.jpg)
The Father's Business Podcast
The Father's Business Podcast
Strength to Equal Your Days-Finding Strength through Christ-Centered Community
We were never meant to do life alone. In this new episode of The Father’s Business Podcast, Kimberly and Elizabeth open up about the kind of sacred community that strengthens us—not just in celebration, but in the middle of grief, questions, and life’s hardest places.
Drawing from their 27 years of friendship, they share how true Christ-centered community is formed not through fixing or rescuing, but by holding space, showing up, and staying close—just like our Heavenly Father does.
At the heart of this episode is an invitation to root yourself in the Father heart of God, the source of all healing, belonging, and identity. When we live from His love, we’re free to build authentic friendships that reflect His presence and draw others closer to Him.
Whether you’re feeling deeply connected or longing for community, this episode will encourage you to take the next step—toward others, and toward the God who never leaves.
P.S. This episode launches our summer re-release of the Safe in the Father’s Heart series—a powerful journey into healing, identity, and connection through the love of the Father.
The Father's Business was founded by Sylvia Gunter to encourage people to a deeper relationship with God. I'm Elizabeth Gunter Powell. And I am Kimberly
SPEAKER_02:Roddy. Welcome to The Father's Business Podcast. We are so glad that you've joined us. Well, hi, everyone. Welcome to today's edition of The Father's Business Podcast. Elizabeth and I are glad that you are with us. Thank you so much for joining us. As we have been talking through some of the topics that we have covered have been finding Sabbath rest, the gift of blessing other people, spiritual warfare, knowing if something's spiritual warfare or not, who am I when everything around me changes, and how to really cultivate deep roots in quiet seasons. And wherever you're listening from, whatever season you're walking through as you listen to these topics, I think we can all find something to take away. But the other thing we want to recognize is that When we think through these things, there's something pretty foundational that undergirds all that we've been discussing and sharing in this series. And that truth is we were never meant to walk through seasons of struggle, silence, or even growth alone. God designed us for sacred friendship, for Christ-centered community that helps carry our burdens, that helps sharpen our faith, and it helps keep our hearts engaged when life gets hard.
SPEAKER_01:trying to go through the hard places of life without those types of friendships and relationships in my life. It reminds me of Proverbs 27, 17 that says, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. And Ecclesiastes 4 reminds us that two are better than one. If either falls, one can help the other up. And I know in our friendship of however many years we've known each other, 27, I think, there have been so many times where one of us has been struggling and the other one can be strong. So sacred friendships aren't about fixing each other, which is very difficult to remind myself of that. They're not about offering the right answers or always knowing what to say. It's about being present. As another friend of ours said to me when my dad passed away and she showed up for the funeral, and I really honestly was a little surprised at the people who came. And she's like, well, I've just learned that you just show up. And I learned through that process of losing my dad, how much just showing up and being present, being there for people, the power there is in that. And it's about listening and holding space for someone's pain or process and inviting Jesus just to come in the middle of it. And it does relieve the pressure that I don't always have to know what to say in that moment. I just need to show up.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And sometimes we feel like we're not sure how to do that. Sometimes Sometimes there's a geographical barrier. And I mean, Elizabeth, you and I have had that for more time in our friendship than not. We have not been in the same city. And yet there are many people that hear us on this podcast and they think, oh, I love that you guys get to do this. You sit on the couch together. And I'm like, nope, I sit in my office in Virginia and she sits in her office in Alabama. And it's just interesting because even though we have not often lived in the same city or state, our friendship has transcended those spaces. And, you know, when I was walking through one of the darkest seasons in my life, you were overseas. And like you said, it's about holding space. Like you said, we've been friends for close to 27 years or something like that. But what that really means is that we've walked through a lot of life together. One of the biggest things that we've learned over the years is how to hold space for each other. And One of the things that we've talked about that we're really grateful for are some of the And I can cry and I can scream and rant and do whatever emotion is at the surface.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we've talked about it on our podcast, but that comes out of an overflow of our own relationship, which is, I mean, the minute you start telling me about something that's not going right in your world, I immediately want to go into, okay, how do I fix this? How do I help my friend Kimberly? Because I don't want her life to be hard. But we've had to learn that very important question to like pause and go, now, wait a minute. Is this mine to carry? Or am I just being invited to be present and let God do the heavy lifting for Kimberly? And we talked about in a previous podcast about sometimes we try to rescue people out of situations where God is trying to lead them to a certain place where he wants to teach them something that he can only teach them in those hard circumstances. And so as much as I love you and want to make your life easier any way I can, the deeper love comes when we begin to ask that question of, is this mine to carry or Am I just supposed to be present? And praying for Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to come and minister to Kimberly right where she is.
SPEAKER_02:I like to have all the answers. So when you call me and you're telling me you're going through something relationally or there's a situation or whatever, I'm like, okay, let me tell you what to do. And sometimes you're like, yes, tell me what to do.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me what to do.
SPEAKER_02:And other times it's like, no, I don't really, I don't want to know what to do. I just want you to listen. I just want you to stay with me. I just want you to create space for me. And again, after 27 years of friendship, we can sometimes, usually more so than not, figure that out by Right. Mm-hmm. easier when I know you're there for me. And I think that's what God intended. He created community. He is community. And so it's the ministry of presence, but it's also that ministry of community that we need. I need you. You need me. I need others. Others need me. They need you. And it's about the body of Christ. It's about Yeah. Yeah. How much more do we need community? And not only do we need it, he created it for us. He created Adam and Eve and says, it's not good for me to be alone. He walked with them in the garden. He spent time with them. And so we've talked a lot about hidden seasons, weary places, strength that grows beneath the surface. But sometimes what we need most is that quiet assurance that I'm not alone in this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Absolutely, because I do. I was thinking about Adam and Eve as you were talking, and it's like, you know, He created Adam, and one would think paradise plus Adam plus God, I mean, that would be enough, right? But even in that, God's like, no, Adam needs someone with skin on. Adam needs the body. Adam needs community. He needs family. And so a lot of us, our family of origin is great, but There's also some wounding there. And so a lot of us, as we get into our adult years, we create our own families. And there are friends and people from our church and just a whole network of relationships where we build our own body. And I know, and you know, Kimberly, that not only each other, but we have this group of people around us that if life gets really, really hard, it's a text message, email, or a phone call to a group of people, and they are on it. And they will not only pray for you, but will encourage you. They will show up for you. And that is such a beautiful gift. And if there's anyone listening to this, you're like, well, I don't have that. I would encourage you, what are the steps that you can take to start being that for someone else as a way to start building that type of community for yourself?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think we can all think of times when we've moved to certain places or even when we have a spouse or a family member near us, sometimes we feel alone. Like being alone in a new location, being surrounded by people in a house, both of those things can feel very alone. And so it's not always about geographical circumstances or whatever, but I do know that there are times when I remember specifically a friend praying for me during a season that I would know... God camped out with me in my living room, right? And that is the picture of Emmanuel, God with us. Through the Exodus in the New Testament with Jesus, like all throughout scripture, we see this message of Emmanuel, God with us. And that isn't about God fixing everything instantly. It's not about God standing at a distance saying, hey, hope you're doing okay over there. But it's about God coming close, right? It's about Him listening. It's about Him weeping with us. It's about Him staying near us. We did a series on Psalm 23 a couple of months ago. It's about God walking with us through those valleys.
SPEAKER_00:As
SPEAKER_02:we think about God being Emmanuel, the reality of knowing that really means this, that we can only show up with a true presence for others when we are secure in the presence of who God our Father is.
UNKNOWN:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02:The truth is we can only offer safe, healing friendships when we have first received it from Him, when God has been our friend. He is a friend that sticks closer to a brother. More than that, He is our Father. And Elizabeth, help us understand a little bit more about that idea of the Father Heart of God.
SPEAKER_01:The Father Heart of God is a phrase I think that gets thrown around a lot, and yet there's such a depth to it that it is at the core of who we were created to be, is to respond to His Father Heart for us. It is everything. It is when we really know deep down in our core that we are loved and We are chosen. We're delighted in. We are not forgotten. We're not disqualified. It is at the very... deepest core of our identity, because I do not believe you can understand your true identity apart from knowing the Father's heart towards you and Jesus's heart towards you and the Spirit's heart toward you, because that is the definition of who we are. We are a response to what God has placed in us and how he so abundantly, supernaturally loves us in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with our merit. And if we truly begin to grasp that, and I don't think we will fully grasp that in this lifetime because there's even the verses that talk about how you cannot grasp the height, the depths, and the widths of God's love for us. But if we just start to get around the edges of that and really let our lives be saturated with God is not just a God who is holy and other and worthy of our worship. He is. He is all those things. He is big and He is powerful and He breathes forth the universe and He's there for the big moments of life. But he's also Abba. He's also the one who knows me better than anyone else will ever know me and knows you, Kimberly, and knows everyone who listens to this podcast. He knows everything about you, even things you don't fully understand about yourself. He gets you in a way that no one else can. And it's about not letting go of the bigness and the majesty of who God is, because we don't want to in any way belittle any of that, but really leaning into this relationally driven, deep father love that he has for us. And some of us had great fathers, but even if we had a great father, they weren't perfect. And we all have been wounded by whatever father figures we have in our life. And some of us had some really, really bad, dark, Father situations in our lives, and there's different levels of healing that needs to happen. But as we lean into understanding, God is in no way a reflection of my earthly father. You can take some of the good parts, and that may be a little of who he is, but God is so other than any human relationship I've ever had. and ask him to reveal to us what it means to feel to be loved and delighted in and chosen by him, that changes everything. We will live differently. And as I begin to change on the inside, it allows me to love the people around me differently. And it allows me to hang in during the hard times differently than I have before, which is why we think this is such an important topic to bring up around this whole idea of strength to equal your days. What are you going to do when the strong winds blow? One, you need to be deeply rooted in who God is as Father. And then two, allow the body of Christ to come around you. And be there for you as you walk through these things. So it is the it's the ministry of presence, one with the people, human people around you, but also inviting the ministry of God's presence, his fatherness to come and love you in very deep places.
SPEAKER_02:I'm thinking about this season like we're in the summertime now. Father's Day is upon us. You know, there's a lot of different things that people walk through each day that that we don't know how deeply it impacts them. We don't know where, how bad they, how badly they're hurting. I was actually thinking about a friend, I think it was either yesterday or day before yesterday. And, um, I was like, I need to reach out to her and just check in and see how she's doing. Cause I knew that her marriage wasn't doing well. And then I saw something on social media that she posted and I was like, you know, there it is. Like she's hurting. She's in grief right now. And, um, I, I, I'm going to reach out to her. But, but that's the things like I, those thoughts, be aware of the thoughts that you have about other people. Like, I don't believe that those things are circumstantial. I do believe that God puts people on our hearts and on our minds to pray for, to reach out to, and don't be afraid to reach out to people. And, and, Don't be afraid to ask for help for reaching for someone to reach out to you. Yeah. to have people around me to get through this. And I did, and it was such a blessing to have those people show up for me and to want to know. And I didn't always know if they wanted to know, but I just took a chance, took a risk. And so I would say if you're walking through something, don't be afraid to ask people to surround you and don't be afraid to reach out to people when you're thinking about them. I think that there are a lot of people that I know, I'm sure you do too, Elizabeth, that have been wounded by their father or their mother. But when I'm thinking about Father's Day, We're talking about the Father, Heart of God. There's a lot of people who've been wounded by their dad. Yeah. unintentionally or intentionally. It doesn't matter. It's a deep wound. As we are wounded by people on this earth in significant relationships with us, it's hard to overcome that. There's nothing easy about it. There are people around you who can help you. One of the things that I think is critical more than anything is just what we're talking about, leaning into the Father heart of God, learning that who God is as a Father is so different and distinct from from who you had as a father, good or bad. He is different and distinct. And so we want you, I want me, Elizabeth, I want you, we want us to also know the steady presence of God in our day-to-day life. So if you feel like you're on unsteady ground right now, if you feel like life is shaking or if your friendships have been hard or you feel isolated, this is an invitation. It's a gentle invitation to come closer, to lean into the Father heart of God and to do it with others, to do it with community. And again, like Elizabeth said, if you don't feel like you have that, ask yourself, is there anything I can do? Is
SPEAKER_00:there
SPEAKER_02:anything I can do? We have had people... come to events that we have done. We have had people reach out to us and they have formed friendships that they didn't expect to have as they have shown up to some of those things. And that is so encouraging. And so think about the people around you. Think about the places you've been and ask, is there someone, God, that you have put in my path that I need to reach out to and form a friendship with? I mean, back in the day, Elizabeth, when you and I became friends, it was a mutual connection that said, hey, You know, like you guys should meet up like we didn't know each other. Right. And it just our hearts were connected early on and we were able to grow
SPEAKER_01:deep with in our friendship. Kimberly, another thing I'm thinking about that I did in my early 20s, about the same time that you and I became friends, is I thought of three different women who were about 10 to 15 years older than I am. that I knew. Most of them were connections with my mom. And I remember emailing all three of them and saying, you know, I'm in my 20s. I'm still trying to get my head screwed on straight, quite honestly, and figure out some things in my life. Would you be willing to have lunch with me every four to six weeks? And it was really scary to do that. But I felt like I need some women that are older than me, but not my mom, that I can spend time with and just have lunch. And it wasn't a formal discipleship program. We didn't do Bible study together or anything like that. And it was really scary to send that email to them because I risked rejection. And of the three, only one of them said, sure. I mean, if you want to meet up for some chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant and talk a little bit, we can do it. And we both showed up and we both were kind of like, we don't know what we're doing here, but we'll have lunch. And then that kind of became something that we did off and on and still do off and on through the years of let's just, you know, get together, have lunch. How are you doing? And then I may not talk to them again for a while, but again, they If a crisis hit and I needed that person and I needed that wisdom and I need someone to pray for me, a phone call away. And so it's about taking that initiative, whether it's someone your own age or maybe you don't have older people in your life speaking wisdom into you that maybe you've got it. You're like, well, no one's asked to mentor me. Maybe we need to be taking the first steps towards how are we going to create community where we don't have any.
SPEAKER_02:And I think community can look different these days, which is what we also have to keep in mind. Oh, yeah. You and I do some things via social media or other apps and things like that that help us stay connected. But I think that I know a lot of people that are struggling with the corporate church, corporate entity of the church. Yeah. And as two people who have been on staff with churches, I think we understand that. But that's also what, it's not what God intended. And it's hard because the church is broken and messy because it's full of people. And I know that God longs for better for his body. And as he longs for better, I think we still have lots of opportunities to be in community with one another. And it's important to be in community. And I don't know what that looks like for you. I'm not going to pretend to know what that looks like for you. I have a dear friend who longs to be a part of a corporate body that worships together right now, and she doesn't have that. She can't find that. She's struggling to find that. And that makes her sad each week as she seeks to gather and doesn't know what that looks like. And so I do think that God is with you in that journey, if you're in that journey. And along with that, I think that He is going to provide you opportunities to be in community. So it could be a season where, like for my friend, it could be a season where God is doing something deeper in her and she's not sure what that looks like right now. It could be that He's preparing her for another community. It could be that she needs to just spend this time grieving the loss of community that she had. I don't know what God Mm-hmm. on a church staff or in ministry full time with a corporate organization of some kind. And these days, these last 10 years have looked different. I haven't been on a church staff and I've had to figure out what that looks like as far as having community. But it's also where we talked about a few weeks ago, like how to not find your identity in those things and how to choose to step out in different paths of faith and say, God, where do you want me to find community? And there's days where it can be isolating and lonely and a different season. And some of you are in seasons where you're thriving and flourishing in your church, and that's awesome. And you know right where to find your community that God has given you. But I think that there's a lot of people that are just struggling. And so in the midst of that struggle, I want to encourage you to, again, I don't say this lightly. We say it genuinely. We long for you to lean into the Father heart of God, to find His strength, because it's not your own strength. And He will meet you in that. And it may be hard. It sure as heck may be hard. But God will meet you in that.
SPEAKER_01:We've talked a lot during this series about the imagery of roots and that, you know, when you look at a tree, you see what's above the ground. But what's holding that tree from falling over when the wind comes is the deep root system that goes beneath the soil. And our roots can't go as deep as they need to in shallow soil. They need something strong and rich and unmoving. And the Father's love, the Father's heart towards us is that soil. His heart is that foundation that we get to anchor everything on, because if you look through scripture from the beginning where he's creating Adam and Eve all the way through Jesus coming, Jesus said, I came so you could know the Father. That was his whole point. I think sometimes when you ask people, why did Jesus come? Well, he came to die and save us from our sins. Also true. But if you ask Jesus why he came, he came so that you might know the Father. And what he was trying to restore was that father-heart relationship between man and him. So it's so foundational to everything we do, which brings us to something we're really excited about. which is starting next week, we're going to re-release our Safe in the Father's Heart series that we recorded a couple of years ago with new intros. So you'll hear a little fresh information from us and then it will go into the teaching that we spoke about in the series because it's so foundational to what we need. So if you've been following for a while, you may remember parts of what we're going to share. And if you're new here, this is a perfect time to dive in and for all of us to be re-reminded because, you know, how many times God tell us we need to remember, remember this, remember me, remember. It's because we so quickly forget the richness and the necessity to know the Father's love for us. So we're super excited about this series.
SPEAKER_02:This series is deeply personal. It's about what it means to be safe. It's about what it means to belong, to be fathered by God in every part of our story. It's about healing the places where we have felt orphaned or overlooked. It's about finding strength that flows from being rooted in perfect love. There is also a book that goes along with this podcast, and we'll probably talk about that in episode one as we re-release it. But if you are curious, you can go to thefathersbusiness.com and find that book and study guide. Maybe you're looking for a resource to go through for the summer. Maybe this is it. So check that out. But I will tell you, it is deeply personal, and we long for you to find the strength that flows from like Elizabeth says, being rooted in God's perfect love. And
SPEAKER_01:so whether you're listening again or for the first time, we pray this summer series will help you feel seen and known and deeply loved by the one who calls you his own. And so as we close our time today, I pray that you would remember that you are seen, you are loved, and you are not alone. I want to thank you for listening to the Father's Business Podcast. This podcast is made possible through donations by people like you. To donate, go to www.thefathersbusiness.com. Be sure to follow us at The Father's Biz on Instagram and Facebook.
