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How to Let Go of Control and Trust God · The Expert Method

• speaker-0: When we look at themes of control, Ian, and we surrender to the Lord, we're surrendering to the idea and and trusting the Lord to show us our path because we really are very limited in our knowledge. You obviously don't trust me. You say you do, but you really don't, because you're not letting go. Well, first of all, you gotta be still. speaker-1: Today's guest is Sylvia Worsham. Sylvia is a best-selling author and spiritual transformation coach whose own life changed after a serious medical crisis forced her to confront how tightly she was holding onto control. In our conversation, we talk about how fear and doubt can drive the need to control everything in our lives and what it actually looks like to surrender that control to God and trust Him when you can't see what comes next. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Sylvia Worsham. Sylvia, thank you so much for being here. speaker-0: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. I get to be a guest. I'm usually the host. speaker-1: Yeah, let's go. Yeah, very exciting. I hope I can hope I can do my duties well and pull the pull the best insights that you have out of you. But yeah, I'm excited for our conversation. But to start things off, Sylvia, you've described yourself as a high achiever, perfectionist, and someone who felt a strong need to control the circumstances around you. And I think myself and I'm sure other listeners can really relate to that idea of just wanting to try and control everything in our lives, like as soon as we give up responsibility or give up control, like we feel like we're spinning out of control. So I want to start with that part of your story. So where do you feel that need for control came from for you? speaker-0: In my childhood, I was raised by a high achieving perfectionist father, and he instilled in his children that you needed to achieve and you needed to achieve perfectly. I had the distinct privilege of selling Viagra to my own dad and so I had to shadow him for an entire day. And I was in the OR, in the operating room with him, and I could sense how much of a perfectionist he was. By the way, everybody was kind of tense around him. He he was not someone that would help others relax. You could sense it from him. And so living and growing up in that environment, it's pretty much an easy step to fall trap to environments that encourage that. And that's why I fell into corporate America. It was very easy to do that. And I fell into the corporate environment and I was doing sales. And in sales, it's controlled environments. You are not you have creativity, but there's a structure that you need to abide by. And there is constant messaging of you need to be successful, you need to do it this way, there's no other way but this way. And when you're constantly in that grind, it's easy to stay in that grind. So to me. It started from the moment I was seven years old. I became a security seeker, is what I call it it in my book in Faith I Thrive, Finding Joy Through God's Master Plan. And it's a pattern of behavior that gets easily attached to feelings of doubt. And when you have doubt, control is gonna rear its ugly head. And I had a trauma that happened. And this is usually how it works. for people you'll have a significant emotional event that occurs that gets a belief gets formed at the moment of that experience. And for me it happened when I was seven years old. I had a major trauma that occurred between my father and I. He basically blamed me for my sister's accident and told me that if she died, it would be my fault. And when you have an experience like that at such a young age, what happens is that they transfer their parental responsibilities onto you. And I felt in that moment the pattern of behavior, the security seeker pattern attached itself to a feeling of doubt. So anytime doubt showed up in my life, control would kick into high gear. And so that's where it originates from, usually. speaker-1: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. can tell you've probably answered a similar question like that before. That was excellent. So from what I understand, like I think it might be important to clarify just the controlled environment. The control environment. Like is that are you talking about an environment that really breeds that control mindset, I guess? Or is it like speaker-0: It's modeling. It's the modeling. You see it every day. And you have to understand one thing about the subconscious mind. It has no filter for those listening. Meaning that everything you see, everything you read, everything you hear, it comes inside your mind and it forms beliefs and it's information. And that's why we want to encourage people to be aware of this so that they're choosy about what they allow to To hear, to see, or to speak into or allowed to be spoken to in a certain way, because all of that is information that the mind uses. And it's everywhere around us if you think about it. Look around our culture. It's all about controlling our outcome. Look at sales. Like sales is about a sales quota. If you do not achieve that sales quota, what happen, you know? I mean, it's it's a continual grind and it's a continual information. that the mind is using to set yourself yourself up for controlling those situations and controlling outcomes. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And one thing that I've learned in other conversations here on the podcast, like it's easy to just get frustrated at the things that we see like in our modern world that are like, that's so clearly wrong. But then in order to really understand how we can switch it, how we can change it, I found that it's we need to understand like what is that pattern or what is that thing like doing for us or doing for those individuals. So like the same thing with the on a smaller scale, right? With with control, like in our own lives. Right. So we pick up these patterns because they serve us in a specific moment. And then we can carry them on because they have like some benefit to it, even though it's probably very shallow. And then in the long term, it doesn't serve us like this idea of control. So what did you find? Like what did that control give you in the moment where you were? Like was it security, like was it safety? Like what what did control give you? speaker-0: For me in that moment was safety. If I could control the circumstance, if I could do it myself, then I would I was gonna do it right, according to me, right? But the Lord has other plans about control, and he had a very creative way to get my attention, to release start releasing that control over to him and to surrender to understand the value of surrender. Because controlling is in that moment may satisfy it for a split moment, but it's not sustainable. You get exhausted over time, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. You're exhausted. And there comes a a breaking point. And my breaking point came in twenty twelve. speaker-1: Yeah. Can you share what happened in twenty twelve? speaker-0: So I had already been through a divorce. I I was a single mom with a six-year-old boy and I was starting to date who would become my second husband. And he invited us over to Louisiana for a crawfish boil. It was Easter weekend. And so I took a flight from South Texas, which is where I was living at the time, with my son. And days before I was scheduled to fly, I got very pale and I started to breathe very shallow. And my mother insisted I call my brother, who's also a physician. My dad was a doctor. And so I called him and I kind of described my symptoms. And he said, that sounds like pleurisy. And pleury for those listening is the inflammation of the lining of the lung. And it mimics the same symptoms as pulmonary embolism. And that's what I ended up having. And I took a flight in, which is extremely dangerous. It carries a forty percent chance of dying midair. And I landed in Houston, which is where we were meeting Donnie. And I remember just feeling not so good and walking very carefully. I couldn't even grab my bag from underneath my seat. It was very, very painful. And luckily, he took one look at me. The original plan was to drive to Louisiana overnight. You could imagine what that would have done. He said, Let's just stay here in Houston, Texas. And for those listening, Houston is the Epicenter, like the medical center of Texas, is there. And we spent the night, and in the middle of the night, I get jolted out of bed at 3 a.m. And I felt like 50 knives were piercing my chest. And in that moment, I heard the Holy Spirit tell me, lean forward and you'll be able to breathe. And in that relationship, at that time in my life, my relationship with the Lord is very strong. And so I was obedient and I leaned forward. And I was able to take deeper breaths and I stayed like that for four hours. I didn't call anybody because my brother had told me, this is just really painful. Just take ibuprofen for five days at like really high doses. And so I just kind of did what my brother was telling me. And I thought, wow, he wasn't kidding. This is really painful. I didn't know it was pulmonary embolisms at the time. So the next morning I ended up being admitted to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and in stable condition. They took a scan of my lungs and they were like, Yeah, you have pulmonary embolisms. You're staying here, you're not going anywhere. But they caught the top of my liver and it looked inflamed. And the guy, the critical care pulmonologist, basically told me, We're just gonna take a scan of your abdomen tomorrow to check things out, but we just we think it's just pulmonary embolisms, as if just pulmonary embolisms weren't enough, right? So there's my boyfriend outside with my son. And you know, with ER protocols, they can't come back because he's not my husband. It was a mess. And so, long story short, my son gets sent back to South Texas. I end up staying ten days in the hospital. But that day when they did the scan, I had six doctors walk into my room. And none of them were looking at me. So I could tell right away I was in sales. I was in corporate sales for Pfizer pharmaceuticals. I knew what that meant. I knew that was very bad news. And the fact that they had consulted all three of the doctors in my family, also very bad news. And they basically said, You're about to lose your liver because you have a massive blood clot in your vena cava. And it's putting a lot of pressure. They were baffled how I had actually walked into the hospital unassisted. I should have been doubled over in pain. I shouldn't have been able to walk. And I knew that the Lord was with me, right? So they wheel me, they rush me to ICU. And what they start shooting me with these things to try to destroy this thing before it takes my liver out. I had the liver transplant team on my case just waiting to see if I went into acute liver failure. It was a mess. And the very next day it was Easter Sunday morning and I needed a miracle. And this lady with the Catholic diocese walked into the room because when I walked in, they always asked you what religion are you? And I was in between religions, but I'd been raised Catholic. So I put Catholic. And so here she walks in, and Donnie was in the room with me. And we formed a circle and we started praying. And in the midst of that prayer, Ian, I felt a presence that was undeniable. It was God in all of his form and all of his love. And I felt cradled by him. And in that moment, I knew I was okay, that he had given me my second chance at life. Because the moment those doctors walked in, the first thing I did was to surrender to the Lord. I had no choice. They were not confident I was going to survive the night. They told my father and my brother and sister, she's likely going to die tonight. Prepare yourselves. And that's when my father and my brother flew into Houston because they they were likely flying into a deadly situation and running against time. And the Lord had basically told Donnie and myself, because he appeared and to Donnie as well and told him Your prayers were answered. She will live and you guys are going to be happy together and you're going to move on. The third and final miracle that I received after the prompting and the Lord making his presence known in the ICU was that the doctors were highly predicting that I was going to have scarring in my lungs and have long term complications. So they were going to check me out to see what was going on. And I knew I was okay because the Lord had already told me and confirmed. So when the doctor came out like 10 minutes later and he looked radiant, he said, You have no evidence of disease anywhere in your body, is as if nothing had ever happened to you. It was I had like seven pulmonary embolisms and that massive blood clot, and there was like no trace of anything left. I mean, and the doctors were just shocked because they hadn't seen a case like that survive. So that was my pivotal moment that basically taught me the value of surrender. That when you surrender control to the Lord, he will step in and nothing is impossible for the Lord. Nothing. speaker-1: Right. Thank you for sharing that. And in hindsight, when you look at that experience, you know, non spir if you if we would have had this conversation, you know, six months ago, I would have interpreted this story very differently. I wasn't raised with religion and I don't know, something in my life kind of led me to Reaching out and building that relationship with God. There's just like, I don't know, coincidences, right? Like all these coincidences that happen that kind of can lead you to to starting to reach out and build that relationship. But in hindsight, when you look at that experience, you know, something that I've learned is that when you build your relationship with God and you, you know, ask him for help, that doesn't mean it's all gonna be sunshine and rainbows, right? Like he's gonna Yeah. Yeah, not in not in any way, shape or form. Cause that's not how we learn, right? So what do you think obviously like My interpretation is an understanding that maybe God brought this situation to you to teach you the release of control, right? The surrender. Like what do you think? speaker-0: I think he uses our choices because I chose to take birth control pills after the age of 35, knowing full well I was a pharmaceutical rep. I knew full well the consequences of that. And I never believed I was gonna be a side effect. I mean, I talked about side effects day in and day out. So what I think the Lord did was, okay, I'm gonna use one of your choices and I'm going to save you. But I'm gonna let you sit in this for a little bit. So that you learn. Because as a parent, we don't immediately, if we immediately rescue our children, and I've made that mistake repeatedly with my kids, they don't learn anything. They just keep going and keep making the same mistake over and over and over again. And the Lord loves us so much. He doesn't want us to make that mistake and have more pain. But we're stubborn, man. We just don't learn sometimes. We just have to go at it again and again because we think that if we do it Our way, which is where control comes in. In the book In Faith I Thrive, finding joy through God's Master Plan, which is my latest book. It was released in 2024. I talk about two identities in the ego identity and the soul identity, and they're in conflict with each other. And if you look at scripture, Paul writes about it in Galatians five seventeen. He talks about having the desires of the flesh pulling at you at the same time as being spirit led. And you have a choice. Either you're led by the Holy Spirit. And by the Lord, or you're led by your flesh, which is it? And I was led by my flesh. There's consequences, there's natural consequences to our choices. Otherwise, we don't have free will, right? And he loves us so much that he is not going to force himself on us. He's not going to force us to worship him day in and day out. He's going to want us to make the choice to come to him. And in moments of crisis is when most people come to him and he knows that. He knows your heart. He knows how you need to learn because he created you. He knows how you function. So he knew that I needed something big to wake up. And so he used my choice. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah, that idea of like the linchpin for me was the understanding of okay, God gave us free will. Like I always believed in a God and a higher power, but I don't know, I didn't take it as seriously, I guess, until like six months ago. But one of the ideas that really sticks with me is the idea that God gave us free will because it's the greatest extension of his creative capacity. Right. And why would God want to create beings that are just indentured servants to his worship, right? Like that doesn't seem great, right? Like you wouldn't want that. So given a free will, right as the greatest extension of his creative capacity, God, the universe, right, the higher power is always there, ready to support us, but we have to reach out and ask for that. And it sounds like in that moment when you were in this crisis, it sounds like you already had a relationship with God prior to that, maybe? speaker-0: Did and but I had turned away from the Lord for ten years as a Catholic. I when I married my first husband, there was a lot of hypocrisy experience in the Catholic Church and I turned away. So there's one thing I do want to clarify is that when Christ came here on earth, he rebelled against religion. He was not a fan of the organized religion. Right. He was a fan of relationship with the Father. He told his disciples, Follow me. Follow me. That was his directive to the disciples. And it's follow me is very different than follow all these rules, otherwise you're gonna go to hell. That's not the same message. And I think most people forget that. And that's why I'm so grateful for series like the chosen that have shown his ministry so that people are reminded of that particular. moment where he gets angry with the Pharisees, calls them hypocrites because they were being hypocrites. There's a lot of religions out there that are keeping people further away from God himself. They're it's defeating the purpose entirely. And so the work that I do is I work with people with religion trauma who confuse religion and relationship and kind of coach them to get a relationship with him. Yes. So that's the difference. speaker-1: Yeah. And just a clarification or curious clarification on my point, like my understanding of what you know Jesus said was yes, he was rebelling against the organized religion of the day, which makes a lot of sense because it seemed like from again from what I understand at that time, and it still happens here today, there's this institutionalization of religion where they create this sense That in order to have access to God, you need to come through this institution to access God. Or from what I understand of what Jesus said is that God is within you. Right. You find God within your own relationship within you. Right. You don't need me to access God, right? God is there within you and you can build your own relationship with God if you reach out. speaker-0: One, and think of the scripture of like in the book of John. In the book of John you hear, Abide in me as I abide in you. I mean, that's his word. That's scripture. That is the part of the armor of God that is the only defense we have and on the offensive against an enemy intent on twisting words around, twisting what you believe about him around, 'cause you know scripture better than we do. And so and he accesses us through our w how we speak out loud, because he can't hear our thoughts. The Lord is the only one that can hear our thoughts. Satan cannot. But how however, we are very vocal human beings and we say a lot and he's always prowling. If you look at the book of Peter, Peter says he's prowling. The book of Job, at the beginning of the book of Job, it's interesting. God asks Satan, What are you doing here? And he goes, Well I've been prowling the earth. So he's always around, he's always listening. that's something for people to understand. Be be aware of that. Be aware of what comes out of your mouth because he is listening and then he's able to twist. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And my understanding is this idea that, you know, hell is something that we can experience here on like heaven and hell are two things that we can experience here on earth. And it's hell is just living in a perpetual loop and thought system grounded in fear, right? And fear is something that speaker-0: Fear doubt. I mean fear's the big umbrella, right? And we have anger and doubt and envy and if you look at the sins of the flesh that Peter I mean, excuse me, Paul talks about. I think it's in Galatians, where he talks about the fruit of the spirit and the desires of the flesh and the sins of the flesh, you see quite the opposite, right? So we know that the fruit of the spirit is peace, love, joy, faithfulness, goodness, patience for Self-control. Anything opposite of that are sins of the flesh. And that's that conflict that we're constantly in. It's a battle that we're constantly in. Are we gonna be are we gonna allow the Lord to guide us? Or are we gonna do whatever we want and control our circumstances because we think we know best. We know more than God, than the maker of the universe. The book of Job is an actual great book to look into, although it's terrifying for those reading it for the very first time. Because it's about a man that loses absolutely everything. And the reason why he loses everything is because when Satan goes up to heaven and the Lord says, Have you seen my my good subject Job? Have you observed him? He's such a righteous man. And Satan tells him, Well, he's righteous because you've given him everything. I bet if you took everything away from him, he wouldn't honor you anymore. And so the Lord says, Okay, I guarantee you he's not going to turn against me. And so they take everything from him and he still honors God. He's still a righteous man of God. And for a second time Satan comes up to heaven and he and he tells them, like, What have you been doing? Well, I've been prowling the earth, but have you seen my good subject Job? Well, I bet if you took away his health, he would he would curse you. So then he gets boils on his feet and he still doesn't curse the Lord. He's angry with them, but some of us tend to be at times with him. But he never dishonors him and he doesn't disrespect him. He knows his place. He knows that he doesn't know everything, although he he thinks he does. That's the problem, right? So at the end, the Lord never answers any of his questions, but he does come to tell him, Were you there when I created the earth? Were you there when all these things were created? How can you possibly know why all this has happened if you're not me? And so I think. When we look at themes of control, Ian, and we surrender to the Lord, we're surrendering to the idea and and trusting the Lord to show us our path because we really are very limited in our knowledge. We are limited in our grasp of the entire plan. We can't possibly know all that because we can't see into other people's hearts like he can. And the people that surround us that are part of our plan, if that makes any sense. speaker-1: Yeah. And we are limited in our capacity to, you know, shift into the right path or shift into the right thought system, if that makes sense, right? We can't do it on our own, or we can't control our own situation, right? Like we need to lean on him and surrender to God to help us in that journey. So for someone like myself who's very new to this journey and can recognize these ideas that, you know, this belief and this you know, love of control, right? Is an idea that's just grounded in this fear based thought system, like just feeling like we need to hold everything so tight because if we don't, then everything's gonna go wrong. Right. It's just we're fearful of what will happen if we give up control and we do surrender. But we recognize that that's just not the way to live, right? But how do we like what does actually giving up control and surrendering look like in the moment? Like what did that look like for you in two thousand twelve? Or what does giving up control and surrendering like actually look like? speaker-0: Well, I'll share with you that in the last ninety days from May twenty sixth up until maybe a week ago, I was in a a testing period with him in the wilderness. And he had directed me to read the book of Job. And I thought innocently enough it was to help my son who was also in a wilderness season, like he was a young guy and he had started reading the Bible and getting into the word and of course the enemy w started attacking hard. And when the Enemy attacks hard, he attacks identity. So I want you to understand that. When you feel like your identity is under question, that's the enemy. That's not of God. So it's remembering that and putting that somewhere to remind yourself. What does surrender look like in these seasons of wilderness? It's turning to the Lord, even if you don't feel like it. There are days I was numb during these ninety days because I mean I got attacked from all sides. Career, family, marriage. All of it. I mean, it was that entire gamut. And I I was grateful that he had directed me to read Job prior to the wilderness season. It was almost to equip me of like, you know, previews of attractions to come. You know what I mean? Like this is gonna happen to you in your time and your sphere. And so I need you to understand that this is a test. It's not because you failed. It's not because I don't love you. It's not because I I've abandoned you. It's because I need to test your faith. Is it? Are you loving me or loving what I'm giving you? Because of what I'm giving you. So let me rephrase that a different way. Do we love people for who they are? And in essence, do we love God for who he is, his character, his value, what he has sacrificed for us? Or are we loving and worshiping him because of what we've received from him? And that I think was the lesson he was trying to teach me. So what does surrender look like? Going back to him. even when you don't feel like it. Force feeding yourself the word of God because it's the only offensive weapon we have against the enemy, who, by the way, is the one doing the like coming at you from different sides. Because you're dealing with a lot of unbelievers out there. People that are so it's all about me. And when it's all about me, man, you're gonna encounter a lot of conflict because It's just the nature of the beast. So what has God called us to do is to be peacemakers. That's not an easy thing when you're in conflict with people that are not seeing reason or logic, right? And you and you know what's happening to you. So it's obeying him. It's repenting when you've messed up. And I messed up a lot in that wilderness sec session these last ninety days. Being really honest with him. And I sat down with my journal and I wrote, if I'm being brutally honest, I'm mad at you. I'm really pissed off at you, Lord. Because I thought that I had suffered enough already. Why are my kids suffering? In the same fate I suffered as a child. I'd been bullied as a kid. I'm like, why am I having to live this over again? So I was brutally honest with him. You know, the Lord is. used to our honesty, he's used to our anger, he can handle it. He he's omnipotent. We're the ones that are so limited in our capacity, in our in our knowledge of things. So surrender looks like being honest. It looks like going back to his word, whether you feel like it or not, force feeding yourself. It's talking to him, not stopping the talking to him. It is obeying his promptings. Even if you're terrified, even if you can't see the step before like right before you. Step there anyways. I'll tell you when you're in alignment. What in alignment to his truth, in alignment to his plan. When you step and you were terrified a moment ago and you have peace a moment later. So those are things that I've used to reconnect and to surrender daily. And just be honest with him and be honest with yourself. I'm not saying don't be angry and push that down because in this society today it's like the toxic positivity. if you're negative and you're this no, no, no, no, no, no. Cause there's some real issues going on, you gotta sit with it and you gotta accept where you're at and you gotta accept your role. What role did you play? in this circumstance that you're in. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Did your control put you here? Well then what do you think the Lord is trying to teach you in this season? Because he's a good dad. He's not gonna not equip you for what's coming next. He's gonna equip you, but you gotta be obedient. speaker-1: Yeah. Toxic positivity. That was my first time I've heard that. I love I love that. And there's a couple ideas from what you just shared that I'd love to just clarify. Like first, you led with this idea that attacks on your identity. What is what do you mean by that? Like how do how does that show up? speaker-0: Where you feel unworthy. Where he in in this wilderness, I'll give you an example. He attacked whether I was a good friend or not, whether a mistake had cost me a friendship. He attacked my marriage, basically saying I was a horrible wife. I was a horrible mother for not seeing the signs. That's what he attacks. He attacks who you are, how you identify in this world. He starts attacking and creating doubt in your mind. Over and over. It's like a rumination. My anxiety climbed so bad. I was like desperate. I couldn't get out of there. If it was the most awful feeling in the world. And all I kept hearing in my mind was, For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you from Jeremiah twenty-nine, eleven. And I had that on repeat. And on days I was. Feeling low on energy, I knew he was attacking the hardest. I put on worship music. I danced to it. I tried to revive myself even when I didn't feel like it. speaker-1: Yeah, so these attacks on identity show up as just these beliefs, these doubts, these just again speaker-0: You're this horrible person, yeah. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And I think again, that's something that resonates with me. I think that's something that we can all relate to, that we've experienced that. And it's in those moments when those attacks on our identity are taking place, which isn't just like, Okay, well that happened for a couple of weeks, now it'll never happen again, but it's you know, an speaker-0: It will. It'll continue happening because and he shares that with the disciples while he's here on earth. Like you start to follow me, you're gonna start seeing things happen because the spiritual realm is huge. We we haven't even touched the surface here on earth. There is so much happening around us constantly that some of us have spiritual gifts that get revealed later on in life. You f at first don't understand those gifts. Like I would get visions and I didn't know what they meant until later that he started to show me like I'm going to show you visions. And that is my way of communicating to you your next steps, like what you need to do and to let you know that I'm right there with you. He showed me a vision of how he was holding my son. And he said, you need to let go. You're a very protective mama and I love you. When you're very protective of your boy, but he's my son first. And I need you to let go. So I can be over this situation. I'm sovereign over everything. So in this season of 90 days, he was teaching me several lessons. One was on dependence, total dependence on him, because I had zero control over some of these situations. In fact, over all of them, I had zero control. And he was saying, You still have control issues, Sylvia, and I need to I need you to let go. I need you to trust in my sovereignty and you're gonna have to let go. And so he very slowly started to like let go of my hands. My hands were so tightly wound around my son, around my daughter, around a certain situation, around my marriage. And he's like, You obviously don't trust me. You say you do, but you really don't, because you're not letting go. And then I just started to let go slowly. I started to say it out loud. I started to carry my body in that way. I started to read scripture that I started to almost chant to myself. And the more I did it, the more I reaffirmed in myself who I was in him. And I was a child of his. And being a child that he abides in me, I have his power. I have his spirit of confidence. I have his spirit. Not of timidness, but of confidence and courage. So where was that courage? Why was I not letting go, right? So it is, it's just a it's a process and he's he's preparing us for what's coming next. speaker-1: Yeah. And that's preparing us for what's coming next in our own lives? Or is there a Yeah. okay. Thank you for that. And the other question, this is kind of basic, I guess, and again, it's just coming from a place of myself, from myself who's just beginning on this journey and I have like an inkling of an understanding. But how do you hear God? Right? You talked about the ideas that you have his promptings. How do you hear God? speaker-0: Well, first of all, you gotta be still. And scripture actually guides you, be still and know that I'm God. Well, there's direction there. Be still. What does it mean to be still for you? And it's different for everybody Ian. For me, it's about my morning chats with them. I wake up sometimes as early as four o'clock in the morning. This morning I woke up at two thirty in the morning and I started laughing at the Lord. Luckily I was I was in my bed alone, my husband was overnight somewhere else working because I just happened to turn on the light and I started to pray. And that's what I do in the stillness of my mornings. I'll have a cup of tea and I'll have chats with him. I'll read scripture. I'll sit with scripture and actually try to understand what it's saying to me. And the prayer that I have every morning in is Lord, give me the eyes to see what you need me to see about this circumstance I'm currently facing right now. The ears to hear so I can understand your voice and know. And distinguish between your voice and the voice of my ego, my flesh, telling me something different. And Lord, give me the heart to believe in who and what I am in you, Lord, my identity in you. So I can stand firmly on that. Truth, because you are the truth. And so the stillness of it is where you start to hear Him and discern whether it's His voice or. The opposite, right? The the sins of the flesh, Satan himself that is trying to twist things around. You know it's from him when it aligns to his truth, when it aligns to scripture. And that's why you need to get into the word of God so that you know who he is, his character. You can see it reflected in every story you read in there. You see his patience. You see his love, his joy for his people. You see his self-control, because he could have lost control while here on earth and didn't. I mean, two of his best friends, two of his disciples betrayed him the day he was getting crucified. He didn't did nothing to hurt them. In fact, he forgave them. That's such a blessing to all of us to see that modeling and to know that he feels us. He knows what we go through. He knows the temptations we fall. He was tempted for forty days. So I remembered that as I was going through my own wilderness season just ninety days ago. speaker-1: So the hearing of God, again, it makes sense that we have to, yeah, create stillness, but then we only hear God when we ask to hear Him. Right. When we intentionally reach out and say, I am willing, right? Give me the the eyes to see what you want from me, the ears to hear and understand your calling, your ask of me, right? Okay, that makes sense. So you have to intentionally reach out and then in that in the action of doing that, he will present himself to you and what he wants of you. And that shows up through, you know, visions as you called it, or maybe like your intuition. The ideas will pop up. speaker-0: A persistent thought, like a thought that does not leave you alone, but it also aligns with scripture, that's of him. speaker-1: Yeah. Amazing. One of the other ideas that you brought up, and I'd love to finish with this idea. You brought up forgiveness, right? When he was here, he had the disciples who betrayed him and he forgave them. What role does forgiveness play for us in our spiritual journey? Like speaker-0: It's huge. It's a big role that we play. In fact, in in December of twenty twenty four was the toughest year of my life to date. I lost my father and I lost my maternal aunt who was like my second mom within months of each other. And it was the worst attack I had received from Satan to date. I asked the Lord, I want to rid my heart of all sin. I want to be more like you. So he put it in my heart, he said, Go to your prayer closet, my war room, and look at the scripture that's on the wall. You'll find your answer there. And so I started looking through the scripture, and lo and behold, I had scripture from Job of all places. And one of the quotes was Remove the sin from your tent. Remove the sin from your heart. So I thought back, what is my sin? And I knew I had kept the record a wrong Towards my bullies, towards people that had terribly wounded me. And the Lord placed it in my heart to reach out to every single one of those people on the list and to meet with them, if I could in person, and to repent to them directly and ask them to please forgive me for keeping a record of wrongs against them for the circumstances that that led to me keeping that record of wrongs. It was incredibly humbling because I was facing people that had wounded me. I mean ways that I wouldn't wish on anybody. But it's in scripture that first you must confess it to each other, and then you can offer forgiveness to the Lord for those people. So you can't just offer forgiveness and walk away. You have to confess it. Because in doing so, you are becoming one body of Christ, right? They're your brothers and sisters. You're not supposed to be fighting with them. You're not supposed to be having conflict with them. You're called to be a peacemaker and that and to be a peacemaker, you have to create that bridge. And so instead of having conflict, you are creating a bridge to peace. And I gotta tell you, the the one person that I struggled with most was a friend of mine from Pickleball Group that would had been Telling people to take me out of groups so that she didn't have to see me in those groups playing pickleball. It was very hurtful. And it was just years and years of that. And he asked me, I need you to walk up to her and I need you to confess that you've kept the record of wrongs against her, like enormous resentment built up. And so I did. It was one of the biggest tests I did in twenty twenty five. Can I tell you I felt like a huge load came off my back? Can I tell you that a couple of weeks ago when I couldn't sleep, she helped me find some sleep with some medication, recommended some medication for me to take because now we're friends. Because now when I'm not on the court, she calls me, she's like, Where are you? Like, why aren't you on the court? Yeah. Things like that. And I actually started crying in front of her when she was giving me like recommendations for medications to take because I hadn't slept in ten days. It's incredibly freeing, Ian, to forgive another human being that has wounded you because it's a gift you give yourself. And in turn, you give them the gift of receiving that confession, if you will, and giving them an opportunity to also confess to you and freeing themselves from that load that they're carrying. Because resentment is heavy. Anger is heavy. It blocks you. From joy and from abundance you can't carry it together. That's why in scripture it talks about anxiety and gratefulness not being able to coexist with each other. There's a reason for that. Anxiety's on the side of fear, that's why. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. That that idea rhymes with something that I've learned is that the only thing lacking from a situation is that of which you do not bring yourself. Right. So that lovingness, that forgiveness, if it doesn't exist in a circumstance or in a relationship, it's because you have not brought it to that relationship, right? the only thing lacking from a situation or a circumstance is that of which you do not bring, right? What you give to others, you receive to yourself. So that's beautiful. And there's the forgiveness of others, which is its own journey and its own responsibility or duty or whatever we want to call it. But then another thing that I've learned with this idea of forgiveness is the forgiveness of yourself and the letting go of your past. Right. So what have you learned about or that forgiveness of yourself? Like how does that idea show up for you? speaker-0: For me, it shows up as acceptance of my past, of how my past shaped me. And forgiving myself is it's an interesting topic because this is the one I think most people struggle with is to it's we're it's a lot easier for us to forgive other people than to forgive ourselves because we're really hard on ourselves. And I was one of those people. But the more the closer I became to the Lord, Ian. the easier it became to forgive myself and to give myself the grace that he gives me because I started to see myself the way he saw me, in his light, not in my light. My light is tainted with all the negativity from what happened and occurred. Once we transition over to seeing ourselves the way he sees us, it shifts everything around. It's not something that you're intentionally doing. You're just leaving it and releasing it to the Lord. And that just means that you are in prayer saying, Lord, you know, I release all of this to you. This is yours because I can't be the person you've called me to be until you take this from me. And he knows that. And he loves to take it from his kids because he's like, he's waiting for you to just ask him to release you of that burden. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. So I have one final recurring question or a question that I ask every guest, but before we get to that, there's just something on my heart that I wanna ask. So you talked about you wanna he wants us to see ourselves the way that he sees us. How does God see us? speaker-0: As radiant light. Radiance. I mean, he created us in our mother's womb. He gave us gifts that are uniquely ours. No one is like you on this whole earth, Ian. It I encourage you and your listeners to discover who that is at your core, like removing all the layers of doubt and all the layers of modeling and expectations from other people and just the layers. Just peel them back and see who you really are. And then ask him, invite him, Lord, please show me who I am in you. Show me that light. Show me that love. And when he reveals it to you, I gotta tell you, that moment was pivotal for me. And it was in the writing of my first manuscript in twenty twenty. It was actually it happened in June of twenty twenty one. I'll never forget that day. Because when I saw myself as light, as pure, as the daughter of a king, it's very hard to unsee that. speaker-1: Amazing. Sylvia, thank you so much for the time. I have one final question for you. It's a recurring question I ask every guest, but before we get to that, how can people find you? speaker-0: Easy, my webpage www dot silvia spelt s y lictor I A W O R S H A dot com. You'll find everything, my books, my podcasts, everything's on there. speaker-1: Amazing. Yeah, we'll have the the link to that in the description. SylviaWorsham dot com. Yeah, go check out all of her work, her books, everything there. But Sylvia, my final question for you is a recurring question I asked every guest. If you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, with like one message to the world, what would it say and why? speaker-0: Be the light. It's from Matthew five fourteen. It's how I sign off my podcast. It's because we are all light in this world. We are all called to be light and to be love. And if we just do that every single day, we honor him and we honor our the body of Christ, which is our entire family of humanity out there. And it's something that brings us back to who we were created to be. speaker-1: Be the light. Sylvia, thank you so much for the time. speaker-0: Absolutely. It's been my pleasure.