Since the events of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic that’s still ongoing, social anxiety has been on the rise like never before. More and more, we struggle to be around other people, to relate to others and share our day-to-day lives with them in person. As a pastor and an author of a book on the topic of anxiety, Josh Weidmann gets questions about this topic all the time. Josh returns to the Nothing Is Wasted Podcast to share his wisdom about social anxiety in this conversation exclusively for our Monthly Partners.

These 42 daily entries were written to help you walk every day towards healing from whatever tragedy, trauma, or major life transition you’ve faced. Whether you’re walking through a painful season yourself of you want a resource to give to someone else who needs it, we’ve designed this devotional to be exactly what you need!

We’re offering the audiobook of this devotional to you for free as way to say thank you for being one of our Monthly Partners. We truly hope you’ll choose to walk along with us in this daily journey from pain to purpose.

When we’re going through something difficult, we often pray for God’s deliverance. We want the Red Sea miracle, where God suddenly makes a way and then everything is better. But while God sometimes does choose to do this, the very reason these moments are so special is that they are rare. More often, God’s grace looks less like parting the Red Sea and more like bringing mana every day. In this bonus conversation exclusively for our Monthly Partners, Vaneetha Risner sits down with Davey to talk about the different between delivering grace and sustaining grace, and what that means for our lives.

Growing up without parents in your life is one of the hardest challenges that a child can face. That’s why it’s so vital to have loving, reliable foster parents who can care for these children and help them grow into the men and women they were made to be. Having fostered approximately 145 children over a period of 18 years, Debra Moerke is an expert on this. She’s shared some of her incredible story of tragedy and forgiveness on the podcast before, but we brought her back for this special conversation for our Monthly Partners to share some of the wisdom she’s gleaned from her years of fostering.

The Bible says that the tongue is like a rudder; it steers the whole ship of our lives and our relationships with others. Our words can bless or curse, heal or wound, and we have the power of life and death in our mouths. When we are in painful seasons, our language can often turn hurtful and negative, as all of our worst thoughts and impulses bubble to the surface. Pastor Mark Vroegop has witnessed this firsthand. As an author and the pastor of College Park Church, Mark has watched as the hardships of the last year and change have left so many of us speaking from a place of anger, resentment, or even hatred, and he’s seen the devastation that this language can cause. In this bonus conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Mark sits down with Davey to talk about how our language matters and how we can keep it under control even in the midst of hard circumstances.

Whether we realize it or not, many of the ideas we wrestle with come down to a question of identity. We try to find who we are in all the wrong places, and unsurprisingly find ourselves struggling when the things we try to label ourselves with don’t hold up to a weight they were never meant to hold. In this bonus conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Davey is once again joined by Sheridan Voysey, who shares some of what he’s learned from scripture about the identities that God calls us to live in instead of the ones we run to all too often.

For many of us, our relationships with the Bible are pretty limited. We all love the Bible verses that come easily, that seem to tell us what we want to hear, but have we truly engaged with scripture on a serious level? Are we familiar with the context, the nuances, the deeper meanings of what we’re reading? Have we even read the whole Bible? Our guest for this month’s bonus episode, Tara-Leigh Cobble, wants to help us with these questions. As the author of the new book The Bible Recap and the host of the podcast by the same name, Tara-Leigh has made it her mission to help people read and understand scripture in ways they never have before. In this exclusive conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Tara-Leigh sits down with Davey to talk about how we can engage with the Bible on a deeper level and the impact that can have in our healing journeys.

The reason that you may be familiar with Justin and Trisha Davis’ story is not what they, or anyone, would have wanted. Justin and Trisha were featured in our Sexual Betrayal Series, sharing the story of Justin’s affair with Trisha’s best friend. But while they may be know for this horrible thing, that’s far from the end of their story. Now, Justin and Trisha have a loving, happy marriage, and a thriving ministry where they help people not only in marriage but across all aspects of their spiritual lives. In this bonus episode for our Monthly Partners, Justin and Trisha share some of what they’ve learned about marriage and ministry in their journey of partnering with God to take back their story.

Sexual abuse and assault is a pain that is familiar to far too many. This extremely intimate wounding at the hands of another can leave scars and shame that last a lifetime. But they don’t have to. Healing and wholeness are available to us. That is the story of Nothing Is Wasted Ministries’ very own Aubrey Sampson. In this bonus episode for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Aubrey shares her painful story of sexual assault and abuse, and how God led her down a path of healing to not only overcome that pain but to use it as momentum to help other women who’ve gone through the same thing.

Read more of Aubrey’s story in her book, Overcomer.

When we’re going through a painful situation, there are certain things we all know we should do. Maybe we pray, get help from a group of friends, or seek counseling. But there’s one incredibly powerful tool that many of us ignore — writing. That’s what Allison Fallon spends her life trying to teach people. In her work with people at every point on the spectrum from amateurs to bestselling authors, Allison has made it her mission to teach us that whether or not anyone ever reads your words, there is something powerful that happens inside us when we write through our pain. In this bonus conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Allison sits down with Davey to talk about the power of writing things down and how it can be an incredibly useful tool for each and every one of us.

For too many people, sex has been a place of wounding. This beautiful gift from God has been distorted into a thing that hurts people deeply, that ruins lives, relationships and family. Kristin and Michael Cary know this full well. Since walking through their own journey of sexual addiction and betrayal, Kristin and Michael now work with men and women to help them reclaim whole, healthy sexual behaviors as well as to pick up the pieces of their lives after sexual betrayal.

Kristin and Michael were originally featured on episode 83 of the podcast as part of our Sexual Betrayal Series, and came back for this bonus conversation with Davey about how the work they do with people experiencing unwanted sexual behaviors and with those who have experienced sexual betrayal.

It’s easy to think of our lives and our wellbeing in discreet categories. We separate our health into categories of mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical, and we like to think these have nothing to do with each other. But our health and wellness are far more interconnected than we think, and the choices we make with our physical health can determine how we’ll heal not just physically but in every other area as well.

In this month’s bonus conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Davey is joined by someone the Nothing Is Wasted community knows very well, his wife Kristi Blackburn. In addition to her work with Nothing Is Wasted Ministries, Kristi is a licensed PA with a storied list of accomplishments and a passion for holistic wellness. Kristi joins Davey to talk about how we can make smart choices with our physical health that can lead to healing in every area of our lives.

We’d all like to believe that churches are always safe places, that pastors are always safe people. No one wants to believe that a spiritual leader has anything but the best of intentions or would ever do anything to harm anyone else. But sadly, the men and women at the top of our spiritual hierarchies are no more immune to this fallen world than the rest of us. Jill Monaco has learned firsthand the horrors of spiritual abuse, and now she sits down with Davey to share more of what she’s learned in this conversation for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners.

When trials come, we all want to be more resilient. But how do we get there? How do we build up our mental, spiritual, and emotional "muscles" to withstand the suffering that we'll all go through? In this bonus episode for our Nothing Is Wasted Monthly Partners, Aundi Kolber talks about the relationship between the resilience we want and need and the trauma we'll have to go through.

Once an addict himself with seemingly no hope, Chris Dew underwent a radical transformation that turned him into the speaker and evangelist he is today. In addition to sharing the gospel with people, Chris uses his platform to try to reach people in the same trial he was in. Whether it’s battling our own addictions or watching a loved one struggle, Chris shares some wisdom on how to deal with the evils of addiction.

Despair is seemingly all around us. With everything going on in our world today, it’s only natural that we’ll sometimes fall into despair and not know how to get out. Michele Cushatt has felt her share of despair, and she shared some of that on Episode 113 of the podcast. Now she’s back to talk with our Monthly Partners about practical ways to dig ourselves out when we find ourselves in a pit of despair.

Terry Wardle has learned through experience that healing from trauma doesn’t come easily. Now he’s made it his life’s goal to help others experience experiential, holistic healing from a Christian perspective. Terry sits down with Davey to share with our Monthly Partners about what it looks like to heal from the wounds we’ve been carrying around and help others do the same.