Alex Seeley with Sadie Robertson on the Whoa That's Good Podcast

[Music] what fam welcome back to the whoa that's good hi cast I am thrilled today because this has been a long time coming I finally had passed your Alec Seeley on the podcast and I couldn't be more excited because people don't always know this I do tell like half the people I talk to but alex is actually part of the reason why I started speaking I saw her speak and preach one day and I was like wow I didn't pack tin my life so much it was the first time I responded to an altar call and from there God just began to speak to me about speaking like she did and preaching and so Alex I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast you're so special to me [Music] I am so honored and I was actually thinking about the other day when I first met you in the greenroom with Lisa Nelson after that night and I remember thinking just how special you are and to see what God has done in your life is an absolute Beauty sign and a wonder and I'm just honored to have played a small part in that initial launch yeah not so crazy I know thinking about to that I guess I was like 17 and I had no idea where God was about to take me or any of us but before I get to the question that I asked everybody I also just want to say and then I got to actually go to the belonging to your church and you and Henry for those who don't know they lead a church called the belonging in Nashville and I got to go there when I lived in Nashville and I love that church just the heart of worship I'm telling you is amazing so so cool it got had in store from that little moment yeah I love it all right so let's get to the question we asked everybody we always ask them what that's good what is the best piece of advice that you have ever been given well that's a big question it is it's loaded I know the thing that will always come back around was the very first piece of advice that I got given I was 21 years of age when I started in ministry full-time vocation and I remember I just come out of Bible College I thought I could take on the world I thought that you know this is it my time has come and I remember starting on my first day in my mentor who I was actually taking her position she sat me down and she said Alex I've got one piece of advice for you in life and in ministry and it's just this always keep a sweet spirit well and I remember at the time going yeah sweet spirit what's that it'd be bitter about my life is awesome I'm just about to but I didn't realize how pertinent that piece of advice was now I'm 47 and how many times that piece of advice has resonated in my life when adversity has come when injustice has come when trail has come when disappointment has come that piece of advice is Alex heap a sweet spirit about you that's so good well that's beautiful too you know one of my favorite parts by asking that question is because it's so cool like most people that are on the podcast have some sort of a platform and so a lot of people get to see their life from afar you know you recognize things in people but you don't really know where that comes from and so like I know you I've seen you from afar and up close and let you have such a sweet spirit and so to backtrack all the way to 21 when somebody told you that and you actually took it and applied it is so cool and that's what you know I hope people do on this podcast like they hear something like that and then they take it in their own life and they're like oh yeah one time Alex Neeley said that she you know was given this piece of advice and then they become that sweet spirited person too and so I love that that is amazing one of just the coolest things about you and your family is that y'all are from Australia and you move over to the States which is like a huge thing you start a church and a lot of people know the belonging as their belonging like y'all had this amazing album that went out it's a big church but not everybody knows like kind of how y'all start and so I thought it'd be cool just to give you a minute to just kind of share your story of y'all moving and kind of starting the church and what that looked like yeah absolutely it's kind of a crazy story my husband and I had been in ministry like I said since I was 21 and we moved we felt the call of God to just leave everything behind in Australia which is a crazy notion but God confirmed it by giving us a green card so we packed everything up and we moved to Nashville Tennessee and we didn't know what on earth God was doing because we'd been serving a ministry for like just under 20 years and we thought we're going to be there forever and so we'd always been second in charge you know always helping our senior pastors and when we moved to America it was quite daunting because we knew nobody we have no job lined up and we were just living off our life savings Henry was he's a record producer and mix engineer and so he got about doing his work but for me I've always been in ministry I came to the south and realized that there was no place for me in any of the churches but what we discovered in that year in 2012 was the lack of pastoral care for the music community and the artists that were traveling from Wednesday through to Monday and they weren't in church and something awakened in me where I saw a need where there were these sheep without a shepherd and it looked quite harassed and needed just needed a place a soft place to fall and a safe place to worship and so we accidentally started a church and a lot of people don't believe us when we say that but we really did we just opened up our home on a Tuesday night and it was kind of like a Bible study and I would share the word and Henry would lead worship and honestly Sadie I invited five people and that was it from 5:00 it just kept growing every week people would just stop piling in people that we didn't even know would knock on our door saying somebody told us about this place we never gave out our address we never did anything it was like the acts Church awesome and we saw within a year over a hundred people and then God spoke and confirmed and said guys I don't know if you're aware about this but this is a church and you need a plan and you need to lead it and the rest is history and Wow now we've got a big jet amazing I love it I love that nothing about it really is that traditional I mean it's just awesome you're right and so the extra I remember Laney and I Laney one of my best friends and we were roommates oh never we started going to the belonging and I'm not kidding we would dance into church like we were like so we were touring yeah and so we were like where we gonna go to church well their belonging is Tuesday night and I mean we would dance people in the parking lot like these people are going to Disneyworld that we would be so excited just because God is just he's always in every place he's everywhere but just and y'all just invite a space to just recognize that he's here and it's amazing and so I love it I love the church I love what y'all do I want to talk to you a little bit about TaylorMade because she wrote this amazing book cut tailor-made also the opposite life so you're an author of two books right now well just truth for now I feel like you got a lot more coming I'm on a bit of a break to are amazing and tailor-made specifically I want to talk to you about because I think it goes along with kind of the message of my ministry which is just live original and it's about just being the original person God created you to be but I started to think about like TaylorMade is that it's like another level of that like how you're going to be able to live original is by getting the message that you wrote and tailor-made by knocking these labels off your life and so absolutely I think it's really timely even to talk about what you wrote yes I just wrote a book called live and I worked on it for like two years and it came out right before quarantine Wow and it was really crazy because people were saying like Sadie do you think it's kind of weird that you wrote this book that's like the subtitle is to have an exciting and fulfilling life and now we're quarantine and I like keep saying to everybody that has said that unlike I actually think it is perfect timing it is so good I mean because the book is about choosing life whenever you don't want to when it doesn't seem like it has value or meaning it's not doesn't feel worth celebrating and so for you writing a book like Taylor Made and looking at the times were in how do you think kind of that message could help people right now with with where we're at yeah it was funny I was actually thinking about how I how I should relaunched the book because I think more than ever right now when people don't understand their identity in Christ yep they let every other voice every other bit of noise dictate who they're becoming and who they are and God has called each and every one of us uniquely with a perfectly structured mission that if we know who we are and we remove the labels that everybody has put on us and let me tell you right from the get-go it's an enemy assignment to keep you silent and small so that you do not live out your god-given Destinee we are all meant to reflect a facet of the nature and the image of God when we don't know who we are and we live under a certain label that that kills us effectively yeah we don't rise up to be who we are called to be and that is a disservice to humanity it's a disservice to one another because what we're doing is we're letting the enemy when we are being silent shut down and then gods like hold on a minute I created you to be a world changer I created you to do something and everyone has something unique stop looking to the left stop comparing to the right yeah we all have something unique so would you just know who I say you are rather than whatever society says you are whatever culture says you are one of your parents say you are if you've had a negative experience your teachers your church leaders whatever it is we've all had a negative word placed on us and sometimes the negative word speaks louder than what God says and we've got to listen to what God says that's so good a man for people who maybe haven't read the Bible aren't Christian haven't been Church and they hear these things like believe who God says that you are what are some of those things that God says we are just from reading the word knowing the word and speaking it over your kids and people's life like what are those things that that you kind of hold on to as label is that that God has put on us yeah I think first and foremost we're a son and a daughter of the Living God whether you are a believer yet or not you were made in the image of God and he is our Father and when we understand that we're made in an image of a great majestic glorious King we have an inheritance and we are heirs of that therefore there's something special about us and so I tell my kids all the time I birthed you you are made in the image of the father it's gay is the one that not he knows your destiny better than I do I can guide you and help you discover but he put gifts inside of you he put talents inside of you put passions inside of you he formed all of that in my womb that had nothing to do with me I was just a carrier and a birther of you but who you are was actually formed before the foundations of the world God had you in mind before humanity even existed and he said you're going to be born at this time and this is what I've set you out to do so Psalm 139 actually talks about that we were fashioned and formed in our mother's womb and that he wrote every one of our days in a book before they even came to be so whether you know God or not there is a book with your name on it and it has details of what you're supposed to do but the only way we get to know how to do that is if we get to know our maker and so that's the powerful thought that someone greater than the world made you with purpose in mind that's so cool I believe that that is going to speak to a lot of people right now that God made you with purpose in mind that we all have a purpose and were created for a purpose by purpose and so it's amazing for you and your own life even to me you know you're such an inspiration I respect you so much and just love the way that you live your life just so open and everything and I know you talked about this in the book some and and you preach about this but for you even though you were 21 whenever so you were young whenever you went to ministry when was it for you that you really started to take God at His Word like you started to realize like wait a second this is who God says I am and then you know that boldness and you got confidence and you kind of activate it because when you see you preach you see the boldness you see the confidence the authority that you truly believe what you're saying but when is it for you that you had that like aha revelation that this is this is real yeah well it was two moments in my life had two pivotal awakenings and the first one was when I was 11 years of age and I got saved and I'd been brought up in a Christian home but I'd never actually heard the gospel that you needed to repent and ask Jesus to you know forgive you and enter into a relationship and so for me I physically I remember it like it was yesterday I physically felt the weight of sin and shame lift off me at the age of eleven now I had not only done anything wrong that's why it's not about the deeds of our flesh it's actually just about the whole notion that we were all born sinners and that we're separated from God and that when salvation takes place true salvation and this is actually an issue I have in the church I think we've put in a preference for Jesus rather than a picking up your cross and becoming a disciple leaving everything behind so you've had a true radical encounter with Jesus your life is never the same so I was 11 years of age I got filled and baptized with the Holy Spirit a week later and I became a mini evangelist in my school I went to a Catholic private school and I just began to tell everybody about Jesus and something changed in me but because there were fractures and broken pieces in my life I grew up where my mum was beautiful and amazing and she is still to this day she's one of my best friends but there were some fractures in her life and so just through a pattern of abuse and physical abuse and verbal abuse I was quite a fracture little girl so I had this encounter with God but then I believed these awful labels that I was reject that I was stupid and that I didn't really have a place in this world so there was this tension and I feel like this is gonna speak to someone today because it's almost like well that's great for you pastor Alex but I'm broken and I feel unworthy and in part I did too and so it wasn't until I was actually I think I just turned 20 in I just had kind of toyed with what my heart is still broken I love Jesus with all my heart but I still feel stuck and it was when I was 20 that I drew this line in the sand in my bedroom and I said God if you're really who you say you are and I really do have this call of God on my life and I give you everything because I'm tired of living this kind of seesaw up one day down the next and I remember the Holy Spirit just saying in my heart just saying Alex I need you to give me a hundred percent cause you've only given me 90 hmm and I said what does that mean he goes that means lay down your life and give it all that means I'm going to need some of those friends that you have to go I'm going to need that relationship that you're in to go because that's an idol in your life I'm going to need you to go after me like you've never gone after something in your life and I remember putting a line in my carpet and I stepped over and I said Jesus I give you my life and I cry when I think about it because I I have never looked back you know I'm 47 and I've never seen God forsake me I've never that's why I'm passionate it's it's still fresh to me it's still alive to me because he took this little broken girl and said watch what I'll do with the surrendered life watch what I'll do with a young person who says it's all about Jesus and I'm leaving everything behind and honestly it's why today I get up every morning people go you never a stale with your faith I'm not God because every day is a new mercy for me every day is a new mercy and so I just love Jesus with a passion and I've got to tell everyone about him I love it I love it so much you can see it it's so evident in your life and that passion has touched so many people including mine which ended up touching so many more people too and so thank you for that I will never forget that actually that was what I noticed that day when I saw you preach I was like every word and that's what I tell people I was like the difference in my life is whenever I responded that day because when I saw you preach I was like every word she says matters like every word she says she truly believes it's gonna change someone's life and it did and I was like thinking about my own words with the platform that I had I was like am i saying words that matter am i saying words that change people's heart that change people's lives and like bring them to Jesus bring them to love bring them to joy and am I even passionate or confident in what I'm saying because if I'm not saying that I might not be very confident and passionate and so when I started to talk about Jesus I started to talk about just what he's done for me and me giving and I actually truly like you said like pick my cross changing my life everything shifting like I was no longer afraid to speak because I had so much passion I was no longer free to speak I was so confident when I was saying and so I can just a test of what you're saying like when you truly give your life to Christ and you you don't go back you know you truly pick up your cross everything changes and that passion is contagious its contagious absolutely yeah I think it was what the disciples were like it's why they died for the cause of Christ because they didn't counted something that changed their lives so they were like everybody needs this and this is what I why I believe that even God said Henry and I to Nashville because when we arrived here I felt the church as a whole was very complacent and very like it was like entertain me yeah rather than making disciples and so we've been very diligent to make disciples that's so not just entertain people and let Christianity be a smorgasbord option yeah it actually be the only option yeah I love that and you know it's crazy I think a lot of people from the outside they might look at the blind because they see like you know celebrities there or yeah well who and they might think like oh that would be a church that would bring the entertainment yeah but it's not I mean I told somebody every time you go to the belonging you leave like not just like fed you leave like convicted in a good way and like you you want action to spark in your life because you and Henry both like when y'all lead y'all lead in such a way where you really lead the church like you really lead your church to become better and more like the church and the Bride of Christ and it's really really empowering and really powerful because when you step in you're like man I'm a part of the church yeah which is awesome and so actually it was talking to Christian about you know what I was going to talk to you about and I shoulda asked you something just about the church because you know when stuff comes up in life that we're going through globally or in our world or in our state or in our community you never shy away from really speaking into it and I know a lots going on right now in our world and so I just wonder what are you and this time like talking to your kids about talking to the church talking to the people that you pastor because you know some people listening they might not go to a church I'm gonna have a home church right now none of us are really going to a church and so just at from a pastor's perspective what are you kind of speaking into people's hearts right now yeah well there's obviously a two-fold thing that's happening right now in our world and that's obviously this pandemic that's one thing and so we've been what I feel so proud about our church is so many people have even we've been talking about this that I feel like we've prepared our church that no matter what the circumstances come our way what circumstances come our way nothing will move us and so I've watched our church be resilient and move forward and not fall apart in this season it's been incredible to be nimble and flexible and move with the Holy Spirit we're so used to moving and ebbing and flowing with God that this has not taken us out us and our church you know those that have lost jobs or those that have lost incomes those that have actually had their lives turned upside down and not taken out and so we've prepared our church that God is still on the throne he's never let the right just be Forsaken and that he covers our needs and when you know like even just in terms of giving nothing has changed people are still sowing into the kingdom why because they realize whether we're in plenty or in luck I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me so that's been one good thing the only thing right now is we're dealing with this racial tension on epic proportions and so yesterday I was able to preach to the church and talk about the day of Pentecost and actually how the day of Pentecost was the birth of the way Jesus wanted church to look like and that was every nation under heaven in one place and he decides to pour out his spirit like he promised in Joel 2:28 that every tribe in every tongue heard the wonders of God in their own language and I think God was very intentional about saying this is how I want my church to look like that one spiritual language that fell in that upper room now translates into everybody hearing the gospel in their own language he wasn't wanting anybody to change who they are culturally he just wanted us to be one in spirit and so now we're leading our church we need to be a voice for the voiceless we need to be a church that stands up and stands against the demonic realm of racism division hate and if the church does not do it then no one else will and I believe that we are in unprecedented times that we get to change church history in the area of racism and so we're standing and I'm teaching my kids that we have a voice and that we stand in unity and and things are going to change for the better and so I'm excited about the future it's going to take a lot of work it's going to take consistency but we're going to see change so great Alex I love that I love whenever you preach because you bring a lot of hope and also just actual practical advice on what to do and yeah it's really encouraging oh and with this a lot of times I like to pull one of my favorite piece of advice that I received from you learn from you heard from you and it's crazy because I had written this down there their day just to quote and you pretty much just said it and you said our words form our world I love that and I think it's really powerful and impactful whenever we starting to think about that I mean we know that our tongue holds the power of life and death the word talks about that and you just talked about how that you're teaching your kids or teaching Church that we have a voice and like the church right now has a huge we need to be using her words we need to be using our voice and so yeah I'm so encouraged by you I am so inspired and I just know that this is gonna help so many people everybody out there listening I just pray that you would take these words to heart pray about the meditate on them ask God how you can be a part of that change how you can be a part of becoming even learning more about his word about what he says about you to be more confident and the words that you're choosing and saying and so Alex thank you so much for being a part of this podcast I know that this is gonna bless so many people owe us so welcome it's been a nap honor I've just been selfishly just loving the conversation for myself and so I love you dearly I love your family and I'm just so so proud of you and I know that this is just your description the surface and thank God for you thank God that you're a voice to this generation and the generations to come and so I champion everything about you I love you dearly thank you so much that really means the world I love you [Music]

Channel: Sadie Robertson

Views: 72,805

Rating: 4.9688044 out of 5

Keywords: sadie robertson, sadie robertson huff, whoa that's good, whoa that's good podcast, sadie robertson whoa that's good, sadie robertson whoa that's good podcast, alex seeley, alex seeley the belonging, christian podcast, the belonging church, the belonging co, the belonging company, the belonging co nashville, the belonging co church, sadie robertson podcast, sadie robertson dwts, sadie robertson dancing with the stars, sadie robertson duck dynasty, sadie robertson preaching

Id: IxVUHDMlNG0

Length: 25min 42sec (1542 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020