Rooted with Rachel

Welcome to Rachel’s Vault These videos are treasures from the journey — raw, real, and rich with purpose. Pulled from the archives of This Perfected Life, each video captures moments of growth, encouragement, faith, and transformation. Whether you're here for inspiration, practical wisdom, or a reminder of God's hand in the process, you're in the right place. I thought it would be fun to resurrect...

Welcome to Rachel’s Vault These videos are treasures from the journey — raw, real, and rich with purpose. Pulled from the archives of This Perfected Life, each video captures moments of growth, encouragement, faith, and transformation. Whether you're here for inspiration, practical wisdom, or a reminder of God's hand in the process, you're in the right place. I thought it would be fun to resurrect...

Welcome to Rachel’s Vault These videos are treasures from the journey — raw, real, and rich with purpose. Pulled from the archives of This Perfected Life, each video captures moments of growth, encouragement, faith, and transformation. Whether you're here for inspiration, practical wisdom, or a reminder of God's hand in the process, you're in the right place. I thought it would be fun to resurrect...

Welcome to Rachel’s Vault These videos are treasures from the journey — raw, real, and rich with purpose. Pulled from the archives of This Perfected Life, each video captures moments of growth, encouragement, faith, and transformation. Whether you're here for inspiration, practical wisdom, or a reminder of God's hand in the process, you're in the right place. I thought it would be fun to resurrect...

These videos are treasures from the journey — raw, real, and rich with purpose. Pulled from the archives of This Perfected Life, each video captures moments of growth, encouragement, faith, and transformation. Whether you're here for inspiration, practical wisdom, or a reminder of God's hand in the process, you're in the right place. I thought it would be fun to resurrect these old videos with tim...

Think for a minute about the things we are tempted to add to our relationship with Christ. We are so easily sucked into the world’s pursuit of fame, fortune, friendships and feeding the flesh. On top of those things, there’s the daily temptation to add works and will-power to make our spiritual resume more appealing. We know in our hearts that it’s all by faith alone and through Christ alone, but...

Have you ever woken up with a running list of tasks, dreams, and goals—businesses you want to start, skills you want to learn—only to feel unprepared for the journey ahead? You are afraid you don’t have the skills needed to accomplish all the things staring back at you. I woke up recently feeling that exact way. I felt like I just was not equipped for the job at hand or the task ahead or something...

Have you ever been tempted to jump ahead of God? Maybe you’re in a season of waiting or anticipating something and you’re tired of the delay so you make a plan to jump ahead of God. We know whenever we’ve done this, we end up making a mess of things. The temptation to forge our own path and to jump ahead during times of waiting is so great. It’s difficult to trust his timing. It’s hard to be patie...

There are times in our lives when we can feel very insecure. We don’t feel confident about making decisions. We second-guess ourselves. It’s frustrating when this happens because we so desperately want to be decisive, but we feel stuck and almost paralyzed to make a decision, perhaps because we’re worried about making the wrong decision. Today’s podcast is for those of you who feel like your confi...

Do you ever feel like your growth has been stunted? You are working hard towards a goal and you just feel like you are not getting anywhere. You don’t see growth, in fact, at times, it seems like you are going backwards instead of forwards. If you are stuck and you don’t see any fruit for your efforts, if all of this resonates with you, I want to encourage you today with something that I keep comi...

Have you ever been in the middle of a trial and you wish Jesus could be there with you in the flesh? You so desperately need “Jesus with skin on”. You envy those who in ages past had the privilege of sitting at Jesus’ feet, embracing his physical body and experiencing his loving gaze. You think, “If I could behold that, it would assure me that he is with me in this trial.” But seeing is not always...

Sometimes people are hard to love aren’t they? We say things like “Loving them is a bit of a stretch.” Oftentimes, our love wanes for one another when we walk through difficult times. But these are the moments when we need each other the most. These are the times we need to stretch out our love to one another. Why is it, that when we go through tough times, we tend to turn on those we love? Perhap...

Do you struggle with anxiety or an imagination that runs wild and can’t be controlled? Today, I hope to encourage you with a truth that has been such a comfort to me. I came across a sentence the other day that I have not been able to get out of my head… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rootedwithrachel.substa...

When someone asks what you do, how do you introduce yourself? Maybe you are a teacher, so when someone asks you what you do, you identify as a teacher. Or maybe you’re a lawyer, or a homemaker, or a homeschool mom. It could be that the season of life you find yourself in right now, you would say that you are single or a widow. These labels tend to define us sometimes in ways we don’t want to be de...

Isn’t it interesting how we ring in the new year with hopes and plans and dreams only to find that heartache and troubles are right around the corner? We say things like, “2025 is going to be better than 2024!” only to find a terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, a plane crash, and deadly fires in California already staining a fresh turn of the calendar. It’s simply another reminder that we will hav...

What is it about a new year and the urge to purge? I was thinking about this recently as I put away Christmas decorations and felt that deep desire to go through and clean out every closet, drawer and box. I think there is something built into us by our Creator to long for a fresh start. As I decluttered my rooms and cleaned out, I realized how similar our urge to purge is to what God provides for...

There is something about beginning a new year, turning the page, saying “sayonara” to a year that has been hard and painful. We make goals, have aspirations, hopes, dreams, plans, but then reality hits. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is right and good to plan your year, but maybe instead of having a hard and fast plan with multiple layers that inevitably gets debunked every year, we need to focus...

We are now in the final week of Advent, the week marked by love. It’s interesting that love is the word for the last week in Advent, because isn’t that what we long for most, to be fully loved? We know ourselves better than anyone else, we know our inward thoughts however ugly they may be and we wonder, how in the world would anyone love us? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss t...

I don’t know about you, but it sure does seem like every year December flies by faster and faster doesn’t it? I mean, I can’t believe we are already in the third week of Advent and that Christmas is just right around the corner! This week is marked by joy. And you know, there really can be so much joy that can fill this season, but alongside that joy, we can also experience and witness so much pai...

Have you ever felt like something else was taking over your heart? It’s like someone or something suddenly jumped into the driver’s seat and now you are headed down a road you don’t want to go down, but you can’t figure out how to stop it. Oftentimes this can happen in our hearts when we have allowed unwelcome thoughts to invade and take over our minds. We need an umpire of sorts to step in and bl...

Are you waiting for something? It seems that we are always in a season of waiting in some form or another doesn’t it? Yesterday (December 1) was the first day of Advent. The season of Advent is a time of longing and yearning for something (or Someone) who will come to break our bondage. It’s a season of waiting. Christmas is about Jesus entering into our brokenness and weariness bringing us hope....

We’ve all witnessed image after image from the devastation of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina and in other areas. It almost seems unreal, doesn’t it? No doubt, you’ve been in awe as you watched videos showing the power of the flood waters sweeping away cars, houses, bridges and even entire towns. These images came to my mind this week as we studied Matthew 7:24-27 in the Sermon on the M...

Sometimes we are fully aware of areas in which we need to grow in character and in Christ-likeness. Other times, we are blind to the areas where we lack. God is always faithful to allow the Holy Spirit to point out those areas, whether through the means of time in his word, a line in a book, an article, a faithful friend, and sometimes, believe it or not, he might even use social media to pinpoint...

Did you know that gratitude can actually make you happier? Gratitude releases two hormones in the brain that are responsible for our mood. When we practice gratitude, serotonin and dopamine are released into the brain, giving us a mood boost; it’s like a natural antidepressant. Today, I want to give you some ideas of how to cultivate gratitude in your life. As we move into the month of November, i...

The storms of life can hit unexpectedly. They can be intense and long. Seasons of hard that bring so much heartache. Your faith may falter in the sea of troubles, but your Savior walks with you through the storm. On today’s episode, we will look at the story of Jesus walking on the water in the midst of a powerful storm. Peter asks to join him on the water. Everything is smooth sailing at first, u...