What if Your Doubts are Not A Problem for God: God Isn’t Afraid of Your Questions:

Hey, and welcome back to Faithfield Living.

This is your host, Kristen.

Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about the Trouble with Jesus considerations before you walk away, whether you're a skeptic, whether you still aren't sure how you feel about Christ, or whether you just have questions or doubts or fears you're wrestling with.

We're going to get real and we're going to talk about how and why we should bring those questions, those doubts and those fears to the Holy Spirit and let him do the work within us.

Hi.

Today in the podcast, I would like to welcome our guest, Constance Hastings.

She is a retired ordained deacon and she is also the author of the book the Trouble with Jesus Considerations before you walk Away.

And she has a weekly blog called the Trouble with Jesus.

She's also been a mental health counselor and a freelance journalist and an educator.

And I'm excited today to have her on because we're going to talk about some of the things that she often writes about and that are in her book.

But it really comes down to something she says, which is don't deny your questions, your doubts, your fears, but wrestle hard with them, I mean, with the Holy Spirit, and allow God to heal and overcome your trouble or your concerns or your doubts.

And so I'm happy to have this conversation because we are all, we all wrestle with questions that we want to ask or bring to God.

We all wrestle with our faith or when something happens in our lives that we just can't quite understand it.

And so that is what we're going to talk about today.

And how do we, how do we bring that to God?

How do we wrestle with those things and then let him do his work?

So, Constance, thank you so much for joining me today.

I'm glad to be here today, Kristen, thank you.

Why don't you tell us just a little bit about life and your journey and what you're up to now.

I sometimes say that I shouldn't be where I am now.

It has only been by the hand of God upon my life.

I was not raised in a Christian home.

It was only because I was inadvertently sent to a small independent Christian school during the time of desegregation.

That was for all the wrong reasons.

And yet God took me there.

The teachers loved me.

They taught me well.

I learned to read from the King James Bible.

And that took hold of my life, has been the direction to where I am today.

And my, my salvation came from there.

But of course, the growth of, like everybody else, was a journey.

And God, as you Mentioned God brought me professionally through many things.

He's given me a family.

My husband and I have been married for 48 years.

We have a son and a daughter in law and then his daughter and our grandson and life is full like that.

So that's, that's in the short version, how I got here today.

Yeah, I love it.

Wonderful.

So why did you decide to write this book?

And I'll just caveat that with, I know because of many of your professional roles and then also having roles in the church, it allowed you kind of to bring together, right.

Those different experiences in conversations, in intersection.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about that and why you decided to actually put pen to paper in the blog, in the book to talk about some of these things.

Even though my background is in education and I was an English teacher for 25 years and have a degree in English and so forth, I never intended to actually write a book.

I was like, I don't have anything to say to put down on paper.

However, as COD would have it, I was asked by a women's group to do a Saturday morning retreat.

And they gave me a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do.

I knew these women, they were smart, they were leaders, they were professionals, and I wanted to bring them something that would have lasting impact upon them.

So during that time, I kept thinking about, what am I going to be talking about here?

What's the message?

And I was getting very frustrated because as you know, there are 66 books in the Bible and I could not come up with a message.

And one day, again, this was going through my mind and I was frustrated and I just looked up and I said, the troubles with Jesus.

Oh.

And sat down, wrote it out, pages started forming around it.

And I did the retreat session and it was very well received.

I went back to my home church and did it again.

Again, it was well received.

And I realized then what I had was the outline for a book.

So that took quite a number of years to come about.

But that, that's really where the trouble with Jesus started.

Now sometimes people say to me, do you have a problem with God?

It's like, I don't have a problem with God no more than most people do.

Meaning we all have those periods of struggle.

We all have those times when our faith is absolutely stretched where God is taking us into.

Areas, avenues, paths that we did not think we'd ever have to walk down or at least not walk down at that point in our lives.

At the same time, I was listening to what other people were saying and I'm talking everything from my own family members when I was in education to my students, the 18 years of having a faith based mental health practice, listening to my clients, and certainly then broader into the media and what the world is saying about Jesus Christ.

And all of that converged then into this voice that I use in the book.

It's, it's a voice of a doubter, someone who's very skeptical, and it interrupts the narration within the book of Jesus life and it challenges, it's questioning, it's sarcastic, it's angry, and there's this back and forth between the two and until at the end of the book.

The choice is given.

And you know, as Jesus said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.

Do you believe this, that question?

Do you believe this is the question which all of us are going to have to answer?

And it has such an impact then in one soul, so briefly, that's, that's how all of that came about.

Yeah.

So good.

That was a great summary.

And you know.

Yeah, I think you kind of start somewhere very early and I don't know if it's on the first page, I can't recall of the book.

But like you said in that voice, you know, what did it say?

It said something about willing.

I'm willing to give Jesus benefit of the doubt.

And doubt is what I'll bring to the table.

Right, because you're trying to, like you said, all of the things you've heard, all the conversations that you, or you know, the things people were saying, you were trying to convey that in the book.

And so you did it in this very creative way, right, to kind of present both Jesus in context, but then from this place that us as humans, right, we, this is what we do, we question things, we wonder, we try to understand them.

And of course, so many things are, you know, hard for us to grapple with, right, for some period of time.

So what, I guess, what would you first say to us just about, about doubt or about questioning things?

You know, we've just kind of hit it on the surface.

But just what would you say to people listening whether there's somebody deep in their faith but has walked through hard things, or whether there's somebody that's.

They're, they're seeking, they're looking for answers, they want to deepen their faith or maybe they've come upon this particular episode and they're not really sure, right?

They're not really sure what they think about this whole Faith, Christ, you know, thing.

What would you just share with them to encourage them that it's.

It's normal to have doubt and, you know, and what would you say to them?

Someone once said to me that doubt is not the opposite of faith.

That actually fear is the opposite of faith.

Because when we're in a place of fear, we're not able to activate or.

Or, let's just say exercise that faith.

And faith is not one that all the time is in total belief, lockstep with whatever we're told we're supposed to believe.

I write in the book at one point, courageous souls float in wonder, the position between doubt and belief.

And now let's.

Let's be clear about it.

Christianity is not an easy religion.

And we are called to be in that place where sometimes we do float.

We just wonder.

We're looking around, we're saying, okay, God, what are you doing?

We're watching.

We're waiting.

And that, I think, is the time when we are most able to grow on another perspective.

And those of you who do children's messages, listen carefully.

But one time I was doing a children's message, and it was the Sunday which the text being preached upon was of Thomas and his doubt, okay?

And as we know, we call him Doubting Thomas.

So what I did was I showed the children a bottle, a regular water bottle, and I had a balloon.

And I said to them, okay, now let's think about this.

Do you believe we can get this balloon to blow up or get this bottle to blow up, this balloon?

And the kids are looking at me sort of strangely.

And then it was really cool because behind them all their families are sitting, and everybody's sort of sitting up and watching.

And I said, okay, let's try it.

So I took the balloon and I placed it at the end of the balloon over the mouth of the bottle.

And what happened was the balloon expanded and virtually blew up.

And everybody's like, what happened?

What happened here?

And I said, I want to make this point to you.

There are times in life where we have no clue as to what is happening, what God is doing, what God could possibly do in that.

But we're called to have that faith, to be in that place.

However, what I didn't tell you about this was that inside the balloon was baking soda.

And inside the bottle, even though everybody assumed it was water, was actually white vinegar.

So when I placed the balloon over the bottle, the baking soda dropped down into the vinegar, it created a gas and expanded the balloon.

Now, I tell the children, pretty Pretty adamant about this.

I said, this is not magic.

This is science.

However, you did not know everything that was happening here and in our lives as well.

We are more often than not in that place where we don't know all that is going on.

We do not know all that God is doing.

We do not know where he is working.

We.

Where we can't see in the moment.

We are just called to have that faith.

And when we do, like the balloon, our faith will begin to expand.

That went over generally well.

But what I didn't know when I did that experiment one time when I was called to speak at another church because the pastor was away.

There was a boy about 12 years old who was sitting there.

And, you know, you could tell from start of the service he didn't want to be there.

Somebody dragged him in, et cetera, et cetera.

But when I did that experiment, I mean, he sat up and he was.

He was just so much focused on what was going there and what I was saying.

Later, somebody came to me and said, you have no idea what happened there.

His father had been killed in a car accident three weeks earlier.

He was really struggling, and so much he needed to know that God is still with him, still working, and that in that place, God loved him still.

And.

That was just amazing because, again, I didn't know all this was going to happen.

And yet it still comes back to that place of being courageous.

The Christian life is one of being courageous enough to walk that in faith.

Even though we have our doubts, but we can still express them and give them to God and let God do what God does with them.

Oh, so good.

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly.

I mean, and here's the thing, you know, that I've definitely learned even more so since doing the podcast for several years, is that by sharing our stories, but our testimonies, by sharing, by showing up and like you, you know, being willing to share, you know, kind of that experiment with tying it into your faith to Christ.

And then.

But.

But people coming on, having conversations, people listening to the podcast or reading a book like yours, what it does is it allows us to have that wonder or that curiosity.

It allows us to be thinking and then to.

To kind of plant more seeds of faith, you know, and that's one thing I've found is just having on certain.

Some of my guests, most of my guests, it continues to help me expand my faith in different ways.

Right.

Or my belief in different things.

You know, I was, obviously, I was already a believer, but it's like I Didn't realize how often, especially United States, a lot of people, if you ask them, they'd say, oh, I've never seen a miracle, you know, or things like that.

And yeah, and I don't mean like small divine appointments and things, but like something that they would call miraculous.

But often it's because one, we're not looking for it when we don't believe for it in that way, you know, or we're not desperate enough for it.

Right.

Like we.

Life is maybe too comfortable in some cases.

Right.

In some of the parts of the world.

But I just think, know, talking about these things, seeing something like your.

The talk you were giving with that experiment, like you said, you never know what little seed will be planted by something we say and someone hears or sees how we're acting or how we're believing, even in a hard thing.

Yeah, you're, you're so, you're so right about that.

And you know, all of us are going to have those points in our life where we just are pretty much knocked to our knees and all we can do is say, God what?

Just what?

And to stay in that place and be willing to hold on to our faith and yet see what God is going to do and, and how that's going to happen in speaking to our, to our faith in that regard.

Too many times people will come to that where they shut down and they think that this, this shouldn't happen.

What kind of a God would let these horrific things happen in our world?

What kind of a God would let me have to go through these experiences of rejection and retrail and hardship and financial problems and so forth?

You know, it's, it's not that it's the wrong question, but it's a question that can be expressed and yet again, expanded, changed to be able to open those, those windows in seeing God in, in new and greater ways.

Yeah.

I think one thing in your book is you.

You sort of have areas, right.

For people to write down their questions, right.

Kind of what are they grappling with?

So what would you just share with us?

Because I think sometimes, much like many things in our lives, we do get stuck in our head, right?

Like we might keep having the same anxiety or fear or worry, or we might be having the same question or maybe we're angry at God.

Right.

Because something happened and we haven't really brought it to Him.

We've just kind of said, I'm going to kind of close that door some of the way.

Right.

Like I'm going to have a hardened Heart.

So what would you say to us about taking it from it, being stuck right in our thoughts and, and presenting it, you know, writing it down and actually bringing it to him.

Yes, I do have at the end of each chapter of the book questions that are open ended that people can, I call it further provocations for your consideration.

And they can, they can think about them, they can journal them.

Sometimes I've been led groups where people have actually discussed them.

And that to me it's most exciting because it just goes everywhere and, and it's, it's just thrilling actually, just to hear what people bring to it.

However, you know, let's, let's be clear about this.

We live in a culture that only may turn to God when there are problems.

And you know, most of us of adult age, we, we look back to 9, 11, and we go, God, what is going on here?

And you know, any kind that time there's a, a certain catastrophe, you know, we look to that or you know, why is God sending pandemics and things like that?

However, the approach to God as Jesus revealed is that we have a God who, who loves us, who cares for us, who wants the best for us.

But this God is not what I call a divine fixer.

I believe that's the sixth chapter in the book and probably the book, the chapter that's going to give people a lot of trouble.

Because think about it and look, you know, preaching to the choir here, but I know everybody else does it too.

How often when we pray do we say, God, this is the problem and this is what needs to be done.

You know what we're doing here?

We're telling God what God needs to do.

Now, now, excuse me, but who, who is God in this situation?

And I love to talk about John 11 when Mary and Martha are grieving the death of their brother Lazarus, and Jesus shows up and he knew he was sick, but you know, waited a few days, Lazarus had died.

And he comes in and Martha says to him, and these are her first words to him, jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

I mean, she's challenging the Son of God.

And then just a little bit after that, she says, but I know that you can do whatever God asks of you.

And now she's in a point where she's trying to manipulate him to do something.

Okay, yeah, you can blame Martha or you can excuse Martha, but look, we, we've all sat in that place where we just have cried out to God, but a lot of our crying is God.

This is what you need to do.

And we want God to fix it the way that we want it to be fixed.

Probably maybe 20 verses after that is when Jesus goes to Lazarus tomb and says, in that point, it's verse 35, I think, the shortest verse in the Bible.

Jesus wept many times.

People read that passage and they say, look at this.

Jesus experienced all the emotions that we have.

Jesus grieved for the loss of his friend, for the grief that is the two sisters were going through.

Isn't that wonderful?

But if you go back to the original Greek translation, it doesn't mean that Jesus wept out of grief, but Jesus wept because he was so darn angry at the situation.

All of these people were converging on him to fix the situation.

And he's looking right into the face of death.

And yes, he does raise Lazarus from the dead.

All is well.

However, in this point, we also see that Jesus has been in a place where people have these expectations of him and by extension God, that God should not allow these things to happen, that God should always fix them and fix them as we want them to be fixed.

And that's not who Jesus came to be.

Jesus didn't come to change the world.

He came to change hearts.

And in changing hearts and how we know him by that, the world will be changed.

Such a good, Good.

Yes.

Example of that.

And isn't it true, I mean, we do often see God from our human perspective.

Right.

In other words, we try to make God the size that we can fathom when that is so not true.

Right.

And it's.

It's kind of the I've talked about before so many times.

We think our problem is bigger than God.

Right.

And I don't mean, like you said, we're not saying we're in control of how that, you know, what happens with, like, something we're going through, we can't be in control of that in.

In that way.

But we do have to remember that we have to make sure we put God above the problem.

Right.

Instead of kind of giving the problem the glory, if you will.

Right.

Like everything's about the problem.

And I'm.

Ha.

Like, I'm cancer.

I have the cancer.

Instead of like God's above it, you know, or whatever the thing is.

In other words, we kind of put the focus on the thing, the marriage that's struggling or, you know, whatever it might be.

So that's a great example, though, of.

Of exactly.

Like you said, you know, we don't understand always what God's doing and how he's working yet.

And at the same time, we're not going to always know.

And like you said, it's not going to work out how we hope it always will be because we aren't in control, you know, and often it might work out better down the road in some way that we would have never even understood.

Absolutely.

And more often than not, that is what happened.

It just takes a lot.

It's more perspective and time, at least as humans as we understand that.

Of course.

I love that.

Okay, so obviously throughout the book, you're talking about sort of how Jesus is countercultural and, you know, each chapter is kind of about these things.

So what would maybe be one of your favorite things that you share just about Jesus and kind of in the context of then but now, and that might just be encouraging for us there.

Briefly, there are a few chapters that, you know, kind of butt up against what our culture would say.

You know, one of them is the trouble with Jesus is he chose losers.

If you're going to start a movement today, you don't start with people who are relatively uneducated and who have no influence beyond, you know, the length of their arm.

And yet that's what he chose when he chose the disciples.

The trouble with Jesus is he valued women.

In his context, women basically had no rights.

You could be a wife, a slave, or a prostitute.

And in many respects, there was not much difference between the three.

And yet he valued women.

He brought women into his following.

The first woman to go, first person to go tell that he was the Messiah was a Samaritan woman.

And then, of course, at his tomb and Mary Magdalene, he speaks to and tells her to go tell the disciples.

So, you know, God is revealed in who he is and in resurrected form to women first.

There is certainly value there.

There's a chapter on the trouble with Jesus was he talked too much about money.

I think it's in the Gospel of Luke.

He talks more about money than he does about prayer.

Okay.

And God has a lot to say about our money.

We don't like that.

But the.

The chapter that I think in, in a lot of ways is.

Shows how hard it is and how deep we need to go.

Is the trouble with Jesus is his teachings were twisted.

And we sometimes read what he taught on a surface level, rather, going.

Going into the depth of it.

That chapter deals primarily with the parables.

And quickly, one of them is the Good Samaritan.

And we talk about the Good Samaritan.

You know, whole culture knows about the Good Samaritan.

You know, somebody's in need, you help them.

That's what we do.

But that's not the lesson.

The lesson is the Samaritan was a foreigner.

The Samaritan was someone that the Jews hated for all the religious, ethnic, racial reasons that anybody ever pulls up.

And yet the Samaritan was the one who helped the man in need.

So our good Samaritan is actually that person who will have relationship with us even though they live a life that is vastly different from what we know.

That's a.

That's a hard one for people to grab, grasp, and grapple with.

And that's.

That's what the teachings of Jesus do.

They take us beyond that surface, into places where we don't really sometimes see them going, but where we actually live.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

So I knew before we started talking, one of the things that we want to talk about is just how do we, you know, so one, if we have questions or doubts, we want to bring them, right.

We want to bring them into prayer.

And we want God to kind of like help us have a different perspective.

Right.

Go to scripture to try to grapple with, you know, who is God, really.

Right.

You know, all the different ways that he is, who he is and who he says he is.

But then also, it's just deepen, doing the spiritual practices to deepen our faith.

Right.

To continue, even if we don't feel like it on a certain day.

The more we are faithful in doing these things, the more our faith is going to deepen, the more we're going to understand God.

And so I know you share with a daily practice we can do when we're reading our Bible.

That is very helpful in doing so.

Yes.

And let me just say that in the moment, you may be doing, say, like a devotion, and you may think, oh, what's this got to do with anything right now?

Okay.

And it may not.

You may be in worship and hear a sermon, and it may not have any relevance, close relevance to where you're living in the moment.

But that's the point.

You're preparing yourself.

You're strengthening yourself.

You're building those spiritual muscles, if you will, to carry you, because those times of pain and hurt are coming, and you want to be ready for it now.

I have to say, Kristen, I love the resources that you have on your website that help people sort of monitor, I guess I'd say, their.

Their spiritual practices.

And I think what would fit in perfectly with that are these.

These three questions.

When you read your scripture, you take a passage and ask yourself these three questions.

What does it say?

Okay, you know, just be able to say, all right, you know, Moses saw the burning bush.

Okay, what does, Let me see, what.

What does it say?

What does it mean?

Okay, Moses saw the burning bush.

And that means that sometimes God's going to speak to us in unexpected ways.

And lastly, how does it apply, you know, where am I hearing God now that I didn't expect.

You know, where got from an area where God would speak to me.

Now, there's a fourth component to that, is once you've done through those three steps for your next time, say the day before, you look to see what opportunities God gives you to put that into practice.

And you may be the one who's speaking God into someone else, or you begin to, you know, look at a.

In a reading, a devotional, it may be, you know, a podcast, you know, maybe Christian music, but seeing how God speaks to you.

And briefly, this has been a practice that's been around for, I don't know what, how many hundreds and hundreds of years.

And yet it is so powerful and how it brings daily transformation in allowing the word of God through the Spirit to pour into you and become a part of who you are.

Absolutely.

So powerful.

And yeah, I mean, to your point, it lets us take what we're reading in scripture and, you know, kind of like they say, right, we're.

We're praying, but we're thinking on it.

We're letting it also get into our spirit.

But then, like you said, we're also then saying to the Holy Spirit, we're opened, we are ready to receive, right?

How it is you want to use us in this day and not being so busy and not present that we miss.

Miss the opportunities.

So, yeah, and it is, you use the word present, it's practice, what they call practicing the presence of Christ.

And, you know, you're not going through your day just checking things off and, you know, being there for everybody else.

You're.

You're being there, but you're bringing Christ into that place as well.

Okay, so let me ask you what.

Would just be, as we start wrapping.

Up, just maybe a few words of encouragement for people as they're just listening to this conversation.

They're hearing about your book and your blog.

What else that we haven't covered?

Would you like to share?

There is a passage, let's see.

I think it's in Mark 9, where the disciples bring to Jesus a father who has a son who's as it's described in the passage, as demon possessed.

If you look at the Description of what the boy is doing, it pretty much sounds like some kind of maybe a seizure, maybe a form of epilepsy or whatever.

But the disciples weren't able to heal this, Heal this boy.

And so the Father comes to Jesus and he's saying, in this place, you know, you know, if.

Heal him if you can.

And Jesus says, if I can.

And the man says, the Father says to Jesus, I believe, but help my unbelief.

And to me, that is the most candid statement in all of the Bible about where we live.

Yes, we believe.

We have a measure of belief.

And we, you know, we sometimes talk about people who have great faith.

Maybe so, but there's still that point where we sit and we, we, we.

We just don't know.

We are in that place of maybe not full doubt or the kind of doubt that would make you walk away, but rather you're in that place.

And yet Jesus says to him, you know, if I can, he says, and then he does heal the boy.

And again, if.

If the Bible was written to just, you know, tell us that God is good and everything's fine with him, those kinds of things wouldn't be there.

Yeah, those kinds of passages, and you can find them in many places, wouldn't be there except to let us know, hey, this is speaking into where you live.

And this is what Jesus Christ brought to us in his lifetime so that we would know God and even more.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great example.

Yeah.

And that's the exact thing is, excuse me, is we do.

A lot of us have belief, obviously, different levels at different times.

I mean, that can happen, but sometimes we don't.

We believe God can, but then we don't.

We don't always believe God can for us.

Right.

Like, in other words, we believe God can in general, believe that God will.

Right?

Yes, that's right.

And that's tough.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, and this is sort of what.

What we're saying, this is what we grapple with sometimes.

Right.

And that's why.

Getting clearer, you know, spending more time in prayer, in scripture, hearing testimonies of people.

Right.

That it can do nothing but build on your faith, on your.

On your belief, you know, in who God is and what he can do.

So I think.

I love that.

Okay, so I have one last question for you, and then you can share with us how people can learn more about your book and everything right now.

What is just fueling you in this season?

Just, you know, is there anything it can be about your faith?

It can Be just something that you're just, it's filling your heart, you know, or that you're just, it's just bringing you joy.

All my life I have wanted to live in a particular place and.

You know, whether it's jobs or family or whatever I've had, I've had to move and move more than I ever thought I would.

But God fulfilled his promise.

In Jeremiah 29 he says, I will bring you home.

And that is what's happened in the past few years is that I, my husband and I are living in a place where, you know, the day we, we went to settlement, you know, and paid for the house and all that, we came over, unlocked the doors and I anointed the doorway, inviting God through the Holy Spirit to be in this place and to be a sanctuary for us.

And that is what has brought me joy.

Yes.

You know, there are lots of things in the world that I could point to in my personal life and beyond that, you know, are problems.

There are lots of places of points of prayer that, you know, I, I carry upon me.

But I have in here this, this confidence because God has brought me to a sanctuary in which I, I have a place to pray and read and write and do my simple hobbies and you know, be a relationship of deep love with my husband.

And that to me has been the greatest blessing.

I love that.

Thank you for sharing that.

Okay, so Constance, can you share with us?

Where can people find out more about your book and your blog and just about, you know, your story?

Okay, my website, Constance tastings.com is probably the best go to place.

When you go into the website, there'll be a pop up and you can subscribe to my blog, the Trouble with Jesus.

And as well as if you do that, you'll be sent an email with a link and a discount code that you can buy the book for 20% off.

If you buy the book, include it in the book and.

Here'S a copy of it.

On the very last page there's a section that the publisher provides.

If you fill that out, you can also download an e, an ebook of the book.

So if you buy the book for 20% off, you actually get two books.

Now again, my prayer is for the book is that for that person in your life, that is the doubter, the skeptic, the one who has put such obstacles up to belief in Jesus Christ that now having been in prayer, and my phrase for this is bloody your knees over it and let the Holy Spirit move so that you know, when it's Time to present them with a copy of the book and say, if you'll read this, could we have a conversation and let God do what God does.

Let the Holy Spirit lead and help someone else take this journey as well.

Now, the blog, it comes out weekly.

It's relatively short.

You could read in less than 10 minutes at the most.

And it also is the trouble with Jesus.

It does include that edgy, skeptical, doubting voice, but it deals with a specific passage and the content in that as to where Jesus is.

So in brief, that's, that's how you can, you can get up with me.

Fantastic.

Well, thank you for coming on and joining us today and just talking to us a little bit about, you know, what so many of us probably have felt or experienced, you know, as we walk through this thing called life right in our faith journeys.

And so just thank you for coming on and sharing kind of your journey and then just some of the tidbits that are in the book and some of the things that, you know that you can get from there.

So thank you so much and thank.

And God bless you too, Kristen, for all you.

Thank you.

God bless you.

And before I end today's episode, I did want to let you know if, if you would like to increase the joy you feel in your everyday life.

I have a new download for you.

It's called Joy Rising.

And it is basically a journal prompt for each day of the week where you can write down what you're grateful for, you can write down how God moved in your life, where did you see God present in your life, and then also what brought you joy in your day.

Because when we start focusing on these things, our joy starts increasing because we're focused on being grateful first.

We're focused on seeing God move in our lives and in the world.

And when we do that, we will see the miraculous.

We will see God blessing us, we will see God's promises being fulfilled in our lives.

If you want to get that, head over to KristinFitch.com and go to my Workbook section and grab the Joy Risings workbook.

If you enjoyed today's episode, if you could, like, leave a rating review on Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, it helps the show get discovered by more people so that we can continue to uplift and encourage people in their faith journey as well as all of the other parts of their lives.