Episode 001 - The Spiritual Markers of Life: Angelic's Story

Angelic Gibson: 0:02

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Grow, where God reveals our way.

Angelic Gibson: 0:07

I'm Angelic Gibson, your host, and I can't wait to explore the vast riches of God's Word with you. So don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming episodes packed with biblical teachings, inspirational stories and a fresh perspective on the world around us. Now let's get started on this beautiful journey. May God bless you abundantly. Wow, it is so good to be with you all today. You have no idea how long it's taken to get to episode one. God planted this podcast in my heart back in 2016, and sometimes things just need to marinate in your heart and you need to be in prayer in my case, multiple years before you actually step out in faith and really embrace what God is calling you to embrace. So here we are in 2023, and Grow is officially getting off the ground, and I could not be more excited. This is a very big step of faith for me. Those of you out there who know me know that I'm a planner, I like to execute, I like to see results, and so, if I can't see around the corner, yeah, I'm going to be a little uncomfortable, but with this, I'm going to trust that God is revealing my way, along with your way, and there's going to be great blessings that he is going to birth through this podcast. So thank you for tuning in with me and thank you for being with me today. So it has been incredible just to even publish a two and a half minute episode zero, introducing you to this concept of Grow God reveals our way and to see so many of you already start to download it. It is exciting. It's almost like you're when you're birthing a baby for those who have had children out there, when you birth the baby and you see that baby for the first time and you see how beautiful your baby is and everyone else starts to see your baby and tell you how beautiful that baby is. That's what it's like Someone is taking interest and wanting to tune in and listen in. It feels very, very good and I just pray that all the glory of this podcast and all episodes to come, including this one, just bring great, great glory to God, because it's really his and I hold it truly loosely in my hands and we'll have him do with it as he wills.

Angelic Gibson: 2:28

So grow.

Angelic Gibson: 2:29

Why grow? God reveals our way. Well, first and foremost, god gave this to me in a dream and it was based off of Hosea 10:12, where the Lord is speaking to Hosea and he's saying it's time for Israel to plow up the hard grounds of their heart, that they may sow the seeds of righteousness and they'll take good root so it can produce a crop of love. And it's always it's all about producing that crop of love. And so if we just kind of look at the state of the world right now, we can certainly see the hard ground of the hearts that are against the Lord in his ways. And we as the body of Christ, as the body of believers, we really need to lean in and we have to just start to help people plow up that hard ground. And that may be some of our roles is to plow up that hard ground.

Angelic Gibson: 3:27

And the next phase is to plant the seed into the heart, into the ground right, and that would be the word of God. So we say plow up the hard ground, make it soft and subtle and supple and ready to receive seed. The word of God goes into that heart and then when God's word takes grab, takes hold, it literally starts to grow, the harvest comes and it produces, and it should be producing a crop of love. So the fruit in our lives should be just an abundance of love surrounding us by the people that were leading to Christ. And so that is grow. It's prepare the heart to really be dedicated to the Lord, plant the seeds of righteousness, the word of God, to produce the crop of love.

Angelic Gibson: 4:14

And really cool story is grow actually has the entire trinity with the body of Christ wrapped up into it. If you look at the root words, god means Father, reveals means Holy Spirit, our is the collective body of Christ and way is the way of Jesus. And so you can't make that up, right. Folks like that is pretty amazing, and these are what I like to call Godwinks, where God gave me a dream, he gave me big vision, he gave it all to me, just words and a dream that were rooted in scripture, and there's been much birthing in and around this grow since then and there's other things that have predated this podcast. So not to get into all that today, but really this is just the next step in that journey where God is revealing my way and my walk with him, and hopefully you're going to get lots of good nuggets listening to this podcast and how he wants to reveal his way to you so you may live abundantly, producing a great crop of love. So I think what I want to do in this episode not just give you that little background on how we got to grow today, but really just introduce you to who I am and how has God been at work in and through my life. And that is obviously a big question when you kind of tee it up, often Sometimes people say how did you come to faith?

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You know, why is your face so deep? Or you know, I don't quite hear from God the way you hear from God, and you know, how did that come to be? So, whatever the question is in and around, how did you come into a relationship with God? Where does the faith come from? It's a very big question and it's something that I will be unfolding through many episodes to come, because you can't sum up a lifetime of God revealing himself to you in one episode. But what I do want to do today is just give you some big nuggets, pretty big milestones throughout my life that have really set in my heart firmly why I believe in the God that I believe in and then. Not that I'm going to unpack those big milestones in this one episode, but in future episodes I will be peeling those milestones back. The good, the bad, the ugly and the great, the excellence of the Lord, it's all mixed into life, because life is never one straight path. There's twists, there's turns, there's sadness, there's joy, there's all the emotions in between, and certainly my life has been filled with all of them in a beautiful, beautiful way. It's a tapestry of the Lord, for sure. And so with that, that big question, when did I come to know God?

Angelic Gibson: 7:13

Sometimes people will say there is a moment in time where they came to know the Lord, and then other times people will say, well, I don't know, I've just kind of always known him. And I would say, for me it's a mixture of I don't remember a day without the Lord in my life, in my heart. But I will tell you, it took me almost 25 years of living, from birth to 25, to really figure it out what it means to follow him. And you know I love this scripture. It's great that you believe in Jesus. Well, even the demons believe. But do you really follow him? And that following him is really, I think, whatever Christian rustles with, from the day you come to the fact to, when you come to that crossroads, that you have a choice you're going to surrender your life to him and follow him or you can just you know, maybe be playing with him in the sandbox. And so certainly I had key things in my life that woke me up and said my way doesn't work and I need to lay it at the foot of the cross and I need to do things differently. And I, I uh, have had those moments right and this is where I'm at today.

Angelic Gibson: 8:33

But if I start at the beginning, what I want to do for you today is actually just give you some really good high-level milestones. Again, I said that already, but I'll say it again to kind of chart out what does my spiritual journey look like? Sometimes, if you're into, you know, really doing work on who you are in relationship with the Lord, who you're, you know your connection of your spirit to the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that's called spiritual direction, where you're working on yourself. You're working on who God is in your life, through your life, and what does he want. You know that next step to be for you. At many times when you're doing spiritual direction work, a spiritual director the one who is directing the Direct E will have you create a spiritual autobiography, and I'm going to give you a high-level spiritual autobiography of my own.

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And then what I would encourage you to do after this episode is to find some time in your calendar, block it off and just call it time with God and really sit down and pray through what are your spiritual milestones, because it's a huge indicator of how God has been at work in and through your life and maybe how he wants to reveal his way for your next step. And when, it's interesting, when you chronologically journal things out and give honor to God for all that he is doing, has done and is doing in and through your life, revelation just comes out in a very wild way. It's so cool. I love it. I love the practice of journaling and meditating and just really getting centered with the Lord.

Angelic Gibson: 10:09

So, angela Gibson, who am I? Well, I would just say again, I've always known the Lord. He's always been a presence in my life and I would say that there were some very big spiritual things that happened to me when I was early on. First and foremost, we know that God created family man and woman and there's a mother and a father, and then there's children involved, and his desire is that we are raised in a home that honors him. And so if we look at all of Deuteronomy, it literally is all about teaching what are the commandments of the Lord, raising children up in the ways of the Lord, because if we follow the ways of the Lord, blessing and prosperity follow the goodness of the Lord. It's just, it's blessing.

Angelic Gibson: 10:58

And when we don't follow his ways, the opposite happens. Curses happen and we see it. We can see pathways of righteousness producing great fruit in our culture today and we see where we don't do things God's way, the evil that manifests. It's just broken homes and hurt people and death comes upon us and just lots of, lots of horrible things. And you know, these realities certainly didn't escape my childhood.

Angelic Gibson: 11:25

My father passed away when I was three and that is a huge spiritual moment because God says that he is a father to the fatherless. And so in that moment when I was three years old and I lost my father, you know what little girl doesn't want to have a father around for all of her life, I was certainly was, you know, a part of that. Like I my entire life. I don't remember a day where I didn't wish I had a father that was with me my whole life and I definitely had issues as a result of not having a strong fatherly presence in my life, but he he departed when I was three years old through a tragedy, and that was the first spiritual marker, because when you read the word of God, he promises that he will be a father to the fatherless. And so my encouragement to you out there who's listening, who might have lost a father at an early age know that God will never turn his back on you. Hold firm to the promise that he is a father to the fatherless and that is just forever written in stone. It's his promise to you and it's been a huge encouragement to me. So I hope that gives you encouragement and when you think about the next things I'm going to share with you.

Angelic Gibson: 12:39

There has been a divine protection over my life and my family's life since that moment in time when my father passed away. There were unfortunate circumstances that just started to hit my childhood left and right, and I'm not going to go into all the details of that on this episode, but just some really tragic, hurtful, dysfunctional events throughout my childhood that led me and my siblings to a place where we went and lived with other relatives outside of my mother when I was 11 years of age and through all of what we live through, though, I can tell you that it doesn't make sense how we got to the other side of them and how we stand firm in healing today, unless God's hand was protecting us and fathering us spiritually. It's very beautiful In the mix of all this turmoil that I kind of grew up in as a child. I had a lot of sweet moments, though, with the Lord. I remember I would go to my grandmother's house for a vacation Bible school during the summer, and if anybody's ever done vacation Bible school, specifically back in the 80s, you know how good it was. I mean, this little lot of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I hope you all are singing out there, because that was a good one, and I just remember singing all these sweet little songs, and I remember in my heart, as just a little girl, asking my grandmother Grandma, do you ever think that I'll get to sing for the Lord one day to a lot of people? Do you think I'll be able to speak for him? Because I would be enamored at all these people who would be teaching on the Lord, the Lord's word, and I just always captivated my heart, even as a little girl, and my grandmother, my grandmother, would always tell me you know that I was called and set apart and I was going to do a mighty work for the Lord. So I stand firm on that truth and let all that that we do give glory to God right, amen. And so if I move past my adolescent years, another spiritual marker for me would be that I got to.

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I lived outside of Chicago when I was growing up and I lived in a town called Hensdale Illinois shout out to Hensdale and there was a town next to it called Oakbrook and there was a church there, the Oakbrook Christian Center, and my youth pastor of that day was Paul Glyman, an amazing man of God and he was a beacon in my life. So, just a pivotal point in my life I was, you know, 13, 14, 15 years old. I had a lot of, you know, identity issues that I was battling and looking for acceptance in all the wrong places and just being a typical teenage girl who was running away from the Lord. Quite frankly, he was a voice of reason. Paul Glyman was a voice of reason and truth in my life that, even though those seeds took at least another decade to really start to take root, he was definitely part of plowing up that hard ground and planting seeds of righteousness. And you know, calling out I already called out my grandmother I also had another spiritual just beacon in my life my grandmother on my father's side. She was a prayer warrior. I'll tell you more about her in a future episode, but wish we all had grandmas like her. I would also say that you know it really took a while for me to get to my next spiritual marker.

Angelic Gibson: 16:23

I ran from the Lord from about 15 years old till about 25. I just ran away from him and I did everything opposite of what the Lord's way included, to the point where I was 23 years old, single mom of three children and not really knowing how to plant a good path for them, and I was at a pretty major crossroads and that, honestly, that crossroads with God's divine hand on it, is really what took me to a new place in life. I was looking at my three babies and I wanted something different for them that I had in my own upbringing in life. I wanted to give them a sure foundation, I wanted to give them hope in a future, and so that's what I did. I turned away from the ways of the world and I started to seek out the Lord and really start to follow Him, and that path took me to New York. So at 23 years old, I left the Midwest of Illinois, packed up my three babies and went to New York and I really did a reset on life, and there that's when I would really find the way of the Lord.

Angelic Gibson: 17:37

God was so gracious. He gave me a live-in nanny and her name was Mary Beth. And Mary Beth was just a salt, a piece of salt that came into my life and she introduced me to Christian contemporary music third day, and I'll never forget it, because that music of third day started to do something in my heart that was transformational. So God was really using her to reach me through music, and then ended up getting planted in a church and things just started to look drastically different for me. Lo and behold, two years would go by and the Lord would introduce me to my now husband, who had two beautiful children of his own. So we are celebrating 20 years of marriage this September, in 2023. Praise the Lord.

Angelic Gibson: 18:29

And together I had my three children, he had his two. We blended them very closely and then we had our one guy together, one little guy, john John, who's not so little anymore, he's 19. And I still call him John John. He doesn't like it, but I really don't care. He's always going to be my John John. So sorry, john John, love you, buddy. But yeah. So here we are all these years later and God has done an amazing work in and through my family.

Angelic Gibson: 18:59

I would just say that one of the biggest milestones, spiritually, spiritual markers in my life is my family. It's not too often at least in my experience, it hasn't been. I haven't frequented the scenario. You know a lot, but when you have a blended family, you can see division, you can see, you know whose kids are whose or whatever the words are right. You can see that it's maybe not a unified biological family. And one thing that, by the wisdom and grace of God, that John and I John is my husband that we have done since really we decided, you know, to lean in and get married and to lean in and get married and blend this family is really try to love past bloodlines and I'll do future episodes on this, but I'll just say this it's not very, it's not very often that people can come in and identify whose kids are what kids in my family and I have so much gratitude from that lens because I can't take credit for it it's truly the Holy Spirit who I believe because he's a father to the fatherless that he saw the battle wounds that I went through as a kid.

Angelic Gibson: 20:18

He saw the families that I lived with and there was division and you know, I wasn't always a biological kid in the house and I felt the separation from that of a biological parent to a non biological parent. And I remember making a promise to God one day when I was a teenager and I was hurt by something that I was living through in the moment and I said if you ever give me kids that I don't actually naturally birth, I just pray that you, you know, give me the heart to love them the way that I would love my own kids, because I would never want another child to feel the way that I was feeling in that moment. Sorry, and it's just a great blessing to know that God's hand has truly been on my family. Whew, sorry, I'm a crier. You're learning that episode one. But these are tears of joy because it's nothing short of a miracle that I am blessed with a family that John and I have been blessed with. So again, that's a big spiritual marker in my life is being able to raise up a family in a blended way and see the fruit of the Lord across all their lives. It's amazing.

Angelic Gibson: 21:43

Another spiritual marker in my life it's a little out of sequence here, but would be my second born child, my first son, austin. He was born with a Kajenal heart disease and I could do an entire podcast series on that boy because he has met the Lord more than once. He's came back to testify about it. I have incredible miraculous stories in and around his life just seeing the true hand of God, just continually keeping someone alive or bringing them back when they literally passed and came back. It's just been amazing. So I will be sharing in future episodes I'll be sharing more details about his story, but it's absolutely incredible. But yeah, those are some of the big ones. I think another one I'll end with this one today. I have so many.

Angelic Gibson: 22:38

But another big marker for me was once I really started to figure out how do I follow the ways of the Lord and really living it out, living what the Bible says in practicing what you preach, so to speak. That's what I'm trying to say. I had to figure out well, I could live it out at home, but how did I live it out in the workplace? And I'm a CIO, chief Information Officer by day in the workplace and I have the privilege of leading large teams. And I had to figure out how do I live authentically to who? I am based in faith, whether I'm at home or at work, and I didn't want to be angelic one person on Sunday at church, another one at home and another one at the workplace. To really live as a Christian is to live a fully integrated life, and so God has taught me so much on what it means to live in Him. And then consistency no matter where you're at or what environment you're in or what role you're playing in a day, your lifestyle will live consistent, will hold up to who you are and who you say you are in Christ. So that's a huge milestone when God really called me to be a marketplace leader, representing who he is and not, you know, not standing firm in the integrity of my faith for fear that maybe it would not be accepted in the marketplace. So that has been. It continues to be a journey that I'm on and it's a huge marker in my spiritual life. So, yeah, that's a little bit. A little bit about me.

Angelic Gibson: 24:39

I really want to just encourage you to lean in with God. What has God been revealing to you? What are the key moments in your life, maybe key moments of adversity that you faced, maybe moments of joy where you could really feel the presence of the Lord? Or, if you haven't felt the presence of the Lord, what are those key milestones that have shaped you into who you are? And maybe lean in with prayer and read your Bible and see what God has to say about those milestones. Because at the end of the day, he said that before you were formed in your mother's womb, he knit you together in that womb, but he also recorded every single day of your life in his book. And so what does that mean? Every major milestone, mile marker in your life, big event that you've gone through, good or bad, you know, sad or happy, he has been there with you, whether you felt him or not, and he does have something to reveal to you in those moments. If you haven't leaned in to understand what that revelation is yet, so that would be my encouragement lean in with God and see what he has to say about the key milestones in your life. I'll be praying over you.

Angelic Gibson: 25:59

I'm going to close this out in prayer, but thank you for listening today. It's an honor that you don't count it robbery to join me on this podcast and see what the Lord is doing. We're going to have some really cool guests coming to the podcast soon. I can't wait to reveal who those folks are going to be, but I think you're going to get a lot out of it, so I'm super excited about it. But with that, may God bless you abundantly. I'm sending you great love and I'm going to close this in prayer.

Angelic Gibson: 26:25

Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this time. We just give you all glory and honor for it. Thank you for every listener who is under my voice, lord, I just thank you that you are stirring in their hearts. You're reminding them of the big markers in their own life their own life that you want to reveal something to them. Even if they think they have it fully understood, lord, there's always more to understand and to unpack. With you, you're constantly just providing revelation and knowledge to those who seek you, lord. So we thank you that you are faithful to be with them in this moment as they're listening. We thank you that you are just going to pave the ground to show them abundantly more than they can ask, think or imagine.

Angelic Gibson: 27:07

Lord, we close this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Grow, where God reveals our way. We hope you found inspiration, wisdom and encouragement as we continue on this faith-filled journey together. We invite you to subscribe to Grow so you never miss an episode. Stay tuned for more biblical teachings, heartfelt testimonies and insights that will nourish your spirit and deepen your relationship with God. We appreciate your support and participation in this podcast. Until next time, may you grow in faith, love and knowledge of His divine plan. May God bless you abundantly.