Shows / ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
ToddTalks: Spirit by Design is a weekly podcast for Latter-day Saints and other Christians who want to keep their faith strong in a chaotic world — especially when trials hit, answers feel delayed, or you can't always be in church because of work, travel, or life.
Host Todd Andrewsen is a former missionary and Elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a military instructor pilot and commercial aviator who taught pilots to fly in Afghanistan. He brings a pilot's discipline to…
Episodes
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Choose Decide What to Do with the Time You're Given — Agency and Adversity
Life can hand you a weight you never volunteered to carry, and the hardest part is realizing you don't get to rewrite the assignment. We start with that raw…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Prophets Aren't Here to Make Us Comfortable — Jeremiah (Part 2)
A warning light is annoying until it keeps you from flying into the mountain. We take that same idea and apply it to Jeremiah: prophets do not exist to make us…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
When Life Looks Fine but Your Spirit Is Drying Up — Jeremiah (Part 1)
The greatest danger isn't always the enemy outside the walls. Sometimes it's the quiet spiritual decay we excuse because life looks successful, stable, and…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Be Rich Like Jesus? Jerremy Newsome on Money, Faith, and a Christian Money Mindset
Losing millions can harden you, or it can humble you. Jerremy Alexander Newsome did rage at God — then he hit the point where blaming everyone else stopped…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Do What You Can, Give God the Rest: Trusting God When You Can't Control Life
Suffering can shrink your world until all you can see is the walls of your own Liberty Jail. In this episode on trusting God when life is out of your control…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How to Keep Your Faith in the Refiner's Fire: Trials, Suffering, and D&C 122
Pain has a way of shrinking your world down to one brutal question: why would God allow this? We wrestle with that question head-on through the image of the…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
You Did Everything Right and Still Got Wrecked: What Liberty Jail Teaches About Suffering (D&C 121–123)
You can do everything you believe God asked you to do and still end up in the middle of a storm. That’s the gut-punch question I’m sitting with today: when…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
When Character Fails, Freedom Falls: Why Laws Can't Replace Morality
Right and wrong didn’t disappear. We just started treating them like opinions, and that shift is costing us more than we realize. We dig into why a moral code…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
True Freedom Starts With Virtue: Joy vs. Pleasure, Agency, and 2 Nephi 2
“The pursuit of happiness” doesn’t mean chasing whatever feels good. We dig into a deeper definition that’s rooted in virtue, character, self-government, and a…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
From Seeking to Jesus: Laura Ruth Stewart's Conversion Story, and Learning to Pray and Listen
A single sentence in a dorm Bible study can crack a worldview wide open and sometimes it takes years to understand what just happened. We sit down with Laura…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Faith Like a Mustard Seed Still Moves Mountains: A 7-Day Practice When Your Faith Feels Small
You might be waiting for “bigger” faith before you try again, pray again, repent again, or hope again. We challenge that assumption head-on with the Savior’s…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
When Life Gets Turbulent, Fly the Fundamentals: Simple Gospel Basics That Steady Your Faith
The fastest way to drain your faith is to bury it under extra rules, endless debates, and spiritual overthinking. We keep returning to a simple claim: Jesus…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Commandments Aren't Restrictions: How Obedience Brings Peace, Health, and Purpose
Commandments can feel like fences until you notice what they’re actually doing for you. I’m digging into a question that changes everything: what if God’s…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Choosing a Mission Over a Basketball Scholarship: Spencer Kimball on Building Unshakable Faith
A scholarship offer can feel like a lifeline until it forces the real question: what does God want me to do? Todd sits down with his friend Spencer Kimball, a…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Fear Not: Faith in the Last Day!
Fear sells fast right now. Headlines stay hot, social feeds stay loud, and it’s easy to confuse constant тревога with “being aware.” We take a different…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Consistency-Simple, Not Easy: Building Spiritual Strength Through Daily Habits
You can feel inspired in a single day, but you don’t rebuild a life that way. Real transformation comes from the quiet work you repeat when nobody is clapping…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What Makes A Good Man or Woman?
If you’ve ever wondered why someone can look impressive and still feel hollow, this conversation gets straight to the point: goodness is not a brand, a bank…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Don’t Judge Me Because I Sin Differently Than You!
The fastest way to feel righteous is to find someone else’s weakness, but it’s also one of the quickest ways to lose the Spirit. We dig into a trap that shows…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What If Doubt Is Part Of Faith? Interview With Lila Willardson
Some prayers are peaceful. Some are honest enough to sound like a fight. Todd sits down with his close friend Lila Willardson for a real conversation about…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Making And Keeping Covenants Is How You Grow Stronger Spiritually
Covenants can feel intimidating until you realize what they’re designed to do: connect you to Jesus Christ so His power can change you. We talk about why…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
When God Is First Everything Else Falls Into Place
Your life can be full of good things and still feel out of order. We’re talking about one change that acts like a master switch: putting God first. Not as a…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What If Busy Is Your Biggest Temptation - Coose Between What’s Good, What’s Better, and What’s Best!
Something feels off even when you’re doing all the right things. You’re working, serving, learning, staying active, showing up for family, and trying to be a…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Personal Revelation - God Teaches You How To Think With Him
If you’ve ever second-guessed a prompting, you’re not alone. We get honest about what personal revelation actually feels like when it shows up in normal life…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
God Prepares You For A Moment Like This - Esther
The moment you’ve been avoiding has a question attached to it: will you choose what’s right even if it costs you something? We dig into the kind of courage…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
God’s Glory Is Intelligence - Seek to Constantly Grow Intelectually
God’s glory isn’t wealth. It isn’t raw power. It’s intelligence, light, and truth and that single idea can change how you treat learning, creativity, and…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Why Strength Training and Caring For Your Body Honors Jesus Christ
You can be deeply sincere about Jesus Christ and still slowly lose the physical capacity to serve, endure, and show up for the people you love. I’ve been…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What If Your Trial Is Shaping You? Answer - It is!!
The hardest trials are the ones that don’t resolve on your timeline, the ones that make you whisper, “Why is this happening to me?” We sit with that question…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How To Use Visualization To Build An Abundant Life With Christ
Visualization gets lumped in with “manifesting,” hustle culture, and wishful thinking, but I want to reclaim it as something much older and much holier. When…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Servant Leadership That Actually Changes People - Leadership part 3
Leadership can look impressive and still be hollow. We’re digging into a sharper standard: the real measure of a leader isn’t how many people know your name…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What If Leadership Isn’t About Power At All - Leadership Part 2
If leadership is “getting people to do what you want,” you can win a lot of battles and still lose your kingdom. We pick up part two of our leadership series…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
The Cost Of Not Listening - Leadership Part 1
One stubborn moment can undo years of trust, and Rehoboam proves it. He inherits the greatest advantages imaginable as Solomon’s son, yet he manages to…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
If You Stop Learning, You Start Losing
One sentence can fracture a family, a team, or an entire kingdom. That’s why I’m leaning into a hard leadership lesson from the Old Testament: Rehoboam had a…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How To Love Like Christ Without Being Used
If you’ve ever felt guilty for saying no, even when you’re exhausted, this conversation is for you. We’re digging into one of the hardest tensions in Christian…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Signs Of The Second Coming - Are You Watching or Working on Becoming Holy?
The world feels like it’s accelerating, and not always in a good way. Wars flare up, families strain, truth gets treated like a preference, and technology…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How Prosperity Can Slide You Into Spiritual Apathy
Comfort isn’t always a blessing. Sometimes it’s the quiet condition that puts our spiritual life to sleep while we’re busy feeling “fine.” We dig into a danger…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How To Stay Spiritually Anchored When Culture Tries to Shift Truth
Truth didn’t get weaker, but the pressure to treat it like a preference has never been louder. We sit with a hard question: why is it so difficult to stand for…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Righteous People Suffer And God Still Refines Them - Lessons From Job
The hardest seasons of life can make you wonder if God has gone quiet or if you did something wrong. We go straight at that fear by walking through the Book of…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Are You Training Yourself To Hear God Or Ignore Him
A tiny spiritual nudge can feel easy to dismiss, until you realize it might have been the exact help someone needed. I’m Todd, and I’m digging into a principle…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
What Anchors You When Truth Feels Optional - Stand in Holy Places
When your “instruments” fail in the clouds, your body can swear you’re level while you’re actually turning into danger. I open with a real C-130 cockpit moment…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Memorial Day Calls Us To Live Worthy Of Sacrifice
Memorial Day can feel like a holiday on the calendar until you’ve watched a grieving unit file onto an aircraft and stand over flag-draped coffins. I’m Todd…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Real Faith Trusts God When Nothing Works - Lessons about God from George Washington's Life!
What if one of the clearest lessons about God doesn’t come from a pulpit, but from a battlefield? We take a fresh look at George Washington and the word he…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Tithing Is Not A Payment Plan, It Is a Transformation in Faith
“Tithing is fire insurance” might be one of the most repeated lines in Latter-day Saint culture, and also one of the most misunderstood. I’m not interested in…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
The Self-Doubt Epidemic - Reclaim Who You Are!
Self-doubt is getting louder, and it’s not just a confidence problem. When your worth feels tied to comparison, followers, likes, and constant evaluation…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Knowing Better Raises The Standard For Discipleship - Spiritual Light Increases Accountability
“When you know better, you do better” sounds like a gentle nudge. I argue it’s something far more serious: spiritual light changes you, and once it shows up…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Build Faith One Focused Day At A Time with Prayer, Meditation, and Vision!
Faith doesn’t usually break in a dramatic moment. It drifts, quietly, one distracted thought at a time, until we look up and realize we’re nowhere near where…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Remember Your Soul's Purpose Through The Light of Christ - Interview with Shane Murphy and Myles Treanor
Your mind can argue forever, but your soul often knows in an instant. Todd sits down with Shane Murphy and Myles Treanor to explore the Soul Alignment Method…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Becoming Unshakable - Moral Agency Part Three - Building a Foundation on Rock Not Sand
Part three of our Moral Agency discussion. Chaos doesn’t break most people all at once. Drift does. One skipped prayer turns into a week, one “I’ll handle it”…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Stop Digging The Ditch You Keep Falling Into - Agency Part Two
There’s a point in every battle where you’ve stabilized after the first hit and you finally have space to choose your next move. That’s the moment we focus on…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
How To Protect Your Moral Agency In A Noisy World - Agency Part 1 of 3
Losing control and losing your agency rarely happens all at once. It happens the way a pilot gets off course: one small degree at a time, until you look up and…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
You Do Not Fall Away All At Once You Drift Until You Gear Up Again with the Armor of God
Spiritual collapse usually does not look like a sudden break. It looks like getting comfortable, skipping the small things, and slowly taking off spiritual…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Mercy Vs Tolerance: Why Mercy Demands Truth and Change
Mercy is often expressed like it means “accept everything,” and tolerance gets sold like it means “approve of everything.” That confusion sounds harmless until…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Beating Self-Doubt With Faith: Seven Spiritual Steps to Build Unshakable Confidence
Self-doubt behaves like a thief: it steals your peace, shrinks your courage, and convinces you that your future is already decided. We tackle that head-on with…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Easter Episode--The Meaning of the Atonement: What Justice Requires and How Mercy and Christ's Sacrifice Satisfies Those Demands
In commemoration of Easter I delve deep into the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I weave in several aviation metaphors because that's what I do. The opening…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
The Great Sifting Going On: Why the Holy Ghost Is the Only Reliable Instrument in the Turbulence of the Last Days
The world feels louder, faster, and harder to know the truth and that pressure is not just political or cultural, it is spiritual. I use a pilot’s lens to…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Attraction or Transformation : The Gospel of Jesus Christ And The Law Of Attraction
This is a rerelease with a much better recording. The law of attraction works, but it can also leave people stuck in frustration when life doesn’t “manifest”…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Can Freedom Survive Without Personal Virtue: Recognizing Corruption In Our Society and Selves
Organized corruption rarely looks like a movie plot. It looks like “normal” political or societal actions: insiders protecting insiders, the rules changing…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
When The Bad Guys Run the PTA and the Senate: Warnings from Ancient Corruption
An ancinet warning specifically for our day! In this episode I walk through Moroni’s urgent spotlight on the Gadianton robbers—a network that infiltrated…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Sodom, Gomorrah, And Us: How a City Lost its Soul and Why It Matters Today
Let's trace what made Sodom and Gomorrah collapse—systemic violence, pride, and predation—and confront where those patterns echo now. In today's episode you'll…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Faith Looks Forward: Lessons From Lot’s Wife And Letting Go Of The Past
Let's explore why longing for the past stalls spiritual growth and how faith reorients the heart toward what God desires from you. Learn from Lot’s wife so you…
- ToddTalks--Spirit By Design: Your Weekly Survival Guide
Flying Through the Turbulence: Overcoming Self-Doubt by Living the Gospel of Jesus Christ
The sky can look spotless and still your stomach drops. That sudden jolt of self-doubt—the kind that destroys your inner peace without warning—is the launching…