Candace Nassar (00:00.856)
Well, welcome everyone today on our MomQ Mingle, Annie and I are talking about getting back to the basics of living out the gospel. So I’m really excited. And welcome Annie. How are you? What’s been going on lately?
Annie Mendrala (00:15.673)
Hi, well it’s been, August was a busy month. A lot of transitions in our home. Our middle son went off to college and our youngest son is starting football. I’m getting back into doing my prison ministry along with MomQ, editing, and writing and all that fun stuff. Also, I’m looking forward to this month going to a soul care retreat in mid-September.
Candace Nassar (00:24.526)
Mmm.
Annie Mendrala (00:45.599)
Just to keep taking or doing some self-care and keep letting the Lord work in my heart so that I can pour that out to others. How about you? What’s happening in the Nassar world?
Candace Nassar (00:53.036)
I love that. That is so good.
Candace Nassar (00:57.762)
Gosh, well, of course, like you, busy with MomQ. We are launching our fall semester next week and we have a new chapter here in Austin. So that’s been a lot of fun to get ready and get that off and running. And then I just had this irony that every appliance in my house has been breaking and it’s just literally
the fridge, the oven, the washer, one thing after the other, because we’ve lived here 12 years and this is the longest we’ve ever lived anywhere and we’ve never had this happen. So, we’ve just been like, you are kidding me. It’s just crazy. But excitingly, we decided to redesign our tiny little laundry area. So once our washer broke, it was unfixable. And so it’s exciting that we’re redoing that and adding a stackable unit with some drying racks and stuff that’s very efficient and functional and makes me very excited.
Annie Mendrala (01:31.515)
Mm -mm. Ugh.
Candace Nassar (01:51.18)
So.
Annie Mendrala (01:51.195)
Yes, gosh, laundry. Anything to make laundry more exciting is really nice.
Candace Nassar (01:55.306)
Yes, exactly. So that’s what’s been going on over here. Yeah, just living out the gospel, trying to be… All right. Let’s talk about it. So what is the core? What would you say is the core of the gospel message?
Annie Mendrala (02:02.854)
I’m gonna do it.
Hahaha!
Annie Mendrala (02:14.675)
Well in the church, you know, we often think of the gospel as the good news, the story about how we were saved from death and damnation to hell and that we get to go to heaven. And sometimes we kind of stop there at this idea that the gospel is just our, we’re saved from eternal death. But really the message, that’s just the beginning because that is true. The good news is that we are saved from this separation from God eternally, but the core of the gospel is a message of love, of unconditional love, right? John 3:16 is. “For God so loved the world.” That was His motivation, and that that love was unconditional. It was others- directed. It was self-giving. It was gospel love, and it was founded in grace. It was an unearned favor, or undeserved.
Candace Nassar (03:03.895)
Mm
Annie Mendrala (03:10.727)
For us undeserving sinners. So, you know, I would say the gospel is really an invitation to a relationship centered around love, to a life ultimately of transformation. You know, we say the gospel is a free gift and it is, because there’s nothing we can do to pay for it or earn it by our good works. But there is a cost, in a sense, to the gospel, not just for Christ, but for ourselves, because to gain life
Candace Nassar (03:25.324)
Thank
Annie Mendrala (03:40.091)
We really have to lose our lives. We have to choose to give up everything we understood to have value, and trade it for a set of new values. And so the gospel is not just the moment that we come to faith, but it is a life of transformation of our thinking and of our being. And so I think that’s why it’s so important we get back to this basic. And it’s really not basic. It’s fairly, it’s deep and it’s
Candace Nassar (03:49.934)
Hmm.
Annie Mendrala (04:09.913)
It’s a life transformation and it’s going to take a lifetime to really learn how to live the gospel before we are ultimately in heaven.
Candace Nassar (04:20.078)
That’s so good. Yeah, our theme this month is Back to Basics and I was likening it to the fundamentals on a football team of being successful. As I think about it, it’s not that we’re being successful, but when we’re doing as God wants us to, when we live that kind of transformed life, I see love and grace as being those fundamentals, those skills that we have to keep going back to.
Annie Mendrala (04:42.983)
Mm -hmm.
Candace Nassar (04:47.846)
over and over again and making sure that we’re doing those things. So then I asked myself, okay, well, what is love and grace? I mean, we know that this is God’s heart to lavish us with love and grace, that He does not afflict us out of His heart. He does sometimes allow things in our lives, but His heart is to bless us and to love us. And that’s what our heart needs to be towards others, and so there’s a great quote by Thomas Aquinas that says, “To love is to will the good of another.” And think about that. Is that what we do? Is that why our society does not see love like that at all? Love is very transactional. It’s what I, you know, I’ll give to get right with God
Annie Mendrala (05:26.186)
Mm. Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Annie Mendrala (05:42.075)
Yeah, well, and that’s Jesus on the cross. I mean, he is for the joy that was set before him, for the will, for the good of others, for those undeserving sinners. That’s what love is. That’s what compelled him. That’s the gospel. That is love.
Candace Nassar (05:56.45)
Absolutely. And then grace is out of love, giving undeserved favor. Grace is an essential part of God’s character because while we were still sinners, He died for us. So again, it’s that whole, He’s choosing our good and giving us grace.
Annie Mendrala (06:03.43)
Mm -hmm.
Candace Nassar (06:21.742)
Romans 5:8 says, it’s so great, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” So that’s really love in action, Unbelievable love. We can’t comprehend it. And grace, as you said, it’s free. We can’t earn it. It’s a gift.
Annie Mendrala (06:36.7)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (06:48.842)
And it’s also closely related to God’s mercy, where we don’t get what we do deserve. I always get those confused, grace and mercy. I have to think through them for a minute. So grace is getting what we don’t deserve and mercy is not getting what we do deserve, right? And I was confused.
Annie Mendrala (07:04.443)
Yes.
It’s the idea of your child disobeying. Well, they deserve a consequence, a punishment. And instead we say, instead of punishing you, I’m gonna give you grace and I’m gonna give you a second chance. But yeah, it’s interesting to think about in the context of the gospel, is the grace from God.
Candace Nassar (07:26.22)
Mm.
Annie Mendrala (07:35.173)
We were just being, we were being really rebellious and He came and pursued us in love and to offer us a gift, even in our rebellion. Mercy is the fact that he didn’t destroy us the first day we turned our face from Him. You know, when we started living life according to our way, you know, the mercy is that He gave us time to come find Him, time to find repentance. I was even reading this morning, it says, you know,
“The heart of God is that he wishes no one to perish. Time to God is not as we see it. And the reason is, is that He wishes nobody to perish. That’s His mercy. Ultimately His justice will come, but the gospel is definitely grace and mercy.
Candace Nassar (08:17.228)
Yes.
Candace Nassar (08:23.922)
Mm -hmm. And love lived out. So, let’s talk about for a minute why that message that Jesus gave when he came and he talked about his love and his grace and how, you know, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” Why was that so radical at the time? And why is it so radical even today?
Annie Mendrala (08:48.005)
Yeah, you know, it takes us straight to the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus came to establish God’s kingdom on Earth. The people were waiting for a political ruler, someone to establish a material kingdom, you know, even like in today’s political climate, you know, we want our person in the presidency. And we think that’s going to save us. And that was the mindset of the people then. And that’s the mindset of the people that today that human power is what we need.
Candace Nassar (09:04.678)
yeah.
Annie Mendrala (09:18.175)
But Jesus came to give a radical, radically different message about spiritual power through humility and sacrifice and just the opposite of the world. The Sermon on Mount just shows that the kingdom values are just flipped, all our societal norms upside down.
Candace Nassar (09:37.262)
Yes, yes. And I think about how they thought that you could be from a certain class or have a certain practice in your life, and all that performance-based stuff, to earn your salvation, to earn God’s grace. And Jesus was saying, “No, you can’t. None of us can be good enough. None of us can earn it. This is my expectation. know, love your enemies. Turn the other cheek.”
Forgive all those things that we struggle so much with and God knows that and yet He’s saying, “Come to me and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and I will help you.” It’s just like you said, it’s turning it all upside down. It doesn’t matter how much money you have, how good or bad you see yourself, what’s your past, what’s your genealogy. Everybody,
Annie Mendrala (10:30.599)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (10:36.564)
no matter where you’ve come from, has that opportunity to receive the gospel, receive God’s love and His grace, and we can’t earn it. And it’s just so beautiful.
Annie Mendrala (10:47.409)
Yeah, and interestingly, the gospel, you know, they were like you’re saying, they were such law abiding religious people, you know, follow the rules, follow the rules. But Jesus said, even if you follow the rules, your heart is really broken, too, because you may not physically murder someone, but if you hate them, you’re murdering them. And he really started to offend the people just like the gospel offends us today because it goes to the core of our our sin nature to the hidden parts that we think we can put away.
Candace Nassar (11:06.126)
Absolutely.
Annie Mendrala (11:17.007)
You know we can mask those things with a big smile but on the inside we are radically corrupt apart from Christ and so the gospel penetrates the heart. That’s why it is transformational: it’s an inside out, not the outside in.
Candace Nassar (11:26.286)
Mm.
Candace Nassar (11:33.516)
Yeah, so good, Annie. I’m so glad that you added that because yeah, I mean, that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. The beauty of the fact that He calls us to these things, but He also helps us get there. And so we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes. But let’s talk a little bit about what it means to live a gospel -centered life. We’ve kind of touched on it, but let’s dive in a little bit deeper. So what would you say?
Annie Mendrala (11:40.721)
Mm -hmm.
Annie Mendrala (12:01.415)
You know, I think about this, like really a gospel-centered life is an eternally-focused life. You know, early in my faith journey, I read the verse in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, because what is seen is temporary and what is unseen is eternal.” So to live a gospel life means to live in the unseen.
Candace Nassar (12:07.15)
Hmm.
Annie Mendrala (12:26.351)
In the eternal focus, because “what is seen is temporary” is very quick to hijack our brains, our hearts, our minds, right? But to live gospel-centered is to live outside of this world, to live in a place of grace and hope and love. Our whole lives should reflect that from the way we spend our time to the way we spend our money, to the people, to our priorities, everything. It’s a radically changed life.
Candace Nassar (12:52.824)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (12:56.322)
Yeah, it means in my opinion, in addition to that, I would say, just making those choices to yield to the Holy Spirit, to pour out love and grace onto others, like having compassion instead of condemning, humbly putting others above ourselves. It means, and it’s a big one for me, giving up the need to be right and win an argument and listening to understand instead, and being a peacemaker.
Annie Mendrala (13:11.035)
Mm -hmm.
Candace Nassar (13:25.967)
We already talked a little bit about the political climate. There’s nothing more important than remembering when we are tempted to argue out of anger, and start posting hateful things on social media. That’s not practicing the gospel fundamentals at all. We are citizens of heaven first. And so as being on Team Jesus, we want to remember love is to will the good of another, and grace is giving what they don’t deserve. So focusing on that and just like you said, pursuing God with our whole heart, surrendering our will to His. And you said this earlier, you know, it’s lining our priorities up with God, living a transformed life. We don’t have enough willpower to do that. We can’t just decide to do that. We need help.
Annie Mendrala (14:25.017)
Amen.
Candace Nassar (14:25.935)
Praise God you have it. Praise God for giving it to us. So let’s talk for a second. I saw this great chart on one of my favorite websites, GotQuestions .org, and it talks about the me-centered life versus the gospel -centered life. It really gives us a good picture of what the difference is because culture, and our own flesh even as believers, we want to be me-centered. It’s just our sin nature. And so the me-centered life, there’s some things that it says. Which one of those really hit you if you had to pick one or two?
Annie Mendrala (15:06.129)
You know, honestly, one of the first ones that they listed was me-centered. We know about Christ, but have we really surrendered our lives to him? You know, for me, like, yeah, like I know a lot of things, but yet I default to my own, to my own understanding instead of just surrendering to his, you know, and the outcomes that he has for me, because I want to manipulate those. So that idea of my plans versus his plans maybe is a big one for me.
Candace Nassar (15:34.776)
Mm
Candace Nassar (15:44.974)
That’s good. One of the things that jumped out for me was the me-centered life serves only if it brings satisfaction or approval. Yeah. Because I want to be approved of by men a lot. But the gospel-centered life joyfully serves others as a way to serve Christ, not to get anything in return.
Annie Mendrala (16:02.983)
I’m
Annie Mendrala (16:13.339)
Yeah, that’s a good one.
Candace Nassar (16:14.37)
That was good, That was a big one for me. Are there any others?
Annie Mendrala (16:19.559)
You know, there was one at the end actually. It was interesting. It was a transformational part of my own journey. You know, I used to think a me-centered just says, well, this is just how I am. Like this is how God made me. This is just how I’m wired. But a God-centered, a gospel-centered life, knows that the fruit of the Spirit can be developed in our lives, that God can transform our hearts, that…
Candace Nassar (16:31.672)
Mm.
Annie Mendrala (16:45.411)
even though we may have sin tendencies or ways that we are kind of wired, that God wants to rein those in. He wants to harness those for His ways, so that our sin, our flesh, is not an excuse to keep sinning. It’s actually an opportunity to see the work of the Spirit in our lives.
Candace Nassar (17:07.422)
So beautiful. Also, it’s funny, before I became a believer, because as I’ve said many times, I was not raised a Christian, I considered myself a good person. And that’s what a me-centered person does. They, you know, it’s easy for us to look at the speck in someone else’s eye instead of the plank in our own. And we make a lot of excuses for ourselves, but we want to
Annie Mendrala (17:08.839)
Yeah.
Annie Mendrala (17:21.371)
Mmm.
Candace Nassar (17:36.616)
know, look at others and say, “Well, they don’t do this and they don’t do that”, and compare ourselves. But I considered myself a good person until I was confronted with the gospel, until I read the Bible and read the scriptures for myself to understand that anything I think, or do, that doesn’t please God is not living up to God’s perfection and so makes me not a good person. And that was really, you know, I was like, “What? I’m a sinner?” And it sounds so prideful, but I just didn’t think I was because I didn’t think I, you know, killed anyone or had affairs or whatever. But now I am so grieved over my sin, you know.
Annie Mendrala (18:21.361)
Mm -hmm.
Candace Nassar (18:29.448)
As God has more and more matured me, it’s the little things that I do that grieve me, the way I disrespect my husband or try to control my kids or whatever it is, you know, Or even just thoughts that I know aren’t right, you know, I’m just grieved over those. And that’s, I think that’s what God’s asking us to do.
Annie Mendrala (18:50.533)
Yeah, that me-centered life, the comparison is us against everyone else. And we can always find ways that we’re better than other people. But in a gospel-centered life, our comparison is Christ. And we’re always comparing ourselves to Him as our standard. We’re going to always be in a place of humility and of just dependence, because then we’re going to realize, well, we’re never going to meet that standard. Like you said, no one is good.
Even Jesus said it when they called him a good teacher. He was like, “Hold on a second. Nobody’s good. Why are you calling me good?” You know, like if our standard is ourselves, well, sure, we can make ourselves look great. If our standard is Jesus, is God, then well, we’re hopeless without Him.
Candace Nassar (19:38.37)
Yeah, so to continue living a gospel-centered life means to continually look at Jesus and keep our eyes fixed on him so that we see ourselves in his light and realize these are things that we’re not doing and we need to be doing. So, let’s talk a little bit about why it’s so hard to live the gospel out.
Annie Mendrala (20:04.569)
I don’t know, it’s very easy for me. Just kidding. You know, living out the gospel, gosh, you know, yeah, because we think of living out the gospel as, well, I’m going to go share the gospel. I’m going to tell people about how they can be saved. You know, that’s what living out the gospel is, is bringing that message. But really, when we do that, even in that, we think about ourselves as our pride becomes this imposter in our
Candace Nassar (20:07.318)
you
Annie Mendrala (20:32.377)
missional thinking because it’s like, “What am I going to do for God today? How am I going to, you know, check off the list that I shared the gospel?” But really, our flesh continues to invade the spirit and battle inside of us. It’s, you know, back to that sermon on the mountain. Jesus really infiltrated the soul of the people listening because they got offended. They’re like, “Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I’m good.”
The gospel comes in and it wrecks because our tendency is to orbit around ourselves. We have to keep going vertical in this horizontal living. We have to keep going back to Him. It’s hard and I wish it was a default setting that I just automatically woke up filled with the Spirit, living and knowing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That that was just who I was. But the reality is that’s not. That’s not the default nature while I’m still here on Earth.
Candace Nassar (21:34.67)
Yeah, I mean, it just takes constant discipline on our part and yielding to the Holy Spirit. Another verse I memorized early was Romans 7:15, when Paul says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.” And, you know, the more mature I get, the more I see the sin in my life. And I’d get really upset by it. But the beauty is God’s grace is there for me to continue to confess and repent and just keep going back to receive His grace and sit at the foot of the cross and be filled by Him and just realize that Paul ends that section on Romans 7,
“What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Annie Mendrala (22:41.919)
That’s the mercy part, right? We do what we don’t want to do. And in the moment we’re convicted, we know, why did I just do that? And in God’s mercy, He doesn’t kill us in that moment. He doesn’t end our lives. He gives us the gift to repent and to try again and to return to Him. And it’s that turnaround time, I think, as we mature as believers. How quickly can I turn around from my sin? It’s not will it happen? It’s how quickly can I turn away from it?
Candace Nassar (22:43.905)
Mm -hmm.
Annie Mendrala (23:11.623)
Yeah, it’s so hard.
Candace Nassar (23:12.696)
Mm -hmm.
So this is a great place to talk a little bit about our own struggles more specifically. So where do you struggle the most in living out the gospel? And then I’ll share mine.
Annie Mendrala (23:19.654)
Mm -hmm.
Annie Mendrala (23:27.109)
You know, I like this question because this made me kind of be honest with myself. Like, where do I struggle in being gospel-centered? I do struggle to be other-centered because I often get annoyed with people around me, My greatest default sin is pride. I think I know better than everyone around me, even God. And in the body of Christ, often I find it hardest to give grace to those around me.
I lack empathy for those who call themselves Christians and then make choices that conflict with the very identity that they’re claiming to stand in. But again, that’s my pride because I’m making a judgment and God really struck me. And literally this morning I was reading Romans and Romans 2 says, “Every one of you (and then I put the word Annie) and “Everyone, Annie, when you judge you’re without excuse.”
It says, because when you judge another, you’re condemning yourself because as the judge, you do the same things. And God was like, “Annie, the gospel is not about judging those people around you.” He goes on to say in Romans, He says, “Do you despite the richness, the riches of his kindness, his restraint, his patience, not recognizing that it’s God’s kindness that intends to lead you to repentance?” You know, the gospel is not about making judgments about people around us. It’s about being kind and patient and restraining our desire to be right. And I struggle because I see inefficiencies and I want to make it right. But then the Lord’s like, no one asked you. You need to calm down and you need to restrain and you need to go in kindness. So, you know, it’s really hard. I heard a sermon once where the pastor said the worst sin is pride. And I was like, what? That’s crazy. And God just continues to build me. The pride of my heart keeps me from living gospel-centered because then I do become an imposter. I say I believe one thing and I’m doing another, just like you said in Romans. I want to do this, but I do something else, you know. And so just moving out of judgment into just curiosity and kindness and just staying in my lane. That whole spec log thing that you talked about, too.
Candace Nassar (25:50.978)
Mm.
Annie Mendrala (25:54.415)
Like I’m going to work on myself and I’m going to love the people around me because I want them to give me that same love and grace.
Candace Nassar (26:02.38)
Yeah, you know, we both love podcasts and there’s a podcast series on the Bible Project that’s been about the Sermon on the Mount. The one that’s probably hit me the hardest is the two episodes that were about judging and when it’s appropriate to judge others. I think, you know, that’s so much about me in a lot of ways, the opposite of love and grace is judgment and condemnation.
Annie Mendrala (26:10.342)
and
Annie Mendrala (26:30.533)
Mm
Candace Nassar (26:31.286)
It’s kind of like what you said. It’s our default. And that’s one of the reasons why Jesus talks about it a lot. So if I encourage our listeners, if they want to pursue that even more to go look at, listen to, I should say, and I can put those in the show notes, The Bible Project.
Annie Mendrala (26:40.017)
Yeah.
Annie Mendrala (26:49.851)
Yeah, I love that. You know, the other thing I meant to mention is this too. So as I get in a place of judgment and that I get more prideful and more prideful and then when I’m wrong, I have a really hard time saying, I’m sorry, or I’m wrong. Those words never roll off my tongue naturally. Often, like you said, I’ll be convicted. Even the other day, Mike and I were doing something and I got a little short with him and
immediately I was like, “Hold on. Let me redo that.” And I said it again and I realized, “Wow, like that was a big win.” Because I’ve been working really hard on doing that. But I’m like, why has it taken me so long to naturally repent and say I’m sorry or I was wrong? Because I’m so prideful. So that is so hard.
Candace Nassar (27:40.587)
We all are Annie. I mean, honestly, the greatest sin is pride because all other sins flow from that. So I hear you. And for me, perfectionism, I’m an Enneagram one. But I’m also a wing two, which makes me what’s called “the advocate”. But I have this vision of how things should be. And when they don’t turn out that way, I start feeling sorry for myself.
Annie Mendrala (27:48.613)
Right?
Annie Mendrala (27:56.103)
Mmm.
Candace Nassar (28:09.58)
Or I get stuck, I go inward and sometimes double down on control, which in a lot of ways is pride. It’s just because I’m not being perfect or someone around me is not being perfect, I mean, “What? No one’s perfect.” So doubling down on control, which leads to more frustration and disappointment. And so I just have to continually, daily, take my eyes off of what’s going on around me and put my eyes on Jesus as he’s the standard bearer. He’s the author and perfecter of our faith. And that way I keep from being judgmental, hyper fixated on imperfections, obsessive, in other words, self-centered really. And it’s also tied to my desire to please people too, which can be an idol in my life that I have to lay down daily.
It’s a journey. It’s all part of the sanctification process. I just keep leaning in, keep asking God to show me, and He does.
Annie Mendrala (29:19.483)
Mm hmm. Yeah, think whatever our struggle is, you know, it doesn’t matter what we’re struggling with, we return to a gospel-centered life. We will reorient our hearts to a place where we can then endure whatever it is that we’re going through. But as long as we stay centered around ourselves, we will find panic and fear and anxiety and anger and frustration. But if we return to a gospel-centered focus, that’s where we find life and freedom and joy.
Candace Nassar (29:51.804)
Amen. So good. So, okay, as we wrap up, how would you encourage our listeners that might feel discouraged, like you and I do sometimes, to keep fighting the fight to finish the race, as Paul says?
Annie Mendrala (30:07.889)
Well, you know, the reality is if you have breath today, God’s not done with you. He’s not done with me and he’s not done with any of us. And so God has a purpose. I was thinking about this most of my life, it’s been about building something-building a family, building a business, building memories and experience, building my own knowledge. While all of this is part of the life God has called me to, these things often distract me and pull me away from the heart of God, even though they’re good things, even if they’re centered around bringing the gospel truth. I get in that mode of do, do, do. And so I just want to encourage our listeners, especially, those that are in the thick of it- motherhood or, just whatever you’re going through, it’s easy to focus on what is the next task I need to accomplish to get to an end goal.
And so as we fight to finish this race strong, we have to prioritize our relationships. Ultimately, number one, our relationship with God and ourselves and then with others. Our doing can blind us from the greater work around us. And that is the transformation-changed life, our lives being changed, the lives of the people around us. And so, you know, for me, I really try to prioritize this year. I’ve been doing the Bible In a Year.
The Bible recap and every day it says find a “God Shot”. Keep it simple-like who is God? There’s a lot of stuff going on in the Word of God and we could look at the Greek and Hebrew and we could look at the theology, but ultimately who is God? What is one thing to focus on him daily? I think that as we talked about getting back to the basics we gotta get back to who is God and surrendering to the fact that
control is an illusion and that He’s in control and that His gospel is meant to bring life and hope and joy. And so I would just say, get your “God Shot”, give up the results, trying to manipulate and control the results of our lives. Mother Teresa said this (when I was in the thick of it with my little three boys and just feeling overwhelmed), I read something that said, “None of us can do great.Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.”
Annie Mendrala (32:33.487)
And so just taking the portion that we have and multiplying it through love, I just want to encourage our listeners to do that.
Candace Nassar (32:40.64)
Mm -hmm. Very good. Yeah, and just stay focused on the fundamentals of love and grace. Speaking of another podcast, you sent me one that I am now following called The Rule of Life by Practicing the Way. It’s with John Mark Comer, who wrote one of my favorite books, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and his counterpart, Bethany Allen. The episode I was listening to was on the practice of solitude
Annie Mendrala (33:10.001)
Mm
Candace Nassar (33:10.112)
and why it’s so important and beneficial for true life change, the transformation that we’re talking about. And I know especially young moms, solitude is like not possible. So you would literally have to find a way to have your husband or your mentor or somebody in your life who could maybe take your children for a little bit as you
Annie Mendrala (33:22.843)
I’m
Candace Nassar (33:36.824)
go and just spend some time somewhere just sitting and listening to God because John Mark Comer quotes Dallas Willard saying that “the practices or the disciplines are things we can do to make space for God to do what we cannot do.”
Annie Mendrala (33:54.727)
That will preach.
Candace Nassar (33:56.492)
Yeah, yeah. It makes space for Him to do what we cannot do because we cannot transform ourselves. We can lean in, we can yield, but we need to make space for Him. And so that was the whole point of the solitude episode, which, you know, we can get overwhelmed by thinking, how am I supposed to do that? But really, it’s taking things away. It’s not adding something. It’s like putting your phone away.
Don’t be around other people for an hour or whatever it is and just put things away so that you can have that time. And then just don’t get discouraged because it’s a lifelong journey. We’ve got to continue to do the spiritual practices, Sabbath, solitude, silence, slowing, being in the Word, all the things we know. Just keep doing it. Keep at it. Another thing they said in that podcast was trying versus training.
We can’t try hard enough to become Christ-like, but we can train and give God the space.
Annie Mendrala (35:03.633)
That’s so good. brings us back to that football season analogy, right? That we don’t know that we’re going to win the Super Bowl. We actually do know. We know that Jesus is winning the Super Bowl ultimately. But in life, we don’t know what the results are going to be, but we can know if we’ve trained, if we’ve done what we can, could, as far as it depended on us, did we, you know, strengthen our spiritual muscles? Do we get healthy so we can endure whatever is to come?
Candace Nassar (35:08.334)
Exactly.
Candace Nassar (35:14.904)
Yes.
Annie Mendrala (35:33.35)
Yeah.
Candace Nassar (35:33.986)
Good. Wow. Good stuff. Annie, I would love it if you would close us in prayer.
Annie Mendrala (35:40.537)
I’d love to. Heavenly Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus, we are so grateful for your abiding presence in our lives to those who have put our faith and trust in you, God. We pray that you would help us to center our lives, orient our hearts and our minds around your love and your grace, your mercy and your truth. God, help us to be vessels of hope in a world that is chaotic and fear-based, Lord. We trust you for all things. Be with our listeners and just encourage them today. In Jesus’ I pray, Amen.
Candace Nassar (36:19.179)
Amen. Thank you, Annie.
Annie Mendrala (36:21.467)
All right, bye friend.
Candace Nassar (36:23.022)
Bye.
