In recent posts I have mentioned Red Flags. Here, I will attempt to detail :
- what these red flag descriptions mean
- how they hurt my relationship with God
- what it looks like to give it to God
Overthinking
Description: My heart starts beating faster as I loose track of time. I wonder if I look normal on the outside as I complete everyday tasks. Inside my head, the thoughts never stop running. It causes me to constantly move, while also being constantly exhausted. I wake at 3 AM and do not get anything done. I put all my energy into falling back to sleep while my mind races. I cry out to God for help to stop my mind, to take this thought out of my head, but God’s peace is far away at the moment.
I am not joking when I say anything can trigger this type of thinking, it just has to trigger something deep within me that makes me doubt I am good enough.
Relationship status: This hurts my relationship with God because it splits my focus from him. When my mind is constantly being reminded of a hurt, fear or resentment it fuels my anger and overthinking.
Giving it to God: Before I understood how to give specific things up to God in prayer these thoughts would haunt me for weeks/months/years. This changed my life. I learned that God could not take away these thoughts if I am not dealing with the hurt/resentment/fear that triggered it. This overthinking happened so often it became ingrained behavior. I had no idea I was the problem, I thought I was just supposed to keep praying and wait on the Lord.
Then I learned I was holding on tightly to something I was asking God to take away! Giving something up to God is the easy prayer. The hard prayer is when you ask God to reveal what you are holding on to. This started my introspection with God, you can find more about this in my previous posts : Experiencing God’s Peace
Planning
Description: My worry or people pleasing patterns can take over my imagination, this leads me to control all the plans. This looks like planning what new friend my kids should have, or hosting a party when I do not have the time. The difference between God led planning and self led planning comes down to this: do I have a deep peace about this? If I don’t have peace about it, I need to slow down. I can push plans along because I feel the need to be productive which splits my focus between my plans and God plans.
Relationship status: These thoughts split my focus between God and my own desires.
If my reason behind plans that look normal from the outside is people pleasing or control of a situation, then I am manipulating in the most discrete way. I am coveting something for myself outside of God but you would never know unless you saw my heart behind the planning (and only God has access to that!).
Giving it to God: I humbly slow down and give God back the control. I repent for wanting my own way, and ask for courage, strength and wisdom moving forward. Then I ask for God to bring me the people he wants me to speak to that day. This never fails, it calms me down and restores my peace.
Expecting God to give me the answer
Description: A hurt that I had given to God recently came up. It hurt me again, and I lost God’s peace by anxiously thinking of ‘how to fix this’. I caught myself turning away from God and immediately ran through all the things I knew to do:
Introspection with God, revealing any additional red flags, digging into the feelings and patterns behind this hurt. I open handedly prayed to God and gave all feelings and behaviors and resentments up .
Then, I asked for him to give me the answer. I said “I will wait on you, I trust you God to give me the answer. Show me what to do.”
Relationship status: This last piece of the prayer revealed that I had found another way to control. I held on to the expectation that God will use me to fix it and the answer was through me. I was talking to God, and asking for his advice, but my focus was on how I could fix it, not how God will handle it.
Giving it to God: After the situation was resolved, I took time with God to find out where I had lost my peace. He gently revealed where I had turned away from him and chose to turn to my old control patterns. I also learned how past hurts can cloud my judgement in present situations.
Overthinking, planning, and expecting God to give me the answer are just a few of my red flags. In the next two posts I will continue to outline my red flags. I pray this will give you a clearer picture of what red flags can look like, how they pull your focus from God, and how to give them over to God. He is the only one that can free you from these patterns! - JJ