I spent much of my growing years wondering how to stay on God’s good side. From the time my mom taught me and the other kids in our Sunday school class about God, heaven, and hell, I became fixated on making sure God knew I was one of the good kids. In my particular church tradition, there was a fabulous marketing campaign about the horrors and tortures of hell. Since I grew up long before children’s church was the norm, kids like me sat through adult sermons, but without the maturity or spiritual context. The result for me ... a lot of religious anxiety and nightmares.

I loved God, but I grew up really afraid of Him too.

While it’s almost in fashion these days for people to trash their Christian upbringing, please know that I’m doing nothing of the sort. My childhood, black Baptist church was where I learned about Jesus dying for me. I still remember getting baptized on Sunday, April 9, 1981. I stood in line with six or seven other kids wearing long white cotton robes and really ugly, tight white swim caps to keep our hair as dry as possible before we were baptized by the pastor in the full immersion pool. (Little girl black hair is a WHOLE thing, and I’m not sure why our mothers wanted to spend actual hours doing our hair only for us to get dunked the next day. Okay, back to the story. …)

            Even though I grew up with a fear of hell that ended up making me afraid of upsetting God, I still learned a lot about God, Jesus and the Bible. And for that, I am grateful.

However, my mindset about God was far from okay. In His sovereign mercy, God didn’t leave me to live from that spiritually anxious place. But, I’ll be the first to admit that for a long time, I thought if I wasn’t on pins-and-needles with God, then I wasn’t a serious Christian. I mistook anxiety for intentionality. Can you relate?

The fear of disappointing God stayed with me. It haunted me. God didn’t keep a chart measuring how often I read the Bible, but I did. He didn’t track of the number of minutes I prayed, but I did. He never compared me to the other Christian women in my Bible study, but I did.

The life-changing spiritual breakthrough began as I looked back through my journals. I saw that most situations didn’t change because of anything I’d done, it was because either God changed my circumstances, or more often than not, He changed me. My journals recorded a-ha! moments when I had a new thought about God or a lightbulb moment when I understood a passage of scripture in a new way. There were line-in-the-sand moments, where I finally let go of control in a situation, ready to REALLY fully surrender.

As I could see and label how God sovereignly and powerfully worked in my imperfect and flawed life, I realized that my spiritual to-do list wasn’t keeping me on God’s good list. It was just keeping me anxious. My anxiety lessened when I grew confident in seeing where God was working in my life. Does that mean I stopped reading my Bible and praying? Nope. In fact, I began enjoying Bible study and prayer on a level that I’d never experienced before because the anxiety of keeping up with my spiritual to-do list was finally gone!

There’s a precious freedom I now have in my faith because I’m free from being afraid of God. As a result, I feel more connected to Him – and more grateful! Now, I thank God throughout the day whenever I see His Spirit at work in me. Sometimes, it’s when I notice I’m patient in a situation that I’d normally push through. Other times, it’s when I follow a leading by the Holy Spirit to pray for someone or surrender. Afterward, I say, “Whew, thank you God for helping me do that!” or “God, I would have handled this differently before. Thank you for what You’ve done in me.”

My friend, this is the freedom and confidence that I want for you. God is always at work in your life (Philippians 1:6). Do you know how to identify how He’s working? Do you NEED to learn how to identify how He’s working? My prayer today is that my story will jumpstart a desire in you to let go of your spiritual to-do list and discover the joy of seeing and receiving all that God wants to do in you.

COMMENT: In what ways could you relate to my story today? As you reflect on your relationship with God, are you growing closer to Him? Do you need to back off of any anxiety-motivated items on your spiritual to-do list?

 

Let go of feeling like you are not a “good enough” Christian! 

Have you ever felt that being a good Christian means you’ve got to follow a bunch of rules and measure up?

If so, you aren’t alone! In my Breakthrough: Finding Freedom in Christ six-week Bible study of Galatians, you'll see  that even the believers in the early church struggled to let go of rule-keeping and performance in order to embrace God’s free gift of grace. Together, we'll learn to see God-powered spiritual breakthroughs and break free from legalism!

If you’ve ever struggled with feeling like God is disappointed with you or felt trapped by rules or religion, this study will provide a path to discover your freedom in Christ.

Sometimes, you and the girls have got to get away! God gave us friendships to nurture our hearts, minds and souls in a special way that family may not be able to do. Getaways give us an opportunity to see our lives from a fresh perspective. So, when we combine girlfriends and getaways we give God room to show up in a significant way!   Join Barb and travel expert, Wendy Anderson Schulz, for a fun and practical conversation about getaways, girlfriends, Jesus, and Italy!   RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE

https://wendyandersonschulz.com/

Instagram: @wendyandersonschulz

ABOUT OUR SPECIAL GUEST

Wendy Anderson Schulz is the founder of Adventures Together, which leads modern pilgrimages for Christian women to France or Italy. She is also a writer and speaker who is passionate about encouraging women in their faith walk. Wendy is married to her college sweetheart Pete, and has two daughters. Check out this episode!

God doesn't hate divorced people! However, if you've gone through divorce, you may have been left with the impression that He does. On today's Better Together podcast, Barb talks with with best-selling author Tracie Miles about her new divorce recovery resource, Living Unbroken Divorce Recovery Workbook. Six and half years ago, Tracie went through a divorce after experiencing the devastation of infidelity, addiction and finally abandonment. As a Christian woman, she knows what it's like to experience the shame, hopelessness and fear. However, in today's conversation, Tracie shares her story of how God healed her, how she learned how to trust Him again and as a result, Tracie learned how to love life again and experience God in new life-giving ways.  If you or someone that you know has going through a divorce and need to know that hope and healing is possible, this is the episode for you! RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE

Living Unbroken: A Divorce Recovery Workbook

https://traciemiles.com/

Tracie's Facebook Page

Instagram: @traciemiles

ABOUT OUR SPECIAL GUEST

Tracie Miles is the Director of COMPEL Training at Proverbs 31 Ministries as well as an Author of five best-selling books including Living Unbroken, Love Life Again, Unsinkable Faith, Stress Less Living and Your Life Still Counts. She is the founder of the Living Unbroken Divorce Recovery Program. Tracie is also a contributing author to the popular Zondervan NIV Women's Devotional Bible and a monthly contributing writer for the Proverbs 31 Ministries Encouragement for Today daily devotions which reach over 1.5 million people per day around the globe. Tracie has 3 grown children and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out this episode!

Do You Get Mad When a Spiritual Lesson You’ve Already Learned Returns Again?”

Welp, turns out that God is leading me through a season in life where I’m learning new lessons about an old struggle. Maybe “lessons” isn’t the right word. Perhaps, it’s more accurate for me to say that God is teaching me more about His character, His power, His presence and His provision, BUT He’s using an old, familiar, frustrating struggle to do it. Ugh. Can you relate?

In the past few weeks, I’ve wrestled with patience. Anyone else out there feel me on this? If you’ve done my I’m Waiting, God: Finding Blessings in God’s Delays Bible study, you’ll know I spent a decade learning how to trust God’s timing and the spiritual discipline of patience during long seasons of unanswered prayer. One of my greatest faith lessons was waiting while trusting God and not pushing my plans when I worried that God wasn’t moving fast enough. Praise God that He was patient with me. Eventually, I learned some great lessons, and I give God glory for how I’ve grown in that area.

I thought that I was good to go on patience for the rest of my life.

The last few weeks though, have proven that I’m not. It’s been uncomfortable and humbling. Here are some real thoughts that have been going through my mind lately. Warning—it’s raw and real:

“Ugh. I thought that I’d already figured this out.”

“Was God trying to teach me something that I ignored?”

“It was really hard the last time. I don’t know if I want to go through this again.”

As I wrestle with this new season of unanswered prayer, it’s been challenging not to beat myself up. Not only that, but I’ve had to choose not to believe the lie that I did something wrong or that God is punishing me.

I want to say these same things to you too. If you feel like you’re reliving spiritual lessons that you’ve already learned in the past, that doesn’t mean that you messed up or that God is punishing you by making you go through something similar again.

Satan would love nothing more than for us to discount God’s work in our lives. Let’s not give him that victory!

Instead of making assumptions, we can choose to get curious.

Here are a few “curious questions” that I’m asking myself:

1. How am I entering this new season differently (or more maturely) than the last time I went through a similar challenge?

2. Does God have something new to show me about Himself to deepen my faith and trust?

3. What blessing might God have in store for me this time if I’m faithful to Him in this new journey?

I don’t know if these questions are helpful for you, but they are for me. As a spiritual anchor for these questions, consider the Apostle Paul’s teaching to the Philippians as he sat in prison…again. Paul would be the perfect person to ask: “God, why are You letting me go through this again?” Yet, listen to his wisdom and consider how it could apply to your life today:

And I am certain that God, who began a good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. -Philippians 1:6 NLT

Aren’t you so encouraged when you read this verse? Notice how it doesn’t blame you for taking one step forward and then two steps back? This verse affirms that God is working FOR you, He is not disappointed in you!

You may be going through the same old situation, but God has new blessings, strength and peace waiting for you.

COMMENT: What area of faith or spiritual lesson are you learning in a fresh, new way these days?