Grace Enough Podcast

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A podcast designed to encourage believers that God can use you to impact His kingdom no matter your story. Yes, it requires surrender and trust, but His grace is enough.

Episodes

Tuesday Sep 08, 2020

84: Sandy Cullum | When Your Faith Walk Changes

Tuesday Sep 08, 2020

Ep. 84 of the Grace Enough Podcast, Sandy Cullum joins me to talk about cultivating a prayer life through thanksgiving, quiet and Scripture prayers. We also discuss her journey of doubt and darkness and how she has learned God never left her.

www.graceenoughpodcast.com

Questions Sandy and I Discussed:

(4:19) Tell us a little bit about your childhood and how you came to know Jesus.
(836) Fast forward to being a young mom living back in Florida. What were your days like and how were you involved in ministry during that time?
(15:03) Something I have said time and time again is, "I believe your prayers for me and Sam long before I was a part of your family literally changed my life and continues to do so." Share with our listeners a few tips on cultivating a prayer life.
(30:22) You were in the middle of your "dark night of the soul" when Sam and I got married, but what I have heard about the Sandy prior to that season in your life is Jesus was truly your best friend and it was obvious. Share a little about what happened that led to your season of wrestling with all that you believed to be true.
(1:03:50) What does your relationship with Jesus look like today?

Quotes to Remember:

"People have asked me how did you become such a woman of prayer? And I was like, because I couldn't handle life. I couldn't handle life. I was desperate."

"I had an advantage then, because we didn't have much money. And even though I have this full library now, I had almost no books, then. I had no internet and having the internet alone makes is this huge resource that's there that you can turn to first. Instead of turning to God first."

"I would say that practicing daily Thanksgiving, although people see it as a separate spiritual practice, is a huge part of prayer."

"I needed to keep my mind on what I did have, instead of what I didn't have and thought I needed. I needed that practice of writing down in journals every day, things I was thankful for, and being able to see it in front of my eyes. You might think that's not prayer, but if you're keeping any kind of a thanksgiving paper on your wall or a log of some sort, or you have it as a daily practice, that's prayer."

"Cultivate quiet. That's what I see as by far the biggest challenge for people today in our culture, social media, all the streaming that's available, our phones constantly going off. Prayer is as much listening and hearing what God is saying to us, as it is what we're saying to God. And if our phone is constantly going off, then we don't have...enough quiet space in our life, to let Him speak to us."

"When you pray those kinds of prayers for people, God changes your heart, and you're able to then accept things that may come into your life or their life that you wouldn't have asked for."

"If you just get in the habit of reading Scripture out loud, then you'll find yourself more easily moving into the Scripture prayers that God's Spirit is directing you to."

"One night when I was coming home from the Bible study, I remember it was raining and I remember I just started almost shouting, 'God, I want them to know you. I want them to know you like I know you. And I was praying for my husband. I was praying for Kyle and his wife, Michelle, and I was praying for Sam and I was praying for his future wife. And when I prayed that prayer, I knew that reality was changing and that my whole family as a result of that prayer was stepping into or through a different door."

"I was writing Father, I need you to show me the Scriptures I need now. I feel so lost, so unable to hear you or help my family through my intercession for them. Father, Who can I talk with about this? Who will understand and point me and push me in the right direction? Save me, save us, Lord, save us from ourselves."

"Prayers that I prayed back in 2003 and 2004 and 5, in 2006 God was holding in that bowl. You know that bowl of incense, which is the prayers of the saints, to release them later in my life, I wrote as late as March 29, 2006, 'I wonder if I will ever wholeheartedly believe in the God I used to know again? If my thoughts about God will ever again resonate with certainty rather than sound hollow and empty, like a whisper of a long ago dream? Oh, God have mercy on me. And so those prayers that I had prayed for Sam and his wife, I couldn't pray during this time. But God was holding them from the time when I had been able to pray them, and He was working them in your lives, because He's not bound by time and He's at the center of all time and sees it all."

"God was so faithfully patient with me...David asked me..., 'Sandy, are you a Christian?' I would think about it, I would answer him, 'I don't know if I'm a Christian, but I know that God hasn't left me' and I couldn't make rational sense of that with Scripture."

"I was having a fresh look at the cross from within the lens of Isaiah 53. Not just that our sin that He took upon Himself, but our suffering that He took upon Himself, and that the suffering took upon Himself was largely the result of God's respecting our free will."

Scripture References:

Revelation 21: The River of Life

Ephesians 6: Spiritual Warfare

Ephesians 3:14-21 "...may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" (18)

Psalm 103

Nehemiah 1

John 17Jesus prays for His disciples and all believers.

Isaiah 50: 4 The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.

Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Isaiah 53

Resources Mentioned:

TWO BOOKS TO USE LIKE DEVOTIONALS TO HELP YOU STAY ROOTED IN GOD'S CHARACTER AS YOU PRAY:

SANDY'S TWO FAVORITE BOOKS ABOUT PRAYER:

FINDING THE HEART'S TRUE HOME by Richard Foster (very accessible) Use as a guide, 21 short chapters, each about a different type of prayer. Thoughtfully reading it will stretch your conception and boxes of prayer - it will invite you to an ADVENTURE - not another duty or task on your to-do list.
LISTENING PRAYER: LEARNING TO HEAR GOD'S VOICE AND KEEP A PRAYER JOURNAL by Leanne Payne Here's what Dallas Willard said about it: "An intensely practical book based on the author's rich experience of how to live now as a servant of Christ and His Word. There is nothing in print that surpasses it in this regard, and perhaps nothing that equals it."