Dr. Michelle Jeremie is a vibrant advocate for embracing joy in the journey of the 1Life experience and is a recognized voice of clarity, healing, and connection. She serves as a ministry leader, educator and Consultant who is called and committed to building up the people of God by closing the gaps between theology and reality.

IG: @‌mjeremie

Website: www.livethe1life.com

Hi, I'm Angel.

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God chose for us to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Dr. Michelle.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm actually currently in Toronto, Toronto, Canada.

Okay.

For some reason, it feels a bit Caribbean, your accent, yeah?

But I could be wrong.

No, no, because I actually just returned from Trinidad on last Thursday.

So I spent a lot of time in Trinidad.

That's very cool.

Are you from the south or the north part of Trinidad?

No, we're from from the Trinity area.

Okay.

I would consider that north as a south guy, but it's really the east.

It's really the east.

That's wonderful.

So how did you come to meet Jesus?

I have a history of spirituality in my family, right?

So when you trace back, I have a grandmother who was devoted to Jesus.

I have parents that love the Lord.

I had a family that loved the Lord.

And so I do have a rich heritage of God in my family.

But what I love to say is that even though you have the heritage, even though you have the history, every person has to encounter Christ for themselves, right?

And sometimes we can think that we can just rest on the history alone and allow that to be our entrance into the kingdom.

But through my own experience, like I said, I have a history of my family knowing God.

But what I liken it to is through my childhood, I was involved in church, involved in ministry.

But when I went to university, when I went to university my first year, you know, you just, you start to experiment in the sense of, you know, trying a different lifestyle.

And especially when you've been a little sheltered, it has an appeal.

And not an appeal for just doing foolishness in that sense, but being part of an in crowd, being part of, you know, a group that is a popular group.

And I remember through my first year, still loving God, still going to church.

But also I like to say it, I'm one foot in, one foot out, you know?

So more of the cultural Christianity.

And it's in my, I want to say the beginning of my second year, I had an encounter with the Lord at the back of a bus, a public transit bus.

I was on my way home from an event, and I just felt the presence of the Lord.

And it was just me at the back of the bus, and I started to weep, right?

And I started to weep.

And through that encounter, I just started to say, Lord, you have me completely, you have me complete, you have me completely.

And so that is one, that is what I usually use as my real turning point, you know what I mean?

And from that, life really, really changed.

The Lord led me down a different pathway, even when I was going to become a psychologist, he adjusted that.

I went into seminary, and that's really what kick-started the life that I now live.

Yeah.

Have you ever felt anything like that again?

Well, yes, you know, and it's interesting, because at the beginning, you know, you don't really understand exactly what it is, but you know it's God, right?

But then as you're walking with God, you become, I don't want to use the word familiar, but I want to use a word like, the better word would be that it is the expectation, as you're walking with God, that you will encounter his presence, that you will feel his peace, that you will feel his joy and see his direction.

So I have felt it in different ways, but it's more now an awareness, an awareness of his abiding presence and his leading in my everyday life.

I'm at the point now with the podcast where I'm having these conversations, and I love to recognize patterns and how dots connect.

And one of the latest patterns that I've been seeing is how that initial encounter has within it signs of what you do in your ministry.

So would you say that there's any dots that you connect from the perspective of, for example, the presence of God and how you bring that when you're ministering or even the solitude of God being able to touch someone without what would be the standard, you're in a crusade or you're in a service, right?

And have you seen such of a pattern on that?

Well, I have to first say, I love questions.

I love, I love good questions, right?

Anybody who knows me knows I ask a lot of questions, right?

And I think that that question is a fantastic question.

And it's actually one that has not been asked of me before.

So I take great delight in answering it and just unfolding what's packed in the answer, because you keep mentioning the connect the dots.

And in the ministry that the Lord has allowed me to develop, one of the curriculum that I offer is something called connecting the dots, right?

And it's the idea of looking for the patterns and looking for the ways that God uses certain situations to guide us without us really knowing it.

So for my first encounter, that encounter that I had that I call my turning point to now, yes, I definitely, definitely can see it because the things that that I advocate for, especially in living for Christ, right?

The core of my message is something that he's given me called the one life.

And that is closing the gaps between the word and our reality, you know?

And the idea that it is not just the church me, the work me, the friend me, the family me, but it's one me.

There's a spiritual layer to everything and living with that awareness and that recognition every day of our lives, right?

And using his presence and his word and his spirit to inform every decision, not just things that we would consider to be spiritual decisions.

And so I thank you for that question, because it's just giving me greater clarity that how he has met me truly within it was the science and the direction of what, not only what the ministry in my life would look like, but what it would feel like and what it would carry in it.

So I thank you for that.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Yeah, it's truly an encounter you experienced.

Within it, there's enough fuel, not just for your generation, but for generations to come.

And that's the multiplication factor that exists as well in testing or proofing the reality of how God befriends us and is with us and is a father and a friend.

Really, really love the story for its simplicity, yeah?

But yet beauty.

So for the person who is listening who may be in transition, what would you say to them?

You know, I heard a phrase used a couple some weeks ago, and the person who was speaking said that when they were walking through a time of change, the phrase that the Lord gave them was grace and space, right?

And it's something that I have adopted in as I go through my own transition now, not only for my own life, but those people who are part of my life who are impacted by my transition, right?

Because, you know, when God calls, he does give peace, but not everybody sees the vision the same way.

And so when we go through transition, it's not just us, it's those that are connected to us that will also experience change.

And as we know, a change is not easy.

And so I want to leave that word with those who would be listening and going through their own time of change and transition is grace and space.

First of all, the grace of the Lord.

I mean, there are different understandings, different levels of understanding for the word grace.

But one of the aspects of it is that it's the empowerment to be able to do what he has called us to do, not apart from him, but with him.

And it's the empowerment to make the challenging or the hard decisions, the empowerment, excuse me, for us to be able to stand for what God is saying and allow God to work on us, but also on others in his timing.

So that's the aspect of the grace.

But then the space is that transition's a little messy, right?

Like for myself, I'm a strategist, an administrator.

So, you know, you want to have things neatly in boxes.

And God is continually showing me that you need to have agility and flexibility to go with him.

And so the space, give ourselves the space to learn a new thing, not to try to put labels on it just yet, because we really don't even know the fullness of what it looks like until we come through it.

And so the space for us to be able to make the mistakes and get back up and not be too hard on ourselves, not be too hard on others, and to understand that everything that God does, he does well.

And he always, he always finishes what he starts.

For the person who is listening, who's, you know, captivated by your voice, your story, what's the best way for them to be introduced to you?

Okay, well, I mean, either on social media or my website, my website is www.livetheonelife.com and the one is actually the number one.

So live the one number one life.com or on Instagram at M Jeremy J E R E M I E.

And that's it.

Yeah.

And we'll definitely add the links, folks.

Yeah.

So if it's challenging, like me to write or text what I hear, yeah, the links are in the show notes.

Yeah, we'll definitely put that.

Yeah.

Five years from today, message in a bottle.

You're listening to this conversation.

What's a message you'd leave for future you?

Oh, the message I would leave is you already have the victory.

Dr. Michelle, a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on What is Inspired by 12 Makeup.