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
Meditating Thoughts
Perspective That Heals: The Transforming Power of Biblical Meditation
Biblical meditation is not just a mental exercise. It is a way of life that moves us from being trapped by our problems to standing in the light of God’s promises. Psalm 23 gives us a perfect window into this kind of transformation. David did not just recite words. He let them take root until they changed how he walked through the darkest valleys.
Meditation, in God’s way, means filling your mind with who He is and what He has said. It is the steady turning of truth over and over in your heart until it becomes part of your story. The world’s meditation is about emptying your mind, but God’s way is about filling your mind. The difference is everything.
Joshua 1:8 draws a line in the sand. It says if you keep God’s word in your mouth and heart and meditate day and night, you will see prosperity and good success, not because you wish it so, but because God is faithful to His word. Take a phrase like “The Lord is my shepherd.” Do not let it just be background noise. Make it personal. Let it sink in until it is your reality in the hospital room, at the graveside, or in the quiet of your hardest nights.
David practiced this when every reason for fear and discouragement was pressing in. Instead of giving his thoughts to dread, he spoke the truth about God’s presence and care. That is how he found the courage to keep going. His situation did not change right away, but his focus did. Fear loses grip when you look at the Shepherd more than the shadows.
I have watched this in my life. As a child, I repeated Scripture to myself on nights when the dark felt too close. That same habit has stayed with me through every diagnosis and setback as an adult. Even now, facing cancer and health challenges, meditation is my anchor. When I focus on God’s promises, peace returns, and hope gets back on its feet.
Job is another example. Stripped of everything, he anchored his heart to God. In his darkest moments, he meditated on the Lord’s character and found the strength to endure. That same invitation is open to you.
Here is my challenge to you. Do not just listen and move on. Learn the practice of biblical meditation. Pick one Scripture. It does not have to be long. Dig into it. Study every word. Ask God what He wants to say to you through it. Recite it when fear, doubt, and the temptation to despair arise. Let that verse become part of your life, thinking, and prayers. Stay with it until you notice your perspective shifting and God’s peace settling in.
Meditation is not for the spiritual elite. It is for anyone who wants to experience God’s presence in the middle of real life. If you take this step, I promise you will start to see the Shepherd in your valley and hope where you once saw only fear.
Share this episode with a friend who needs practical hope. Let’s walk together in this journey of letting God’s Word change us from the inside out.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
I just want to take a little bit of time to talk to you about meditation. We're in Psalm 23, and we're going to continue because we're barely cracking the surface of the most wonderful, beautiful thing I can imagine Psalm 23. But I think you're going to have to learn that what we're trying to do here is meditate. You see, you're always meditating, meditating whether you realize it or not. You're always thinking thoughts and you're always repeating thoughts to yourself. It's just who we are. We meditate, we consider things, we think things, we think them repeatedly, and what you think determines if you're going to survive or thrive, and all the attacks and the messes that come your way. David meditates and Psalms are birthed. We learn about how to act when we're in such desperate need. David is facing death. He needs help. He's discouraged. What's he do? He meditates and we get Psalm 23. He encourages himself in the Lord. You know, you've been told to encourage yourself in the Lord. This is exactly what David does here. He encourages himself in the Lord. He focuses his mind on God, on God's character and God's word. He empties his mind of himself and thinks on the Lord. Now, it's not about worldly meditation, where you just sit there and don't think about anything. It's about where you focus on God, his word and his promise To meditate has the idea of moaning, groaning, uttering, speaking, musing, pondering, imagining, devising, speaking, proclaiming.
Austin Gardner:It's all that's tied up in that word for meditate that we find in the Scripture and that's what it's about. It's kind of like the way we understand chewing the cud. We've already discussed that a little bit, but it is that we would take in the Word of God, chew over the Word of God and then re-chew the Word of God. Then don't let the Word of God out of your mouth. Let it keep coming and filling up your heart. Lay down in the green pastures and go back over what you've already learned before you do that until it becomes an integral part of your body.
Austin Gardner:In Joshua 1.8, he said the words do not depart from your mouth. You meditate, think about, mutter over day and night. It's not about what do they mean. It's about how does it affect me so I can do what I'm called to do, and if you do that, you make your way prosperous and you have good success. That's a Bible promise, psalm chapter one. He said he meditated in the law day and night. What's it mean? How does it apply to me? How am I going to put that into practice? And he prospered everywhere he went.
Austin Gardner:So you fix your mind on truth, you cultivate that truth and you practice it and you repeat it. You think on those things, you calculate based on those things. In Philippians 4, it says think on these things. We tend to think on what's going wrong, what's happening to us, how our lives are falling apart, how we deserve it, how there's nothing we could do to avoid it, and how God's getting even with us. We tell all kinds of lies to ourselves. That's the opposite of what God is calling on us to do. So Psalm 23,.
Austin Gardner:Not only have I been learning truths, but I've been meditating on those truths. So I've been personalizing what the Scripture says. So I lay down at night and I say the Lord is Austin's shepherd, he is my shepherd. I shall not want. So I think back to all the things he's done for me in the past. How he's met so many needs. How he's answered so many prayers. How he allowed me to marry the most wonderful woman in the world, have the most beautiful, wonderful children in the world. How he's blessed the ministry. Everywhere I've been, he's always blessed it. And I just go over that and over that and over that in my head. The Lord, the one who loves me, the I am mercy and grace. I know I can have victory over my fears because I'm focusing on my shepherd and not on my situation. That's how I prepare my heart to pray.
Austin Gardner:Often I've laid in bed at night nervous about the cancer, nervous about feeling the tumors, nervous about how coy the doctors are when they won't quite say. They just say there's still a lot of things we can do. So how do you handle that? I want to scream out sometimes, but I need to calm the fear and put truth in its place. I need to focus on the shepherd and not the problem. I need to get my eyes on Christ and not on the circumstances. I want to repeat, over and over, slowly the Lord is my shepherd.
Austin Gardner:I don't know if you ever did this, but I did it when I used to. My dad would send me out to the barn and it was dark and it seemed like it was forever to get to the barn. Come to find out. It was more than a couple of hundred yards away probably, but I would go out to the barn scared to death hearing the dogs howling, the other animals in the woods, and I'd be nervous and scared and I would say to myself what time I'm afraid I'll trust in thee, what time I'm afraid I'll trust in thee. And I'd repeat that and repeat that. I'd run to the barn, turn the lights on in the barn and when I turned them off I would run like a scalded dog all the way back to the house.
Austin Gardner:So you think on these things, that's what David's doing. He's thinking on the Lord is my shepherd. He says you're with me, I know you're with me. You are my shepherd. I will not fear he won't let that out of his mouth. Not fear, he won't let that out of his mouth.
Austin Gardner:The Bible says in Psalm 63, 6, that David said in the nighttime on my bed I remember you and I meditate on you every time I wake up during the night. Yes, there's danger, yes, there's a valley of danger and yes, he's walking through it and yes, he's proceeding and moving. But he is focusing his mind on the Lord. Job focused on the Lord in the deepest, darkest darkness, in the darkness of a cave, in the darkness of men lying about him and being traitors to him. He hid from the attack.
Austin Gardner:In the truth of God's word. It could be that we're confronting danger and sickness and problems are all around us, but we can put our thoughts on this. I will not fear that thou art with me, thou runneth us out of the comfort of me. I will not fear we could easily make that the call of our life. That's what I'm challenging you to do. I'm challenging you to realize that David saw beyond the true fact that Goliath was enormous to a God that was bigger, and he thought about the spirit of power and a sound mind that God gave him, not fear. So God is with us all the time and God is taking care of us all the time and we're going to put our minds on him and we're going to trust him. With all that's happening, we have his promises.
Austin Gardner:So tonight, as you lay in the bed and if you notice, today I've had some yawning and stuff that's part of the lack of having adrenal glands and having all the medicines I take that make me extremely sleepy and often want to make me moody and make me want to think about my problems.
Austin Gardner:But it helps me to focus on you and to talk to you and remind myself how big my God is and what God's doing in my life, and he's doing that in your life. So I challenge you to meditate. Learn to meditate. Find you a scripture, dig into that scripture. Learn what that scripture says. Go over it. Look up all the words. Make it a part of your life until God changes you through his word. I am so honored that you would take the time to listen. I hope it's making a difference in your life. I know it is mine, and I want to use my mind for His honor and glory. I want to use my heart. I want to use the remainder of my days, and I hope that you will too. God bless you, thank you.
