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
Success over Stinking Thinking 2
Stinking Thinking: How to Break Free from Your Own Worst Critic
Most of us spend our days listening to a voice in our head that rarely has anything kind to say. That voice nitpicks our appearance, questions our abilities, and quietly whispers that we'll never be enough. You're not alone if you're exhausted by the constant barrage of self-doubt. The average person has about 6,000 thoughts running through their mind every day, and nearly three-quarters of those are negative. It's no wonder many of us live anxious, tired, and burdened.
But there is hope. God doesn't leave us trapped with our inner critic. Today, we're talking about the biblical way out of what I call "stinking thinking." We'll look at David's story, especially the moments behind Psalm 23. Imagine him: abandoned, hiding in caves, hunted by those he once trusted. Yet, instead of replaying his pain, David zeros in on the goodness of his Shepherd. He doesn't mention his problems, only God's steady love and care.
David's secret wasn't just stubborn optimism or mental grit. He practiced "word power," taking God's truth and speaking it out loud until it changed the atmosphere inside him. Joshua 1:8 lays out the process: keep God's Word on your lips, chew on it all day and night, and live by it. This isn't sitting around thinking positive thoughts; it's an active fight. It means stopping those negative thoughts in their tracks and replacing them with what God says.
In this episode, I want to help you do what David did. Not by pretending your pain isn't real but by learning how to anchor your thoughts to the truth of God's character and promises. Our minds are built to meditate—they're always chewing on something. You get to decide whether that's fear, shame, or the steady kindness of the Shepherd who never leaves your side.
Here's what we're covering today:
- Why we all talk to ourselves in ways we'd never tolerate from anyone else
- How biblical meditation goes beyond positive thinking and rewires your mind
- What David knew about surviving dark days without letting darkness take root inside
- How "word power" can interrupt the spiral of negativity and bring lasting change
- Fundamental steps to stop destructive thoughts and build your mind on solid ground
Tomorrow, we'll continue talking through some simple, honest ways to trade those old, toxic thoughts for the truth God speaks over you. But for now, hear this—being stuck isn't your destiny. No matter how long you've been fighting these battles in your mind, God's Word can bring real change on the inside.
You're not alone if you're worn out from fighting these thoughts. We'll face this together, step by step.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
you know your deal with stinking thinking and you know it's afflicting you and it's causing great harm and great hurt to you. I want to remind you, you've thought all these things. You even think things like why is my body like this? Why did God make me like this? Why did he make me this dark or this light or this tall or this short? Why did he give me such big bones or such little bones? Why do I get fat so easily and other people don't seem to have my problem? We're not satisfied with the way the Creator made us. Why do I not have the talents that other people have? It's like they got all the talents, they can do anything, and I'm just not talented.
Austin Gardner:All these thoughts run rampant through our minds. We need a biblical argument, we need to bring them into captivity. We need to have control of our thoughts, and that's what I want to challenge you to do. We want to learn to confront negative thinking, stinking thinking, with truth, and you need first to admit that you have a stinking thinking problem. Now I want to ask you, and I want you to be honest do you have a stinking thinking problem? If you do, I want to challenge you to get victory over your stinking thinking. Admit it when your thinking stinks, you can't fix it if you won't face it. Now here's a question for you. If a person talked to your friend like you talk to yourself like your thoughts come running at yourself, would you get in a fight? If somebody talked to your wife the way you talk to you, the way you think about you? If somebody looked at your wife and said your body stinks, you're too tall, you're too short, you're too fat, you're too skinny, you don't have talents. If they talk to your wife like that, or your husband, would you not get angry? Yes, you would. But you let yourself talk to yourself like that. That's thinking. Thinking it's attacking you and it's you doing it to you. We want to get victory over that. All of us face that. 6 000 thoughts a day, six thoughts a minute, one every 10 seconds. 75% of them are negative. We're going to get victory over it. No one should ever have to listen to the garbage you put up with in your own thoughts. You need to bring them into captivity. You need to think about it and calculate about it. You need to make the mathematical calculations about what's happening to your family, your friends, your ministry, your life. Our minds take everything in and turn it into a calculation, and the majority of those are to our detriment. What are you going to do with those thoughts? How are you going to get victory over those thoughts? So we are going to learn how to consider, to believe, to reckon, to act that something is true. We want to get victory over stinking thinking. Now I need to say to you that I don't have all the victory. I'm on the same journey you're on and I'm working at it, but I am far better off than I was.
Austin Gardner:Jesus said it wasn't what a man put into his body that would contaminate him, but what came out of his heart. You know what's in your heart? All that negative, stinking thinking, and sometimes it comes out in bitterness and anger, sometimes it comes out to hurt people. Jesus said in Matthew, chapter 15, 17 through 20, he said it's what proceeds out of the mouth that comes from the heart, that's what contaminates it. Mouth that comes from the heart, that's what contaminates, it's from out of the heart. So you and I should be watching over our heart. We should get our heart under control, because if I could quiet the anxiety, if I could stop the negative thinking if I could live in the promises, I'll be happy and joyful, I'll be what I'm supposed to be, and I won't let all this beat me up.
Austin Gardner:What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about? Are you trying to control your thoughts or you just go with the flow, whatever comes running through your mind? The Apostle Paul wrote. He said I want you to think on these things when you're making calculations, when you're meditating, when you're imagining. I want you to imagine things that are true and honest and just and pure, things that are lovely. None of that's what I think about. Just to be blunt and honest with you, I don't think about that. I let my mind eat up with the other stuff. Now, we're not going to get anywhere with willpower. We're going to need word power. See the way David could go in Psalm 23,. The Lord is my shepherd. Without starting in the pit, without starting in the pity, without starting in all the bad stuff that's going on, he could start. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want he could do that because he was taking the word and believing the word, not what he wanted to think. Now we're taught through Scripture, but I think we miss it. See, we're taught with Scripture to meditate in the Word and to keep it in our mind, to keep it in our mouth. Listen to what it says in Joshua 1.8. The word of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth. Now stop with me just for a second and consider that. What do you mean? Not out of our mouth? Well, you see what I think comes out of my mouth, what's in my heart comes out of my mouth, and what he's saying is I want you talking about the word of God. I want you to speak truth. I want you to speak what God said. I don't want you to speak what your neighbor said. I don't want you to speak what social media told you. I want you to speak what your neighbor said. I don't want you to speak what social media told you. I want you to speak truth. And then he tells you how to do it. You shall meditate in day and night. You meditate in it, you think about it until it consumes your mind and becomes who you are, and then you do what it says do. And when that happens, it's going to make your way prosperous and you're going to have good success. It's going to make your way prosperous and you're going to have good success. Do you realize that basically meditating is like muttering or murmuring truth? The Lord's my shepherd, the Lord, the Lord is my shepherd, the Lord Yahweh, I am God. The God of relations, the God who loves me, the God who saved me. I am, is now, right now, in the middle of all the stuff, is, no matter how much I messed up, is not going to be, not depending on, is my personal, my shepherd, shepherd, he's shepherding me, he's taking care of me, he's meeting my needs. I belong to him. You see, we're muttering it. It's not departing out of our mouth. I think too often we want to quit talking, spiritual talk. We want to quit talking. Lord talk and we move away from it. The Bible says in Proverbs 18, 21,. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. You see, this little tongue has more power than you ever thought. One it reveals your heart. That's terrible. Two, it can cut people down and hurt people. It can spit out good and spit out bad. Now David is facing the destruction of his entire life, work. His kingdom is gone, abused from his own family, abandoned by people who were his best friends, who chanted his name and praised him before and now he faces almost certain death. But notice, david doesn't mention his needs or hurts anywhere in the Psalm. Psalm 23,. No mention. The fact is, psalm 23 doesn't even focus on David. It focuses on the shepherd, on the Lord. There's no focus on him, just focus on God. Much of the time I whine and complain and I focus on me. If you're honest, you do that too. David doesn't address God as shepherd until the fourth verse. I don't know if you think about it, but when you read Psalm 23, he never talks directly to God. He just starts on about God in third person. The Lord is my shepherd. That's a truth. That's a truth. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me, he maketh me lie down, he restores my soul. And it won't be until he gets to the third verse before he ever starts talking about it. Fourth verse Somehow in the darkest moments of David's life, he feels transported to another reality. I think one of the most beautiful things I see when I think about Psalm 23 is I picture David huddled in a cave. His clothes are dirty, his crown is laid off to the side, some handful of men are standing around him, enemies are outside and David gets lifted up to a higher plane and David says now, I'm not thinking about David in a cave, I'm thinking about the Lord is my shepherd. David sees the shepherd feeding him, giving him a banquet, refreshing his head with oil, joy running over David sees God's goodness and mercy following him all the days of his life. David goes from desperation to the light, from darkness to light, death to life, all because he knows how to meditate on truth. What if you learned that lesson? We can learn from this. So we're going to discuss how to get your thoughts under control, success over stinking thinking, and we're going to discuss that more. David, by the end of the psalm, will be flying high. I look at the psalm 23 as like a crescendo. He starts with the most basic fundamental truth the Lord is my shepherd and I ain't never leaving him. And the truth is God ain't never leaving David, and we're going to talk about that. And I think't never leaving him. And the truth is God ain't never leaving David, and we're going to talk about that, and I think it's going to help you get success over your stinking thinking. Look forward to talking to you tomorrow. This is good stuff, wonderful stuff from the word of God.
