Episode 16: Living in the Unknown: Faith, Worth, and Spiritual Growth
Living in the Unknown: Faith, Worth, and Spiritual Growth
In this episode of FOUND & REFINED, host Amy LeSage delves into the challenges of navigating life's unknowns and the importance of finding worth in God. She shares personal experiences of dealing with uncertainty, the significance of seeking worth from God rather than worldly achievements, and the spiritual growth that comes from enduring hardships. Drawing on biblical stories like the trials of Moses and the Israelites, Amy emphasizes the necessity of trusting God and leaning on His wisdom. She also recommends a powerful song to provide comfort during tough times. Join Amy as she encourages you to grow closer to God through faith and trust during life's uncertainties.
00:00 Welcome and Apologies
00:44 Checking In on Your Worth
03:58 Facing Unknowns and Uncertainties
05:39 Navigating Hardships with Faith
08:55 Lessons from the Bible
11:28 Encouragement and Final Thoughts
15:54 Song Recommendation and Farewell
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🎵 Check out these songs
➺ “What Am I Doing Here?” ONE HOUSE and Kyndle Inskeep
➺ “Up To Something (Live) [feat. Rudy Villarreal &Skylar Dayne] - ONE HOUSE & UPPERROOM
➺ “Always Mine” - Claire Leslie
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TRANSCRIPT - EP. 16
Hey guys. welcome to another episode of FOUND & REFINED. I am your host, Amy LeSage. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I wanna first ask you, did you think I quit? Did you think I was not gonna show up again? I wonder, I did miss last week. I'm sorry. There is just a lot going on in life, a lot of moving pieces.
I'm also like doing these jobs on the side, so my hours are not consistent and they're here and there and everywhere and there's just a lot going on and I apologize if you were looking for it. Thank you for looking for it.
I hope you found this one. I'm gonna get to our topic in a second, which is on unknowns and uncertainty. but first I wanna check-in and see how you're doing on your worth. Worth is such a big area of concern and a big topic for me personally. And so I just constantly wanna be kind of checking in with you guys and seeing, how it's going with you.
Are you feeling like you're able to decipher between whose voice is speaking, into your worth? Is it God? Is it the world? Is it a person in your life? Is it the enemy? who are you allowing to have the number one spot to decide your worth because that number one spot should always go to God. Always.
That doesn't mean that it's wrong if you feel proud and like you have a sense of worth when you're thinking about how successful you've been at your job or the nice things that you've been able to have in your home. I never want it to come off that way. Those things you can be proud of and happy to have. They just should never hold the number one spot of your worth.
That's what I've learned. That's just a constant thing that I have to always check who's in the number one spot, what's in the number one spot? Have I moved things around somehow, accidentally, because it becomes very easy to shuffle through and move things depending on what your life circumstances are. And so to constantly be checking in and making sure that your worth is coming from Jesus. Um. Is super important. Hopefully you're able to be doing that and not letting other people, possessions, worldly things, take hold.
It's interesting because as I've been in this space of unknowns I think the devil can sense when we're uncomfortable, when we're doubting ourselves, doubting our situations, or where we're at in life, our insecurities. I feel like he can hear that in the way that we talk. He's always paying attention to where he can chime in and start feeding junk that goes against anything that God would want you to believe about yourself. But, uh, for my own personal experience, not knowing career-wise where I should be going that's been a big thing for me. So in my head, " you don't have a worthy title to your name, you don't have these, nice things right now,
you're not able to get..." you know what, whatever, whatever it is.
So, always just kind of keeping that in check. I'll recognize it later on after I've had a thought pattern I'll just be like, Ooh dang, that's not, um, , that's definitely not God. So, whoa. I gotta get that outta my head. So hopefully you guys, I pray that you are doing good with your worth, and remembering who you need to listen to
number one, God, God's words. God's thoughts on you, God's love for you. His unconditional, individualized love for you. Because you're worth it and you're that special. Just keep reminding yourself of that because it's true. I don't say so. The Bible says so.
Today, I wanna speak about unknowns in our lives, because that's just been a really big thing for me. We can all say We don't know what the future holds.
No one knows anything more than what's literally right in front of our face at that exact moment in time or what's behind us. The future is God's territory, right? So we are constantly living in a state of unknown. But there are times in life where you don't really feel that way because life's moving at a pace and with a flow the next steps just keep happening.
You have routines in your life. Let's say you wake up, get your kids ready for school, or you get yourself ready for school, you get there, you do all the things. You then get your kids home, or get yourself home, do dinner, you shower, you do your night routine, go to sleep, then do it over and over, and you can kind of rely on that flow to happen every day.
And although it's an unknown, it's just working seamlessly. And that's a comfortable space to be in. But when a wrench or something completely uncertain gets thrown into the mix, we can become like just extremely stressed, anxious panicked because we didn't expect it. And so, now we have to navigate something completely new that's jolted our reality and our flow.
That is pretty much where I have been living for a while. It's wearing on me a little bit. Just the unknowns of how I thought something should be versus what it turned out to be.
Uh, I've been just kind of searching for some wisdom as to how to navigate this
I think we need to remind ourselves when things are getting thrown into the mix. That God uses hardships to strengthen us. So if you feel like you're in a hardship or you're constantly being thrown into hardships, he is strengthening you through that. And you have to almost look at it with that lens, because if you don't, it can take you down.
How you approach those hardships. Determines your growth.
And I think that's really important. I wish I could speak to you on how it all works out after you've been in a world of unknowns, and just things will start working out. But I'm not in that stage of life, I'm stuck in the middle of unknowns and uncertainties, and constantly feeling like the ground is sometimes.
shaky and, and, not level. I think a lot of spiritual growth can come from that. It doesn't mean that it's easy, but
it's absolutely worth follow through.
There are a lot of things that I feel I've been learning throughout this process. But control, my desire to control everything around me was so big at the time of starting this journey that I, um, I, it needed to be broken.
I couldn't go through life that way, almost playing God.
The Key isn't to like escape the unknown, to run away from the unknown, or to try and control it like I did, but what God has taught me is that I need to slow down, stop running away from discomfort, and run to God instead, so he can get you through the discomfort.
He invites us constantly to fall into his arms and to trust him. Trust him wholeheartedly, like surrender ourselves, our lives to him. That he will get us through whatever the situation is.
The Bible encourages us in Proverbs. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding," because we don't know what the heck we're doing here on this earth, and we don't have the understanding and the knowledge of God.
"Lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your path straight." Proverbs three, five through six. Finding rest in him, trusting that he is leading us, even when everything feels completely uncertain and unknown. God's peace and presence remain a safe space for us because he knows what's best. He's the only one who knows the future.
A lot of these hardships and living in the unknown for two years has been teaching me to slow down, lean on him, listen to where he's telling me to go, wait for him and trust in him.
It sounds a lot easier than it actually is. It's hard.
But when we're not doing that, we're trying to control situations and things are just being flung at us constantly. That's when anxiety and stress and all of those things can like creep in.
/ Another place where I was reading and kinda researching was Moses' story and how the Israelites and Moses were wondering the wilderness for 40 years. There's just so many accounts in the Bible where people were living in the unknown and God was using those hardships to strengthen them, to humble their hearts, to show them that they needed to trust and rely on him and he provided. One of those examples was Moses and the Israelites. It says here in Deuteronomy 8:2, "remember how the Lord your God, led you all the way in the wilderness, these 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands, he humbled you," God humbled you, "causing you to hunger, and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known. To teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." Okay, so Deuteronomy 8:3 is teaching us that God uses hardships to draw us into dependence into Him alone.
/He's constantly calling his people to trust him deeply. He used hardships to test and refine them, and he provided. He fed them. He gave them, water that came out of a rock. 40 years in the wilderness, their clothes didn't wear out. He made sure that he provided for them. It was still hard, but they grew in their faith, they grew in their trust of him,
i'm sure it wasn't the way they would've thought they should be provided for. I'm sure it wasn't at all the perfect timing in their own head or that they would've chosen to be in the wilderness for 40 years. I look at these stories, I look at the Bible 'cause I'm searching for answers, and I feel like the Bible is the best place to go when you're walking with God. You have to go to the Bible because all of it is still true today. It can still be relatable today. And so I'm leaning on this stuff as like, okay, ' this isn't exactly how I would've envisioned my walk with God.
But he will provide throughout and even more so after.' He rewarded them with the promised land, the Israelites, he rewarded them. And that's not why I'm doing this, but I'm just saying hardships equal growth, spiritual growth.
/I guess here's what I would encourage you to question in your own life: how do you handle unknowns? Do you have patience, and trust, and faith to walk through the unknown with God, and at his pace? That's even harder sometimes, letting him lead you throughout those moments. Or are you constantly searching for control, and quick fixes, or ways to escape the discomfort?
I was doing the latter at the beginning of this journey because the unknown is uncomfortable. It's extremely uncomfortable at times, or at least it was for me.
/ And this is like big unknowns. There are times when you have to navigate uncertainty and unknowns throughout a day that are natural to being a parent, to your job, all those things. We can't just sit there and be like, okay, God, you go ahead and take the reins. There are certain things where we have to make choices and we have to move forward. What I'm talking about are the uncertainties and the unknowns in your walk with God. Let's say you broke up with your boyfriend or girlfriend and you don't know what the future holds there. I just wanna encourage you to lean into God during those times to hopefully help you walk through that and give you guidance.
There are uncertainties in my life that I just can't dodge. I have to continue walking forward into each and every one of them, and I'm doing that with the faith and the trust that God's gonna get me to the other side.
I have had a lot of doors closed. I've had a lot of things taken away, but I've been given a lot as well. There are definitely some things he's waiting to show me, as much as I wanna rush that, if I wanna do it right, with him, I can't rush it. I can't take the reins. I can't take over. I have to trust the process and the walk that I'm going on with him. And so I hope that can also encourage you.
/This is how he grows you spiritually. This is spiritual growth. It is done with hardships. It stinks, but it's true. And you become a stronger person in the end because you walked it faithfully with Him. And I do believe that you're rewarded for that. Somehow, some way, there is a reward for that, a better life.
On the other side of that, once you're through it. But to show your faithfulness to God. I think he's constantly testing us, some of us more than others, and if you're feeling that way, there must be a big plan for you.
/It's oftentimes in these spaces where God invites us to have a deeper relationship with him, a more intimate relationship with him due to our trust. So I would encourage you to faithfully walk with him in the unknown and in the uncertainty. There is only so much that we can humanly control. So just know when it's time to let go and give it to God. That's the right thing to do. Allow him to be your presence. your comfort and your guide through those times. It's just a sacred opportunity you have to grow closer in your relationship with him.
/We are so blessed to have a God who wants to be closer with us. It's just so crazy to me. Every time I think about that, I'm like, there aren't even like celebrities that would wanna do that with, with us.
It is just An amazing opportunity that he wants every single one of us to, to draw near to him, to pull in closer to him and to walk in his presence. He wants that relationship with us. It's a missed opportunity if you're not leaning into it.
In my opinion.
Yeah.
Don't let your fear risk becoming a huge barrier to growing closer to him. Don't let that happen. God knows your future perfectly, and he invites you to lean in slow down and trust that he is with you every step of the way, even in the unknown.
I forgot to tell you. Okay. So there is a song that came up and wanna tell you guys, man, you can hear her agony in the unknown. You can hear it in her voice. This person's voice is just ridiculous.
So I wanna say it on air. I'm obviously gonna put it in the notes, but I don't know if you guys look at those. I don't blame you if you don't, but I want you to hear this song if you're having a hard time, um, and you just need a song to kind of agonize with you on how hard it can be in the unknown it is called, 'what am I doing here?'
And it's by ONE HOUSE and Kyndle Inskeep. It's so powerful, and the end of it is just... it's exactly what I'm, what I'm speaking to, and it's exactly how I've been feeling. It's just like, man, it struck a chord with me. And so I wanna pass that on. If you have the time, go check it out. It's good, it's good stuff.
Um, also, if you could like, subscribe, review all the things, it just will help me get this out to more people. So your generosity in doing that is, uh, truly appreciated. If you can find the time to do it, thank you so much. I'll talk to you later.
Bye.