God is a good God, and he has good plans for your life. Other people have bad plans for your life, and you may make some bad plans yourself, but God only has good plans for your life.

How do you learn to live in God’s love so that you can live free of fear? Every day, you have to surrender your heart to God.

When you wake up each morning, before your feet hit the floor, you have to say, “God, before I even start this day, I surrender my emotions to you. I want you to be Lord of my feelings. I want you to control my mind and my emotions. I surrender my heart to you. I want you to fill me with your love.”

If you don’t feel loved by God, then you most likely aren’t going to offer love to anybody else. It’s nearly impossible to be loving unless you understand and remember the way God loves you. You need to remind yourself every day what God thinks about you—not what the world thinks or what you think about yourself. Remembering God’s love is what removes your fears.

Sometimes we need God to shake up our lives. It’s especially true when we find ourselves locked up in prisons we created ourselves, like a habit we can’t escape or an addiction that we keep running back to or fear that keeps us from taking an important step in life. If that’s where you find yourself today, you may not be behind physical bars, but you  might as well be. God always wants you to live in freedom, so sometimes God sends an earthquake.

If you want to build a deep relationship with God, you have to slow down and be quiet. Friendship with God is like any other friendship—you have to make time for it. If you don’t make time for your friends, they’re not your friends. And if God is going to be your best friend, you’ve got to give your best time to Him.

Yesterday we talked about the different storms and valleys that we go through in life. You may be in the middle of one of those valleys right now. These are hard places on your journey, where it’s easy to doubt or forget God’s goodness. But you can always trust that God walks through the valleys with you. And He’s promised to bring you through to the other side.

It’s impossible to live a life without going through storms. All of us will face storms. All of us will go through the wilderness from time to time. And that’s okay. The real issue is how we respond. What happens next? Do these setbacks consume you and cause you to stop trying and give up?

When people approached Jesus, they always came for one of three reasons: a need, a hurt, or a question. Jesus didn’t blow them off. He never told them they should’ve come for more doctrinally correct reasons. He just met their needs.

If you decided to run a race, you couldn’t do it successfully with unnecessary baggage. You wouldn’t wear nine layers of clothes. That would be ridiculous! People who run races successfully strip down to the bare essentials—a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and the lightest pair of shoes they can find. They don’t want to carry anything they don’t absolutely need.

When you focus on your problems instead of trusting God, you’re going to end up exhausted. And you’re going to be defeated because you weren’t designed to fight your battles alone. You don’t have the power you need to face every problem in your own strength. You need God’s power.