Remember Why.

In this heartfelt episode of Life in Perspective, Brenda Palmer shares a pivotal moment when she was ready to quit ministry. In a conversation with God, she was challenged to see how walking away meant abandoning her first love.

This episode invites you to reflect: Have you left your calling because of others? It’s time to return — to your purpose, your passion, and the "yes" you first gave to Jesus. Let this message reignite your faith and inspire you to step back into your divine assignment.

Listen now and let the journey back begin. Don’t forget to share, subscribe, and join the conversation!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome to Life in Perspective. We are finally back. I know some of y'all probably want to sing, Where have you been? Because it's been a minute, okay? We haven't been here. Well, first of all, we ain't never been here, but like we ain't never been like here since August of 2024. That's crazy, okay? But it's a new year, it's a new season. We're in season seven, which is kind of crazy because 2025 is also my seventh year of living in LA. So it's kind of like, you know, two-fold there. Um, man, so many things have happened since the last time we've been together. Um, I think since the last time you saw me, I've quit. You know what I'm saying? I quit all the things and then I made a comeback. Um, and I probably lost myself for a little bit, and then with the help of Jesus, found myself and remembered why. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. Um, I think uh, I guess there are so many lessons I feel like I have learned in this last season of my life. But I think the main one that I'm carrying with me every time I experience frustration or doubt or fear or disappointment or people being weird, like whatever category of things that are considered trials when I face it, it is simply to fix my eyes on Jesus. And I ain't gonna hold you. Easier said than done. But it like, I don't know for whatever reason, like I feel like that's something I've heard all my life being a church kid, right? But there is something when a word or a scripture or something that you've memorized uh in your mind becomes alive in your heart. And I feel like to fix my eyes on Jesus has been my grounding point and a reminder. And it doesn't eliminate the circumstances. Like I probably this week I experienced something that made me just frustrated. And I find myself immediately when I'm experiencing emotions that are not aligned with how God would want me to show up in a situation, I find myself taking that thing to God in prayer immediately and Him saying, mm-mm-mm, keep your eyes on me. And it's it's been helpful. Like it is, it is something that I have put into practice and it has been so beneficial to my life. Now, I didn't start there, and actually the way I got there is that I just had a rough, like a rough year. Like 2024 was rough in a way that it shouldn't have been rough because I was just being obedient. Um, and I'll say, like, I feel like I experienced very much a 1st Kings 18 and 19 situation. Like there is, and I'm gonna just summarize it for you, but I just would like encourage you to go and read it yourself. But there's the story of Elijah, he has this showdown on Mount Carmel where he basically tells them, like, the God that y'all been serving is not real. It's actually an idol, but y'all are doing like this back and forth thing with like serving this idol, and then sometimes you want to roll with God, and he's like, if the Lord is your God, follow him. He has this showdown, he's like, Okay, if this is the God you want to roll with, I'm gonna roll with my God and we'll see whose God shows up. Okay, Elijah basically wets wood, and just so you know, wet wood doesn't burn, okay? He pours gallons of water on wood, okay, and he asks the Lord to send fire. Immediately, the Lord sends fire. Now I ain't gonna tell you what all the other people went through with their God. Here's the spoiler alert: it didn't show up. It just didn't, okay? So he has like this major moment where this generation of people turn their hearts back to the Father. They ex well, they leave famine and like originally Elijah was just going there to tell them that it was gonna rain. But while he was doing that, he needed to remind them who their God was. They experience rain. He has this, I would say, life-transforming moment in his life where God uses him to reveal himself to people, and he challenges an altar because they were serving another God. So he challenges idolatry in their hearts, they shift, they turn their hearts back to God. He ends up depressed in a cave right after this high point. And the reason I would say is kind of what I experienced is because I feel like um last year and choosing to be public about renouncing the sorority I was a part of and challenging people in their idolatry in their lives, whether it was similar to mine or if it was their families or their careers or their purpose or their money or their status, whatever it is, I just feel like God gave me the assignment to challenge idolatry. Now, I didn't ask for that assignment. I really, really did it. I promise you, I didn't, I didn't want it. I did I this is not something I signed up for. It was something I was led into by being obedient. And I feel like after doing that, I then entered, which would be 1 Kings 19, where Elijah ends up in a cave depressed, feeling like he's alone and also telling God like he doesn't want to live. And it's like a really weird juxtaposition where he literally is used by God to do this like miraculous thing, and then he ends up depressed. And as I look back over my life the last year, that is how I felt. I felt extremely alienated. I felt like God asked me to do something, I was obedient to him, and then I felt like my life flipped upside down. And it was interesting, right? Because I became public about um idolatry that exists in my life, not knowing that God was using the response to that decision or that step of obedience to also eliminate a hidden level of idolatry in my life. Now, I'm somebody who says all the time, man, I just want to please God. Like my highest ambition in life is to please God. And I felt like last year I had to come face to face with do I really stand on that 10 toes down, even when I'm disappointing others? Do I still want to please God when it makes people I love and care about not happy with me, or when it disappoints them, or if my parents don't understand, if my friends walk away from me, do I still feel that my highest ambition is to please God when it disrupts the normalcy of my life? And I had to sit with that. And I had to face the fact that my highest ambition to please God sounded like a really good statement to put on a shirt. But when I had to live that out in moments where the people that were closest to me were kind of like not in agreement with the things that God was calling me to do, it was almost like you think I'm after this huge moment for you to help bring people out of idolatry. He's like, No, I'm actually after the idolatry in your heart. Like the hidden one that can only be revealed when you're in a situation like this. Like, will you still choose God when nobody gets it? When nobody understands it, when nobody supports it. It's really easy to be obedient when everybody's like, dang, Brenda left her job. Dang, Brenda did all these faith moves. But what about the step of obedience that nobody agrees with? What about the step of obedience that cost you your livelihood? What about the step of obedience where everybody was rocking with you and now we don't know because this doesn't really align with how we saw you fitting in our plan or our system or our like or our friendship? Like I even had crazy journeys of relationships last year where I just was like, I just want to check out. Like, and here's the thing about responsibility. Sometimes in your living out your responsibility, you can hide from the things you need to address. And that's what was happening. I had so many responsibilities on my plate that I didn't even have time to process my feelings or to even understand what was going on. I just knew I needed to show up. I knew I needed to keep showing up. So for me, that meant suppressing how things were affecting me, not dealing with them, not taking them to God. It was like I was taking it on the chin because I just need to show up. And I need you to know that you don't serve a God who would, at the cost of your life, of your mental health, of your sanity, of your like, of your relationship with God, he would never cause you to sacrifice moments with him so you could show up for him. That is not the kind of God we serve. Honestly, all of I feel like the pressure got heavy because God was like, hey, at what point are you gonna give this to me? At what point are you gonna bring this to me? At what point are you gonna be honest that that did hurt your feelings? And that person did, you know, walking away from you did make you feel away. At what point are you gonna stop and bring it to me? And I was not doing that, I was just suppressing it, suppressing it, suppressing it. I literally hate everything I did video-wise from like June, July, like the summer months. I can watch those videos and I'm like, I had sad eyes. Like I was not okay. Like, I remember, I'm gonna tell the story about Saeed. The last season of this podcast we shot. I was hanging on by a thread. And Saeed, he he shoots, he handles all the video stuff, and he was like, Are you okay? And sometimes, bro, like you need people to ask you that because sometimes we think that we are doing a great job of pretending. And Said was like, girl, I'm not buying this. And I appreciate that because I think for me, that was a moment where it's like, okay, I never want the things that I'm journeying through to hinder and affect what God's called me to do. And in those moments, you gotta sit down, you gotta take a step back because if not, you get to a place of unhealth where what you create, what you put out, what you do, it starts to filter through whatever you're you're not dealing with. And I had reached a point where child, I didn't have nothing else to give. Like honestly, even in the last season, I'm gonna tell you I was hanging on by a thread. And I not until I think maybe October finally started to understand what was going on because I have been suppressing my feelings so much, I didn't even know. But here's the thing: here is the kicker. Okay, offense unaddressed is detrimental, not just to your life, but to everything that is attached to it. If you do not properly process hurt, it will then turn into offense, which then creates a door for the enemy to do whatever he wants to do with that stuff that you haven't dealt with in your heart. And what I did not realize is that something had hit my heart, it went unaddressed, and little by little, little, it was unraveling my life. Like bit by bit. And I didn't even understand it until I got to a point where I'm like, I have nothing else to give. I got to sit with God, I got to sit in his presence, and it was almost like he started to run it back like a video reel. Or we just went back through the last five or six months, and I felt like God rang me. He rung he rung my little heart. He's like, look at this, and look at this. And you remember he did this? That's attached to this. And that like he just took me on a journey. And I had like this honest conversation where I was like, God, I don't want to do this anymore. I do, I don't like how it's making me feel. I don't like the things I have to navigate for a life I never wanted. Like, and it's funny, in um, one of my seminary classes, our professor said something that's really, really simple, but it just hit my heart because that is my first excuse. I'm always telling the Lord, I didn't even ask for this. And I like throw it at his face, like it's my little spade card, like I'm finna win the game with that. And and I he said something, he said, to say that something is unfair says that God owed you something. And I don't know why that just like wrecked me, but it did. Because to deem that something is unfair means that God didn't show up how he was supposed to show up. Like he owed you an easy life because you said yes. And I'm not one who thinks that, but I think sometimes when it comes to ministry stuff, I do think that. I do feel like I'm out here following you, so this should be easy when they crucified Jesus. So I don't really know where that expectation came from. But I remember sitting with God and just saying I didn't want to do it. And if you've been like following me for a while or you've engaged with my content, you will often hear me say that a lot. But when I when I say that I'm done, I was done, it it's not like a joke. Like, like I genuinely was finished with this. I canceled everything. Like I wasn't podcasting, I wasn't preaching anywhere unless it was already on my calendar. I wasn't really going anywhere. I was going to school, I was staying in my house. I was low-key depressed. Um I and and I remember sitting on my couch. It was maybe the last Sunday in August. And no, no, no. First week of September, maybe somewhere in there. Um, and I felt like this pool that I needed to go to this church in Arizona because there's a pastor. Um, well, he's like a traveling speaker, like evangelist, that I listened to who was gonna be in Arizona, and I felt like God was like, you need to be in the room. And I played around and I didn't go in the room. I watched from my couch. And I remember Stephanie texting me and saying, Hey B, how's your heart? And now the timing of her texting that and where I had just decided I was gonna be, they were, it was like, it was almost like God was like, No, like it was like God was like not on my watch. And you have to be careful in moments where you are navigating offense or disappointment or the hard things in life, you have to be careful with moments of isolation. Like somebody needs to always know how you feel. And I don't know if it's a spouse, if and it needs to be a trusted person. And the reason I say that is because when you are in a vulnerable place like that, you have the tendency to make emotional decisions. And sometimes they are not ones that you can take back. And so you have to be very careful with that space. I would venture to say that as much as you invite Jesus into that space, you need to invite a trusted voice in your life into that space as well. It could be a parent, it could be a mentor, it needs to be somebody who is mature that will call you to the place in which God has like predestined for you to be in. Like, not like a person that will make space for you to feel how you feel, but they'll always call you higher. And so Steph sends a text and she asks how my heart is, and I'm like, bro, you wanna you want like the the answer I know I should give you, or do you want the truth of it? And I just share with her, like, I'm done with this. And I I promised myself that I'm not was not gonna get emotional in this, and I'm not. But um she sends a text and I tell her, like, I'm I'm so done with this. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, I just I don't want to navigate it.

unknown 15:44

I feel a cry coming. I need a moment.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Um, and I remember her, oh my goodness, I haven't cried on a podcast in a long time. But um she was like, what is happening right now?

unknown 16:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Um she was like, Mambi, like I felt led to pray for you.

unknown 16:07

Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Um she was like, I literally, like, God is saying, like, the thoughts that you're having, like, they don't belong to you. And she was like, I literally see what's going on.

unknown 16:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Okay, it's okay to cry, but my voice getting shaky. That's a little, that's a little, that's too much of a cry. Um, and she's like, man, the the like the thoughts that you're having, they're not yours. And she's like, I literally almost, she's like, I got a vision. She's like, it's literally like the enemies like whispering into your ear. And she's like, those are not your thoughts. And she's like, absolutely not. Like quitting is not an option. And like, bro, when I tell you, like, in the course of those months, me and Steph had a bunch of conversations about me quitting. And you have to have a friend who just it doesn't matter how serious you are, they never take you serious, even when you want to be taken serious. And she said the thing, like, she tells me a story about a mentor that she had who would always say, like, he didn't want to do it anymore, right? And so she said, like, he literally told God he didn't want to do it anymore. And God told him, He's like, Okay, that's fine. He was like, You have a nephew who has the same name as you. And so I will raise him up, he'll take over the ministry and I'll call you home. And I was like, Wait, what, Steph? And she was like, Yeah. She says, Some of us, our callings are the only reason we're alive. Like, you literally were born to do this thing, and outside of you doing this thing, God's like, okay, then you can just come be with me. And she says, he says to her, he says to God, like, oh no, no, no, no. Like, if it's like die or live in my calling, for sure, I'm gonna choose living in my calling. And she said that he like started doing ministry again, and she was like, eventually, he like passed away. And she was like, she genuinely feels like even though he had another like round of hey, I'm gonna do this, that at some point he started to pray again and say he didn't want to do it. And God called him home. Because she was like, there was she was like, he just passed away, like there was no like thing that made him die, like he just passed away. And she was like, So, you know, she's like, it's fine. She's like, it's fine if you don't want to do this anymore. She was like, but if that's your choice, then be okay with whatever God decides. Nobody wants to hear that. Like, I want to, I wanna wallow in this. And so then I mean, what do you say to that? Right. And that kind of I ain't gonna tell you that like it ended there for me because it didn't. Like I had like there's one thing to like decide in your mind. When you decide in your heart, that is you have a resolve. And and I had a resolve. I didn't care nothing about y'all that needs to like hear this podcast. I didn't care about the lives attached to come alive. I didn't care about the lives attached to my book. Like, I genuinely didn't care about anything other than not wanting to feel the way I felt. And so I went on this journey and I started having conversations with God. I didn't go to that service, but I did watch it, and it gave me so much context. He preached on Elijah, and um, he said something that like took me out. There's a portion of that story at the end of 1 Kings 18 that I've read over and over again. But he it talks about him waiting for the rain and he's sending servants to check, and they go and check six times. It isn't until the seventh time that he sees a cloud forming and the rain is about to come. In that passage, it also says the hand of God was on Elijah and he was supposed to go to Jezebel. He was supposed to confront her. Instead, Jezebel sends a threat that gives him a vision that causes him to fear and not follow what God told him to do, and he ends up in a cave depressed, asking God to take his life. And he says something that sticks out to me from that sermon, and he said, Jezebel didn't have any authority, but she invoked a fear into Elijah that caused him to do to himself what she couldn't do. And when I tell you, that wrecked me because I realized that the enemy's job is to distract us so much that we make the decision that he doesn't have the authority to evoke. He he doesn't have the authority, but we have all the power. So it's like, oh, how do I hinder the call on your life? Well, he creates all of these things that we endure that we don't include Jesus in in our journeys of life, and then we make the decision to take ourselves out of the game. And it's like, bro, why would you leave a game that's already fixed? It's already won. We already have the victory. And so it's like, man, what is it that you have walked away from? Or what is it that you've experienced that's made what you're walking through so tough that you're ready to throw in a towel? Or you've already thrown in the towel in your heart, you're just thinking that you're present, but you've already left. I want to challenge you to invite Jesus into that space. Now, I'm gonna tell you right now, it's not gonna be a fun journey. It's not even gonna be an easy one, okay? Because when I started sitting down with Jesus and telling him that I wanted to walk away, you know what he told me? The thing I've been preaching for the last four months, which is you lost your first love. You forsaken it. If you could walk away from a place That I put you in and I positioned you because of how people are making you feel, this ain't never been about me. It was always about the people. If the people can make you walk away from a thing God put you in, it was never about obeying God. That's just what you told yourself. But the fact that they're not responding the way you want them to respond, and now you're ready to walk away means it was always about them and I was never the root of it. And I I had to, of course, have a conversation with the Lord, be like, no, no, no, that's not it. I'm just saying, Brad, look like you got me out here by myself. And so I had to sit with, yeah, at some point I lost focus. At some point, I lost sight of the reason I said yes to Jesus in the first place. It wasn't so that people would like what I said. It wasn't so that people would feel like roses and happy. It was so that I could do the thing that God created me to do, the way He created me to do it, and not be concerned about how it makes people feel. And so I, you know, I spent a lot, a lot of time with the Lord. I got in therapy because a lot of things that I was internalizing were triggers from things I hadn't dealt with in life previous to this year. So when things mirrored something that I had experienced prior to, but I had never dealt with, it became a trigger. And I ain't gonna hold you like my um coping mechanism is retreat, it is avoidance. It is, I'm not even gonna deal with this, I'm gonna walk away so I can protect myself. And I cannot do that being called. You cannot do that being called. There are too many people that are assigned and attached to what God placed on the inside of you. It's too rare. It cost him his life. And we don't get to just throw in a towel because it gets tough. We don't get to just throw in a towel because it gets hard. Like, bro, grow up. It's it's it's I had to grow up. I had to mature. And the crazy thing is like the year was tough, but the year prior, God was preparing me. I kept getting prophetic words after prophetic words of people saying, Hey, Brenda, the spiritual life and the spiritual disciplines that you had for this year, they ain't gonna work for next year. They ain't gonna work for the next season, they're not gonna work for the next thing. And crazy enough, in hindsight, I understand why. There was a way that I needed to be so tapped into God that I wasn't distracted by all the things that came outside of him. And because I wasn't in the space I needed to be or the space he was calling me to be in, man, it shook me. Everything that could be shaken was shaken, and so was I. Shook it. Um, but here's the thing: I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful that I got to experience God walk with me through a journey where I hadn't struggled with depression since 2019. And for the first time in a long time, I battled with that. I battled with feeling like I didn't want to live. I battled with like I just want out of this. And not because life was so hard, it just felt like it was like back to back to back to back. And like, like I feel like people can prepare you or like even like mentors or people who share life stories, right? Like they can prepare you for outside people attacking you, bro. It's the ones that that's close to your heart that hit in a way that you be like, Woo, wait, I need some recovery time. And I think overall, the biggest lesson I've learned outside of keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus is like you gotta see yourself properly. I always say like the level of that the attack reveals what you carry. Like, like nobody's gonna try to attack somebody who ain't got nothing. Like you have to, you have to have a lot of weight on you when the attacks are weighty. And so I want to challenge you with that. You may feel like life is, I mean, squaring up with you and knocked you down a couple of times. You know, you might feel like Tyson in that last fight on Netflix, you know. We all knew how that was gonna end, but there was just a hope that we all had. I had hope. Like, I was like, Tyson's about to shock the world. He didn't. He didn't shock us. He did exactly what everything in him, like it just it wasn't, and and that boy wasn't fighting him for real because he like, you don't got this in you. So when Satan squares up and takes his best shots, don't let that be a sign to you that God isn't present. No, no, no, no. Let that be a sign for what you carry and the amount of weight and impact that it's gonna make in the world that Satan would try to take you out before you even step into it. You gotta know that. It is a way to amplify what God has on the inside of you. The biggest threat that you could ever be to Satan in his kingdom is you recognizing your authority and your identity in Christ Jesus. He he does everything he can from the moment you're born to ensure that you never recognize your identity. He challenges it all the time. The first thing he says to Eve is like, Don't you want to be like God? She already is. She already is. You not knowing who you are in Christ and what you carry gives the ability for Satan to make you do what he doesn't have the authority to. Because when you don't recognize what you carry, you give everybody access to it. You let everybody be your friend, you let everybody be in your space. You you allow everybody to speak into what they don't really, what they shouldn't have authority to speak into. And so I want to challenge you that you learn who God says you are. Practical step with that is literally Google scriptures that reveal who God says I am and dive into them. Like I'm I'm not one who will tell you now some things you shouldn't Google, but that you can. What does God say about my identity? Now, dreams, don't Google that because we don't know where that source is, right? But somebody could give you a list of things that God says about you that will give you scriptures and you go find those scriptures, you mark them, and whenever you doubt whatever God says about you, you find that verse and you declare it over yourself. Man, listen, you gotta do whatever you gotta do to maintain that structure and that discipline that reminds you what God said about you. I'm telling you, that was the biggest issue I had this year is that I didn't recognize who I was. There's a sermon called I Didn't Know I Was Me. And after this year, um, well, after that year, I just I didn't know I was me, but now I do. And now I recognize the authority. Bro, like it changed the game. Like I have been doubting myself. I have been doubting my calling, I have been doubting the assignment on my life. But the moment I fix my eyes on Jesus, listen, Peter steps out on that boat. He says, Hey Jesus, if that's you calling me, let me know. Jesus calls him, tells him to come. Peter is walking on water in the middle of a storm. It was a storm before he stepped out there. He's walking on water. There is a storm. His eyes are on Jesus. It's not until he pays attention to the things around him. He recognizes, like, oh, snap, it's a storm. He starts paying attention to his circumstances. He takes his eyes off Jesus and then he starts to sink. That is life. If my eyes are fixed on Jesus and I'm tuned into what he said and what he's calling me to do, I won't be moved by the storms around me because I recognize not only who's called me, but who's within me, empowering me to walk in the direction that he's in. So I'm really here to like talk your ear off. I just wanted to share with you, like, if you wanted to know where I have been, that's that's where I have been. I had quit everything, and then I decided to surrender to the Lord and return to my first love. And now we're back doing all the things. We got pop-up Bible studies, we got the podcast back, but it's not from a place. I'm telling you, it's from a healthy place. It's from a place that I do not care. I don't care. All I care about is did I please God? And it's crazy how the Lord will like affirm, like, because I'm I'm not gonna hold y'all. It was scary. It was really, really hard. I was really battling my mind every time I would step on a platform to preach because it was like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to be this way, and I don't want to do this. And what are they gonna think about this? I will post a clip and be in my head. And I can remember the moment I stepped on a platform and I had notes. And it was almost like the Lord was like, girl, give me these notes. And not only did he wreck me, he wrecked the room, and I saw the fruit of my step of obedience and understanding that everything in my life, every opportunity is just a moment for me to be a tool in the hand of God and to do what he wants. Everybody is not gonna get it. You gotta know. Number one thing to know about obedience is everybody is not gonna get it. But here's how you settle in that. Here's how you reconcile. Did you do what God said do? Everything else, you leave it to him to respond to. You have to because if not, the enemy will use you to do the thing he doesn't have the authority to, and that's take you out. So I hope you feel encouraged. I hope whatever you were considering walking away from, the thing in your heart that you've been stagnant on because you don't know how people are gonna receive it. It doesn't matter. All you have to do is offer it as a gift and an offering to the Lord and said, Man, God, I'm doing this as unto the Lord. I'm doing this for you to please you and praying that you use me to impact others to lead them to you. I want to pray with you. But before I do, I want you to write down an area that you've walked away from. It could be internally, it could be a person or a family member, an area that you feel God specifically called you to that you walked away from. I want you to write it down and I want you to sit in the next week, the next seven days, and just sit with Jesus and talk to him about it. Talk about why you walked away, talk about how it made you feel, and then ask him to remind you why he called you to do that thing in the first place. Before I pray, I want to share with you my scripture that's been getting me through. It's Hebrews 12, and I'm gonna start at verse 2. Um, well, actually, I'm gonna start at verse one. Um, it says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses who by faith have testified to the truth of God's absolute faithfulness, stripping off every unnecessary weight and sin which so easily and cleverly entangles us. Here's the part I need you to pay attention to. Let us run with endurance and active persistence, the race that is set before us, looking away from all that will distract us, and focusing our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and perfecter of faith, the first incentive for our belief, and the one who brings our faith to maturity, who for the joy of accomplishing the goal, sat before him, endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God, revealing his deity, his authority, and completion of his work. Okay. I don't really got time to unpack this whole verse for you, but to sum it all up, is that you need to just keep your eyes on Jesus. Don't allow the distractions to pull you away or draw you away. Allow yourself to keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. And then that verse gives us an example. Jesus, for the sake of accomplishing the goal that he was created to do, he was born to die, he set his focus on um accomplishing the will of the Father. Being crucified has a level of shame to it. And he endured death, he endured the shame. He didn't allow any of that to distract him from his purpose, which was saving you and me by dying on the cross. So the same way Jesus took up his cross and died on it for you and me is the same way we need to take up our cross and follow Jesus and not allow the distractions to tear us away. So I'm gonna pray for you. Lord, I thank you for my brothers and my sisters that are watching this podcast or listening to it right now. God, you know exactly where they are. And my prayer is that in this moment they would feel uh their faith being reactivated. God, that they would uh feel uh a burning sensation for the burden that you've placed in their hearts. God, wherever they walked away, wherever they left you, wherever they forsaken, not just the thing you called them to, but you being their first love. God, remind them why they said yes in the first place. Remind them why you called them. Remind them why you thought they were to die for. Remind them why you gave us the greatest sacrifice we could ever receive. God, remind them of that and let them know that everything that they endure is worth everything you endured for us. God, I pray for those who are struggling to even believe in you. Maybe they've experienced some disappointment or some letdowns in their journey of faith and they can't see you in it. God, could you remind them that you are there? Could you remind them that your word says you'd never leave us nor forsake us? Could you remind them that you are in everything and that all things work together for the good of those who believe and are called according to your purpose? God, in this moment, we choose to surrender the hurt and the pain that has distracted us from the reason you created us. God, we repent. We repent for choosing how we felt over what you said. God, I pray right now for every person that there wouldn't be shame and there wouldn't be condemnation, but that the conviction they feel in this moment would only draw them closer to you because you discipline those that you love. God, we thank you for an opportunity to experience you as Abba Father, the one who calls us closer and draws us to himself. God, I pray for the person who's deciding if they should say yes to you. Let this moment that spoke directly to their heart in their situation be a sign that you are the absolute only choice. God, we just give you glory and honor and praise for who you are in your son Jesus' name. We pray. Amen. Hey guys, I hope that today something was said to help put your life in perspective. I'm so excited to be back, and I know that this season is gonna bless you because we're gonna return to our first love. Hey, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button, share this with somebody. I'm sure they could use it and be right back here with us next week because you don't want to miss a thing. Hey, I'm Brenda Palmer, your host, and this is Life in Perspective. We out.