Episode 135 – I Prayed For 30 Days…What I Heard Changed EVERYTHING

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

For nearly a month, I had been praying for clarity. It was one of those stretches where you’re doing all the right things—showing up, reflecting, meditating—but something still feels off. I was waking up with a weight on my chest, stressed and overwhelmed, stuck in loops of overthinking around some really important areas of my life. Maybe you’ve been there too—those seasons where no matter what tools you have, you can’t quite find the lever that moves things forward.

And so I did what I’ve learned to do: I turned inward. I went to the one place I knew answers would come—my higher power. I asked. I waited. I kept asking. Then one day, while on a walk by myself, I received a response. Not in the form of a lightning bolt or some grand epiphany, but a whisper. A single word.

Obey.

Four little letters. And yet, in that moment, it landed like a jolt to my soul. It wasn’t something I “thought”—it was something I heard. As if it was etched across the sky or flashed on an invisible screen right in front of me.

And to be honest, it shocked me. Obey? That word felt heavy. Loaded. At first, I didn’t even know what to do with it. So I sat with it. I let it marinate. I allowed it to sink into me—not intellectually, but spiritually. I didn’t try to analyze it; I tried to receive it.

And over the days that followed, it started to unlock something deep. It shifted the way I look at personal growth, spiritual growth, the way I lead my business, the way I parent, the way I walk through the world.

What We Get Wrong About Obedience

At first, I resisted the word. Obey? It felt ancient, authoritarian—even oppressive. Like many people, I had internalized the idea that obedience was about control, about submission to some external authority that demanded compliance under threat of punishment. We’re taught that obedience is about following rules blindly, about giving up personal freedom. But the more I sat with the word, the more I realized I had it all wrong.

See, what I’ve discovered is that many of the concepts we encounter on the earthly plane are distorted reflections of higher truths. Words like power, authority, discipline, even obedience—when filtered through fear, ego, and human limitation—can lose their divinity. But on the divine plane, these words hold a different frequency. And obedience, in its truest form, is not about surrendering your power. It’s about aligning with a greater power. It’s not about weakness—it’s about trust. It’s about recognizing that there is a force beyond your own intellect and effort that is actively working on your behalf.

I began to see that obedience, when rooted in relationship with the Divine, is actually an act of strength. It takes courage to trust the unseen. It takes faith to act on a whisper instead of a spreadsheet. And it takes humility to admit that maybe, just maybe, you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. When you obey the voice of your higher power—whatever you call it: God, Source, the Universe, Spirit—you align yourself with a current far more powerful than willpower. And in that alignment, something beautiful happens: clarity returns, peace emerges, momentum builds, and life starts working again.

It reminded me of Moses—often described in scripture as “meek.” Not because he was weak, but because he was obedient. He listened. He followed. And through that obedience, miracles happened. I started to wonder… what miracles am I missing out on simply because I haven’t yet obeyed?

You’re Already Obeying Something

Before I could really embrace the idea of obeying God or my higher power, I had to first recognize something sobering: I was already obeying something—I just hadn’t realized it. Obedience isn’t optional. It’s not a switch we flip on or off. It’s a constant. The question isn’t whether or not you’re obeying; it’s what or who you’re obeying right now.

Obedience, at its core, is about what has authority over your actions, your decisions, your attention. And when I got really honest with myself, I saw that I had been placing my obedience in the hands of all the wrong things. Fear. Financial stress. The opinions of others. Old patterns. I wasn’t consciously choosing them—but I was certainly following their lead. The mental loops I entertained, the emotions I indulged, the habits I reinforced day after day—they were all signs of where my allegiance was going.

Think about it: we obey social media when we reach for our phone before we reach for prayer or presence. We obey anxiety when we rehearse the worst-case scenario for the hundredth time instead of speaking life over our situation. We obey our inner critic when we let it steer our decisions, telling us we’re not ready, not qualified, not enough. We obey cultural narratives about success, beauty, money, productivity. We obey our trauma. Our conditioning. Our fears dressed up as logic.

This realization hit hard. Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Obedience is happening whether you’re conscious of it or not. And every time you give your attention, your energy, your faith to something, you’re handing over a form of power. That’s not a reason to beat yourself up—it’s a reason to wake up. It’s an invitation to ask: What have I been unknowingly obeying that doesn’t serve me? Once I started answering that question honestly, it became clear why I was stuck. My outcomes weren’t the result of punishment or bad luck. They were the predictable consequence of misdirected obedience.

The Cost of Disobedience (and the Hidden Invitation)

Once I saw how much of my life had been shaped by obedience to fear, pressure, and misaligned priorities, I began to reflect on the cost. Not in a metaphorical sense, but in very real, tangible outcomes. Years ago, I lived in chronic financial stress. I remember pacing the floor, checking my bank account over and over again, calculating whether I had enough to make it to the end of the month. I was consumed by fear. And that fear wasn’t just a passing emotion—it was the authority I was obeying.

It’s wild how many hours we spend in quiet obedience to the things that are actually stealing from us. Back then, I wasn’t broke just because I lacked money. I was broke because I was aligned with scarcity. I was following the commands of anxiety. I was devoting mental and emotional energy to everything I didn’t want. That was the true disobedience—not to some rulebook in the sky, but to the inner knowing that I was made for more.

Even when things started to shift and I began building what became the Powerful Living Experience, fear still found new ways to lead. I worried we wouldn’t have enough people show up. Then, when the room filled with more than 300 attendees, fear told me I wouldn’t be good enough. No matter which way I turned, I was obeying fear. And obedience always brings results—the question is, what kind?

But here’s what’s important: I was never being punished. I wasn’t cursed or abandoned. I was simply out of alignment. That’s what disobedience really is. It’s not about doing something “wrong”—it’s about stepping out of sync with the flow of divine intelligence. And that misalignment has a natural consequence: things don’t work. Doors don’t open. Peace doesn’t come. But the moment I began to hear and follow that higher instruction again—when I started obeying the nudge instead of the noise—things shifted. Not because I tried harder, but because I finally let go.

That’s the hidden invitation: the whisper to step away from the problem, to stop striving, to surrender. And that kind of obedience? That’s where the real power lives.

The Bridge Between the Promise and the Provision

As this word—“obey”—continued to unfold in my life, I began to see a deeper spiritual truth: obedience isn’t just about right and wrong. It’s the bridge between the vision you’ve been given and the reality you’re meant to experience. It’s the connecting path between the promise and the provision.

So often we hear a calling, receive a vision, feel inspired by a sense of purpose or a glimpse of the life we’re meant to live. But between the mountaintop moment of revelation and the valley of manifestation, there’s a gap. And many people get stuck in that space—not because they’re not worthy, not ready, or not working hard enough, but because they’ve missed the bridge. That bridge is obedience.

We see it over and over again in scripture. Noah obeyed an invisible warning and built an ark, saving humanity. Abraham obeyed the instruction to leave everything familiar and became the father of nations. Moses obeyed and lifted his hand over the sea, and the waters parted. Joshua obeyed the seemingly illogical instruction to march around Jericho’s fortified walls—and they crumbled without a single attack. Peter, after a long day of failed fishing, obeyed a simple direction to cast his net again—and received an overwhelming catch.

None of these people were particularly powerful. What they were was obedient. They didn’t strive. They trusted. They didn’t control. They listened. They didn’t know how it would work. They simply followed the instruction. And in that posture—what the Bible calls “meekness”—they tapped into something miraculous.

Obedience isn’t about earning a blessing. It’s about aligning with the flow of blessing that’s already moving toward you. When you resist it—through fear, control, urgency, or ego—you’re swimming upstream. But when you obey, even if it scares you, even if it doesn’t make sense, you find yourself in the current of grace. That’s where life begins to work again—not because you forced it, but because you finally flowed with it.

How to Obey When It’s Scary

What makes obedience so hard isn’t always the instruction—it’s the uncertainty that comes with it. Obedience almost always asks us to do the thing that doesn’t make sense to our logical mind. To surrender control. To move before we’re sure. To give when it feels like we don’t have enough. To step back when we’re convinced we should push harder. It’s counterintuitive. And it’s often terrifying.

There are areas in my life right now—nagging health issues, business friction, relationship challenges—that I’ve tried everything to fix. I’ve analyzed, strategized, prayed, and pushed. But nothing’s shifted. I’ve been feeling stuck, and not because I’ve done nothing—but because I’ve been doing everything except obey. And here’s what I realized: I was still obeying… but I was obeying urgency, anxiety, and my ego’s need to solve everything.

Then I heard the whisper again: “Obey Me by stepping away.” That hit me hard. God wasn’t asking me to do more. He wasn’t telling me to hustle or optimize or launch a new plan. He was asking me to let go. To walk away from the battle. To stop trying to fix it. To trust that He was working on my behalf.

It reminded me of what I learned in addiction recovery: that my life had become unmanageable, that a higher power could restore it, and that I had to surrender. That surrender was obedience—and that obedience led to freedom. Not immediately. Not painlessly. But deeply. When I let go of the illusion of control, things began to open up. Peace came rushing in. Provision flowed without striving.

Obedience often looks like rest when we think we should be working. It looks like giving when we feel like hoarding. It looks like stillness when everything in us is screaming to act. But that’s the paradox of divine instruction—it often leads you to do the one thing your fear is trying to avoid. And when you finally do it, the fear loses its grip. Obedience doesn’t always make sense. But it always makes a way.

Surrender Is the Shortcut

Obedience, I’ve learned, isn’t about giving up your power—it’s about finally accessing it. When you obey the whisper, when you follow the nudge, when you surrender the outcome and align your actions with a higher instruction, you stop swimming against the current of life. You stop resisting the very thing that’s trying to carry you.

We tend to think surrender is a last resort—something we do when nothing else works. But what if it’s the starting point? What if obedience is the shortcut we’ve been avoiding? Not to skip the process, but to align with it. To flow with it. To finally stop delaying the peace, prosperity, and purpose that’s been trying to reach us.

You don’t force blessings into your life. You align with them. And alignment is the natural result of obedience to a higher power—not to fear, not to scarcity, not to social pressure or urgency, but to truth. That truth may show up as a whisper, a gut feeling, a quiet nudge that doesn’t go away. And the more you ignore it, the louder life tends to get—because love will keep knocking until you answer.

So I’ll ask you what I had to ask myself: What have you been obeying without realizing it? Is it serving you? Is it leading you into the life you know you’re meant to live? What would it look like to obey differently—not out of fear, but out of trust?

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about willingness. About noticing where you’ve been striving, controlling, or spinning your wheels—and choosing instead to step back, listen, and align. That simple shift might be the bridge between where you are and everything you’ve been praying for.

Because obedience isn’t about proving yourself. It’s about positioning yourself. And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stop fighting and simply obey.