Dannah Gresh: When fear floods your heart, what should you do? Here’s Judy Dunagan.
Judy Dunagan: You know, ladies, you can run to your God and be honest with Him and pour out your heart to Him and wrestle with Him and ask Him the hard questions about the fears that you are facing.
Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Facing Our Fears, for September 1, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.
Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I receive messages from women who are navigating hard circumstances. I’m talking about scary things—things that make you think, Wow, I bet she’s really fearful right now. We all experience fear, no matter how closely we’re walking with the Lord. But the thing that distinguishes followers of Jesus from non-believers is that we don’t let fear rule us. Our guest today, Judy Dunagan, has learned that, when fears do come flooding in, we have a safe place to take them.
Judy calls herself “a wonder-seeker of God and His Word.” I love that! She’s a speaker, she’s served on the team with Moody Publishers. She’s also the author of The Loudest Roar: Living in the Unshakeable Victory of Christ.
Judy led a breakout session at a True Woman conference called “Finding Freedom from Fear.” It was so practical and Scripture-focused.
We’re about to listen to the first half of that session. If you’re prone to be fearful or perhaps facing some fears today, I hope you’ll join Judy in making God’s promises your dwelling place. Here’s Judy Dunagan.
Judy: I live in Colorado Springs, and it’s, I have to brag, I think one of the most beautiful cities in the world. My favorite place to go is called Garden of the Gods. I don’t know if any of you have been there before. I’ve changed the name to the Garden of the One True God.
One of my favorite places to go . . . Well, there’s hiking trails and soaring rocks, and you can climb up and capture a view of Pikes Peak, which is at 14,000 ft, so it’s a distant view, and take a picture. But just two weeks ago, and I’ve lived there many years, I stumbled on an area I hadn’t been before. It’s just a quiet area and a beautiful pond with benches by it. What happened was, I sat down with my Bible and my journal. This pond was beautiful, and there were these soaring trees, these huge tree trunks over the pond. The pond is like glass, and the trees are bending over the pond and reflected in the surface of the pond.
And then all in a sudden we had ducks coming, like they were queued to come and hang out with me. One was this gorgeous white duck. I had never seen a pristine white duck. The duck gets in the water and is gliding across the water. There’s a muskrat coming, just gliding across the water. Then there’s a family of mallard ducks that are swimming, and then they get out and decide to take a nap right at my feet on the edge of the pond.
I’m sitting there thinking, I think I’m in a living Monet painting. It was stunning! I had this precious time with the Lord of journaling. I so needed it. I’m in a very busy season right now, and I’m in the Word.
Well, all a sudden, this woman walks up. I had been there about an hour, and she walks up, and she’s got a big dog on a leash, and she says, “I think I should warn you that there is a big bear about two hundred yards that way, but he’s coming this way.”
I don’t have to tell you immediately I picked up my Bible and journal, threw it in my bag, and I followed the lady with the big dog to get away from the bear. We went to our cars that were in the parking lot.
But that can often be what it’s like with anxiety and fear that seems to come out of nowhere, right? Where we’re gliding along in our lives, like so much peace and trusting the Lord, being a good Christian not worrying, trusting God with our worries, when all in a sudden, something comes out and hits us, it seems, out of nowhere. And that blows up. That Monet painting for me, that living painting was blown up because of the bear, but often our peaceful lives, our lives where we’re trusting our God, that can happen to us.
I just assume with all of you here who were drawn to this workshop, that perhaps you’re dealing with some anxiety in your own life. My hope and prayer is that I’m going to be able to equip you and encourage you in that journey.
I just wonder, if I asked you, What is your greatest fear right now? What are you most worried about? I have a feeling that something comes to your mind right away. For some of you, it might be three or four things. Could you jot on your paper what you are most worried about. Just write it down, and we’re going to be looking back at that at the end of our time.
One of my favorite books on anxiety is called Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow. It’s a classic. It’s been out many years. I think she’s sold half a million of them. It’s a phenomenal book. She starts the book by quoting a French philosopher who said, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which have never happened.”
That’s kind of a definition of worry. Where you just worry and worry about something that never happens. Well, I used to think that was kind of a fun statement, but you know what, people are really going through a lot. So I think there are probably some in this room that could say, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which have happened.”
For me, probably about twenty years ago, my life was just hit with one thing after another. I tend to be an anxious person, ever since I was a little girl. I joke that I think it goes so far back that I was anxious right after I was born, because I wondered if I did that right. So even as a little girl, I was really fearful. When I became a young mom, it got even worse, because I had to worry about them, for their health and their safety, and now I’m a grandma.
Thankfully, after all these years, I’ve learned to surrender some of those fears to the Lord, but this particular season, we were hit with one thing after another. We had one daughter who was very, very ill. It was very serious. She was a middle-schooler. Then my husband and I hit a hard time in our marriage where we loved each other, but we were just going through some really hard things. My mother-in-law had stage four cancer, and it was just one thing after another.
I’ll never forget, one night getting ready for bed, right before we went to bed, I said to Rick, “You know, I’ve loved and served the Lord all these years, and I’ve trusted Him, but there’s so much going on. I just don’t feel like we deserve it.” And I said these words: “This wasn’t supposed to be my story.” I think I said it more to God than my husband.
At that time, the only way I could fall asleep was if I would wear earphones and listen to worship music, and make myself listen to the lyrics of the song to keep my thoughts captive to truth. You know, when you’re in a season of deep grief or sorrow or fear and anxiety, your mind can just escalate, can’t it, to the “what ifs” and “if onlys.” I found one way to be able to rest was to have those earphones on and to try to fall asleep listening to the truths of the worship songs.
Well this particular night, remember I had just said this wasn’t supposed to be my story, and I had a new CD, a new worship CD I’d never heard before. It was kind of contemporary worship. So I put this CD on, and I had just said this wasn’t supposed to be my story. All of a sudden, about the third song in, it was an old hymn, called “Blessed Assurance.”
Now I grew up, I’m a Baptist minister’s daughter, so I grew up in the sixties and seventies, going to church three or four times a week and sang all the old hymns, but here are the lyrics of that song that started to be played over me:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchased of God
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood
This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long . . .
Just think about that, women. I’d just said really to God, “This wasn’t supposed to be my story,” and it’s as if He arranged to have that worship song, that old hymn, telling me what my story is. It’s not about the brokenness, it’s about Him redeeming our brokenness. It was as if He was singing over me.
After the impact of that song, I had to research the hymnist, the psalmist, the one who wrote the song. Her name is Fanny Crosby, and she’s a new hero of mine. She passed away in 1915, and this is a little bit about her life story:
She was blinded as an infant at about ten-weeks old when she was blinded; her father died when she was six months old. She then married when she got older, and she had one baby, a little girl that they named Frances, and her baby didn’t live past infancy, most likely SIDS. She had a very, very difficult marriage.
And yet, as a young girl, her grandmother had told her, “You’ve got to memorize Scripture,” So from the age of ten, she started to memorize God’s Word. She grew up to write over 8,000 hymns, the lyrics. She was a poet. Can you imagine? Some of you know those hymns—“To God Be the Glory,” “Pass Me Not,” “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” and then of course, “Blessed Assurance.” She also had a heart for the homeless, and she served at a rescue mission.
I want to share two of her most famous quotes with you that just took my breath away when I was in the midst of this sorrow time. She said, “If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind, for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior.”
And then this quote: “It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God [this is a heaven rules quote] that I would be blind all my life, and I thank Him for this. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow, I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.”
Can you imagine?
Even in the midst of those things that all of us fear—a disability, a child who loses her life, a difficult marriage, she learned to press into her God.
So today I want us to look at some really hopefully practical ways to find freedom from fear, to combat fear. We’re going to look at, first of all, about pressing into God. I mentioned the Bible verse 1 Pet. 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”
How do we cast our anxiety onto Him, and what does that mean? It’s easier said than done. Cast means “to throw,” or literally just hurl it onto God. I don’t know if you’ve been able to do that, but I’ve had to do that throughout my life when fear is trying to grip my heart.
You know, ladies, you can run to your God and be honest with Him and pour out your heart to Him and wrestle with Him and ask Him the hard questions about the fears that you are facing.
So how do we press into God? One of the first ways is dwelling in the promises of Scripture. Psalm 91 is a beautiful example of how you can dwell in Scripture. This is one way that I’ve been able to keep my thoughts captive to truth and to God and press into Him when anxiety is taking over.
My husband Rick and I, during that season, we started to read Psalm 91 so much together out loud like a prayer to the Lord, that we ended up memorizing it.
I thought today, I’m going to try this, just for you. I know at a conference like this you run from one thing to another, and you’re getting great content and taking notes and spending time with people and looking at the books, but I wanted to provide just a moment of quiet where I’m going to recite Psalm 91 over you. You can look it up, but I would also encourage you, maybe just bow your head or close your eyes and just listen to these words from the psalmist. Think of the thing that you wrote down that is troubling you or worrying you the most as I speak this over us, okay?
Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”Surely he will save you
from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
no disaster will come near your tent.For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.He will call on me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”
Amen, and hallelujah, correct? Beautiful, beautiful psalm, so do turn to it now. I want to unpack this psalm, because I’m giving you an example of God’s Word, especially the Psalms, you can just dwell in and see the truths, and how it will reach your frightened terrified heart.
Many of the psalms were written by David. Often he was running for his life from either Saul or his son Absalom. Sometimes we’re told in a preface of a psalm that he was in a cave or he was just captured, and then he still wrote these amazing psalms, these lyrics to songs, really. He was like a poet, and often he turned to worship, or pouring his heart out.
Now, we don’t think he wrote Psalm 91. We’re not sure. Some think it was Moses, actually. Psalm 90, we’re told Moses wrote it, and I guess the rhythm of it, and the writing of it, so it could have even been Moses, or it could have been David.
I know if any of you are associated with the military, I have many friends living in Colorado Springs who are either in the military or married to someone in the military, or a parent of someone, and Psalm 91 is often their go-to psalm to pray protection, as if they’re being covered by the protection of God.
I kind of took apart this psalm, and I’m just going to read or speak this over you. You can do this on your own, too, but even just in the first four verses of this psalm, there are four different names of God. And then there are promises of what He does for us.
The names of God in this psalm is Most High. You’ll see that at the beginning. The Hebrew word for Most High is elyon. I love that. It means “transcendent name, the highest of the high.” He’s the Most High God.
Then Almighty. In Hebrew, that’s El Shaddai. I learned after moving to Colorado that El Shaddai, one of the meanings in Hebrew is “God of the mountains.” When you live around the mountains, you know that those mountains cry out His majesty. Shaddai also means “measureless.”
Then when you see the word, the name LORD in all caps in the Old Testament, that means Jehovah or Yahweh. Yahweh is the name for God that the Jewish people back in that time, they couldn’t even speak the word. It was so holy to them.
Then you see the word God, and that’s elohim.
And then at the very end, there’s the word “my salvation.” I have done some research in Hebrew the word for salvation is Yeshua, which is really Jesus. So when you get to the end of the psalm, it’s almost as if it’s talking about our Lord Jesus.
My father passed away five years ago. He was a godly man, a prayer warrior and a pastor. He’s the one who taught us about Psalm 91. I inherited his Bible. I’ll never forget it. That was five years ago. I looked at Psalm 91, and all the passages on each side of the page, because he dwelt there so much, you could see stains from his hands, if that makes sense, of him holding it and studying it so much. So please dwell in it.
The promises of protection in this psalm, I’m just going to read these over you. Think of what you wrote about your hardest fear, what you’re most worried about. These are the truths of what our God does for us, the promises of His protection from Psalm 91.
- If we dwell, that means “abide,” we’ll rest.
- He is my refuge.
- He is my fortress.
- He will save us from the fowler’s snare.
- He will cover us with His feathers.
- Under His wings we will find refuge.
- His faithfulness is my shield and rampart.
Rampart means “a protective barrier.” Often people will say, “I pray a hedge of protection around my family.” That’s what a rampart is.
Another promise for us is I will not fear terror, the arrow, pestilence, and plague. If I make the Most High my dwelling, no harm will befall me or disaster come near my tent.
Now, I know that is difficult for some people, that part of the psalm. If I make the Most High my dwelling then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. I know a lot of you have had disaster come near your tent, meaning your family.
I remember when our city was hit by extreme fires, and we had to evacuate. I tried clinging to Psalm 91, and I was kind of not real happy with the Lord, because we thought we were going to lose our home. We didn’t, but three hundred, of our neighbors did, so that is a difficult one. No harm will befall you or come near your tent.
I have a dear friend, though, who had a three-year-old little boy who passed away from complications with strep. She didn’t know Jesus until that happened, and then she found Jesus before her survival. She is one of our authors at Moody and loves Him so dearly. Her name is Kim, and I said, “Kim how do you reconcile ‘No disaster will come near your tent’?”
She said, “Jesus has been my only hope in my grief. He is who I can run to.” She even believes that is talking about eternity—His protection of her soul for eternity.
Another promise in that, is if you make the Most High your dwelling, He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
And then, I will trample the great lion and the serpent. So some of that psalm is obviously, I believe, talking about the enemy.
And then God’s “I will” statements at the end; please cling to these. It says:
Because he loves Me and acknowledges My name, and calls upon Me:
- I will rescue.
- I will protect.
- I will answer.
- I will be with in trouble.
- I will deliver.
- I will honor.
- I will satisfy with long life.
- I will show her my salvation, which I said is, “Show her Jesus.”
As you dwell in this, you can circle the names of God, you can underline His attributes, you can talk about the promises.
You see some of our part there at the very beginning. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” So how do we dwell? We’ve got to choose that. We’ve got to choose to dwell in Him. That is our part.
We’ve talked about dwelling in the promises of Scripture, but I also want to talk about prayer. I think prayer is one of the most neglected things that we as believers do. It’s hard. I’m not going to do it, but if I had you raise your hand just to say, “Hey, is it hard to have a consistent, meaningful, deep prayer life?” there might not be too many hands, and there’s no condemnation there.
I was on staff at a church. I’ve been in women’s ministry for over twenty years, and I know I get so busy in ministry where I’m leading Bible studies or helping mentor mom ministries get started, or teaching on the importance of prayer, and not really praying.
I think the enemy wants to keep us from prayer more than anything. It’s such a threat to him. But when you’re overwhelmed with anxiety and fear, I want to encourage you to just run to Him in prayer.
I just to encourage you, if you’re having a hard time with it, just ask Him. Cry out to Him. Say, “Jesus, I want to pray more. I want to come to Your throne room in prayer more,” and He’ll be faithful in that.
We’re told in Hebrews 4, that the throne of grace, the throne room where we can go to pray, is called a throne of grace and mercy. You can run to Him with whatever your burden is, whatever your fear is.
Nancy: That’s Judy Dunagan, inviting you to bring your burdens to the Lord.
Fighting fear isn’t about digging deeper into your own strength—it’s about leaning into God’s strength. Our team has produced a 40-day fortitude challenge, we’re calling it Endure. It invites you to a life of deeper trust in Him. When you sign up for this challenge, you’ll receive daily emails from writers like Mary Kassian, Leslie Bennett, and myself. They’ll encourage you to endure hardship with grace. The challenge started on August 25, but it’s not too late to jump in. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com/challenges to register and begin receiving emails.
And if you’d like this challenge in the form of a booklet so that you can write notes and fill out your answers to reflection questions, we’ve got you! Request your copy today with your donation of any amount. You can do that by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, or calling us at 1-800-569-5959. We’d love to send you the Endure booklet as our way of saying thank you.
We’ll hear part 2 of Judy’s breakout message tomorrow. She’s got practical wisdom for your prayer life, including something she calls “alphabet praise.”
Judy: It’s going through the alphabet thanking God for His names and attributes. It can help calm your mind. If you can’t fall asleep, or you wake up, try that, where you’re just worshiping Him in prayer.
Nancy: If you’re battling fear, you won’t want to miss it. Please be back for 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.
All Scripture is taken from the ESV.
*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.
