Podcast

The Way of Rest: Accessing Christ’s Peace, Comfort, and Voice in our Hurried World. Cheryl Scanlan

[00:00:00]

Cheryl: And I will stop speaking death over myself, the truth is I serve a living God. So I declared that to myself with the fullness of the authority of Jesus Christ and said, I serve a living God. I live in a living God. I have stepped into eternity because of a living God. And what was my next step? I will stop speaking death over myself, very practical, and I will begin to live a Lord willing life.

Welcome to the Unshakable Hope podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions such as, how do I trust God’s heart when his ways and delays are breaking mind? We’ll hear from people just like you and me who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected my prayers, that God would renew our hope and his word and his love through these conversations.

Kelly: Well, hey friends. I’m [00:01:00] very thankful you’re here. I’m so honored to be able to bring you a powerful conversation from a guest who is well versed in working out what it looks like.

Kelly: To seek the true freedom that Christ has for each of us. How do we shift from living the life we’re living right now into living the life in all the abundance God has called us to? Cheryl Scanlon is my guest today. Last June I released a previous conversation. I highly recommend about how a life of humility and receiving rescues us for being stuck.

Kelly: It’s episode 85. So powerful. I’ll link to that in the show notes. Well, Cheryl is the founder of Promised Land Living, and this ministry has impacted multitudes worldwide. Their focus is a desire to help believers discover it is possible. To live abundantly in Christ, well, after much, much prodding from the Lord and after much prodding from friends, Cheryl has written a book titled The Way of Rest.

Kelly: She [00:02:00] has been living and teaching these principles for decades and finally there encapsulated in a book. I’m gonna read just a bit of the back cover.

Kelly: This book is for followers of Jesus who are feeling off in their faith. They know there’s something more, but they can’t quite grasp it.

Kelly: They love the Lord. They love the Lord’s people, yet they’re bone tired and quietly asking, where is this abundant life? The way of rest. Journey gently reminds them it’s still here, and so is he.

Kelly: So we’re drawing from the book and Cheryl offers us some very, very practical examples,

Kelly: you’ll hear examples of how to access his peace, his comfort, his strength, and his help in our everyday lives. We’ll talk about what questions we should be asking and how do we go slow to go fast? How do we train ourselves to hear God’s voice?

Kelly: This is a powerful conversation, but I wanna tell you, I’m just in awe of this woman and all that she allows God to do in and through her. I’ll tell you a little bit more about [00:03:00] her. She’s an executive coach and has been walking in this passion for almost 20 years. For a decade, she served as provost of PCCI, which is the Professional Christian Coaching Institute.

Kelly: This is the largest virtual Christian coach training school in the world. Cheryl’s a precept trained bible study teacher, and she has trained over 3000 coaches with experience that exceeds 15,000 hours of coaching. What I love so much about Cheryl is not just her vast wisdom, experience, and sensitivity, the Holy Spirit, although I love to soak that in whenever I get a chance, it’s that she is not about growing international ministry.

Kelly: The deepest focus of her heart is the heart of God. She wants to see lives transformed one soul at a time. So Cheryl, I am really looking forward to our conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Cheryl: Oh, thank you, Kelly. You know, I am so sad that your listeners can’t hear the conversation we had before you [00:04:00] hit that recording button and to understand how much you love them and how much you want to tend and shepherd to their hearts. It’s just, I wish we could peel back the curtain for just a second so they could hear your heart towards them.

Cheryl: So I just wanna put in a little plug here. Kelly is praying for you. She loves you, and, she’s literally, I kid you not. She’s learning how to take care of herself better so she can continue to love you through this podcast. She wants to steward her life and her health well on your behalf. So Kelly, I know you didn’t want me to say that.

Cheryl: I know you didn’t know I was gonna say that, but I had to.

Kelly: Thank you so much. Those words mean more than I can say. I appreciate it, Cheryl. I wanna tell you that as I read this book, the Way of Rest, I was so surprised because I physically felt my body relaxing in the very first chapter. Like I could not believe it.

Kelly: I felt myself, [00:05:00] my shoulders relaxing. I felt my anxiety level going down. I was resting in the Lord. I was peaceful, and it was, it was so amazing. So what I’d like for you to do, for us, for our listeners. Is to paint a picture of what deep, tangible peace within us can feel like, because I don’t think most of us know what that feels like, and I don’t think most of us live there.

Cheryl: Wow. Thank you, Kelly, and I’m so glad you read the book and your response to the writing is ultimately what we hope will happen. And Kelly, I think you could agree. Maybe you don’t, but this is not a book you just read like you would a normal book. It’s

Kelly: right.

Cheryl: It’s an immersion experience with the Lord.

Cheryl: Yeah. Then the book is just a way to get you there. I’ll tell a funny story to help us maybe understand and enter into this piece that Kelly’s wanting me to describe. ’cause you know, a picture’s worth a thousand words.

Kelly: Yeah. [00:06:00]

Cheryl: I was babysitting my grandson on last Saturday, and he wears these special glasses.

Cheryl: He’s 20 months old, so keeping these glasses on his little head is it’s a challenge. And my husband called. We need to take care of some family matters, which we may talk about later. And five minutes later I look up, of course, I’m paying attention to Jackson and making sure he is okay. But five minutes later I realize he doesn’t have his glasses on.

Kelly: Oh, no.

Cheryl: We had already had to replace one pair of these glasses because we weren’t paying attention to it. So I am now in a pickle. I’ve got these two large dogs that want my attention. I have my grandson who’s starting to get tired because he’s hungry, and all I can think about is where are these glasses, right?

Cheryl: And so as soon as I started to focus on wear these glasses, guess what started to happen to me? Can you imagine? Describe it, right? Yeah. Okay. I become focused and then I become fixated, and then I become panicked and, and, [00:07:00] and, and, and, and, and it builds up like that. It builds up so fast. Well, I call my husband, and say, Hey, can’t find the glasses.

Cheryl: That’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I’ll be there soon. I’m still, I’m looking for them. I’m not playing with Jackson the same way anymore. I’m distracted. I, I’m feeling concerned. I, I am worried everything that is not peace.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: I was feeling over a pair of glasses.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: That’s how fast. We can have our peace stolen from us now.

Cheryl: The peace was still in me. Peace is still resident in me. This is key. Peace was still resident in me, but peace wasn’t president.

Kelly: Oh, I like that. Say that again.

Cheryl: Peace was resident. Christ is there, but peace was not president. So here’s what happens. Tom gets to the house, my husband, and he starts looking around and he’s, and I’m like, I, I have no idea where these are.

Cheryl: Keep looking. Those are all the, he says, well, have you prayed? No, [00:08:00] I didn’t pray. I didn’t even think to pray. So we pause, Lord. This is your child. These is, these are your resources. And ultimately because these are your resources, these are your glasses. And Lord, would you please direct our steps to find these glasses.

Cheryl: Well, I want you to know this is key. We hadn’t found the glasses, but I had peace. Oh, wow. The, the peace we’re talking about is not contingent upon circumstances. Mm. Right. The peace is contingent upon how present I am to the presence of Christ in my life.

Kelly: Oh my goodness. Alright, I’m gonna ask you to repeat that last line also please.

Cheryl: Okay. So the peace is not contingent upon our circumstances. The glasses were still lost. So how do I have peace? The peace is I had moved back into the presence of Christ.

Cheryl: So he went from being [00:09:00] present? Yes. Present in my heart, but becoming president in the situation I had peace.

Kelly: Can you describe physically what happened? The difference,

Cheryl: the worry literally dissipated like as quickly as it had come over me. It was the, like the sun. Hitting the fog and the fog just lifts.

Kelly: Wow.

Cheryl: My mind stopped racing. I stopped rehearsing what we were gonna do and what we were gonna say to the kids.

Kelly: Yes. Oh my goodness. That’s huge, right? Yeah.

Cheryl: I, I stopped being concerned with another $450 cash outlay.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: All these things between worry and rehearsing and all, it just quieted. It just melted away and it was almost like, I’m sure some of your listeners have, uh, experienced this, but you’ve ever experienced the Christmas snow.

Cheryl: It’s [00:10:00] Christmas Eve and the house is quiet, and then you hear that little crinkle of the snows. It starts to fall. It was like a Christmas snow. Everything was still and beautiful. Wow.

Kelly: That is a beautiful picture of peace. Thank you. I love that. I know we can all relate to that panicked moment and being a mother of three daughters who wear computers on their head, these cochlear implants that cost about 12,000 each, it’s, it was so hard when they were little.

Kelly: They would go out and play and we, one time we came home and we couldn’t find them, and it turns out they were under the trampoline. It had rained the night before, but the trampoline had kept them dry. And so remembering to pray in a crisis and realign our hearts to the peace of Christ is. Was key was so key in those moments.

Kelly: I experienced that transformation so many times and [00:11:00] then that thought that Kelly, if you only made Jesus your first call rather than your last call, this could be a little different. As the peace of Christ and Christ himself became president in your life. I love that. Right. Well,

Kelly: thank you for taking us to this place where we can visualize the peace and breathe a little bit deeper. Let our shoulders relax and imagine what it would be like not to be igniting the worry centers of our brain all the time. And instead allowing the peace of Christ to just keep calming our life. And, trusting in him that he’s with us. He’s got us.

Kelly: So I love this next thought. You share a quote in your book, go slow to go fast. And you talk about when we’re weary, Jesus doesn’t invite us to work in your old ways. It isn’t. Grit your teeth and push through just like in your story. It isn’t just frantically keep searching for things.

Kelly: You know, I’ve gotta fix this. I’m, I’ve gotta fix this. I’m worried about what people are gonna say. How, I wonder how many, [00:12:00] I’m just throwing this in. How many times when we’re worried the opinions of others go flashing through our brain? The times I have noticed that I’m just like, that is so interesting.

Kelly: What if I let go of the opinions of others that would reduce a lot of the worry? Well, what you’re describing goes slow to go fast. Is, it’s a journey of transformation. It’s a journey of yielding to the Holy Spirit, and it’s a place where we can feel so vulnerable and out of control. I know you’ve learned this deeply in your life.

Kelly: There are so many stories that you could point to right now, but I’m wondering if you could just share a recent story about how God has met you and transformed your heart as you kind of lived out the truth of, to go slow is to go fast.

Cheryl: Mm-hmm. Thank you, Kelly. That’s a great preparation for this.

Cheryl: It is. If I had a mantra, this would be the mantra. And [00:13:00] everyone in promised land living knows this phrase. We will often remind each other. This is a go slow to go fast moment.

Cheryl: There are things that we can do in our life to help us to train, to go slowly, to go fast. For example, we get accustomed to knowing how to do something and then that.

Cheryl: accustomedness turns into a comfort, which then turns into a resistance to trying new things. When we go slow to go fast, we’re giving ourself permission. It’s very much tied to transformation to learn something new because you can’t learn new things fast. It doesn’t work that way. And when I say learn, I’m not talking about the intellectual learning.

Cheryl: I’m talking about the ontological learning. You know, the whole being the soul of who we are, learning and growing and discovering, and I, I’m experiencing that right now. You asked for a [00:14:00] recent example. Just last week, my dad passed away. He was my rock in many, many ways. He was 90 years old, and I did everything I could to keep that man alive for longer than I would be alive.

Cheryl: And he knew it. He knew it. So I am experiencing, my mom passed away 26 years ago, and so we’ve had 26 years with my dad and I grieved with my mom. But this grief is different. I feel this grief in my bones, and I found myself Kelly starting to get busy because busy can numb the pain.

Kelly: Yeah,

Cheryl: and I very similar to what happened with Jackson and the glasses.

Cheryl: Yes, I turned to God, prayed for the family, did all those kind of things. But here’s the thing. In the previous case with Jackson, it was to access that peace, but [00:15:00] in this case it was to access his comfort. You see everything we need, we have in Christ.

Kelly: Hmm. And

Cheryl: I needed comfort, but I didn’t go initially to him for comfort.

Cheryl: I went to numbing for comfort, and this was only for about 12 hours as I was dealing with the initial shock. He died peacefully in his sleep, but we did not expect this to happen, and so I realized I needed to ask the God of all comfort to comfort me. I needed to make this. A personal request. I needed to resist the desire.

Cheryl: Oh, I don’t wanna bother God. Oh, it’s not that big a deal. Oh, so many people have had much worse pain than me. Oh, Cheryl, you should be able to handle this. Oh, come on. You have to quiet all those voices.

Kelly: Yeah,

Cheryl: and, and as you said, Kelly, I needed to access my own vulnerability. I feel sad, and then I needed to remember.

Cheryl: I have a God who’s a God of all [00:16:00] comfort and to ask him to meet me there. Hmm. And so I did. I said, God, you are the God of all comfort and you are the God of my comfort. And would you comfort me in this situation? Well, let me tell you. You know how he just, sometimes he responds so fast.

Cheryl: So fast.

Cheryl: I was like crying these anguish, tears while I was driving.

Cheryl: My family was nervous about me driving and all the grief while I was driving and I said, okay, I need to get this under control. So I called some family members to let ’em know that dad had passed. And in the course of that conversation, they share the story about how her mom. Was sleeping next to her dad who had died in his sleep.

Cheryl: She thought he was just sleeping. She didn’t know he was dead. So she went to work. She comes home later. She thinks he’s taking a nap. She lets him sleep ’cause she figures he’s tired. It’s not until that evening that she realizes that [00:17:00] he’s dead. Oh no. And here, here’s the thing, she’s a nurse. Wow. Now, the reason why the story is so profound is in my most secret, vulnerable place.

Cheryl: Dad probably passed on Wednesday morning, but we did not see him. We did not realize it until Friday night. ’cause he lives far away from us.

Kelly: Yeah,

Cheryl: and the thing that I was so in anguish about is we did everything to protect my dad from being in this situation. I know him so well. How could I have not Been there and it’s, it’s okay.

Cheryl: He’s dead. But grief, it doesn’t make sense. You can’t, you could not rationalize that with me no matter how hard you tried. That was my point of angst. And isn’t it fascinating that after I pray that prayer, that is the story that I’m told that the wife. Who is a nurse of a husband did not realize [00:18:00] sleeping next to him that he was gone, and I let my family members know that God of all comfort has met me in my place of pain and irrational thought, and he has loved me in that place.

Kelly: Mm.

Cheryl: But here’s the thing, Kelly, if I had not prayed that prayer, if I had not accessed my vulnerability, and if I had not brought that vulnerability to him, I would’ve missed that moment of ministry from the father.

Kelly: Yes.

Cheryl: Because first I had to remember who he was. He’s the God of my comfort. Then I had to ready myself for whatever he would give me, and then when he gave it to me, my job was to receive.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: And so go slow to go fast. If I was speeding through life, if I was speeding through that moment, if I was simply trying to get to tell them Dad was gone, I would’ve missed that very intimate moment between father and [00:19:00] daughter.

Kelly: Yes. Well, the thing that stands out to me, first of all, is the compassionate heart of God To give you that story at just the right time.

Kelly: He ministered to that deepest question in your soul. And then the second thing that I was really touched by is the intentional intervention of accessing. The Holy Spirit in that moment. And I have a physical therapy analogy, God brought this to mind yesterday and I thought of you.

Kelly: You’ve been through physical therapy. We talked about that last time with your chronic Lyme and you lost the ability to walk. So I think you’ll appreciate this. Story, I am having to strengthen my core muscles. I’m in my sixties and there are certain things that have become painful because, uh, my core is not strong enough to support my body.

Kelly: And the funny thing is I’m a physical therapist and I did home health for a while, and I would teach these older men and women to stand on one leg. So we did [00:20:00] this exercise, single leg stance, and you just stand on one leg for 30 seconds, and then you switch to the other leg and you try to keep your core tight.

Kelly: Well, it’s so counterintuitive because you think when I’m exercising, I should be moving. I should be pushing a lot of weight, I should be sweating, I should be walking really fast on a treadmill. We have this idea of going fast in our minds when we think about exercising, but to do a single leg stance, you have to go slow.

Kelly: Like it looks like you’re doing absolutely nothing, but once you stand there. For long enough you, and you do this repeatedly over a period of time you are, you have strengthened your muscle fibers, and these are the muscle fibers that keep you from falling when you stumble over a rock.

Cheryl: Wow. I’m gonna start standing on these, my legs one at a time.

Cheryl: Kelly, that is such a perfect example of go slow to go fast and here’s, gosh, you’re inspiring me. I’m actually gonna go do that. The world is revving up faster and faster and getting [00:21:00] tighter and tighter, and we, the only person who can slow us down is us.

Kelly: That’s a good word. Wow.

Cheryl: The only person who can slow us down is us. And either we will intentionally slow down or we will be slowed down.

Kelly: Right? Right.

Cheryl: But one way or another, because we can’t sustain the pace that is being demanded of us in this world.

Kelly: Yeah, and the thing that I’ve noticed that goes along with this analogy and the go slow to go fast, is when you continue to just go fast, you’re ignoring your soul and there are parts of you that are dying and getting weaker and weaker and getting stuff deeper, and it’s all gonna come out and present as a problem later on.

Kelly: So. The point that I think I’m hearing is we need to intentionally intervene in our rushing in order to slow down and access the Holy Spirit and receive the healing in deeper places [00:22:00] that these places would not be accessed if we weren’t slowing down. Right.

Cheryl: Oh, Kelly. So well said. The word intervene resonates with me.

Cheryl: You know, so for example, when you wake up in the morning. Before your feet hit the ground, before you start having that runaway train of thoughts, and the ticker tape starts going like the Wall Street Journal at the bottom of his TV screen, you say, good morning, God, what would you have me do with the strength that you’ve given me today?

Cheryl: Good morning, God. Will you order my steps today? Good morning, God. Train me to praise your name and right from the get go we are commanding our body. That we are going to take measured steps this day that the Lord has made.

Kelly: Hmm. Oh, that’s so good. So good. Well, Sherra, one of the most powerful ways God has rescued my heart when I’m weary, when I’m confused, when I’m waiting, when I’m disappointed, is that he is a God who speaks.

Kelly: He is alive, and he speaks through his word in his [00:23:00] spirit. And John 10 27 is one of the scriptures you reference which I love. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. So it’s just such a specific reminder that. We, we are programmed and created to hear God’s voice and we can hear God’s voice.

Kelly: And sometimes that does require us to remove distractions to go a little slower to hear his voice. You write this, God’s voice brings rest and it gently. Draws me into rest.

Cheryl: Mm-hmm.

Kelly: And so that really sounds like that’s the open door that the Lord is placing before us. And I’m just wondering if you could talk to us about some of the questions that you help people process through, because I know so many people think, well, I don’t hear God’s voice and can I really hear God’s voice?

Kelly: So can you help us process some of those questions?

Cheryl: In promise, land living, we start our discipleship conversations with a question.

Cheryl: And the question is, what [00:24:00] is the daughter or son of God asking themselves? And Kelly, sometimes we don’t realize we haven’t formed the question, but it’s deeper in there. It’s deeper, it’s, and it time, again, another go slow to go fast moment. It takes time for that question to get formed.

Cheryl: And so what we’ve come to understand is so often we cannot hear God’s voice because we have not formed our question. We have not taken the time to understand where we are, what’s going on for us, and so God is speaking to us, but we’re. Caught in this. I mean, so much noise. And we’re listening to the noise, and I think we talked about this before.

Cheryl: You will hear a voice behind you. And so you think about all the stuff that’s in front of us, but the voice we wanna train to hear the sound that we wanna train to hear is sort of like a mama who can pick [00:25:00] out her babies, cry from across a room with 15 crying babies in there, but that mama knows. When that baby starts to cry.

Kelly: Yeah,

Cheryl: mama knows. So as we begin to give less license or liberty to the noise and the voices that are in front of us, the people, the anything, and we say, God, this is, this is what’s going on for me. Will you meet me here? He will meet you there. That’s how God works, and you’ll recognize it because you’ll experience this very subtle quickening, not like a caffeinated pump, but it’s more of a quickening of your spirit.

Cheryl: It’s sort of like when you hear that chord in a song and it just is like, oh, that is so beautiful. That resonates. I’m connecting with that. That’s what it sounds like, at least for me. [00:26:00]

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: When the voice of God is speaking.

Kelly: That’s so good.

Kelly: We need to learn to pay attention to our souls. And maybe one way that we can do it, and one way that’s helped me, is to just. Pause and just sit with the moment aware that God is here with me and just think about just resting in his spirit and then ask him to reveal what’s going on with me.

Kelly: What’s happening inside of me? Paying attention to what’s happening. And a lot of times we’ll notice some anxiety and worry and, we’re concerned about the future and when we bring those to the Lord, it’s almost like it clears out space in us to hear God’s voice.

Kelly: Before that, it’s almost like a roadblock or an obstacle standing in the way because we’re kind of held in a place of worry but as soon as we tell God the truth and we just confess what’s going on, we just truth tell. Then the Lord is able to speak to that deep need

Kelly: but I so agree with you that we don’t even know what that is most of the time until we [00:27:00] just pause and sit with him and ask him to uncover it.

Cheryl: Yes. And I think that word pause is big because pause gives us opportunity to decide to access what is already ours.

Kelly: Yes. Oh, that’s

Cheryl: the first thing we did is we accessed his peace in this podcast.

Cheryl: The second time we accessed his comfort. And so when I have the courage to pause now I’m now, it gives me an opportunity to say, okay, God, this is where I’m at. Where are you?

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: God. This is what’s going on for me. What do you want me to know?

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: What do you want me to know? God, what is the truth that will walk me away from this ledge that I’m about to go over with anxiety or with worry, or with anger, or with anything else?

Kelly: Or With numbing.

Cheryl: Or With numbing, yeah. Right. Numbing. The, let’s just, you know, they call it doom scrolling, but I call it numb scrolling.

Kelly: Yeah. You

Cheryl: know? [00:28:00]

Kelly: That’s right. Well, I think it’s so important to realize that God is with you. You don’t have to pray any specific thing to invite His presence. Like, we’ll, pray that God, we invite your presence here, but that’s not really a movement of God that occurs.

Kelly: That’s really a movement of our spirit that occurs like we’re accessing him. We’re opening up our spirit and saying, I am acknowledging the truth that you’re right here with me and I am willing to receive all that you have . And so I think that’s really important and also just realizing that God is speaking and that

Kelly: we can rely on him to guide us. I know that you and I have walked through a lot of, everybody has walked through a lot of difficult decisions in our life where there’s so many pros and cons to both sides. There’s not a clear path forward, but we can rely on the Lord to guide us and he may, and this is something he’s famous for, not telling us the whole thing right up front, but we will.

Kelly: Here are the next step, the next place where we place our foot, the next place that he’s [00:29:00] calling us to.

Cheryl: Yeah. And I think you’re stepping into some challenge here too, Kelly, because sometimes we’re looking for. A confirmation and a confidence that what we’re hearing is clear and so we wind up not moving.

Cheryl: Right,

Kelly: right, right.

Cheryl: And so that is like, that there’s ditches on both sides of the road. Yeah. On the one side of the road there is, you know, go headlong and forget to invite God in like we just talked about with the, my dad or with Jackson. But the other side is that we sit on the side and we’re like, well, how do I know that that was God?

Cheryl: And you know, maybe that, maybe I didn’t hear him correctly and, and maybe there’s more that he wants me to know before I can move forward. And so then you’re sitting by the. Side of the road, um, waiting for this revelation that is beyond what is required in the moment. And in both cases, we’re not trusting, right.

Cheryl: We have to walk our [00:30:00] walk in Christ and he goes with us wherever we go. He is there with us. So we’ve gotta take those steps of faith.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: Sometimes it’s blind faith. We take the step.

Kelly: Right. And sometimes if this has happened in our lives, so we were praying about a big decision and God led us to say yes to this decision.

Kelly: And so the Yes meant. Our location would be in a certain place. But as our story evolved, we realized we couldn’t move to that certain place. And so we ended up living in a different place. But yet the yes remained true. We’re saying yes to this job that my husband is gonna take, but it didn’t really turn out the way

Kelly: so it’s just, yes, it’s a step by step following of the Lord. And I love that you brought up the story of Moses and how there he was between a rock and a hard place just saying, God, if you don’t go with us, I am not going forward with these crazy, stubborn people. And God revealed his presence when Moses was really in a crisis. In the [00:31:00] quiet and hidden in the cleft as Moses was not going fast, but he had just calmed his spirit. God spoke to him in a still small voice.

Cheryl: Yeah. And, and in that Kelly, I’m so glad you brought that up. This is where disappointment can get in the way.

Cheryl: Because we do hear from God.

Cheryl: And we decide what we heard, how it’s going to look Yes. And how it’s going to play out. I mean, Abraham, your, your descendants will be as numerous as the stars, right? David, the scepter will never leave your throne. So we hear these things. God tells us these things, but then we question them because it doesn’t look like we thought it was gonna look.

Cheryl: And I think the most profound example of that is the Pharisees with the Messiah.

Kelly: Yes.

Cheryl: Jesus didn’t look like what the Pharisees thought. He didn’t look like what the zealots thought. He didn’t look like what the Sadducees thought. He did not look like what any religious form of the day thought.

Kelly: [00:32:00] Yeah.

Cheryl: And so.

Kelly: Wow, that’s a good example.

Cheryl: Right? And so this leads to disappointment. It leads to doubt. And then we start to disconnect from God. And, and the word if, if, if your listeners were to only leave with one thing today, I think the word is access. Kelly.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: To continual access that which is already yours.

Cheryl: No matter how disappointed you’ve been, no matter how much you thought, you understood and heard God and you didn’t, or you built it up and thought it was gonna be one thing and it wound up being another. He is still there and he’s training your disciples ear just like he’s training mine. I mean, I thought, you know, with the Lyme disease, I thought I was gonna die at 50.

Cheryl: Like I thought I heard from God very clearly. When I was reading Hezekiah, I was gonna die 50. He gave me 10 more years. I was 40 years old at the time. I was like, God, thank you so much. You’re gonna gimme 10 more years. Well, I’m now 60 years [00:33:00] old.

Cheryl: I didn’t hear him, right.

Cheryl: He told me he was gonna lengthen my days, but as I was reading Hezekiah, I interpreted as. 10 more years.

Kelly: Oh, that’s a good example. Yeah. So easy to place our expectations on God’s promises, and that’s why it’s so important to spend time with him continually and continually with open hands saying.

Kelly: God, this is what I’m sensing you saying, and actually in my mind, I can tell that I’m formulating a picture of what it’s gonna look like. Help me, help me surrender this to you and just trust that I’m gonna see your goodness in the land of the living and that this promise is true, but help me not write my own expectations into it.

Cheryl: There you are between the rock and the hard place. What you just described, Kelly, is the between the rock and a hard place position that we are in, in Christ, because then we are, we’re with him. He’s seated in the heavenly. We’re seated with him, but [00:34:00] we are not in charge. We do not take that control that is not ours.

Cheryl: We walk as we wait. We wait as we walk.

Kelly: Oh, that’s good. Yeah, absolutely. I think what you just captured is that the waiting is active when we’re going slow. God is always actively working in ways that we can’t see.

Cheryl: Yes. And, and, and let’s make this super practical. I mean, if your listeners have made it all the way to the end of this podcast, let’s just make it really practical. If you each could think about a rock and a hard place moment that you are right in right now. Just, you know, for me it was this bone pain grief with my dad and how am I gonna go on without him and you know, how am I gonna continue to run a ministry and raise grants and all, I mean, all that kind of stuff.

Cheryl: That was my rock in my heart Place moment. My rock in my heart Place moment today is different than it was even a week ago when dad died. What is [00:35:00] yours? Like, what is it that if you gave yourself permission to really feel the denseness of your vulnerability? It could literally stop you dead in your tracks.

Kelly: Wow. Yeah.

Cheryl: Name that. Bring that before the father. Bring that before the father and make it personal. Bring your vulnerability and say, God, I need to access your wisdom. I need to access your comfort. I need to access your peace. I need to access your presence right now. Give me the courage to sit here in this moment and receive.

Kelly: Hmm. Wow. That’s so helpful. Thank you for putting words to that moment. Very practical. I think that that’s one of the questions that I had for you as well, because you say a hurried life cannot hear, but being at rest creates an environment that allows us to hear God and to hear [00:36:00] one another.

Kelly: And so I was really wanting you to help us become better listeners. And so that question that what you just did was a very practical way. To not only access the Lord, but we’re accessing the Lord in our most honest, most vulnerable place.

Cheryl: Yes, yes. A hurried life cannot hear, and I will say this, a life that cannot hear, cannot heal. Therefore, a hurried life cannot heal. And so it’s sort of like, I’ll, I’ll share a story. This was another comfort moment. I have sort of an adopted daughter love her to pieces, and she loved grandpa and her and her husband came over and all of a sudden she just needed to be next to me. She just needed to be next to me.

Cheryl: I put my arm around her and she starts crying, the silent crying, but the shoulders are moving and you hear these little sobs that kind of sneak out, but she just doesn’t want ’em to sneak out. And as [00:37:00] I’m holding her, I allow my tears to start to come back out. And we have this moment where this deep healing happens because we chose to not hurry through that moment of grief.

Cheryl: We chose to enter that moment of grief. Together. And Kelly, I have to say that after that moment by the fire pit with her, my pain has not been as intense.

Kelly: Hmm.

Cheryl: But if I had hurried through that, if I had been worried about her baby who was starting to fidget, if I had been concerned, I’ve gotta get up the next morning, and we’ve got stuff that we’ve gotta get taken care of, we’ve got titles to transfer and all this stuff, if any of that has started to come in.

Cheryl: That which was meant to happen in that moment would’ve been lost to the hurry, even though I was sitting there, even though my arm was around her. In my mind, I had reentered the hurried life. Yeah. But instead I quieted that and I entered this [00:38:00] moment and it was there that we could hear God, we could receive his.

Cheryl: Mercy and his grace in our time of need, we were comforted through one another and we experienced healing.

Kelly: That’s really beautiful and it’s such a perfect picture of how God designed us to heal in community. Yeah. When someone enters into that same grief with us and just receives our story with acceptance and empathy, and both of y’all were in that.

Kelly: Same place. And you didn’t let anything interfere. It’s so beautiful how the Holy Spirit just covered y’all and brought healing out of an unhurried moment of grief. So thanks for sharing that.

Cheryl: You’re welcome.

Kelly: Oh, that was very tender. I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind just closing with one more thought.

Kelly: So in, I just returned from a conference and the word of of the conference was shift. That it was so interesting that as we prayed [00:39:00] for people, it seemed like the Lord was shifting people into new seasons, into new places of healing. Everywhere we went and. You have a shift in your book. You explain it so beautifully, you illustrate it practically, and it’s really so simple the way you take us through it, that we can.

Kelly: Grab hold of it and sit with the Lord and do it on our own time, after time, after time for the rest of our life. And so I thought it was wonderful. I, I wonder if you could illustrate these steps with that story. Maybe the story about your sister-in-law…

what were you thinking?

Kelly: I was thinking of Sybil.

Cheryl: Oh, yes.

Kelly: You were speaking death over yourself because you had Lyme for so long.

Cheryl: Yes. Well, I was speaking death over myself because since I was 16 years old, I have partially entertained a, a quick escape route from this.

Cheryl: This world because I, I just didn’t wanna deal with it anymore. So, and I did not realize that I had [00:40:00] literally placed this on myself, like a mantle, a cloak of death. And so, Sybil comes to see me when I’m in the hospital and she’s a lovely, lovely woman and a lot of mutual respect. And I was talking about, you know, if I should live till tomorrow and if I don’t die, you know, all these little phrases that come out.

Cheryl: And she said, Cheryl. I don’t wanna say this, but I feel like the Holy Spirit is asking me to say something to you. And I’m like, Sybil speak. If God’s telling you to say it, you better say it. And she said, you always speak death over yourself.

Kelly: Wow.

Cheryl: And in that hospital bed. I was hooked up to IV Solumedrol three times a day.

Cheryl: I didn’t have my swallowing Reflex was really messed up. I was very, very sick. But before the Lord, I was talking to him in this moment and I was remembering how many times I would speak death over myself and I serve a living God. I serve a [00:41:00] living God. And it was almost like I was saying to God, you may have done this for me, but I’m gonna continue to stomp my feet and speak death over myself.

Cheryl: I refuse to move fully into what you’ve given me, which is life and life abundantly. John 10 10. And I looked at her and I said, Sybil, I think you’ve just healed me. From this need, from this need, from this obsession to speak death over myself. And so from that day forward, I started speaking a Lord willing life.

Cheryl: I’m going to live. Lord willing, we will do this tomorrow. So if I should die, turned into Lord willing. Now the shift there was first recognizing in my physical frame. What happens? I, I get stressed and I want a sense of control where I feel out of control. So I’m feeling out of control. So what do I tell myself?

Cheryl: Well, if I speak death over myself, I’m back in [00:42:00] control. I’m in the driver’s seat. But then the reality is, well, what is the truth? Well, the truth is speaking, death over myself doesn’t make me any more in control. And in fact. It removes me out from underneath his protection because now I’m trying to do things my own way.

Kelly: Yeah.

Cheryl: And the truth is I serve a living God. So then I declared that to myself with the fullness of the authority of Jesus Christ and said, I serve a living God. I live in a living God. I have stepped into eternity because of a living God. And what was my next step? If we ask ourselves the next step, I will stop speaking death over myself, very practical, and I will begin to live a Lord willing life.

Kelly: Oh, that’s so good. Well, I think that there’s so many places we can apply this truth to ourselves. The Holy Spirit is always transforming us into deeper and deeper soul healing. So I love how practically you illustrate these things, because I think it helped. [00:43:00] Uh, us pay attention to our souls and what’s really going on deep down inside so that we can bring it before the Lord and receive the healing that he has for us.

Kelly: And establish new responses to things that used to trigger us in certain ways that weren’t functional, that weren’t aligned with God’s heart and with his will.

Cheryl: That I think is a key piece, Kelly. So, you know, at the very beginning I’m figuring out what’s going on with my body and, and there’s another podcast she has where we talk about the shift at in depth.

Cheryl: But that second step is to ask ourselves what are we telling ourselves? But the key is we don’t stay there. Yeah. See what happens is we get caught in our own story and then we tell the story and we rehearse the story. And when we live the story, we only. We only give it a minute, we give it a nod. What am I telling myself?

Cheryl: And then we very quickly move to the next step.

Cheryl: Accessing the truth of who he is inside of us.

Kelly: Hmm. So good Cheryl. Well, thank you so much for this [00:44:00] conversation. Thank you for being so vulnerable, especially in your fresh grief with the loss of your dad. I really appreciate you joining me today for this conversation.

Kelly: I’m wondering if you can just tell our listeners, where they can, well, the book is the way of Rest.

Cheryl: Yes. And we have it in Audible now. , So just go to Amazon. Kindle, audible and soft cover.

Cheryl: And then if you’d like to really train yourself to live this life, the abundant life, and to shift out of, you know, my, the way I was thinking, to the way we can be, living all the things we already know. We would invite you into a discipleship intensive, and so you can simply go to promised Land Living.

Cheryl: It’s ed promised land living.com, and there’s lots of fun stuff there, but just click on intensive or courses, I don’t know what the word is. And we have lots of them coming up, and we would love to walk with you in your own journey of treating you in the shift process.

Kelly: Absolutely. I recommend that.

Kelly: I know people that have gone through [00:45:00] it and I still haven’t been able to, but I look forward to it. And also the book, the Way of Rest takes you through some of this, and it’s just very good, very well illustrated, like I said. Well, Cheryl, thank you again for your time today.

Cheryl: Thank you, Kelly. This was delightful.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall.org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope podcast.