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
The God Who Sees: Finding Hope When You Feel Invisible
There are moments in life when we feel completely alone, as if no one truly understands the depth of our pain or the weight of our burdens. But Scripture reminds us of a powerful name for God: El Roi—The God Who Sees.In this second episode of our podcast, Austin Gardner shares from his own journey of overcoming health battles and deep personal loss to show how God’s presence is most real in the places we think are hidden.
In this episode, we discuss:You are not forgotten, and you are not alone. God sees you exactly where you are today.
- The story of Hagar and the first time God is called "The God Who Sees."
- How to find comfort when you feel overlooked by others.
- Trusting God’s plan even when you can’t see the way out.
📘 Order "Pain to Praise" on Amazon: here
🚀 Leadership Training: Visit Alignment Ministries at https://www.alignmentministries.com/
🌐 More from Austin: https://waustingardner.com
Support the show: If this episode encouraged you, please share it with one person who needs to know they are seen today.
Keywords/Tags:
The God Who Sees, El Roi, Hope, Healing, Faith, Austin Gardner, Alignment Ministries, Christian Encouragement
Thanks for listening. Find us on YouTube, Substack, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Welcome back. Yesterday we talked about the performance trap, the feeling that we have to be perfect for God to love us. Today I want to go a layer deeper. We're kind of peeling the onion back. I want to talk about the things you don't show anyone. Before I move on, I think it's normal that we want to perform. It's how we made it in school. That's how we made it in sports. I didn't play any sports at all. It's how I made it on the farm. It's how I worked wherever I was working. It was always about my performance. It's always about my performance. But I want to try to show you the loneliness of the strong person. I've spent over 50 years in ministry. I've traveled to 50 countries. I've stood on stages. I've led several organizations. I've mentored dozens, if not hundreds, of leaders. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's this the loneliest place in the world isn't the desert. It's a room full of people who think you're doing just fine while you're actually falling apart on the inside. You're feeling inadequate, feeling like you don't measure up, feeling like you didn't do as good as the other guy. You're in the compete and compare mode. Oh, we're experts at the social media smile, aren't we? We've learned how to Christianize our pain. We call it a trial or a prayer request, but we keep the actual ache hidden down deep. We're afraid that if people saw the real weight of our depression, our marriage struggles or our doubts, they'd look at us differently if they knew that we wanted to run so many times because we were scared. We know how to handle it. I remember I was at a meeting with some very close friends, and I was preaching. I was one of the speakers. It was a college, and I was excited about being there. When they asked me to speak, though, I was like, I don't know. I don't know if I fit in. I don't know if I'm the right person. I don't know if I can do a good job. I wanted my friends to tell me I'd do a good job because I wanted to hear that because that's what we do when we're playing the game, isn't it? Because we don't want people to know. We're hiding. We're busy hiding from each other. We've been doing that ever since Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam and Eve, when they once they, once they moved themselves up into being God and they could make decisions, they had to put on masks, they had to hide their struggles, had to hide their doubts. But here's the beautiful thing about God. You don't need to hide from God. And you can't hide from him. The beautiful thing is that he is not looking for an excuse to judge you. He's looking for a way to heal you. That's the key. In the book of Genesis, there's a story about a woman named Hagar. She wasn't a queen. She wasn't a hero. She was a servant, a slave. And she'd been used by Abraham and then cast aside, thrown away. And she was literally, at that moment, wandering in a literal desert, waiting to die. She was at the absolute end of her rope. And right there, in the middle of her isolation, God meets her. He doesn't come to give her a 10-step plan to fix her life, doesn't give her conditions, expectations. He doesn't judge her or criticize her. He just lets her know he's there. And Hagar gives God a name, and I want you to hold on to it today. She calls him the God who sees. Think about that. In her lowest, most unseen moment, she's cast away, she's forgotten, she's thrown on the garbage heap of time. She's abandoned and abused in a lot of ways, but she realized she was a center of God's attention. I know what it feels like to be unseen or to feel like you're unseen. Battling cancer, COVID, nights in a room that's dark, machines running, drifting in and out of pain. No one could really help you, no one can reach you, and I have to remind myself, fact is I used Psalm 23 to do it, the God who sees me. He doesn't see the pain and have no words. He sees my pain. I can't express it. He sees my fear. Fears you don't even tell your spouse. He's not watching from a distance like a spectator. He's sitting with you in the dust. Why does it matter that God sees us? Because you cannot heal what you do not reveal. We think that our hiding we think that by hiding our pain we're protecting ourselves, but actually we're just pecking the wound. When you keep your pain secret, it begins to fester. It turns into bitterness or addiction or coldness towards the people you love. Healing starts the moment you stop pretending. In what I call the hub or at WAUSEGardner.com slash blog, our article we discussed yesterday, I mentioned that the big leap of faith is believing God loves you exactly as you are. Today's step is even more practical. Is coming to God and saying, Lord, you see this? You see this anger I'm carrying? You see this grief I can't get past? I'm tired of carrying the corpse of this old pain. On my website tomorrow, I'm posting an article called The God Who Heals the Broken. I want you to read it because it explores how God takes the broken pieces, the shards of our lives, those pieces we think are useless, and he creates something beautiful. God doesn't just fix things so they look new, he redeems them so they have a story. Your scars aren't something to be ashamed of. They're the evidence you survived, and God was there the whole time. If you're a leader, a pastor, or a parent, let's listen to this, stop trying to be the hero who has no wounds. The people following you don't need a perfect leader, they need a real one. They need to know that it's okay to hurt because they see that you know how to take your hurt to the Father. Don't spend another night in the desert of the unseen. Pay attention to the God who sees you. I invite you to go to W Austengardner.com slash blog and look for the post, the God who heals the broken. Use it as a guide to start talking to him about the secret things. I'm Austin Gardner, and thank you for letting me walk with you for a few minutes today. Remember, he sees you. He loves you, and he's working even when you can't see the way out. He's the God that sees us. He loves us. God bless you. I love you. Thank you for the chance to talk to you, and I will see you tomorrow.
