How to Rest in God's Peace When Your Body Is Tired and Wired
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We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. The to-do list that never ends. The house, the kids, the family. We're supposed to be taking care of our health on top of it all. And now we have access to everything happening in the world, right in the palm of our hand.
Life can feel very, very heavy.
I don't think our nervous system was ever created to carry all this. But we do. And often thoughts like "If I don't do anything about it, no one will" creep in. Or hopelessness quietly settles over us. This is where we find ourselves exhausted from the day-to-day, but unable to rest because we are overstimulated.
But the Bible promises that the Lord Himself goes before us (Deuteronomy 31:8). So even if this wasn't His original design, He knew this nervous system overload would happen. It gives me comfort to be reminded that none of this caught Him by surprise.
Why Your Body Feels Tired but Wired
As a health clinician, look at struggle through two lenses: the physical and the spiritual. The aforementioned calms the spiritual side of the “tired but wired” problem, but what about the physical? Let's start with a basic understanding of your nervous system. It has two major branches: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
The sympathetic nervous system is your fight-or-flight side. It's designed to protect you, and it switches on whenever your brain senses danger, real or perceived.
The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest-and-digest side. When your body feels safe, it hands the reins over to this side so you can calm down, rest, repair, and process your food.
But the moment your body senses any danger, the sympathetic side quickly takes over. I think of it like a caring but overbearing boss. This type of boss means well and really does want to protect the team. But they may treat every email like a five-alarm fire. The same goes for you: a missed deadline, a tense text, or a headline you scrolled past at 10 p.m. can all trigger the same response: we are not safe. When a boss like that runs the office long enough, nobody rests.
That's tired and wired. You're exhausted, yet your body won't stand down, because somewhere along the way it stopped believing you're safe.
When Faith Meets Our Physical Limitations
What's interesting to me about this is that faith was never meant to be separate from our physical body. The greatest act of love the world has ever known, Christ dying for our sins, happened because God came in the flesh. Jesus had a heartbeat and lungs that needed air. He grew tired. He wept. He took on a body and overcame this world so that we could too (John 16:33).
Understanding the physiology of the nervous system is such a gift, because we can see that our body is often just trying to protect us. We can't simply command it to calm down, but we're not powerless either. We've been given ways to remind it what's true.
When we're tired and wired, our nervous system locks into the sympathetic side, and it has a hard time hearing that we're safe. But as believers, when we lean into our faith, we can help it shift to the parasympathetic side.
Romans 4 is such a beautiful picture of faith meeting the limits of our physical body. Paul is looking back at Abraham's story in Genesis and reflecting on his faith:
"Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised" (Romans 4:19-21).
When we flip back to Genesis 15 to see what Paul is talking about, it's pretty incredible. Abram is in the middle of an impossible situation. God takes him outside and tells him to look up at the sky and count the stars, "if indeed you can count them... So shall your offspring be" (Genesis 15:5).
It doesn't make sense. It goes against everything Abram and Sarah's bodies are telling them.
But. But Genesis 15:6 says, "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness."
Against all odds, Abram (later called Abraham) believed the Lord. And we have the same invitation.
Through this invitation, God called Abraham the righteousness of God, yet Abraham wasn't perfect. Less than a chapter later, he and Sarah tried to make the promise happen on their own terms (Genesis 16). When Paul says Abraham "did not waver," he's reading the story through the lens of grace. We are invited to trust, and the deliverance of God’s promise doesn’t depend on our ability to be perfect in the faith journey.
Right after reflecting on Abraham, Paul writes: "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God" (Romans 5:1-2).
Trusting God's Promises When Your Body Says Otherwise
It's amazing how our body constantly tries to protect us, and at the same time, if we're not careful, it can put God in a box. God wasn't in a box with Abram and Sarah. He held true to His promise.
Wouldn't it be the same for us? He promises He has good plans for us. And we have access to the same peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Abram didn't have to calm his body before he could believe. He believed while his body still said no. You don't have to have it all together either. Faith is what we hold onto while we teach our bodies they're safe.
When we consider this access to peace and decide to believe God, even when it doesn't make sense, even when our body feels it needs to be hypervigilant, we can teach our body that it is safe.
How Breathwork and Prayer Can Help You Find Peace
We have simple tools to teach the body it's safe, and breathwork is one of my favorites. Breath is the life force that feeds our cells. It's also one of the few parts of your nervous system you can directly influence. When you slow your breathing down, especially when you make your exhale longer than your inhale, you engage the vagus nerve, the main invitation for your body to hand off to the parasympathetic system. Your heart rate eases, and your body gets the message: we're okay.
Military and law enforcement have long used structured breathing when walking into stressful situations. Of course, their bodies are telling them it isn't safe when they enter dangerous situations, but they have to go in anyway to protect and serve. As a part of their training, they integrate breathwork to help them stay calm and focused enough to get the job done.
We can do the same thing here, but pair it with prayer.
Here's a breath prayer I use to calm my nervous system and remind myself of God's promises. It pulls from the words in Romans 5:1-2. Breathe in slowly through your nose, and let each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Inhale: I am justified through my faith.
Exhale: And therefore have peace with God through my Lord Jesus Christ.
Inhale: Through Him I gain access.
Exhale: into this grace I now stand.
Inhale: I boast in the hope.
Exhale: of the glory of God.
Repeat it three or four times, or as long as you need. Try this one out, or choose another promise that speaks to where you are today.
You were never meant to carry the weight of the world. But you were made to be carried by the One who does.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/kieferpix
Jess Brown is a registered dietitian, founder of The Well Collective, and host of the Fuel Her Awesome podcast — but the work she's known for rarely stays on the plate. People come to her for gut healing, hormone balance, or energy boosts; what they find is an invitation to stop white-knuckling their own bodies and trust the One who made them. A board-certified specialist in sports dietetics and eating disorders, Jess built her Empowered Eating MethodTM on a single conviction: healing is almost never just physical. Nutrition is really about the mission it fuels. She writes and speaks on hormone and gut health in addition to the imperative daily work of choosing calm over control when it comes to caring for your body. Jess lives in New Mexico with her husband and two boys, and is often found off on an adventure. She believes your health can be a place you meet God, too. Start here with her Spirit-Led & Well-Fed devotional.
Originally published October 21, 2026.
