20. Off the Cup: How do I know if this is God’s will?

On seeking God's will, enjoying your work, and building a strong business foundation as a Christian entrepreneur.

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• Episode transcript (AI generated)

  You're listening to the More Than Ambition podcast. I'm your host, Dusty Heggie, owner of Caffeinated Sites, a website template shop to energize your business. And I'm a business consultant who really, really, really believes that the work that you do is important and that your desire, your ambition, and your goals are absolutely, when you're seeking Christ,

  0:22

  meant to be a gift to God. to bless your family, to bless your clients and your customers, and to glorify God. And so here on the More Than Ambition podcast, we talk about that kind of stuff. We talk about practical business development, like strategies, tactics, marketing advice. I get to bring on experts from

  0:39

  all different kinds of industries and niches, and it's always so much fun to learn more. And then I get to share my own experience from being in marketing and being in the online business world for over eight years in a variety of roles and position in nonprofits, in online spaces, and in everything in between.

  0:56

  And so it really is, it's such a joy that I get to be doing this. I was just talking to Brian the other day, and I say a little bit of this in the bulk of the episode today, but I am like, I'm truly excited awestruck, I guess maybe is the right word,

  1:11

  that I get to do this work that I feel like I have been working towards this goal for so long. And to start to see it blossom and come to fruition, it really, it's so very humbling and such a blessing. And so thank you so much for being here.

  1:24

  I know that there are billions and billions of podcast options to listen to today. So thank you. I would really be even more grateful if you would take a moment to subscribe to More Than Ambition and rate and review the podcast. They mean a great deal to me.

  1:42

  You can find all the links and stuff in the show notes as you're listening. And so just keep that in mind because we do mention quite a few different opportunities. There's not like one sole sort of call to action, as it were, in this episode. But if anything, as you're listening,

  1:56

  resonates with you or you want to learn more, just know that all of the episode... Sorry, I said that in a weird way. All of the show notes are available to you with all of the links and all the resources and all the things.

  2:07

  Today I'm joined by my one of my very dearest friends in all the land. You guys already know her. It's Christina Wallace. And I'm going to go ahead and just we're going to go right straight to this episode because she introduces herself and the work that she does so very well at this point in the game.

  2:22

  Most of you already know her. We actually just finished recording this episode just a few hours ago, and this episode's coming out late today, but I am so determined to bring you an episode every Tuesday. And so even if it's a few hours late here, it is. And I'm so excited. Okay, let's go.

  2:40

  Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first? You go first. Okay, real quick fire what I'm doing. I am nowhere near where I had like set goals when we did our little coaching session podcast episode. That didn't happen. Long story very short.

  2:55

  I ended up with a puppy from the litter that has some sort of very bad chronic stomach condition that has required like way more intense care than is normal for a young dog. And that's taken up a lot of my time. So I haven't recorded a podcast episode since April, which I'm really sad about.

  3:16

  I did not launch my course by my birthday. I ended up having to renounce my US citizenship on my birthday, which was not... something I knew was going to happen when we had that coaching call. So June was sucked up by having visitors from the Philippines and having to go to

  3:33

  London and renounce my citizenship and turning 31 and all these other things. I did not launch my course. That didn't happen. I'm still working on it pretty diligently. I'm finishing up a wedding gallery for a client whose wedding I photographed in May. And then I'm kind of looking at winding the wedding photography stuff down and

  3:52

  quite significantly I don't want to close up shop but I am really evaluating what that looks like because my health isn't great and it's taken a toll on my body to do 12-hour days on my feet photographing weddings and also it's just not where my

  4:06

  heart is in the same way that it once was so the other thing that I'm doing is working really steadily and consistently on my personal substack So I have a Substack that accompanies my podcast called Magic Like This. And that was where I sort of started on Substack.

  4:23

  But in the background, there had been a second Substack that was brewing that was like really my heart. Like it just felt like a natural extension of what I have always known I was going to do someday with my life. Yeah. Which is writing. That's a great way to say that for like the work that you're doing.

  4:39

  It's a hundred percent. Yeah, no, it's just, and when I look back, I've been doing stuff like this in one form or another since I was about 17. Like I've had other blogs flip. If I'd been consistent with those, those would be probably freaking huge now because I was blogging back when the

  4:56

  algorithm was so much kinder and I was getting loads of views, but part of me is kind of glad that my 17 year old self, it doesn't have like this immoralized archive that loads of people know about. But in one form or another, I've been like writing what God's teaching me. And I use a ton of metaphor.

  5:16

  I love I'm a teacher. So I love like taking what God's teaching me and then like regurgitating it through one of my own like teaching metaphors and making it like all poetic and artsy and Enneagram for you know.

  5:30

  Um, so I started a, I started a sub stack doing that with my writing and it's called the battle cry. And that is the one and only thing that I have been doing consistently, which we did talk about during our coaching session. So that was one, I felt like such a failure when I was listening to it.

  5:47

  Cause it was like two months after we recorded it, that it got released. And I'm like, wow, I didn't do this. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. But then one of the things that you had really challenged me to do was, get really serious about substack get really serious about being consistent on the

  6:01

  battle cry and just like start building a name for yourself as a writer in the public space because the people who love you know you're a writer but strangers don't know you're a writer and that needs to that has to be like the cart before

  6:14

  the horse you know well and that's really really really wise of you because there's always going to be stuff that comes up doesn't matter who you are or what your life situation is like goals have to be adjusted that doesn't mean you don't set the goal but it does mean you're like okay

  6:28

  well I need to pivot and if you had to just keep one thing you chose the right thing to keep because that's going to set you up for so much better success in the future when you are ready to launch 100%. I was having a coaching call with Jen. You now know who that is.

  6:49

  So Jen is just one of my favorite human beings. And she knows how to like navigate the like spaghetti bowl of my brain that is just all tangled and doesn't make sense. And she somehow untangles it and makes it make sense. And one of the things that she and I were talking about was like,

  7:06

  I felt such a heavy grief and a heavy sense of disappointment in myself. And I really failed because I was so sad that my dog was sick. I'm so sad that my dog is sick. That's been so hard in and of itself to just watch this sweet little puppy in so much pain.

  7:25

  And it's really altered my life so much. And so I've grieved the life I used to have. I'm grieving the pain my dog's going through. But I was also grieving like all these plans that if I hadn't had a dog, I would have – like I just know I would have hit those goals because I'm a really

  7:40

  goal-oriented person. And I'm an overachiever to the point of it not being healthy. So I was telling her like – I just feel like I failed because this is the first time in my life where I don't have like a boss telling me what goals to hit. I've set my own goals and then I haven't met them.

  7:56

  Like this is the first time that I've had the opportunity to like work for myself. And I feel like I failed myself. I haven't launched my course by the deadline I wanted. I had to pause on my podcast. But the one and only thing that I feel like I've been able to continue doing is writing.

  8:11

  I felt like I have to write almost to get through this time in my life. And Jen said something that has really stuck with me. She's like, you know when people overwork themselves and then they end up getting pneumonia because their bodies just stop and chill out? Yeah. She's like,

  8:29

  I'm not saying inherently that this is what God is doing because I think a lot of times we like to put words in God's mouth. But I think it's very interesting that you have been put in this life situation where you brought this little puppy into your life as a way of like kind of

  8:46

  starting your family and bringing joy into your life. And it's ended up turning into this really traumatic, painful thing that has forced you to stop. And you can't spin more than one plate. You have to focus on taking care of yourself, your family, your dog, and just writing for the battle cry.

  9:04

  That's all you've been physically able to do. But look what's happening because of that. You know, like my, my sub stack is growing. I'm getting, there's one particular sub stack writer who found me, who is a bestselling author. Who's been like, championing my work on his own page consistently for the last two months and I'm so

  9:24

  grateful to him I hope to be that kind of person for someone else someday when I'm like a published author and I have an audience that I can introduce like new writers to my audience to like yeah the step up because the minute he started

  9:39

  promoting my stuff subscribers just started coming in I was waking up to like 10 new subscribers a day and it was insane that's incredible um And his audience is appropriate for my work, which was the brilliant thing. So absolutely. He's called – I'm going to name drop here because I want – like if anyone listens to this,

  9:56

  I would love for them to go look him up. I think his work is brilliant. He's called Jonathan M. Seidel. And he's currently sharing a lot about his experience walking through alcoholism as a Christian. And it's like his sub stack is just amazing. It's so like not trite. It's beyond platitudes,

  10:15

  but it still really challenges us to like press into scripture and he's fantastic. But all these amazing things are happening because I just committed to writing for my sub stack just one day a week. That's all I've been doing. I've been active on sub stack every day with notes and engaging with other people.

  10:30

  But in terms of my own writing commitment, I'm like, if I can just write a post every Monday, Then the rest of the week is just trying to keep my house clean and keep my dog alive and keep my husband and I fed. And that's all I've been able to do.

  10:42

  And I've been doing that for about two months. And yet I feel really, really excited for my life and my business and the work that God's letting me do. And I do think that there is something in what my coach said of like, maybe this was like a metaphorical way of God just getting you to stop,

  11:00

  slow down, focus on one thing. So that's what I'm doing. That feels a little bit shorter than how long I normally go on for. I think so. And I think there's a really important lesson for all of us to glean there. Two things come to mind. The first is,

  11:14

  and this is the thing Brian and I keep saying, because this is how it has always gone for me when I have grown businesses for months. Typically, it feels like you're publishing content and creating resources into a void. It's like silence for a very long time. Yes.

  11:32

  And then all of a sudden it catches fire and it grows and it does. It's like a snowball. What really what it's like. And Brian made this metaphor like to help illustrate this is that it's like building a house, maybe analogy. I don't actually fully understand the difference. Maybe you can explain in a minute. Um,

  11:51

  but it's like building a house, like so many months and building a house is unseen work, like the foundation and all of the plumbing and getting the baseline stuff set up for electrical work. Like all of that stuff takes so long and nobody is seeing the work,

  12:05

  but it arguably is some of the hardest work that's unseen work. And then in a week, the house is all the way up once that foundation is built. Um, and I think that that is something I keep having to like pull myself back to, to be like, no, no, no, no, no. I am building foundation right now.

  12:21

  And in the last, and when I give my recap, I can explain more, but like, I'm starting to catch that fire. I'm starting to, to roll that snowball as it were and build that house up. Cause once it comes, I know it's going to come quickly. Um, But it's like that.

  12:36

  It's just like what you're experiencing now, like this foundational work. And I think it's really hard when we're in that period of building a foundation to not give up because it feels like, well, I'm doing all this work for nothing. Yeah. But remembering like. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and remembering like. you're not doing this for nothing.

  12:57

  Like it will eventually produce good fruit. It just, it has to be in God's timing and not in ours. And our goal is simply like coming back to this again and again, like faithful obedience of like continuing to do the work when it doesn't make sense or when it maybe to the rest of the world looks like,

  13:12

  why are you still doing this? But it, it matters that consistency or persistence, I would say more than consistency. Both, both I think. Yeah. And like, I totally agree with you that the early stages of putting down the foundations are sometimes the most discouraging.

  13:29

  And because you do feel like you're just like shouting into a void and you don't see any results. And there's two things that came to my mind when you said that. And then I'm going to say these real fast so you can get on to your bit.

  13:42

  But the first one, the word that came to my mind was humility, right? So there's something really humbling about having to build the foundations rather than just getting to like, you know, see immediate results. And I was talking about this on my sub stack yesterday,

  13:57

  because I've been seeing a lot of posts of people who are kind of shouting from the rooftops about how they've gained like 1000 subscribers in two months, or 50 subscribers in a week. And so I was talking specifically to people who follow me. And I was like, you know,

  14:11

  I have not felt threatened at all by people who have shared that they've gotten a ton of subscribers. I just celebrated hitting 200 subscribers on Substack.

  14:19

  Yeah.

  14:19

  But I feel threatened specifically when people talk about doing it in a certain amount of time. When they give like a shortened time frame. Suddenly I feel like, oh no, I'm falling behind. Oh no, I'm missing the boat. Like all of a sudden it feels like a race.

  14:33

  I could be really going off course with this metaphor here, but part of me feels like having run a marathon before and being in that environment. there is something usually quite instinctual in a race about focusing primarily on yourself because you're the one who wants to get over the finish line, right? And so there can be,

  14:51

  I'm not saying this is a one size fits all, but there can be a lack of humility if we're just going, going, going with this expectation that things are going to fall into place quickly rather than Um, having done a marathon, I can tell you,

  15:05

  I was not interested in getting over the finish line faster than anyone else because it was so long. I was just interested in making sure that my muscles had the endurance to get across the finish line at all. Yeah. Just to finish. And so I wasn't.

  15:21

  focused on myself in the sense of like how I was performing against anybody else I was just focused on how I was performing for my own well-being and in that like there's something really humbling because God teaches you about your own limitations right he teaches you um you know like I learned through running a

  15:40

  marathon that I had an autoimmune disease Like I finished the marathon, but I was real slow and I was just happy that I finished. I didn't feel at all like I'd failed in comparison to someone else finishing faster. And I was like humbled to know like this is this is the race God set me to run.

  15:58

  And I do not care about anybody else. And there's something humbling and there's something also really profoundly calming about that. Yeah. Yeah. So building those foundations can really humble us. But also the other thing was the word that came to mind was like endurance, longevity, right? So again, with the marathon metaphor,

  16:16

  it's like I spent 10 months training before I ran that marathon to make sure that my muscles weren't going to give out when I did the marathon itself. So like when you're building something slow and steady and intentionally and you just focus on the one thing in front of you, like you're building a solid foundation and

  16:34

  People can throw up a new build house in a couple of weeks, but it usually ends up being really crappy quality. Yeah, you live in that house for a couple months and you're going to realize real fast, oh, this is not a quality build. Yeah, absolutely. So, right. Thus concludes my TED Talk.

  16:50

  Dusty, what are you working on today? I have the site cafe. So that's my cute little name for the website template shop. Mostly love that name. I think it's the cutest. I love it too. And I have some stuff I want to do on the back end of that.

  17:09

  So like I really want to improve the brew instructions, which is my cute little word for like the tutorials of how to move in to your website template. That's something that's on the back burner. I'm not quite ready to start doing that, but that's something that's moving up on my to-do list.

  17:24

  I have all of the stuff set up, all of the systems and the processes and the automation set up to do custom brews and to take on custom website clients. The custom work is something Christina and I just yesterday were talking on Voxer for, I don't know, several hours.

  17:39

  Um, because I really love working with clients and I really love working that with that one-on-one work. But what's hard for me sometimes is like a similar situation that Christina is in. Like you have these goals and you have these deadlines and I get worried that like,

  17:52

  what if I can't give my very best work to my client? Because I have three kids. Like if one of them gets sick and we're down for that, because nobody ever just gets, there's never just one person sick in the family. It's like a domino effect of sick explosion. Yeah. Chris, we were talking about this.

  18:05

  I was like, I feel like the Heggies are always sick because as soon as one of them gets sick, the next one gets sick. Oh, yeah. Yep. And then we all get healed and we're all healthy again. And then the kids go to a day camp and they bring home another sick.

  18:18

  I think every parent ever listening right now with little kids is like, yes, I understand. It's just it's a lot. But it's like stuff is just going to come up. If you don't have kids, other stuff is going to come. Like things are just going to come up.

  18:30

  And the situation that I'm uniquely in right now is that my husband's job is really intensive. And so it's like a week of not seeing him, a week of him being home, a week of not seeing him, a week of him being home. And so it's hard for me to find a good routine.

  18:44

  And so I'm excited about all of that foundational work, speaking of foundations, that I have done on the back end to make custom brews and custom websites. That process goes so much smoother. I've set up a lot of automations. I'm starting from a base template for a lot of things.

  18:59

  I can fully customize to be really individual and unique, but I'm starting from a really solid, strong foundation. And it has taken me longer than I anticipated to get all of that in place. And it's finally in place. And I feel very excited to be able to start taking on custom brews,

  19:17

  but like one at a time and do it slowly and be able to give that the attention that it deserves. And so then the other thing that I'm working on right now that I'm most excited about is starting to get stuff set up for my small group come this fall.

  19:30

  So it'll be a mastermind slash small group coaching, consulting, accountability type program. I don't actually have like a good word that I feel like summarizes what I want this to look like. But the goal is to merge biblical discipleship and business development. So it'll be a four to five month program.

  19:47

  I haven't quite finished outlining all the curriculum yet. And how exactly I'm going to structure like the content, but the actual structure of like the container of how we're going to run this is there will be a call, I think three times a month.

  20:01

  There'll be like a lesson and like a group sort of consulting and coaching session where we'll brainstorm and bounce ideas off of each other. There'll be a weekly coworking session where we can all come together and have kind of open office hours.

  20:13

  So people can ask me questions and we can all kind of help each other grow and develop our businesses. And then there will be a weekly Bible study as well. And we're gonna go through Galatians. So right now, a lot of the work I'm doing is studying relations, mapping out curriculum,

  20:29

  starting to kind of build in all the back end systems that need to be in place, like the wait list. And I'll have a link for it in the show notes. But I'm calling it the More Than Ambition Fellowship. And I'm really excited because my goal is to be able to run two cohorts of the

  20:44

  fellowship once or every year. And so this will be kind of the beta tester version where we're just going to learn as we go. I'm going to set up a curriculum and I'm going to create a structure. But the goal would be that it kind of morphs with what our particular group needs

  21:00

  and let it kind of be fluid and really, really focusing on accountability and really focusing on practical like business development from a kingdom minded perspective. And I'm like giddy. I am so giddy about it. I cannot wait. This is like something I have dreamed of. I remember sitting and standing. I was washing dishes.

  21:20

  Who sits while you wash dishes? Nobody. False. Maury on Gilmore Girls in Babette's kitchen. Yes, you're totally right. Because he can't fit otherwise. Because he can't fit. People listening are either going to be like, what? Or, oh my gosh, yes. If you know, you know. Anyways, carry on. But, um...

  21:40

  I was in my like tiny apartment kitchen in Portland listening to Amy Porterfield's podcast. And I remember thinking someday I want to do that. Like I want to teach people how to run a business. I want to teach people how to build something that is going to be sustainable and fun and bless their community.

  22:00

  But like my spin is I want to use it as a platform to share the gospel and use it as a way to be able to, be an extension of like Bible teaching, which is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite things to do. And so it's just like,

  22:15

  it's wild to me that I'm like coming to a point now where I feel equipped and I feel like God has really, speaking of foundations, man, you just keep coming back to that. Cause that was what, eight years ago that I had that original thought. Um,

  22:27

  and all of this time that has taken to get me to this place and there's still more work to be done and there's still more things I want to learn and grow in, but it feels really exciting right now. I feel like I'm full of energy and momentum.

  22:39

  Um, and so I can't wait to open it this fall. Yeah. Those are the big things. For as long as I've known you, this is something you've wanted to do. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's insane that like. The other day I was on a consulting call with an actual dream client, somebody whom I've admired forever.

  22:56

  And it was so fun to talk. She was on the podcast. Her name is Tabitha. And we were talking. And after the call, I was like, Brian, I'm doing it. Like, I'm doing the work that I really believe God wants me to do. It's slow. We're still in the early stages. But, like, I can't believe.

  23:12

  I can't believe this is real. And this was something else we were talking about yesterday, wasn't it? We have both struggled with this internal narrative that says that if we love our jobs this much, Like it's either too good to be true or we must be doing something wrong or there

  23:36

  must be some inherent selfish sin inside of us because there's no way, there's no way that we can be this on fire for our work life and still be in God's will. Like that's a narrative we've told ourselves like separately at different times. And there is definitely some,

  23:57

  areas where I believe that has been taught to us through some dodgy theology over the years but you were saying this yesterday like at the end of the day we each have to take responsibility for the stories we tell ourselves but that can be really hard if you're inundated with this message of like I call it martyrdom

  24:13

  gospel right so like this idea that I mean I remember growing up hearing people say like well it was the thing I least wanted to do so I knew it was what God must have wanted for me and I'm like yeah But yeah, I mean, obviously, in context, like,

  24:28

  that sentence can mean a lot of different things to different people. And like, maybe you have a history of belligerently going against what you know, God's asking you to do. Maybe that's not that's not for me to judge or for me to say. But to say that in like a neutral context.

  24:42

  sends this message that like God inherently wants you to do stuff you don't like. Right. And all the desires, every single desire that you have must inherently be bad. And we were just all made to be these miserable longing machines until Jesus comes back. That's such an uncompelling gospel. Yeah. Yeah. You know, any part of that.

  25:03

  Well, and that it's such an uncompelling character of God as well. If we're going to talk about God, like Jesus literally says, so you know how we've always been told about how like Abba is like that affectionate word for father, like it's like daddy or papa.

  25:21

  I always kind of knew that, but it was one thing to know it. And then when I watched The Chosen, which I am still adamant you need to see. I'm going to this winter. It will be my show. I'm very. Oh, my gosh. It is just the most stunning piece of television. I just love it so much.

  25:38

  I love how much they try to keep to historical accuracy within the Jewish tradition, whilst obviously having to account for the fact that the actors are speaking English. But they incorporate certain Jewish words, and one of them is Abba, Abba and Ima. So you hear all of the characters when they're around their parents go like, Abba, Ima.

  26:01

  And you hear that love, that affection that's like, Daddy, Papa, Mama. Like what we know in our Western culture is like that warm, safe title of your parent, right? And scripture says we can go to God and call him Abba, right? What good and loving like Abba

  26:22

  Would be like, I want you to do everything that makes you miserable all the time. Yeah. Like, I don't want to bless you ever. I don't want to. And I'm not getting on prosperity gospel here, guys. I'm not saying that God only ever wants health, wealth and happiness for us.

  26:35

  I know suffering is part of the Christian journey. the life of Christ proves that. So like anyone who's coming at me, like don't come at me. Just don't, just don't come at me. I'm not sitting here trying to preach prosperity gospel to you. Literally. If you read my sub stack,

  26:50

  it's like all about finding the goodness of God in the midst of life, really sucking. Okay. But at the same time, I feel like because we don't need to go and look for suffering, like suffering will find us. The fact that we live in a world with sickness and death and evil and war and accidents, right?

  27:08

  Like sometimes things are morally neutral, but like car accidents just happen and we could lose someone or we could be injured. Like we do not need to go looking for suffering in this life. It's going to find us. And so like taking that into account, recognizing that God is still good, even though suffering exists. Like,

  27:26

  can we also appreciate that if we have an Abba in our heavenly father, if our creator literally stoops down to the level of being our Abba, not just our king, not just our creator, not just our God, but our Abba. Like what loving dad have you ever met who's just like,

  27:47

  I am only ever going to teach you through misery. I'm only ever going to teach you lessons the hard way. I'm never going to bless you. I'm never going to let you be happy. Like that is not in keeping with the character of God that Jesus proclaims to us.

  28:00

  And so for both of us, we've kind of hit this thing. And I think coaching has massively helped. So part of me really hopes that Jen listens to this episode. Jen, we love you.

  28:08

  We love you so much.

  28:10

  But this is like a huge thing that I was wrestling with over the last two, three years is just this idea that like, oh my gosh, like I can be in love with my life. I can love my job. Like that can actually help me feel closer to God.

  28:25

  Like this is one of the other messages I've always been told is like, We only get close to God during our times of suffering. And I'm like, no, actually, I am like super into God in my times of like joy. It just magnifies how gorgeous he is to me. I'm also clinging to him in my suffering.

  28:42

  Maybe the message is just let's cling to him all the time. Like God is good in our suffering. God is good in our joy. But like we're allowed to want joy and good, beautiful things. And I love that. I love that you were like landing on that these last few days when we've been talking and you're like,

  28:59

  I am beyond jazzed about this small group. I am so excited. And I'm like, good, like be on fire for this job because yeah, we are actually allowed to love our work. Like, yeah. Isn't it crazy that we have a God who loves us so much that he planted desires

  29:14

  within us that are for his glory and our good and bring us this much joy. Like, I think it's awesome. I think it's incredible. Yeah. And that's why like for, In all of the work that I do, but really specifically the work that I do here on More Than Ambition and in the

  29:28

  fellowship is to merge that biblical discipleship and business development because I do not think it is possible to build a business that isn't going to rob you of joy. or be a place of incredible pride without the Holy spirit. Like it's just physically impossible. Amen.

  29:46

  You see all of these creators and all of these educators and business owners of all different varieties of all different walks of life have this story of being like life was miserable. All I did was work. I experienced such incredible burnt out that brought me to the hospital that destroyed my family.

  30:01

  Divorces are happening, but I earned, you know, seven figures and this is how i'm fixing it i don't want that story i want my story to be it took longer than i thought but god is so faithful and the more i sought

  30:13

  him to like seek him and the more diligent i was in in trusting his goodness and still stewarding my time that doesn't mean we just lay back and do nothing god like dignifies us and trusts like his authority in us to be able to produce good works

  30:31

  so

  30:32

  Absolutely take action, but take action in knowing that it's that endurance. It's that humility. It's that consistency. It's that joy that is going to point people back to the Lord and produce results that aren't going to leave you feeling so depleted because God always makes space. He always foots the bill for his will to be done.

  30:53

  I keep repeating that to myself over and over again, like a little mantra of being like, God always, always makes space for his will to be done. My job is to seek him. And I think that's where we see a lot of problems, one, in the online Christian business owner space.

  31:12

  but also just in American church in general of people trying to find that in-between ground of prosperity gospel and this martyrdom gospel, but doing it in their own strength, like without seeking, they'll say, I've heard people say, I just had a really wonderful conversation yesterday of somebody saying,

  31:29

  I'm not sure if it's God's voice or if it's my voice. And I was like, yeah, that's a really good question to ask. Have you been reading your Bible? Because that's God's voice. And she was like, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to urge you to read your Bible because if you want to hear from God,

  31:43

  he's talking to you. You just have to read. And in love, and I am so guilty of also not coming to Christ when I should come to Christ. So please don't hear this and think, Dusty's like all buttoned up and together. I'm so super not. That was a really good reminder to me of like, no, no, no.

  32:00

  My sole responsibility is to enjoy my Abba, enjoy my creator, enjoy my Lord. And then that's it. He'll make the rest happen. And it feels really freeing. It feels like a lot of relief. But the funny thing is, though, is for a long time it did not feel like relief for me.

  32:18

  For a long time it felt like a trap. It felt like – so if you're listening and you're in this place where you're like, but if I let go of this stuff, it's not going to get done.

  32:26

  Or if I just put all of my hope and all of my trust in God, I won't have time to get everything done. Please hear me when I say, like, listen – I have been in that place of feeling like I remember hearing somebody talk about

  32:41

  heaven and heaven being this really wonderful place where there's no pain and there's no sorrow. And just speaking genuine truth about heaven, not in like a romantic way, but just in like a this is what scripture has to say about heaven. And my first thought was, shoot, I don't want that.

  33:00

  Because in my mind, I can't perceive of fun. I can't perceive of learning. I can't perceive of growth without pain. Like it doesn't make sense to me to be able to see joy and goodness without suffering. And I remember thinking like.

  33:13

  Okay, but like we're just going to all sit around and be like zombies of singing praise all day? Like that doesn't sound fun to me at all. Whoa. You've never told me this. Yeah, and I felt a lot of guilt because like as a believer, that's supposed to be my hope.

  33:28

  That's supposed to be like – I'm supposed to look forward to that. And for a long time, I could not conceive of how can it be good if there's no pain? Because here we can only see good from pain. So we think. Yeah, sure. And so it has taken me a long time of being,

  33:48

  of wrestling with the idea of praying through this, this idea of like, how can I trust the Lord that this is all going to be good? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, am I making my point? I feel like I'm talking in circles for a second here. No, I'm picking up what you're throwing down. Yeah.

  34:04

  And it's, I think really, truly what has, what started to clarify that for me is reading, It's by C.S. Lewis. It's like a fictionalized version of Heaven. The Last Battle? Oh, The Great Divorce. It was the first time that I was like – because once I – I remember feeling this

  34:22

  way about somebody proposing this idea of Heaven to me. Not even proposing, like just reading scripture and telling me what it's going to be like or what we know of it so far, you know? Um, and I kind of was like, I just stopped thinking about it after a while.

  34:35

  Cause I felt these feelings come up of being like, that sounds awful. And then I was like, but I don't like, I know God is good. I can't enter into that right now. Like, I'm just not going to think about it.

  34:44

  And I just kind of backburned it and put my eyes back on what I knew to be true about God. wisdom dusty yeah and so I was like stop that but then somebody introduced this book to me and I didn't really fully know what it was about and I started reading

  34:57

  it and it was through reading this process of of a fictionized version of what may be true about about heaven and just kind of pulling off these ideas of what we read in scripture um and it opened up so much for me of Wait, okay. It's okay for me to ask questions.

  35:13

  It's okay for me to maybe at this stage in my life, wrestle with this idea and not know the answer, whether it's in business or my understanding of scripture or my understanding of theology or who God is, or even in relationships, like human relationships.

  35:26

  It's okay to be in a place of wrestling and in pain and asking questions and feeling like we have less figured out than we have figured out. And it's like God's perfect timing. He brought me these resources that just opened my eyes to like,

  35:39

  oh i can conceive of this in a different way than what i'm imagining in my mind does that make sense Yeah. Well, I do a C.S. Lewis podcast because that's literally what his writing did for me. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel you. Well, it really brings up one more thing.

  35:56

  And then you have the floor because I'm talking a lot now. No, please. I'm loving it. We're never going to get better at this. We're going to try and we're going to fail. And people are either going to love us or hate us. And that's okay. We love you no matter what. It's a polarized marketing tactic. Okay.

  36:11

  It really is. I think, too, that bringing in like C.S. Lewis's works. Can you imagine if he thought to himself, well, my work isn't impacting anybody and I'm creating all this work into a void. So I'm just going to stop. I think about this. I've literally thought about this. Can you imagine if he did?

  36:32

  I think we are not C.S. Lewis, but maybe in 20 years our work will be remembered in that way. I don't know what God's going to do with my work. That is my prayer. Fully up to God. He can do whatever the crap he wants with my life and it'll be a good thing.

  36:46

  But there is a part of me that deeply wants to be the 21st century female C.S. Lewis to someone 40, 50 years from now. Only because what his writing has done for my relationship with God has been more profound than any other book. than any other relationship I have with another human being. Obviously, I've never met C.S.

  37:11

  Lewis, but just his writing has opened up pockets of my mind and my understanding of who my God is and made me feel closer to him. The only other person who's done that is another author called Pete Gregg, who is still alive, and I hope I get to meet him someday.

  37:26

  But Lewis has helped me grapple with theological questions that have been so heavy in my heart. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm a writer and I'm a reader, right? This is how I navigate the world. If my writing can do that for someone, if my writing can help someone make sense of God's goodness in the midst of

  37:44

  suffering so that rather than deconstruct and walk away from Jesus, they press in and get closer to him. Yeah. Like, that is all I want to do with my life. Yeah. That and love my family, you know? Well, and I think that's true. And I think if you're listening and you're like, but I'm not a writer,

  38:02

  but my business and my work isn't to share the gospel. First of all, your business and your work is to share the gospel. That is your number one. That is your primary calling as a disciple of Christ. Secondly, that doesn't have to look like writing a faith-based book. No,

  38:17

  that doesn't have to look like creating a business that teaches people how to do business through the lens of biblical discipleship, that it can look like doing your regular corporate nine to five job and loving people really, really well. Like we all as disciples of Christ get an opportunity to leave this legacy that

  38:36

  shouts God's glory and God's goodness. And I think the key here is coming back to that foundational work, coming back to the if you want to be able to be a really active participant in building the kingdom, a really active participant in the calling that God has placed on all of us as his disciples,

  38:56

  you have to build that foundation in humility, in consistency, in endurance, in coming back to scripture and in asking him to direct your steps and producing good work, whatever that looks like in your particular season of life and that. is in line with your interest in your skills and sometimes that's going to be work

  39:12

  you don't love because that's how it goes and i think a lot of times it's going to be work you love and both is valuable and can i can i start my monologue can i bring it i am ready okay jump up on that box girl i have three things to say that i

  39:29

  made mental notes of while you were talking yeah i'm gonna start i'm gonna start with the last thing you said and work my way backwards Okay, so I'm talking about this idea that it might be work you love and sometimes it

  39:42

  might not be work you love there was just a little thing that went off in my head of like if someone's listening and they're like well how do I know, like, especially if it's work I don't love.

  39:52

  How do I know when we've talked about this in previous episodes a little bit but like how do I know when. It's work I don't love and I don't love it so much that I hate it and I'm miserable and that's actually a sign that I need to bounce, you know,

  40:04

  versus like also how do I know when it's work I really, really do love, but I'm just kind of appeasing my own desires and I'm not in touch with God at all and I'm not actually concerned about whether or not this glorifies him because we know people like that, right? Yeah.

  40:19

  I 100% know of Christian leaders who have definitely jumped off the humility train because their empire grew. Yeah. And it's like kicking butt. And I am seeing the metaphorical dead bodies that they are leaving in the wake of their ministry because it's devastating. And I'm like, that's hard. Yeah, that's hard. And I'm speaking from personal experience.

  40:44

  And so how do we know like we might really, really love the work. and not actually be in alignment with God. And we might really, really hate the work and also not be in alignment with God. So like, how do we discern that?

  40:55

  And this is I'm going to now go back to something you said like 10 minutes ago. Reading your Bible is so underrated. It really is. Like, can we please bring back independent Bible study? Because, I mean, I have so many feelings about this.

  41:13

  My husband and I have been living in the town that we're living in for the last three years now, and we have yet to find a church. That's tough. Lots of people ascribe our reason for not having found a church on the common idea

  41:28

  that we are just being Western consumers and we haven't found a church that can like serve our consumerist needs. I am telling you wholeheartedly. Yeah. That is BS for us. That is not why we haven't found a church. We haven't found a church.

  41:44

  Because after being in a church for a number of years together, that was not facilitating discipleship. And by that, I mean like they weren't even doing the basics of teaching their congregation how to read their Bible independently. We had small groups and we were not reading our Bible together during the small group.

  42:06

  Like, I'm not, I'm not joking. The, the curriculum did not involve. There was curriculum, but it didn't have any scripture in it. yeah yep rough that's yucky yeah yeah it was flag if i ever it was my first red flag now let me just stop for a minute and say god has brought the most beautiful

  42:28

  family of friends to our lives through this church you met them at our wedding yeah they're all those people They are like the most gorgeous family of Christ-filled people that I've ever met. So I just want to say here for a minute, I am not on this bandwagon of bashing churches,

  42:45

  even though I 100% think a lot of churches have really screwed up and I've been really hurt by churches. But I still believe that God does beautiful things through our broken attempts to serve him. So that was just my little like pause aside. I was deeply hurt by this church and yet...

  43:04

  the community of people that we still have, almost all of us have left this church and we've all moved to different parts of the country and they are still wholeheartedly my like capital C church. They are my family of like fellow, um, you know, saints that love Jesus. So, um, that all to one side, but yes, I've,

  43:22

  I've been to churches where it's like, this church is growing, growing, growing. Still they have, I'm trying to like be really discreet cause I'm not here to name them and bash them. But like, Like they have now got branches in other European countries and they are growing, growing, growing, growing. But I know full well,

  43:40

  they did not prioritize discipleship or teaching people how to read their Bible, right? And so we started to see the impact of that when conflict would take place and it wasn't being handled on like the small scale level. People didn't know what the biblical precedent was for how to handle conflict within the church. And so-

  43:57

  Everyone gave into their own prideful desires for how they wanted to handle it. And it was really hurtful. I experienced that firsthand. I watched people I love go through that. So we left that kind of environment. And then we got into an environment that was so on fire for just teaching people how to read their Bible.

  44:15

  And I just was like, yeah, take my money, take my time. I will do everything. to serve this church because I, all I'm watching them do is love God, love others, read their Bible, like make disciples. There was no flashy lights. It was like literally a hundredth of the size of the church I used to go to.

  44:33

  There was no performative service. It was just like raw, honest worship. And let's like know God first and foremost by worshiping him together and reading our Bible together and then going out and serving our community. That was like all they wanted to do. And I'm like, I have everything. Where have you been all my life?

  44:52

  This is what I want to do in community with other Christ followers. So since having to leave that town that I still class as my town and I miss it dearly and we had to move here for work reasons, Chris and I's only like real requirement of a church is like, is the leadership prioritizing church?

  45:16

  discipleship like from the top all the way down is the leadership teaching from scripture rather than like pigeonholing scripture into like thematic ted talks are they just teaching scripture in an authentic way and are they empowering their congregation to read the bible themselves yeah that is our like you do not need to

  45:36

  have flashy lights you do not need to perform and entertain me at church i am not a consumer i am a part of the body of christ but i am not prepared to My husband and I are not prepared to put ourselves in another situation where we

  45:50

  could get hurt by people who are undiscerning entirely because they are not prioritizing discipleship in their lives and they're just not reading their Bible.

  45:59

  Yeah, that's tough.

  45:59

  And I'm not expecting perfection from someone if they're reading their Bible. I read my Bible almost every day and I'm like, hardcore the least perfect person but we at least can have like this common agreement that if we don't know how to handle something if we are both prioritizing

  46:14

  scripture we can go to the scriptures and be like all right this is like a base level of what god has to say for something yeah obviously people can have different theological interpretations but there's like a good faith approach to life when you know that other people are also prioritizing reading the scriptures.

  46:30

  So circling back over to how do I know if I'm miserable, if I'm actually supposed to be in the work, or how do I know if I'm happy, if I'm actually supposed to be in the work? Are you frigging reading your Bible?

  46:42

  yeah because however God talks to you like God talks to me a lot in dreams he talks to me a lot in pictures um when I'm reading scripture I will like get little thoughts and I'll see things in weird like colors and like I'm weird I'm an

  46:57

  enneagram for I God talks to me in cool weird artsy fartsy ways okay but I know when it's him because it's in alignment with his character and That is consistently in the scriptures that I'm reading. And very often I get a revelation literally coming from the scriptures as I'm reading them.

  47:14

  And it's like I we always talk about like the Holy Spirit is the one who reveals the truth of scripture to us. Right. Like you could have the best apologetics teacher in the room. And someone might not get it. And then they go away and they open the Bible for themselves.

  47:26

  And the Holy Spirit is the best teacher. If you're reading scripture, the more you spend time with God through his word, the more you're going to be able to, in your day-to-day life, be like, okay, I want to do this thing. What are my motivations for doing this thing? Are those motivations in alignment with

  47:41

  the character of God who I have learned to be true through reading the scriptures. Like that's a super practical, honestly, one size fits all way that everyone can like discern in their own lives. Like, is this, is this right for me in terms of, is it going to nurture my relationship with God or detract from my relationship

  48:00

  with God? Because the reality is like, I am definitely in my own personal life. I err on the side of like, I fight really hard for the happy things in life. I reject misery pretty hardcore. So I found it super interesting. And this was the third bullet point that I was going to get to.

  48:22

  I found it really interesting how you really... struggled with this idea of heaven being a primarily happy place and no suffering because for me and and you said you felt guilty about that right yeah oh yeah i find that fascinating because i felt guilty for having a completely different feeling about heaven and basically about earth

  48:45

  I constantly struggle with resentment towards suffering. And that makes me feel guilty. That makes me feel like I am some fraud who's really desperately trying to like cloak a prosperity gospel and something more gritty. I feel really guilty being like, no, I don't want anything to do with death. I don't want anything to do with suffering.

  49:05

  But I also, I wake up every day I feel so lame saying this, but it's just true. My entire life, I have woken up every morning dreading the day that my mom will eventually leave this earth. Yeah. I am annoyingly aware of death every freaking day.

  49:23

  It makes me sound broody and sultry and artistic, and this is why I write all the time. I'm a little bit, yeah, for real. But you know what? I would love to just be kind of oblivious and actually be a happier person. I see, yeah. Because I am a pretty sad person.

  49:39

  Like I fight for joy really hard. That's why my sub stack is called the battle cry. Because for me, I have to fight to, to find happiness and joy because I am so aware of everything that's wrong all the time. Like I don't watch sad movies because I already carry so much sadness in me all the time.

  49:58

  I'm like, I can't, I can't add more. Even if it's a fictional story, I'm like, I don't need any more reminders of how much this world sucks. Yeah. And I resent suffering so, so much because, Because I feel like I carry so much of it inside me. And I know that sounds really dramatic.

  50:13

  And it's like, I'm not a refugee. I'm not someone who's had to deal with bombs going off around them. I'm looking at Ukraine. I'm looking at what's going on in Israel and Gaza. And I'm sitting here thinking, I've never been faced with the level of suffering that these people are faced with.

  50:24

  And yet I feel so supremely aware of it. And I hate it. And I feel guilty because I'm like, Jesus did promise us suffering in this life, right? Like, I don't want to be this airy fairy person who just like buries her head in the sand and refuses to acknowledge the reality of this world.

  50:39

  But then there's part of me that's like, it's almost cause I'm so aware that I resent it. Yeah. But like we're two opposite sides of the coin. Right. So you're like, a heaven where there's no suffering sounds boring. And that makes you feel guilty to feel that way. And I'm sitting here and I'm like,

  50:54

  I can't freaking wait to get off this hellhole that we call earth because I am sick of the suffering and I just want to experience joy, but I feel guilty too. So it's like, why do we feel so guilty no matter like where we sit in navigating like this question of suffering and joy?

  51:10

  I think that's one of Satan's greatest victories. He has no power over how we feel. We are in charge of our feelings. He's also very smart. And he knows how to manipulate our circumstances and our surroundings to cause feelings. And it's really easy to not actively fight. And the way we actively fight our battle cry is scripture.

  51:41

  Like our battle cry has to be first and foremost, Lord reveal yourself to me. Um, because I think that otherwise guilt and shame, whatever color and flavor that comes for you in is going, is going to be there because if we experience guilt and shame, it robs us of joy. It robs us of happiness.

  52:05

  It robs us of fun. And all of those things are so central to what God offers us. Um, And I just, I can't help but think if, I mean, you did an episode on this for Magic Like This when you were talking about like in the, and you can expand on this better than I can,

  52:25

  but talking about that in the Screwtape Letters of like, if we can just get our eyes off of the fact that God is good, even amidst our suffering, then it just crumbles everything. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was like, I think that was when I was covering letter number eight,

  52:42

  which is one of my favorite screw tape letters. And it felt really profound for me personally, because the last few years of my life from COVID, right when my wedding fell apart, and I just kind of reached this point with God where I was like, this was a really simple joy that I wanted of you, God.

  52:57

  And like, you told me to get married in 2020. And then you knew it was going to fall apart. Like, How do I know that you're good when a simple joy was like just ripped apart in the most like catastrophic way?

  53:12

  And that like for people who don't know my story, I know it just sounds like I'm crying over a party. I will link the episode, like this specific episode in the show notes for you guys because I would really recommend you listen to it because even if you can't relate to this specific event,

  53:27

  she does an incredible job at – you have to listen to it. the end. Thank you. I would love for you guys to listen to it. I do this work because I want to bless people. Yes. Yeah. I'll link this specific episode for you guys.

  53:39

  But I talk about this letter because it felt so profound for what started as like my wedding fell apart in COVID. I won't get into that. You can listen to the episode, whatever. I talk about it a lot throughout my podcast because it was a really profound moment

  53:53

  that was like a catalyst for me of just going down this renewed journey of being like, okay, how... How do I know that God is good? It started with the wedding falling apart. And then my husband fell into a really severe depression.

  54:08

  And then we lost multiple... Multiple family members died all within like a year of each other. And we just... We lost a lot. We ended up in a lawsuit with an ex-wedding vendor that stole thousands of pounds from us. Like there was just a crap ton happened in the space of 18 months. And it was horrendous.

  54:28

  And so I was in this space of being like... okay, the last time my life fell apart, my dad was a drug addict and my parents had to get divorced and we were homeless. That was pretty catastrophic. And yet, for whatever reason, my spirit did not question the goodness of God.

  54:47

  I just inherently knew that he was good and he carried me through it. His spirit really protected me during that time. Fast forward and this is the next time in my life where everything's exploded and everything's falling apart. And I was like, okay, I've already had the opportunity to question God's goodness.

  55:08

  I had that opportunity when things fell apart in my childhood. And I determined that God was good. So this time, I'm not sitting here and I'm not asking, is God good? Yeah. I'm asking, how is he good? Because I determined that that truth remained true.

  55:25

  But I was in a season where nothing in my life pointed to the goodness of God. And that's basically what the screw tape letter is about. What do we do when the entire world seems void of his goodness? Where do we go? For me, personally...

  55:41

  God granted me the gift of faith in the simple truth that he was good I knew that but I felt so hollow inside because I'm like I am an academic and I can't just accept that without knowing how it's true because right now it doesn't seem true it

  55:57

  doesn't make sense and if I don't press into this question of how is it true my faith will eventually over years erode like if I just kind of like oh yeah God is good even though my whole life sucks And I don't ask, how is he good?

  56:11

  I don't like press into that God-given curiosity that he has implanted in me. My faith would have eroded. So I went through the really painful process of being like, God, you do not seem good to me right now. I choose to believe that you are. That truth is pre-established.

  56:29

  So that's point A. And I'm over here at point B. How do I get back to point A? What's the journey you're going to take me on to get there? And So I talk about that in that episode of The Screwtape Letters where it's like there

  56:43

  is a real profound experience that I think we each have to go through at some point in our life where, as C.S. Lewis says, the entire world seems void of his goodness. And can we look around in a world that seems completely empty and still obey and still trust him?

  56:58

  And what that letter doesn't talk about is like, okay, what's the definition of obey? For me... The definition of obey was wrestling like Jacob did until I got my answer, you know? And that's the kind of faith that God invites us into, which leads me to bring up this book that's incredible by Lori Wilbert.

  57:25

  It's called A Curious Faith. I highly, highly recommend this book. It really, God has really blessed me with an incredible gift of faith as a child. And I have always been okay with not knowing the answer. And to a certain extent, I think that that is good. I think that that is healthy.

  57:42

  And I think that it is wise. There's a certain amount that no matter how hard we fight to understand, we're just not going to understand. And resting in faith and resting and trust that god is good and that and that god is sovereign and

  57:54

  that is a blessing to me um is is good but also i admire your faith i like i admire that gift i really do it really isn't of me i would like to say well i and i know that because it doesn't make sense no like and you're you're really really smart so

  58:11

  it's not like you're just wandering around dumb like oh i don't know it's just i'm just assuming that god is good like you're very intelligent And yet you have this faith that like doesn't make it – like it doesn't matter how intelligent you are. That faith just is there.

  58:26

  Like you just know that you know that you know. Yeah. And I admire that. Thank you. And I am really grateful for it because it has protected me from a lot of – it has protected me from a lot. And it is God's blessing to me. That said, it has also robbed me,

  58:42

  maybe I have allowed it to rob me is a better way to say it, of my ability to preach the gospel and to evangelize to people because I can't explain in words why it's this way. I can't, because I've never had to wrestle through it. It's just something I've come to understand.

  58:57

  There was not like a wrestling process of me trying to get to this answer. So I have found in my own faith journey and in my own relationship with God, I understand this truth, and I feel like I have to work backwards to the point of, wait, why does this, why is this true?

  59:12

  And this book, A Curious Faith, has... As I was reading it, I think showed me the beautiful gift of wrestling to understand, like Jacob. Like it showed me why asking questions is not dangerous. It is instead when we are rooted in scripture, when we are persistent to seek Christ.

  59:38

  why it's such a gift and why that will only strengthen our faith. Her writing is beautiful and I love it and I highly recommend it to everybody. And I'll add a link for you guys so you can read it. You've been recommending that one to me for a while along with Gentle and Lowly.

  59:56

  So I have both of those in my Amazon cart. So good. They're so good. I will get both of those. I really will. But it's so interesting to me because I feel like we keep saying – Like we're on opposite ends of the spectrum, but the end result continues to be the same for both of us. Right.

  1:00:12

  So you felt that your gift of faith has impeded your ability to evangelize. I have felt that my like over analytical faith has impeded my ability to evangelize because I feel like I over explain things. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I can feel really at home if I'm in like a wrestling session with someone who

  1:00:32

  already knows Jesus, but they're like going through a really hard time or maybe they're in a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. And that is, I would argue, a form of evangelism. Absolutely. But if I'm talking to someone who doesn't know Jesus, I do not know how to say things simply. I don't know how to do it. Well,

  1:00:50

  it's a skill that I think has to be, I mean, there is a certain amount that we as humans can learn absolutely and grow a skill. But I also think a lot of that has to be Holy Spirit led. Because like we were saying earlier, like the spirit reveals spiritual truths.

  1:01:04

  Even God himself doesn't reveal all of the spiritual truths, even in scripture. Like there's so much in there that he's like, you're going to understand this later. You won't understand it now, but you've got to just trust that. That I'm going to work this out for your good and for my glory.

  1:01:17

  Because, spoiler alert, God's glory is always for our good, which is such a gift. 100% of the time. Yeah. So I think that while there is a certain amount of wrestling and there is a certain amount of human skill that can be learned, I also think in both of our situations, it really has to lean –

  1:01:39

  What I'm hoping and what I think our prayer needs to be is, Lord, let us let us lean on and rely on your spirit and not on our words, because otherwise we're going to muck up the whole situation. Yeah. And you know what? It's something that I've like felt God giving me this like kind of clarity recently

  1:01:57

  that's been like a real release and relief. Bring it. Is I have always felt like because I grew up in like a very evangelical, missional, traditional, um, like youth group type of environment when I was, you know, going to church as a teenager. And so I felt like evangelism only looked one way.

  1:02:15

  And I felt like there was only like the people who, who we evangelize to are the people who don't know Jesus yet. And that's it. And so I always felt like I do not fit the bill for talking to strangers who don't know Jesus and knowing how to engage with them. Like that is not my skillset.

  1:02:31

  It's just not. Now, that doesn't mean I shouldn't pray for that. That doesn't mean I shouldn't lean on God for that. I believe God brings us into situations where we can speak to strangers. I actually wrote about that on my sub stack.

  1:02:42

  I went and prayed for a girl who was at the immigration office with me and I didn't even know her name. And that was really cool. Yeah. The Holy Spirit led me to do that. But that's not my natural instinct. And I felt a real relief in recent years when like God's basically said,

  1:02:57

  But look at all these gifts I have given you to like talk about me in the really rough places, to talk about me in the really like heavy C.S. Lewis-y, theological, deconstruction-y, difficult places. Yeah. your goal is still to bring people closer to me.

  1:03:14

  Like maybe it's okay for you to just lean into the strengths I've given you and evangelize in the places where you do feel comfortable. Like I feel like we're just always trying to put ourselves in these situations where we feel least comfortable as though that's our only sign of faithfulness to

  1:03:31

  God when actually like maybe we just get to embrace what feels easy. Yeah. and then like we got we get to watch really cool things happen because like shocker god made us this way yep god made us to think however we think and then if we trust

  1:03:45

  him and we love him if our heart is genuinely to share his goodness with everyone which is my heart for my writing like i get to be put in front of people who will receive what i have to say in the way that i say it

  1:03:58

  the way that God's made me to explain things and it brings them closer to him. And like, that's okay. Maybe it's okay that I don't go out and preach to strangers on the street all the time. Yeah. Maybe I'm still doing good work. Absolutely. Well, and it really brings us back to that,

  1:04:13

  how we opened up this episode of saying like, yeah, our interests, our skills, our passions all point back to God's divine sovereignty and God's divine plan. And so if you're really interested in, Riding a bike. There's a reason. That's not a human drummed up interest. There's a reason for that. And God wastes nothing.

  1:04:39

  It's not like God's like, oops, I accidentally did that. And that's not how it goes. But I think that we get ourselves in this trap of just like you're saying, of thinking, oh, because I like it, it must be of an interest based purely in flesh. And my encouragement to you, whether you're starting a business,

  1:04:57

  you're growing a business, whether you're trying to decide if you want to start a family, whatever the decision that is before you and you want it so bad, but in the back of your mind, you're like, I can't, there's no way I'm going to get this because I want it so bad. Maybe you won't. Maybe you will.

  1:05:11

  I can't tell you. But what I can say is two things I'm constantly praying that have perfected me. That's not what I meant to say. Prevented me from running outside of God's will, which I believe is entirely possible. And we don't need to open up that can of theological worms. But that has prevented me. Because we would.

  1:05:34

  I'm saying please not right now. Not right now. No. Another day. The first thing is, Lord, take away anything that I am doing that is not in your will. Because I do not believe I have the strength and the wherewithal and the discernment to do that on my own. And it has to be of you.

  1:05:52

  You have to just take it away from me. And he has been so faithful to do exactly that. And I could point back to my story. I still haven't shared my like entrepreneurial journey of how I've started. And it's all just a test. Can I nominate myself to interview you to share that story? Yes, please.

  1:06:08

  I would really love to do that. Okay. Okay. Let's do it. I love that plan. Because I have written it time and time again, but I have so many words that I'm like, this is like a five-hour podcast. I would love to interview you. Okay. That's a great idea. But anyways, so I'm always praying.

  1:06:26

  Take this away, Lord, if it's not your will. I have done that since I started this blog that I did in what, 2011 or 2012 called Cliffs and Canyons. Yeah, you're welcome for that name. God has time and time again, taken it away when it wasn't time and it is all his gift to me.

  1:06:44

  The second thing I'm always praying and that I would really encourage you as you're listening to be praying is God give me clarity and give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Basically what we're asking for here is discernment. Lord, give me discernment to know what doors to walk through and what doors to not walk through.

  1:06:59

  Because sometimes the door will open and it looks shiny and good and you want it so bad, but it's not the right door for you to walk through. And that's just a matter of fact. Sometimes even if you want it, it doesn't mean you're going to get it.

  1:07:10

  Otherwise, everyone would win American Idol and that would be a shit show. what a great choice of example those two simple prayers on repeat all the time god take it away if it's not in your will and lord please grant me clarity give me discernment through your spirit alone and let me experience success in your perfect

  1:07:33

  will and in your perfect timing and let that success go to glorify you um those those things have constantly rooted me back to okay i'm I can just walk forward and do the next thing. And if it's not right, God will pull me back. I will fall. I will trip. I will stumble.

  1:07:52

  And if not, God will give me the strength to take the next step forward. Yeah. And can I add to that? Absolutely. One practical question that I think you can always ask yourself in the work environment is, especially if you're wanting to be an entrepreneur, which I'm assuming that you probably do if you're listening to this podcast,

  1:08:08

  right? Mm-hmm. Obviously, with businesses like mine and Dusty's, it's really straightforward. I write about Jesus. She's openly talking about Jesus as part of a business fellowship. But maybe you're a business that's just making baby clothes. My mom's not an entrepreneur. My mom is an esthetician and she works as a brand rep for a few different cosmetic brands.

  1:08:30

  There's no... That is... spiritually neutral in terms of the frontward facing brand of the job. But the question that you can ask yourself is, if you're like burning to do that thing, ask yourself, how might I bring glory to God in this? Is that something I want to do?

  1:08:53

  Do I want to do whatever would be necessary to bring glory to God through this work that I'm doing? So for my mom, My mom gets to have loads of conversations with people who are coming up to her and maybe they're looking for the right foundation shade to match their skin tone.

  1:09:12

  And they end up sharing with her... This happens to my mom all the time. They end up sharing with her that they just survived stage three breast cancer and they just got given the all clear and how they had a moment before they went into surgery where they heard the Holy Spirit speaking to them.

  1:09:29

  And my mom gets to... to like hug them and pray over them or like someone who doesn't know Jesus but is sharing how they've just gone through a really hard time like one time there was a lady that was talking to my mom and she was looking for a perfume and my mom was

  1:09:41

  trying to help her find this particular scent and it turns out that this was the perfume that this lady's daughter wore before she died and like my mom got to be there like i don't think my mom felt the holy spirit telling her to openly pray for the woman outwardly in that moment but she comforted her and

  1:09:57

  then she prayed for her like privately yeah and so every day my mom's going to work and she's like i talk to her most mornings when she's on her way to work and she's like all right god what can i do for you in my job today my mom works in one of the

  1:10:12

  most vain materialistic states in america california is like Everyone's got something fake on their body, right? I feel more self-conscious when I go back to California because it's a very vain environment. And I tell my mom all the time, I don't know how you do this work.

  1:10:30

  I would feel so like my self-esteem would erode over time working in the cosmetic industry in California. But my mom goes in. super natural, super beautiful. My mom is gorgeous, but she's like, she's so stunning. It's disgusting how beautiful she is. But like, like she's letting her hair go gray. She's looking super natural.

  1:10:52

  Like she's going against the grain of what California tells her she should look like. And she's like hitting her sales goals and doing all the practical things that she needs to do within this job. But then she's asking like, all right, God, What would it look like to glorify you through this job?

  1:11:07

  And then God brings conversations to her through her clients all the time. And she gets to be a presence of the Holy Spirit around them. She gets to witness to her coworkers who don't know Jesus. And she finds a lot of joy and fulfillment in that. Now, my mom's employed.

  1:11:21

  So it's like easier to say when you're in an employment environment like and you kind of don't have a choice what your workload is going to be. You can just be like, all right, God, bring some opportunity to serve you today. But if you're going to be self-employed and you're going to go out and start your

  1:11:34

  own business, ask yourself, how is this going to bring glory to God? Is that my actual motivation for doing this? And if it is, and if I ask myself, how is this going to bring glory to God? And I get my answer. It's going to bring glory. You're going to sell baby clothes to people, but you're,

  1:11:50

  you know, you might be bringing glory to God just by putting, I don't know, a little scripture on your business card or just like. Or praying for each customer. Yeah. I was going to say being open to conversations with each customer or praying for each customer, whatever you feel the Holy Spirit putting on your heart as like,

  1:12:07

  this is how you're going to bring glory to me. Yeah. That's going to benefit you and be for your good as well. Then ask yourself, okay, am I actually willing to do that? Am I willing to do whatever it is God's like kind of nudging me to do to bring glory to him within the business?

  1:12:24

  And if you're like, no, actually, I really don't think I – would want to have conversations with my clients about God if the opportunity arose. I don't actually think I do want to do that. Okay, well. I mean, that's between you and the Lord at the end of the day. But this is a nuanced conversation.

  1:12:41

  For me personally, every time I write a piece, I have to ask myself, what's motivating this? What is my motivation? What do I want my readers to take away? For me, it's a pretty easy black and white question to ask myself because every single time I write a piece, I have to ask, what's my motivation?

  1:13:00

  Who benefits here? How is God being glorified? What do I hope readers will take away when they read this piece? I just wrote a really hard piece yesterday about some relationship and spiritual abuse that I experienced in my old workplace, which was a Christian organization that I worked at.

  1:13:16

  And I had to really kind of sit there and be like, okay, what's my motivation for sharing this? Because it's not... If it's revenge, then I can't press publish. If it's out of bitterness, then I can't press publish. But I mean, you read the piece,

  1:13:31

  so you know that I did everything I could to make my heart very transparent and that I'm like, yeah, I was hurt. I'm not going to conceal that I was hurt. But the reason I'm sharing this is to... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have to ask ourselves that in whatever environment we're in, like,

  1:14:00

  and especially if we're going to take on this bold, beautiful invitation to start our own businesses. Yeah, because as an entrepreneur, I don't care what space you're in. You're a leader. You are taking on responsibility. And I believe that there is a stronger set of consequences for leaders who don't handle business. their leadership well.

  1:14:19

  Like I just, I believe that wholeheartedly to be true and it should be true. That should be the truth of it. There should be a level of accountability there. And so I think that that's an incredible question. And I would also invite you to ask that question.

  1:14:31

  How can I bring glory to you, Lord, today, even if the work you're doing is not paid work? even if it's changing diapers, even if it's taking care of an elderly parent. It doesn't matter what that work is, washing the dishes. Lord, how can I bring glory to you in the mundane and the exciting work today,

  1:14:50

  the paid and the unpaid work? Because we are all workers and we get the opportunity to choose. Are we going to work in line with God's will and do all we can to bring God glory through this? Or are we going to do it from a place of our own strength and from our own

  1:15:05

  selfish ambition um yeah I think that that's an incredible I think those are some really practical things that we can ask ourselves um I think here's a really great spot to wrap up before yeah close this out though Christina I would love to hear

  1:15:19

  what is something big or small that is just bringing you a lot of joy and happiness right now question um Honestly, like being on Substack right now is just bonkers fun. Like I am having really deep, profound conversations with strangers. And I have not had an experience like that on social media easily in a decade. No, no.

  1:15:48

  Like, people just engage on this platform differently, I think, because it was established to be a place for writers and artists. There's kind of this presupposed assumption that people are there to read long form content. It is the opposite of TikTok, right? It is the opposite of taking things in in a second.

  1:16:09

  It's like there's an assumption that people... Yeah, the people on that platform are slowing down, thinking deep, reading long pieces. And my pieces are long. Like even for Substack, my pieces are long. And I'm getting like... For me, 30 people liking and reading that is better than a thousand people liking an Instagram post for me right now.

  1:16:33

  Because that means they dedicated 15 minutes of their time to read my content. Yeah. And then commented on it and said, like, this... I had someone that literally commented an hour ago saying, like, I felt every word of this post in my body. That's wonderful. I related to it so deeply.

  1:16:50

  It's, like, connected me closer to Jesus afterwards. Yeah. it is really really nice to feel like the work I'm doing is reaching people and like I do not need hundreds of or thousands to feel fulfilled in the work I'm doing because just getting to see it like a tiny group of people that are enjoying my

  1:17:10

  work and I'm enjoying other people's work and I'm engaging and having good conversations with people so in a time where I'm like right now living in a town where I have literally four friends um like that's all I've got four friends and I'm like And that might seem like a lot,

  1:17:25

  but I lived in a town where I had easily like 15, 20 people on speed dial within a five-mile radius of back where I lived in the Peak District because I lived in a whole community of people. So I have four friends here in this town.

  1:17:40

  It is really sweet that God is kind of supplementing some of my loneliness. Mm-hmm. by bringing new friends to me online. And I have not experienced something like that in a while. So that's been Substack. I am like all about Substack. I'm not, you know, I'm not a member of their marketing team, but maybe I should be.

  1:17:57

  Maybe you should be.

  1:18:00

  You have told me to cut over to Substack for, I don't know, a year, maybe. And I finally did it. And I finally did it. And I have yet to really put the energy into that space in the way that I'm excited to, but I have moved my podcast hosting and stuff over there.

  1:18:15

  And I'm excited for the, and that's something I didn't talk about when I was giving my like business summary, but there's some cool things that I'm like in the works on building on the backend, but I'll wait to reveal all of that till later. But I am so glad I finally listened because it is.

  1:18:27

  I'm delighted you're here. It is like a slower pace. It makes me think of like OG Facebook. to be quite honest. Like way, like I don't know, 2010, 2009 in that area of like when Facebook and even the beginning of Instagram when like writing like essay type captions was

  1:18:49

  was what was working and there was like so much open dialogue and it wasn't trolling people. I don't, it just feels like the warm hug of the internet and I'm happy about it. It really does. And it's, it's, it was a crowdfunded, it started off through crowdfunding. That's cool, I didn't know that.

  1:19:06

  And yeah, and like just the premise of what this platform is trying to be just really stands for promoting artists and writers to actually make money through their work and so feels like the antithesis of TikTok right now yeah absolutely it is and it's

  1:19:23

  promoting people who like have 20 or 30 subscribers like there's not the same kind of algorithm hierarchy so I'm finding people who have way more subscribers and way less subscribers than me and I am just following people on the merit of their work

  1:19:36

  and it's such a gift that's really nice that it's a level playing field and I get to engage with other writers and Just enjoy them based on the quality of their content, not based on how many followers they have. I quite literally was praying yesterday and asking God to protect this platform and

  1:19:52

  help it to stay true to its – For real. Not even kidding. It feels like something I didn't know the internet could be anymore. Yeah. It really does. It really is. Yeah. My favorite thing right now, the thing that's bringing me joy is – Yes, tell me. My husband, Brian, is super into cycling.

  1:20:12

  And the last few years we have been watching the Tour de France. Every year on Netflix, they do, well, for the last, I think, three years, like a recap of the last years in like a very Netflix quality documentary style. Like it's really high quality and it's fun. And the Tour de France is a 21 day race.

  1:20:31

  And so it requires a lot. There's like a lot of parts that are just kind of men in lycra writing and so it's not as exciting but this this documentary series really was like kind of like our gateway into this world and we learned so much and

  1:20:44

  it's been so much fun and watching we whenever possible so most days brian and i will wake up really early um because we're in the u.s time differences is pretty extreme from france to us and so we i am aware you would have no idea being in england But I'm only an hour's time difference from France.

  1:21:04

  I it's what time is it over there right now? It's 1134. It is 734 p.m. here. So there we go. There we go. Carry on. Carry on. It's been such a joy to, like, get up really early. We're getting up at, like, 5 a.m. and to watch the race. And it's been so much fun.

  1:21:25

  And the other day, if you know, by the time this comes out, it will have been out. But there was one particular race. So the two sort of, like, best races. Really, it's like between these two riders of who's going to win the tour this year, like the overall tour. It's Tare Bagaja and Jonas Vingego.

  1:21:45

  And the two of them are both such incredible riders. And what I love about this sport is, one, it is a team sport. And you do not realize how much cycling is a team sport. It's just incredible. The second thing is... There is this camaraderie.

  1:22:01

  And so there was this one in particular chase at the end of this race. They were like really trying to get over the two of these riders. One rider had a really, really serious injury just a few months ago and did not think he was going to be able to come and do this race and has,

  1:22:18

  and is in second place right now. He has last year. He won. He is one of the world's best riders. And so this race, This accident was just devastating. I mean, it would be for anybody who's in this position, but all the more for him.

  1:22:33

  So much was on the line, and it's incredible to see sort of this comeback story. And he is not winning at this time, but, like, to be in second place and to be – it's just – it's been so fun to watch. But anyways, they're doing this final chase, and –

  1:22:47

  And he – the man who was in this accident won this one stage. And when it was, like, within seconds of each other, it was – down to the wire, who was going to win this. And I think it was actually 1.2 second. He was ahead.

  1:23:05

  Um, he, he just, as he crosses this line, his whole body is like so excited. He's so relieved. He can't believe that he's doing this. He's filled with this emotion and he and his opponent reach out and hold hands for a

  1:23:19

  are like it was like a measure of both of them understanding how big a deal it was that he won this race how hard he fought to get back to this position how that consistency has paid off and how his family has supported him it was just so Brian

  1:23:35

  and I both were like on the verge of tears we were like It's insane to me how hard these men have worked to get to this place. And it's just brought me so much joy to see. It's just brought me so much joy to like experience this alongside Brian and to watch this.

  1:23:52

  And it's been so much fun. Do you realize that we pretty much started with a race metaphor and ended with a race metaphor today? We're having zero plan. I have to say. We're doing pretty good. But do you know what I was thinking as I was listening to you?

  1:24:05

  Because I'm not that into sports and that was epic. You have to see it. It's so amazing. Anyways. I would gladly watch that. But it was just making me think like when I talked about how when we're running races, usually it's like a really – Like, if you're running to be the first person to cross the line,

  1:24:23

  usually that's a really selfish – you're selfishly motivated. You only care about yourself. But, like, what you just showed is actually it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah. So, like – go ahead. I was just going to say, like, the point of that race – like, with a marathon,

  1:24:37

  you're kind of just running it to do it. But with that race, they were running it to get across the finish line first. And yet – They also showed, like, just this incredible camaraderie and respect for one another in getting across the finish line with their stories. Yeah. Like, the story that took them across the finish line.

  1:24:58

  It was so cool. And it just made me think, like, that's actually how we could be in business rather than competing against each other. Well, and their victory didn't just impact them. It impacted their whole team because the whole team gets that victory.

  1:25:07

  If any interview ever with a cyclist who wins a stage never is saying, I won this. They are always saying, my team got me there. every single time. I love that. I love that. This sport is so unlike American sports. It's just so – it is so fun to be a part of it.

  1:25:26

  And the other thing that comes to mind is I think it was the next day or maybe it was two days later, the man who is winning the race currently and who has been the other man's rival for a very long time

  1:25:38

  in the sport sense of the word not in the like relationship sense of the word but um sure he was minutes ahead which in cycling is a big deal he i think he was three minutes ahead of the guy behind him um and he crossed that finish line as if

  1:25:54

  somebody was on his tail the whole time like He worked his ass off to get across that finish line, even though it was so obvious he was going to win that stage. Like, two-thirds of the way... He wasn't cocky. No, two-thirds of the way in, we knew, oh, like, Tadej is going to win this stage, but...

  1:26:13

  you could see in the way that he was performing that he didn't know if he was going to win or not. And he was putting everything on the line until that final second. And for me, that left me so feeling so inspired. It really reminds me of that. Put your blinders on and do your job.

  1:26:29

  with everything you have, with all of the resources you have to the very best of your ability. And that is exactly what he did. And for me, that was so inspiring. And just stay in your own lane, isn't it? Like just focus on your own race. Like you're not,

  1:26:42

  and it's funny because that was also the metaphor I used on this note I put on Substack yesterday. Yeah, I'm just like why we are all we just need to focus on our own race, not anybody else's like and I paraphrased Chronicles of Narnia where Aslan says sweet child I never tell anyone any story but their own.

  1:27:00

  So like we can like Let's focus more on just discovering what it looks like to be a Christian whose God actually wants them to be, you know, maybe happy in their work and enjoy that and then run that race and trust that God

  1:27:17

  knows what's going to bring you joy and rest and peace and stop comparing it to the other person. Like for me, I got to stop comparing it to the person who got a thousand subscribers in two months because I only got 200 subscribers in two months. And you know what?

  1:27:29

  If I'd had a thousand subscribers, it probably wouldn't have been as good for my mental health. And I believe that God... is protecting me and he wants me to just focus on running my own race and letting him tell me my story, my story, not someone else's story.

  1:27:43

  And like, and we can also support each other in running our own races. Like you and I, I'm so grateful for the relationship we have to like just support each other and running our own races. And like, We're like, we kind of do like with stuff like this, where there's like a semi-business partner-y relationship there,

  1:28:01

  but we're also doing totally different things. You're way ahead of me in some areas. Like I'm growing in some crazy areas. Like technically on Substack, I'm ahead of you at the moment. Yeah, you're ahead of me in a lot of areas. We're both have strengths and weaknesses for sure.

  1:28:15

  But like all we care about is like staying in our lane and cheering each other on. And that's really nice that like we can prove that it can be done. Yeah. Like, and I think that within the entire body of Christ, it can be done. It can be done. Yep. And,

  1:28:30

  and really like bringing it back to the work that you and I do, bringing it back to the battle cry and bringing it back to the program this fall. Like both of these are created with that purpose in mind. Both of them are created with the,

  1:28:41

  how can we build community and how can we support one another in a way that brings God glory and, and joy. build his kingdom and build his church, whether that be through wrestling through faith topics or whether that be through developing a business that is profitable and sustainable and blesses you and your family.

  1:29:01

  shameless plug and brings you joy sub stack with christina and get on the wait list for the fellowship that's coming this fall i'll have links direct links to both of those things um in the show notes but i yeah yeah do all those things it's an honor

  1:29:15

  to do this with you come hang out with me on sub stack i would love to have you yes please definitely hang out with dusty in the fall because um i can attest that she's an absolute hoot i am a hoot You are an absolute hoot. You really are. That's the vibe I bring to Substack. Owl eyes.

  1:29:34

  Well, you know, owls were my favorite animal from the age of 13 until I was 22. That's some brand for you. Obviously, you're my spirit animal, Dusty. I love that I get to do this with you. Yeah, it's an honor. All right. Okay, we have to stop talking now. We're done. I've ended it.

  1:29:52

  We're just fangirling over each other now. I'm sorry, everybody. Okay, bye. Bye. Such a full episode, right, guys? We covered so much ground. I feel like God really directed that conversation and I'm endlessly grateful because we did talk about a lot of stuff in true Dusty and Christina fashion.

  1:30:12

  I want to wrap this episode in particular up with a prayer. Just asking God to bless us with discernment, asking God to bless us with clarity, and most importantly, asking God to pull at your heart and just draw you nearer to himself.

  1:30:26

  So I'm just going to go ahead and do that instead of telling you I'm going to do it. You ready? God, I thank you so much for your goodness. I thank you so much for your glory. I thank you so much for your kindness.

  1:30:34

  Lord, I pray for everyone who is listening today that as they are listening, God, that you... would would pull them closer to you god that you would draw them in nearer and the work that you have put on their heart on their interests their passions and their

  1:30:48

  hobbies that god it would all go to glorify you lord i also just ask that anything that they are doing anything that they are thinking that is not in line with your will lord that you would pull that away from them and help their desires god help

  1:31:00

  my desires please lord to be so in line with yours that Let your will be done. And God, I ask that you would grant each one of us success according to your good grace, according to your goodwill and your perfect time. Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to be here today to speak to all of these

  1:31:18

  incredible people and to share the goodness of who you are and to be able to share some practical information on business. I pray that. whatever it is that you want each person to walk away with today, whatever the lesson, whatever the takeaway, that they would hold tightly to that and that the rest would fade away.

  1:31:39

  Anything that was not in line with the truth of who you are, anything that was not in line with the gospel, with whatever it is, even if it is true, but maybe the timing right now isn't really, it's not what this person needs. I pray that, Lord, that they would remember what it is they do need,

  1:31:54

  that your will would be done in their lives. And I pray, God, that you would protect this space, that Satan would not have a hold on this space in the internet, that you would bless me with discernment, that you would bless me with clarity, and that you would do the same for everybody listening.

  1:32:10

  God, we love you and we praise you and we are so grateful for you. Amen. All right, guys, as we wrap this up, just a quick reminder. I would be very, very grateful if you would head to the show notes and join the wait list for the fall. Smuggler's program. It's going to be so much fun.

  1:32:28

  I'm going to do another episode later on with a lot more details about that program. Right now, everything is still in its infancy. Things are still being worked out, so you're going to hear more about that really, really soon. Lastly, if you haven't already, head to your favorite podcast platform and click subscribe. That's

  1:32:47

  to have you join our community in this way. There is going to be some really fun, cool stuff coming down here in the near future for this space and for you and for everybody else joining us today. All right.

I am so excited to announce…

The waitlist for the More Than Ambition Fellowship is open!

It’s a 4 (maybe 5) month business small group for kingdom-minded entrepreneurs seeking to glorify God through their work online and offline. I an BEYOND giddy about it!

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LINKS MENTIONED:

Connect with Christina Wallace:

⁠The Battle Cry on Substack⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠

The podcast episode we reference on Christina’s podcast, Magic Like This (listen HERE on Apple Podcasts)

A Curious Fathe by Lore Wilbert*

Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund*

*As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases/ (at no cost to you!)

Connect with Dusty Hegge:

⁠Website⁠ | ⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠Get a Website Template

Join the MTA Fellowship Waitlist

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Current Projects

08:23 Building a Solid Foundation

13:21 Combining Passion and Calling

21:50 The Importance of Humility and Endurance

26:06 Desires for God's Glory and Our Good

28:01 Seeking God's Will and Trusting His Goodness

30:27 Perceiving Joy and Growth Through Pain

33:29 The Importance of Reading the Bible

42:55 Empowering the Congregation to Read the Bible

48:22 Awareness of Suffering and the Guilt of Joy

53:45 Pressing into the Question of God's Goodness

56:14 Faith and the Inability to Explain

58:10 Discernment and Reliance on the Holy Spirit: Navigating Life and Work

01:12:47 Finding Joy in Activities that Align with Your Interests and Passions

01:26:23 Supporting and Cheering on Others: Building Community and Collaboration

EPISODE TAKEAWAYS:

• Challenges and unexpected circumstances can impact our goals and plans.

• Consistency and focus on one thing can lead to growth and success.

• Endurance and humility are important in building a solid foundation for our work.

• It is possible to love and find joy in our work while still seeking God's will.

• God's goodness can be found in both suffering and joy.

• Seeking God and trusting His timing and provision is key in our work. Different perspectives on heaven and suffering can lead to guilt, but it's important to seek God's truth and understanding.

• Reading the Bible and seeking God's guidance is crucial in navigating complex emotions and questions about faith.

• Faith can impact evangelism, with strong faith sometimes hindering the ability to explain it to others, while over-analyzing can make it difficult to simplify faith for non-believers. Our interests, skills, and passions are gifts from God and can be used to bring glory to Him.

• Trust in God's divine plan and seek discernment in decision-making.

• Run your own race and focus on your journey, while supporting others in theirs.

• Find joy in your work, regardless of the scale or nature of the job.

• Connect with like-minded individuals and build community in your chosen field.

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