Hi everyone it's Leslie Ludi hosted the set-apart girl, biblical encouragement for women of all ages.

Today we're going to be talking about something that I know so many Christian women struggle

with, overcoming fear. And this is something that I can relate to in a very personal way.

My husband Eric and I had been in ministry for about two years when I started waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety attacks.

I remember just being absolutely terrified and not really having any good reason for it,

but just sitting up in bed in the middle of the night with my heart pounding

I couldn't breathe I couldn't relax I was just terrified and there was really no explanation for it

other than the fact that we were under a lot of stress.

We were being hit on every side.

It seemed that when we got into ministry, it was sort of like we had taken a baseball bat and hit a hornet's nest and then realized as the hornets were flying at us that we couldn't go anywhere because our feet were stuck in concrete.

That was kind of what it felt like. We had health challenges, we had financial challenges,

we had relational challenges with other people,

not with each other necessarily,

but very, very difficult things with other people in our lives.

And I found myself constantly dreading what was going to happen next.

Proverbs 31 talks about the fact that a godly woman smiles at the future, but I recognized in this season of my life that I was not smiling at the future.

In fact, I was actually dreading the future.

And when I realized that, I started to cry out to God for answers. I said, Lord, why am I being controlled by fear?

All of these stressful things seem to be too much for me to handle and suddenly I am just not able to overcome this struggle

with constant anxiety.

Over the next few months as I prayed about this intense struggle in my life, God began to give me a biblical battle

plan against fear. And I'd like to share with you what I learned in that season in a nutshell.

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