Welcoming God
Hey spiritual seeker! My name’s Sarah Haykel and I’m the host of Welcoming God, a podcast for spiritual seekers.
In this podcast, I’ll be sharing the goodness of Welcoming God back into my life after years of rebelling against the God of my Catholic upbringing and years of honest seeking on a personal spiritual path. I’ll share my consistently evolving understanding of God and what I’m learning on the path, to help create a God accessible to the every day person.
We’ll have honest and sometimes hilarious conversations about how to go from being a “spiritual” person to a God-loving person. Understanding God as a benevolent guide. What does it mean to have a relationship with God? What does it mean to surrender to God? Cultivating a spiritually mature understanding of God. Learning how to discern God’s truth and will for our lives. How to cultivate the most important relationship you’ll ever have, with God, on a daily, moment to moment basis.
Come along on this spiritually rEvolutionary journey where we get to know God.
This podcast is marked as explicit because there may be swearing or content appropriate for mature audiences in some of the episodes.
Welcoming God
Unconditional Love And Self-Worth For Spiritual Seekers
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Your worth is not a prize for good behavior. Your worth and value, as a human being, are "inherent in your beingness," as Feminine Power would say. It can't be earned or taken away. It just is.
To close out the season, I share what I’m still learning about self-love, inherent value, and the unconditional love of God. I talk about the ongoing work of honoring our worth and value even when we don't know we can believe it. The fact that our worth and value are inherent in us can be an anchor for spiritual seekers who feel tired of striving.
I also name the harder edge of faith: suffering. Trauma, loss, and fear don’t make the idea of unconditional love easy. I don’t offer a neat answer for why painful things happen, because I don’t have one. What I can offer is companionship in the mystery, a reminder that being human is a kind of “guest house,” and encouragement to keep talking to God anyway, especially when life knocks hard.
A film called Ordinary Angels sparks a practical challenge: what if God’s goodness shows up through us as inspired action from God, in ordinary choices, ordinary courage, and ordinary care? If we keep waiting for someone else to do it, we’ll keep waiting. I share how I’m learning to see my own and others healing, kindness, and right action as the place where God's goodness becomes real.
If you want to stay connected, join the email newsletter at WelcomingGod.com for a free ebook companion to season one and info on upcoming retreats for women moving through the menopausal journey. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find Welcoming God.
Music by Song Channel Music. Listen at SongChannelMusic.com
Tempo: 120.0
SPEAKER_00Hey everyone, Sarah here. Just to let you know, sometimes I do use swear words in these episodes, and we may at times discuss adult content. In case you happen to be listening around little ones or people that won't appreciate that. Thanks so much for listening, and let's get right into it. Hi, and thanks for joining me on Welcoming God. Thank you for joining me on the Welcoming God podcast. Today, to round out this season, I want to just express to you how special you are. I know self-love and honoring and recognizing my own inherent worth and value continues to be a journey for me of integrating this truth, this fact. I remember in the course that I took called Feminine Power way back when in twenty ten to twenty eleven, they talked about how our value is in and our worth, our value and our worth are inherent in our beingness. It is who we are. We are inherently valued and valuable. We are inherently worthy. That cannot be earned, gained, it can't be taken away. It is a part of who we are. And this speaks directly to God's unconditional love. And I know it feels challenging to accept this at times and understand it because we're faced with all kinds of horrors, traumas, challenges from the tiny smallest ones to big, big T traumas and everything in between throughout our lives. This being human, like Rumi says, is a guest house. And at any moment, at any time, anything can come for a knock at our door, unbeknownst to us. And sometimes things we don't want at all and or fear greatly. It come a knocking. So it can, I know the challenges of understanding this all. Well, I don't understand why is there so much suffering in the world? Why have things happened to me? Why are things happening in my family or friends, community? You know, whatever. There's look, you know, I'm along the journey with you. I don't know why things happen exactly the way that they happen. It's a mystery and it's beyond me. Um and yet I'm a part of this great big mystery. And and I believe that we all are a part of this great big mystery. So I just want to encourage you forward to do what you need to do to talk to God. I just watched a really sweet movie called Ordinary Angels based on a true story. Uh, Hillary Swank was in it. It was made in 2024, and it was so heartfelt and touching and moving, inspiring to see what's possible when someone gets inspired to act and make a difference. It is powerful. And um, and that is God moving through us. We all are ordinary angels to ourselves, to others, to animals, to life itself. And it's up to us. Like in feminine power, they would also say, you know, if we're waiting for someone else to do it, we're just gonna keep waiting. Like it is up to us. We are the manifestation of life's greater goodness. We are it. We are life's greater goodness manifest through us, through our actions, through our thoughts, through the way that we heal, the things that we say, the things that we do or don't do. I mean, we're it, baby. God is working through us. It's all a part of the oneness, as far as I am concerned at this point. These are all my beliefs, but um, that really resonated with me when I heard that in feminine power. Um and how does that resonate with you? That we're it, we are you could say God's greater goodness manifest. It is through us that this blessing manifests through life, through us, through it all. And it doesn't mean bad things aren't gonna happen or challenging things, difficult things, horrific things, traumatic things, and that sucks. But and how will we continue moving forward knowing this isn't the end, this isn't it all, there is more. I don't know what that is, but uh there is more to this story, and it is being written, it is being told through us into life and through others. So thank you for joining us today on Welcoming God. Stay tuned for more episodes coming up from the Welcoming God podcast. And if you'd like to be on our email list, go to welcoming God.com and sign up for the email newsletter there. You'll receive the free ebook, which is a companion to season one of the Welcoming God podcast. And you can check out more pages of the website. We've got a retreats page with information about retreats for women, going through the menopausal journey, and there's more coming up from Welcoming God and Sarah Haeckel. So stay tuned, God bless, and Aloha Nui Loa always and forever. See you next time. Hey everyone, Sarah Haeckel here from Welcoming God, a podcast for spiritual seekers. This is a legal disclaimer to say that this podcast is not a substitute for therapy or professional help. I am not a trained therapist. I also have not studied theology in a formal setting. This podcast is purely for educational, inspirational purposes, to share the goodness of welcoming God back into my life and all of the things that I'm learning on this journey. So thank you for joining me here, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks for joining me on another episode of Welcoming God. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen, and consider leaving us a review as it helps more people find and benefit from this show. Music by Song Channel Music. You can listen and hear more at Songchannel Music.com. Until we meet again, Aloha Nui Loa, take care and God bless you.