Welcome And Season One Finale

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Hello my friends and welcome to Everyday God for Your Every Day with Kathy, a space where we'll discuss real practical ways for life with God, especially for those days when life is hard, complicated, and messy. How do we apply biblical principles such as God's love, mercy, grace, and wisdom to our daily grind? Well, join me each week as we do just that together. So wherever you may find yourself today, please know that you are seen, held, accepted, loved, and never alone. So let's get to it. Hello and welcome to episode 15 of Everyday God for Your Everyday. So episode 15 will actually serve as the last episode of season one of Everyday God for Your Everyday. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who've done this journey with me. Thank you to God for bringing us through, for bringing me through. And I am so excited that what started out as one step in obedience to God has really led through an incredible journey, a journey of growth, of maturing, of just seeing God's hand and faithfulness in this process. So I've just been, I'm so excited. I am. I'm truly excited about this, not just because it's the last episode and I get to have a little break, but because it is the culmination of so many lessons in the past few months. It's been a truly humbling experience. It's been a great kind of apprenticeship with God. It's been this incredible partnership with him. And I'm super excited. I'm excited for what he's done through this podcast. And I'm excited to yet to see what he is yet to do and what the new iteration will be and what it will look like, because I have no idea. So, but I know that God is faithful and that it will be incredible.

Transition Stages And A Cliffhanger

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So let's start episode 15: the messy middle. So last episode we discussed transition, life's transition period. We talked about the fact that there's typically three stages through the transition period: the ending or letting go, then there's the messy middle, which we're gonna explore this episode, and of course, the new. Now, you guys might have noticed that I said there's typically three stages. We, of course, have already explored the ending or losing and letting go during episode 14, which was last week's episode. And then I've said that episode 15 is going to be the last episode of season one. And what we're gonna explore is the messy middle. So then you're like, Kathy, what does this mean? It means that I'm leaving you on a cliffhanger. We're not going to discuss the new during this season. And I thought I was like, I tend to listen to God, how he wants this to go. And I thought, oh, you know, look, Lord, okay, so that means I'm gonna do an additional episode, or this is gonna be like a super long episode. And God was like, no, we're not going to do the new during this season. We're going to finish out season one with episode 15. It's it's a number of rest, you know? So that's we're gonna we're gonna stop it. Because the reality is, Kat, you don't know the new yet. Ha. See, I can talk about the ending, the losing, and the letting go because I've experienced that. And I can talk about the messy middle because I have been in the messy middle and I still am in the messy middle. So when I talk about that, I'm still I still am in the messy middle, I am. I'm I'm still experiencing the middle because I'm not yet in the new. And if we remember from the very first episode when I talked about what is everyday God for your everyday, one of the things that I realized was the promise or the premise of the podcast was that we would be going through this together. And I can't, I'm not gonna talk about something that I have not yet experienced. Now, I've experienced some other new things in my life and some new new seasons, but there's a specific reason why God wants to put kind of a pin, a little bit of a cliffhanger. And then when we come back, which means that I I must come back, he's pretty much telling me I am coming back, and we'll discuss the new that God is doing. I'm excited to see what that's gonna look like. So let's talk about the messy middle right now. As

Why The Bible Loves Journeys

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I was preparing for the messy middle, I really started thinking about this whole like idea of transitions and journey and travel and how they're not only themes in our lives as human beings, but they're actually recurring themes in the Bible. So when we start to look at different Bible stories, we see that not only does God work through people, but he often works in their lives through journeys, through travel, through transition periods, the going to and fro, the moving from one place to another. For example, Abraham and Sarah, Lot, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Joseph, Esther, David, Moses, the Israelites. So that's huge in the Old Testament. But then as we look at the New Testament, the idea of journey and travel are central themes in the New Testament as well. Mary and Joseph, even Jesus' ministry was a whole bunch of moving from one place to another, even in terms of the Great Commission, what the disciples were called to do, and what we as Christ followers have been called to do, is to spread the word of God, the good news, the gospel, by going to places and doing so. And even in terms of our relationship with God and how that is referenced in the Bible, it's in terms of journey. We would, you know, there's the faith journey, the faith walk. We're called to walk with God. Even in terms of our name as Christ followers, speaks to this movement. And let's face it, God is intentional. Faith in our relationship with God is all meant to be dynamic. It is not meant to be stagnant. A journey or an adventure speaks of ups and downs and stops and turns of growth, of maturing, of detours. And I was thinking about it, I'm like, maybe this is God's way of weaving the very rhythm of life through the Bible. So I read you guys Ecclesiastes chapter three, verses one through eight, I believe, last episode. So I'm just gonna read verse one of Ecclesiastes three. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. There's a time to sow and a time to reap. Well, I'm gonna say that there's a time in life, especially during the transition period, a time to go and a time to be still. So, this episode, we're going to talk about the messy middle, the place where most of us hate to be, and yet the place where a lot of growth and maturing and transformation happen. It's often also a time that requires stillness and pause. You know, on last episode, we talked about how many of us don't spend the requisite time in the transition period before we enter our new seasons, whether that be a new relationship, a new job, a new role, a new time in our lives. We talked about that, but we didn't talk about why that might

Three Reasons We Rush The Middle

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be. So I want to explore during this episode three primary reasons why I believe we blow past or want to speed through the transition periods in our lives. The very first one is that I believe that we do not think that transitions are all that important or significant. Because, as people, we tend to place the importance or the significance on the destination itself, not on the process or on the way to. Especially for those of us who are forward-thinking or future-focused people as I used to be, we become hyper-focused on the destination, on the next, on the new. And yet, the more I walk with God, I have come to appreciate that the journey is a huge component of the destination. Or else, why would God not immediately beam us up to heaven if the destination was all there was? So if we think about what Paul says about running the race in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 7, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. And John 10, 10 affirms that the ultimate goal of the journey is to experience life fully. Yes, we all know that Jesus came so that he might save us, but not just to save us for eternal life with him. But he says himself in John 10:10 that I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. Guys, I believe that doing life, like the transition, like all of that, the journey is important and it's critical. And God wants to do it with us. Secondly, I think that we're in a hurry, right? We want to do things in our own time. And we tend to have one speed and that's fast. But yet we see time and time again in scripture that timing is important. That sometimes, you know, we we see slow as a bad thing, especially me. I have, oh my gosh, I've been so uber focused on just kind of okay, God, I just want to get through it. I just want to get through it. I just want to learn whatever it is and I'm supposed to learn and just get through it. And God has convicted me, especially these last 15 months or so, that, you know, if we look at the New Testament, Jesus took long, a long period of time to get to places. You know, last episode we talked about the fact that Jesus wept, even though when he was going to resurrect Lazarus, even though he knew that he was going to resurrect Lazarus. So we wanted to emphasize and really focus on the fact that Jesus took the time to be in the moment and to weep, to grieve. But I'm gonna focus not necessarily in Jesus' weeping, but in the time that it took for Jesus to get to Lazarus to begin with. Because we're told in the Bible that really he took longer to get to them, even though he knew Jesus knew that Lazarus was going to die, but he took longer to get there. What was Jesus accomplishing in that? We are told that that the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. I've gotten, I've to, I've gotten a completely new perspective on timing in this period in the messy middle. So we're gonna talk about for one second Exodus. Two

Exodus Shows Purposeful Timing

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things in Exodus. Exodus, number one, talking about the time that the actual exodus of the Israelites from Egypt took and why it may have taken as long as it did. And then the second thing that we're gonna talk about is the 40 years that it took them in the wilderness, where it shouldn't have taken 40 years to get to the promised land. So let's first talk about the fact that as we read in Exodus, it says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh would not let the Israelites go. Even when we're we're reading that Pharaoh was ready. Pharaoh was ready to say, okay, I'm tapping out. Uh-uh, okay, I got it. But he would harden Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh would be like, No, I'm not letting them go. So why was that? Because the goal of God was to deliver the Israelites. And we know that yes, God wanted for the Israelites and the Egyptians, for all of us as we're reading it, to see his hand at work. But I mean, we saw his hand through the Red Sea. I mean, he just parted the Red Sea. So there are tons of things, even in the plagues, that we saw God's hand. So why would God harden Pharaoh's heart? And why would that time take so long where Moses had to keep going back? And God helped me to see something that I've missed so many times in reading through the Bible and reading Exodus specifically, which is what if? So I just want to focus on one perspective. What if in all of that, and we know that God was working in the time that it was taking, that the longer it took, maybe it was not necessarily about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart or the deliverance of the Israelites. Yes, all of that was being done, but what if there was another purpose in the time that it was taking? So let's look at Moses, a central figure in Exodus, a man that God was working through and also working in. When we first see God call Moses in Exodus three, Moses is a man who was on the run, a murderer, one full of shame and remorse who left his home, who left his people, who left his God. And God calls him, right? And then if we remember correctly, like he's telling God, like, why me? Like, I can't even speak, like I don't know what to say. You need to send somebody else. So we're seeing a very hesitant Moses, a Moses who is not confident at all, and a Moses with not necessarily a strong faith. But yet God still chooses to send Moses. And as we see Moses, and with every plague and every time that Moses goes back, the first time that Moses goes before Pharaoh, he hesitates. He's hesitating, he's unsure. But yet, as we see Moses through this time, Moses becomes more confident because he's seeing God's hand through all of this. God is walking with him, is with him in this process. I want us to pay attention to something else. God needed to work through Moses because the Moses that we first saw in Exodus 3, that Moses could not be the Moses that would take the Israelites to the Red Sea and who God would need to work through to part the Red Sea. See, there was a transformation, there was a maturing, there was a growth that needed to happen in Moses during that time that would enable him to do what God was going to call him to do. There is purpose in God's timing that oftentimes as human beings we do not see. And I'm gonna talk about the Israelites taking 40 years in the wilderness. I have always looked at it, and I know many of us as Christ's followers, as Christians, as we read the scripture and look at it, we look at it with judgment. We say, you know, they took 40 years because they failed. They took 40 years because they didn't believe. They took 40 years because they took 40 years, as if they shouldn't have taken 40 years. But the one thing that I know, and it says in the Bible, is that no man, no one, nothing, no thing can tort God's plan. He even talks about that no word from his mouth will ever come back void. God was doing something in those 40 years. God knew in advance which generation could not go to the promised land. He also was doing something in preparing this new generation that was going to be the ones to inherit and to claim the promised land. And by the way, if I think about Joshua, he was doing a work in Joshua and Caleb. He was making a leader out of Joshua because he knew that Moses was not going to be the one to take the Israelites to the promised land. Guys, sometimes we're in a hurry and we want to blow through stuff. Scripture tells us on God's timing that he is never late, that his plans are perfect, and waiting is a purposeful season of preparation. I need you to say God knows what he's doing in his time. So we need to trust that and stop trying to blow through stuff when we're supposed to be still and know that he is God. So

Discomfort Is Not Proof Of Failure

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lastly, the third reason why we just love to blow through the transition period is because it's uncomfortable, it's inconvenient, it's difficult, and it's painful. I need us to understand and know that discomfort is not proof of failure. It's not proof that we're outside of God's will. It's not proof that we're not strong enough, that we're not faithful enough, that we don't believe enough. You know, discomfort can often be evidence of healing. When we stop outsourcing responsibility for our inner lives, we really begin to see ourselves clearly. A lot of that happens, you know, that fruitfulness through periods of discomfort. Spiritual formation happens in periods of discomfort. You know, sometimes, not sometimes, oftentimes, in the discomfort, God starts to expose what we've been suppressing. And we start to feel or we start becoming honest about what hurts. And we are left with no other choice but to bring those things to God's light. We gotta learn to be not necessarily comfortable in the discomfort, but we gotta learn to stay, to have staying power in the discomfort. Because that's exactly what the messy middle is, that messy in-between the wilderness, the winter, the coldest time of the transition period. This is a time where it's often confusing and uncomfortable for us. It's a period of limbo because we've lost our old identities, we've let go of old ways of thinking, but in the messy middle, we don't yet have the new identity. It's a period of preparation, of transformation, where I'm not the old me and I don't know who the new me is yet. This period requires immense patience and resilience as we try to establish new routines. Remember, I was telling you guys that what I used to do in my old practices to get closer to God are no longer serving me in this period of my middle. And I haven't established new practices yet. So sometimes I'm like, oh, oh, oh, and I'm trying to hold on. And God's like, no, no, no, no, I got you. It's a limbo period between the old way and the new one. Old systems are gone, but new ones have not yet necessarily been established or stable yet. And let's face it, when we talk about the messy middle, it's our winter. And I call it winter for a reason because it's often hard to see what's growing in winter. We often experience confusion, not knowing what to do. We are anxious, we're fearful, we certainly are not energetic or passionate because we're not sure, we're feeling overwhelmed. And It is often very hard to see again what's growing in winter. You

Chicago Winter And The Tulips

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know, I remember my first away assignment back in 2000, I think it was 2004. I have lived in South Florida for most of my life. So then I'm asked as this South Florida girl to go to Chicago in February, the tail end of winter. So for any of you who are not familiar with the shy, with Chicago, it can, oh my God, it can be incredibly cold. By the way, Chicago happens to be one of my favorite cities anywhere. It's, it's, it's just, it's an amazing place. And the more I think about it, it's like, oh, that was a transition period in my life. So I'm called to go to Chicago in February to do a three-month assignment. It was cold, you guys. I experienced the extremes of Chicago weather. I mean, Chicago weather can be a bit bipolar. So you go out, you know, it's like 30 degrees. I mean, not necessarily warm, but 30 degrees you can handle. And then in the middle of driving, all of a sudden my car starts saying freezing rain, and it dips like by 10, 15 degrees. I had a warm time kind of getting used to that. And I remember one day I'm experiencing freezing rain and all of that stuff. And then it was like one day I just wait, I just woke up and the city was covered in tulips. So, for again, any of you who are familiar with Chicago or may not be familiar, the marking of spring are these beautiful tulips all along the magnificent mile. And they seem to rise out of nowhere because one day it's winter, and then it's like all of a sudden the city is covered in these beautiful tulips. So a little interesting factoid: the magmile tulip is actually a specially bred sturdy Darwin hybrid named the magnificent mile tulip because it was bred to withstand the windy city's gust. They're special, they're specific to that. And my point being that in the harsh of Chicago's winter, beneath the snow, the often below zero windshield factor, under the often gray slush of snow and the ice on Lake Michigan, it would be hard for us in the midst of winter to imagine that something so colorful and vibrant could be waiting to bloom. That's what the messy middle is like. So, how do we successfully navigate or travel through the messy middle so that what is meant to bloom in the new does so. So as I started thinking about wrapping up this season, I wanted to have like a last episode of like as a kind of recap of what we've covered in the last couple of months. However, when God gave me, you know, the transition topic, I thought, okay, well, I guess it's not meant to be. This is God's, this is God's podcast. And then in this week, as I started thinking of the episode and preparing for it in my head, God reminded me that everything we need to get through the messy middle, we have covered. Ah, what a God. What a God.

What We Need To Make It

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You know, first and foremost, we need only one thing in every season and in every transition period, whether it's the ending, the messy middle, or the new. We need one thing in our lives, period, and that is God. We need Jesus. The first thing we covered, if we think about it, the first podcast was what is everyday God? And we talked about the fact that Jesus is our everyday God for our everyday, for our every moment, for our every second. And the fact that God wants to be in every facet of our lives. So, in the messy middle, the first thing we need and we should remember is that God is with us in it. Because the foundation of everything that we do, the foundation of our lives, as we are reminded in 1 Corinthians 3.11, it says that no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Christ Jesus. In Matthew 7.24, it says, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Guys, before we can build our house upon a rock, we talked about this. Before you can build your life upon Jesus, this requires not just hearing the word, but putting his teachings into practice. So we talked about this, seeking to know God by spending time in his word, spending time in his presence to listen for his voice. Because you can't listen to God if you don't know his voice. And you won't recognize his voice and you won't hear his voice when there's too many other voices crowding out what he is trying to tell you. When we spend time with God, when we spend time in his presence, we need to be spending time seeking his face, not just his hand. What do I mean by that? We need to be seeking his presence, seeking to be with him, the lover of our souls, not just trying to get what we can from our God. He's not a genie, and we need not treat him that way. We need to be practicing the disciplines, prayer, fasting, submission, surrender, remembering that seeking and knowing are not one-time things. They are not one and done. And I discussed this last episode that the one thing that is one and done, the one thing that is one and done was our salvation. And it was because Jesus did it, we didn't do it. This is the way of Jesus. Matthew chapter 7, verses 7 through 8 says, Ask, seek and knock. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks, finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. And I know that we talked about this in seeking God in that episode, and I think it was episode two, if I'm not mistaken. Jeremiah 29, 13. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. We did an entire acceptance series, acceptance as a practice rather than just a feeling. The fact that we often need to accept before we can understand that understanding is not a prerequisite to accepting God's word or accepting God's love or who He says we are, who He says I am, who He says you are. We cannot fully grasp nor understand God's grace. Nonetheless, we are recipients of it. We are beneficiaries of God's grace, his goodness. In our finite minds, it is impossible for us to think that we can understand God's word on our own. Scripture tells us that it is the Spirit of God who reveals the truth and leads us to the truth. And as I have said multiple times throughout this last season, God's ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God's ways higher than our ways and his thoughts higher than our thoughts. And guys, when you are in the messy middle and you don't understand and you are freaking out and you are like grasping, and you're like, God, why and how? Remember Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways. Submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. We also discuss that the constructs that we build and that we hold on to, especially in the middle of a transition period, we can hold on so desperately to the things that we have known, to the things that we once knew, to the things that once were, the former things that we cling to them for dear life because we cannot let go because we don't know, because we don't understand. But if we do not let them go, let them fall away, then we will not be able to receive the new that God is doing in us. We won't be able to perceive it. We will miss the great and unsearchable things that God wants to do. That's John 5:9, or we'll never glean the great and unsearchable things that He wants to tell us. Guys, while we're busy trying to speed through the transition or busy clinging to old ways, yet spiritual growth often begins when God gently and sometimes not so gently dismantles those constructs. Accepting God's love and mercy is not only a belief statement, it becomes a lived practice when we stop trying to manage every outcome, when we stop trying to control, and we start trusting God's leadership in real time, when we start trusting Him to control, when we start trusting His sovereignty, trusting and accepting His will for us and His authority in our lives. I

Prayer For Peace Not Outcomes

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have learned in my own messy middle the many purposes of prayer. I have seen transformation in my own life. You know, I asked God a question. I think it was a month ago. I was struggling. I left a drive-thru prayer that I do that I volunteer for at my church. And it was the first time that I'd left drive-thru prayer feeling dejected because how do I do this, Lord? How do I sit in the discomfort when it doesn't seem like you're coming through? How do I sit with someone else and sit with them when it seems like prayers are not being answered? And God has taken the time, taken the time to sit with me and to help me to understand that when we come to him in prayer, it is not only about seeking his hand, that it is often about coming to God simply because we're coming to his throne of grace because we can't handle the burdens that are on our shoulders. That praying is not about the answers to our prayers. That prayer is about the peace of God that we're seeking that transcends all understanding, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding. It's about praying and being able to be content in all circumstances, even when our circumstances or our mountains do not move. That prayer, as is asked of us to pray continually, because that is God's will for us in Christ Jesus, that when we pray continually, it is about coming into God's presence and being transformed by it. That it is no longer about seeking what God can do for us, but it is about seeking the presence of the one who loves us beyond measure. That when I pray continually, God reshapes and reframes my heart and my mind and my spirit. It is about drawing closer to God. It is about becoming more like Christ. It is about being like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and Jesus saying, She has learned that only one thing matters, and that is being with me, and that nothing will take it from her. I have seen God transform me. I have seen fruitfulness in the messy middle, in my winter. I have seen God reframe and reshape my desires. I have seen God, God's hands and his face in my wilderness, in obedience, in letting go, and grieving and surrendering in submission and seeking in defiant faith, in reckless abandon, in total dependence. I have called to God. I have sought his face, and he has answered me, and he has shown and told me great and mighty things. I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstance, in lack or in plenty. I have experienced walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and even though I have feared evil, my God, my shepherd, has been with me. His rod and his staff, they've comforted me, and I have seen my cup runneth over in the middle of my winter. I have seen God's irrational, illogical, don't make no kind of sense. I have seen my cup prayers transform to vessel please. And in my pouring out and emptying, I have seen God's exceedingly abundantly more. In the messy middle, I've sought God, I've sought his kingdom and his righteousness when I have not understood, when I have not liked, when I have not been able to make sense of anything. I have found healing, I've found reconciliation, forgiveness, peace, joy, love, compassion, grace, patience, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. I have found spirit-changing, transforming, renewal in me. But it first started with ending. It started with the letting go, with the shedding, with the dying of myself, dying of the things that I once held on to, dying of things that I thought I understood, dying of my need to control, dying of my need to understand. It started with wilting in the heat of my own sanctification and the stillness and surrender of the frigid wilderness. My prayers have changed. My heart has changed. My mind has been renewed and continues to be renewed. This journey through the last 15 months of letting go of what again I held on to, of my profession, my career, my passion, of relationships that I had led become idols of old desires, old ways, old thoughts, old beliefs, old constructs, the exodus of things and people that no longer served where God is leading me. Through their grieving, through their grieving of what once was, all that I had once wanted, all that I had sacrificed, all that I believed that I deserved, all that I had worshipped, all that I had sought and was seeking. Old wounds, old hurts, all that I had held on to. The messy middle is a period of forced dependence, including the stripping away of distractions, the stripping away of things that we have tried to hide and hide not only from ourselves and from others, but from God. The stripping away of facades, the stripping away of traditions and doctrines, exposing what we've suppressed. Then as I watched what I once knew and understood change. Following in obedience as God led me and established my steps into the uncertain, the not knowing of what God was doing, that not knowing how he would do it, not knowing when, and still not knowing any of it. Just to know, just for clarity, I sit not knowing any, any of it. I sit not having one of these prayers answered, not knowing why I was going through all that I was going through. Why would God bring me to a place of nothing at the end of myself? Why would he strip me of myself or of gifts that he had given me? Then first accepting that I may never understand, that I may never know or like where I am or where I was, but choosing to trust God, choosing to accept and embrace his word and his peace where answers to my prayers and questions did not come. I have learned to embrace the peace of the unknown, fully embracing and accepting and knowing that the what, the when, the how, the why, the where, none of those questions, nor their respective responses mattered when the who is Jesus Christ. Amen. When the who is Jesus Christ, my who is Jesus. If your who is not Jesus, make your who Jesus Christ, because that is the definitive difference, that is the differentiating factor in our ability to successfully navigate the messy middle. Because let me tell you something. When Jesus is your who, if my God be for me, then who can be against me? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And to remember that my who is Jesus means that I remember his promise in Matthew 28, 20. I will be with you always. Yes, even until the end of the age. And that means even until the end of yourself, even until the end of everything that you have ever known, even until the end of your season in your wilderness, in your winter, Jesus is with you. And I hold on to the words of God when the lies of the enemy, or the lies of the world, or when my circumstances tell me otherwise. That's how we not survive the middle. That's how we thrive, that's how we grow to be like the vibrant tulip sitting under the ice, being sustained, being covered, being provided for by our Christ. Because in the middle of your messy middle, of your unknown, of your wilderness, of your saying, God, why have thou forsaken me? You can remember. Jeremiah 29 11. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you. To give you hope in a future. Lamentations 3, verses 22 and 23. For the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. His faithfulness is great, even in your winter and in your wilderness. He is constant. A major lesson that I have learned in my messy middle is that faith is a journey with God. It is walking with our Father. And yet, oftentimes we treat faith, our faith walk, as a just as a solo project when we should treat our faith walk as a beautiful partnership with our loving Father, the lover of our souls, the great I Am, the Alpha and the Omega, the Creator of the Universe, our Heavenly Father. It is collaborating with God rather than, after all, it is the Holy Trinity, the triune God, God Father, Spirit, and Son. He is relational, guys. He, communion and community is at the core of our God in three persons. Why would we think that faith, that the faith walk is a solo one? You know, the surprising discovery of this entire journey for me, of faith, of walking with God, of everyday God for your everyday, is that walking with God brings peace and confidence, even when the plan is unclear. Christian discipleship, being a Christ follower, the way of Christ is not about curating perfection. It is not about performance. It is about learning obedience, surrender, and vulnerability. When life feels messy and complicated and emotionally uncomfortable, the invitation is to hold our father's hand anyway, trusting like a child, trusting his sovereignty and providence, even when the process itself is humbling, especially in the messy middle. Thank

Gratitude And Closing Prayer

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you. Thank you for walking with me in this journey. I am just completely in awe of all that God has done in my life just through this podcast. I came into the podcast thinking that it was, you know, my way, it was ministry, which I guess it has been, but it has been more useful to me and has grown me and matured me in ways that I could not have imagined or dreamt. I am so grateful for this partnership that I have been blessed to have with God and the fact that you have allowed my voice into your life because it's my voice, but it's God's words. I am going to thank God and praise him and glorify him for all that I know that he is doing in your lives. And I cannot wait to come back and discuss with you all the new that he is doing in my life, that he has done as the new iteration, the new season of everyday God for your everyday comes back. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. And as usual, we are going to close out in prayer and in gratitude to God for all that he has done and all that he is doing and all that he will do. Father God, thank you. Thank you for being our God. Thank you for being our Father. Thank you for choosing to call us by name, Lord, and to redeem us. Thank you for your grace at work, not only in my life, but in the lives of every listener. Thank you for what you have done through this podcast, Lord, and everything that you will do, Lord, as you have given me time to rest, as you will pour into me, Lord, until we come back. Father God, I lift up every listener, I lift up every life, I lift up every need, every request. And God, I pray that, Lord, as we seek you, as we seek to know you, as we ask, as we seek and as we knock, that Lord, we would find you because we are seeking you with all of our hearts. And Lord, I pray that every listener would know that your promise, that when we seek you first, Lord, when we seek your kingdom and its righteousness, that Lord, all other things will be given unto us. Father God, I pray that as we continue to bring our requests and our petitions to you, Lord, that we are seeking your face and not just your hand. That Father, that you would work in us to renew our minds, that you would create a pure heart in all of us, O Lord. That Father, that you would redefine what good is, that you would reframe and reshape the desires of our hearts so that it would mirror what you desire for us, O Lord. That we would remember, Lord, that the cross often comes before the crown, that you're good sometimes, Lord, means that we have to go through seasons and periods of transition, of wilderness, of grieving, of endings, of losing. But Lord, through all of it, you are our God. Father, I pray for those who listen who may not yet know Jesus as the truth, the way and the life, as their savior, the one who came not to condemn them, but to save them. That Lord, that they would know him, that Lord, that you would create resources for them in an environment where they would grow, Lord, in their discipleship with you. Father, I pray that I would continue to follow in obedience, that Lord, that I would continue to seek you with all of my heart, that I would continue to seek your kingdom in your face, Lord, above all things. And that, Lord, you would continue to transform not only me, but the hearers of your word, Lord, every listener, every life. It is in your holy and mighty and matchless name, Jesus, we pray. Amen and amen. Thank you. Thank you again for your being obedient in allowing God's grace to bring you to this place of seeking, of seeking to know him deeply, of acceptance of his love, of who he says you are, of your identity in him, of his grace, of his sovereignty and his providence in this seeking of doing every day with this everyday God who longs to do every day with you. Have a blessed day. Bye bye.