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
Why Rules Can’t Make You Holy But Love Can
What if the most powerful force for real change isn’t pressure or fear but gratitude? In this episode, we open Galatians to discover why “faith working through love” is the heartbeat of the Christian life and how grace transforms duty into desire. Instead of chasing perfection, we explore a better way: walking with the Spirit so that Christ reproduces His life in us, one day at a time.
We uncover the traps of legalism and license one crushes with demands, the other drains you of meaning, and we reveal the alternative of grace that leads you home. Love becomes the guardrail of freedom, not an excuse for recklessness. You’ll hear how the cross settles ownership, why the old self no longer commands you, and how the Spirit changes you from the inside out. Rules can only trim weeds, but grace grows fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
This isn’t theory, it’s deeply practical. What does it mean to stop keeping score and start trusting the Giver? How do you forgive when you’ve been hurt? Why does peace often show up in conflict, not after it? We point to the daily companionship of the Spirit who doesn’t scold when you stumble but steadies you, who doesn’t withdraw when you wander but draws you back. The same grace that saved you keeps you, restores you, and carries you so you can serve, forgive, and love because you’re already held.
If this message of grace speaks to your heart, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs hope, and leave a quick review to help others find their way to freedom in Christ.
Key themes:
Faith that works by love is the core of Galatians
The contrast between legalism, license, and grace
Love as the guardrail of true freedom
Walking by the Spirit instead of striving by effort
The old self crucified, and ownership settled at the cross
The weeds of the flesh versus the planted life of the Spirit
The fruit of the Spirit as evidence, not achievement
Daily dependence: stumble and be steadied by grace
Grace that saves, sustains, and restores
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Well, I'm back with you again here on Followed by Mercy. And I am so excited to share with you how much God loves us. And it is a good thing to realize that goodness and mercy really are chasing us. Because it is God who's always been seeking us. It's God who saved us. And so in the book of Galatians, we find the verse that says, In Christ's circumcision, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which works by love. That's the heartbeat of true Christianity. Faith that works, not by fear, pressure, or guilt, but by love. The only power that can make a man truly holy is gratitude. When you realize how much you've been forgiven, love becomes your fuel. You start forgiving others because you must, but because you can't hold on to bitterness and grace in the same heart. You start giving not because you fear lack, but because you trust the giver. You start serving not to prove your worth, but to share your joy. Grace in motion. That's what that is. You know, legalism is saying do more. License is saying do whatever, but grace is saying walk with me. Legalism will crush you with rules. License will drown you in regret, but grace will lead you home. By love, serve one another. That's a secret. Love's a guardrail that keeps freedom from running wild. Love keeps you turn from turning grace into an excuse. Love makes you careful, not careless. Paul said, All the world, all the law is fulfilled in one word. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. What the law demands, love fulfills. The man who walks in love will never have or need a rule book. When Christ's love fills your heart, you won't need commandments to tell you to be kind, to forgive, to serve. You'll just do it. Because the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is living through you. It's not that the moral law disappears, it's just that it gets written on your heart, on flesh, not on stone. God hasn't lowered his standards, he's lifted you up by his spirit. Paul says, Be careful, you bite and devour one another. Take heed that you be not consumed one of another. See, when freedom loses its focus on love, it becomes destructive. Whenever you use liberty selfishly, it becomes a way to lose liberty. It happens over and over. Church is split. Mostly not over not over sin, not over doctrine, but over ego. Grace isn't meant to run out, it's meant to overflow. Some people use truth like a weapon instead of a bomb. That's not grace. Grace never wounds to destroy, it only wounds to heal. Christ calls you to freedom that restores, not freedom that tramples. Freedom doesn't mean no restraint. It has a new restraint, love. When you love someone, there are things you simply don't do. Not because they're forbidden, but because they break the relationship. That's what Paul's saying here. Your liberty is real, but it's not reckless. Love never asks how far can I go? It asks how close can I stay. That's how grace leads you. It doesn't police you from the outside, it persuades you from the inside. Grace always works from the inside out. It doesn't reform the flesh, it replaces it with new life. That's where Paul leads us next. We talk about walking by the Spirit. So think about this. You are free not to live without love, but to live in love. You don't have to earn God's favor. You don't have to keep score. You don't have to prove you're wrong. You already belong. You don't have to try to belong. Because you do, you're free to serve, to forgive, and to love. Maybe you've been hurt. Maybe you've been betrayed. You don't have to manufacture feelings. You just let Christ love people through you. Grace will give us that power. Grace never stops forgiving. It flows through. But what it means, that's what it means to live free. Faith working by love. We've spent time learning that we've been set free from the law, the fear, the guilt. Now let's talk about what we're set free for. A spirit-filled, joy-filled, love-filled life. Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. The Christian life is not trying to imitate Christ, but allowing Christ to reproduce Himself in us. That's the difference between effort and grace. Effort says, I try harder. Grace says I trust deeper. Paul's honest about it. The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. There's a battle going on in every believer. One says, do it this way, and the other says, walk with me. So you need to know your old man is dead. You no longer have to be afraid of what he wants. He has no power. He has been destroyed. And so you don't have to live in resentment or pride or self-sufficiency. You don't have to live in that. You can live in the spirit and truth and gratitude and grace, freedom. Flesh looks like idolatry and envy and strife and jealousy and anger, selfish ambition. That's a natural outflow of Adam, of the lost man. You don't have to produce those. They just come on like weeds growing in the garden. That's what the law can never fix. You can trim the weeds, but it can't change the person. It doesn't cut off the bad fruit. Jesus plants new life. You could stop the symptoms for a while, but unless grace grows to the root, it will always come back. But we have the fruit of the Spirit. It's fruit, not fruits. Not nine separate things you have to try to grow. It's one kind of life that shows up in nine flavors. It's not the product of our labor, but it's the evidence of our life. You don't strain to make that fruit grow. It comes natural, it's healthy, and it's rooted. Love gives birth to joy. Joy produces peace. Peace gives patience room to grow. If the spirit fills you, love will spill out. That's why grace and spirit always belong together. The law demands the fruit, but grace plants the seed. Love isn't a feeling, it's choosing to forgive when you've been wrong. Joy is a pretending everything's fine, it's finding hope when everything's not fine. Peace isn't the absence of conflict. It's knowing God is still good in the middle of it. When Dehan describes these things, he's not painting a picture of perfect people. I really wish you'd read the book. He's saying a spirit-fear Christian is not a man who has conquered his flesh, but a man who surrendered to his Lord. Paul said, they that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. That doesn't mean we no longer struggle. It means we we no longer belong to the struggle. The cross settled the ownership. We're not slaves. The flesh can say that they have rules and tells us what to do, but grace has set us free. Sin's not less serious, but victory is possible. So if we live in the spirit, we should also walk in the spirit. We have the spirit living in us. It's another thing now as we let him set the pace. We've got to let him work in us. It's a daily, moment-by-moment relationship. When you stumble, he doesn't scold you, he steadies you. When you wander, he doesn't abandon you, he draws you back. That's grace. So the flesh will still wear a choir robe if you let it. It'll turn everything spiritual into a competition. But grace reminds us there's no ladder to climb. You and I can live in the power of the Holy Spirit. He makes Jesus visible in our lives. The grace that saved us is the grace that bears fruit in us. So say, Lord, live your life through me. I am so excited that we get to study and see what God is doing for us in His grace. He is not fixing us, He is giving us new life. He has given us new life. And we are going to live that out, carrying each other's burdens, loving each other, sowing to the right, doing what we ought to do, because we love Jesus. We're not doing anything because we have to. We're doing it because we are saved by grace. And so just remember this: it's not the law, not fear, not guilt, but grace. It ends the book of Galatians with grace. The same grace that saves you keeps you. The same grace that forgives you restores you. The same grace that called you now carries you home. So you don't have to earn what's already yours. You can stop punishing yourself for what Christ already paid for. Grace doesn't give you permission to sin, but it gives you power to live. So let it settle in. You are free, you are forgiven, and you are loved. And so I pray that you and I will enjoy what Jesus did for us on the cross of Calvary. I've enjoyed just chatting with you a little bit about the book of Galatians, and I hope it's been a blessing to you. I'll be on to something else. Back to Ephesians, I'm sure. But thank you so much for being with me. Thank you for praying for me. And I will look forward to telling you how more things that God's showing me and teaching me as I seek to serve Him.
