 Some days are bright and sunny like today. Some days have clouds with them, but no matter what kind of day you're having today, God is with you and we're gonna hear all about that today. Welcome to Hope Today. I'm Tom, I'm here with Anna, I'm here with Sydney. Anna, tell us, cause we've got people that are gonna share their story with us today along those lines. Yes, we surely do. It's so good to be with you on this Tuesday. And today we get to hear the music and God stories from Christian Music Duo after Grace. Cody Clark and Jared Moffitt became brothers through marriage and started making music from their hometown of Mountain Home, Arkansas. Doesn't it sound like a wonderful place to live? Well, Jared comes with encouragement for parents considering adoption and Cody shares about dealing with grief and loss. It's gonna be a diverse conversation, just two different topics, but it's two different individuals where God is working in their lives, and it's gonna be good. You know, I always love when we get to hear people's stories and their testimonies of what God has walked them through, what God has brought them through, because maybe as you're listening, I think for all of us that we can have these little nuggets, I'm like, ah, I've been there before. And you know, one thing I love, Tom and Anna, when we hear about these testimonies that if God brought them through, guess what, he's gonna bring you through too. And even today, you know, if you're going through something, you're walking through something, you need a little dose of encouragement and hope. Well, you give us a call at our prayer line at 888-665-4483, because we have prayer partners that are always standing by, no matter where you are, if you're in Pittsburgh, Alabama, California, Arkansas, you can give us a call. That's right, and maybe watching us on Roku, you know, we had a little trouble with Roku for the past three weeks or so, and maybe you weren't able to see us, but we're back on Roku, so good to have you back. But I do love those stories, Sidney, and I love where people, see, it says that the word of their testimony, they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Now that's the testimony about Jesus Christ, but it's interesting that testimony has run through our life, what God has done in our life, what God has done to make a difference. And so I love hearing those stories. Yeah, it's truly incredible when we hear those stories. So we are just encouraging to pray your heart and your mind and to be open, because God is truly on the move, Anna, like never before. I mean, there's so many good things that are happening that it makes me so encouraged and excited. I know, it is awesome. And you know, as a side note, I just, I don't know if you guys talked about this yesterday, but we were with a whole bunch of you on Sunday at an event in Pittsburgh. It was a fundraising gala for the Women's Care Center, and we were kind of chatting behind the scenes how wonderful our viewers are. So we just wanna give you all a shout out. We love when you see us out somewhere and you come up and you say hello and you give us a word of encouragement as we give you words of encouragement. And it truly is just a beautiful thing of the Cornerstone television family. Absolutely. I had a few people come up to me and say certain things. One lady is like, I have Cornerstone on for my grandkids. I have a plan. So they hear the word of God, you know? So yeah, we love that. And love when you take the time to let us know that this ministry is touching your life as well. Yeah, so you can always give us a call. We would always love to connect with you. I mean, so many of you give us calls like different times during the week and we are able to talk with you and pray for you. So just know for here with hope today, we're really about being a family. That's what makes us different. So that's what we love that you are watching us whether it's in the morning, the evening, afternoon. We love you. All right, well now for some music and some good God stories. Cody Clark and Jared Moffitt have been leading worship at conferences and events around the country since 2013, opening for artists such as Toby Mack, Colton Dixon and many others. These two come from Mountain Home, Arkansas and join us to share their real life God stories. Jared comes with encouragement for parents considering adoption and Cody shares about dealing with grief and loss. Here they are with their music video for their song, Simple Things. Some glad morning when this life is all of my way. Here's on Sundays, listening to daddy preaching, watching people pray, service went a little too long and they kept singing the same old song but looking back I wouldn't change a thing. Well, Jared and Cody, welcome to Hope Today, Austin. Before we get into talking about your purpose and mission behind After Grace, can you share? There are some very special people in that video. Yeah, it's always tough in things like this because watching it beforehand sometimes you don't realize how much it's gonna hit you. So I'm trying not to cry. So forgive me if I do. But no, it was a special moment for us to do that because we didn't know that shortly after we shot that video that my dad was gonna pass away unexpectedly and then my grandpa, which was the older man in the video, my dad's dad, that he was gonna pass away a couple months after my dad did. So it was just a very, it was a cold God moment where it's emotional and sometimes sad to look back on but we're also thankful to have, to just have something like that where we have a memory of being there, shooting at my grandparents' house on my grandparents' front porch like that. That was actually the very last family meal in that video is the last family meal we got to share together before dad passed away. So it was just a cool moment that we got to capture that and be able to look back on it for sure. Yeah, very special indeed that you'll always be able to have that recording for your family to look back and see God's blessing and legacy in your family. So let's talk a bit about the name after grace. Tell us a bit about yourselves, how you came to choose that name and your mission. So the verse 2 Timothy 1-9, it says, for God has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace and that this grace was given to us before the beginning of time. So it's the idea of like God's grace is always there for us. And then talking about the moment of when you experience that grace for the first time, what happens in your life afterward? So after grace, that's kind of where that comes from. And Cody, you're on the left, or Jared, you're on the left, I think for as far as, yes, okay, where in the hat? Can you tell us a little bit about your, just your worship through the years, how your heart has connected with audiences and how your mission has remained or if it's changed at all? Sure, yeah. God has called each of us individually to ministry through music. It's something that we've always been passionate about. Cody and I are brothers in law and we're the same age. We went to the same school growing up. So we've been playing music together for 15, 16 years. And I mean, through those years, our message, our purpose really has not changed. It's been to offer hope through melodies, through sharing stories, through the songs that God gives us. It's really been to put him first through that. And we've just watched him honor our commitments throughout the years. It's truly what we are most passionate about. It's truly what we have been called to do. It's something that brings fulfillment in each of our lives and like anything else. But that's because it's God's calling over our lives. It's what he made us to do. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. And Jared, I understand that another calling, another passion in your life is adoption. Your family has grown recently. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, yeah. Back in 2018, 2019, God put fostering an adoption on my wife's heart. And I was very hesitant to buy into that. I was feeling as though maybe she misheard from God because I was very scared. But we prayed about it together as a family and it felt like God was really calling us into this whole world of fostering adoption. Adoption through foster care, I guess is what I should say. So we dove headfirst into it with our own ideas. God slowly to rip all of those apart because his plans are often not our plans. And so we went into it thinking that we were gonna maybe adopt up to two kids and up to 10 years old and very long story short, what ended up happening was God brought a sibling group of five kids to us. And at the time they ranged from 13 down to two. And yeah, and when my wife brought the picture of those five beautiful babies to me, I just laughed in her face because I thought, oh, there's no way that this is what we're gonna be doing. But little did I know God had other plans. And so, yeah, they came home in October of 2020 and we adopted them in June of 2021. And they're our babies. We went from zero to five overnight. Sounds like some really funny, stupid sitcom or something but it's our lives. What a fantastic story. That really is diving headfirst into the adoption process. I just was interested. You guys are from Mountain Home, Arkansas. Like Anna said, it just sounds so great. Mountain Home, Arkansas. What's it like going from there? I've never been there. I imagine it's not the biggest place in the world. Now you're in Nashville, big city. What's it been like to go from there playing your music in your local church to now traveling around, doing all these venues? What's been the challenges and the blessings of that? Oh man, I think Mountain Home is a cool city for sure. It's a beautiful place to live. It's a big fishing hub in America. People travel from all over the country to fish for trout, white river and stuff there. So that's kind of its big draw, a very outdoorsy type place. But Nashville area, yeah, live right outside of Nashville in Murfreesboro but same thing. The biggest difference for sure is the traffic. It is crazy and sometimes it just drives you nuts. Like the other day we had to go to a right and it's only 25 miles from my house to where the right was and it took us 90 minutes because traffic was backed up so bad or like a normal 20 minute drive. So that's the biggest thing. It's a kind of similar atmosphere of life. Still kind of the South scenery is the same. So it's basically kind of like maybe if you took Mountain Home and just amplified it up 100 fold kind of thing but it still has that homie feeling for sure. And Cody, I know that you, while both of you actually experienced such loss in your family not too long ago, can you share a little bit about that knowing that we have viewers who have also experienced such deep loss and how God has walked you through that? Yeah, I think for us it was one of those things like I talked about that video, we filmed it and then shortly after we released the song, Simple Things in that video, that's when kind of a lot of the downhill started happening. My dad got COVID the last week of August. We were supposed to have a family get together. My mom called, she was like, hey guys, we can't make it. Dad and I have COVID, we'll see in a couple of weeks, hung up the phone. Little did we know that that couple of weeks for our family was gonna turn into, instead of having the rescheduled family dinner, we were having my dad's funeral a few weeks later. It was a crazy thing. He was 55 years old. Just not something you would expect, no way to prepare for it, no way to grieve in advance or anything like that. And we did find ourselves doubting things because I remember pacing the hospital floor the day before we told the doctors to go ahead and pull the plugs and stuff. And I said, God, if you're who I've always believed you to be, I need you to save my dad because I can't do life without him. And it didn't happen in the way that I wanted it to. But the last few years, we've really seen God do some cool stuff and my dad's legacy of how he lived his life and showing us how to be a man, how to live for Christ and walking and talking like Jesus in the best way possible, being kind to people, being respectful to people and just loving people. And we've seen a lot of things come from that, people I've never met that have called or emailed us and been like, hey, you don't know me, but I wanna tell you this story about when your dad visited us in the hospital. I wanna tell you this story about when your dad brought us food. And I could name just tons of those stories from all these different people that I've never met before. And it's just been encouraging to know that, that even after you're gone, if you make a purpose to live your life like you should and be kind to people that your legacy is gonna matter and it's gonna aim to do out of this is, I just wanna live like my dad. I wanna show people Jesus like he did and be a representation of that as best as I can. And you wrote a very special song which we're gonna hear in just a minute and you wrote it for your son and it's called It's Okay, Feel This Way. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so that song is one that, you know, after my dad passed, my dad and my son were super close. He was six years old at the time when dad passed. Everything you can think of that a grandpa and a grandson did together, they did together, right? So when my dad passed, it was really hard on my son and he almost got expelled from elementary school cause he was angry yelling at teachers, hitting students and stuff. And when he got home the day we heard about it, we just asked him, Bub, what's wrong? And he said, mom, dad, I just miss Pop Pop. No, I don't understand why he was taken from me. And so I just wrote the song to let him know that as his father, I love him and I'm here for him through everything. And then I want him to know that God's got his back and everything too and that it's okay to cry, hurt and ask the tough questions cause God wants us to. Well, thank you both for just your ministry through music. God has anointed both of you to be such a powerful blessing in this earth. And we're gonna take a listen now to your song. It's called, It's Okay, Feel This Way. Thank you for sharing your hearts today. Thank you guys. Is it wrong to hurt so much? Is it wrong to miss someone? Is it wrong to ask a question? How could this happen to me? Do you want to just move on, push it down? Pretend it's gone. Do you want to find an answer to ease your suffering? You don't have to be ashamed. You can't tell me anything cause it's okay to feel this way. You know that life is not the same even in your deepest pain. My love for you will never change. You don't have to fake that smile. Let yourself cry for a little while. I'm here for you in the heartbreak so it's okay to feel this way. There's no use holding it in, let it fall. He's there for you to lean on when you just don't understand. If you're hopeless, nowhere you're out of every tear. So it's okay. I just love that sweet song from Cody and Jared talking about it's okay to feel this way. And just right now, if you're feeling that that really touched a place in your spirit, just hold out your hand and whatever is in your hand, whatever pain that is, whatever loss that is, whatever grief that you're dealing with, just give it to God. It's too heavy for you to carry. And I love that Jesus says that we can cast our cares upon him. You know, even in this moment as we were just listening to his song, something that God just spoke in my spirit is that, you know, you can sew your tears unto the Lord that when you're crying, that when you're grieving, when you feel all hope is lost, do you know you can take those tears and just give it back to God? And maybe today that is exactly where you are, that you're sad, there's so much sorrow. And we all know what it feels like to come to the end of ourselves to feel like you're in that deep pit. But I just even feel now that the Holy Spirit is coming into your living room, is coming into your bedroom, wherever you are watching from, let the Holy Spirit touch you in this moment. God heals the broken hearted and he binds up their wounds. And that's what we're believing for you today. And so if you're in that place, give us a call at our prayer line at 888-665-4483. And even as we are the remainder of the show, just allow the Holy Spirit to touch you, to heal you, to speak to you and allow yourself to be in that place because God wants to meet you in a very special way today. You know, God says he stores our tears in a bottle. So there's never a tear that you have shed that God doesn't know about. There's never a pain that you have gone through that God hasn't gone through with you. So whenever you sense that, you sense the losses, the reverses, the things that have happened in your life that have brought those tears, remember that God is there with you and he's storing up those things for just the healing, for your healing. Cause he, you know, he doesn't say, ah, forget about it. Don't worry about it. You know, it wasn't a big deal. He doesn't say that. What he says is it was important enough that you cried those tears that I, I stored them up knowing that my life and the life of Christ in you is what brings about your healing. So trust in God for that. He wants to bring healing. Yes, we'll always have the scar, but we won't always have the pain. God wants to heal us from that pain. I just want to mention quickly that if you're struggling like in a crisis of faith, I call it where you're wondering if God really is who he says he is. That is also okay, but what we want to encourage you with is to come to him with your questions, with your fears, with your anger. Like all of that is okay in the presence of God. He is good with that and he wants to come alongside you. He wants to speak into your heart, his comfort, his encouragement, his word. So as you grapple with your faith, this is not a time to walk away from God. This is a time to walk to God. And in that place, he is faithful. So today, know that God is for you and working for you. Have hope today. On tomorrow's Hope Today, providing a guiding light through dark times. Author and Pastor Glenn Damon offers encouragement to those who are facing trials by helping us understand our circumstances through the lens of God's character. Don't miss tomorrow's Hope Today. No matter your age or circumstances, God wants you to move forward. Join best-selling author and teacher, Dr. David Jeremiah in a masterclass, revealing how to live fearlessly. You'll discover that it's never too late to find your purpose. Dr. David Jeremiah reveals powerful ways for people of any age to live a life that's meaningful. Inside Forward, you'll uncover strong Bible teaching coupled with incredible real-life stories and practical biblical insight. Learn how God wants to expand your dreams, give you divine direction, equip you with tools to overcome fear, and much more. Request your copy of this life-changing book when you support Cornerstone Television. Call 888-665-4483 or give online at ctvn.org slash donate. 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