Hey Justin here, before we jump into the story of Yahweh and Hagar and Ishmael, I want to say thank you to every one of you who've come alongside me as patrons of Holy Ghost stories since that opportunity began two weeks ago. I'm so encouraged, so grateful.

If you're not already familiar with it, Patreon is an online platform that allows people like you to support the creators

they appreciate to become patrons of that work. Now, you're listening to Holy Ghost Stories right now,

so here's what I know. There's a good chance you've listened before and you like what this

podcast does. I love that so much. I don't have to explain to you what Holy Ghost Stories is or

what I'm trying to accomplish

with it because you know. Here's what you may not know. There are two reasons more things

like this podcast don't exist. Number one, it's demanding. Every one of these episodes requires

loads of research, story outlining, painstaking writing, editing, rewriting, precise recording, sound

editing, musical scoring, mixing.

It's dozens and dozens and dozens of hours of work.

And there's no team, there's no research assistant.

It's just me.

I'm having a blast doing every bit of it, but it is a full-time commitment.

It requires a concentrated devotion of time and

energy. This podcast exists because I've made it my job. The reason there's not allowed out there

like this podcast is just because it's really demanding. The second reason, it's dangerous. And what I mean

is this, in order to devote the time and energy I just talked about, I had to quit my job, rent out my house, and start eating a lot of rice in order to live for a while with no income. And apparently, that's just not a super popular thing to do. Not many people want to change their lives and risk everything, hoping, praying that people see the value and what they're creating, come alongside

them and partner with them to do something new. But I thought, man, telling the stories of the Old

Testament in all their moody, dappled goodness would bless people uniquely enough for them to decide

they wanted to give some money each month to make sure it continued. I thought maybe the reason the

church doesn't have more people sharing truth in fresh and beautiful ways is that there haven't been

...