River: Kneading and Knowing

Healing Hearts Through Poetry: The River of Life

In this episode of Teens Draw Near To God poetry podcast, host Shirah Chanté, a Relationship Artist, shares insights on navigating life's challenges through faith and poetry. Shirah introduces her show, geared towards teenagers and their influencers, and reads the poem 'River' from her book 'Jaundiced View.' She breaks down the poem line by line, discussing how it reflects life's flow, emptiness, and eventual fulfillment through God's power. Drawing from personal experiences and biblical teachings, she emphasizes the importance of healing from past traumas and the perpetual cycle of reaping and sowing. Through engaging storytelling and spiritual wisdom, Shirah inspires listeners to find strength and joy in God, no matter the adversities faced.

00:00 Introduction to Draw Near To God's Poetry Podcast
01:04 Empowerment Through Faith
01:53 Connecting with Teenagers and Parents
06:12 Exploring the Poem 'River'
08:18 The Flow of Life and Overcoming Emptiness
14:23 The Law of Reaping and Sowing
16:45 Kneading and Knowing: Spiritual Needs
19:11 The Story of Jesus Christ
21:29 Conclusion and Final Blessings

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Buy Jaundiced View: Desire Love Hate Religion book of poetry.

Transcript

 Draw near to God, don't fear, draw near to God, don't fear, draw near to God, don't fear.

Hello, hello and welcome to Draw Near To God's poetry podcast and I am your host, Shirah Chanté, relationship artist. Blessing God's people with music, art, and poetry. You know, it's like She Ra, Princess of Power.

Well, I don't know if you grew up in my generation, but there was a show, a cartoon called He Man and She Ra. So just think of me as She Ra, the Princess of Power, the Power of the Most High! Woo hoo hoo hoo! The Lord said, I will give you power, power, power over all the power of the enemy! So that nothing by shall any means hurt you.

That's a big promise. Nothing, nothing, Lord, nothing shall hurt me. Wow. So why have I been hurt in life?

I asked that question, I'm like, what, what's going on? Hey, something's not right here. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We got to get this right. Ah, how are you? Hallelujah. How's it been going? So happy you're here with me today. Teenagers, parents of teenagers, anyone who works with teenagers, who wants to see them reach their God given destiny.

This is the show for you. Yes. And I am once again, so happy you are here. I'm sharing a poem today in my book, Jaundiced View, Desire, Love, Hate, Religion. You can find it on amazon. com. And I have an author page there, so I have many other books as well. And you can peruse, and use, at your will. And so what I do on this show is I read an original poem I wrote, and we just go through the poem, line by line, to see how this poem can help us get closer to God.

That's what we want. We want to be close to our Heavenly Father, because He knows everything about us. And he does everything for us. So why not? I mean, don't you love your natural dad? You love your natural dad. It's even more for God, the spiritual father. He is God in the spirit. It says God is spirit and he who worships God.

must worship him in spirit and in truth. And so, yes, the father is all encompassing. He is all knowing he's everywhere. He's all powerful. That's why he can give us all the power of the enemy because it all belongs to him anyway. All the power over the enemy, not of the enemy. He can give us all power over the enemy because he has all power.

All power belongs to him. So any power you see being utilized on earth is from God. Now, some people misuse and abuse this power. And so we see things happening that are evil, that are tragic, that are just plain demonic, but. There is a pure power of God where people of God use God's power in a way that will uplift society and uplift humanity and heal broken hearts, which is what I love to do.

And I have been preaching for many years. I have a character called tender heart Tony, and I'm going to be putting this on my website very soon.  It's a personality quiz where you can find out your relationship personality. So one of the characters is tender heart Toni and her main thing is she wants to heal her broken heart.

Have you ever been there? Have you ever had a heartbreak? Have you been heartbroken? I'm not just talking about in a relationship It could be because your parents were divorced or because you grew up without a dad It could be because you were abused sexually or in some other way that you were neglected.

There's all kinds of hurt and abuse that happens in life that breaks our heart. It could be a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a mate or for some of you parents listening, it could be a spouse or an ex. So there's all kinds of reasons why we need to have our heart healed. And the best way to have our heart peel, healed, peeled, but we may need to peel it like an onion, right?

Maybe the best way to have our heart healed is to peel it because there's so many layers of hurt. Now, when you have layers of hurt, you may have to peel off this layer. Okay. Then that layer is healed then. Oh, what about this thing that happened? Okay. Now we have to peel off that layer and that layer is healed.

And then this thing happens. And so we have to keep peeling, peeling off the layers of pain and hurt off of our heart so that we are totally healed. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. Happy you're here. That's one of the things I really love to do healing hearts through the arts And so thinking about the arts, we have a new poem today.

It's called river. It's a short poem And so I'm gonna read the poem. We're going to go back through it line by line and see How this point can help us the name of the show today is called needing and knowing Needing and knowing so let's get right to it. We're gonna read the poem River, or I'm going to read it and here we go.

River. Life is a river full and flowing life is a river void and knowing life is a river, gently sowing life. Is a river meeting and glowing, and that is the poem, River. And I drew a little picture of a river. You probably can't see it, but there's a little picture of a river right there with some little rocks.

And I went to school in a city called New Orleans, Louisiana. Some of you maybe are from there or have heard of it at least. And there's a really big river. The biggest river in the United States of America. I believe it's the longest in America, the Mississippi river. And it's man, it's. It's wide, it's a very wide river, and I'm like, how can people swim across this river?

Because I remember reading, when I was a little girl, Huckleberry Finn, has anyone ever, Huckleberry Finn? Anyway,  and they were talking about swimming across the river, and I'm like, wow, that's such a wide river, I don't know if I can make it across there.  I guess probably if I had to, you know, survival mode.

Yeah.  So life is a river full and flowing. So like this, if you've ever seen a full river flow, it's powerful and it's just shh, and it's constant and it's just flowing. And so life is not something that's static. Life is not something that's still, it is. It's flowing and flowing and flowing. And yes, you will feel like you've accomplished something if you flow with the river.

You got to flow. You can't just be static. You can't just be set in your ways. You can't just be not learning something. You can't just be not doing something. You got to be at something. And so that's why I've been talking. About vision and dreams lately. And we talked about on the last show, God with me, part two, dream with me because your dream, your vision will keep that river flowing in your life because the river is flowing with or without you.

So you want to be on the river. Maybe you can't swim across the river. Maybe you, you know, maybe you're not a good swimmer, but you can get a boat. You can get a boat. You sure can. You can get a boat. You can roll down that river. You can get a kayak. You can get a canoe. You can get a yacht, you know, hey, you want to get fancy, go ahead, get you a yacht, get on that river, come on, we need you on the river, the river of life, it's moving, it's moving, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, moving So, life is a river, full and flowing, life is a river, void And knowing you, now we're going to get dark, dark, void, empty.

Oh, have you ever felt empty in life? Just empty. How about the loss of a loved one? The loss of a family member. Yeah, that can make you feel real empty. I know it's made me feel empty. I've lost, I recently lost a family member and it's, it's an empty, empty space. It's an empty place. I had a great loss in my life and, uh, I've lost a child.

It's something that you have to fill slowly and, and deliberately,  it's a hard place to be in when you lose someone close to you.

Eventually, you have to fill that void and the Lord will lead you on how to fill that void. Like, for instance, this morning, the Lord gave me a song about my lost loved one. And it's a beautiful song. And it's a way for me to fill the void in life. Sometimes that river shows itself to be void and knowing it's empty and you know you're empty.

You know it, you just don't, there's nothing in you that feels like you want to get up, get out the bed, go to work, go to that play, that dance, that movie, whatever, hang out, just something just, well, not today. I'm not saying that that sometimes you do need to take some alone time, but I'm talking about something that comes on you, a depression, just something that just makes you not want to move in life.

Because of a loss, because of heavy heart, well, you know, there's a remedy. Oh, there's a remedy. There is a remedy for a heavy heart. In the Bible, it says the joy of the Lord is my strength.

Joy of the Lord  is my strength. So in the presence of the Lord is fullness of joy. And the joy of the Lord is my strength. I remember one time I was when I was pregnant and I was feeling a little down because I was in this pregnancy by myself. I was just, it was just me and I had friends and loved ones who loved me and who were supporting me, but I was doing this alone and I remember just feeling down one day and I see myself now in my apartment with the, this yucky green carpet.

This carpet was so ugly, but, and I'm walking up and down a carpet. And I'm just, I just start to praise the Lord and I just start saying, And the presence of the Lord is fullness of joy, And the joy of the Lord is my strength. I'm giving it to you. You can say that. And the presence of the Lord is fullness of joy, And the joy of the Lord is my strength.

And the presence of the Lord is fullness of joy, And the joy of the Lord is my strength. And I felt a lot better. I felt heaviness lifting off of me. It's not magic. It's the word of God. It's way better than magic.

Life is a river, gently sowing.

Everything we do, reaping and sowing. Reaping and sowing, baby. Every, every little thing, every idle word we say will be judged. Everything, everything, everything you do is being taken account. It's being written in the books. Okay. What did they do today? Uh, let's see. What did they do on,  February 1st, 2025?

It's February, right? It's a new month. January, January, 2025 off the book. But it's on the books in heaven. Yeah, God knows everything you did in January 2025. And now there's a new book starting. It's called February 2025. What you gonna do this month? Life is a river gently sowing. We are sowing and we are reaping every single day.

When people say,  where you are is because where you want to be. Well, not always, but sometimes we don't realize that the decisions we make are going to put us  these places and because we don't understand the reciprocation of life. Life is reciprocal. That's the law of reaping and sowing.

You might understand that it's karma. What goes around comes around. It's a reciprocity in life. And there's no way out of that. There's no escape from that. That's a natural law of the earth. It's a natural law that God made on the earth. It's like gravity. What goes up must come down. Isaac Newton said,  the laws of gravity.

And so there's nothing we can do to change that, but we have to learn how to navigate it. We have to learn how to excel at reaping and sowing. We have to learn how to master it so that it doesn't master us.

Life is a river, kneading and glowing. Ah, we have a happy ending. Glowing! Kneading and knowing. That's the name of this show. Kneading. And I spell kneading with a K like you knead dough. Like a pizza dough. Anybody ever worked at a pizza place? You knead the dough? I really don't like kneading dough at all.

I don't. In fact, I just bought two pizza crusts so I could just avoid the whole kneading process. But I want to make a pizza, so, but it's hard  when you knead and don't, you got to put your hands all in there, you like, you know, it's, that's a lot of work kneading. And I want to put this out there as needing the other need that we need things in life.

So as you're kneading that dough, think about what is it, what do I need in life? We need things every day, but there's something, there's a remedy once again, from the word of God. Philippians 419, and I want to share this with you. For my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus.

My God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, my God, the most high, he shall supply all your need. Not any other God, not those little gods, the one big God. He does everything. He knows everything. He has all the power. Remember we started the show off like that. He has all the power. Why would you go to any other God?

He has all the power you need. He's the only God you need, and he will supply all your need according to his riches, riches. He's rich. He has everything, everything is his, he can give it to you, whatever you need. In Christ Jesus, by Christ Jesus, how does he give it to you? By Christ Jesus, for my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

He does it by Christ, by the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ. He came to the earth. As a man, the son of God, born of a virgin Mary. Yes, his mother was a virgin. The Holy Spirit put a seed inside of her. That seed was Jesus Christ. Remember, he has all power. He can do what he wants. The baby was born. He grew up.

He became the savior of the world. He was perfect, sinless. He didn't do anything wrong.

Yet, humanity killed him. He didn't do anything wrong, but he, that's what he came for. He came to die for us. All the sins of the world that were ever done were put on him and he died. They crucified him on a cross, Yeshua, the Messiah. You may know him as Jesus Christ. They nailed him, his hands and  his feet.

He gave up the ghost, meaning he died. They pierced him in his side to make sure he was dead. Water and blood came out. Medically, that says that you're dead. When water and blood comes out, he died. They buried him. He was in that grave for three days. But on the third day,

guess what happened? Yep, he rose again. God raised him from the dead. Ah, and now he's ever making intercession for us. That means he's praying for you. He's praying for me. He's like, don't let me, I didn't die in vain. I died for you and you and you and you and you and you, so that you can make it through this river of life, needing and glowing, yes, you need, but I supply all that, so now it's time for you to glow, flow, show the world what you know.

In Jesus name. And I pray for everyone here, Father God, that they will glow. They will flow. They will show the world what they know.

Amen. Thank you for joining me. This is the poem River from my book, Jaundice View. You can find it on Amazon if you choose. And I love you. And remember to love God, love you, love people. Thank you for joining me today.

Bye