Welcome to episode 23. Today we're going to take on a posture of peace
by anchoring ourselves to the word of God.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale. Posture is a podcast that serves as a short audible
fist bump to remind you that God is in everything.
Together we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture
of perfect peace.
All right, this week we've been talking a lot about practicing
possibility, and I want to take a little bit of a different angle.
As many of you know, a part of my testimony is being completely healed
from anxiety, including panic attacks, really
constant anxiety for a while, and I get a lot of questions about that.
And I just want to speak to this area of possibility because
something that was illuminated to me through an author teacher pastor named
Wendy Backlund in her book, which I highly recommend,
Living in the Unseen, she said something that has stuck with me forever, and it
was regarding fear. And she said, you know, fear
is just faith pointed in the wrong direction.
And I used to think of myself as a very fearful person, and it was an identity
that I attached to myself, and it kind of filtered the way that I
viewed life and did life and interacted with other people.
You know, I was always thinking about possibility in the negative. It's like,
well, anything is possible, and it would be
this worst-case scenario. And when I read the words from Wendy
Backlund who said, fear is just faith pointed in the wrong
direction, I realized I am a faith-filled person, but Satan has
tried to pervert that in me by pointing my faith in the wrong direction. So I
began through different things, but specifically through reading the
word of God and anchoring myself in the word of God,
I began to turn the ship of my faith into the right direction,
pointing it to the truth, not to the lies.
So if you resonate with any of that, and if you think, man, possibility
is not really a safe place for me because anything is possible, and you
always thinking about worst-case scenarios, I want to encourage you
with this scripture. Hebrews chapter 3 verse 12 says this,
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints
and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions
of the heart. The word of God is living and active. When I was in the
chokehold of my anxiety, I did not always feel a shift
when I read the word of God, and I was tempted to just kind of stay away from
the word of God because it didn't feel like it was making a difference, and we
talked about this before, feelings are not our highest indicator
of truth, truth is our highest indicator of truth,
and our truth as kingdom people sits and is founded in the word of a living
God. The promise to us today is that the word
is living and active, so if you find yourself maybe in the
chokehold of anxiety, of fear, in difficult circumstances, you maybe
feel stuck, confused, hurt, broken, go to the word of God and begin to shift
that fear, that faith into the right direction. I
want to also encourage you in this, maybe you're not the one that is
finding yourself in the chokehold of anxiety, but maybe you know someone who
is or is facing a difficult situation and you find yourself thinking,
I just don't know what to say, I don't have the words.
I find myself there often and I just want to encourage you,
share the scripture, share a verse, share a promise,
it is living and active and it is doing something even if you don't see
necessarily the physical tangible evidence of that today.
When I was in the chokehold of anxiety, I tell you there were friends,
mentors who gathered around me and would speak the truth of God's word and I am
sure there were many times that I just stared back with dead eyes,
and they may have been tempted to back off, they may have been tempted to think
maybe this is trite for me to share scripture with her right now when she's
facing such a difficult time, but I'm telling you
it made such a difference in me because what was not
necessarily tangible in the physical, things were
shifting in the spiritual realm. So if you or if someone today
is suffering, give them the words that are living and active and sharper
than any two-edged sword. Guys, anything is possible and today I
want you to partner with a God who can do impossible
and read his scripture and declare the truth over your life and declare it and
share it with other people. Watch those seeds begin to grow.
The promise of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26 3
and in Hebrew it is shalom shalom, meaning complete wholeness, nothing
missing, nothing broken. This is
who you are in Jesus. Let's declare this together.
Today, I am kept in perfect peace.
With my whole heart, I trust the Lord.
I am strong. I am victorious.
I am whole. Remember, friend, you are a living testimony of Jesus'
ultimate win. Not because of anything you did, but because of what he did for you.
With every step you take today, you're putting Jesus' victory
on display and Satan's defeat on replay.