Jesus is Faithful to Show Up for You

There are many voices out there - telling us what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and how "it" should look. But what if we took a step back, and cut away the voices of this world, and even well-meaning voices, and asked Jesus to make His voice the clearest and the loudest to us. 

What would happen if we took away all the strategies, bells, whistles, and ideas and simply said, "Jesus, today, I"m going to show up. And I know YOU will give me the strategies, bells, whistles, and ideas that I need to do what You called me to do." 

I want to encourage you today: while best practices, platforms, and strategies have their place, nothing bests the plan that Jesus has for what He's called you to do. Or the way in which He has called you to walk where He's led you to minister. The pressure is off us: He's calling us to show up. To pursue Him. To be obedient, repentant, and to persevere. But the outcomes, the glory He gets, the souls that come to Him... they are up to Him. He is faithful - He will see it through!

Scriptures Referenced: 

• Philippians 2
• John 6
• Zephaniah 3
• Psalm 56:8
• Matthew 5 - The Beatitudes
• Mark 8:34-35
• Mark 12:29-30
• Isaiah 61

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome to a brand new episode of Honey from the Rock. I'm Carrie, your host, and I am so glad you're here. And today's episode is going to be interesting because I don't have an outline this week. Usually I do. Usually I have kind of a direction. I've been seeking the Lord. I've discerned kind of which way he wants to go. He's been faithful to lead me. And it's not that the weeks where I don't have an outline and I kind of just plop down in the chair and fly by the seat of my pants that the Lord hasn't been faithful. But there are times when I really sense a challenge from the Holy Spirit to just show up and to ask him to fill my mouth and be sensitive to his leading as I turn on my microphone and hit record. And that's what's happening today. And actually, as I've been recording my um numerous warm-up intros, I'm not kidding, I usually record probably seven or eight different intros before I finally land on one that I like and one where I don't sound dumb or sound less dumb, you know? I mean, whatever works. I, as I was, as I've been doing this intro and kind of trying to figure out how I want to articulate how today's episode is going to go, I it was it was like the Lord kind of caught my attention to say, this is what I want you to talk about. And that is this this idea of feeling like we have to be prepared or ready. I think ready is probably a better word for whatever the Lord calls us into. And I think that there is a real, I'll speak for my own life. There have been times, many, many, many times, that the Lord has called me to do something like this podcast. And I have felt completely unprepared to do it. I have felt inadequate and lacking in so many spiritual areas. Like, who am I to sit down behind a microphone and try and encourage or share or teach or whatever the Lord wants to do? And yet there was that unshakable knowing deep in my spirit that this is what the Lord was calling me to do. And so I said, all right, Lord, if this is what you're calling me to do, I'm just gonna show up. I'm gonna show up. I'm gonna be faithful to show up every week, and what you choose to do with it is up to you. And that was terrifying. Not because I'm such a great planner, my mother will tell you that that is not the case. I mean, just ask her about my elementary school years. I, you know, God bless her. She has the patience of Job. But I I'm not generally a planner. And actually, when I started to do this podcast, I really dove in. You know, I was I was reading different blogs and articles and looking at content calendars and how do you plan for your content? And these are best practices, and you should have this much content in the can. Um, before you even hit publish, you need to have 10 episodes recorded. And all of a sudden, I had all of these voices crowding in my head about how this podcast needed to look and what I should do and all of this stuff, and it sucked the joy out of it for me. The joy that I had felt in the anticipation that I that I was feeling to actually sit down and and dig into what the Lord was calling me to do by starting a podcast. And I think often that happens to us, right? We the Lord's calling us to something, we anticipate his move, and we don't get the whole instruction. We just, we just know he's calling us, right? We know he's calling us to come with him. It's it's like what he said to the disciples hey, come after me, follow me. Hey, you, I want you, come with me, right? And in our culture today in America, we have a tendency to say, I'm not going to do that unless I have all the details. And I don't know if you all know this about walking with the Lord. I am sure many of you do, that the Lord is kind and gracious to give us light for the next step. He may give us a sense of a direction to go. And sometimes he does. Sometimes he says, This is the next step, take this one. But he never gives us the whole plan as far as the details are to walk every single thing out. And I mean, we know the ultimate plan is our full redemption. When we die, we go to be with him. Once all of this is over and Jesus returns, there's going to be the new heavens and the new earth. But even then, we don't know what that's going to look like. And I I just want, I want to encourage, and I know I say it every week. Again, if anybody who runs like thesaurus.com or whatever wants to sponsor this show so I can I can find some different words rather than the ones I use every week. That'd be great. But I want to encourage you this week. Where are you with the Lord? What is the stirring in your heart towards what you are discerning or sensing that he is calling you to? And I don't mean calling you to in the sense of you've got a giant thing. Maybe you do. Maybe he's he you've you know you've got a major ministry opportunity in front of you and you're having to discern and walk through things. Maybe he's calling you to a season of rest where he's saying, pull back, leave all of this here, trust me with it, and come away with me and rest with me. Maybe you're in a waiting season where you're caught in between, you know, what is what has been your ministry, what's been in the past, and yet the Lord's calling you forward, but you can't quite, you can't quite move yet. Think about those things. Think about where the Lord has you. And I want you to take a step back with me as I do the same. And think about the voices that you are letting dictate to you how this particular season that you're in should look. Is it primarily the voice of Jesus? Is it the conviction of the Holy Spirit? Is it the leading of the Father? Is it his word informing and conforming you as as you as you wait on him, as you seek his wisdom? Or are you finding yourself in a place of overwhelm, like what I was talking about when I was starting the podcast, where all of a sudden there were so many voices invading my mind about what about what this should look like, quote unquote, and what I should be doing, and how a podcast needs to look, and this is the way you should do it, versus what the Lord was actually calling me to do. And and please understand, I am not advocating that we just ignore best business practices or you know, legal things or anything like that. And I know you all know that I'm not saying that. But I am saying, and I and and I I have discerned the challenge from the Lord in my own life. Who am I letting speak into what he's called me to do? And that's not to say I don't let anybody speak into it, because Proverbs tells us that in a multitude of counselors, there is much wisdom. And if you have people in your life who love the Lord and walk with him and love his word and know him, and they are speaking into your life and and they're helping you and walking alongside you to help you discern what the Lord is doing, I think that's amazing. But I think on top of everything, and and this ties into why I have been off of social media, Facebook, notwithstanding Instagram and threads I've deleted off my phone, is because I realized the multitude of voices that I was absorbing through my doom scrolling and through what I was consuming, they it wasn't just mindless and and harmless. It was actually really impacting the way I saw the world, how I walked in in holy spiritual sensitivity and reality, and it was impacting my feelings, the way I processed through certain things, and and I see now, having been off it a month, how the Lord has really cleared my mind. And it was the same thing when I was starting my podcast. You know, there are lots of ways to do a podcast, and there are lots of best practices and things that you can do. And there may be a time and a place to implement those. And the Lord will lead. But with whatever he's called you to do, whatever ministry or call he has put on your life, and for what he has called me to do, those things may factor in, and the Lord may use those best practices or these tools or this thing or whatever, but the foundation has to be what is the what is Jesus calling me to do, and what is he saying about how I walk this out? Because when I was focusing on all of these best practices, and you got to have 10 episodes in the can and you got to do this and you got to do that, it's it started overwhelming, and like I said, it completely stole my joy for from of what the Lord was calling me to do because it's not that I can't do those things, I can, but that rigid every single thing planned out to the hilt, I'm writing a script, I'm doing all of these things, it's not me. That's not how the Lord's made me. And there's times and places where I can do those things and need to do those things for sure, but I also need to walk out what he's called me to do in who he's made me to be. And I want to encourage you that if if if you are discerning change or shift in in your life, if the Lord's calling you and your family to do something different, that how he leads you, what he what he guides you into uh out of the truth of his word, right? Because he's not gonna call us to anything that violates his word. He's just not. But what whatever he's called, like first and foremost, what the Lord says and what he's calling you to do, friends, I really believe with all of my heart, his greatest pleasure is when we simply decide we're going to show up. We're gonna show up and we're gonna be open-handed with him. We're not gonna hold on to things too tightly, and if and if we do, he'll show us. Or and we're not gonna be loosey-goosey and you know, just flailing around either. But but Lord, I'm gonna show up and I I want to walk this out the way that you've called me to. Do I have social media for the podcast? Do I have a newsletter? What, you know, and I've and I've referenced it a little bit, and and it on the surface, it probably sounds like, well, yeah, you have to have all of those things. How else will people find it? And yet, I know that the Lord is saying to me, uh, let go of those things. Seek me, ask me, keep knocking, and and I'll lead you. I'll lead you in in how to promote the show. Do you trust me enough to get your podcast into the phones and into the podcast players and earbuds of the people who I want to encourage? Do you trust me with the results of what I've called you to do? Because, you know, that's the other thing, is listening to all it, man, you start to listen to all these voices, and you're trying to do all of these things because you're trying to get a certain result. And it's like it's really incumbent upon me to obey the Lord. It's up to him to produce the result that he wants to. And and I say that from a place of having wrestled with ambition, wrestling with the desire to want to build a platform, to want to share the Bible studies that I've written, to want to do all of these things. And and they are inherently, in and of themselves, not bad things. They're good things that the Lord's called me to. And yet I know that He is He is calling me to step back, to not be on social media, to really not promote the show right now and just keep showing up and keep posting it every week, and that's enough. And to seek him for his direction about how he wants me to promote it, how, what tools he wants me to use. And honestly, I so I a couple of nights ago, I hopped on Instagram. I was like, you know what, Lord, it's been a month, and I said I'd be off it for a month, so I'm gonna hop on Instagram and I'm just gonna see how I feel. Jeez, oh Pete's. I was so overwhelmed and yet found myself just completely sucked back in. And it was overwhelming because I had cut out all of that noise, and I chose how I wanted to get the news. I, you know, checked the websites that I wanted to, but it I wasn't being bombarded with all of these images and all of these ideas and all of these thoughts, and and you know, all you know, some really funny memes and you know, news about the World Cup and all of you know, just oh my goodness, all of this stuff. And I immediately closed the page and I'm like, okay, Lord, a month is not long enough. I need to stay off it longer. And I told my mom, I'm actually, I was actually toying with uh just deleting my profiles completely. And I I actually kind of feel like the Lord's like, no, just leave it for right now, just leave it. But I want to encourage you if if you are walking with the Lord and you are you are sensing him stirring the waters of your ministry or what your family's called to do or whatever it is, and what he's asking you to do flies in the face of what's conventional and culturally acceptable and the way you do things to build a platform and strategies you use to build a business and all this kind of stuff. Again, I'm not saying that those things don't have their place in time, they have their place in time when the Lord says that they do. And, you know, the Lord, it's a scripture that's used in a lot of different right ways, but I think it also applies here. The Lord tells us that his thoughts are not our thoughts, they are so far above us, right? His thoughts and his ways. Our ways are not his ways, his ways are not our ways. And at some point, we have to reconcile within ourselves that this discipleship journey with Jesus that we are called to is countercultural. It goes against the things of the world. And that's not to say that we we don't use the things of the world, right? Jesus talks about using the mammon of unrighteousness, but but that at its base, what what we are called to in discipleship, the loss of our life that we might find it, the forsaking of all that we have to follow Jesus, right? Again, the thing that was so offensive in John 6 to disciples who followed him. If you can't, right, you must eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you must drink his blood, and that's the way that you abide with him. That was so offensive to disciples, not just the Jews. Many of his disciples forsook him after that. The things that he calls us to when it doesn't make sense, come unto me and rest. You're weary and you're heavy laden, come to me, take my yoke upon you. I find rest for your souls. My burden is easy, my yoke is light. Learn of me, because I'm meek and lowly in heart. You know, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. All of the things that scripture tells us that that though I may weep, right? The Lord puts my tears in his bottle, they're written in his book, and and though I may weep for a night, joy comes in the morning, that up is down in the kingdom. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are you when you are persecuted for for my kingdom and for my righteousness and for my witness, all of those things that we are called to a countercultural gospel, and yet at the same time, the Lord calls us to minister that countercultural gospel into our culture. But I think if we are constantly trying to form what he's calling us to do according to culture and according to what all of the voices out here tells us is best and bright and good, and that's our foundation versus Lord, this is this ministry that you've given me is your gift to me. What do you want to do with it? How are you leading me? What does this look like? What is what and what do different seasons look like in you, Lord? What are you saying? What are you trying to teach me? How are you trying to reveal yourself to me so that as I turn around and then and I go and I minister or I comfort someone as I have been comforted? Or I, you know, preach your gospel on a street corner, Lord, and and defend your gospel with Christ-centered biblical apologetics, or I go and I sit in a hospice room with someone who is alone and and dying and has nobody, Lord. How are you equipping me and revealing yourself to me in deeper ways so that I can step into the world that is sick and dying and lost and minister you in your love and in your truth? And until I sat down in this chair and started talking about this, I really didn't fully understand or realize. And I still wouldn't say that I fully understand, but even just talking about this has given me a better realization of the season that the Lord has put me in with this podcast. That and my mom had said it to me that he's he's calling me to go against the grain. And friends, I want to remind you that he's calling every single one of us to go against the grain. That the gospel it in and of itself, it's a very nature, is against the grain. And yet at the same time, it is the very thing, it is it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that has the power because of who he is to go into our cultures, to to go into places that we never would have expected to be called and to minister and to transform. And, you know, we're not called to completely sequester ourselves away from the world. And yet I think there is great care and wisdom and wariness we need to have when we start to try and adopt all of these worldly practices to our ministry. I hope that that makes sense. I hope, Lord, I hope it makes sense. It makes sense in my head. I just hope I'm communicating it clearly. Because what I really sense in all of it is that the Lord wants to take the pressure off of us. There's actually no pressure on us in the sense of the ministry that the Lord's given us. Not only do we have to obey, but man, we've got to make sure that we've got X, Y, Z results. It's on us to obey. Lord, He is the one who bursts the fruit, right? And He prunes us so that more fruit would abide. We're responsible to be obedient. We're responsible to love the Lord with our heart, mind, soulness, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself, to do the things that we know the Lord has commanded us to do. And He has shown us, He has shown us that when we do those things, we will bear fruit. But how that fruit looks, how much we bear, um, you know, the seasons that we're in, we have no control over those things. That those those things are on the Lord, and he gladly takes that on because he can see the whole picture of his kingdom, what's happening, what he's doing, who he's drawing to himself, where he's working in power, where he's working in comfort, where he's working in conviction, where he's rebuking and disciplining, where he is lifting up and encouraging, and sometimes all in the same situation, right? I pray that the Lord, I there is a, there is a, I know I said it a couple of weeks ago, but there is a shift happening with the Lord's people, from what I can see in my circle, with the people that I do life with, that the Lord is uprooting lies and he is tilling up the ground, and he is saying, I have work for you to do in this world. I have ways that I want to show myself and bring glory to myself through your life, through your testimony, through the ministry that I have gifted to you. But I also want to relieve from you, I want to take this un this unholy spiritual yoke off of you. That's all of this pressure that you got to just get this done right. No, I want you to come. I'm asking you to show up. I'm saying, hey, you right there. I love you, I've died for you, and I'm calling you, come with me. Come away with me, come rest with me, come follow me. Keep opening that book, my word, even though there are things about it you don't understand. Keep persevering. I will open it to you. I will show myself to you. All of these things that the Lord says says in his word, that he loves our faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please him. Because we have to come to him believing he is who he says he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Friends, he wants us to just, he wants us to show up, hands open, hearts willing, and and and a spirit and a disposition that says, I will, I will keep persevering no matter how how difficult this gets, Lord. Because this this discipleship thing, in though it's countercultural in many, many beautiful and amazing and encouraging and exceptional ways, it is also countercultural in suffering, in affliction, in in the difficulties of life, in the requirements to forgive those who offend you and hurt you, and to ask forgiveness of those you've offended and hurt. It's one of submission, it's of our wills, something that we don't easily love to give up and surrender to the Lord. It's it's it's countercultural in that we say, I'm not going to live. How how culture in the world says it's okay to live. I'm gonna, I'm gonna believe the word of God and trust that the commandments that He's given me to obey and to live by are the very best things for me. They're protection for me in many areas. They help me discern truth from lie. They bring me into a place where I can walk in unity with Jesus and where I can actually know. I can know the one who created me and who gave me these gifts and and who has held me as I have cried and comforted me in my devastation and ministered to me in my weakness, and and proven himself again and again and again to be faithful. Friend, I can't remember where it's it at, it's in Micah somewhere. And I was saying this first to my mom, and I can't remember the context. So I've taken if I've taken it completely out of context, forgive me. But there is a place in Micah, I believe, Micah or Malachi, where the Lord tells the Israelites, he tells the nation of Israel to not despise the day of small things. And I just, friends, we're so obsessed in so many ways with being big and wanting to have impact and yada, yada, yada. And I think there's a place for those things. I firmly believe that there is godly ambition. There is a doubt, there is a demonic ambition, no doubt, but there is a godly ambition, but it has to be honed and sharpened and molded by the hand of the Lord. And I want to encourage you to keep showing up where you are, whatever that looks like. Right now, for me, it means showing up for my family every day, for my friends every day. It means every Tuesday sitting down in this chair, putting my headphones on, plugging my microphone in, opening my recording app, and saying, All right, Lord, fill my mouth. What are we doing this week? And he's do-I I want to encourage you because I'm not just sitting down here saying, Man, I've got so much wisdom to impart to you people. No. No. I I want to walk this thing together with whoever listens. I want the struggles, the sins that have easily beset me, the places where I've been in bondage, and Jesus has had to step into my life and deliver me, the things that I've suffered, the afflictions, the surgeries, the disappointments, the joys, the beauty, the wonder, the amazement, all of it. All of it I want to share as the Lord leads, to give him glory and to encourage his people to keep going. That we can persevere, that the Lord is near to us when we are brokenhearted. He is near to us in joy. He sings over us, he dances over us, he delights in us. He wants to conform us to the image of his son. But conformity to the image of Jesus does not mean we all look the same. But it does mean that we can be unified. And so, however the Lord has called you, whatever ministry he has given you, I would encourage you, friends, examine where you're at. Examine where you're at with the Lord. Ask the Lord to show you what voices you are letting in or are speaking into your ministry, and the Lord's saying, cut that away. Cut that away. For now, it is enough to keep showing up. If you keep showing up, the Lord promises He will. That he will show up. It was it was one of my most favorite things that my dad would say in ministry. You know, people would come for prayer, they'd come for counsel, and they'd come expectant because they had heard how the Lord had moved for other people. And my dad would always say, I don't know what Jesus is going to do today, but I know that he will show up. And friends, I that is what I want to give to you and and to give to me. Wherever it the Lord has you with with your life and the ministry that he's given to you, uh rest in the fact that today it is enough to show up. And in you showing up to faithfully do what he's called you to do, Jesus is equally as faithful to show up and walk with you. And no matter what you have to do, what voices you have to cut away, trust the Lord. Trust the Lord with what he has given you because he wants to bring glory, his glory into your life. He wants to show you his glory, and he wants your life to be a testimony as well of his love and his power and his grace to save us from sin. But even more than being saved from sin. That he's died to redeem us so that we can know him and be restored to him. I pray that this episode blesses you and encourages where you are. And I pray that the Lord makes his face shine upon you. I pray he encourages your heart and your spirit, and that you find yourself confident that that he is with you, as Paul says in Philippians 2, both to work in you and to will in you for his good pleasure. Amen.