Episode 036 || When God Seems Quiet

Hey there, Pando family, welcome to the SE Online Pando exclusive podcast, where every week we walk through the sermon and talk about some of the things that have stuck out to us, some of the ways that we can apply the truth of God's word into our everyday life. My name is Brandon. I am part of the SE Online team here at Southeast, and we just want to let you know that wherever you're joining us from, we are so glad that you are here with us today, joining us as we walk through scripture together, as we talk about what it means to us. And every week, we love the opportunity to sit down, to get to do this, to talk through these things. And we just also love to hear from you. I know in this past week, we've received so many letters from our Pando family, just sharing their story, telling us how we can be in prayer for you. And I just want to invite you, in the description of this, our address is down there. Write us a letter, let us know who you are. Let us know how we can pray for you, if you have any questions about some of the stuff we talk about here on the podcast. But we would love to hear from you as we continue on this journey together, walking through scripture. But as always, I am not alone this week. This week, I have Annie Potter with me. And Annie, I know you've been with us before on the Pando podcast, but if you don't mind for maybe somebody jumping in the first time, maybe introduce yourself. Let them know kind of what you do around here at Southeast. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to have you. Hey, so Annie Potter, I lead our Shine Disabilities Ministry here at the church. And the cool thing about Shine is we meet people where they are at through our Shine Ministry. What we hope to do is for friends and families affected by disability, we hope to create

a space where they can not only worship, but they can find connection with Jesus, but also build community and find community for themselves in a way that best fits them. So, man, I love being a part of that family. We just got back from camp with over 400 campers and leaders together. Wow, that's incredible. Man, it was an incredible weekend. So it was hot, but boy, it was so good. It was so worth it. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I know you were saying earlier, you're kind of coming down off the... I don't want to say camp high, but like the camp experience and the soreness and having the spiritual experience of that, but also the physical experience of staying at camp. Yeah, the beds are phenomenal, all things considered. But the plastic mattress life is definitely not one my body is built for anymore. I can completely understand that. So in addition to having camp and all that going on, I know you're a big soccer fan, obviously, getting ready for the World Cup. We are... Today, America's playing, right? Belgium later on this afternoon. So I got to talk a little bit about what that means to you, what World Cup season is about. I know that's been... You've been looking forward to it this year in particular. Yeah, so for me, this is my sport of choice. Grew up playing since I was four, still connected to the game to this day. But for me, this one's been even more exciting, not only that it's been in the United States, which is really cool to have it going on on our home soil. But my wife is a rock star, and she woke up one day and said, hey, let's get tickets. And I was like, hey, that sounds fantastic. So we actually just got back a couple weeks ago from Seattle, had an opportunity to watch

the US stomp the Australian team live and in person. It was phenomenal. The electric stadium. We were in Seattle, so we were at Lumenfield where the Seahawks play. And let me tell you, when they talk about how loud the 12th man gets inside of that stadium, I think three or four times through the game, the Richter scale was set off. That was insane. They were literally having earthquakes because of how loud that stadium could get. It was amazing. That's incredible. Yeah. It's been so cool to see some, I'm not a soccer fan. I prefer football, the other football, but it's been so cool to see the American stadiums filled up, hearing some of the stories of visitors from other countries coming in and experiencing like Buc-ee's for the first time and things like that. Also, having to subject the World Cup crowds to hearing country roads and stuff. It's been great. It's been phenomenal to be a part of that. Yeah. I think the cool thing for me that I've always just found out a little bit as I've grown in my faith over the years, man, if there was one sport, in my opinion, that can literally connect the world together and you don't have to speak a common language, man, I've had so many. so many amazing gospel conversations and Jesus conversations just because the sport of soccer has opened the door to that. So, you know, for all of you that are listening that are soccer haters, man, guys, I pray for you all. But for those of you all that are fans, what a cool time to be alive.

This has probably got one of the heaviest cast of just all-star and just icon players that are part of this World Cup that I don't think we'll ever see, you know, this heavy of a cast playing again, so yeah. All right. Yeah. Well, very cool, very cool. So we are in this week three of this series. We've been walking through the life of Joseph called Meant for Good, and we've really been on this rollercoaster ride with Joseph where things have been kind of up and down, and he's experienced some incredible highs being the favorite son of his father ending up in a prison in Egypt. And today we're going to see his life kind of take another turn. And this one is kind of, it starts in a low place, but it swings up. In Genesis chapter 38, we left off with Joseph being in, or I guess in 37, we ended with him being in prison after Potiphar's wife made some accusations against him. And in 39, we come back. He's been in prison for a few years now. Some people say it's been about a decade that he's been kind of hanging out there. And he has an encounter with two servants in Pharaoh's court. He encounters the cupbearer and the baker who are both there because they displeased the king. That was all it took back then,

is like if you're serving in the court of a king, they can throw you in prison for whatever. And as they're there in prison, Joseph interprets a dream for each of them. The cupbearer and the baker both kind of have similar dreams but with different outcomes. To the cupbearer, he says, hey, your dream means you're gonna be reinstated to serve Pharaoh. And to the baker, he says, well, no, your dream means you're gonna be executed. So kind of a different, kind of a swing there in the interpretations. But the cupbearer, he is given his station in life back. He's serving Pharaoh. And he tells Joseph as he leaves prison, like, hey, I'll remember you. Like, I'll tell everyone about this guy in prison who interpreted my dream and you won't be stuck here long. I'll let everyone know what you've done for me. And it doesn't happen. In fact, Genesis 40 opens up by telling us, it's been about two years that the cupbearer has just forgotten about Joseph, forgotten about what this man did for him. And so Joseph continues to languish in prison. And I know we're kind of tempted to wanna skip ahead to see what happens, but I wanna stop there for a second, right?

Because we see this Joseph kind of being stuck in a place he doesn't belong in. He doesn't deserve to be in. And he just continues to wait and waste away, kind of waiting for the cupbearer to do the right thing. So Andy, as you kind of think about that, as you think about that waiting in those seasons that Joseph was in, what kind of stands out to you about that? How do we see those same sort of seasons in our life? Man, that's such a good pull out of that. I think the biggest thing that's really kind of been jumping out for me from a conversation I had last night is really in those seasons of waiting, sometimes it's that frustration. I know in the business world, sometimes you run into that leader that takes all the credit and they take all the limelight, but then when things go bad, it's kind of like David and Saul type moment, and he's chasing him around and throwing swords at him. But it's like finding that person that won't accept ownership, but also won't give ownership away as well. Man, that can be frustrating at times. I know for me, it's one of those seasons where even maybe you're doing everything right, and it seems like everything around you is still going wrong.

It's those trials that you hear so often, of people that put their faith in Christ for the first time, and they might even be the first person in their family that have ever put their faith in Christ. And then the trials and the tricks and the plays of Satan kind of start showing up, and things just don't go right. Right, yeah. Yeah, I think we kind of get ourselves into this habit of thinking like, oh, if I do this right thing, then everything's gonna instantly turn around, right? Everything's gonna be fine. It's 100% gonna start going the way that I want it. And that is just not the way life works. It's not often the way God works, is that we're in those seasons of waiting, and they are, when we're in them, I think some of the most frustrating seasons of life. right, to think like, oh, I'm doing this day after day after day, and I'm just not seeing any change. They're incredibly frustrating. But on the other side of it, we can often look back and say, oh, no, it was frustrating, but it was also very formative, right, that God was doing a work there, that he was working through me. He was impacting other people in the midst of that waiting. He was working in me, that even though I didn't see it at the time, those investments of doing the right thing day after day, choice after choice, made a difference in my life over the course of that season. Yeah, I think of, you know, a little bit of our friend Tony Weider, who recently passed away.

I think through a little bit of his story, that there was a missionary in Africa for over 40 years. This woman had served all over the country, and I think about her story even of 40 years of ministry, and of that 40 years, she really only, for lack of better terms, led one person to Christ, and it was Tony. But now as a residual of her faithfulness to the mission, that one man's life has now impacted thousands of lives, and still continues to impact people's lives now that he's sitting at the feet of Jesus, and just seeing the faithfulness inside of that waiting moment of, I mean, four decades. And I don't know about you, but I'm a performance-based kind of guy. Forty years of waiting, I don't know if I can do that. I would have probably given up four years into it, probably even four months into it. Yeah. Well, you think... Yeah, so often we get in that results mindset, and I think what God is so often after in our hearts is, what's the righteous thing? It's not about what results or what we're producing, it's about who we're becoming. And he just continues to work in and through that time. And I think what helps Joseph so much through this circumstance is that refrain we read so often in his story. I should have written down... It's like four or five times where the author of Genesis makes sure to back up and tell us that the Lord was with Joseph, is that even when it didn't seem like God was there, and even when it seemed like God was absent or quiet, or even when it seemed like Joseph's life was falling apart, like, no, the Lord was with him. He was working, he was doing something. And I think that's the hardest assurance for us to sometimes have when things aren't going our way, to think, while I'm doing this, is he really seeing that? Is he really with me? And I read a couple of years ago, there's a book by Mark Vrogop, I can't...

I think that's his name. It's a complicated bunch of consonants there, but Vrogop is his last name. He talked about waiting, it's called Waiting is Not a Waste. And he says that what's so important for us about waiting is that we need to live in light of what's true about God when we don't know what's true about our future. And I think that's where Joseph was able to survive these years in prison, is to understand that, like, hey, I don't know what's true of my life, I don't know how this story is gonna end, but I know who God is, I know what he's promised, I know I can rely on that in the midst of it. Yeah, I think that's such a good point. It's in that waiting too, that even as you were talking, I go back to a book that I was handed a while back, it's called The Myth of Balance. It's trying to balance your time out as well, and the main point of the book is we know our finances, we can tell you where all of the pennies and dollars are going, but where's our time going? And I think it's in that we have so much time that we get distracted so easily, and it's in that distraction that we kinda get pushed away or pulled away from that. And obviously, Joseph had plenty of time on his hands, and probably had plenty of time to just stop and know where to go. Right. Yeah, so Joseph comes to the end of this time, it's been two years since the cupbearer left prison, two years where he's just waiting on this guy to help him out. Like I know a guy, he's gonna help me. And then finally things get set into motion when Pharaoh has a dream, and the king of Egypt has these two dreams that basically mean the same thing, where seven fat cows are out in a field, and suddenly seven skinny kind of zombie cows, that's how I like to imagine it, they come and they eat these fat cows, and he is very perplexed about this. Like he's obviously had some bad Mexican food or something the night before, just messing with him, just this terrible dream. but the dream affects him so much, right?

He wants to know what it means. And it's at that moment that the cup bears like, oh yeah, like when I was in prison, there was a guy who interpreted this dream for me. His name was Joseph, you should call for him. And it's a testament, I think, to how desperate Pharaoh is to understand this dream, that he calls a guy out of prison to be like, hey, can you interpret this for me? Like, you think about the king who's in this highest place, Joseph is in the lowest moment of his life, and he calls Joseph out to interpret this dream. And Joseph, when Pharaoh first talks to him, Pharaoh says, you know, we have this dream, but no one can tell us what it means. And Joseph doesn't immediately say, oh, I got this, right? Joseph leads off, the NLT says in verse eight, Joseph's first line is, interpreting dreams is God's business. Like, you know, like, I can't tell you, I can't tell you what this means, but God can. And as you think about that, like, what does that show us about Joseph's, you know, continued reliance on God? Like, even after all this time, after all these years, he's still leaning on God, he's still, before he even interprets the dream, he's giving God credit for it. Yeah, I think, honestly, it's just that phrase, like, this is God's business.

I don't know about you all, I'm a man, I'm a natural born control freak. I like to be in control of every situation and the fine details inside of it. But I think it's Joseph's faithfulness that also pulls out just him understanding, not just who God is and what God's seat is, it's knowing and understanding his place as well. And I think when we give up and we kind of relinquish that control of those pieces, one of the things I always tell my kid is, when we know who's in control, the rest is just noise. You're able to block out that noise. You're able to block out the noise that this guy sold you out for his own gain. You're able to block out your surroundings or your environment or where you're actually laying your head down to sleep at night. And you're just grateful that you're getting to lay your head down at sleep at night. And you're praising God that you've got these moments, this candid time with him. Yeah. And so I think for me, it's really that understanding of your character that allowed Joseph to release that control over to God and really be able to focus in on, well, God, what do you say about this? And it allows us to be able to spend that same time with our Heavenly Father and say,

God, what are you doing in this? But then he was obedient on the other side of what God told him to do. And that's tough. I mean, you've got this guy that's already thrown you in jail, probably the next step for Joseph was if he didn't get this right, if God didn't give him the answer, the next step of Joseph's journey was probably not gonna be very pretty. Yeah. Yeah, Pharaoh's probably not gonna be like, well, just send him back to prison. Like, he's gonna be angry about this whole thing when it's all said and done. But yeah, so Joseph, he comes out with this reliance, and I love how you brought that up, that there's an element of our life where we, part of the reason why we get so frustrated in the waiting, I think, is that we wanna control it, right? We want it to be our way. We want things to work out on our timetable. And so often, like our timetable is not God's. And there's a frustrating element. That's either gonna be a frustrating thing, or it's gonna be a freeing thing, right? Where we can say, hey, it's not up to me, it's up to him, and I'm gonna trust in him and rely on him as opposed to trying to push this through on my own. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, it's like pulling a steak, a slow-cooked steak off the grill. Oh, okay. You know, you get that grill char on it. You know, it takes a little bit longer, versus, man, I could throw this sucker in the microwave, and in two and a half minutes, I could have a well, well, well-done, ruined piece of meat. You know, and it's just in that slow-cooking process. It's like throwing meat into the smoker versus throwing it into the microwave. Like, man, just give it time, trust the process, let it do its job. I love that, I love that. Like, if you want a hot dog, you can throw that in the microwave, but if you want steak, like, you gotta wait, you gotta do it right. You gotta do it right. And now I'm disgusted thinking about microwave steak. At any rate, so Joseph finally comes to this point. He interprets the dream for Pharaoh, and he gives Pharaoh just the meaning of the dream, saying that, hey, what this means is that there's gonna be seven years of plenty, that Egypt is gonna have just great crops, everything's gonna be great, but those seven years of plenty are gonna be followed by seven years of famine.

And the fact that Pharaoh had. two dreams that one of them was about cows, one of them was about heads of grain, kind of the same imagery. It says the fact that you had this dream twice means that God is absolutely going to do this, that this is his plan, this is what he's going to do. And then Joseph, to his credit, he doesn't just give the interpretation. He goes a step beyond. There in verse 33 of chapter 41, he says, therefore, Pharaoh should find an intelligent and wise man and put him in charge of the entire land of Egypt. So Joseph just jumps out there and is like, look, if this is what the dream means, and this is what you got to do, you need to store up in those seven years of plenty, you need to get the land of Egypt ready so that there's going to be a surplus that will last for the seven years of famine, that you'll be able to feed the people based on what you have stored up during the times of plenty. And I think, again, it's such a testament to who Joseph is that he's and how he's relying on God, that he doesn't just give the interpretation, he gives a course of action. And Pharaoh looks at Joseph, again, how desperate he is to deal with this situation. This kid he's just met, who's just out of prison, and Pharaoh says, that sounds like a good plan, and I want you to do it. And in a moment, Joseph goes from the dungeons of Pharaoh's palace to the second-in-command of all Egypt, overseeing this plan to fill up the storehouses, to save up, to get the nation of Egypt, to get the world ready for this famine that's about to hit the land. So again, kind of coming back to this idea of waiting, this idea of these difficult seasons as Joseph preparing, loading up the storehouse, how do you see that playing out in maybe your own life? How do you see that playing out in the lives of our Pando family? Man, so I was actually talking, I got a phone call from a really good buddy of mine who's at one of our local facilities last night. I was really actually... I knew this question was coming, it was unscripted, unplanned, but I kinda knew that this was the direction we were gonna go, and I've been praying, like, God, what is it? What does this look like? And I think what my buddy had shared with me last night is how he's desperate to get out. He's got plans for when he gets out. He's starting to see God forming a calling through his journey of incarceration that what's next is to come, and as frustrating as that waiting has to be for him, man, I just hear joy in his heart of what God's been able to do through him and in him in this time. It is amazing to see just the joy of not just who God has revealed himself to be in the midst of his trials, but it's also the joy that he's finding in this trial. And so as I was thinking, I was like, man,

sometimes we think our storehouses are for the money, it's our savings account, it's our 401k, it's our investments, but man, it's this understanding that he's found that there are other men that are out there going through the same trials that he is right now, that he has a voice and he has a platform to reach them with the gospel now. Man, to see his heart and his passion for what God is able to do through him in the midst of this trial, and just joyfully be obedient to that in the midst of waiting has just been an incredible just joy for me, and really a kind of a call out for me through the service and the ministry that he's been able to do on the other side. Oh, that's good. That's good. You make me think, we were talking a little bit earlier about how in those seasons of waiting, we so desperately wanna control the situation when really all we can do in those times is control how we respond to it. We can't control what's going to happen, but we can control our response, because one way or another, those seasons are gonna change us. They're either going to change us more into who God wants us to be, or they're gonna drive us away from that vision, they're gonna drive us away from what he wants. And so how in those moments do we... How do we control our response in those times? How do we make sure that we're responding, that we're seeing the opportunities for growth, as opposed to maybe the obstacles that are keeping us from what we want? Yeah, I think going back to what I said earlier too, it's knowing God's character, but knowing yourself. When you know who you are, you'll know what to do. But I think the same can be said for when you know who you serve. Oh, that's good. I mean, we not only serve a great God... But some of us have life experiences, good, bad, or indifferent, that where we can look another man or look another woman in the eyes and we can instantly tell what they're going through because we've looked in the mirror and seen that same look in our face. You know, I see this a lot through some of the amazing men and women I've met through the addiction community, that they have this ability to look in someone's eyes and they can see the exact pain because they felt that exact pain that you and I haven't necessarily experienced, but they have, and it gives them this beautiful relationship, it gives them this beautiful ability to just see one of God's children hurting. It allows them to see someone else in the midst of

their pain and come alongside of them in a way that you and I don't have the ability to do. Yeah, and I think that's an underrated element of those seasons of waiting, is that oftentimes the waiting is for us, God is doing something there, but many times the waiting is also for someone else, right? That God is preparing us, that He's getting us ready to be able to minister to other people, to take care, or to speak into what they're going through. You know, I think even in my own personal journey, like part of my story has been journeying through leukemia and cancer, and that has given me the ability to, you know, there are times when we'll have connection cards come in, and if it's somebody who's like recently diagnosed with something like that, it's, well, that's someone I'm gonna talk to, and call, and reach out to, because there is that ability to look them in the eye, like you said, and be like, no, I know exactly the seat you're sitting in, like, I know exactly what that feels like, and you know, I think we sometimes miss the gospel opportunity God has for us, and that to be like, you know, I can empathize, I can understand, I can speak into that. Here is how Jesus can meet you in the middle of this, if you'll let Him. Yeah, yeah, and I think the biggest part of that is having that bold courage to really speak up and speak out. Yeah. You know, one of the things I tell my kids all the time, you know, I've got a couple teenage...I've got three teenage daughters, or young adult daughters. We will pray for you. Yeah, man. I've got one more to go, and my boy, too. But one of the things I often share, and I've learned as their parent, is that when we give it away, it loses power over us. It's that whole heart of God calling us to have a heart of confession. It's those things that we often regret or hate most about ourselves. Those are these cool moments that, like, when we finally find a bold courage to release those and release control of those stories to God, and we give them away to other people, and we share those life moments of shared journeys with other people, it starts to lose control over you. Yeah. And it's so freeing. I think back to a time that, you know, for me, man, I don't say this jokingly either, but like, for me, I struggle with anger.

Yeah. To a point of rage at times, and I remember standing in front of a room full of men and women and confessing that out in a Celebrate Recovery meeting that I was supposed to be teaching that night. Wow. And I can't tell you, I've never felt so much love and compassion for people and understanding from people of something that I literally sat up there sweating bullets. Like, in my mind I was pacing back and forth telling God, I'm not going to say this, and when I gave it away, oh my gosh, it just started to just give me this freedom. It kind of took the load off of my shoulders, but it allowed for me to start seeing that piece of me, and God also started teaching me how to actually protect myself from those moments where I do get there so that I don't make mistakes that are gonna wind up leading me to even further regret because of me trying to hold on to something that I didn't need to. That's good. Yeah. I love that imagery, that the more we hold on to something, thinking we're controlling it, the more we allow it to control us. Yeah. Right? Like, there's a paradox there a little bit that we think, oh, I have a handle on it, when really it's just what's dominating us instead. Yeah. Everybody sees you driving the car out of control, like, except for you in those moments. It's like bumper, you're playing bumper cars and everybody else is just casually standing by, like, watching the wreckage happen. What is this guy doing? He's gonna stop. So Kyle walked through, at the end of the message, just four ways, you know, that we can respond as, you know, America's celebrating its 200th 150th birthday this past week, but it made me realize as we've been talking like a lot of these things, a lot of the four things he's been talking about are ways that we can respond ourselves when we're dealing with, you know, times of difficulty or when we're dealing with times of uncertainty and waiting. So let's just review these really quick and I'll kind of see how they strike you. So Kyle first talked about like we pray like desperate people. Well, we definitely want to do that for our country, but I think when we're in those seasons of waiting is when we become more desperate ourselves, right? When we realize, when we lose control is when we realize we never really had it. So we

pray like desperate people. We reach the people nobody else is reaching. Again, that kind of speaks to what we were talking about with using the seasons of waiting you've been going through to reach out to other people, right? That you get, that when you have gone through a situation, I think God naturally gives you kind of a heart for the people who are dealing with that very same thing. We tell the truth about the hunger. We recognize in those seasons of waiting, I think what we're really hungry for, right? That we start to see this is the thing I think I need, but what's really behind that? Am I searching for significance? Am I searching for meaning? Am I searching for, you know, connection? Like what is it that I'm really after? And I think waiting gives us a unique way to understand those hungers, to understand like, hey, this is what is really behind this. And finally, Kyle talked about we do the invisible work. And that is so important in the middle of those seasons of waiting. You know, he talked about Joseph for seven years just tucking away as much grain as he could. Like no party, no celebration, no nothing. Seven years of just doing the work day after day after day, knowing that it was going to pay a dividend in those years of famine. And again, in waiting, it's those simple choices of, you know, I'm tired and I'm sick of waiting, but every day I'm getting up and I'm reading God's word, and I'm making sure, like I'm making this investment day after day after day to see what God is going to do there. So pray like desperate people, reach people around us, tell the truth about the hunger, do the invisible work. As you think about that in terms of our personal struggles, our personal times of waiting and difficulty, what stands out to you as some of the most important things there? Man, I think it's that tension in all of these of joy and frustration. And so I think for me, it's been... I'm not a journaler, but this has kind of forced me here recently to pick the pen back up. And so something I would challenge you all to join me in as well, and there's some semantics in this, but take a notebook or take a journal and I open it up, I only write on the right-hand side of the pages. This is not a jab at left-handed people, but I only write on the right-hand side of the pages. And then what I do is I close the notebook and I flip it over, and I open it back up, and I only write on the

right-hand side of pages. And so here's what winds up happening, is as I write in the front side, I'm only writing things where I see God showing up and I see the joy that He is giving me. And there's days where I struggle to write one thing in there. And I started this journey actually during COVID, and I remember the first night that I actually opened it up and did it was the night that restaurants opened back up, and we could do takeout only. Couldn't go to the restaurant, but you could get takeout. And I remember my youngest daughter at the time was about 18 months old, and I remember putting that white golden chalice of Star Foam queso on the table, and she knew what it was. And next thing you know, she's toddling up and climbs up on the table, and she is over top of that cup of queso doing her happy dance. And so I think about these joyful moments like that, or the joy of just seeing... Having one of my daughters who struggles with a little bit of mental health, this past weekend at camp, it was probably the first time in over a year where she actually pursued me for a hug, and for God to give me that gift. I see those joyful moments, and then everything in between. Seeing friends struggle through health issues, and God healed them. Seeing that happen in my own family, and God healed them. And so those front pages sometimes are really hard to find those moments of joy. Yeah. But on the backside, I write those things that I give away to God, the things that just frustrate the fire out of me, that make you wanna go just smash your head through a wall some days. And I write those on the backside, and the reason why I do that is that over the years, as those pages grow closer and closer and closer together, it's those moments of joy that will never be touched. by those moments of frustration, and they'll actually be flipped upside down on their head. And so I want the joy to just eradicate those moments of frustration, even though I most days find it so easy to fill up the backside of the journal, eventually those moments where God shows up, that God shows off, those storehouses of memories and stories, I can go back to those things, and they will always have those frustrating moments flipped upside down. Man. Yeah. I love that.

Thank you. That's an incredible practice. And I love just the way of... I mean, it gives you a way to look back and be like, this is how God has worked in the past. Like, this is how I've seen Him, the joy and the frustration, how I've seen Him work, even in the pain and the waiting and the difficulty. I love that. I think that's such a great practice. Yeah. I think one of the things that's really been kind of stuck in my head lately, and I'm not gonna sing, because you all would never listen to this podcast again, but I think about our buddy Bryce that's on the worship team here at Southeast, and you all have seen him if you've watched our feeds. He's got really gnarly red beard. I mean, beard goals, man. I wish I could do that. I mean, if you were gonna grow a beard out, this is the guy. But man, his gift for just leading worship and his passion for the Lord are just amazing. And I think about... I just hear Bryce constantly lately singing, God, show me your glory. And I hear that song on just repeat, and then God just continued, like at camp with our Shine family, or those little moments where I'm not only working, because I'm on that team and leading that team, but I'm also a dad of two little girls who are part of my ministry. And so it's those juxtaposed times where I have to be staff dad, but God shows me the glory when I look out and I see some of our friends who are wheelchair users fighting with everything they have to stand up and raise their hands in worship. And it's in those moments where my kid comes out of the lake. Selfishly, she just wanted to give me a soaking wet hug.

But you know what? I'll take it. I won't take that. Yeah, 100%. But it's in those moments where those storehouses just open up and the floodgates open that God just continues to bless and bless and bless. Oh man, that is so good. That is so good. Well, Andy, thank you so much for sharing with us today, for being part of the Pando podcast. Any last words of encouragement, any last USA chance or anything you have before we sign off? Man, number one, by the time you all listen to this, the US will be on to the round of eight. Let's go. We'll be through the quarterfinals, beating Belgium. I'm gonna call it 3-1 US. Bookmark this. Bookmark this, 3-1. But no, I think my biggest encouragement for you all that are listening and you find yourselves in that season of famine, take it one day at a time. Focus on today. Focus on the goodness that is happening today. Find one thing and just hold on to that today. And then tomorrow, wake up and find one more thing. Pray for God to put other men or other women in your presence today. He is faithful. Pray for that person, that Aaron and her that can actually like lift your arms up in battle and hold you steady. Find those people.

They're right next to you. They may be in a room next to you. They may be sitting across the lunchroom table. They may be coming in today and you just don't know, but find those people that can hold you up and help you out in it. The biggest thing about faithfulness that I've found is it requires action. Just keep moving forward. If there's anything you take away from today, you don't have to do anything other than keep moving forward. Don't give up. Don't give in. And just keep fighting for joy. I love that. I love that. Well, Pando family, thank you all so much for joining us today on the Pando SC Online exclusive podcast. Andy, thanks again for joining us. I appreciate you. Appreciate your heart and your wisdom in sharing with us today. Guys, we want to let you know, as we said before, no matter where you're at, no matter where you are in the country, we'd love to hear from you. Be sure to write in, share your story with us. Just know that we love you guys. We're praying for you, and we'll see you next time on the podcast.