Today on the podcast we're sharing a message by Emily Jamieson from our winter Collide conference that was just too good to keep to ourselves! Emily is an incredible leader in the Younglife space, as an academic coach, and in her own family and ministry involvement. We were so blessed to be joined by her and are excited to share her poignant message about hearing God's voice.

Do you know Jesus simply as teacher? Or do you know him as healer? Do you know him simply as healer? Or do you know him as provider? Do you know him as provider?

But do you know him as friend? You might know him as friend, but do you know him as king? You might know him as king, but do you know him as your counselor, as your savior?

The God who sees me.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are.

So that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. This is Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide and I'm so glad that you hopped on for our podcast today.

I'm super excited to have you guys be exposed to Emily Jamieson. She spoke at a collide event that we had this year.

And I met Emily actually at Washington Family Ranch, a young life camp last summer where my kids were at camp and I was hanging out for five days or so with my husband. And she is hilarious, so talented, very involved and has been three years with Young Life Ministry.

And as well, she's heavily involved with Live Salted. She's an academic coach and works with non profits, raising up the next generation of leaders. She will make you laugh. She'll make you cry.

She's a mom of four great boys and wife to an amazing man. And so today I'm just gonna press play on the talk that she gave at one of our conferences this year. And I know that it will bless you.

So check it out.

Good evening. I am so glad to be with you. I actually did have a couple pictures just so you can have a visual of my people. So.

So my tall one, Pace Wonder Marshall is on the far right there. And then we have Tucker, Bennett, Wesley, and Finn is three.

We joke that he's the finale, but you know, every family picture that really isn't the picture, right? Because this is the picture, right? Everyone's like, the one that's like, hey, I'm still happy.

One's crying, one's mad, one's like, are you kidding me? Still? And I was probably just screaming. So, you know, let's be honest, just want to be real with you right from the get go.

It is not always how it seems, is it? I'm going to pray for us, and we are going to dive in. Lord Jesus, we thank you that your spirit is here. We don't have to invite you in.

You say that you've never left us. You will always be with us. And you are with us right here in this space.

God, I ask that as I speak that you would translate between my mouth and these people's hearts exactly what it is that your spirit wants to convey. God, give us peace. Give us your voice. We love you. We pray that in Jesus name, amen.

As I have been praying and preparing for you these last months, my heart has swelled with this excitement to know you. And I look around the room and I know, like Willow said, I can't know every story, but I know one that does.

And God knows your very story, every detail, and in fact, has been downloading into my heart just a sense of who is sitting in this room. Women who are brave, women who are leaders, women who are courageous and kind, women who are upending systems of oppression.

Women who are making change in their little spaces, in their kitchens and in their minivans and in spaces in work and in spaces all over this community. And I also know that in this room there are women who are bleeding out. In fact, I would say all of us in some area are bleeding out.

And we're going to dive into a story in a few minutes, but we have a little bit of an on ramp. Am I clicking? I'm going to take this off. We have a little bit of an on ramp here.

And I have one goal for us tonight, one goal, and that's intimacy with God. I think the greatest threat to us in our world is alienation. It's separation. In fact, the word sin literally means separation. It's missing the mark.

The perfect purpose of God, which is to be in relationship with us. And the enemy has lied to us and told us that we are somehow separate from God.

And I trust that often our horizontal issue of separateness is actually a vertical one. That when we come to believe rightly about who God is, we will then understand rightly who we are.

And then we will be able to relate to one another in a way that is authentic and true. And so intimacy with God I've titled this talk, Love is on the way. Where are you on the way to? Love is on the way to you, with you. For you.

Love is in you. God says, I am love. He is with us. And so I want to do three things.

We're gonna grow in intimacy with the Lord in three Ways to fall in love with His Word, to hear his voice, and to know more of his character. It's a tall order. I'm excited. And we have like 30 minutes. You guys ready to fall in love with God's Word?

I remember when I was in college and I was just really beginning to make the transition between believing in God and knowing Him. You know, there's a difference, right? A grand difference between believing God and knowing Him.

It is this insane long journey that's about 12 inches between your head and your heart. And I remember people would say, oh my gosh, open the Word of God. It's like living water. And I would open my Bible, so excited.

And then it was more like dry sand. Anyone? Anyone? You open that Word and you're like, this is not alive. No, no, I'm actually quite bored. Okay, good. So what now?

And the way that I related to the Word of God, it was like, it was a whole bunch of information that I was supposed to memorize a resume about this God that I was supposed to get to know. But we don't know people by way of information.

When I introduce you to my best friend, I actually don't even really know where she went to high school. To be honest, I can't give you the resume. But I can tell you about experience, I can tell you about her character.

I can tell you about times we cried together, laughed together, fought together, reconciled together. It's an experiential relationship. That's the relationship that God wants with us. Not just information, but revelation that transforms.

And so there's three different words in the scripture that are translated as the Word. The first, the most common, graphy, graphite, like we get, you know, graphite with a pencil. And so graphi is the written word of God.

It's most often translated as Scripture, but also as the Word. For example, in the Word, when it says the Word is living and active, sharper than any double edged sword.

And then the Word is useful for rebuke and correction and all these things. Those are graphi, the scriptures. But then there's another word that's translated as the Word, the Logos.

And it's interesting because the logos in John 1 it says in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning, Jesus was with God.

In the beginning, Jesus come, God in a bod, the living Word, God made flesh. It says in scripture that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God.

If we want to know who God is, how He Thinks, how he speaks, how he relates to us.

We need look no further than the person of Jesus and we begin to understand his character, how disruptive he is, how unpredictable he is, how compassionate is he.

It says here in John 5:39, Jesus looks at some people that he's speaking to, and he says, you search the scriptures diligently, thinking that in them you have eternal life. Yet these are the very scriptures that testify about me, and you refuse to come to me to have life.

See, the written word is actually a window through which to see Jesus. It's a window through which to see Jesus. There's a third word, and this is one that I think might surprise you. And it's rhema. It's a pretty word.

R H E M A rhema. And rhema means the uttered word. It's the spoken word. And all throughout Scripture we see the rhema word of God.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by the very rhema word, word of God. Not words on a page, but words uttered from the living God, spirit to spirit, deep crying out to deep.

And faith comes by hearing and hearing through the rhema word of Christ. Surprising, right? I've always heard that that was just merely the scriptures. And it is.

I'll help you with that in a moment if you're struggling right now.

But the rhema word of Christ, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the rhema word of God, the spoken, revealed word of God. See, we have the scriptures that are a window through which to see Jesus.

So we read them and we understand them, and we look at the person of Christ, we recognize all of the scriptures, point to the Messiah, the same Savior, and then we get to know his character so that we can recognize his voice in the world. Because Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He spoke then and he speaks now. And he's going to speak to you tonight.

I don't know if you know you can hear God's voice. I have to say I struggled with it for years and years. When my second boy was. Oh, he was in my belly. Yes, here's the story.

And I was at a Young Life camp, and I was sitting speaking with a dear friend, Bill Page, who's a fantastic speaker within young life. Just a wonderful big teddy bear of a black man who was a cop in New York City.

And actually quite scary at first, but actually delightful and wonderful. He's a dear friend. And I looked at Bill this one day. We had become friends.

We're at camp and I'M sitting at the table, pregnant with this little boy, thinking that I should know by now because we've been in ministry for, I don't know, six years. But I'm struggling, wrestling. Do I hear God's voice? I mean, I know. I know things resonate in my spirit.

When I read the word, when a friend says something to me, when I sing a song, there's things that resonate. But can I actually hear his voice? I've never heard the voice of God audibly. Is it something in me I don't understand?

And I looked at Bill across the table. I said, bill, I'm just kind of wrestling, like, I just. I don't know if I can hear God.

He looked at me and kind of gave me the sideways glance, like, I do not have time for this. And he looked at me and said, are you his sheep? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, then you hear his voice. And he stood up and he walked away.

That was the whole conversation. The whole conversation. So I ask you, are you his sheep? Yes. Then you hear his voice. It is as simple as that.

And so I'm gonna add a little bit to that so you can understand, because you hear his voice all the time. The kingdom of God is like a radio wave. If I had a little old school receiver right here, you know, a radio with the antenn.

There's actually all kinds of waves around the room. And we could turn that little dial and we would get static, but then we would get talk radio.

We might get a little Latin music, We might get some hip hop, we might get a little classical. I do love classical. I was into orchestra for years. Guys played the violin.

But just like that, in the kingdom of God, there is a voice that we can tune into and we are made to receive. There is also another voice in the world, though, that we hear all the time. It's like the static on the radio. It's most often this other voice.

Because there is an enemy in the world.

Who.

He wants to do everything that he can to separate us from the love of God. He can't. He can only lie.

But he wants to come at you with accusation and condemnation and lies, to divide you and basically to give you the illusion that you are separate from God. It says in Scripture that our enemy is not flesh and blood. Our enemy is powers and principalities.

Essentially, it's anything that sets itself up against the truth of God. Anything that sets itself up against the truth of God.

And we know in Psalm 139 that there is nowhere we can go apart from the love of God, not even death.

Jesus proved this on the cross, that even death cannot keep us from the powerful loving who came into this dead man's bones and caused his heart to beat again and breath to come in and out of his lungs and to walk again free. That is our God, who goes straight through death. And on the other side is life.

And so let me give you just a little filter that has helped me to understand how to discern the voices. Yes. Okay, so there's two voices. First off, there's the voice of God.

Now, what I'd like to propose is that it's the voice that is in you, but isn't you. So think about this. We have our mind of flesh. It says in Romans. We have a carnal mind, a mind of flesh.

And it's really good for, like, math and following recipes and things like that.

And we basically, with that mind, we agree with the truth of God, or we agree with the lies of the enemy, sometimes knowingly, most often unknowingly. And so what we need to understand is, what are these two voices? The voice of God, it always sounds like Jesus.

It is always in accordance with scripture. So like I said before, the rhema word of God, the people who penned these scriptures, they were hearing the rhema word of God.

It is spirit breathed, right?

So as those I think about, Paul, and as he heard from God, he let that spirit of God speak to his spirit, and it came out of his hand and flowed onto paper for you and I to read so that we would understand what God sounded like, so that we might discern his voice today for ourselves. How beautiful is that? And so as we read the word of God, we begin to tune our ear, our spiritual ears to his voice.

And so the word of God always sounds like Jesus. It's always in line with his character. It's always in line with the word of God. It always comes with the fruit of the spirit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. Thank you, Jesus. I need some of that. And it always comes with freedom.

Not freedom necessarily from our circumstances, but freedom within our circumstances, where we no longer have the fear of man, where we no longer have the fear of death, where we no longer have the fear of what people think of us, what we are, what we aren't. Freedom comes on the other side. We have the voice of the enemy. And the enemy's voice sounds like fear, guilt and shame. Fear, guilt and shame.

And the thumbprint of the enemy is self promotion and self protection. Can we all nod? As women, we know that one well, right?

And so if you are walking into a room like this and you come in the back and you suddenly see you know someone else and immediately that little voice pops up that's like, oh, you do not have an outfit like her, or you do not look like her, or her story is not your story. Does that sound like fear, guilt and shame? Or does that sound like the spirit of God? Fear, guilt and shame, right?

And so we can let the enemy dictate our circumstances, or we can say, oh no, no, not today, Satan. And we can actually tune our ear to the voice of God and say, what do you say?

And he says, yeah, she doesn't have your outfit and your outfit's great and she's beautiful and you should probably go talk to her because the enemy's trying to separate you because she's got something for you and you have something for her. You can walk into any room and you can either submit to the voice of the enemy.

Fear, guilt, shame, alienation, or we can tune our ear to the voice of God, which always ends in freedom and unity. But we need to not let our circumstances define who God is. We need to let God define our circumstances. Can I say that again?

We need to not let our circumstances define who God is. We need to let God define our circumstances.

So as we understand, as we understand how to discern God's voice from the enemy, as we understand that, as we fall in love with the word of God, the written word that gives us a viewpoint into the person of God who then speaks to us in our day to day scripture is transformed and we read it with an entirely different lens.

I remember when I started reading the scriptures differently because I realized that the very God I was reading about is the one that I could talk to. And so I would begin to read scripture and say, jesus, what were you doing there? Why did you say that? What's between the lines?

What's even inside that word? There is so much that's not said. Does it ever frustrate you? I mean, my goodness, I'm like, that was that story. Holy guacamole. It's like.

And they were surprised. I would be peeing my pants. You know, I mean, it seems so understated. And so I asked the Lord to infuse my imagination.

Don't you think that God made every single single part of us good and made every single part of us to receive from God? So instead of using our imagination to run into trips of anxiety, into the future, or depression in the past.

Couldn't we lend our imagination to the living God? Behold the living God and ask him, what do you have for me? What do you see for me?

So let us lend to him our imagination and ask that the spirit of God speak to us. It says in scripture we have the mind of Christ. Christ, which means that we will hear his thoughts in our thoughts.

We will hear his thoughts in our thoughts. And so let's lend him our imagination as we unpack the scripture.

Tonight we're in Mark 5, as Willow mentioned, and I'm reading in the voice translation, and I have it up on the screen for you. And then we'll unpack it together. I'm going to unpack it with you, just like I did about a month ago.

One early morning, after Jesus returned across the sea, a large crowd quickly found him. So he stayed by the sea. One of the leaders of the synagogue, a man named Jairus, came and fell at Jesus feet, begging him to heal his daughter.

Jairus says this, My daughter is dying. She's only 12 years old. Please come to my house. Just place your hands on her. I know that if you do, she will live.

Jesus began traveling with Jairus toward his home. Love is on the way. In the crowd pressing around Jesus, there was a woman who had suffered continuous bleeding for 12 years.

Bleeding that made her ritually unclean and an outcast according to the purity laws. She had suffered greatly. And although she spent all her money on her medical care, she had only gotten worse.

She had heard of this miracle man, Jesus. So she snuck up behind him in the crowd and reached out her hand to touch his cloak. The woman to herself says this. Even if.

Even if all I touch are his clothes, I know I will be healed. As soon as her fingers brushed his cloak, the bleeding stopped. She could feel that she was whole again.

Lots of people were pressed against Jesus at that moment, but he immediately felt her touch. He felt healing power flow out of him. He stopped. Everyone stopped. He looked around. Who touched my robe? Asked Jesus.

His disciples broke the uneasy silence. Jesus, the crowd is so thick that everyone is touching you. I just love the disciples, like, idiot like. I mean, seriously, Jesus, like all the people.

Okay. Anyway, why do you ask who touched me? You know, I love that they just ask question. It's so good. But Jesus waited. He had purpose.

He had intention in his gaze. His gaze swept across the crowd to see who had done it.

At last, the woman, knowing that he was talking about her, pushed forward and dropped to her knees. Notice who turned Here was It the woman repenting and turning around. No, it was Jesus who turned and faced her. Jesus is always before us.

No matter how many times we try to turn away, he moves and comes before us. He is always before us. He turns and she comes forward. She was shaking with fear and amazement. She says, I touched you.

Then she told him the reason why Jesus listened to her whole story. Daughter, you are well because you dared to believe. Go in peace and stay well. There is so much in this story. I imagine it covered several hours.

So the way that I learned how to read the Scriptures, when I first started to learn it was an Anne Graham Lotz conference in Seattle. And she talked about taking each verse verse by verse, looking at the verse, reading it, saying, what are the facts? And then what's it asking of me?

And so, for example, just the first after Jesus returned across the sea, he's coming with his disciples. Am I traveling with Jesus or am I waiting for him? A large crowd quickly found him, so he stayed by the sea. So many people in this crowd.

One of the leaders of the synagogue, a man named Jairus, came and fell at Jesus feet, begging him to heal his daughter. I think about this man who was full of status and he was important in the community.

And he came and he fell at his feet because don't we know that death and sickness has no favorites? Regardless of your status, your privilege, the color of your skin, the place in society that you are, it does not matter. Trial will come.

And it's a thing that lays us low and causes us to recognize we cannot do this alone. And so for whatever reason, Jairus comes because he has faith that maybe this man, I mean his 12, I have an 11 year old son.

I can't imagine him being in that place of almost dying and what I would not do to make him well. And so Jairus comes and he asks Jesus to come. And immediately Jesus goes. I love that Jesus is so quick. He's standing there, he's teaching, I imagine.

And then this moment he asks and right away he begins to walk. Jesus moves at about 3 miles per hour. I love that God moves at 3 miles per hour. I feel like often I need to slow down to catch up with God, you know.

And so they go and Jesus begins traveling with gyoshortus home.

And this is the part where I think, I think about the woman, I think about what she was doing, where was she on the way to when she heard the buzz and the crowd. Was she on the way to another doctor, on the way to a well what was she thinking?

Was she comparing condemning what was going on in her when she heard that the miracle man, the healer Jesus was there and she saw the crowd and she thought, I have to get to him. This crazy act of faith where this whole crowd is on the way to a miracle. And I wonder even about the crowd, who all is in that crowd?

I think some really have relationship with Jesus. There's the disciples who are constantly discovering. There's others that really want to know him.

There's others that are just in it for the like, hey, all my friends are going, I'm gonna go too. Why are you here? Why are you in the crowd today? What is it that you're longing for?

Are you watching Jesus go to actually answer someone else's prayer? Are you willing to just walk along? Or are you willing to approach him yourself? Because this God we have is interruptible.

And I think about the moment when she finally made that lunge. It's now or never. And she reaches through the crowd and touches the hem of his garment and immediately healing goes out of him.

And she feels that something. I don't even understand how that would work. But you know, and the bleeding stops and she knows she's whole, she's healed.

And oh my gosh, would not that be enough? 12 Years you've spent everything and she's going to shrink back in the crowd.

But no, because Jesus is so much more concerned about the state of our heart and our spirit than he is about our body. Ultimately, this woman will still die. We all will die. Ultimately, this body will decay. But is my spirit alive? Am I alive?

In my community, the only thing that will matter in 10,000 years is your relationship with God and the people around you. It's the only thing that matters. And so Jesus stops. He says, I felt the power go out from me.

And I look at this as a beautiful example of the fact that God even uses our bodies to sense the movement of the spirit.

Have you ever been in a place and you're singing a worship song and suddenly your heart gets hot, or your palms get hot, or you feel just kind of a weight where you just need to sit down? Do you know that God wants to speak to you through every part of how he created you? Your mind, your imagination, your body even?

And so in this moment, Jesus feels it in his body. That power has gone out with him. He senses the move of the spirit and he stops.

And this moment is amazing to me because remember, everyone's on the way to a miracle. And yet Jesus is interrupted for another miracle. And he stops and he listens to her whole story. I asked the Lord, I said, what was that like?

And it came to my mind. I was like, gosh, this woman probably doesn't talk to a lot of people. She's not a public speaker. I bet it was not linear.

I bet it was not very succinct. I bet it took a long time. 12 Years of bleeding. If any woman even just tells you about their day yesterday, how long does that take? Right? One day.

One day. I try to, like, let me catch you up. My husband, he's like, how long do we have? I'm just telling you about the last 15 minutes.

It'll take 24, you know? But I just think about this woman telling about these 12 years and how Jesus listened and he didn't pull her aside.

It was as if it was only he and her. But do you realize who was there? Her entire community. Her entire community heard her story.

Do you know the power of telling our story, of being brave and vulnerable?

But it can only happen if we first know that the one who made us the most famous one loves us, and we're known by him and we're free to tell our story. And as she tells her story in the midst of that community, she's restored to her community. Can you see that happening?

Where empathy comes, compassion comes. If she had just slunk away, no one would have actually maybe believed that she was actually healed.

They might have still yelled unclean anytime she came around. Because a woman in that day, if she was bleeding, was basically unclean, not allowed to be anywhere in the midst of others.

But instead, he actually makes her healing known. And I bet that it bolsters the faith of all the people in the crowd.

What's amazing is that after she tells the whole story, Jesus looks at her and he gives her a new name. He says, daughter, you are well because you dared to believe. Go in peace and stay well. Stay well, daughter.

I imagine that all of us in this room are carrying around lies. The enemy has lied to us to tell us who we are. You're not enough. You're too much. You don't measure up. You're not loved. You're not worth it.

There are so many lies that we hear on a daily basis, and we don't even realize that we have agreed with them. And they become part of the fabric of our internal narrative.

And I trust that right in this moment, Jesus doesn't want you just to watch someone else have a miracle. He wants you to have a miracle.

And.

And so we're gonna interrupt right now, and we're gonna ask the living God. And so I'm gonna pray. I'm gonna ask you to bow your heads. If you need your eyes open, that's fine too.

However it is that you want to commune with God right now, but, Jesus, we ask you to be the only one that speaks right now. We trust that we can hear your voice, that your spirit cries out to the spirit in us.

And, Jesus, we ask that you would silence the enemy right now, that there would be no other voice but the voice of the living God. And God, I just ask that you would reveal to my sisters what's the lie that they hear? You know the lie. I want you to call it out.

They don't need to hear it again from the enemy. Will you just call out the lie? What is the lie that comes? What's the lie that you hear over and over again? The first thing that comes to mind.

Now, in your imagination, I want you to take that lie. Not giving you long. Typically, the first thing that comes is the spirit of God. And then our brain rushes in and says, no. That's weird.

So if that happened to you, I'm just telling you what happened. So in your imagination, I'm gonna ask you to write it down on a piece of paper. Okay?

Just imagine, I want you to write that lie down on a piece of paper, and you're gonna fold it up and hold it in your hand. Now, Jesus, will you give us a sense of your presence? An image of yourself before us? It might be just a sense of who you are.

Perhaps you're standing before the cross, reminding us of what you've already done. But God, you say that you are always with us. And so, Jesus, I just ask that you would give us a sense of your presence just right in front of us.

And now what I want you to do is I want you to hand him that piece of paper. You're going to give it to Jesus. If you need to put your hand out in front of you to symbolize that, that's fine. What does he do with it?

How many of you? It disappeared. You can raise your hand if you want. It disappeared? Did anybody. Did it burn up? Did it get thrown into fire? Did he swallow it? Hmm?

Laughter. Right? Do you know that Scripture says that Jesus swallows up death and gives us life? It will always be affirmed by Scripture.

What you see, it's not weird. And so this is what I ask. The forgiveness of the cross is the great exchange where Jesus takes death and Then he gives us life.

Forgiveness is an exchange. And so, God, we just ask you right now, what is it that you want to give us in return?

We have offloaded to you this lie that has been identified and broken off in. You have taken it, you have received it upon yourself. It's done. And so, Jesus, we ask you to tell us, who do you say that I am? What do you call me?

The first thing that you hear, write it down. If you have pen and paper, write it down. And I feel compelled to tell you this. Thank you. If you heard nothing, if it was quiet.

Anytime that you ask the Lord to speak, he always does. But he struck me with this in this last year, because, Emily, he said, emily, I want you to annihilate this lie once and for all.

Because so many times I had gone to the Lord and I said, lord, speak like I want to know. What am I supposed to do? And it would just get quiet inside.

And then my next response was, he either doesn't want to speak to me or I can't hear anyone. Did anyone feel that way? He doesn't want to speak to me or I can't hear. And I want you to know this once and for all.

If when you ask the Lord to speak, it gets quiet inside. Zephaniah 3:17 says that the Lord your God is mighty to save. He will delight in you. He will rejoice over you with singing.

He will quiet you with his love. When is it ever quiet inside? I have adhd, like, it's never quiet inside.

And all of a sudden, I realized all those times it had gotten quiet, it was the miracle of God quieting my entire inner being because he knew what I needed the most was his love. In the midst of quiet. And for so many years, I had let the enemy swoop in right after that and say, you can't hear. He doesn't talk to you.

And the Lord said, never again. So if you ask the Lord to speak and it gets quiet, rest in the quiet and then say, tell me about the quiet. What do you want me to know?

And right on the other side of that quiet, I promise you, is a deep sense of presence of the living God. I hope many of you have a word about your identity. Beloved daughter, warrior, friend, nurturer, mother. Who has a word, yell it out.

Yeah, you can do that anytime. You can ask the Lord, tell me who I am. You tell me who I am. I hear from everybody else who I am but Jesus. I need you to tell me who I am.

I think it's the most important question that is asked in Scripture. When Jesus comes to disciples and he says, who do you say that I am? I think he wants us to ask him the same thing.

And it will change the way that you live. It will change the way you relate with your sisters. Because when you recognize your own belovedness.

Henri Nouwen, anyone, you can't help but want to call out the belovedness in others. When you recognize that you are so loved by the God who made you, you can't help but but want other people to know the same thing.

There is no scarcity in the kingdom of God. There is enough for everyone.

The final thought I have is this, because after I read this passage, and I was actually only supposed to go to that verse 34, I believe, and then I asked them if I could have verse 35, because the rest of the story, we do see that Jairus indeed has his daughter healed.

And the thing that is so beautiful is that Jairus as he was paused because, remember, remember, he was on the way to his own miracle and then got interrupted by this woman. It says a lot about justice because this man had status and privilege. He could have right off the bat, been like, no, no, no, we're going.

I mean, he had every right to do that. This woman was. Was not revered at that time, I would argue. Still today, probably he could have thrown his weight around.

He could have asked for Jesus to keep going. But something in him paused. He submitted to Jesus, and he waited and watched. And I wonder what was going through his mind.

Have you ever watched someone else get the miracle you were praying for? The husband you asked for, the baby you hoped for the degree you always wanted.

And instead of celebrating and you wanted to, there was a bigger part of you. It was the lie that came that said you're not worthy of that. Maybe you're not moral enough. Maybe you didn't pray hard enough.

And guilt and fear and shame bury you. And instead of seeing the miracle of God in someone else's life as a. To keep going and to say, yes, he still works.

Yes, he still makes babies, and he still makes husbands, and he still gives degrees, and he still satisfies me in my singleness, and he still satisfies every part of me that I could possibly need, satisfied as I watch the miracle in other people's lives. Am I gonna let it tell me that I'm not worth a miracle? Or am I gonna watch and say, okay, God, you're still at work. Look, let's keep walking.

Because the next Thing that happens is, while Jesus was still speaking, some members of Jairus household pushed the crowd. And to Jairus they say, hey, your daughter's dead. Your daughter's dead. The dream died. It's over, done.

There's no need to drag the Teacher any farther. In other translations, it says, there's no need to bother the Teacher any longer.

Now we know that the enemy is not flesh and blood, but oftentimes the enemy carries his voice through flesh and blood, which just sucks. It just does. And this question reeks of the enemy. Hey, don't bother the teacher any longer.

Essentially, it tells Jairus that he's just like an annoying little kid. That's certainly not his identity. It tells him, you didn't move fast enough. You didn't get what you needed. Your dream is dead.

Fear, guilt, shame all over that question.

And I think in some ways, when we only think that Jesus is a teacher and this book is just a book full of wisdom so that we can be really moral and good into our 15 minute quiet time and go about our day, we miss it and we get to some point and we say, there's got to be more than this. What I've been given is a sham because I only thought that Jesus was teacher.

I just thought he was supposed to give me a lot of wisdom and make me feel good. But that was never, ever, ever who Jesus said he was. Because the next moment, to Jairus or to. Yes, to Jairus, Jesus overheard their words.

Then he turned to look at Jairus. He says, it's all right. Don't be afraid. How many times does Jesus say, don't be afraid?

How many times does the Holy Spirit come by way of an angel or anyone else? 365 Times. Enough for every single day of the year. Because there is so much fear in us. He says, don't be afraid. He immediately calls out the fear.

He calls out the lie of the enemy. He doesn't rebuke these men. He just rebukes the lie. Don't be afraid. Just believe. Do you know what the work of God is in Scripture? What's the work?

What would you think if I were to work for God? What is it? It says the work of God is to believe. It is hard work, but that's the work. It's not to do, it's to believe.

It's to believe that God is who he says he is. Do you believe that Jesus is merely a teacher? Jairus had just learned that Jesus is also a healer.

And he pressed on and he trusted What God showed him even in the midst of the waiting, even in the midst of the process, and he stayed with it. Do you know Jesus simply as teacher, or do you know him as healer? Do you know him simply as healer, or do you know him as provider?

Do you know him as provider? But do you know him as friend? You might know him as friend, but do you know him as king?

You might know him as king, but do you know him as your counselor, as your savior, as the one who sees you, Jehovah, Elroy, the God who sees me.

I want to ask you right now to just focus for a moment on the God who made you, who loves you, who has never left you, who will never leave you, who promises to speak to you. And, God, will you just tell us right now what is the part of your character that we're actually really familiar with?

What's that identity of yours that we are really comfortable with? And he says, yes, Preston, that's where I've shown you. Maybe you know him as friend. You're always like, hey, God. And you guys are really casual.

Maybe you know him as counselor. He always comes to you with wisdom. Maybe you've seen him as healer, but he seems distant.

But now I want to ask this, Jesus, what part of your character do you want to start to know tonight? How do you want us to know you in a new way? And if there's a sense or anything that came to mind, write it down.

And like I said, if it's quiet, that might be something for you to unpack later. But I trust that we get to know the fullness of. Of the living God who satisfies like nothing else.

And I will tell you, I think about this bleeding woman, and I think about Jairus, and I think about the things in my own life.

When I ruptured my ACL when I was in high school, and my identity was, like, gone because I was a soccer player, and it was the first time I didn't know that I wasn't what I did. Did I say that right? You get it?

And then I think about in college when I got suspended for plagiarism because of the lie, that I never felt like I was enough. And I was at an Ivy League college playing Division 1 soccer, and I didn't feel like I was good enough.

And so I plagiarized a paper and got suspended for nine months, and my entire identity was stripped from me.

And in that season, I got to know the goodness and the intimacy of a living God who said, I know you And I love you, and you don't need to do anything. And he rebuilt my entire identity and gave me back everything better.

I think about early in marriage, the moments when I'm married to a wonderful man who loves me well. But there was extreme loneliness because no one person can be your God.

And I remember the night that I looked at Marshall and said, I just need you to tell me I'm beautiful. He's a man who loves me well, but is a man of few words. And he looked at me and said, I love you, but I can't be Jesus for you.

And everything in me switched. And I remember as he went to bed and I went to the living room and I dropped to the floor, and I was like, jesus, I need you to satisfy me.

Because no person can, even the best, most moral, most wonderful of men, even the most hilarious, ridiculous children, like no friend, no job, nothing can satisfy you. I walked through a miscarriage and I bled for days.

And I remember beginning to tell my story through a blog that the Lord had put on my heart to start. And the night that I found that there was no heartbeat, I processed through my fingers. And the next day, 5,000 women read this tiny little blog.

And I began to get messages from all over the country, from people that said, me too. And I've never told anybody. And I learned in that season that community and intimacy with God is everything.

And reverse that order, Intimacy with God and community is everything.

And so I want to encourage you that if you are suffering, if you are in darkness, if you are in a place where you don't know that you are deeply, deeply known, would you run to the living God and ask him to satisfy the deepest parts of your heart? And would you open your mouth and tell a sister and walk together in community so that you might know vertically, also horizontally.

I'm gonna pray for us and send you into our next part of the evening. Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for every woman in this room. I thank you for every story that is represented here.

I thank you for the joy and the victory that's represented in this room and the deep faith in this room. I thank you for the courage in this room. I thank you for every single woman here and that you know every detail.

And, God, I ask that we would be women that fall in love with your word, that have a deep friendship with Jesus, our Savior and king and friend and counselor, and that we would hear your voice and that out of us would come love and joy and peace, even in the craziest of circumstances because you are victorious overall. I pray that in Jesus name, amen.

I hope that Emily's message met you right where you're at today and encouraged you in a helpful and hopeful way. And we hope that you'll join us back next week on the Collide Podcast. Take care.