Friends and welcome to Faithfield Woman.

Happy New Year.

Can you believe it is the start of another year?

2025.

Wow.

I just hope that each of us are blessed with just an amazing year full of faith and peace and joy and maybe some new perspectives so that as we walk into the year, we walk into the circumstances that will surely find us this coming year.

We will have our sights set on the right things.

And so that is my hope and my wish for you.

Today is a mini episode, so I'm just coming on to share a few quick ideas with you as we jump start 2025.

Welcome to Faith Fueled Woman, a podcast designed for Christian women eager to deepen their faith and shine God's light in every aspect of their lives.

Each week we'll delve into practical strategies, inspiring stories and biblical wisdom to equip you with the tools you need to navigate life's challenges and grow deeper in your faith.

From finding calm in the chaos, forming deep Christian friendships, to everyday ways to connect with God, we'll cover it all.

Hi, I'm your host, Kristen.

I'm an encourager, a faith led entrepreneur, a mom and a wife.

Let's be encouraged in our everyday lives as we let our faith guide us, fuel us and fill us with God's incredible peace, wisdom and joy in our lives.

As I'm reflecting on my past year and as I'm thinking to what I want to have this year be all about, I'm thinking about what are some of the words, what are some of the themes that I want to add more of into my life?

And one of those is to make sure that I'm having a deep, rich relationship.

So how can I strengthen those relationships?

How can I build or grow those relationships?

How can I deepen my faith?

How can I be the best version of myself?

And by this I mean optimize my health in simple ways.

How can I continue to take time, to slow down, to get outside, to garden, to get in God's word and just to be present?

So these are some of the things I'm thinking about and I was reading, I've mentioned, I'm reading the book A Million Little Miracles by Mark Batterson and I want to read a quote from you from that book because I just thought, wow, this is, this is something to be chewing on or thinking about as I or we step into this year.

He says few things are more cathartic, more catalytic than worship.

Why?

Because that's where we were create.

That's what we were created to do.

You can't not worship.

Either you will worship God with a capital G or you will substitute a lesser God.

Not only does worship improve vagal tone, but it also gets us God's wavelength.

It helps us discern the still small voice of the spirit.

It activates the gifts of the spirit as well as prophetic imagination.

And of course he's talking about some things in this quote that he referenced earlier in his book.

But the fact that it says if we aren't worshiping God, we are worshiping something, right?

And we're of course warned about that in the Bible that we don't want to make things our God.

And that can be easy to do and not even realize it.

But I thought it was so important to remember we are made to worship.

We can't not worship.

And what I wanted to share with you today is when we worship, imagine everything that comes from that one.

It, we actually experience less stress.

So it actually is more calming to us.

We are more connected to God.

It helps us hear God's whisper or spirit and it taps us into our imagination, into our co creation ability with God.

And I think that's pretty impressive.

The other thing though is to worship doesn't mean that we have to only, you know, hold our hands together or kneel on our knees and pray, right?

We're talking about worship, not prayer specifically.

Some people define prayer as speaking to God, right, Or asking him for things or whatnot.

Of course, it could also be praying to give him thanks, to tell him what we're grateful for.

But worship is, it's almost like being in awe, right, of the divine.

It's being able to be present in the moment and just take notice of everything that is.

And it was created and still is being created by God.

And so I've talked about this probably a long time ago, but worship is anything we do.

It can be dancing, it can be singing as we do our chores, it can be just giving a little, a little prayer of thanks.

But it's anything we do, it's coming together, you know, in communion, it's coming together in fellowship.

But worship is really just whatever we do to be reminded and to remember God and to give glory to God.

And so it doesn't have to be something formal, it can be something informal and hopefully throughout our day.

Because the more we get used to it, the easier it is to be continually worshiping God.

In other words, to be continually staying in a connection or a conversation with God.

And yes, the conversation might not necessarily be audible the way I'm speaking, but it definitely can be felt.

And so in the.

And God speaks in so many ways.

It's absolutely not.

And for most of us, it is not through the spoken word, right?

It's something that speaks to our heart or our spirit.

It's something that comes to us right in our mind.

So that's the imagination or an idea.

Some people call it a download.

It's the small impulses to go help someone or to do something kind for someone.

There's so many ways God speaks to us.

He could speak to us through other people, right?

Through a prophetic word or encouraging word.

He can speak to us when we're taking time to be silent, when we're getting in nature.

And so we want to worship because this is how we connect to God and it's how we also experience the goodness of God.

And so when Mark Batterson was talking about how it improves a vagal tone.

Well, the vagal tone is basically the vagal nerve.

It goes.

It covers most of your body and goes up through your neck.

But when we are calmer, when we're not stressed, then we initiate our parasympathetic nervous system, which means the nervous system of rest and relaxing versus our sympathetic, which is the one that is fight or flight.

So what we don't want to do is stay in this really stressed out, really anxious, fight or flight, high cortisol place.

And by worshiping God and also praying, we actually lower our stress, we lower our cortisol, and we shift into the parasympathetic or the rest and relax part of our nervous system.

So there's benefits not just in all the things I mentioned, but also in just calming us down, feeling more peaceful, feeling less stressed.

And so there is huge benefits, huge implications to worshiping Him.

And so as we step into this new year, starting today, I just put it out there for all of us.

Are we daily worshiping God?

Are we daily pausing throughout our day to just take a breath and just worshiping Him?

You know, that can be being all of his creations.

It can be being in awe of the gift he's given us, right?

It could be of our children, it could be of our pet, it could be of our spouse, whatever it might be.

I mean, I'm in awe of the colors, right?

When I go on walks.

Every color of the rainbow and more, every shade of green.

To me, it's just so amazing.

All the creativity, all the differences, right?

I mean, there's still animals and microorganisms and plants that have not been discovered, and there's millions of them.

And so once again, it's really getting curious again.

And actually in Mark Batterson's book, I think he talks about it in more than one book and he definitely talks about it in his sermons.

He talks about the idea of holy curiosity.

And I believe it was Albert Einstein that mentioned that.

And that's who I believe Mark Patterson references.

But we want to have a holy curiosity.

In other words, if we're just always reconnecting that, oh my gosh, like this is so amazing or how can this be, you know, and how does the human body work?

How does the sun spin?

I'm sorry, the earth spin around the sun.

Like all these things, when we pay attention, when we notice, and when we actually realize just how many miracles, how much is happening without us doing anything, it's quite miraculous.

And that allows us to tap into this holy curiosity.

And when we do that, another concept that he talks about is holy confidence.

We can be confident in God because we know everything he's doing and how miraculous it is.

And with that, I just want to say to you, I'm wishing you every blessing, peace, prosperity, joy and health this year.

And I hope you'll find more moments this coming year to make time for worship.

So until tomorrow, I hope you have a wonderful New Year's and I have some exciting news to share with you.

I have a 10 day email challenge getting ready to start next week.

It is 10 days to rediscover joy, faith and renewal and it is so good.

It is going to fill you up and just start your new year off.

So wonderful.

So you know it's going to take you a couple minutes each day to read the information and it will give you a prompt or a small exercise to do.

But it's going to be a great way to start off your new year.

It's easy, it's simple and straightforward, but it's going to really open your mind and help you step into some new things this year.

So if you're interested in that, head over to KristinFitch.com and make sure you're on my email list so that you get all that information.

I can't wait to join you in the five day challenge next week.

Thanks again for listening to the show and if you enjoyed today's episode, we would love it if you could take a minute to leave a rating and review on Apple podcast because it helps our show get discovered by more people.

And if you'd like to be encouraged in your faith and in your life, go on to KristenFitch.com and sign up to get my newsletter.

I have lots of freebies and lots of inspiration encouragement that will be coming your way and I would love it if you joined part of our community.