BONUS EP!
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[00:00:00] but the Lord whispered to me and said, let them pass you. You are not missing where I'm taking you. If they are speeding by you, I have you running your own race.
Welcome to Your Daily Bread podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Stasior, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor. My prayer is that these bite-sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food and improve body image, as well as help you grow closer to God. Now, I can't personally heal you, but each week I'll be directing you to the one that can, and that is Jesus. As a disclaimer, I'm not a pastor, but a sister in Christ providing you with some food for thought for you to bring to the Lord and into your quiet time as your daily bread. Let's dig in.
Hello. Hello. Welcome back to Your Daily Bread podcast. Today is a bonus episode. I am so excited about this because y'all, I just turned 30, [00:01:00] like y'all. I feel like in every movie that we see, every main character is like, Ugh. I just wanna be in my twenties forever. I. Can't believe I'm turning 30. I feel so old, y'all. I have never felt more alive. I am so excited to enter my thirties, and it just feels like a fresh wind. And I pray that if you're in your twenties, that you also feel this way entering your thirties. And if you're already in your thirties, I just pray that you've had a similar experience.
And if you haven't, I pray that the Lord just renews your mind around this because honestly. It feels so good to be 30. I'm so excited to start a new decade. I feel like I'm hitting the refresh button. It feels so good. I feel so close to the Lord and close to the vine, tethered to him. I feel so on mission.
I feel. Good in my body. I feel like I've made a lot of breakthroughs recently in terms of body image and stewarding my body the [00:02:00] way that the Lord wants me to, and. This is my year of boundaries. I've been studying better boundaries and I've been getting away from more people pleasing tendencies.
Things that I've been for me for literally decades. For literally decades. So I am really excited for this bonus episode, because the Lord put it on my heart to share. 20 things that I've learned in my twenties now that I am entering my thirties. So I'm gonna kind of rapid fire through these and Father God, thank you so much for another day. Lord, thank you for just creating space to be able to record this bonus episode. I pray that this serves as a blessing for your people. Lord, I pray that. This episode does not fall on deaf ears. It does not fall to the ground, Lord, because your word says in one Samuel that you were with Samuel and his words never fell to the [00:03:00] ground, Lord.
So I pray that your Holy Spirit works through me and does what only you can do, Lord, and speak and pierce right into the hearts of every single listener. I pray that every single listener has divine revelation through. The insights that you have given me, Lord, and please help me to be able to articulate these things the way that you want them.
Lord, I just pray that your Holy Spirit leads this. Lord, thank you for another day, another year, another decade. I'm so grateful to serve you Lord, and I am so excited for more revelations coming into my thirties and to. Just have greater intimacy with you this year, Lord. And I pray that for every single listener as well.
In Jesus's mighty name we pray, amen. Now, these aren't necessarily in any particular order. This isn't ranked. These are just the revelations that came up for me in the order that they came up for me and the Holy [00:04:00] Spirit was revealing me. I got confirmation that the Lord wanted me to do this episode.
And then I just started journaling and it was like I literally had the 20 things, like literal, the three minutes. I'm like, wow, Lord. Wow. And this just scratches the surface. There are so many things that the Lord has revealed to me, and it's wild because if y'all listen to my testimonial episode, you know that I grew up Catholic and.
I knew about God, but I didn't always have a relationship with Jesus. I was only saved, I got saved and baptized. I was baptized as a kid when I was Catholic, but I got rebaptized. , I chose to be baptized in 2021, so it hasn't been that long. It's only been four years, so number one, the Lord has been really working on me with what success means to him, especially as an entrepreneur.
And I used to run my business in a secular lens and from a very worldly perspective, very focused on money and getting clients and more and more and more. And so the Lord has. Really renewed my mind [00:05:00] around that, especially when approaching business and approaching it more from a servant leadership standpoint as Jesus would.
And the Lord said to me that success is obedience. And so that applies to every area of your life, not just business or your career. But with your family, with your health journey, success to him is not hitting a certain number on the scale, but is being obedient to how he has called you to steward your body or steward your family, or steward your finances, or literally handle that conversation.
Literally anything. Success is obedience Number two. The Lord has revealed to me that we are called to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, and all of our mind. And we're called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. So you are not loving your neighbor well if you are not loving yourself well.
And how [00:06:00] do you love yourself more? You receive love from God. You have deeper revelations of who he is. Because if you understand who he is, you understand how you fit into the story and fit into the picture, and how you are grafted into his family, and when you are saved, now you are a child of God never to be separated, always protected, you start to receive yourself as Christ has received you. When the Lord renews your mind and you go through sanctification, you see yourself more as God sees you, and then you're able to receive your neighbor as Christ has received you. Number three, we're called to rest in the Lord. And I've heard it said that resting in the Lord is not passivity.
It doesn't mean doing nothing. Resting in the Lord is more accurately described as active [00:07:00] dependence. So it is active, but the Lord does not want you striving in your own strength, where now you're burning yourself out, but it is being actively dependent on him. And asking him, Lord, what do you want me to do as far as my next step?
So there are gonna be times where the Lord calls you to take a nap and take a break and maybe even take a season off, from serving or doing whatever you're doing. Yes, we need actual physical rest because
we have a limited capacity as humans, but.
Resting in the Lord also means to be actively dependent on him. Resting in the Lord is not laziness.
Number four, the Lord said to me on a prayer walk , this was recent and I normally power walk through my neighborhood. I got my loop and the Lord said, I want you to slow down. Let me set the pace. And I said, okay, because Jesus, he walked everywhere at three miles an hour.
So the Lord [00:08:00] had me slow down in my prayer walk, and normally I can get through that three mile loop in literally 35 minutes. Like I am power walking y'all. I'm a New Yorker, like I know how to hustle, but the Lord told me to slow down and it took me over an hour to do this loop. And I'm like, okay. And people were passing me, passing me, passing me, and.
I was starting to get frustrated and trying to speed up, like it was really hard for me to walk slowly, but the Lord whispered to me and said, let them pass you. You are not missing where I'm taking you. If they are speeding by you, I have you running your own race. And not only did that release so much pressure for me on this walk.
, But it helped me relieve a lot of the pressure with comparison. I tend to struggle with that, especially with social media. I feel like we all are comparing ourselves and the Lord said to me, let them pass by you because you are not missing what I have for [00:09:00] you. And that was so comforting for me. So that leads into number five, that God's pace is slower than what we would expect. A good indicator for me that I am.
Out of Jesus's easy yoke and not doing things in God's will is when I am rushing and going too fast. I tend to injure myself. When I'm rushing, I tend to forget things. I tend to be short fused and frustrated, and so God's pace is slower. Whenever we expect something and we have a timeline in our heads, it's very rarely God's timeline and things take.
Longer than what we now, some things happen suddenly, but I've heard a lot of preachers and pastors and theologians say that whenever things seem like they've happened, suddenly God's been doing a lot of work behind the scenes and it has been actually a slow burn leading up to what you see as suddenly.
So God's pace is slower and Jesus [00:10:00] walking everywhere at three miles an hour. He was never late and he was always. Present with people, and he was always patient with people. And patience is a fruit of the spirit. So if we are rushing and we are impatient, we likely are operating out of our flesh.
Number six, God cares about the little details of your life. There was a time in my life where I didn't go to God about things 'cause I was like, God's got bigger fish to fry. Right? There are other more important things that the Lord has to do than to be talking with me about the little trivial things in my life, and that's just not true because God has called you by name.
It says in Isaiah 43, God has had more thoughts about you than there are grains of sand. He knows every hair on your head. He has them counted. He knit you together in your mother's womb. He saw you before anyone knew you. And Psalm 37 23 says that he orders the steps of the Godly [00:11:00] and he delights in every detail of their lives.
So he doesn't just care about the little details of your life, of your life, but he delights in them. It lights him up. He gets excited. It warms his heart, the little details of your life. Another revelation that I've had is that Jesus didn't just die to forgive our sins, but he died to restore our relationship, restore our union with him, and that like makes me really emotional.
That God wants to be in friendship with you.
Okay, number seven, Jesus grieves. He cries and he mourns with us. Jesus fully grieved Lazarus [00:12:00] crying out, knowing that two seconds later he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. That is not something to brush by or rush by in scripture. In Psalm 56, verse eight, it says that God collects all of our tears in a bottle.
Our tears are so precious to him and tears and emotions, they are not sinful. That is not weakness. That is embracing your humanity, and that is something that Jesus did. So we also need to be embracing our humanity, and it is okay to grieve. It is okay to cry. It is okay to mourn. We have to feel to heal, and it's important to bring those raw emotions to Jesus so that.
He can mourn with you. Jesus felt every human emotion, so he empathizes and he's the answer to healing. I praise God that we have a God that empathizes, that knows exactly what I'm going [00:13:00] through. And one thing that the Lord revealed to me, this was when, me and my boyfriend, Manny were in premarital counseling.
We finished it up in the fall, and when you're in premarital counseling, you are prepping for marriage and you're talking about your family of origin and a lot of things are coming up and stirring up and there's just been a lot of turmoil in my family over the years. My parents are divorced and. Just a lot.
Just a lot there. , I was feeling very wounded after one of our sessions, and I was really upset about it. I just felt broken. I felt damaged, I felt, I felt wounded, and the Lord whispered to me and said I was wounded too. And I have scars too, and. It made me really appreciate not only what he did for us on the cross, [00:14:00] but it made me appreciate that he kept his scars on his hands and on his feet.
And that revelation has been really helpful for a lot of patients that have stretch marks, that God has scars too. And that does not mean that you're imperfect shows that you have been through something miraculous. And something amazing, and it's okay that the human body has those things and God's light shines through those.
So powerful, so powerful.
Number eight, y'all. My favorite piece of scripture is probably Psalm 23, and I hope that that doesn't come off basic, but I have had some of my most profound encounters with God. When reading Psalm 23, and I just, I keep having deeper and deeper revelations with it. It is, honestly, it is like the whole gospel.
If we could boil the whole gospel, the whole Bible into one [00:15:00] psalm, I really think it would be Psalm 23. It just covers everything. It is really so deep if you sit with it. And so I've read a lot of books on Psalm 23, and you know the verse where it says, surely your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
A better translation of follows me follows is actually pursues. And that changed the game for me, that God doesn't just follow you. His goodness doesn't just follow, it pursues you. There's just a different intention, a different energy there, a deeper love there that he pursues you. And I am so grateful every day that the Lord did not give up his pursuit of me because I wouldn't be where I am.
You would not be where you are if the Lord. Stopped pursuing you, so be grateful for that, that he doesn't just follow you, but he [00:16:00] pursues you. Oh, I love Jesus. Number nine, God does not look at your outward appearance, but he looks at your heart. This is something that is at the heart of this podcast and we talk about First Samuel 16, seven.
So often, and one thing that I heard a preacher. Speak on recently when he was talking about one Samuel 16, seven, and the story of David and him becoming anointed is that David's dad, Jesse, when Samuel came to anoint the king and the Lord said, Hey, someone in Jesse's family is going to be the next king, and please go and anoint him.
Jesse had all of his sons there except for David and Samuel's like, well, none of these. Guys are like, the Lord's not telling me to annoy any, do you have any other sons? And they're like, oh yeah, well we got David Outback, tending to the sheep. Okay, well let's bring him in there. Doesn't look like he would be a warrior and a king, but God doesn't look at your out appearance. He looks at your heart. And David, as we know, was a guy [00:17:00] after God's own heart. And what I heard in the sermon recently is that. Jesse and his other sons, they didn't even care about David enough to have him be there to see one of his other brothers potentially get anointed as king.
They cared about him so little they didn't even care to have him be there to watch. So God does not care about your outward appearance. He cares more about your heart, and that can translate to so many other things in our healthy lifestyle. God doesn't care about your weight. He sees your heart. What is your motivation behind why you do things? Are you doing things to steward your body just to lose weight or are you doing things because you want to glorify and honor God with your body?
Another revelation that the Lord gave me is that so many of us are treating our bodies like a dumping ground, not holy ground. We're treating our bodies like a trash can. Not like a [00:18:00] temple. And that's not permission to go on a super excessive exercise plan in a restrictive diet. No, that is an invitation to listen to the Holy Spirit.
Get in your prayer closet, get with God. Figure out how God wants you specifically to steward your body and be obedient to that because success is obedience and the Lord will continue to work on your heart. So that you are doing things in a way that honors and glorifies him, and that's what he cares about more than your outward appearance.
Number 10. This is something that the Lord revealed to me recently because I. Have felt very responsible for my family's salvation and for them to really be.
Pursuing a relationship with Jesus, and the Lord has told me that I am not responsible for their salvation. That is his job. And I have really had to surrender [00:19:00] that and be very spirit led in the things that I say to them, the conversations that I engage in. And not every conversation with every single family member that I have is an opportunity or an invitation from the Lord to speak truth into them. Sometimes it's just witnessing and being a light and living my life as a follower of Christ, and sometimes just that is enough, and I hope that that is helpful for you too, that you are planting more seeds with the people in your life that aren't saved and don't follow Jesus just by you living your life.
Sometimes more than a direct conversation. We plant the seed, but it's God that waters it, and it's the Holy Spirit that convicts them and lifts the veil over them and takes the scales off their eyes.
That is not my job. And so I've learned that balance in my year of boundaries and navigating being a believer in my family. So I hope that is helpful for y'all too.
Okay. Number 11 is I don't have to strive [00:20:00] for or earn God's love. I operate from it. One of the first small groups that I was a part of, we ran Journey of the Soul \ it is such a good book and it goes through all the stages of your journey with Christ, and I highly recommend that to everyone.
Whether you're new in your faith, you've been walking with the Lord for a while, because each stage is so essential and it's very actionable.
And one thing that it talked about in the book journey of the Soul is that there is a cycle of works and there is a cycle of grace and.
Let me actually grab this book. I have it, I have it right here. And it is, I keep it very close to me because I reference it a lot with clients on sessions. It is so good. Okay, here's the page on Cycle of Works versus Cycle of Grace. So if you are operating from a cycle of works, you start with some sort of expectation.
Maybe there's a lot of pressure on you, it could be a perceived expectation or [00:21:00] pressure on you that you feel like you have to do this so that you can earn love. And so that leads to you achieving and striving in your own strength that leads to. Self-reliant behavior and boosting your ego.
And your ego is driving things and that leaves you feeling empty and the cycle keeps going. So people that achieve a lot of things in their own strength, they may achieve a lot. Boost their ego, but they find that when they hit that milestone, it leaves them feeling empty and not satisfied. So with the Lord, we operate differently.
We operate from a cycle of grace. So we start with acceptance. We accept that the Lord loves us unconditionally. We are his beloved, and you operate from that place because when you know. And you know that you know that you know that you are loved, you are desired. You are [00:22:00] chosen, you are precious and honored in his sight.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made that energizes you. So from acceptance and you really accept and receive God's love that leads to you having an increase in energy and that sparks you to take action and that builds your self-esteem and that leads to good fruit. And the cycle keeps continuing. So you have better fruit, you have more self-esteem, you have greater energy when you operate from that place of acceptance.
And you are just left with emptiness and no fruit when you operate from a place of expectation or earning or striving for the Lord's love. So that was a huge lesson for me and something that I'm still working on teasing out. And I don't know if we ever fully arrive until we get to heaven, right?
But I'm looking forward to doing more of that in my thirties. Number 12,
consistency. [00:23:00] Comes out of a deeper love for God. I get asked all the time, Abby, how do I be consistent with eating well and my routines? How do I be consistent with my exercise routine? And it comes out of a deeper love for God. I have been coaching people for over seven years, and for those of you that have been following my business for a while, and you know that my business started off very weight loss focus, very fitness focus, very much in the think of diet, culture, and praise God for delivering me from that.
And I had clients that would see results, but it wasn't sustainable. So I've always been on the hunt for helping people find a sustainable, healthy lifestyle and rhythms that they can keep up with in the ebbs and flows of life. And intuitive eating, embracing a non-diet approach.
Got. Clients and myself closer. But it wasn't until I came to Christ and fully converted my business to be a faith-based business and invited scripture and Jesus into all of [00:24:00] this, and my approach with clients that people actually started to find consistency. And it all comes back to one Corinthians 10 31.
Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all for the glory of God. Because when you're doing things out of obedience, out of love for God, there's a scripture that even says in John, if you love me then you'll obey my commandments. So the greater love that we have for God,
An, outpouring of that is going to be obedience and consistency, not by force or obligation. Or out of fear that God's not gonna love you or out of earning or striving, grasping, desperate energy. No, no, no. When you're coming from a place of love, a place of heart change, where the Lord has really worked on you, or your motivation is not to change your body or look for other people's approval, but it is coming.
From a place of wanting to steward your body well, to glorify God, that's when things change and unlock. So if you are [00:25:00] not consistent with your habits right now, I would definitely look to see if there's a heart change needed in your motivation to really embody one Corinthians 10 31, and that can unlock a lot of consistency for you.
Number 13. I don't have to punish my body, but Jesus paid the full price. I have found this extremely healing, and I know clients have too. We have a whole episode on it that we did a couple weeks ago, right before Easter, and I used to work out to punish my body for how I ate yesterday and the day before.
He really revealed to me in my twenties, wow, I don't have to punish myself.
And if you are punishing your body, you're not taking full confidence in what Jesus did for you on the cross. So it's really, really important that we do take confidence in the cross and we are not punishing ourselves, but we receive God's love and mercy and the full extent of what [00:26:00] Jesus did for us on the cross.
Number 14, the world glorifies hustling, but rest is what the Lord declared to be. Holy. And I got that from Christine Cain and that. Whew. That really, really stuck out to me.
That rest is not bad. Rest is holy. And like I said before in number three, rest is not passivity, is active dependence on the Lord. So I think it's important to remember that, taking a Sabbath is one of the 10 Commandments, right? It's the fourth commandment. And it's something to take seriously in the fact that God modeled rest.
He didn't need to rest, but he modeled it for us. He was demonstrating the rhythms that we need because we have unlimited human capacity. That's God's kindness and that is a gift to us and. If we feel like we have to be working, working, working, constantly striving, and we feel like we can't rest, we likely are operating probably from that cycle of works and not from a cycle of grace.
And [00:27:00] we are being too self-reliant and not trusting that God can take care of things when we are resting and we are really not honoring our human capacity and our humanness, which is important to do. 'cause God created us with this capacity for a reason, so rest is a gift. Number 15, the Lord said to me, this is just the beginning and there is always more of God and it's just, it blows me away to think about, wow, like the profound counters that I have had with him and these moments and these revelations, how amazing that has been. And it just gets better. Like this is just the beginning that makes me so excited so I just can't wait for my thirties and to keep diving deeper with the Lord and keep having deeper revelations of who he is and his love for me.
Because it's just the beginning and it is just the beginning for you two. Number 16, the scripture apart from me, you can do nothing. [00:28:00] Or Jesus is the true vine and we are the branches, that has helped me so much to get out of my striving behavior, thinking that it's because of me my hard work that I've seen this success and this change and all, all of the things, but the Lord has been reminding me, no, no, no. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, and everything is from him I can personally do nothing, but it is by God's grace and by his spirit that I'm able to do what I do and I'm, I'm grateful for how he's graced me, and I'm grateful for how he has worked through me.
Number 17, how God speaks to me. That's, that's what I put for 17 and I really have learned how he speaks to me and that is so important. And John 10 27 says.
My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow [00:29:00] me.
The more that you spend time with someone, the more that you recognize their voice, and I've learned how God speaks to me because we've spent, time together, and I'm just looking forward to more time and getting to know him even better. And I feel like I'm just scratching the surface, but that has served me so well in decision making and in discernment and.
\ Every aspect of my life. Because if I know how God speaks to me, then I know how to discern his voice versus the enemy's voice, versus the world's voice. And that helps me to have greater obedience because I know, Ooh, I can trust that this is from the Lord. This sounds like him.
This aligns with his word. This aligns with his character. , And that's how he normally speaks to me. So that helps with obedience and staying in God's will by learning how he speaks to me. And how do you learn how God speaks to you, increasing your awareness of his presence by spending more time with him?
Number 18,
nothing can separate you from God's [00:30:00] love. You are his baby girl. You are his beloved. And that revelation and just deeper revelations of his love have been transformative for me. That no one, me especially, is too far gone for God, and that he embraces us in our brokenness, in our sin, and that we are not too far gone for God, and that his love covers a multitude of sins.
His mercies are new every day. There's power in the blood and we are washed clean white as snow, and his word is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And it applies to us even though it was written so many thousands of years ago. . Last two 19,
God is within you. And God is healing you. I talked about this in our gut health episode early on in season one, and I talked about my journey with my gut health and the profound encounter that [00:31:00] I had with Psalm 46, but that was a huge revelation for me, that it wasn't me healing myself and my relationship with food and my gut health with supplements and doctors, and the diet that I was on and diets is trying so many different things to try and heal my gut.
But God gave me that revelation in Psalm 46, that he is within me, that he is healing me and I need to be still and know that he is God. Definitely go back and listen to that gut health episode, especially if you have gut health issues. 'cause whew, I think that scripture will really speak to you too, . And then lastly, number 20, Emmanuel God is with us always.
And one thing that I learned that my spiritual director pointed out to me is that in the Old Testament, the bread that was made in the Jewish tradition, it was called the bread of the presence and then Jesus says, I am the bread of life.
[00:32:00] And we experience that when we take communion, do this in remembrance of me. There's so much there. So when we take communion we have God dwelling within us. His presence is within us. And that revelation, whew, has helped me so much, and I've had very profound communion experiences and growing up Catholic and going through my first holy communion, I always knew that the Eucharist and communion was special, but I didn't start having deep revelations with it until.
The last couple years when I was saved and wow, that God not only died for the forgiveness of our sins, but he died , to restore our union and to be in friendship with us. And that distinction, I think is, so helpful. And that's a prayer that I, I pray a lot when I get distracted or off my routines as Lord, please restore our union.
And that is a promise from God. Jesus said, I will be one with you as I am [00:33:00] one with the Father. We are invited into that union. So salvation is yes, eternal life, but it is also an invitation into the same relationship that Jesus has with God, that oneness, that ness. Union, common union, communion.
Well, let me know. Please dam me on Instagram. Let me know which one of these 20. Stuck out to you or which ones if multiple stuck out to you and would love to hear what the Lord is revealing to you in this season and how he's speaking to you.
Thank you for listening and I will see y'all next week for our next irregularly scheduled episode. Love y'all.
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