Join host Angie Austin for an uplifting episode of The Good News, featuring the inspiring insights of Beatrice Bruno and Michelle Rahn. As they recount personal adventures and challenges, the conversation delves into the power of living with intention, a concept beautifully emphasized through scriptures and personal reflections. Travel narratives merge with spiritual guidance as the guests share valuable lessons on staying committed to one’s faith and purpose, even amidst life’s unpredictability.
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SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hey, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News. So excited to have Beatrice Bruno and Michelle Rahn back on the show together again. Welcome, ladies.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yay. Hello. Thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
So excited to have both of you. Beatrice has been moving her daughter across country, and she’s got that little grandbaby, and she’s rebooting the Drill Sergeant of Life. And Michelle seems to be going on many travels with the grandkids and the husband. Oh, and I’m getting all my kids into high school soon. They’ll all be in high school next year. And one more thing. Mark decided that he would tear up our front walkway because he doesn’t like it. It’s like Trex deck. It’s like 25, 30 feet, and he’s going to put in brick. But he tore it up, and I haven’t even ordered or figured out what kind of brick we’re going to put in. And you guys know how short I am, so I practically need a stepladder just to get under the porch now.
SPEAKER 08 :
Oh, my goodness. Wow. Good exercise. A good step. All right.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, with Mark being 6’6″, he’s like, what’s the problem? Right, right.
SPEAKER 04 :
And, of course, with your kids getting as tall as they are, they have no problem either.
SPEAKER 1 :
No.
SPEAKER 05 :
It almost comes up to my waist. I would say mid thigh is where the first like, you know, how I have to kind of crawl up. I grab like a brick wall and then, you know, and then I put my knee up and it’s ridiculous. But OK, so every week, Michelle has a word of the week. And Michelle, did you just get back from another trip?
SPEAKER 07 :
We did. Yeah, we did.
SPEAKER 05 :
Where’d you go?
SPEAKER 07 :
We’d never been to the Mexican side of the Riviera. Yeah, Mexican Riviera. Yeah. So we went on a cruise to Cabo and Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. Yeah, it’s always so fun to see different parts of the world and meet new people and new experiences. But it’s always good to be home. Love being home, too.
SPEAKER 05 :
You know, it’s so interesting that you bring up all those places because that was the cruise that I had booked for our family before my aunt said she wanted to come visit us for Thanksgiving. And I thought, you know, it might be her last trip. She’s in her 80s and not real healthy. So I canceled it. And then just last night, my sister-in-law and I were talking about a lot of expats living in Mexico. So I had researched and sent her. She’s older than I am and retired now. And I had researched and sent her a whole bunch of info about Cabo, not Mazatlan, but, oh, gosh, Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta. Yeah, places that I’ve been that I felt might be safe for her and have some English-speaking people as well because she does speak Spanish, but it’s always nice to have some expats around too. But you enjoyed it? It was wonderful?
SPEAKER 07 :
It was, yes. Enjoyed it a lot. Enjoyed it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Is that where you thought of your word of the week?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, mainly when I got home, when I got home. So my word is intentions. intentions and since I’ve been home I’ve been trying to catch up on some things that have definitely fallen behind in my life and as I was going through all these things on my desk and trying to sort them out and everything else I find that there are items where I have had great intentions to do but I have not accomplished them and some of these things I’m still able to do but I there are a couple of them where I am too late, too late. And I thought of Jesus and Jesus keeps nudging me to follow his plan for my life. And my intentions are good, but that is useless if I don’t listen and follow through for him. And the words too late has a whole new meaning when you’re thinking about Jesus. And so I just thought, Okay, let’s concentrate on the word. And if we look up intentions, it says deliberate, calculated, intended, planned, and yep, yep, there’s a lot of things that those words just fit me to a T. And being intentional means making deliberate choices to reflect what’s most important to us. There’s the key words. And becoming intentional means can increase our focus and commitment and bring more purpose to our lives. And thinking about Jesus again, we sure do that. I mean, that’s our whole purpose. Living intentionally means thinking ahead, making choices based on our personal values, beliefs, and goals. And my goal is to live with Him in heaven. And what more intentional thing can I work towards than that? And people who live with intention, they think ahead. And they choose things that affect their lives positively. So with all the noise and all of our world stuff pulling us in a bazillion different directions, I believe that my focus and perhaps yours truly needs to be what Christ is calling us to do and taking time every day to spend time with him. And that means for me, it means setting a place in my house, that I go to daily. Now sometimes, yup, that isn’t possible, but I will do it another time. But basically I go in the morning and I sit in a particular place and it’s intentionally being, spending time with God and talking to Jesus and, and confessing what, what is totally on my heart. And so in the Bible, Living intentionally means purposely pursuing the life that God has called us to live. And being intentional takes focused action, and it means God is intentional, and he calls us to be the same. And my advice from a life well lived is don’t wait until it’s too late. Be intentional today and follow through.
SPEAKER 05 :
I want to hear Beatrice’s feedback, but I always do enjoy you being a teacher, and I just flash back to you. Intentions. Intentions. Intentions. Think about those last three. Think about those last four letters and how they come together. Intentions.
SPEAKER 08 :
It’s a vocab test.
SPEAKER 07 :
You’re right. You’re right. I love it.
SPEAKER 05 :
All right, Beatrice, what do you say?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that goes along with what I have been studying this week on my prayer line. um, Romans 12 and especially verses one and two that goes so well with it because in the King James version, it says, I beseech you now for brethren by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto him, which is your reasonable service and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And, but in the message version, This is what verses 1 and 2 say, and it lines up with what Michelle is saying about intention. Here’s what it says in the message version. So here’s what I want you to do. God helping you take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work and walking around life and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. And when you talk about intentions and say, well, you know, I intended to do this and that and the other, and I just didn’t get around to it. Well, guess what? God put that in that particular thing. So if you present your bodies to him as a living sacrifice, holy or unto him, evil service, at least you can do, then you need to work that intention out and do it because he’s already put that thing inside of you to get it done. And how often do we let the world, you know, our culture, our family, the stuff that we normally do, how often do we let that pull us away from our intentions, the things that God has planned for us to do? And so that just goes perfectly with Romans 12, 1 and 2, you know, because as we live this Christian life, And as we focus on what God has put us on this earth to do, we’ve got to stop allowing stuff to distract us so that the intention that God put inside of us is lost because we’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world and what the world wants us to do, what our family wants us to do, what friends, when the phone rings, hey, hey, what you doing? Can I get you to do such and such? Well, I wasn’t, well, okay, no. No, because if that was not God’s intention for you on that particular day, baby, you better pay attention to what God said for you to do, because you might miss a moment in which God was going to use you for something that you don’t even have an idea what it was. But he wanted to use you. But we’ve got to keep our intentions aligned with God’s purposes. so that we can fulfill everything that he has said for us to do. And I’m finishing that thing this morning. That’s good right there. That was a good word, Michelle.
SPEAKER 07 :
That was really, really good. Well, it’s all him, not me, Tootsie.
SPEAKER 04 :
That was his intention, his intention for you, okay? His intention for you was to share that word right there because somebody needs to hear that today.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I think sometimes we just, you know, obviously we get distracted, but too, just the effort, you know, as we get older, just the effort to do some of the things that we may be called to do that, you know, you just kind of lose your steam a little, you know, and you’re like, that’s a lot of effort. Is that really what I’m supposed to do? And I’ve got this like a reminder on the front of my phone about something I’m supposed to do involving like weightlifting and resistance training. And then I got COVID for three weeks. And then I, you know, and so I’ve put it back on my phone to get started and I have good intentions to start lifting again and doing resistance training because it’s so important as we get older to do that and I’m fine with walking but in the lifting I just haven’t been able to get back into and so it’s been a good I don’t know four or five weeks it’s been on the front of my phone and I’ve got good intentions but have I started yet which it’s not like me but no I haven’t and again that’s really not like me it’s like I’m stuck in a rut we’re like oh yeah maybe I’m still a little worn down from the COVID and You know, I dropped like 20 some pounds because I could hardly eat for three weeks. I’m like, well, I’m just probably weak. So I probably just need to get my energy back up.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s like excuses. I’ve come up with a reason. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
So ridiculous. Well, Beatrice, you’ve rebooted your drill sergeant of life. You know, you’re in your 60s. Michelle, if you don’t mind me saying you’re in your 70s. And so you guys are like really trucking like you’re not resting on your laurels. Like, I mean, Beatrice, you came back and you’re like getting in gear, speaking, writing, like really getting out there. Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, ma’am. Because, you know, something I want to live my life to the fullest of what God has said. And, you know, I don’t want to get before Him and, you know, stand before Him in glory. And He said, well, why didn’t you get that done? Why didn’t you complete that? I put that before you. Why didn’t you? No, uh-uh. No, let me go ahead and get this stuff done now. Because when I get up to glory, all I want to hear from God is, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.
SPEAKER 05 :
So you don’t think He’ll take, like, I wanted to take a nap as a good excuse? No.
SPEAKER 04 :
No, and I can’t even say to him, well, Lord, you know, Angie distracted me because she called me and she needed to do something. And then her and Michelle and I went with the, uh-uh, he doesn’t want to hear that. No, no. What has God said for you to do?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I want to make sure, Michelle and Beatrice, since you’re both speakers, and Beatrice always working on books, and Michelle doing her acting, her singing, her speaking. Michelle, how do people find you? Michelle is very reasonable, but she would like to get a little money for gas and maybe lunch when she does her speaking events. You bet. But you speak to mops groups, women’s groups, church groups, senior groups, lots of groups. So where do people read? And you have a lot of different messages. Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you. Michelle A. Ron dot com.
SPEAKER 05 :
And Beatrice, you’re getting you’re getting back out there. So what’s going on with you and how can people reach you?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I’m getting ready to start back speaking frequently, regularly. They can contact me, Beatrice, at Drill Sergeant of Life dot com or check out my Web site, Drill Sergeant of Life dot com. I’ll be speaking for the Optimist Club next week. And so it’s fun. I’m enjoying myself.
SPEAKER 05 :
It is fun. It is fun. All right. I want to make sure people, too, you can find me on my website, AngieAustin.org. We put our shows up there. You can listen to podcasts of prior shows and get in touch with us. If you want to reach out to the ladies and you’ve forgotten their email addresses or their websites, you can reach out to me as well. God bless you both. I love you ladies. And it’s such a blessing to have you on the good news.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you. Love you, too.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
Hey there, friend, Angie Austin and Grace Fox. And guess what? We have a new book to talk about today because Grace has another book coming out. And Grace, which book is this for you? How many? This is number 14. Oh, congratulations. That’s a big deal.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you. It is a big deal. You know what’s so fun is this one will be released on July the 9th.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 06 :
And when the publisher set that release date, they had no idea that that was my birthday. So it’s releasing on my birthday. Isn’t that sweet?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, that’s so sweet. All right. It is a devotional study, and it’s Names of God, Living Unafraid, and Who Doesn’t Want to Live Unafraid by Grace Fox. All right. So it’s fun to interview you about a new book. We’ve been doing interviews now for about a year now. I think so, a little bit more than that. Yeah, yeah, and you’re just so wonderful and reliable wherever you are in the world, just about. You’ll do an interview with me. So tell us about Names of God, Living Unafraid.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right, so Names of God, Living Unafraid, it goes into seven Hebrew names of God, so seven names from the Old Testament. And what I discovered as I did the research, and I’ve been working on this even since During the pandemic, during the pandemic is when I really started studying the names of God, and it eventually bloomed into this. It’s going to be a three-book series, so this is the first of three. So anyway, seven names of God, because I’ve discovered that as we understand who God is as manifest through those names, that helps us exchange fear for faith. The better we understand who God is, the better our… the better off we are to face those fears and to rise above them. We just need to learn how trustworthy he is. And that’s how he’s shown it to us is through these names.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so many times I think you and I have talked about how trustworthy God is and that we need to learn that. I know one of our recent interviews was about trusting God. And I think, oh, one of them that I really enjoyed, you were talking about how the first time you were sent on a book tour, it was before navigation and before where you had to use old school maps and you were sent to, like, was it Chicago? Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
And I was from an island where there wasn’t even a stoplight on the island. So then they throw me into a book tour in Chicago where I have to rent the car and get myself from place to place.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my gosh. So you live on an island without even a stoplight. You go to Chicago and you’re like, oh, well, someone picked me up. And they said, no, you’re going to have to navigate to all these locations. And so that was about trusting in God. So, yes. Okay. So let’s talk about that. So God manifesting himself in specific names in the Old Testament. Any specific ones you want to talk about?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I’ve got a few favorites. Actually, it’s hard. I shouldn’t say that because it’s really hard to pick a favorite. They’re all so good. But there’s one, the Hebrew name is Yahweh Roi. And in English, the translation is the Lord is my shepherd. Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd. One version says, I have everything I need. And I like to just say, hmm. the Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need. Any questions? But, um, this, you know, everybody around the world who knows anything about the Bible understands that Psalm 23 chapter about the, the shepherd. And, and it is amazing that David was a shepherd. He understood the role of a shepherd and how a shepherd’s reputation depends on the wellbeing of the sheep. And, um, Boy, he just says so many rich things in that very short chapter. So you want me to take you through a little exercise?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Don’t worry. Yeah, do that. Okay. Okay, this is so fun. If you look at that name, the Lord is my shepherd, take it apart with every word in that phrase, even the. And at first, I thought the, I mean, you can blow right past that and there’s no significance, but there is. So listen to this. The Lord is There is only one, the Lord. It’s not like there’s a whole bunch of gods out there to pick from who’s going to be our shepherd. It is the one and only. And then Lord, that word there, when we see it in scripture, it’s in all caps. And that means he is Yahweh. He is the true, the living God, the almighty God, the creator of heaven and earth. And he wants relationship with us. That’s who our shepherd is. And then is, that’s present tense. It’s not the Lord was our shepherd once upon a time or the Lord will be our shepherd when he gets around to it. But it’s he is every moment, every day. And then the Lord is my shepherd indicates relationship. You can’t have relationship with an inanimate object. So like the psalmist talks about God as a fortress, for instance, or a rock. How can you have a relationship with that? But you can have a relationship with a living being. being and that’s who god is the lord is my shepherd i belong to him and then shepherd of course that’s where you can start reading about um the role of a shepherd and how he protects his flock and not just the whole flock but he knows every individual sheep and he knows that individual sheep’s idiosyncrasies and and he knows how to how to call his sheep the sheep know him by name and And they recognized his voice. There is that relationship there again. And he guides them on the best pathway. He will never lead them into something that’s going to be bad for them. But he is there for them all the time. In our lives, spiritual realm, doesn’t mean nothing bad ever happens because bad things do happen. But he is there to care for us in the middle of that. And he has a purpose we don’t understand. But the Lord is my shepherd. Beautiful. That just opens it wide up.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, that is beautiful. What else do you teach us in the book? I love that you lead the readers through an exercise like that.
SPEAKER 06 :
I talk about Yahweh Yireh, and that is the Lord is our provider. And I, oh man, it’s not just our physical needs, but Angie, you know, my husband and I have lived on faith support for over 30 years as career missionaries. So never having a set monthly income. We’ve never known what’s exactly going to come in in a month. It’s about 33 years. And for a few years in that, Jean and I were on our own, and that was one thing. But when we had three children, there was an 11-year gap where Jean worked as a civil engineer, and then God called us back into career ministry at a Christian camp. So we had to go back to raising support. And I remember for about, oh, it was At least the first full year, we had a little apartment over the office. I would run down the stairs and open the office door and sneak in. I didn’t want the secretary to see me too much because I didn’t know what she’d think of me if she saw me do this several times a day before the mail arrived on payday. I just needed to know that we were going to have enough money to buy groceries. There was one time before we had more of an established support base behind us or a support team. The Canadian Postal Service went on strike. So people didn’t do PayPal or e-transfers. That wasn’t even a thing back then. It was a check in the mail. That’s how they sent support. So when there was a mail strike, we didn’t get our checks. And we were kind of embarrassed. We didn’t want to tell anybody. So we were like, God, you’ve got to help us because, like, It didn’t take long for us to kind of run out of food in the fridge. But we had met a couple. This strike happened in November. But in August previous, we had met a couple at the family camp. We really struck it off nicely with them. So we invited them for coffee. And we thought, hey, why don’t you guys come for dinner one night? The first time we could get our schedules together was like in November. And so they were going to come for a Sunday dinner. And that was after the mail strike started. So I’m looking in my freezer and going, I have a couple pounds of hamburger. That’s it. You know, and I’ve got macaroni noodles. What am I going to do? I made a casserole out of the left hamburger that I had and macaroni, and I didn’t even have produce for a salad. I think I had some frozen veggies. You know, I was going to throw that in the pot as well. They showed up, and like I’m praying, God, expand the food, because they had three kids as well, so ten people. God, you’ve got to feed the masses, right? Take the little fish and little and make it grow. And And you know what? They drove in and they started unloading groceries. The guy said, I work at a grocery store. We didn’t know that. I work at a grocery store and you know what? I heard the Lord say, buy groceries for this family. And so I did. And they had all the stuff even coming into the Christmas season that I never could have afforded to buy like Christmas crackers and special things, special treats. But they bought flour and sugar and peanut butter and syrup and pancake mix and all these staples and produce enough to put together a nice salad for supper. I have seen God provide.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’ll bet you when they started helping you put those groceries away, if they did, and saw how little food you had, they must have also been astounded that God led them to buy you groceries.
SPEAKER 06 :
They were. It was just this moment of rejoicing for all of us because they had heard God’s Spirit speak and they obeyed. And we were the recipients of it, and our kids saw that. So it was just an amazing faith lesson for 10 people that day in that kitchen as we stood around and realized what had happened. But God doesn’t just provide our physical needs. He provides wisdom, and He provides strength when we need it, and He provides patience for parents when they need it with their little ones, and all of these things. He is our provider because He is the ultimate source of everything and the infinite source of everything.
SPEAKER 05 :
He never runs out of those things that we need. I love it. You know, you talk about God as our supreme commander, and how does God as our supreme commander, how does knowing that help us when we’re facing a personal battle? And you know, how do we know when we are to answer a call?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. So we all go through battles and they might be a relationship that’s gone south with somebody else. There could be a battle in that and forgiveness and trying to figure out how to communicate with these people. That kind of a battle of the soul. There could be a battle with fear over finances. Fear is a huge thing that we battle with or a battle with a secret addiction or a shame. Something happened to us in our past and we’re just so afraid somebody is going to find out and what will they think of us. So there’s that battle inside too of Um, but so many battles, but you know, scripture says that, uh, God is, let me say this right. Yahweh, that’s the Hebrew name. And that means the Lord of hosts. And that means that he is the Lord, the commander in chief over, over all of earth’s armies, over all of heaven’s armies. He determines the final outcome and he never, he never loses the battle. He never, uh, loses the battle. He has purposes to accomplish. And when we’re fully surrendered to him and working in sync with him, he will win that battle. So do we have trouble forgiving somebody? Is there a battle of the soul going on? When we walk surrendered to his authority, he will help us get over that battle with unforgiveness that we’re struggling with in our life. Is it secret addiction? When we walk surrendered to him, this commander-in-chief will enable us to rise above that enemy that’s keeping us captive. There’s so much, oh my goodness, there’s so much hope in knowing that he is there as commander-in-chief, and he will help us fight those battles and help us, you know, with the fear. I think of David and Goliath. Goliath went, ha, you know, he kind of taunted the Israelite army. Twice a day for 40 days, and the entire army turned around and ran, but David, the teenage shepherd, walked in and said, I’m going to take you out because you have defied the name of the living God. And you come to me with all your armor on and your javelin, but I come to you in the name of, and he used that name, Yahweh Sabaoth, the Hebrew name translated the Lord of hosts, God Almighty. I come to you in that name and I’m going to take you down.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow. I love your writing. I love our interviews. We only have a little bit less than a minute left. What keeps you inspired to keep writing? I mean, 14 books, that’s a lot of work. You’re a grandma. You have a lot going on with your family, and you travel a lot for your ministries. What keeps you motivated to keep writing?
SPEAKER 06 :
I know that God’s called me to write. Maybe someday we can talk about that in an interview and how I know He called me to write. And one day when I thought I was done, He affirmed it through a stranger phoning me. And affirming in St. Grace. I just felt compelled to call you today to say keep writing. Oh, I love that.
SPEAKER 05 :
I love that. GraceFox.com if you want to check out Grace and all of her 14 books. And this one is Names of God Living Unafraid. Thank you, friend. God bless you for always sharing with us.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thank you, Angie.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
