Why Does My Faith Feel Like Another Job?

For years my health journey was filled with questions like:

What supplement am I missing?

What protocol will fix this?

What's wrong with me?

Then one day the question changed.

Instead of asking,

"How do I fix my body?"

I began asking,

"What is my body trying to tell me?"

That shift transformed more than my health.

It made me wonder if I'd been doing something similar with my relationship with God.

In this episode of the Freedom Camp Podcast, we explore why faith can quietly become another job, another checklist, or another place to perform, and how tending to our roots changes everything.

Together we'll explore:

• The hidden pattern of replacing relationship with performance

• Why fruit isn't manufactured, it's grown

• A simple tree visualization to help you notice what nourishes your roots

• One experiment to try this week

1 Question Worth Carrying

Where have I unintentionally replaced relationship with performance?

Stay curious.

Keep becoming.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Freedom Camp Podcast, rooted in truth, growing in freedom, and built on the belief that you weren't meant to grow alone. Each week I'll share honest stories, insights, and simple questions to help you explore the unseen things that keep you from living in the freedom that's already yours. And take brave intentional steps toward the life you were made for. This is your space to reconnect with your authentic self and grow in freedom on purpose. And there's these moments where I unintentionally seem to turn my relationship with God into another project to manage, another thing to improve, another place to perform, and another box to check. And I was wondering, why does my faith sometimes feel like another job? Have you ever felt that? For several years now, my health journey with autoimmune, Hashimoto's, leaky gut, MTHFR, and some perimenopause for good measure, has sounded like what supplement am I missing? What test do I need now? What protocol will fix this? What's wrong with me? How are these things related? And how do I feel better? And not that any of those questions are wrong or don't matter, but they don't help my nervous system. They don't help my nervous system to calm, to rest, and digest, and they certainly don't help me receive God's love for me. So I started praying to receive God's love, and I noticed something changing. I stopped asking, how do I fix my body? And I started asking, what is my body trying to tell me? How can I cooperate with my body? And how can I support my body? And that may seem like a tiny shift, but it completely changed my relationship with my body and with my healing. And lately I've realized I wonder if I've done the same thing with God. So I'm curious, where have you unintentionally replaced relationship with performance? So here's a pattern that I think I'm noticing. Whenever I think that my job is to produce the fruit, I become anxious or controlling, critical of myself, always feeling behind, and always feeling like I should be doing more. Because I'm not trying to manufacture what only grows from connection. So here's a pattern that I think I'm noticing. Whenever I'm thinking that it's my job to produce the fruit, i.e., the spiritual fruit talked about in Galatians, you know, joy and peace and faithfulness and self-control, and I become anxious. I become controlling, I become critical of myself and always feeling behind and like I should be doing more because I'm trying to manufacture what only grows from connection. So during freedom camp this week, we drew a tree. And at first it seemed like maybe it was too simple, but trunk, branches, fruit, roots, weeds. But we did it because something has clicked with me. On the farm, in nature, I don't see trees standing in an orchard striving or straining to produce anything. They stay rooted, they receive, they grow, and in due time fruit appears. And it's not because the tree tried harder, it's because it stayed connected to its source. It stayed authentic to who God created the tree to be. And producing fruit isn't the tree's job. Tending to the roots is.