Overcoming Anxiety

Some battles rage silently behind smiles and spiritual gifts, known only to the warrior and to God. For years, Clay found himself living a paradox—a man who could prophesy over others and witness demons flee at his command, yet privately captive to an enemy he dared not name. While laying hands on the afflicted and speaking in tongues, his own mind had become a battlefield where a single unwelcome thought could trigger complete collapse. His journey from prisoner to overcomer reveals that sometimes our deepest healings come not through instantaneous miracles, but through humble agreement with truth spoken across time and space—and that our greatest testimonies often emerge from the very places we're most ashamed to reveal.

He didn't talk about it. Ever. Unless someone directly asked—and no one did, because no one knew. The anxiety and depression that had gripped Clay since 2012 remained his secret shame, a crippling reality that contradicted everything he believed about himself.

The irony wasn't lost on him. Saved in 1997, baptized in the Holy Spirit ten years later, Clay had embraced the Pentecostal experience with its spiritual gifts and powerful manifestations. He thought himself "ten foot tall and bulletproof." He was prophesying, laying hands on people, witnessing deliverances from demons—all while harboring a private torment that could reduce him to disorientation and panic in seconds.

It had begun with a trauma point sometime in 2012, planting inside him a fear so overwhelming he could barely function. The triggers could be anything: driving too close to another car, taking any kind of medication, a room becoming too hot or too cold—any circumstance where Clay felt his control slipping away. When these episodes struck, his vision would blur, dizziness would overwhelm him, and sometimes he would physically flee.

"I remember once," Clay says, "it came to me so badly, I got up and started running down the street. I got halfway down the block before I realized what was going on." The anxiety could strike with such intensity that his only response was literal flight—running blindly from an invisible enemy that pursued him relentlessly.

Clay’s wife, MaryAnn, knew nothing of his struggle. No one did. Only God witnessed the humiliating contradiction: a man who could cast out devils through prayer being utterly undone by a simple thought.

"I can't really put that into words to express how humiliating to me that was," Clay confesses. "I wouldn't tell anybody."

The façade crumbled in an emergency room in Central Texas. What began as a migraine headache—likely triggered by the notorious cedar fever allergies of the region—led to a routine medical intervention that exposed his secret. As nurses went through their checklist, Clay's anxiety mounted steadily.

Clay describes, "As they were going through their checklist, I was just getting more and more anxious. Then they came to me with a drug that was going to affect my mind and my conscious state—and I nearly had to be strapped to the bed when they tried to administer the medication."

MaryAnn watched in bewilderment as her husband, a man of spiritual authority and confidence, transformed before her eyes into someone gripped by irrational terror. His secret was exposed, but only to his wife. The circle of shame had widened slightly and the condition remained.

For what seemed like years, he prayed for healing. He begged God to release him from this contradiction, this thorn in his flesh that made mockery of his spiritual gifts. The deliverance he sought remained elusive.

Then one evening, alone on his couch, he found himself watching a recorded program featuring Rabbi Schneider of "The Jewish Jesus"—a Messianic rabbi who had experienced a radical conversion to Christianity and now ministered globally, seeing healings and deliverances in his services. The recording had sat unwatched—fifteen months had passed since its initial broadcast.

As the rabbi moved through scripture verse by verse, something unexpected happened. "I'm feeling led right now to pray over anxiety and fear," the rabbi announced suddenly, moving from behind his pulpit to kneel in prayer.

At that moment, something in Clay broke. He slid from his couch to his knees, extending his hands toward the television screen. Where two or more are in agreement—even across time and space, even through a recording made more than a year earlier—he would believe for his miracle. Clay knew he wasn't alone in this struggle; tens of thousands, perhaps millions suffered similarly. He agreed with Rabbi Schneider's prayer, desperate and at the end of his hope.

When the prayer concluded, Clay returned to his seat feeling strangely ambivalent. No dramatic sensations, no overwhelming peace—just a quiet empowerment that left him uncertain whether anything had actually changed. The real test would come with the next trigger.

He decided not to force the issue. Though he had medications in his home—allergy pills he could have taken just to test his reaction—he chose to wait for an organic encounter with one of his triggers. "I'll be in a situation I'm not expecting," he told himself, "and we'll see what happens."

Eventually, that situation arrived. Driving his car—an activity that had consistently triggered his anxiety and one he had grown deeply afraid of—"I was really afraid to drive," he admits. Despite his fear, he had forced himself back behind the wheel, unwilling to let anxiety claim another piece of his life. As he drove, he felt the familiar sensation beginning to rise within him as he pulled too close to another vehicle, the precursor to panic and disorientation.

"You can feel that thing that's inside start to try to creep up," Clay explains. "But the spirit inside of me was much bigger, and it trampled on that thing! I rejoiced and started to weep because that's when I knew that I had been healed."

The healing had happened during that kneeling prayer, activated not by dramatic feelings but by simple faith in agreement with another believer. Clay couldn't wait for the next trigger, eager to confirm his victory.

In the decade that followed—more than ten years since that night with Rabbi Schneider's recorded program—Clay has walked in freedom from the anxiety that once imprisoned him. The traumatic memories remain "seared" in his consciousness, but they no longer trigger the paralyzing responses that once controlled his life.

Clay's testimony isn't offered as a sermon, though he acknowledges it inevitably becomes one. How can he speak of his healing without mentioning Jesus? It stands as an encouragement to others who might believe their spiritual maturity should exempt them from such struggles—those who, like him, once thought their halos "didn't need polishing."

"Maybe you struggle. Maybe you're just not perfect like me," Clay adds with self-deprecating irony, acknowledging how he had been "brought down out of those clouds" and shown what millions face daily.

The battle that once brought Clay shame now brings purpose. He offers hope to others trapped in similar prisons. "You can be healed, too," he assures them. “Find a church that believes in healing and agree with someone. Agree with the fundamental truth that humans weren't designed to live in perpetual fear.”

"When we're struggling with these fears or anxieties or anything, we're in a victim state," Clay explains. "And that's where the devil wants us to be, in a state of perpetual victimhood." His voice rises with conviction as he concludes: "No. No. No. You are not a victim. Go right now and look in the mirror and just declare: I am not a victim in Jesus' name. I'm an overcomer. I'm a winner. I'm good, I'm holy—and not because of anything I've done, but because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ on that cross at Calvary."

Clay emphasizes this truth repeatedly, determined that others grasp the power of this identity shift: "You were born and designed as an overcomer. A victorious overcomer." His eyes light up as he drives home this point. "Without that," Clay acknowledges, "we have no hope. I would be telling a different story right now if it wasn't for that blood. If you're still here... you already have victory."