The Nothing Is Wasted Podcast

The first few months of 2020 left a mark on all of us that we never could have imagined. Now several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, all of our lives have been impacted in ways that we’ll feel for years to come. But at the beginning of March 2020, Nic and Cassie Brown hadn’t experienced that yet. What they thought was a minor sickness resulted in an extended hospital stay, a close call with dea...

Most of us have dreams for our life. Maybe it’s a great marriage, a successful job, or a happy family. We have some vision in our heads of what’s supposed to happen, and we tell ourselves that God will definitely give us these things. But sometimes he doesn’t. So what then? That’s the question Sheridan Voysey asked over and over. Sheridan and his wife felt like it was time to start having children...

Abortion is not a topic that is often brought up in churches. We might mention it in broad strokes or when talking about politics, but too often pastors and whole churches are afraid to engage in it personally. But whether we face it or not, many women like Serena Dyksen are facing this issue quietly in one way or another. When Serena found herself pregnant as a teenager following a terrible sexua...

If the last several months have taught us anything, it’s that the racial tensions we read about in our history textbooks aren’t limited to the pages of the past. The pain that our black brothers and sisters have felt at the hands of white America hasn’t gone away, and ignoring it isn’t going to make it any better. In the second part of this powerful conversation, Dr. Anita Phillips shares with Dav...

Dr. Anita Phillips sits at the intersection of several important conversations in our culture today. As a trauma therapist, a black woman, and the wife of a pastor, she is uniquely positioned to speak into the intersection of mental health, race, and faith. Through her own traumatic experiences and years of helping others, Anita has come to an understanding of the Kingdom of God, and how we can re...

Dawn Barton’s demeanor and her story don’t seem to match at a glimpse. She radiates hope, optimism, and cheerfulness. You’d be forgiven for thinking she’s had an easy life, but that’s far from the truth. Dawn has walked through an amount of darkness that most of us couldn’t imagine. Through trial after trial, she’s learned to choose joy when despair would be a much more natural option. Dawn sits d...

ADOPTION SERIES PART THREE   Sam Collier couldn’t be blamed for seeing his story as one of abandonment. Born to a 21-year-old single mother, Sam and his twin sister were given up for adoption. His birth parents never reached out, and he spent the entire time he was growing up never meeting either of his birth parents or the three other siblings he didn’t even know he had. But Sam looked past the a...

ADOPTION SERIES PART TWO   Sometimes the things God calls us to don’t make a lot of sense. We’re asked to give up our loaves and fishes, to step out of the boat, or to carry a cross, and there’s no telling what the outcome will be. Johanna and Brian Cannelongo had four biological children when they felt God calling them to not only adopt, but to adopt a child with special needs. Little did they kn...

ADOPTION SERIES PART ONE   Sara and Sam Ward were only just starting on their journey of adoption when they hit a wall that no one wants to experience. They went to the hospital for what they thought was a minor medical issue and left with a cancer diagnosis. Not only did this upend their entire lives, but they had to watch their dream of adoption seemingly die. Little did they know that this wasn...

American culture often makes the mistake of thinking success lies in what we do. We think a thriving life is one in which we accomplish great things, earn the most money, and climb our way to the top of whatever ladder we think we’re on. Joel Manby learned the hard way that this picture of life isn’t quite accurate. Having been at the top of multiple huge companies, Joel was “doing” everything rig...

If we’re honest, the church hasn’t always done a great job of elevating diverse voices. Women, people of color, and other marginalized groups often find themselves on the outskirts of our faith communities, with no one they can learn from who shares their life experiences. This is a problem that Ashlee Eiland knows well. Both as a black woman and as a pastor and author, Ashlee has felt this pain,...

For most of us, life-altering tragedies are something we experience in rare instances. For a firefighter in a big city, they’re everyday occurrences. Working as a first responder in the Oakland Fire Department, Jason Sautel saw suffering, tragedy, and death constantly. Jason looked to his job to make something of his life and to redeem his troubled childhood, but without any hope to draw from, he...

We’ve probably all heard the sermons about not trusting our emotions. “We should preach to our feelings and not let them lead us,” they say. After all, the heart is deceitful above all things, right? While that may be true, it doesn’t mean we should ignore our emotions or treat them as excess baggage. That’s something that Elizabeth Laing Thompson knows very well. Elizabeth advocates for us to rec...

Failure is not something any of us want. It is consistently ranked as one of the most common fears, but it is also a fact of life. None of us make it through with a perfect record. That’s something that Os Hillman learned the hard way. After not one but two failed marriages and going from thriving in business to being broke, Os had been through failure and adversity on a tremendous scale. What Os...

For some of us, the idea of racial trauma is entirely theoretical. We maybe understand it as a thing of the past from the limited history we were taught, or we turn on the TV and see reports of it happening to someone else. Someone who doesn’t look like us. But we don’t all have that luxury, that unique privilege of experiencing racism in the third person. Sheila Wise Rowe knows this all too well....

We are living in times unlike any in our country’s history. In the months following the killing of George Floyd, nearly every eye in the country has been on the unfolding story of racial tension. In the wake of this tragedy and the ongoing conversations about it, Davey was joined by LaMorris Crawford to discuss the topic of racial reconciliation and what each of us can do in this unprecedented mom...

As a pastor, Dr. Adam B. Dooley had preached about having faith in the midst of trials many times. After all, what pastor hasn’t? But standing in a hospital room with his three-year-old son, Adam’s theoretical knowledge was about the become practical. No parent should have to hear that their child has leukemia. With an uphill battle in front of his family and questions of whether his son would eve...

We want to believe that the churches and other Christian environments that our children grow up in will always be safe, but too often that isn’t the case. This is something Jill Monaco knows all too well. After a sexual assault from a priest as a child, Jill grew up wondering what was wrong with her. What had she done to invite this horrible abuse? As her adult life fell into a spiral of continued...

While Erin was in the midst of grieving her traumatic loss, Steve was about to walk into one of his own. He and his wife Wendy went to bed one night just like any other happily married couple, but Wendy never woke up. In the second part of their conversation with Davey, Steve shares his story and the couple shares how they found each other in the wake of unimaginable tragedy and what God has done...

Before Erin Ullmer had met her husband Steve, before her new life and new family, there was the moment on the bridge. The moment where everything changed. A peaceful day walking in the park for Erin, her husband John, and their kids turned into a life-defining moment when Erin lost her husband, her daughter, and very nearly her life in a random act of violence. In this first part of their conversa...

ADDICTION SERIES PART FOUR   Cory and Michelle Joy knew their oldest son Caleb had some struggles. They’d caught him in smaller things like drinking and smoking weed, but it was all too easy to dismiss this as childish foolishness. Surely he’d grow up and move past these things, right? By the time they realized the extent of the grip that addiction had on Caleb’s life, it was too late. Despite the...

ADDICTION SERIES PART THREE   Even as a child, Allen Cothran could tell his experience with drugs wasn’t like everyone else’s when he was quite literally intoxicated with the feeling he got from simple cold medicine. As an adult, Allen found himself pulled into using pills to medicate away emotional pain, and the problem only grew from there. Stuck in the tension between his family and ministry an...

ADDICTION SERIES PART TWO Before he was the bestselling author of Every Man’s Battle and many other books, before the radio show and the successful ministry, Stephen Arterburn was an addict. When he was exposed to pornography at an early age, Stephen’s mindset was set down a dark path that would shape his life for years to come. Stephen’s journey from a sex addict to someone who’s ministered to th...

ADDICTION SERIES PART ONE   Seth Haines looked like he had it all together. As a lawyer and a writer, no one would have suspected that he had a problem. Sure he drank pretty regularly, but who doesn’t? It didn’t seem to be affecting his home life or his career. He’d never gotten a DUI, never been abusive, never seen alcohol hurt his work. On the outside, it looked like Seth had it all under contro...

Esther Fleece Allen’s childhood wasn’t easy. Having dealt with an abusive father and being abandoned by her mother before age 13, Esther went through more hardship as a child than many of us may hope to face in our lives. Her trials didn’t stop there though. When the now-adult Esther’s father showed up at her home after years of absence and began stalking her, it became clear that her trauma would...