I pondered a blog name for quite a long time, debating ideas around what would capture the message of God’s transforming work in my life, and ultimately give glory to the One to Whom it’s due.  When I heard the phrase “hands up, worries down” in a song, I knew that hit the proverbial nail on the head for what I wanted to encompass with this blog.

You’ll discover in posts such as this one that God (thankfully!) interrupted my self-focused life path and began to break decades of destructive patterns to compel me to surrender my life and live for Him.

He’s replaced fear with faith, timidity with trust, control with cooperation, transgression with truth, and waywardness with worship. Not perfectly and completely, of course, but that will never come this side of heaven. This dichotomy across the board led me to love the title “Hands Up, Worries Down” to accurately reflect the shift I’ve experienced as my walk with God has moved me away from worry, fear, and control, and toward trust, faith and submission to His plans.

“Hands Up” represents a life of praise and a daily goal of living for Christ and making Him known. Praise and worship music drives every beat of my heart, and there’s no greater feeling than communing with your Creator through every fiber of your body in worship.

Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.
My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.

Psalm 63:3-5

“Worries Down” represents the surrender I’ve experienced as I let go of my own ideas, plans, fears, and natural inclination to control every detail. This is certainly a battle in which there are victories as well as defeats. I own the fact that I’m not wise enough, not important enough, and not strong enough to fabricate the best plan for my life. Only the One who’s made me is. I’ve found that obediently walking in the path God has laid out for me is the only way to go.

Of course I’ve not “arrived” in any of these areas, and I can still slip back into those deeply entrenched tendencies, but I pray that I continue to willingly receive feedback on it, as well as hear the Holy Spirit’s gentle but firm correction to guide me back on course.

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”  Ephesians 3:20-21