Latest / Cortisol Coach / Stewardship, Discipline, Community, and Faith | Reframing Fitness with Ashton Gregory of Iron Forge Reignite

Transcript

Stewardship, Discipline, Community, and Faith | Reframing Fitness with Ashton Gregory of Iron Forge Reignite · Cortisol Coach

0:04
Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. If you're exhausted, gaining weight,
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losing your hair, your anxiety is through the roof, or the depression and emotional
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overwhelm have completely consumed your life, or maybe you're not showing up
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as the wife and mom you want to be.
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You've spent years never feeling good enough, taking care of everyone else while
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you quietly fell apart, and your body has been keeping score of every single bit of it.
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The chronic stress, hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause,
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whatever season you're in, cortisol is making all of it worse.
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And until you heal the root, nothing changes.
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But this show here is about to change that.
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I'm your host, Christine Marie, Holy Spirit-led Biblical Mindset Coach,
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and I have helped thousands of women heal their hormones and cortisol levels.
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Every week, I bring you leading experts, doctors, and coaches who will help
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you heal your body, mind emotions and your spirit so that you can step into
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every kingdom purpose that God has planned for your life so go grab your cup
1:02
of coffee and let's jump in.
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My guest today is Ashton Gregory, co-founder of Iron Forge Reignite,
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a Christian gym in North Fort Worth, Texas that is built on one unshakable conviction.
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The body is a temple and we are called to steward it. Ashton grew up in South
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Mississippi, one of the most obese states in the country, but even surrounded
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by a culture that normalized the opposite. She found fitness early and never let it go.
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She played sports through high school and into her first year of college.
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Before an injury forced her to pivot. That pivot led her into running races,
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triathlons, and even a bikini competition.
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And through every one of them, she became fascinated, not just with training
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the body, but truly understanding it.
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She earned her bachelor's degree in exercise science and went back to school for physical therapy.
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And she has spent over 14 years as a licensed PTA in outpatient care while personal
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training clients on the side.
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When the Lord brought her husband Chris into her life and led them to Texas,
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they both carried the same dream—owning a gym one day.
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At the end of 2025, God started opening doors and Iron Forge Reignite became the result.
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This is not a gym built on vanity or aesthetics. It is built on stewardship,
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discipline, and community through faith. And Ashton and Chris are unapologetic
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about never separating their faith from their fitness.
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Ashton, welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. Thank you so much.
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I'm happy to be here. I am so excited. It sounds a little bit odd when I say
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this, but I have been following your husband longer than I have been following you.
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That's totally understandable. I hear that for most people. He is quite the legend on Instagram.
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He is truly, so when I first saw his account, Instagram always suggests accounts for you.
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I've only been on Instagram about two and a half years or a little bit over two years.
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His profile, one of his carousels popped up and I was watching it and my husband's
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like, what are you looking at?
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And I said, this guy is incredible.
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And he was like, what are you talking about? And I said, you have to follow him.
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He is so biblically rooted and he takes It takes a stand.
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He talks about the tough things. My husband had just returned,
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I want to say like a year prior from this men's group called Rise Up Kings.
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Oh, crazy story about that, but continue.
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Okay. And so he had been a part of Rise Up Kings for several years.
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And I was actually rebaptized at a women's Rise Up Kings event.
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And it's all about breaking off strong spiritual strongholds.
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It's about removing the masks. And I loved that Chris was so in your face,
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not calling you out, but calling you higher.
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Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I mean, there are several men that I have friendships
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with because of the industry I'm in.
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And every single person, I'm like, have you heard of Chris Reignites on Instagram?
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And then it was a couple months ago, I was like, he has a wife.
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Oh, my gosh. So welcome to the show. I could not be more honored and excited.
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And I just want to share that story. Because if you're a man in your life,
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tell them to follow Chris Reignites on Instagram.
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Yeah, for sure. So it's crazy because that's actually how we met.
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I saw him on Instagram and this was when I was still just a wee little thing in Mississippi.
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And man, this guy is, I love it because I'm the same way to a certain extent.
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We deliver a little differently, but yeah, we're both very bold and unapologetic.
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And yeah, and I saw his profile and I was like, man, I'm about to slide into this guy's DMs.
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And sure enough, I did. And I felt my message was going to get lost in the abyss.
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And it was the same thing. Like, I was like, man, this guy is so incredibly bold.
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It's like, I've got to talk to this guy, which I, you know, I was like,
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he probably has millions of messages every single day.
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And so sure enough, somehow, well, it's all the Lord's doing.
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It's all God. Yeah. It's all God's doing. But yeah, he messaged back and we've been...
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Here we are in the gym and married now. And the Lord writes an amazing love
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story. That's for sure. That is so cool. So take us back. Talk to us about your journey, your story.
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You are somebody I have been so excited to have on the podcast because you talk
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about the body as a temple.
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And you and I really aligned on that piece. I know for a lot of women,
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it's a journey, right? And we're just beginning to learn.
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So talk to us about where you were, what led here, and then we'll dig into more
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on that piece. Yeah, so growing up, sports, being active, being outside,
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it was always like a non-negotiable for me.
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You know, even leading into high school and college, just playing sports.
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Like you said, like my injury, so my injury kind of put me out of things for a while.
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I had a terrible rehab experience, so I was very inactive. In those months,
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you become like depressed almost.
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You lose that identity. And so coming out of that, I was kind of reshaped that.
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I was like, okay, this is who I was for so long. Now let me recreate that.
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And so I was, you know, I adjusted and shifted into different avenues,
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the running races, the triathlons, and then the bikini competition was actually post-divorce.
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I was married one time before, and so it was post-divorce and I was like,
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okay, revenge type thing.
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But bottom line is I was doing it all for the wrong reasons.
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My faith has always been like a solid foundation in my life.
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But I wouldn't say that I necessarily trained for the Lord or trained to steward
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my body. You know, it was all about how strong I can get in the aesthetic piece
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of it, you know, vanity, all of those things.
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But it wasn't until I was like, I am done separating the two.
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Like the Lord, the word says, you know, our body is a temple.
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So it wasn't until I changed my mindset to...
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Okay, I'm going to train. It doesn't matter if I do a race. It doesn't matter
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if I do a high rocks competition. It doesn't matter what I'm doing for.
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I'm just training for life.
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I am doing it all for the glory of the Lord. And whenever you shift your mindset
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to that, the vanity piece, the aesthetics, it completely goes out the window.
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Who cares about that? Yeah, that's a byproduct of moving your body and fueling
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it appropriately with food, but you're not doing it for those reasons.
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You're doing it because your body is a temple.
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We talked earlier today actually about, you know, we are the church.
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You wouldn't go into a church and dump trash cans everywhere.
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So why is this nation, this world, filling their body with trash?
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You know, if you think about your body not only as a temple but as the church,
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you're not going to trash the church either.
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So that's why we will never separate the two, you know, our faith and our fitness,
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because we're called to steward it.
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That's such a powerful explanation and way to share it.
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And I truly have never, I've had the thought of, you know, if you only got one
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car in your life, how would you treat it, right? Like the body.
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But I've never thought about it that way in that I knew, I've known that we are the church.
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It was follow the way, right?
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We are to follow Jesus Christ, wherever that takes us. And we don't have to
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be necessarily in a church because we are the church.
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But I never thought about it from a vantage point of our body is the church. Yeah.
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That's so, it makes you rethink what you put into it.
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How are you nourishing the cells in your body?
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Exactly. Thank you for sharing that.
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Talk to me about the gym. Okay.
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Where does that start? How did it start? What's the story there?
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Yeah. So with fitness being my background and just, I have such a passion for
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it and helping people, not just physically, but just helping people improve,
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helping people to better themselves.
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It always has been a desire of mine to open my own gym.
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And so it was just always one of those things where like, you know,
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I'll wait on the right time or whenever the Lord opens that door or things like
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that. So I always just was like, I'm just going to grind, you know,
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as a therapist until the Lord just opens that door.
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And then same thing with Chris. He always, you know, once, you know,
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his power, his testimony is so powerful and most people kind of know bits and
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pieces of it just from social media. But once he kind of, you know,
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the Lord got ahold of him,
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Fitness was a huge passion in his life. He had those same desires.
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It's something whenever we got together, we would mention here and there.
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We were like, man, we feel like it's getting close to that time.
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What if? What if we did this? What if we did that? How would we do it?
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Just talking a little bit about it, but then it wasn't until we actually saw,
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because we were talking about it, But of course, things are up on your social
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media and Iron Forge official, they started popping up on our Instagrams.
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And so, man, we really like this concept. Like they, you know,
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they do not separate their faith from their fitness. And so long story short,
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Chris hopped on the call with the founder and it was, you know,
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just really awesome alignment.
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And they were looking to start an affiliate program.
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And so he was like, he asked Chris, he was like, no, do you need to pray about
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this? And Chris was like, nah, I've been praying about this. Let's go.
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And so this was back in, gosh, I guess like October, November-ish time frame.
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And it happened so fast. The Lord started opening doors that we opened our door on January 12th.
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So we did, you know, found the building, did a complete build out.
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Got all the equipment, did all the marketing stuff.
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And yeah, we opened the doors on January 12th and here we are June 22nd and,
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we're rocking and rolling.
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We have, you know, we aren't busting at the seams with members,
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but you know, what we pray every single day is that the Lord would send the
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right people, not just people, but the right people.
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Whether you're new to your faith, whether you've been a Christian for years,
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whether you've never even heard the word of God before, it doesn't matter.
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Everyone is welcome here.
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And honestly, this is, for some people, for some of our members,
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they don't have a church home.
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So this honestly is like their church home, their community,
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where they hear the word.
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And yeah, just like all of our online stuff, we will not separate that.
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The faith is the center of everything that we do here as well.
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So talk to me a little bit about what's different at your gym,
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because this, This, I was so excited for people to hear this. Yeah, yeah.
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So what every single class looks like, they're all structured the same.
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And it is class structure because we focus on community.
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It doesn't matter if you come at 5 o'clock in the morning or if you come at
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6 p.m. in the evening, it's still the same.
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So we gather around to start class. We always do, if we have some new people,
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always do introductions. We always want people to feel welcome.
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And then we start out with a short word. We do, it's kind of like a mini devotional.
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We have a scripture reference for that day, and then we talk a little bit about it.
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And then we get into the warm-up and then the workout, and then we finish every class in prayer.
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And then as far as the devotional to begin class, that's all kind of Holy Spirit-led.
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We do have 13 core values for the gym.
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And for the first 13 weeks of being open, we actually did cover one core value a week.
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But now, honestly, like I said, it's all Holy Spirit-led. It's just what the
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Lord has laid on our heart that week. Or if we feel like members are struggling
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with a certain topic, we'll cover that.
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So yeah, that's how we structure like the devotionals at the beginning.
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And then prayer, we always do that at the end because it's more intentional that way.
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We never want to rush it. So we take prayer requests, we take praise reports,
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and I mean, we'll cover you. Like if you are struggling, we will stop right
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then and there and we will cover that person in prayer.
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We never want people to leave the same as they came in.
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This is incredible. And then you also talked about you don't have mirrors at your gym.
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Correct. Yeah, we do not have mirrors. We actually had some ordered,
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and this was all I think the Lord's doing as well.
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We had some ordered. We were just going to put them like on one part of the wall.
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And for whatever reason, which again, the Lord, they got lost in transit.
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We have no idea to this day where they are.
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And we decided, we were like, we don't care where they are. We're going to just
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cancel the order because we don't need them. So yes, no mirrors.
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We do have like bathrooms with mirrors. But yeah, as far as the gym goes, no mirrors.
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It's so incredible when you live a life that is surrendered.
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What I love most is that surrender starts with that belief and knowing that
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your Holy Spirit is encased in a body, which is the church. Correct.
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So I cannot wait to hear it. Tell me your Rise Up Kings story.
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Okay. Okay. So, so we, like I said, we pray for the right people to walk in these doors. Yeah.
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We had, I can't remember the exact way that we got connected,
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but one of our members is one of the program directors for Rise Up Kings.
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So Rise Up Kings, their, their headquarters is actually in texas like right
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down the road so a lot of their you know.
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Head guys are here and like i said one of their program directors is a member of our gym now and so,
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chris started you know really chatting with him and they connected and and brian's
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his name he he was like man you got to come to one of the events you got to
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come to one of the events and so chris was all for it you know we're both,
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you know huge advocates for bettering ourselves and you know diving into coaching
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or whatever you know coaches need coaches to that type thing so so yeah he he
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got signed up and he went to an event and,
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it was just an incredible experience for him and then we were going to the Arise
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Summit was also local and so we were looking to go to that as well but But Brian
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was like, man, Ashton, you really need to go to a Rise Up Queens event.
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And so I was like, you don't have to tell me twice. I am so down.
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And so that was actually the same weekend. So Chris went to the Rise Summit,
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which is a huge Rise Up Kings on that event.
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So I went to Queens that same weekend. And so we both got so much out of each
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of our weekends. And it was just kind of talking what you were saying,
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like just complete surrender, just breaking off all the chains.
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And you think that you're completely healed in your journey.
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Until you go to an event like that and you're like, whoa, man,
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like, I guess I still do have stuff that I need to work on and let go of.
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So yeah, it was a huge stepping stone, not only for us individually,
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but in our relationship as well.
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Well, and I bring that up because the podcast is truly rooted in cortisol and
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chronic stress, which I will die on the hill that I believe that is spiritual warfare.
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And it is the way that the enemy, without even doing anything,
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right? Because we live in a sinful world, in a fallen world,
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and we want to try and do everything on our own.
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And a big part of my healing was my husband going to Rise Up Kings.
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And him saying, I'm going to step into dealing with and healing my own wounds,
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because he was trying to be the provider and the great husband and
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the man of the house, but he was operating from this place of hurt.
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And what I love about Rise of Kings is they make it comfortable.
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They can be vulnerable and you can strip down and share your biggest heartache,
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your biggest pains, your biggest weakness. And you're not judged.
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Yeah, absolutely. And so he came home from, I think it was five days or something.
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And we began having these deeper conversations. So a lot of my healing came
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from him stepping into healing, which is all God, because he was just searching
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on Facebook one day and it was an ad that popped up for Rise of Kings.
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And then my son, when he was 18, they have a young adults program.
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My son actually went. That was great. Yeah.
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And then one of the events, my husband, my son and I, we all went back. We all went together.
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So it's just super amazing. And I think that is a really important piece for
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women, especially watching the leader of your house,
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the leader of your home, step into that place of saying, you know what,
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there are some things that I need to do, too.
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And I'm going to get vulnerable and I'm going to work on me.
18:18
Yeah, for sure. And I think it's helpful, too, as a female, learning how to,
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communicate better with the leader. You know, learning how they feel loved,
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you know, learning how they need to receive that communication.
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And so I think it's just beneficial on all aspects for sure.
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It's a big piece of marriage is intimacy.
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And that was the first time I was in a room with women where it was talked about. Yeah.
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And, you know, that opened up all these other things about why is the church not talking about this?
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You know, why is this not a normal conversation?
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And so it just began a lot of really honest conversations in our marriage and
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deep healing, right? Because with honesty and vulnerability becomes transparency.
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And then you can truly step into
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that place where Holy Spirit can work on both of you at the same time.
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Yeah. And I think, too, it goes back to, you know, just the body being a temple.
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You can like circle it all together because so many women are so ashamed of
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their bodies and they don't see it as a temple.
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And if they would just realize that the Lord loves you just as you are,
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you are worthy, you are chosen, you are beautiful.
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Yes. It's not about, you know, aesthetics. It's not about vanity.
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It's about being a daughter of the king, you know, and that's yet another reason
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why you need to take care of the temple because you are his.
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And so why would you want to destroy what's his? You know, us,
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you know, stewarding our temple is like giving a gift back to him.
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He's like, here, I'm giving you this gift of your physical body.
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So by us taking care of that care of it it's like giving a gift back to him
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it's like of course lord i'm going to take care of what you gave me.
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So it's so true and i feel like so i posted a photo last night of myself,
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on social media i'm not somebody you're going to see in bikinis and whatever
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online i'm just not but i posted a picture of myself in a full piece swimsuit,
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of what I used to look like just three years ago.
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And the last piece, the last photo was me in a swimsuit, which you can't see much, right?
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But the point was, it was never about my body.
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It's always been about the healing that happened internally.
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And I believe our body is an outward mirror of what's happening internally.
20:53
Yeah. And can you talk a little bit more about that?
20:57
Yeah, for sure. It kind of brings me back to an exercise. And I recommend any,
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female doing it, honestly, is, you know, think about yourself like standing
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in a mirror, or even physically stand in front of a mirror.
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Put a bathing suit on, whatever you need to do to get extremely vulnerable and
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stand in front of a mirror.
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And if you cannot look at yourself in the mirror, then there's some deep work
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that needs to go on. Because ultimately, it's not about what you're seeing.
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It's about what you're feeling internally.
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You feel shame. You feel unworthy. You feel unloved.
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And so, you know, if you feel all those things, then you're going to have no
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desire to even take care of the body that you're looking at.
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So if you can look at yourself and you can truly see yourself,
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and again, see yourself as the Lord sees you, as beautiful, as worthy,
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as chosen, then you're going to want to continue to take care of it.
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So yeah, usually if it's not some crazy body image issue, which yeah,
22:05
there's some of that that goes on too, But usually it's the deep.
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The internal, and it could be from past experiences.
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Like if someone has hurt you, if somebody has been verbally abusive,
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mentally abusive, physically abusive, then you're not going to want to see yourself
22:22
as beautiful and worthy and chosen.
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And so looking at yourself, you know, it is difficult.
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But the healing does. It requires that full surrender, knowing that you are
22:34
chosen and you are beautifully and wonderfully made.
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And that you were called to take care of that temple that he gave you.
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And that is a gift. It's truly a gift.
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And so I always recommend that women, I mean, it's challenging,
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even, you know, like years of healing, like it's still very challenging.
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But if you can truly like look at yourself in the mirror and just think about
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like the Lord, like Jesus standing behind you and like putting you on display,
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like, look, you like, just look at yourself, like how I see you, you are beautiful.
23:08
Like you are a daughter of the king.
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And so if you just can shift your mindset to thinking of it in that way,
23:15
it allows you to kind of strip away those deep layers of pain and hurt that
23:20
you felt and know that you are chosen and loved and beautiful.
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And then you'll want to take care of it more. You know, it's all just this big,
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like it all ties in together.
23:31
It really does. And one thing I'm so thankful for, for our listeners who are
23:35
local to your gym, can you share what you're sharing with them?
23:38
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So if you are local, we like to the North Fort Worth area
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or anywhere in Fort Worth, we want you in this gym.
23:50
We want you in here. Everybody is welcome. If you haven't worked out in 20 years,
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if you are an athlete, if you're a beginner, like literally anyone, everyone is welcome.
24:02
And we just want you to come through the doors. And yeah, we want you to come in first.
24:06
First three workouts are on us.
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And so you are gonna feel loved when you step foot in here, you're not gonna
24:13
leave the same after you leave. So, so yeah, we want you here.
24:19
Thank you so much. That is such a gift. And for those of our listeners,
24:22
we have listeners worldwide.
24:25
So how can they step into connection with you? And what can you offer for them?
24:31
Because I know that that's a big part of what you do.
24:35
Yeah, for sure. So we all of our online stuff, we do it through Chris's platform, actually.
24:40
So Chris reignites on Instagram. And then we want to offer we have an entire
24:46
online program, which, you know, you can reach out to his page anytime or mine, honestly.
24:53
And we are offering a fasting guide.
24:55
So we have put together because fasting is a huge part of the faith walk as well.
24:59
And people have so many questions about it, how to properly do it,
25:03
how to come off of a fast, like things like that.
25:06
So we want to offer a fasting guide to any of our listeners who want to experience that.
25:12
That's so amazing. And you, I encourage you, you guys can see all of the information,
25:18
on not only the gym, but how to connect,
25:22
with Ashton, how to find out more about the guide, as well as what training
25:29
and fitness assistance, guidance, whatnot, mentorship you can gain with them.
25:34
All of that will be included in the show notes.
25:37
If you were to share one biggest last word tip advice with the listeners today, what would that be?
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First Timothy 4.8, everybody tries to warp that verse a little bit.
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Physical training is of some value.
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They try to say that it's not of any value.
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And so we truly believe and we'll never watered down our faith and what we believe
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in stewarding our body should look like, you will not ever regret stewarding
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the one gift that the Lord gave you.
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So if you're fearful of it, drop that fear and take that step forward.
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I am so thankful you were on today. The entire mission of what,
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podcast does of what my platform does is to help women step into healing so
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that they can become everything that god created them to be and i love how you,
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are in you and chris are so aligned with that and that's what you do you both
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are just out there being the hands and feet of christ and so thank you for being
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on today's episode when i am,
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in fort worth next i don't know when that will be but I'm definitely going to
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come check out the gym because you both are such an inspiration.
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So thank you for being here today. Welcome anytime. Thank you so much.
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Friend, I am so thankful that you were here today. I pray this episode blessed you big time.
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And if it did, would you do me a favor and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts?
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It helps more women just like you find the show. And it may be the very reason
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that somebody else gets the answers that they need.
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I would also love to connect with you personally on Instagram.
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You can find me by searching cortisol underscore coach. That's where I show
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up every single day and send me a DM. I would love to connect with you. I'll see you next time.