The Bridge Churches Podcast

Some setbacks are temporary. Eventually things heal. The opportunity comes. The season changes. Life starts moving again. But some things change life permanently. Sometimes there is no going back to the way things were. The relationship is over. The opportunity is gone. The diagnosis changes the future. The dream you built your life around simply isn’t going to happen. At some point, you have to stop asking, “How do I get back to where I was?” and start asking a much harder question: “How do I move forward from here?”. In the final part of PIVOT, we’ll talk about what it means to grieve what you’ve lost without losing yourself with it, and how to discover that your purpose can survive even when your plans don’t.

There are some things in life we can accept without understanding. And then there are the things that keep us awake at night. Why did this happen? Why now? Why me? Why didn’t God stop it? Why didn’t He answer the prayer? Why would God allow something that hurts this much? Sometimes the hardest part of an unexpected change isn’t what happened - it’s trying to reconcile what happened with what we believe about God. In Part 3 of PIVOT, we’ll talk honestly about what to do when God doesn’t make sense, what to do with the questions that don’t have easy answers, and whether it’s possible to keep trusting God when we still don’t understand Him.

Most of us are pretty good at fixing things. When something isn’t working, we work harder, make a call, have a conversation, find another option, or figure out a way forward. But what happens when there’s nothing you can do? You can’t speed up the healing. You can’t make someone change. You can’t force the door to open. You can’t manufacture the answer. You can’t fast-forward through the waiting. You’re just… stuck. And sometimes waiting for your circumstances to change begins changing something in you. In Part 2 of PIVOT, we’ll talk about what to do when there’s nothing you can do and how to keep a season you can’t control from controlling the person you become.

We all have an idea of how life is supposed to go. The career takes off. The relationship works out. The family stays healthy. The opportunity comes through. The timeline unfolds more or less the way we imagined. Until it doesn’t... Sometimes life changes gradually. Other times, one phone call, one conversation, one diagnosis, one decision, or one unexpected moment changes everything. Suddenly, the future you planned isn’t the future in front of you. So what do you do when the plan changes and you didn’t get a vote? In, Part 1 of PIVOT, we’ll talk about how to navigate the disorientation of an unexpected change and discover why a change in your plans doesn’t mean God has changed His.

Most of life is ordinary. We sleep, work, drive, make dinner, run errands, have conversations, and move through days that rarely feel significant. And yet, we often expect God to show up in the extraordinary: the breakthrough, the miracle, the moment we cannot explain. But what if God is already present and speaking in the ordinary moments we are so quick to overlook? Elijah’s encounter with God at Horeb reminds us that God does not always show up the way we expect. And if we only learn to recognize him in the extraordinary, we may miss him in the ordinary.

What if the thing standing between you and what God is calling you to isn't fear, isn't failure, and isn't a lack of faith? What if it's a spreadsheet? What if it's the research you haven't finished yet, the options you're still weighing, the details that aren't quite clear enough to commit? Most of us don't think of planning as a problem. And most of the time, it isn't - but there's a version of needing the plan that stops being wisdom and starts being something else entirely.

In The Princess Diaries, Mia discovers she's the heir to the throne, but spends most of the movie trying to prove she's worthy of the crown. Many of us approach our faith the same way, believing we have to earn God's love and approval. But what if we've had it backwards all along? Join us as we discover what Scripture says about our identity as sons and daughters of God, and why His grace, not our performance, is what qualifies us.

We all have Gremlins. Temptations and things that we keep in the dark. Things we think are small, harmless, and controllable. So we feel… reasonable. “I’ll deal with it eventually”. “It’s not hurting anyone”. The thing is, the more we become reasonable, the more we become comfortable, and comfort feeds the Gremlins. Don’t feed the Gremlins…