Do you long to feel closer to God? Are you searching for a faith that’s more than just going through the motions?
Let’s be honest: we often feel distant from God. We spend much more time looking faithful than living out a life-giving relationship. Our souls ache from the lack of intimacy. Something is missing. We know life isn’t supposed to be this way. What we want is to know God and be known. We yearn for an honest, ongoing connection with God as a real person.
In today’s episode and through her book Befriending God, Tanya Godsey invites us to move beyond religious performance and into authentic relational intimacy through:
- Biblical character studies illuminating how we can encounter God in the struggles, questions, and complexities of our lives;
- Vulnerable, powerful examples of God’s relational transformation in the context of a marginalized community;
- Practical guidance for setting aside faulty cultural norms that keep us from friendship with God.
If you crave a genuine connection with God that transcends religious to-dos and cultural currents, tune in to experience transformation and renewal in your spiritual journey. Discover the joy of knowing God intimately in every season, heartache, and ordinary moment.
Summary
In this episode of the Love Offering Podcast, Rachael Adams welcomes Tanya Godsey, a singer-songwriter and author of ‘Befriending God.’ Tanya shares her faith journey, discussing how she came to know God as a friend and the importance of emotional honesty in our relationship. They explore the barriers that prevent people from befriending God, the significance of loneliness as a form of consecration, and practical ways to cultivate a friendship with God. Tanya emphasizes the transformative power of intimacy with God and how it reflects our lives, encouraging listeners to embrace God’s endless love and grace.
Takeaways
Tanya Godsey shares her journey of befriending God.
Emotional honesty is crucial in our relationship with God.
Loneliness can be a form of consecration.
Cultivating a friendship with God requires quality time.
God’s love is an endless ocean, inviting us to receive it.
Jesus modeled a moment-by-moment relationship with God.
Intimacy with God leads to transformation in our lives.
We can love others out of our relationship with God.
The importance of knowing God personally and intimately.
God invites us to return to Him, regardless of our past.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Tanya Godsey and Her Journey
02:59 Befriending God: Tanya’s Personal Experience
06:05 Understanding Barriers to Befriending God
08:48 Emotional Honesty and Trusting God
11:55 Loneliness and Consecration: A Spiritual Perspective
15:00 Cultivating a Friendship with God
17:58 Biblical Examples of Friendship with God
20:50 The Transformative Power of Friendship with God
24:01 The Importance of Intimacy in Our Relationship with God
27:08 Jesus as the Model of Friendship with God
30:06 The Call to Know God Personally
32:51 The Endless Ocean of God’s Love
36:02 Conclusion and Prayer
Transcript
Rachael Adams (00:01.484)
Well, hello, Tanya, and welcome to the Love Offering podcast. I’m so happy to have you.
Tanya Godsey (00:06.904)
I’m to be here, truly. Thank you for having me.
Rachael Adams (00:10.168)
So we, as we, were getting to know each other before we hit record. You told me you’re a mom of two, married, and living in Tennessee. You’re a singer and songwriter and just finished recording, maybe another. What would you call it? Is it an album, or what is it called when you record when you were in Chicago?
Tanya Godsey (00:26.106)
Yeah, so it’s an accompaniment to this book. That’s what we recorded on Friday. It’s a musical companion for Befriending God, the book I just wrote.
Rachael Adams (00:31.594)
Really? How wonderful!
Rachael Adams (00:42.272)
Wow, okay. You’re going to have to definitely give us the links so we can, at the end, take a copy of that and listen to it, as well, as it’s alongside how we’re reading your book.
Tanya Godsey (00:55.246)
Yeah, I’m so excited to do that.
Rachael Adams (00:57.718)
Yeah, well, okay. So, let’s talk about your recent release, befriending God. When did you first come to know God as your friend? When did you befriend him?
Tanya Godsey (01:07.56)
I’m in that tiny category of kids that became Christians, like the single digits, young single digits. I remember that stirring in my heart at a Wednesday night service when I was six years old. I can close my eyes and put myself back in that moment. That’s how profound it was to me.
That stirring, that calling, that invitation to know Jesus as my Savior. And I grew up as a PK, so of course, I was immersed in the stories of the Bible, immersed in faith. But that moment felt very personal to me. And so I walked down with my mom, who came to the altar with me.
And the rest is history, quite literally. I’ve always grown up with a very profound sense of God’s presence in my life, so I’ve never known him. It almost feels like that. I’ve never known that he was there. He was always there. And that just happened to be when I realized it and chose the friendship back.
So, yeah.
Rachael Adams (02:33.35)
When I was first saved, I was saved out of fear that I didn’t want to go to hell. And then it took me a long time to learn of God’s love. And so now that’s, you know, it’s, it’s, think that there are, you know, those, those two sides of the Lord, this reverent fear that I’ve learned now and just realizing how much he loves us. And I’ve just seen how, though, over the years, he continues to develop and show me more parts of his character, you know, learning to know him not just as my savior, to be in eternity with him one day in heaven, but to start to know of him as my Lord and as my father. When I became a mother, I learned of God as my father. But now I’m learning to know him as my friend this season. He’s my favorite person to talk to, And so that’s why when I saw your book come across my desk, so to speak, immediately when I saw your title, I thought, gosh, this is something I need. This is something that God is teaching me specifically right now. And so as you were thinking about, you know, because you’ve had this close friendship and relationship with the Lord your whole life, why do you think that maybe your readers or people in general, women, are perhaps not befriending God? Maybe why do they think that he is a standoffish God or view him as this mighty God, which he is, but also hoping to help them to see him as somebody that can become their friend as well?
Tanya Godsey (04:08.858)
Yeah, I love that question. There are layers to it. For many of us, it is storied. The things that happened to us as children and adolescents during those formative years and how we interacted with our mom or dad or authority figures can shape how we feel about the ultimate authority, capital A, God himself. And so, there’s a lot of work there. I think there’s an invitation from God to do some work around healing some of those wounds because they impact our relationship with God and the safety or lack of safety we feel around becoming his friend. So I think there’s a personal aspect of that. There’s a cultural aspect because we are in a very transactional world. We are in a do more, try harder, strive our way, earn our way, and perform our way into belongingness. And so we’re culturally conditioned to believe in transactionalism over the purity of relationship. And so that is one of the main stumbling blocks for many people. As a spiritual director, I do get many people who come to me and want the formula, so to speak, you know how to do it. The thing about God is that he is other. If there were a formula to an abundant life, it would be Jesus, the son, and that is relational and not transactional. Hence, all of this revolves around relational communion with God.
And there’s an undoing that has to happen in us as disciples of Christ, as people give ourselves over to a process of spiritual formation; my control systems don’t work. But faith does, surrender does, and a relationship does. And so it’s working with God through his word and spirit to undo some of those concepts. And I think it’s needed now in the church capital C because we’re seeing celebrity Christianity doesn’t work. Platforming doesn’t work. In all these ways, we’ve been conditioned to believe that the goodness of God comes to us, but those things don’t work. It’s the secret place that works.
It’s going into our bedrooms or closets or driving with God and learning to hear and know His voice. That is what the invitation is above all else. And so the Lord is inviting us to return to Him, like His heart, to return to a radical loyalty.
God as a friend, and remember that we are eternal beings, set on an eternal trajectory. What we see right now is important, but there are more conclusive authorities. God is, eternity is. And so this book is an invitation to remember who God is and to enter into that process of answering the question, what does it look like to befriend God in a way that is on earth as it is in heaven? Because what we know about him here and what we develop with him here will continue when we meet him face to face.
Rachael Adams (08:25.9)
Well, that’s beautiful. And I’m thinking as you talked about how the Lord has always pursued us. You know, you can read through scripture how the Lord has continued to pursue. He just has always come closer as far as, you know, thinking about Him first coming to, you know, the Israelites out of Egypt and being in the Tabernacle and then actually bringing Jesus as a baby to live as Emmanuel God with us. And then, as resurrected, he brings the Holy Spirit to be present within us. You know, he wants a relationship with us. He is constantly pursuing us. And I think to your point; it’s us that sometimes holds back because of our previous, you know, past experiences with other people or just mistrust or and feeling like maybe he hasn’t been a good friend, so would you speak to perhaps the woman listening right now who maybe feels like she doesn’t trust God as her friend.
Tanya Godsey (09:32.949)
I hear those stories every week, and they’re very common. There’s an invitation to that mystery, in disappointment, in suffering, and I think that that is an invitation to emotional honesty with God because God can handle hearing the complexity. Now God made a complex universe entire of solar systems invisible in this visible world. He’s the designer. I call him the original artist because he was the first to make something out of nothing at all. Right? For some reason, I think we’ve been culturally conditioned to believe that God cannot handle our complexity and that our complexity turns him off. He designed the human heart, the most complex landscape, right? It is more complicated than all of nature and all of science. And so, what does it look like to go? I will bring my complexity, the complexity of my story, the things that have happened to me, and the disappointments I have suffered. I will bring my mystery, the things, the unanswered prayers, the disappointments, the failures, the ruptures that have not been repaired. I will get that all to God in the sanctum of prayer. And we see a model for that in the life of the Psalmist, who, like this, takes Psalm 139, for example. It’s beautiful. It starts as this beautiful worshipful almost tribute to God as the one who fearfully and wonderfully creates us. But in the end, it ends up being like, I hate my enemies, you know, like do away with them. Like, there’s this roller coaster of emotion and what I would call a very unsanitized prayer. And that’s why I think the Psalms permit us to pray the unsanitized prayers. So, what I think I would offer as ean ncouragement to those dealing with disappointment is to pray unsanitized prayers.
Tanya Godsey (11:55.568)
Pray that the prayer you know contains things you’re afraid to tell God. Trust him. Trust that perfect love casts out all fear and that you will be safe and received. I was doing an event recently, and I got the impression that there would be a lot of grief and disappointment in the room. As I was praying into that, I felt a stirring in my heart as I prepared; it’s almost like the Lord said, was it any less holy for Jesus to grieve with God in the Garden of Gethsemane than for him to walk out of the grave? Was it any less holy for Jesus to grieve with God than to celebrate with him? And so I think we as believers have to do some work around encouraging people to do that to understand that it is no less holy to grieve with God, express disappointment, and empty your heart’s contents in complete emotional honesty. It’s no less holy to do that with God than to celebrate with Him.
Rachael Adams (13:14.668)
Yeah, absolutely. In thinking about how many people are lonely right now, you know that God has built us for relationships, and we do need community. We do need earthly friendship, and that is so important. But for those listening who are lonely, you know, I have found it in my own life. Some of my loneliest seasons regarding my earthly relationships were when I felt the closest to the Lord. And so I think there is something to our lonely seasons, growing closer to the Lord and knowing Him as the friend you may not have here on earth. Does that evoke any thought in you?
Tanya Godsey (13:57.242)
that’s like, you’re talking about my life story now. It’s so personal to me. And I have some words for people walking through that because I have lived it and am living it literally. When people look like, you know, look at you, look at me, there’s this perception that we’re surrounded by like amazing, you know, just this massive community of like, and maybe to a certain extent, you know, There’s church life, and that has its place. We have family, but there is a loneliness that comes with a call. And then there is a pervasive loneliness, I think, in our culture because we’re so connected, quote-unquote, socially. We go to Instagram, see stories, and think we’re connected, but it’s surface contact. It’s not an intimate connection. And so it doesn’t satisfy that, and there is a sense of loneliness, which brings a sense of exile. Why doesn’t fill-in-the-blank feel like home? There is a homesickness. We all have to deal with that on a spiritual level. A friendship with God fills that hole that only God can fill. I was recently doing some work with the Lord around loneliness around feeling a sense of isolation in my call because you’re on the road, you’re doing things, you’re by yourself to meet with God and have something to say, you have to do what Jesus did. You have to go away to a quiet place. And I heard these words: what if it’s not loneliness? What if it’s consecration?
Rachael Adams (15:53.684)
Wow, that’s powerful.
Tanya Godsey (15:55.708)
What if it’s not loneliness? What if it’s consecration? Because Jesus moved through the world like he named the stars. He was at the foundation of the world, all authority in heaven, fully one with the Father, yet he had no place to lay his head. He moved through the world like a nomad, but his belongingness was grounded in God the Father. And his unison with God, his unity, he moved in unison with God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. And so he was like, what if it’s not loneliness, Tanya? What if it’s consecration? And what if this sense of exile is deliverance? I’m delivering you into my keeping. I’m providing you with intimacy with me. And so he just totally reframed it. And so I do believe there’s an opportunity for us to do something with that longing that connects us with God on a spiritual level that brings empowerment to us so that we live and move and breathe in unison with God in the sense of deep, deep love and deep belongingness and deep approval in Him. And we can love others out of that sense of belongingness instead of moving with this gaping hole and ache we don’t know what to do with. Maybe it’s not that you’ve been rejected. Maybe it’s not that you’ve been isolated. Perhaps it’s that you’ve been set apart and that God wants to cultivate something with you in that set-apartness that cannot be grown in the noise, movement, and activity of the hustle and bustle of life as you once knew it.
Rachael Adams (17:58.762)
gosh, I’m going to have to stew on that. That is interesting. I had a friend that said something similar. She’s like, it’s like the Lord is setting you apart. You know, that’s what holiness is. And so sometimes that means that you are apart for a season. And so that makes so much sense to me as you’re saying that. And I have heard before that you know that you have to have good friends and be a good friend. There is this give and take and this ebb and flow in a relationship, and so if we think about our earthly relationships to feel close to that person to be intimate, we do have to be vulnerable, we do have to be authentic, we do have to spend time with one another to get to know one another to feel close. So if that’s true of our earthly relationships, That’s true of our relationship with the Lord too. If we want to feel close to Him, we must read His word. We need to talk to Him. We need to listen to Him. We must continue to pray in this posture of openness and be willing to be authentic and vulnerable with Him, too. So, I’d love for you to speak about how we cultivate a friendship with God. Like, what is our part? We know He’s there. He is our friend. He says I am your friend. Like that is in scripture.
Tanya Godsey (19:18.235)
Yes.
Rachael Adams (19:22.39)
What does our part look like in the process?
Tanya Godsey (19:25.444)
It’s exactly what you said. It’s a quantity of quality time with God pouring that quantity of quality time with God into the reservoir of life so that we can live a vertically aligned life aimed upward at God, like getting up in the morning. And the first thing you say is good morning, God. And you begin what Dallas Willard calls a conversational relationship with God. That is what it looks like: prayer, spending time in God’s Word, and prayer is just an honest exchange. I like to view that and offer that out to people as less of a compartmental part of their day and more of an ongoing awareness of the presence of God.
Working out in the world, even though general revelation when Roman says his invisible qualities are out in the world, even taking just 10 minutes a day to go and watch a sunrise or a sunset. And when you see that heron in flight, you know that silhouette against a sunrise. Doesn’t it motion you to the heart of God? Doesn’t it echo his love and kindness in all those moments?
Throughout the day, we become an accumulation of relational moments with God. And so it looks like a constant and continual awareness of his presence. Yes, there are invitations into solitude and silence, like 10 minutes a day sitting with the Lord, just listening. What is it that he is saying to you? Take moments in the Psalms and scriptures to study, sit with that, and hear and know God’s voice. But I like to offer it to people as less compartmental, more relational, and more continual.
Rachael Adams (21:32.76)
You know, you’ve mentioned the Psalms as a beautiful way to hear those emotions; you said that emotional honesty with God. I’m wondering if there is another character, and I shouldn’t even say character, but another person in the Bible who you do not envy; envy is not the right word, but you may admire or be inspired by that person’s friendship with God. Is there somebody that you love their story and their relationship with the Lord that inspires you?
Tanya Godsey (22:06.748)
I may get emotional. I get emotional thinking even about this because I spent about 11 months in Exodus and Numbers, just like meditating on Moses’s friendship with God. He was plucked out quite literally of obscurity like he was on the backside of the desert when he met God in a burning bush. And it set him on a course of like the supernatural with God. But that wasn’t the reward for him. Like the super, like he saw, you know, a sea parted, and he saw all the plagues, and he saw, you know, manoring down. He saw all kinds of things, yet it was the smoke on the mountain with God. That was his reward. When he says, “Show me your glory, show me your glory. Like he’s begging God, show me your glory. That’s relational. He had seen all the miracles, the handiwork of God, and yet, as he had, he just wanted to see his face. And I think that kind of purity of motive is what moves God’s heart. And it has moved me to want to pursue a relationship with God that is less about the outcome and less about metrics and results and all those things and more about what it looks like to know you and to be radically loyal to you as a friend and for that to be my reward. And then everything good flows out of that, right? The good works God has planned for us to do will flow out of the purity of that motive. So I love, You know, he, he, like all of the fathers and mothers of our faith, they had up and down moments with God. They were human, and God met them in their humanity. But I love how faithful he was to God as a friend in the long term.
Rachael Adams (24:20.426)
It was said of Moses that God spoke to him face to face as a friend, right? That was Moses. And then, after they had that relationship and that time together, Moses’ face radiated, radiant. And gosh, isn’t that? I’m thinking about it as we talk; that’s the result. Know, yes, we want that connection with the Lord, but radiant with the glory of God. That is an overflow and a result of what will happen when we have a friendship with the Lord. And so I’d love to hear that from you. What do you think can happen as we get to know God as our friend and have that intimacy with Him? Like what people will notice? It will be evident that you are just living out the light and love of Jesus and that you’ve spent time with Him.
Tanya Godsey (25:10.576)
Yes. The result is that you were filled with the fullness of what it means to become like Jesus because it is through that friendship that we surrender our will, our ways, and our former selves to the recreative work of God. Instead of trying to be like them, we strive to be loving and kind, as if it’s a byproduct of the quantity of quality time that we spend with him that we are loving because we know his heart and his voice. We know how to hear his voice and understand it. And we’ve been immersed in that, that life-changing presence. The result is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control. Having sustainable longevity in those things is impossible without an abiding relationship with God as a friend. Our grace runs out, our patience runs out, and our love runs out. And so, in our relationship with God, we can go to him and say, “God, I don’t have that today, and I need you to love me today, be kind to me today, and be self-controlled.”
And there’s just an untethering from our sufficiency, dependency, and humility. You’re reaching inward and upward to God for everything that you need. So, quite literally, when scripture says that every perfect gift comes from the Father of Lights, it’s through friendship. It’s not through transactional. It’s through our relational alignment with God as a friend.
Rachael Adams (27:15.49)
How do you think that Jesus modeled that kind of friendship?
Tanya Godsey (27:21.956)
I think it was a moment-by-moment, second-by-second, day-by-day, hour-by-hour empowerment of being in unison with God and the Holy Spirit because we see that, you know, in a world of formulas, like there were no formulas. He had one aim: to do his father’s will. And that was a real-time discernment practice for him. And so sometimes it took him to the masses, like the sermon on the Mount. And sometimes it took him to the woman at the well or in front of Nicodemus, face to face. And so what it looked like for Jesus was having his ear to the ground of what God was saying? That is the question. That was the animating question at the center of his life. He was only there to do his father’s will. And so when we have an abiding friendship with God and form our lives around the epicenter of that question, we look like Jesus. And that does look like a narrow road because it took him into a very narrow road, away from cultural scripts, away from the expectations of institutions and the fear of man. And now, Jesus was not integrated into those places. He had one aim, which was to do his father’s will. So, I think it’s spirit-led, relationally centered, and grounded in this radical loyalty to God himself. Everything good that he did on this earth flowed from that.
Rachael Adams (29:16.77)
When I think about friendship, relationships, and intimacy, I think we know each other. We know the sound of voices. We know what a laugh means. We know what the mannerisms are. We know what it sure looks like. We know when somebody’s being honest or lying to us, you know, know what they like to drink, and you know how they want their food. You know what activities they enjoy. You know them. And the Lord knows us. You know, mean, gosh, He knows every hair on her head and our thoughts when we lie down and wake up. He knows all those things, but a verse in the New Testament just haunts me, and it’s away from me. This is, you know, when we get to heaven one day, hopefully, and He’ll say, I never knew you. And so I think that it just that makes my gives me goosebumps because I guess, gosh, that would be the most tragic ending I can imagine, especially for those of us that do know the Lord and think we’re trying to make an effort with him but then he doesn’t know us in return. I don’t know. Do you have anything to discuss about that?
Tanya Godsey (30:34.24)
I could talk about that for an hour. So I’m so glad you brought it up because that is the question. That lies before us to discern as the church capital C and on a personal level because the scripture you referenced me says depart from for me. I knew you not. That is a relational statement. And then the entirety of that scripture, the context of it, is saying, “Well, I prophesied in your name, and I did all of these things. But he looks at them and says, ” I didn’t know you. And so, what does it look like to wrestle? With the tension, you can be doing things in God’s name. And you can be a productive member of cultural Christianity and yet have forfeited the secret place with God. You can influence God without being intimate with God. And that is terrifying. It should provoke a holy fear of the Lord because there will be a day when we will stand before him and face reality. God sees the purity of our motive or the lack of purity. Knows what is happening and the recesses in the hidden parts of our hearts. And so it doesn’t matter whether our platforms are moving up and to the right when what is happening in the secret place is empty and void. And that is the tension that we live in right now where we live in a culture that is so centered on productivity that we have forgotten what it looks like to drink the cup of a carpenter’s son and to go back to that humility and that friendship with God, it’s so important. I’m so glad you brought that up because if we have the fear of the Lord and operate in the fear of the Lord, we will return to him in the secret place over all else. Whether it means we must forego some of our commitments or completely reconstruct our lives, we will prioritize radical loyalty to God as the final conclusive authority over all things. And that’s the choice we must make before us right now. And I believe that it is a time-sensitive invitation from God. There are eternal implications that lie in the wake of that invitation.
Rachael Adams (33:26.08)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I’m thinking about Peter, who was Jesus’s friend. Then, you know, life got hard, and he got scared, and he rejected and denied that he knew Jesus. But then he repented of that, and Jesus gave him another chance. Then, I gave him a mission, and so I just, you know, I don’t want to evoke fear in people. I think there’s a holy reverent fear of the Lord, and to get your life right with the Lord and make sure your motives are pure as much as it is up to you, I also want everybody listening to know because I know I need it. There’s grace. There is mercy. There’s unconditional love. He is a gentleman, and he is going to convict you. If you need to be convicted, he won’t condemn you but will convict you to come closer. He’s pursuing a place just like the Garden of Eden. Where are you? Where are you? He knew he knew, but he’s constantly pursuing us and wanting a relationship with us when we just return to him and return to him. That leads me to my next question for you, which I’ve been asking all of my guests: Is there a biblical concept of love that you think applies to this topic today?
Tanya Godsey (34:42.468)
Yes, I think it ties right into what you were saying: where the gospel is concerned, there is no such thing as cancel culture. What that means is that the love of God is an endless ocean. And while we are here, we are immersed in that ocean. And the invitation of God is to receive what is being given simply. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to perform for it. We just have to come as we are, and there is a standing invitation, if you will, to do that. Peter is a great example of that. Despite his humanity, he became the rock Jesus built his church on. What an example for us that there is no such thing as being too far gone where the grace of God, mercy, and love are concerned. There is always the possibility of transformation. We can live in the tension of his call to be transformed, but we must understand that we are not transforming ourselves. He is transforming us. We are not forming ourselves. His love is forming us.
Rachael Adams (36:02.804)
Amen. Well, is there something that you are loving right now? It can be a person, product, or scripture food. There are no rules to this one. This is whatever first comes to your mind.
Tanya Godsey (36:12.987)
I love traveling. I just returned from a 17-day trip, and I think travel Tanya is the best version of Tanya. I love being at home, too, but I’m wonder-centered. I love the wonder of the world that God made. So, I love being out in creation. Yeah.
Rachael Adams (36:38.476)
Do you have a favorite location that you have traveled?
Tanya Godsey (36:41.5)
The first time I visited the coast of California and experienced the Pacific Ocean for the first time, I liked to have the mountains and the ocean in the same line of sight. I saw an ocean or a mountain when I was 20. So, to get that combination, it marked me. And so the coast of California would be. Yeah, I’ve not met a California beach yet that I didn’t love.
Rachael Adams (37:11.832)
Right? Yeah. Yeah, I’m with you. I love it all. I’ve not met a beach that I don’t love. Or any body of water, to be honest.
Rachael Adams (37:19.296)
Well, I know I want to stay connected with you, and I’m sure listeners will want to, too. So please tell us how we can best do that.
Tanya Godsey (37:27.59)
The best place to get connected is my website, tonyagotzi .com. T -A -N -Y -A G -O -D -S -E -Y. I’m also on Instagram a lot. I love Instagram stories, so you can find me there any day of the week, sharing from my heart. So those two places.
Rachael Adams (37:46.892)
Yeah. Well, and I know I’m going to be honest. I will be emotionally transparent with everybody and tell them I called you Tanya when we first started. So everybody it is. It’s Tanya, but it is spelled T -A -N -Y -A. So when you go and look for her, just be mindful of that. And then tell us how we can also listen to what you just recorded on your website.
Tanya Godsey (38:12.38)
We’re still working. We just recorded it on Friday, which must be mixed and mastered. I hope to have that collection of songs up maybe by the end of the year. But the book doesn’t come out until February. So we’ll hopefully have it out around the same time so that it can be used as a companion for the book. I’m so excited about it.
Rachael Adams (38:31.982)
Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah, I’m excited about it, too. And I know you’ll become a fast friend to everybody who gets to know and hear you. Your biblical knowledge and depth are bar none, honestly. So, I enjoyed today’s conversation, and it encouraged me to be more intimate and close and develop my relationship with the Lord. So thank you for that. And I would be honored if you would pray for us as we close.
Tanya Godsey (39:01.466)
Absolutely. Yeah, let’s pray. Lord, we thank you so much for being a God who has been present with us. Even in our mothers’ wombs, you were there. You were fearfully and wonderfully created us; you are our permanent home, God. You’re where we begin. You’re where we’re called and invited to abide through Jesus the Son. And you are where we are going. There are many rooms in your mansion and your house. And God, we want a life postured to know you and to know you as a person, not a concept. And so I pray that you will work in us to reveal yourself and help us notice you, pay attention, and be responsive to your invitations. You are a God of love, you’re God of kindness, you’re slow to anger and abounding in love and compassion. We thank you for your character, God. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that teaches us all things. We thank you, Jesus, for making a way for us. And so I just pray that every person listening right now that you would bless them in their walk with you, draw them near to you, and have a palpable sense of your presence and your work in them and around them. They should notice your activity and be encouraged and changed. We trust you for all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Rachael Adams (40:55.944)
Amen. Well, Tonya, thank you so much. I feel like I’ve found a new friend in you, and I appreciate your encouragement to continue to befriend God because he is our constant, unconditional friend.
Tanya Godsey (41:10.662)
Thank you for having me, Rachael.
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