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March 13, 2024 27 mins

Welcome back for part 2. The world is an anxious place and growing more anxious by the hour. What is God's provision and path to help us live above the fear, in union with Him, no matter what life looks like? For this 2-part discussion I invited friend and counselor Mandy Nelson to discuss her life-long journey with anxiety, what she is learning, and how it has led her to becoming a mentor who helps others navigate fears and find the peace God promises us.

Mandy Nelson is a highly gifted communicator, teacher and mentor who also leads Socratic Scripture Studies and Biblical Dream Interpretation classes where she is Co-Director of Empowering Ranch with her husband Scott Morin. Find out more about Mandy Nelson. To join Mandy and Scott for Empowering Ranch’s Socratic Scripture Studies, email Mandy at mandy@empoweringranch.com.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:42):
One of the rescues in my story
has been the introduction of a of a paradigm
that the Kingdom of God runs on Joy,
the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Now, I mean, you can say we can sit hereand just wrestle with it.
I just I just pray that as you as a listener,just chew on that and let the Holy Spirit

(01:10):
teach you.
The whole story begins with joy in the garden.
It begins with rest.
The whole story ends with joy.
I mean, that's
that's foundational to all that God has created.
It's obviously foundational to his plan, to his purpose,

(01:32):
and to his design for the world.
We live in the middle chapters where joy,
that eternal joy, eternal past,
eternal future is being interrupted,
bombarded, blasted, bombed, desecrated.
That's the that's the piece of the story that we're in.
But it doesn't change the fact that joy

(01:54):
is the foundation of everything.
And if the joy of the Lord is our strength,
which Scripture says,
then the rescue is always
what I'm. What I'm.
What he's teaching meis you have to learn to return yourself to joy.

(02:22):
And a dear friend of mine, the same woman that's
that told me the light that reveals heals
has offered a lot of wisdom on this paradigmthat we basically go through
five stages in our life with regards to Joy.
If in fact, joy is what the kingdom runs on.
And if, in fact,the joy of the Lord is your strength, then your whole life

(02:44):
is really about our relationship.
The joy in getting back to it when we fall out of it.
So between zero and three years old,
we're a child, We have a dirty diaper, we get hungry,
we have a problem, we're in pain, we cry and somebody comesand they restores to joy.
There's no responsibility on our partwhat so ever is an infant.

(03:05):
But then you get to 4 to 13 years old
and it's the job of the parent to teach the childhow to return themselves to joy.
It’s the job of the childto learn to return themselves to joy.
And there's three other stages that come after thatwhere we become more sacrificial and we begin
not only returning ourselves to joy, but it becomespart of our mission in life to help others return to joy.

(03:30):
Doesn't that sound like the kingdom?
Yes, fully the kingdom.
But here is here's where the thing gets broken
is between the ages of four and 13 years old.
What if we what if we grew up in an environment
where nobody knew how to return themselves to joy?
What if we live in a culture widely

(03:51):
that does not know how to return itself to joy?
And I want to
I mean, that's where I feel like we we are.
And God has been saying,son, there's no blaming your parents or anybody else.
But you came from a home.
You come from a culture where you were not taughthow to return yourself to joy.

(04:13):
And I was like,
whoa, that's huge.
But connected with that
observation, connected with that brilliant
diagnosis was God's invitation.
Now I'm your father.
The one that you never had.

(04:33):
I'm the mother that you never had.
Your job right nowis to let me teach you how to return to Joy.
And then for you to engage in that practiceof how to return to joy.
So what you're sharing is how you're learning,how to return yourself to joy.
What God's helping me do is learn how to return myself
to joy And anxiety, I believe is scripturally.

(04:57):
What God says is going to bethe underlying theme of humanity.
That's what's going to have
people blowing their brains out and doing stupid stuff
and leaving their lives behind in their wivesand their children and all this other stuff
because they're looking to return themselves to joyand they won't know how to do it.
That's, you know, that's the rescue.

(05:17):
So that's what I am.
That's what I'm eagerly seeking the answer to.
This right here is a listI pick up at every First Tracks and First Bloom.
This is the most frequently given commandin all of Scripture.
It's a piece of paper that I pull out

(05:38):
all the time.
And the scripture on here is all the different timesthroughout
Old Testament, New Testament, where God says, Do not fear,do not be anxious.
It is literally the single most repeated command.
And there's a reason for those, because the thing it'swhat we fall victim to more than anything else.
So if that's the case, if that's the big enemy

(05:59):
and God says your biggest weapon is to return yourself
to joy, where you're back in your strength again,and that's where you're having your impact in the world.
And I feel like that's the battle of the age.
To me, that's what it feels like to me.
That is that's so rich.
Jay Like, I love that you have that print out.

(06:21):
Okay, so here's what we don't want.
We don't want to be in fear.
All these exhortations to
well then, well, right.
So the words that are coming to mind and you name
some of them or ones that are synonyms like attachment,
healthy attachment to God,not all just show up and spend a little time with God.
Like God was actually lovinglyconfronting me on this kind of wooing me,

(06:46):
confronting me during some of the tricky timesthis past year.
Are you showing upbecause you feel like you have to, or do you
do you know thatthis could be the most exciting part of your day?
And I was like, my gosh, I'm usually showing upbecause I feel like, well, know, it's the right thing to do.
And yeah, I do love you.
And just inviting him to shift my heart, my mind on that.

(07:11):
Now this is where the joy comes,
because what makes me most full of joy, honestly, is
when I am in partnership with Yahweh, doing the things that he's about
through me
in the ways he created me like, or just communing with him.
It doesn't matter what's going on out there.

(07:31):
So, like,that's when I have real joy is when I know who he is.
I know who I am.
We're together and then we're we're doing the kingdom stuff.
I love that. Yeah.
So that's like, yeah, there's the life.
There's the hope.
Here's what we don't want to be. But

(07:53):
I think I've been noticing this with young people.
I was actually at an event last night,
a choir concert of one of my extra nephews,as I like to call him.
And I was justI was watching all these college students perform
and I thought I wish I could talkto every single one of them and hug them
and do listening prayer with them and speak words of lifeabout who Jesus says they are.

(08:15):
And because I think we have an epidemic of
muddled destiny,
muddled identity and muddled is a very gentle term, right?
I think one of the plans of the enemy is to obliterate
a sense of purpose, especially in young adults right now.
So, yeah, I'm alive when I'm who he made me to bebecause I'm connected to him

(08:37):
and he's giving me the strength to do the missions.
It doesn't you know, thisit doesn't mean missions are always easy.
Sometimes missions are really, really hard and very costly.
Don't you feel alive when you're in them?
And, you know, those are the missions you call to.
I was on a prayer call two days ago with some people.

(09:01):
We just asked Jesus questionsand we all listen and one of the
one of the questions that we askedwas around the topic of joy.
And we were being curiousabout what preemptive joy might look like.
And we asked Jesus to give us a picture of preemptive joy.

(09:21):
And the picture that he gave me was living
was it was a river
in the middle of a wildernesslike is so often seen in Scripture.
The Old Testament.
And he actually took me back to a memory of mine
when I was in outside of Moab, Utah.

(09:43):
There's literally nothing, no one around.
It's just cactus and scrub and beautiful landscape.
But then there's a river flowing in the middle of it,
and Jesus
showed me his presence there
and he said, Preemptive joy is looking
at the wilderness from the river.

(10:06):
You've been looking at the river
from deep in the wilderness,
and I'm teaching you how to make your camp by the river.
And instead of
walking through the wildernessand getting a drink every once in a while,
which has been okay up until now,
you actually need to camp out next to the river.

(10:28):
And I will send you on excursions into the wilderness.
But you always come back and you camp back with me
and my his
in his
when I said, okay, tell me more.
He was just saying, that's my presence.
Okay.

(10:48):
Which comes back to the question, okay,
how do I live more in your presence?
Which
excavates one of the fears that I had
buried in the backyard and that is I am not good enough
to be in the presence of God.

(11:09):
I'm not really a good boy.
And that's for me.
That's been the story.
I mean, I could go into great lengths to describein the last 18 months what he's been bringing up.
But the heart of it is there is still a little boy inside me
that thinks that I'm not good.

(11:31):
And until about a week ago, I couldn't have told you that
that actually came up at survival schoolwhile I was walking some roads in the mountains.
You're you're not good.
You don't think you're good.
So you need to come backand you need to figure out a way to come back to me.
And in Union with me, find your joy.

(11:52):
In fact, find a joy that you've never had.
I remember I was a super happy kid in elementary school.
And then somewhere along the way I just lost it.
And I've known it's just my smile's missing.
Even when I'm really happy.
There's just something foundational about my identitythat has not yet been restored.

(12:15):
And that's what God's after.
For me.
And I
see it in the lives of the other menthat I'm with around the campfires.
He is going after something deep, deep, deep in men.
And more and more, what we're trying to do is invite men
to be present, to be still

(12:36):
for long enough to recognizewhat's really going on inside the soul.
And then they're surprised by what comes up.
I didn't know that I felt this way.
I didn't know that I thought this way.
I didn't know that I felt like I needed this.
And then to be able to ask Jesus, okay,what do you have to say about that?
It opens a whole world of joy and hope

(12:57):
and and rescue.
Yeah, that's beautiful work, Jay.
I mean.
Well, he's doing it and.
Yeah, yeah, I did partner with him
to lead others.
So the last question I would ask is, how are your tools

(13:18):
changing?
what a great question.
the old tools are becoming secondary
and the new tools and
in a sense they're becoming a lot
a lot simpler.
We've talked about this union with God, really easy to say,

(13:41):
but to put yourself in a posture
of going there and letting the Holy Spirit go there.
I mean, you're talking about things come up in menwhen they have a little space to reflect
how many of us have trained ourselves to not go there
because it's going to unearth somethingthat's going to set dominoes in motion.
And now I'm, for lack of a better phrase,

(14:03):
I'm accountable for what I've let myself consciously see.
But the life is through.
The life is going through that to the other side,not during it.
So my tools have changed because honestly, more and more
they're just coming straightto the heart of what Scripture says is true.
They're becoming a lot more real time.

(14:24):
I just wake up and, you know, when I go to bedand here's a fun thing,
I'll ask God like, speak to me, speak to me.
And that gets back to the dream stuff.
But tell me what you want me to read tomorrow.
And sometimes he does.
You know, I have a character named JamesShow up and hand me a scroll, and I'm like, Got it.
That's really helpful.
I guess I know where I'm going tomorrow.

(14:44):
It's not always that obvious, but yeah,
my tools are sacrificingthe things I wanted to put in in first place.
I mean, I didn't, but I did.
There are days I don't get to do my fun HIIT workouts. Why?
Because I'm going to be frantic the rest of the day,and I will do better.
Going on a walk in the woods with Jesus and I.

(15:06):
I like nothing wrong with the class, but
so honestly, it's being willing to live counter
culturally to not try and keep upwith the frenetic pace of the world around us
and just ask what's
what's the capacity you've given meand where do you want me to spend it?

(15:26):
And Scripture, Yeah, I was in Philippianstoday, didn't know I would go to Philippians.
I was looking at one verse, wound upreading all the Philippians, which isn't that long.
And I was underlining thingsfor the second time and different colors.
I was like, This is so good.
This is just a few chapters, this is so good.
But like letting the relationship
be dynamic instead of stagnant.

(15:49):
I just I can't do stagnant.
This is what I'm supposed to read today.
I should listen to exactly two worship songs,and you can't do it.
I wouldn't do that with my husband.
What a horrible relationship if it was just a big formulaevery day, letting it be dynamic.
Jesus, Today I'd like to go rollerblading.
Cool. Yes.
Okay.
Eighties Michael W Smith music or are we praying today

(16:13):
like suddenly I’m alive...
We're engaging and 27 year old Mandywould have been far more about here's the devotional
nothing wrong with devotionals I'm just saying
I need to have a robust relationship with God.
It's going to be in motion.
I've been listening to Jamie Winship’s book
Living Fearless, so phenomenal.

(16:37):
I mean, he is phenomenal, right?
And he's talking about conversationswhere things are either my word, static or dynamic, right?
It's either a formulaic conversation.
Hi, how are you today? Fine. How are you?
Da da da da da. And then you move on.
Or will we ask the probing questions?
Will we give the honest answers?

(16:58):
I want my relationship with God
to have that kind of movement to it right?
Like you don't want to drink from a stagnant pool of water.
It's got more stuff in it.
You want the living water.
You want the water that's in motion.
So back to your river analogy.
Yeah, a river so significant.

(17:18):
Well, tons of metaphors in Scripture
for God being present as the river of life.
But also things are fresh.
They're fresh. I think like religion does need to die,
right?
Religion is the stagnant pool of waterthat we'll not you know
this, we know this, thisthat will not hold anybody in days to come.

(17:41):
Not even close.
So I'm trying to orient my life
to the living water and the river
and make the sacrifices necessary in the natural
to really let the excitement of God, the depths of God,
the refreshment of God and the challenges of God
come down the river to me and go,You love me, you love me.

(18:03):
So anything you send,
it's for the good
of what you want to do in me and through me.
So as you're sharing that, I'm
I have a great empathy for people,
for sons out there who have been trying to religiouslive a religious life and it's falling apart.

(18:28):
Friends, I would say to
you that it's only been within the last,
I'd say four years
that really
beginning to trust that a dialog with
Jesus is something that's accessible,that's available for me

(18:48):
has been a reality before.
Four years ago
I thought, it happens occasionally when God's in a mood,
when when he's in a good mood, when the stars align,when I've been
really good, when I'm in desperate need
and if you're feeling

(19:08):
that God is not accessible and that you cannot come boldly
with your fears and the things that God
is in his kindness bringing up in you right now,
I would I would just ask you and beg you to challenge
go to God and say, God, here's what I'm feeling.

(19:31):
Thinking this isthis is the voice that I'm hearing in my head is that you
or is that me or some other voice?
And what do you have to say about it?
Dare to go into the presence of God
and have that conversation because many of us just believe
God doesn't want to operate with me in that way.

(19:52):
And what Mandy, what I what I hear you sayingand what I've been experiencing
and what I'm experiencing in the men around meis that that's exactly
what God is going after the deepest
seeded rootsand wounding that produce disconnection between Him
and us like he'snot interested in what we have to offer to the world.

(20:15):
In the End Times ministry handing out stuff
if in fact that's where we are.
He is.
He is desperate to reestablish connection with us
because that's preemptive to anything else that he's doing.
You have to walk with me.
You have to hear from me.
You have to recognize and learn my voice.

(20:36):
And that is the beginning of all healing from anxietyand fear.
That's been my experience in the last 18 months.
And it has been one hell of a battleover the last 18 months.
And just to be candid with you guys,
there have been stretcheswhere I've laid in bed all day long,

(20:57):
and I thought about nothingother than removing myself from the story.
And I won't go in any more detail than that.
But that's how dark it's been,
and that's
in his kindness.
He's laying there in the bednext to me saying, Don't go there, but

(21:19):
what are you feeling?
Why do you think you're feeling left?
Let's go to the root of that,
because this is not going to go away.
You need me.
I think he's rescuing.
He's on a worldwide rescue missionwith his own children right now.

(21:42):
It's not just going after the lost.
It's going after the lost places in his sons and daughters.
Well, Mandy, thank you for for this one.
I would love to have another conversation with youabout that and reflecting on this,
because I know that.

(22:04):
How do you return to Joy?
That's another really big question that we could divemuch more deeply into, because in your work as a
as a counselor, as a therapist,that's really what you're about, is
let's let's get the truth out thereand then let's help you return back to Joy.
Can I say one thought
Jay, I can't I can't let this gobecause it feels so important

(22:28):
what you're talking about in connecting with God.
What we're talking about hearing from God,
letting him unearth the lies, really,and the wounded places, all this stuff,
and then bring in his voice of truth and his love and his
orientation to the big story.
You know, we were never meant to do this life alone.

(22:52):
And for whatever reason, I justI feel like I got to say that out loud.
You can edit it out later if you want to.
And you know that it's you are getting men together,
doing life in community.
When a person when I haven't been able to hear for myself,
a rescue has been

(23:12):
when someone else hears on my behalf, someone who loves me,
who hears from God, whom I trust.
It happened at a women's retreat last month.
I was just tangled up about something and God
gave this word of life to one of the other women,and she brought it so beautifully.
And I was in instant tears.

(23:34):
It was like identity, overwhelmed with love restored.
I was a different person.
One hour later, I was like, Well, let's go for the rest of the weekend
just burden lifted.
And that is the power of community,that that walks with God.
And that is willing to

(23:54):
really sacrifice for each other.
So I think that has been a gift to me.
And, you know, I think that can be a gift to otherswhen we do it for them to this year.
On one side of the family, we're not doing Christmas gifts.
And what we've said isyou can do baked goods or words of affirmation.
And so something I'm hoping to do isdo some listening prayer about my relatives

(24:17):
and see what God says and maybe bring that as just,
hey, here's what I feel like God said about you.
We can do that for each other.
That's the body of Christ.
And in days to come, none of us will make it alone.
No way. No way.
But if we have that kind of a tribe,those kinds of relationships,
when one person feels like they can't hear,maybe, maybe call in, phone a friend, right.

(24:42):
Call in the troops and get the band of brothers.
Get the band of sisters.
We can listen for each other, too,and hear each other's behalf and help clear
the gunk in the air
that's jamming up the airwaves.
There's just so much more to say,
but it just opens up a ginormous Costcosized can of of worms.

(25:05):
You know?
Mandy, thank you for your
your kindness and for your joyand for your vulnerability and sharing your story.
Would you
just would you pray for us as you feel led by the spirit?
I'd be honored.

(25:25):
Thanks so much, Jay
Papa.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That it is your heart's desire

(25:46):
for us to thrive,
to thrive
in the ways you made us
in union, with you utilizing the gifts you've given us
so we can be a part of the big story.
The only story?

(26:09):
I'm just.
Thank you for that invitation.
Thank you for the invitation to partner with you,
to be your sons and daughters.
To walk in the full rights of sonship and daughtership.
I think it's just
preposterous that you would extend that invitation to us.

(26:31):
But you have.
So I ask that for each one of us, for Jay,
for me, for the listeners,
that you would keep calling each of us by name,
and that we would lean in
and that we let go where we need to let go,

(26:54):
and that we would really receive
what it is you are giving to us.
Open our eyes
to see what's true
and ask that everything else would just fall away.
Jesus, we love you.

(27:15):
You are the one who has made union with God possible.
That's it.
No other name by which we can be saved.
So your kingdom come.
Jesus,
Your kingdom come.
We love you.
Pray these things in your name.

(27:36):
Amen.
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