Made to Tremble

Dannah Gresh: During an intense season, Blair Linne would have panic attacks when she tried to drive.

Blair Linne: I think in those moments I was afraid to die.

Dannah: But she came to understand this truth . . .

Blair: Okay, what's the worst that could happen? Well, if I'm with God, I'm gonna be okay, even if I die. I mean, literally, even if I die, death is not a bad thing for a Christian.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules for April 20, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

If you’re walking through the 2026 Bible reading plan with us, today we’re reading 2 Kings chapters 7 and 8. In that passage, we encounter many characters who are faced with fear and anxiety: fear of enemy armies, fear of famine, fear of loss. 

I know you face a lot of difficulties, just like those characters in today’s reading. Blair Linne 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 from 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. Here’s some background. It was 2015, and the Linne family had just moved to Philadelphia . . .

Blair: . . . because my husband was going to plant a church.

Dannah: They had three kids . . .

Blair: . . . ages three and under.

Dannah: They were all in the car driving to visit family . . .

Blair:  . . .and I was behind the wheel.

Dannah: Around 1 a.m., Blair started to see road signs warning of deer crossings.

Blair: 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 said, “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, and so I'm being very aware.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, so I slowly moved over to the right.

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

Blair: 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!

Dannah: Once the family was back home, those attacks began.

Blair: 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.” 

Dannah: But she wasn’t going to move on so fast. A day or two later, Blair visited her small group. They asked her about the accident, and she told them about hitting the deer.

Blair: 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 kind of trigger me or stir in me, I think, all of those raw emotions about the accident. 

So I'm back in Philly driving home from the small group, and all of a sudden I feel like I can't breathe. I try to swallow, I feel like I can't swallow. I roll down the window to try to get some fresh air, and then all of a sudden my heart is pounding, like racing, because my body knows something is wrong. Why can't I swallow? Why can't I breathe? It’s not dying down; I need to go to the ER. We did.

They did all the tests, the EKG; they made sure everything was fine. They just said, “You’re fine. Everything is good.” No one explained that it was a panic attack, and so I had no idea. And by that time, things had calmed. I didn’t feel like I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t hyperventilating at that point.

I said, “Okay, I’ll just go on home.” But it continued happening again and again. It spiraled me into a season where . . . 

I never would have considered myself to be an anxious person. I remember counseling friends who said they struggled with anxiety. I would just say, “Just trust the Lord. Read more Scripture and it’s going to go away.” But now I was feeling like, “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 around midnight to one o’clock 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 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 was being anxious about being anxious! That was 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?’”

I needed to do that, but also there were the physical symptoms, and I needed to also address that. 

Dannah: Our guest on Revive Our Hearts is Blair Linne. 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 are ready for a solution. It took a long time, but Blair did heal from her trauma.

Blair: 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.” So they sent some resources which kind of started me on this journey of understanding more about anxiety.

Dannah: Blair also got help from godly authors.

Blair: John Flavel, a Puritan, wrote a book called A Treatise of Fear. He lays out three categories of fear, which I found very helpful, and [which are] often absent in our discussion when it comes to fear and anxiety.

It’s 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 that 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. 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.” That’s worry. The Scripture talks about being divided when it says, “Do not be anxious about anything!” (see Phil. 4:6). 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 where we talk about fearing God, about being able to be in the 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! In Isaiah 6, 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, he’s speechless; he’s trembling in the presence of God.

I just love that John Flavel lays out these three examples of fear, and I think it’s the perfect platform for me to help the church better think about fear and anxiety.

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

Blair: My next step eventually was to get a counselor. And actually, in the acknowledgements of my book, I mention Revive Our Hearts. I’m going to read the acknowledgements here: “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.” 

I’m just so grateful for that! We were a young family in ministry, on a 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 it. It was wonderful! Opening every session in prayer, leading me to the Scripture, and sharing with me breathing techniques that were helpful when those panic attacks would come.

I remember her encouraging me, because I literally had to learn to drive again. I would drive for ten minutes, and then I would start hyperventilating. And her encouragement to me was to play Christian music and to cry out to God. The Lord really met me again and again.

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.

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 could be satisfied with this. It would 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 ruminating over it, thinking about 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 is in control! He has sufficient resources. He’s not divided. He is the God of peace who is with us. When we realize that, we can relinquish control. There’s a lot of peace that comes from the God of peace.

Dannah: We will continue hearing from Blair Linne 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.

Blair is telling us some ways God helped her combat anxious thoughts after a car accident. During panic attacks, Blair couldn’t breathe. 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 sixty years.

Blair: I remember hearing her pray one time. She prayed and asked God to help her breathe. It just struck me because I never heard anyone ask that of God. And the reason it struck me is because I thought, We all need God's help to breathe! We don’t breathe on our own. 

Her circumstances caused her to rely upon God in a way that, maybe if she didn’t have those circumstances, maybe she would have been tempted—like we often are—to not ask God for the things that she or we need.

Certainly, I’m in a different trial or different affliction, but I have had to ask God for help to breathe. I’m grateful for that, because what it does is it helps me to see my humanity. It helps me again to see that I don’t have the resources. I’m not in control. 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 (see Col. 1:17). 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 that anxiety is a good thing. But God uses every trial in our life to help us to rejoice in the Lord, 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, “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. I never want to let go of this level of dependence upon You!” 

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.

It reminds me of Job who said towards the end of his story, “My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes see You!” (see Job 42:5). 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. 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 that 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 in one chapter of the book, I share some friends of mine who shared their personal experiences as well. Because if you have this intrusive thought that comes into your mind that tells you to be afraid of something or tells you to do something . . .

I remember when I just had my youngest child—and you know all the hormones, the things that are going on—I remember I was driving on this narrow road. I had this thought: “You should just drive off the road.”

I know that is not of God! I was able to, praise God, identify that right away and to see, “Okay, when the Scripture talks about how 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 (see Eph. 6:12).

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 into this thought. Every thought that I have may not even be from me! But I know that thought isn’t from God! 

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 is important. So, I talk about that.

Sometimes we have these moments of worry. It could be an intrusive thought, but maybe it’s just a concern. You know, “What if something happens to me? I have this pain, what if it’s cancer?” Sometimes we just kind of run to the extreme. 

And so if we have those thoughts, we need to take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. It can be difficult, because when things happen to our body we should question those things, right? I think it’s right to say, “Oh, something happened and my heart is pounding, so is something wrong?”

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 it’s an intrusive thought or a worst-case-scenario thought, we cast those over to the Lord.

Dannah: Blair Linne has been helping us combat anxiety through biblical principles and practical suggestions. She talks about all of this in her new book.

Blair: So my book is called Made to Tremble and the subtitle is How Anxiety Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to My Faith. 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 you know, I say, “Anything that causes me to be dependent upon God is one of the best things.” And so, the reason I say anxiety is the best thing that happened to my faith is because it is the very thing that God used to help me to see how much I need Him.

When things are going okay, sometimes we can be tempted to think, Okay, I got this! I’m sufficient! I am God! Of course, we wouldn’t say that, but sometimes we function in that way, that I have my life under control. 

So anything that would cause us to say, “I’m not God! There’s no question about it! I don’t have this; I don’t ‘got this’ at all! I need the One who does have this under control!” This is a very good thing!

The title, which is made to Made to Tremble, is kind of a double entendre. 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. He is greater than any of our anxieties! 

He's more powerful than anything that would cause us to tremble. You know, there's that line in the hymn “A Mighty Fortress” 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.

Dannah: We would like to send you Blair’s book Made to Tremble. It is 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 are helping this ministry point other women to God’s Word. 

When you support Revive Our Hearts, you are 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. 

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

Blair: 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 towards shame and condemnation, and that causes us to feel like God is not with us. But the Scripture says, “Do not be afraid.” 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. If you can, I want you to open up the Scripture. I do want you to remind yourself who Your God is, how powerful He is, how steady He is. He is un-anxious. He is not terrified. Even the moment that you find yourself in, it has not caught Him by surprise! He is with you in the thick of it. I guess that would be my first encouragement to you. 

And then, you’ve gotta 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 and poetry throughout. I write in poetry and prose.

I see that as an opportunityto selah, an opportunity to express our gratitude. Philippians 4:6–7 talks about, “Don’t be anxious for anything, but in everything with prayer and supplication and with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds in Christ” (paraphrased).

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. 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 gonna just neglect me when it comes to these anxieties that I'm experiencing.”

Dannah: That’s Blair Linne, helping us say “no” to anxiety.

Before we go, I want to let you know that our guest, Blair Linne, is the cohost for a brand-new podcast and radio program that you will 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 peak at Wonder of the Word Highlights.

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

Exodus chapter 1, verse 12, tells us that God’s people were enslaved by the Egyptians.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites!

Blair: So the king of Egypt made an evil edict and told the midwives to drown Israelite baby boys! 

Nancy: Verse 17 says, “But the midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; but let the boys live” (CSB).

Dannah: 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!

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.