Today I want to tell you to stop worrying because I believe God has more for you.
I’m a worrier by nature. I was born into a worrying family. To me, worrying was an act of love. If you weren’t worried about me or my five-minute trip across town, did you even love me? I had married the two together, making worry a part of my story just as much as love was. But I had to learn that worry wasn’t my intended design, and it’s not yours. It’s not giving you life. It’s stealing it.
I wonder what would change if we surrendered our constant need to worry and control the future and laid it at His feet—allowing us the space to fully step into His perfect design for our life and live that out. To finally live.
If you’re like me, you’re thinking, this is all too good to be true. It’s a good thought, but practically speaking, it feels impossible. Your heart says yes, but logic says that’s a terrible idea.
I know the fight is real. So far, logic may be winning. But today, I want to get your logical mind on board, allowing you to set aside what is keeping you stuck and to walk into the promises God created specifically and individually for you.
Inside this podcast, I present you with a new way to see your life, not as an author but as a character in the greatest story ever told. Allowing you to set down your need to create your own ending and live in the peace that God has already shown us the ending and it’s perfect—creating room for you to live right now. The place where life is happening. Where memories are made, and change is created.
Let this be your permission slip to stop worrying because you know God has more for you.
Don’t tell me to stop worrying.
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:36
I’ve read this verse a thousand times. Expecting that if I could keep repeating it, it would somehow become my life. Don’t get me wrong. There is power in meditating on the living word of God. But meditating and memorizing can only go as far as your beliefs about God.
I learned the hard way that I didn’t think very highly of God, and I certainly didn’t always believe He had my best interest in mind. Making it difficult for me to stop worrying.
Let’s be clear, at no point in the history of the world has the phrase “just stop worrying” made anyone actually stop “worrying.” Most of the time, it only amplified my worry, not because I knew my worrying would make a difference but because telling someone to do something without giving them a place to set worry down never worked.
It’s like telling someone to think more positively without giving them a reason or a change of perspective to do that.
We can’t just will ourselves out of these things.
Yet, at the same time, we can’t let ourselves get stuck in the places of not being okay. Letting ourselves get stuck in these negative spirals allows your mind to build a foundation built on fear and worry instead of the foundation of Christ. And no amount of attempting to get yourself to a safer place works when your life foundation has been built on fear, trauma, pain, and negativity. We have to tear those foundations down and return to the beginning to create a new foundation.
A foundation that is always and forever built on the story you tell yourself – the story of you as savior or God as savior. Which you choose changes how you live and the outcome of your life.
It also changes your happiness, leaving me to challenge you to surrender to God.
It’s time we go back to the story you wrote over your life. To dig up the crumbling foundation built from a faulty and sinful world and build it in truth.
I promise things are about to look up.
And it begins by seeing God in the beginning, middle, and end of your story. When you can see him, you can set your fear down and stop worrying. Creating space to live in the moment.
God As Author
You’ve heard it a million times. It is the story of creation, “In the beginning God…” It’s the first line of the Bible. God begins this story of life. It is a story of building a perfect world, creating humans in his image, gifting them the power of choice, and rescuing them from His love regardless of their works.
Unfortunately, Adam and Eve took full benefit of choice, choosing to side with the slavery of living under human power instead of the freedom of living under God’s power.
And so begins our journey of getting stuck believing we are our own author, leaving us to desperately need a savior.
Choosing to side with the power of self is a generational sin that started in the garden. And a sin that continued throughout every generation in the Bible—seeping into the culture of our world today. Believing we are the author of our own story.
This leads us to live a life trying to control what is out of our control leading to needless overwhelm, frustrations, and questions. You are constantly looking for an answer that will bring you home to yourself. That will bring peace and rest.
But there is only one home, only one satisifation and that is God. He is the answer.
This idea isn’t popular or sexy. Because in many ways, we’d all love to control our outcome. We’d all long for that American dream. Chasing a version of life that is anything but where we are. A place most of us find ourselves in. Stuck in the world of self-help, believing that if we could somehow find ourselves, we could live life.
Spoiler alert, that’s a chase that never ends because this story that we’re living isn’t ours. It’s God’s story and He is the author. And because He is the author, He is also the creator of the details of life, including your existence. I don’t want you to miss this because I did. I missed God’s love for me in the middle of blaming God for my problems. When the truth is, God didn’t have to create you, and He didn’t have to create me. He didn’t have to create any of us, but He did because He wanted us.
I’ll say that again, He wanted you, and He still wants you. He made you on purpose, with purpose.
As I sat in that truth, my truth began to change. God is the author of the story, and He chose you to be a part of it. Because He is the author, He knows all. Every detail, every circumstance, every outcome was in His plan. What feels out of control to me is never out of God’s control—giving me a space to set down my worry.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
The gift of a story gives you reason to stop worrying.
Maybe you’re like me. Accepting parts of this truth but questioning if God is good, how come there is so much pain?Shifting my pain to His blame. Wanting to rest in Him but still questioning His plan. The questions can be looming and, at times, overwhelming. But I keep going back to the story.
Because there is something wildly different about a story over an idea. An idea stems from logic. It stems from commands and facts, encompassing temporary action. But a story involves all of you. It involves everything about you. Every fear, every worry, every joy, every hope, that’s a part of your story.
I believe God in His goodness doesn’t need to answer our hard questions, but I believe He does because He loves us. And part of answering these questions happens through His story.
In the Bible, we see repeatedly see people turn from God. Working to take control of their life, even beg God for a different life. I’m currently studying 1 and 2 Samuel. There is a common theme throughout those books, the people beg God for a monarchy because God as king was too different to be accepted. They wanted an Earthly king. And God, in His love, gives them what they ask for, even though what they asked for was not what God knew was best.
It sounds eerily similar to our story. Often times we become our own worst enemies, especially when we attempt to write our own story.
But even after God’s people time and time again turned on Him, God never turned on them. Not once does He turn on His people even though He had every right to. He showed up and rescued them over and over. And He never stops, nor will He.
As I have studied 1 Samuel, I learned that there is debate over the original Hebrew for the translation “I am that I am.” Some scholars believe it is more accurate to translate it as, “I will be, how so ever, I will be.”
Something about this translation struck me more than what I had read over and over.
It’s truly a beautiful depiction of the character of God. Yes, there is pain, self-created pain. Pain has always resulted from humans taking back their own control. But God. He doesn’t leave us in our pain. He rescued us from our pain, writing a perfect ending to a love story that not one of us deserves.
The story doesn’t just show us God’s love. The story is love. Allowing us to experience God in His wholeness and in the whole of who we are.
He could have just commanded it, but because He loved us, He made us a part of a story—a story of love, redemption, rescue, and of a perfect eternity. And He will show up not just as author but as the main character, coming to our rescue, in every need, with the attitude of “I will be, how so ever, I will be.”
What story have you settled on?
There is truth in understand the story you tell yourself is creating the outcome you experience. In that, I fear we are far too easily dissatisfied with the story that will never bring satisfaction and too satisfied with the story we’ve believed about what will bring satisfaction. Don’t stop at the story you’ve believed if it’s anything less than the story God wrote for you.
You are worth too much to not live out that story.
Worry doesn’t have to win. Fear does not get the last breath. Heartbreak is not the end. Redemption is. The best news is, we know the ending. The feedback loop in your mind can be closed. The story has an ending. Sin is defeated. Death is no more.
Meaning fear doesn’t stand a chance.
Don’t let fear write your story, but go back to God’s story. Invest in understanding His story and how you fit into that story.
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” Philippians 4:5-9
Know the ending and then go back to the beginning to see God in every detail of your life. Never leaving, never forsaking, only sending out the still small whispers of His voice, looking to captivate your attention.
You don’t have to keep trying to hold your life together, controlling what is never in your control. Surrender your life to God. Lay it down at His feet. Let Him carry you through what you’d never make it through and live. Truly live right where you are.
This year, write a different story. Let God be the hero and experience the freedom that comes from that.
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