E206 Is Your Witness Living in the Center of God’s Faithfulness?

This is Faith to Witness 99. Because we want a deeper faith, stronger witness. 

Season 4 Episode 206 Is Your Witness Living in the Center of God’s Faithfulness?

Here’s the Top 3 Take from this week’s episode. A little motivation that travels well, human.

01. Count the cost

God is faithful deep inside his nature. And we travel deep when we count the cost of giving everything we have to get there. 

02. Help carry the lost

We all share the same purpose. To help Jesus carry the lost home. 

Our earthly shoulders. His divine power.

03. Seek your authentic witness

When we go finding the one God has put on our path, we will need his nature for the rescue. This is where our authentic witness lives. In the center of his nature. 

Stay with us for the conversation. e206

Listen to the full episode on your platform here: pod.link/1648558274

Read today’s show notes: Substackhttps://substack.com/@kathrynabise1 and https://kathrynbise.com/category/buoy-podcast-show-notes/ 

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Connect with Kathryn:  deeperwater@kathrynbise.com

Season 4 starts here. Let’s jump right in. There is more to the faith God gifts us than managing our earthly trials. Why? Because our earthly life is not the end game. Heaven is. We are preparing for a life that has no end. A life that requires spiritual heft anchored in God’s glory. Our faith flows from God’s faithfulness. We have nothing divine without God’s nature. This truth turned my spiritual walk upside down in 2022.

We have no witness without his glory, his I AM-ness. God was a witness first. To his creation, to creating mankind. To the behavior of his chosen nation during a two thousand year Old Testament history. Jesus bore testimony of his Heavenly Father on earth. In the middle of the taxpayers, sinners, the Pharisees, the teachers, he pulled everyone into one common group and gathered the conversation around his earthly purpose with one word. 

Suppose. 

A simple directive that takes us straight to the purpose of the parable of the lost sheep. 

And the eternal power of repentance. 

Luke 15:1-7

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

15 Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. 2 But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.

I’m Kathryn Bise, your host.

With each new season I take spiritual inventory of how Jesus, our Shepherd has led me through a journey initiated by that one word:  suppose. In the fall of 2022 I committed to a solo podcast on this premise: I would bear witness to God’s work in my life, share insights from my spiritual growth, and help motivate what I envisioned as a “little band of seeking humans” to join me in pursuing a deeper relationship with God, that we would grow in our witness. This came on the heels of a nearly 30-year career raising funds for nonprofit organizations in New York City and Los Angeles. Funds for artists and arts education, funds for underserved inner city youth, and so on. I applaud God’s work in my career journey; I remain grateful for his forgiving mercy throughout my experiences. His hand raised amazing resources for the underserved.

While God’s faith anchored my walk with him in my career—I could not have risen to the challenges without him—I did not really use my career platform to witness for him. Colleagues, board members, corporate sponsors, team members knew I was a Christian, but I did not bear outright testimony to his life-sustaining grace that took me through each day. And I certainly did not go finding. I was swamped with funding priorities initiated by powerful, ambitious people. It was exhilarating work. With beautifully exhausting missions to realize noble visions that tested human capacity in all of us. 

I did not commit to a podcast without some spiritual reluctance. Going from being measured by the earthly approval of many, to the eternal approval of one divine presence didn’t come without some anxiety. 

Count the Cost of Your Calling

At the time I also knew this podcast would be a personal springboard from which deeper insights, longer works would develop. It would serve as a spiritual discipline within my relationship with God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. 

I thought I wanted to commit to a respectable six episodes. I wasn’t really thinking about episode seven, longevity, or seasons. I didn’t even know how to do any of it. But at that moment, I did deliberate over the cost of this calling, that God had set the cost when his Son saved me, and it was up to me to always determine the cost as “everything” just as Jesus has told us following in his footsteps would require. 

Luke 14:33: “In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.”

Matthew 16:24-25: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.'”

The cost of following Jesus would cost me everything. I am sharing my reflections on how this evolved with you to show the spiritual power of asking yourself this question: 

“What is the cost of my calling?” 

So, I took my spirt-cue from Luke 15:4, my anchor verse for the inaugural season. Yeah, 99 episodes. I published the first three episodes when I launched on October 19, 2022. As I prepped for episode 4 I brooded over what I had done. What was I thinking when I publicly committed to bearing witness to nearly two years of personal spiritual growth? Season 4 of a weekly witness share seemed unimaginable. When you ask yourself “what is the cost of my calling” I can bear testimony to this:

God is faithful deep inside his nature. And we travel deep when we count the cost of giving everything we have to get there.

What I began to discover is that the more I immersed in his Word, embraced his nature, the clearer my priority was. Our purpose in this life has to surpass a need for earthly survival kits from God. I am not saying we don’t need them. I am saying that his survival packs are for a much greater purpose beyond what we need on earth, or for what we ask for. We can’t even think about how much greater. We don’t know his thoughts. All we can do is go all-in.

Isaiah 55:8-9

8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

    neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so are my ways higher than your ways

    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Help Jesus Carry the Lost Home

What matters beyond all else, is bearing witness to God’s glory and power to save a person. 

Growing up I was described as having broad, strong shoulders. An athletic girl who found her way to dance. Well, God is giving us that kind of spiritual heft to carry our spiritual purpose. We have varying spiritual callings along life’s path, the measure by which we count the cost in our words and actions. 

Yet, we all share the same purpose. To help Jesus carry the lost home. 

Our earthly shoulders. His divine power.

To have the spiritual strength to rescue a lost sheep off the ledge. 

Luke 15:5

5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 

After my first podcast season—named My Witness99 Journey—a season that completed 99 episodes, I was convicted that my focus was to continue this path. I wasn’t all that happy about it. I knew continuing was non-negotiable with my God. But I was hoping for a turn of topic, maybe. How about helping people with worry, with struggling, with anxiety, with, with, with. I just re-released e71 which was about brokenness and God’s mercy. Most downloaded episode to date. Maybe I should turn my podcast toward brokenness, broken people? Much easier and so in demand by the ever-gathering crowds on the hillside of social media influence.

But I had spiritually found my Mt. Everest during this journey because I end up in the same place, at the same pace, with the same majestic view. There is just nothing like witnessing someone coming to Jesus. Watching someone turn back toward Jesus. Watching something click in their spirit walk to shift their dependence onto the shoulders of the Savior who carries us home. This is the pace, the stuff, of going to find the one. And laying your witness bare for the taking.

I feel the weight of this unpopular topic because “witnessing” has a cultural stigma, both within and outside the church; that it is for those who are called to be evangelists, who can stand face to face with the people in the grocery store checkout line, maybe in front of crowds. Share their redemption story, beginning to end. It is scary, embarrassing, intrusive, involved, complicated, and full of moments brimming with comments to God like “Well, that was awkward.” 

The truth is, how we define our witness is often limited to a human-sighted, spiritually paralyzing perspective. That it requires perfect conditions.

A mic.

A media platform.

Perfect words.

A perfect moment.

Someone who is 100% listening.

Someone who is 100% receptive.

Someone who is so lost there is no other place to go.

Someone with an open heart. Somewhere safe for our ego, heart, spirit.

None of these things are necessary. It’s common to think of our “witness” as self-narrating our redemption story to an attentive, lost sheep who knows he is lost, who just wants to be delivered to a field of fresh grass and a sparkling brook.  

But suppose your lost sheep does not. He just keeps climbing higher and higher into his worldly dominance of his own human nature, where the spiritual oxygen gets thinner and thinner. 

Or suppose your lost sheep just keeps stumbling lower and lower into her human nature, where the devil’s underbrush and bramble entangle her at every step. 

We have to catch the lost in the middle of the in-between. Stop his ascent, her descent, stop his movement toward living so deep within his human nature that no light, no direction change gets through. 

Let’s train for the rescue. 

And be ready for all levels of being lost. This is the conversation premise of Faith to Witness 99. Deeper faith. Stronger witness. 

Living at All Levels of Lost

Jesus is the King of conversations. A woman at the well. Blind men, sick people, demon-possessed people on dusty roads. Seeds. Storms. Riches. Lost coins. 

And lost sheep. 

So let’s forget our own narrative for a while. And concentrate on the power of our Savior’s conversations. Learn from his exchanges with all levels of lost people: his disciples, the Pharisees, the Roman officials, his family, the crowds, the naysayers.

Jesus opens our minds to his purpose for us with one word. Suppose.  

Suppose a sheep is just tangled up in a bush on the path. He needs someone to stop for a moment and free him from a web of stubborn mental burrs in his wool. 

Suppose a sheep is getting lost in the same conversation with none other than, well, you. He just needs you to stop the loop, and share how God is working through you, a way to break the cycle that was leaving God out of the conversation, out of the relationship. 

Suppose there are lost sheep crossing your path, sheep in your family, your friendships, relationships, community. At all different levels of lost. And we don’t get to know their whole story. It’s not about replacing their story of being lost with our redemption story. Many times, so many times, God gives us a moment, a conversation to move a lost sheep toward a little spiritual shade. Jesus calls us to go finding the one in our day, sheep who are living at all levels of lost. Cross paths with someone in a moment conducive to a direction change.

I have been convicted about, ok, Holy Spirit has guided me to go deeper. A way in to a witness that shows up daily, and begins to exemplify a crazy, strong testimony through my words and actions. It takes both, human.

Train for the Rescue

Now suppose you need a little motivation. Let’s say, weekly. 15-20 minutes to fan the witness embers in your heart and spirit for finding the one. That’s what Faith to Witness 99 is. God leads us to such deep truths about who he is, he takes us to the center of his nature. We cover it all. Season 1, 2, and 3 are in the Faith to Witness 99 archive for you. We learn, become convicted about who our Savior is, what he commands of us, and how he empowers, how he transcends our flesh nature into a spirit that illuminates his image, not ours. Why? 

Because when we go finding the one God has put on our path, we will need his nature for the rescue.  

This is where our authentic witness lives. In the center of his nature. 

We have to deepen our ability to connect God’s nature to another person. To do that our personal relationship with God, the father, Jesus the Son, and Holy Spirit must continue to grow.

So here we are. Season 4. In pursuit of deeper faith, and a stronger witness. Oh let’s go all-in. We want a crazy, good life lived in the center of the one and the 99. A life that isn’t all about our personal struggles. A life that turns us toward the glory road. His glory road. 

A deeper look at how Jesus treated lost sheep, how to talk to them, to connect with others like Jesus does. By his power, by his nature.

Paul’s words in Ephesians capture how I feel about our journey together. 

Ephesians 1:17 

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

The deeper we know God’s nature, his Son’s nature, the better we know who we are, and the more we go finding.

Luke 15:4

4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?

“Is your witness living in the center of God’s faithfulness?”

Let’s count the cost Jesus has defined for us and train for the rescue. That’s the conversation we are having. 

Today’s Motivation That Travels Well

Ponder, pray, and pursue his Word about today’s motivation that travels well. 

Count the cost

01. God is faithful deep inside his nature. And we travel deep when we count the cost of giving everything we have to get there. 

Help carry the lost

02. We all share the same purpose. To help Jesus carry the lost home. 

Our earthly shoulders. His divine power.

Seek your authentic witness

03. When we go finding the one God has put on our path, we will need his nature for the rescue. This is where our authentic witness lives. In the center of his nature. 

God’s faith to your witness. Go find the one.