Followed By Mercy
The Followed By Mercy Podcast
Real Grace, Honest Hope
You might notice a new name and a fresh look, but the heart behind this podcast is the same. After years as the World Evangelism Podcast, I sensed God leading me to a deeper, more personal path centered on His relentless mercy and the kind of honest hope that can reach into every hurting place. That’s why this show is now called Followed By Mercy Podcast. The format may shift, and the tone may be a bit more personal, but my mission hasn’t changed: I still believe the world desperately needs to hear the good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ. You are welcome here if you’ve been with me from the beginning or just found us now.
What if God’s love is more personal, stubborn, and relentless than you ever imagined?
Welcome to The Followed By Mercy Podcast, where we get honest about pain, hope, and the kind of grace that finds you right where you are, five days a week. This isn’t about religious performance or church routines. It’s for anyone who’s ever felt worn out, unseen, or unsure if they belong in the story of God’s love. Every conversation is rooted in this reality: God loves you right now, just as you are, and He isn’t giving up on you.
Here’s what you’ll find in every episode:
Experience God’s Relentless Love
Every show starts by reminding you that the Shepherd knows your name, cares about your story, and isn’t offended by your failures or questions. This is personal—it’s about God’s unwavering affection for you.
Find Your Place in His Heart
Once you grasp how fiercely you’re loved, sharing that love with others doesn’t feel forced. It becomes the most natural thing in the world. Real grace overflows.
Prayer That Changes You
We pray together—not just for the world “out there,” but for the battles and hopes you’re carrying right now. These prayers are honest, rooted in Scripture, and meant for hearts that need a gentle touch from the Shepherd.
Discover Your Unique Role
Whether you’re called to go, give, serve, or show kindness in your corner of the world, God’s mercy meets you where you are. You’re not just a bystander. You are His beloved, invited into the story He’s writing.
When life knocks the wind out of you, this is a place to catch your breath. You’ll hear the encouragement that meets you on your hardest days, and your honest questions will be welcomed. No pretending, no heavy-handed advice—just the reminder that your Shepherd is right there with you, walking every step with you, even when you feel like giving up.
Why does this matter? Because some days, it feels like nobody sees you or cares what you’re going through. But the truth is, you have a Shepherd who never takes His eyes off you, lets you slip through the cracks, and never gives up on you. That kind of love can put you back on your feet, and it might be the hope someone else is waiting to see in you, too.
If you’re longing for more than just religious talk—if you want to know you’re not alone and that God’s mercy is following you all the way home, you’re in the right place. Whether you listen in the car, on a walk, or in a quiet moment, let every episode remind you: God’s mercy is after you right now, ready to bring real grace and honest hope.
Subscribe today and join a community to discover what happens when loved people become loving people. The journey’s just beginning, and there’s a place for you here.
Followed By Mercy
You Are Not Your Past: How Grace Redefines Who You Are
Have you ever struggled to see yourself the way God sees you? In this opening episode of our Ephesians series, we explore Paul’s greeting to the believers at Ephesus and uncover life-changing truths about our identity in Christ.
Paul calls ordinary Christians “saints” and “faithful in Christ Jesus,” titles that don’t depend on performance but flow from our union with Christ. Just as a bride takes her husband’s name instantly at marriage, we receive a new name and identity at salvation.
We’ll see how grace always comes before peace, why “being in Christ” means participation rather than mere imitation, and how our faithfulness rests on Christ’s faithfulness in us. If God could transform Saul the persecutor into Paul the apostle and raise up saints in a city filled with idolatry, He can do the same in your life.
This episode will help you rest in who God already says you are instead of striving to become someone you think you should be.
Join us for this journey through Ephesians, and share this episode with a friend who needs encouragement in their identity in Christ.
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Welcome back to Followed by Mercy podcast. I'm extremely excited to have you with me today and I'm launching out into something new. I suppose it might be called our third season. I am opening the book of Ephesians and I'm in chapter one and verses one and two, and I'm excited about the truths.
Austin Gardner:The Bible teaches Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus and to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Grace be to you and peace from God, our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. So, as Ephesians opens, paul writes a greeting, like when you write your letter to your wife and you say dear sweetheart, when you say dear baby, because you're writing her, that is her identity and she'll recognize who she is. And so when you open the book of Ephesians, that's what you're getting. You're getting Paul writing to a group of people in Ephesus and he's saying to them hey guys, hey, saints and faithful in Christ. He says to the faithful in Christ, he says to the saints, the ones that live in Ephesus, he's speaking of very definite people. It's a greeting, but it's a declaration. It's a declaration and so you are who you are by what Jesus did in you and getting a hold of your identity would help you greatly. Now you need to remember who's writing the letter. It's Paul, the guy that used to be called Saul, the guy who held the coats while the people killed Stephen, the guy who said about himself in Philippians 3, 4 through 8 that he was very religious and on fire, but he was empty. And then he encounters the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus. He is stopped in his tracks and God calls him and chooses him, and he says it wasn't men that chose me, it was the Lord Jesus Christ.
Austin Gardner:So here's the key Some of us reject a little bit, rebel a little bit about being called saints and faithful, and we try to figure out a way to explain that. But if God can transform Saul into Paul, then no one is beyond the grace of God and what it can do. Now he writes to them in the city of Ephesus, and the city of Ephesus is a very wealthy but very immoral, wicked city. It's full of idolatry. The temple of Diana is there and that's one of the seven wonders of the world. But God starts a church. He plants a church right in that community, and so here's the big lesson your culture doesn't define you. Where you live doesn't define you. Who you were in the past doesn't define you. God does. God does. God has saved them. God has changed them. And so today I want you to consider your identity with me, and that is he calls the Ephesians saints and faithful. Ephesians, saints and faithful.
Austin Gardner:Now, what's a saint? A saint means holy, set apart, belonging to God. But now here's what you need to get a hold of. You hear saint, you automatically think of holy and living clean and living pure. But this is not the story of your performance, but the story of your union. You're being joined together to Christ. He takes you out of where you were once dead in trespasses and sin. He takes you out of where you were. All have sinned and all have fallen short of the glory of God. He takes you out of all that and saves you. But he doesn't save you by what you do, not by works of righteousness, which we have done. He saved us according to his mercy, which we have done. He saved us according to his mercy. You see, the law is like an x-ray it shows where the problem is, but the law cannot heal. The healing comes from the grace of God. Grace is the cure. Grace is the Lord Jesus Christ living as himself in you, the Lord Jesus Christ living as himself in you. Now let's just think about it just a little bit.
Austin Gardner:When a bride takes her husband's name, she instantly has changed her identity. She is a new person. She has a new last name. She's changed and, by the way, it's given, not earned. She doesn't have to spend the rest of her life trying to live up to that name. She doesn't have to go around saying every day I hope I can be my new identity. She is her new identity. So if I could say something to you and I'm thinking of one of you in particular right now you need to stop calling yourself by your past, stop calling yourself by your failure, stop mentioning everywhere you messed up and realize that God has already renamed you. God calls you a saint. So he writes to the saints and the faithful. The saints you are a saint. You have a new name. You have a new identity. You are not who you used to be. The Lord Jesus saved you and made you somebody new.
Austin Gardner:He doesn't write to the sinners at the church of Ephesus. He doesn't write to the sinners saved by grace. He writes to the saints and faithful. He writes to saints because that's what he made us, not because of how good we live. This letter is going to be full of people who need to work on things. They got marriage problems in Ephesus, you know, but they're still saints. They got some lying and stealing problems and some bad speaking problems. They got a lot of issues that we'll deal with in the book of Ephesians, but they are still saints.
Austin Gardner:You're not called by what you do, you're called by who you are. And the next word he uses for them is faithful. He says the saints in Ephesus and the faithful, the faithful in. Hear the verse again the faithful in Christ. The Bible says to the faithful in Christ Jesus, and that's who he's talking to. He's talking to the faithful in Christ Jesus. Yeah, so the whole point is that you are now faithful in Christ. He is calling you faithful. It's Jesus' faithfulness in you.
Austin Gardner:Failure doesn't mean you never stumble. Faithful doesn't mean you never stumble. It doesn't mean you never struggle. It just means believer. Faithful means believer. Faithful means you belong to Christ. Faithful, as many as received him to them gave you the power to become the sons of God. We are the saints, the faithful, the sons of God. We have been sealed with the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, which is the Romans that's Ephesians 1.13, and nothing can separate us from that love. That's Romans 8.
Austin Gardner:So your faithfulness, again, is who you are. It's not what you do, it's who you are. Your faithfulness is not measured by how tightly you hold on to Christ, but how securely he holds you. Faithful is his verdict over you because Christ, the faithful one, lives in you. Think again about marriage. A husband is faithful to his wife, not because he feels it every moment, but because of the vow, the promise he made, the covenant that binds them. In the same way, you're faithful because the covenant Christ made with you and the Holy Spirit who seals you. And notice all the emphasis on what God called you, how the Spirit seals you and how Jesus made a promise to you. It's all about what God has done in our life.
Austin Gardner:Now, one of the most important words in the whole text, and something you got to get a hold of, is say in sin, in Adam, we were messed up and away from God, but now we are faithful in Christ. That term in Christ appears in Ephesians like 27 times. It's a reality. It means being joined to Jesus. It means being in Jesus, us in Jesus and Jesus in us. It's like Jesus explained it we are grafted into a tree, we're a branch on the tree, and the life that flows through the branch, through the roots, which is Jesus, flows into every one of the branches. And so do you understand what's happening here? We are in Christ, we are joined to Christ, we are sons of God, we are saints, we are faithful. That's a reality.
Austin Gardner:Now. Ephesians, chapter one, is going to have so many wonderful promises for all of us. You see, we are blessed, we are chosen, we're adopted or predestined to be adopted. We're accepted, we're forgiven. You realize we are raised up and seated with him, that we're a far off, we that were distant have been brought near by his blood. So it's not about imitating Christ, it's about participating. It's not you trying to live like Jesus, it's Jesus living in you. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. I am crucified with Christ. I'm dead, in other words, but I'm not dead because Christ is living in me, and the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, and so you are going to live out your new identity as Christ is in you Now, in the greeting here he says grace and peace.
Austin Gardner:You know, can I remind you that you're listening right now and maybe you're not feeling the peace because you haven't understood the grace. Grace is not God patting you on the back and saying try harder, you can do better. It's God working in you what you could never work in yourself. Grace is God giving his own life to you, and when grace takes root, peace follows. Peace is knowing the cure has already been given, knowing the work has already been finished. So what do we do with all this? We live it out.
Austin Gardner:There are only two kinds of people sinners and saints. Those in Christ and those in Adam. If you're in Christ, you're no longer defined as a sinner. You are a saint. You have a new identity and you don't have it because of how you strain, but rather how you rest. The fruit of the Spirit is not your project, it's God working in you.
Austin Gardner:Now, as saints, we're going to grow to maturity. As saints, we don't want to sin. There are sins that will never even be named among us. We are going to pray for each other. You see, we are predestined to be adopted. You know. That means our father chose us. We didn't earn the family name. It was the father's choice and he has a plan in the future that we'll talk about in another podcast, when he's going to set us up in front of everybody and say this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, and he is going to give us his name and we're growing into that name right now. We're right now being formed and handled and predestined to be just like him. He gave us the name Saint and now he teaches us, through the Holy Spirit who lives in us, how to live out who we are.
Austin Gardner:We are the faithful and we do want to live faithful, but it's not about your performance. You're going to live for Jesus, but it's really Jesus living through you. So the persecutor is now the preacher. The believers in the wicked, dark city are now the saints and faithful in Christ. And you're a saint. Listen to me you are a saint not because of your record, but because Christ lives in you. You are faithful not because you hang on to him, not because you try your best, but because he's hanging on to you. You're in Christ and Christ is in you and of his fullness have we all received grace for grace. That's who you are. Rest in it, live from it and give thanks for it. Now I can't wait to continue taking you through the book of Ephesians, as the Lord deals on my heart. So come and be back here with me, invite others to listen, invite others to be a part. I really believe this could change your life. God bless you. Like it, share it and comment. I'd appreciate it.
