My "Hallelujah Challenge" testimony_ my story of overcoming!

I want to share my hallelujah challenge testimony….. 

I told God that if He did this for me, I wouldn't be shy about sharing my testimony. 

For those of you who don't know, Hallelujah Challenge is a global prayer and worship movement that happens twice a year in Nigeria! The premise is that we get together online and in person to praise God and pray for 25 days. Anywhere from 400,000 to 1million people globally attend every single day, so it's not your average prayer meeting. It's a very powerful and spirit-filled movement. In the past, I've only ever done the Hallelujah challenge for one or two nights, but this time, I felt like I needed to. 

Let me paint you a picture of what the last 2 months have been like. Going into September, I felt a shift in my spirit, and I knew God was transitioning me (yet again), but this felt different. What transpired, thoughhhhh was basically hell on earth. My personal, professional, financial, and overall life were in major flux, and I was having A LOT of anxiety about it. 

Unfortunately, I'm not new to having or experiencing anxiety, but over the last 2 years, the anxiety symptoms had subsided tremendously, so it was tough when they just started to spring up uncontrollably. Without going into the details of all the things that were just falling apart and out of my control, the anxiety attacks became unbearable. It was so bad, I was having panic attacks once or twice a day for almost 3 weeks straight. 

If you've ever suffered from a panic attack, you know how awful it can be. It's more physically demanding than anything else. Your chest is tight, you can't breathe, your heart is racing, heat is rising, and your head is pounding. There is a lump in your throat that feels like you are being choked from the inside out, and your vision is blurry because you are usually crying uncontrollably, and in that moment, all you want to do is just escape. 

It was so bad, and they seemed to be coming on randomly. I would have panic attacks at the grocery store, taking a walk, before jumping on client calls, during meetings, on my couch, on the bus, on the subway, just any and everywhere. To top it off, the triggers felt random. I couldn't trace where it was coming from, and I started to get scared about when these attacks would happen. Would I be close to home? Would I be safe? These were the questions I would ask myself. On a few occasion,s a few strangers would try to help me or give me concerned looks. It was truly awful. 

I sought out help because it was getting really bad, and my therapist taught me grounding techniques I could practice when it happened, especially in public. She taught me this thing called a sensory exercise, where you would pay attention to what you can hear, what you can see, what you can taste, what you can smell, to draw your attention to the present moment and recognize you were not in danger. She also told me to play around with temperature stimulation, which is where you hold something really cold or drink something really hot. The premise was that if you drink something hot, you have to slow down or else you will burn yourself. Although these strategies were helping me recover, I was still asking God a lot of questions about why these things were happening. 

He began to teach me through reading the word, attending discipleship class at church, watching sermons, listening to podcasts, and even doing an inner healing ministry called Sozo. He began to work on my heart slowly. My church hosted a small women’s event called a “Soul assessment”, which was essentially a time to slow down to understand where you were with your soul. Your soul is made up of your mind, will, and emotions. This is, unfortunately, an area a lot of us, especially Christians, often bypass. Someone hurts us, we don't process, we just go straight to forgiveness. You didn't get something you were excited about, no time for disappointment, we go straight to it must be God's will, rejection is redirection. We experience fear, we go straight to quoting scriptures like do not fear, do not be discouraged, be strong etc. Listen, I'm not saying this wrong in any way. I actually think scripture is powerful and the word of God can heal you, but you also have to process those emotions. 

The last blog I wrote was about how I've been having a hard time feeling my emotions and how my emotional reactions have felt delayed. Because I've been told that I can be too emotional, I often go straight to how to fix a situation and how to overcome it without necessarily addressing the pain. Basically, I was suppressing my emotions, and I've been doing this for a long time (unknowingly ofcourse). I really thought I was in touch with myself, but I guess I wasn't fully there. So when the pressure got worse, it just started to spill out in every way possible, and it began to manifest as anxiety. In the discipleship class at church, they taught us about something called “the bleeding heart”. Essentially, many of us, especially women, are dealing with a lot of hurt, disappointment, pain, et,c from the past and present, but we just push through because we want to be strong, and let's be honest, Adulting doesn't take a break for you to process your emotions. I mean, in the middle of these anxiety attacks, I was still showing up for my clients, selling my programs, posting on LinkedIn, hiring and training team members, learning in my business, showing up for friends and family in crisis, in joy, in confusion etc. Doing groceries, cooking, cleaning, and packing up my life. It was a lot to say the least. 

Anyway, in discipleship class, they talked about the bleeding heart and how the symptoms are emotional hypersensitivity, fear, bitterness, and trauma bonding. Alot of these words are ugly and sad, and I didn’t know I had some of these things in my heart. It scared me a little, not going to lie, because I thought How come I didn’t know? I’m someone who always does self-reflection and seeks accountability, but how come these things are in my heart and I didn’t know? It was truly just a season of God revealing all these things in my heart, and it felt really heavy. 

Anyway, fast forward to the Hallelujah Challenge, at this point, it's been weeks of struggling with these uncontrollable, unpredictable panic attacks, and I just join in, hoping to connect with God, and maybe get a miracle. The first couple of days felt very overwhelming, but I'm so glad I never gave up. I reached out to my community to join me, shoutout to my prayer sisters with me on the carpet (you know yourselves), and I just cried out to God, and kept showing up. Throughout the Hallelujah Challenge, God started waking me up at 4 am every SINGLE day, and then at some point, He moved to 3 am. I would wake up, spend 2 or 3 hours in his presence, praying, reading my Bible, watching sermons, crying out to God for healing, for understanding, for intimacy healing, just desperate for God to come through. My physical body was getting tired because I wasn't sleeping through the night, my emotions were fried because it was just heavy and overwhelming, and my mental health was just in the dust at that point because my mind was trying to process a million things at once, and on Oct 24,2025, everything just came to a head. 

I woke up that morning a,t 2:45, did my prayer and worship like always, and didn’t go back to bed till about 7:30 am. I messaged my team to cancel all my meetings for that day and basically stayed in bed because I was exhausted and at my breaking point, but still holding on. A few days prior, Ps. Nathniel (leader of the Hallelujah Challenge movement) had asked us to dress like our miracle as a prophetic act. I had worn white gloves and taped a white piece of paper to a ruler to make a white flag. To me, the white gloves represented peace, and the white flag represented surrender. I danced like I had already received it, and he said that in the next 72 hours, some of us were going to receive our supernatural miracle, healing, etc. So my hope was high, but my circumstances on that faithful Friday screamed despair. I had just experienced the worst panic attack since these episodes started. Thankfully, I was with my roommate, and she basically guided me back home, and I just stayed in my room for the rest of the day. 

When the service started that night, I was horizontal in my bed, just crying, and by the end of the service, 2 hours later, I was leaping for joy! My roommate was confused, and my friends were shocked because they knew exactly where I was at the beginning of that day. It was truly a miracle. Since that day, I have not had a single panic attack, not even a period where my heart has raced; it's like night and day! I also received joy that night. What's crazy is that my circumstances haven't changed. My pastor once said, “You know you have peace from God when the storm is raging and you are calm, and it doesn't make sense”. It is undeniable that God is the one who gave me this peace in the middle of it all. Don’t get me wrong, my emotions are still up and down, I still cry when I’m sad, but this time I’m learning to allow myself to feel the sadness, to feel the emotions, to go through the process, to take my time to experience the thing instead of spiritually bypassing it. 

God is still working on my heart, healing me from the inside out, showing me where things are broken, telling me what's true and what is a lie I believed, what I should pay attention to, and how to process it. I have no idea how long this process is going to take, but I know without a shadow of a doubt that my God is truly good, and He is trustworthy and He cares about the condition of my heart. There were so many mini-testimonies along the way, so many people God used to speak to me, so many scriptures that I can’t go through because this blog will be at least 6 more pages, just know that God is sooo intentional and soo good.  

The Bible says we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony, and this is my testimony of how God showed up in my life in this past season of anxiety. 

If you're dealing with any mental health challenges, unprocessed grief, loss, deep hurt, depression, anxiety, OCD, etc. Seek help, talk to someone, process it, don't suppress it, let God into the places where it hurts. Throughout the journey, God kept telling me, I can't heal what you won't reveal. He knows the condition of our hearts, but he wants us to come to him with our pain. Stop pretending you're ok, stop gaslighting yourself that it's just your circumstances, they are just symptoms pointing you to a deeper hurt. Don't be scared of where He wants to take you. He is refining you and preparing you for more, but first, he wants to deal with the places where your heart is broken or where your heart is hardened. 

If He can do it for me, he can do it for you! Trust him, surrender it to Him. I promise you He is trustworthy; He is not a human who might mishandle your heart. There is no risk involved. This is the perfect love that casts out all fear!!! And He loves you. 

Wooosh….. This was a lot! 

All in all, God is faithful, and you can bring your stuff to Him, flaws and all. 

Till next time, 

Your healing bestie 

Ibiyemi