Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
304. What is the State of Your Soul? Part 2
Today’s episode explores the concept of functional atheism, where believers live as if God is absent in their daily lives. Mindy Caliguire reflects on her journey through struggle and vulnerability, emphasizing the importance of shifting our perspectives to recognize God's presence, especially during challenging times.
• Understanding functional atheism and its implications
• The impact of our perceptions of God on daily life
• Exploring vulnerability as a path to deeper faith
• Lessons learned through personal desert experiences
• The importance of hope and God’s goodness in trials
• Shifting towards a God-centered worldview for strength
Visit Mindy's Website: Soul Care
Order Mindy's New Book: Ignite Your Soul
Take the Soul Health Assessment: SOUL HEALTH
Learn more about Whisper Ranch: A PLACE TO BE
Begin Your Heartlifter's Journey:
- Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide.
- Join the Advent Glimmering Hunt and download your Advent Glimmers PDF: HEARTLIFT CENTRAL
- Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon
- Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW
- Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon
- Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International
Thank you and support the podcast at heartliftcentralcom. Now settle in for today's remarkable conversation with Janelle. Wherever you find yourself today, may these words help you become stronger in every way.
Speaker 2:Hello, heartlifter, and Merry Christmas to you. This is Christmas Day, a day that we've been waiting for, the arrival of all through our four weeks of Advent glimmering. We're welcoming back Mindy Caliguire, author of Ignite your Soul, so thankful for part one. It has been moving through my body all week as we went through our fourth week of Advent and now we are here at the beautiful arrival of Christ's birth. I hope that you have joined me over on Heart Lift Central Substack. All the information you need is in our show notes or hop over to heartliftcentralcom and you will see there how you can join the conversation. Yes, there are two different subscriptions. Want to make it clear. There is a free subscription. I've had several people say but when I go on there, it tells me I have to pay. No, it just. It gives you an option. Take a moment, take a breath. It will give you an option to be a free subscriber or a paid subscriber. I have reduced those rates because I really want to make it accessible for any and everyone in 2025.
Speaker 2:This is where I will be hanging out. I will be writing, sharing, asking questions, going deeper from our podcast episodes. It has simplified my focus, which is what I needed desperately. So please meet me there. If you become a paid subscriber, you get more. That's all I can say. I go deeper, I do more behind the scenes. I offer more in-depth podcasts and lots of videos of teaching. They used to call that a vlog, a video blog, and I'm just going deeper, going wider and deeper there. I really encourage you to join me there. And available now due to the beautiful back behind the scenes of Substack, they are offering gift subscriptions, so it's really easy for you to give the gift of inspiration, motivation, heart lifts to someone you love. Maybe it's a whole Bible study group, maybe it is a small group, maybe it's your neighbor, maybe it's just someone that you know could use a daily heart lift. Everything you need is there. If you have any questions, heartlifter, my goodness, please email me or direct message me on Instagram or you can comment over on Substack.
Speaker 2:Okay, enough, already we are here for part two with Mindy, and Mindy and I open with a discussion of something I had never heard of before, which seems to happen a lot as I just keep learning and growing, and it's called functional atheism. She brings it to light on page 24 in Ignite your Soul, as I began, she writes, to reflect more on my life. I realized I had been operating from my own wisdom, my own strength, key operative words there my own. One author has described this as functional atheism, a term that definitely described me Well. When I read that, it just took my breath away because I was like how on earth is Mindy Caliguire a functional atheist? I turned to Paul Tripp, a very wise man, for a little more information on this because I thought, man, this is a teaching moment, this is a lean-in moment. He writes a devotional and I'll put it in the show notes Are you a functional atheist? He writes.
Speaker 2:I'm concerned with the level of functional atheism that exists in the church of Jesus Christ. Yes, we believe that God exists, that he created the heavens and earth, that the Bible is accurate and that paradise awaits, but we often live at a functional level, as if there is no God. Okay, what does he mean? We worry too much, we control too much, we demand too much, we regret too much, we run after God replacements too much. Boy, I'm circling that we do all these things because we have forgotten God's presence, power and glory.
Speaker 2:Heartlifter, print this out, take a self-examination. He continues. If you look around and look at yourself, you'll see evidence of functional atheism everywhere in the lives of Christians. This week, how many thoughts did you have, words did you speak or decisions did you make that omitted the Lord from your process entirely? Oh, my process entirely. Oh my, it's the end of the year, my friends, I want us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a little unusual for a Christmas message, I get it, but in our community, we are committed to a healthy sense of self, healthy behavior patterns and healthy communication skills, so we want to be whole W-H-O-L-E. So what better time than at the closing of a year for us to sit and ask ourselves some deep questions, one being am I a functional atheist? So that we do not take it into a new year, I don't want to cross the threshold with that. I don't. He continues. It's embarrassing to admit my functional atheism to you, but I'm not always good at preaching the gospel to myself or allowing it to influence everything I think, say and do, even though I do teach it to others publicly. This devotional has reminded me again that I can't share truths that I don't first desperately need myself. Well, this is where Paul Tripp and I completely align, because I do teach things here, on this podcast and on Substack that I myself know I desperately need. If I ever stop being the first audience of my writing, paul writes I should stop writing. As you read my material, please remember me and pray for me. I love this. Pray that God will help me to live with courage and hope the things that I write.
Speaker 2:There's another side to functional atheism that we need to be aware of. Maybe we aren't as extreme to assess our lives in a God-absent way, but perhaps the God we remember is small, distant, disconnected, uncaring and seemingly unwise. This is a tough word, but I need it. I don't want to enter a new year with any seemingly functional atheism. In ways we don't realize, we experience trouble not only because of the stress of life in a broken world, but also because of how we interpret the character, size and strength of the God who rules that brokenness. Many people have talked to me about the Lord in the middle of their difficulties, and after listening to them, I have been struck that if I believed in the same quote God they described, I'd be in a panic too.
Speaker 2:So where do we go from here? Humbly admitting our vulnerability to functional atheism is the first step, but then we need to ask for help. Wow, greatest sign of strength these are my words is asking for help. We become stronger every day by falling on our knees and humbly asking God for help, for guides, for mentors, for wiser people than we are. Help comes in a myriad of ways, he writes. Ask the Lord to give you spiritual eyes that see his infinite grandeur everywhere. You cannot correctly understand your life and make God-honoring choices unless you look at it through the lens of a God-centered worldview. God first, god all the time. Worldview God first, god all the time. Pray also that God would grace you with the wisdom and strength to avoid measuring the size and nearness of God by assessing your circumstances. This is life changing, heartlifters, he continues.
Speaker 2:Your interpretation of God will never be either accurate or stable if you've arrived at it by trying to figure out what he is doing in the situations in your life. Boy, can I say amen, a very loud amen here, just again, living through a situation where I made God small, I made God distant. Where I made God small, I made God distant and I replaced my view, my God-centered view worldview, with my own, and it's dangerous because it sends me into a spiral of discouragement and despair and always sends me back to my insecure, avoidant attachment. But I've come too far. We've come too far, heartlifters, to stay in that place. Thankfully, god sent a guide, and her name is Mindy, and she has helped me so much, just in our conversations and through her book Ignite your Soul.
Speaker 2:Okay, your interpretation of God will never be either accurate or stable. If we have arrived at it by trying to figure out what he's doing in the situation, some situations will never figure it out. I'm saying this it is a mystery, and most of these situations that come in our life are to create within us a vulnerability and a humility and a dependence, a beautiful interdependence with God. When your Lord answers these prayers he writes, and he will your heart will be progressively washed clean of the cynicism, doubt, fear, discouragement, anxiety, worry and control that defines functional atheism. Wow, heart lifter, we, we are committed to being radically in love with our God, his Son and the Holy Spirit. Let's shake off cynicism, doubt, fear, discouragement, anxiety, worry and control. We're going to do this together. We're going to move through and over the threshold of this new year with our lens being really, really clear, our lens of a God-centered worldview. We're going to make God bigger and believe in him for great, great things. Wow Okay, things, wow Okay.
Speaker 2:So here we go into part two with Mindy and we begin with this functional atheism and grow through her stories, because that's the power of story, and Mindy has been walking and following God for a very long time. And so grab your journal, grab a cup of something delicious, take a deep breath, because you probably are listening to this either at the end of a very, very busy Christmas day, this year for me is very quiet. It is a Christmas for two. Christmas Eve we're having some guests, but you know we all just need to exhale. So I hope that this episode is an exhale and an inhale of deeper faith.
Speaker 3:Welcome, mindy, to the show and so let me give some examples of that Right.
Speaker 2:So so sobering to me. Oh, it's it is, it is but you want to crawl in my closet.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no but it's sobering. It's the idea of repentance, that is not like a, a, a um, like beat yourself up like that. There's no purpose in that it's. It's like a turning, it's like oh wait, there's a different way. Like I, just I turn. It's not the sackcloth and ashes kind of thing. No shame, right, no shame so. But it is again. I like thinking about it.
Speaker 3:We turn and change our direction when we see an invitation, when we see a different way Dallas Willard always said that Jesus saying repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, was more like if you were walking down the hall and you were looking for a bathroom or a certain room. Willard would say, if we were to modernize this, it would be like Jesus saying turn the, the, the, the bathroom's right here, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're going the wrong way.
Speaker 3:It's over here, it's right here it's it's, it's like, especially related to the kingdom of heaven. It's right here, it's right here, Anyway. So the same is, I think, this truth with functional atheism is that when we're like some examples would be when we are, oh say, in a financial constraint, right, anybody ever face that Like?
Speaker 1:all the time right.
Speaker 3:We're always dealing with a world that has limits and so, whether it's through an organization that's going through a budgeting process or it's a family that's needing to face the hey, our burn rate is higher than what it should be. We got to make some changes here. All of those things can be done just with human reason and again, there's nothing wrong with our human reason, but we should always be alert to the fact that God's presence, always be alert to the fact that God's presence, god's power, god's, you know, the availability of the kingdom of heavens is that the kingdom is undergirding, permeating and superseding everything that we can touch and feel and see, and that includes bank accounts and land and houses and all these things.
Speaker 3:And so the reality, the simultaneous reality of the kingdom of God is what the spiritual life is about learning how to attend to and live from that into our day-to-day life. But but when we either don't pay attention to it or I mean, you could sort of like intentionally ignore it, but I don't. I think once you kind of understand what's going on over there, you're like oh wait, how do we enter our budgeting process as an organization, very much alive to God, in this process? Now we're still using our human logic and reason, our gifts, our intelligence.
Speaker 3:God is a part of the planning process.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:God is the first mover. We want to listen first, see if God has anything to say about this, and then we'll apply our reason and do all the things. It's still on us to show up and do the work that Jesus was doing the work of God. We get to do the work of God. There's still work to be done and there's nothing wrong with that. But we just don't do it with functional atheism. What happens with a lot of Christians that I've been and been around is we latch onto a really good kingdom idea we should plant a church, we should go start a homeless ministry, we should start a, whatever the thing is and we just assume that God's in it because it's got his name on it.
Speaker 3:So, we're like, okay, here's the good thing I'm going to go do, and then sometimes there's a rhetoric in Christian circles that is like oh, go, do a thing that only God can do.
Speaker 3:And then sometimes there's a rhetoric in Christian circles that is like, oh, go, do a thing that only God can do. And it's like, well, that's not a good idea, Like there's a lot of things in the world that only God could do, but that doesn't tell you what he is doing. You could set yourself against any number of impossible things and I think that's kind of oh man, I'm rambling here, but I think this is-.
Speaker 2:No, your ranting is. Rambling is good.
Speaker 3:When Jesus says, when the enemy comes to him in the temptation, and says, throw yourself off the temple, and quotes Bible verses and says you'll be protected whatever. And Jesus's words are not to test. The Lord, your God. And I've often thought that that's kind of what we end up doing with this functional atheism is we end up sort of putting God on the hook to go do something that we thought was a good idea, that only God could do, and it's like, well, yeah, only God could do that, but is God doing that? Is that?
Speaker 2:what the?
Speaker 3:heart of heaven is Now. I do believe we get to collaborate with God. I think God wants to know, mindy, what do you want to do, janelle, what do you want to do, I think, out of relationship? God cares very much about the desires of our heart.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 3:Anyway. So functional atheism is when we function as though God is not a part of the picture.
Speaker 2:We function as though God is not a part of the picture that's going ahead of God, not or just like. I think the magic word that I heard you say would be assuming, you know, like assuming. So my deeper question, then, is because I know that you've got lived experience in this. Experience in this is when, when you really really do think that God is directing your path.
Speaker 3:When you really shoot. You're going to make me say hard things now I am yes, okay so here's what I cannot get away from.
Speaker 3:Here's what I cannot get away from. I believe with everything in me that God led us to Boston. Okay, I I believe we were doing the best we could. There were areas of our own growth and character development that impacted what happened and what didn't, but there were a lot of huge disappointments, a lot of like God is this some cosmic joke, are you kidding me? Like even this family's leaving, even this family's leaving, now that financial drama happened and it just it is very hard for us, when we feel very led into a thing, to believe, because I think there's this and this is a very American kind of Western Christian thing that if God leads me to it, it will succeed.
Speaker 2:Oh, it will grow, it'll just become fame, it will just yeah. And we? Far more today than 30 years ago. For sure, sorry, what? Far more today than 30 years ago in some respects. Yeah, I still think the spirit was the same, the same driven spirit.
Speaker 3:But I think now everybody wants you the numbers and the fame and the la-di-da-di-da, how we reconcile being led to a place that doesn't have an up and to the right story to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how do?
Speaker 3:we? Did we miss God? Was God not powerful enough? Was he? Is it only just the enemy? Is it our own failure? Did we fail God Like? There's a lot of big questions that we all ask ourselves in these moments, because we have a hard time reconciling a true desert experience with God's leading.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you were asked that I love in the book you you a friend of? I asked a mentor that yeah, go ahead, share this.
Speaker 3:I love this, I, I. This is another one of those like send a chill down your spine kind of thing. I was complaining to her a little bit about how hopeless everything felt, like I couldn't see a way out. I couldn't see, I couldn't see how does this end? How does this? Like you just can't and, and friends, whoever's listening maybe some of you thought that just this morning, like I don't see a way out.
Speaker 3:I don't, I don't see how this story ends. I don't, and that's hard, it's really hard, and that's hard and hopeless, really hard, and um, and so I was saying that to my friend and and she said I don't know exactly, but essentially this is the conversation I I was like either I said I feel like I'm in a desert, or she observed it sounds like you feel like you're in a desert. And because there was no comfort, there was no source of water, it was dry, dry, dry and dry as far as the eye can see. And in my sort of late 90s Christian worldview, I think I thought, oh well, god's going to show me the oasis, he's going to show me the way out.
Speaker 3:Palm trees right around the corner, exactly, and she said to me well, mindy, if God leads you to the desert, go to the desert and learn what the desert has to teach. And I wanted to throw my phone across the room I was. It was before you could throw a phone because it was, you know, still tied to a thing Still tied to a six foot court.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I, I like I can still see the carpet. I was on my like hands and knees on the carpet. Oh, I feel you, I can, I can, I could see the twirly of the little telephone.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, mine was yellow.
Speaker 3:Maybe most of our last listeners have no idea what that even is, I know, but I can still see it in my mind's eye. And when she said that, I mean I was angry. And again that word invitation, it felt like it did finally wake up some curiosity, like, oh my gosh, god could teach me a thing here, that there is no other way for me to learn it than this Learn what the desert has to teach. And we get so railed against our pain and suffering that we sort of shut down Disappointment right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, we kind of shut down our openness, our willingness to listen, to learn, to see and again, this is not a cheesy, tinny response to when someone's in pain.
Speaker 1:I really want to be clear about that.
Speaker 3:This was a mentor in a moment, giving me beautiful words of acknowledgement yeah, like she wasn't invalidating. You're in a desert, yeah, and I she didn't know how it was going to turn out either, but isn't, isn't it? You know? Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 2:I'm so grateful for that woman because, Mindy, as you would reflect, I mean I would say anyway, if you hadn't spent time in that desert, I don't know if this book would be here.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, right, no, no, no. Do you know Sheldon Van Auken's book called A Severe Mercy. So you know the book and the idea of what was very, very severe and what was the mercy of God inviting them into life. Oh, yes, and I often say that that season of my life feels like a severe mercy, because I wouldn't have wished it on anyone. It was horrific and it felt like I was in a prison of my own body. I didn't know if it was going to get better.
Speaker 2:It was terrible so let's bring in then that at that time you actually got the diagnosis after a while that you had benign vertigo.
Speaker 3:Okay, Yep, benign positional vertigo. Yes, benign positional vertigo. Here is the lovely diagnosis Post-infectious, benign positional vertigo, which basically is only describing the symptoms. To this day, they don't for sure know what was really wrong. It was impacting my optic nerve. It was impacting my cerebellum, which is different than typical positional vertigo. The pattern that they see in medicine is that sometimes, when somebody has a virus that just sticks around for a while, something can kind of misfire in the inner ear, which is usually the source of vertigo, where your eyes start to move in your head.
Speaker 3:But I had a version of it that my eyeballs started moving in my head. I mean, it was so so disorienting.
Speaker 2:It was just icky.
Speaker 3:And you were pregnant with Jonathan and I was pregnant and I had a two-year-old. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the perfect storm, the wildfire, all of it's there.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was a burning of the inside. It wasn't like the wildfire here at the ranch. It was everything in my life and, yeah, the therapists, advisors, people that surrounded me the longer it went that they could not find any reason and they had to do like MRIs to make sure I didn't have this rare form of adolescent brain cancer. So that's why the benign version is in there.
Speaker 3:So it was post-infectious after an infection benign no cancer, thank God. Positional vertigo which meant like I was just sick all the time All the time vertigo which meant like I was just sick all the time. So anyway, I at that time the only thing I could pray was God. If I know you don't make, I know you don't heal everyone who's got terrible things that go wrong, you almost know too much to pray sometimes.
Speaker 3:But then I thought, I think, it does matter that I go on record as saying all things considered, I would prefer to have my life back, and so I know I can't, shouldn't, wouldn't ever demand this of you. That's not how this works. But I do want to be honest in saying would you please heal me, and if you don't, I'll still follow you. I'll still follow you, I'll still love you, I will still, but I really would prefer to have my life back. And if you do choose to heal me and it wasn't like a bartering with God, that's not a good idea.
Speaker 2:That's probably from the depths of your soul in the wilderness.
Speaker 3:If you do choose to heal me, would you please make it matter that I went through this.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And scrupulous, as he is making it matter that the suffering one of us endures can bring hope and life to another. And if that's part of what set you on a journey to sit in silence and light a candle and offer yourself to the Lord in prayer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had no words.
Speaker 2:You know, he sees you yeah, he did I didn't know that at the time, and you probably. You know you're, you're pregnant, Like you're bringing life into the world. Now it just doesn't, it can't get lost on us. You know it's because I think that's often how God is so gracious, you know. I'll just say like in the last two and a half years I've had five grandbabies, Like all of a sudden, just. But yet I feel like I am in a dire wilderness of my soul vocationally, and so I often I mean this is just a big part of our community work here is to be able to hold both. But I think am I right in saying, Mindy, that just takes a lot of maturity, Does it take a lot of surrender, Does it take a lot of all of the above?
Speaker 3:I mean, I think maturity is a hard thing to define. Okay, I think.
Speaker 2:I mean, the minute you think you're there, it's like yeah, so I get it yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, probably best not to try to measure. Let's not try to measure our maturity. There you go, thank you. I appreciate that to me during that season and I'm pretty sure I'd written about this in other books and possibly this one as well. I don't remember the women in my life, many of them at that time. The spiritual friendship book I wrote, the stir book.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh yes, yeah, I was so blessed by women in my small group who were part of 12-step communities and I learned more about grace from them than I ever did in my Bible-toting worlds. I hear you, I learned more about brokenness and the, the gift of desperation. I I learned more about acceptance, and acceptance doesn't mean approval, it means absolutely.
Speaker 2:This is what's real that's right, and this is where your feet are today, and your body is today it's just this day, this hour, this minute Exactly, and so you know I have five grandchildren.
Speaker 3:I'm just jumping into your story for a moment. I have five grandchildren and there's so much joy in this part of my life so much joy, and it doesn't cancel out the fact that this part doesn't feel like it's working right and I don't know how to fix it. No, and there's. What else do you bring to the Lord, but acceptance? And saying this is this is. I'm grateful for this. I would prefer not this, but but I'll meet you in it.
Speaker 2:I'll I'll get down on the floor, Like you said small voice. Yeah, I'll get down on your floor. And I'm just yeah, this is it. That's just what I wanted you to help us with, mindy.
Speaker 1:Cause.
Speaker 2:I think that there are thousand million books. Obviously, I like I write books, I love to be an author, uh, but it's in the reality, it's. It's that simple and that crazy difficult to just light a candle and sit and be still. And I had Trevor Hudson on, which was just amazing. Love Trevor, oh my gosh. And he was like this is what I would pray, lord, if you'd be so kind. And I was like who prays like that?
Speaker 3:Trevor Hudson does Trevor.
Speaker 2:Hudson and I was like Trevor Hudson, so I've been going just be so kind.
Speaker 3:I know if you say it with his accent, I think the Lord hears it.
Speaker 1:Maybe, he'll hear me Totally Okay.
Speaker 3:Totally Okay. So, mindy, and you know what, God is very kind and we can trust his kindness, even in the most painful circumstances. There was a time last summer it was so the book had been written but hadn't been released yet. So this was a year ago, like 18 months ago. Such a long process. Oh, it is such a long process and you know that, and I was in another set of impossible circumstances.
Speaker 2:I find myself in these places all the time. I know you must. It's experiential because then you guide us like a little lantern.
Speaker 3:Well, I think God's in all of it and I can't put him on the hook for any dumb decisions I've made, but he has invited me to places and and it was something related to our team and our organization with Soul Care kind of getting off the ground and feeling all this momentum, but then a couple of things weren't working the way we thought they should. Anyway, I was in the midst of that and for maybe the better part of six weeks, maybe eight weeks, in the middle of the night or as I was driving, I would hear the phrase I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that scripture so much.
Speaker 3:Well, I didn't remember that it was a Bible verse.
Speaker 2:We just sang it in our little charismatic 50-member church. It's a beautiful song that I will see the goodness, I mean. It's just the best. It makes you just immediately start smiling, I mean it's just the best.
Speaker 3:It makes you just immediately start smiling. So one time, when it kept coming to me again when I was in a distraught place, like God, how's this going to work?
Speaker 2:I finally thought oh, I wonder if that's in the Bible. I love it so much, Mindy, who knows the scripture? You're making us all feel better.
Speaker 3:I wonder if that's in the Bible. So I went I mean, come on, this is so embarrassing.
Speaker 2:No, it's giving us all great relief.
Speaker 3:I don't know where my Bible is right now. Oh, here's one. I have five or six over there. I want to take a minute to read this because let me just take a picture I don't know how the finances are going to work. I don't know what the team is doing. I don't know how we're serving our clients well. I don't know why God keeps giving me this invitation to serve him around, this message which has been in me since 1998, probably by the time I was trying to start a thing.
Speaker 2:Soul Care was Soul Care back in 1998.
Speaker 3:Was not trying to start a thing. Okay, so here we go. So I finally I don't know if I Googled it or I looked it up on the Bible app or whatever, but I'm like, oh there it is. There, it is in the Bible, right there, psalm 27. Can I read this, would you please? Yes, the Lord is my light and my salvation.
Speaker 3:Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid when the wicked advanced against me to devour me? And my enemies and my foes? It is my enemies and my foes who will stumble and fall, and I think of this as the enemy, not like people. Oh yes, though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear. Though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. I was like, oh, I'm feeling anything but confident. Even then, I will be confident.
Speaker 3:One thing I ask from the Lord. This only do I seek that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and gaze on the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His temple. For in the day of trouble, he will keep me safe in His dwelling, he will hide me in the shelter of His tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me. At His tabernacle I will sacrifice with shouts of joy, I will sing and make music to the Lord. Hear my voice when I cry, lord, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you seek his face. Your face, lord, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger.
Speaker 3:You have been my helper. Do not reject me or forsake me. God, my Savior. Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Teach me your way, lord. Lead me in a straight path Because of my oppressors. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses rise up against me, sprouting, spouting malicious accusations. I remain confident of this. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. And look, I can see now this Bible that I had on my desk. Oh, I know I love it.
Speaker 2:Don't you love doing that? I love it, yes, I do. That says 2023. That's not long ago, that's what. I mean, it was a year and a half ago. I know it was fresh off the press.
Speaker 3:I didn't even know it was in the Bible. I had to look it up.
Speaker 1:But that's what combats functional atheism.
Speaker 3:Say more, just a little. We're in pain, we're in suffering, we have opposition. We might even be having to remind our heart. My heart is telling me seek the Lord. Your face, lord, I will seek, like your heart and your will having to come to that point, of you know this is a Psalm of David. He knew what it was to have enemies.
Speaker 3:He knew what it was to have things go on in his life that was terrible and all kinds of stuff you know. And this is he's saying. He's confident, but he's also at the same time saying do not tell me, you desire my foes. Well, of course he's afraid. He's feeling fear, so he's in the air, right yeah. But he's saying he's anchoring to the unseen.
Speaker 2:I love that word Anchoring to the unseen. Anchoring to the unseen, that is your next book. Oh my goodness. Anchoring to the unseen, that is so powerful. Oh my gosh. Anchor to the unseen, that's my word. That might be my word for 2025.
Speaker 3:I love it. That's a good word to keep. So I think that's our invitation. That's what happens when we allow the wildfires of our soul of burnout, or on a land, to actually light a lamp that guides us out of that place, not too quickly, not spiritual bypass, but embracing it, moving through the desolation facing it, accepting it, sitting in it. The lamp that we're invited to follow then leads us.
Speaker 2:It does Leads us well.
Speaker 3:The living where we can wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.
Speaker 2:Amen Mindy, thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Lovely to meet you, so incredible. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening today. Please meet Janelle over at Heart Lift Central on Substack at Heart Lift Central, where we can keep this remarkable conversation going. Please share today's episode with a friend and invite them to become stronger every day. Heartlifter, always remember this you have value, worth and dignity.
