Ep. 126 | Mindsets (Part 8): Worry Is Faith in the Enemy
Worry feels normal to most people. Responsible, even. But Jesus talks about it like something far more dangerous.
In this episode, Rob Dayton breaks down why worry is actually rehearsed faith in bad outcomes and how the thoughts we continually entertain slowly train our brains toward either fear or trust. He explains why many Christians consciously say yes to Jesus while still living mentally programmed for anxiety, catastrophizing, and unbelief.
This conversation is about learning how to take thoughts captive, stop partnering with fear, and retrain the mind toward gratitude, peace, and the promises of God.
You’ll Hear
Why Rob says “worry is faith in the enemy”
How worry chokes out the words of Jesus
The connection between imagination and mindset formation
Why your brain naturally rehearses fear
How thankfulness helps reprogram your mind
The difference between faith in God and faith in worst-case scenarios
Why worry keeps you from peace, creativity, and trust
Practical ways to capture anxious thoughts before they spiral
How gratitude becomes a weapon against fear
Journal Prompts
Jesus, why is worry so unhealthy for me?
Holy Spirit, what worries keep replaying in my mind?
What can I become grateful for instead?
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Rob Dayton (00:00)
Welcome to the 100X Life Podcast, where we activate people who desire to live the words of Jesus and experience the abundant life He promises. I'm your host, Rob Dayton, and I hope this podcast inspires you to put in the work of following Jesus.
Rob Dayton (00:36)
Hey, 100xLivers, welcome back to the podcast. I hope you had a great weekend and are looking forward to a good week as we continue our series on mindsets. Mindsets are so incredibly important. Before that, I just want to let you know I'm in Dallas, Texas. I'm here to serve one of the cities through strategic culture that's coaching executive teams. It's the fastest way to make a city run better, so I'm excited to serve.
University Park out here. I just flew in from Newport Beach where we had incredible TMP sessions in San Diego and in Newport. So my heart is full and soaring as I'm recording this podcast and excited to jump into this. We're looking at mindset number eight. Worry is faith in the enemy. Yeah, worry is faith in the enemy.
Let that sink into you. What does that mean? Hey, do you believe in God? I mean, we say yes to Jesus. We say yes to Jesus and then people say, well, we're believers. And we say yes to Jesus with the conscious mind. The conscious mind is somewhere outside of your body. It's part of your soul. It lives forever and it does not die with the body. But while your conscious mind can say yes to Jesus. Your brain can still say no. How many?
How many know this is true? The brain can still say no. So you, Jesus says, Hey, follow me here. And the body, which is part of the brain, the brain lives in the body says, no, I'm not doing that. A decision to say yes and follow Jesus requires us to reprogram our brains to also say yes and to act in God's We can't know God's ways and his behaviors of love if we don't
reprogram our brains, then if we don't reprogram our brains, we're not going to live it because you can say yes with consciousness and have the brain say no. So true faith is going to be when you have complete alignment, the conscious mind and the unconscious brain are in complete alignment and the actions that are happening automatically. Your brain is wired to act fast, automatic with emotion.
When that brain is aligned with your conscious yes to Jesus, it is so powerful. That is when faith really exists. True faith cannot exist in the double-minded mind, where the conscious mind and the body are in disagreement all the time. That sounds kind of like Roman 7 I do what I don't want to do, And the thing I don't want to do, I do. It's this conundrum, this battle within your head.
This is why mindset development is so critical to being a Jesus follower. That's why he's saying, repent, transform the way you think so that you can believe. We have to develop mindsets that get hardwired into our brains so that we can automatically react and have strong emotions that are congruent with where we've said we've decided consciously to go.
We must think differently and consistently in the conscious mind while the body's brain is getting reprogrammed. the reprogramming process happens because you're focused on something and your conscious mind is playing a script and imagination that's true and alignment with God. That's when the brain gets reprogrammed and the mindset gets hardwired into your body.
If your conscious mind constantly participates in worry, then the brain cannot reprogram for belief in God. It just can't. In fact, it's doing the opposite. Instead, the brain gets hardwired to believe in the enemy and the worst outcomes. And so this mindset is so Let's get into it before we do. Let's just talk about where we've been.
Week one, we talked about the mindset of believing in the one God sent, which is Jesus. You gotta have that one. You gotta believe Jesus is part of the Trinity and he came from God. That will change everything for you. In week two, we talked about the mindset of living as one led by Jesus. he's actually going somewhere. He's taking us on a journey. And so we just have this mindset that we're constantly being led and then our brain will...
Well up thoughts. Where are you going? Jesus? Where home is this it and you can be in constant prayer about where you're going and how you're doing. We three we talked about seeing the words of Jesus as your freedom. So obedience is not sacrifice. It's actually just being free and so every word of Jesus we want to. We want to develop those, put them into practice in our hearts so that we can practice constant freedom. Week four we talked about.
Focus on the reality that you are the dwelling place of God, that God actually dwells in you and you dwells in Him. Wow, that mindset is so powerful to transform just how you think about yourself, how you look in the mirror. Week five, we talked about the reality that all people bear the image of God. This is kind of the inverse. The first one's the internal, like how do I see God as dwelling in me? And then how do I see other people as image bearers of God? How is...
How is my mindset of looking at people as image bearers going to radically change my actions? And then week six, we're focused on the mindset. I'm a servant to all. You want to be the greatest in the kingdom? Then you've to be a servant to all. You've got to serve and be a slave to all. That is Jesus's recipe for greatness. That is an awesome mindset. I was experiencing that on the plane on the way out here trying to serve everyone around me, even though
It could be called annoying. There was a kid behind me that was just, you know, pounding on my, pounding on my seat. And I smiled at the parents and I said, man, I thought American Airlines had installed a massage chair. They laughed, you know, let, them at ease because I know they were horrified that their child was behaving such. And then helping people with their bags, telling them they can go first as servant to all. Last week we were focused on the mindset of forgiveness.
And that, you know, this is my mindset is unforgiveness is a cancer and who would want cancer? And I encourage you to come up with one phraseology for that mindset that would serve you better. Maybe it's just forgiveness is freedom. That would be fine too. And then this week we're talking about mindset number eight, worry is faith in the enemy. So let's get into it. first thing you need to know is worry is about something.
that does not exist. Worries about the future, it distracts us from the present, where love exists, distracts us from that. Worries stifles kingdom reproduction. I think about the parable of the sower in Jesus' third soil and how he says it suffocates his words. Matthew's account, the worries of life choked the word and made it unfruitful. Man, worry is just gonna...
Obliterate all the words of Jesus, all 55, the 100X life, 55 words of Jesus. Worry is going to take them out and make them useless. Worry is a door to fear. A doorway to fear. It's how you access fear. then fear is the opposite of love. You know, lot of people think that love, the opposite of love is hate, but it's actually fear. Love is about others and then fear is focused on possible bad outcomes for you.
That's what we worry about. Worry is unbelief in God's words. It against the words of God the Father and of Jesus. The author of Hebrews makes this clear about, he's talking children of Israel who were in the desert wandering and they had God's promise, his word that they would get into the promised land, but they did not get into the promised land.
And the author of Hebrews points out why he says, take care, brother, and that there not be any one of you who has an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living
And then he goes on to say that we see that the children of Israel were not able to enter the promised land because of unbelief. was their unbelief. Their worry and not getting there, their worry, their complaining about all these things when they could have been thankful for the pillar of by night and the column of smoke
by day, the endless amount of food and manna and that their clothes didn't wear out. Instead of that, they were worried. And the author of Hebrews says that that unbelief canceled their promise. Worry produces faith in the enemy. And so when you're worried, you're saying, OK, well, the worst outcome is probably going to happen. Who wants to have faith in the is why this mindset works well for me, because I don't want to have faith in the enemy.
And when we think about faith, we can be tempted to think that faith is a good thing and faith is not good or bad. It's just a belief, a very strong belief in an outcome. You can have faith that the worst will happen you can have faith that God's going to pull through and the best will happen. The enemy is the master of bad outcomes and believing the worst is faith that the enemy will prevail. Worry is a pretense.
stories from your brain that rise up and say, what if it doesn't work out? And again, it doesn't exist. And ironically, this is the same principle as faith in God. When we practice faith in God, it is also about an outcome that hasn't happened yet, because when it has happened, then there's no need for faith. Like you pray for healing and someone gets healed. Once they're healed, there's no reason to have faith that they will get healed. so
Faith in God and faith in the enemy are all about the future. But when we faith in God, our hearts are at peace. When we faith in the enemy, our hearts are at war and destruction. Both faith in God and worry, they access your imagination.
So here's what happens. Here's what's going on in your brain. And you can't prevent this. You'll you'll have worrisome thoughts that will rise. They will come up. And then what happens is your conscious mind looks at that and makes a decision. And if the conscious mind makes a decision that, hey, maybe I'm going to take that worry one step further. And then the imagination starts catastrophizing about a bad thing happening. And so
You can't do that at the same time you're imagining the good thing happening with God. In other words, your imagination space will either be consumed with imaginations about the thing that's rising from your brain that's worry, or it'll be consumed with the outcomes of God, the hopefulness, resting in peace. And remember, you will either imagine the outcomes of God's promises or worry about the enemy's outcomes. Either one.
So we want to choose the lane of God's promises and what God's saying. We want to cancel the worry because remember the brain does not know that your imagination is not real. It actually thinks the scenarios you're imagining about are completely real. And then the brain programs or reprograms neural pathways to reinforce the imagination, making it true.
When you're doing that imagination about either faith in God, good things, good outcomes, faith in the enemy, bad outcomes, whatever that imagination, that is the process of the brain. So the more you lean into the things of God, thinking that worry is faith in the enemy, I'm not gonna do that, I'm gonna have faith in God, I'm gonna keep being thankful, I'm gonna believe that God's not done yet because it's not good yet. And when you do that again and again,
brain gets programmed to naturally and automatically think those thoughts. So right now you might have lot of worrisome thoughts just coming up all the time, but the more you practice thankfulness, we're going to talk about creating this mindset, the more you're focused on hope, the more you're believing that God's outcomes are going to be good for you, things are going to get better, I'm going to grow.
The more you do that, then the less the negative thoughts are gonna arise. Over time, you'll reprogram your brain and you'll have emotional consistency with the thing that you want to believe.
This will set up the body to cooperate with good outcomes. If you're if you're focused on the bad outcomes all the time, it sets your body up to to cooperate with those outcomes. That means it'll lead you to pretty poor decisions. It actually closes your mind to possibilities when you worry. You actually close off your innovation or your.
part of your brain that's finding answers for you. Just close that off. And remember, we are focused on mindsets because they eventually program your brain. I can't emphasize enough. If you're going to fully believe in God, you will need to create mindsets that program your brain to align with God's beliefs. OK, so how do we do this? So we want mindsets that repel worry. OK, we want a mindset that is full of thankfulness and hope.
My approach is to focus on mindsets that work for me. Now, the one that works for me, as I've said, is worry is faith in the enemy. That is horrifying to me. Why would I want to worry? I have rehearsed this mindset in my imagination, picturing myself supporting the enemy and their power if I worry. And I don't like that thought. It scares me in a good way. That's the fear of God This is enough for me to run from catastrophizing thoughts, and I don't do them.
Or if I do do them, I catch them really, really quick. So what mindset will you create? Maybe you'd like to create a mindset that says worrisome thoughts are to be captured and destroyed. Totally cool. know, Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 10 that we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's totally a great picture. So you have these worrisome thoughts that are arising. You can take those thoughts captive.
and make them conform to the words of Jesus, which are full of hope and love and peace and joy and patience and kindness and self-control. that's what God's words full of. So you could just take the bad one that makes you feel bad and is releasing stress hormones in you and making your body feel awful. You can just take those captive or maybe you'd prefer a mindset that sees worry as ungodly.
or maybe poisonous or toxic. Any kind of thought or mindset, the way you wanted define it, that's gonna make you repel worry, that's gonna make you run to hope, then that will likely work for you. can't actually control the thoughts that are rising within your brain. You're gonna have to...
combat them, you're going to have to deal with them. So when you experience bad thoughts, worrisome thoughts, say out loud, not my thought. That's my go-to. I learned that from godly woman about 20 years ago. She said, this is what I do when I have a bad thought, a worrisome thought. I just say, not my thought out loud. That's a good one. Or you could choose not to entertain that thought with an imagination. So just don't, okay, I see the thought. I see you there.
I'm not going entertain an imagination about it. I'm not going to catastrophize. I'm not going to take it to the next level. And then actively practice thankfulness. Thankfulness is your ticket. And you know, we've talked about awe and thankfulness and gratefulness is how you program new mindsets. This one's no different. Become a professional at gratitude. That's a sure way to destroy worry because gratitude is focused.
what's right. Worry is focused on what's wrong. So if you stay in the gratitude lane you will not exercise worry. You will not have faith in the enemy. and if you worry constantly and this is like a real problem for you, you're always catastrophizing, always thinking the worst outcome, you may need to start a thankfulness journal. Like we'd be really serious.
about thankfulness in the morning, in the evening before you go to bed, particularly in the evening before you go to bed. Set your mind focused on gratefulness. There's so much to be thankful for. We live in America. Most of the people listening have jobs and have a decent income. We're not starving. We're not in dire straits situations, most of us, again. And even if we were, there's so much to be thankful for.
We're children of heaven that we're going to live forever with Jesus, that we're going to live in love forever. We're going to for millions and millions and millions of years. It's going to be so good. Maybe if this life is not as good or is is like dimly distorted or bad, we can be thankful for eternity. We can focus our thoughts on things that are really good, that are powerful.
So, thankfulness journal. That might be something you need to do. Remember, it's very difficult to worry when you're practicing thankfulness. So, thankfulness is your lane. Okay, I got some journal prompts for you. This one Jesus. Why is it so unhealthy for me to worry, Jesus? That's a great journal prompt. Remember, we are journaling from Jesus to us, explaining to us. Have Him teach you about why worry is so...
unhealthy, why that mindset is destroying so many things you. And then Holy Spirit, bring to mind three things that I worry about and then ask, what can I be grateful for that eliminates these three worries? If you do that, if you journal this, it'll be a good head start for your week. And remember, make this this Tuesday release of this podcast your start date.
to work through Monday, work through the weekend to Monday, exercising this mindset, practicing, focusing your attention, being aware, noticing the thoughts that are arising within you, judging those thoughts as worrisome thoughts or thankfulness thoughts, and the enemy's thoughts or Jesus' thoughts. Just judge them. If they're full of hope, if they're full of love and joy and peace and kindness, they're gonna be Jesus' thoughts. We wanna.
Imagine great things. want to take our imagination and just catapult us. Just make it even better with your imagination. And then if it's not, it's the bad thought, then we're just going to take it captive and make it obedient to Jesus. So friends, so glad you're here. I pray and bless your mindsets. May your mind be fully renewed so that you can prove every good thing that God is doing in your life and walk in the abundant life Jesus promises.
Bless you guys. See you next week.
