Well, as we welcome you back again to another podcast of Struggling Well, this is a special podcast. insurance.
This is the 100th podcast that we have done since November 1st, 2022 and now all the way to the month of October in 2024. And it's hard for me to believe that we've done a hundred of these things.
It wouldn't be hard for those of you that know me, it's not hard for me to come up with a hundred of anything. But we have to put in context that Jimmy is an introvert. And so for an introvert and a wacko extrovert fun though, I'm So fun for us to do a hundred of these things is huge.
Yeah. And the third person that you've heard his voice every now and then but not always is that's been with us for all 100 of these is Tim Briggs who has produced 100 episodes. So thank you Tim for your work and your efforts. And some of you have come to hear this podcast
and may not realize that the podcast is just one aspect of a ministry that Suzi and I founded. in 2019 called Tandem Spirituality. And it's our way of giving back to the church, the big C church, to develop and help cultivate healthy relationships in order to impact the kingdom of God. and this was a way that we felt coming out of the pandemic that we could have our voices heard. And we're just overwhelmed by the number of people who have listened to this.
It's been really amazing. And what we love is we get to do it together
because under the umbrella of tandem. Jimmy and I do a number of things separately from Bible study to mentoring to speaking and all that stuff. But the podcast is the place where we come together and we let you sit with us at our kitchen table and listen in as we do what we do every day, which is just talk and debrief and laugh and
Yeah. And then there's a grouping of people that maybe don't have direct connection to this produ the producing of this podcast, but have had certainly had a connection to Tandem's ongoing ministry, which is those of you who have been led by the Lord to faithfully give financially to support the ministry. we can't tell you how much we appreciate that. It takes away from us having to worry about where's the next thing going to come from. You've been generous and used God's used your faithfulness to the ministry to help support it.
And then we have a grouping of people the board of Tandem Spiritual ity that has been amazing. men and women that not only let us dream and have come alongside us in our dream, but they've given form to it and texture and they ask us a lot of good questions and they help us to refine what our mission and our dream is so that we're not just we're just shooting in the air at no target. we had a board meeting a few weeks ago and it was really almost a time of worship just to be together. and to hear them speak from the word and encouraging us to carry on with what we're doing. And without them, we wouldn't have any place to bounce off ideas, nor would we have any good instruction as to what we're supposed to do.
Yeah. And one of the actual tangible byproducts of that is one board member who has pestered me for a number of years to complete writing a second book. Well, that book is hopefully going to be available and to be in your hands in the next few months. And so,
and what's the title?
The title is no surprise. It's called Struggling Well.
Struggling Well,
and having said that, I do want us to bring us back to God's word here in this, not just celebrating the hundred podcast, which is certainly worth celebrating. But when we've talked about struggle, we've often times referred to the struggles that have been going on in our world, the struggles that we know are going on in people's worlds who listen. The internal struggles of living in a broken fallen world.
Some many things that we can't control, many things that we wish we could control, but we don't have the ability to. And I think it's easy to look at those external struggles, which we all have, and they're different. Some people it's health, some people it's jobs, some people it's kids, some people it's marriage. It can go on and on. But I think we can oftenimes overlook the fact that there's a struggle that we all have internally as well. And in the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah says this to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Speaking for the Lord, he says, "Plow up the hard ground of your hearts. Do not waste your good seed among thorns. Oh people of Judah and Jerusalem. Surrender your pride and power. Change your hearts before the Lord." And I love that picture. we don't live in an agrarian culture. Now some of you may have backyard gardens. I don't know. We never have been able to success do that. But
I have a black thumb.
You have a black thumb. Okay. but I grew up going to my grandparents farm as a kid and I can remember my grandfather getting on his tractor and having to turn o over the soil that had gotten hard and gotten baked and it was in the Carolinas and that hard red clay that had to be broken up before he would plant seeds for that garden. And a lot of us don't live in that world. There are some farmers who still have to do those things, but So when he says, "Plow up the hard ground of your hearts," it's the idea of turning over the soil of my heart and allowing God to sew his seed of his word in my life to surrender my p my pride and my power and to change my heart before the Lord. I love that verse and I think it's a great reminder for us that sometimes the struggle we have and this idea of struggling well has to begin with an internal look at our hearts.
And you know when I look back on 100 episodes and when we started this out and named it struggling well, I think we were very innocently moving into we want to help people to struggle in ways that are that will ground them and grow them. As is typical of God, he takes your poultry offering of your time and maybe some abilities that you have and he says, "I'm gonna take you deeper. I'm going to This isn't about you just giving out my word. I'm going to use the word that you are preparing as and looking at to share with other people to plow up the ground of your heart. And we can say that in since our first episode began until today and it will continue to go on that God has so mercifully he has plowed up. He's told us to plow up our hearts to come before him and confess our sin and to be authentic. and honest before him. Not easy. Not easy to do at all. But the people that we were when we started our very first episode of struggling well, he has changed us. He's changed us through his word, he's changed us in the middle of the struggle. And while none of us think, "Oh, yay. I can't wait for a struggle." But you know what? That's life, you guys. And also, that's the place where growth occurs. There is no I'm going to use an illustration here which I hope makes sense. For anybody that likes to drink wine, there is no good wine unless you squeeze the grapes and get out the good wine. Grapes are just grapes. But until they go through the pressure of what they have to go through to make a wine, they're just grapes. But God never leaves us in that condition. He's all as we give into him, he always squeezes us with gentle, merciful compass. passionate hands to bring forth something that is way beyond what we thought.
Yeah. And so as you as I challenge you with the struggle that goes on internally from Jeremiah 4:4, I want you to hear that it's what I get challenged with myself. I want to surrender my pride. I want to surrender my power. I want my heart to change. I want my heart to be soft before the Lord. And so Well, I'm not asking, we're not asking anything of you that we don't take very seriously for ourselves as well. And you know, my simple def definition of what it means to struggle well is never ever turn my face away from Christ
because he is the answer. He is the hope and he is the one that brings about through the spirit who lives within us. He brings about change. And so that's our challenge. Not that you have to do it on your own, but to lean into to who Christ is what he's done for you and the spirit who lives inside of you to bring about that change.
One last shout out before we go.
Of course.
Of course. Yeah. I always have a PS. we want to thank those of you that have prayed for us. oftentimes we'll be in a location and somebody will say, "I pray for you and your husband and your family often and we may barely know them if we know them at all." But that's the way the body of Christ works. Well, and so for many of you that pray for us and have lifted our name before the throne of God, thank you so much for that. And we of course would love to do that for you. And so our information is on our website. You can get in touch with us there. And if there is something that you want to struggle with us on, we will we'd love to do that with you, pray for you. but thank you for being there for us.
Yeah. And thanks for being faithful listeners and for spreading the word. And we hope we'll come back with 101 next week.
Jimmy, congratulations on 100 episodes. Tim,
congratulations on your incredible production of this incredible podcast.
And we want to also shout out to Gus, our dog, for staying quiet during this podcast.
Yes. Thank you all so much.
Have a great week.
Thanks for joining us. To learn more about the Struggling Well podcast, visit tand from spirituality. com.