Episode #230 How to Stop Overthinking Your Walk with God – Small Steps, Big Faith

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to this episode of Good God Talks. If you're listening to this around the time that it airs, you know, we're entering into a brand new year. And oftentimes in January, we tend to set goals for ourselves and that can include goals for our faith, what we want our walk with God to look like in the year ahead. And setting goals is great, but sometimes our goal setting or project planning can lead us to overthink, overanalyze, and over commit ourselves to things that are not necessarily as significant as we might make them out to be.

And so today's episode is about how to stop overthinking your walk with God.

Now, you might be listening to this and wonder, how would I even know if I'm overthinking my walk with God?
Well, if that question is coming up for you, you're probably overthinking the question, which means that you're likely overthinking some aspects of your faith.

We also can see this tendency to overthink bring up anxiety or concern.

If you feel tense when thinking about spending time with God.

If you want to avoid spending time with him.

If you're nervous or you feel shame or embarrassed about an aspect of your life or an aspect of your walk and that's making you hesitant to draw near, that's also a good indicator that you might be overthinking something in your walk.

Or even more simply, if you feel frustrated or exhausted when it comes to your faith.

If you just feel tired and fatigued and the idea of setting new goals or starting a new Bible study or a reading plan or setting aside more time in prayer, if any of those things feel heavy and tiresome to you…those also could be good indicators that you're overthinking something when it comes to living out your life with God.

And that's okay. We're talking about it in this episode because that's a really common problem. And the reason for that can vary for all of us.

One of the common reasons for me is I tend to fall into those achieving perfectionistic tendencies. I want to earn things for God, and I want to earn his approval by doing those good things for him.

And so I can get hard on myself when things don't look or feel the way I think they ought to look or feel. Self-criticism can get loud in my head, and I can work myself into doing things that feel really significant in a moment but actually are smaller than what I'm making them out to be. Or are smaller in the scope of what God would have for me than what I'm actually building them up to be in my own heart or mind.

Especially in a new year season, we tend to give ourselves more to do.

Am I doing enough for God?

We can analyze our actions or maybe even compare ourselves to others and wonder if we're doing enough for him. We can wonder if God is disappointed in our actions. We can wonder if we've missed him somewhere.

If we missed an opportunity to walk in what he's called us to do or missed hearing something that he wanted to communicate to us. We can even get down on ourselves if we feel like we've been less consistent in connecting with him. Or if we think that our quiet times ought to look a certain way in frequency, or duration, or location, or activity—we can judge ourselves and determine that we need to work harder for God in the future.

Now, if God's bringing conviction to your heart about things that he wants to help you change, walk with him in it, ask him more about it. But the overthinking that we have happens on our own. We overthink. We can drive ourselves to overwork and to load ourselves up with expectations that God never put on us.

And so today we're looking at how to stop overthinking our walk by simplifying it down to one core perspective. And the thought I want to share with us today comes from Isaiah 26:3, and I'll read it for us in the ESV version. It says,

“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” (Isaiah 26:3 ESV)

Note this word stayed here; “whose mind is stayed on you.” In the original language, gives the visual of someone who's leaning their hand against something for support.

Our thoughts can rest against God, can be sustained by and supported from him when our mind is focused on him.

See, where I contend to overthink in my walk, those overthinking thoughts are all about me. What I need to do, where I am failing, what I ought to have done and maybe what I could possibly do about it now. But perfect peace comes when I lean my thoughts, and I allow my thoughts to be supported by God because my trust is in him, not in what I can accomplish for him.

And so we overcome the overthinking thoughts about our walk with God by focusing our thoughts continually on him.

And when they run away—because my thoughts do run away to other things—we bring them back to him. We ask God to help us keep our thoughts on him because our trust is placed in him and not in ourselves and not in our own achievements or activity.

Oftentimes we can overthink and overanalyze our walk in ways that give us so many things to do, but God doesn't put pressure on us that way. He takes those burdens off, and he invites us to the simple way to come and to walk with him, to be with him.

If you've been in a place of overthinking your walk, that can change right now in how you approach God in this very minute. And so let's talk with him about what he would have us do instead.

God, what is one step you want me to take as I walk with you today?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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