape the mind and leave it too numb for full functionality. So those with a broken mind end up as life-long slaves of a pill, and a doctor, and an endless battle with stress. Thus arises the question:

Can God do a better job?

Modern society refuses to believe that God can heal a broken mind. They have come to accept that there is no true freedom from anxiety. Learn to cope. Control it. Keep it wrapped up in an insulated blanket of pills and treatments and blame.

Even though the God of creation has promised to give us the strength to stand against the fears of an unknown future, mankind refuses to be healed. The name of Jesus is treated as a curse word, a hindrance to medical science, and a hazard to those who are sick. Oh how sad is their misunderstandings of the truth?

In one section of scripture, the promise of a healing is worded like this:

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind,” (2-Timonthy 1:7).

A “sound mind” means self control, or as it is worded in another version of the bible, “good judgment”. In simplicity, it means that we are able to discern what is important and what is not, what is worth focusing on and what is a waste of time; and it establishes our ability to look at God rather than temporary circumstances, real or imagined.

Perhaps you are thinking that I just don’t understand. You may hold it in your head to believe that I have never been where you are now. In a moment, I will take you into one of my dark days. I will also take you back into the light.

But first, look here at yet another place in scripture. This time the promise is written in this manner:

“ While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal,” (2-Corinthians 4:18).

Isn’t it strange that anxiety is nothing more than a fear of that which is unseen as though it were real? And this is exactly what God tells us to do if we are to be at peace in this world. Look not at the seen, but the unseen. How great is his wisdom?

Oh, I know. Sometimes the anxiety comes in like a great heaving monster that has crawled deep in our gut. It is a moaning way down inside that doesn’t really seem to be focused on any particular issue. It is like a mounting tension, a winding spring that turns tighter and tighter until you know that it must surely break. It makes a scream in your soul. Will it not let up? Will it go on until you die in this manner? Perhaps you even wish that you were dead.

God said that all of these things that we see are temporary, even if what we see is but the fear of an unknown enemy. If you are a Christian, God gave you the power to look past any trouble that this life can bring, or appear to bring. He gave you the power to look past the now, beyond the limited future, and to see into a certain, and imperishable eternity with him.

Perhaps you wonder how I can be so certain that these promises are true, how I can know without doubt that God will heal a broken mind. Here is but a glimpse into my healing.

It was July of 2001. I had just gotten released on a pretrial bond. In three months, I would have to go back to face the consequences of my sins. My mind was alive with the fearful wailing of a broken man. I understood what I had done to my life. I had fully failed all those who trusted me and loved me. The weight of the shame was more than I can enter into words.

My wife was faithful to stay by my side. She knew a measure of the guilt that weight upon me. She knew how near I was to collapsing. She knew that the man I had always thought myself to be could barely endure what the man that I am had done. Therefore she would not leave me out of her site for even a moment.

Yet there came a day when she must pickup the grandkids on an emergency call. God intended that I be alone that day. So it was conceived, so it came to pass.

I would stay home and mow the yard. She would only be gone for thirty or forty minutes. I told her I would be fine. “Go on,” I said. “Deal with business.”

As she pulled out of the drive, I was finishing my second lap around the front yard on the riding mower. She topped the hill, and had barely passed out of site before the deck on the mower suddenly came loose on one side and dropped to the ground. It was the beginning of a healing.

No problem. I have been a mechanic off and on all my life. I never saw a machine that I could not repair. So I went to the garage and returned with a bucket of tools. Then I knelt down beside that old Craftsman 48” cutter with the broken deck, and I suddenly realized just how broken my mind had become.

The weight of the sky seemed to collapse around me. I looked at the mower and knew that I could not repair the problem. Indeed, I suddenly knew that I could, of my self, do nothing right in life, no not now, and no not ever.

I crawled to the front door. Literally.

Then I used the doorknob to pull myself upright. I stumbled through the house. I found that far back bedroom closet. I went in. I shut the door. And then I collapsed upon my knees, my face to the floor.

When I cried out to God, it was not a whimper. It was not a low groaning deep inside, nor even a loud voice. It was a scream that rose up from all that was within me. “Help me, Jesus. Oh God in heaven, help a foolish and stubborn man.”

Then I waited, a useless piece of clay, unable even to repair a broken lawn mower deck. Unless this God upon who I called should come and strengthen me in body and mind, I would surely ever be an empty and broken vessel.

The time that passed as I knelt there seemed eternal, yet it was not so long, for my wife had not yet returned home. In a while, God gave me strength to rise and go take a seat in one of rockers in the breezeway. I was there when my wife came home.

She was angry.

Gone for nearly forty-five minutes and I had mowed no more than when she had left. “What have you been doing,” she asked, a fire in her words. Yet within moments she saw and recognized my condition of will and mind. So she took a seat in the rocker beside of mine.

“I can’t function, hon.” That was all I could say. “I just can’t function.”

We sit there, side by side, neither of us talking and neither of us knowing what to do. Yet I know that she too was praying even as was I.

After a length of time that is beyond recording, a voice came to me. He said, “You see now that without me, you can do nothing. Rise up now and I will show you how that by letting me live through you, we can do all things.”

I looked upon my wife and I smiled. “It is well now,” I said. “God says I can go fix the mower.”

This was not where God finished healing me. This was only the beginning. He can do the same for you. Believe upon the name of the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved. God can free us from anxiety disorders.

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About The Author:

Hi, rmharrington here

Thank you for reading my articles and stories. My goal is to glorify God, lift up the name of Jesus, and to provide quality-reading material.

Read about how praise carries us through the hard times:
http://jobshopesolutions.com/index.php?page=article&article_id=22581

or

have fun with Star Trek:
http://jobshopesolutions.com/index.php?page=article&article_id=22571

Thank you again.