I know how it feels to let worry consume you. My life is a classic redemption story, which I share openly with you on my Instagram and here on my blog. I experience true peace, and I want to help you experience it too.
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Did you know that you never have to lay down your peace and that you can walk in every area and aspect of your life from a position of peace because of what God did for you? A few years ago, I didn’t know that. I will tell you, I was very frustrated. Peace felt like this elusive thing that was only available to me or I only experienced it when I was making a decision. If I had peace, it was like the green light to proceed. And if I didn’t have peace, it was like a yellow light or a red light. But I didn’t know how to live in it. One day when I was reading the Word, I came across John 14:27 when Jesus said, “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” This struck me in a whole new light.
I will tell you, I’ve been a believer now for almost 15 years. I became a Christian when I was 25. I have an incredible, incredible testimony. I was one of those people from Jesus’s story where he was sitting with his disciples and he said, Hey, there are people who are not of this fold. There are people that I need to go get. They are not in church. They are not growing up in Christian families. They are absolutely heathens and they belong with us. I’ve got to go get them. I grew up in Northern Lower Michigan in the Traverse City area and I grew up not going to church.
I have parents that divorced when I was very young and we experienced many family problems. My daily life consisted of doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and I developed ongoing anxiety. Jesus was never an option or a thought. I suppose you could say environmental factors played a role in my brain function and my behavior. I was so sucked into culture and negative thoughts were my default. Feelings of anxiety were my go-to. I didn’t know I was dead in my sin. When I was 25, I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit and it wasn’t until I looked back that I realized I had an actual conversion–a specific event.
I never asked Jesus into my heart, so I didn’t have an altar call. I didn’t go to church. It was just this invitation when I was at my lowest point.
My lowest point came when I was a very sad 25 year old who was living with a man who had no intentions of marrying me. And he was verbally and emotionally abusive towards me. He was unhealthy, but I didn’t know that. There were a lot of things that he was saying to me that cultivated confusion for me and I slipped into depression and was plagued by anxious thoughts. I became a secret drug user…this became a normal part of life for me. I was dabbling in cocaine and cocaine was just flat out too expensive. Soon after, I was diagnosed with ADHD and they put me on a generic Adderall. My friend told me about how she crushed her generic Aderall and snorted it. “You want to try?” she asked. This started me on the path to secretly abusing prescription drugs. There is a psychological piece to it that I was experiencing. I can’t describe it to you. And I’m, again, not a medical expert. If you are taking medication and you take it properly as prescribed, that’s great. I was not. I had all of the risk factors for abuse and I was tormented. I don’t know any better way to explain that, but I was tormented, I had suicidal thoughts, and everyday situations provoked feeling of stress. My physical health was taking a nosedive and stressful events were happening regularly. I was in significant distress. I just knew I was missing something and all I could do was think on worst-case scenarios.
One night, while my boyfriend was at deer camp, I heard a voice. It wasn’t audible. It was quiet and it was a whisper and it was internal. It was an invitation from the Lord. And he said to me, “I’m going to change your life. I have better for you. You are unwell. Would you like to be well?”
About four months before that experience, someone had given me a Bible. It was a Gideon’s New Testament Bible. I was so deeply provoked by that voice and that invitation that I went and grabbed my Bible. I didn’t know the Lord was after my heart. I didn’t know he was pursuing me. I knew nothing about theology and I grabbed my Bible and the words jumped off the page. They jumped off the page and I was all in. The Lord said, “I will change your life. I will give you a new heart. I will make you a new creation and I will do things with your life that will blow everybody’s mind”. I left my boyfriend. I got my own apartment, The Lord totally was paving the way and providing things for me. He was setting podcasts in my path. I was reading the word. I stopped abusing prescription drugs. I quit smoking. I had been living such a life of heathen that I wanted to do good. I didn’t know what had come over me, but I wanted to bless people. I wanted to talk to God. I wanted to learn. I was just this girl who absolutely had this life transformation and I got a new life. It was crazy. This was 15 years ago. I was in the kingdom of darkness and God, like a trusted friend, literally plucked me out and said, “I’m going to change your life.” And he did.
I was enjoying 12 years of a vibrant relationship with God when I was standing over my sink one day and doing dishes. I was minding my own business, probably worrying about something, when the Holy Spirit nudged me and said, “did you know that you never have to lay down your peace?” I just stood there with soapy hands and wondered, “well, what do you mean?”
At the time, peace felt elusive. Verses about not being afraid, not being anxious, having the peace of Christ….I’ll be honest….those were hard for me. I experienced chronic worrying about… everything. In fact, I come from a long line of chronic worriers. My mother worries about everything. My grandmother worried about everything. Excessive worry is in our genes. However, I knew that I had access to peace because God said I did, and I believed him and my relationship with him was good. And on the days that I had peace, my life was simple. I enjoyed my family. I enjoyed my relationships. I enjoyed my job. I enjoyed being in the kitchen. My circumstances didn’t matter. Small house, bigger house, whatever….I found contentment was easy to attain when I was at peace. I wanted more of that and I wanted to stop the feelings of worry.
So over the next three years, God took my on a journey where I learned that I never had to lay down my peace. It was a culmination of events and lessons. I didn’t just wake up one day with unshakeable peace.
The purpose of this blog, my podcast, and my platform is to encourage you and tell you that you never have to lay down your peace, either, even in times of stress. And if you have laid it down somewhere along the way, you can pick it back up.
My blog and podcast discuss a myriad of topics that we often find ourselves worrying about. We worry about money. We worry about our jobs. We worry about our kids. We worry about our marriages. We worry about our relationships. We worry about our faith. There are a lot of things to be concerned about.
Over the three years since the Holy Spirit met me at the kitchen sink, I have become obsessed with taking my thoughts captive and helping others do the same–even going so far as to become certified as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Practitioner. The peace infused throughout my life now is too good to keep to myself and I love helping others find it for themselves, too. Being a CBT Practitioner is related to life coaching and it’s an amazing, transformational service for people ready for more peace. It is not walking through trauma with a counselor or with a therapist and unpacking old wounds. It is for the person who is wanting to move forward and has made peace with some wounds and wants to live a different life, even if they experience occasional anxiety. They want to cultivate a new life and create better habits and make better decisions. A life coach is somebody who sits and listens and helps you to figure out what thoughts are actually provoking anxiety and worry. From there, they help people the right treatment (in a non-medical way) or protocol to help navigate the particular situation in their daily lives. They might even help you implement stress management techniques.
The Peace on Purpose Podcast began when I realized that the frameworks that I was learning in my CBT certification program needed to be shared on a bigger scale. Every woman I know could use more peace in her life. The podcast aims to help people cultivate a sound mind, while making appropriate lifestyle changes and adjusting daily activities to encourage peace. God says in Philippians 4:6-7 that the peace that transcends all understanding is available by being anxious for nothing. I believe all of us can use more peace. Even as somebody who has learned how to cultivate a sound mind, I lay down my peace all the time, but what I have learned is how to meditate, renew my mind, fixate on God’s word, and lean into the gift that is assurance.
Friends, faith is believing that God is going to do something good. Fear is believing that Satan is going to show up and something bad is going to happen. That’s it. When we realize that a lot of these knee jerk thoughts that we’re having produce our worry and that what we need to do is renew our mind, this changes everything. We need to come back to the word of God, be reoriented and pay closer attention to our nervous system to learn how fear and worry is playing out in our lives.
I want to challenge you this week when you’re reading the Psalms to think about how David actually cultivated a sound mind — in some sections, he was tormented with worry saying that he was afraid he was going to die and that his enemies were everywhere. And then he would reorient himself and he would say either the Lord is for me or he is not. It is me. It is my belief here and I choose to believe in a living God who is for me and who is up to good. Friends, there are a thousand different things that God is doing right now in your life and you can only see three of them.
I believe with my whole heart that he is inviting you to believe for yourself that you never have to lay down your peace–and that’s good news!
Thank you so much for reading along and listening to the Peace on Purpose podcast. It is my earnest prayer that you will be blessed by it. I can’t wait to hear all the testimonies that come in and all the things that are going to take place in your life because you’re going to learn how to take your thoughts captive. And please share this with a friend that might need to hear this message today, too.
You can find me over on Instagram and Facebook. You can also find out ways that you can partner with me or work with me for a season. You can get more information at leslieburris. com
I know how it feels to let worry consume you. My life is a classic redemption story, which I share openly with you on my Instagram and here on my blog. I experience true peace, and I want to help you experience it too.
Too many moms are letting stress sap the joys of motherhood. At Leslie Burris, I’ll teach you how to break up with worry for good, take better care of yourself and step into who God uniquely designed you to be.