Stop Performing for God: Ministry, Burnout & Trusting His Provision with Paul Granger

What if ministry is not a title, but a way of living with God and loving people? Kristin talks with writer and longtime podcaster Paul Granger about living as an ambassador of Christ without the pressure to perform, build a platform, or prove your worth through numbers. Paul shares how God led him away from a traditional paycheck, taught him to trust divine provision, and met him in seasons of fear, criticism, burnout, and lament. Together, they explore healthy boundaries, mission drift, the danger of trying to “fix” people, and how creativity can help us recognize hope and meaning even when life feels empty—including the story behind Paul’s “Something in the Froth.”

Paul's contact info:

Website - www.wheredidyouseeGod.com

Paul's book:

Something in the Froth - FREE eBook and paperback coming 8/11/26! 

https://www.wheredidyouseegod.com/something-in-the-froth

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Transcript

Reelite Sponsor Message

SPEAKER_03 0:00

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Welcome And Meet Paul Granger

SPEAKER_03 0:35

Welcome to the Hope Unlocked podcast. I'm Kristen Kurtz, your host. I pray this episode is like a holy IV of hope for your soul. Please help me welcome Paul Granger to the show. I'm very excited to have him here today. We were just talking right before this, and we are believing collectively for a clear recording. Just I've been getting hit with little internet issues and computer issues. So I'm very like excited about what's going to happen here today. And I know that he's going to have a strong word for us today. So, Paul, before we get into that, would you be open to just sharing a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah. Well, first, thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation. And I'm always encouraged when someone's kind of crazy like me and is willing to consider uh internet issues with a spiritual mindset. Something be going on here. Um But yeah, I, you know, the easiest way and also the least clear way to describe myself is I'm striving to learn what it means to be an ambassador of Christ. And an ambassador is somebody who represents someone else or something else, some entity in everything they do. When they show up, what they say, who they are, how they operate, they are representing that other thing, not simply themselves, which means they also are having to make decisions with that other entity in mind. Um and I say that's the easiest way to describe myself because my life is not traditional in any way, shape, or form. I have gone without a traditional paycheck since 2018. I'm a full-time volunteer ministry. If somebody says, Well, what do you do? I cannot answer that clearly because every year, every month, every week, sometimes every day is completely different than the last. But that there is a core thread of I'm simply trying to live into who God is inviting me to be, how he's inviting me to function. And more specifically, scripture makes it clear that I'm called to love God and love others. And so I'm I'm striving imperfectly to do that with as many elements of my life as I can. That said, you know, the the

A Middle School Faith Wake Up

SPEAKER_00 2:50

easy titles that people like are, you know, content creator. I, you know, feel God's invited me to write. And so I've written a lot. Uh I a podcaster, I've had a podcast since 2018, do a lot of stuff in my community, serve with Youth with a Mission, YWAM, YWAM River City. But at any point, any of those things could change because my job is ambassador of Christ.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

I love I love that. I love that it's it's an identity statement in a way, but it's also a mission statement as well and vision, right? I want to I want to go back to this marker moment for you in 2018. But before that, we want to go back a little bit in your life. Have you always been operating this way? What did it look like for you to come into this maybe new operating system? Or were you just born like this?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

My pastor says something a lot, and he's been a spiritual father of mine since 2007. He says something that I appreciate, and also it's a little frustrating. But he's like, Paul, you're different. And and I understand what he's saying because I have always operated differently. I've never been one that has felt an inclination, inclination towards being like anyone else, being trendy. Yeah. I've always been comfortable just being who I am and not not even being who I am as an identity statement, like just simply being. And so I I can recognize now that's always been a part of my life. The other thing that's always been a part of my life is the the concept of faith. I grew up going to church. I I've gone to church all my life. I grew up in an environment where it was normal and even expected to be Christian. But the the point at which those two things really took a deeper form was in middle school when I can recognize now that it's the Holy Spirit, but at the time, it was just this random question that just kind of plopped itself in my mind of, you know, you say you believe in God, but what does that actually mean? How does that impact your life? You you say that you're a Christian, but how is that shaping your direction, or is it just a label you wear? And I really sat with that with my little middle school, halfway developed brain, thinking, man, yeah, if if this is as big as everyone's saying it is, and as I'm saying it is, shouldn't it impact my life more profoundly? And I just remember having this piece about leaning in that direction of saying, all right, you know what? I want to live for God. I want to live a lifestyle of ministry.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

And there wasn't this like fanfare moment, or it was just this decision in my mind that immediately, immediately took root. And I can look back and I'm a little caught off guard by kind of the things that happened because then I entered in high school and at the end of my freshman year, I was invited to become president of the FCA. I ended up playing like a leadership role within our young life. I ended up leading a Bible study at a coffee shop and co-leading another thing, a prayer group. And I'm like, but that's I was never that type of person. And like in my teenage years, yeah. And I am not a type A personality. I'm not a go-getter. I'm not the person who's always trying to start stuff. So when I look back, I'm like, huh. That that was 100% God. And the only role I played in that was saying, all right, God, I'll let my life be for you. Like, yes. Yeah. And from then on, nothing about my life has been normal or traditional.

Ministry As Lifestyle Not Title

SPEAKER_00 6:30

I've been serving in ministries of different forms for over two decades. And but more importantly, the thing that I have known from the start and have been striving to understand more deeply is the difference between ministry as vocation and ministry as lifestyle. Because those are very different things. You could do ministry things as a job and it not necessarily be fully ministry, right? You could do ministry as a lifestyle and it not look like ministry at all to others, but actually fully be ministry. And there's a big piece in there of who is this for and what is this for? That we aren't always honest when we answer it. And so for me, especially in where I am now, not getting a traditional paycheck and creating lots of different content, I've had to release all the normal metrics and expectations. When you do a podcast, you're supposed to do it to get listeners and passive income. When you write, you're supposed to get readers and passive income. It's always always comes back to money. Yes. And God invited me from the start, 2018. Uh this is the way I remember it in my mind. And it wasn't an audible voice, but it was, I it it just I just recall it as a clear conversation with God of essentially God saying, Well, you know, first, this podcast isn't about being a podcast. Anything you create's not about creating stuff. You're what God was inviting me to was to cultivate authentic, accessible space to process who he is, who he's made us to be, and what that means for today. And the podcast, books, and all of that is just they're just vehicles. They're just vehicles for that. If there's a podcast episode, that's a byproduct, that's a bonus. But then God pressed it further, and I felt like he was saying, What if I invited you to do this and you spent decades doing it? And in the end, only one person ever benefited from it. And you came into eternity and I said, Well done, good and faithful servant. Would that be enough for you? And as a good Christian, I'm like, Yes, Lord, I but then he pressed it further. All right, what if you do this for decades? And not only does nobody ever seem to benefit from it, the opposite happens. People actually get mad at you for doing, they call you a fool, they call you reckless, they call you irresponsible as a husband and a father and a homeowner that you are wasting your time and for what? And you die looking like a failure and you come into eternity. I say, Well done, good and faithful servant. Would that be enough? That's a harder one. And I want to say yes, but I've come as I've gotten older to a place of painful humility that I believe Peter landed at as well, because he he was 100% all in for Jesus, except for the spaces that he wasn't. But he he didn't know that those spaces existed, and he didn't couldn't imagine that they could exist because he had given up everything already. And when Jesus is like talking about dying and all that, Peter says, I will go to jail for you, I will die for you. But what do we see when the moment arrives? There's two moments. One that he he proves his resolve in the garden, guards are coming, and he takes out his sword and he takes on an army, right? Like blaze of glory, I will die for Jesus. But then the humiliating death, you know, a little girl by a fire says, Wait, weren't you with him? And he's seeing if he says yes, he's gonna be bloody on the ground like Jesus, being beaten and insulted and lied on. And he denies something he I believe he 100% believed could never happen, could never happen. Yeah, but it did. And Jesus knew it would. And he even named it. Peter heard it was gonna happen and still believed it wouldn't happen from the guy he said was the son of God. And so, you know, I I want to believe that in my efforts to be an ambassador of Christ, I am I'm going to live it out faithfully. But I also have to have the humility to know that I am still in this broken body with this broken mind, as the apostle Paul puts it, I don't understand what I do because the things I hate to do, I do, and the things I'm supposed to do, I don't.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

And so what it looks like to live that out, right? Because even that goes counter to humanity and culture. We're told that if you just get smart enough and strong enough and skilled enough that you're you can become unstoppable. And scripture tells us, nah, like without the spirit, you've got to limit a cap. And that's on a good day. But there are gonna be bad days in which you're gonna do the opposite. Here's a whole string of spiritual leaders, heroes of the faith, who had horrible, horrible moments of going against God.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

Many moments, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

So it's like I'm daily living this countercultural way that it's it's hard. It's hard, yeah. It's hard for so many reasons. And yet I'll look back and say, Oh, I got through that. So I know that wasn't because of me. So God must be real.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

He he is, you know. I I'd actually have been, I don't know if you know who Rita Springer is, but I just love her music. And oh wait, yes, I do. Yeah, there's uh an album that she wrote called Fed by Ravens, and it's just such a profound album. I was just listening to it, and it's like there's a song called I Think He Is, and it it really goes into, you know, is he really good? I'm waiting, and like, you know, she says, I think he is, but then it ends with I know he is because of you know, seeing his goodness. I would love for you to just maybe go a little deeper on what you said about ministry, right? So people, you know, we hear ministry, we hear it thrown around a lot. And I would love for you to just share more of the revelation you've had around ministry and and what it's looked like for you to walk it out, because I think somebody might be wondering.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, yeah. So the first thing I want to point out that comes to my mind immediately is we when we think of ministry, we can think of all the reasons that we're not qualified for it and other people are. And so when I think this was before we started recording, you were bringing up Moses and how Moses is like not the one because you're talking about someone who needs to talk to the most powerful man on earth.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

I'm not good at speaking. So maybe you don't know me well enough, God, but I you got this wrong. Yeah, like the qualifications for the qualifications for doing good stuff, for running something well, for fixing problems, like on a human level. Yeah, like sometimes it's

The Only True Qualification

SPEAKER_00 13:43

counselors go through a lot of education so that they are qualified to say, oh, here's a diagnosis. We see a lot of people online right now giving diagnoses that really shouldn't, right? So there are spaces in which you know there are certain qualifications that are needed. Um spirit-led ministry is not that. First and foremost, spirit-led ministry, the qualifications are that the spirit's a part of it, that the spirit's guiding it. We see this in scripture, right? You know, the disciples had these moments where Jesus was inviting them to learn how to do ministry, and they kept trying to do it like humans. One of the best examples was they had these moments where everything was going well. They were sent out in pairs, and they're healing people, they're casting out demons, and their minds are blown. They're like, I never knew I could do this. This is amazing. And then they come back together, and then there's this guy whose son has been possessed and keeps trying to kill the kid, throwing him into fire, throwing him into water. And Jesus becomes privy to this because an argument erupts between the disciples and the crowd and the Pharisees, and he's like, All right, what's going on? And the father comes up and he's like, I brought my son here to be healed, and your disciples couldn't do it. And it's this powerful story. But in the end, the disciples are like, Why couldn't we do it? Because they're thinking, we've done this before, and we said, you know, the right set of words, Jesus. And and it and his answer really intrigues me because he says, This kind can only be driven out through prayer, which then begs the question of, was prayer not a part of what they were doing? Or in other words, were they trying to do it in and of their own power rather than knowing they needed a power outside of them? And so I say all this as an encouragement to people because there are a lot of people who may listen to your podcast and say, wow, Kristen's so good at this, I can never do that. To which he would be like, Oh, if you only understood, like this is because I'm good.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

And I feel like honestly, I want to interject for you saying that for a second, because you know, speaking of Moses, the Lord called me to this, and I argued, I was like, I I don't know about that, Lord. You know me. I'm not eloquent of speech. Like, this is really gonna be a problem, you know. And all that to say, I said yes because I I'm like you. I love that you said you're different. I'm I want to be different and and I want to follow him. My birthday is 12.2, so Romans 12.2, I feel like it's my birth verse, you know, do not conform to the patterns of this world. So in saying yes and doing this for, you know, over three years, I I feel like I actually am an I epitomize like using somebody that would be unlikely to then give permission to others to simply I always say this, just simply start whatever he's calling you to start. If it's simply starting a podcast, simply start it. You don't need like you don't need a microphone, you don't need a studio. He showed me I just needed my mouth and my computer. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

It's true. So I wanted to share that. Like, you know, a lot of us, you know, maybe feel like, oh, I could never do and I I think that of other things too. I'm like, oh, I would not love to go stand on stages and be a traveling stage standing person, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:22

But you know, follow what he's calling you to. So thank you. I just wanted to share. Yeah, you know, for listeners thinking, oh, she's doing a great job. Well, it is literally me and Holy Spirit. We show up every day. I got my power source. Like I'm plugged into here.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Yeah. So it's like the apostle Paul says, and I man, I keep telling myself I'm going to memorize the reference and the verse itself. But I say this anytime I preach, I started off with a passage where Paul's essentially saying, I did not come to you with eloquence or wise words. I came with you to you with timidity, so that your faith would not rest on my words, but on the works of the Spirit. And this is a guy who actually had a profound skill set. He was Pharisee of Pharisees. He knew scripture backwards and forwards, but he was choosing to position himself in weakness, looking like a fool and a failure. And there were people that looked down on him and said, uh, Apollos is much better than Paul at this.

SPEAKER_02 18:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

So, you know, I I appreciate what you shared because it's a good segue into the second thing that I would want to share with people. So the first is really the qualification is that God invited you to do something.

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yeah, that's that's again that's what qualifies. Somebody needs to write this down.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Yep. That is period, full stop. That's the qualification. And any and there's plenty of scripture verses, like you mentioned, Moses, Gideon, and others, where they do what we normally do, which is, but I'm not qualified for this. And God's like, the qualification was I called you. Like, that's I can take care of the rest. I'm God. I think you forgot that. Yeah. But this is the second thing, and this is the other, this is what really trips us up is we don't actually ask the question, what actually is the ministry? Because our minds go to the broad sweep categories of the ministry. So you were talking about starting a podcast. Well, then our mind goes to, okay, well, God called me to do a podcast. Well, what is a podcast and what does it need to look like? And then you do all the research, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna have to demonetize and I'm gonna have to do this, I'm gonna have to do this because this is what a podcast is. And, you know, as I was sharing earlier, God didn't call me to do a podcast, He just called me to cultivate, to be obedient, like faithful and obedient to cultivate a space uh to have conversation where I just happen to be recording. And so the thing is, is that we we we constantly look at ministry based on this problems and solutions mindset, which is fair, it's logical. You know, there's a community. I live in a community where there's high levels of poverty, high levels of addiction, high levels of violence, and a lot of ministries have started in this community, and communities like it because they see the problem, and there's a heart to want to fix the problem. Yeah, but then here's what happens is the problem it doesn't end up getting fixed. And a lot of people end up like burning out, giving up, throwing it off, or just like it just fades. Because what we actually were trying to do was fix problems when God was saying, I just want you to be an ambassador in that space. If I want

Being A Conduit Of Love

SPEAKER_00 20:29

to fix something, I can fix it. I actually don't even need you to fix it. You actually kind of get in the way sometimes and fixing it. I want you to represent me in that space. I'll give an example. A friend of mine for over 15 years, most of that time he was unhoused or had inconsistent, typically insufficient shelter. And at best, he's sleeping on somebody's sofa. At worst, he's on a side porch of an abandoned house with raccoons waking him up. Real story, he knocked on my door at 10 at night. He was telling me about waking up with raccoons staring at him. So rough situation, and I had always longed for um better housing for him. He also had some other things that he was navigating, and the normal ministry mindset that we come to with this is how do I help with any housing issues, with any addiction issues, with any, you know, needs issues, and how do we fix this situation? How do we fix him? Well, it's a long story I won't get into, but he finally ends up getting into housing, his first apartment of his own. And I'm thinking, finally, now that he has stability, life is gonna get better. It got worse. There are many reasons. People started taking advantage of him, started wanting to steal his benefits, started trying to break into his place because he had been unhoused for so long, even though he had a bathroom, didn't mean that he was using it. He had a shower, didn't mean he was using it, had laundromat, didn't mean he was using it because he never had needed one before. Or you know, and so like he had these old life styles that just kind of stuck with it. But the biggest thing, the biggest thing, was that he was in the start of dementia. And so he was not even cognizant of a lot of the things that were happening. And because he was used to living in really rough, unhealthy conditions when his apartment got really rough and unhealthy, it wasn't outside the norm. And changing that would be a lot of work. And so there came a point a year after this, and I'm talking so many struggles, so many moments of frustration. Frustration, so many like moments of anger at people taking advantage of them that I realized because of the dementia, particularly, his life may never actually get better. And this is the point at which people would kind of give up or step away or get mad at God or get mad at the person. We we can get mad at the people where they don't really care. They're not really trying. But man, it's actually much deeper than all of that, much more nuanced. But for the person that is striving to serve in a lifestyle of ministry, what I had to accept was my calling here is not to fix my friend because I can't fix dementia. It's not even to fix his living situation necessarily because all the efforts to do so seem to be failing. I think God is just inviting me to be a loving presence in his life. And let me give a good caveat here that people need to hear.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Not love as I love, because I didn't want to most of the time. I didn't have the strength most of the time. I needed to be cared for myself in that season. And so I had to rely on God. And so, in other words, not only do I have to be an ambassador of Christ, I need to be a conduit of love, not a source of love. A conduit. The source is over here. God's the source. It I'm just a pass-through. And the good news in his story is that he is in the healthiest place he's been. I've got him set up in a place where he has nurses checking in on him every day, making sure he's eating, taking medicine. But he calls me five or six times a day with the same exact words because he forgets that he's called me. Like he is going, his mind is going to continue to degrade. It's going to get worse. And so what is ministry? Like, ministry isn't fixing. Ministry is being a conduit of love. And it can take practical forms. But at any point that the goal, the purpose, the metrics are tied to something outside that, that's that's when we find ourselves getting astray. I I can guarantee you there were a number of Pharisees that started off really well, like genuinely wanting to love God. But at some point, the purpose of their ministry shifted from simply loving God and loving others to something else, like keeping the laws. Because they wanted to honor God, but keeping the laws was the primary thing. And it led some of them to the point where they killed the son of the very guy that they said they loved and served. And so, what is ministry? Ministry is just love. Who's qualified? Whoever God says, go and do this thing.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

That is so have you written a book about this?

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Uh, not specifically. I'm like, is that the book right here?

SPEAKER_03 25:20

Yeah. Conduit of love. I mean, just getting deeper into this, it's so it's so good. And it's actually very timely based on a conversation I was just having with somebody earlier today. How old is this young man?

SPEAKER_00 25:34

He just turned 68.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

68. Okay. And how did you meet?

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So when I first moved into the community, within a year or two, none of us can really remember when this happened. But he and his cousin, they were no longer able to work or hold jobs. And so they would cut grass as a form of income in addition to maybe getting benefits. And so that was the first encounter as they asked to cut the grass. But I we learned they lived just around the corner in a rooming house. And my friend was staying with him on the sofa at the time. And it was a transactional relationship. My friend less so, he was he was kind of in the background, and the his cousin was more of the like asking for things a lot. And I'm like, all right, God, I'm trying to show love, but this feels very transactional. When does this turn into a friendship, a relationship? And it took a couple years for it to really across all the pages do that. But it wasn't until many years later that my interaction shifted more from the cousin to this friend that I've been talking about, which was not planned or an ex or expected, but I can look back and see God's timing in it. But because we lived close by, you know, I know the reason I'm here is because I felt like God invited me to come and learn what it means to love my neighbors. So that's why I'm interacting with them, is because God said, Love your neighbors. And so that means I have to be accessible and present.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

So yeah, lots of stories over the years for sure.

SPEAKER_03 27:10

How have you, and I don't know if you've encountered this before, but you know, when you you seem like one that people would probably want to learn from and and talk to and maybe draw, you know, like Jesus, what I was reminded of earlier today was like Jesus drew away from the crowds, right? So, you know, people wanted to be in his presence and and kind of pull on him, right? So if there's if there's a lot of need, you can find yourself being pulled on, right? I don't know if this is resonating with you, but if that is the case, what does it look like for you to draw away when needed? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

I I've learned that it's really important to ask the question of why do I need to draw away? Because there are logical, functionally good reasons for us to do so, uh, but might be merely human reasons. So I need to draw away because I don't know how to do this. Well, we've already tapped into that, right? I need to draw away because I'm really exhausted, right? But that that then

Boundaries With Wisdom Not Fear

SPEAKER_00 28:24

says that my ability to do things is just based on my own strength, which is not supported by scripture. Like so there are there are legit like legitimate reasons. But as you were saying that, it made me think of a hilarious moment when Jesus had a legitimate reason to draw away. His cousin, someone he loved, John the Baptist, had just been beheaded. Okay, not just not just died, not just killed, but like unjustly, brutally murdered. And Jesus just needed to mourn. And he just wanted to get away. And so he tried. He got away from the crowds and they followed him.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

And he landed his ship, his boat, and there they were. And there's a, you know, different versions of scripture translations say it differently, but there is one that I feel like says something to the effect of he was filled with compassion. And I prefer that because like we look at Jesus and and rightly so, see him as perfectly being able to do this, all these things, perfectly compassionate all the time. And then that makes this inaccessibility for us. But what Jesus wanted to convey is he only saw what did what he saw the Father doing, and there is the spirit that he was sending, a helper and advocate. So I love the idea of Jesus coming to the shore, and he is just full of sorrow, and he just wants to be alone and he sees the people, and there could have been a part in his humanity that's like, I just want to get back in this boat and go the other way.

unknown 29:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

But it says he was filled with compassion. Something supernatural equipped him to be able to show love when he had no strength or desire. And I say that as a human, but like limited strength and desire to do so. And so I think that's important to name because I think there are a lot of times that we will want to draw away, I think we need to draw away, try to draw away, that may be based more on our humanity than than the spirit, than God, than what God is actually accomplishing, what God can actually do. That being said, boundaries are important. And so when we have that as our starting point, a willingness to say, here I am to God, a willingness to say, not my will, but yours be done. Like if we have that starting point of yes to God first, then we can come to the question, ask that question deeply and have a wisdom to know when there are times to live into boundaries. And I live in a community where, you know, every day, maybe multiple times a day, somebody asks me for something. And, you know, early on, my wife and I are like, do we give money or do we not? Like, and we we heard spiritual advice, you know, on both ends of the spectrum. I mean, it's God's money, so you should always give it to like, no, you're just actually in what's the word I'm looking, enabling the problems. They might just spend it on this, that, and the other. And where we landed was we're just gonna seek God and then whatever we feel peace about, we're gonna return for everyone, right? Like scenario. And so I'll I'll say this. One of the gifts God gave me in my relationship with my friend is that I had to ask these hard questions of boundaries because at one point, by no decision of my own, he ended up living in our garage. Now, when I say garage, this was not a finished garage. This was not a livable space. It leaked, it was not conditioned, it was nobody should be staying in there. He had been sleeping on a porch, raccoons had woke him up, they were going to tear down the house, and so he had nowhere to go. And so he and his cousin asked if he could stay in the garage. And like, I had one boundary I'd drawn is never offered it to him before, even though there were times I knew he could benefit from it, because I felt a piece about not offering it, and I did not want to say yes, but I felt like God gave me a piece. I was like, okay, a few days, it's winter, it's getting cold, so being not in the elements is good, but this isn't a long-term thing. Two years, I think, is how long he lived in the garage. And there are so I felt like God gave me a piece about some boundaries that put me had me have to be willing to release responsibility over his life. The coldest days of the year, I knew that I could invite him into the house. There are a lot of practical reasons why that wouldn't have been wise, but I felt a piece about not doing that. But that meant I had to, as a human, accept responsibility of nobody else's checking in on him. And when I go out the next day, he might be dead. And I had to release, I had to accept that I was not responsible for his life, even though I was one of the few people at that time who were like actively trying to keep him alive. Those are really hard boundaries. But when they're spiritually discerned, it can be really important and healthy. Because if I had just leaned into I need to do everything I can to keep him alive, it would not have been sustainable. And as I shared before, wouldn't even have necessarily worked in the way that I thought it would because of all these other elements, the dementia in particular. And so boundaries are important, but more important than boundaries are understanding with humble introspection why we are setting those boundaries.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Is it out of wisdom or fear? Is it out of love or selfishness? And and knowing that the spirit can bring us to a place of boundaries that do that are more about us than the other person. But the starting point wasn't love of self. It was love of God and love and love of others, even if it lets another be left to harm. And we need wisdom for that. And God is the source of wisdom, fortunately.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

Oh my gosh. Wow. I feel like there's just so much, so many keys that you're dropping here. Hope everybody's got a notepad, especially if you haven't written a book about this yet. So I wanted to kind of go back. You did say that you had left, you had a job up until 2018, a career, right? What were you doing prior to to this? I like to call it the go, the go moment.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Yeah. My last traditional role was with a nonprofit ministry. I had been there for five plus years, and I was serving, I actually had three jobs functionally. And that was part of the problem, is that one uh they needed to be separate jobs, but it became a toxic environment. A new part of it was early on, it was still operating from a grassroots mindset where people just wear lots of hats and they do lots of things. Ah, we just don't have the money, we figure it out. That can be fine, that can be beautiful in certain seasons when it is spiritual,

Mission Drift In Ministry Work

SPEAKER_00 35:19

when it is wisdom driven, but when it becomes just the norm or an excuse or a pass, then it can cause issues. So there is a point at which it shifted into that. And I was not being cared for as a staff member. But then there was a new boss that came in who had different, had a different mindset. He was actually more running a nonprofit than a ministry. Not that he didn't care about ministry. He cared deeply about the ministry, but his his mind was very focused on certain metrics, accomplishing certain things. There was a pressure because he was taking over from the founder. And this was a very charismatic guy. And so there's a lot of weight and a lot of opportunities for people to reject him. I mean, he was caring so much, but unfortunately, he made his mind up about me really quick in an untrue and unhealthy way that stuck for three years. And it it was just a torturous environment that I kept wanting to leave, and God kept saying, I want to invite you to stay, and it's not going to get better.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

I'm like, Come on, God, like, why would you invite me to that? Thank you for that invitation.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

So again, untraditional approaches to life. I'm different.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

But yeah, so and it was stuff that I was really good at, really believed in. But it was interesting to watch the shift from ministry to nonprofit, something I've seen in a lot of spaces. There's a book, and I'm I'm blanking on the name of it, but it taps into this idea. Oh, it's called mission drift. It taps into this idea of entities that start with a very clear, strong mission, and then one day look and realize, oh my goodness, we are so far from who we used to be. It gives the example of the the what? Like the Pharisees. Like the Pharisees. It gives the example of the YMCA, which was the Young Men's Christian Association. And a lot of people don't know that. And that makes sense because it's it's a gym. That's what people. Right. And they actually navigated it in a healthy way of like realizing, like, you know, they shifted naturally over time, but then they're like, all right, well, let's just own this. And so now they go by the why because they wanted to be honest about where they were. And but there are a lot of entities that don't actually do that introspection. And unfortunately, that that nonprofit was one. It really lost sight of what made it special and important, but more importantly, invitations, like clear words that God had given, and just became was trying to become a good nonprofit. And good nonprofits, that's great. That's fine. But I I feel strongly there's a big difference between being a ministry and a nonprofit, particularly around, or let me put it this way: you need to be, you have to make the decision which one you want to be predominantly. Because I understand many ministries have to still function in a nonprofit sphere and be labeled a nonprofit. But for me, one example of the difference between a ministry and a nonprofit is a nonprofit has expenses and that so they have to figure out what their income is and they have to get grants and they have stakeholders, they have all this kind of stuff and supporters, and so they have to be mindful of their money. A ministry can't be driven by money. A ministry has to be willing to say yes to God because they care more about God's wisdom than human logic. That's a dangerous thing for any official entity to do. And so I feel very strongly that entities need to be honest about what it is they are trying to be and then just lean into it. And if you want to be a nonprofit that has faith-based values, that is fantastic. But also just own the spiritual limitations that might bring, the things that it might tie you to, the people that you have to honor and respect that may mean you can't just jump off a cliff for God. And if you decide you want to be a ministry, you have to realize like you're probably going to look like a failure and a fool. You're probably going to do things that people will say are reckless, but you might get into eternity and God's like, well done, my good and faithful servant.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm I'm I feel like I'm part of your club in a in a different way. The wild, the wild ones. Um I would love for you to just share maybe some. I've I I'm I'm picking had some people be like, what is he thinking? And how do you respond to that? Second of all. Let's just start there.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Can you say the question again? Because the internet decided.

SPEAKER_03 40:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Oh, when people say, like, of course.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Well, we're gonna ask again. Yeah. So like I I'm picking up on that. You've probably had people maybe speak to you and be like, what are you thinking? What are you thinking? And how do you respond to that? Yeah. How do you respond to them? What do you say? I I feel like there's a lot of people, including myself, you know, I have clients. I've got, I love, you know, hearing people's, I love the, I call them the NOAA builders, the ones that are willing to create the ark and build something for over a hundred years, and there's still no rain. Yeah.

unknown 40:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

So what do you say to those people?

unknown 40:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:46

There is not a clear answer. Other there's not a clear answer of what to say, because I feel like different situations, different contexts, different people. Sometimes there's nothing you can say that will satisfy them. So the the better answer would be that I'm trying more and more to learn to seek God in those moments, to be prayerful in those moments and to release my expectations that people will even understand me. That was one of the hardest parts of that toxic work environment, is when I tried to explain to people, I know you're you're saying I should leave. I get it. I want to leave, but I really feel like God's invited me to stay and said it's going to get harder. People started to get mad at me. You're doing this to yourself, Paul. This is your fault now because you chose to stay in this pit. And nothing I could say could get through. When I lost that job and God invited me to not operate out of financial fear, which meant not rushing to get a job. I had somebody, you know, almost a couple of decades younger than me publicly rebuke me because you know, they were like, You're a husband and a father, and you've got a baby

Handling Criticism Without Defending

SPEAKER_00 41:54

on the way, and you're not, you don't have another job lined up. Like that's irresponsible. That's reckless. You were talking about Noah. One of the books I wrote last year. It was this I ended up writing a lot of books last year, but one of them was called Encouragement for Foolish Christians.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

And it was something I think title.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Well, and it came because I was having a conversation with a friend who is really trying to honor and seek God, and both of us were reflecting on how foolish we felt, how foolish people thought we were. And I feel like this is one of those books that came in the middle of the night. I woke up and then it was just there. But basically, what it is is it's this collection of fictionalized accounts based on scripture.

SPEAKER_02 42:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:44

Uh, reading between the lines of these accounts that we have to say, but what was this person possibly actually feeling in this moment? So Noah's one of them. And trying to get into Noah's shoes and be like, what must it have been like for Noah, like you said, to faithfully try to serve God and then just be met with an abrage of attacks. Yes. You know, not seeing any rain, not even understanding what he was building, because he's never built something like that. I don't even know if he had built much of anything before.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

And where's the scaffolding? Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

Where's the boom trucks? Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

Like I struggled to build simple things, and that's with having YouTube available and seeing someone else tell me exactly how to do it. Right. And so so, yes, here's the the hard reality is scripture is filled with moments where people were faced with what you described. Others coming up to them and saying, You what are you doing? This doesn't make sense. You're a fool, you're an idiot, you're raculus, you're Jesus faced this. My goodness, people called him a glutton, called him demon-possessed, rebuked him publicly, wanted to stone him multiple times. And then in the end, when they put him on trial and actually paid people to lie on him, scripture says he didn't defend himself. Right. And so I think this is the the real answer is we gotta ask ourselves why it is we feel like we gotta give an answer to these people. There may be moments where an answer is good. And and let's be honest, scripture says always be ready to give an account for the hope that you have. But it doesn't say I could be wrong, but if I'm remembering correctly, it says always be ready to give an account, not necessarily always give an account. I think. We actually have to be so aware of ourselves and our motives and our choices that if asked and if we feel a piece to respond, we can. But there is a healthy way to do that and an unhealthy way. Because the reason we want to give a response sometimes, and the reason I've wanted to give a response is to explain myself, to justify myself, to get maybe some affirmation finally, to some point finally. Right. Like as a human, I would rather have something other than rejection and misunderstanding. I've missed I've been misunderstood most of my life.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

And it is so rough when I'm misunderstood, but the stakes are much higher. And so that's often why I would give a response. There's this in psychology, this uh term called jade, uh, that is it's it's basically an encouragement for people who are in relationship with others who maybe are high-conflict personalities or navigating something like borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder. Put another way, there is something going on internally that in certain moments they might not be fully aware of what they're saying or what they're doing, or their logic might not be operating as it would if they were relaxed and calm. And there's certain ways the other person can engage and respond that could be detrimental. And so Jade is justify, argue, defend, and explain.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

And basically what it's saying is in those moments, it may not be wise to justify yourself, to argue, to defend yourself, to explain. And it may not, it may be counterproductive. It may not, it might not only not accomplish what you want it to, but cause more issues, make you look like more of a problem. And so maybe that's the the real answer is I need to, we need to embrace in those moments that giving, explaining ourselves to someone might not be what should happen. But in the moments where it is, this is why we need a helper and an advocate. So Peter, I think it's Peter and James, Peter and somebody, early in Acts, and this happened multiple times, but early in Acts, after the spirit descends, they cause this big ruckus with thousands of people, and so they get arrested.

unknown 46:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

They're they're put on trial and told to explain themselves. And this was a moment in which they didn't stay silent, but they also didn't use their own words. And Peter, a fisherman, mind you, not a Pharisee, not a trained preacher, who only, you know, uh weeks before had like denied Jesus and rebuked him, even Peter is uh starts speaking so eloquently from a spiritual standpoint that these Pharisees are like, who are these? These are untrained men. How are they talking like this? And so that's the other part of the answer is when God wants us to give a response, He doesn't want us to rely on our own understanding, he wants us to be a conduit of the spirit, whatever the spirit wants to do. That conduit. And so really all of this ties back to that idea is we don't want to be a conduit. We want to be the source, like we want to be the ones doing it. A conduit is nothing, like it's just the the vessel, like it's the hose that the water goes through. Like nobody cares about the hose, they want the water, right? Yeah, but are we willing to be nothing so that God can be still be everything? And that's gonna cost us. And so, yeah, I I I say all this, and someone could then assume that I'm really good at it. Oh no, like I still struggle. Like when I'm misunderstood, I still struggle. I still want to justify, you know, defend, explain myself. I'm not one to argue a lot, but like because I'm still human, yes, but so is the apostle Paul, and he wrestled with this and he had to navigate this. So is Peter, so have so many others who had to contend with what does it look like to be in and not of the world? Yeah, to still be human while called to something beyond humanity, right? And that's an ongoing journey.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

It is, it's every like for me too. Like every day, it's like it it it feels like a battle sometimes, honestly. Right. Especially like I left corporate job in 2021. So it's you know, as time goes on, I I get further and further out of the system and the quote unquote umbilical cord to safety, right? There's a book, I haven't read it yet. It's on my bookshelf, but it's called Not Safe. Love the title, right? In in this journey, like since 2018, I would love for you to maybe just testify to a moment where, like maybe the one of the most wild moments that you've had since then. Yeah, in these, you know, everyday like I'm I'm walking it out one day at a time, one step at a time. Could you share maybe a moment with us?

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Yeah. So I mentioned I was rebuked by someone close to half my age. And her reasoning was valid because this world runs off of money. Like you need money. Yeah, my issue was that God had told me to not operate out of financial fear. What he was really like pushing me to embrace is to live into the belief that I don't need money, I need God. God can work through money, but God is the starting point. And that's one thing. When I was a young man, just starting out in ministry, and I was fine just eating

Provision Without Financial Fear

SPEAKER_00 50:19

spaghetti every night. I I was making $75 every two weeks. Like, you know, I could do that, right? But you know, that's a much different thing when you have responsibilities. And and so no income for you know those first nine months or so. I had an opportunity, a few jobs that uh offers out there or are close to offers, and then one with YWAM River City. I was YWAM, Virginia at the time. And the YWAM one, what was beautiful about it is that it, whatever God was in calling me to do, that would be my job, right? The caveat was no money, no YWAMers get a paycheck. People are like, well, how does that work? And the easy answer is like, oh, you do support raising. But God made it very clear that's not what he was inviting me to do. Not to not support raise, but he was, I had seen how support raising worked in so many other ministries, and I knew how to do it, had gone through the trainings, and I felt like God was saying, you don't need money, you need me. You don't need people for their money. I am inviting you to invite them into what I'm doing. If if I put generosity in their heart and they choose to give, so be it. But maybe to put more specifically, one of the things that I was supposed to do as a fundraising person that I knew God was saying not to do was you're supposed to list out all of your expenses and find that number, right? So that then you know how much income you need to cover that. And then you work, work, work to get money to match that number. And you know, so can you give a hundred a month and can give a thousand months? And I'm not saying anything bad about that. Um but I it was very clear God was inviting me to not engage with people as though they were simply a source of money and to be content with if they gave nothing, they still brought value. So I'm just inviting them into the story. What that meant is that I've never in all that time had money come in that matched the number that it needed to match. Since 2018. Since 2018. Let me get a little crazy for you.

SPEAKER_03 52:25

Did you tally you you did end up tallying everything up?

SPEAKER_00 52:28

We there were times that my wife and I did like, because for her, she she could tell her own story. She had a very different journey around navigating the finances, and there were moments like, let's figure out what we need, and yeah, and that's a whole other story. So but there were moments where we knew, and even just functionally, like you see your bank account and you kind of know like we need to we need some more money, right? Yeah. But it got a little crazier because 2019, serving with YWAM, if you want to be on staff, there is a requirement that you would do what's called a discipleship training school, and it's five to six months missions training. Okay. I you it because I'm part of a family, I'm supposed to do it as a family, but that wasn't something my wife signed up for, something my kids signed, they didn't sign up for. We just had a baby, you know. How do you do that with a baby? Like all these things. So it was a hard no. Um, it would also require my wife to leave her job. Well, I come home one day and this had to be God because she went from a hard no to saying, This morning I feel like God was saying we need to do this together. We didn't have the money for it. Yeah, here's how crazy it was. Do you have to pay to do the training? You have to pay to do the training, you have to pay to travel. And the training space that God put on our heart is one they had in all places, Hawaii, somewhere we never would have gone, which we didn't mind the idea of going, but the cost of going there, there's so many stories I could tell in that. But I name it to say even more expenses, but that also meant my wife left her job. And this was 2019. She planned to go back to work when we got back in 2020. We all know what happened in 2020. She was a teacher, mind you. So going back into work, uh, that's not really an option. And so for two years, she didn't have an income. We had no traditional income coming into our home. She does have one now, but she's a teacher at a small Christian school. So it's not, you know, high money-making thing. So here's here's the answer to your question: is one, I'm still in the house. Like we haven't lost our house. We haven't gone without a meal. God has sustained us, but even more, yeah, in addition to us living in Hawaii, somewhere we never thought we would visit. We ended up going there. Costs were covered miraculously, not by any effort of our own, really. But in the number of years since then, over $100,000 worth of work has been done on our house that we really haven't had to pay for. Maybe $80 we paid for all the windows in our 1905 home replaced, no cost to us. New HVAC system, bathroom renovation that we weren't even looking for, but like this grant came in and he looked and he's like, we're gonna replace this bathroom. Oh, okay. Like, and so God has shown himself as provider. Yeah, the thing is, is he does it the way he wants to do it. And one of the other books that I wrote is in that time is called God Won't Provide The Lie We Don't Believe, We Are Believing. And the basis of it is on Sunday, we will sing about and call out about how God is provider, but then on Monday we live as though it's not true. Yeah, yeah, God's provider, but this bill is coming. So I have to do something. Sure, God's calling me to this unconventional ministry lifestyle, but I've got to get a paycheck. I, you know, the you know what I mean, the number of times that there's an invitation from God that we can't, we just can't do it because of money. And and so God has given me the opportunity to really have to live out what it means to actually live as though that theology is true, live as though scripture is true. This doesn't mean money's bad. Jesus Jesus had a money bag, but he also pulled money from a fish. He also made a whole meal for probably more like 15,000 people without money exchanging hands. Right. So that's that's one big one.

SPEAKER_03 56:24

Right? With leftovers.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Oh, with leftovers, yeah. Yeah, and not just leftovers. The irony of it, where it's like the disciples didn't know how it works, and there's 12 basketfuls. All 12 of them had a basket full of leftovers. Like just God's sense of humor. Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, and but I will let me insert a little thing there because this is where we can get tripped up then, because then we can start to expect the excess blessing when we serve and honor God. And this is let me be transparent. This has been my struggle the last couple of years, is finances have changed for a lot of people, particularly in the last year. Things have gotten more expensive in the last year and a half has been the hardest for us. And it's been partly because it's not functioned like it was. It used to be that there was this constant flow of God providing blessings. Well, after the windows, nothing's really happened since then. Like these bonused things, you know, support I was giving has dropped off, expenses have gone up, all these things. And I'm like, God, where's my where's my extra basket full? Like, where is this, you know, where are the extra blessings? And we we begin again starting to want the blessings more than we want God, to want comfort and security more than we want God. And so I've been having to navigate that. So even though I've seen God be provider since

Lament When God Feels Silent

SPEAKER_00 57:49

2018, there's still moments I'm like, God, why aren't you providing? And God has to remind me, what's what's your like proof that I'm not providing here?

SPEAKER_03 58:01

That's a good answer. So how like on on maybe some of those days, you know, you know, we're we're human and we have emotions and and feelings. And those days where you're kind of like, you know, just kind of like this the song from Rita that I was just listening to. She was like, you know, I'm shaking my fist. Like, you know, do you have some of those moments of like, you know, shaking my fist to God?

SPEAKER_00 58:26

Um so I mentioned last year I wrote a lot of books. And what's funny is if you look, one of the themes that's threaded through a lot of my books is me wrestling with hope. One of them's rejecting actually rejecting hope no longer is this year, but there's there's one last year it's called How Long, O Lord. And it's based off of Psalm 13.

SPEAKER_03 58:47

And it's uh song's about too.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

And this is David, man after God's own heart. He saw God work in powerful ways. He felt God work through him to kill a giant. And and he's saying, How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long, you know, uh tears be my food day and night, and sorrow in my heart. And yes, I have had many raw conversations with God. And I'll be transparent again. The past year and a half, God has felt pretty silent. And not absent, but it feels like he's just given me breadcrumbs. And I'm like, I'm I'm tired of breadcrumbs off the floor. I need you to give me a loaf of bread, God. I've haven't I proven myself God, haven't I worked hard enough? Haven't I endured enough? Yeah. And and so absolutely, and that's why I'm so grateful that God and his wisdom included Psalm 13 and others, so many of David's Psalms, so many moments throughout scripture, because if if God was just a man, you only bring the good stuff. You only you basically, your book is saying, Hey, I'm amazing, and everyone who serves me, everything goes great, and all of it's amazing. This is why you should be a part of my team. Man, so much of scripture is not a good sell for Christianity. Not at all. Yeah, you're gonna lose everything, you're gonna die, you know, people are gonna persecute you because of me. Yeah, and right. And so I'm so grateful, so so grateful that scripture shows that it is not just okay, but expected that we will hit these moments where God, I don't know what to think of you, and I don't like what you're doing. In fact, one of the most famous examples is Jesus himself saying if there's any way, can you take this cup from me?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

But then he says, Not my will, but yours be done. At the end of the day, his father was the only important thing, right? And in all of his divine wisdom, Jesus saw how horrible a path forward this would be. Painful, how many people it would not move the needle for, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:05

And yet he said, But not my will, but yours be done. And so that's yes, I have lots of Gethsemane moments, but by the grace of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm still able to say, Not my will, but yours be done. Maybe not as poetically as Jesus.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:24

Sometimes it's a poem coming.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:28

Yeah. Well, and I I just think it's really powerful, you know. Your name is Paul, and Paul, you know, much of you know the Bible was written by Paul in prison. And it sounds like last year, not saying you've been in prison, but you know, a lot of our challenges produce they produce things, they produce keys, they, you know, we are able to extract hope that we couldn't produce on our own because we're so I mean, like there's such a reliance. Not that we don't have that all the time, but it's a different level of reliance, right? So how many books did you write in the last year and a half?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

All right. So I started self-publishing, I want to say like 2023. Okay. And I've written like over 24 since then, but last year was 12 because I felt like whole story to it, felt like God was inviting me to self-publish a book a month. And I didn't know how that could even be possible, but I'm like, all right, God. And it happened, but I come into a month, I'm like, I don't know. And God's like, but I do. And then I have one, everything else is self-published. I have one that is coming out through Morgan James Publishing called Something in the Froth, which is different from all my other books because it's mostly not words, it's images. It's well, actually, here. So it looks like a coffee table book, and you have an image. There we go. Yeah, here we go.

unknown 1:03:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

Where it just looks like coffee froth, right? Yeah. But when you turn the page, you see what I found in the froth. Oh my god. And here's the basis, and this ties back into what we've been talking about, especially because I'm just looking at the time and I've got to go soon. Um, but yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:22

I don't have my I should put my glasses

Creativity That Finds Meaning

SPEAKER_03 1:03:24

on. You keep me on track here. Uh but we're I lose track of time in this, you know, not of this world world.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you. You know, for most people, this might just seem like an entertaining, fun coffee table book, and it is, but there's a deeper purpose to it. So it started back in high school. My friend Scott and I would get bored in class, and so we'd entertain ourselves by playing the doodle game where we'd each have a piece of paper, just do a scribble, and then slide it over to the other. And now you had to look at your friend's scribble and turn it into something. You had to find something where there is absolutely nothing other than scribbles. And this built this understanding of creativity and this muscle within me that it began applying in other areas of my life. And what what I want this book to uh convey to those that engage with it is that uh I believe that we were made in the image of God. God's a creator, which means we are made in the image of a creator, which means creativity is in our DNA. Yes, creativity can be art, it can be music, but creativity is creating something where there was nothing. And uh so often in life we look at situations and we see no value and no purpose. And what if God has given us the ability to look at any moment and to see something where there is nothing? He has put a creativity within us to do that. This book, the way I shaped it, is you normally it would have those two images side by side, so you can look back and forth. That would just draw attention to me and my creativity. It's not about that, right? Because I didn't know what I was gonna draw until I started sketching it. I want people to experience the same thing I did. So they're on opposite, they're back to back on the page, so that you have to see the one image and you have an opportunity to look yourself. Oh, what do I see in it? And then you can flip it. Oh, that's what Paul saw, so that it builds this muscle within readers, that they can then come to understand the creativity within them. And then as they practice it in life, some moment comes up that seems valueless, purposeless, and they can look at it and see something where there is nothing. The Apostle Paul puts it, I've learned the secret to being content in any and every situation, right? In every situation, means that includes the worst case scenario. The Apostle Paul could look at the worst case scenario and use his God-given creativity to find contentment in the midst. And so that's my hope in everything that I do and create is you know, like I share with you other side, I don't care for the spotlight. I don't want to be on display. I don't want to put myself out there sometimes. But if if there is something that God reveals to me that I can then put out in some way that someone else can benefit from it, can experience growth from it, then I want to do that. And if it's a bunch of books that I didn't plan to write, then so be it, God.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:28

Wow. What a what a testimony. You've you've really I love, you know, just one of the things somebody shared with me years ago when I was walking. Through a lot of trials. I'm actually wearing a shirt today that says choose joy because I was reminded of you know James 1, 2, 1, James 1, 2 through 3. Just you know, consider it all joy, all of it, right? All of it when you face trials of many kinds, right? But I love how you know you you're able to see beyond, right? It's it's the unseen. It's I like to remember, you know, see God in the details all day, every day, no matter what is going on. And I think we can we can see literally signs and wonders every day if we're just looking for them, right? He speaks to us in so many different ways. And on those days where, you know, you feel hopeless. And and for me, I'm I'm called to be a hope igniter. And Rita actually was, you know, interviewing somebody on her inner on her podcast, and she said she has kind of this, you know, for me, I'm called to bring hope. You know, you two, a lot of times the very thing that we're called to bring, we're gonna be faced with that opposite, maybe hopelessness. So for her, it's like she brings courage, discouragement will come for her. So thank you for bringing hope here to open locked today. I would love for you to just share first of all, I don't want to miss this part, but where can people find you? How can they touch base with you? And then I'll be sure to add that to the show notes as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:58

Yeah. So as I shared earlier, my heart is to cultivate authentic accessible space to process who God is, who he's made us to be, and what that means for today. And that takes the form of books and podcasts and conversation and sitting on the porch, you know, when it's somebody that's local. And all of that you can find at where did you see God.com. Um, all the books are on Amazon. Something in the froth is uh available for pre-order, uh comes out August 11th, and that'll be wherever you buy books, but the pre-order is currently available. But that's that's what I want what I want people to really know is that this is less about content. It's definitely not about sales. It's more about if if I can create

Where To Find Paul And Blessing

SPEAKER_00 1:08:39

a space in which you feel uh seen, heard, loved, cared for, I want to be willing to create that space. And so if that space uh doesn't seem to exist anywhere, reach out, let me know, kind of like you did. Have you written a book about this? Like I I've I've got a whole list of books, and there may, you may, you know, listener, you may be the one that God uses to tell me what the next book is. Because I want I want everyone to come to understand that they are actually not alone. God is with them. God is with you, listener, but also He has created us to function as a body. So we are not created to be alone, and therefore we aren't.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:14

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on today. Um, I feel like you have so much wisdom to share. We might have to have you back again another time. So, as we wrap up, I'm just gonna share the hope unlocked anchoring verse, which is may the God of hope fill you with all joy, all joy and peace and believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. And that's Romans 15, 13. So, thank you so much for being a brave voice who's setting so many free. I will be back with another episode next week. Thanks, listeners, and we'll be able to do this.