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
Holy Spirit Powered, Not Self Powered
Have you ever felt worn out from trying to earn God’s approval? You’re not alone. In this episode, we open Ephesians 3:14-21 and discover what it means to be “strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man.”
Through honest stories and biblical truth, we explore the freedom that comes from moving from performance-driven striving to Spirit-enabled rest. Christianity was never meant to be a grind. It isn’t about proving how well we can live for Christ but learning to let Christ live through us.
We discuss the vast dimensions of God’s love, its breadth, length, depth, and height, and how His love encompasses our lowest failures and extends all the way to heaven’s glory. Perhaps the hardest truth to accept is also the most freeing: God loves you personally, and He isn’t keeping score.
I share my own journey of performance-based living and the guilt that comes with always feeling like I had to do more. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. The good news is that you can rest. You can stop striving and start abiding. The fullness of God is not found in your effort but in Christ Himself living in you.
If your soul has been craving rest, this conversation is for you. Listen now and discover that you cannot do anything to make God love you more or less. He loves you because of who He is, not because of what you do.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Well, I want to welcome you back to Followed by Mercy, where we know that goodness and mercy are literally chasing us down every day of our lives. I'm so excited that I get to respond to you as you listen, and then you send me text messages or emails or whatever comments, and I so much appreciate it. First thing I want to do is apologize. The last week's recordings we did a different way than before, and I just uploaded all of them as I'm making this podcast, and I was quite embarrassed about some of the quality. I hope I'll do better in the future. I'm trying to learn, trying to get better every day. Thank you for being patient with me, and thank you for helping me share the message of God's wonderful love. Now we're back to discuss Ephesians 3, 14 through 21. Our goal is to help us move from a performance-driven striving to a spirit-enabled rest in Christ. We walk through it, we'll talk about it. I have a listener who's been in touch with me. This person's wrestling with this very passage and asking honest questions because they're beautiful truths about our union with Christ. And it helps so much for us to look at it and understand as the Lord's leading her through it. We want to open our eyes to how much God loves us. We want to open our eyes to what he's doing in our lives and what he's saying. Ephesians 3 says, For this cause I bow my knees be unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit and the inner man. Sounds a lot like Second Corinthians 4 16, for which cause we faint not, but though our outward man perish, yet the inner man is renewed day by day. So strength doesn't come from us, it comes from the work the Holy Spirit is doing in us. The Holy Spirit's work is like turning on a light in a dark room. You suddenly see Jesus, you see the Christ, and he was there all alone. God's strength is for ordinary people who admit their need, their weakness. Grace is for the desperate. It's not a mettle for the strong. God never calls us to live the Christian life in our own power. He provides strength daily as we depend on him. So we're going to obey God and just leave the consequences to him. The Christian life is not us showing how we live for Christ, but it is Christ living in us. So the same Jesus that walked the shores of Galilee now walks in us. So as my friend said, the fog is getting thinner so that she can understand some parts more each day, and she continues asking, seeking, and knocking. That is the beautiful part. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love, Ephesians 3.17. That is Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith. It's about us resting in his settled presence. It's not about striving for feelings. God sometimes withholds a sense of his presence to teach us to live by faith, not by sight. Can't go by what you feel, can't go by what's happening. Faith is leaning your entire weight on God when you can't even see the ground underneath. Faith is trusting God moment by moment. It means believing that he loves you and he knows what's best, even when you don't understand. You see, faith is our response to God's word. God doesn't call us to understand, He calls us to trust. Now, my friend said, as soon as I rest, I feel guilty. Like I must do more to earn the right to stop. It's exhausting craziness. Boy, I've lived with that. I've lived with that performance-based idea of how we're to live. But the Bible says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love. So, rooted and grounded in the soil of the Christian life. That's grace. It's not performance. You know, the hardest thing for us to believe is that God's not keeping score. See, joy comes when the love, love is the soil. Joy is the flag that flies above the castle when the king is in residence inside. So to be rooted means to live with complete security. It's to accept that God's love never changes. It's the anchor of our soul. God doesn't love us because we're valuable. We are valuable because God loves us. So wake up to this reality. You are rooted and grounded in Christ. He's it. And every one of us, we're not just mere mortals. We are children of God, and God lives in us. And that's what we're aiming for. See, the Bible says that you may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes understanding that we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Those are the dimensions of Christ's love. There's breadth and length and depth all the way down to our lowest failures and heights all the way to the throne of God. You know what the hardest part for me to believe is that God loves me personally. See, grace needs to stop being a doctrine and become the oxygen we breathe every day. It means that we will really believe that He never will leave us and He never will forsake us. You can measure God's love by the cross. The width of the cross, the length of the cross, the depths of his suffering, and the heights of heaven. God's love is like a consuming fire. It is safe, but it's never tame. It changes us in ways we cannot control. It frees us. We're less entangled. We're walking in a whole new world. That you might be filled with the fullness of God. Now, unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. According to the power that works in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Now, this fullness that's dwelling in us, that's not a thing. That's a person. That's the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. So don't limit God by what you think you can imagine. He works beyond even all of our wildest thoughts. The abundance of life isn't about pressure on you, it's about his presence. Christianity is not a grind, it's a gift. So being filled with God means surrendering daily. The more we yield, the more he feels. So just let's just let him do his thing. It's not difficult, it's impossible. Only Jesus can live his life through us. We're not able, but he is. So we abide in him. We rest in him. We can't bear fruit of ourselves. He has to do it in us. It's Christ in us, Christ living as us. It's the key to abiding is forgiveness. We receive it and we give it, we extend it. Abiding is like letting the Holy Spirit lead us and guide us. We're not imitating, it's incarnation. Not imitation, but incarnation. Because it's not trying, it's trusting. And so it's wonderful what God's doing in our lives. God's word wakes us up more like Christ, joyful, free, and full of grace. God is speaking to our hearts. The Bible is God's love letter written to us. The Son of Man became, the Son of God became man to enable men to become the sons of God. So I just want to thank you for listening. And I want you to know I really appreciate getting your notes. It really blesses me and helps me and encourages me to keep going. I'm growing in this too. I'll be honest with you, I've lived my life pretty much performance-based. I'd have never admitted that. I'd have never said that. I'd have told you that I was doing the right thing and I was doing it for the right reason. But I think as I look back at my life that I've been so man focused. I've looked at what I'm supposed to do for God, not what God's been doing for me and God is doing, God has done. We've lived our lives based on I gotta please God when God was already pleased. God commended his love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So yeah, you're not the only one that's dealing with trying to figure this out. You're not the only one that's saying I don't know how to make this happen. I got the same problem. But the God of heaven's making a difference in our lives. We're not going to forget that. Let the Holy Spirit work today. Now you're you've been a little discouraged. You've been a little like, I don't know if I measure up. And you're trying to be productive and you're trying to measure up. One guy wrote and said, I just I just can't be consistent. Well, don't worry about it. Do what's right right now. What happened yesterday is gone. Forget it. What's going to happen tomorrow is gone. Well, if I gone hadn't come. But what's happening right now? You don't know how long you're going to live. So use this minute to honor God and relax. He loves you, and you can't do anything to make him love you more, and you can't do anything to make him love you less. Not because of you, but because of him. He is good. Well, I've been extremely excited to have Robert and Robert Canfield and David Gardner with me, and uh I'm looking forward to having more of those. Uh by the time you get this, I will be in Peru, and I will have I'll have both of my sons there. I really kind of look forward to maybe having a podcast or two with them, and I'll share with you what God's doing. I am so excited and so blessed. By the way, thank you to those that pray for me. I am feeling better physically than I have. I went off the blood pressure medicine uh 13 years ago. They put me on blood pressure medicine to lower the blood pressure entering my kidney. And I don't know what happened, but I was so lethargic. I honestly getting out of bed, all I thought about was getting back in bed. And I wasn't even sleepy, I was just tired. But you'd be amazed what happens when you come off the blood pressure medicine. And the doctor took me off the blood pressure medicine, and I am up again, and I'm excited about that. So thank you so much for listening. And if there's ever anything that you'd like to talk to me about, feel free. I love getting your comments. I love talking to you, and I am just blessed that I get to share with you. God thank you. God bless you, and thank you for what you're doing.
