What You Need When Your Soul is Tired
A few weeks ago, I ran a relay race in Des Moines called Market to Market with some friends. I love competing. I love pushing. I love feeling in control. But the night before the race, my wife Chloe and I barely slept — we couldn't stop thinking about the logistics, our babysitter had fallen through, we ended up bringing all three kids along for a full day in and out of the vehicle. We got almost no rest. And it showed.
Rest matters. Our bodies need it. But if I'm honest, the kind of rest I struggle with most isn't physical. It's the rest that happens in the soul — that deep, settled peace that doesn't show up just because you had a good night's sleep.
Maybe you know what I mean. You lie awake running through scenarios you can't control. You pray about something, genuinely lay it down before God — and then pick it back up twenty minutes later. You say the right things: "God's got it." "I trust Him." "I've given it to the Lord." But inside, something is still churning.
I don't think most of us have a trust problem. I think we have a rest problem.
The Season That Exposed Everything
A few years ago, my wife Chloe started experiencing some really strange symptoms after the birth of our son Oliver. At first, we had no idea what was happening. Neither did the doctors. For almost two years, we lived without real answers.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Myasthenia Gravis (MG) — a condition that affects the communication between the brain and the muscles. Things got serious quickly. There were multiple ER visits. Chloe couldn't pick up our newborn son. She started losing control of her speech to the point where I sometimes couldn't understand what she was saying. She couldn't eat normally. She lost a dangerous amount of weight. Eventually, it even started affecting her breathing.
As a husband and a dad, that season exposed how little control I actually had.
I would pray — honestly, sincerely — and lay it down. Tell God, "I trust you." And then a short time later, I'd pick it right back up. Replaying conversations with doctors. Rehearsing outcomes. Trying to think my way into a solution I couldn't manufacture. Everything in me wanted to fix it. And it was defeating when I couldn't.
I said I trusted God. But my soul? My soul was restless. And I couldn't figure out how to make it stop.
We Believe It — But We Don't Live It
Here's what I've noticed: most of us aren't dealing with a belief problem. We actually believe God is in control. We just don't know how to live from that place.
We pray… and then we panic.
We surrender… and then we take it back.
We give it to God — and then grab it back like He might drop it.
There's this gap between what we say we believe about God and how we actually live when the pressure is on. When the diagnosis comes. When the relationship is breaking. When the finances are tight and the answer still hasn't shown up.
So the real question is: What does it actually look like to trust God — not just say it, but live it?
I think David gives us one of the clearest answers in all of Scripture.
What Psalm 62 Teaches Us About Soul Rest
Open your Bible to Psalm 62. Here's how it starts:
"For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken." (Psalm 62:1–2)
That phrase — "for God alone" — becomes the heartbeat of the entire psalm. David repeats it over and over. God alone. God only. His soul is settling itself in God and nowhere else.
What makes this remarkable is the context. David isn't writing from a peaceful season. Look at verses 3–4:
"How long will all of you attack a man to batter him, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse."
People are attacking him. Lying about him. Trying to tear him down. And yet he opens with silence and rest. That's not natural. That's chosen. That's trained trust.
One commentator put it this way: "The natural mind is ever prone to reason when we ought to believe… to be at work when we ought to be quiet."
That's most of us when the pressure rises. We want to control, fix, analyze, rehearse, manage outcomes. But David's soul is learning another posture: stillness before God. Not passivity. Not denial. Dependence.
Preaching Truth to Your Own Anxiety
Something subtle but profound happens between verse 1 and verse 5. Look at the shift:
Verse 1: "My soul waits in silence…"
Verse 5: "O my soul, wait in silence…"
David is now talking to himself. He's preaching truth to his own anxiety.
David didn't wait until he felt peaceful. He told himself what was true until his soul caught up. That's huge. Because a lot of us are waiting to feel peace before we trust God. But Psalm 62 shows us the opposite is true. Trust comes first. Peace follows.
David is essentially saying: "Soul, settle down. You know who God is. You know His character. Act like it."
That's not fake spirituality. That's faith. Faith is anchoring yourself to truth before your emotions agree.
He keeps repeating the same truths — "He only is my rock… He only is my salvation… my fortress" — because anxious hearts forget quickly. Your mind is like a phone with notifications constantly buzzing: fear, worst-case scenarios, insecurity, what-ifs. The goal isn't to eliminate the noise. It's to change which voice gets the final word. David is reminding himself to prioritize God's voice above all the others.
An Invitation for Everyone
Verse 8 broadens this from David's private experience to a universal invitation:
"Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us."
At all times. Not just when the answer comes. Not just when life makes sense. At all times.
And I love that phrase: "Pour out your heart before him." God is not a cold, distant rock. He invites honesty. Fear, confusion, grief, frustration — pour it out. God can handle your honesty.
Then David tells us what not to trust: people, riches, power, status. He says they're lighter than a breath. One commentator summarized it well: "The point is not so much that we have nothing to fear from man… but that we have nothing to hope from him."
We keep trying to build soul-level security on things that cannot carry soul-level weight. Money. Approval. Control. Success. Other people. None of it can hold you.
The Reason Rest Is Actually Possible
David closes with this:
"Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love." (Psalm 62:11–12)
Don't miss what David is saying. God has the power and the love.
He can. And He cares.
One commentator said: "Power without love is brutality, and love without power is weakness." But God has both — perfectly. That's why rest is actually possible. Because your life is not resting in weak love or detached power. It's resting in a God who is both strong enough to hold you and loving enough to want to.
The Big Idea
Rest isn't the absence of pressure. Rest is the presence of God.
David still had enemies. He still had pressure. But he also had an anchor.
So let me ask you something: What's the thing you keep picking back up?
If you're honest, you've prayed about it. But you haven't released it. You're still holding it emotionally. Still rehearsing. Still obsessing over outcomes. Maybe it's a relationship, your health, your finances, your kids, your future — or a burden nobody else even knows about.
David's move wasn't to obsess over the problem. It was to preach truth to his soul before fear preached to him.
So this week, when anxiety rises — before you grab your phone, before you rerun the scenario — stop. And say:
"Soul, find rest in God. He alone is my rock. He alone is my salvation. He alone is my refuge."
Not as a magic phrase. As a declaration of what is true. Tell yourself the truth until your emotions catch up.
What a Church Full of Anchored People Could Look Like
Imagine what it would look like if we became a church full of anchored people. Not people with easy lives — people with steady souls. People who walk through storms differently because they know where their weight rests.
Two boats can hit the same storm. One drifts. One holds. Not because the storm is different — because the anchor is.
That's what Psalm 62 invites us into. Not a technique. A Person. A God who is powerful enough to carry what you cannot and loving enough to care deeply about what's crushing you.
You don't need a different situation. You need a deeper anchor.