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
If Grace Did Everything, What Does That Make Us?
Have you ever felt like your spiritual life was a phone with no signal, working on the outside but cut off where it matters most? That’s the picture Paul paints in Ephesians 2:1–3. After all the praise and promise of chapter 1, he turns the light toward who we were without Christ and who we are now in Him.
This isn’t about cleaning yourself up or trying harder. It’s about resurrection. We talk about what it means to be “dead in trespasses and sins,” why “you hath he quickened” is written in the past tense, and how that one truth changes everything, how you see God, yourself, and the world you walk through every day.
We honestly examine how the world’s system shapes our thinking, why deception blinds us as it did Eve, and how grace breaks through that fog. The gospel moves us from trying to earn God’s favor to realizing we already have it. We were lost, but He found us. We were dead, but He made us alive.
If you’ve been stuck in the loop of guilt or self-effort, this conversation will help you rest again in grace. Follow the show, share it with a friend who needs encouragement, and join me tomorrow as we talk about what comes next, how God is rich in mercy.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Well, I'm excited to be in the book of Ephesians.
Robert Canfield:And Robert, why don't you kind of tell tell him, sum up chapter one one more time? Well, God wants our eyes of our understanding to be enlightened, and he wants us to realize all that he's done and what not just what he's done, but what he's made us in his son.
Austin Gardner:Yeah, you know, Ephesians chapter one could be summed up in this. God saying, Praise me because I did this to you. And then for us, if anything, it changes our entire view because we look at it and go, look who I am. Huh. Because he made me, I'm a saint, I'm faithful, I'm chosen, accepted, complete. That's the that's actually Colossians. I'm forgiven, I'm reconciled, I'm redeemed.
Robert Canfield:Man, you think, and you you look back and you think about all the stuff like in the book of Acts, how those first generation Christians worked. You know, one thing I was reading, like the first several chapters, is it's always joy and rejoicing. Those jokers, those new, those new believers were always rejoicing and praising God. Like, like even when it came down to like them getting persecuted and suffering at the hand of the Sannehedron and being beaten, they like praise God that we're counted worthy. And I feel like in the Christian realm, that's where it all starts. It's a praise of understanding what God's made us rather than a fear of I have to earn up to something. That's right.
Austin Gardner:And so anyway, now we're in chapter two, and I don't know if you've ever paid attention to that, but he he he he liked he's basically telling us now, you see, all I've done, now let me tell you where you were when I started with you. So he started now, he's gonna tell us, and this is your condition, but look, I did it anyway. I did it anyway. So, like in chapter two and verse one, you were dead in trespasses and sin. So, but he has quickened us, he has made us alive. And so, real quick, let's go over what it means to be dead.
Robert Canfield:Well, and that that word dead, I mean, is the same idea of like a dead body. I mean, I was looking that up, yeah, and he was talking about that's just the state of being. We had no, I guess when we were destitute.
Austin Gardner:Well, biblically, we were dead. That's right, dead. It doesn't literally mean that we were physically dead. It's like when your phone is dead and you can't make a call. It's like when you've lost a connection, it's like when there's no signal. And and here's what happened: it it's separation, it's not being in communication. And that's what happened in Romans 5:12. Sin entered in the world and death by sin, so that death passed on to all men, right? Amen. Because all have sinned, and so separation, not dead. We were dead, we were separated from God. And go back to the Garden of Eden. There was connection, then sin, then separated, and then he brought them back together again.
Robert Canfield:For by one man, sin passed upon all, right? That's right. Because according to Romans 5, I know paraphrased that a little bit, but yeah, you you think of that word dead, it means uh it gives the idea that we were baptized, we were put in to, we were just in sin. That's who we were, that's what our identity was. There was no way of being in moral or standing right. It's not even moral, but this being upright before God.
Austin Gardner:Well, yeah, because we we're dead. And Colossians 2.13, we were dead in our sins and and in our flesh, and he forgave us. Amen. So we were separated from God. There was nothing of communication between us and God. We were living separated, separated, and we had no desire to get to God. The Bible says in John 5 40, you did not want to come to me so you could have life. You didn't want to be reconnected. So, Adam and Eve, did they seek out God or did God seek them out? No, they were ashamed, and they're hid.
Robert Canfield:And when confronted with their sin, they were quick to justify themselves by blaming the next party. Yep.
Austin Gardner:And so they they weren't looking to fix things. And by the way, I wasn't looking to fix things. It's all so that's what he's trying to get across. All of salvation has been me. We we we we we did not seek to get things right. Ephesians 1 is, I did it all, God says, I did it all. And the reason is because y'all didn't even want to know me. You didn't want to talk to me.
Robert Canfield:You know, Paul wrote, and this makes me think of Romans chapter 3 when he says, verse 10, he says, There's none righteous, no, not one. He said there was none righteous, but then he goes on and he says, There's none that understandeth, there was none that seeketh after God. He said that we were all gone out of our own way. We'd use deceit, and he talked about using the mouth and all that stuff. And he just the way of peace was not even from us. So before the standing of God, we didn't even want to see him, we didn't want to be around him. So he came to us. Yeah. And he gave us life. Well, that's what he said in the verse one, right? He said, He quickened us. You hath he quickened.
Austin Gardner:He quickened just means he made us alive. Okay. By the way, when you don't know God and when you're not in communication with God, you're like in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and verse 14, they do not understand the things that are of the Spirit of God. Lost people, people that have yet to accept the gift, see everything as craziness, and they can't understand it because you got to be spiritual to understand it.
Robert Canfield:Well, I mean, they're just they're using their mind, they're using the mind of what they've been taught. That's why Paul tells that Corinthian church to the to the Greek, you know, they were looking for reasoning, they were looking for some type of logic, and it was it was it was foolishness. And he says to the Jew, they were looking for some kind of sign, but this was a stumbling block, and that's what made the gospel powerful because it was the Holy Spirit working in them.
Austin Gardner:Human beings got a new mind the day they decide they want to be like God.
Robert Canfield:It's very true. Because even in other in the New Testament, Paul says the God of this world, talking about Satan, has blinded them. Oh, it's in my next verse, actually. Look at you and how you jumped on that. Well, I was just thinking about that. Like, yeah, so in understanding the wonderful things that God's done for us, I guess there has to be a realization of what he's brought us out of.
Austin Gardner:And that's what death is. And in Ephesians 4.18, it said that we had our understanding darkened, and we were a long way from life out of our ignorance and the hardness of our hearts. And so we we live, see, but Adam and Eve chose, they they Satan said that if you eat that fruit, that's the day you get to be like God. And by being like God, that means you decide right and wrong, you decide what's good. And when and whenever we got, we're really messed up. And so we have to have God open our eyes so we can realize that what we think is not right.
Robert Canfield:Well, what you said, even the progression, how Satan used deceit, and it was deceit, it was a lie, right? That's right. That that allowed Eve to harden her heart against the good stuff that God gave and have her seeking out after something else. Yeah, she couldn't see a garden with everything for her. She could only see one thing that she wanted to have. And that's what happens in our lives too, right? A lot of times we get deceived before, even before, like before salvation. There was a lie out there that this is an angry God, or there's this lie out there that there's this God that just wants to destroy you. And there's this lie out there, and there's other things, other lies. You know what I mean? Like you have to work in order to be good. And that deception leads us to harden our hearts towards the grace of God. I I this makes me think about a whole bunch of stuff. Like, like even like in Hebrews, how Paul talks about, or not Paul, the writer of Hebrews talks about, you know, how bitterness and and and fornication it puts in a root and it helps us, it helped hinders us from seeing the grace of God. Helps it becomes vain in our life. And so it always starts with some type of lie that we end up believing, and it's it blinds our mind and it causes the world.
Austin Gardner:It's Satan. And so what's actually happening is that you're we're describing death because death is not listening to God, not being able to communicate with God. And but I want you to notice in Ephesians 2.1, before we continue on in that, and we'll talk about any part of it you want, but it says, He gave life. How does it say it? And you hath he quickened. You hath he quickened. You have he gave life, you have he made alive. And I want you to notice he hath quickened. It's not going to happen, it has happened. And I think the emphasis ought to be on the subject of the sentence. Y'all. He hath quickened, right?
Speaker:Well, yeah, he's the subject.
Austin Gardner:Well, maybe that's not the subject. And you has he quickened. You, he's you talking, that's right, but he hath quickened, he has given life, and it's already ours. Yeah, that's even Ephesians 1. It is ours, already given to us. And he's just saying, you know, y'all couldn't do anything. Y'all couldn't do anything.
Robert Canfield:I did it all. Well, that's why in verse 2 he jumps in the dead and the trespasses and and sins. It just seems like he's just given us more illustration of what that looked like. That's right. He likes that we walked according to the course of this world. And what does the world show us? We got to take care of number one, we got to be concerned with ourselves. I mean, Jesus, even while he was here, he he talked about the world system and his kingdom system, and it's polar opposite. And one is seeking after self and the other one's seeking after God.
Austin Gardner:Well, I I think that I think there's a lot of stuff here. In time past, that's before we were saved, before chapter one, formally, we walked according to the course of this world. Now, let's let's talk real briefly about the word world. What does it mean that we walked according to this world? That's not talking about the creation. Go ahead. No, I would that mean this like the world system. That's the world system. It is a system of values, it is a way of doing things. It's in, it's against God. It's the idea that we can do what's best and we know what's best. It's not creation, not the trees and the birds and the bees. That's not what it is. It is a whole system that raises itself against God.
Robert Canfield:So we're not talking about just earth as a whole. We're talking about a system, something that that that that motivates people, something that causes people to act the way they act, something that that that people I guess put in their their whatever the I don't I don't know how else you say it, but yeah. Well, I think it makes it clear where they get their understanding, how they get it.
Austin Gardner:It makes it clear when you read it when you realize this. It says you want to go to course according to the prince of the power of the air. According to the prince of the power of the air.
Robert Canfield:So if we so that's he's taught that that means Satan, right? Yep. So in my mind, when I hear that, I think of like how Satan worked. So I go back and I think through the scriptures, right? He tempted Eve in the beginning, right? With God's withholding something from you. Yep. He showed her that she could be like God. Then I think about how the temptation of Christ, how he worked in tempting Christ.
Austin Gardner:I think an interesting side note here is I think people like to think this is my father's world. But actually, Adam and Eve sold this world to the devil, and he is the prince of the power of the air. That's why he told Jesus, bow down to me and I'll give you the kingdoms. Jesus didn't look at him and say, You an idiot. You don't have the kingdoms. Jesus was like, I know you have the kingdoms, but that ain't the way I'm getting it. I'm gonna get it not by doing something here, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna give my life.
Robert Canfield:Yeah, and so Satan being controller of the world was trying to deceive Christ, even there in the temptation of taking care of what we would seem 40 days. I'm fasting, I'm without food. It see it seems like you know, food wouldn't be a bad thing at the time. But in Christ, in that situation, that temptation was causing Christ to be to be brought between a situation where he was going to choose either God's word in the sense of like, what did he say? He said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. So Jesus wasn't denying the fact that that there was there's necessity of food, but he's he was showing Satan that the real issue is I'm trusting in God's word, what God wants for my life, not a moment of pleasure of getting mammon or or bread or whatever you want.
Austin Gardner:Well, it's kind of established real quickly. Could you look up John 12, 31 there?
Robert Canfield:Yeah.
Austin Gardner:And and you know, I I want everybody to understand that there is a prince of this world.
Robert Canfield:1231.
Austin Gardner:Yep.
Robert Canfield:Now, this is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. Now, who's that talking about?
Austin Gardner:Satan. Yeah, it's talking about Satan. I think you don't understand sometimes as Christians that when it says after the course of this world, you're talking about the course led by the accuser, led by the slanderer. I know you understand it. No. But Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 12 says we don't have a battle against flesh and blood.
Speaker:We wrestle not against flesh, but against principalities. Keep going. Powers, governors.
Robert Canfield:I'm jumping there. Okay, but I want to make sure we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Austin Gardner:So we've got to understand that the fact is, I hear people blame God. We chose this. As human beings, we chose to walk away from God, and we chose not to, we we chose not to listen to him, we chose to do it our own way. Look what we've got. We put ourselves in a big mess.
Robert Canfield:Well, that's funny because the scripture always repeats itself, right? And so when Paul talks about Romans 1, he talks about how that the creation of the Godhead, the Godhead, the power is it's clearly seen from creation and his works are all this. But when people saw that, they they didn't give him glory, they didn't give him thanks. And the Bible says, Paul says, it's through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that he gave them over. And he just God just like the idea of just, I'm letting you go. If you don't want to praise me, if you don't want to thank me, you do your own thing. I'm not holding you back.
Austin Gardner:And that led us that led us exactly where we are in the world, where men use men and not women.
Robert Canfield:And it's he lists there at the end of Romans 1 a whole bunch of horrific things that people look and say, This is horrible. How could God do this? It's like God didn't do it, he let man over, and man chose this.
Austin Gardner:That's right. And now, even then, even at that, the devil, 2 Corinthians chapter 11, 13 to 15, the devil disguises himself as an angel of light and an apostle of Christ, and he he pretends to give good news, he pretends to do things because, see, he is he's in the business of deceiving people. Yeah.
Robert Canfield:Well, that's what deception does, it makes it look good and appealing, but the end is very bitter, and that's what we were in. That's the world system that we were in.
Austin Gardner:That's right. Can we go back to all of you listening in Ephesians 2? In times past, we walked them that way. It says we're in a time past, you walked according to the course of this world. So that's not who we are now. We used to live following the devil and self, and that's who we wanted to make our own decisions. That's who we used to be. In time past, you walked according to the course of this world. And then before we move on to verse three, notice the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. I would just like to say real quickly, that's not a believer.
Robert Canfield:Yeah.
Austin Gardner:See, I used to preach that even, and I'd be like, if you develop in disobedience, you're doing these things. That's not what the verse says.
Robert Canfield:No, he's showing us how we were dead in our trespasses and sins. And we used to live like that. Yeah, we were children of disobedience. Now we're children of God. That's right. We're trying to be able to be able to be able to do that. Many of those who believe on him demands.
Austin Gardner:We chose to obey and trust Christ.
Robert Canfield:Yeah, to them gave he power to become sons of God.
Austin Gardner:And so in the times past, you did what you thought was right. In the time past, you lived according to what the devil told you. But in the time past, you had the same attitude as other people who don't know God. That's not who you are now. You walked past tense. That's right. Not now.
Robert Canfield:Yeah. Not now. We walked according to the course of this world. Okay.
Austin Gardner:I tell you what, let's let's finish verse three, and that'll be enough for today's podcast.
Robert Canfield:All right. Well, he says this among whom also we had our conversation in times past, once again, like what you were reiterating, in times past. We had our manner of living conversation. Had our lifestyle in times past, in the lust of the of our flesh. Desires of our flesh, what I wanted. Yeah. Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And were past tense, were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. The children of wrath are those who won't trust Jesus, but we did trust him. The children of wrath are the ones that judgment's already upon because they don't believe in Christ. Now, by the way, if don't forget, this is after Ephesians 1. Do you remember who you are? So he tells us who we were in the beginning. Now he's telling us who we were. He's telling us who we are right now.
Austin Gardner:Right now you are accepted. Right now you are chosen. We were a lot of things, but we're not now. It's a comparison. Yep. And he's showing us again, it's about how good he is.
Robert Canfield:All these things, and if you think about it, it's so true. It just tells you how how true the God's word is. Where does our sin, where did sin usually originate from? Always in our mind. It came from our desires. And we just fulfilled all those things whenever we wanted to. And what he was trying to show us is that before Jesus, before being placed in Christ, we were dead in that. There was no hope. There was no life.
Austin Gardner:Separated from God, doing your own thing, living your own life, and you found out that was futile.
Robert Canfield:And all you could do is just you were on a default setting to mess up constantly. Mess up, mess up. And even though sin had its pleasure for a season, you always came away with being not satisfied. That's right. Well that's a terrible place to leave off, but that's what we're going to leave off.
Austin Gardner:I hope that it's helped you realize that's who we were, not who we are. That's right. We are Ephesians 1. We were Ephesians 2, 1 through 3. We are Ephesians 1. All those great things we've been seeing. We were this stuff here before Jesus stepped in. And by the way, we're going to talk about in tomorrow's podcast how God is rich in mercy. And we'll see that. Thank you for being with us today.
