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Hey, welcome back to the Way UK podcast.

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My name is Michelle and today I'm joined by- Solomon.

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Amazing.

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And our wonderful guest, David Lockhead.

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Hello.

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Hey.

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He is the founder of Stream Studios and the co-founder of Finlay & Co.

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There we go.

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But he has an incredible story of just God's faithfulness in his life.

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And we get the absolute privilege to get to hear a bit of that.

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But before we dive in, make sure for our guys that like to listen on the go, we have this podcast available for you on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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So do make sure to check them out over there.

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Sorry for the interruption, we have news.

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Zoe, would you like to share?

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Yes, I would.

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Friends, this September we're heading to Malawi.

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We've heard incredible stories of faith and resilience and we have the opportunity to go and meet the people behind those stories.

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Yes, and we'll be doing that with World Vision, a Christian-led humanitarian charity who work alongside local communities to bring support to children and families and to basically help tackle poverty.

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They do amazing work and we're so excited to be partnering with them.

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Over the course of the trip, we'll be meeting people, shaking hands, hearing stories and seeing the work that's already happening on the ground.

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And we would like to invite you to be a part of it.

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One of the initiatives World Vision runs is called Chosen Sponsorship.

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Now, Chosen basically flips the typical idea of child sponsorship on its head.

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Instead of you choosing a child to sponsor, Chosen returns agency back to the kids and a child chooses you.

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Yes, and so we'll be going to Malawi and be seeing Chosen in action.

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And if you want to get involved, follow the link below and sign up.

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Hey, David.

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Hey.

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We need you to chat a little bit more so we can actually hear your accent.

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Do you know what I mean?

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Come on.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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It's been watered down over two decades being away from Scotland.

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And being in London.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Dude, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, about what you do?

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Give us a bit of context of who you are.

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Yeah, for sure.

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So grew up in Scotland and I thought I'd come to London for two years.

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And somehow, almost 20 years later, I'm still here.

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Wow.

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I love all things sport and I eat a bit too much chocolate.

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And I probably had three main sort of career waves.

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So I had five years in sort of regular corporate jobs doing consulting after doing a business degree.

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Oh, wow.

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And then went through four rounds of redundancy in those five years.

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The fourth round I got cut.

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and was like this was supposed to be the safe career path.

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I always wanted to go and start businesses and so I thought I'd go and get some experience first and actually four rounds of redundancy and I was like, this is not safe.

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I'm actually gonna go and do the risky thing.

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And so set up a business with three friends and we were beautifully naive about the industry.

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None of us had worked in Iwer before and had the joy for the best part of 10 years of building a brand in that space.

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Wow.

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And then the third wave has been working on a non-profit called Stream Studio for the last few years.

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So, yeah.

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Tell us a little bit about Stream Studios.

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We got to check it out a little bit before.

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It's really, really cool stuff.

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It's like storytelling, right?

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I'd love to hear a little bit about that.

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Thanks, man.

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Yeah, it's kind of intriguing because when you look at the Instagram account or the YouTube account, it says refreshing conversation about faith.

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And you're like, well, that's pretty vague.

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Like, what's all that about?

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And ultimately, we exist for a reason that's not maybe immediately clear when you see that title.

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We exist because so many of my friends over time have struggled with their faith.

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And I wanted to create something that might be helpful on the days that we're on the verge of drifting or struggling or maybe even walking away from God altogether.

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And so

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streams it took a long time for god to get my attention with it um it was a really fascinating journey of um of wrestling whether i could leave doing my sort of dream job in the eyewear space but ultimately he planted this seed in the stream and broke my heart for for those who have known him and known him really well and fully but ultimately are are drifting or distant when did that happen

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So he started talking to me, God started sort of putting it on my heart around 2014, 2015.

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And I think part of it was I had been in London for a few years by this point and I was leading a small group and I was aware that sometimes I would get to Tuesday night when I was leading the small group and I'd be like, I haven't really engaged with God since Sunday when I was in church.

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And I was like, wow.

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Maybe I'm a total fraud or maybe some of those in my connect group are also struggling and not thriving as much as we all make out.

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And so primarily it was actually to try and solve the problem in my own life of in a busy, fast paced career and city life and socializing life.

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how do we make enough time for God to be present and full and engage in a relationship with him that is meaningful and life-giving?

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And so wrestled with that and began to think that maybe creating some sort of app would be helpful and then sort of realized that actually for someone to remember the name of the app to download it and then each day to bother to load it up,

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um what if we created something that was already in the spaces of distractions what if we had something within social media world yeah and so it's going to be called rhythms um and sort of something about daily rhythms and um truthfully no one can spell rhythms um

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I still don't know where the H's and the Y's go.

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And so we changed it to streams.

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And streams from the verse in John 7, 38 says, whoever believes in me, streams of living water will flow within them.

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And that being the Holy Spirit, and I knew myself the times and seasons where I had felt closest to God, I feel most alive, I feel those streams of living water.

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within me and so that was my prayer for friends would be like could we create something that they would feel that intimacy and closeness back with the lord because i think a lot of what we make as the church is either evangelistic in nature or discipleship oriented for those who are thriving and doing really really well

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But I think there's a bit of a space between for those days where we're if we're honest, sometimes we're just struggling.

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Sometimes we're busy.

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Sometimes we're not feeling it.

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Sometimes we're angry or we're we're just in a place where we don't want to engage.

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And so those are sort of the at risk moments where I don't think we're ever static.

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We're probably moving forward or moving back.

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And so could we create something for those days where maybe we're we're struggling a little bit?

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And was it from your own sort of personal walk with God and where you had experienced that sort of, I guess, tricky season of, I guess, not feeling like you want to engage with God, but then knowing in your heart that I probably should, this is probably the thing that I need, but it's really difficult.

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Yeah, I had a season when I first moved to London where I just felt like I could see through it all.

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I was still going to church and I pitied the people who were standing around me.

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And I think...

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maybe in today's language we'd call it a season of deconstruction but it felt like it was maybe a case of me beginning to own my own faith right i'd grown up in a really wonderful family and great church environment and i'd gone off and done a gap year in uganda for six months and

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at university I'd chosen not to drink and so like was all the way in was sort of part of various bible studies and groups and I think a lot of people begin to own their faith rather than it being relying on their parents faith at some stage in their teenage years and maybe mine was just a little bit later on and so I had this challenge of being in London and suddenly alcohol was everywhere around my job and

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There was a lot of freedom and a lot more partying that I'd maybe had during my uni years.

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And I think I just really struggled to reconcile my faith with the party lifestyle that I found myself in connected to work and friends.

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And so knowing the pain and the difficulty that you experience when there's this sort of disconnect.

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And I think anyone, any of us who've ever spent time away from God or who've had friends who drifted, it's not a pleasant experience like this.

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I would almost call it being gloriously ruined in a sense.

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So like I think like the Lord places something in us that means when we're distant or we're going through where we're seeking pleasure, it doesn't satisfy in the same way that it might have done.

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It feels like it's like actually shredding you apart more.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Fully.

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So I had experienced this and I just,

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having understood the pain and the difficulty, I wanted something that could be useful, that could be shared with friends in times or spaces where they're just really not feeling it and sort of at risk of leaving the beauty of the faith they've discovered once in the rearview mirror.

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Why stories?

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Why stories specifically?

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So when we started, we actually thought we'd have three content pillars.

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We would have what I call theology, illustration and story or testimony.

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So theology would be sort of biblical insights.

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Illustration would be, I don't know, someone who gives a sermon often like starts with a bit of a...

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an illustration it's not necessarily a personal story but it's like there are 10 million stars in this galaxy whatever and um it's been the the testimony and the story ones that seem to have really resonated and been shared most widely and therefore what we've become known for so it took me a little bit by surprise um we didn't set off by going okay we're gonna just tell stories um

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video is the stickiest form of content and uh they're short because attention spans are so short um but it it makes sense like there's a verse in revelation that says they overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony and so i think we need to um remember how powerful our own stories can be for the encouragement of others i actually think the word remember generally is so important for us like if you were to say

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to any of your friends, hey, like what are the five times God's most clearly answered your prayers?

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you know he has and you'd be like maybe you could scramble one or two off the top of your head but you almost like sometimes have to think and be like oh uh okay yeah this that and so i think one of the most helpful things i've done in in recent years is keep a list of times where i felt god's answer to prayer or showed up in some some way or form i think it says so often in the bible remember remember and so that's

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for us internally to remember but testimony is is remembering it and sharing in a sense so yeah what you said also reminds me of that scripture in revelations where it's like um the testimony of jesus is a spirit of prophecy like it's just so powerful and i remember i remember

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I think on your website it says like initially you'd written 40 people down in your on your notes that had like walked away from faith.

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And that's kind of where like Stream Studios kind of was birthed from, I guess.

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And like also it said that 40% of people who had engaged with Stream Studios had like come back to faith.

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which is just like phenomenal and we had a bit of a moment off camera where you mentioned how like finley and co the sunglasses brand that you had started with your mates there was a moment in there that was really like pinnacle for your faith like could you share what that was yeah for sure so um we had the joy of starting a

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an eyewear brand, a sunglasses brand back in 2012.

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And things were going pretty well.

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We were opening our first store in Soho.

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Wow.

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And then it just began to be really tough.

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And we'd had the lease for a few months.

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We hadn't managed to get open.

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We were running out of cash.

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And it just felt uphill.

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And I remember my co-founder, Sam, when we very first started the brand, he was like,

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it's unfair like it's unfair for our competitors because we have the holy spirit and i was like that's really interesting but realistically there's there's so many challenges in building a business and we were just under it we were we were struggling and we were fearing that we might lose the business and

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I was in church one night in East London and a friend who I'd met once at a summer festival came up to me and said, I actually have a word for you, but it's a word for your business.

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I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sure.

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And she shared it and said, in the Second World War, when the Spitfires would go out on their missions...

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the pilots wouldn't know if they were coming back or not.

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And she said, I see your business and I see the Lord's emblem on it.

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And he's saying it's a sure thing.

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Wow.

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Okay, well, that's really, really encouraging.

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So I wrote it down with a day in my list of moments of sort of encouraging prayers and went on.

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with life.

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And a few months later, I received a phone call from a brand, a fashion brand, you may have come across it called Aspinall of London, sort of a fairly small sort of leather goods brand.

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And I said, hey, we're doing this collaboration with a male model called David Gandhi, sort of one of the biggest models in the world.

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And we're doing all this sorts of thing and we want to do some sunglasses part of it.

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And he says that actually the only brand he wants to work with on the sunglasses is you guys.

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Would you be interested?

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I was like, yes, that's great.

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She said, oh, I forgot to mention it's actually all about Spitfires.

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I was like, OK, interesting.

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So we did the collaboration and it was a really fun one.

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The imagery was really fab and the business by this point was actually doing a lot better.

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And so I went back into my phone and looked at the date of when that word had happened.

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And something extraordinary occurred to me.

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24 hours after that word had been given to me in church on the Sunday night, I was on the tube on the way home from having dinner with my family in town.

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And it just started to receive loads of text messages and emails.

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And so what's going on?

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And sure enough, Prince Harry had stepped out with his new girlfriend for the first time.

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And she was wearing our sunglasses.

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No.

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That turned out to be Meghan Markle.

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They were in Toronto.

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They were at a tennis match for the Invictus Games.

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And it was, the photos were incredible.

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And somehow our PR agency had jumped on it early enough that all the magazines and newspapers had credited it as being our sunglasses, which was great.

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And if you zoomed in on the photo, you could even see that we'd engraved the frame with MM on the side.

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And so she looked great.

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and the next morning every major newspaper had this image on on the front which was great and amazingly the couple never appeared in public again together until they announced their engagement and they announced their engagement and they were going to have this engagement photo shoot but there were no photos of them other than of that day where she was wearing her sunglasses so for a second time every major newspaper in the western world had this photo on the front page and we saw another sales spike

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And those sales of that one style completely transformed our business from struggling and not being able to open the store to then being able to get the business up and going.

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And it kind of just shook the foundations that God would care enough.

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about a business like we we we know we hear that he cares about us as individuals but it was a little bit mad it was almost that that verse in ephesians where like we could not have designed a moment like that where a future royal would only be photographed once looking so good you can see the engraving there's a verse in ephesians that says he can do immeasurably more yeah you can ask imagine i was just like

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Wow, for the Lord to care about the details of our lives like that and for him to give a word to a friend who I'd only met once that was so specific and for it all to then happen 24 hours later after that word was just really formative for me in believing that actually God wants the best for us.

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He's so interested in the details of our lives and he can orchestrate things that we would never be able to piece together.

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I feel so encouraged by that.

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Like, I think it's so easy to feel like, yeah, I know that God's invested in my life, but does he, is he as invested in, like in the things I would love to do kind of thing.

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So hearing that is like, so I guess comforting.

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I'm just wondering, like, obviously that, that was like a moment for you where you're like, okay, God, you care enough about what I care about.

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And what point was it where you actually decided to step away from Finlay & Co and then decide to start Stream Studios with that sort of experience?

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Because, yeah.

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So it was a few years later and I'd felt...

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numerous times I'd felt the Lord sort of downloading into my heart, often during worship, this sort of idea and picture of what streams might become.

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And I felt this push and this pull.

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I felt this pull towards starting, but I also loved working in the business.

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And after a while, maybe a few years into the business, there were some factors...

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working in that that were less enjoyable and so i was like maybe it's time for something new but i very much was feeling the the call from from the lord but i'd sort of been sat on this for six or seven years often when we have an idea and god um calls us to something it can be immediate but sometimes it sort of builds and i don't know if he was

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building building faith in me or if i i needed to go on a bit of a journey but basically end of 2019 um i went to a friend's wedding in malaysia and i expected that a bunch of other friends from london would come no one else came and i was like well i'm not going all the way to the

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at first ever solo holiday and I was like maybe I should try and put my phone away and maybe I should actually try and read this book that's been in my suitcase for the last six trips that's not been read and maybe I should actually spend some time in the word and so for three days amazingly no one really spoke to me at the resort like it was all families and no one seemed to care that there was this random single guy

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So I was pretty much left to my own devices and just felt really clearly on the beach one day, God saying, like, now's the time, like, step away, lean into this.

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And so I made the decision there and then and came back to the UK.

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I was trying to wrestle with, like, do I cut down to four days?

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Do I leave completely?

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Yeah.

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And I was having a couple of hospital tests at the time and I was feeling really cold a lot.

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I remember a friend who owned a clothes brand gave me a big thick red jacket because I was freezing in winter.

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And I went to the doctor and they were like, yeah, you're anemic, like you're losing loads of blood.

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That's why you're so cold.

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And so we need to run some more tests.

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And anyway, went for tests and found out that I had stage three bowel cancer.

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And so was like, wait a minute, Lord, I've just said yes to going to do the good thing.

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I've been running this sunglasses fun brand and now I'm going to go and do follow the calling.

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What is going on?

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Like, how have we gone from this exciting new future of I'm going to set up this thing, Laura, I'm going to go and do this for you to hold on.

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I don't even know if I'm going to survive this.

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And so chemo, radio, multiple surgeries, it, it got pretty gnarly.

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And, um, I, I,

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basically had a year where during covid um i was having all all this treatment and and basically said to the lord like if if i get to survive this like what would it look like to to create this new project what what should it be how should it function

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And maybe it acted as a bit of a motivator for me to have something to sort of focus on and dream about and chat about beyond my illness.

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And I think I also tried to view the illness as like, what if this is a preparation season of sorts now?

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for me where I'd felt for a long time, am I worthy to go and start some Christian organization?

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And probably had a bit of fear around that.

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And I think God did all sorts of work in me during that year.

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There was then another year of sort of building up energy after surgeries.

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I had a sort of big surgery at the end that was like 11 hours or so.

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My word.

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21 wires or tubes coming out of me.

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No way.

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I was in the hospital for seven weeks at the end.

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So it was like gnarly stuff.

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But madly, I encountered God more through that season than probably any other time in my life.

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It feels funny to say that in the time where I suffered in a sense most, I actually felt his goodness the most.

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And there were fascinating times.

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Like I had sung as a kid loads of songs about peace.

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I've got peace like a river.

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I never really thought about it.

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And somehow through that year, in the midst of not knowing if I would survive or not,

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I felt what can only be his peace.

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It made no sense.

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Like the Bible says, it's peace that passes understanding.

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And it's now become one of my favorite facets of his character.

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The fact that he is able to calm the seas in our hearts at a time where nothing should be able to.

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And I wish that we could...

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have these experience and learn these lessons on holiday on the beach on the on the top of a mountain but somehow he he seems to do a lot of his deepest work in in the valley and in the middle of the storm you know it reminds me of moments in my own life where i've walked through a

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deep pain or suffering.

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And that is where I have like met the kindness of God and met Jesus.

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And I think it's just hope for all of us either going through seasons that are really difficult

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um to know that jesus is there yeah with them and i and that's also just kind of what you guys are doing over at streams where you're telling these stories of people who have met jesus in all sorts of crazy seasons um

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Because life isn't all good.

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It is just, it is hard.

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And bringing those conversations to people in seasons where they really need it is just, it's such a kingdom thing and such a...

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it's the heart of God to bring hope to other people to keep on carrying on and like what you've spoken to so many people on streams and I just wanted to like ask like what's

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what's a conversation like what's one conversation you've had with someone that you've come away like god like you can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine but also just like the power of power of god yeah

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So we've shared just over 500 videos now and probably had about 200 different conversations with folks.

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And we try and have sort of multiple clips from each conversation.

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I think it's fascinating to hear the breadth of how God's at work

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in the world at once it's like it's weird like i was reflecting even last night of how um it's right that we should be so aware of him in our own lives and and in a sense feel like he's personally interested and and walking with us and yet it's also so important to like hold the tension of like

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there are several billion of us on this planet.

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And whenever we interview these folks, it's fascinating to hear how specific and how he's moved in their lives.

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I think it's like collectively built faith in me that any of us who've walked with God for a decent length of time should have moments where we can point to and go, yeah, the Lord showed up or he revealed himself through scripture and it was undeniable to me in that moment.

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for him to be like that personal with so many of us simultaneously is like blowing my mind yeah about how great he is like i think a large part of my journey of faith since a sort of crisis of faith in the early 20s has been trying to

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appreciate that God is actually wanting to be our friend.

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He calls us friends.

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And yet now wrestling through what, what is it for him to be so mighty and sovereign and involved in like, imagine having a best friend, but he's also best friend with a billion other people, right?

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Like, yeah, it's fascinating that he's, he's so huge and other and capable to hold that space.

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Like,

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If we had five people we were trying to be best friends with, we'd, they'd feel like we're short changing.

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Who is this?

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That's just so other and so mighty and so capable and so interested in our lives.

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Yeah.

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You strike me as a man of remarkable ideas.

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I guess you, you've, you've kind of shown that to be the case.

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And I'm, I'm, I suppose I'm curious as to.

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how do you, I can't really think of a better way to ask is like, are all your, are all your ideas good?

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No.

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Have you, have you had bad ideas?

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Yeah, definitely.

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How do you, how do you differentiate between the two?

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I just kind of, I'm thinking about people that might be at home watching this with, who are trying to figure out, is this, is this something to try and do?

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Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly having ideas and most of them are probably horrible.

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There's a film in Australia called The Castle and there was a line that goes, You're an ideas man, Steve.

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And my housemate for a while was Aussie and he'd always go, You're an ideas man, Steve.

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sure but most of them are really bang average and never come to anything i think the the ones that are most interesting to act on are when you feel like it you're gonna explode if you don't do it if that makes sense where something's become so compelling that you're like part of me's gonna be like not being true to myself if i ignore this any any longer because it's hard to discern like

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Is this my idea?

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Is this God's idea?

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Is this worth leaving my job for?

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Is this something that I can do and that might end up being a job that pays?

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And so there's a constant wrestle with that.

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But no, most of my ideas are pretty bang average.

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I wanted to drop out of uni and start a gelato shop.

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in scotland and then i bottled it i ended up thinking like oh like selling ice cream in a cold country is not the smartest move but now i really wish i'd done it because there's gelato everywhere so i don't know you can decide if that was a good idea or a bad idea but

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uh most of ideas are horrible that's that's for sure most of them should never see the light of day but it's fun um playing around with ideas i had a call last night from a friend who's driving home from work in germany and was just wanting to like run through some some different ideas that they had and i just i find it really stimulating to to dream about what could be and and the idea that the best businesses haven't already been made that's so cool right we can take

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everything already exists like this ministry or this charity or this business it's already in place and it's so hard to go and create something new now i think we need to have like a the permission to dream that anything's possible and actually with the right tenacity and the right resourcing and with god's help because streams hasn't become

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a thing because we're great at it like it was truly felt like the lord's idea to me and i feel like his hand has has been upon it and and so the the the combination of like our graft and working as hard as we can on something but in partnership with him is i think where the click happens

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And you mentioned streams again.

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Just coming back to that real quick, you said that earlier you talked about how it kind of looked different to how you imagined it initially.

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And I suppose my question would be, has in that change and in its growth, because it has grown, has it surpassed what you expected of it?

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And if so, how?

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Yeah, in many ways, in many ways it has.

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And so truly, I still see it through the lens of, is it serving the names on the list, my friends on the list of who I pray for and who I care for?

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And therefore it's made it really easy to make decisions about what we do when I'm thinking, do we interview this person or do we post this clip?

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It's through the lens of like, would those friends watch it or not?

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And I'll occasionally get messages from friends who have watched something and just say, this has moved me, this has been helpful.

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And like, honestly, it doesn't matter to me if a video has had a million views.

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It's worth everything when there's a personal connection and someone's actually been moved by it.

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So, yeah, totally thrilled with the fact that people have discovered it and that it's become this like shareable resource.

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But until the names on that list are all home, then we have work to do.

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And I had this moment a few years ago where it was during the pandemic, it was when I was mid chemo.

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And of course, like when you're receiving treatment for cancer, you're a little bit more emotional.

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And I was aware of that.

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But I had a friend reach out and say, hey, I've been struggling and I've not really been around church for a few years.

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Would you have any like podcasts you could suggest or sermons you could send?

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So I sent through five and a little bit later that day, I was praying for them and I just found myself in floods of tears.

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And I was like, what is that?

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And I felt God say, I just want my kids to come home.

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And so when you think of that story with the 99 sheep and one who's gone astray, I used to think of that as like, oh, it's like evangelistic.

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Like, yeah, of course, like leave the 99 to go find the one.

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But actually it's one who is already in the fold.

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And Jesus leaves the 99, the shepherd goes out and leaves 99 in search of the one who's far from home and wants to bring him back.

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So that's Jesus's heart.

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And I think we've got so much work to do.

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There's so many folks who have tasted and encountered God's goodness everywhere.

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and been in and yet somehow in the long medium to long term they've struggled with with faith and with that relationship and so until everyone's home we've got work to do wow what's something that you would say to somebody who is currently struggling with their faith and they're doubting or they're walking through a lot of pain um what's something that you would tell them

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I honestly think it's different in every situation.

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And my encouragement would be the fact that you're thinking about it and talking about it is probably half the battle.

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I wonder if it's when we bury it and run completely and don't speak to friends about it.

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Weirdly, in my season it was a little bit strange because I'd grown up in a family where we would say like, and how was church on a Sunday, wherever the family was?

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I felt like if I stopped going to church, I would then have really difficult calls on Sunday afternoon with my family.

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They're like, oh, so how was church tomorrow?

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I don't go anymore.

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So I kept going, which was really weird and yet felt like a total fraud in there because I felt like I saw through it all and I was pitying everyone that I was around.

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And so there was some sort of strangeness that worked and helped for me by still being proximate.

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by still showing up even though I honestly didn't believe in that season.

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So it may feel counterfeit to go, I'm still going to go to church.

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I'm still going to go to that thing.

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I'm still going to meet my Christian mate, even though I don't believe.

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But I actually think keeping those ties or that proximity or that willingness to be honest and talk about it is a huge head start in being able to have the hope that maybe someday things might resolve a little bit.

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Yeah, that is like, there is, you know, there is still hope and there is still like a loving father that is reaching out to that one who is like questioning or doubting and walking through that.

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Like people really do love you.

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Like whoever's listening and that is walking through that, like people really love you and God really loves you.

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Yeah.

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and there is hope there is hope um but david i've been so incredibly blessed by this conversation like really so thank you so much for yeah thank you um coming on and guys if you have also been blessed by this conversation please do um share this to anyone that you think would

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I guess, need it too.

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And yeah, review, what was it like five star, give us a little five star rating on Spotify and Apple podcast, because that actually helps like send out the videos further to more people.

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And we want to, we want people to know the good news of Jesus.

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And so in you doing that, you're partnering with us with that too.

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And also make sure to check out Stream Studios because

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they are phenomenal what they're doing out there is is genuinely god's work and it's it's just so beautiful but yeah we'll see you guys in the next episode