The Throneroom

I don’t consider myself to be a particularly anxious person. But there are occasions, for all of us, and especially at this time of lockdown during the Coronavirus, when anxiety can hit. When it does come, it can really knock us off our stride, and if we don’t have good practices in place, we can find ourselves in a downward spiral of anxious thoughts, behaviours, and even depression.

When Ash was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 there were times during his treatment that we were both full of anxiety and fear. As soon as you hear the ‘C’ word, all sorts of dark thoughts can flood your heart and mind, and before you know it you’re thinking of the worst case scenario, and anxiety takes a grip. There were days when we couldn’t even muster enough energy to work out what to pray. In the very dark moments all we could do was cry out to Jesus. What sustained us through this time were the good practices that we both had put in place, and became our default behaviours.

The first thing we did was to gather our dearest and closest friends, share our news with them, and just ask them to pray, pray, pray. This group of people we have known for many years and are our ‘go to’ wise bods for times of crisis. We knew that there would be times when we didn’t have the words to pray, but that they would stand in the gap for us.

Secondly, listening to worship was so important to both of us. Worship brings us into the throneroom of the Father, where we can sit at his feet and allow the music to wash over us and be our prayer, and this is what we did on a daily basis. There were two songs in particular that we would listen to: ‘Tremble’ and ‘King of my Heart’ - often crying as we worshipped.

Peace, bringing it all to peace

The storm surrounding me

Let it break at Your name

Still, call the sea to still

The rage in me to still

Every wave at Your name

Jesus, Jesus, You make the darkness tremble

Jesus, Jesus, You silence fear

Jesus, Jesus, You make the darkness tremble

Jesus, Jesus 1

Declaring and worshipping the name of Jesus does silence fear and pushes back the darkness, especially at times of storm and chaos. We would declare the name of Jesus over our thoughts, and push back the lies that the enemy would whisper to us in our vulnerability. The Holy Spirit replaced anxiety with peace as we declared the name of Jesus as King in our lives:

Let the King of my heart

Be the mountain where I run

The fountain I drink from

Oh, He is my song

Let the King of my heart

Be the shadow where I hide

The ransom for my life

Oh, He is my song

'Cause You are good

You are good, oh oh

You are good

You are good, oh oh  2

Finally, we would bury ourselves in scripture and in particular the Psalms. When we had no words, the psalmist gave us words. When we needed to cry out in anguish, we did so in the knowledge that whatever we faced, whatever we needed to journey through, however hard and frightening it might be - through it all God is good, all the time, He is good.

During this time of lockdown, my hope is that we all will be able to pray, worship and through it all declare that “God is good, all the time. He is good”.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

By Alex C

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Footnotes

1 Hank Bentley/Mia Fieldes/Andres Figueroa/Mariah McManus Tremble, Mosaic MSC (2016)

 2 John Mark McMillan, Sarah McMillan, King of My Heart Meaux Jeaux Music/Raucous Ruckus Publishing (2015)