Podcast

How do I Cultivate Hope During Seasons of Disappointment? Hannah Bowman

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kellie 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 mine? 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 prayer is that God would renew our hope in His Word and His love through these conversations.

Kelly: Well, friends, welcome back to our second podcast of redemptive wrestling. All summer. We’re doing a Bible story series where I’m being joined by some gifted Bible teachers. And we’re talking about how we can wrestle through everything that stands in the way of trusting God more deeply.

Each week we’ll be looking at different stories in the Bible and here are some of the questions we’ll be addressing. How do I pray through a crisis? How do I trust [00:01:00] God when he breaks my heart? How do I process my grief and unmet expectations? Hannah Baldwin will be joining me for two more powerful episodes.

Last week, you heard her amazing story of how God worked in her life and set her free. You’re not going to want to miss the way she wrestled through the pain in her life to land in a place of surrender. I’ll link to that rescue story in the show notes. Hannah took us in the psalms specifically. We looked at two of David’s powerful and messy prayers and how looking at how he wrestled through his own hurts helps us grab hold of the powerful truth of God’s character.

Today, Hannah and I are comparing two people in the Bible and how they responded quite differently to some life altering news. This news was actually very good news. We’re going to look at one of the individuals whose hope had been shut down because of ongoing disappointments. So we’re going to talk about how we can cultivate [00:02:00] hope in places where loss. Has robbed us of hope. Hannah Baldwin is an author, speaker, and podcaster who offers treasures of biblical hope and wisdom through the many books, courses, and resources you can find at her website living from the overflow.com.

So Hannah, I’m gonna have you start by sharing a portion of your story you elaborated on last week. But let me just set it up. One of the things we know that happens when our hearts are broken. By a pile of hardship or by ongoing disappointments is that we start to believe the lies that were not favored.

We may feel like God prefers other people and that good things only happen to them and not to us. And if anything good is ever going to happen, then we have to be responsible for fighting for it and making it happen. When we live that way, there’s a lot of stress, striving, and anxiety. And Hannah, I know you’ve experienced something [00:03:00] similar in your own life.

So kick us off by jumping back into your story and sharing that portion.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely.

It’s like Kelly said, if you haven’t listened to what we talked about last week, I encourage you to because then what I’m about to say is going to make a lot more sense to you. But I am no stranger to hardship and challenges and trauma and grief, all of it. And as a result, I really believed the lie for the long, the longest time that I wasn’t favored.

By God. And kind of the scariest thing about it is I didn’t even realize I believed that. Until, honestly, recently, in my faith walk with the Lord, I just really didn’t think I was favored. I was like, I don’t think you would look at my life and my story and think, oh yeah, that girl’s favored by God. But as I travel through the story of Esther and like her story, if you really dig into it is far beyond the Sunday school version that we are taught of, she becomes, she’s orphaned and becomes a queen.

There’s a lot that happens in her story [00:04:00] that would also suggest she’s not favored, but over and over in her story, it says favored by God. She is favored by God. She is favored by God. And through this study, the Lord really shattered the lie that I’ve been believing this all of my life. that I’m not favored by God.

I am highly favored and anointed, and it’s why I’ve been able to walk through all of these challenges and all of these schemes that the enemy . Sent my way and come out of every single one with a deeper understanding of the Father’s heart and who I am in him and so i just think wehave to be really careful that we’re not dictating our level of favor on our circumstances but we’re dictating our level of favor based on the fact that we are children of God. We are literally the Lord’s Inheritance.

Jeremiah the prophet says that, like, I’m the inheritance of the Lord God of the heavenly armies. Like, hello, favor. Yeah. And so I think we just have to be really careful that we’re not basing truth on our circumstances, but that we’re basing our circumstances on truth. And that [00:05:00] is that we are highly favored by God and our circumstances don’t really get to have a say in that.

Kelly: Amen. That is so powerful. We are God’s beloved and he is ours. , yes, we are highly favored every single one of us as children of God are honored and treasured. And he loves us. He lifts us up. He is always working on our behalf. He Bends down to listen and to act and to work in every area that concerns our hearts.

Yes, we are favored and it’s an identity definition, not a circumstantial one. Amen. And so today we’re going to continue the redemptive wrestling Bible study. And we’re actually going to be talking about somebody who was told by God that she is highly favored. We’re going to be in Luke one and and we’re going to be comparing two people, two angelic announcements.

There’s Zachariah’s and Mary’s. Angelic [00:06:00] announcement, and we’re going to see how they both responded to the angel.

And we’re going to see what we can discover about how we can cultivate hope during seasons of disappointment.

Kelly: So these announcements are earth shattering history making and absolutely mind blowing Jesus is coming on the scene in Luke one out of 400 years of silence.

So Hannah, let’s look at let’s look at Luke one. And I’m wondering if you could just read the descriptions of Zachariah and Elizabeth starting in verse five.

Hannah: Absolutely. So Luke one, verse five says in the time of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zachariah who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah.

His wife, Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all of the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But, they were childless because Elizabeth [00:07:00] was not able to conceive and they were both very old.

Kelly: Okay. And so I just want to make the point that these two, when it says they were blameless, it doesn’t mean they were perfect.

It means that they were following God. They were faithfully following God’s commands and they loved God. But they had this deep heartache that they couldn’t have children. And we know Hannah in that culture, that was a source of shame. Yes. That separated you from people and it made people think that God’s favor was not on you and that there was something wrong with you.

And so she had walked through this and dealt with his shame through all of her childbearing years, . So now, , her and her husband, I would assume, had accepted the fact that they weren’t going to have children. But in this particular year, there are many thousands of priests at this point, but Zachariah was chosen to go into the temple of the Lord and offer incense. I mean, this was a once in a [00:08:00] lifetime Honor and everybody else was outside worshiping God and waiting for him to come out. So he was offering prayers for Israel at the altar, and it was a very sacred time.

So Hannah, why don’t you read that next part of starting in verse 11, we’re going to see about this beautiful encounter he had with the Lord.

Hannah: All right, Luke 1 verse 11 says, Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear.

But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and a delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Even before he is born,

he will

bring back many of the people of Israel to [00:09:00] the Lord, their God. And he will go on before the Lord and the spirit and the power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

I’m like, wow. What a prophecy for any parent about what their child is going to be like. Yes. Yes. So

Kelly: John is going to be the one who’s announcing and introducing Messiah, not only to the nation of Israel, but to the world.

So let’s just quick, go ahead and read the next portion

Hannah: sure. Zachariah asked the angel, how can I be sure of this? I’m an old man and my wife is well along in years. The angel said to him, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.

And now you will be silent and not be able to speak until this day happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.

Kelly: All right. So, that was [00:10:00] Gabriel. And now we’re seeing Gabriel again, a few months later. So it says in verse 26, Luke one in the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David.

The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, greetings, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled as words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus.

He will be great. And he will be called the son of the most high. The Lord, God will give you the throne of his father. I’m sorry. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. His kingdom [00:11:00] will never end. Wow. I just have to stop there for a moment.

Hannah: It’s so profound. Like, I think sometimes we just, we get used to this. Yeah. And we don’t really understand. Or we don’t give ourselves the capacity or the space to really absorb what he just spoke to Mary. Yeah. It’s like, you’re going to conceive and give birth to a son and you’re going to call him Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. Like, I mean, I’m like this girl, she’s 14 at the time.

Kelly: Yeah.

Hannah: I’m trying to imagine my 13 year old comprehending. I’m going to carry God’s son. Like, I don’t know that she could fully comprehend what she’s being told.

Kelly: I know it’s so crazy. And so the king is coming. It’s finally time. They have been waiting 400 years of prophetic silence between the old Testament and the new Testament. And even though Luke is the third gospel in the new Testament, [00:12:00] chronologically, it’s written as the first, because because he starts when the angel comes to Zachariah.

So this is, it’s so cool the way this plays out. So now we see Mary’s reaction, and we’re going to compare Mary’s reaction to Zachariah’s reaction, and we’re going to see what we can learn about disappointment and the power of wrestling to set us free. So Mary’s response to this amazing earth shattering mindblowing news.

How will this be? Mary asked the angel since I am a virgin. It’s just such a sweet question. If the angel answers. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age.

And she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God. [00:13:00] And then Mary responds, I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said, and then the angel left, it’s overwhelming.

Hannah: It is. I’m like, there’s so many things I want to unpack. So I’m going to let you take the lead.

Okay.

Kelly: Well, what I love is that Mary simply asked one little question and then she. Responded in utter and complete surrender, even though she knew that this would involve a lot of shame. People would be judging her. They would be misunderstanding her because in that culture, it says she was engaged.

And in that culture, that was as. As binding as being married. Yeah. So if she was going to turn up pregnant, that was going to be every reason for her to be stoned , or at least for her husband to divorce her.

Hannah: Right. What I think is so interesting is that Mary’s yes required her to risk cultural shame.

Yes. But Zachariah’s [00:14:00] question came because of a spirit of shame. Isn’t that fascinating? I’m like, just piecing this together right now. Cause like, if we’re looking at what they asked, I mean, it’s, I mean, Zachariah is just asking, how can I be sure of this? I’m an old man. My wife is barren. And Mary is asking, how can this be?

I’m a virgin. And I’m like, the questions are coming from. Very different places in their hearts. And Mary asks her question, gets some clarification and is like, okay, I’m going to do this because I care more about being obedient than I do the opinions of others, but Zachariah’s question is actually kind of birthed in the opposite.

He’s like, I’ve lived my life believing the opinions of others and shaping my worth around the opinions of others. So I can’t even believe. Like I have a spirit of doubt and discouragement and despair with what you’ve spoken over me, where Mary is like, I’ll walk into whatever you want, Lord, like, I’m going to give you my full yes, I don’t care what other people think.

[00:15:00] And so I just think it’s so fascinating that Zachariah’s question was birthed from a place of shame, and Mary’s yes and amen Was birthed out of surrender, knowing she might face shame, but she knew who she was in God.

Kelly: Yes, that’s so powerful. I’ve never thought about that before. I absolutely love that. Wow.

I’m just going to repeat that. Zachariah’s question was birthed from a place of shame and Mary’s yes and amen was birthed out of surrender, knowing she might face shame, . Wow.

So let’s look more specifically at Zachariah’s response. Zachariah says, how can I be sure of this? So the responses differ so greatly. We see Mary in a, in an act of surrender and we see Zachariah really pushing back on, on this announcement in doubt. The angel makes it very clear that Zachariah is speaking from a place of unbelief.

So we see this huge contrast between Mary and Zachariah, they’re both asking questions. They’re [00:16:00] both speaking to the angel. They’re both receiving these earth shattering announcements. And yet Zachariah is saying, how can I believe that that’s true? And Mary’s saying. I believe you, I surrender, but I don’t understand how that can happen.

So we see one question is birthed out of unbelief and a long history of shame because they were childless. And then Mary’s question is birthed out of confusion, although she knew she would face shame.

Hannah: yeah. And almost like confusion or like curiosity or like. Well, this doesn’t really make sense to me, but like, there’s not an under current that’s going against the father’s heart in her question. It’s very clear from the way the angel responds that her heart is in a pure place.

 

Kelly: It’s such a beautiful childlike faith. I read that and I think that’s how I want to surrender to God when he tells me things that are going to be hard for me to walk into. it’s such . A beautiful moment. where Mary who can’t even possibly comprehend what is really being said and in her sweet [00:17:00] childlike faith, she just says, I believe, , she is fully, completely surrendered and we know she believed in contrast to Zachariah, because when she goes to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, that’s the first thing Elizabeth says is blessed is the one who believed the promise that God spoke to her.

And I think that’s the part about Mary’s response that just quickens my heart. I want that to be said about me. Blessed is the one who believes everything that God has promised her.

Hannah: Yes.

Kelly: But Zachariah, I really want to talk about Zachariah for a bit. I’d like to know what you think, Hannah. , there’s this part that’s a little bit confusing. When the angel comes to Zachariah in verse 12, he says, your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth will bear you or you a son and you’re to give him the name, John.

As somebody who’s walked through ongoing disappointment, we know it’s difficult to make space for hope and to believe that this could really happen. And so I think when the angel says, your prayers been [00:18:00] heard that he’s referring to the decades of prayer , that they would have a son that happened in the past, it is quite hard for me to believe that at the age where they were well past childbearing years, that Zachariah would have been asking for a child in that moment, it could be that he did, we don’t know,

but I want to suggest, because of the response he gave to the angel and because of the discipline he received from God.

I think the most likely scenario is that because of the years of being disappointed, he had completely given up on hope of having a child. And that’s why he struggled to believe the angel.

Hannah: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I’m no stranger as are you, we are not strangers to hard things.

And I do think that there is something that happens in our mindset where we stop expecting. The best and we stop hoping and we stop reaching for more. We stop believing for more. So then when something comes along our way that feels too good to be true. [00:19:00] It’s also hard to believe that it can be through and it’s it feels so cognitively dissonant that it’s just like it’s a shock to our system.

It feels like a foreign language. It does not feel like, oh, yeah, that’s congruent with. my history and that’s congruent with how God’s worked in my life. And yep, that’s congruent with God’s character. It literally feels very far out of left field and it’s like our brains and our hearts do not know how to compute it because it’s so abnormal to what we’ve been walking for year upon year upon year.

Yes, I get Zachariah’s response. It probably would have been mine. Like say what now? Like, have you not been paying attention to the story of my life? Like, surely you are mistaking me with a different Zachariah.

Kelly: Right. Right. And then the angel says, because you didn’t believe you’re not going to speak.

And so I think it’s so interesting that later when the baby is born and he writes down that. Yes, we’re going to name him John.

So, [00:20:00] in faith, he has agreed with God’s word. His he’s able to speak again. So, for 9 months, he’s silent, but he’s able to speak again at the end of this time. And. The first words out of his mouth

Hannah: are praising God. I was just processing this with my husband this morning about just Zachariah’s like this one glimpse to begin.

This is really the only glimpse we get into his life. Yeah. And how clearly he had some misperceptions about the father and he had some identity issues. And he had some insecurity and shame issues, right? Like you, you don’t ask a question like that and get disciplined in the way he did if you’re not

Kelly: struggling

Hannah: with all of these things.

I’m like, his question reflects that what’s inside of his heart is not congruent with God’s character. And what’s so beautiful about this to me is that God disciplines those he loves. And the fact that Zachariah’s very first words out of his mouth, once John is born, are words of worship and [00:21:00] praise.

They’re prophetic. It tells me that he got disciplined by God exactly the way his heart needed for his heart to be healed by Father God. For him to come in alignment with who God says he is. For God to become congruent to him. And so I just, I, God is so good to us. That he would give. This consequence to Zachariah, knowing what it’s going to produce in his life, like, that’s the grace of God on our lives right there.

Like, God didn’t do this, like, you messed up. You missed the mark. Here’s a super harsh consequence. We know from the response that Zachariah has when this is lifted that it was actually the exact right measure of what he needed because it put his heart in a place that was congruent with the father’s.

Kelly: Yes. And that almost brings tears to my eyes. And that was one thing I was going to talk about too. I just, so I just want to piggyback on that and just say amen. Amen. This is

exactly how God responds , he is always rescuing our hearts. [00:22:00] So even though somebody may hear this and say, well, that was a harsh condemnation. No, God is pursuing his heart and he is rescuing Zachariah’s heart from a place of really captivity where lies, like you said, lies about God.

Who God is and who he is are holding him in prison and God is so beautifully and compassionately. Rescuing him from that wrong view of God, preparing him to agree with God’s word. And he’s preparing him to be a wonderful sold out father to John, who is going to be the the one who’s announcing the King.

Yes.

Hannah: Yes. And I just, I love that the angel tells Zechariah, like John’s going to have the Holy spirit inside of him. Even before. That’s a miracle, you because Jesus left the Holy Spirit with us [00:23:00] when he ascended to heaven. But here, John’s already carrying Holy Spirit and John’s entire purpose was to pave the way for Jesus.

And what I love is that even before he’s born, we see these clues about, I know we’re really talking about Zachariah and Mary, but I just want to touch on this. Like we see these clues about what John the Baptist’s life is going to look like, because Elizabeth is carrying him the silence that came upon Zachariah during these nine months, God is preparing this radical heart healing and this radical shift in Zachariah, John’s dad’s heart, and then he’s born and it’s like, Whoa, there’s the transformation and it’s like, By the Holy Spirit, by the word, by the power of God in his heart for us.

That’s how we are renewed and transformed. And even before John was born, it’s like, you can see the foreshadowing of what his life was going to be as he prepared the way for our savior to make things right in our heart between us and father God.

Kelly: Yes. Amen. Amen. That is so beautifully said. . And

just to get back to Zachariah just a little bit, when we deal with those kind of disappointments, it is [00:24:00] very difficult for our hearts to be rescued into a right view of who God is. Because as you started out with, we so often believe the lie that God is not as Is not good or he’s not favoring us and that there’s something wrong with us and we come to a place of defeated weariness in our faith walk where we just kind of accept the less than the measure of hard things and think this is the way it’s always going to be and that’s a lie.

It is. It’s a big fat lie.

Hannah: It’s as big to me as the lie. People believe when they feel that, and I lived this lie for a long time, that God’s love, God loves everybody, but it’s just not going to be attainable for me to feel what that’s like.

Kelly: Yeah.

Hannah: And it’s the same goes for our circumstances, that I’m always going to be in this place of the not yet, or struggling to find joy, or struggling, like, that’s just not, [00:25:00] True.

What is true is that there’s always a deeper measure of joy and hope and peace and faith, all of that to grasp and possess.

Kelly: Yes. We will always discover deeper dimensions of who God is for the rest of our lives. One of the things that God did for me and he does for all of us when we are feeling weary from a long season of things not going well, and we start to believe.

Kind of the defeated weary light where it’s never going to get better, you know, and or we can believe God for maybe a question we might ask is, well, what can I believe in for? So we begin to water down our idea of God and we begin to water down the vision that God has for us for our future. And I can remember that happening to me once when it just seemed like everything I had dreamed for my girls could not possibly come true.

We just kept getting beat down. Every time we got our hopes up it, it turned out [00:26:00] poorly. And so one day God said to me, Kelly, I am doing a new thing. And that’s in Isaiah 43, 18 and 19. And that is one of the most powerful scriptures that I have seen God give to so many people who are feeling weary.

He wants to rescue us from places of defeat and take us to a new place. Yeah. You are not stuck. If you believe that it’s always going to be this way. That is a lie. And God wants to say to you, I am doing a new thing and I want you to believe me for that. But as I tried to live that out, it was very difficult because

god just kept saying. Kelly, believe me for the best I can do and not the least I can do. And I would say, well, God, you have to help me because I’m kind of stuck in the least you can do place. And so I’m looking at God’s word and saying, what can I believe you for? What God ended up doing is perfect. Opening my mind to believe [00:27:00] the magnitude of his goodness, which is pursuing us every single day of our lives. And he trains us to open our eyes and see the measures of goodness that are being put out in our lives every day.

Like you were saying, God began to open your eyes to, Oh, there’s your favor. There’s your favor. There’s your favor. And you began to see his favor being poured out in your life. That’s exactly what God does in our weariness. When we began to look to him and believe. God, you will do a new thing.

I know I’m going to see your goodness, even in this dark place. So I’m going to wait for you. I’m going to look to you and I’m going to keep looking to you and believing you, but I need you to help me. Yes. Yes.

Hannah: It’s all of this is making me think of that passage that says, surely I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

And I had to cling to that because I was like, well, I’m living. [00:28:00] I’m alive, so it must mean I can see God’s goodness, you know, I guess, you know, my whole journey with losing our son really brought me to this place of like, I actually have a responsibility in hard seasons to go on a fact finding mission and to gather clues that point to truth when my feelings suggest otherwise.

And so I was like, Nope, I’m in the land of the living. I’m alive right now. So surely I will see God’s goodness. in this hour, in this next hour, throughout this day, tomorrow, the next, you know, and I just can, when we’re like, we need to be mindful of the fact that we can boss our feelings around because if we don’t, we end up in places like Zachariah.

Where we fall slave to shame. We fall slave to fear. We fall slave to hopelessness and that’s not what God has called us to. But God is so faithful to bring us out of it, to bring us to a place of hope filled expectancy. In him and just like, like, I mean, when we look at Zachariah, [00:29:00] how did he get his speech back after John was born?

It was he declared his name is John. Yes. And he broke the final barrier of cultural expectations. He’s like, I don’t partner with these opinions anymore. I’m partnering with the opinion of God and his calling on my life. And he got his speech back immediately. And so to just take heart in seasons of silence.

Of seasons of a lot of work happening behind the scenes that God really is at work and he really is working all things together. And because we are alive, we can see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living right now, right here,

Kelly: right? Exactly. The verse I was talking, which obviously you have held on to that same verse, also 27, verse 13 and 14.

, we have to remember, and yes, we’re bossing our feelings around. And I want to just tell you that when you walk through your house, when you declare it out loud, that does something in your brain that helps that silences the lies. When you [00:30:00] say it out loud, God, I’m not going to believe the truth that this is the end of our story.

I know this is not the end of our story. I know you love these, my daughter. So this is what I was saying. I know you love them. I know you have better plans for them than what I see right now. I know you’re writing a redemptive story and I’m going to look for that. And it takes a lot of courage. To believe something that’s true when you don’t see anything in your environment testifying to that truth.

Hannah: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I just have to kind of get a little geeky here. You were talking about, there’s a lot of power in speaking truth out loud. I’m like, that does something to our minds and our hearts.

According to neuroscience, what it actually does is it bridges the gap of dissonance between what we know is true and what we’re feeling in our hearts. So when we declare truth out loud, we can sing it out loud or we can speak it out loud. It actually helps journey that distance between our mind, what we know.

Academically to be true, but we don’t feel in our hearts to be true yet. And so I would just challenge people [00:31:00] listening to this go on a 30 day journey Of every single day like even just three times a day declaring simple truths out loud That actually are the opposite of what you’re feeling but god’s word says are true and personalize it like I will see the goodness of God today.

I’m believing for more. I’m going to experience a new thing. God calls me favored. God says I’m loved and just speaking what is actually true over ourselves and over our homes or our situation. It’s not a name it and claim it. It is getting our minds aligned with the mind of Christ that we were given at salvation and literally being renewed.

By the being daily transformed by the renewal of our minds. Like that is how we put those verses into practice. And so I just wanted to encourage that there is a tangible thing you can do here, even if things seem hopeless and you want to be working toward hope and you want to partner with Holy Spirit in that way, start proclaiming truths out loud to remind your heart and to get it in alignment with what God says is true.

Kelly: Absolutely. I so agree with that. I’ve experienced the truth of that. I love [00:32:00] the explanation of that. And just to go on. Let me just piggyback on you again. The thing that you said was you were talking about how it helps with that dissonance between our mind and our heart. And that’s exactly the same thing that happens when we’re afraid.

When we are dealing with doubt and lies and untruths and shame and guilt, and that is why truth telling is so powerful and really in helping us redemptively wrestle through to a place of truth. When you tell God the truth about what is standing in the way of believing him and you give it to him, you are being freed from that.

Dissonance. And then what really rescues your heart is when you allow God to speak what’s true. So you’re repeating his word out loud, like Hannah was saying, or you’re listening to the Holy Spirit. Just speak a specific truth that you needed to [00:33:00] hear that day. And that helps heal that dissonance.

So many times what God will speak to us is something about his love, the character of his love. And people suddenly, as we sit in the truth of what God spoke, if we can’t dismiss it, we need to pay attention to it, write it down, focus on it, whatever it is. Maybe he just speaks. You are my beloved.

Maybe you hear in your mind very quickly. I treasure you. I love you. You are my wildly loved child. I don’t know what it is you might hear, but you’re going to hear truth. And I just want to say, pay attention to that. Don’t dismiss it, write it down.

Hannah: Absolutely pay attention and receive it because fear, guilt, and shame are actually the paths of least resistance for our brains to grab onto.

So It’s a lot harder to grab hold of the truth that I’m a wildly [00:34:00] loved child of God. I am a kingdom warrior. I am an advocate for the kingdom. I am a collector and a giver of hope, especially if our feelings are not lining up with that. But we are not called to take the path of least resistance. We’re called to take the path that our great shepherd.

sets in front of us. His word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And so that is what we are called to walk in. And it might be a really difficult wrestle at first, but the more that we wrestle it out with the Lord and the more we take hold of that truth, it actually starts to become our path of least resistance.

But we have to put in the groundwork and the foundational work with Holy Spirit to learn a new language, to learn a new way of life. So that we can walk in the way,

Kelly: right? Right. Absolutely.

So, Hannah, I want you to tell us about the resources you have on your website, livingfromtheoverflow. com, so that our listeners will know what to look for when they get there.

And I will put some links to those in the show notes

Hannah: Sure. So I have a weekly [00:35:00] podcast and you’re welcome to tune into that. Some of my favorite resources though are I have two courses on my website for free. One is learning how to discern God’s voice through his word and the other is learning our identity and it walks through the life of Zacchaeus and the little brief snapshot we’re given and some massive takeaways though of being transformed by God’s view of us.

And then I have two prayer journals. to help people grow in their walk in prayer and learning how to apply scripture to our prayer life with God. And then my two favorite resources I have are is I have a reflective devotional, it’s called 30 days of hope, and it walks through 30 days of different passages on hope.

And it guides you through reflective listening prayer questions that you can be asking God along the way. And then I have a 365 day devotional called Stan strong. And in it every day, there is a biblical affirmation, the verse that came from and that verse written into a prayer. So we can start learning how to not just be hearers of the word, but doers of it.

Kelly: Oh, that’s awesome. I [00:36:00] can’t believe you did a 365 day journey and me both. That was the Lord’s fault, right? He made. Yes.

Hannah: Yeah, he did. He did.

Kelly: Well, I just want to encourage our listeners resources and I’m going to close with this one thought from Luke 1 verse 37 for nothing is impossible with God.

And in the NLT, it says no word from God will ever fail. When our God speaks is it’s eternal and his word can always be trusted. He never lies. He never tricks us. He’s never betraying us. He wants to rescue our hearts. More actually more than we want to be rescued. And when we land in these deeper places of intimacy with the Lord, we’re going to look back and say, I can’t believe I put up with that as long as I did.

He wants to set us free. So let’s just walk into that. Let’s declare what’s true every single day [00:37:00] throughout the day. We know God’s heart is for us. We know he is with us. We know he loves us and he has wonderful, beautiful, redemptive plans for us. Hannah, thank you so much for joining me today. Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a treat.

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, kellyhall. org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope Podcast.