Welcome to the Podcast!

Hey friend, I am so excited to dive into this space where we can talk about Jesus, how He loves us, and understanding His word better. A few years back I did a weekly podcast and after that ended, I really missed connecting with you guys! I can’t wait to dive in again and spend time together every week. We will walk through the Bible together, share testimonies of how God is changing our lives, and encourage each other in Christ. I am so glad you are here! See you next week :)

Erika 

“She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.”

Genesis 16:13

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Join me over on instagram! @erikaruthpizzo 

Website: www.erikapizzo.com

Transcript

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Hi, friend. I'm so happy to have you here and welcome to the podcast. I've been praying about this and praying about what we're going to talk about and how we're going to see God in his word. And I just can't wait to dive in with you guys. And I chose the title of The God Who Sees You because I was thinking about Hagar in Genesis. And there's this verse there that has meant so much to me. It's in Genesis 16, 13. Hagar is talking, and she says, You are the God who sees me. I have now seen the one who sees me. So my whole goal with this podcast is to help you feel seen and loved by God and cherished by him. And I kind of wanted to give you a little bit of my background. I actually grew up in a Christian household and I loved the Lord from a really young age, but he's taken me through some crazy things. One of those being some serious health issues a few years ago. And at my lowest, I really felt the Lord reach out to me and say, I see you. I see what you're going through right now. And I had so many moments with him where I kind of would wake up in the middle of the night because of all my health issues. I had a lot of anxiety and I struggled with, Lord, how do I serve you and love you when I feel so awful all the time? And so I'd wake up in the middle of the night with anxiety and I would just talk to him. So in those middle of the night hours is where I really forged a deep relationship with him. And sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would kind of just call me away and say, Can you come write with me? Can you come write what you're feeling and thinking and praying? So I would get up when nobody else in my house was awake, and I would go and sit and write and just kind of write out my heart to him and the anxiety I was feeling and just everything that he was kind of bringing me through. And these became our special moments, those middle of the night moments with God. And eventually he called me to kind of show people those writings, show them my heart and to kind of put it out there. And that was when writing and becoming an author started. And I felt a lot of spiritual warfare in the moment where I started to put out my first writings. It was just in a blog format, but I felt like this real heaviness. I felt like the enemy was coming down hard on me and the depression was starting to get worse and worse, and just everything coming against me was getting worse and worse. And I had this moment where I actually was sitting down talking to my parents in my backyard, and I said, they've been in ministry for a long time. So I was asking for their advice. And I said, Have you ever had a moment where the pressure from the enemy got so big that you just kind of decided to give up on whatever you were working on? Or just throw in the towel. And they said, no, they said, Erica, if you are feeling that pressure, that means you are in the right place and that you should keep going and keep writing. Um, so they they kind of gave me that word of encouragement that I needed to push through this heaviness and this depression that I was feeling. And so from there, I just I just kept writing. And God has taken me through now six books. I'm on my seventh book right now, and just feeling um the presence of God every single time I write. And sometimes that spiritual warfare is still very heavy, but God is always pushing me and bringing me through it. And a current thing that I'm doing now too is working on a master's degree in theology. And I'm doing this because I want to handle the word of God properly and write, and I want it to be the way that I can effectively teach it. So that's just a little background of me. Um, and in these videos, in this podcast, my goal is to kind of bring the Bible down to a level that is so understandable, so relatable, and something that can transform your life. Because I really believe that knowing God and Him knowing you can completely transform the way you live, like it has done for me. So we're gonna journey through so many different topics in the Bible, and um, we're gonna receive a lot of encouragement from this. But first and foremost, I just want you to know that God sees you, that He sees your heart, He sees your life, and He cares about all the details of you and what makes you you and your emotions and your thoughts. So I've been praying about what is our first topic? What are we gonna get into? And I have to say the one topic that has meant the most to me in teaching is when I taught a prayer class back at my church and we talked about friendship with God. That was my absolute favorite thing I've ever taught on. It was so tender, and it was this moment where I got to kind of really dissect what does it mean to be his friend? And then what does it mean that he wants to be friends with us and how beautiful that is. So we're gonna explore that. Um, John 15, 13 through 15 says, I have called you friends. One part of that says, I have called you friends. So that's what we're gonna explore. Jesus calls us his friend. We are his friend, and this is gonna be a great series. I can't wait to see you next week.