He is God of the generations. His goodness goes beyond are daily experiences. His goodness stretches back beyond our timeline. Christ has the authority to say on the cross "It is finished" because of who He's been, who He is, and who He forever will be. When we position ourselves under the truth that God's goodness isn't dependent upon our experiences we can find security and rest for souls.
Scriptures:
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:29-30 ESV
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” John 1:29-31 ESV
Letter from the host:
Dear Beloveds,
Reflecting on and responding to the faithful and intelligent love of God has been therapeutic to my mind, heart, and body! I vulnerably share because I want you to experience the joy of authentic connection with Jesus, yourself, and others.
Growth happens at the point of connection. Thank you for trusting me with this connection! I'm glad to be with you!
With joy,
Gabrielle Michelle
New episodes onWednesdays! Bi-weekly!
Thanks for subscribing and leaving a review! Please feel free to share with your family and friends.
He is God of the generations. His goodness goes beyond are daily experiences. His goodness stretches back beyond our timeline. Christ has the authority to say on the cross "It is finished" because of who He's been, who He is, and who He forever will be. When we position ourselves under the truth that God's goodness isn't dependent upon our experiences we can find security and rest for souls.
Scriptures:
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. John 19:29-30 ESV
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.” John 1:29-31 ESV
Letter from the host:
Dear Beloveds,
Reflecting on and responding to the faithful and intelligent love of God has been therapeutic to my mind, heart, and body! I vulnerably share because I want you to experience the joy of authentic connection with Jesus, yourself, and others.
Growth happens at the point of connection. Thank you for trusting me with this connection! I'm glad to be with you!
With joy,
Gabrielle Michelle
New episodes onWednesdays! Bi-weekly!
Thanks for subscribing and leaving a review! Please feel free to share with your family and friends.
Welcome to the return to joy podcast. I'm your host, Gabrielle Michel Leonard. Here we're leading people to cultivate joy through storytelling. We hope listening will reveal pathways to unlocking the healing power of connection, so that you can see your relationships and the world around you transformed from fractured into flourishing. It is finished Christ on the cross before dying, giving up his last breath mouth the words it is finished. That is so striking to me right now. I'm gonna tell you why. It's striking, because rarely in life, do things do that does the story feel finished? At least not to the point that we would like it to be right. More often than not, we find ourselves in the middle of the chapter in the middle of the book. We're caught in the in between space. We're still waiting to know, if things are going to work out. We're not quite certain. Yes, we have faith. Yes, we're hoping. But the verdict is still out. We're not sure how this is going to pan out. And if it's going to, if it's if it's going to happen in the way we're hoping for it to or wanting it to write, we have dreams that we desire to accomplish, maybe a vision, a passion, but you're not quite sure what you're gonna, what it's gonna look like to get there. There's loved ones that you care about them even thinking about people in my life, who you're seeing the heartache, you're seeing their struggle in their wrestle. And you're not quite sure how a story is going to finish what's going to look like. But what is certain and true is the story is not done right now. We often are in the territory of being in the middle, being in the waiting being on the journey. And so when Christ says something like it is finished, man that is going up against everything that feels natural, and more. It's coming up against what feels more normative for our space as humans. It really all feels finished. So it's just an interesting thing for me if that in and of itself points to the reality of how much of this walk of trusting God is just that it is a walk of trusting him and holding in faith. Clinging to His words and trusting for them to be true because it is not natural. It is not natural. But I want to share with you some stories of some things, a story of something and just recently even happened, think will bring encouragement. I know it will tell you I my dad and I have been on this beautiful journey of of just continuing our relationship has just been I've I've personally just have felt so full by the relationship with my father. And that's been a long journey and process to be at this place of not just acceptance in regards to where he's at. But just i My eyes are seeing things that I've prayed for 10 years ago, 15 years ago. I remember 10 years ago, my eyes couldn't even see or wrap them I couldn't wrap my mind around what an answered prayer would look like for my father. I knew things that needed to change in his life or I wanted to change in his life or in a new things that I wanted to be different about our relationship and about the relationships in our family even as a whole but I did not know I my eyes couldn't even imagine I hadn't imagined yet what it would look like to begin to see the fruit of my my father's heart being transformed by the Lord. He always had a love for God but just to be able to for him To be able to experience even for himself, the healing that was needed in his life. And recently, my dad said something to me, that really struck me. And it shook up my understanding of story and my understanding of completion, if you will see, I had spoke at a church two weeks ago. And I sent my father the sermon, the message that I preached, and he called me a couple days later, and he called me saying, he listened to my message twice. And then he said, and then he said, he thought to himself Can anything good? Come out of I think he said, Can anything good come out of Zion, I'm not sure. But basically, he was like, Can anything good. And then he just broke down and began to weep. And I'm, I'm beginning to join in that weeping because that's something that I never experienced with my father, I, I don't know if I have another memory, in my mind, where I can point to my father, experiencing such brokenness with me and allowing me to be in that space. It's that's a vulnerable space for any man, right. But my father is allowing me into that space, and there's this brokenness that I hear. And then then he begins to say to me, the fact that because my parents are divorced. And he says, something of the nature of like, the fact that God will redeem even you in my ear, mother and I's relationship, to bring with to bring out things like this, to bring out you to bring out my siblings, and what God is doing in that moment. My father was experiencing the mercy and grace of God, experiencing hope for his life. And what he felt like was his mistakes, things that he made, decisions that he made that were immature things or things that he did that was in sin, that did damage and caused pain. In that moment, I was hearing my father and brokenness and weeping, I was hearing the Lord connect a dot for him. Well, what the Lord was doing in my life, the fruit that was coming up and showing up out of my life was an answer to his prayers. It was, it was redemption. Here's the truth I want you to see in that my life, and what's happening in me what God is doing in me, was connected to the redemption story from my father. That blew my mind to see to witness that to experience it and see it. Because sometimes, especially in this in this culture that we're in today, where we want things to come immediately and quickly, I know I do. And so if we're going to see fruit in our lives, if we're going to see things change, if we're gonna see the narrative change, we're like, I want to be the one to see it, and I want it to benefit me. But I love the beauty of my father. So humbly, being encouraged by God, and seeing it as Christ is love to him. That he would bless his daughter's life, that he was blessed his children's life and seeing that as the mercy and grace of God upon his life. Because my father's story will not end with his death. My father's story, my father's life. And the arc in history of what God is doing in my father's life will not end with his last breath. It won't even end with mines. It will continue on there will be a seed that will continue on generationally. Because the Lord, being faithful to his promise and being faithful to His word, being faithful to who he is, is so much bigger than our story that in the timeline of how long we are, we are alive here on this earth. There is the period of in between from when we are born from when you were born and when you will die. And I promise you there will be some things that you will see the goodness of the Lord in in your lifetime and you will see the Lord redeem mistakes that you have made you will see the Lord redeem ways that you've hurt people you will see the Lord heal and restore things that have been broken and things You may have even contributed in the brokenness of in your lifetime. But the great hope is that there are also things that are felt that the Lord will heal and restore and speak life into. Like his promise of faithfulness to you will actually supersede and go beyond your life. The Lord, being faithful to my father does not end with his life. It trickles into mines, it trickles into my siblings. Christ is faithful to his work, he's faithful. But that concept that I don't even really expect for it to fully hit for those who are listening, and it's I don't know if I fully get it for myself. But there is something that is so upside down, you know, like, consistently in Scripture we see that Christ is way is so different from the way from what we know the value and from the way in the way we move and how we show up and be. It's better though. It's better. I'm challenged. I'm challenged by the necessity, to see the Lord as God of the generations to see God as the God of the generations and not just the God of my timeline in my story. There's a reason why he was called consistently, when, when when the people of God, when Israel was referring to him in the Old Testament, you consistently hear the God of, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I think we miss something and not understanding that concept of the the history of God that goes so far beyond us. It goes beyond our nearest ancestor, it goes on for generations, beyond what we're able to conceive, his timeline did not begin with our timeline. And it will not end with our timeline. And you know what, that truth actually can bring the security that we need. See, if God just began with me if he began being good with me, and if he stops being good with just me, and even just with not just with me with if he stops being good with my generation, if it's all about my generation, the man that is a fragile god, I can't trust that God because his roots aren't deep enough. He's got to be anchored. He's got to be one who's been who's been existing far beyond me, and will and will, and will continue onward. And we can like that concept that can even be true for us, but it's another but it also has to serve as something that brings about a conviction and challenges the way we move. Because understanding God to be good beyond us will challenge the next time we shake our fist at God because he didn't do what we want him to do when we want him to do it. It challenges those moments when we're hurt. It challenges those moments when we are experiencing an injustice. When we are experiencing a trauma, and we're shaking our head and we're like God, I don't I don't know if if you are good. If we're having those questions, there are real questions to be handled and to be had and to be wrestled with. I'm not diminishing having them. I've had those questions. But I've also been challenged by the reality and the truth that puts me in my place of knowing that God's goodness isn't dependent upon my timeline and it's not dependent upon the timeline of my generation either. He's been good for a long time. He's been good for a long time in John chapter one, just want to point out something this you can see this beautifully in John chapter one, but I want to point make make a notice of something before wrap up this episode. When Christ come comes on the scene in the book of John and we, we encountered John the Baptists, who points to the Christ as Christ is coming up about to be baptized by John and John says, Behold, you know, Behold the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world like John is, is in awe and magnifying the name of God. And he is in his declaring who God is before the people that are there. And I have heard that so many times. And I know you had to have heard it too. But I just want to place I just want to place that story for you real quick, I want to give you some context, I want to make that more that step moment more impactful for you. Because you may not recognize that when Jesus comes on the scene in the gospels, in this moment where you have this crowd gathered, and they're gathered around, John, and can you picture it, Jesus walking up, and John stops everything, and yells out, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, I need you to get what's what's happening here in this moment. They have not heard from God, in hundreds of years. I can't remember the exact timeline since of how many hundreds of years, maybe three to 400 years, but in the same way that God had seemingly gone silent, while Israel was subjected to 400 years of slavery in Egypt. That's that had happened again. And then it been a minute, it had been a hot, minute generations, since people had heard from God. Okay. So anything that was happening in that period of time before Jesus comes on the scene, it was simply as why we had this book called The Talmud, it was simply just people talking about, like the Pharisees, leaders, people talking about what they heard, what was what was said, right, it was people just having discussions, people writing about what was written. This is why so many times you hear Christ say, You've, you've heard it said, or it was written, but I say, that's why that was such a crazy thing for the Pharisees to hear. And people want, we're so thrown off of life by the authority that Christ spoke with, because he wasn't speaking on behalf of God, as if he was just as if he was just a prophet. And he wasn't speaking, saying, you know, in reference to what God said, he was speaking on equal terms with God, my father said, my father does, he was speaking as if he was God. He was speaking as like, he was speaking as God. That's what was so just stirred up people into anger, or people into following him like, whoa, the thought that's why they kept saying the authority by which he speaks because he this is not a man, speaking about God, this is a man speaking with the same authority as God himself. This is him speaking the very words of God not saying it was written, have you heard it said. So for four years, centuries, generations, people had just been talking about what was said about what God said, they were talking about what God said, which is very different than God himself showing up on the scene and be in speaking. And so when Christ shows up, in this scene, being baptized by John the Baptist, and John is proclaiming about his identity and who he is. The people that were present would have been in such awe. And there would have been such a this sense of release of like what we have longed for this for generations. Generations. And I don't have any pretty way with the bow to tie this up. This was just on my heart, I'm still still wrestling with it. But it's basically just this concept of like, man. We are not the only ones. You are not the only one who has a longing within the depths of your soul. If you're waiting to see the goodness of God, if you're waiting for the Lord, to answer and for the Lord to be his promise to you, if you're waiting upon the Lord, You are not alone in that wait. generations before you have waited. Shoot, some have waited. Some generation some people there has been some times three and 400 years without seemingly a word from the Lord. I'm thankful that we're not in that period. But I know collectively as a body collectively as a Whole and as individuals we still long and wait. Sometimes it feels as if he is silent and not speaking. But I just want to encourage you in this episode but that the Lord is still good that the story of God's goodness will continue. He will show up, he will be the answer, he is the answer. And according to Christ, It is finished. And sometimes, we just have to trust and take him at his word that it is. If you're hearing this message, you've listened to the entire episode. And for that I am deeply grateful. I hope this episode resonated with you and if it did help us out by sharing this episode and leaving a review on Apple podcasts, and Spotify. Most importantly, reach out to let me know how you're engaging with this episode, and what topics you'd like to see covered in the future. You can connect with us on social media, or get in touch with me directly at Gabrielle at returning to joy.com to share your heart. I'll see you in two weeks for a new episode.