Season 1 Q&A // S01E14 (EPISODE 14)
We’ve wrapped up Season One with a Q&A to answer personal and spiritual (usually both) questions from all of you! Thank you to everyone who’s been with us throughout this season! We’ve been blessed beyond measure as we’ve dug deeper into God’s Word to deliver encouraging and challenging Godly thought to you all.
Season Two is already in the works, and our first full episode of the Summer Season drops June 24th, 2020! Next week, join us for a shorter, reflection episode that helps position us for what we’ll focus on over the next batch!
Til next time!
QUESTIONS WE TOUCH ON IN THIS EPISODE:
VERSES FROM SEASON 1 Q & A
Matthew 16:23, Luke 22:31-32, Acts 5:3, Romans 8:28, John 2:30-35, Ephesians 2:1-6,
QUOTES FROM SEASON 1 Q & A
“Parenting Calia has taught me so much about how God loves us and it’s allowed me to give more grace to myself because I’m very hard on myself.”
Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S01E14 (EPISODE 14)
“I’ve gotta be less. I’ve gotta be humble. I don’t serve, you know, I serve people, but I’m serving God. And then through that serving it’s, it’s a natural flow of being able to serve people. And that’s what keeps me grounded out of judgments or when the judgments come in, I knock them down with who am I? Because God has so much more, he must be more so.”
Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S01E14 (EPISODE 14)
Transcript
Shea: I just want to say thank you to everyone who listens, who comes on and tells us, you know, Hey man, I listened the other day. It’s really cool, man. I got something out of it. I gleaned something or just said they enjoyed it. You know, there’s a lot of people out there who just need understanding. You know, I remember when I first came to Christ, it was, it was like, wait, sanctification, justification, glorification. But you know, as you learn over time, it comes around.
Michelle: Yeah, that’s cool. I like the idea of having just a down to earth podcast. That’s still remembers to incorporate the word the whole time without, like you said, getting so high up there that you have to have been in the faith a long time before you’re going to understand what we’re talking about, right? Yeah.
Michelle: So thank you to all of the people who submitted questions we have at first, we were scared because we were like, we have no questions. Then we got a lot of questions. What we’re going to do, how this is going to work. We’re going to answer all the questions here. If you are tuning in, you are watching something that will never be able to be watched again, because it won’t be up later. This is like just a moment with the pantry tribe. There might be some questions that don’t make it into the final cut for the podcast episode. So we’re going to go ahead and jump right in. It’s actually a combination of questions that we got from several people. Several people want to know how we met. And did we date or was it kinda like courting? And then did we know that we were, who God meant for one another?
Shea: Actually the way we met was, through church and it wasn’t like we saw each other and it was like, Oh, that’s it. There was some things that were going on. And so basically the way we learned each other was through Bible study. Yeah. We kind of said, Hey, well, dang, we understand one another. I wooed her. I just wanted that. Wasn’t the definition of courting. I wooed her anyways. So we, we kind of sat down and we, I guess, courting because it was planned, right. It was like, you know what, if we’re going to move forward in this, where do we want to be at the end of this? We didn’t just say, hell, let’s just check it and see if we like each other. We kind of knew each other. So we just move forward from there.
Michelle: We were done trying things out to just try them out. We really didn’t want to, I don’t want to say waste time, but waste time. We didn’t want to label ourselves a couple. If we weren’t interested in marrying one another.
Shea: Yeah. And if there’s anyone knows my history, I was like, okay, look, it’s either, you know, when we made that decision to date, it was, that was it. There was, there was nothing forward in that.
Michelle: Unless something grievous occurred, we were getting married.
Shea: Does God expect an end date for our grief? How do we relate to others who are grieving parts of their stories? Ie, trauma abuse, core family hurts betrayals, et cetera.
Michelle: When you look at all of the words, when God hears us, he hears all of our thoughts, right? He feels everything that we’re feeling. He knows who he made and he knows what we’re going to experience before we experience it. So he wants the best for us. He wants us to have that eternal kingdom mindset. He wants us to know and prioritize the truth above all things. And sometimes we are grieving because of worldly things. We’ve put too much hope in. And it’s not that he doesn’t understand that he doesn’t honor that it’s, that he wants to guide us through to that next step. That next phase, where it becomes a testimony he’s wants to see. He’s the one who will give it an end date if we are walking with him. So it reminds me of the story of David. When he and Beth Shiva have a baby together, their first child and the child passes away.
Michelle: And he was in such utter despair and grief and fasting while the baby was still alive. But when it passed on, he got up, he took a bath, he put on lotion and he went to the temple to praise the Lord. And can we all do that every single time? No, but why was he able to do all of that? Everybody was astounded and it was because of the Lord. So when we have the Lord, there can be a definitive end date for our grief. And he’s not sitting there, like you’re taking too long to get over this. He’s sitting there like come to me and I will walk you through the storm.
Shea: Yeah. That’s a lot of it is that faithfulness in him, like trusting him. You said at the beginning of Psalm 34:18, the Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. I said it perfectly. I was like, Oh, she said it was beautiful. It was beautiful. All my verses disappeared. So I might have to record that in later. So it’s all good.
Michelle: So the next question comes from Jasmine M who wants to know, how did you come to the faith?
Shea: I think I’m gonna let you answer up front on that. Mine was, I mean, Hey, I came in, I didn’t have an upbringing, in necessarily Christianity at the beginning, but it’s kind of funny. My parents divorced and then all of a sudden it’s like, they end up in church. And so like, here I am. I’m like, okay, well, and so I was the faith then, but yeah. And so I came into there, but really came into it later in life.
Michelle; Yall he is truncating this story so much. He’s like, it’s no big deal. So to truncate mine equally as much. So I grew up in a home. I had little children’s Bibles, but we didn’t go to church. I think part of it was not wanting to go to the wrong church. And part of it was, they would have picked different right churches. So what they did right is God was used in the house. Prayer was used in the house, you know, we had nativity scene. So I was exposed to the story to a degree, but I didn’t understand who Jesus was until college. Well, actually it was right after college. I realized the world was going downhill. And the media that I love to consume was getting darker and darker to the point where I wasn’t sitting comfy in it anymore. So I started looking into why and ended up reading the book of revelation, go figure. That would be the book that I read first, the ending. And so, so I read the book of revelation. I saw God’s grace in it. I realized what Jesus had died for and why it mattered. And so I came to Christ on my sofa with the laptop open with the Lord.
Shea: She comes to faith through revelation. I’m just going to put it out there. So how do I keep in tune with the Holy spirit in my busy day to day? If you guys know my work environment, sometimes I feel so bombarded, but I’m like, okay, Lord, take this Lord, take this. So breath, prayers, I’m staying in the word. Because when you’re asking a question, when you’re seeking answers, it’s not always this voice that pops out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s through something you’re reading or a devotion. So, if you go to thirtyone25.com, Michelle wrote something, why do I keep backsliding? Right. And there’s an arrow and it has these big, these big loops big, but then he goes to these little wiggles and that’s really where you want to be. We are in constant communication.
Michelle: And on that note, the second half kind of related questions is from Tabitha saying, what are some tips and tricks of balancing the chaos of parenting with staying committed in your community, your relationship with each other and your pursuit of truth. And so to add in, I’ve really made it to be intentional, to guard my I and irrigates and be very selective with what I let in, in my busy day. So making a conscious effort to listen to more sermons and worship music focused on what I can actually accomplish in a day, you know, making sure I have a lot of Bible verse Instagram accounts that I’m following so that I get the verses that way. And we’re going to touch on this in another question later that I read at least a little bit of the Bible every single day, making sure that that is like the first priority and knowing if God wants to be my first priority, he’s going to honor that and help me carry on with watching our daughter and being your wife and being an entrepreneur. You know, he’s not going to say, Oh, well, you didn’t put them first. So they’re not, they’re just going to fall apart on you. Instead, knowing that I’m putting him first, he’s going to help me with what that costs me. Time-wise elsewhere. All right. This one comes from Kyler. What are some ways to reach out and spread the word of Christ while in quarantine
Shea: Podcast? No, no. You know, you got to share, God called us to be disciples. God called us to share the word of God. God called us to share the gospel. We need to find ways to do that. Whether it’s reaching out to your friend and say, Hey, man, I just love you. I’m not saying that you have to throw a Bible verses someone all the time, but you got to shine the light. You gotta be that light. Right? And so there’s name it, Instagram, texting, phone calls. And so man, use that talent, use that talent to put the word out there that God is good. That God is love that God will lift you up.
Michelle: Right. Right. Some people think they’re not a creative, so they don’t know how to put it out. Well, borrow somebody else’s I see a lot of people do a great job with that, but also practice that boldness while we’re all safely inside and go live and share something, you know? Okay. So the next question comes from Alicia. It says, you mentioned that you read scriptures together each year. I’d love to know how you do that. And since you sometimes read different versions, do you read separately and then come back together at some point each day to talk about it? I know that we have always chosen the same Bible study in the YouVersion Bible out called as it happened. So the cool thing about that is it takes you through the whole Bible, but it orders the Bible chronologically, Proverbs and Psalms are kind of shuffled in there with first and second Kings and the Chronicles. So sometimes he’ll read it in one version. I’ll read it in another. I like NLT a lot. I read it differently every year. Yeah. He’s done amplified, New King James, NLT, ESV, I think one year when I get better and more proficient, I’ll go King James, we’ll see,
Michelle: Oh, one year Hebrew and Greek. But, but yeah, to be honest, there’s times where I give a high, like right now I’m 15 days behind. But one thing that I heard two years ago, actually, when I was just beating myself up over, it was, you know, if you’re behind it’s okay. Just keep reading because God’s going to honor the fact that you want to, and that you’re trying, and it’s going to speak to you the same. Like I’ve actually been behind before. And then it speaks to me better than if I had been on time. Cause you know, I’m 15 days behind there, but it fits the season I’m in and that works. But I make sure that I read the Bible everyday. Even if I’m not in that structured way. But you know, the podcast helps us talk about it. I would say at least 50% of our conversations are about the Bible.
Shea: I started memeing. I’m reading and I’m like, oh, here’s a picture. I want this. And she puts it together for me. She throws my name at the bottom humility.
Michelle: That’s how we do it. And it’s not necessarily like we’ve set aside a certain time to talk about it. We’ve just gotten, we met over the fact we just nerd out over the Bible.
Shea: It’s the lightning round. Except that song was like a slow lightning round, but it’s okay. So the lightning round is courtesy of our awesome friend D White. I think about a dozen questions and some are the kind that we can answer really quick. We’re each allowed to add an explanation to one of them. Yes. Okay. Strangest thing you’ve both eaten.
Shea: Monkey brain
Michelle: Guacamole with peas.
Michelle: Dream destination, vacation spot
Shea: Patagonia.
Michelle: Northern Canada. Like really North, so North that the mountains are yellow and there’s like reindeer. Alright. Favorite quality about each other?
Shea: I said heart because you’re beautiful. Thanks though.
Michelle: I said your heart. Cause we’re just cheese balls. But on the day of our wedding, he spotted on his way through the grass, he sees a frog and he’s like, someone’s going to step on this frog and if this frog dies on our wedding day, Michelle’s going to be so sad. And so he like he’s walking and all of a sudden I see him running back and I’m like ducking behind the house so that he can’t see me. He grabs up this frog and then he runs it to the Lake or to the pond and he throws the frog in. And so he saved a frog’s life on our wedding day. And that’s just like the least of all the examples of how awesome he is.
Michelle: So anyway, give up music or TV for a month?
Both: TV
Michelle: a word or phrase people use that you just can’t stand. There’s so many, I can’t stand.
Both: I know.
Michelle: I song that can always make you dance. *Danza Kuduro plays” I know it ain’t Holy y’all but
Shea: I mean I don’t really listen to anything anymore. But this Danny Gokey song.
Michelle: Childhood show you want to see come back
Shea: A team, with the old cast. It can’t be a new cast.
Michelle: So weird on Disney channel.
Michelle: If you and Shea won $10,000, what would you do?
Shea: Pay bills. Yeah. Pretty much pay off debt so that we can give. Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of funny. Don’t take that light. We’re trying to be out there
Michelle: But it’s not like if I won a million it’s 10,000. I would like to pay bills. Cause I’m an adult now
Shea: I want to knock out debt.There are so many people that are in need and we really work that way. So anyways.
Michelle: Yeah. All right. Final lightning round question. What do you see yourself doing after retirement?
Shea: If y’all didn’t know she’s 18 years younger. So I’m hoping that the entrepreneur that is sitting across from me, combined with my retirement from the military will give us a sustainment that I can go into full time ministry.
Michelle: Yeah. So it’s not like I have any pressure to succeed or anything. So yeah, no, I know the Lord is good. So me all the things that I can’t do right now, like stay up past 9:30, thanks to Shea, travel, drink, yummy things like matcha all day by a dog and let it live inside and sit on things because Shea says we have to have a non shedding dog for it to do that. So I’m waiting. I’m just waiting guys. That’s like the reason that’s like what? I term a dog, there will be non shedding because retirement doesn’t mean I die. I know, but I probably just will wait. And then I’ll fold with a dog. I’ll get a dog and stay up past 9:30. I have to cling to those things or I’ll get sad. I know that was an explanation.
Shea: Okay. So ho how has parenting changed your walk with God in general,
Michelle: Parenting Calia has taught me so much about how God loves us and it’s allowed me to give more grace to myself because I’m very hard on myself. Shay knows I’ve sat there, you know, ugly, crying for not defrosting the chicken on time. And he did nothing. He said nothing. I just didn’t do it on time and felt like a failure fast forward. And now having Kaliyah and the grace, I give her and I’m imperfect, right? It astounds me. And I finally understand a little better how easy it is for God to forgive us how much he loves us. And then I also see how I can best be his daughter by how Calia behaves with me. Some of the examples have been when Calia naps or something. And she just wants some little part of her. Like when she’s eating dinner, she always wants to put her foot on my leg.
Michelle:She always, when she’s just sitting there, she wants a little part of her touching you. And that reminds me of how, no matter what I’m doing, I should always want a little bit of me touching him. And then, you know, if she falls, sometimes I can’t panic and freak out. I have to let her do it. And I can’t just pick her up and make everything right. I have to show her how to get up on her own. And that helps me in situations when life’s hard and I don’t know what to do. And you’re tempted to say, God, why God, why, why aren’t you delivering me out of this? Why am I not being snatched up? Like, enoch why are you making a way through the sea for me? You know? But it’s because he wants to strengthen us, build us stronger in our faith and walk us with and teach us how to do it. You know? And it’s not always, he’s just going to snatch you up makeup, everything. Right. Instantly. So, I mean, those are just some of the examples, but it’s been a game changer.
Shea: The girl has it in her too. I remember when she was opening the little drawer. She has a little game controller in there and a fake one because she wants to play with my Xbox. Remember what I have placed. So we put a fake one in there so that she’s like, Oh, I got the real one. And she pulls it open just like about an inch as she gets her hands, she can’t get out. And she’s like, she starts throwing this fit. And then she collapses on the ground and goes, and I just looked. I said, sweetie, just get up, just get up, open the drawer just a little bit more. And she was like, she gets up as she opens a little bit more, takes out her game controller and she’s happy, but that’s like, God being there, it’s like that touch goes back to the spiritual, how do I stay connected spiritually? Right. I’m looking for that touch. Right. I’m looking for that, that, that together, that connectedness.
Michelle: So the next question, what is your quiet time? Like
Shea: Who was that for? Oh, that’s for me, honestly, it’s fit in, in different places now. The bathroom or the bathroom at work during lunch. So if y’all didn’t know, I am in Bible college. I take classes, I run a life group. I also work with a group in Kenya, JG ministries. What else do I do? I just keep adding to that. It used to be, I’d get up in the morning. I’d wake up at 4:30. I’d get up. I’d have a couple hours to do my, you know, my devotion and then I would study, Calia came along. She gets up now. So I kind of just fit it in. My quiet time is where I can find it and it’s OK. So some of my papers are written at work at lunch. but what do I do? Here’s, here’s my quiet time. How I get away from people’s earbuds, because that gets me away from the noise and gets me away from distraction. And that way I can focus
Michelle: On that note with all those things you just listed, how do you know what God is calling you to do when it’s not like a physical voice?
Shea: Oh, even in the word, I like what Michelle said. She could be 15 days behind sometimes or sometimes she’s right on time with her apps. But she said it he’s right on time. And so he speaks, he comes clearly. I’m not saying that it’s a voice all the time, but let me tell you, sometimes it’s a feeling I get drawn to somewhere. I get drawn to a verse. I get a thought in my head that says, look into this. And so it’s not necessarily a physical voice of someone say yooo, hello. Although sometimes I do feel like it, like it’s a over here, come back. And I’m like, oh yeah, thanks man. But a lot of times it’s just because I am being open to his word, open to him and constantly like seeking and saying, hey, come, please talk to me.
Michelle: Right. Sometimes for me it’s I hear something that I don’t necessarily want to hear. Cause it’s really hard. And that tells me because it one, it’s not sin. What’s being said, you know, it’s not telling me to go sin, but something like I’m really upset. And in my head, I’m like, you could just get over it. God loves to say that it’s a truth. Right. But it’s always important. Is it a sinful thing then? He’s not telling there there’s no exception to that. Is it, is it aligned with the word it’s safe to try it? You know what I mean? Alright. Is the soul our energy or is it our spirit? What’s the difference between soul and spirit? When we accept Jesus into our hearts and our hearts become the Holy Spirit’s dwelling, what happens to our own spirit?
Shea: First? I just want to say that there are many ideas to this in verses, you know, he cuts you deeper than to his sword of separating the soul and the spirit. That kind of thing, where there is a separation. So it makes me really believe that there’s two, there’s your body, there’s your soul and there’s your spirit. I’m gonna leave it right there. Cause I think at that would need a deeper understanding. So I’m going to jump to the last question because I think for time, otherwise it’s going to be us really hammering this out in a podcast. Here we go. When we accept Jesus in our hearts and our hearts become the Holy spirit dwelling, what happens to our own spirit? You become alive, plain and simple. You are dead to the, to the world. You received Jesus Christ. Now you’re alive in Christ.
Shea: Your spirit becomes alive. It’s kind of cool. Like in Ephesians 2:1-6, before Christ, we walked according to the world’s ways. And after the principalities air, the spirit of Satan, that’s what we walked after before Christ. I like how in, in that same verse it says sons of right.I didn’t read the whole verse out. Look, I’m challenging you out. Here you go. Is God speaking, go out and read the verse. I’m gonna say it again. Ephesians 2:1-6. Sons of is a Hebrew way of saying those characterized by thus the sons of disobedience or people who disobey, whether Christians or non-Christians. You can look at this in Matthew 16:23, Luke 22:31-32, Acts 5:3. When I look at this, I say, okay, so we’re alive. And that people think like, Oh, I’m good.
Shea: You know, I didn’t, I’m never influenced wrong, but your spirit is secure. Your spirit is, is good. Right? It’s all of the other influences. Soul is psyche. So that means that there’s movement there. There’s thinking there’s, there’s the freewill in there, you know? And your flesh is your flesh. I mean, it’s, it’s like we were drawn. It’s our body. It’s our, it’s our being, when we receive Jesus Christ, that spirit that was dead, that was completely influenced by the, by the world with no defense, with nothing to give right or to protect. Now we have the Holy spirit, our spirit has been brought alive. We are now protected. There’s nothing that can go get against us. Right. He has always, for us, God has never against us. He protects us. He stands in front of us or behind us. And so when we look at that question, it’s like, what happened? We become a lie. Alright,
Michelle: What’s the funniest thing you’ve done. So
Michelle: Because we don’t have anything that we really sit and think. I was like, we’re both kind of funny all the time, instead of really funny sometimes. So remembering what has made us laugh is really hard. So I was sitting there and I was like, okay, well this one, everyone else will find funny. So on our second honeymoon, right? Cause our first honeymoon was right after the wedding, just a few hours away. Second honeymoon was the one that everyone helped pay for to Nova Scotia. Not a lot of people up in Nova Scotia, beaches, everywhere. We had a rental car. It was like a SUV or whatever, decent size. And so we realized there’s not a lot of people and there’s not like we could have a part of the beach all to ourselves. We could have like a romantic evening on the beach. So, and you can drive your car right up to the beach in certain places. So we found a little off, cut, and drove down. It opened up the back so that we could hear the waves coming in the romance. And like about five minutes of having the back of that thing open.
Michelle: And I’m like swatting thinking, it’s like one annoying mosquito. And then Shay says, no, there’s another one. And then all of a sudden something bites me and I’m like, okay, wait. And so we turned the light on and the whole car is just swarmed with mosquitoes
Shea: And we’re like romantic time over.
Michelle: So pretty much we were getting a blood transfusion instead. And so we quickly wrapped all that up and open the windows, drove really fast to try and get them out of the car.But, Malika is like laughing. So anyway, I hope that made everybody laugh. Cause you know, Oh man. But God was faithful. We didn’t have a lot of mosquito bites. You know, we reacted quick, final question. All right. What is your favorite scripture from the Bible and why?
Shea: Oh and why? Cool. I like that for John 2:30-35. God must increase and I must decrease. I spent a lot of my life in pride, but I mean, you know, the army kind of builds you that way. It’s like, yeah, you can do better. Yeah. You all. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like this constant pump up, man. You’re the best. You’re good. And so you kind of get into that. And when, when, and when you flip scenes and you come back to the church and it’s like a whole different environment, I’ve gotta be less. I’ve gotta be humble. I don’t serve, you know, I serve people, but I’m serving God. And then through that serving it’s, it’s a natural flow of being able to serve people. And that’s what keeps me grounded out of judgments or when the judgments come in, I knock them down with who am I? Because God has so much more, he must be more so
Michelle: That’s good. Mine is probably a quarter million people’s favorite, but mine is, Romans 8:28. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and our court called according to his purpose for them, that verse has gotten me through so many times where I would question, why is this happening? You know, it was this game changer. I think he gave me that verse first because it has hardened me to a lot of things that the devil would love to use to trip me up. That other people expect me to feel some sort of way about. And they’re really surprised, you know? And I think we’re actually going to have a podcast about caring as a Christian because sometimes when you care as a Christian people will look at you and think you don’t care. Cause you’re not freaking out, but freaking out actually doesn’t equate to care. Right. It equates to a lack of faith in that moment. Right. So I think that that is my biggest, best favorite verse.
Shea: That’s a GoTo verse though. I like it. I like it.
Michelle: We said when we started this podcast, if one person listened, that’d be the point of all of this. Right. And then of course being the marketer, I’m like, we have to have more than one, you know? So instantly I’m like taking control back from God. So you know, God, I hear you, but thank you.
Shea: Yes. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Even if you haven’t listened to all of them yet, that’s fine. You know me? I like hugs. So I’m hugging you virtually with Covid right now, but Hey, you know what, here, praise, God, things are changing. We’re getting into a new season, man. We’re going to come out of this because guess what? When we stay in God, we move with God and we get through things.
Michelle: Amen. Remember, season one is over. Season two, starts in two weeks. We roll like that. But remember that you can still rate and review us on iTunes on our Facebook page, on podchaser and visit us at thepantrypodcast.com with your prayer requests, with your comments, with your questions. We love hearing from you. Bye guys.
KEYWORDS: PODCAST, CHRISTIAN PODCAST, SEASON FINALE.