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May 12, 2025 15 mins

Shawna’s daughter remembers being left at Costco, but Shawna remembers it differently.  Shawna admits there have been times she felt God had abandoned her. But God remembers it differently.  He didn’t leave. He never does. God is with you. You were created for a relationship with Him by Him! He’s not going to leave you.

Listener, Dawn, calls in to share when she lost her grandson God pressed deeper into her heart how he made us for relationship with Him. And that He was with her just as He was with her grandson.

What are you learning about obedience? As Shawna watched her daughter’s Australian Shepherd obey as slowly as a dog possibly could she saw herself in him. There are times when her obedience to God has been soooooo slow it was hardly recognizable that she was moving at all.

Listener, Jess, shares how her obedience led to greater surrender which is leading her to into her God-given destiny. Through obedience and surrender she is doing things she never thought she would – things God had planned for her before she even took her first breath!

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Episode Transcript

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S1 (00:03):
It's the Perry and Shawna podcast on the real life
journey with you, reminding you that you are ABBA's beloved
child and that Jesus has called you into his massive
mission to heal the world.

S2 (00:17):
God loves you so much. He created you so that
he could have a relationship with you. He wants to
hang out with you today. Whatever it is that you're doing,
he wants to do that as well. Just riding shotgun
right along with you. Because that's why he made you
for this relationship with him. My daughter Eden has a
memory from her childhood that really left an impression on

(00:38):
her heart. And it's not a good one. I just
as a mom that breaks my heart to have to
tell you that. But she remembers being at Costco and
I left her.

S1 (00:48):
Oh.

S2 (00:48):
And it was very, very scary for her to be left.
She was probably about four years old ish at the
time that she has this memory. She felt like I
forgot her. She actually felt like I forgot about her
and I just left Costco, as if somehow the groceries
were more important than my child. Now, if you're a mom,
you know. Yeah, we're not perfect. And we get frazzled

(01:08):
and we make mistakes 100%. But I tell you what,
we do not forget where our babies are. We do
not forget that we are mothers. And I've asked her specifically, like,
break it down for me. What happened? How do you
remember the situation and and how did you get back
to me? And she said, oh, well, Nana was there.
And then she took me back to her house. And

(01:30):
then you came over later and you picked me up
and I'm like, honey, I'm telling you, as her mom,
I did not leave that child at Costco. And if
she went home with Nana, it's because I made a
plan with Nana in advance for her to go home
with Nana. I never left her. I never forgot about her,
but she felt like I did. She felt like I

(01:50):
had abandoned her. There have been times in my own
life where I have felt like God has left me.
Like he abandoned me. Like just God. Do you even
see my circumstances? Do you even care? Do you know
what I'm going through right now? Like where are you?
Why would you leave me right now? I'm so lost.
I have felt like he wasn't there with me. But

(02:12):
that actually doesn't mean that God wasn't there with me.
Eden's feelings are totally valid, and they matter, but that
doesn't mean that she remembers it accurately. God doesn't leave us.
He does not walk away. He's never going to forsake you.
He's with you right now. And that with Eunice that's
going on right now is always going to be your reality.

(02:32):
Because he's such a great dad. He's the perfect dad.
He loves you so much. And you can trust that
whether you feel like he's right here, right now, all
up in your business, tending to your needs and loving
on your heart and wiping your tears, or whether you
feel like you are entirely alone and you just don't
know where God is at in the moment that you're

(02:54):
walking through right now, he is with you. He is
right here, right now with you because he created you
for that very thing to be with you. Our God
loves you so much and he is with you all
of the time. We'd love to hear your testimony of

(03:17):
the witness of God. Don, how did you experience the
witness of God?

S3 (03:22):
I would have to say that it was on the
worst day of my life. And that was 14 years
ago when our first grandson was born. Little £9, eight
ounce beautiful boy, and he was already in heaven in
Jesus arms. And the thing is that that day I

(03:44):
felt God's God with me, and it was through His Word.
In the midst of all the grieving and the sorrow
and the disappointment, there was also a peace. And it's
that peace that passes understanding that God talks about. Because
I knew God was with me. I knew that God
was with my grandson, you know, and that my grandson

(04:08):
was fully in his presence, and that this was not
a surprise to God. This was not a oops, you know.
And then as I processed all of that a couple
months later, I was I was just processing with God.
I was never angry. I said one morning to the Lord,
I said, Lord, I just don't understand why you created
him to take him so soon. I just that's something
I'm just not comprehending and not audible. But I heard

(04:30):
God speak to me and he said, Don, it's because
I wanted him with me. I wanted him to exist.
He's mine, just like you are. And I love him.
I wanted this person to be an eternity with me.
And I thought, oh, okay, Lord, I get it, I

(04:51):
get it. Even though it's hard, you know, to not
be able to to have him in my life like
he's he's with God. And that's what he was created
to be. And that's what I was created to be.
And I just realized that a lot of times on Earth,
I kind of get short sighted on the eternal perspective
of things. Thanks.

S2 (05:09):
Thank you for sharing that. That is that is heartbreaking.
And I'm so sorry for your loss, but so grateful
that God would use even that to tell you I'm
right here with you right now. I am in it
with you. Listen, God doesn't leave us. Even when we
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, on
our hardest days, on our best days, on our completely

(05:31):
average days. That God who made you and created you
to be in relationship with him, is not going to
walk away from you. He's going to walk with you
through it. He's going to see you to the other side.
That's just who he is. What is God teaching you

(05:54):
about obedience as Christ followers were disciples and disciple literally
means learner. So learners are learning to obey all the time.
It's not a one and done. I wish it was,
but it's this ongoing thing. And I have to tell you,
my daughter Brynn has been with us for the last
six months. She's back in her flat in Brno in
the Czech Republic, brought her to the airport yesterday morning

(06:16):
and she arrived there, flew through the night and just
arrived at her flat. Well, probably about a half an
hour ago, but she had her dog, blue. He's an
Australian shepherd with her during the six months that she
was here. And one of the things that I learned
about obedience through Baloo is he loves Bran and he
wants to obey everything that she says. He has no
desire to disobey her at all, but sometimes she asks

(06:40):
him to do something he just doesn't want to do.
And it's wild because he doesn't want to get in trouble.
He doesn't want to be disobedient. So he does what
she's asking as slowly as you possibly can. Like if
if he tells, if she tells him to sit and
he's standing, you've never seen a dog move their rump

(07:03):
so slow in your entire life like he's being obedient.
But my goodness, he's doing it reluctantly. We are called
to be obedient to God and I am on the
journey with you. I want to be quicker. I don't
want to be slow to respond to God. I want
to be quicker to respond in obedience. What is God

(07:23):
teaching you about obedience, Jess?

S4 (07:26):
So I've been a Christian since I was 19, and
it wasn't until I was probably about 31 when the
Lord had really started impressing on my heart the importance
of obedience. And that obedience was that attending church on
a Sunday morning wasn't necessarily obedience, that he was calling

(07:46):
me into deeper relationship with him. And in order to
get there, I really needed to full send, be joyfully
obedient to the things that he was asking me to
do and the steps in this season of my life.
It had looked like quitting a job that I had
been at for seven years. He was asking me to
be obedient and not know exactly what was happening, and

(08:08):
I did it. And it was great and it was scary.
And I ended up getting a job on staff at church.
And then there were more opportunities to be obedient to
the things that he was asking me to do. Those
things looking like speaking up in meetings or eventually speaking
on stage on a Sunday morning, all of these things

(08:29):
that were so scary to me. Um, but I knew
that he was asking me to do it. And every
time I stepped out in obedience with expectation, he met
me in those moments and he carried me through them.
So I got really good at being obedient.

S2 (08:43):
That is amazing. What a great testimony. Someday, Jess, I'm
going to grow up and I'm going to be like you,
and I'm going to be able to say, I got
really good at being obedient. You and I are called
to be obedient, like, lovingly obedient to the God who
loves us. When he gives us instructions, when he opens

(09:03):
up a door and he says, I want you to
walk through it. Then we walk through it in obedience
and and then we walk into this whole brand new space.
I feel like that's what obedience has been for me.
Or really, my walk with the Lord has been for me.
Just one step that opens up new space. And then
I follow Jesus into the next room, which opens up
this whole other space, and then follow him into the

(09:25):
next room. This is ongoing obedience. And Jess, we were
talking a minute ago about obedience. You said you got
really good at obedience. What did that lead to for you?

S4 (09:35):
There's this moment, after about a year and a half,
of just intentionally being obedient to what God was asking
me to do, that he started to ask me to surrender.
And it started popping up in different ways, different songs,
books that people were giving me scriptures, but it was
always just this word, surrender. And it was so insistent

(09:56):
and consistent that I started to get a little bit
salty because I was like, hello, look at me, I
am doing all of these things. I am uncomfortable all
the time. I am growing so fast I can't even
keep track of it. I am surrendered. Yeah. And he
very clearly spoke to me and he said, you have

(10:17):
been obedient, but you are not yet fully surrendered to me.
And it just step back and go, whoa, those are
different things.

S2 (10:27):
So what did you learn about the difference? What was
the more that he wanted from you? What is surrender?
That obedience isn't.

S4 (10:34):
What started with me understanding that I could be joyfully
obedient without being fully surrendered. But I couldn't be fully
surrendered without first being obedient. And so he was showing
to me that there was like a process. There's a
step like learning. This is good. Not being fully surrendered
wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He was just encouraging me deeper.

S2 (10:56):
Mhm.

S4 (10:56):
I'm a food motivated person. And so for me obedience
is kind of like if you're making cookies, sugar cookies
and you have a cookie cutter obedience is like the
cookie cutter. Like there's the cookie, you put it in
the dough, you press it down and the same shape
comes out like that's obedience. God is asking me to
do something, and then I replicate that, and I do

(11:19):
it as best as I can. But surrender was so
much more encompassing as to who I am as a
person and my identity, and letting him work in and
through me in becoming who he wants me to be,
not just do the things that he's asking me to do.
And so for me, that's like the cookie dough.

S2 (11:40):
Like, yeah. Come on. Like the very.

S4 (11:41):
Substance of cookie dough. Yeah. I'll be whatever kind of
cookie dough you want me to be and become what
you want me to be. But who I am, what
you're molding me to be. I'm giving that to you.

S2 (11:52):
That is a great analogy of the difference of permeating
versus like, ah, you know, shapeshift and do this thing
that you want me to do. Surrender being I'm going
to be who you want me to be, not just
do what you want me to do, but I will
be who you want me to be. What are you

(12:13):
learning about obedience? It's a conversation we're having. We'd love
to have you join the conversation. (800) 968-8930. Zero. Stephanie texted in.
She said, God's teaching me to love and have grace
with people who are very different from me. He's growing
me and being patient and waiting for his timing. That's
so good. Thank you for sharing that, Stephanie. And as

(12:34):
God is doing that work in you, your life is
showing people more and more who Jesus is. That's what
I love about obedience. As we say yes to the
things that God's calling us to, we look more like
him to the world around us. We're becoming who God
created us to be. And I think oftentimes with obedience,
it's such a pathway. One step leads to the next step,

(12:57):
which leads to the next step. And if we knew
where we were going to end up at the end,
I think it would completely freak us out. So God
kind of lets us just take it one step at
a time.

S4 (13:09):
I was just talking to my friend about this from
college that I haven't talked to in a minute, and
she was like, isn't it wild that where we're at
now is never where we expected to be? And I
was so grateful because if my reality right now was
what I wanted my future to be back then. It
would be so lame and so limited and so not

(13:32):
as fulfilling.

S2 (13:33):
I resonate with that one big time. I mean, just,
I never in a million years would have dreamt that
I would ever be having this conversation with you from
a radio station, you know, in the studio on a microphone. Like,
what the what?

S4 (13:46):
Yeah.

S2 (13:46):
God's plan for us is just wildly better than we
could possibly think or imagine. And and probably, I think
in my own circumstances, a lot of the plan that's
not revealed to me is because if he did, I
would probably freak out and run for the hills.

S4 (14:06):
Yeah, he is so good at growing us. If we're
willing and submitted and open even just a little bit.
He is so good at growing us at a pace
that we can handle and like layering on opportunities to
continue growing and developing. And then we have the season
where we can just walk it out. And then he

(14:28):
adds some more layers and it's so beautiful.

S2 (14:31):
You know what. And that's just what good parents do.
You don't teach your child or encourage your child to,
you know, crawl and then never bring them to a
place of walking. Never encourage them to take steps, pushing
out space in front of our kids so that they
can step into what's next for them. We want to
tee them up for success. And I think the thing

(14:53):
that's about surrender and and obedience that's so scary is
that we're afraid that we're going to fail, and we
don't realize that our perfect father is pushing out space
for us to succeed.

S1 (15:06):
Thanks for letting Barry and Shawna walk the real life
journey with you. The content from the Perry and Shawna
podcast comes from their live show Barry and Shawna Mornings
on 89.3 Moody Radio, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reach out to
us by texting 800 968 8930 and please subscribe.
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