Welcome & Introduction

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Hey friends, Mandy here. I'm back on the Be the Brave Ones podcast, and I'm so glad that you are here. Whether you are a young middle school girl trying to figure out her faith or a young adult ministry leader who found us on the Bible lab or a mama who wants to grow and connect with your daughter and her friends and pour into them, whatever it is, whatever uh reason you came or by whatever means you came, I'm so glad you're here. And my hope and prayer is that you are gonna find this time meaningful. Our heart at Brave Girls Gathers, when you come into our content, that you leave better than when you arrived. And that's my hope for me sitting in this seat right now, that even myself, as I share these things with you, that I'm gonna leave better than when I arrived. If you're new to this ministry, we want you to know that we are all about gathering, growing, and going. We gather together with our sisters in Christ, older, younger. We build community, we grow in community because that's God's design for us. We grow in Christ. And so we use content that helps us to do that. And there's all kinds of great content out there. Maybe you can even come up with some of your own content, but we don't want to leave you without good resources. So you can go to brave girlsgather.com where you can find conversation cards and Bible studies and discipleship tools. There's a lot there that you can use. And then finally, we don't just want to gather and grow, but we want to go. We want to go and make disciples. We want to take that leadership step where we are becoming the discipler. If we're being discipled, we don't just want good information, but we want to experience transformation that results in multiplication. But before we go a minute further, I want to pray for us. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for my sister who's here with me today. Father, I pray that we would not just sit under good information, but that you would show up and be in our midst, whether it's a girl in her bedroom or a woman in her car or a young woman on the treadmill, wherever that sister is right now, Father, would you meet her there? Would you teach her? Would you show her? Would you transform her? Would you transform me? Because we are living in crazy times and we need to be transformed, to walk courageously in our lives and in our faith. And it's all for your glory. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Another very important aspect of our ministry and why we exist and why we have this podcast is we believe in the power of intergenerational relationships. So if you go into this book, the Bible, if you're listening and you can't see the Bible, you're gonna find all kinds of relationships that matter and are super impactful. And a good amount of them are intergenerational. You have relationships like Moses and Joshua, Ruth and Naomi, Paul and Timothy. And these were people who were running hard and fast after the purposes of God. And they were being strengthened through these special kinds of relationships. If you know me, if you've been following for any amount of time, you know that these relationships are critical in my life. And I had someone in my life who I referred to as my spiritual mama. Her name was Grace. And last year in 2025, she went to be with Jesus. It's part of the decision to put the ministry on hold, walking with her through a terminal cancer diagnosis. And what a gift for God to provide me that opportunity to walk with her, but what a gift to have had her in my life for the past 18 plus years. And I feel her absence. Sometimes you can't recognize how much something means to you or the impact that it's having on your life until it's gone. And I'm letting you know there is a gap that needs to be filled. And I have been reaching out still to the more mature believers in my life. I was on a phone call this morning, those women who've walked more seasons, who've been with Jesus longer, who know things that I do not yet know, who can strengthen me and encourage me. And we're always at Be the Brave Ones podcast and Brave Girls Gather. We're always gonna encourage you in directions that lead you to those kinds of conversations. So keep coming back because we're gonna we're gonna encourage you and we're gonna give you what you need to help see those relationships come to life. So in this series, we are walking through Matthew chapter five. This is the first chapter in Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount. It's like his most famous sermon that he has. And we're just walking through the first chapter, but we want you to know there's three, there's three chapters. So when you get to the end of this, whether you're just joining us on the podcast or you actually are doing the Bible study, you can download it for free on our website. You can find it on the Bible app. We want to encourage you that once you're done, that you don't stop there, but that you gather with the girls in your life and you read chapter six and chapter seven together. Okay, so as we look at chapter five, we are examining what does it mean to live a blessed life? What is Jesus' definition? Because we all have our definitions of what it means to live a blessed life. And maybe you've even encountered this content before. You're like, Mandy, I know the Bible study answers. I want to encourage you to come with a fresh heart, hands open, heart open, mind open, saying, Jesus, teach me. I want to know something new because I'm always coming back to the word and learning something new. And that's what God wants for us. He wants us, He wants us to grow. He wants to teach us something new. But maybe for you, it's like when you think about being blessed, it's like, you know, making the team or landing the role or getting the job or just experiencing healing, personal healing, healing in your family. Those are all good things. But I want you to know that Jesus has some much deeper ideas of what it means to be blessed. And there's some things in our heart and mind that he wants to flip upside down for our good and his glory. So let's take a look and with open hearts and open minds to what he wants to show us. I always am a fan and a proponent of, and I'm always gonna try to lean towards asking you to go back in scripture before you go to where we are in scripture. And that's really important in this section of scripture because if we go back to Matthew 4, we see the start of Jesus' ministry. And right prior to the start of his ministry, he's in the wilderness and he's fasting for 40 days, and he's tempted by the enemy, and he overcomes the temptation. And then it says that his his ministry launches. If you look at verse 17 in chapter 4, Jesus' ministry launches with these words repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And those words at hand mean present here with you right now. And if you if we were to move forward to the book of Luke, chapter 17, and we look at verses 20 and 21, we see the Pharisees, those were the religious leaders of the day. They were the elite religious leaders, and they're asking Jesus the question, and they're saying, When is the kingdom of heaven gonna come? And his answer to them is very intriguing. He said, It is not gonna come in ways that are observable. What he's saying is, is it's not coming in ways that you can see with your physical eyes. You see, the kingdom of heaven is more real than this couch I'm sitting on, but it is not observable with our human eyes. We need spiritual eyes to see it. And Jesus, in this section of scripture, is gonna teach us how do we develop those spiritual eyes? How do we build our spiritual home? You see, I'm in a home right now, and this home has all kinds of things in it, right? And we might even have our own ideas of what makes a home beautiful and what makes a home good. Jesus is telling us in the Sermon on the Mount, he's teaching us how to make a beautiful spiritual home that is gonna sustain us, that is gonna stand firm in all circumstances that we encounter. So I want to encourage you again to prepare your heart and get ready. And before we end all of our conversations, I want to give us a moment to connect with God. So let's do that now and let's start with a declaration. And I want you to just, wherever you are, if you can, repeat this declaration with me. Jesus, I want to know the way of your kingdom. Teach me what is it that you want me to know even right now before I take another step forward in this series? Take just thirty seconds and allow me to speak to us. Okay, I don't know what he ministered to your heart, but I pray he ministered something. And if you haven't yet heard what that is, I want to just encourage you to continue to spend more time with him. And at the close of all of our conversations, we're always gonna encourage you to connect with others, going back to those intergenerational relationships and building that strong sisterhood around you. If something in today's conversation stood out to you, if there's something like stirring in your heart right now, I want to encourage you to reach out and share it with somebody. And if you are going at this alone, if you're like, hey, I'm just tuning into the podcast, or hey, I just found this on the Bible app and I'm going at this alone, I want to encourage you to prayerfully consider not doing that and to get at least one sister who will go through this with you. Even more, grab a group of girls. If you're a woman, grab the girls in your life. If you're a girl, grab the girls in your life and invite a more mature believer to join you and go through this content together, do the Bible study together and tune into the podcast together and have meaningful conversations about it. So this is episode one. I'm inviting you back for episode two. I'll be here. I hope you will be also. And in the meantime, I want to encourage you to gather, grow together in Christ, and go make disciples.