Young adults have so much to navigate, from relationships, to big decisions about career and calling, to schoolwork, and complex questions about faith. No one knows more about these deep doubts and questions young adults struggle through than Josh Lease, who works directly with college-aged people in a young adults ministry in the Pacific Northwest. In this episode, Josh gives practical wisdom and insight into walking alongside people in their faith deconstruction and reconstruction, encouraging young adults in their truest identity (not just their future job title), and developing kids to become their best selves.

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 we can't wait to collide with you.

Do I actually believe Jesus loves me no matter what I accomplish or don't accomplish? I'm reminded of a verse of we love him because he first loved us.

And I think that's been really helpful for me because our love is actually a response to him loving us first. And when we experience that love, then we can freely love rather than trying to earn or be enough or accomplish something.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and today we get to hang out with Josh Lease.

Josh works for a ministry called Ecclesia, which is in the Pacific Northwest up in the very far left hand corner in Bellingham, Washington, and he oversees the discipleship mechanisms of young adults in that community. He also works for a church where he oversees small groups and children's ministries called CTK North Bay.

He's engaged and about to have his life blessed and rocked when he gets married in September, and he's passionate about developing people to become their best selves and loves cultivating communities around Jesus. He also loves sports, basketball, music, and Marvel movies. Josh, I'm so glad we get to talk about all this stuff today.

Yes. So excited. Thanks for having me, Willow.

Yeah, well, first of all, I'm going to throw you under a bus right now. Let's talk about. You are the founder of a podcast.

I was the founder of a podcast that lasted a whole five episodes.

Let's talk about what it was called, because it cracked me up.

It was called Occasionally Important. And that name was chosen because my friends and I essentially wanted to talk about anything we wanted to talk about.

And everything I read about successful podcasts is that it had to be niche and specific, and we chose to ignore it anyway.

Usually important, like bananas are occasionally important. Toilet paper is occasionally important.

Exactly.

Cars.

Yep. Yep. We talked about that. I'd say talked about sports. We talked about the local Seattle Mariners. We talked about Marvel movies.

Anything that we honestly normally talk about anyways. But we thought maybe someone will want to listen to us.

Well, in the spirit of your old podcast, I have to ask, you love Marvel movies. What's your favorite?

Yes, that's tough for me. I actually made like, a top 10 list for Ekklesea and everything recently, so this is fresh on my brain. Infinity War.

I feel like most people would say Avengers Endgame, but that's probably my number two. I think Infinity War is a story that sets up that story, and I just like the. The twist at the end, but I don't want to spoil it.

Obviously, I love that you already have, like, your top 10 list. So do you also have your top 10 list of actual superpowers you have? Or if you had to tell me one right now, like, what's your superpower?

Man, if I could choose any superpower, I would probably want to teleport because I sometimes struggle with being late to things, and I think that would help me.

Totally on time to this podcast.

I was. That was trying. I was trying to be faithful in that, but no teleportation could really help me. I think my friends would appreciate it, too.

I love it. Okay, so you have a comm degree and you're certified to teach elementary education, but here you find yourself working in ministry.

How did this change of direction in God calling you to work in the ministry come about?

Yeah, well, let's see.

I honestly had thought of the idea of doing ministry someday for a long time, but I kind of told myself, or maybe I told God that I'll do it if you make it really obvious, like, I'm not going to open that door. You have to open that door for me, for me to really step through that. And I was.

I was in a program at Western Washington University, and I was going for to be an elementary education teacher, and I had been doing my student teaching and everything, and I hadn't gotten a job offer yet at the end of my school schooling yet, and I was still wanting to do it, but I was definitely feeling a little insecure about where I was headed. And our pastor here at Ecclesia, when I was a student at the time, he approached me and basically invited me to be an intern with the ministry.

And at the time, I said no. And I went and talked to some other friends about it, but it wasn't on my plan. It wasn't in what I thought I was going to do next.

But then as I kept praying about it and thinking about it, it was kind of like, all right, well, if nothing opens up, then maybe I'll consider it. And if nothing opens up, maybe I'll consider it.

And it got to the point where it was around summertime, and I still was just not really able to land anything. And then I was like, okay, God, maybe I'll look into this.

So I spent the whole next year substitute teaching and interning and I didn't know what I wanted to do. That whole time period, I would say most of that was trying to figure out what, what do I really want?

And I was working at Everson elementary, which is as a fifth grade teacher for. I took over a teacher's classroom who had had a baby.

And so I was there, had a full on teaching experience for the final three months of school and then I was offered a full time job for the following year.

And it got to this point where I was like, well, everything I've worked for, everything I've gone to school for is right in front of me and I could take it.

And I didn't have anything lined up in ministry, but as I thought about it and as I prayed about it, it got to a point where it was like I knew deep down what I actually really wanted.

And it felt like the reason I was going to do teaching is just because I was supposed to or because I felt like that that's what the path that I chosen had done so far. But honestly I wanted to do ministry and so I said no to that job.

And then about a month later I actually got recruited at the CTK North Bay Church to be their kids ministry director. Soon after that, a position opened at Ecclesia. And at the end of the summer I was full time ministry.

And it was kind of like, all right, I have no idea how I got here, but it was like, okay, God, you opened up the door and here I am.

Invite us into that time in your life where, you know, you said, God, you have to open the door. You even said no at one point when you were offered the internship. What was going on in you? Were you having feelings of inadequacy? Were you afraid?

What was the deeper issue that was keeping you from doing the thing that ultimately you even say deep down you knew you wanted to do?

Yeah, I would say the biggest thing that I was wrestling with and honestly still wrestle with, I don't think that I've gotten a lot of 100%. On the other side of this is I struggled and struggle discerning what I actually desire.

And it's not that I don't desire to do ministry or never desired, it's that I had 300 desires and how do I pick anything?

And at the time it was kind of like feeling that I wasn't maybe capable of doing ministry or Maybe I didn't know enough about God or maybe I didn't know enough about the Bible and stuff like that at the time. But I would say most, most of all, I couldn't picture myself doing anything for 20 years.

And it felt like the pressure on me was to choose something that you're going to be at some point. And I didn't like that feeling at all.

I hated feeling like I had to make a decision based on something that I didn't really know about fully, that I felt like was determining a long term path of my life. And that just scared me and sometimes still does.

But that was a lot of what I felt like I was wrestling with and trying to figure out what God was doing in there with me.

I love how honest you are about that because I think it speaks to this great pressure that's put on young adults. So let's talk about it because it seems like, and I don't know how you, you would put.

I'd love to hear what you're seeing, but what kind of pressure do you see our culture putting on young adults that you, you have to figure out your life plan when you're 22, when you grad, or if they've gotten a running start, they're 20, I mean, even younger than it was when I, I was a kid. But it just seems like there's so much pressure. I laugh all the time.

I try to tell every young adult that's stressing out about these kinds of decisions. Look, I'm 47 and I'm still trying to figure it out.

And who knows how many times I'm gonna, you know, see that the Lord changes my path or navigates a new direction. We're all trying to figure it out. Why do we think that we have to figure the whole plan out at 20 some years old?

Yeah, yeah, I'd say I feel like that pressure comes right at a very young age, right when it starts of people asking you what do you want to be when you grow up? And it's one of the first questions I feel like adults ask kids.

And it's well intentioned, but the whole time you're in school, you're told, you got to do, you got to pass this test, you got to succeed at this thing if you want to get to this place. And it's not just a 22, it starts at 11. Beginning to discern who is the person I want to become.

And largely that's been defined in our culture as what you accomplish or what your career title is. Because that it defines how important or maybe impactful we are.

And I think for me, and I think a lot of what I'm seeing when I work with young adults is this generation desires to make an impact, desires to be important and to feel meaningful. And that's been defined as the only way to do that is if you do something career wise that society has defined as really important.

And so even when we're in places where we have stable jobs or even when we're in doing something that is you're going to school at a four year college and you're, and you're already like on a great path, you can't feel content there because you and your, in your mind, it's never enough because you're not actually told that that matters really in a lot of ways. And so yeah, I would say that that's some of what I experienced there.

And I would also say the thing that I've noticed is there's a difference between reach and impact. And I think what young people often define as impact is actually reach meaning affecting a lot of people with your personal influence.

But there's a lot of people who have a lot of reach on my life. Like I don't know, the founder of Fred Meyer, like has some reach on my life, but not a lot of impact on who I am.

But the person who has a lot of impact on me was my youth pastor that doesn't have a lot of reach that didn't, that not a lot of people actually know about.

And there's been this conflation that impact means a lot of people being affected by you and often takes us out of being present where we are so that we can make an impact in the places that we already exist.

Hmm, that's such a good word. It's so interesting. We're in the middle of a big project around here called Women of Impact and it's going to be an online course.

We've invited, I think we have something like 70 plus voices of different women and what we've purposely tried to do. I can't wait to come out with his project for women. I think next year, next fall or something. I'm not sure.

I shouldn't really say anything, but anyways, I'll leave that to the powers that be.

But it's the idea that we invited women from all these different sectors of the world, whether they're a support officer, a dentist, a stay at home mom, it ranges. You know how God uses you, he can use you at home, he can use you in Another country, he can use you running a corporate business.

And I love that you're differentiating and saying, like, hey, you might think the, you know, CEO of Fred Meyer is a big deal, but the person who had the most influence on my life was my youth pastor. Like, that's. I love how you're differentiating that.

I imagine that you have lots of opportunities to have these kinds of conversations with young adults.

When you're sitting with a young adult and they're stressing out and they're feeling all this pressure, and they begin to identify who they are by what they do or what they think they're gonna do, how do you invite them into a new way of being?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's something I've been in process in and still in process in.

And I think the conversation I think I try to have with most young adults is helping them disassociate their identity from something that they accomplish, recognizing that who they are is far more valuable than what they do, because who they are makes an impact in every space that they exist in. And the thing that we also.

That I really try to talk about in order to hopefully relieve some pressure is that this decision you're making does not define the rest of your life as I once thought it did, that the decision you're making of what major you're doing or what career you're going to do doesn't pigeonhole you for 30 years. You have so many opportunities, so many chances, you have no idea what God can do through just taking a step and making a choice.

And I think a lot of young adults are looking for certainty when they make that choice. And in my opinion, it just doesn't really exist. And I haven't heard many people experience a lot of certainty about where they're going next.

And so part of the conversation we have is trying to just talk about that what you're deciding. Any choice you make can be good. Any choice you make, God can use you. Any choice you make, you can make an impact in.

But what defines you isn't the thing you do, but who you are in the thing you do. And so it's more so a conversation of recognizing, like, if you did get that thing, what do you think that would bring you? If you got that career?

What are you trying to find when you actually receive that career? And I think that question alone illuminates a little of, like, well, what am I looking? Like, what are the things I'm attaching to.

To my dream or to My passion that can actually be found in Jesus, or recognizing that he can already fulfill that presently.

So that rather than trying to do a career or a dream in order to be enough or in order to be loved or in order to be valuable, we can have the freedom of going, well, God already says I'm loved, and God already says I'm valuable, and God already says I'm enough, and he can be that. Where we put our energy in that freeing us to actually pursue what we just want freely.

Not out of trying to get anything out of it, but out of joy and out of worship and out of, hey, this will be a great opportunity because it doesn't define me.

It's a deeper invitation that you're putting before people, and I love that so much.

And not only a deeper invitation, but it's one that you're trying to say yes to yourself, definitely inviting other people to believe it along with you. Why are you convinced that God loves us outside of what we do?

I think because the gospel is predicated upon that being true, that I think that Jesus doing what he did and dying on the cross and rising again has to be predicated upon his love for us versus us earning it in any way.

And so if we say that he delivers us from our sins, and if we say that he gives us opportunity to walk in freedom, and if we say that and believe that to be true, then I think there's no other option than Jesus loving us, period. Because by his grace, we've done that rather than us earning his love. So, and that comes through personal experience, like belief.

I think we can say that and we can communicate that, and we can say that we think that to be true. But I'd also say an invitation that I've had to go through over and over again is, but do I believe that internally?

And does that demonstrate in the way that I live and the actions I take? Do I actually believe Jesus loves me no matter what I accomplish or don't accomplish?

I'm reminded of a verse of, we love him because he first loved us. And I think that's been really helpful for me because our love is actually a response to him loving us first.

And when we experience that love, then we can freely love rather than trying to earn or be enough or accomplish.

But just respond, yeah, it's interesting while you're talking and, you know, I know you're not a parent yet. I'm a parent of a young adult.

And I'm just thinking about, you know, it's gotten all twisted because I don't necessarily know that it has me with my son, but maybe, probably in some ways.

But anyways, the experience we have with our earthly parents, we often feel they're proud of us when we do something, when we become something, you know, oh, I'm so, you hear, you know, you hear parents. I'm so proud of my son. He, you know, graduated from the business school. I'm so proud of my daughter. She, you know, passed the bar exam.

And yes, of course, as parents, we're going to be proud.

But I wonder a little bit if we projected those experiences that we have where we feel like our parents are most proud of us when we've become something like career wise and we think somehow that God is proud of us in what we do.

And I love the invitation that you're laying out for young adults and saying, life isn't all about what you do, it's about who you are in whatever you do.

Hey there, friends.

We just wanted to pop in here real quick to let you know that if you're enjoying the content in this episode, we think you would also love our free digital download Getting Unstuck.

We know that so many women desire a life free from bitterness, regret, monotony or roadblocks, yet it feels like you continue to be bogged down by comparison. Unrealized dreams and difficult relationships. We all get stuck.

But not everyone engages with the reflective exercises it takes to find freedom from those ruts.

In this digital download, Getting Unstuck, we walk you through discerning the 10 most common ways you may be feeling stuck in life and then offer guided reflections, scriptures and more to help you find freedom and unleash you into the life life you desire once again. This resource is free and it's available now on our website. When you search Getting unstuck at We Collide.net Happy colliding.

One of the coolest things, because I used to work with young adults, I don't know if you know that, but.

For a really long time.

And I love young adults because this is when their faith becomes their own.

If they've been raised in the church or, you know, had Christian parents pouring into them, they have to get to a place where they decide, is this for me? Do I want to walk and know and love Jesus?

And you're right there, you're in that, just that sweet spot of where they're trying to figure all of that out. And I want to know how your face became your own.

Yeah, that's, it's, it's a process. I would Say I. I grew up believing God existed. I would say my family instilled that.

But I wouldn't say that I grew up having any idea why that mattered for my life or any idea of what following Jesus actually meant. It was far more just a cultural value that we held that we're Christians because we're supposed to be.

And so the beginning of my process of following Jesus happened in high school. I went to a summer camp at a youth group, largely because a girl I liked was going to this said summer camp. And I was like, all right.

I didn't really have any intention in going into that.

And three or four days in, I felt like I was experiencing something I hadn't before, which was a real love that existed, honestly, mostly in the community that I was in, that the people that were around me were treating me in a way that I hadn't been treated before or were loving me and noticing me in a way that I hadn't felt that before. And because of that, I wanted to understand Jesus more and what made them like that.

And so I would say that when I first, like, chose to say I want to follow Jesus was around then. But you're right in saying it really did become my own when I went to school and when I went to college and left home.

Because while I went to youth group and I did all those things in high school, it was more of a, I'm a part of this because my friends are there. And I would say, when I went to school, there's no one telling me what to do or who I have to become.

And there's no one around me who says what you should or shouldn't be doing. And so for me, I remember coming into college praying that I wouldn't leave faith.

Like, praying to God that, like, I don't want to lose this, basically. And so.

But when I entered, honestly, I look back, and I think God just immensely showed up in my life because within a few days, I had roommates all on my floor at the dorms who were followers of Jesus already. We were building community really quickly. We found Ecclesia as our community within a month.

And from then on, I would say the biggest thing that helped me is I lived in a house called the ark with 11 other guys, which is a lot. We had a total of 12 of us.

And we were essentially wanting to commit to being a group of guys who loved each other, tried to help each other become more like Jesus, tried to create community that would do the same.

And that was a time where it was like, I want to love Jesus because I'm discovering who Jesus is personally, not because of any idea or value that I'm holding to or a cultural community thing. Instead it was like, no, I feel like I'm discovering the reality of who Jesus is and I want to do that personally.

And so from then on it's been a continued journey of figuring out how is Jesus Lord for me and what does that mean for my life and how do I continue to submit to actually following him because I want to, because I learned to love him.

That's a really cool story. I love that the Lord put all these different people in pockets of community in your life to answer that prayer that you prayed.

I mean the fact that that was your heart going into college, that you didn't want to lose your faith, that I would say that's a unique heart space to be in for an 18 year old guy, you know, and a beautiful heart space.

I again, my son's leaving for college in just a couple months and yeah, nothing I want more for him than to know Jesus, love Jesus, live for Jesus, know like that he can be purposed by Jesus to help change people's lives. And the older I get, the more I just realize I can't force it, I can't control it, I can't manipulate it.

I'm curious from you, what do you see young adults most need in this season in space in order to figure things out apart from their believing parents?

Yeah, two things come to my mind right off the bat.

One, I think young adults need a space to process that they need a space to actually come with their questions and feel like that they can belong prior to any behavior change, prior to any belief statements that they make, that they can fully enter into a space and feel like they can just exist. And that's okay for them to process what this Jesus thing is about.

I would say that's important for people who would already claim themselves as Christians and those who wouldn't. The other thing I'd say is young adults, especially this generation, want to be part of a movement.

And I say movement because something that I think keeps them interested is these, this group, these people are actually embodying something different or they're, or they're doing something different with their lives that I want to be a part of.

And there's something about that and being able to be connected to a community who's trying to do that that is so important in that age of discovery of who am I, what am I supposed to do? Like who do I want to become? And so much of that is formed by the people we surround ourselves with.

And also when they're given a clear vision who they can become in following Jesus, that's really moving and I think really attractive to a lot of young adults because I think they see a lot of the church is not doing that. I think they see a lot of the churches as something that is stagnant or doesn't feel like it's actually doing something that they think is helpful.

And so when they see churches that do do that or communities of people who are embodying the love of Jesus, they're very excited to jump into that.

You know, you, you bring up kind of some angst or discontent or maybe looking around as a young adult and feeling like, well, how is the church making the world a better place? How is the church changing people's lives? How, how is the church making an experience for someone hopeful, life giving? Right?

Like they're looking and they're, they're wondering and they want to be a part of something where they can see it. And I hear what you're saying, and I think it's so true of the young generation. There's so much deconstructing and reconstructing.

And I want to talk about that because so often I see people doing a lot of deconstructing, but they don't reconstruct. So I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah, so many of us have been hurt by the church or religion, and so we start tearing it down, but we don't build it back up. So when young adults come to you, what do you find helpful in the deconstructing, reconstructing experience?

Yeah, I think this is such an important topic for the church to be having right now because honestly, my friends are people who have left the church because of this.

My peers, the people that I was in community with, people who have walked away from maybe being members of our community, ecclesia, they enter into this deconstruction. I can't tell you the amount of conversations I've had with this happening with people.

The thing that I try to do when I talk to someone who says the church is doing this poorly or they have some sort of critique about how the church is failing or it's not being helpful to people. And what I try to help people do is narrow down what they're talking about because it's very easy to just say, well, Christians are like this.

And it's very easy to say, well, the church is like this. And I Try to say, well, which church? And who's doing that? And where have you experienced that?

Because often, and now there's plenty of experiences, like you said, where people are genuinely hurt by the church and they do need healing and they do need love.

And honestly, what they need most is the listening ear, and not someone who's going to tell them what they should or should not be doing at that moment.

But many people I've experienced are people who haven't actually experienced that hurt, but they're buying into a narrative that culture has said to be true about church more than the reality of what they've experienced in church. And so what I try to do is help young adults kind of differentiate. Like, what critique do you have? Where does that come from?

And ultimately, like, what do you want to do to help it? Because I think it's very easy for us. And the church has always had this problem.

Like, this is newer in some ways, but in all ways, the church has always had a problem of so many unique voices existing and trying to be united and not knowing how to do it.

But with this group of young people, I try to encourage them to be a part of the solution that they'd like to see, because it's very easy to just say, well, the staff should do this differently, or they should do this differently. The church should be like this. And a lot of it's very valid.

But recognizing that the church isn't just that building or that organization over there, that you're a member of the church, if you're claiming to follow Jesus, and how are you participating in being an important member of that body?

Or are you standing back criticizing things that sure are rightfully criticized, but maybe that criticism is actually God's spirit pushing you to go forward and partner with him, to bring beauty in the thing that you see not happening. And I think that that one, helps young adults go inward and actually reflect a little bit and not just be critiquing only.

But then I'd say two, that it helps them understand that the church isn't a operation or an organization. It's a people group. And that's something that in deconstruction, I think a lot of people disassociate themselves from it.

But when you say you're a part of it, there's a level of like to deconstruct your faith. There's no way to do that without including Jesus in it. Because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to try to get to what is Jesus more like?

Because if that, that. I mean, deconstruction is, is tearing down ideas and trying to get to the essence of what something is.

And I think often what people are doing is just resisting. It's not deconstruction, it's just resistance. But deconstruction is actually going to what's true and what isn't.

And the only way you can do that is with Jesus, not without Him. And so I try to hopefully help people to partner with him in that process, knowing he can handle those questions. He's with you in those things.

He can use you in those things. That you having those thoughts doesn't mean that you need to just drop Jesus. Because Jesus, thankfully isn't just the church.

Jesus is a real entity in and of itself that you can have relationship with as a member of church. I know that was a lot of jargon.

Your invitation doesn't get us off the hook. And you're inviting young adults to be a part of a movement where they definitely church.

I think so many people, especially in the last year, in the last few years, it's like they look at the church and it's like a club. And they don't want to be members of that club because they don't want to be associated with the, the culture of the club.

And we're seeing this in our culture right now. We're seeing such polarization and, and it's, it's hard, it's hard to navigate, it's hard to watch. It's painful. We're hurting each other.

We don't have unity. And in a lot of ways, I think all these conversations are so important.

But you're inviting them to stick around and reconstruct it into something better, more healthy, more beautiful, more life giving, more Jesus. Like, don't just cut out.

Yeah.

It's interesting that you're doing that.

When you say that this generation, the two things you say they need most to make their faith their own, is a place to process, is what you said, and be a part of a meaningful movement.

Yeah.

And if there isn't a more meaningful movement that needs to happen right now, then reconstructing what it looks like to be the church together, I don't know what is.

Oh, absolutely. And I think God. I think God is working in that reconstruction.

I'm very hopeful because something I've had to learn as a leader of young adults is to be patient, is to walk with them in the processing, is to walk with them in the disagreement. What they don't need is someone saying, well, you shouldn't think that or what they don't need is someone saying, you're doing that wrong right now.

They need someone to care about them, to love them, to walk them through the process they're going through ultimately towards Jesus. And that's been trying many times this year, especially in the year of COVID where it was candidly difficult to walk people through that process.

But I think God has been refining and something that I've been learning about, and we actually have talked about as a ministry at Ecclesia is the process Paul went through when he encountered Jesus. He actually, I mean, hunted Christians and persecuted and thought he was following God.

And he gets to a point where he encounters the real God and it gives him blindness. And he doesn't know what to do and he doesn't know where to go. And he has a friend come along Ananias, and prays for him.

And then what Paul goes and does is he spends like decade alone trying to process what has occurred and reconstruct what he thought God was about. And what comes out of that is theology is what we say, we believe. What comes out of that is beautiful.

But it's because Paul went through a process of something he encountered, changed everything he thought. And then he went, I'm going to partner with Jesus to build, see what Jesus has for me.

And I think that's someone the long faithful process we're invited to enter into so that we can hopefully rebuild something more beautiful than the damage that might have been done to us.

Josh, you've said yes so far to the long process of God using your life to impact young adults. And who knows?

I'm not going to ask you what you're going to be when you grow up, but I am going to ask you at the end of the day, and I mean like the end of your life, what do you want people to say about who you chose to be, not what you chose to do, but what do you want people, how do you want them to describe Josh? This is the kind of person he was.

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that I hope, I hope people saw me as someone who was faithful to Jesus, call on my life.

And by call I mean just faithful to trying to become more like him.

I hope that people would say that I was intentional in my relationships and friendships and that I tried to bless those around me when I had the opportunity to be with them.

And I hope that people say that I made the most of the opportunities to try to make an impact that I was given no matter what I do or didn't do in all spaces, that I was someone who asked God, what what do you have for me here? And how can I press in?

And how can I say yes to the beauty that might be right in front of me, instead of looking for something else and always looking to the next thing, but instead saying, well, what's here? And I hope that people can feel that and know that I was someone who was faithful to that. So many other things, but I would say some of those things.

And they talk about your favorite Marvel comic.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think people will say that about you, Josh, because they already are.

And I just want to thank you because you're taking your young life and you're pouring it into other young lives, and that is reconstructing the church and bringing about beauty where there's been harm and life where there's been death and faith where there's been just wreckage and doubt. And so I'm so grateful for you and so glad that you hopped on today to hang out and have this conversation.

Oh yeah, thanks so much, Willow. I appreciate the encouragement.

Yeah, it was super fun to have you.

And for those of you listening, I hope that you will continue to wrestle out your faith, that it would be your own and your own alone, that you would know that Jesus is with you. He loves you as you are, outside of anything you do or do not do. Be encouraged by that. Keep colliding and we'll catch you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

You can find us on Instagram at We Collide on Facebook as Collide Women, and you can also visit our website at wecollide.net to find our blog resources, event information, and more. One last thing. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take a few seconds and leave us a review?

It seems like such a small act, but reviews help us to keep producing this content and help other women find it too. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode and letting us walk with you as you seek and collide with Jesus.