Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] When the world is closing in on me and it gets so heavy.
[00:00:09] Hey there. Welcome to Grace and Grit podcast, and I'm your host, Shanna Williams. So what is this all about?
[00:00:19] Grace and Grit is a faith filled journey designed to empower you with spiritual strength and resilience. Each episode we're going to delve into biblical topics, offering insights and teachings to help you overcome life's mental and emotional challenges. We're going to use scripture. I'm going to tell you stories. It's going to be a blast. I can't wait to see you today.
[00:00:50] Welcome back.
[00:00:53] Yes, it's another week and you always hear these on Monday. I did that on purpose because I think Monday everybody needs a little bit more encouragement, probably.
[00:01:06] And this time of year we are coming into fall. So excited about fall. And this last weekend, the temperatures actually got like into the sixties, maybe even high fifties overnight. And I woke up and it felt like a new season. I love new seasons when they're fun. When you've been maybe going through something really long and stretched out and hard like summer is in Texas, and all of a sudden you start coming into fall and you're like, oh, my gosh, a reprieve. Yay. I'm so excited. So I hope that wherever you are, and most of you probably are in Texas, you are enjoying a little bit cooler temperatures, a little bit easier. You know, we're coming into, yes, school starting, but also kind of a rhythm, you know, because summer kind of gets chaotic. Right. So anyway, I hope that things are moving along nicely for you. You're getting some rest in this new season we're coming into. And today thought I would talk about something that has been on my heart lately and has been kind of something that's been life changing for my husband and myself.
[00:02:21] We had gone through really hard season for the last two years. We've been married three. So the first year of our marriage was, you know, fun because it was like honeymoon phase and we both were doing pretty well financially that year. And so although it was an adjustment to get married, it was easier that year because we weren't dealing with so many catastrophes at once. But then a year into it, I felt like the Lord said, okay, I want you to change what you're doing for a living. And so going straight from going from a salary where I kind of knew what I was going to make into jumping off the deep end and to going straight commission has been extremely difficult. And so the financial burden that we've been under, I've talked about that a lot. And I don't want to harp on it anymore, but I know we're all under this financial burden right now with inflation, interest rates being crazy, everything costing, like, four times what it used to. You know, you have to have, like, three jobs just. Just to make it right now, it seems like for most of us. So things are just hard, right? And so we kind of came into this season where it was just all about the grind. You know, the last two years was just like, okay, how many hours can I work extra? How many part time jobs can I have on the side? How many can I make things to sell? I mean, it was just, like, all the time. And it really, after a while, it starts to suck the life out of you. And before you know it, you are completely not kingdom minded at all. Like, your life becomes all about surviving, you know? And maybe it's not financial for you. Maybe it's just a different kind of a survival time in your life where things have just gone on forever. Like, I talked about this last episode last week. If you weren't around to hear that, go back and grab it. Because I talk about when you despair even of life and when you're going through a season that drags on forever. Well, this is kind of like, I've been in that season forever, and I'm tired of it, and I wanna shift things. And so, you know, when you're going through things like that that are so hard, you can get to where you just don't. Just gonna be honest, you don't pray like you used to. You don't really interact with God. And the thing is, he is the source of life, of all life. He is life. And so when you start to disconnect from him, just not intentionally, but you are just getting so busy, so distracted with the cares of life, overwhelmed, frustrated, you just kind of, you know, because we're just, like, dull. I mean, you know, we're just not. I mean, Jesus compares us to sheep, so what does that tell you? We're not exactly the smartest crayons or the sharpest crayons in the box, rather. And so he has to. He has to oftentimes dumb things down for us. And I hope I'm not offending anyone, but if you have a. Any ounce of humility, you know what I'm saying is true, right? You know that without him, we would be lost, right? And that's why he came. But I'm saying all that to say that you can get so far away from the primary objective of our life, which is to be with him, to know him, to love him, to be loved by him, and in turn, to love our families, our friends, our. Our neighbors, our world, and be an example of who Christ is and who he can be in this world and what he can do. We can get so far from that because we get so steeped in the problems that we're dealing with in this life. You know? And if you really put that in perspective, you'll begin to see, because one of the things that keeps running through my mind is the parable of the seeds and the sower. And, you know, some of the seeds, very few seeds actually survive, but some of the seeds get choked out by the weeds. Some of them are because of the cares of life, they are kind of, like, choked out and the stresses of life. And I feel like so many of us are in this place where God has tried to plant seeds within our hearts to grow a harvest, to grow a harvest of peace, to grow a harvest of joyous in the midst of all these trials so that we would look like him. Even though we are in the world, we would look like him because we have his DNA, because we've allowed him to plant these seeds in our hearts, and it grows. Right. But most of us don't get to experience this beautiful harvest of the seeds because things choke it out or it's built on a faulty foundation. But what really brought me to this is because that's where I was. Even just a few months ago, that's where I was. It was just kind of like survival.
[00:07:26] Because of all that I had been through, I was completely in survival mode. Was I a Christian? Yes. Was I still attempting to, you know, pray? Sometimes I read my Bible, sometimes I went to church. Off and on. I'm just being honest. I was so devastated from what I had been through that it was kind of like being numb, you know? And it was. It was so hard. And I know a lot of people can relate to this. When you've been hurt in church or hurt in life or betrayed by someone you trusted, you just kind of like, the life gets sucked out of you. And really all you want to do is you just kind of want to be alone. You want. For me, anyway, you. You just want to stay at home. You just want to live in your little quiet world where no one can hurt you. And obviously, that doesn't work. We were made to be in community, but healthy community. Right? That's the way he created us. And so the reason I want to talk about how to shift the atmosphere in your home today is because this is something that the Lord has taught me and my husband recently.
[00:08:33] It was crazy, because one day I just woke up, and out of nowhere, I'm telling you, this was the Holy Spirit stirring in my heart. And I said to my husband, I came in because he usually gets up before me.
[00:08:44] He works super early, but even when he's off, he typically wakes up before me. And he was sitting in the living room, and I just. I said, can we pray? It was like 07:00 in the morning. We were drinking our coffee. I said, can we just pray together? And, you know, we had done that off and on, but it was very sporadic. And we have this huge, massive book, and it's called. Called.
[00:09:08] Oh, gosh, I can't. It's about the gym. It's called spiritual gems, or I can't remember. His name is Rick Renner, and he wrote this book, and it's huge. It's like a devotional. And every day he picks a phrase or he picks a scripture and he talks about the greek words and what they really mean, and it's really been good for us. And it's crazy how spot on it is most of the time. So we decided, okay, every day we're going to read this book together. When we're home together, we read it together. If we are not, like, if he's at work, then we both still read it. And then we just kind of talk about it later that day when we see each other. And then we try to pray together every day that we're home together. And it was so simple. It was nothing extraordinary. It wasn't like we devised this plan to just do something so big. It was just simple. It was like, okay, you know what? We need to enter back into this relationship with God. We are totally dropping the ball. We are not interacting with him.
[00:10:16] We are not living in that John 15 abide with me kind of thing, which, you know, is one of my messages that I carry, you know, that I have totally not been doing the last couple years is abiding with him just because I've let the cares of the world and the worries of the world drag me away. And so we just decided to implement that, you know, just super easy. So we prayed, read, talk about it, and it has been life changing. It has absolutely shifted the atmosphere in our home to very much more aware of what's going on in our home. Even discerning of spirits, even sensing if we felt like specific assignments of the enemy were targeting us with demonic spiritual presences, because I really want to say that for people who don't really believe in that, listen, you are being targeted by the enemy.
[00:11:23] You may not believe that. You may live in a world where you think you are not that important or that kind of stuff doesn't really exist. And, you know, these charismatic people, they make big deals out of stuff like that, and it's not that real. And, you know, you can tell yourself that all you want and you might actually believe it, but until your eyes are opened and you see how the enemy works and the strategy of the enemy to completely derail you, you're going to be living in a place that's you're probably either asleep and numb or you're completely miserable and you don't understand why. And my heart is to really help people see, pretty much all the answers you need are found in this relationship with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, but also understanding that your enemy is real and his tactics are real. And he really does have a strategy and schemes to try to pull you down to keep you in a place where you are miserable or sad or discouraged or hopeless or whatever. I mean, he came to still kill and destroy. So anything that leads to death, spiritual death, that's the ultimate goal, is that he wants to not only spiritually kill you, but kill you in your flesh as well. Right?
[00:12:51] And so we just decided that we were going to take initiative, which I really believe was prompted by the leading of the Holy Spirit to begin to seek God as a couple. Now, I think that's what made the difference. Now, hey, you guys start where you got to start. You might be in a relationship. Your spouse may not be willing to do that with you, but, man, if they are, if you just come to them and say, listen, I think that because we're a couple, and I want you to think about this for a second. Jesus said, for this reason, has God created it this way, that a man should leave his mother and father and she should leave her mother and father. And basically the two become one. The two become one. So God sees us as one when we're married. And so how much sense does it make to you? How much, how more powerful could that be if you decide between you and your spouse that you're going to approach this relationship with the father and even taking it back to the garden of Adam and Eve, and I'm thinking about they were walking together, God would come and talk to them as a couple. They were always together when he talked to them. And I think that's so amazing. But when you look at Satan, he comes individually and talks to them individually.
[00:14:19] So there's just something about this unity between a husband and a wife that is so powerful. And when we started to do this together, we started to hear the Lord so much clearer than we had individually powerful. And it might seem so small and insignificant and trivial, but I'm telling you, it's the act of it. Just coming to him together and saying, hey, lord, we, we recognize you, we see you, we worship you, we praise you, we thank you for your presence in our home. We, we invite you in here. Lord, reveal to us, give us wisdom, show us whatever it is that you want to show us today. What can we do to strengthen our relationship with each other, with you? Can you bless us in our finances so that we can be a blessing to the kingdom? Show us, you know, pray, praying blessings over our children and their lives. And just whatever he would lead us to do is what we have prayed. And it has changed everything. And we became super sensitive to, and I had mentioned this a minute ago, but just expound a little bit on it, we became really sensitive to spirits presences in our home that should not be here, be allowed here, that we had invited in. Now, when you look, and I'm not going to read this passage, but you can look this up about when, you know, there's teachings about when a demon is cast out of a person, he comes back, comes back and he brings more with him. If he finds it swept and empty, then he comes back in. And so there are things in our past that we all have that we weren't probably enticed by demonic things. For me, it's things like even partnering with spirits of depression or spirits that bring in that depression, that mindset that's negative, that is not from God, right? That is not a spirit. That is not something the Lord gives us with his holy spirit. So if it's not coming from him, then it's coming from Satan, right? And so there are specific demons, I believe, that carry that kind of assignment and that kind of power to kind of pull you down into this dark place with them.
[00:16:48] And so because of my past, I had allowed that.
[00:16:52] Even though I have cast that thing out of my life, I have fought with it, went round and round and round again. The Lord has delivered me several times from this mindset of woe is me, I'm a victim, I'm going to be sad and depressed all the time, right?
[00:17:10] So I had to be really careful because anytime I, I even entertained a negative thought. If I didn't reject it. So, listen, you can't control when the thought pops into your head, right? You can't control that because you have to know that thought probably was planted. If it was super negative by the enemy, it could have been brought on by your flesh, too. But a lot of times, like I said, there's a demon, demons assigned to try to bring you down, and they know that that's a weak area for you. Then they're going to try to plant seeds of doubt and fear and negativity into your thoughts. And you have that moment where you can partner with that, or you can say, nope, I'm going to pull this into submission to the lordship of Christ. Like Paul talks about, you have that moment, and that's your strength, and that's your power. And you can do that through the Holy Spirit, and he can teach you and show you how to do that, make that thing submit to the lordship of Christ.
[00:18:14] So. But there have been times when I didn't, and I allowed that in. So when I say allowing things back in, that's what I'm talking about. For me now, that could mean a lot of different things for people. Some people maybe have a really dark past, and maybe, you know, maybe they struggle with alcohol or drugs or pornography. And so that obviously would be the same type of thing, allowing that door open to you again and having given the enemy access to you, whether that be, you know, you watching things you shouldn't watch. And you knew it, and the Holy Spirit was telling you not to do it, but you did it anyway. You can allow that back into your home and that spirit, they become territorial, and they become familiar. They know you. They've studied you. Think about that for a minute. They study you. They know you. They know the things that trip you up, and they use them over and over and over. And. And, you know, those were, for me, like I said, it was the depression, anxiety, things like that for my husband.
[00:19:15] And I don't think he would mind me talking about this. He had a really strong pull to, like, he liked paranormal stuff, you know? And I'll have him on at some point because I really wanted to tell his story about how he got delivered from that. But, you know, he had to shut that door. He had to say, okay, I'm not gonna watch that kind of stuff. I'm not going to allow it in my home.
[00:19:38] Because there's always kind of. He's just a curious person. For him, it's just curiosity, you know? But he began to realize that that was opening a door that was demonic and it was allowing these spirits in to his life. He's traveled all over the world. He's experienced these presence, these presences and other nations that were just so powerful and almost suffocating to him.
[00:20:08] And so there's no telling what he's been exposed to or been around just because of the nature of what he did when he was younger and being in the military and all that. So.
[00:20:21] But, you know, we had to realize, and I'm saying a lot because I'm just trying to form my words and say them in a way that is makes sense, and I'm not losing people. So we have to be so mindful of this stuff. Like, your enemy is very smart, very in tune with you. I studied you. I was actually just listening to a YouTube video, and they were talking about the presidential debates coming up. And, you know, one side is studied the other side by watching their last few debates, you know, and so that they. They have, like, these mock debates going on and setting the other person to the point that they kind of know what they're going to say or what they're going to do so they can kind of circumvent them in some way. And I feel like that's exactly what the enemy does to us. He really studies us. He wants to make your home life miserable. He wants to make your marriage fall apart. He wants to make your relationship with your children, with your children fall apart as well, and be just a terrible experience for everyone. He wants to ruin your health. He wants to ruin your job.
[00:21:32] He doesn't want you to be effective. So here's the thing, though. But he uses methods that you don't always see and recognize as a strategy against you. Right? So one of the things you have to learn how to do is make your home shift the atmosphere of your home to one that is full of the presence of God. See, because he cannot be where the presence of God is. Right? So it's not just a matter of you kicking him out. Like Jesus talks about when he's teaching about demons being cast out of people, right? He says he's talking about it and he's saying, hey, you got to have something stronger inside of you than this, because if not, it's going to come back and bring, like, seven more with it. So that's what we're talking about here, is sweeping the house clean. Yes. Getting the junk out of your home, spiritually speaking, that shouldn't be there, but also shifting the atmosphere by allowing and inviting, inviting the Holy Spirit in on a level that you've never done before. So if you're in a relationship with someone, let's just take this down to a really easy to understand level. If I'm in a relationship with someone, I think about them a lot. I talk to them as much as I can.
[00:22:53] I, you know, like, if I know they like certain things, I try to do those. If I know they don't like certain things, I don't do those things. Well, let's think about this. Do. Do you think the Lord really wants to be which where he is, nothing evil can be, but for our own sake, he does not want these evil presences in our home because it'll destroy us. But that's just not where he lives, right? He lives in a high and holy place. And so I'm even going to say yes. You know, it's amazing that we have all this technology. We have the Internet, we have tv, we have radio. We can watch anything we want anytime we want. It's always available. Like, seriously, like that. Like 2 seconds. And I can have something pulled up, but that's also a doorway.
[00:23:47] And that was something that my husband and I had to really learn because so many people, I feel like I talk about this a lot, and I feel like some people think it's so ridiculous, but I don't care. I think that it's true, and I feel so convicted about it. I've tried to watch things that other people, even christians, post about how they watch this. This is, like the best, um, you know, this is the best series ever that I've found. You guys have had to watch it. And so I'm thinking, okay, well, this isn't my christian friend. They wouldn't be, you know, posting about this if it wasn't okay to watch. Well, then I start trying to watch it, and it's horrifically awful. Like, it's so laced with all kinds of things that I know in my spirit, I feel compelled and convicted. I cannot watch this. So I just want to say that is between you and the Lord. And I'm not trying to push my convictions on anyone, because I do believe everyone's different and people are affected differently. I just know that I am extremely sensitive in the spirit.
[00:24:50] I tried to watch a documentary one time. It was just a PG 13 documentary, but it was a. It was about somebody who he was.
[00:25:02] He was basically a monster who was molesting children, but everybody thought he was this amazing person, and he was a spokesperson, and he was doing horrific things behind the scenes, and they finally caught him and took him down. But what they had to do to take him down was just.
[00:25:23] It was just so devastating to the woman who had to go through some of the things to catch the sky, you know? And it made me sick for, like, three days. I could not watch it. I could not stop thinking about it. I was so depressed. And I really have to be careful. I know we need to know about these things, but we have to be careful what we let into our home and to what degree. Know, you need to be aware of things in the world that are happening. I'm not saying that, but do you need to watch, you know, a five hour documentary about it? You know what I mean? Like, if, you know it's gonna bring you to a place of complete hopelessness and allow the enemy in, if you already struggle with depression, maybe it's not the best thing to watch, you know?
[00:26:11] And I would say that with any. Anything that is advice to you.
[00:26:15] And, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to just harp on the things that we watch. I just know how powerful they are and how they were really causing, I would say, kind of like just distance.
[00:26:30] And, you know, when there's distance between you and the Lord, it eventually leads to death, because we can't live apart from him. He is life. He is life. And apart from him is complete and total hell. That's what hell will be. It will be the absence of goddess. And I have no desire to live in that place. I wasn't created to live in the dark. None of us were. We were created to live in the light. So I want to live right now, in this moment in the light, because I like it so much better. And that's really what I'm trying to say, is, what are the things that, you know, when you do, they bring light and they shift the atmosphere. And, you know, that could just be playing worship music a lot during the week. That's lots of prayer. That's lots of Bible meditation and reading. That's just you having a conversation with your spouse about. Sometimes Mike and I, we just talk about different things in the Bible. We just have a conversation about it, and I feel the Lord in it, like he's pleased with that, that we have decided to make that more important than watching some dark show or documentary or something or anything. You know, just being mindful and inviting him in. That's really how you shift atmospheres. I have so much more I could say about this.
[00:27:50] One of the other things that we did was we put up stakes around our property, and we wrote specific scriptures on them about God's protection and things like that. So we staked our land out. You can also go through your house and anointed each room as the Lord leads you and to pray specifically, he will show you what you're praying against or what you're dealing with as you seek him. I mean, this stuff is real. That's really the bottom line here. I'm kind of tired of this weak Christianity that pretends like we are not battling in the spirit world, like we are not engaged in a spiritual battle, because we are. And so I just want to bring awareness to that and I want to encourage you to take this seriously.
[00:28:38] I hope that this message brought you some revelation, encouragement, and didn't make you feel condemned, because I'm definitely not trying to make anyone feel condemned. I just want to share with you things that have worked for us. We've seen tremendous growth and just so many positive, wonderful things from just learning how to shift the atmosphere and how easy it has actually been as far as yes, we have to war in the spear. I'm not saying that, but just the, the simplicity of it was just so easy. You know, I think we make it more complicated than it is. So I would love to get your feedback on this. If you have a story, please email me at shanna strange.net. maybe even have you on the podcast. I would love to interview some people, you know, get some stories about your experiences with this and things that God has done to help you in this area.
[00:29:33] Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give me a review and that would help me so much in growing this podcast. Until next time, I pray that you guys are blessed. Bye.
