Your Joyful Order With Leslie Martinez

#118- Jesus Had Goals: Rethinking Purpose, Progress, and Obedience

• Leslie Martinez • Season 6 • Episode 118

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After the longest break since launching the show, I’m back with a heart reset and a different lens on goals, purpose, and the way we measure a faithful life. A family summer through Europe, quiet miles on the trail, and 161 soaped chapters of Scripture set the stage for one core shift: goals aren’t ladders to climb, they’re callings to complete.

I walk through Luke 13:32 and the Greek nuance behind “goal” as completion- bringing an assignment to its intended end. That single insight reframed everything I teach about goal-setting. We name the modern “foxes” that derail us- fear of failure, fear of success, distraction, urgency, and we learn how Jesus answered pressure without abandoning purpose. Instead of chasing outcomes, we talk about stewarding what God has already placed in our hands and asking better questions: What needs to be finished, not added? What outcomes do I need to release? Where is my yes rooted, obedience or ambition?

You’ll hear candid stories from ministry life, the pressure of perfection, and why I’m slowing the show to two episodes a month to deliver deeper, more story-driven conversations. We also get practical with a simple framework to realign your year: identify your entrusted assignments, set faith-anchored actions, pre-name your foxes, and let Scripture set your pace. If you’re ready to swap metrics for meaning and move from performance to completion, this one will meet you where you are and nudge you toward the finish God intended.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help others find it. What will you finish this year?

Connect with Leslie:

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Email: lmartinez@yourjoyfulorder.com
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Watch this Episode on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXoAYIM2mfclNtYiaOzIUw

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Welcome Back And Season Six

SPEAKER_00

Hey everyone, I'm Martin Martina, and you're listening to your Joyful Order Podcast. Each week I will bring you joyful stories that will motivate and inspire you, but at the same time, bring order to your everyday life. Let's just say this show will be a mixture of preaching and teaching with a kick of motivation from your girl here. Welcome to your joyful order podcast. Hey friends, welcome back to your joyful order podcast. If you're new here, I am Leslie Martinez. And if you've been here for a while, thank you for staying. And can you believe we are getting into season six? Truly, I am so grateful for you. And I hope you missed me because I missed the space. I missed this community. And I am just so glad to be back. This episode just feels really special to me because it's not just the start of a new season. It is a return. This is the longest break that I have taken from the podcast space in the last almost five years that I've been doing this. And we are here with season six. This is episode 118. And I don't take that lightly. I am so grateful for this space and the community of you being here. Now, I just want to first get into a little bit about why I took a break. I stepped away the last episode. If you go back, you'll see my last recent recording was in May of 2025. Now, during that time, I kind of felt a nudge to pause on this podcast. Not because I didn't love the podcast, not because I ran out of things to say. Lord knows I can talk your ear off. I needed space to really listen to God and the direction where he was taking me, which included this podcast. Now, since May of 2025, life has been just full of the most meaningful moments and very unexpected uh surprises. I got to travel to Europe with my family in the summer of 2025 in July. My husband, myself, and my youngest son, we got to travel. It was a uh it was a a tour that my son had planned to go on, and we got to kind of tag along as chaperones. So it was some high school kids along with some of their families, and we got to travel to Germany, to Austria, to uh Switzerland, to Witherstein, to France, and it was the most amazing experience ever. We had uh two weeks of traveling, um, seeing palaces and uh the Alps and eating some of like the best, freshest food ever. And I got to walk along the fountain where uh Julie Andrews sang in the sound of music. I got to march up the steps, I got to twirl around up along the Alps. So we took a gondola ride up to the Alps. I got to see palaces and beautiful, beautiful castles. It was the most amazing trip. And I will tell y'all, Switzerland has been on my bucket list for years. Um, got to cross that off my bucket list. I actually want to go back and spend a little bit more time there. We only got to spend about like three days there, um, mainly because it's so dang expensive there. But what really surprised me was Austria. Y'all, Austria never on my bingo card, never on my bucket list. But can I tell you that Austria just completely blew us away? By far a country I want to go back to. Vienna was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. So much history was there. Also, I've learned a lot, grew a lot. We even visited a concentration camp. Um, very, very um just eye-opening, also. I felt God show up in so many different ways and so many small lessons, also. Uh, so that was a big part of my summer, some big milestones. Also, I got to see my twin nephews, which are my godsons, also uh graduate high school. My youngest son, he is a senior now. In September, he started his senior year of high school, bittersweet there. And we spent the fall season uh or football season with my son on the sidelines photographing. Um, in case you don't know, my husband and I, as a kind of hobby, uh, we photograph high school football sports, and we just got to capture a great season from our son's high school football team. Um, my son actually cheers, so he was on the sidelines, but this was our last season photographing. We've been photographing on the sidelines for like the last five years, I think now. And this is the last year that one of our sons are going to be on the field. We either had a son playing football or a son on the sidelines uh cheering. And uh, this is our last moment. So took some time to embrace this last uh football season and just some other things that I've done since. Y'all, as I'm doing my 2025 recap, I realized that I have read 161 chapters of the Bible. Wow. Now, there is 1,189 chapters in the Bible. I've read 161, got a long way to go to get through the Bible, but I can um clearly and truthfully say that I have studied 161 chapters of the Bible. I have soaped 161 chapters of the Bible. I have two and a half soap journals filled with 161 chapters. So that is something that I'm super proud of. Um, I walked over, or I should say hiked um about over 220 miles. And those are just some small little uh kind of things that I guess in reflecting of my hair that I'm super proud of from this last year. I endured, I developed some disciplines that I think are gonna carry through into 2026. Also, there were so many moments in between, some quiet ones, some sacred ones, some emotional ones. But those were just some of the highlights that shaped me and who I became in 2025 and during this break of not recording the podcast. Now, the real reason for the pause. And if I'm being totally honest with you, I didn't step away because I didn't want to podcast anymore. It wasn't it. I stepped away because I needed clarity. I wanted to know am I doing this podcast for the right reasons? This podcast takes planning, it takes a lot of creativity, it takes time, it takes energy, it takes prayer. And it's not something that I get paid to do, y'all. I needed to ask myself a very real question. And that is, am I doing this out of obedience to what God called me to do, or am I doing it out of selfish ambition? And I really needed to examine my heart. I needed to examine my motives behind it, and I needed to re-examine my goals of what I wanted this space to look like. And that's not something that I got a clear answer to overnight. I needed to go deep. I needed to spend a lot of time with God in the direction where he was taking me. There was a lot of things that he put on my heart to do, but was I continuing to do them for the right reasons? And during the season of silence and kind of time off, I prayed, I reflected, and God just kept telling me the same thing over and over again. And that is to keep going. Your assignment has not been fulfilled. So here I am with a joyful heart, some more clear motives into the direction of where I want this space to go, and just a deeper sense of alignment. And I just want to thank you for being here. I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank you for just walking with me into season six and for your patience. If some of you are like, hey, Leslie, what happened? I did get a couple of DMs here and there. And that's really what it was. I just needed space to make sure that I was moving forward with this podcast with the intent that God wanted me to do this with. Now, I want to uh transition today's episode. For today's episode, I want to talk about something that truly has shifted the way that I think about goals. As we are in the beginning of the year, I wanted to start with something fresh. The first episode of January, I typically kick off with some kind of goal-oriented podcast in creating goals and habits for the new year and you know, making sure that you are in alignment with where God is taking you. And this year I had a real epiphany when it comes to setting goals. And it started with the simple but powerful truth. And that is that Jesus had goals. Now, when we talk about goals today, we often think about like the hustle culture, which is something that I lived in for an entire decade. Performance-driven, achievement-driven, productivity-driven. All of that is needed for goals. You need to perform. Yes, you need to get up off your butt and move. You need to do some achieving, okay, of the goals that you have that maybe God gave you. And you need to be productive in creating and doing things that God has called you to do. But when we look at scripture, we see something very different. And this is where this season of me being off, it allowed me to really study scripture, y'all. Like really, really study it. And I needed to see what direction it is that God was taking me into this new year and moving me forward with the things that he called me to do. Now, Jesus, he lived with clarity, with purpose, with intention. And he had very obedient focus. Now, this is a passage that just rocked my world. Now, for the month of December, I had invited my community to read along in Luke with me. For the entire month of December, if you started on December 1st, you will have read the entire life of Jesus before Christmas came. And it would allow us to really embrace what the reason of the season is. Jesus. There's 24 chapters in Luke, and you start on December 1st, you finish on December 24th, and then by Christmas Day, you will have just, you know, learned all about Jesus. Well, I was reading through this with my community, and in Luke 13, 32, I came across this verse. And I was reading from the NIV version, and this is exactly what my version of the Bible says for Luke 30, uh 13, 32. And it says, Go tell that fox, I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow. And on the third day, I will reach my goal. This is Jesus speaking. Okay. Some of the Pharisees had came to him and told him that Herod was coming after him, that he needed to flee. But Jesus was like, wait a minute, I'm not done what I was called to do. Like I got goals. And that's how I had read it. That I was like, oh, Jesus got goals. Okay, let's go, Jesus. He had goals. Then I did a deep dive into this. I was I was soaping. Now, when I soap, I also use Chat GPT to help me study. Now, for all you holy sacred Bible thumpers out there, yes, I use ChatGPT to help me study the Bible. I have a very specific prompt that I use that allows me to understand the theological context of scripture. It also allows me to look at Hebrew and Greek meaning of it, understand the culture of the context of which scripture was written. Okay. I also use the Holy Spirit to speak to me. But let me tell you, when you understand the theological context of scripture, that's where the Holy Spirit starts to speak through you. Now, because I used my Chat GPT prompt that I used to understand the theology of this, once I got clarity of what this verse really meant, the Holy Spirit was then able to speak in and through me in a way that I can understand. So again, for all you chat GPT haters of using it to study the Bible, that is how I use it. So go Bible dump somewhere else. Don't come at me. Because me using ChatGPT to understand the context has completely transformed the way I study scripture now. I understand it. I understand the cultural significance of some of this stuff. So with that said, I'm gonna move now forward into what the scripture means. Luke 13, 32. Now, there are different versions of this scripture that it doesn't say uh Jesus will or I will reach my goal. There's other contexts where it says I will um get to completion, that Jesus says completion. Now, the original Greek term for goal is actually come um completion. It points to fulfillment, which means bringing something to its intended end, not rushing, not striving, but finishing what is assigned. That's where the original Greek talks about the word completion. Now, Jesus wasn't wandering aimlessly, he wasn't reacting to pressure either, right? The they were telling him, hey, Herod's coming after you. He's like, I don't care, let him come. I got a goal, and that is to cast out demons, that is to save people, that is to do this, to do that. I have a ministry to fulfill, I have a calling, and it's not done yet. So I'm not gonna let him chase me off. He wasn't reacting to that pressure. He wasn't driven by what other people's expectations were for him. He knew that he was sent to do a specific assignment, he had a specific goal, and he stayed aligned with that even though it cost him. Now, I'm gonna break this down a little bit deeper for you. All right. Now, in in uh Luke 13, 32, Jesus responds by calling Herod that fox. Now, this moment tells us right here that Jesus understood purpose, timing, and completion. Now, the fox saying the fox, that wasn't a compliment. And this is again going back to how I use Chat GPT to study, because there is different context of words in Hebrew or Greek meaning. Now, I'm gonna give you a little Bible study tidbit. I have said this many times, I will reiterate it here. In uh for the New Testament, if you're reading from the New Testament, you want to look at what the Greek context is of it, because the New Testament was original context was written in Greek. For the Old Testament, original context is written in Hebrew. So that's where you look at what Hebrew or Greek context is. Hebrew and Greek, their vocabulary have different meanings than some of our words too. So for us, a fox, I mean, besides like the actual little animal, um, we can sometimes use it as like, oh, she's foxy or oh, look at that silver fox. Like we think of it as something sly or sexy kind of, right? If you call someone a fox, it's almost like a compliment. Well, in the Greek context of what this verse was saying, it wasn't a compliment. Jesus wasn't saying, like, oh, Herab, that fox. No, in Jewish culture, the fox symbolized someone who was cunning without power, someone who had intimidation with no real authority, someone who would pose as a distraction that had no control. Jesus was not impressed by Herod or he he like he wasn't deterred by what he was saying. Now, Herod was a a Roman leader right in the Roman army. Now, him calling him a fox, there was authority by intimidation. He wanted to distract and not allow control without getting too much into this. I want you to relate that to today's politics and think about how much of what took place then we see it today in our politics again. I'm just gonna say that, all right, but there is a lot of correlation between what is taking place in the Bible and what has taken place today in our world. And if you study the context of the Bible and you learn and you open your eyes to see, we are repeating history, it just looks different today. I'm gonna leave that there. Now, going back, Jesus did not change his mission because of pressure from Herod or from the people telling him, hey, they're they're coming for you. He said, I cast out demons and heal today and tomorrow, and on the third day, I will reach my goal, or as other contexts say of the Bible, I am brought to completion. The focus wasn't threats, it was completion. Now, again, this is what I'm learning in my um deep dive study of understanding scripture, going back to what the Greek meaning is. The Greek word that Jesus uses for completion is to tell you, to tele, oh, oh, okay. That is the Greek word for completion. And or you can say like that was the word for for goal. Goal and completion are we kind of very uh similar in the Greek context. So it means to bring to completion, to fulfill an assignment or purpose, or to finish what was entrusted to you. Biblical goals aren't about achievement, they're about faith. Full completion. Now, to teleo means completion. If you are a Bible nerd, you know a little bit about the story of Jesus, you will know that to tele, uh, to telesty in Greek means it is finished. And that is what Jesus said when he died on the cross. To telestai, it is finished. That means when he died on the cross, he knew that his goal, his assignment was finished. So he said, to telestai. Now, to teleo is the gre is the Greek word for completion. They go hand in hand. Completion, it is finished. Jesus said both to teleo and to telesty. This is what I'm learning, you guys. Like when I look at this, I was just like, I've been looking at goals at a whole what I've been teaching or sharing about goals. They're not wrong, don't get me wrong. It just was missing this part. Are we chasing what God has entrusted us to? Or are we chasing things out of pure ambition? And there is a difference in what we are going after. And I think you will see it. There might be things that we might be chasing that we struggle to find completion in. And that's maybe because God didn't call you to do that. Maybe God didn't call you to launch a business. Maybe God didn't call you to a certain career where you're finding yourself stuck in. There's lots of things that we chase out of pure ambition that is something that God did not call us to. So a date, uh like, is it timely? Well, you got to set it a date. Um, but how do you measure it? You typically measure something in with with numbers, right? That's what modern goals ask. But when we look at creating biblical goals, we need to ask ourselves: is this something that God has entrusted me with? What does faithfulness look like to achieve this goal? What needs to be finished? To teleste. You want to be able to say, to teleste, when you get up to heaven. At least I know that's a goal for me. Like, I want to get to heaven. I want God to say, my good and faithful servant. And I want to be able to say, to teleste, I finished. Like I finished my race. I've I've been missing a big part as to why I've been doing the things that God has called me to. And this is it. For me, goal setting is like check, check, check, check, check, check. God called me to uh launch a soap journal. Done. Create it. It's done. It's not done. The assignment wasn't just to create a product, the assignment was to allow people to learn to study God's word, to draw them closer to God's word. That's what the assignment was. The silk journal is just a tool to get there. So I created the tool, but my assignment is not done. I haven't completed that assignment. This is where the epiphany just kind of like, I was like, wow. Learning to study the scripture in this context has allowed me to draw deeper and understand what God is, what was really taking place, but also applying it to my life. Now, going back to the verse again, the whole foxes. Now, we know what foxes meant in in the like the Jewish context, okay? But we have foxes today in our everyday life, and they are going to try to derail our goals. That's pressure, comparison, fear of failure, fear of success, urgency, distraction. None of these foxes will determine your assignment or its timing. Now, I will tell you, some of the foxes in my life for my assignment have been fear of failure, fear of success, and distraction. And I think it is important also that you learn to identify what those foxes are in your calling. What is it? What are you having a fear of failure? I know that was a that's a real thing for me. I fear failing God. I truly, truly fear failing God. I fear failing my family. I don't want to fail my family. I don't want to invest all this time and money into a product or into a thing that is going to jeopardize the footing of my family. I I don't want to um fear success either. I feel that there is this stigma with success that I am fearful of. I see that let me go back a little bit. I've been in ministry for over 25 years now. And I've been in ministry in the context of as a volunteer, as a full-time staff, as an elder, as a leader of the church. I have seen and done it all. I've seen many people come through and filter through the church as leaders and um leaders that have completely walked away from the church, leaders that are still in it, um, and just so many different directions where people in the church have gone. And one of my biggest uh fears is really that where I feel that God is calling me to this place to really preach his word, teach it, is that there is this expectation of perfection that comes with people who speak God's word. I've lived it. A decade of me being a staff member on church, I like I nearly lost myself trying to hold up to that expectation that people have of leaders in the church. And I almost lost my marriage from it. I nearly like I lost my identity. I was on the verge of just a complete breakdown because that pressure for perfection, I will not wish that upon my worst enemy, just put it that way. And that is the expectation that people put on leaders in the church. I walked away because I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. This is gonna break me. Unfortunately, that stigma of people that preach God's word, that they have to be perfect. You you can't sin, you can't curse, you can't look someone sideways, you you have to have the perfect marriage, the perfect kids. You have to like literally walk on water. That is the expectation. And don't tell me, some of you listening right now, you have a certain expectation of the leaders in your church. You do. And I'm gonna tell you, we have to break that stereotype down because when you look at the Bible, Jesus didn't pick the priest, he didn't pick the Pharisees or the Sadducees who were like the holy people during that time. He Jesus didn't handpick them to walk with him. Y'all, he picked his disciples. When you look at his disciples, this is like a schmordishborg of hot mess expressed here. Like when you talk about who is driving the hot mess bus, you got Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, y'all, some of the most like tore up from the floor up people, Jesus said, Hey, come with me. He didn't go ask the Pharisees or the priest of the time, hey, come walk with me. No, he picked specifically the most broken, sinful people. And that's why everyone was in an uproar because they're like, Jesus, what why are you walking with that fool? Why are you sitting at the table with sinners? These are sinners. Y'all, Jesus sat with sinners, like he he did that for a very specific reason, and you might have an expectation of who your pastor or leaders of the church are. Y'all, Jesus did not pick perfect people, that pressure is something that I have kind of feared. I'm like, no, because y'all, I'm gonna tell you a very big secret, which some of you might not be surprised by this. Because I've never done this on the platform, uh like on my podcast, on my platform. Um, but I curse. Y'all, my mama don't like it, but I curse. Yes, I've never cursed on this space. Your girl that like is speaking this word of what God has given to me. I like I also probably dropped dropped about five F-bombs today, and that was just in my head, okay. That is full transparency here. God is working on me. Don't get me wrong. I I will never um like curse the way that I do around like certain people in in the space because I respect you guys, but I also am human. And in my head, I I I drop the F bomb quite often. I do. I'm like, darn it. So that is a real challenge that I have. Um, in I I have heard many times people do not like take me seriously. I have friends, maybe even family members, that do not take that like what I am saying about God preaching and everything, because they know the real side of me. Um, in that Leslie Curses, she can never like speak of God's word. Y'all. Some of Jesus' disciples, I am certain they dropped some words that were not very holy. And Jesus was still like, yo, come with me. I'm not perfect, y'all. I am not perfect. But these are some of the foxes that stop us from moving forward what God called us to do. And I'm I'm I'm gonna be real. That that's another fox in where I feel that there is this fear of success that if I if I get, and success in what I mean, it's like fulfilling what God um called me to do and the space and place in that the the more eyes on me I feel, the more judgment, the more expectation of being perfect. That if someone sees me on the street and they, you know, cut me off and I flip them off, you'd be like, hey, aren't you the one that like has a podcast that you talk about, Jesus? I'm gonna be like, Yep. So that fear of having more eyes on me, there is a real expectation of having to walk a fine line. And then I go back and I look at these people from the Bible, and I'm like, they were a hot mess. Like, and and that's where Jesus came with renaming people, like um Simon Peter, he, you know, renamed him because he he was just a mess. Like God meaned to say, hey, you're no longer that old person that you were. I'm gonna identify you as a new person and even give you a new name. Because I don't want people to know who you were, because there just is judgment that came with that. Now, that's just my opinion on that, by the way. I I don't know how like biblical what I just said is. So don't don't come at me, okay? Don't come at me. Now, let's let's move on. In looking at, okay, you want to identify where your foxes foxes are and really what it is of what God is entrusted you with. Now, I want you to also ask yourself, what is it that I am called to stored in this season, where you're at right now? What does that look like? What is God entrusting you to stored right now? What does faithful action look like in this season? And what is that going to require of you? What outcomes do I need to release to God? This was a big one for me because I am numbers driven, smart goals, measurement. If you can't measure a goal, it's not a goal. My my words, that, right? I've been measuring outcomes. I've been like, God, if I don't, if I don't reach this number, then it's not successful. I've been looking at the outcomes of it. And you need to ask yourself, what do I need to release? What outcomes do I need to release to God? And then lastly, I want you to ask yourself, what needs to be finished, not added? This was huge for me. Y'all, I didn't create new goals for 2026. I didn't. For me, it was about after reading this and really, really taking to heart the whole completion thing of like, you know, God, God called me to create journals. But that was just a tool. Again, this is a tool for a much bigger goal that I don't think that I have fully completed yet. So rather than going um like wide as far as making all these goals, I'm gonna go deep this year. Have some of the same goals, but I need to go deep in what does this soap journal really going to do for people? I created the tool. Now I need to go deep in making sure that people are able to get closer to God's word by using this tool. And it's not even about the tool, like it's just a tool to help you. It's really about teaching you how to study God's words. So I want you to just be reminded that biblical goals are not ladders to climb, they are callings to complete. Jesus finished what he was sent to do, and nothing intimidated him off course. So going back to that, he didn't let the foxes get in his way. He's like, I got demons to cast, I got tables to flip, I got people to save, I gotta resurrect people from the dead, I gotta heal the sick. And he was like, Herod, go sit down, go sit down. You are not intimidating me whatsoever. He was the leader of like the freaking Roman army here. And Jesus wasn't scared, he's like, sit down. Because he knew what his course was, he knew what his goal was, and he wasn't gonna let anything get in his way. And this just reframed everything about goal setting for me, because biblical goals are not about proving something, they're about obedience, they're not about speed, they are about faithfulness, they're not about building a platform, they're about fulfilling an assignment. And Jesus didn't chase outcomes, he walked in alignment for fulfilling what he was called to do. And that's when I realized that I don't want goals to impress people. I want goals that please God. My intent for 2026, I am no longer gonna be driven by ambiguous goals. I am going to be driven by completion and completing what I feel that God called me to do. I'm not gonna be driven by pressure or comparison. Now, here are a couple of questions that I want you to ask yourself also in preparing for 2026 and you know, moving forward. And some of you, as you're listening to this right now, you might be already like have created your goals, your vision board for the year, all of that. I you might, after listening to this episode, you might go back and change some things, but I really want you to ask yourself these questions in that also. I want you to ask God, what are you inviting me into for 2026, this next season? What am I storting in this season? What is it that you need me to store? What needs to be finished, not just started? And where do you want my yes to be rooted in obedience, not ambition? Jesus shows us that holy goals are anchored in calling, not culture. Don't worry about what you know, Mary and Joe and Samantha are creating for their goals. If you're going to like a goals workshop, a vision board, Workshop, don't worry about what they got on their vision boards. Worry about what God called you to do. And that is the framework for what I am going to use to carry me into this new year and this new season. So let me ask you this: are your goals aligned with what God is calling you to? Or is it just to impress people? Are your goals rooted in obedience or expectation? And are you trying to accomplish more or fulfill what you've been assigned to? And these are all questions I had to ask myself, y'all. And this is where I was just like, wow, God, have I been doing this wrong the whole time? Like I am a legit certified goals coach. I am so ambiguous in teaching goals that are just like measured and ambitious and check, check, check. It's not that I've been doing it wrong. It's just that this has been the missing piece. What am I trying to accomplish? Or what do I need to fulfill? That is what I am walking into 2026 with. Now, as we step into this new year, I want to invite you to rethink goal setting. And not as like striving, but as surrender yourself to where God is taking you. Now I know that's a lot to take in. Just take a deep breath in and out. Take a couple of those. Pause and take a break if you need to hear. Go back and write those down. I want to invite you to this next season of the podcast. And invite you to come along on a journey with me this season and going back to what I felt like God was leading me to do in the direction to take the podcast. A lot of the podcast has been um geared towards teaching you something. It's been teaching and preaching, right? It'll be a mix of teaching and preaching, as I say in my intro here. This season, I want to get into just sharing stories. I want to bring on guests to share their stories, their testimonies of what God has done in their life. And I think it's so important that we learn from other people. And oftentimes I look for guests that have some kind, some kind of platform to kind of allow you to follow up with them. So if you, if I have a guest, I typically will redirect you and say, hey, here um are a way that you can go and learn more with them. You can follow their journey, um, go and learn more from this person about whatever topic it was that we did or we discussed here on the platform. And I don't I I've always kind of looked for that because I don't want to misdirect you, my podcast listeners, but this season I felt heavy to really lean towards relationships that I have with people because I have some amazing relationships with people that I think have great stories. And I'm not just going to be bringing people that I have relationships with. I am looking for people that can tell stories that are going to bring you into a relationship with God, that are going to allow you to create stronger friendships, stronger relationships with yourself, and even just relationships like um partners, marriages, all of that. So I'll be slowing down this season. Also, I will only be releasing two episodes a month, and this will allow me space to create and produce without the pressure or the stress of a weekly podcast. And that was another thing because we don't get paid for this platform. And we, I say that because my husband helps me to edit a lot of episodes also. I write, I produce, I create all of the contacts for this. But my husband helps me to do some of the editing. And when we were on a weekly podcast, we both, you know, do full-time work, kind of full-time stuff. And it was just the pressure and the stress just became cumbersome. And that's what I wanted us to have the space to be able to create and bring something well curated for you and not have the need to rush. So we're gonna be slowing it down. And I'm just so grateful that you are here. I am so grateful to be back. And I hope that this episode was just insightful for you. This is a new kind of epiphany that I had in reading scripture, and it really changed the context of the way that I am going into 2026. So I just want to say thank you again for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for trusting me with your time. If this episode spoke to you, please share it with someone. And I just want you to give yourself permission to slow down, give yourself permission to take a break, give yourself permission to pause and ask yourself Am I doing this out of obedience, out of fulfillment, out of ambition? Allow yourself time to refocus and realign yourself with what God has planned for you. I am so glad to be back. I missed y'all. I missed the space. And until next time, keep chasing joy and keep walking in obedience.