Biblical Rest And The End Of Hustle Culture

Hustle culture tells you to grind harder, but your soul seems to be asking for something else. We’re talking about biblical rest as more than sleep, more than “self-care,” and definitely more than laziness. I’m joined by  Mrs.Darius Thompson, founder of Ruth Marie Co, a faith-rooted business offering Christian coaching, guided journals, and devotional tools for women walking through growth, grief, and transition, and she brings a powerful framework for understanding what God is actually inviting us into.

We break down three kinds of rest found in Scripture: physical Sabbath rest (the command to cease), spiritual rest for the weary soul (Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11), and the eternal rest we enter because of Christ’s finished work. From the Israelites and manna to the warning signs of burnout, we keep coming back to one idea: rest is dependence. If you’ve ever felt like slowing down means you’re falling behind, we name how that mindset can become self-sufficiency, striving, and even a hidden idol of control.

Take a listen and  after this conversation helps you breathe again, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s burned out, and leave a review so more survivors can find real rest!

Please check the show notes  below for Darius's blog , media platforms and website info!

About our guest : Mrs . Darius Thompson 

Darius is the founder of Ruth Marie & Co., a faith-rooted business offering Christian coaching, guided journals, and devotional tools for women navigating seasons of growth, grief, and transition. As a wife and mother of two girls who has walked her own seasons of deep loss, her desire is to help women slow down and notice God at work around them, through them, and in them.

She also leads In This Season, a membership for women in every season of grief, waiting, or growth — with free and paid tiers, including one-on-one coaching for those wanting deeper support.

Find her:

Website: https://ruthmarieandco.com

Blog: https://ayingardens.substack.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/ruthmarieandco?igsh=MThic2gxdHcyanNjNA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ruthmarieandco?_r=1&_t=ZT-98TIqknRsBK

YouTube: https://youtube.com/@ruthmarieandco?si=k8GLLp1aF9LDHi6P

Find Eve

•  TIKTOK- https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdXBhyrM/
• FB-https://www.facebook.com/eve.mcnair
• IG-https://www.instagram.com/mseve_mseve/

How to cope with Trauma
“Talk to a few trusted people, open up about your struggle, seek online support groups, read self-help books or practice small acts of self-care such as meditation, breath work, yoga and exercise can help you regain some feeling of control.”

 Find a therapist

• Get Started (betterhelp.com)
• Online Psychiatric Medication & Mental Telehealth Services - Rx Anxiety, Depression & Insomnia Treatment | Cerebral  

Triumph Over Trauma Scripture:  II Corinthians 2:14 Now thanks be unto to God , who always causes us to Triumph in Christ....

Books I'm reading on my healing journey

• The Body Keeps the Score -  https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143127748/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_i_HXH4RMNC329DT7VPQ5WG
• Trauma & Recovery https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465061710/ref=cm_sw_r_em_api_i_
• It didnt start with you Ihttps://a.co/d/3CZwWao

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Podcast Exists

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey y'all, welcome to Triumph Over Trauma, the podcast. Listen, y'all, I created this podcast because like so many other people, I've had a traumatic past. I didn't always realize how those things affected me negatively and how I even carried them into my adult life. And so I wanted to create a space where other people could come and we could have candid conversations with how do you identify trauma, how do you navigate it, and how you recover from traumatic experiences. If this resonates with you, then join me. I am your host and trauma survivor, Miss Eve McNair. Let's get into it.

Returning To A Season Of Rest

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hey guys, welcome back to Triumph Over Trauma. It has been, I think it's been about a few weeks. Um had a little bit of um catching up to do with summer, vacation, and just um good old-fashioned rest. And believe it or not, that's actually what we're gonna talk about today. Um, rest is so important even to your well-being, to even to be able to continue to do what it is that you do on a daily basis. And so today we're actually gonna be joined by a special guest named Darius. I came across Darius' information on TikTok. I I always say that TikTok seems to be where most of my tribe is, although I have several other social media platforms, but I came across Darius' um page, and she I was literally like taken away, uh, first of all, by some of the content that she shared, the products that she offers, but namely because she was speaking about rest, and it resonated with me so much because I'm actually in a season of rest, although I do, you know, am still functioning and still working and things like that. Um, I often find that the Lord will put me in these areas or in these um seasons where I need to rest or times where I need to rest. And so I'm trying to get my mind um, I guess, acclimated with the fact that rest is okay and it's needed. But Darius is going to talk to that, to she's going to speak to that um with us today. Darius, please tell us a little bit about yourself, uh some of your content, the projects and things that you're working on. What do you want us to know about you before we get started?

SPEAKER_02 2:06

Yes, so my name is Darius Thompson. I'm the founder of Ruth Marie Co. We are a small, faith-rooted business um that offers Christian coaching, guided journals, and devotional tools to help women navigate seasons of growth, grief, and transition. Um, and I just launched as a business earlier this year. Um, and I'll share a little bit of my testimony as we continue throughout this episode, but um, I do have some very deeply rooted personal experiences with grief and rest. Um, so uh we'll share a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Awesome, awesome. Um, I love when our special guests can uh relate and resonate with the topics that we're speaking of. And I try to um focus on individuals who certainly can relate because I feel like you can help people more when you can say, hey, listen, this is where I was, but for the grace of God, digging. You know what I mean? And so uh people people need to be able to relate to one another and to have that connection via their shared experiences. And I feel like that's what life is all about. We are going to dive into a series of questions, um, just because I want to pick your brain on it, especially because of the background you have and some of the things that you have experienced. You mentioned grief, you mentioned seasons of rest and even um launching a new business, all in the midst of all of the other background things you have going on. And so we know that it is important for you to rest spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, um, while being able to manage all those things. So let's just go jump right in and to some of the questions that we spoke about um earlier. Now, of course, the podcast is what I would consider a faith-based podcast. And so I always try to come from a faith-based lens. However, of course, the podcast, my listeners may be people who are not of faith. And so I always try to introduce to them uh the benefit I have found in God and in my relationship with Christ. And so these these uh questions are going to be centered um around that.

Three Kinds Of Biblical Rest

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Um, so our first question, um, Darius, according to scripture, what do you think biblical rest is?

SPEAKER_02 4:22

So biblical rest, as we see through scripture, um, it is actually can be you can find it in three different types of rest, is what I like to call it. So um physical rest is instituted by God through the law of Moses um to honor his work in creation. So we know the creation story is that um God created the heavens and the earth, and then on the seventh day he rested. So uh God instituted this physical rest, the Sabbath, um, to honor his work in creation. So that was instituted for us as humans. Um, but that also points towards something deeper, um, our need for dependence on him. Uh so we see this in Exodus when the Israelites are in um the wilderness, right? And God uh tells them that every day in order to provide them sustenance, food, uh he's going to rain manna down from heaven. And they're instructed that not to collect um more than enough for that particular day, but on the Sabbath, they are not to collect any of the manna. They are to rest. Um so on the sixth day, they're able to collect a little bit more because that um they're they're to rest on the Sabbath on the seventh day. So we see God institute that physical rest in Exodus. Um, and so it's actually called Shabbat, is what uh Jews they call the Sabbath. Uh that means to cease or to stop because God rested in his work um um in creation and it was complete and perfect. We also see like the second type of rest is a spiritual rest. So that's uh the rest that's introduced um by Jesus in Matthew 11, 28, where he says, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest for your souls. Um, he says, Well, take your take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, um, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Uh so this rest is a spiritual rest. Um, so once we lay down our burdens of self-sufficiency and uh striving, striving, um whether that be just striving in our day-to-day lives or striving to achieve uh salvation, um, even um, we are we are to be yoked to Christ, yoked to Christ. Um, but it's a spiritual rest that he's inviting us into. And spiritual rest, I mean that it's it's such a I know that that can sound pretty lofty for someone who who doesn't like study the Bible, but really all it's saying when Jesus is saying to be yoked to me, so the idea of a yoke is like you might have two oxen that are yoked together, right? Um so they're pulling a shared load with one another. Um so this idea of being yoked to Christ basically means that he is going to help carry our burdens. So that means our burdens of sin and in the weight of sin that you and I have to carry because Romans tells us that the wages of death is sin. Um, but Jesus, he carried that and he died on the cross for our sins. So we see that in exchange for our sin that he carries, he gives us this spiritual rest. So we do not have to work towards our our salvation because we are saved by grace through faith. Um and so the third type of rest, I believe, would be the Hebrews for uh rest. It's the eternal rest. And that's the rest that we are able to enter into because of Jesus' finished work on the cross. And our belief is that in him, like I said, we are saved by grace through faith, not through works, not what we're doing in our day-to-day lives, not because we are just good people, because um, we all sin and we all shall fall short of the glory of God, but right we can enter into that eternal rest, which is also a rest that God has always designed for us, right? Since before the creation of the world. Um, but we're able to enter into that rest because of Christ's finished work on the cross.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Wow, wow, absolutely. I

Hustle Culture And Why God Commands Rest

SPEAKER_01 8:22

love how I've never I've never heard it broken down into three parts like that, but it definitely gives much more clarity. Um, because I think that, well, we're we're in a time, and I could say maybe even from a generation, I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my late 40s. But um I think that even in our culture, no matter what age you are or generation from you're from, there is this nuance or maybe even a struggle to fully um accept rest or fully, fully embrace it because we, you know, we're part of that hustle culture. You know, early bird gets them arm, you know, I gotta get out here and get this bag, you know, we're not gonna stop until we get this coin, you know, all of those things. And while God does, um, the Bible says that there's a time to work, but there is also a time to rest and that sometimes we, you know, are kind of unbalanced in our rest. Um, not only in our physical rest, but like you said, our spiritual rest or our our our even mentally, emotionally, we can be unrested within our souls. So I like how you gave scriptural content or context rather regarding rest and what God's design for it was. I will say this when I first read in the Bible where the Lord um instructed the children of Israel to rest, especially around surrounding the idea when they were to work six days or gather their foods for six days, and then on the seventh day rest, I was like, oh wow, I wonder why, you know, why was it, why was it important, so important that they couldn't even gather food, right, um on that day, right? Only on the sixth day could they gather a little bit more so that they would have it for the next day. And so I began to ponder that and think to myself, it was so important to God that his people implement rest in their lives, appreciate rest in their lives, that he would go as far as to say, listen, I'm gonna make sure you have all the provisions you need. I'm gonna make sure that everything that you can even think of, everything that you could ever even need, I will provide, right? And then not only will I provide, I'll give you instruction on how to maintain and sustain that. So when you are rested, you still have everything you need. I think that is so profound. Um, but it is difficult for us because, like I said, we live in a culture where it's like, you know, sometimes people um think let rest means laziness. Sometimes people think rest is just like relaxing and laying in the bed. You know, my favorite scripture is be still and know that I am God. And for me, that speaks rest to my emotions, to my anxiety, or to my, even to my eagerness to do things in my own strength. Right? Because I will say that I'm somewhat of um, I'm somewhat independent. I feel like God has to keep kind of rolling me in back in, like, you're gonna let me do it or not, you know, you're gonna let me work on it or not. And so sometimes even that scripture be still a know that I'm God helps me to know that I can rest and I can trust that he has everything all under control. And so I like the way that you broke that down and that the way that you provided that. Um, you kind of answered this already, but I want to just take a little bit of a deeper dive. Why do you think that God commanded his people to rest? And um, what do you think that that reveals about God's character and his design for us?

SPEAKER_02 11:47

So uh I did say that it it's to cultivate this level of depend of uh dependency on him, right? So it is to cultivate dependence on him. But if we look at it a little bit deeper, um if we look at Eve, so um in Adam and Eve in Eden during the fall, we see that Eve, she sees the fruit and it's a delight to the eyes, and she says that it has a desire to make one wise, right? So she, of course, was tempted by the serpent, but it's the thought of being of being wise, you know, and having wisdom apart from God. She says it has the desire to make one wise. So to me, that speaks that she kind of was tempted by this idea of being self-sufficient, not having to go to God for the knowledge, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:31

For the wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

So that temptation is ultimately what makes her take of the fruit and eat it. So, and we see that that temptation was kind of present in her, in her, of course, through the external temptation of the serpent, but it's her decision to ultimately partake. And that even is even there prior to the fall, so prior to sin entering into this world. So, what I'm thinking when I when I read that, when I read that part of scripture, is that there is a curiosity, a natural curiosity of what would it be like to be self-sufficient, right? To not have to depend on God. So I think that uh God instituting this idea of of the Sabbath or Shabbat for the Israelites is so that each day it's cultivating dependency because you you have to know God is gonna rain manna down the next day and then the next day, and then the next day, because I can't save it overnight. It's gonna turn into maggots, right? Right. And so you have to trust that he's gonna provide it every single day, and then you have to trust that on the sixth day, it's not gonna turn into maggots, it's not gonna spoil, it's gonna be enough to sustain me on the seventh day, on the Sabbath. So I think just again, God knowing us because he is our creator and he has, you know, the instruction manual or the other creator's manual. So he knows that like us in our hearts, he knows each and every one of us very deeply that we have this inclination as human beings to I I don't want to say have a desire to be self-sufficient, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

I love that you spoke to that. First of all, my name is Eve. So anytime I talk about Eve in the Bible, I'll be like, Lord, it's me. Now, I when I was younger, I was like, Mom, why would you name me that? Like believe, believe it or not, my first name is Arabic. My Eve is my middle name. Everybody in my in my family calls me Eve. My first name is Hawa, right? Which means it's Arabic for life or mother or Eve. And so everybody in my family calls me Eve, right? Um, Hawa meaning like sweet. But every time I hear the name Eve, I'm like, oh boy, they're talking about me. But it just so happens in this particular reference, you are talking about me. I like how you said um two things. I like how you said that um even before the fall, there was this inclination in man to be self-sufficient, right? And immediately when you said that, I thought about the scripture in James that talk about nobody that talks about that God doesn't tempt anybody, but that we are drawn away by and enticed by our own lust, by our own desires that are inside of us. And so with Eve being tempted to eat of this fruit, because, like you said, one of the reasons why was because to her, oh, this is make gonna make me wise. And maybe if I have my own wisdom, right? If maybe if I can maintain, sustain, or source my own wisdom, I won't have to go to the source, right? Um, God will just be a resource, but I will be able to uh you know hone on this with this wisdom myself. And I never, I never thought about it like that. Um, I think I focused on on that particular scripture, the lust of the flesh, the pride of the pride of um life, but just how beautiful she thought it was and that she it was pleasing to her to, you know, to be edible and things like that. But I never thought about the fact that one of the reasons why was because, you know, she thought, oh, this is gonna make me wise, right? And how many times do we make certain decisions, decide not to pray, decide, oh, we'll we'll handle, we'll talk to Guy about it later, or we'll get a scripture about it later because we think, well, I know the answer already, or I know how this is gonna pan out, right? And it's just that little that can make us eat of the fruit, right? Uh eat of the fruit of pride, or eat of the fruit of self-sufficiency. So I like the way that you brought that down. I'm gonna be chewing on that for a while today. I'm gonna be chewing on that for a while because baby, this I participate I personally think that what one of the reasons why God has me in the season of rest is because rest for me is being translated into dependence on God, and I have to come out of independence in order to fully embrace dependence on God.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah. Wow.

Abiding In Christ Like A Garden

SPEAKER_00 16:50

What does it practically mean to rest?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Oh wow, that's the next question. What does it practically practically mean to rest through dependence on God? We just kind of spoke to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah, well, I mean, even but practically, what does it practically mean to rest through dependence? I think a big part of my journey and what I've learned um is it's through abiding. Uh, so I had a season where I was um sick um nonstop. I was actually pregnant with my second girl. I was sick um just month after month, I was coming down with something the flu, COVID, um, man, uh stomach viruses, uh upper respiratory. I was literally sick month over month. And on top of that, I had, of course, the morning sickness. Um and shortly after that, I actually found out about a life-threatening pregnancy complication. And uh thank God we are both here today. But in that season, I literally God sat me down, He sat me down and made me rest. I mean, Psalms 23 100%. He made me lie down in green pastures. He did. Um, but in that season, um, so I'm also a gardener, I love to garden. Okay, and that season I could not garden, I couldn't go out and garden. But my garden did flourish, it flourished without me having to do anything to it. And so, what I think God was teaching me in that season is the importance of abiding. Um, so John 15 uh talks about Jesus being the true vine, and and he says, For I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, I am I in him produce much fruit. Right. So I think that abiding is how you practically depend on God. And it says, Whoever abides in me produces much fruit, for apart from you can do nothing, right? So God produces a sanctification, not our works, not ourselves, nothing that we can do is going to help us produce fruit, right? But it's it's the Lord. And I think that he was showing me that he's the one who sustains me, he's the one who's gonna give me the nourishment. Uh my aunt also gardened, so we talk about this often. And um, if you think really, really practically about how gardening works, like if you have whether it's a melon vine or if you have um like a tomato plant, for example, you have the vine, the vine that comes up out of the soil. That vine is sucking up all of the water and the nutrients from the soil, and it's literally providing the nutrients to the branches. And the branches are what you know, flower, and the flowers then are pollinated and produce that fruit. And if you are stubborn from that, if you come along and you prune too much and you accidentally snip a branch from off of that vine, that fruit is gonna wither away. That branch is no longer gonna be able to produce fruit. So when God was introducing to me the concept of abiding, is when I truly learned that man, it it is through abiding that I am dependent on him. Because until I get to the point where I'm able to just rest and abide in him, I will not be, I will not be uh uh living in that dependence, right? I'm still living in in an in some level of self-sufficiency or independence.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Wow. So abiding in God um helps us become dependent on God, which leads to rest. Um and that is something that we have to continu, I feel like we have to continually continually take into consideration, um, especially depending on our backgrounds, how we grew up. You know, some of us come from backgrounds where, you know, once we reach a certain age, you know, our caregivers are like, you're on your own now, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. You go, you know, or and then sometimes if you're a first daughter, or obviously if you're female, you know, just all of these different cultural nuances sometimes that kind of put us in the driver's seat where God is like, let me drive, let me drive. When you come into the kingdom of God, he's like, No, there are things that I take care of. And so we have to constantly learn how to rest, how to abide, and how to be dependent on God. I am studying right now, every year I try to read the Bible from cover to cover. And it's amazing to me, no matter how often I find myself in the scriptures, that the scriptures kind of like reopen themselves and teach me a new lesson every time. But I just finished studying the children of Israel in their Exodus, and even now I'm in the book of I think I just crossed over into judges. But I'm paying attention to their behavior and to their patterns. And I used to be like, oh my God, they're so hard-headed. Like they they just keep doing whatever they want. Like, God tell them one thing they do the complete opposite. You know, and he and God will call them stiff necked and rebellious. And I'm like, God, look, I'm glad I'm not like this. And the Lord would be like, You are, you know. But you know, you I one thing that I've seen and noticed in their behavior is that they're There's this tug-of-war with their need to be dependent independent, right? They want God, they want to do they want, you know, the things of God, but depending on God and abiding in God becomes difficult for them, right? Um, and I don't know if that's like a trauma response. You know, the podcast obviously focuses on on traumas and how we can navigate, identify, and recover from those experiences, but I think about where they came from. I think about the fact that they were in slavery for generations, for years and years

Trauma, Control, And Hyperindependence

SPEAKER_01 22:30

and years. And I think to myself, God, is there hyperindependence? That's which is going to lead me to my next question. Is there hyperindependence as a result of the trauma they've experienced? Um, and if so, many people, you know, have experienced trauma. And I think to myself, can hyperindependence keep us from experiencing God's rest, his provision, and ultimately ultimately the life that he intended for us, you know, um, is that kind of sort of a blockade, if you will? You know, the the Bible talks about us um endeavoring to enter that rest. And so maybe I guess my question and my answer is is trauma healing necessary, first of all, is trauma healing necessary in order for you for one who has experienced trauma to enter into um rest through dependence by abiding in God? And how can somebody who has experienced trauma do that?

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yeah, so I I love that you connected that uh to the children of Israel, right? I I've never thought of it from that perspective that they endured so much trauma that that was sort of um putting an emphasis on this hyper like independency that they that they had, right? Um, especially in the wilderness. And I think that uh a part of them building being in the wilderness for so long was God trying to draw that out of them and heal them of that, right? Right. I think I think you're spot on. Um, so I've been studying this that uh in Dr. Anita Phillips actually she talks about um pain and how uh pain, whether whether it be from trauma or grief or anything of that nature, how pain can produce these conditions that sort of cloud our vision and our understanding of truth.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

So it makes it it makes it a little bit more difficult to see to see God, you know, when we're in the middle of pain. So 100% I believe that you have to part of depending on God or learning to depend on God through abiding is that um that healing does have to occur, but sometimes God heals you in that journey as well, in that hill in that world. Um, like with the children of Israel, right? Um I do think that the the hyperindependence probably stems from uh lack of trust due to the pain that we've endured uh through trauma and through uh grief, um, almost as a defense mechanism to like produce this uh like sphere of control, you know, like what is within my control is gonna bring me a sense of comfort, right? Um, and and that comfort though, ultimately should be coming from the source, which is God. Um, so uh, and this is again something else that God was working out in me in a very difficult season, is that I was learning I had an idol of control, right? I wanted to build this sphere of control around myself because I I can do it. I'm self-sufficient, I'm a strong, independent woman, you know, the hustle culture in that mindset, like we were talking about a little bit earlier, and just moving through life without ever consulting God, without ever bringing any of it to God, without ever even considering well, what does God, you know, think about this or you know, bringing any of it to my father in prayer, right? I'm just going, going. Right. And, you know, I think that that hyperindependence very well did stem from like some traumatic um experiences that I had in my life. And um again to establish that sense of of comfort for me. Um and it God definitely worked worked that out of me. And I can I can share a little bit more more details here. So my mom and my grandmother, uh, they both uh fell ill um with different illnesses, but at uh at the same time, around the same time, within a couple months of each other. Um, and I was one of their caregivers, but I was also eight months into become into becoming a mother for the first time myself, right? Wow. So it was a very um trying season for me. I I endured a lot of trauma in that season, um, being a caregiver of of multiple generations at that point, and um just still dealing with postpartum depression myself, postpartum anxiety. Uh, but when they both passed, again, that was that season that I went through. It was it was excruciating um of of just trying to be obedient to God, trying to remain obedient to God, but feeling just such heavy pain, right? And in response to that, I naturally went into overdrive mode. Like, I'm just gonna keep going. Um like and I think a lot of a lot of us we do that when we are in the middle of something that is very painful, we just try to push through, power through it, right? Um and we power through it almost so that we don't have to feel, you know, we don't have to room and avoidance. Avoidance, yes, distraction for sure. And that is what I found myself living in, just this state of just hyper independence, apart from God, this state of striving and just on the go non-stop. And ultimately, I think it was distraction that I didn't want to even uh take the time to slow down and allow my feelings to really catch up to me, right? Um but one morning I heard from the Holy Spirit specifically slow down, you know. I I will never forget I was rushing, getting ready for work, getting my girl dressed to get her off to school, and she was having, you know, like a more a bad morning, and it was it was so it was so hard. And in the moment I'm like trying to rush her, and then I just heard just a calm spirit just sort of envelop me. It's it's weird to say you hear that, but I I I I heard it right and um slow down, and I know that that didn't come for me because I've never even considered slowing down ever in my life. And that was when I realized, no, God is trying to slow me down, right? He's trying to get me to really um stop living in this state of hyper independence, um, and to recognize, and it's it's painful, it is very painful when you're in it to to slow down and and have to address everything that you're feeling. Um all of the the sorrow, the the grief, the just the it can be it can be overwhelming. And um, I think that God wants us though to to get there, not because he wants us to stay there, but because he wants to meet us in it. And in meeting us in it, he he heals us, right? And so he does the healing work for us. Um, just like he, I mean, and that was a tough season for the children of Israel in the wilderness, right? But he didn't leave them, yeah. He stayed with them and he he healed them, you know, and he did discipline them as well. But um, we we do see that, we do see that. Um but ultimately, yeah, that I think that that's that's the Lord's goal, is is to meet us where we are and to heal us, um and to get us to the point where we're able to recognize that he's the sovereign one, not us. Right. Right. We we don't have any control over our lives, right? We we have a falsely perceived um falsely perceived image of control, but it is really the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

It really is, right? Um, I think it's very um interesting that like you said, sometimes God I don't I don't even want to use the word allow. We know that God is sovereign and that there are certain things that are allowed, but I I also want to kind of give space to the fact that because we live life, right? Like we are subject to go through life, right? Um, the Bible says that in this world you will have trouble, right? But take heart because I've overcome the world. And I think sometimes we'd be like, oh God, you did this, it was your fault, you loved this. And although it was permitted, um, I don't always look at it as if it was something that you know that God um like forcefully made happen just to, you know, just to harm me. But there are things that we will obviously go through. And when you said that you realize in the midst of your grief, in the midst of your own transition as a mother, you know, different things that go on with that, you know, getting getting your body back to healthy or just reclaiming your body, post-traumatic, post-traumatic postpartum, um, all of the things that you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

Yeah, post-traumatic because sometimes it's a little traumatic, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:22

But all of the things that enhouse that, I love that the fact that you acknowledge that there were some instances where you were distracted or willfully distracted, maybe, and um, or willfully avoidant because of those issues. But one of the things that you said is that even in the midst of all of that, God wants to meet us there, right? And for some people, it's hard to stop running, to stop being distracted, to stop avoiding, because it's who's gonna catch the bottom when it falls out? Who's gonna deal with all of this, right? I remember one time I had a conversation with my therapist, and she says, Um, have you been crying lately? And I was like, a little bit, you know. And she's like, I don't think you cry enough. And I'm like, I'm gonna cry baby. Like, I'm I'll be ugly crying. What do you mean? And she's like, I feel like you don't fully lament what you experience or what you go through sometimes. You just kind of shed a tear and you just keep on going. And I was like, Oh, wow. And then I had to get along with God in prayer, and I was like, well, why do I kind of like have my moment? Then it's just like, okay, you know, everything you you gotta keep on going. And it was because I was afraid of the to face the brokenness. I was afraid that the brokenness would be overwhelming for me, right? And although that may have been true, maybe it would have been, maybe this would have been like the most severe crash ever, right? But like you said, God would have been with me even in that, right? Um He would have been there, he would have let me ugly cry, he would have let me hyperventilate, but he would have been there with me. And I think for a lot of people, um, they don't understand that trusting God and depending on God or resting in God are closely related, right? Because how can you rest? How can you rest with someone that you don't trust? Can you imagine laying next to somebody and you're like, I don't know if you don't do something to me, I don't know. That's how we sometimes entreat God, right? You're like, okay, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna cry a little bit, but I'm not gonna be in here like showing out, you know what I'm saying? And so that leads me to my next question, which is kind of again, we're kind of overlapping some of our answers, but just for the sake of somebody who may not understand how rest and trust are related, do you think it's possible that someone can truly experience one without the other?

Why Trust And Rest Are Linked

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Like, can you experience rest without trust?

SPEAKER_02 33:43

No, not at all. I don't I don't think you can. Um, so resting in God is surrendering to him. It's it's allowing him to lead, it's allowing him to um, you know, show you the way that you're supposed to go. Um, it's allowing him to even just make you lay down sometimes, right? Thank you, right. I know, man, you even if you don't want to rest yourself, God will God will sit you down now. He will sit down. Thank you right.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

So to me, it's releasing to him again that falsely perceived like sphere of control that I was burnt to it's it's releasing all of that to him. So that that is surrender. Um, so Jesus says, not not my will but yours, right? Um so surrendering what we want and and our will, right, for whatever God's will is, that is resting in him. Um a heart that can't surrender to God and his promises doesn't trust him because it's inherently saying, Hey, I know you're good. Yeah. And you know, I know you're saying you'll come by and help me out if I if I really needed you, but um, you know, I'll take care of it myself, you know. Right, right. It's and and that's you know, it's kind of a funny thing to to feel or or think about God because if you believe that he is good and that he is sovereign and he's omnipotent and omnipresent, you know, yeah, then you'd believe that he could keep his promises that he would, right? Um so why would you then allow why would you allow yourself to depend on your own limited human capacity if God is almighty, if he it he is all of these things, right? Um so I think it's inextricably linked to trust. Um yeah, and like biblically, I see we I think we see this show up a few times. So, like with Sarah and Abraham, for example, um, when God promises them that they're gonna have a child, and Sarah's like, I'm too old, right? And she gets impatient waiting on that child. And what does she do? She gives her servant Hagar to her husband to to lie with him, and then you know, um, they then have their child, Ishmael. And then in that, what did Sarah do? She became so impatient, she wasn't trusting God and his promises. She acted in her in her own strength, her own knowledge, very limited, you know, human capacity, right? And what did that do? That created, you know, a line of people that are gonna be forever odds with her own people, right? If you look at the stories of what happened with Ishmael and with Isaac. So we see that there. We we see that also again, um, related back to the children of Israel when um they are waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai, you know, with the with the commandments, um to give them further instruction on what they're to do. They're like, he's taking a little bit too long here. Let's build us to go to the worship or something else, you know. Exactly. Start to lean on other things. So I think ultimately, um, when we don't trust God and his promises, his sovereignty, and his will, then we do we we we do kind of renege on that trust. We or or that that rest, I'm sorry. We we kind of say, I'm not gonna rest in you, I'm gonna rest in in what I know to be true, right? Wow, Proverbs 3.5 says, uh, trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding. And so those examples of people in the Bible, they were leaning on their own understanding, right? So they weren't trusting in God. So, you know, they did not experience that rest. They created situations for themselves where, I mean, like I said, if you look after after Sarah um acted in her own will, it created a situation for her and her bloodline where they will be forever at odds and at war with other people in this world and with the Israelites, they were punished, they were disciplined from from the Lord, you know, because of their idolatry, because they were impatient and and not wanting to to rest in him. And I know that that's a difficult thing to really ponder, right? The idea that if we're not trusting in God and we continue to willfully lean on our own understanding, that we will fall into idolatry. We we may fall into you know other sin. And the consequence of consequences of the of that sin may, you know, who knows what that what that would entail. But right, um, on the flip side of that, though, we do see countless biblical examples of um people who do have that undeniable trust in God and they are able to rest in him, right? We see um David, for example, after he sins with Bathsheba. Um God does you know present his consequences that you know someone from his house will rise up against him, and and so his son Absalom uh rise up, and David is on the run from Absalom, and we see that David actually um encounters a situation where he is praying to God, lamenting to God, right? And God allows him to rest, and it says, and I I wish I knew the address to this. I always say I know scripture, but sometimes I forget the address. Yeah, it's in the same thing, yeah. But we see in scripture, it literally says that David rests and then he he awakens, and so God protects him over the course of that night as he's over on the run, literally on the run for his life. Um, and someone who's is on their way to literally kill him. But David has a peaceful, a sound rest because he is trusting in the Lord that the Lord is going to deliver him. He laments to the Lord, like, Lord, protect me, save me, deliver me from my enemies, right? We see that in the Psalms. And he he's able to fall asleep and wake up the next day being completely protected by God. So, I mean, I think that the two are inextricably connected. When you see someone who is striving out of their own strength, out of their own understanding, who refuse to rest in the Lord, we see where that can go in one direction. And then we see someone who may also be in a difficult situation because of sin that they have, you know, committed, but they instead put their entire trust in God after that. And, you know, we see that God delivered deliver them. So I think um it's it's inextricably connected. And I hope that I I answer that question. No, no, no. That was no, let's see.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

No, but I love how you gave an example of how you know sometimes our own sins lead us to kind of want to um lead us to impatience, which then leads us to more sin, which then leads to idolatry. But then I love how even on a flip script, we can come to the point where we realize, you know what, God, this is as a result of my own doing. And I repent from that, and yet I do ask you for your help and then learn how to trust in you, like you, like you said, David did. Even though he recognized the fact that his, you know, the fact that he fell with Bathsheba and then this this punishment, as you will, or judgment um that God was allowing was as a result of discipline for what he had done. He's still, even in discipline, you can rest, right? And that is very difficult. That even first of all, like you said, to have the conversations about how it can lead to idolatry because we feel like because I'm not creating a physical object like the golden calf, or because I don't have, you know, you know, a picture of Jesus in my room and I'm bound not bound down to it, that I don't necessarily have idols. But sometimes we make idols out of our own selves, right? We make idols out of self-sufficiency, we make out of idols out of um independence, and we don't even know it, right? One of the things that I can say that God is teaching me about myself in this season of my life where I feel like, first of all, he's definitely teaching me dependence because I didn't even realize that I was as as ambitious as I am, right? And I kind of kind of I think I was proud of my ambition because I'm like, I can do this, I can I can get it together, like you know I'm saying, you know, if if if some if this person's not here or I don't have this, like I can go get it, I can do it myself. And where I was once proud of or needed to be self-sufficient, coming over into this new level of relationship or expanded level of relationship with God and realizing self-sufficiency is not required here, right? It's not necessarily a badge of honor here, it's not something that you're gonna get points for here. In fact, the way up is the way down, right? Like if you want to go up, if you want to increase, if you want to get closer to God, if you want to ultimately learn how to rest and learn how um to have his blessings on your life, it's really by being dependent on him, right? Um going back to what you said about your garden, you said that um while you were in that season of rest and having to take care of your body and make sure you were, you know, maintaining and sustaining your health. You said that God um still took care of your garden, right? That he still um made sure everything was aligned with the season, things still, I'm assuming, grew still grew as they were supposed to. And sometimes we take um the pruning chairs and we think, Oh, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, dig this up, I'm gonna do this. And where God is like, I am the ultimate gardener, I am the ultimate. I in fact, so much so that I I gave scripture pointing to the fact that, you know, I'm the vine, right? You stay rooted and grounded in me. And and even other scriptures, like um in Psalms where it talks about that person that stays in the word of God is is rooted, right? It's like a tree planted by the rivers of of water. And so I love how God gives us not only um in our everyday lives, but even going back to the word of God, how he gives us those um practicals, um, I guess I would say metaphors, images metaphors, images of things. How they relate to us in our everyday life. So we can see, like, okay, this is real. This is practical. This is, you know, I love that it that Jesus often, even when he walked the earth, spoke, spoke in metaphors, because we always need something to be able to relate it back to. If this is real, show me how it applies to me. And so I think that's awesome. I love how you expanded on that. That was great. Well, our next couple of questions you kind of answered about what are some scientists someone is driving instead of trusting in God. And we see that. Um, you know, um, constantly, you know, running around, constantly making all your decisions, leaning to your own understanding, fumbling, making the same mistake. I've noticed within my own life, some cycles, some cycles of independence. I'm like, oh man, I did it again. You know, but that's I wasn't I wasn't resting in God, you know what I mean? I wasn't, I was striving.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Yeah, and also also I will add to that if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling a sense of exhaustion. Right. If you're if you're feeling like, oh man, you know, overwhelmed even sometimes, it's a it's a sign that you you could be striving instead of resting. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Yeah, certainly. Um,

Practices That Build Dependence On God

SPEAKER_01 45:09

what's bear what are some spiritual practices that help us cultivate a life of dependence rather than self-reliance? I know you spoke to that as far as like um you know relying in God and and and abiding in God, but what do you think we can do in it in our daily life to adhere to that?

SPEAKER_02 45:28

So I've I've actually spent quite a lot of time on this because um 1 John 2.17 um says that uh the world is passing away, and along with it, so is everything that we crave. Um some translations say all of our achievements. So I do like that, that translation um or that version. But it does say um he who does the will of God abides forever. So that's that call back to abiding, right? So whoever does the will of God remains in him forever. Um that they experience that eternal rest that we were speaking about earlier. And so when we look at, well, what is the will of God? Um, so 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18 says uh to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in every circumstance, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. So scripture is pointing us like clear as day what you need to do. You need to rejoice always. So that's to me, what that says is that you're always looking for the goodness of God, right? So a heart that is always joyful is fixed on God's goodness, not fixed on their circumstances, because our circumstances create happiness, but not true joy, right? Um, but I always say like happiness is a result of our happenstance.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

But rather joy comes from the Lord, right? So a heart that is always joyful is fixed on the goodness of God. And Philippians um says, you know, whatever, of course, is is pure, whatever is good, whatever is praiseworthy, whatever is excellent. So a mind and a heart that is always focused on those things is a heart that's joyful. Um, a heart that prays without ceasing or is constant, is in prayer is always connected to God, is is always abiding in him, right? Because I mean, and I'm not talking about just okay, I'm gonna say a formal prayer um in the morning in my quiet time. I'm gonna say grace at lunch, and then I'm gonna pray when I get home, right? I'm talking about all day consistent, constant conversation with the Lord. And sometimes we think that we have to come to him all buttoned up with everything like perfect, right? And know exactly what to say. But really and truly, God says, Come as you are, right? And to still want us to be in relationship with him. So if you think about any relationship that you've been in, like if you if you first start dating someone and you're you're kind of, you know, you're feeling them, and you you almost don't want to stop talking to that person, right? You probably want to talk to them a little bit all day, you know, and that's that puppy dog love, right? Well, right, that is where you develop that intimacy. And God wants that in relationship with us, He wants us to feel in our hearts, man, I want to share this with the Lord, right? And so, man, I want to share this with my with my boyfriend, with my husband, with my, you know, he wants us to feel that way about him. So a heart that is constantly in prayer, just conversational relationship with God, I think is a heart that's you know abiding in him, is producing that intimate relationship with him. And then um a heart that is always thankful is a humble heart, yeah, right, because it's a heart that recognizes its insufficiency. So um I I actually wrote about this. I also have a blog series called I and Gardens. Um, and you can find it on stack, but I I wrote about this recently that um a thankful heart does cost us, it does. Um to be thankful in all circumstances, it requires us to put down our egos, right? And in in seasons where life isn't going the way that we want it to go, when um, you know, we might be in a season of of grief or a season of transition. But if life isn't going the way that we want it to go, to still find gratitude in that, it's hard. It would be hard for anybody to do, but what it requires is is humility, and that humility um is also what keeps us yoked and connected to Christ because he says, Um, and again, I'm relating this back to Matthew 11, um, where he says, Um, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble at heart. So um I want to touch on this a little bit also. A yoke, I know I mentioned like the the oxen pulling being pulled um together, but a yoke in um Jesus' day was also seen as like a rabbi's teachings. So being yoked to a rabbi or taking their yoke upon you would be seen as following a rabbi's teachings closely. So when Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, that's basically saying, No, follow me, follow me. I'm the way. For I am gentle and humble at heart. So he's telling you, my way is that I'm gentle and I'm humble, and I want you to follow that. So a heart that is is always humble and and always faithful in every circumstance is a heart that's humble, and that is a heart that's going to be um, I mean, following the will of God, right? Yeah. Um, but I think practically, if if we're looking at like some spiritual disciplines, obviously, you know, um, reading the word, which is our daily bread, you know, um, and or fasting, replacing like literal food and water, which is our physical sustenance with God, that can help us to cultivate a more dependent relationship um with the Lord and cultivate a life of dependency. Um, journaling for me has been essential, especially in my grief and healing journey. Um, it's a practice that I've picked up to return to God daily throughout my day and to keep my heart postured towards him. So all of these uh practices are, I think, are just practical ways, again, to keep your heart postured towards the Lord and um allow him to to really be Lord of your life. And um, because everything in this world is temporary. That's why I like uh that translation or that version of first John uh 2.17 that says um this world of passing away and along with it our achievements. Because I mean, oftentimes we are striving to achieve something in this life, that's our ambition, right? And it yeah, and nothing is inherently wrong with being ambitious, but if it's what matters is your heart posture, right? Why are you um striving towards this achievement? And sometimes we're striving towards this achievement for our own personal um claim or our own personal like fame, right? As opposed to uh like doing it for the glory of God. And um it may not always be intentional. Sometimes it might be buried a little bit underneath in our hearts, but that's why I think that it's important to remain humble, um, to always be thankful, to always be in prayer and to always be joyful, because a heart that is all of those things will keep you connected to God and keep you in his will, um, and not get so caught up in the hustle culture of this world and everybody convincing you, okay, once you get to one um point in your life, well, what's the next step for you? Right. That hustle culture and that that selfish ambition that keeps us like in overdrive for sure.

SPEAKER_01 52:36

Yeah. I love that the version you read from spoke to the fact that our even our accomplishments are passing away. Uh, for someone's ego, even my included mind, that's always that's hurtful. Like, man, what do you mean? You know, if I go ahead and get a master's, you know, that's passing away, even though we know that God can be glorified in the things that He calls us to in those um seasons of our lives. Ultimately, like when we get to heaven, he's not going to check to see our GPA, he's not gonna check to see, you know, what college we graduated from. He's not gonna check that. And it doesn't mean that those things are to be considered as not while we're here on earth because we do want to occupy. Um, I'm an avid um advocate for learning and reading and things of that nature, but it's like you said, it's about your heart posture and making sure that you don't you're not making idols out of those things, which ultimately is going to cause even more distress, right?

Surrender, Obedience, And Daily Dying

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Or distrust in the Lord. Um, I am learning. I have been saved for quite a while, a few decades. I've been in my church for over 25 years, and I am a licensed and ordained minister. I can say though, I am learning in this season of my life. Um, I'm learning what true dependence is, I'm learning with true stillness is, and I'm learning how obedience is related to that. I'm learning that you can't really say that you love or trust someone that you don't obey, right? That you don't listen to, that you don't take in consideration. Um and I'm learning all the little ways that my trauma uh affected mine, had developed all of these coping mechanisms um to kind of get through life and how they were even so much so affecting my relationship with Christ, you know, on this side, right? And um some of sometimes you don't think about those things. You're like, you know, this is just how I am, this is my personality. But you know, sometimes we have trauma personalities that we need to shed, right? I like I love the scripture that says be renewed by the transforming of your be transformed by the renewing of your mind because it goes to show you that um your mind has to constantly be renewed, right? It's when the when the Bible says be renewed, it's not like just happens one time, it's a constant renewal, it's a constant change, it constantly transforming. That's what I'm learning from the children of Israel because they were starting to get on my nerves a little bit. I'm like, yo, y'all don't listen. I'm like, y'all don't be listening, and like, you know, and I understand that um and probably reading from a Western culture, you know, I understand that it's probably different in different parts of the world of how they perceive and receive that, um, those scriptures. But I'm just thinking now, I'm I feel like I'm finally understanding some of the nuances that the Lord was going through with these people. And then I'm relating it back to myself, like, oh Lord, you were going through that with me, you know. Um, but it just gives me a greater understanding as to how dependent we have to become, you know, and how much trust we really need to put in the Lord, and how much trust we really have versus what we want to have, right? We always say, I trust in the Lord, you know, you know, I know he's gonna make a way, but sometimes, we spoke to this a little bit earlier. Sometimes we know that God is able, we know that he's capable. We don't know if that ability can be applied to us because maybe unworthiness, maybe feelings of doubt, insecurity. And so I think there is a connection there too, with um knowing that God is capable, because we know we learn we've learned about his character. Big mama and him always says if you try Jesus, you know, he'll come through. He may not come through when you want to, but he's gonna come through. And so we know a little bit about his character, but we don't know how his character applies to ourselves personally. So that's why that personal relationship is important, right? And sometimes when I'm unsure if God will answer in this particular way or meet this particular need, I say to him, God, you did it this way for this person, right? I saw you do it for them. I heard that you, I've read that you did it for them. You you told me in your word that you did it this way for them. How are you gonna do it for me? Because I may be missing the opportunity to rest in God because I'm looking for the way he did it for them, for that same way to be done for me, right? Maybe for that person, he gave them 10,000 shekels. Maybe for me, he's going to give me resources in another way, right? Maybe he's gonna have somebody knock on my door and say, hey, listen, you know, we bought too many extra um candy goods. Here you go. Um, I don't even eat candy goods, but I'm just, you know, using it as a metaphor. But sometimes I think that's where we're missing, God, is that we're looking for it to happen the same exact way. I'm I'm looking for the results to be the same. I'm looking for provision. I'm looking for an answer. I'm looking for direction. I'm looking for strength. I'm looking for healing, but I don't know which way you want to do it, right? Um, I don't know which way you're gonna do it, right? I I think about the man that uh he told the prophet told to go wash in the pool. Wait a minute, I might be mixing up stories. There was a story in the Bible where he says, go wash in the pool of Siloam. Do you remember that story?

SPEAKER_02 57:49

Yes, I do. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Okay. And there's another story that says uh the prophet told the um servant to go wash in the Jordan, and the Jordan River was filthy, and he's like, Why would he go come here wash in Jordan? Why he just couldn't come to the door and just speak a healing over me? And sometimes that's what we want. We want God to prophesy to us. We want somebody, you know, this this abstract type of miracle, and it's not that God is not able, it's not that he can't do it, but is that the way that he has designed the miracle for your life, right? Because what I realize and am realizing is that it is personal, it really is personal. And if and and if I can appreciate how personal it is, because that means that it's tailor-made, that the way you're gonna bless me, that the way you're gonna bring me out, that the way you're gonna heal me, that the way you're gonna answer me is tailor-made to my personality, to my weaknesses, my strengths, you know. I can take to me that took even more the courage encouragement to rest and to depend on God because I'm like, oh, I wanna, I can't wait to see how he's gonna do this. I can't wait to see what miracles are gonna come out of this, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:58

100%. And when you say tailor-made, I mean that just reminds me of um Psalm 139 where he says he knit you in in your mother's womb, right? If someone knits you, like that is handmade, that is handcrafted, it is unique. You know, you knit one thing. I mean, you cannot knit the same thing every time you knit it, right? It's gonna always be a little a little unique. He knows us in and out, so it is going to be tailor-made to you. That's he he meets you in whatever season you're in, and in yes, 100%. And um man, that was so good.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

That's good, right? I'm not gonna point on that a little bit. I will be put on that a little bit later. Um, we kind of spoke to this again as well, but um what role do you think that surrender and obedience play in experiencing God's rest?

SPEAKER_02 59:48

Um, so I would say a little bit further down in John 15, it talks about the heart um that abides in the Lord is a heart that's obedient. And I I I wish I had the scripture in front of me to like quote it exactly. But I know that it's um uh towards the end of John 15. And I think it's recognizing that our striving doesn't make us more holy or more sanctified or more obedient. It's not again of our own doing or of or or of our own works, but it is truly um the Lord that produces the fruit, right? The fruit of the spirit. So um it and you were talking a little bit earlier about God being the the vine dresser, right? Or the gardener. And in John 15 talks about that, how and when you are a gardener and you're pruning something, you prune with precision, right? You don't come in just snipping all willy-nilly, you prune with precision because you want to make sure that this plant produces fruit. You know, if you prune too much at one time, it might stunt the plant's growth. If you um prune too little, it might slow down the plant's growth. So you you prune with precision, you make sure that every single little branch that you you pop off is going to um actually be, I guess, productive to the plant's growth and producing of that fruit. So when I really look at John 15 and I imagine God as the gardener, it's him saying, Listen, I mean, I'm the one who causes the growth here. And that's in First Corinthians too. Um, that it's neither he who watered nor he who planted that causes the growth, but it's the Lord, right? So I think that ultimately um you have to surrender to you have to surrender to the pruning. You have to surrender to that, to that part of the process. Um, but it's because God is causing that growth in you. God is causing you to grow to produce the fruit, the fruit of the spirit. Um and ultimately, I think that that that's what what surrender and obedience um mean when it when it comes to resting in God. Because honestly, if you're you're a branch and you're connected to the vine, you're not doing anything. Right. Yeah, you have no like you're and I I hate to say it, you're not doing anything because there is still work that we have to do as as believers, but like as a branch, you are your only job is to stay connected. That's your only job to stay connected to the vine. And the vine does all of the work, the vine pulls up the nutrients, it pulls up the water, it you know, causes the growth. And God is saying, like, and Jesus says, and and my father's the gardener, so he's the one who does all of the laboring in terms of pruning and getting you to the place that you need to be to grow and produce the fruit, right? So if Jesus and God are doing the work, you your job is to stay connected to him, and the way that we do that as believers is to surrender. Right. That is work for us. That's our job. That's our job. That is work for us because I mean that is picking up our cross daily, right? Recognizing that, hey, again, we have to put down this inclination of self-sufficiency, this desire and this curiosity that we have to go out and do it on our own. We have to put that to death on the cross every single day. It is a daily choice. I like when you were saying that earlier, that it is a daily choice, a daily action. Um, so uh where uh Proverbs 3.5 says, Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. So heart in the Hebrew um is lev. And um lev means not just your your heart as we think of it, like your physical heart and emotion, but heart in the Hebrew literally means your mind, your intellect, your will, your conscience, all of it working together, right? So it says trust in the Lord with all of your mind, with all of your intellect, your will, your conscience, all of that, right? So that's your belief. That's your knowledge, and that your will is what you do. So you have to trust in God with in all of those ways, with with more than just the knowledge that you have of Him, right? With more than just um your belief that He can do this for me, but also with your action to say, Well, I'm actually gonna put this down at your feet and let you carry it for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

Oh, that's good. So I think it's I think it's a combination of all those things that will help us to experience God's rest because quite frankly, that that branch is just resting, resting in the mind. Yeah, resting and trusting that He is going to come through and provide, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:40

Um, so yeah, that's good because you know, sometimes I know that we you know we are spirit beings, we live in a body, we live in a body, we have a soul. Sometimes it's hard to to um understand how we're all connected, like how our body, mind, and soul, and spirit is connected, you know. But when you say things like your heart is compassed or compassed, composed of not only your physical beating heart, not only your emotions, your seat, the seat of your emotions, but even your will, right? Um because there's times where I would think, you know how we we famously quote the scripture, God knows my heart. And then we still go out and do the complete opposite, you know, of what we know we should do. Now, in our heart of hearts, we didn't want to do that. We didn't really want to. We knew it was wrong and we felt bad, and there was a can there was a conviction for a slight moment, but our wills overrode that so much so that even then we still did not submit our full hearts of hearts to God. Now, that's a little tricky and t touchy for me because I don't like to I don't like to believe about myself that I haven't submitted my heart to God. Like, what do you mean? You know, I love him, you know what I mean? Um, but when you think about it in terms of surrendering all, like obviously we are not expected to die on the cross. In the way that the Lord Jesus did. We're not expected, but you said something, we die daily, right? It's a daily death, right? And nobody wants to die before they physically die, right? Nobody wants to have up have to give up anything, but I'm learning in order to gain life, right? The the Bible talks about he that seeks to save his life ultimately lose it, right? But him that loses his life, that gives his life away, that dies daily for Christ will gain, right? And and sometimes it's hard for us to put in perspective what am I gonna get out of dying daily? Like how is it gonna hurt? How's it gonna, you know, it's it's it's painful. But it puts things in perspective that um if I die to my flesh, if I die to my will, to my own desires, to even to my own thought proceeds and my own understandings, even to what I think is fair, because they did this and they go on, they got they going this and they got this going on, even dying to that helps us to live to Christ ultimately, which then helps us to live more fruitful, more peaceful, more restful lives, right? And it's so it's all connected. What God says in his word is a hundred percent true, it's reciprocal. Like I think of God's word as that little uh logo that's on the recycle bin, how it kind of goes like around, round, round, round. It's like if God is telling you to do something, it's for this reason. But this reason ultimately is gonna bless you, right? And it's like reciprocal, you know. It it and it works in that way. And so I have to kind of keep that in mind when I'm getting a commandment from the Holy Spirit or when I hear something, come across something, and it's word I'm like, Dag, I gotta do this, man. And you know, you know, I don't want, I'm gonna have to wait to see the result of this, but ultimately it's for my good. So yeah, that's good. That's good that you want.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

Yeah, and when you that reminded me of something, what you just said. So um, if we look at uh that spiritual rest that Jesus invites us into in Matthew 11, right? And he says, Um, again, learn from me, take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. Um, Philippians also refers to um, oh now I'm gonna forget this address again. Um, I want to say it's Philippians 2, 17, but um correct me if I'm wrong, where it talks about Jesus um emptying himself and becoming like becoming a servant, right? So if Jesus is saying, um, I've emptied myself, I've humbled myself to the point of being um, I've humbled myself. And it says he found himself obedient to the point of death. That's the part that I'm trying to give you. And that scripture. I wish that I had it in front of me. Let me look it up. Do you mind if I look it up?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:38

Sure, here we go. Let's see.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:41

It is Philippians 2.8.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:46

Philippians 2 8.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:47

I was a little off.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:48

I was a lot off. Philippians 2 8, and it says that he humbled himself. You are in the neighborhood. Um you may not have the right. Um, and he was obedient to the point of death. So if we are to be like Christ, if if if Jesus is saying, in order to enter into this spiritual rest, you are to take your yoke, um, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, what he's saying is, learn from me and what I did. And what he did was become a servant. He humbled himself, he emptied himself of his deity. He came to this earth and he died on the cross out of obedience for your sins and my sins. So if we are to learn from his example, then we are to also be obedient and put to death our flesh, our sinful ways, um, the things that we desire, our idols of control, our idols of independence, our idols of, I mean, an idol can be literally anything that you put above God, right before God. So your idol could be your social media. If you wake up in the morning, the first thing that you get on is Instagram, then your idol is, you know, social media. But wait a minute, say that again.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:53

If you wake up in the morning, then the first thing that you get on is Instagram or TikTok or social media. TikTok, yeah. Then your idol is social media. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:04

So Jesus, yeah, Jesus is saying if you want to experience a spiritual rest, then you have to become like me. You have to become a servant, you have to be gentle and humble at heart, and you have to be willing to be obedient to the point of death, meaning not like literally die, um, but put your sins in your in in the things of your flesh to death. And um, I think that that's what what he's calling us to do, to experience that spiritual rest 100%.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:32

Wow. Wow. Um, there's a scripture, and look, I'm gonna read, I try to remember uh Hebrews 4 9 that says, um, there yet remaineth a rest, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. And I've always kind of pondered that qu that um scripture because I'm thinking, like, well, if there yet remains a rest for the people of God, what what what hope do the world have, right? If the people of God has not have not yet learned how to rest or have not yet claimed their rest, you know, how do we do so? And then how can we encourage others to do so? Like, you know what I mean? How do how do we model that for them? Because if for some people, we're the only Bible that they will ever read, right? For some people, we're we are the only church that they will ever attend through our lives and our experiences and our testimonies. But um, I think with that in mind, um if if if if if that scripture is true, how do we hone in on the fact that okay, that every day we have this opportunity to come into rest? It's not like okay, I've rested, I took a long nap today, you know, I didn't rip and run, I didn't go to the store, you know, it's not that just that, but how do we in our everyday practices, or we we did speak to this late um earlier, but in our everyday practices, strive for that rest, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

Yeah, so um striving um for that rest. So I think Hebrews 4 um has been really important in my study. Man, I love Hebrews. Hebrews is such a beautiful book. Um I think that it does a beautiful job of like explaining the totality of scripture, like from like Old Testament through New Testament. Yeah, it does.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:15

Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

Yeah. But um, Hebrews 4 to me um really speaks to that eternal rest that we will enter into um when we are finally called home, right? When there's no more tears, when there's no more sorrow, when you know the world and and everything in it passes away, and when God thing brings everything um back into restoration and reconciles everything back to him, right? And it says that we must do everything to strive to enter into that rest. I think that striving um is is again what we have to do as believers, as people, which is, you know, put our pick up our crosses and die daily, you know. Jesus calls us in and how can we be that example for other people if we're the only Bible that they know, right? I think Jesus calls us um to be the salt and the light of the earth. And that is that's hard. I mean, it can be hard sometimes, you know, to have the fruit of the spirit always, right? When we're talking about um, you know, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, all of those things are difficult um in our day-to-day lives, right? That's why we have to always constantly rely in the Lord um to help us produce that fruit. Because the bottom line is we can't do it on our own, we can't do it on our own strength. But when we encounter people who aren't believers or people who um, you know, maybe they don't go to church, maybe they don't read, I think that what they're looking for in us is the love of God.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:49

Right? They're wanting to see the love of God. And they're hoping that um and and how we model that for them is is through the fruit of the spirit. And the fruit of the spirit is ultimately produced through abiding in God.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:04

Um again, like I said earlier, I'm studying the children of Israel, their behaviors, but I I I noticed that every human characteristic that exists existed in the children of Israel, right? All of these different uh regular people, regular people, like and you're gonna think, why? That's me, you know what I mean? Um it's like a people. I look at the Bible as a people book. It's it's better than any psychology book I've ever read because you really get to see that um humans are humans, right? And that we are gonna, that's one thing we're gonna do well is human, right? And because he is God, and because he is gracious, because he is kind, because he is trustworthy, you know, we can learn from him and ultimately learn how to cultivate a relationship with him where we're not out of alignment all the time, where we're not in distress, you know. I

Living A Full Life Without Burnout

SPEAKER_01 1:14:58

think about busyness, and I think there's a difference between being busy and versus being actually productive, right? Sometimes we just busybody, we just doing all the things, you know, running around. Um, but somebody who maybe like yourself, a wife, a mother, a business owner, um, a mentor, you know, someone who is um a professional, how can they in their busy lives, like, do you think it's possible for someone who is really busy who wears those many hats, still live from a place, place of rest, you know, in God?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:31

100%. I think it's very possible. So, like you said, I'm myself, I'm a wife, I'm a mom of two. Uh, I also work a full-time corporate job and I'm building a business on the side, I'm in school. So, I mean, I wear a lot of hats, right? Um, I think it's very possible though, because but for me, I will say it's a fine line. Um God will let me know if I'm doing something out of my own strength or if I'm striving, because it just won't feel right. It'll get to the point where I feel like I'm starting to get overwhelmed or exhausted or burned out. And that tells me right there, red flag, you are now kind of transitioning into that margin of of his margin, right? So I think that there is there is a margin there. God gives us all of these beautiful, full, full lives, right? Um, he blesses us with so much. And his expectation for us is that we steward them well, right? And we are good stewards. That is what our margin is, right? He's gonna bless us with many things, with full lives, but our responsibility is to steward them well. That's our margin. Where his margin starts, that's where our margin starts and stops. Where his margin starts is, you know, when we then surrender everything, oh like everything to him, even with what's within our margin. So when I when I start to feel like I am getting burnt out, like I'm exhausted, like I'm a little bit overwhelmed, I'm getting tired, I'm getting weary. I know red flag number one, I've started to drift into his margin and I've started to um pick pick up too many things and try to be Lord over my own life and Lord over all of those things and control all of those little things instead of surrendering them to him. Um we hold on to things in this world a little bit too tightly sometimes, I do think. Um and we we do have to get to the point where we're able to, I mean, our children, our work, our businesses, you know, we have to get to the point where we are able to surrender all of those things to the Lord. Um, because we we can I know I can't I can speak for myself. I find myself um when I start to operate in his margin, it's because I'm doing all of the things from a heart posture of wanting to control the outcomes. I want to make sure, you know, this product turns out to be really good. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna, you know, stay up all night making sure, you know, instead of just surrendering, praying about it, and letting God tell me um the direction that I need to go, right? Um, so sometimes I can put myself in in overdrive. I can do so much out of my own strength without bringing any of it to God, without consulting him, without asking him. And really, it's I shouldn't be just consulting him, I should be just handing it over to him and allowing him to lead me. You know what I mean? I think that we can often find ourselves um not wanting to submit to the Lord. And it's that submission and that surrender that will ultimately um, I think bring us to to where we have to go. So um I think that it is very easy to um, you know, it's a fine line. I will say that I will say that it's a fine line, it's it's very easy to drift into self-reliance, but um, it's a constant daily, like like we said earlier, practice. It's a constant daily practice of reminding yourself I'm not the one in control, I'm not the one who's solid, I'm not the one who's gonna grow this business. Um you know, nothing, God is the one who causes the growth, and nothing can snatch me out of his hands. So I know for one thing, like whatever God's will is for my life. I mean, Jeremiah says that the plans of man are many, but it's the purpose of the Lord that will prevail, right? So at the end of the day, I can work and strive all day long, but if it's not God's will, then it's not gonna happen. So I think that first and foremost, we have to be submitted to the Lord. And um I think that you can still have a very, very busy life um and submit yourself to God. And I like to call that just a full life instead of a busy life, but um, you can also have a very busy life and never submit to God, and that will find yourself, you know, in in some some other places, right? Because everything that you're doing, you're striving with the wrong heart posture. And I I think truly, I think truly it's about your heart. And is is your heart postured towards the Lord? Are you remaining connected to Him? Are you um, you know, living out First Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18? Are you living out, rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in every circumstance? And are you abiding in him truly? Um yeah, I I think that's um it's about the heart. And and you mentioned this earlier too, uh in the the heart. Um, I think it's Proverbs that says the heart is deceitful above all things, like that's really what he could know it. He would know it, you know. There's no man that would know it. So only God knows your heart. I mean, in reality, he does, he knows it in and out. So I I should hope that it's postured in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:35

Really, exactly. Yeah, that's good. Um, man, I am so truly. This is one uh con one of the conversations that I've had that have been very beneficial to me in many ways, like not just for the sake of recording and getting content out there, um, but also helping me to reflect on my own heart posture. It lends me to the practice of seeing God. I want to make sure my heart is in the right place. I want to make sure I'm submitting to you daily. Sometimes we get caught up in that rhythm of we go to church, we pray, you know, all of those different things, and we think that that entails salvation or sanctification or even a relationship with God because I done crossed out the T's and I died at all the I's and all of things to I'm good, right? But it's things like this the topic of rest, the topic of obedience, the topic of surrender, that help us to understand where we truly are and where we need to come up at. You spoke to um how one of the telltale signs for you that you're kind of drifting to God's um lane, the boundary is that it's burnout for you. It's you know that exhaustion. And I remember two different things came to mind when you said that. I remember uh last month we went to my niece's um bowling party and we had a couple lanes that we have rented. And for some people who couldn't bowl, they had these like uh what are they called? But how do I call them? Bumpers, bumpers. They have bumpers up, and so it would help kind of if the ball went to the to the right or to the left and wasn't gonna go straight down the aisle for a strike, it would kind of bump them back right into place. And I feel like for me, I'm one of those I'm one of those children. God, I need you to put bumpers, you know, to give me that little alarm, like you, so to speak, as you said, okay, you're you're reaching burnout here, you're exhausted, you're tired, you're not focused, you're distracted, you're overwhelmed, you know. That's gonna be your bumper, right? I remember we test drove this car and it had laneuses on it. And even if you were like an inch or two from the next lane or from the shoulder, it would beep and the wheel will automatically align itself. And my daughter was like, Mom, I don't like this. It's kind of scary. And I'm like, actually, I like it because sometimes you can drift, right? And even not even knowing, you know, sometimes I find myself to be more of a shoulder, shoulder hug hugger. I don't really like the middle lane and I don't really like the lane farther to the left. Because I'm like, they're going too fast, right? But that's just even how it is in life, right? Sometimes you see to those people that look like they accomplishing everything, they doing everything, they're getting everything, they they're going too fast. And maybe they're going in that speed because they're going without God, right? I want to be, if my race is slow and steady, if I'm the tortoise in this race, right? And not the hair, then I want to go at God's pace. And I want him to be able to put up those bumpers on my life and say, beep, beep, beep, you, you know, you're you're drifting off, you're exhausting, you're over exerting yourself, you're not resting in me, you're not depending on me, you're not relying in me, right? And I have not become your source, I've become your resource when things are troubled, when your life is headed and when you burnt out. So I love that analogy that you gave. Um, that's gonna be my little red flag. That's gonna be my little alarm system, if you will. Like if you read a burnout girl, check to see the last time that you submitted to God. Check to check to see if you surrendered this to God before you, you know, took this up on your own.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:54

And I think you hit you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, one of my favorite sayings is uh, be still and grow slow. I know that your your favorite verse is be still and know that I am God. So um, that is such a good verse. Um, in in some other translations, say uh cease striving. So cease striving and know that I am God. So that literally means just rest in the knowledge that God is the one who is sovereign. And um, God, if you if you really think about how he moves, he moves slowly, he don't move fast. I think the enemy sometimes will will be that like catalyst to say, oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this. And though those thoughts, those fears that kind of creep up, that's the enemy, you know, trying to get you to to um speed things up to to outpace God's um God's timing. Sometimes God's timing is slow, and we gotta be okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:42

As we wrap up the discussion, how would you say that learning to depend on God um in this season or even in former seasons, how has that transformed your own life in

Grief, Father Wounds, And God Winks

SPEAKER_01 1:24:52

ministry?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:52

Um, oh man, it has transformed me greatly. Um when my mom and my grandmother passed away, um, I also had two other family members pass away shortly after. So I had a cousin and my godfather passed away.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:08

So how far away did your mother, mother, and grandmother pass away?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:13

So between them two, it was about uh eight months, eight months, and then six months um after my mom, we lost my cousin, and then um I would say about nine months we lost my godfather. Um so within a span of two years, I lost four people. Um, and in in my in my life, my immediate family, um, we we're a big family, so people might hear cousin and think, you know, or godfather, but like we were very close, right? Um very close-knit family. And yeah, um, so it it impacted everyone really deeply, you know. Um, and that grief, that grief didn't go away, and and it and it won't go away, you know. Um it's definitely changed me forever, but it was in that season that God revealed um so much to me about his character and who he is, right? Um up until that point, I think that I thought of God as um more of a judge and not father. And so I I felt the need to do a lot to please him. So I don't I and this is gonna get real deep for me. And I hope this is okay. Um, it's like a safe space. I think a lot of times we can look at um God as how we view our earthly fathers, you know, if we have them in our lives. Um, and sometimes if we don't have them in our lives, it it still impacts how we view the Lord, right? Um, for me, I had a very uh a very harsh father, and and and he's since changed, he's since grown a lot, I will say. Um he likes to say now that he and I grew up together. Um, but he was very harsh. He was a Marine Corvette, so he was just very strict. Um, you know, every so it was it was definitely cultivating in me um some perfectionism and fear of failure. And I think that um my entire life I kind of looked at God the same way, God is judge. Um, so I felt like I had to do a lot to please the Lord. Um, but in my season of grief, um, when God met me in all of that, I started to see his love for me. And it completely changed my life because that shifted my mindset from I have to do all of these things to pre to please the Lord. Um it shifted it, it shifted my mindset from that to he just wants me with him. He really just wants me with him. He really just wants me to to to come to him with what I'm feeling, right? He met me, he met me there. Um and this. Right now is becoming one of my favorite verses, Isaiah 40, um, 11. I believe it says it says that he tends to his flock like a shepherd. Um, and he uh carries us in his arms, he nurtures us in his bosom, and he leads those um gently who are with young. And that verse to me has been just like so beautiful, like a beautiful depiction of how God met me in my season because I was not crying out to him, like, Lord, I need you because I'm going through X, Y, and Z. Honestly, I was running away from him because I was running away from all of it. I didn't want to think about God. I didn't want to think about, you know, my grief or what I was experiencing. I just wanted to get through the day and survive. And I thought the best way to do that was to keep going. But what God did for me was slow me down. He made me lie down in green pastures, he tended to me like like a shepherd because he saw the condition that I was in. So I didn't cry out to him, but he he looked at me, he saw the condition I was in, and he knew that I needed to be carried in that season. So um he gave me so many God winks that reminded me of my mom. I call them God winks because um it's just things that only he would do. Right only he could do, you know. Um and I I'll share one of them. Um, I was feeling very overwhelmed one day. Right. I was I was pregnant and I was um nesting, and I decided to clean out our linen closet. And at the bottom of our linen closet, we had a a container, and it was a container of just old sheets and blankets, and I was just going through it trying to you know throw away some stuff. And um, I found this blanket, and my mom had given it to me years prior to, like, I don't know, maybe five years before. Um, and I forgot that it was in there. I I completely forgot that it was there, and that blanket had a letter that was pinned from her, and it says, Whenever you are overwhelmed, remember whose daughter you are. And that was like the first sentence, and that literally made me cry because I knew I was overwhelmed in that season. Yeah, but God knew that I needed to hear those words, and um, he knew that I would have to hear those words from her, and there would be no other way that I could hear them from her other than this gift that she before, right? Wow, and literally that morning, I didn't even want to clean out that closet at all. I was just kind of I was nesting and I was I was avoiding it though, because I knew it's the worst closet in our house. And the nuts to to do it, you know, yeah came came up in me. So I just knew it was God that led me there. And so it's beautiful how he weaves our stories together where even in our hardest times, in in times that are uncertain, anxious, grievous, like you know, grief transition or healing from trauma, in all of those seasons, he meets us in such unique and beautiful ways, and he's he sees the condition that we're in, and he carries us. And when you finally just allow yourself to be carried by the Lord, that is when you truly feel that rest. And it is a beautiful thing to feel, like you know, when you come home from a really long day at work and you can just tell you that's that spiritual rest, you know, and only God can give that to you, and cultivated that in our relationship in that season, and I do not want to turn back because I've never experienced rest so good or so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:42

Yeah, that's that's amazing. I love that. Um, I love that you would you get I love the fact that you were able to gain from that season is you know the ability to trust God and to rest in him and to know that you could come to him like a father. I too grew up with caregivers who were ex-military. He also had a very traumatic life, and so he was so what we would consider mean. He was just so stark and so harsh and like just a matter of a fact. There was like you couldn't really tell if he was happy, if he was okay. It was just mute. And so um I kind of grew up with that same um like performance in my relationship with God because I never knew if he was happy with or pleased with me, you know, as far as a father. And so I was like, I kind of kind of worked that into my relationship with God. If I do this and I do all of this, then I can rest. Then God is pleased, then God is happy, and then I'm safe. Um and what I'm realizing now, even at this age, even as I'm working through past traumas, is that if I do nothing, I'm safe, right? In fact, he's calling me, in fact, to do nothing but rest, but rely, but abide, but depend on him. Like you said, just be the vi, just be that branch that's um um connected, you know. That's that's my role. If I want to have something to do, if I must do something, just just rest in the in your connection with God. And it is different transitioning from, like you said, understanding who God is in relationship to your earthly father, whether he was absent or not, or whatever the case may be. You sometimes we do kind of liken him, you know, to oh, he's probably like this or he's probably like that. So we kind of have to learn, you know, in these instances, like you said, in grief and transition and loss and difficulty. We have to learn who he really is, you know. I'm grateful that in those seasons, those are the opportunities I feel like he takes to introduce himself. See, you didn't know that I was a shepherd. See, you didn't know that I was a father, you didn't know I was a provider. It reminds me of that time in the Bible where Moses says, Show me your glory, and God says to him, I'm going to put you in the cleft of the rock, and I'll let I'll allow my glory to pass over. And Moses really wanted to know who God was. And, you know, God said, I will reveal myself to you in a in a way um that I would not reveal myself to anyone else, and that has still that is still living. And I love that even in these instances where God puts us in that cleft of the rock and he reveals himself to us in so many ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:10

So he does. And um, I will say that in in all of it, um, he it's it's not for nothing, right? He uses everything that we go through. Um, so I think um I want to say this is Peter. It says that we are to comfort others in the comfort that we've received from the Lord. Oh man, I'm so bad at the addresses. But I know that's Peter. I think it is Peter. Mm-hmm. Um, so we are to to comfort others with the comfort that we've been comforted by Christ. So, I mean, everything that we go through and when God reveals himself to us, we are to share our testimonies and we are to reveal to the world what God has revealed to us because we could be a comfort to our sisters, to our brothers, to the other people in our lives. And I think that that is so important. And pain ultimately births purpose. So um, like even with your podcast here and with my business, we can see that the pain that we've gone through, it has birthed purpose for our lives to touch other people as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:11

Amen. Thank you so much, uh, Darius. You when I say this has been a blessing to me, truly a blessing. Your spirit, your love for the word of God. It's evident that you have a genuine relationship with God and is exuding from you. Thank you. I invite people to the podcast who are not only going to share their stories, their experiences, but that all that are also going to be beneficial to the body of Christ. I believe with my whole heart that you are such a jewel to the body of Christ. And I really pray that God will continue to bless and expound your business, your endeavors, all that you do and are doing for him.

First Step Toward Rest And Where To Connect

SPEAKER_01 1:35:47

Someone is listening right now, or someone will be listening right now to this podcast. And um, they may be thinking or realizing that, you know what, I've been carrying everything on my own. What would you say would be the first step take toward God and toward entering into his rest?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:03

Um, I think the first step would be towards the one who cares for you most. He's inviting you to sit with him, to give him your burdens. And that may look like going into your secret place and being completely vulnerable and open and telling him everything that's weighing heavily on your heart. And that may look like just sitting in silence, um, but being in his presence. Um, but either way, uh he invites us to cast our anxieties and our worries on him because he cares for us. Um and we should do that free of all fear, free of condemnation, because he did not give us a spirit of fear, and there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. Um and uh that may look like a lot of things. Um, I mean, for me in my season, it looked like screaming sometimes, it looked like crying, it looked like being silent, um, audible prayers and journaling and a lot of journaling, all of the things, but um, he's inviting you to share with him your innermost feelings and thoughts. Um so I think that no matter what you're feeling, as long as you continue to bring it to him, you will experience his rest.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:21

That's good. No matter what you're feeling, as long as you continue to bring it to him, you will experience his rest. Darius, if someone said, you know, I want to check her out, I want to get some more information. I want to, I'm interested in the journals and the the uh cards and information that she has, how can they connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:38

Um they can connect with me um on all social media platforms at Ruth Marie and Co. uh well, Ruth Marie and Co. Um, so that's Ruth R-U-T-H Marie Um and A N D Co. Um, we have a website, Ruth Marie and Co. com. Um, yeah, I can also give it to you to put it in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:00

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put this information in the show notes. It's been a pleasure having you on the show. I really appreciate all that you do, all that you say. Certainly, your wisdom, your references to scripture, the word of God pours out of you, and that's awesome. That's all that's a testament to someone who lives a life abiding in the presence of God.