THE JOY OF SHARED MEALS (2/3) Jesus loved a good dinner party! All throughout the Gospels you'll see him blessing food, enjoying food, sharing food, multiplying food, and even calling himself the Bread of Life. In fact, Jesus did some of his best ministry around a dinner table. He changed hearts and minds through conversations had at a meal time and time again. In this episode, I'll share 5 lessons we can learn from 5 different meals where Jesus was present. From eating with sinne...

THE JOY OF SHARED MEALS (1/3) The World Happiness Report had an entire chapter dedicated to the connection between food and social relationships, and we need to talk about it. As a society, we've become faster paced with a desire for ease and convenience, and this has translated over to our meals as well. Many families are eating meals on the go, takeaways, meal replacement shakes, and quick snacks pulled out of a bag to solve their hunger as if it were a problem. But how does all of th...

FEEL GOOD PRODUCTIVITY 3/3 Y’all, the holiday season is here! Calendars are getting full, to-do lists are getting long, and stress levels are rising. So, how do we enjoy these next couple months at a pace that is sustainable and joyful I want to talk to you about 3 different types of burnout in this episode and give you a few practical tools that will help you evaluate your life and then cultivate a rhythm of productivity that feels good, so that you can truly enjoy all that the rest of this ...

FEEL GOOD PRODUCTIVITY 2/3 Are you currently camped out at Procrastination Station? Do you have something you're excited about doing but just don't know how to get started? Have the goals you set become more of an obstacle than a motivation? Let's unpack all of that in this episode which is the second in a 3-part series on finding the joy in productivity, based on Ali Abdaal's book Feel Good Productivity. Today, I'll tell you about the 3 primary blockers we all face, how to overco...

FEEL GOOD PRODUCTIVITY (1/3) Do you experience time famine, the feeling like you have too much to do and simply not enough time to do it all? Does this then lead to a constant state of stress and procrastination? Do you wish you had a key to greater productivity in order to regain control of your time? Well, my friends, the answer lies within JOY. In this episode, I'll unpack some research found within Ali Abdaal's book Feel Good Productivity to let you know how you can...

When you’ve been waiting a longer time than expected to see a dream become a reality, it’s easy to become discouraged, disappointed, and dare I say jaded. It can get harder and harder to see other people see their dreams come true while yours seems dead or dormant. It can affect your heart… which then affects your relationships, your friendships, and your faith. Today, let’s unpack the miracle of Abraham and Sarah conceiving a child in their old age. They both laughed, but their laughs ...

In honour of Mental Health Awareness Week in New Zealand, this episode is an important conversation around the power of hopeful thinking. Hope is a clear theme throughout the Bible. Hope is a clear theme in positive psychology. Hope is a clear theme in mental wellbeing. So, how could hope become our anchor this week? What can we learn from scripture and from science to incorporate into our lives to raise our level of optimism, which then raises our overall level of wellbeing? *Please note: In...

Last week, we finished off our list of 5 behaviours that will make you happier by talking about the powerful biblical practice of taking captive every thought. This week, I wanted to dive deeper into this practice. How do you take captive every thought? How do you know when a thought is unhealthy and is leading to a mental mess? How do you untangle the emotions and memories and thought patterns that are binding your mind? Let’s talk about it. Let’s identify the state of our minds, let’s...

Have you ever wondered how you could shift your mood through a simple, practical action? Have you ever wondered how you could possibly find joy on a hard day? In this episode, I'm sharing with you the five behaviours that will make you happier, as identified by a professor of positive psychology. Spoiler alert: You are fully capable of doing all five of them this week ;) And even though the psychology professor didn't intend for this list to be grounded in scripture... there's bib...

This past week was heavy... and many tears have been shed over the violence of murders that have taken place, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk. How is it that some could laugh while others mourned? How has our society become so numb and desensitised to violence? How can our hearts handle it all? This episode is not about politics; it's about processing pain — something that we all need to do better at no matter what you believe or who you vote for. Our brains are adapting to ...

Dr. Becky Kennedy from Good Inside said, "Regulating difficult emotions is a prerequisite for happiness." We have to learn how to navigate through our negative emotions and our negative experiences in order to discover a newfound joy. Suppressing it all is just distress avoidance, and that's not healthy for any of us in the long run. I know this episode will speak to so many parents that are helping to coach their kids through meltdowns and hard days... but I have a feeling that this episode ...

Have you ever wished you could play a "Just Say No!" card in the game of life when you were thrown a curveball or faced a setback? Have you ever wanted to play that "Skip" card on certain seasons of pain and delay? Well, we've all been there. We've all had moments where we don't understand why we're facing certain circumstances or when we will be able to cross over into the Promised Land. But God is so intentional in the way he walks with us and so intentional about the way that he works thro...

There are some songs that we absolutely love to hear on repeat at certain times of the year, because it touches our soul and our memories in some way. Songs can mark milestones in our lives and bring us back to that very moment when we hear it again. Songs can connect us to other people and actually bring hearts into alignment. Singing songs on a bad day can sometimes be the only thing to turn the mood around and shift our perspective. Why is that? Well, God designed our brains with such inte...

REST SERIES (3/3) Has someone ever told you to rest and you think, “I wish I could!” Well, a tea bag label once told me, “When God made time, he made enough of it.” That convicted me then, and it continues to convict me today if I ever catch myself saying I don’t have enough time to rest. God was very intentional in showing us a weekly pattern or rhythm we can all follow — work for 6 days, then rest for 1. But it’s one of the Ten Commandments that we can very easily brush aside when our...

REST SERIES (2/3) Have you found yourself feeling absolutely exhausted lately? Perhaps physically tired, because your kids woke up way too early or far too often throughout the night... Or maybe you feel emotionally tired, mentally overwhelmed, or spiritually depleted. This episode is for you, my friend. We don't just need a nap to feel rested... we need 7 types of rest to feel truly restored. Yes, SEVEN. And I reckon you probably have a "rest deficit" in a few of these 7 ar...

REST SERIES (1/3) Life isn’t meant to be a constant sprint... yet sometimes we find ourselves on a hamster wheel and feel like we can't get off to catch our breath. On this episode, let's look at how nature teaches us that life is lived in rhythms — seasons that cycle and patterns that repeat. Perhaps embracing repetition, rest, and renewal is the very thing you need to bring balance to your life. Just as the earth pauses in winter and blooms again in spring, we too are designed for rhythms o...

Ever felt like you were wrestling God? Have you ever gone to God with question after question in an attempt to understand the season you were in? Today, let’s explore the book of Habakkuk together to understand how this man learned to both wrestle and embrace God. He knows what waiting on God feels like, and he wasn’t ashamed to enter into conversation with God about the struggles he was facing. Carrying confetti can sometimes feel like a ‘wrestle and embrace’ too. It doesn’t erase the strugg...

Welcome to a spontaneous bonus episode I felt to record after putting the kids to bed ☺️ Apologies for not being able to deliver my usual Monday episode! Thank you for your grace as I took a week break due to sickness and other circumstances... but I missed y'all... and I needed a pep talk, so I thought many of you might need it too. Let's be encouraged together to let faith rise within us, despite what we're going through. God bless you my friend! Connect with me on Instagr...

AESTHETICS OF JOY (9/9) We've made it to the final episode in our series on the aesthetics of joy, and I'm excited to bring you one that speaks to the notion of transcendence. Why do we long for a feeling of lightness and elevation? And where should we look to find it? Also, why is upwardness a metaphor for positivity? What effect does an upward motion have on our minds? Just like the enemy can try and distort our joy of wonder and joy of abundance, he's also relentlessly tried to...

Hey y'all! Welcome to my first bonus episode, because it felt like the right week to sprinkle a little extra confetti... and a little extra joy found through freedom in Jesus Christ. This message is one I recently spoke at Replenish Conference -- an annual women's conference we host at our local church, Elim Papakura. But this message is not just for women! Men, I know you're listening, and I promise you (hand on heart) this bonus episode is for you too. When I spoke it live, many women...