Followed By Mercy
The Followed By Mercy Podcast
Real Grace, Honest Hope
You might notice a new name and a fresh look, but the heart behind this podcast is the same. After years as the World Evangelism Podcast, I sensed God leading me to a deeper, more personal path centered on His relentless mercy and the kind of honest hope that can reach into every hurting place. That’s why this show is now called Followed By Mercy Podcast. The format may shift, and the tone may be a bit more personal, but my mission hasn’t changed: I still believe the world desperately needs to hear the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. You are welcome here if you’ve been with me from the beginning or just found us now.
What if God’s love is more personal, stubborn, and relentless than you ever imagined?
Welcome to The Followed By Mercy Podcast, where we get honest about pain, hope, and the kind of grace that finds you right where you are, five days a week. This isn’t about religious performance or church routines. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt worn out, unseen, or unsure if they belong in the story of God’s love. Every conversation is rooted in this reality: God loves you right now, just as you are, and He isn’t giving up on you.
Here’s what you’ll find in every episode:
Experience God’s Relentless Love
Every show starts by reminding you that the Shepherd knows your name, cares about your story, and isn’t offended by your failures or questions. This is personal—it’s about God’s unwavering affection for you.
Find Your Place in His Heart
Once you grasp how fiercely you’re loved, sharing that love with others doesn’t feel forced. It becomes the most natural thing in the world. Real grace overflows.
Prayer That Changes You
We pray together—not just for the world “out there,” but for the battles and hopes you’re carrying right now. These prayers are honest, rooted in Scripture, and meant for hearts that need a gentle touch from the Shepherd.
Discover Your Unique Role
Whether you’re called to go, give, serve, or show kindness in your corner of the world, God’s mercy meets you where you are. You’re not just a bystander. You are His beloved, invited into the story He’s writing.
When life knocks the wind out of you, this is a place to catch your breath. You’ll hear the encouragement that meets you on your hardest days, and your honest questions will be welcomed. No pretending, no heavy-handed advice—just the reminder that your Shepherd is right there with you, walking every step with you, even when you feel like giving up.
Why does this matter? Because some days, it feels like nobody sees you or cares what you’re going through. But the truth is, you have a Shepherd who never takes His eyes off you, lets you slip through the cracks, and never gives up on you. That kind of love can put you back on your feet, and it might be the hope someone else is waiting to see in you, too.
If you’re longing for more than just religious talk—if you want to know you’re not alone and that God’s mercy is following you all the way home, you’re in the right place. Whether you listen in the car, on a walk, or in a quiet moment, let every episode remind you: God’s mercy is after you right now, ready to bring real grace and honest hope.
Subscribe today and join a community to discover what happens when loved people become loving people. The journey’s just beginning, and there’s a place for you here.
Followed By Mercy
Nurturing Spiritual Growth: A Guide to Mentorship and Faith Development
Unlock the secrets to fostering genuine spiritual growth and mentorship in our latest episode. Imagine helping someone catch the vision of what they can achieve through their faith, guiding them with love and kindness, and providing them with the resources they need to flourish. We promise you’ll walk away with actionable insights on how to teach others to pray, make wise decisions, and grow closer to God by sharing the paths you've already traveled. Expect authentic stories and practical advice on nurturing meaningful spiritual dialogues and creating an environment where questions are encouraged.
Get ready to understand the importance of surrounding yourself with passionate, like-minded individuals who inspire a fervent commitment to God and ministry. This episode is packed with strategies on setting goals, offering direction, and fostering purposeful yet informal conversations that inspire spiritual leadership. We delve into how to maintain a balance between academic learning and real-world application, ensuring that every discussion has substance and direction. Whether you’re a mentor, coach, or aspiring spiritual guide, this episode equips you with the tools to help others ignite their faith and achieve their spiritual aspirations.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
we want to encourage them to grow personally. That's our goal Encourage them to grow personally. We're there as a guide or a coach or a mentor, but they have to be growing. So you're going to help feed them books. They'll read their Bible. They'll discuss it with you. They'll read books. They'll discuss them with you. They'll have projects and they'll do them and come back to you and they'll discuss, before they go, how to do it and what to do there, and then they'll discuss what they did, what they learned from it.
W. Austin Gardner:And your main job is to be as loving and kind as you can. You are going to have to correct things. Any good coach corrects things and you're going to have to do that. So I want to challenge you to look at how you can help them grow in their spiritual world, but you've got to help them catch the vision of what God can do through them. I don't know, nor do you know, but you do know how to teach them how to pray, because you do, and you know how to teach them how to get along with God, because you do, and you do know how to teach them how to read the Bible, because you do, and you do know how to help them make decisions, because you have. In other words, you're taking them down the roads. You've been down, you know no one held my hand, no one carried me along the way and showed me what to say or do, but that doesn't mean we can't help other people that come along behind us. Now, vision is born as people rub shoulders with those who have vision. In other words, the reason they'll want to do something for God is because they'll be around people that want to do something for God.
W. Austin Gardner:You and I both know you go to the church where there's this red, hot on fire, really good preacher, got good skills and doing a good job. It has the power of God, and there'll be separate preacher boys on the front row. And you go to the other church where things are kind of slowly dying and there's nobody and so like attracts, like you draw to yourself what you are. You know there's a saying in Spanish that they use here in Peru. Translated, it says tell me who you run around with and I'll be able to tell you who you are. So if I find out who your friends are, I can tell you who you are. In English we say birds of a feather flock together, and so we want to get them around, people that might give them a passion for God, a passion for prayer, a passion for preaching, a passion for being a missionary.
W. Austin Gardner:So how do we do it? Well, it's going to boil down to talks, chats, but they're not directionalist chats. They're informal, they're non-formal, but they have a direction or a purpose. They're informal, they're non-formal, but they have a direction or a purpose. So you don't want to come into the room with a lesson. You don't want to come in and say, all right, tonight I had in mind to talk to you all about homiletics. No, that's not what you want to do.
W. Austin Gardner:We need Bible college. I hope in no way that you have taken from anything I'm teaching that we don't need Bible college. I think we do. I think we need the academic setting to help us learn academically a lot of things. I'm all for it, but there's a lot more to it than that, and we both know it. You know it and I know it, and we've watched people have all the know-how, have all the intellectual part, but not the know-how, maybe, and we know that.
W. Austin Gardner:So it's going to be a very candid time, these discussions. It's going to be where no questions are off limits. It's going to be. You can ask anything you want. Now we're only talking about the apostles, the 12, the disciples. Those are training to be in the ministry, those are trained to be pastors or missionaries. And then, while y'all are together, you always want to be giving them a goal to accomplish. You know a passage to read, a verse to memorize, a book to read, a ministry to accomplish, and then you want to get together and you always want to be talking about it. Well, tell me how it went. Well, what mistakes do you think you made? What could you do better the next time? Oh, you did real good on this and you did real good on that, and so you want to have that discussion with them. You want to pray together.
W. Austin Gardner:I'll never forget Pastor Willard Willis. He was the first pastor I worked with, such a sweet man of God, and on Sunday mornings we'd always go to his office and he was old enough to be my dad and he'd say, well, let's pray for the service, and he'd get on his knees and two or three of us would get on our knees and I'd listen to that man pray and I just loved listening to him and praying with him, I to him and praying with him. I learned a lot about praying from him. So pray with them, include them in your ministry. Include them in your ministry. They need to go with you and live with you doing ministry. They want to live with you, labor with you.
W. Austin Gardner:It's person with person ministry. It's the purest form of discipleship. By the way, there should be no pressure. Actually, it's more like you're getting to spend time with your best friend. Actually, pastor, now you're going to go make that hospital visit, but you don't have to be alone. You got somebody to chew the fat with. Hey, what'd you read in your Bible? What did the Lord teach you? What's going on? How can I pray for you? Hey, why don't we stop over? I want to finish up with a little bit more tomorrow, so I hope you'll stay tuned and I hope you'll invite somebody else to come and be with us.