Encouraging You to Give Yourself Grace

Give us five minutes, we’ll give you encouragement!

Transcript

0:00:04 - Eric

Hey, we welcome you into Your Encouraging Five-Minute Podcast. I'm Eric. This is my friend. Heather, give us five minutes. We'll give you encouragement, because we know it can be hard to find encouragement, especially easy encouragement, so we're going to do all we can to bring you some good news and encouragement for your day. Heather found this quote. You may have heard it before, but it's good. I said we got to share this. 

0:00:27 - Heather

You know how, like when you see something, you're like, oh, this is, I need to print this out that stuff pops up in your feed. 

0:00:39 - Eric

Oh, my word, this one said you may be a product of your past, but you don't have to be a prisoner of it. 

0:00:42 - Heather

I feel like I've heard that before, but when you hear it's like you know cause stuff happens to you in life, weigh you down or make you feel guilty or shamed. But you know, at the I mean at the end of the day people can stick whatever labels they want to on you, but Christ's resurrection freed you from all of that. You are not defined by your past. At all. 

0:01:02 - Eric

Probably the biggest challenge I would say, then, is leaving it in the past. Oh my goodness, letting it go. 

0:01:07 - Heather

Yes, I mean, I think even our kids do that. Right. They're like, oh my gosh, when I was in seventh grade I was so cringe, like well, you didn't know then what you know now. But I am trying very hard because I see a lot of the difficulty in looking back and appreciating my past as a part of my story and what made me who I am today. A friend of mine told me she is learning to love the woman that she was and love the woman that she is and to be excited about the woman she's going to be. And I'm still struggling with a lot of the past decisions that I made. So I'm not necessarily to that point where I love that or can look at that and go, oh man, that taught me so much. I'm so grateful that happened, but I'm working towards it. 

0:01:59 - Eric

And hearing what your friend is saying is almost healing. 

0:02:02 - Heather

Yes, exactly, and that's what I find a lot of times when I look back at the past. I think that's God saying honey, you haven't healed this yet. Sit with me and let me heal you of this, so you don't carry it into the future. 

0:02:17 - Eric

Yeah, because that baggage will weigh you down. And when you give it over to God, truly just let it go. It frees you up to be who God created you to be. 

0:02:27 - Heather

You know, when I look back at some of the things that I still carry guilt or shame over, well, we all do Right, but it's like, yeah, I got some things wrong. Maybe I wasn't the best person I could have been. There are times I was completely out of pocket and there are definitely some people I should have apologized to. You know, I even messed up opportunities that were literally handed to me. But if I keep looking back at that with criticism and not with grace that I extend to other people, because if a friend of mine said all of these things to me, I would be like no, no, no, I would extend grace. But I find a lot of times we just don't give ourselves that grace and permission to not only heal from those things but to leave them in the past. So, like you said, eric, we can go forward in Christ and be who he designed us to be in Christ and be who he designed us to be. 

0:03:26 - Eric

It's really simple advice Always be kind. I saw this the other day you, that's me, you and all of y'all you will never look into the eyes of someone. God does not love. Every person that you connect with, that you lock eyes with, that. You see today, god loves that person Always. Be kind. It reminds me of the verse in Ephesians, Ephesians 4:32. Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God, through Christ, has forgiven you. 

0:04:06 - Heather

That person you lock eyes with today. God loves them and you know what. That is something I need to remember when that person cuts me off in traffic or you're going to encounter rude people, and that's the thing I think that we forget is that each of these people that we see and in our minds immediately are like well, that person's rude see, and in our minds immediately are like well, that person's rude. God created them in his image as well and he loves them so much, even if we're finding it challenging. Yeah, and research even shows a small act of kindness impacts like three degrees of separation away from you. 

0:04:39 - Eric

I'm not sure what that. That sounds like trigonometry to me.

0:04:41 - Heather

It does but listen to this. So you're nice to that person at the cash register, right, so they're nice to the next person that comes in, maybe that's a teacher, who's then nice to say. 

0:04:51 - Eric

I mean, you know it's like the ripple effect. 

0:04:53 - Heather

Yes, the impact you have just with your kindness is unfathomable. 

0:04:58 - Eric

Whoever you encounter today, or however many people you encounter, be kind to each one. It's going to have great effect. 

0:05:05 - Heather

We hope you've been encouraged today. Thank you so much for listening.