Faith Is Learning What’s Yours to Do and What’s God’s to Carry

Matthew Gottesman (0:02)

Welcome to The Niche Is You. My name is Matt Gottesman, at Matt Gottesman on Instagram, and this is my daily podcast where I create short, quick hitting episodes to help you uncomplicate life, creativity, and the pursuit of your highest self. There's only main character energy here. Now let's get into it.

Welcome to episode 896 Faith is learning what's yours to do and what's God's to carry. Faith is learning what's yours to do and what's God's to carry. So about a week or two ago, I had put up a couple of posts on Instagram on my stories, and I was giving some general advice around calling and then trusting your intuition. Well, several people reached out, and we're looking for some more subject matter. And one of the biggest questions asked was, what's your faith walk been like? Like how does that look between like your relationship with God and how do you have so much faith? And also, do you always have so much faith? Here's the deal. And then I wrote, of course, 10 things I've learned about walking with God. Faith has been a very interesting practice. And I don't want to say that it's always been easy because it requires a lot of letting go. It requires a lot of surrendering. It requires a lot of trust in yourself, trust in the vision, trust in the bigger picture, trust without necessarily the certainty that I think a lot of people look for.

And it genuinely is a relationship with God. And that's a practice that you have to be present for continuously every single day. And if you think about it, which is going to lead to my first point, which is actually I'll jump into my first point, because this will make all of it. Build a relationship with God that exists outside of what you need from Him. That right there. Build a relationship with God that exists outside of what you need from Him. It's very easy for prayer to become active for you when you need something, right? An answer or your job, an opportunity, money, healing, whatever, right? Relief, or maybe you're just like, you're really in it. However, what would it look like if you didn't necessarily need anything, but you were just having a relationship like, hey, thank you so much for the day. So appreciate you being there for me.

By the way, just want to get your take on things like anything could be doing better, or hey, I want to go on a walk and just be still with you for a minute and receive and understand more about this process with you.

So when things don't need fixing, what does that look like? Now, think about it like this. If anybody in your life, friends, loved ones, whatever, if all they ever came to you is when they need something, I mean, we hear this all the time, right? If all they ever did is come to you when they need something, don't you kind of feel slightly like a little hurt? Not that God would feel hurt, but don't you as a human feel a little hurt? Like, be like, that's it? You don't even want to ask how I'm doing. You don't even care like what's going on in my life. You just like, you just constantly need something, right? We've all probably encountered that at some point, right? And how would you feel? Okay, well, I look at God as, well, God is a very loving God, but at the same time, God has been like, hey, sit with me for a moment. You know, how are you feeling? What's going on? What are you doing? Like, let's talk, let's conversate. You know, let's study together. And so if you can look at a relationship more like that, not just when you need something, I actually feel you'll feel a lot steadier and more anchored in all situations in life. And also, this is a big deal for me at least, when people have said like, how do you feel? So like, how do you have so much conviction or confident about like what God is doing in your life? And I'm like, because the more time I spend with God without necessarily needing something, but trying to understand and like move with God, the greater I'm learning about what God is always doing. This is a really big deal because if we're not careful, if we feel disconnected, we see something happening that maybe we don't like per se. And we think like, oh, is that punishment? And you're actually realizing like when the more present I am with God, I'm like, oh, wow, you're doing me a favor. Oh, wow. Like, that's not something that needs to be around me. Oh, wow. I'm being protected. I'm being covered. You start to see the details through the veil. Right. And so, yeah, the relationship with God should exist outside of needing something. Right. And I made a little note here that faith deepens when God isn't only for you to go to because you need something from him. Right. Faith is just constantly being present all day every day. And isn't that what we all want from each other, is our each other's presence. Right. All right. Point two, pray for direction, but don't expect God to make every decision for you. And here's what I mean. Have you ever asked for something? You know, you guys all have heard the... I've mentioned this several times, and you've all inevitably heard that. It's like, you know, a man is out on the life raft in the middle of the ocean. He's like, God, please send food. And all of a sudden, you know, a bird flies by and he does nothing. God, please send food. And fish come right up to the raft, and he does nothing. And then eventually, he passed away and he goes up. He says, God, why didn't you do anything? God's like, what are you talking about? I sent you birds. I sent you fish. You know? So like, we can ask for things, like especially direction, but we have to execute. We have to move. You know, sometimes we don't need another sign. We already have enough wisdom to make a responsible choice. It's right there in front of us. You have to, like, a lot of times God will give us something. And instead of just constantly feeling, I think, certain about it, maybe that's what the issue is. You know, because faith doesn't always mean restricting certainty. That's not, like, I'm not always certain, but I'm like, that, okay. And that's how I'm learning to have this faith walk. Like, and I've brought this up before. It's like, I'll ask for sound advice or like, hey, what should I be focusing on? And I'll be talking about a very specific area of my life. But then all of a sudden God would, I'll feel God or say, I hear God say, oh, focus on this. And I'm like, wow, that seems completely different than, and different discipline, different area of my life, different everything. Okay. But then I started to notice that as I listen and I do it, it starts to make sense how it's actually tied to the other things that I want.