Love Conquers Fear: Lauren Akins and Nik Wallenda
Lauren Akins: I see Jesus, I see the Lord in my children’s faces, and in our conversations, and getting to watch their little minds grow, and how they ask different questions, and how they love each other and just how they love in general. He created my love for my kids and my love for my husband. Only He could have orchestrated the life that I’m living now. I owe all of it to Him.
Love Conquers Fear: Lauren Akins and Nik Wallenda – Episode #217
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. Our episode today is a special celebration to commemorate five million downloads of this podcast. We are so grateful for all the amazing guests who have shared their stories here, and to you, the listeners who keep coming back each week to find inspiration, encouragement, and hope.
Our guests this week have a determination and a ferocity of faith that inspires them to never give up—and allows them to be Jesus’ hands and feet as they live out His message of love: philanthropist and author Lauren Akins, and world record-setting tight-rope walker Nik Wallenda.
Lauren Akins is a mom, wife, author and philanthropist. Following a childhood dream to study medicine, Lauren got her degree in nursing at the University of Tennessee, and shortly after married her husband, country music star Thomas Rhett, and was taken on a whirlwind of touring life as her husband played concerts around the country. Though Lauren loved this part of her life, she still felt a strong conviction that her purpose was to serve God through medical mission work. Through the connection to a friend who started a ministry to orphans, Lauren began a life of service in developing countries through Love One International. She shares the joy of never giving up on the dream that God planted in her heart, only to have God expand that dream in ways that would profoundly impact the lives of hundreds of orphans—and, in particular, one little girl who would eventually become Lauren’s daughter.
Lauren Akins: Congratulations, Sarah Young, and the whole Jesus Calling team on your five millionth download for the Jesus Calling Podcast. I’m so honored to get to be a part of it and be with y’all.
My name is Lauren Akins. I am a mother of three living in Nashville, Tennessee. My husband is in the country music world. He is a singer, songwriter. Thomas Rhett Akins is his name. And we have three daughters: Willa Gray, Ada James, and Lennon. I am now an author, which is so crazy to say. I have a book called Live in Love. I’m just livin’ the mom life/releasing a book in this crazy world right now, figuring it out as I go along.
I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, a little bit north of the city in a town called Goodlettsville. And we lived out in the country in a neighborhood with neighbors that grew up and felt like brothers and sisters to us.
I always say that I think that we just had such a dreamy childhood growing up. I mean, it was just every day was a new adventure. We were always making up new games and having big sleepovers. And we just had such a full life when we were young. Everyone ran around barefoot. Nobody locks the doors at night in our neighborhood. And I feel so blessed to be able to say that that was my life and my bringing up.
Finding a Purpose in Missions
Part of my dream as a kid was being able to go to countries where I’d never been before and experience different cultures. And growing up, I always wanted to do missions and possibly medical missions. That was really my heart. I loved all things medicine growing up.
And so I went to nursing school at the University of Tennessee—Go Vols! And shortly after I graduated from nursing school, my husband and I got married. He took off on tour almost immediately, and I never actually got a chance to work in the hospital because the second we got married, you know, I was with him on tour, and always thought that I would come back to nursing and do that later. But that just wasn’t in the cards for me.
And a couple years into us traveling a lot with his job, I met Suzanne Mayernick, who is one of my very best friends. And about the time I met her, I had really been struggling with where it was I felt like the Lord was calling me and what my purpose was in this world. Because it felt like I was just kind of tagging along wherever Thomas Rhett went. I love being his cheerleader and supporting him, and I love watching him do what he loves. But I felt like I had more of a purpose. I felt like my life wasn’t exactly where the Lord wanted me just yet. I felt like I was close, but I didn’t know what that missing piece was until I met Suzanne, and she started an organization called 147 Million Orphans, now renamed to Love One International.
“It felt like I was just kind of tagging along wherever Thomas Rhett went. I love being his cheerleader and supporting him, and I love watching him do what he loves. But I felt like I had more of a purpose.” – Lauren Akins
That is a whole other God story in and of itself that we got connected through one of my best friends in college. He is her nephew. And so he came back from a trip, and he just had a small window of time that we were able to catch up. And all he kept talking about was his Aunt Suzanne, who he just knew that we were supposed to meet. And he said, “Lauren, you’ve been on my heart. And I just really feel like the Lord needs you to reach out to Suzanne. You need to meet Suzanne.”
And it was such a specific and odd request that I was like, “Okay, well, I trust you.”
So I emailed Suzanne, and asked about their upcoming trips, and they were going to Haiti a month after I emailed her. And that was my first missions trip. They needed a nurse to come and help them with the clinicals they were doing there, and so I went with complete strangers to a third world country. I just felt like it was a door that the Lord had swung wide open right in front of me. And it turned out to be the best thing I’d ever done, because it’s like God just opened my eyes to a whole new world. I felt like at least in that moment, He introduced me to my purpose.
And then fast forward to now, I’m actually on the Board of Love One International. And I’ve been able to go to so many places and meet so many amazing people and see the world. And seeing that dream come true is just another testament to the Lord’s faithfulness and how He created me. He created my dreams and my heart and my desires. And it’s just been a wild ride and a lot of ups, lot of downs, but so much fun and so fulfilling. And just honestly, a big adventure.
A Life Full of Love
I have experienced so much love in my life, and probably the most famous of those loves is mine and Thomas Rhett’s. So we’ve been in school together since we were in, technically, first grade, but we didn’t get to be friends until middle school-ish. We even dated a little bit in high school as fifteen and sixteen-year-olds, and it did not work out. But we remained super close friends and then actually got back together at the end of my college.
We’ll never forget, we were at my sister’s graduation party from high school, and he came over one night, and I guess he and my dad had been talking earlier that day. Our families are super, super close. And apparently, I was the only one out of our family to not know that he was in love with me. But my dad told him before my sister’s party that night, he said, “If you don’t tell her how you feel tonight, I’m going to tell her.” And so that kind of lit a fire under Thomas Rhett. And so that night, I like to say he professed his undying love for me. And the rest is history.
So we adopted our first little girl from Uganda in 2017. I met her in 2016. I was over there on a trip with 147 Million Orphans at the time. And when I met Willa Gray, I learned that no one had any connection with her biological family. And we still to this day have no connections to her biological family and don’t know their stories. So it became very obvious to me that her future was going to be that children’s home, unless she found her forever family. I just fell in love with her so instantly that I wanted to make it my mission to find her forever family.
I’ll never forget, I was on the phone with Thomas Rhett that night as we were going to bed. And I was telling him all about her. And I said, “You know, babe, I just know that her future is not this children’s home.”
And as I said that, without even hesitating, he said, “We’ll do it. We’ll bring her home.”
She came home the next year, and she was eighteen months old when she came home. And I actually got pregnant in the process of adopting, and now she’s got two little sisters that just adore her, and she adores them, and she’s already mothering them. You know, it’s cool getting to talk about all three of my kids and their different stories, because they all have such different stories of how they all three got here. And I think it’s so special, watching my girls love each other and love other people and love our dogs and love nature outside and watching them develop and grow into their own kind of love. It’s just so sweet to watch.
Following Where He Leads
I can see, looking back, where the Lord has shut doors and open doors, and I tried to have the motto of, “Where He opens the door, I’ll walk through it, regardless of what I can see on the other side.”
“I can see, looking back, where the Lord has shut doors and open doors, and I tried to have the motto of, ‘Where He opens the door, I’ll walk through it, regardless of what I can see on the other side.’” – Lauren Akins
There were a few times where I can vividly remember just crying and feeling so weak in my faith, and doubtful. Just like, I didn’t know how much longer I could keep going. And I was just honest with God about those feelings. I was angry at times. I was doubtful at times. And I did stay close to the Lord. That didn’t mean that I always had a good attitude about things, I’ll be quite honest. But what I did have was a faith-based community surrounding me and praying for me and checking in on me on a daily basis. And they were constantly encouraging me, having honest conversations with me, praying for me.
And through it all, I know why God wants us to have community, because there were times where I felt like I just couldn’t pray another prayer, or when I felt the weakest in those moments, that is where I could just feel Jesus was carrying me on the backs of my friends spiritually and on His back, obviously.
“There were times where I felt like I just couldn’t pray another prayer, or when I felt the weakest in those moments, that is where I could just feel Jesus was carrying me on the backs of my friends spiritually and on His back.” – Lauren Akins
And it’s really amazing to me how Jesus is just in every detail, and my faith now is completely different, as well as my husband’s. Our faith is completely different. And I know that was Him molding and shaping us and teaching us even more about Him and His faithfulness and how His plan truly is greater. And I’ve learned to let Him take control of a lot of things, not that He wasn’t already taking control. But I think sometimes we have this mentality where we feel like we can control things for ourselves and we can take care of ourselves, and it’s just not the case.
Loving the Way God Does
I’ve learned that if I can at least just love the one in front of me well, whether it’s Willa Gray at the time or Ada James, or if Lennon was screaming and crying and needs me right then, just loving that one right in front of me. And then when I’m in Uganda, it’s loving the one. The need in Uganda for those children, they need so, so much, and that need can feel extremely paralyzing and overwhelming. But, you know, loving one at a time and doing what you can right just for the one, and then moving on to another one, and then another one—that’s how Jesus works. Those are His hands and feet.
“Loving one at a time and doing what you can right just for the one, and then moving on to another one, and then another one—that’s how Jesus works. Those are His hands and feet.” – Lauren Akins
If we can all love that one in front of us, wherever that one is, whether it’s in a classroom and you’ve got a class full of kids, or you’re a mom and you’ve got a houseful of kids, or if you do missions and you’re traveling all over the world, or somebody at the grocery store, whatever that is, the Lord puts people in front of us to love.
“The Lord puts people in front of us to love.” – Lauren Akins
Our Creator, He created us, and He also created our love. And just the closer you get to Him, the closer you get to love. And you can’t get too close. There’s no such thing. So the more and more we can get to know Him and live in sync with Him each day, inviting the Spirit to be in every facet of your being and in every relationship and every conversation, that is to me the most important thing about my days.
And as a wife, as a mom, as a friend, as just a woman living in Nashville, Tennessee, that is the most important thing, inviting Him into your world so that you’re able to see the world through His eyes and you’re able to love the way that He loves and how He’s modeled and tried to teach us to love. And the way you get close to Him is spending that time with Him. And I’ve learned over time that I have to get into a quiet place. And for me, it’s got to be in the mornings before my day gets going.
“That is the most important thing, inviting Him into your world so that you’re able to see the world through His eyes and you’re able to love the way that He loves.” – Lauren Akins
I love Jesus Calling. It has been something that I have been reading for, goodness, I’m trying to think how long. I would say at least ten years. It started out [when] I got my first Jesus Calling, it was just like a little pocketbook almost. I mean, it was pretty thick, because it goes 365 days long. But I carried it with me everywhere I went, and if I was having a busy day or just needed to have a quick moment with the Lord, or whatever it may be, just having that nearby would always jump-start whatever conversation I was wanting to have. Or just to have a little, you know, Godwink in my day and just a conversation starter with Him, or with whatever group I’m with at the time or whatever it may be. But now I have a calendar version, one that sits on my kitchen counter. It has been such a sweet book and calendar to have sitting on my counter in my home here. And just I love it so, so much.
Jesus Calling from February 24th.
BE STILL IN THE LIGHT of My Presence while I communicate Love to you. There is no force in the universe as powerful as My Love. You are constantly aware of limitations: your own and others’. But there is no limit to My Love; it fills all of space, time, and eternity. Now you see through a glass, darkly, but someday you will see Me face to Face. Then you will be able to experience fully how wide and long and high and deep is My Love for you. If you were to experience that now, you would be overwhelmed to the point of feeling crushed. But you have an eternity ahead of you, absolutely guaranteed, during which you can enjoy My Presence in unrestricted ecstasy. For now, the knowledge of My loving Presence is sufficient to carry you through each day.
I love that the theme of that passage is all about love, and His love, and how I think love is so sweet and deep and beautiful in the most powerful thing in the world. But to think that we still can’t grasp just quite how much He loves and how good His love is something that is so hard for my mind to try to wrap around.
“To think that we still can’t grasp just quite how much He loves and how good His love is something that is so hard for my mind to try to wrap around.” – Lauren Akins
Some days it feels it feels so dark in the world and it’s easy to get discouraged and be ready for Him to come on back so we can all just go home. But He’s not done, clearly, and He’s got more to teach and He’s got more people for us to love and to take His love to them. That’s such an encouraging passage. That makes me feel so at peace and also makes me excited for eternity and how everything is going to be right one day. And it makes me really, really excited for that.
Narrator: To learn more about Lauren’s book, Live in Love, visit www.laurenakins.com.
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Narrator: Our next guest is Nik Wallenda, the Guinness World record setting “King of the High Wire” who has amazed and astounded millions of people with his heart stopping performances walking on hire wires in every state in the USA and all over the world. A performer who descended from 7 generations of wire walkers, Nik and his family have spent their lives facing fear and showing the world that fear can be conquered with a little faith and a resolve to never give up—even when that fear might threaten to steal what we hold dear.
Nik Wallenda: My name is Nik Wallenda, and I am a seventh-generation funambulist, which is basically a fancy way of saying, wire walker. My family actually started performing on wires in Bohemia back in the 1780s.
I was born in Sarasota, Florida, born into a circus family. In fact, my mom was six months pregnant with me and still performing on the wire and touring around the country. She came home, she had me at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, which is in my hometown, still here to this day.
I grew up on the wire. I mean, at eighteen months, we were touring around the country and I would be playing on the wire as my parents were playing on the wire. Because I saw my parents enjoying what they do, I wanted to be a part of it. So as soon as I could walk, I was reaching up to my mom, which mind you the wires were two feet off the ground when we train for anything new. And my mom would take me or my dad and hold my hand and walk me back and forth, and that’s really how I got my start of wire walking, but at the same time, entertaining.
In fact, at two years old, I was a clown in the circus where my peers were performing at SeaWorld San Diego for an entire summer. And I would come out in a pillowcase, and the clowns would carry me out and dump me into the ring and do a skit with them. And that was really my first taste of entertainment.
But then I went on to perform, whether it be bareback riding, which my grandfather, my mom’s father was—which is basically riding on a horse, standing up, doing somersaults and pyramids—to clowning, to juggling, to training dogs, and then eventually convincing my parents to allow me to get on the wire in front of an audience at a height that was dangerous, which was at about thirteen years old.
And faith played a huge role in my life. My legacy, or the legacy I was handed, was just that—it was a history of amazing wire walkers who always pushed the limits—and I was raised by amazing Christian parents who brought me to church every single Sunday when we weren’t traveling. And as we were traveling from city to city in our caravan, they would be playing Keith Green worship music or they would be playing preachers from around the country, and I remember it was cassette tapes they would put in the dash.
Just being raised in this amazing industry, to be honest with you is more of a life to me than anything. My great-grandfather said it best: “Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting.” And for our family, being on the wire is life, it’s just what we do. It’s not an occupation, it’s not a career, it’s not an industry even, it’s just our life because we’ve done it for so long. It’s in our DNA.
“My great-grandfather said it best: ‘Life is on the wire, and everything else is just waiting.’” Nik Wallenda
Early on, I didn’t understand why God gave me this platform, why He was opening doors, why twelve other wire walkers tried to get permission to walk across Niagara Falls, none of them ever successful. Simultaneously while I was seeking permission, there were just barriers that were just being knocked down and God was opening these doors. And I remember sitting on my couch here in Sarasota and going, “God, why are you opening these doors for me? Why not anyone else?”
And God saying, “Look, just follow the desires that I have placed in your heart.” And I continued to pursue them and change the law over a hundred years old on the U.S. side. I went to Canada again, got more pushback, and then sat on the couch and go, “Lord, am I supposed to continue to pursue this?”
And God said, “Continue to be a man of integrity, continue to be upright, and continue to pursue this.”
And I continued to, eventually changing the rules in Canada and becoming the first person the world ever to walk directly over the precipice of Niagara Falls. Other wire walkers have walked, hundreds of years ago, but never directly over the precipice of Niagara Falls. They’ve walked, most of them, historically, they say, over a kilometer downstream of the falls. It was really just the Niagara River with the falls in the background that they were walking.
If I’m stressed, if I’m nervous, I’m going through a difficult time, I sing praise and worship songs, and I talk to Jesus. I pray without ceasing. I didn’t know my microphone was even high and my microphone was left on. And the next day, just testimony after testimony of people’s lives that were transformed, and changed, and motivated, inspired by seeing what I did. The boldness that I had really encouraged so many people, people with disabilities, people that had health issues, etc. I was like, “Okay, Lord, now it all makes sense. Now I understand.”
I know for a fact that God has opened doors for me to get to where I am in order to bring glory to His name. I find it fascinating that people like Howard Stern will watch me walk across the Grand Canyon, and I proclaimed the name of Jesus fifty-three times in thirty minutes live on the Discovery Channel, 220 countries around the world, seen by over twenty million people in the United States alone. And Howard Stern says, “I’d be proclaiming the great name of Jesus, too, if I was walking over the Grand Canyon.” It is an amazing platform that God has given me.
“I know for a fact that God has opened doors for me to get to where I am in order to bring glory to His name” – Nik Wallenda
A Life-Threatening Accident Plants Seeds of Fear
My latest book is called Facing Fear, and it is about just that. It’s about the story of an accident we had about two and a half years ago when we were on a wire here in Sarasota, Florida, where I live. And we trained right here in my backyard for about two and a half months for an eight-person pyramid, four layers high, and our goal was to take it to a public setting and get up on a wire twenty-eight feet above the ground and break this world record.
We rehearsed one night and everything went well, which broke the world record, but we didn’t do it in front of an audience, which was the goal. And two days later we were supposed to open in front of a live audience, and that’s when my biggest nightmare became a reality, because that pyramid collapsed and five of my family members fell to the ground.
By the grace of God, I kept to the wire and held on, as did my cousin, and one other gentleman, but the other five weren’t so lucky and were injured very very badly. My sister had broken every bone in her face, was in a coma, and we didn’t know if she was going to survive.
What I didn’t realize was that was a seed of fear, of negativity, of doubt, implanted in my head right after that accident happened, and I just wouldn’t acknowledge it. And we had to go to New York, and I experienced a spirit of fear that I had never had. And I was trembling so bad, and I was experiencing a form of PTSD. And I told my wife I couldn’t do this anymore. And she said, I will support you in whatever decision that I make, but I think you need to rethink that decision because your life is about supporting people and inspiring people to overcome their greatest challenges.”
“What I didn’t realize was that was a seed of fear, of negativity, of doubt, implanted in my head right after that accident happened, and I just wouldn’t acknowledge it.” – Nik Wallenda
The book really tells the story of what it took for me to overcome that challenge, everything that I had to go through mentally and the acknowledgement that I was facing fear, that I was dealing with fear before I could face it. And that story was the greatest challenge of my life, trying to overcome that fear in hopes that other people are motivated, inspired as well, which has always been my history. And I believe that we can use everything that happens to us to bring glory to God’s name.
And my sister, who shouldn’t have lived, her greatest walk of her career three times longer and almost three times higher than anything she’d ever walked, was her comeback walk after that accident and nearly took her life. And through that, again, we hope to inspire and encourage people.
How to Survive in the Face of Fear
You know, I believe society is gripped by fear. I think much of society, at least, is gripped by fear. And this book was written—mind you, God’s timing is so perfect, which is amazing—well before we knew there’s a pandemic. It wasn’t completed. But I was a couple of chapters away from the end when we got hit with this pandemic. What amazing timing for overcoming fear.
You know, I think so many people are scared to leave their house now. They’re scared to death of this virus. I know I catch myself, sometimes I’ll sniffle or something like, Oh, man, immediately your mind goes to the worst points. And that’s really when my book is about, is controlling those thoughts. You know, I talked about earlier on that weed that started in my head, that seed that was planted.
And I relate that to a weed growing in your garden. If you don’t pull the weed out, it’ll sprout and take over your whole garden. Well, I just was watering that seed over and over again. And I think that’s what so many people do as they continue to water that seed of doubt, seed of negativity, that seed of I’m not good enough and I’m not smart enough and I will not make it through this, I’m not healthy enough, and people continue to water them. I think that’s what holds people back from their greatness and often holds people back from their calling, from what God has called them to do in life.
“I think that’s what so many people do as they continue to water that seed of doubt, seed of negativity, that seed of I’m not good enough and I’m not smart enough and I will not make it through this, I’m not healthy enough, and people continue to water them. I think that’s what holds people back from their greatness and often holds people back from their calling.” – Nik Wallenda
I think a lot of people are fearful to step out in faith. A lot of people are fearful to be bold with their faith. And that is really my motto. I speak to churches and men’s groups often, and I tell them, “Be bold.” The fact of the matter is that I know that I have a God who created the universe, who created the naysayers, who created the negative, the people that were negative or will say negative things about me. He created those people and He loves them, even though they say those things. And it’s up to me whether I decide to not like those people or love them and be an example and be Christlike. And I would much rather go to heaven knowing that I was bold in who I was and what I believed in, that some people were upset and offended by that, then offend those people and they not ever get the knowledge of who God really isn’t and how much you really love them.
“I would much rather go to heaven knowing that I was bold in who I was and what I believed in, that some people were upset and offended by that, then offend those people and they not ever get the knowledge of who God really isn’t and how much you really love them.” – Nik Wallenda
A lot of people, a lot of believers, give up because that door gets closed. They say, “Well, God didn’t want me to go that direction.” Well, I believe we have an enemy that closes that door so often because he doesn’t want us to get to the other side, because we are going to fulfill God’s calling and bring glory to God’s name. So I encourage people again, of those words, Never give up. I mean, that’s what it’s about, facing their fears and facing what’s holding them back from greatness.
You know, when I go through a stressful time, no matter what it is, whether it’s raising kids or arguing with my wife or just life throws us lemons. I get my truck, and I’ll put on praise and worship music, and just drive. Pretty much anywhere I go—it’s funny, I learned this recently, actually, while I was at church, it really dawned on me. But my whole life I’ve listened to worship music, my mom, growing up, traveling, I mean, just hundreds, if not thousands of hours of worship music. And that music always has a positive vibe to it. There’s always positivity. And that’s what’s been spoken over my life as I sing those songs. I don’t even realize it, but I’m speaking life over myself. I’m speaking life over these situations that could take my life constantly, whether it be in a car, no matter what. So I have literally spent a lifetime speaking positivity and singing positivity and listening to positivity and feeding that into my mind. I think we have such an amazing, gracious God. And He acknowledges that even to those who don’t believe in Him, His Word still applies. His Word cannot return void.
“I think we have such an amazing, gracious God. And He acknowledges that even to those who don’t believe in Him, His Word still applies. His Word cannot return void.” – Nik Wallenda
Walking with God on the Tightrope of Life
So tightrope walking is so similar to our walk with God. You know, we’re to constantly be in our prayer closet, where to constantly be in the Word. And really what we’re doing is we’re preparing for the battle. We’re preparing for what we are inevitably going to face at some point. And wire walking is the same in the sense that when I am training for Niagara Falls, I trained with wind machines that would exceed double what I knew after studies would exceed what I was going to face while I go across that wire. We had fire trucks hosing me down to where I couldn’t even see in front of me. Again, preparing for that battle, preparing for what I was going to face, what was ahead. And that’s really what our walk with God is about, is being prepared. And then being prepared, being able to share the love of Christ and to be Christlike and to hopefully help others and lead others to Christ through our walk and through our lives and through the battles that we’ve been through.
I can tell you this, the closest I have gotten with God, as my relationship with God has grown more and more, it took those valleys in order for me to get to those peaks. And there were many, many times in my life where I was in the valley going, “God, why? Why? Why would you do this to me?” Not realizing that it’s called life, it is called the world. It’s called decisions I make. Yet I want to blame God for the decisions I make that are going to be wrong decisions. But through those situations, I have gotten such a stronger and closer relationship with Christ.
“As my relationship with God has grown more and more, it took those valleys in order for me to get to those peaks.” – Nik Wallenda
Narrator: Nik reads a passage from Jesus Calling that illustrates how we can find balance by keeping our focus on Christ.
Nik: [April 25th]
Make Me your focal point as you move through this day. Just as a spinning ballerina must keep returning her eyes to a given point to maintain her balance, so you must keep returning your focus to Me. Circumstances are in flux, and the world seems to be whirling around you. The only way to keep your balance is to fix your eyes on Me, the One who never changes. If you gaze too long at your circumstances, you will become dizzy and confused. Look to Me, refreshing yourself in My Presence, and your steps will be steady and sure.
You know, it says, “Fix your eyes on me.” When I walk the wire, I don’t focus on what’s going on around me. So when I walk across Niagara Falls, I’m not focused on the heavy mist and I’m not focused on the wind or the waves. To be honest, the roar of the falls, the sound is more intimidating than anything, but I’m focused on the solid rock at the other end. And that’s really about fixing her eyes on Him. And that’s really what I do when I’m walking the wires. I fixed my eyes and that’s what God is, our solid rock. So we might have wind and waves on each side and we may have to go through a treacherous war right now. But the reality is, if we can gaze our eyes on the other side, that’s where we’re going. You know, when you’re driving, if you look this way, you tend to go that way. If you look to the left, you tend to go to the left. So the reality is, though, if you look straight on, you’ll go that direction.
Narrator: You can find Nik’s new book, Facing Fear: Step Out in Faith and Rise Above What’s Holding You Back, everywhere books are sold.
If you’d like to hear more stories about facing fear, be sure to listen to our episode featuring Bear Grylls and Rhonda Vincent.
Narrator: Thanks for joining us for this very special episode celebrating five million downloads of the Jesus Calling Podcast. Be sure to join us next time when we talk with One Tree Hill star Jana Kramer and former NFL player Mike Caussin about the struggles they’ve been through as a couple as Mike is recovering from sex addiction. Jana shares how she prays as they’ve looked toward God for help in this season.
Jana Kramer: I’m just always constantly praying for our family. I want us to stay together. I’m praying for his recovery. I’m praying for our recovery. I’m praying that we can withstand the seasons that aren’t good, because I think marriages go through seasons. And I think some people can weather the season and some people can’t. And I just hope that we always, you know, choose to stay in it. And so I just pray that we’re always strong enough to continue to grow.
