Hey, friends, and welcome back to Faith Fueled Living.

This is your host, Kristen.

Today is a mini episode and I'm.

Going to talk about what do we do with our fears.

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That equips you to live well spiritually.

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Each week we'll dive into conversations and biblical truths to help you strengthen your faith, pursue meaningful work, care for your whole self, and live in line with what matters most.

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Okay, let's dive in.

So today we're going to talk about what do we do with our fear, right?

Our fear, our worries, our anxiety.

And if you're human, you've had them.

I'm definitely somebody that's grappled and does grapple with worries and being anxious about certain areas or just being wondering like, am I going to, you know, will we be provided for or what if the future looks different and how will we make an income, you know, or whatever it might be.

But I can get stuck in those places.

And even though I'm a pretty positive person, I have to catch myself and I have to take it to God.

And I have to, you know, just remind myself that we're not asked to carry these burdens or these worries on our own.

We're asked to allow God to intervene.

And in the Bible it says fear not 365 times.

I believe that is one for every day of the year.

So imagine that God knows we're going to wrestle with fear.

He knows that we're going to wrestle with worry sometimes or with indecision.

We're going to wrestle with understanding what happens in this world, in this life, but he wants us to bring it to Him.

And so today I want to share with you Matthew 8:26, which says, Jesus replied, you of little faith.

Why are you so afraid?

Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.

And that comes when he was ex.

When basically some of the disciples were on the boat and a strong storm and winds come.

And the disciples are afraid, right?

They're afraid of the storm.

They're afraid if they're going to make it.

But Jesus asked them, you have little faith, why are you so afraid?

Because of course, he knows that he's got them, but they are letting their fear be greater than their faith.

And so that's the point is God wants us to trust him.

He wants us to bring him into the fear.

And I read something that I that really kind of hit me today.

It was the Today's Devotional from Bob Goff's Catching Whimsy book.

In this one sentence, I was like, wow, this is absolutely what we need to do.

He says, God doesn't ask us to ignore or dismiss our fears, but instead to understand them.

When we figure out what our fears are attached to, we can ask God for the kind of supernatural help we need to overcome them.

I think this is it, right?

That is the question.

That is what we need to do with our fear.

We don't want to just have the thought, right, the worry about something.

We want to maybe write it down or take a little time to think about it and ask ourselves, what is this fear attached to?

In other words, what's behind the fear or the worry or the angst?

So I'll give a couple examples from my own life I've shared openly on the podcast.

Before that one of our sons walked through severe depression and other things.

And I'm going to tell you for, I would say probably two years.

I regularly was, of course, worried for his health, for his safety.

And it could be all consuming.

And by all consuming, I don't mean I was thinking about it.

And it was something I was verbally talking about all the time, or I was.

I was thinking about all the time.

But it was in the back of my mind, in my subconscious.

And so throughout the day, I would go there again and I would think about that and of course I would pray about it.

But I finally had to kind of release it to God.

I had to come to the realization that I can only do what I'm able to do to support and love and be here for my child, or at that time, an adult child, I guess, right?

College age.

But I was not in control of anything Right.

I am not in control of what happens to myself, to my family.

I mean, I can pray for safety, I can pray for protection, all these things, but at the end of the day, we don't decide the outcomes of this life.

Just like if you're driving down the street and you get an offender bender, well, you didn't know that outcome was going to happen.

So in other words, I had to stop being so worried about holding on so tightly to trying to protect Him.

Instead, I needed to let.

I needed to give that up to God.

Yes, I'm going to do all the things I can in my own human power to pray for him, to be there for him, to spend time with Him.

Right.

All these things.

I have the power to participate in that, but I do not have the power to participate in letting my fear or my worry change the outcome.

And so if we ask ourselves, what is our fear attached to?

I think that's a question worth writing down and coming back to over and over when you're worried or afraid or anxious.

And so what was my fear attached to?

Of course, it was that I couldn't keep my child safe.

Safe, you know, or being worried that I couldn't.

And so once again, though, what is behind that?

Right?

And it was.

I was afraid that I would lose my son because he was struggling with, you know, some really hard, dark thoughts.

And so once again, if I start seeing what's really behind it, I can start realizing that, did I do everything we could?

And we were right.

We were praying, we were talking to him, we were taking him to professionals that could hopefully help us navigate through this and understand what was going on.

You know, I educated myself, and so I was doing all the things.

And so the point, though, is, once again, what's behind our fear?

And then are we asking God to intervene to help us to overcome the fear or the worry?

It doesn't mean we're not going to still have the thought, but we can release it to Him.

And so another example might be maybe you're afraid of where your, you know, your money is going to come from.

For instance, right now we're in a government furlough or shutdown.

And that's not for all parts of government.

Of course, the military is still working, Social Service, Social Security, still up and running, things like that.

But my husband works for the government, and, and he is furloughed right now.

So he is not working and he's not getting paid.

Now he will when they go back to work, when the, when a budget is actually Approved.

He'll go back to work, and he and many other people in his same position will get back pay at some point.

But, you know, that could be a worry, right?

Because we aren't going to have his paycheck.

And now, yes, we have additional money, but much of it, of course, is earmarked or put elsewhere for retirement and other things.

But my point is, we could let that be an anxiety, but behind that worry would just be, will we have enough?

Right?

Like, will we be able to pay the bills?

And I don't mean tomorrow.

Right.

And I'm sure the government's going to figure this out.

I would hope, this month.

But if that were something that happened, or if, you know, he lost his job or if you lost your job, what is our worry?

What's the fear?

If we're worrying about that, it's will we have enough?

Well, God promises us that we will be provided for.

We don't always know how or what that'll look like, but he does promise that.

That we will be okay.

So we've got to hold on to his promises because he is faithful in his promises in our lives.

I mean, look at your past.

Look at the opportunities you've had.

Look at what he's done in the past.

Have you been provided for?

However that looked, right?

It can look different in different seasons.

And sometimes we might lose something.

A job.

It could be your home, it could be a relationship.

But always he's providing something.

He's providing enough, right?

That might mean that we have to temporarily live elsewhere or get a temporary job, or we might have to ask someone for help financially, something.

And obviously none of us want to be there.

But my point is, we have to stop letting fear run the show, or at least run the show in some areas.

I remember sometime after Covid, I was definitely getting caught up in this, I guess.

I don't know if I'd call.

I'll just call it fear.

A fear mindset.

And it wasn't about COVID the virus.

It was about all the things that they were trying to force.

It was about losing medical autonomy, right?

Like us deciding what we want to do with our own bodies and trying to tell us we can't do this or we can't go here.

And it was all those things.

But I was more worried for the future.

You know, what does our future look like?

But I finally realized it was taking hold of me, and I had to take it to God, and I had to say, God, I want to be informed, but I do not want this to take over my thoughts.

I can't let this take over my thoughts.

So one, I limited going on any sites with information to basically once a day and very limited.

I don't watch TV news or anything like that.

I haven't for quite a few years.

Not that I ever did much anyways, but anyways, and then I just had to take it to him.

And when I started having these thoughts of being concerned of the future, which of course, I'm not saying we don't want to be prepared, we don't want to be informed, but we don't want it to take over.

And so that is when I take it to God and I just say, lord, you know, help carry, take this weight off of me.

Let this not consume me.

Let it not, let, let it not make me afraid or worried or anxious because I know he has me, right?

He has us.

And so I could feel that weight lifted.

I could feel a shift happen in my heart that I released it.

And so I just wanted to come on today and say if you feel like fear is running the show or at least running the show in some area, it could be about your, your health.

And it could be a different word you're using.

You're anxious or you're worried or you're fearful.

You're worrying about the what if something goes wrong?

Or what if I don't get better?

And I'm here to just tell you that God's in it.

God is here.

He wants to participate with us.

And when you take it to him and when you start filling your mind with positive things, right?

Just like the Bible tells us, good.

And the things of heaven, things of God, the word of God, but also things that fill you up, that fill your soul, that allow you to focus on wonderful things, not the scary things of the world.

And that's not to say we shouldn't, we shouldn't know what's going on, but we aren't meant to hold the weight of the entire world and everything that goes on with it.

Yes, maybe we are meant to help in one or, you know, a few areas that are on our heart.

So help with.

Right.

It could be a cause, it could be a people, it could be a group, it could be anything.

But my point is we aren't meant to hold everything for the whole world.

And so we have to remember that too.

Okay.

And then the last thing I'll just share with you is I'm really excited in the next two months or between now and the end of the year, I have some powerful and amazing episodes coming up.

I have a doctor that's going to come on who has had stage four brain cancer, who healed it in four months.

He does not have any brain cancer in his brain now, through prayer, through changing his lifestyle, you know, and he goes through exactly what he did.

And it's a powerful testimony, it's a powerful story, and it should give us hope if we're walking through some physical or health struggles.

I have a woman that's going to come on who's written a book.

She's had her own divine healing, but she wrote an entire book on historical accounts of people that were healed by the power of Christ and who then went on to become healers around the country or the world.

It's super powerful.

I can't wait to share that with you.

I have people that are still in waiting seasons, you know, for marriage, for children.

And as they get older, they are still finding the joy and the beauty in this life and in God, even as they wait.

So I have so many stories.

I can't wait.

And just practical ideas for you and ways to just keep deepening your faith, deepening your relationships, understanding just how powerful your relationship and also the ability of us being Christ believers, just what that really means.

It doesn't just mean everlasting life.

It means he wants to heal us, mind, body and spirit.

So I cannot wait to bring these to you.

They're super powerful.

And I also wanted to say, if you have an idea or if you'd like to be on my show and you're somebody that has a really powerful story or testimony or, you know, tips for us that you think align with the show, go on to KristenFitch.com and fill out the podcast guest, you know, form and we'll see if it fits in with the show or not.

Also, if you're somebody that would be interested in sponsoring an episode or letting me promote something that you're doing, whether that's a program or a book or something else, reach out on my contact form.

I'd love to connect with you and see if we can put something together that empowers believers but also helps what you're doing and what I'm doing here, just to help people just live their best lives rooted in faith.

So until next time, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

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