I have a P31 devotion today and want to say hello and “welcome” if you found your way here through it! I’m so glad you stopped by!
I wish we could sit in a coffee shop and chat today.
I’d love to talk with you about things that are weighing you down or worries that are making you weary. They always seem to lighten when shared with a friend.
I’d tell you about the year I let my problems pile up and how all that pressure almost took me down. It’s all in chapter 9 of my book including the story about how I accidentally took my dogs medicine one morning.
In my devotion, I shared how God has been changing me and rearranging me. I also promised to share three steps to overcome worry and a practical way to physically give God your concerns! Since we can’t chat in a coffee shop today, I decided to share my heart in a short video post.
Message Notes: You can download my “Video Message Notes” in a PDF here or in a Word doc here. They include the points of my message, verses and blanks to fill in. {If you’d like to watch more FREE Confident Heart videos based on my book, click here.}
Let’s Connect & A Giveaway: I’d love to hear your thoughts and one thing you want to apply after reading today’s devotion and hearing the video message. Click “share your thoughts” right below this post and do just that. 🙂
Your comment enters you in today’s “Come to Me” stress-relief gift pack giveaway which ncludes a Bath & Body Works Eucalyptus Mint candle, God-iva Dark Chocolate and an Chamomile Lavender scented Anti-Stress Comfort Wrap that can be refrigerated or microwaved depending on your preference – my favorite home spa treatment!!
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This was a great message. I, too, am a worrier. Everything you said hit home to me. You are SUCH a blessing to me! Thank you for allowing God to use you to help all of us!
Would LOVE to win the Stress Relief Gift Pack!!!!
Renee,
Thanks so much for today’s devotional! It speaks to me right where I am. For the past couple of weeks I have been feeling like every day I just wanted to cry. The little things were overwhelming me. I am a mom to four kids including one set of twins that just turned three. It’s summer and everyone is home and I want to be able to be filled with joy and not on the edge of loosing it all the time. We have had our share of circumstantial issues (our central a/c was out all last week and we live in New Orleans!) but I just feel so weighed down and unusually teary. I know God hasn’t given me more than I can handle but I wonder if my heart has been convincing me otherwise. I love the practical suggestions as much as the reminder to give God my worries. I don’t usually consider myself a worrier, but my overwhelmed days are giving away my hearts posture. Thanks for shedding light on that!
Heather
I feel like God was speaking directly through you to me with the words on your devotion as well as your video clip. Yesterday I went to the doctor and basically I have many ailments that are probably the direct result of ongoing stress and worry. Sometimes I feel like I can never change the cycle and already feel defeated before I get out of bed in the morning. What resonated with me was that Satan is whispering the opposite of what God tells us in His word is true. I have printed out the notes and devotion and I am going to ponder and meditate on these truths. Thank you for sharing your heart. I am hopeful that I can stop this worry cycle, but only with God’s help.
Renee,
Thank you for today’s devotion. I am the Queen of Worry and found much hope and promise in your suggestions.
These past few months I have been on the worry merry-go-round and unable to get off of it (over several situations at home). I am one who cannot let go of a worrysome feeling or whatnot and it comes and goes. Many times, it is set on automatic and I cannot shut the switch off. Even at night I have panic episodes and my sleep is WAY off. I realize that God is there to take what I am dealing with and make it into something beautiful – but it is so hard to actually BELIEVE it and LIVE it when things go awry. I have ALWAYS been a person filled with fear and worry.
Yesterday, I saw on Facebook not only your messages Renee but there was a video link to one of Joyce Meyer’s teachings about fear and it REALLY got me to take notice and be more aware. Also the book One Thousand Gifts – Ann Voskamp helps too – for me to get re-set into the peace that God wants us to have in Him even when our situations are beyond comprehension and you don’t know what choices to make.
Thank you so much. God was speaking thru you today. I know I am stressed and the stressors can’t change right now. So I must turn to the Unchanging, Constant God. Mark 6:31 “Then Jesus said ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.'”NLT
Worry, unfortunately, is something I have lived with since childhood. I wrote a post about it on my blog. If I don’t have something to worry about, I worry about that and then find something. I am so exhausted.
Chronic illness, disablity for my youngest daughter who is currently homeless, and a mother in law who is suffering from dementia and has had my husband falsely arrested weigh me down. Thank you for reminding me that “his yoke is easy, and his burden is light”… if it’s heavy,I am carrying too much of it myself.
Now that God has brought it to my attention through your devotion,I think that I do stress more over “thinking” about what I have to do instead of just doing it, which then brings about the sin of procrastination. So…….maybe God is trying to get my attention about my issues of procrastination and the worrying will slip away.
Thank you and God bless!
Today’s devo was ON THE MONEY for me. Right down to the running out of fuel and faith part. Thank you for benig faithful to share the words God placed on your heart. As I’m sure they are for so many women, today they were for me.
My application: “choosing the better thing” by making sure that NOTHING interrupts my intentional time at the feet of Jesus. To “stop worrying” is much easier when I’m face to face with the one who has invited me to cast my cares on Him.
Blessings!
It’s nice how the Lord works through whatever media needed to get us the messages we need. I so needed the P31 today. Thank you for your insight.
Thanks for today’s devotion! It was a good wake up call to drop the worry and focus on the Word. My biggest worries are those that are in the future and typically things I have no control over anyway. I need to turn those over to God and totally trust in His plan for me.
Each day has enough trouble of its own, right?? Lord, help me to focus on You alone and trust in Your promises!
Loved your post today on P31. It really hit home. I, too, often spend as much time fretting over deadlines and things to do as I spend doing the work. Stress has been plaguing me, mostly from a very difficult aging parent, and the lack of time to handle my husband, teenager, parent, household, bills, etc. I’ve gotten so used to the stress, sometimes I don’t even realize that I AM stressed.
Renee, thank you so much for what you do. I worry too much about such trivial things. I really enjoyed your video and liked the idea of writing the worries on a card and giving them to God. Thanks again you are such a blessing. Love in Christ, Rita
I’m so blessed by this devotional. Thank you so much
Thank you so much for your encouraging words! Your invitation to chat over a cup of coffee made me realize how alone i feel. My husband is a pastor, so I am always the one doing the inviting – not being invited. I also work full-time for a very demanding company and have 3 children still at home (our oldest just graduated from college and moved to Pheonix). My husband has an auto immune disorder that causes me to have to pick up more slack at home and church. I have also let worry weave it’s way into my heart and your words were just what i needed this morning. Thank you…..
I am so glad to receive this email today. I am going through so much worry and stress with my job and my marriage and some days just don’t know where to turn. I am going to do like you said and write down my concerns, my to do list and see where God takes me. Thank you so much for sharing this today, it was just what I needed. God bless you
Renee, thank you so much for this devotional today and this reminder! When I read your book with Melissa last year, the chapter where you talk about worry REALLY spoke to me — I truly did not recognize how much my “planning and research and organizing” were actually forms of worry in disguise. And they consumed SO MUCH of my BRAIN activity and TIME! When this truth shined into my life, I began to recognize how much of my energy I was losing by allowing my brain to just run amuk, and God began to whisper to my heart to take my “thoughts captive” and turn myself back towards Him for direction…to let go of the things that steal my energy from Him. 🙂 I believe there is so much freedom and refreshment to be found in the Lord when we let go of these things and rest in Him, but until we even recognize that we are being bound and captive by our own ways, it’s hard to change. I am grateful for your message, and I pray that women everywhere receive it and internalize it — God has VERY different ideas about how we should be communing with him all the time, and this is the first step towards getting there. Renee, I am a “work in progress” and still battling “busy-ness” all the time, but I am recovering! 🙂 Thank you!
I loved the suggestion of writing down our concerns and worries on index cards and laying them on a cross to give to Jesus. I will start implementing this today!! Thank you so much for this!!
What a great reminder to cast our cares on the Lord~He WILL sustain us. He does not intend for us to do life on our own. I love the 3 tips you shared because they encourage our thinking to be where it should be. Thank you!