Imagine being handed a human soul at birth and being told, “For the rest of your life, you will help this person understand who God is. You will teach them about His love, His presence, His power. You will comfort them when their hearts break. You will be the one they look to for answers when they wake up at 2 a.m., unable to sleep. Every time they fail, you will be there to make sense of failure. You will shape the entire atmosphere they live in.”

“Teaching them, day after day, minute by minute, whether the world they live in is fundamentally safe or not. Whether peace is something they can ever have or if rest can be trusted.”

And that soul is you.

What are you teaching your soul about God?

Self-discipleship happens in the background track of your life, hidden in the web of your worries, rumination, and spiraling thoughts, which all tell your soul what to think about God. And your soul listens. Taking notes and learning through what you focus on, repeat, live with, and rehearse.

You could say that for years, I have discipled myself in the art of fear, only because I fear the worst outcome is more feasible than the best one. And I’d never say this out loud, but if you analyzed my thought patterns, you might think that I thought that God was not actively loving me through all of the trials of my life, but instead has set me adrift at sea, leaving me to figure out the storms on my own with nothing but a tiny boat and a Bible.

I know all the facts about Him, but sometimes my thoughts suggest that he doesn’t actively affect my environment.

Ask me, and I’ll tell you he does, but ask my soul as it cowers in the corner of the boat rocking back and forth with the waves, and you’ll discover how often I’ve trained it to expect danger more readily than deliverance.

But how did it get this way?

I think that it’s my propensity to give far more attention to what I fear than to Who I trust. Fear tells me to hurry up, look out, be afraid, be very afraid, and that urgency pulls my attention. Fear constantly points out what might go wrong, what could be lost, and all the futures that need preparing for, and I frankly feel remiss if I don’t pay attention to its alerts.

So why wouldn’t my soul start drawing conclusions from what I repeatedly make it dwell on? Truth be told, I think it cares less about what I claim to believe than about what I consistently rehearse.

And the conclusion it reaches, apart from my belief and trust in God, is that everything depends on me. That if I’m not vigilant enough, danger is going to strike. In the fear of discomfort, uncertainty, embarrassment, or just being out of control, I have spent much of my life taking on roles God never assigned to me: provider, protector, predictor, and Prince of Peace.

So, I guess what concerns me isn’t that my theology is wrong but that my soul has been attending a different church than my mind.

My mind attends the church of God’s sovereignty. My attention often attends the church of fear.

Every day, both are preaching. One tells me God is trustworthy. The other warns me that everything rests on my shoulders. One reminds me that He is always present. The other keeps scanning the horizon for signs that I’ve been forgotten. One proclaims that God is already waiting in tomorrow. The other whispers that I have to get there first and make sure nothing goes wrong before we get there.

And the longer I sit under those sermons of fear, control, scarcity, outrage, resentment, and dread, the more real they become. Not because they are true, mind you, but because they’re repeated so often. My soul learns from what it lives with. It learns from whatever holds its attention the longest.

If you were conscious of the soul you were given to disciple, would that affect the sermons you daily deliver? The thoughts you rehearse, the memories you focus on, the complaints you cling to for safety?

It’s yes for me.

Realizing that every word I repeat is a sermon on the very nature of God and His presence in my life has changed the way I speak to myself.

I’m recognizing that a lot of my thoughts don’t just react to life; they teach my soul what to expect from God.

Every fixation becomes a sermon about reality; a witness to my soul about what kind of world it lives in. And every choice I’ve made to either spiral into panic or look up to where my help comes from has been preaching a different message. Over time, those messages have become expectations, and those expectations, my subconscious thoughts on God.

The truth is, we are all preaching to ourselves all day long. The question is, what’s the sermon on your mind?

The gospel according to fear, control, outrage, self-protection? Things like:

Everything depends on me.
I’m on my own.
Disaster is probably already on its way.
Rest is irresponsible.
Peace is something I can visit for a moment, but never really live in.
Stay vigilant. Stay alert. Hold it all together.

That’s not the gospel according to Jesus. That’s a hostage note.

But the true gospel says that:

“God doesn’t need you to help manage the world.”
“You are not alone.”
“No future arrives without God already standing inside it.”
“Rest comes from a position of trust.”
“God is peace.”
“God does not need your fear to faithfully care for your life.”

If you really were given a fearful soul to lead to Christ, what would you tell it about the wonders of His love and presence? How much of your time would you spend doubting that, and how much would you spend in awe of Him?

Subscribe now

How Are You Discipling Yourself?