Cultivating a Life of Mentorship | Stephany Parkey (revisited)

Join Veronica & Sis. Stephany Parkey in a conversation focused on mentoring, kingdom culture, words of the year, and more! 
Stephany Parkey is the First Lady of Gracelife Pentecostal Church in Memphis, TN. She has a heart for young ladies, which has played a big role in the God-given vision of Dear Girls ministries.

Link to Dear Girls Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/deargirlsofficial?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Honey and Grace podcast. I'm your host, Veronica Waldrup, and I pray that we can taste and see a little bit of God's goodness through today's episode together. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Happy Tuesday, everyone. Welcome back to the Honey and Grace podcast. So glad that you're listening today, and I pray that this episode will bless you in some way. I'm so excited for today's episode because we have a special guest, and I'm just so excited to talk more with her. So thank you so much, Sister Parky, for being on the podcast today. If you would just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Sure. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. And first of all, I want to just say I'm really proud of you and all that you're doing and kingdom work and being a great role model. And I'm very passionate about that and you're doing it. And I'm just, I want to say I'm proud of you first of all. And I'm honored to be on here today. I guess a little bit about me. Um, well, my husband and I pastor at Grace Life Pentecostal Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We've been there almost 12 years. We pastored in California for um almost 18 years, and we evangelized for 18 months and pastored in Bloomington, Indiana for two years, in between California and coming here. So I am a mother of four. All four of my children are married. I'm Mimi to six grand, and that is just a really fun season of life that I'm in. I love every minute of it. I'm very passionate about um mentoring and about imparting to the next generation and some hobbies. I love to read. I'm an avid reader. I probably read at least four or five books a month. Um I had one year goal of reading 100 books and I finished with 78. So that's the most I've ever read. But I read at least like 50 books a year. And I do, I read a lot of different genres, not all like Christian or leadership, although that's probably the majority. I enjoy um historical fiction. I read a lot of historical fiction. I actually listen to on Audible historical fiction books. And uh I so I enjoy reading. I love horseback riding. I've ridden horses probably since I could walk, and I have six horses currently. I love any animal where I have two dogs, and I grew up on a farm, so I love all things outdoorsy. Um, I used to be athletic, probably not so much anymore. But uh I enjoyed volleyball. I enjoyed, I played racquetball back when I was a teenager. Um and so I've started playing a little pickleball, but not much. I need to do it more.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

That's awesome. So fun. And it sounds like you're super busy with the church and all your grandbabies. That's super cool, though. And I know that all of your family is involved very much in y'all's church, which is awesome to see. And I know that um it's very special to you. You mentioned that you grew up on a farm, and I know that you're raised in California and from California. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that because I've heard a lot about a little bit about that story, you moving from there all the way here, and I can only imagine that's a really big transition. And so if you would tell us a little bit about that and maybe how you've seen God um just help you through that season and what he's done for you.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Sure. Um, you know, I think a lot of people have in their mind when they think of California, they think of LA, Hollywood, or they think of San Francisco. Um, probably the most beautiful part of California is the San Diego area. But I actually grew up in a smaller town in the Central Valley, town called Tularie, in between Fresno and Bakersfield. And so it's actually very rural. So it wasn't what most people think of when they think of California. And as I mentioned, I grew up on a farm. Um, our city was the home of Hogendoss, the home of Lando Lakes. So, like the butter, the ice cream, and um, there was Dice and Chicken had a factory in our city. So there was a whole lot of actually southern things and um things about the South that I grew I grew up around that culture somewhat, although it is very different. So I would say I'm it was a culture shock on some level, but overall, I mean, I'm I'm a pretty adaptable person, so and I'm not afraid of change. So I think the Lord prepared me in that respect for that. I would say moving to Memphis was deaf probably one of the things that was the most difficult. We we moved here to become the pastors of the church, and I had come from in California, California is like a melting pot. So there's just a lot of diversity. So when I first moved here, especially within our congregation, there was not a lot of diversity. And that was something that was very unfamiliar to me. And we've always felt we we started speaking it immediately, um, that our church, our churches should look like what it's gonna look like in heaven. And that means diversity, that means that you know, we we say uh at Grace Life, we say that we are a multicultural, multi-generational church. And I love every Sun every um month we do a where we give out baptismal certificates or infilling of the Holy Ghost certificates. And I'm amazed at every every time that happens at the diversity that I see. There'll be children, young people, older people, and there'll be Hispanics, African American, white, um, African people. We've reached into some of the um the like Kenya and different different African cultures. And so if you come to Grace Life now, you will see, and you've been there, you'll see a diverse crowd. And when we first came here, our church in California was heavily Hispanic. So I grew up basically around Mexican people, and so that was very much a part of who I was in that culture. I love the food, I love just the whole Hispanic culture is kind of in my DNA. So we didn't have one Hispanic person when we moved here in 2013. And now we have a thriving Spanish-speaking congregation that we are seeing great revival. We just actually brought an awesome young couple in to pastor that congregation because we've been doing it, but they've grown, they're running kind of consistently 70, 80, and God just doing great things. So now not only do we have that diversity in our church, we actually have a whole congregation of Spanish-speaking people. So I feel like I think Psalms 126 says that, and it's talking about God bringing his people out of captivity, and he and it says it it seemed like a dream because it was so unreal. And I kind of feel that way, kind of like I'm living the dream. Like it hasn't been an easy road. We won't pretend that it's been easy, but nothing worth attaining is easy. So I I feel kind of like I'm living in a dream that seeing God do so many great things, and I know it's we're it's he's not finished yet.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

So that's so awesome. I know I've been to Grace Life a lot, and I love how diverse it is. My dad has always been, he's always said, you know, like heaven's gonna look like it's gonna look like that. So why would we, you know, try to settle for like one race or one color that doesn't even that's not even what God wants? And so we've always pushed for that, and um, I just love that. And it's so cool to hear that you're from kind of more of a rural area, and so it's like the Lord, He just knew what He was doing. Um I had seen a video of you and dear girls, and you were doing a segment, I don't really remember which one it was, but we you were kind of talking about the desires of your heart, and I loved it so much because you said, you know, you thought moving to Memphis, your big hobby is horseback riding and horses, and how in the world in the middle of Memphis could you have horses? So tell us a little bit about that because I think that is so, so cool.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah, so really, really awesome how God works and blows our mind. He never ceases to amaze me. But yes, I mean, we we had when we first moved here, we actually bought a home in Olive Ranch, Mississippi, which worked out good, good schools. I had two still in junior high and high school, so it was good. But in 2000 or in 2020, we decided that our kids were three married, other one away at college, that we wanted to move to Memphis. Like we wanted to live in the city that we were that we were trying to reach. So we sold our home in Olive Branch, and we actually moved to a ministry house on our church property temporarily. And about the time that we did that, the market just like skyrocketed. So for us to even make a parallel move of the house we sold to get in some buying something else, it was like not even possible. And we were ready to kind of downgrade a little bit, maybe do something a little smaller. Um, and so we had a bucket list of five things. One, we wanted proximity to the church, we wanted to be close to the church. Two, we wanted privacy, we wanted to just be able to have a little bit of privacy. Um, my husband loves to fish, and we had a pond at our house in Olive Branch, so he wanted a pond. And then um I'm trying to remember what the fourth one was. Uh I can't remember off the top of my head. The fifth one was kind of like the last ditch effort dream would be that we would be on property where I could have horses. And I kind of figured that dream was gone because in this area, you're gonna have to live, you know, in the Memphis area. You're gonna have to live out in Eads or Arlington and live far out to have enough property to have horses. Without giving you the whole story, we get a phone call one day that there is a piece of property near our church that had been donated to a college, and they wanted to know if we were interested in it because it was close to our church. We drive the next driveway outside of our church property, and it is we couldn't see. We knew there was a house in there, but it was all covered up with trees. We go in there, oh, a single-level home. That was the other thing because we're getting old. I didn't want two stories and grandbabies coming. I just wanted a single-level house. So we drive in there, there's a single-level house, it's right next door to the church. There's a huge pond. And if you drove a little further up the hill, we could see this barn hidden in the back. So there was a seven-stall barn stable with, I mean, stables, everything. And so, and it's 10 acres. So we bought that property. My husband and I personally bought the property. We updated the house a little and took out some of the trees. And I I have six horses right in the middle of Memphis, right next door to our church. It's just crazy. Only God could do something like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Yeah, it really is. That is so awesome to me. And it really does show that God will give you the desires of your heart when you seek him and you live for him, like he sees that. And so you saying that in it's like it's literally in the middle of the city. It is so it's like the Lord really did that. Yeah, but that's so awesome. Um, so we are gonna talk a lot about kind of dear girls and mentoring. Um, dear girls is a big thing at y'all's church and actually really everywhere now because it's growing so much. But I love dear girls. Um, a lot of girls at my church love dear girls. And so if you would tell us a little bit about your passion for girls' ministry and how that has kind of helped shape the vision for dear girls, because I know it's y'all have a big team that puts it on, but I know that you're a big part of the vision. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

I would say probably um starting, uh, you and I were talking a little bit before we started, just about living for God. And as a 16-year-old, the church that I grew up in, we didn't even have we didn't have a youth pastor, and how looking back, I really kind of fulfilled that role on some level. So I think starting at a very young age, without really calling it that, I began to mentor others. And then I, in doing that, felt inadequate and felt like I needed mentoring myself and I needed teaching myself. And so, really, as a young teenager, I began to seek out mentors, and then I was very intentional about living my life in a way that would help others and making decisions sometimes that as a teenager were hard to make because it went against the flow. Um, but God helped me to do that. So I got married pretty young, and so I was a young pastor's wife and started teaching girls and really feeling like I'd been raised in the church, but I did a lot of things just out of obedience, or it's just that's what we did. And I found myself in a place where I was responsible for teaching, and so it caused me to deep dive into the word of God and to deep dive in what being apostolic really is about. And I began to study the word of God for myself. I read every David Bernard book, I read every book I could find on modesty. Um, and I began to just try to figure out what being apostolic was for me personally, so then I could teach others. And so God took me on that journey. Um, I taught a class back in the day called Mare Image, which was probably like my pre-dear girls, like, you know, moment. And uh I did it and I developed a curriculum, I developed study guides, we read books together and studied about things together. So mentoring has always just been a deep passion for me, something that I believe that we need to be mentoring, we need to have mentors, we need to surround ourselves with friends because mentoring is about influence, and our friends influence our lives. So I think that you need all those, those three relationships of being a mentor, having a mentor, and then having friends, godly friends in our life. So that was probably the burden of dear girls started probably when I was 16 years old. And then as a young pastor's wife, I can't tell you how many times I wrote down like about having a mentor class or bringing my mentors in and the girls that I was mentoring and and like putting those generations together. And and so one of the young ladies in our church, Sabrina Stewart, came to me, I think it was 2018 or 19, and God had put it up on her heart to start. You know, now we're in the day of technology and social media, and she wanted to start a page um for girls and doing what if you don't follow Dear Girls, um, we're on Instagram and on Facebook, where we just put content out for Apostolic Girls daily and have thematic um months, and we have different contributors, young and old, that come on and speak and write things. And so when she brought that to me, I just kind of and she was very passionate about it, and I she knew it was from God, and I'm chuckling inside because I'm thinking, I'm all in before she even could give me her whole vision. I'm like, I'm already all in. And so as she we talked about the different ways of of how to do it, what we would call it, and um, and the vision began. And so one of the things I told her even in that meeting, is I said, one of the things that I can just tell you right now, if we start this ministry and the social media page, I do see it culminating to a conference that will be for girls, which you've attended our dear girls conference. That we've done it twice. And so from the very beginning, before it even started, we knew that that would be part of the ministry, and it's become a large part of the ministry. So that's kind of how it really began in me as a young girl. And then what's cool too is because that's how mentoring works is like here's a young lady that I'm mentoring, and God is speaking things to her that He spoke to me when I was her age or younger. And then some of the things that I never saw come to pass, I'm seeing come to pass with the help of a generation behind me.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

So, I mean, that's just like mentoring in its finest. So that's kind of how dear girls has happened is through what it's really all about is empowering girls to fulfill their God-sized potential. And so that's that's kind of the journey.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

That's so awesome. And I think it's it had to be such a cool moment when she came to y'all with that idea because, like you said, you've been mentoring for a really long time, and girls' ministry has been a big thing for you. And so when she came to you, it had to be like a full circle moment. That's so cool, though. And Dear Girls Conference has been life-changing for so many. It was life-changing for me, it's been life-changing for a lot of girls that I've brought, my friends even. So it's awesome, it really is. And you get on social media a lot, and so when there's like those little nuggets or those videos, it can really do something to you in your day and like speak to you more than people might think. So it makes a big difference, and I'm really thankful for it. I was able to have um um Sabrina on and hear her whole story about how God dropped that in her heart, and it's it's really awesome. So if you're listening and you don't follow your girls, go follow because it will be a blessing to you. Um, and kind of talking about that, mentoring girls and the vision that y'all have for that. I feel like every time I go to Grace Life, especially the last few years, I've always loved how it's like the young people there. The the only way I can explain it is that it's like they're empowered. Like, just like the um the saying for dear girls, empowered to fulfill your God-sized potential. It's like everybody, all the young people at Young's church are empowered like that. And it's like when they're working in, you know, serving, or if they're doing a camera, or if they're singing, or whatever it is, they're doing it with like a boldness from the Lord. And so, how would you kind of explain that? Like for anybody that might be in leadership but their church, or anybody that might be a mentor, how would you explain how to like transfer that um encouragement to to our young people and just kind of put that in the culture of our church of just being empowered in what God has given you to do?

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I would say it really starts from the top, and that being our pastor and my husband, he he's just he's a lover of people. And he's always been the type that can just see the potential in people. And he's he's a really positive person. Um and he just loves people and pours into people. And so it's it's definitely become part of the DNA of our church is that we believe everybody has value, we believe everybody has something to offer. We encourage people immediately when they start becoming a part of our church that they that they find a job, that they find something that they can be a part of. And sometimes people want to be a part of a certain ministry, or you know, like, what is my purpose? And I think one of the things that we teach at Grace Life is that your purpose is to do whatever's needed in the kingdom. And so if you see a need, feel a need. And and and it doesn't really matter how old or how young you are, and we have like we have a coffee shop at our church now, and we have a lady that I think she's in her late 70s, maybe even 80s. She's a newer lady, and we were saying if you're interested in being part of, you know, serving in coffee coffee, you know, we had a meeting and she came, and so she's come and ran the register. And so, and then we've got kids that are 12, 13 years old running the register, and the same is true with greeting, or we have cleaning teams for our church. And there's we have a kid, I think he's 11 years old, and his parents do a cleaning team. So I've seen him there cleaning and picking up stuff, and so I think it's just a culture of our church of that there's a place for everybody to serve. And my husband's not a micromanager, so if if you have a if you have a passion about something, you want to see it happen and you want to make it happen, go for it. And and we're all about empowering people to to do what they're passionate about and give them the space to do it. And uh, so I think you see that when you when you come and everybody is valued, everybody's important, and we want everybody to be involved in kingdom work. So it's just Kind of become a culture. So and it does happen. It happens through mentoring. It happens through believing. And my husband's really good, and I hope I've learned that from him is that looking at someone, and I know we may talk about mentoring a little bit more, but part of mentoring is actually helping people discover the gifts that they have that maybe they don't even realize that they're there and challenging them, like, hey, you can do this. Like, don't be afraid of that. And so I think we do that in every aspect of our church.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Yeah, that's so good. Feel the need because I feel like that's so important, especially for anyone that comes to church, you know, whether you're new to church or not, there's always a place for you, like you said. And there's always something that God is going to use you and you just have to fulfill it. Right. And so when you say feel the need, because like you said, some people come with an agenda and they want to be using a certain thing. Right. And that might happen or not, I'm not sure, but it's important to ask, like, your pastor and your pastor's wife, what do I need to do? What's the spot that needs to be filled? And I feel like once you do that, God will start opening doors maybe for what you want to do if He has a place for you there. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

You can find purpose in just working for the kingdom. We've had, you know, young people or young adults that, you know, we we started doing video announcements at our church. And so we had a young man, he he'd never done video editing, he'd never done anything like that, but it was he felt like it was something that would be beneficial. So he got on YouTube, he started watching videos about it, he bought a camera himself and just started it. And now it's like we have a whole team of people that rotates, and it's a whole ministry of our church, and it's a blessing. But it started with just somebody seeing a need and feeling a need, and they didn't even have the gifting or the talent that they were aware of, but they developed it because it was a need.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

Yeah, that's awesome. And and like look at it now, it's just so it's grown, and y'all have a great media team. So if the Lord places something on your heart to do for your church, it's probably for a reason. Yeah, that's so good. So we've tiptoed around mentorship, but I want to finally ask so just give us your tips because you mentor a lot of people, and I know there's probably a lot of people listening that are wanting to mentor someone or wanting to help someone. What is what is your best tips? What would you say to help us out?

SPEAKER_00 24:34

So I recently actually taught a class on this at the UPCI Journal Conference, and so it made me kind of sit down and like think about okay, so I do it, I believe in it, I need it in my own life. What is what is that? But how can we break it down? So I broke it down into five, five different steps. I'm sure there's a million more, but these were the five things that to me just kind of stuck out as important. So, number one is be a role model. So mentoring is about living your life in a way that others can follow you. And so sometimes being a mentor is just being a person of character, of being a person of passion, being a person of excellence. And so just be somebody that others can follow. Um, I may I may end with this later, and you've probably heard me say this before, but be the person you needed somebody to be for you. That's probably one of my life statements at this point, because there was times I needed mentorship and I needed things in my life that I didn't have. And so I look back and it's like, I don't want somebody else to be that 16-year-old girl that was starving for somebody to speak into my life.

unknown 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

I want to be that person. And so sometimes you can feel like you're inadequate, like I don't have anything to offer, but you can think nobody mentored me, so how can I be a mentor? And we, you know, we put put certain parameters on it that are not really there. All you have to do is just think about what did I need? I needed somebody to encourage me. I needed somebody to teach me a Bible study, I needed somebody to recognize when I was in a low place. I needed somebody to challenge me when I wasn't being everything I could be. So those are the things I needed. So be that. So be that for somebody. So just be a role model, live your life in a way that's worth following. Number two is transparency. So sometimes people think you have to be perfect to be a mentor. And really, sometimes mentoring others is about sharing your mistakes, sharing the struggles you had. I know for me, I mentor a lot of young girls or young women, even at this point, some that are married now, that are similar in personality to me. And it's like I want to save them from themselves. Like I've been you, and you know, I don't want them. I had to learn some lessons the hard way. And so if I can help them to say, hey, you need to rein this in. Hey, you don't always have to say everything that you think. Sometimes you need to wait and wait for the right moment, or maybe just pray about it. And so having a, I wish I had had voices in my life that were cautioning me or helping me. So I try to be that if somebody gives me permission to be that in their life. So you don't have to be perfect. Be real, be honest about you know, your shortcomings. I'm very, very self-aware person. So I know, I know my faults. I know the areas that I've been working on them my whole life, and I'll have to work on them until my life's over, probably, because we're all just a work in progress. So you don't have to be perfect. Sometimes maybe you think, well, I don't have time to mentor and I can't sit down, you know, and talk to somebody for an hour every week. It's not always about that. Sometimes it's about moments over minutes. It's about in just a passing moment, you say something to somebody that is like, oh, that's right, that's it, or something clicks. So don't be insecure, I would say, as a mentor. I want anybody that I'm leading to be better than me. I want them to go higher than I. I want them to get it before I got it and go further than I can go. So you can't be insecure if you're gonna mentor others. You have to be willing to watch people flourish and grow, maybe even beyond who you are. So be transparent. Um, number three, encouragement and correction. So sometimes it's like you think a mentor is just somebody that's like, ooh, you're great, you're awesome, you can do it. And although that is a huge part of mentoring, mentoring also is about correction. Mentoring is about giving somebody permission in your life to say, hey, like I said a minute ago, back up, pause. Like maybe next time you need to rethink your tone or how you said that. Or um, so real mentors are people that you give permission to speak correction into your life, and obviously always with love, but yeah, providing honest and direct feedback, it's crucial to being a mentor, and then also being a mentee, allowing somebody to mentor your life is giving people permission in your life to really speak to you. Number four is follow through. So sometimes people say, I want a mentor, but then you say things and they don't listen and they just keep doing so they don't really want a mentor, they maybe just want somebody to talk to and spill all their guts to, but they're they're not really listening. So I think as a mentor and a mentee, follow-up is important. So if you're mentoring somebody, when you speak to them again, you're following up, like, hey, what about the last time we talked? Did you try that? Did you do this? Were you more careful the next time, or whatever? And then even as a mentee of following up and saying, hey, I'm still struggling here, or I did what you said and it didn't work, or it did work, or whatever that would be, but just follow up. And then number five is selectivity. And sometimes I I do this myself. You can't mentor the whole world. So sometimes you have to be selective and recognize who who you could actually impart to, who you can spend time with. Um, we all have a limited capacity, but sometimes I'll I'll close with this about mentoring is that mentoring is not just about sitting down, talking with somebody face to face. I talked about being a role model, being a person that people can look to. So sometimes somebody can mentor you that you've never even had a conversation with, but you're watching their life. You, you know, if they're speaking somewhere, you're listening. If they wrote a book, you're buying that book. Like there's people that mentored me in my younger years that I never met them, never had a conversation with them, but they were somebody that I looked to. So our voices go beyond just having a personal conversation with somebody, even what you're doing, you're mentoring, you're putting content out there that is encouraging that. So you're being a mentor. Um, and so the and then those that are listening are being mentored because they're allowing voices to speak into their life. So um that those are kind of the five five little steps that I feel like are are key in mentoring and being mentored.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

Yeah, those are so good. And I feel like for anybody that wants to mentor, those are like the best ways to just step into it. Anything for God can be intimidating, but especially when you're trying to make a connection with someone, if they're like a new to church and you don't really know them, especially that kind, because I feel like it can be a little bit easier to mentor like a friend or somebody that you've known for a while. Those are so good and definitely helpful for anybody that's involved in mentoring. I really like what you said about being transparent because I feel like that's what a lot of people need though when they're being mentored. They feel like, like at my church, all the time, some of the girls will ask me, they'll be like, like, have you ever done anything wrong? And it's not because it's just because I try, like you said, to live my life in a way where they can look up to me. Right. But I don't just go around telling them all, but whenever I'm like on a conversation with them or something, I'm like, yeah, I have messed up. Like I have done things I wish I didn't do, and try to help them from turning away from that. But it's important to be transparent with anyone, especially when you're trying to make a connection with them. So I think that's so good. I forgot to put this on the notes, but I feel like because we're getting kind of towards the end of the year, I've heard so much about everybody that I talked to says that it came from you, is do doing a word for the year. And so I want to ask you about that because we're coming towards the end of the year, and I, for the first time this year, picked a word. It's just awesome. It really is. Yeah, because it's like it didn't look like it was gonna be like that, but it really has. So it's a really awesome. Um if you could just touch on that and tell us about picking a word for the year and how would you help us to navigate that and do that?

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Yeah, so I've been doing it since 2009. And my sister-in-law's who got me started on it, she's been doing it even longer than that. But basically, it's a simple concept, you know, at the beginning of every year, New Year's resolutions, and you know, we have all these lofty goals and ideas of things that we want to do, and I'm for that, and and I I do that as well. But picking a focus word for a year is just like a way of just narrowing down just a simple um way to study the word of God and allow God to speak into your life. So the way that I do it, and a lot of the ladies and men in our church and our family picks words, is just like right now. And I think God's already given me my word for 2025. Having a focused word is just basically towards the end of the year to start praying and asking God to give you a word. For some people, it could be a phrase or maybe two words, but for the most part, I actually brought, and I didn't even know you were gonna ask me about this, but I brought like my word for 2019 was flourish, my word for 2017 was rest, my word for 2020 was cultivate. Um, and so every year our ladies have a prayer meeting at the beginning of the year, and we do a craft for our word, and we always do a rock. So I have a rock for every or a stone for every year that has my focus word written on it in the year. But it basically you just start praying, asking God to give you a word. I start writing down words that are coming to me, words that maybe I start seeing, and then and then praying for God just to help me choose one. And sometimes I've told people, if that feels too deep for you, just pick a good word, pick faithful or you know, trust or you know, compassion, like pick a good word. Doesn't really matter. I do feel like God can order you and has ordered me in that process. But and sometimes it probably happened for you where you pick a word and you think it's gonna like unfold in a certain way, and then it unfolds totally different, but you know, like God did it. And so I just choose a word and then I do a word study, or what is the definition of that word? Where can I find that word in the Bible, or at least maybe something that is about that in the Bible, and I'll find I'll research and find books that are on that that have that word in them or about that word. So I'll read books. Um, and it's amazing how when you choose a word, you'll start seeing that word or hearing that word everywhere. Like if you say you chose the word cultivate, well, then I can be sitting in a doctor's office and look at a magazine and it'll have the word cultivate in it, or I can be in somebody's house and it'll have a saying on their wall, or somebody's preaching a sermon, or reading a book, and it's like the word just comes alive to you. And then for me, that's one of the reasons why we do the stone thing, is they become like building blocks and stones throughout my life that I look back and it's like the word doesn't go away just because they've become like foundations in my life. And I've studied about it. So I've done extensive studies on rest, I've done extensive studies on flourishing, I've done extensive studies on cultivating. So they become like this this wealth of knowledge and information that you continue to pull from and you still recognize them. Like any word I've ever had as a focus word, if I see that word in print or hear it in preaching and speaking, I it like highlights. It's like this, you know, light bulb every time that word is said or I've read it. So it's just a it's a neat way to study the word of God and have kind of a focus of one thing instead of a whole list of 30 things and letting that word minister throughout the year in your life.

SPEAKER_02 37:25

Yes, it really is. And I feel like it sounds kind of funny until you try it. Because the way that like I was telling my mom about it a little bit ago, she knew that I picked a word for this year, but she has never done it. And so I was like, and we were talking about it the other night, and she was like, I'm excited, I'm gonna pick a word. She's like, she's been praying about it and stuff. But um, I thought it was so cool because when you're explaining it to somebody, it sounds a little funny, like this word just does so much for you. But when you do it, it like really does come to life. Like you said, I hear the word everywhere now. Like people will just be talking to me and saying it, and I'm like, But it's awesome how the Lord works through it, and I feel like it puts your year in a whole new perspective, and you look at it in a different light, especially when you pick like a scripture with it or something like that. I feel like having a word this year has been big for me, but having the scripture with it has carried me through it, yeah, like encouraged me through it. I'm thankful for that concept and what you've put into everybody with the words because it really has blessed me this year. Everything you've been said has been so good. I always ask on the podcast to every single person, because I have a lot of young listeners, boys and girls that listen. What is just a general piece of advice you would give any young person that's listening right now? It could be literally anything that you want to just give them and put in their heart today.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

Well, I I would I would just say, as far as a word of advice is just to do what we've been talking about is to put positive influences in your life with mentors, surround yourself with the right kinds of friends. You the saying you are who you hang around with, it's the truth. And so look at the people you're surrounding yourself with. Do you want to be like them? And if not, maybe find some different friends, maybe distance yourself with certain people. Um, but my kind of one of my life statements, and I said it earlier, is what I would say is that be the person you needed somebody to be for you. And that's just it's an easy way of like looking at yourself and saying, what did I need somebody to be for me? So I want to be that. I want to be that person. And when you're mentoring, I would say, don't give up. There's you're gonna invest, and people are not gonna follow, people are gonna, your heart's gonna be broken at times. But when that happens, don't give up. Just find someone else and do it again. And just keep on giving, keep on pouring into other people and continually be investing in yourself and doing things, whether it's a focus word, whether it's um reading, praying, whatever that is, continually invest in yourself and continually invest in others, and you can see the rewards of that in your life.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yes, that's awesome. Such good advice. Thank you so much for all those words that you've spoken today because they're really they're so good and they've blessed me. And I know it's gonna bless someone else that's listening. And it's just really been an honor having you on today. I've always looked up to you and your ministry. So it's awesome to have you. Thank you so much for coming on today. Yes, thank you for the opportunity.