Why Trust In God? - Find Peace and Question Our Assumptions plus Meet the Host in this Relaunch Episode

Hello! Today, begins the re-launch of my podcast as "Getting Personal with God". I share the process and what you'll like about it. We also start exploring whether you or I have any assumptions about God. (Spoiler alert... we do :)

I'm super excited to start this journey with you! I know that God is actually excited about this podcast because He is excited about YOU and wants to know you more intimately. This is one way to help connect you with Him more often.  Of course, God knows everything, and it is His plan for you to be on the earth at this time, but how much we let Him in is up to us.

If I didn't sense how much God wants to talk with you, work with you, and walk with you, it could be quite vain of me to dare say God is excited about this podcast. However, He numbers the hairs on our heads, so He is pretty focused on us. He doesn't want us to be lonely, to feel shame or guilt, or to be unable to hear His voice. Plus, He likes us both, and He was the one prompting me to begin.

So today starts a fun journey to walk closer with God and get our eyes opened to the wonderful plans He has for us.  

Please subscribe so that we can meet again!  Lenora

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Transcript

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If you're excited about something, you call your best friend and you want to tell them the news. Or if you're stressed, you'll call someone who will help you. And if you're not calling God and you're not telling God and sharing these things, then that means we just have a dysfunctional belief about him as our friend. Do you love God but forget to pray sometimes or feel guilty instead of enjoying his presence? I get it, I've been there. I know how unsatisfying time with God can feel if we believe he's distant and busy. I'm Lenora, a mom, Jesus lover, and former international trainer. If you're ready to feel closer with God without fear or pressure, have a greater ability to receive from him, and desire more confidence to make an impact with your life, well, get some coffee or something, and let's talk. Hey, if you're carrying stress and want support with prayer, I wrote a book to help you. It's called 100 Prayers, Releasing 100 Cares. It's full of real stories, scripture, and 100, yes, 100 prayers for about every part of life. A link for the book is in the show notes. I really think you'll love it. Some have said it is the best prayer book they've ever had. This is the first episode of my rebranded podcast, and the new title is called Getting Personal With God. And I'm super excited and kind of nervous. Uh, you know, there are 40 episodes that are still available from my previous work from 2020 to 2024, because there's some wonderful conversations with authors, executives, CEOs, grief specialists, psychologists, and Christian leaders. And so I want to leave them there because they're still valuable and some pretty amazing people. But personally, I felt like I should start my podcast again. I left it live because I just didn't feel like I should let it go. But I know the effort that it is. So I was really praying and saying, God, what am I going to focus on? And as I've been in this wrestling process of nailing it down, it came down to, do I really get to do what I really want to do? Which is sorry, that seems like a weird question, but I think sometimes we run from the thing we care about the most. And for me, it's about relationship with God. Now, I'm curious about a lot of things, and I've taught a lot of things. I had an incredibly wonderful opportunities in the past to teach the Bible, as well as I taught in the corporate sector for 15 years, and I ran a program for young people and for veterans and amazing, amazing things that I still love and am very proud of. I taught things like presentation skills, negotiation skills, fierce conversations, which is communication skills, uh, process management fundamentals. I loved a 12-month leadership course, a supervisor curriculum that went over six months and many other things. And I'm I love business and I love what we call ministry, although I think they cross over. Anybody who's got a decent ministry better be sharp at some decent basic business. And anyone who's got a good business cares about people and has integrity. So there's so much to love about both. But at the core, what I love the most is God's word, teaching the Bible. So why I'm doing this podcast, that's what this first episode is about. Is in fact I woke up once because I've been thinking about this so much. I woke up with the thought, your father wants to know you, your heavenly father, the God who made the universe, the God who made you and me, wants a personal relationship. So getting personal with God is bottom line what this is all about. There's so many skills we can have, and I'm all for building those. But nothing matters more than the relationship with God. At the same time, at times I've been a person who's been very bored with reading my Bible or bored with my time with God. And of course, I didn't want to say that too often out loud or something, but I know what it's like to feel like, yeah, I should, but I'm busy. Or is it really going to make a difference? I grew up in a Christian family and we had all of our own issues. So it was far from perfect. But I did, and I'm very grateful that I got to hear God's voice at a young age, meaning it was normal for me as a little kid. I knew if it was God talking to me. Not that it happened a lot, but he's so real. But this podcast is going to be about exactly what it's titled, Getting Personal with God, meaning let's get to know him better. We have a lot of assumptions about God. So, what is this podcast about? Well, number one, I think you love God. You probably wouldn't click on this if you didn't have a desire or a polling, a drawing to know God better, or you already love him, but you you want to be closer, and yet you struggle like every human does, or like I don't know anybody in my friends or other Christian friends who haven't wrestled with, oh, am I praying enough? Or am I actually feeling God's presence? Do I hear his voice? Did I hear his voice? Or was that too much pizza? You know, I hope you get my point there. But we all have our struggles. And I have discovered over time that so many times the reasons we do struggle is because we have a lot of assumptions about God. Based on however you grew up, however I grew up, we assume we know God and we're running our race, as scripture talks about, run your race, but we don't realize we're running off of a lot of assumptions. And it makes our Christian walk more difficult. And I like things being easier. And I am excited myself about how amazing God is, how much better he is than I used to give him credit for, even though I basically thought he was a good God. But this is going to be all about digging in sometimes with word studies, sometimes with stories and various things that are going to help us get to know God better. And the prayer that will always be prayed, at least over this podcast, if not in the podcast, is God open the eyes of our understanding to the knowledge of you. That's from Ephesians, one of my favorite books in the Bible. But we want to get to know God better so that we enjoy our time with Him. One of my strengths is I like to talk. One of my weaknesses is I like to talk. So let me get make sure I'm being focused here. So, what is this podcast really going to be about? I know it's titled Getting Personal with God, but here's three things we'll be focusing on. One about God. How good is he really? I mean, I think you're here because you love God. I know I love God, but how well do we really know him? I am convinced, I know and have experienced relationship with God will exceed all expectations or imaginations, the more you discover about who he actually is, what he's like. I actually right now feel his excitement. He wants to know you so much. If you've ex called on Jesus, you've accepted Jesus Christ, he lives within you. And he wants to know you. I love the book of Ephesians. Read the first chapter of Ephesians over and over. It's the it's in the New Testament. And uh get different versions if you need to. Read it on a phone app where you can get different versions because you'll understand a little bit better that God made everything like a baby room so that he could put us in it, so he could be our father. He calls himself father, he's the beginning of fatherhood, and that's what he loves to be, and he wants to know you. But I don't know if you have tainted uh thoughts about what does a father mean? I don't know what your experience was, and so sometimes we we don't love that thought, but he's not like a human in our ability to have failures, and we all have those failures or flaws, but he is better than you could possibly imagine. And he desperately I don't know if there's a better word for that, but he wants to laugh with you, he wants to play with you. Do you know that all my life until a couple a year or two ago, it had never occurred to me that God was fun. He told me once I made him laugh, or he said actually what the word was was God thinks you're funny. I'll tell you that story sometime, but he is fun, he is powerful, he is protective. Read first Corinthians um 13 verses four through eight. God is love. The Bible says he is love, and then let's define love though. It's not about like I love pizza type of love, or I love chocolate or something. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not self-seeking. A lot of us have confused definitions of love. So that's another thing we're gonna do in discovering what is God really like. Sometimes we will take a word and just look at that in different verses and say, here's what God's actually like, and get rid of the assumption of what we've thought he's like, and no wonder we don't want to pray. Because, I mean, if you're excited about something, you'll call your best friend and you want to tell him the news. Or if you're stressed, you'll call someone who will help you. And if you're not calling God and you're not telling God and sharing these things, then that means we just have a dysfunctional belief about him as our friend. And it's not about being bad or good, but we're gonna do a lot of discovery about how good he really is, what he's really like, how he can be trusted, and all those things. And I'm telling you, it's a game changer. Another thing we're gonna focus on is what does God actually think about me? What does he think about not me, Lenora? Although I'll share stories, but what does he think about you? What does he think about us? I mean, so many people think God is distant and busy. I mean, if you had a parent that was always busy and didn't have time for you, you probably assume God is the same way and don't even know you assume that. But we'll talk about what does he actually think about you? Again, read Ephesians chapter one, at least start there. And then another thing we'll be talking about is how can I become bigger than the problems I face? How can I become more powerful and deal with those because of who God is and who he says I am? I should be able to kick these problems butt. You really should. Sorry if that offended anybody, but I want us to talk about how do we get bigger than our problems, how do we walk in the promises God has has laid out in the Bible. There are so many promises. In fact, the Bible itself is called the Old Testament and New Testament, right? Really, the words are old covenant and new covenant. Quickest way to talk about what is a covenant is the closest representative is marriage. Except God isn't a big uh just you know exits if things get rough. He has no prenuptial agreements, and I suppose there's times to do that on earth, but with God, he doesn't have a prenup. He says, I want you as my child. I want you. Uh, the church is called the body of Christ. I want you as my bride, as my whole part of my whole self. All these different ways God talks about being one with us. And we're going to be discovering what does this really mean? How good is this really? You know, the gospel, the word the gospel is supposed to mean amazing news. I mean, it's something you run and tell everybody. Well, if knowing Jesus Christ isn't um something amazing, you just don't understand what you have yet. You just don't understand who he is yet and who you are. So that's what this podcast is going to be about. And I hope you join me on this journey and have fun. And I'm going to need comments from you. And I will want input to hear what you want to hear about, what do you want to talk about? And of course, I'll always want you to uh give me a great review so more people can join this journey with us, a review on the podcast app. But um, thank you for even listening to this first episode. I want to wrap this up, but I want to end this with a prayer. Father, you are so excited to know us better, to have us know you better. Again, I'm asking you open the eyes of our understanding to the knowledge of you. Help us be personal with you, be vulnerable with you, tell you our craziest thoughts, our worst thoughts, our best thoughts, and walk with you, walk with you as a friend and as a father. And thank you. Because I feel your love so much right now. And I know more way more than I do. You want whoever's listening to this to know you are reaching out to them. You want to know them and you want to know them intimately, and they will get good at hearing your voice in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, thanks for listening. Hey, my new friend. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If so, would you take 30 seconds and share this with someone who needs to hear this or may want to join you on this journey with this podcast? And please take 30 seconds and leave a quick review for this show on Apple Podcasts and subscribe so you won't miss an episode. It makes me happy to know this podcast is helping you, so definitely let me know what you want to hear or what impacts you. And remember, a link to get the prayer book I mentioned earlier, 100 Prayers to release 100 cares, is in the show notes. Thank you for listening. I'll meet you back here on Monday for another episode. Until then, be kind to you.