(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Hi, I'm Nikki. Hi, I'm Hope. Welcome to Equipped Fellowship, where friends become family through Christ.
We're two Jesus-loving friends on a mission to share personal stories, resources, and real talk about our triumphs, breakthroughs, struggles, and setbacks. Why? Because we believe you are called to live victoriously, and we're here to equip you with Holy Spirit-led tools and strategies to strengthen your faith, transform your mindset, and walk boldly in God's promises. Because here's the truth, you have been given great and precious promises by God.
So grab your coffee, lean in, and let's grow together. It's time to step into everything God has for you. Yes, sister! And amen! Amen! Love it so much.
We are so excited for this episode, episode five, right? Yeah, and look, we're matching, and we didn't even plan for it. Great, and I just have to, I know this is not necessarily on topic, but Nikki made these, and I think it's the coolest thing ever, and it was the best birthday gift ever, and they're beautiful. And so shout out to Nikki for being incredibly amazing and crafty and handy.
You're so welcome. I love you so much. So today's message, we believe, is one that your heart needs to hear, especially if you've been feeling weary, stuck, or completely defeated and devastated, also just popped in.
We're calling this one, Girl, Get Up, inspired by Mark 541, where Jesus takes a little girl by the hand and says, which means, little girl, I say to you, get up. Maybe life has knocked you down. Maybe you're lying in a place of disappointment, heartbreak, exhaustion, or you're wondering if it's even possible to rise again.
We've been there. Both Hope and I have been there. But today we want to remind you, Jesus is still in the room, and he's still speaking life to you.
This episode is a powerful invitation to stop letting your circumstances define your future. You, my friend, are not done. You are not too far gone.
You are not forgotten. Through Jesus, you have the strength to rise again and step boldly into the life and purpose God created for you. Today, right now, is your get up moment.
That'll do it. That'll do it. Wow, that's so good.
And I have to say, like, you know this, like, I've been battling just short of two weeks of being extremely sick, and getting up has been physically, literally, so hard. And I, you told me that, okay, the Lord put this in you, and I got excited, but even more excited as my each day has become challenging, and it hasn't necessarily gotten easier for me to see how the Lord uses today for myself, and see, like, how He uses you, and what He's revealing to you about this. Because, and you talk about how you and I have been there, and I think it's such an emphasis, or it's important to emphasize that you have been there, and there will still be future moments where you will be there, or at least tempted to stay there.
And I think the get up, girl, get up, is you've got to not be tempted to stay there. And I have been tempted the past week to just stay in this rut. It has been not fun.
Which I'm sure is what she said when she was not living, right? Right. Right. Not fun.
No. Golly. So anyways, I'm just, I had to share that because it's a very timely message for me, so that I can only imagine how timely it is for everyone that's listening.
And I, when this came upon me, we were doing the, Hope and I were doing the Bible in the Year, and this happened to be one of the things that we were reading about the other day, and it hit me so hard, and the Holy Spirit imparted, like, right now in this season, so many people are feeling heavy. They're feeling discouraged. They're feeling fear.
They're feeling shame. They're feeling unworthiness. They're feeling disconnection from God, other people, everything.
And I was just like, and it came to me, like, how many times Hope and I have gotten up in the past, and this message was just like, we have to share this with others. Just like Hope said, like, you're either getting up or you're up, right? There's really, like, no two other ways to see it, and we want to encourage you, if you are down right now, please listen to this whole thing as encouragement, that when you're down, God, Jesus is right next to you, saying, girl, get up. Now is your time.
And every time you keep saying He's next to you, and you mentioned earlier He's in the room, I keep hearing the next part is He's also simultaneously on the throne, which means He's not only comforting you, but He's bringing you to that victory, because He can be in both places at once. And it means it's not over yet. And we are so prone to, I'm fired up already, because every day I'm asking, I'm like, is it over? I don't know.
Like, as humans, we like to, like, cut it off, to write the ending here and now. And He's like, no, my, my, my rope, the train of my rope fills the temple. And that's from each battle and victory I've won.
Don't doubt me. You can rest, you can, you can feel, this is a big one, you can feel the emotions, you can grieve, you can be upset. Emotions are not bad.
They direct you, which I'm still learning that, because gosh knows, I went from being an emotional hot mess to thinking they were all bad, and I should just be, because I have Jesus, I should just be like this all the time. And now I'm learning, like, no, you've got to let your whole body go through all those. But it's, what do you do next with Him? That's the question to ask.
What is that next step you take after you allow yourself to go through that process? That's it. That's it, your next step. I mean, just going back to this scripture, we talked about this the other day, but Jesus had to clear the room.
Yeah, right. Oh, that's, that's, I remember about this. Like you just said, like, sometimes it's so easy to believe what the enemy is implanting.
Like, it's over, you're not getting over this. Like, you're going to stay down. You'll never recover.
And that's what happened in the story. Yeah, exactly. That point you told me the other day.
Yeah, so, and this was something I learned years ago. When you, when you felt like the Lord highlighted this part, I was like, well, do you know what I remember about this story? Is right before the verse 41, in verse 39, he's, he's coming and he comes in and he says to them, why are you weeping? She's not dead. She's just sleeping.
And they laughed at him. And he had to put them all out. And he just took the father and the mother and them that were with him and entered in where the girl was lying.
So he had to put all those people out that were believing the wrong, believing the wrong ending. Right. And we can, we can, we can substitute those people with our thoughts.
Which, you know, that thoughts. Okay. Thoughts come from three places.
And I learned this at the end of last year at a retreat. The enemy, the enemy's camp. There's, I wish, you know, Satan was a one man show.
He ain't. So the enemy's camp, God, yourself. That third one is almost never the case.
It's either God or the enemy. It's, I'm not saying never, right? But like, your thoughts are not as frequent as you think. So you start identifying, like Nikki's saying, these thoughts that are pretty constant in you.
The doubt, the unbelief, the seeds being planted from outside sources. That's still not God. And those aren't from you.
So there's only a third other option. The enemy can use people. Because if we're not all, Nikki and I have already talked about on a previous episode, having that armor on.
If you are not armored up, you're a vessel to be used by anything. And that sounds kind of scary. And that's actually very funny, because I even told you, Nikki, that I got the download for next week.
And it's kind of relevant to that. But anyways, you got to be armored up. And just thinking about the three resources and saying, take yourself out of the picture.
Because it's almost never you. And not leaving the two. As you grow in knowing who God is, which in this story, it's who was Jesus in that moment.
And everything else leaves the last factor. And that makes it really easy. Simple.
Not easy. So I was going to say two different things. I sometimes trip over those words, because it's never easy.
But it simplifies it. And when we're in those moments of those thoughts, it feels so overwhelming. So let's simplify it.
How the Father intended things to be in the beginning was simple. That's why Jesus came, was to simplify things, right? He's putting out the religious folks that are all about doing all the rituals and things like that. He's like, no, no, no.
No, no, no. It's not how it works. Every miracle Jesus performed was simple.
Yes, it was simple. And it was done on a day where everyone was like, wait, you can't do it on these days. You know, like He just... It didn't take hours.
It didn't take days. It took seconds to minutes, right? And it was usually rooted. I say usually, because this was something that popped up to me in our readings last week, I think, with the reading the Bible in the year.
It was usually rooted in them simply believing in Him and His ability. And that was it. That's it.
It was, that was it. And He usually was like, your faith made you whole. Go ahead.
Your faith, your belief. Walk, your daughter's going to be there living. It's just like, it's crazy.
It was that simple. And so anyways, I didn't mean to go down that road, but it's... Well, yes, I did. But it's just those three things.
Eliminate yourself. You've got God and the enemy. It's usually, and it's usually the enemy when it's all negative.
It is the enemy when it's all negative. It's like, it is. And the thing to like, like I like to give my clients tools to like interrupt your thought process.
And a great interrupter would be, is this thought right now from God or from the enemy? So that same ministry, they went back to Genesis one, when, or excuse me, in Genesis, when God, when, you know, Adam and Eve fell and they go and hide and he's searching for him. Right. And he says, who, who told you this? Right.
So that's exactly what you said. And the simple question, who's telling me this? Or going back to this scripture, who, who's, who's believing that she's dead? Who is writing off the good ending? Who is mocking Jesus? Who, who is doing this? Right. You got the two options.
Yeah. Very rarely a third. That's right.
And that's our hope is that through, through your own journey with the Father, through reading the scriptures and prayer and learning how you hear his voice, as well as using this podcast as a tool, you learn his voice so dang well that you have no doubt who's talking to you. Yeah. My sheep know my voice.
That's what Jesus says. And I don't know, I just feel very led right now to declare over every person listening that you know his voice and today you will recognize it in a new way and have no doubt about what he's speaking over you in Jesus name. Yes.
I love that. Yeah, me too. I love that.
And for those who are just like, I don't know, I'm too down, I'm this, I'm that, the doctor said this and there's, try to slice out all that noise. You know, we've talked about the layers and I don't know why I said slice out all the noise, but it's like, remember Hope a couple weeks ago was talking about cutting the, the onion when you cut it right to the core. It's never good.
It makes you water. It's too quick. But slicing, if we just slice it across instead of down in these thin little layers.
So if you're going through something, yes, God can can do a complete miracle and heal you and deliver you and take care of everything in an instant. But sometimes we have to go through that learning process, that pruning process of taking things layer by layer. And in my notes, I put a setback is not a full stop.
It's a pause before the comeback. So sometimes when we're in that season of doubt, we have to take, like Hope said, a look at the situation. Is this from God? Is this from Satan? How have I then, if you bring in the third, how have I contributed to coming into agreement? Yes.
With the situation. Thank you. Sometimes you need to pause and dig a little deeper.
Thank you for mentioning our contribution. I'm so glad as I'm like listening to three things, I'm talking about the voice. I'm like eliminating you as a factor.
You are absolutely a factor because you're, you're, you're allowing and you're agreeing with one of the two. And that's a reality we have to accept is that every single moment we're choosing to agree. And I mean, I'm literally preaching to myself right now to agree with one of those two.
Yeah. I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah, it is.
It's that process. It's that continual renewal. And for all of you out there, everybody's get up moment looks different.
It could be a little get up moment. It could be a severe get up moment. Maybe you're getting up from discouragement.
Maybe you're getting up from fear. Maybe you're getting up from shame. Maybe you're getting up from the weight of expectations.
Maybe you're getting up from a dream unrealized. Maybe you're, you're, you're getting up just because you're just feeling down, right? There's nothing you can't pinpoint how you got here. But you're here.
And you know that this is how you don't want to live anymore. And you're feeling crushed by the weight or the heaviness of the situation that you're in right now. And a lot of times I think that's more often the case than not is you can't quite pinpoint how you got where you are.
And as hard as that is, as that, as I thought about that, it's actually very beautiful because all you have left in you is to surrender to Him. Instead of choosing to try and piece it all together and put together this puzzle, leaving out the biggest puzzle piece in the whole puzzle, you just got to surrender it at that rate because you don't know. And I know I'm really guilty of trying to understand everything.
And I think we all have that tendency. I mean, scripture again, lean not on your own understanding. And I think that's such an elementary scripture, but it's simple.
And you've heard it since you were young, even if you weren't in the church, really, because it's one of those things people can just spit out. But you could revisit that probably every day for the next year. And He would show you something different about how you're leaning into your own understanding and how you're not acknowledging Him in all your ways.
Acknowledging slash agreeing with Him in all your ways. You're agreeing with yourself and your beliefs. You're agreeing with the enemies.
Okay. Yeah. That's good stuff.
So there you go. There is a very simple scripture that most people know, and He will school you on it if you let Him. And I say school.
He will gently love you as a parent would and say, girl, get up. Come on. I got these other ways to show you.
Right. Path. The straight path.
Get off that curly queue of your own understanding or what the enemy is telling you. Get back on my path. I'll teach you everything you need to know.
And so as you were talking, God was illustrating maybe some steps or like an idea, a seed that we're going to plant that maybe people who are in this season can do. So step one, wherever you're at, you could be in your Jesus corner. You can be in your bed.
You can be on the floor. You can be on your car. Think about one.
Are these thoughts that I'm having? Is this situation that I'm currently in right now from God or is it from the enemy? Do that. Step two, like we've already said, how have I been contributing or coming into agreement for this situation that I am in now? Acknowledge that. Take accountability.
And like we talked about in a previous time, repent, right? Repent. Let God's forgiveness wash over you. And then as a culminating activity, picture yourself.
And we've talked a little bit about sacred imagination. Get quiet. Get in a comfortable space and imagine yourself walking down a path, whatever that path in your mind's eye looks like.
It could be a rocky path, a dirt road, but that straight path that Hope was just talking about, you're walking on God's path now. And as you are walking, you're carrying a box and it's heavy because it's filled with all the yuck that you've been going through. And I want you to imagine walking down this path with your box of yuck.
And then I want you to imagine that you get to a gate and whatever that gate looks like for you could be wrought iron. It could be wood. It could be flowers.
It could be whatever it is. And then I want you to open the gate. Walk in with your box.
And when you walk into this sacred space with your box, you feel the overwhelming supernatural grace of God. You are in a space with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit and you just fall down on your hands and knees with this box of yuck. And I want you to go through this box with your Father, with Jesus, with Holy Spirit in the room and take these things out of your box one by one.
It could be one. It could be many. There's no limit to it.
And I want you to take it out with the Father and hear what He has to say about you for every single thing that you take out. Repent if you need to. Receive healing and restoration if that's what is coming to you.
Whatever you need, you're going to give it all away and you're going to get everything that God has for you in this moment. And as you are doing that, Jesus is right by your side saying, Yes, girl, give up. Get it out.
Receive my Father's blessing. He has so much goodness in store for you. So I hope that's helpful for somebody out there.
But this whole plan just downloaded as soon as Hope was talking. Yeah, what is that? Proverbs 3, 4 through 6. I believe that's the scripture for lean not on your own understanding. So you could even, I do think scripture is a door.
So as a way to ensure that you're using your sacred imagination, read that scripture and then do that exercise so that you're entering in through the truth of scripture. I think that's a great way because I know that Nikki and I have had our own journeys of this sacred imagination thing. But I will say that no matter who we learned it from, and I've heard it from different people in different ministries.
It all begins with making sure you're rooted in Him, inviting the Holy Spirit, praying beforehand, reading scriptures. I mean, there's tons of different ways to do it just to ensure that you're armored up with truth and you're going to have the best experience. Even as you were starting to talk, Nikki.
I immediately went there in my mind and it was so cool because Nikki, what Nikki just did is she painted the picture for you. But it's okay if yours looks slightly different. So I wanted to share this because I remember Nikki and I in 2017, 2018, we were in a boot camp together, spiritual boot camp.
And we did a lot of exercises like this. And it was cool because it would start off with painting a picture like that. So you could get comfortable because you don't trust yourself at first.
You aren't fully comfortable with yourself or with the Father yet. And so you need someone to start guiding you. And then it's just kind of like, all right, so what you seeing now? What you doing now? And it allowed you to get more comfortable with the Lord.
And I say that because when Nikki started talking and I saw the gate, it was beautiful. And as soon as I stepped into that sacred space you're talking about with the Godhead there, my box, I dumped it to the side. And I started weeping.
And, you know, it's crazy. And I guess this goes back to even like I was listening to our first episode or I guess episode zero, the welcome to the family recently. And I was just talking in there about how you don't ever arrive.
And I always wrestle with that because I always want to fully arrive. And I do believe that He wants to make us whole and that we pursue all things in Christ. And so I want to always hesitate with that comment of like, we don't arrive because I don't even know what arrival is.
And I think that's the problem is we don't know what it is. And our pursuit should be Him. But I say that because after all these years of doing exercises like this, I'm still weeping that I'm dumping a bunch of stuff out of a box when I can't believe I still have a full box.
Same. So that's what I mean when I say you don't ever arrive is, what was in my box, Lord? Why did I just make a massive hunk of junk to the side of the path? But that was wonderful. And I think that was such a blessing to so many people, including myself.
Oh, that's so good. I don't know. I have a scripture coming to mind.
And I just want to say this so that I, when I look away, I'm looking away to bring this up to share later. So I don't know if there's anything else that you have in your notes or to share, but I got to look this scripture up. Okay, so back to the scripture.
We forgot to talk about this. After she got up, she walked around. So she got up and she walked around because she had a new life.
Getting up means stepping back into your purpose, community, and calling. Today, try to take a small step. Get up and see what God has for you.
And he says, he says, get up and eat. And I think that's really cool because to Nikki's point, it's an What are you going to eat on? A praise and worship. You call a friend and you become accountable for what you've been going through.
What are you going to consume? I never thought about that until like that till right now. What are you going to consume? Because your consumption is everything for the next step. And Nikki and I can attest to this.
And I'm sure no matter how long you've been walking with the Lord and you've been choosing to be in his camp, not the enemy's, your hardest times and the times where you feel like not getting up is right before a breakthrough, right before he's opening up a door to something new. You're fulfilling something that was written for you and you alone to do in the heavens. So it's really important to get up and consume the right things to feed your spirit, your in your body, all of it, but really your spirit, because that's that's where it all starts and it goes down.
But you feel that like wrestling in your soul and in your body. But it's so important. And I think that's where you and I talk about like the accountability and the checks and balances, because without that, your consumption goes to bad things.
Yeah, so true. Do you want to share that Bible verse that came to mind? And I wrote out a prayer, too. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So this scripture came up just while we were talking. Keep it simple, hope. And what's really interesting is through this conversation, we started out, Nikki shared the scripture and then I shared of like, you're you're either up or you're down.
There's there's only two options and you won't always be standing. And it's not not always. I want to emphasize this, too, because I'm still learning this as well.
If you fall, how do I say this? It could be something that the enemy is doing, but recognizing that God works all things for good and it can turn into a pruning opportunity. And also sometimes a testing can feel like a fall because it's removing the things you are comfortable with. And I really wanted to emphasize that because that's why you're either standing or you're down is both because you have such a loving father that he wants you to keep going from glory and glory.
(This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go Unlimited at TurboScribe.ai to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)
