When Bad News Hits Home: Choosing Hope Over Fear

When the bills are piling high, when you see more than 40% of your hard-earned money go to taxes, and when the price of groceries, electricity, and gas keeps skyrocketing, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed. It’s hard not to stress. For many of us, faith is our anchor during tough times. We read about casting our burdens onto the Lord, choosing not to worry, not to fear, remembering that God goes before us, but let’s be honest, that’s easier said than done.

My husband recently got served a plate of bad news. He’s been worried, and I’ll admit, we’ve had a couple of fights about moving forward from this situation. There is NOTHING he can do about it right this second, so as a newly self-proclaimed positive thinker, I keep coming back to the same truth: Ruminating, spiralling, speaking fear and negativity over the situation doesn’t solve it — it just amplifies it. I genuinely believe that refusing to speak life is choosing to make things worse.

Speaking life isn’t just a faith concept. It’s actually science.

Neuroscience has been telling us for years that what we say and think literally changes the structure and function of our brains. This is neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to rewire itself through repeated thoughts, words, and experiences.

• Speaking life gets stress and cortisol under control: it is proven that negative words activate the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, which triggers the release of cortisol. Chronically elevated cortisol increases anxiety, irritability, pessimism, and even memory problems. Positive language and affirmations, on the other hand, calm the amygdala and activate regions of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and problem-solving. Studies from universities like Stanford and UPenn show that positive self-talk can reduce stress hormones and improve emotional resilience.

• It also activates your reticular activating system (RAS): that’s your brain’s internal “filter”, deciding which information gets your attention. If you constantly speak fear, loss, and defeat, your brain starts scanning for evidence that confirms those beliefs. But when you intentionally speak possibility, hope, and solutions, your RAS shifts. You begin noticing opportunities, new ideas and pathways forward. In other words, your words literally train your brain to see a different reality.

• It strengthens your neural pathways: Every thought you repeat becomes a groove in your brain. Repeating a negative story makes negativity automatic. Repeating a positive one (yes, even before you fully believe it) makes optimism automatic. This is why elite athletes visualize success. Their brains become conditioned to expect it. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has reinforced this for decades: thoughts lead to feelings, and feelings lead to behaviors. Change the thought, and you change the outcome.

In short: speaking life works because your brain was designed by God to respond to expectation, repetition, and belief.

Practical Ways to Speak Life into Hard Situations

The goal is not denial. You don’t need to pretend everything is wonderful. You’re simply choosing the perspective that strengthens you rather than destroys you.

• Acknowledge the emotion without fusing with it. Instead of “I am angry,” say “I feel angry.” The difference is subtle but powerful: One defines you. The other describes a temporary experience..

• Reframe negative thoughts: Instead of “This is a disaster,” try “This is hard, but I will find a way through it.”

• Focus on solutions: Negativity freezes creativity. Solution-oriented language activates the prefrontal cortex — the part of the brain responsible for problem-solving.

• Practice daily affirmations: Even if they feel awkward. Even if they feel like a lie. Because eventually, repetition becomes belief, and belief becomes action.

• Build gratitude into your routine: Gratitude rewires the brain toward resilience. It increases serotonin, reduces stress, and shifts your perspective back to God’s goodness.
And as Christians, gratitude isn’t optional — it’s obedience.

I’ve written before about the power of gratitude and affirmations. The Mayo Clinic and leading psychologists agree: positive thought patterns don’t deny reality — they influence outcomes. My husband disagrees. He feels that speaking life is lying to ourselves. And I say: “heck yeah”! Much of our negative self-talk isn’t fact; it’s fear. And fear lies so why not challenge fear with better “lies” — ones aligned with hope, faith, and God’s character — until a new narrative forms? Faith itself is believing in what we cannot yet see. Sometimes you have to tell your brain a “lie,” and keep telling it, until your brain decides it’s true and aligns with God’s truth instead of your fears.

The Three Keys I Lean On in Hard Times

1) Gratitude resets the heart
Romans 8:28 says everything works together for our good. EVERYTHING! So if it aint good it aint over!
If everything is meant for our good, then choosing gratitude (even in the middle of the mess) aligns us with what God is already doing behind the scenes.

Like any good parent, God delights when His children acknowledge His goodness: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6-7).

2) Affirmation and visualization strengthen the mind
I’ve talked about this tool before. Visualization is expectant faith, it’s aligning your thoughts, feeling and actions with the belief that God is moving. It’s standing on Isaiah 30:18, that God longs to be gracious to those who wait expectantly for Him.

When you visualize God intervening, you’re not dictating the outcome. You’re practicing trust.You’re choosing expectation over despair. It’s training your mind to partner with God’s promises instead of worst-case scenarios.

3) Asking others to pray strengthens your spirit

Yep, it requires humility to say that we’re going through a rough patch. But Scripture is clear: unity in prayer releases power. “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).

When you invite others to pray, you multiply faith, not fear. Jesus tells us that when two or three gather, something shifts. Unity brings spiritual reinforcement. And when God responds, many will glorify Him because they witnessed the journey.

In the end, the entire Bible is either true or it isn’t. Either we cling to God’s promises or we do it on our own. On the days when hope feels thin, remind your heart of what’s true, and yes (sorry babe) tell your brain the “lies” it needs to hear, until you find peace and rest (that’s a promise too!).