Hi, my name is Pete Scuzeiro.

I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcasts.

So great to be with you.

This podcast is going to be released on Christmas Eve, so I realize many of you will be listening

to this after Christmas, and that's great.

But actually, I've held this theme,

this message that you're going to hear today, this podcast for really this day, because it's

such a critically important truth that's shaped my life and leadership over many, many years. And it

comes out of Luke chapter 1, verse of 39 to 41. It's about when Mary

receives news that she's going to be the mother of the Messiah, and she hurries to the house of

Elizabeth, who's someone older, more mature, and she stays here for three months, and she

receives this support and encouragement. Basically, there's a space for her to be with someone.

She's not going to be struggling on our own,

with her own fears. And in this atmosphere of nurturing and hospitality and safety, you know,

God, she's able to follow, you know, this birthing of God inside of her. And as God's birthing

something in her, he's very much alive. God is very much birthing something in you and something in me through Jesus all the

time. God's active and alive all around us. But the glory of the gospel is because of he who died

and rose from us. He actually lives inside of us. And he's continually birthing new things in us

and through us.

But so often we miss it.

And this whole process of discernment is so critical.

And the whole birthing process of any new thing God is doing always requires some pain, a gestation period.

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