Zina Goodin: We look at the dogs when they come in as that day is the first day of their life with us. We can’t change the past. All we can do is change the present and the future. 

Giving Love Away, Getting More Back: Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary & Beth Guckenberger – Episode #224

Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. The only thing that multiplies as we keep giving it away is love. Because when we choose to care for God’s creation, whether it’s the people or animals He made, the love we give away will be returned to us tenfold, as we see with our guests today: Michael and Zina Goodin of Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, and and orphan care advocate Beth Guckenberger.

First up, we speak with Michael and Zina Goodin, founders of the Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary in Tennessee. After volunteering at a golden retriever rescue center, the Goodins began to notice how often senior dogs were being overlooked—despite the fact that they’re full of life and full of joy. To help provide for them, the Goodins created their own sanctuary where rescued dogs can live out their days in comfort and peace. Michael and Zina share heartwarming adoption stories from over the years, as well as some lessons they’ve learned about how to live life from these loveable creatures.

Zina: I’m Zina Goodin. 

Michael: And I’m Michael Goodin. We’re co-founders of Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary.

Founding a Sanctuary for Senior Dogs

Zina: Well, we were volunteering with Middle Tennessee Golden Retriever Rescue starting in 2010, after we adopted Gracie, our golden retriever, who we still have. We started volunteering with them and noticed that a lot of the senior dogs were never getting adopted. They were moving between foster homes and vets offices and kennels and never really getting to settle down during their senior years. 

And in late 2011, early 2012, we started thinking about it and realized that if senior golden retrievers weren’t getting adopted, there were a lot of dogs who were not even making it out of the shelters. So in early 2012, we started coming up with the idea of Old Friends Senior Sanctuary. The name Old Friends came from the Simon and Garfunkel song, “Old Friends.” 

We incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in the state of Tennessee, and in that summer we got our 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Michael: It was just Zina and I in the beginning. And so our time we really had to budget our time between taking care of dogs and actually growing the sanctuary. And we never dreamed it would have gotten this big. We thought we’d just save dogs in our home. At one point, we had over forty dogs in the home and we realized, Well, we better expand. So we bought a cabin next to our property, and started a headquarters there. That’s when we had our first employees, and we were able to take on a few more dogs. 

And then as fate would have it, we had to move the sanctuary. So we moved it into an old garden center that has worked very well for us. But obviously, it was an old garden center, so it was not equipped with what we exactly needed. We’ve been here over three and a half years, going on four. But we’ve been super, super lucky with donations to be able to actually build a new facility, and we are in the middle of building that now. It’s going to provide a full vet’s office. Now, the size of the facility is going to be three times what we currently have, almost 20,000 square feet. We usually stay around one hundred dogs here at the sanctuary. It’s really going to be a state of the art facility that we’re super excited about. 

We do what we can to get the dogs into a comfortable condition. Most of them will not ever be perfect, just like older people. Then they have mobility problems and we can medicate that. Some of them are blind. But that is something that dogs can live with quite easily. So we do whatever we can to make the dog more comfortable for the rest of their lives. And that’s our goal: for as long as the dogs are with us, to keep them as happy and comfortable as we can.

“That’s our goal: for as long as the dogs are with us, to keep them as happy and comfortable as we can.” – Michael Goodin

Telling the Homecoming Tales of Furry Friends

Zina: The title of the book is Homecoming Tales, and it is about fifteen of the dogs at Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, most of which are in forever foster homes right now. So it talks about their lives and their forever foster homes, where they came from, a little bit about the personality of the dogs, and how they’re getting along with their families. It’s a really uplifting book that shows how much fun it can be to have a senior dog in your life. 

Lucy-Lu came from a terribly neglectful situation. She was very, very underweight. She was thirty-five pounds, I guess, when she was picked up by the rescue. She was just in horrible shape, and they didn’t really expect her to survive. But she did. And she moved to our house and she hit the ground running and smiling and never looked back. And because of Lucy-Lu’s attitude, we realized that these senior dogs, no matter what terrible background they came from, could appreciate the rest of their life and leave the past behind them and have a good life.

“Because of Lucy-Lu’s attitude, we realized that these senior dogs, no matter what terrible background they came from, could appreciate the rest of their life and leave the past behind them and have a good life.” – Zina Goodin

Michael: And then Leo, Leo was a special guy. We got a call from a guy that owned the hairdresser. And he said, “We have this dog in our back alley, and we can’t bring ourselves to have him come go to the shelter. So would you be interested in picking him up?” 

We said, “We’ll be right down.” 

So we pulled up in back of the strip mall, and we actually think he might have been hit by a car at one point. And so we got him all fixed up, groomed up and vetted up. And so he lived with us for six years. He was a great guy.

Life Lessons Our Furry Old Friends Can Teach Us

Michael: If you notice, one of the greatest things about older dogs, especially when they have been in the shelters, when we bring them out of that shelter, they don’t even remember the past. They just live in the day, and they get so happy. And another amazing thing that we’ve noticed is that they come from all different backgrounds. Lot of times, we don’t know the background, but they tend to really enjoy each other’s company very much. And we have dogs that live in group areas and they just bond very, very quickly, which I always find amazing.

“One of the greatest things about older dogs, especially when they have been in the shelters, when we bring them out of that shelter, they don’t even remember the past. They just live in the day, and they get so happy.” – Michael Goodin

Zina: A lot of times there’s a couple of reasons, especially families with children, think that it’s important to get a younger dog so that the dog can grow up with the children. Puppies are great, but they do have a lot of challenges. They have to be trained. They have to get through the potty training stages and all. 

Also, senior dogs are much calmer than younger dogs. They’ve gotten past that point in their life where they have to be top dog, and they sleep when the people sleep, and they just live a little bit mellower. They still play, but they play for shorter amounts of time, and they really can focus more on being part of the family.

Michael: When you see an older dog, he’s thinking about just that moment. He’s getting the play right now. That’s all he cares about. Or he gets to eat right now, and that’s all he cares about, or he gets to snuggle in for the night and watch some TV. So it’s really a joy to see that. 

Zina: How to trust—it’s amazing how a dog has been treated terribly or has had a bad past, can quickly learn to trust the people he’s around. We have a lot of dogs, again, just like Lucy-Lu, who come from terrible backgrounds that are willing to give people another chance. It is amazing to see that there is joy to be found without spending big amounts of money and getting fancy things. There’s a lot of joy in just being there and the things that are around us.

Michael: They just want to know where you are. They want to be around you. They want to love you. 

Narrator: To learn more about Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary, please visit ofsds.org. 

And check out Michael and Zina’s feature in the October 2020 issue of Jesus Calling Magazine, where they also highlight their brand-new book about the Old Friends called Homecoming Tales, available in stores now! 

Stay tuned for Beth Guckenberger’s story after a brief message.

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The COVID-19 global pandemic has disrupted everyday life in some way for nearly everyone on the planet. Yet, Samaritan’s Purse continues to share the eternal hope of the gospel and to serve in Jesus’ name. We are trusting God as we make plans to collect Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, just as we always have, during National Collection Week in November. Another great option to share God’s love is to build a shoebox online. It’s a convenient and personal way to build shoebox gifts directly from home. Build one by choosing from an exciting list of gifts, then adding a letter and a photo. We’ll pack it for you and send it off. We want boys and girls around the world to know that God loves them, and He has not forgotten them during this time of fear and uncertainty. Every gift-filled shoebox is a tangible expression of God’s love. 

Get the latest updates, and build a shoebox online at Samaritan’s Purse.org/occ.

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Narrator: Time and again, Beth Guckenberger has seen what God can do when we choose to trust Him with our small beginnings. Beth and her husband Todd followed a passion to care for orphans across the globe, which became a full-time pursuit as they jumped feet-first into beginning their own international orphan care organization, and they opened their own family up to adopted children as well. The journey hasn’t always been easy, but Beth came to realize that when God’s in charge of your story, He uses the struggles and the joys for a greater good.

Beth Guckenberger: My name is Beth Guckenberger. My husband and I lead Back2Back Ministries, which is an international orphan care organization with nine locations around the world. We’re also the proud parents to ten children. And I’m an author and a speaker. 

“Look After The Orphans in Their Distress”

I grew up in a Christian family, and I loved Vacation Bible School, especially when you’re talking about other countries. And my family supported missionaries that would come maybe once a year and have a meal at our house. 

When Todd and I met each other, we were high school students. We met through the ministry of Young Life. And we look back and realize we did have some significant conversations through our college years about the world and about our place in it. We were teachers by trade, so we had the summers off. And all through the mid-nineties, we took local high school kids from our church’s youth ministry on mission trips to Mexico where we were partnering with the church. 

And one summer, the summer of 1996, at the church’s request, we were painting the exterior wall around their building from blue to green. The problem was the year before we’d painted it from green to blue. And the students we had brought to inspire about how God was moving around the world were anything but inspired. 

I was complaining to my husband a little bit, and he looked over at me. And the second to last day I was like, “Honey, I don’t know what to tell you.” And he goes, “Do you think there are any orphanages in this city?” And I had no idea, but I was dying to get out of that paint project. 

We left those students in the hands of very responsible adults and we jumped into a taxi cab. The cab driver took us to an orphanage. And thereafter we told the man, “We have a few things in our hands. We have 200 dollars, we have twenty kids, and one day left on our trip.” What would he do with those resources? He told us the kids hadn’t had meat in over a year, and the front windows were broken. And that sounded to me a lot better than that paint project. So the next day, that’s what we did. 

And I followed a little girl, she was about four years old, who’d come up for the fifth hamburger that we put on her plate. Todd pointed her out to me and said, “Hey, I don’t know where that food is going, because I don’t know any preschooler who can eat five hamburgers.” So I followed her up to her dorm room, and I saw that she and her other preschool friends were helping each other lift up their mattresses, and they were sticking those burgers underneath them. 

I just had a conversation with Todd in that door frame, like, “Gosh, I know people who would buy hamburgers for orphans if they only knew how to get it to them.” And it was a year later that we moved to Mexico with the just the seed of this dream in our hearts. 

Expanding Our Hearts for Good, Through the Hard Times

So we moved to Mexico the next year, when I was twenty-four. But when I was twenty-three, my dad died at a very young age from cancer. And I didn’t really have a theology that allowed hard things to happen. I just was sure that God would come through for us and heal him, because the Bible seemed to tell me if I prayed where two or more are gathered, after I fasted, or in Jesus’ name, it was going to happen. 

And so when the Lord took my dad home, I had to expand my theology frame. I had to try to understand what it looked like for God to be sovereign in stories that were hard. And I also got this incredible sense of urgency that life is short and we need to tell as many people as possible about the good news of Jesus, because when he actually passed away, my brothers and my mom and I were there with him. And as soon as he was gone, my mom quoted Paul and said, “Absent with the body means present with the Lord.” And I looked at my brothers and I said, “Oh my gosh. Like, Dad just moved.” You could tell he wasn’t there anymore. He has a new home.

“I had to try to understand what it looked like for God to be sovereign in stories that were hard.” – Beth Guckenberger

And I definitely got the sense, like, I want to tell as many people possible about the home that is to come. And so I think the combination of the way that God expanded my view of Him that allowed for good inside of hard, and that sense of urgency about an eternity that could be around the corner for any one of us, helped propel those missionary events forward in our lives.

The Blessings of Small Beginnings

When we arrived in Monterrey, I was just certain, like, Okay, we’re in the center of God’s will. This means roll out the red carpet, Jesus, we are doing what you want. 

I remember eight days after we got there, we had—this is before the Internet. So I had bought a book about what it was like to move to another country, and it said you should take currency in small bills so that you can easily exchange it for whatever the currency is in that country. So we had basically gone on our savings account the year before we moved to Mexico. We lived off of one of our teaching salaries and saved the other one. And then we turned all of that into, eventually, traveler’s checks. And I was trying to exchange it at a bank there in Monterrey. 

And as I was trying my very best through terrible Spanish to talk to the teller in the Mexican bank, she was shouting at me at the top of her lungs some phrase I didn’t understand. And she was getting slow and loud the way we do when people don’t understand. And I was pushing all the checks towards her, knowing if these don’t turn into pesos, we can’t even eat or buy gas to go home. 

Eventually, one word she said kind of stuck out to me. And I wrote it on a piece of paper and showed it to her through the glass. It was the word nombre. And she was like, “Yes.” And she was pointing to the line at the bottom of the checks. And I wrote on every one of those checks the word nombre, Spanish for name. She was inviting me to sign all of those traveler’s checks, but instead I literally wrote the word name because I didn’t understand her. And one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Zachariah 14, and it says, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.” We held onto that for a long time because we knew that we were taking small steps and this was a small beginning and we had no idea what was going ahead. But there was a lot of comfort in believing that God was just rejoicing in our obedience.

“We knew that we were taking small steps and this was a small beginning and we had no idea what was going ahead. But there was a lot of comfort in believing that God was just rejoicing in our obedience.” – Beth Guckenberger

 And I kept telling people, “I’m in a long line of people of biblical history, we’re ill-equipped and immature and underprepared. And He’s going to get all kinds of credit for this story when we’re done, because there’s no way someone can give credit to a girl who can’t even cash a traveler’s check.” And it’s true today. The organization that we serve has a budget of over eleven million dollars, and it transfers money in different currencies around the world. But if I only told you the end of the story, you might be tempted to give credit to the wrong people. And there’s no way. We were as young and underprepared and naive as they come. 

When Faith Grows, Courage Grows

That first year, I got pregnant, and I just thought Mexican food didn’t agree with me. It took me a long time to realize. I thought I had a parasite, and went to the doctor to get medicine to get rid of the parasite. And the doctor, in his wisdom, realized this is a parasite that’s sticking around for nine months. And so we delivered our first child twenty-two years ago there in Monterrey. 

And little did I realize just shortly after our daughter was born—we had come back to the U.S. to get more organized and raise funds to return. And I had gotten a phone call that a little girl at a children’s home that I loved had gotten hit by a car, and the friends that we had asked to trade us places for a little bit, they were living in our little rental house in Monterrey. They called, they’d only been there a month or so. And they were like, “This little girl Ruth got hit by a car. We have to take her to a doctor. Where do we go and what we say and how do we pay?” 

And I was shouting instructions on the phone, because I could tell us there was crisis mode going on behind them. And I couldn’t figure out the answer to the last question, how I could get them the money fast enough for them to be able to get her the medical services that she needed. And so I just looked at my watch and said, “You know what, I’m going to jump on an airplane to Monterrey right now. I’ll be there by dinnertime.” So I was in Ohio at the time, and I said, “I’ll bring some money with me, just get her to the hospital. I’ll be there.”

And later that night, I went back to the house I had rented the year before, and I got a phone call in that house. I shouldn’t have been there that night, and if my friends had been there, they would not have understood that there was an attorney, a Mexican attorney, calling around looking for an American family. He had paperwork ready for an immediate adoption, because a little boy had been transferred between state lines there in Mexico and was available for adoption. And he’s the same age as my daughter. And we adopted our son, actually, the very next day. 

Emma and Evan, they’re now twenty-one. They were the seed of our initial little family, and watching their relationship with each other and kind of me watching the power of love in the life of an adopted child and what it does to a child to feel known and loved and seen, it definitely birthed all the rest of the stories that happened in our family.

“Watching the power of love in the life of an adopted child and what it does to a child to feel known and loved and seen, it definitely birthed all the rest of the stories that happened in our family.” – Beth Guckenberger

Most recently, we adopted a twelve year old boy four years ago from Mexico. It was about an eighteen-month process, and the Mexican government allowed us to have Skype dates with him three times a week where we would just begin that attachment process with him. 

And about halfway through that process, he moved from an eight to eleven year old government boys’ dorm into a twelve to eighteen year old boys’ dorm. And he was terrified one night. I didn’t want to hang up the phone with him. I could tell he was really afraid. And I said to him, “Hey, buddy, this is what I do when I have big feelings like fear. I remind myself of the things I know for sure to be true, and it swells my faith.” And I said, “What do you know for sure is true?” 

And he was like, “Nothing. I don’t know anything is true.” 

I’m like, “Okay, well, here’s what I know to be true. I know that you’re my son, and I know they were coming for you, and that God has a plan. And even if we don’t like it or understand it, we can trust it. Say that for me right now.” 

He’s like twelve years old. So he’s like, “I’m your son and you’re coming for me. And God has a plan and we can trust it.” 

And I’m like, “Okay, do we feel better already? You know, we have the phone.” 

And then that became our closing mantra for the next nine months as we would hang up. Those calls three times a week, that’s what we would do. We would repeat those phrases to each other. And it was a comfort in some way, I think, to him. 

But anyway, then eventually we got to the courtroom. We were all very excited to go to court. We had lots of extended family there. We walked into the courtroom and he had a traumatic trigger, because the last time he had gone into a courtroom, a family had fallen apart. And even though he had been excited the whole way there, once we got there, he emotionally checked out. 

The way Mexican law is written, if you’re over the age of twelve and you’re going to go to another country, you have to say in open court with your own voice that it’s of your will. So the judge finally addressed him directly and said, “Is this what you would like?” 

And he really only had to say “Yes,” but he couldn’t do it. He was not even there. And I was rubbing his back. And that was ineffective, my husband was elbowing his ribs, and that was ineffective and I was negotiating with a judge like, “Can he write it down? Can you tell it to your Chambers? Can we get some of these people out of here? What are our options?” 

The judge said, “I’m sympathetic, but this is the way that this has to happen.” 

So we just sat there for a very uncomfortable amount of time. And then finally—his name is Tyler. He popped his little head up, and he looked at the judge, and he just said, “I am their son, and they came for me. And God has a plan, and I’m going to trust it.”

And later that night, I said to him, “This is exactly why we sow truth into our hearts, so that in a moment we most need it, It’s right there at the ready for us. So for me, when I get big feelings like fear or anger or anything that can threaten to steal the peace that I have, I just remind myself of what’s true. And I feel that faith swell. And then the courage comes.”

“This is exactly why we sow truth into our hearts, so that in a moment we most need it, It’s right there at the ready for us. So for me, when I get big feelings like fear or anger or anything that can threaten to steal the peace that I have, I just remind myself of what’s true.” – Beth Guckenberger

Leaning Into What God Has For Us

My father died years ago of a BRACA2 cancer. That’s the gene mutation that manifests itself in many different forms of cancer. He had a bone cancer as a result of his BRACA2 gene. But because I knew that was a possibility, I had myself tested and found out I was positive. And there is one word that characterizes that whole season for me, and that is the word amen.

When I found that I was BRACA2 positive, and we went through the process of the double mastectomy and hysterectomy, during that timeframe there were days when I was in so much pain, and the only word I really kept resetting myself with was amen. I just kept saying it and I knew. I knew and I knew. The Lord knew that I meant by that word “You were good. And I trust You. And so be it. Do as you wish and go before me.” And it was a word that symbolized so much more. It was so pregnant with meaning for me. And that word absolutely carried me through all the days. 

It’s also when I discovered two things. I discovered the audio Bible, and I discovered Jesus Calling, because I didn’t have the wherewithal to do any long study or to do any kind of complex reading. I just needed the Bible to come to me, and I needed Jesus’s words to come to me. 

And I can remember one night I woke up—during the day I was doing okay. Most of the time, in the daytime, I was thinking about rainbows and unicorns. But sometimes during the night, I would think catastrophic thoughts, hard thoughts, scary thoughts. And I picked up my phone off my nightstand one night, I opened up my Bible app, I noticed for the first time that it had an audio feature. So I just hit play, and my Bible app had been in the Gospels and those were all red letters. 

So I was in the dark and on my phone and a man was reading Jesus’ words. And I was like, Oh my gosh, Jesus is calling me. He’s literally telling me what he has to say. And it brought such peace to my heart. 

The next day, I opened up one of the Jesus Calling books that someone had given me as a gift. And I said, Okay, if You’re calling me, what is it that You want to say? And those two tools really helped get me through the months when I was not physically, emotionally, or spiritually as strong as I have been previously or as I would become again during that season that I was down. Those were great tools to sustain me. 

Jesus Calling, September 12th:

Receive My Peace. It is My continual gift to you. The best way to receive this gift is to sit quietly in My Presence, trusting Me in every area of your life. Quietness and trust accomplish far more than you can imagine: not only in you, but also on earth and in heaven. When you trust Me in a given area, you release that problem or person into My care.

Spending time alone with Me can be a difficult discipline because it goes against the activity addiction of this age. You may appear to be doing nothing, but actually you are participating in battles going on within spiritual realms. You are waging war—not with the weapons of the world, but with heavenly weapons, which have divine power to demolish strongholds. Living close to Me is a sure defense against evil.

So Todd and I were fostering a little girl who was angry by nature, and she was more work at that point than the other eight of my children were combined. And she brought tension into the dinner table, at homework time, in the evening, everywhere she was. And I can remember thinking and saying out loud to my husband many times, like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I have what it takes to do this for another day.”

And then finally, after a little over a year in our family, she bowed her knee and prayed to receive Jesus, which didn’t make everything magically better. But it definitely shifted things. And about three or four months after she prayed to receive the Lord, a man came on a short term mission trip that I’d never met before. And he asked me after church if I had a moment for a story. He told me, “Do you remember when your organization did an art auction?” 

And I said, “Yeah, I definitely do.” We had this girl that traveled to Mexico from Des Moines, Iowa, very gifted in paintings. And she asked me at the end of a week if I would give her a stack of photographs of kids and she’d pick a few of them to put onto canvas. And they were good enough that we ended up shipping them from Iowa to Ohio, where our headquarters are. And then they auctioned them off. 

And he said, “Do you know who my mom is? Her name was Barbara Shaw.” 

And I was literally thinking to myself, I just met you. I definitely don’t know your mom. But I said, “No, I don’t think so.” 

And he said, “Oh, she was known in your hometown as an intercessory prayer warrior. 

I thought maybe you had met her, because I know she prayed a lot for your ministry.” 

And when he said that, I was like, “Oh, yes, you’re right. You know what, people have told me about her before. But I never have met her.” 

And he said, “Well, she just passed away this spring.” 

I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss.” 

And he said, “Well, somebody bought one of those paintings at the art auction a few years ago and gifted it to my mom. It hung over her couch where she’s been sick for the last couple of years, and people would ask her when they came to visit, like, ‘Are you ready to go home?’ And she’d say, ‘No, I’m still working. I’m working. I’m praying for my pastor and my grandchildren and I’m praying for children around the world.’ She asked me at the end of her life if I would take that painting into my home because she said there was something in her spirit that told her she wasn’t done yet, and she didn’t know what it looked like when she got on the other side of eternity. What do you tell your mom? You’re like, ‘Yes, I’ll take the painting.’ But I don’t have her gifts. I just say the same thing every day.”

And at this point, he was feeling emotional, and he said, “I took a picture of the painting. I wanted to show it to you so you could tell me who the kids are in the painting. And I could pray more specifically for them.” 

I called all my children around me, because they know the kids at all the children’s homes. And I said, “Mr. Shaw is going to show us a picture, and we’re going to try to recognize who’s in it.” 

And he pulls this picture out of his Bible and shows it to us. And as soon as I saw it, I recognized that it was a picture of our foster daughter.

I said to him, “Oh, first of all, if you’re looking for a list of specific prayer requests, get your pen and paper out right now.” And then I said, “Do you understand that your mama co-labored with me and the salvation of this little girl on all the days that it was too hard for me to keep going? God called on one of his saints in the Ohio Valley to pray for me in a place that she had never even visited yet.” 

And when I read that September 12th entry and I think about how it may feel like you’re not actually doing anything to pray, I think about Barbara Shaw and our foster daughter, who is like the one sheep away from the ninety-nine, and I didn’t even know where to go looking for her. And the Lord just used the prayers of this woman to help give me the energy and courage and calling to keep at that task until we were able to to bring her home. So anyway, I certainly love that story, but I love the way that this particular day captures the real work that happens when we choose to pray. 

I think instead of God being made in my image, like a genie in a bottle gives me what I want, if I ask him in the right way, I am made in His image. And if He is writing a story in a particular way, I’ve got to trust it’s the right way for it to have been written. And I think when I’m talking to people who have adopted a child and it’s happened faster than they wanted or not fast enough, or they got exactly what they want, or they didn’t get anything that they were thinking, there’s this surrender that has to happen in our hearts where we say, “God, you are good. And if you have this for me, it is good. And you’ll grow me up through it no matter what it looks like.” And the faster we get to that space where we can trust God to be good and right, the less energy we spend fighting what He has for us.

“The faster we get to that space where we can trust God to be good and right, the less energy we spend fighting what He has for us.” – Beth Guckenberger

Narrator: Find out how you can help Back2Back Ministries at back2backministries.org.

If you’d like to hear more stories about finding love and connection with others, check out our interview with actor Kristen Chenoweth and Mister Rogers’ wife, Joanne Rogers.

Narrator: Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we speak with pastor and author, Bishop TD Jakes. Recently, Bishop Jakes has been thinking about the ways that he’s seen women in the Bible and in the present make waves in the world. He remembers the powerful moment when he read about the prophet Jeremiah calling the women of Israel to pray.

TD Jakes: The fact that He would call for women to pray at a time of war really moved me to say, “This is a good time to amass women and challenge them to pray, because we are being attacked on so many fronts today, personally, nationally, medically, economically. When women pray, things happen.”

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Want to hear more inspirational stories of people who have been changed by a closer walk with God? Then subscribe today to the Jesus Calling Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please be sure to leave a review, which helps us reach and inspire others with these stories. Plus, if you like seeing our guests as well as hearing them, you can find video interviews available on our Youtube channel at youtube.com/jesuscallingbook, on Facebook, and on the Jesus Calling Instagram page.