Episode Transcript
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Hey, friends, and welcome backto Faith Fueled Living.
This is your host, Kristen.
Today is a mini episode and I'm.
Going to talk about what do wedo with our fears.
Welcome to Faith FueledLiving, the podcast.
That equips you to live well spiritually.
Emotionally, physically and purposefully.
Each week we'll dive intoconversations and biblical truths
to help you strengthen yourfaith, pursue meaningful work, care
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for your whole self, and livein line with what matters most.
Okay, before I jump intotoday's topic.
I just wanted to let you know.
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Life you love or you can grab.
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My joyful 15 day devotional.
Okay, let's dive in.
So today we're going to talkabout what do we do with our fear,
right?
Our fear, our worries, our anxiety.
And if you're human, you'vehad them.
I'm definitely somebody that'sgrappled and does grapple with worries
and being anxious aboutcertain areas or just being wondering
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like, am I going to, you know,will we be provided for or what if
the future looks different andhow 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 prettypositive person, I have to catch
myself and I have to take itto God.
And I have to, you know, justremind myself that we're not asked
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to carry these burdens orthese worries on our own.
We're asked to allow God to intervene.
And in the Bible it says fearnot 365 times.
I believe that is one forevery day of the year.
So imagine that God knowswe're going to wrestle with fear.
He knows that we're going towrestle with worry sometimes or with
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indecision.
We're going to wrestle withunderstanding what happens in this
world, in this life, but hewants us to bring it to Him.
And so today I want to sharewith you Matthew 8:26, which says,
Jesus replied, you of little faith.
Why are you so afraid?
Then he got up and rebuked thewinds and the waves, and it was completely
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calm.
And that comes when he was ex.
When basically some of thedisciples 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'regoing to make it.
But Jesus asked them, you havelittle faith, why are you so afraid?
Because of course, he knowsthat he's got them, but they are
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letting their fear be greaterthan their faith.
And so that's the point is Godwants us to trust him.
He wants us to bring him intothe fear.
And I read something that Ithat really kind of hit me today.
It was the Today's Devotionalfrom Bob Goff's Catching Whimsy book.
In this one sentence, I waslike, wow, this is absolutely what
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we need to do.
He says, God doesn't ask us toignore or dismiss our fears, but
instead to understand them.
When we figure out what ourfears are attached to, we can ask
God for the kind ofsupernatural help we need to overcome
them.
I think this is it, right?
That is the question.
That is what we need to dowith our fear.
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We don't want to just have thethought, right, the worry about something.
We want to maybe write it downor take a little time to think about
it and ask ourselves, what isthis fear attached to?
In other words, what's behindthe fear or the worry or the angst?
So I'll give a couple examplesfrom my own life I've shared openly
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on the podcast.
Before that one of our sonswalked 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.
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And it could be all consuming.
And by all consuming, I don'tmean I was thinking about it.
And it was something I wasverbally talking about all the time,
or I was.
I was thinking about all the time.
But it was in the back of mymind, in my subconscious.
And so throughout the day, Iwould go there again and I would
think about that and of courseI would pray about it.
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But I finally had to kind ofrelease it to God.
I had to come to therealization that I can only do what
I'm able to do to support andlove and be here for my child, or
at that time, an adult child,I guess, right?
College age.
But I was not in control ofanything Right.
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I am not in control of whathappens 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 theday, we don't decide the outcomes
of this life.
Just like if you're drivingdown the street and you get an offender
bender, well, you didn't knowthat outcome was going to happen.
So in other words, I had tostop being so worried about holding
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on so tightly to trying toprotect Him.
Instead, I needed to let.
I needed to give that up to God.
Yes, I'm going to do all thethings I can in my own human power
to pray for him, to be therefor him, to spend time with Him.
Right.
All these things.
I have the power toparticipate in that, but I do not
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have the power to participatein 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 questionworth writing down and coming back
to over and over when you'reworried or afraid or anxious.
And so what was my fearattached to?
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Of course, it was that Icouldn't keep my child safe.
Safe, you know, or beingworried that I couldn't.
And so once again, though,what is behind that?
Right?
And it was.
I was afraid that I would losemy son because he was struggling
with, you know, some reallyhard, dark thoughts.
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And so once again, if I startseeing what's really behind it, I
can start realizing that, didI do everything we could?
And we were right.
We were praying, we weretalking to him, we were taking him
to professionals that couldhopefully help us navigate through
this and understand what wasgoing on.
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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 tointervene to help us to overcome
the fear or the worry?
It doesn't mean we're notgoing to still have the thought,
but we can release it to Him.
And so another example mightbe maybe you're afraid of where your,
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you know, your money is goingto come from.
For instance, right now we'rein a government furlough or shutdown.
And that's not for all partsof government.
Of course, the military isstill working, Social Service, Social
Security, still up andrunning, things like that.
But my husband works for thegovernment, and, and he is furloughed
right now.
So he is not working and he'snot getting paid.
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Now he will when they go backto work, when the, when a budget
is actually Approved.
He'll go back to work, and heand many other people in his same
position will get back pay atsome point.
But, you know, that could be aworry, right?
Because we aren't going tohave his paycheck.
And now, yes, we haveadditional money, but much of it,
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of course, is earmarked or putelsewhere for retirement and other
things.
But my point is, we could letthat be an anxiety, but behind that
worry would just be, will wehave enough?
Right?
Like, will we be able to paythe bills?
And I don't mean tomorrow.
Right.
And I'm sure the government'sgoing to figure this out.
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I would hope, this month.
But if that were somethingthat happened, or if, you know, he
lost his job or if you lostyour 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 wewill be provided for.
We don't always know how orwhat that'll look like, but he does
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promise that.
That we will be okay.
So we've got to hold on to hispromises because he is faithful in
his promises in our lives.
I mean, look at your past.
Look at the opportunitiesyou've had.
Look at what he's done in the past.
Have you been provided for?
However that looked, right?
It can look different indifferent seasons.
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And sometimes we might lose something.
A job.
It could be your home, itcould be a relationship.
But always he's providing something.
He's providing enough, right?
That might mean that we haveto temporarily live elsewhere or
get a temporary job, or wemight have to ask someone for help
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financially, something.
And obviously none of us wantto be there.
But my point is, we have tostop letting fear run the show, or
at least run the show in some areas.
I remember sometime afterCovid, I was definitely getting caught
up in this, I guess.
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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 thingsthat they were trying to force.
It was about losing medicalautonomy, right?
Like us deciding what we wantto do with our own bodies and trying
to tell us we can't do this orwe can't go here.
And it was all those things.
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But I was more worried for the future.
You know, what does our futurelook like?
But I finally realized it wastaking 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 overmy thoughts.
I can't let this take over my thoughts.
So one, I limited going on anysites with information to basically
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once a day and very limited.
I don't watch TV news oranything like that.
I haven't for quite a few years.
Not that I ever did muchanyways, but anyways, and then I
just had to take it to him.
And when I started havingthese thoughts of being concerned
of the future, which ofcourse, I'm not saying we don't want
to be prepared, we don't wantto be informed, but we don't want
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it to take over.
And so that is when I take itto God and I just say, lord, you
know, help carry, take thisweight off of me.
Let this not consume me.
Let it not, let, let it notmake me afraid or worried or anxious
because I know he has me, right?
He has us.
And so I could feel thatweight lifted.
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I could feel a shift happen inmy heart that I released it.
And so I just wanted to comeon today and say if you feel like
fear is running the show or atleast running the show in some area,
it could be about your, your health.
And it could be a differentword you're using.
You're anxious or you'reworried or you're fearful.
You're worrying about the whatif something goes wrong?
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Or what if I don't get better?
And I'm here to just tell youthat God's in it.
God is here.
He wants to participate with us.
And when you take it to himand 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
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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 weshouldn't, we shouldn't know what's
going on, but we aren't meantto hold the weight of the entire
world and everything that goeson with it.
Yes, maybe we are meant tohelp in one or, you know, a few areas
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that are on our heart.
So help with.
Right.
It could be a cause, it couldbe a people, it could be a group,
it could be anything.
But my point is we aren'tmeant to hold everything for the
whole world.
And so we have to rememberthat too.
Okay.
And then the last thing I'lljust share with you is I'm really
excited in the next two monthsor between now and the end of the
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year, I have some powerful andamazing episodes coming up.
I have a doctor that's goingto come on who has had stage four
brain cancer, who healed it infour months.
He does not have any braincancer in his brain now, through
prayer, through changing hislifestyle, you know, and he goes
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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 walkingthrough some physical or health struggles.
I have a woman that's going tocome on who's written a book.
She's had her own divinehealing, but she wrote an entire
book on historical accounts ofpeople that were healed by the power
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of Christ and who then went onto become healers around the country
or the world.
It's super powerful.
I can't wait to share thatwith you.
I have people that are stillin waiting seasons, you know, for
marriage, for children.
And as they get older, theyare still finding the joy and the
beauty in this life and inGod, even as they wait.
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So I have so many stories.
I can't wait.
And just practical ideas foryou and ways to just keep deepening
your faith, deepening yourrelationships, understanding just
how powerful your relationshipand also the ability of us being
Christ believers, just whatthat really means.
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It doesn't just meaneverlasting life.
It means he wants to heal us,mind, body and spirit.
So I cannot wait to bringthese to you.
They're super powerful.
And I also wanted to say, ifyou have an idea or if you'd like
to be on my show and you'resomebody that has a really powerful
story or testimony or, youknow, tips for us that you think
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align with the show, go on toKristenFitch.com and fill out the
podcast guest, you know, formand we'll see if it fits in with
the show or not.
Also, if you're somebody thatwould be interested in sponsoring
an episode or letting mepromote something that you're doing,
whether that's a program or abook or something else, reach out
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on my contact form.
I'd love to connect with youand see if we can put something together
that empowers believers butalso helps what you're doing and
what I'm doing here, just tohelp people just live their best
lives rooted in faith.
So until next time, I hope youhave a wonderful weekend.
If you enjoyed today'sepisode, if you could leave a rating
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