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
Paul’s Not Whining. Why Are We?
Ever notice how God repeats the same truth until it finally sinks in? In this episode, we sit with Ephesians 1:15–16 and watch Paul pray not for his chains to be broken, but for people he loves. From a prison cell, he shows us a way out of self-pity and into a life marked by gratitude, intercession, and hope.
Chris joins me as we discuss why repetition in Scripture isn’t wasted space, but rather God turning up the volume on what we’ve been missing. Paul’s decision to “cease not” to give thanks and to pray by name for others is more than noble. It’s a lifeline. Gratitude lifts us when bitterness feels easier.
Intercession steadies us when venting seems natural. Both faith and fear ask us to trust what we can’t see, so why not choose the path that leads to life?
By the end, you’ll have a simple rhythm to reset your mindset: name three things to be thankful for, pray for three people, and let gratitude lead your heart. If you’ve been stuck in self-focus and longing for a way forward, this conversation offers a grounded, Scripture-shaped path to get your life back on track one honest prayer at a time.
If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so others can find the show.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
I'd like to welcome you back to Followed by Mercy, where we know that surely goodness and mercy do follow us all the days of our lives. Nothing thrills me more than to know how much God loves me. It has changed my life. And maybe you're tired and feel forgotten. Maybe you've been praying and nothing seems to happen. I just want to take you to some verses today that are going to change your life. I'm excited that today I have with me one of our co-hosts, our oldest son, Chris Gardner. It's such a blessing, and his knowledge of the Word of God and his walk with the Lord thrill me, and I'm excited about that. So he's here today, and he is going to, we're just going to chat through this passage of scripture. You want to make a greeting there to say you're here?
ChrisGardner:Yeah, I'm just excited to be with you guys. Love when somebody asked me to talk about Ephesians, that's incredible and excited about doing that today.
AustinGardner:Well, I would take you to Ephesians 1, 15. Paul said, Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. That is a sweet, loving pastor speaking to his people. Something I ought to encourage you, like a handwritten note from your pastor loving you. And so today we're going to jump into that. Now we've talked our way through a lot of this on other podcasts, and some of this may be repetitious, but that's okay because it is truths that we need to learn. And so, Chris, do you want to say anything as we crank up with Ephesians 1, 15 and 16 there?
ChrisGardner:Yeah, I'd say the thing to remember as you read the scripture, because the scriptures can seem so repetitive. It's like, man, he's saying the same thing. Why is he saying the same thing? I can, you know, I can imagine a husband that says, Hey, I married my wife and I told her I loved her. If I ever change my opinion, I'll let you know. That's probably not a good approach. So when there's repetition, that's God's volume knob. And he's just saying, so when you hear like you're like, man, I hear a lot of this. You know what you need to understand is you're not hearing a lot of this. What you have to understand is this is God turning the volume knob up in your life with the passage, going, This is something you need more volume on. You need to hear it better, you need to understand it better. Close your eyes, sit back, relax, and listen to what God said in his word. And so I I love how it starts because, you know, I I wonder sometimes how many people I have that pray for me. And I'm not, I'm not talking about just like a casual prayer, but like fervently pray for me with my name on their lips and that that with God asking, with them asking God. I love what he asked here. He's God, I want you to, I want them to have their eyes open, their heart to expand, and their life shifting. And man, what a what a powerful prayer, the fervent prayer that you see there that he has. I'm I'm just thankful there are people like that out there, and not only that pray for me, but I need to pray for others that way.
AustinGardner:Robert Canfield and I went over with you about faith working itself out uh in love, the way we act and treat other people. And so I just am excited about that. I like what Chris had just said to you. You know, all my life I knew academically in my head so many truths that did not reach my heart, did not change me on the inside. And so I had to hear it over and over. And finally, I had to really come to wit's end corner. I had to be where it was all over and things weren't working. And then all of a sudden, I started realizing that God was telling me He loved me. And uh I'm excited. I think the very thought that He the Apostle Paul would say to this church of regular people, I cease not to give thanks for you. And I make mention of you in my prayers. That's pretty powerful truth.
ChrisGardner:To cease not. Like literally, this is something I think about this all the time. You know, you maybe remember the first time you fell in love and you're sitting there, and it was like you couldn't see the McDonald's without thinking about the person that you loved. You couldn't, he's literally saying, All day, all night, I think about you. Now, don't divorce this passage from where it's being written from. Because he's saying this because Paul, Paul is locked up, he's beaten down, he's under pressure. But what's his instinct? When he gets, I don't know about you, but man, when I get attacked, I think about myself more than anything else. I want my safety. I want my but that's not Paul is sitting here and he's like, like I said, he's beaten down, he's locked up, he's under pressure, but his instinct, what he decides to do is he decides to pray for others. He's not whining. He's not whining, he's not in the he's not playing the victim card. He's not he's not in the the the pity pit. He's not the which you talk about in your book. He is literally saying, I'm praying for you.
AustinGardner:Man, I'm mistreated.
ChrisGardner:Yeah, he's not complaining. Y'all pray for me. He's talking about blessing, not complaining.
AustinGardner:No, no, y'all pray for me.
ChrisGardner:Yeah, I'm in trouble. He's interceding, not collapsing. He's interceding, not collapsing. He's not saying, Oh, but what about me? Let me protect myself. The most he's he's like, no, I'm locked up, my life isn't going good, but man, I am giving thanks. I'm blessing, I am interceding.
AustinGardner:Take this back to the listener, and you know, and almost always we make the story about us. Yeah. And what you're saying, Paul's making the story about them.
ChrisGardner:Yeah.
AustinGardner:And and that's reverse thinking.
ChrisGardner:It's it's almost like for for me to live as Christ, to die as gain. It's almost everything about him is different. He's living a different way. And what if what I what I really dislike about the way people read the book, the Bible, is they read black and white on uh on pages. But the truth of the matter is you cannot divorce where this book is written from. And so it, you know, you can't people read these verses and like, oh, ain't that great, Paul? Let's give him a round of applause. He is in a horrible situation. Life on a scale from one to ten is a negative 375. Things aren't going good for him. He's not where he hoped to be. He didn't put this on his five-year plan. He wasn't, he wasn't succeeding on levels that everybody would think of. He is in the pits of the pits of the pits. But he's thinking about this.
AustinGardner:He understands. I think the listeners ought to catch on to this. I'm not sure the apostle Paul understands. I'm writing scripture here. I mean, he's he's writing from his heart, and he's writing to people he loves. And I think one of the best ways to get out of the pity pit is to stop thinking about you. Yeah. And stop thinking about what's going wrong in your life and start thinking about other people and thinking about the Lord. And that's what I think we see the Apostle Paul doing.
ChrisGardner:And and by the way, you're not another thing that you mentioned in your book, From From Pain to Praise, you talk about the power of gratitude. He literally, what he's saying here is this I am in jail. Life is not going good, nothing is going like I wanted it to go, but I give thanks. Him giving thanks is a gigantic part of him exiting that pity. No doubt. And so he here's the thing: no matter how bad your life is, no matter what you're going through, there is something in your life that you can give thanks for. Paul did not, it's not that the reality of the suffering wasn't real, it's that he said, in the midst of this suffering, I have to choose.
AustinGardner:Problem is you can't stand a pity put pit if you're if you're being grateful.
ChrisGardner:Yeah, exactly. And so he's sitting there, he's sitting there going, I have to choose to think on the right things. I have to, and I love this. I saw it. This is a meme that I put on my uh in my phone because it's something I need to remember. Both faith and fear demand you believe in something that you cannot see. So how about choosing well? That's great.
AustinGardner:I think what uh you know, before we move on to another thought here, I cease not to what was it? I cease not to pray. Yeah, I cease not to give you thanks. I cease not to think about you. Yeah. And I want to say that most of us that are hurting cease not to think about ourselves. We cease not to think about what we've lost. We cease not to think about how people did us wrong. We cease not to think about how God ought to avenge us. Look where we're thinking, look where he's thinking. And Chris has made it clear to you Paul's in jail, he's chained to Roman soldiers, he's locked away, he's lost his freedom. And and I think everything in Paul without the Holy Spirit would have been about himself, but none of it's about himself.
ChrisGardner:Yeah. And you know, many times I see prayer as my escape hatch where I get to vent my own stuff and I get to talk to God about what and he can handle that. I see it as my way out, but when Paul is sitting there, the his prayer life is not an escape, it's something that he uses to empower others. And so he's just sitting there doing that. And I I love everything about this passage where he's at, things are going bad, you know, things are not what you expect, but he's focused on somebody else.
AustinGardner:So well, I guess we'll start wrapping this particular podcast up, but I thought I'd reread Ephesians 115, 16 and reread it to you in the Gardner uh uh whiner version, the Gardner complainer version. Wherefore I also after I after you heard of what's happening to me, I sure hope y'all have heard. You realize what I'm going through. Let me tell you my story. And instead of talking about the love of the faith of the Lord Jesus, the love of the saints, he says, I hope y'all don't quit praying for me and thinking about me and making mention of me. I don't know if you realize how backwards the way most of us would read that verse is. And uh, we I want you as you listen today to make a conscious effort to be grateful, to think about others, to lift your eyes up and look at Jesus. You'll get out of the pit when you stop thinking about yourself. Quit the whining, quit the complaining, quit the doing stuff for you, quit the self-help, quit the self-care, and start looking out towards others and others' needs. I hope that's I hope that helps you and blesses you today. You want to add any further things before we wrap up today?
ChrisGardner:No, I thought that was awesome, and that covers at least two of our verses. So just choose what to think about, choose what to be thankful for as you follow today, and it will make a big difference in your life.
AustinGardner:So I hope you'll take that home with you, and I hope you'll think about it today. Today, stop thinking about you, stop whining, start being thankful, start praying for others, get your life back on track. Well, thank you for listening to Followed by Mercy. I am so glad to have the privilege of having Chris with us today. I hope you've been blessed, and we'll look forward to talking to you tomorrow.
