Why Do Believers Worry So Much?

What begins as a hilarious phone conversation about Florida heat, workplace culture, and everyday life gradually turns into an honest discussion about worry, surrender, and the presence of God.

Omar and Tiffany explore why believers can know God, read Scripture, and still live overwhelmed by anxiety. They discuss surrender not as a one-time emotional breakthrough, but as a continual practice—one strengthened by filling your mind with Scripture before difficult moments arrive.

The conversation also touches on the security of salvation, the eternal presence of the Holy Spirit, and the enemy’s strategy of making believers ineffective when he cannot take away their identity in Christ. Using personal stories, humor, and passages from Luke 10, they reflect on how Jesus experienced joy through the Holy Spirit and regularly withdrew to pray.

At its heart, the episode is about learning to recognize God’s presence in the small details of life, remembering what He has already done, and treating prayer less like a religious performance and more like an ongoing conversation with someone who is always with you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Alright, did you hear everything?

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Okay. I'm laughing because I went back and I was listening to it, and uh like all the stuff that I was worried about, it was for nothing. Like, what are we gonna do about the beeps? You know what? You can I've been recording now, but I was gonna say something, but I ain't gonna say it now because we're recording. But imagine what I would have said.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

No, now you gotta say it, homie. I gotta say it. You know what?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

You can go straight to Florida. There you go. Because that's worse. It's worse.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Oh no, you know, you should say something like you can go to Haiti.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

I'm trying to think, like, where do people in hell not want to go? Like, oh please don't send me to Florida. Don't send me there.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

I just too fast. No, the mosquitoes are too big, it's too humid. It's my husband actually just told me the other day he wants to retire in Arizona, and I said, Are you trying to kill me? You know I don't like the heat.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

It's uh well let me I mean, uh, I I've known a few people that have lived in Arizona, and uh I don't know, have you have you spent any time in Texas?

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Uh yes, I have actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Now here's what's wild. I was in Texas uh in Dallas for like six months when I worked for PwC back in the day. And one of the things that I grew to really like was the dry heat. Like it went from, oh my god, I can't take this, to let me go outside and just stand in the sun for a sec, you know, to just feel it. And that, I mean, it took a little time, but your body, as you know, it is want to do, adjusted. And so I've heard that Arizona is just a hotter version of Texas. And if it's the dry heat, I don't know that it's as bad as the swampland that I live in now in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Like it's a here's the beauty of dry heat, right? Yeah, dry heat usually comes in areas that are desert-like, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

And so I live, I live in an area that gets really hot in the summer. Like yesterday it was 101, right? 101 in Florida, you wouldn't be able to breathe. Because the air would be so thick and moist, it's like you feel like you, if you take a shower and you step outside, you need another shower, or you're currently in a shower, one of the two, and you've got all of that dew and stuff coming off of the windows and everything, right? You can actually handle it because it's not so moist, so it doesn't absorb into your skin. Now, the the the this is the beauty. The beauty of it is it's at night, it gets nice and cool, and if you're in a shade, it like goes down 20 degrees, unlike in Florida, where it doesn't matter where you are, you're just hot and muggy and gross.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

You know what's funny you say that. The um I remember when I first got down here uh 12 years ago, and I was I hadn't gotten the job yet at Disney, but I was in the interview process and came down for the interviews and everything, and um I said take that back. I had gotten it, but I had to come back down to do background, you know, where they take your fingerprints and everything. So I came down, met my boss for lunch, and um, you know, after getting my fingerprints and everything, I was like, hey, I'll swing by, you know, we can get some eat. And so we do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

And wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just say did you just say we'll get a piece of meat?

SPEAKER_02 4:24

No, no, I did not. You jackass. I said, We will meet up, we will go and get something to eat. That's what I said. Okay, you can go back to Florida, okay. If you have if you left, please go back or straight to Florida. So again, anyway, speaking of Florida and going there, uh I'm here just to you know get my fingerprints done and to, you know, I was like, hey, we can connect before my flight. And so I'm like at that time, they hadn't really built up the area that we were working in. The only thing that you really could eat at that time in celebration was um Panera. Like that was it. Like there's a bunch of restaurants over there now. But I mean, and mind you, that's no shade for Panera, but I ain't trying to eat that every day. But but I did for a long time, you know. Um, and so I'm standing there because it's walking distance from the office, and so I'm meeting her, and I'm standing there, just standing there. And you know, maybe about 10 minutes. And when I tell you, I was drenched by the time she came up. And this is like June of 2014, and I and she came walking up, her name is Kelly. I said, Kelly, why am I, I feel like I was, I jumped in the pool. Like, what is this? And she kind of gave me this look like you poor thing. You know, it it's uh like there was a few of those moments very early on in my time at Disney when I first got here, because uh Disney will test your entire point of view on everything. Like the amount of like it's it's a job that you don't know is gonna. I I used to people used to ask me, like, what's it like to work at Disney? I said, man, it's the hardest thing I ever loved. And they were like, well, what's it like? And I said, well, and I imagine this is true of any big company like this. Like it's probably true of Apple, and probably true of Google, what have you. I said, Imagine you walk outside of your house and they're like, Yeah. And I said, and you look around, and everybody is running. So you start running, but you don't know where you're running to, you don't know if you're running to something or from something, and nobody's running in the same direction, you know. And if you slow down, people looking at you and they will go, man, you need to run faster than that. They're gonna get us. And you again you run it, but you don't know nothing. Yeah, it is it is a lot like that.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

And and I now that I work for the government, because I've I feel that, right? Because I was in startup forever. But now that I work for the government, I feel like everybody just stops. Oh, it's the exact opposite.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

They like nobody's running, they're just kind of standing. Like, can you please run?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

And and I'm over here, like, let's go, people, and they're like, We we we haven't been told to start yet.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

We yeah, we're not like yeah, it's still they're still in their houses.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Nobody's telling you to start, just go.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

That's hilarious.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

And and accurate is the weirdest thing. It is the weirdest thing. I want to go back to something you said earlier, though. You were talking about worry and and being worried about like all of the things that you're trying to do with your life, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

And I will tell you, it is so interesting that God put me in a place where I work with a bunch of people who worry often. And they're all believers, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Oh gosh. And so I'm talking about that for hours.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Oh my gosh, it's crazy to me because well, I I mean, you know enough of my story that I really have let go a lot of worries in life. Like I'll get worried about something, I'll get nervous about something, and I'll think it through and then I'll let it go.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And it's so interesting when God puts people in your path. I mean, including you. Like you used to be like this, and and I know that you kind of had a a a revival of sorts. Right. But when you're watching these people go through that and you know they're losing sleep at night, you know that they're they have that nervous stomach, or they're constantly, you know, going through things in their head and really worried about all of these things, and you can see it all over their face, and then in their demeanor and the way that they make decisions. And I I I just want to say that I'm like super happy, and I'm very proud of you for getting to that point of surrender and not having those worries. But when you said that, that you were worried about all these different things, I'm like, man, don't fall back into old ways.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

Oh, no, no, I I promise, I promise you, uh not only will I not think one, thank you for that. Two, not only will I not do that, I can't do that. I can't go back um because I it's impossible for me to look at it through the same lens. Like I it's it's I remember feeling how I felt, but it feels silly now to have ever been worried about it. And I don't mean that in a I feel different. I mean that in a sense of like something supernaturally has shifted. Where, like you remember at the end of the Matrix when Neo is realizing that he can stop both. He's kind of just considering the bullet as he looks at it. And at one point, Smith is running up, kind of throwing punches at him, and he's not even paying him any mind. He's just blocking with one arm. And just kind of like he's like, you are not a threat to me. I'm just I'm defending, but it's not even this is nothing to me. This is light work. It's like that relative to the things that I was very, very, very worried about. And so I can't go back to it apart from old me trying to rear his ugly head. And to your point, that's just um, there are ways to guard against that. And uh just to put a finer point on it, what you were talking about, what I think all those people who are believers, really anybody, but uh believers in particular, because we seem to be the best at getting this wrong. Because I know people that don't know God from a hole in the ground that don't worry about a thing, like they're just like, eh, it is what it is. And I'm like, how in the world did you figure that out? You know, um people with the answer uh scared to death, right? And so I'm realizing that, and you and I talked a little bit about this before, but surrender is the the answer, it's also a process, and it is not a one and done. You are the key to surrender, I'm learning, is constant surrender. But this is something that you and I talked about as well, but I want to talk about here since we're recording. Um, in order to consistently surrender, because again, it's a repeat process, I am learning that you have to uh protect and guard your mind to have it constantly fed the word so that it is equipped, so that in that moment when you need to surrender, God's word kicks in. And it's almost like you're reminded of the power that you walk around with. Like we forget sometimes that the one, the Holy Spirit, is once you get saved, the Holy Spirit is the proof that you are saved, right? So it's he's just in there. In fact, I I talked to God like I talked to you, which I don't I don't know if he likes it or not. I mean, he hadn't killed me yet. So, but he did he did make me live in Florida, so I don't know. Jury's still out. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

I mean, I I pay I pay a weather tax out here living in California, so I everybody wants to live in California. The weather's absolutely gorgeous, but everything costs way more than it's gonna be. There's a trade-off, there's a trade-off in everything almost.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Facts. So the um, you know, as I was um, you know, uh thinking about like this approach and like protecting your mind, um, I was talking to the whole uh the Lord about it, and when it, I think it was like a Charles Stanley uh sermon I was listening to, where he was, you know, Charles Stanley's always uh pushing the uh you know that you're sealed because people will think uh that they can lose their salvation. And you know, the there's debates on that. I I I just don't think it's true because I've my personal feeling is that how can you lose something that you didn't pay for in the first place? You know, like you can't like you can't make yeah, you can't make Christ come down off the cross. Like he did that for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, and I I still think that the you can get the devil can whisper enough in your ear that if you don't have how are you gonna how are you gonna make the Holy Spirit leave you?

SPEAKER_02 14:39

Like tell me.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

No, no, I don't I don't think I don't think he leaves you, but it's just like turning your back on God. God never leaves either.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

How do you you cannot lose what you'd never earned? It's impossible.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I don't think I don't think it's uh well maybe maybe the choice of words, because I don't think I know what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

I know what you're saying. It's a you're kind of like when you lose your keys.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

It's kind of like when you lose your keys. Usually, where are your keys? You're searching everywhere for them, and they're right under your nose the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, but it it's a the way people have have misunderstood that, in my opinion, is yeah, they think I I lost my keys, therefore I lost my entire car. You know, by the losing, uh you know, I lost my key, took my house key, so I don't have my house anymore. It's like, no, you just you you lost your way, but you still live there. That's still your address. You know, it's a and I think that's what the enemy does to your point. Um, and actually this dovetails into since the devil's like, since I can't kill you without permission, and I can't, you know, send you to hell, what I can do is make you ineffective. Make you so ineffectual that you are of no, you are of no use to anybody. You're just existing. And that's what not surrendering eventually looks like. That's what worry about nothing is. Like I was telling somebody, uh, well, actually, let me put a bow on the Holy Spirit thing. So Charles Stanley's always talking about how he's, you know, you're the proof of you being sealed is the Holy Spirit. And so it's like, okay, cool. And he said in one sermon, he's like, the Holy Spirit is in you for eternity. And I I don't know why that never resonated with me before. Like it, like you kind of, it's the type of thing that you kind of gloss over, like, okay, cool, I got the Holy Spirit. And for whatever reason, in my mind, it's like I got him while I'm here, and then I'll go there and I'll just be me again. And that's actually not the case. Like, he's in there forever, like forever, ever. Like, in eternity, he'll be walking around inside of you and me. And so me being jackass that I am decided I was gonna control him, you know, and and laugh and get these jokes off. And I said, What? And I'm praying, and I said, What kind of sucks to be you? You stuck in here. Because that is what that's what I would do, which is why he makes me live in Florida, right? So he he not to be outdone, because he's gonna get them jokes off, also, flips it, and he said, Oh, I'm not stuck with you. You, my friend, are stuck with me. And so that kind of changed the narrative.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

What's so funny to me about that is that you've got you've got all of these people in the world, right, that are believers, that are worrying, and they forget all of the things God has done for them. And I think I think that reigns true simply because I believe that people tend to not realize the grander picture, right? Like when you're looking at an artist who's like who's painting a beautiful portrait or a beautiful scenery, right? You're looking at when you first watch that, and there's they have these things all over Instagram and TikTok and whatever, and you're like, what the heck are they painting? Right? Right. And then you start then you start to see pieces of it coming together, and you're like, oh, oh, that's rad, right? Yeah. Well, the the problem with life is life is the same exact analogy. We're sitting here, like, God is giving us all these little tiny things that are leading to huge things. Forget to look at the little things and say, Oh, God was in that moment too. God did that specifically to get to where I'm at right now. You know?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

That's a good word.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

And I I work with a lot of people at my office that are that are all kind of consistently worried and that are always like freaking out about something. And I'm like, look back at your life.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

And these are these are believers.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

These are believers. And and I'm like, and I'm sitting there thinking to myself, okay, how can you how can you sit here and freak out about all of these things, right? But then I realize I used to be there too. I used to be there too because I thought that I had control over anything.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Oh, you know what? Let me give you Oh, good. I'm sorry, go, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

So I'm trying to speak to that.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

The interesting thing to me is it's not even just the word. Like God gives us such a huge toolbox. If you journal, if you if you have a decent memory and you look back on things, all you need to do is shift your perspective, and it's turning your head towards Him, and He'll give you the words, He will give you the memories of all of the times He's been there for you. He will remind you. The Holy Spirit will come and remind you. All you have to do is take out your toolbox and say, I don't need to deal with this. But what cracks me up is when I tell people, when you're starting to worry about it, change your perspective in your mind, focus on something completely different. It doesn't necessarily have to be God, it has to be something God pleasing and God um providing like some type of goodness in the world, positive, powerful, productive. And you and I had that conversation, and I remember you saying to me, Well, aren't you just like avoiding it then? Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_02 20:50

I I do. And the the only thing I want to give you that I think would dovetail into that. One, I completely agree with you. I just want to add some seasoning to what you're saying. And maybe it's different for everybody, you know. Uh the I know what's worked for me was to your point, the toolbox. I had to, I I did, I like I studied the word, or I would read the word and still be, you know, not surrendered and worried. Or surrendering with the mindset of, okay, I know I gotta surrender, but how long do I have to sit in this? Like it's and it's proof that you can know God's entire plan of why he's doing something for you and the benefits, and still not want to sit in it and let patience have its work. What I found that shifted things for me on that was instead of waiting for stuff to happen that sucked and then worrying about it, to preemptively fill my toolbox up and say, you know what, let me just speak and pray his promises so that you know, in every So that when the situation comes, I'm not trying to remember. It's just in there. Like the spirit's got to be able to pull from something. But if you aren't constantly feeding yourself the word, you can turn to all the positive stuff you want. It's gonna still get you're gonna still get that butt whooped. I think the word though is powerful. And it will do, and it will, and I think a combination of all those things. Go out for a hike, nature, all that, but with the word and everything, you do all of that, I think your mind is protected. And what I find is that even as stuff is going down, you have joy. In fact, um, Tiff, when you get a sec, look at Luke uh chapter 10, verse 21. In fact, uh 18, 19, and 20 are pretty good too. The um Luke 18, Jesus is talking to, I think he's about to send out the disciples, but like this was not like the 12. This was like when he had about 70 of them. He was sending them out two by two. And he's saying in verse 18, uh, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. And that just that alone is like, well, well, damn, you know, like lightning, like you know, and God didn't throw him out. It was Michael, I believe, that just was like, All right, you you got to go. And then in verse 19, he says to the 70 that he's about to send out, he's like, Listen, I've given you authority over, you know, to be able to, you know, trample on scorpions and serpents, and I've given you power over the enemy. And then in 20, he's like, Yeah, but don't even trip on that because it's better to celebrate the fact that your names aren't written in heaven. And then it's almost like a throwaway line that I've I've read of Gajillion times, but never paid any mind to. You look in verse 21, and it says that Jesus was filled with joy because of the Holy Spirit. And then it goes on to say something else that I can't remember. But what's wild about that is he's here, basically in a wilderness season, and he had joy, and the conduit through which that joy came was the Holy Spirit. But if you look in the book of Luke, I want to say there's like 13 different times that Luke calls out that Jesus went alone to pray up in the mountain somewhere. He went by himself to pray. So I think a lot of times we can read the Gospels as, hey, these are cool stories, but you never really read it as a biography in the sense of if I want to do, if I want to have success like Steve Jobs, then I have to do what Steve Jobs did. You know, um, and we'll look at that and follow what Steve Jobs did, but we won't look at Christ in the Gospels and model his behavior. It's like, why wouldn't Jesus worried about anything? He was human and God.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

You know, yeah, but can I go back to can I go back to what you just said about Jesus praying? Yeah. Here's here's here's the one thing that I think that people get wrong about prayer, right? Yeah, I believe that there every every person has their own viewpoint or belief of what that looks like, right? But when you when you really get to it, what does it all boil down to if we could just simplify it?

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Prayer? How do you mean? You mean like the purpose of it?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Well, what is it? It's just a conversation with God.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yes. Okay, so you're doing all day in the same place.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Yeah, yeah. Like I do that all day in my head, all day long.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

I told you I do. I make I make fun of him for being stuck in me. Yeah. Right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

But hey, I'm at work, so I gotta go. But I don't care about that. We talking.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Don't care about any of that. They don't like you anyway. At least you're talking to somebody who likes you right now, right?

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Oh man. We'll talk about that more later. Do you want me to call you afterwards?

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Um, yeah, that'd be great. Uh, what I'm gonna do is uh I'll stop this here. I'm gonna upload this to where I can send it to you. You know, and you can check out the audio quality.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Sounds like a plan.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

And and download it, and that way uh see what you can do with it in Canva.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Yeah, well, I'll teach you what to do with it in Canva.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Oh, okay. I thought we were like, I wasn't sure if like is this like do I get to keep this or is this going up into your piece because it's you and No, this is this is you.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Okay, this is yours. We're gonna edit it. We're I'm gonna teach you how to edit it and we're gonna we're gonna use it. I love it. In your platform. This is this is how we're growing it.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Uh absolutely love it. Uh yes, ma'am.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

All right.

SPEAKER_02 27:22

I'll talk to you later.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Talk to you later. Bye.