Revive Our Hearts

Blair Lin: During an intense season, I would have panic attacks when I tried to drive. I think in those moments I was afraid to die. But I came to understand this truth: Okay, what's the worst that can happen? Well, if I'm with God, I'm going to be okay. Even if I die. I mean, literally, even if I die. Death is not a bad thing for a Christian.

Deanna Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules. For April 20th, 2026, I'm Deanna Gresh.

If you're walking through the 2026 Bible reading plan with us, today we're reading Second Kings chapters seven and eight. In that passage, we encounter many characters who are faced with fear and anxiety: fear of enemy armies, fear of famine, fear of loss.

Now, I know you face a lot of difficulties just like those characters in today's reading. Blair Lin is going to help you as you face difficult situations. She says anxiety has been one of the best things to happen to her faith. Blair is a wife, a mom, and a spoken word artist. She is also the announcer for a new podcast and radio program for Revive Our Hearts coming next year. And Blair has written a book to help women combat anxiety. It's called Made to Tremble. In the book, she explains how a season of intense anxiety began.

Blair Lin: Here's some background. It was 2015. The Lin family had just moved to Philadelphia because my husband was going to plant a church. We had three kids, three and under. They were all in the car driving to visit family, and I was behind the wheel. Around 1:00 AM, I started to see road signs warning of deer crossings. And it's crazy because I'm from California. We don't come across deer.

As we were driving along, something ran across the road. I don't know if it was a hedgehog or something. And my husband says, "Oh, you don't swerve for any animal. You just keep going." I was looking on my right because you look out in the brush, so I'm being very aware. And so that's kind of what I had in my mind. I was in the left lane, trying to go fast and be on our way to Michigan.

And this deer came from the left. I remember the hood of the car slammed up onto the windshield, and so I slowly moved over to the right.

Deanna Gresh: In the immediate aftermath of that accident, Blair didn't realize how big of an event this would prove to be.

Blair Lin: And we were initially so grateful that we were all physically well. We had no idea that that would spiral me into a season of intense anxiety and panic attacks. Once the family was back home, those attacks began.

I had taken a trip. I was driving to go visit some friends who were getting engaged. And on the way home from that trip, I did have a moment where I felt like I couldn't breathe. I couldn't swallow. I rolled down the window, and it just kind of went away. And so I said, "Oh, okay. I don't know what that was, but I'm moving on with life."

But I wasn't going to move on so fast. A day or two later, I visited my small group. They asked her about the accident, and she told them about hitting the deer. So I'm conveying this to these sisters in my small group, just kind of going through all the details. I had no idea that that would trigger me or stir in me all of those raw emotions about the accident.

And so I'm driving home, back in Philly driving home from the small group, and all of a sudden I feel like I can't breathe. And so I try to swallow. I feel like I can't swallow. And so I rolled down the window to try to get some fresh air. And so then all of a sudden, my heart is pounding, like racing, because my body knows something is wrong.

Like, "Why can't I swallow? I can't breathe." It's not dying down. I need to go to the ER, and we did. They did all the tests, all the EKG, to make sure everything is fine. And they just said, "You're fine. Everything's good." No one explained that it was a panic attack. So I had no idea.

And by that time, things had calmed. I didn't feel like I couldn't breathe. I didn't feel like I was hyperventilating at that point. And so I said, "Okay, I'll just go on home." But it ended up continuing to happen again and again. It spiraled me into a season where me, who I never would have considered myself to be an anxious person—I remember counseling friends who said they struggle with anxiety, and I would just say, "Just trust the Lord. Read more scripture, and it's going to go away"—and feeling like, "Okay, we're in this season," and it just keeps going and going, and I'm feeling anxious all day every day. This is so different than anything I thought it would be.

My body would wake me up around the time of the accident. So I was waking up at night around midnight to 1:00 in the morning, and then I couldn't sleep. There was a period where I was in bed for a few weeks. I would try to serve my family or make dinner, and then I would have to go lay back down because I was so dizzy I couldn't even enjoy dinner with my family.

So it was rough. I started being afraid that I was going to have a panic attack. It's like being anxious about being anxious. And that was just really difficult. So how I responded was, "There must be sin in my life. I need to get on the hunt and figure out how do I take control of my thoughts? How do I take these thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ?" And there was that. I needed to do that. But also there was the physical symptoms, and I needed to also address that.

Deanna Gresh: Our guest on Revive Our Hearts is Blair Lin. She's written about her experience with anxiety and panic attacks in a book called Made to Tremble. Maybe you can relate to some of Blair's symptoms and you're ready for a solution. Well, it took a long time, but Blair did heal from her trauma.

Blair Lin: So it really took me reaching out to older women in my life and saying, "This is what's going on with my body. I'm trying to figure all of this out." And a couple of women said, "Oh, I've dealt with that before. I have a thyroid issue." And so they sent some resources which started me on this journey of understanding more about anxiety.

I also got help from godly authors. John Flavel wrote this book, it's called A Treatise of Fear. And he lays out these three categories of fear which I found very helpful and often absent in our discussion when it comes to fear or anxiety. And this idea of natural fear. Because we're made in the image of God, God has wired us with this desire to live.

And within that desire to live, that means when we find ourselves in a situation where there is danger looming, there are things in our body that God has given us to help us fight against those fears or those cares or concerns. So these are natural things. But also because of the fall, because we're in a fallen world with a fallen body, sometimes those things go haywire.

And so we do find ourselves also dealing with what John Flavel talks about, which is sinful fear. And that's that worry. That is the being divided, the scripture talks about, when it says, "Do not be anxious about anything." You are divided in multiple places, and your attention is not upon the Lord. Your attention is upon the issue, the care, the concern.

And then he also talks about religious fear, which is what we talk about fearing God. Being able to be in this state of awe. This is an honor. This is a reverence. This is an awe that we have towards our God because He is actually able to do something about it. He is the one who is holy. It's like Isaiah six.

Isaiah says, "I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple." And what does Isaiah do? He's quieted. It's like he's speechless. He's trembling in the presence of God. And so I just love that he lays out these three examples of fear, and it's the perfect platform for me to help the church better think about fear and anxiety.

Deanna Gresh: So Blair received help from authors like John Flavel. She also continued to be helped by other women, and she writes about this in her book Made to Tremble.

Blair Lin: Yeah, my next step was eventually to get a counselor. And actually, I give—it's funny—in the acknowledgments, I mention Revive Our Hearts. I'm going to read the acknowledgments here. It says, "Thank you to Nancy Wolgemuth and Revive Our Hearts who, when I had to pull out of a conference in 2017 due to crippling anxiety, recommended a counselor and suggested rather than return the honorarium, they encouraged me to use it to pay for my first group of counseling sessions."

And so I'm just so grateful for that because we were a young family in ministry, very strict budget at the time. And that was really a means of grace to recommend that counselor and get me going with seeing someone who could walk me through what was happening and give me the tools to find help and to find hope.

I met a beautiful counselor via recommendation who walked me through, and it was wonderful, opening every session in prayer, leading me to the scripture, also sharing with me breathing techniques that were helpful when those panic attacks would come. I remember her encouraging me because I literally kind of had to learn to drive again. I would drive for 10 minutes, and then I would start hyperventilating.

And so her encouragement to me to play Christian music, to cry out to God, and the Lord really met me again and again. And that really was my comfort. It was seeing God for who He is and realizing, "Well, He's not anxious." My God is never biting His nails. He's never hyperventilating. He's always at peace. He is peace.

And so if I know that He's with me, it doesn't matter the level of affliction or suffering, I can have peace in the midst of it. Even if I die. I mean, literally, even if I die. Death is not a bad thing for a Christian. And I had to reconcile that in my mind because I think in those moments I was afraid to die. And I wondered about that. Well, I'm a believer. I know the information about death.

But in a sense, I had to wrestle with God to say, "Okay, I can be satisfied with this." Be okay with leaving my husband and my children in the hands of the Lord. Because often when it comes to sinful anxiety, it really can be about control. We want to be in control. We have these concerns, we have these cares, and so we think thinking about it, ruminating over it, is going to allow us to have some sense of control, but it's a false sense of control.

There is only one who's in control. He has sufficient resources. He's not divided. He is the God of peace who's with us. And so when we realize that, we can relinquish control and there's a lot of peace that comes from the God of peace.

Deanna Gresh: We will continue hearing from Blair Lin in just a minute. But let me step in and let you know about an online resource that can help you evaluate your own thoughts. Are you focused on anxiety? Or are you filling your mind with the truth of God's word?

In the book of Titus, the Apostle Paul tells us to have a sophron mind. In Greek, sophron describes a mind that is ordered or self-controlled. At reviveourhearts.com, you'll find an online evaluation to help you determine whether your mind is self-controlled or out of control. You'll find that at reviveourhearts.com. Look for a link in the transcript of this program.

So Blair is telling us some ways God helped her combat anxious thoughts after a car accident. During panic attacks, Blair couldn't breathe, and she got help for this problem from the example of Joni Eareckson Tada. Joni's been confined to a wheelchair with quadriplegia for close to 60 years.

Blair Lin: I remember hearing her pray one time, and she prayed and she asked God to help her breathe. And it just struck me because I never heard anyone ask that of God. And the reason it struck me is because I thought, well, we all need God's help to breathe. We don't breathe on our own. But her circumstances caused her to rely upon God in a way that maybe if she didn't have the circumstances, maybe she would have been tempted like we often are to not ask God for the things that we need.

And certainly I'm in a different trial or different affliction, but I have had to ask God for help to breathe and I'm grateful for that. Because what it does is it helps me to see my humanity. It helps me to see, again, I don't have the resources. I'm not in control. And in seeing that, I then go to the one who is in control.

I go to the one who is holding the universe together. Colossians says my mind is being held together by God. My body is being held together by God. And so anything that would cause us to see that, I think is a good thing. It's working good in our life even though we don't say anxiety is the good thing, but God uses every trial in our life to help us to rejoice in the Lord, to help us to be able to see our dependence upon Him.

And so I think seeing it that way helps us to see this is good. To the point that when I was coming out of that season of feeling anxious all day every day, I remember praying and saying, "God, even if you fully completely take this away from me, don't let me lose what you've taught me in the midst of it." Like I never want to let go of this level of dependence upon you.

So yes, He could have healed me miraculously in one day, and praise be to God if He does that because panic attacks don't feel great. But I'm so grateful for what He's taught me in the process. And it reminds me of Job, towards the end of his story he says, "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes see you." He was able to see God in a new way, a different way, a more intimate way through his trial, even though his trials were rough. Like, he went through a lot.

There are so many fears that we're dealing with right now and it's interesting because I think it's important for us to understand sometimes we have an intrusive thought that comes. And what's interesting about anxiety is it's not a one-size-fits-all. And so I really try to provide not only my experience but I share some friends of mine in one chapter of the book who share their personal experiences as well.

Because if you have an intrusive thought, let's say. You have this thought that comes into your mind and tells you, "Be afraid of something" or tells you to do something. I remember when I had just had my youngest child and all the hormones and things that's going on, and I remember I was driving on this narrow road and I had this thought. And the thought was, "You should just drive off the road."

I know that that is not of God. I was able, praise God, to identify that right away and to see, okay, when the scripture talks about we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but principalities and powers and wickedness and rulers, we need to be aware of the spiritual realm and what can be happening.

So I think that's an element that we need to consider to know that every thought that I have, I don't have to give in to this thought. Every thought that I have, it may not even be from me. But I know that thought isn't from God. And I'm a pretty optimistic person so I'm like, I know this isn't just me. This is the enemy. So being aware of the spiritual battle that we are in, I think is important. So I talk about that.

And then sometimes we have these moments of worry. It could be an intrusive thought but maybe it's just a concern. "What if something happens to me? What if I have this pain, what if it's cancer?" Sometimes we kind of just run to the extreme. And so if we have those thoughts, we need to take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ.

And it can be difficult because when things happen to our body we should question those things. I think it's right to say, "Oh, something happened. My heart is pounding, so is something wrong?" And it's important to get those things checked out because it could be a thyroid issue. There are other things that can also trigger anxiety.

But when we have those thoughts, "Oh man, it must be the worst-case scenario," I think it's important for us to take those thoughts captive and cast our cares over to the Lord. Whether intrusive thought or a worst-case scenario thought, we cast those over to the Lord.

Deanna Gresh: Blair Lin has been helping us combat anxious thoughts through biblical principles and practical suggestions. She talks about all of this in her new book.

Blair Lin: So my book is called Made to Tremble and the subtitle is How Anxiety Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to My Faith. And some people hear that title and they're curious, but others are like, "How could you say that?" Anxiety became the best thing that ever happened to your faith.

And I say anything that causes me to be dependent upon God is one of the best things. And so anxiety, the reason I say it's the best thing that ever happened to my faith is because it is the very thing that God used to help me to see how much I need Him. And when things are going okay, sometimes we can be tempted to think, "Okay, I got this. I'm sufficient. I am God."

We wouldn't say that, of course, but sometimes we function in that way, that I have my life under control. And so anything that would cause us to say I'm not God, there's no question about it. I don't have this. Like, I don't got this at all. I need the one who does have this under control is a very good thing.

The title which is Made to Tremble, which is kind of a double entendre, that we are made to tremble because we are human. We have this body and there are moments where we may tremble. But also we're made to tremble before our creator, our God, Yahweh, because of who He is and He is greater than any of our anxieties. He's more powerful than anything that would cause us to tremble.

There's that hymn by Martin Luther, "We tremble not for him, we tremble not for the enemy, but we tremble for our God," the one who is greater than any anxiety, greater than any enemy.

Deanna Gresh: We would like to send you Blair's book, Made to Tremble. It's our gift to say thank you when you support Revive Our Hearts with a gift of any size. Not only will you get the book, you can also know that you're helping this ministry point other women to God's word.

When you support Revive Our Hearts, you're partnering with us to fill women's minds with the truth that helps them say no to anxiety and yes to peace. You can make your donation at reviveourhearts.com. Be sure to ask for Blair's book, Made to Tremble.

I want to give you a sneak peek of a new project that Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Blair Lin are working on together. But first, if you're dealing with anxiety, would you listen to Blair for one final thought?

Blair Lin: So if you right now are in the thick of this battle with anxiety, I just first want to stop and say: breathe. I want to encourage you and let you know that this is not the end. That there is hope for you in the midst of this hardship and this affliction. And I want to encourage you to welcome God into your anxiety.

I think so often we're tempted toward shame and condemnation, and that causes us to feel like God is not with us. But the scripture says, "Do not be afraid," but it gives a why. It says, "Because I am with you. I will help you." And so I want you to pray those anxieties to your God.

And if you can, I want you to open up the scripture. I do want you to remind yourselves of who your God is, of how powerful He is, of how steady He is, that He is unanxious. He is not terrified. And even the moment that you find yourself in, it has not caught Him by surprise. He is with you in the thick of it and so I guess that would be my first encouragement to you.

Then you got to pick up the book because there is so much more that I don't have time to walk through with you right now. But I do walk through some practical things like how to find a counselor, what might that look like. I give some resources in the back of the book. And the book also has a lot of hymns throughout and poetry throughout, so I write in poetry and prose.

And I see that as an opportunity to selah. An opportunity to express our gratitude. Philippians four talks about, don't be anxious about anything, but with everything with prayer and supplication, and then Paul says, "And with thanksgiving make your requests known to God." And the peace of God which will guard your hearts and minds in Christ.

And I think that thanksgiving is so important because it helps us recall who our God is and recall what He's done in the past. And sometimes when all we see is anxiety, all we see is what's before us, it feels much more grand than it is. But when we see who our God is and we see He's delivered me in the past—He's dealt with my greatest need, which is salvation—He's not going to just neglect me when it comes to these anxieties that I'm experiencing.

Deanna Gresh: That's Blair Lin, helping us say no to anxiety. Before we go, I want to let you know that our guest Blair Lin is the co-host for a brand new podcast and radio program that you'll be able to hear starting next January.

As you may know, our host Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will be teaching through the Bible starting in 2027 here on Revive Our Hearts. Each of those episodes will have a corresponding four-minute feature called Wonder of the Word Highlights. Would you pray for this new endeavor with us? Pray that women will hear this short daily podcast and radio program in multiple languages and that they then will want to come to Revive Our Hearts to listen to the longer daily teaching.

Here's a sneak peek at Wonder of the Word Highlights.

Blair Lin: Do you ever look at your news feeds and feel worried about the future? Well, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is going to help you take your eyes off those news feeds and fill your heart with hope for the future.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Exodus chapter one verse 12 tells us that God's people were enslaved by the Egyptians. The more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

Blair Lin: So the King of Egypt made an evil edict and told the midwives to drown Israelite baby boys. Verse 17 says the midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the King of Egypt had told them. They let the boys live.

Deanna Gresh: That's a sample of Wonder of the Word Highlights coming to podcast feeds and the radio in 2027. Tomorrow Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will give you encouraging news. You really can control your heart and emotions. Listen for that tomorrow here on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.