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321-Your Story: Discovering God's Faithfulness in Every Chapter of Your Life · Stuck No More Voices

• 0:00
  Speaker: What if your story isn't your story?
• 0:02
  Speaker: What if it's evidence, evidence of the faithfulness of God?
• 0:07
  Speaker: And what if someone else's faith is waiting for you to share your story?
• 0:13
  Speaker: Hey, I'm Theresa Croft.
• 0:15
  Speaker: Welcome back to the Stuck No More Voices podcast.
• 0:17
  Speaker: I'm a visibility strategist helping Christian women go from not seen to seen, and digging in from their calling to their story, to the faithfulness of God underneath their story.
• 0:30
  Speaker: If you're listening on, uh, YouTube, I'm gonna be real vain, subscribe.
• 0:35
  Speaker: We're so close to 1,000 followers.
• 0:38
  Speaker: And if you're on Apple or Spotify, do share this episode.
• 0:41
  Speaker: Someone may really need some encouragement.
• 0:44
  Speaker: So I was reading Psalm 145.
• 0:46
  Speaker: I love that Psalm.
• 0:48
  Speaker: I could tell other stories about that Psalm, but we'll stick to one.
• 0:51
  Speaker: I was stopped on Psalm 145:4,"One generation commends your works to another.
• 1:00
  Speaker: They tell of your mighty acts." I began a- asking, who is telling the story?
• 1:07
  Speaker: Not theologians, not celebrities or influencers.
• 1:12
  Speaker: Ordinary people, people whose lives have been marked by God's faithfulness.
• 1:17
  Speaker: And I realize that's what a testimony, a story really is.
• 1:23
  Speaker: Not telling everyone how strong you are, not telling everyone that you got it made, that you survived.
• 1:30
  Speaker: No, telling everyone how faithful God has been.
• 1:34
  Speaker: I think that's what God's been teaching me over the last few years through the drama, the trauma, and now walking through healing, and maybe He's teaching you the same thing.
• 1:45
  Speaker: Three points here.
• 1:46
  Speaker: Point number one, your story becomes powerful when you begin to recognize God's fingerprints.
• 1:54
  Speaker: For years, I thought I needed a better, cleaner story, not so much drama, or maybe I needed to tell it better.
• 2:01
  Speaker: Now I think the greater is- question is, where has God been faithful?
• 2:07
  Speaker: You know, our minds naturally remember what hurts us.
• 2:12
  Speaker: That's part of how God designed us to survive.
• 2:16
  Speaker: But healing begins when we intentionally remember where God met us in the pain, in the struggle.
• 2:24
  Speaker: Throughout scripture, God continually tells his people,"Remember.
• 2:29
  Speaker: Remember the Red Sea.
• 2:31
  Speaker: Remember the wilderness.
• 2:33
  Speaker: Remember the feeding of the 5,000." Why?
• 2:37
  Speaker: Because remembrance strengthens trust.
• 2:41
  Speaker: The more we recognize God's faithfulness, the more confidence we have to walk into what's next.
• 2:48
  Speaker: Looking back, I can remember, uh, the beginning of being a widow after my husband passed from pancreatic cancer.
• 2:56
  Speaker: It was about four years ago.
• 2:58
  Speaker: I remember Anna coming up to me, my daughter, and saying,"Mom, you're homeless." Yeah, I am.
• 3:05
  Speaker: And I can remember, like,"Okay, gotta go to work.
• 3:07
  Speaker: The most easiest thing I can think of is substitute teach,"'cause I did that in another state.
• 3:13
  Speaker: Substitute teach.
• 3:14
  Speaker: I remember driving one late night.
• 3:17
  Speaker: It wasn't late.
• 3:17
  Speaker: It was to church, the evening service, and it was dark.
• 3:21
  Speaker: And you know something, there's something about darkness and the only thing you have is your headlights ahead.
• 3:26
  Speaker: But then I remembered, it sounded like someone was in my front seat with me, and I heard that voice ever so clearly, the voice that I've heard through the years,"Tee, you're not just a substitute teacher.
• 3:40
  Speaker: You're my undercover secret agent for the Kingdom of God." That was a good shift for me mentally.
• 3:48
  Speaker: So when I went in to teach, I'm like,"I'm a secret agent.
• 3:52
  Speaker: And a secret agent of the Kingdom of God.
• 3:53
  Speaker: I'm gonna be kind.
• 3:54
  Speaker: I'm gonna be gentle.
• 3:55
  Speaker: I'm gonna be compassionate." The kids liked it, obviously, when I was a substitute teacher,'cause I just let them play on their phones.
• 4:02
  Speaker: But anyway, later on I worked for Nike in customer service.
• 4:08
  Speaker: So basically, I was geared up with all these screens and my headset, and I was taking calls from clients.
• 4:14
  Speaker: You know, my nervous system could not handle the angry ones.
• 4:17
  Speaker: I got about two or three angry, ugly comments, and, uh, I couldn't handle it.
• 4:23
  Speaker: After five months, I set it down.
• 4:27
  Speaker: But then something beautiful happened.
• 4:29
  Speaker: The radio station that I had worked at, after 18 years, I was able to go back to work there.
• 4:36
  Speaker: So I found some stability going back to the radio station to work as an announcer, all the while still moving forward and caring for my mind in those first few years after my husband passed.
• 4:50
  Speaker: Even to now, that is such an important thing to, to re- deconstruct, to reconstruct for the sake of my nervous system.
• 5:00
  Speaker: 'Cause, well, what I really desired to do was to teach and speak to the person I once was in my podcast, in my programs, and now at the Calling Activation Seminar.
• 5:11
  Speaker: Maybe today God is inviting you to stop asking why.
• 5:16
  Speaker: Why did this happen?
• 5:18
  Speaker: And begin asking,"Lord, where were you?" Point number two: God doesn't waste what he entrusts you, to you.
• 5:28
  Speaker: My devotional I was reading about legacy said something,"A legacy is declaration of what you do with what you were given." That word, entrusted, given, it stayed with me.
• 5:43
  Speaker: God entrusts you with gifts.
• 5:46
  Speaker: He entrusts you with experiences.
• 5:49
  Speaker: He entrusts you with influence.
• 5:52
  Speaker: He entrusts you with compassion.
• 5:54
  Speaker: Even the painful chapters became places where you can look back and he reveals his faithfulness.
• 6:03
  Speaker: The question isn't what do I wish I had?
• 6:06
  Speaker: The question is, what has God entrusted to me?
• 6:10
  Speaker: Because stewardship always comes before multiplication.
• 6:15
  Speaker: Again, a legacy is a declaration of what you did with what you were given.
• 6:22
  Speaker: God just doesn't give you abilities.
• 6:25
  Speaker: He entrusts them to you.
• 6:26
  Speaker: Your voice, your personality, your compassion.
• 6:30
  Speaker: Yes, your business, your in-flu- influence.
• 6:34
  Speaker: Even the chapters you wish have never happened become places where his grace has met you.
• 6:41
  Speaker: For the past years, I've been doing deep work with mental, he, my mental health, and one of the greatest lessons I've learned is that we often hesitate to step forward, not because we aren't gifted, but because someone, somewhere along the journey, we learned that being fully seen isn't always safe.
• 7:00
  Speaker: Or the, my main struggle is I'm not enough.
• 7:03
  Speaker: Without realizing it, we begin to protecting ourselves.
• 7:08
  Speaker: We hold back.
• 7:09
  Speaker: We second-guess.
• 7:11
  Speaker: We stay small.
• 7:14
  Speaker: But God's word has always pointed us toward a different path.
• 7:19
  Speaker: As it says in Romans,"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind." And our minds are renewed by truth.
• 7:28
  Speaker: We can begin to experience something beautiful when we do the deep work, like a neurocycle process of deconstructing, reconstructing, not just placing a, a, a great affirmation, but really giving it a place to land that you can ap- apply it.
• 7:48
  Speaker: It's not just those rah, rah, rahs I see.
• 7:50
  Speaker: Yeah, the Word's good, don't get me wrong, but that's got to come from a place where you have opened up and said,"This is where I need help." And then as our minds are renewed, we begin to trust God more than the old messages we carried.
• 8:06
  Speaker: Not just spiritual growth.
• 8:08
  Speaker: That's not just spiritual growth.
• 8:10
  Speaker: That's freedom.
• 8:12
  Speaker: The Calling Activation study is one place where I've really enjoyed helping women get in touch with their calling.
• 8:19
  Speaker: You know, that calling you can't run away from, the calling to write a book, the calling that I just can't sit here.
• 8:25
  Speaker: God has called me too, and you would fill in the lines.
• 8:30
  Speaker: And maybe what feels random to you in the midst of all of that is actually preparation.
• 8:40
  Speaker: Point number three, legacy begins the moment you become a witness.
• 8:45
  Speaker: For a long time, I believed my work was helping women just tell their stories.
• 8:49
  Speaker: Now, I think it's more deeper than that.
• 8:52
  Speaker: There's another layer underneath.
• 8:55
  Speaker: I think my work is helping women recognize the mighty acts of God within their story so they can faithfully tell someone else.
• 9:06
  Speaker: That's legacy.
• 9:07
  Speaker: Not fame, not followers.
• 9:10
  Speaker: Faithfulness.
• 9:12
  Speaker: One woman remembering.
• 9:14
  Speaker: I smiled recently because I realized something months ago I was asking God about.
• 9:19
  Speaker: Who is the woman on the other side of this season, and what is her story?
• 9:25
  Speaker: Today, I'm beginning to recognize her, not because I've arrived, because I can finally see the evidence.
• 9:32
  Speaker: God has been faithful.
• 9:35
  Speaker: He's been forming me all along.
• 9:37
  Speaker: You know, I think it's understanding God's faithfulness in my story which helps me to connect when a woman's telling her story to say,"Hey, look, do you see the faithfulness of God?
• 9:49
  Speaker: Yes, it was painful.
• 9:50
  Speaker: You had to forgive, but look at his faithfulness now to release you to write that book, to start that business, to be really good at the business you're in." So I've g- God gave me this acronym.
• 10:05
  Speaker: I love acronyms.
• 10:08
  Speaker: And it's SEEN, S-E-E-N, okay?
• 10:11
  Speaker: And we talk about this in the whiteboard method where we really lay it out so people can say,"Oh, I see that, okay." So this is how it starts.
• 10:19
  Speaker: S is simply see your calling.
• 10:23
  Speaker: Notice what God has placed in you E is express your story.
• 10:31
  Speaker: See it, plan it, express it.
• 10:34
  Speaker: You can use divine investigation.
• 10:36
  Speaker: It's my word for a well-trained AI, Claude or ChatGPT.
• 10:43
  Speaker: There's a way to make it sound like you and not a robot, and it's actually quite easy.
• 10:48
  Speaker: And then the other E, E, is expand your impact.
• 10:53
  Speaker: Reach the ones who need your story.
• 10:56
  Speaker: That might be mean you start writing that book.
• 10:59
  Speaker: That might mean you start that small group on Facebook, or you need to have your own seminar.
• 11:05
  Speaker: Expand your impact,'cause there are people that your story can really connect to them.
• 11:11
  Speaker: You really get to speak to the person you once were.
• 11:16
  Speaker: And then N, never, no never go quiet.
• 11:23
  Speaker: When a woman happens to stop seeing herself as disqualified, they begin to see themself as really with their story entrusted, able to speak from that scar and not that wound.
• 11:39
  Speaker: So maybe today you've been looking at your life through the lens of loss, disappointment, delay, pain, and I'm really sorry.
• 11:48
  Speaker: But can I encourage you to ask one different question?
• 11:50
  Speaker: What have you seen the mighty acts of God do for you?
• 11:56
  Speaker: Because your testimony, your story isn't about making yourself the hero.
• 12:00
  Speaker: It's, uh, it's about helping someone else discover the hero who's been writing your story all along.
• 12:07
  Speaker: That's why your voice matters.
• 12:09
  Speaker: That's why your story matters.
• 12:11
  Speaker: Not because it's perfect, because God has been faithful, and someone else needs to hear your story.
• 12:20
  Speaker: If today's episode stirred something in you, I'd love to invite you to the Calling Activation Study.
• 12:26
  Speaker: It's on a Tuesday.
• 12:28
  Speaker: On this recording, it's this Tuesday, July 28th, but it'll be every other week, so you'll be able to catch one.
• 12:35
  Speaker: And this is the time where we just get to break down some nuts and bolts of your story, story map for you, and really connect and really show you how that calling is connected to your story, which is connected to you being visible, your message reaching your ideal client, you having something that you think is ordinary, and God's put His extra on, and you become an extraordinary solution for someone's pain point.
• 13:06
  Speaker: I truly believe God has entrusted something beautiful to you.
• 13:11
  Speaker: It's legacy.
• 13:12
  Speaker: L- let me remind you of this verse in ending.
• 13:16
  Speaker: 2 Corinthians 4:7.
• 13:18
  Speaker: Check this out.
• 13:19
  Speaker: "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the all-surpassing power is from God and not from us." The jar is your story.
• 13:30
  Speaker: The treasure is God's faithfulness.
• 13:33
  Speaker: Your business helps women stop polishing the jar and start revealing the treasure.
• 13:41
  Speaker: I'm Theresa Croft.
• 13:42
  Speaker: I'll talk to you in the next episode of the Stuck No More Voices podcast.