Ryan Casto, LPCC

Associate Director, New Creation Counseling Center

6 September 2018

As I look at the problems and issues that I face, both professionally and personally, I can be left feeling overwhelmed and defeated.  Maybe I’m just made of weak stuff, but life has been able to at times sufficiently psych me out.  My anxiety is often related to either: 1) not being able to see what the solution to my problems looks like; or 2) thinking that there is not a solution to be found; or 3) there is a solution to be found but I won’t be able to make that solution work for me. 

If I am honest with myself, though, I know that there is always a solution and I know what that solution is.  And it is a simple solution – Trust God.  Trust that He knows how to deal with my problems, trust that He will teach me what I need to know to deal with the problems, trust that He is willing to help me specifically with my specific problems.  And it is as simple as that.

My anxiety, and I think a lot of people’s anxiety, is based on some assumptions that we make that are very much contrary to this simple solution.  When we say “how am I going to figure out what to do?” we are assuming that we must figure it out with our own natural mind; the pressure is on to solve the problem ourselves, and we don’t see a solution to the problem, and we understandably freak out.  We don’t challenge the assumption that it is up to us, in our own strength, to solve the problem.  Sure, we may give lip service to God and His faithfulness, but in practice we are often still leaning on our own understanding, depending on our own strength, pulling our own selves up by the ever-fashionable bootstraps. 

And that is our real problem.  Not the problem as it appears on the surface - “how am I going to do this?”  The real problem is that we believe we must do it ourselves.  We believe that we cannot really trust in an invisible God that we’ve never seen to supernaturally give us knowledge and wisdom. 

So I want to encourage everyone reading this to trust God with me.  If you’re feeling anxious about anything, catch yourself in the act of thinking you have to do it on your own, that it’s on you to figure out a seemingly solution-less problem.  Take that moment to ask God for help, and to tell yourself that God will come through for you.  The alternative is to continue imagining a no-win scenario where you can’t figure it out or can’t succeed.  That’s like someone prying your eyes open and making you watch the scariest horror movie ever made.  That’s no good, I tell you. 

And you don’t have to have any particular beliefs about God, or even believe that God exists.  It’s okay if the concept of God seems silly or even harmful.  It’s okay that you can’t prove Him.  When I was lost in my twenties, utterly lost, I cried out to “whatever was out there” that I needed help, and that “whatever was out there” needed to show me what to believe in, if there was indeed something to believe in.  And “whatever was out there” showed me.  Showed me that I could trust, and rely upon, and believe in.

Here’s to trusting God together!  Be blessed.