Episode 128. God’s Faithfulness with Sandra McCracken

Unedited Transcript

Sandra. I am so thrilled to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Rebecca. It's good to be with you so fun. I am thrilled about this new project that we get to talk about today called faithful. And I just want you, I just want you to start by just sharing a little bit about how you got to be a part of this project.

Tell us a little bit kind of the backside. Well, I guess it starts by. I'm going to go way back and say, when I was a new girl, I used to look at the liner notes in the music are listened to. And so many things that I loved were coming out of Nashville. And so there's this, like I grew up in Missouri and, and listened to both Christian music and a lot of other music too.

And, so there was this magnetism to Nashville and what could happen here and the community here. And I moved here in the nineties, like mid nineties and, And it's, it's, it's real, like, there's like a real thing. There's like, people are very genuine. And I think this project really grows up out of this community that has been formed over many, many years before, long before I got here.

So there's this legacy of faith and of art making and, and music, especially. And then this project in particular. Kelly, Scott and David McCollum, a handful of people were really all the stories like God's faithfulness and the stories of scripture, particularly through the voices of women and, man, what a gift that is.

And like, it just. On so many levels, the way that, that just quietly, brings, just bring it is up things that maybe we hadn't thought about and questions that we've had. And just through the voices of women, I think it makes it such a unique journey to, ask some of these questions together in community.

so yeah, a lot of these women are dear friends and a few of them. There's writing collaboration too. So it's been like a combination of old and new and, something that seems like it's, it's just been ready to happen for a very long time. That is awesome. I love that so much. And I remember just catching up with Susan MacPherson who's friend of mine several months ago and she's she is awesome.

I just adore her. And I remember her telling me like when it was just in its raw. Form of like y'all were just starting to put feet to the project and she was so excited about it. And then it's really fun just to see it come to fruition and get to see so many unbelievable women be a part of it, especially in the season.

So luckily I know I'd like, just to jump in and say, like, I can't believe I'm part of this thing. Like I would be on the fro. To hear and to follow, these women take this journey and to get to be part of it. It's just really kind of, I'm just kind of amazed by that too. Really humbling. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure I'm curious.

So that the project is called faithful. So tell me, what does this word mean to you? What does this quality about God mean to you on the other side of this project? Yeah, well, you know, it's a tricky one because, because if we apply that word to ourselves, we come up short pretty fast, but like one of the contributors, Sally Lloyd Jones, she always says like, you know, every story was whispers the name of Jesus.

And really when we see him as the faithful one, he is in every story in scripture, he is the one that is, Set up as the hero of the story, the deliver the one from first to last, who is the faithful one. So I think it all really points there and we participate in it. So yes, we are called to be faithful, but ultimately like he, this is his name.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just that reminder of like, we don't operate in our own strength or Byron power and he ultimately is the faithful one and we get invited into that faithfulness as we follow Christ as we become more like Christ. But yeah, I love that reminder. So just for people who have maybe not seen anything about faithful yet, there's a book and there's a record.

So like, talk to me about kind of. just a specific role that you played in this project. I remember seeing all kinds of pictures floating around of you guys kind of gathered together, working on it. And so I want to hear just more about that process. Yeah. So we started gathering before the pandemic and, that was a real gift, which would a demon know to ask for, you know, but our first few gatherings were, we're really just in a, in a room together and spending.

Long days, sharing stories, getting to know one another and practicing some creative writing and, and studying these stories of scripture, from scripture. And so some of it was, I mean, it all felt like it combination of structured and, and fluid, you know, it was just like, Seeing what happens when we get together and study this too, but yeah, you're right to say, we should back up and say, as it was to the aim was for two parts to this project.

One was the music side and the other was the written written word. So my role in this has been really songwriting and, contributing to small groups of songwriters, some of which were musicians and some just authors come in, coming together, to work on songs. Yeah. That's awesome. So we've talked a little bit about kind of specific to the word, faithful, what God showed you, but is there anything else, you know, as you think back of all of those memories, anything else that God just really showed you as you were working on the project?

well, I I've. I've been amazed along the way at the way God meets us in the most ordinary. Like he meets us in our ordinary lives and, During the very beginning. So I have a one year old and he was, he was just along with me for some of the really early writing sessions and just, I mean, I forgot, I had forgotten that when we look back at these pictures, his name was Sam and he was tiny.

And he was like in, you know, in next to me or in my arms are asleep in the room when we were writing. And it just reminds me of that. Like we, especially just this unique role of women as women, like to be able to fold a child in or did too. it's not about like multi-tasking or not. It's about, integration, right?

That God calls us to do many things and then he's just present with us in it that it isn't there. Isn't like a Sunday spiritual thing that we do. And then our real lives happen the rest of the week. It's like he is in all of it. And there's a lot of joy in that. And this project has really reminded me of that.

You know, I, Sandra, as I'm thinking about this and as I was prepping to talk to you, I think it's really cool. As I talked to authors and I talked to musicians throughout this whole time and the projects that they're releasing, a lot of them were born. Prior to the ban, to the pandemic, which you said you guys started working on this long before pandemic really struck us.

And so, I mean, how cool, right? That God knew that this was going to come out during this time, but I just wonder, like, what about God's faithfulness? You know, do you think is so important for this time, right? Like, why is this the time that you feel like God had ordained for this to come out into the world?

Wow.

I think some of those things we don't know yet, and we will look back, but even in the short view we have so far, we are, you know, P as people of faith, like when we, when we start to walk with God, whether you just started today, or you've been walking with God for 20 years, there's, there's like a practice of looking backward and looking forward at the same time.

And there are all these places in scripture. What I'll say, like, remember this, and then he'll say forget that. Cause I'm doing something new. He's kind of like, I think God's spirit is always doing both. so this is, and then when we look and then when we. If we, if we look through his eyes, we see that he has such purpose and the timing of it.

And we start to see these like surprises and gifts. That's like, Oh man, of course, like this is, this is the right time. And I think in so many ways we are more isolated than ever. We feel our isolation more acutely than we did before the pandemic. and even as the world is starting to open up a little bit and after the vaccine has been rolled out and they're just like, You know, we're acclimating to some new normal, there is a reminder that God has been the same through all of it that he's just unflinching, even in the uncertainties that we experience.

so intimately in our lives. So it, so it seems like such a good time. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I just last weekend got to teach in person for the first time. Since before the pandemic at a retreat, it was so fun, but we talked all about just this idea of. Our lives are fluid. Our lives are always changing and it's so cool how God uses those things.

To make us more like Christ, which is evidence of that over the last year, but then also he doesn't change amidst all of that. And when you take a look at everything we know to be true about God, I think the characteristic about God that just slays me is the fact that he doesn't change. Because if we think about his faithfulness or his knowledge or his omnipresence, like if, if his immutability was gone, Then the rest of it would be gone too, you know?

So it's like, I love how, just what we know to be true about him. It all checks out. Right? Like every quality checks out with every other quality. And I just love that so much. I love that too. I think we get to see different aspects of his, his person, like who he is. when we go through. Times of disruption and, his immutability is steadiness.

Another one for me this year has been just his patience. I think we, I think we've all had like this intense, like schooling in patients because it's been hard to make plans and everything that we thought would be a certain way. It just requires like immense patience, even just like whatever your living configuration is requires patients.

so yeah, that was like in, in process, I was working on an album called patient kingdom and, and that all came about in such a different way than I expected. It was like, kind of on, in the. In the same time period of during this fateful project. So, I think you're right, like God is revealing himself to us in new ways and he's always been that, but we get to see it when we get to a new vantage point.

Yeah. And it's cool. How, you know, even when our. Loneliness or, you know, these things are kind of exposed in the midst of a pandemic. We're acutely aware of that, but we become more acutely aware of his character too, in those times. And that's just, that's been a real gift. So. So, you know, as this is releasing, I just want to hear, like, what is your hope and kind of your prayer for the reader, for the listener.

he's gonna walk away from faithful. What are you hoping? I, I hope that people experience that these are not just stories on a page, but that these are people. These are women that, That would come to life to us in a new way that the songs and the words on the page that we are experiencing, that we would hear something new from these women in scripture.

And, that we would know that it's, this is like, this is a real thing. This is a historic, encounter that we have with people that have walked on this earth and that have seen God's faithfulness. And, you know, I think, I think it's so much bigger than, just raising up. Women's voices, but by way of women's voices, we see something unique, you know?

And so anyway, so that's my hope is that it would become, then it would come alive to us in the way that it. That, we encounter what's real. So Sandra, one of the things that we do here at the podcast is Patrion, which is so fun. And we allow our patrons, the chance to just ask our guests questions, anything that they, that they think of when they hear about who we're talking to and what we're talking about.

And so we had a question turned in from our fringe. Anelle. And she asks, what is the best way to engage with teenage girls kind of in the season to connect with them and help them see that you care and how much Jesus cares and loves them. Hmm. What a great question. I've actually been asking that question too.

I have like, just pre-teens I have two that are in that kind of right at the cusp. And I'm starting to ask that question in any way. And I don't know if I have the life experience yet to give a good answer, live confessionally and transparently before my kids. And before, you know, my daughter who's coming into that age.

Like the more that I can tell her, clearly this is where I'm weak in that, where they got as strong. I think telling stories of that, both in my own upbringing. it's a, it's almost like a mirroring of what we're doing with these Bible stories. It's like we keep going back to these places of our vulnerability and God's strength.

And when we do that, we give. That our children, a doorway into, their own weakness and thereby God's strength, you know? Cause it's all really about dependence and, and learning to be okay with that, you know, like we resist that, but yeah. especially in teenage years, right. It's I remember that from my own story.

It's like you just trying to figure out how to be a little girl and a woman at the same time and you have no idea how to do it. So. I love the grace for that. Yeah. I can think of a friendship. This is a little later on than teenage girls, but I can think of the season between college and marriage, which was pretty, I mean, I had four or five years of just.

You know, doing life paying for my own place and yeah. doing life in corporate America. And I had a friend and, he's married and has three girls who are now, gosh, the oldest is probably pushing late elementary school now at this point. But one of, I mean, two of them were in diapers when I met her.

And so we would run together and she would just. Invite me in to the season that I so longed for so badly wanted to be married and just wanted a life partner to do ministry with. And, I think sometimes in this season it can be very fairytale, very idealistic. When we think about marriage and motherhood and all those things.

Cause we just stare at people's highlight reels all the time. But yeah, I loved her friendship because she would invite me into like, yeah, he's my life partner. And I mean, I'm so grateful to get, to serve God with him. We got a big fight last night, we worked through it and I've, I lost it on my kids yesterday, but here's how I reconciled within.

And she just. She let me in on like the good, bad and the ugly and how God was meeting her. And he, how he was faithful in that. And I treasure those years with her so much because, she's still one of the voices that I run to when I need to talk something out about my marriage or just ministry life.

And that's. That's the type of friend I hope to be for other people, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Realizing it's like you said before, that life is just constantly changing. So we have this, we have this thing in our mind of what the arrival is going to be, and we're just not in that place and everybody else is in that place, but really it's all, it's, it's all sort of transitioned.

And as we. Become more comfortable with that. We can, we can, I think we can be more, we can reach out to others more, you know, depending, I mean, regardless of their stage. And, I think, like we, of course we need people that are right in the same place. You know, if you've got kids in diapers, you want a friend with kids in diapers, but it's also great to have friends in totally different stages and ages and seasons in life.

it makes it so much richer. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Okay. Well, this has been so much fun getting to know you. I'm so excited about this project and can't wait for all of our friends to get their hands on it. And I want people to know just how can they connect with you and the amazing music that you're putting out as well.

And just tell them all the places. Thank you so much. I have, a website and socials. That's all. It's all. Tagged under Sandra McCracken. So you can go to the website and then find links to socials and all that too, would love to stay connected and, keep in touch. Awesome. Well, we're going to hop on over to our Patrion page.

So for our friends who are already subscribed every day, or we're going to get to know Sandra A. Little bit better, which will be so fun, but for now, Sandra, thanks so much for being with me. Thanks so much, Rebecca.