 You are seen. I am Angela Madden. I am here with Sydney today on Hope Today and we are excited to affirm in you the goodness of God and allow you to see and know just how seen you are by the King of Glory. I'm excited for today's show, Sydney. I think that everyone here is gonna glean a little goodness. We are gonna glean goodness because we here at Hope Today, we are all about uplifting and encouraging your spirit. And we have a question to ask you. Have you ever dealt with an overwhelming sense of loneliness, abandonment, self-ifelicitation? If so, a spirit of rejection may have its grip on you. And our guest today, Monica Gidry, is gonna help you break free from it. And in a moment, Monica is gonna share her story and how the Holy Spirit set her free from the demonic strongholds, bondage. And I'm so excited to talk about this because I actually had an opportunity, a little side note. So Monica and I actually found out recently that we are cousins, so she's a part of family. Yes, and so we found that out here at Quarterstone. And so one thing that I remembered, like several months ago, that Covenant Church of Pittsburgh, and she belongs to a Waysa City Church, it's a sister church that is in Columbus, Ohio. And she did a thing on the spirit of rejection. There was like a, and there was a bunch of women in the room. And can I tell y'all, my good friends, we were there, we got set free. That some of us have that spirit that is so locked up inside of us that we don't even understand how it's hindering us and holding us back. So here on Hope Today, we are all about breaking free from things so you can walk in the fullness and the wholeness of who God has called you to be. You know, Sydney, I love the scripture that King Solomon shares and he says in Proverbs, he says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So when we begin to attack these places of rejection, these beliefs that we have deep within us, it allows us to awaken to the reality of who we really are and the place from which we function. And without understanding like, oh, I actually feel rejection here, I can't be set free. The truth sets us free. Yes, and there's so many lies even in our minds that we've been told or they're speaking these thoughts and I don't know if you deal with, there's something I deal with was like isolation that I'll self isolate and didn't even realize how that spirit was just trying to come upon me. So today, we just believe that this is your deliverance day that you're gonna be set free. So we just encourage you to open your spirit, open your heart, open your mind to what God wants to do. And at any moment throughout the program that you need someone to lean on, you need prayer, we are always here for you 24 seven at our prayer line at 888-665-4483. Well, Monica Gidry is a lifestyle strategist, author and recording artist who helps people remove the broken pieces in their lives and move toward wholeness. Today, Monica is gonna join us to share her story of how she overcame rejection so you can be set free from the spiritual stronghold and be all God has called you to be. Monica, we are so happy to have you with us today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here with both of you. Well, it's an honor that you are joining us and Monica, before we dive into your story, can you just tell us a little bit about who you are in the ministry that you do? Sure, that's a loaded question. Anytime someone asks me who I am, I'm always like, there's a bunch of things. I am a mother. First, I'm a child of God. Secondly, I'm a wife to my wonderful husband in 22 years. I'm a mother of four. And I lead worship or help lead worship at Oasis City Church. I'm a lifestyle strategist and I've authored three books. I'm a community leader and just an overall friend of many friends. And I love helping people unlock what's lying beneath that has stopped them from forward movement progress. And let's talk about those things that actually stopped and hindered you early on in life that a spirit of rejection, can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how God even unveiled this was at work and operating in your life? Sure, sure. I didn't know that I even operated out of a spirit of rejection until a few years ago when I came to a point in my life where I literally was pushing people away that I knew that God sent in my life just because I was projecting. And what I ended up having to do was ask God, okay, I know that there's something here because I'm believing these lies. And I know that they're lies, but for whatever reason, I'm accepting them as truths. And so what I did was I had to go through inner healing and I discovered that there were seeds of rejections, rejection implanted in me from womb, from the womb that I had nothing to do with. It was something that my mother carried around with her while I was pregnant. She dealt with abandonment and rejection being a foster child and having to raise my oldest sister on her own for many years. And so when she was pregnant with me, what she was dealing with from generation to generation, it came to me. So when I was born, I always felt like I just didn't fit in. I always felt as if no one really accepted me. And so growing up as an adult, I carried that too. And so the lenses that I've viewed my life out of were filtered through the lenses of rejection and abandonment. So every since I was a young girl in elementary school, up to high school and even into adulthood, I just viewed life through the lenses of rejection. And as you're reviewing your life through the lenses of rejection, what did that look like? How did it manifest in your life? Well, it manifested by creating walls. I created walls I did not let, I was not very vulnerable. I've always been sensitive and emotionally stable, but sensitive in nature. So I didn't really let people close. I kind of kept them at arm's length. They felt like they were really close to me, but there was a part of me that just didn't fully let them engage with me. And it also manifested in ways of just feeling like that I had to do a lot of work to get the approval of people. I would make sure that I was the best or that I was well put together or that I kept my hands busy or that I appeared to be this well-known person. It was just manifested in ways of presenting myself one way, but internally dealing with a lot of turmoil. I think Monica, like as you're speaking, a lot of us can say that has been me, that I'm dealing with all this inner turmoil and not even realizing how it affected me. Can you just share when was the moment that you started to have breakthrough, that God just started to like shatter all that, the rejection and the abandonment issues that you were going through? I remember sitting on the edge of my bed and it was after I had a big blow-up with someone. And I remember the Lord, it was almost as if it wasn't like I was in it. It wasn't, I wasn't in a dream state. I felt like that I was awake and I felt Jesus sitting on the edge of my bed and I sat up and I saw, I don't know if you guys have ever seen the matrix, but it was as if the matrix, he was decoding all of these lies that I believed and he started to speak truth over me in the midst of all of the lies that I had believed for all of these years. And I remember weeping as the Lord began to speak over me what he thought about me, what he said about me, how people actually viewed me. And that was the moment when I said, you know what, I'm not gonna live my life like this. And I, and I'm instilling in that moment, I just kind of, it was almost like I snapped too and my eyes were open. That's just such a powerful image of just when we have those encounters with Jesus that he just started decoding all the lies that have been filtering in your mind and on repeat over and over again. And Monica, I just feel in my spirit, can you just take a moment to speak to somebody right now that is exactly in that place where they've had these lies and these thoughts and these tormenting things just go over and over again, but they need to be set free. Can you just take a few moments and just to speak to the heart and minister to them? Well, I just wanna tell you that right now that you have the mind of Christ and that the renewal of your mind happens when you read the word of God and you let that be your source and the things that you think on the Bible tells us that he keeps us in perfect peace if we keep our mind set on him. So when you're sitting in a space of overthinking or you're sitting in a space of viewing yourselves through lenses that God does not see or speak about you, focus your attention and your mind on the peace of God. The Bible tells us that the God of peace will surely crush Satan under his feet and that's exactly what he wants to do with those thoughts that are tormenting in your mind. He wants to crush them and he wants to bring you to the revelation and truth that you have been adopted, that you are a son and a daughter of God, that you are coheirs with him, that you're seated in heavenly places and everything that you are is everything that he is. So I speak to you right now in the name of Jesus that you will walk in freedom and you will walk in your sonship. You have been chosen and set apart for such a time as this. I love what you said, it's like we need to walk in our sonship knowing that we are sons and daughters of the most high king and it's so important that we have that revelation in Monica. Just wanted to like ask you, when it comes to overcoming rejection, what are some ways that we can daily just walk it out, this checking in with our spirit and making sure, okay, it's not creeping on me today, I'm gonna fight it. What are some practical things that we can do? The first thing that I will say, the first practical thing that I would say is journal. I have a client right now and we're reworking her whole schedule. She's journaling. As soon as she wakes up in the morning, she gives thanks to God. And then what I tell her to do is journal everything that you're thinking, all of the intrusive thoughts, everything, everything that you're thinking, journal it. Okay, and then the next thing that I would say to do is start fine tuning your ear, start asking people around you what they see in you about you and write down what they're saying about you. The good things, of course, you don't wanna go, don't go to an enemy, go to someone who knows you well and let them speak life over you, write down what they say. And then the next thing that I would say do is take an assessment of your life. What are you watching? What are you listening to? Who are you surrounded by? What are you reading? Because everything that filters in through you is either gonna lead you to God and to destiny and speak well of who you are or it's gonna take you in the opposite direction. Those are the three simple things to do. I love those three simple things. They're simple and easy to do. We can do them today. Something I do is like journaling and it does really help just to jot and put those thoughts out. I love what she said, just have something to speak over and affirm who you are. And then we gotta check in what we're letting in our ear gate, in our eye gate. That is so important. And speaking of those things that we're letting in, one thing that you do beautifully is that you have a heart of worship and music and song and you wrote, can you talk to us about a song that you wrote called Amen that it came out of the pandemic? Can you share that with us? Wow, yeah. So I wrote the song at the height of the pandemic. It was, we were all in quarantine. We weren't allowed outside. So I said, you know, I need to learn. I need to learn something. I need to learn how to play piano, something to keep my time and attention. And my friend sent me the number system. She taught me how to use the number system to create melodies. And so I use the number system and I came up with this beautiful melody and then the Lord gave me lyrics. And the lyrics were basically because we were all so afraid. I hate to use the word afraid, but we just didn't know what was happening in life. And so I was like a lot of people where I would just said, you know what? I don't know what's happening, but I know God, I trust him. And so that's how the song was birthed. And then the Lord actually had me record it last year, almost one day to the date, the year prior that I wrote the song. The Lord said, I need you to record it. And I didn't even know that it was that close in timeline. So he's always on time. He's perfect like that. He is truly perfect. He brings everything full circle. So now we wanna bless you all with Monica's song, Amen, that was recorded at Oasis City Church. Take a look. The ocean knows where the men are stars that shine bright That twinkle in the night sky Some things I'll never but I'll say I So shall it be. Thank you so much for just sharing your story and your gift and your talent with us. I just wanna say I'm proud of you cousin. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And if you wanna check out more of Monica's music and ministry, we're gonna have a link on our website at ctvn.org. And you know, and these moments it's just really touching when we just know we have the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Our God in heaven can reach down low to the depths of our soul no matter what we're dealing with. And he loves to heal us. He's in the healing business for our wholeness. He really is Sydney. And he loves us so deeply and completely that when maybe you're there today and you feel rejection, you feel like you don't belong. You feel like you're isolated. You feel alone. God is saying he's made a space for you and he created you for himself. He loves you infinitely beyond what you could imagine. And so I think that it's really important when we talk about rejection, when we have these spaces inside of us that we recognize like, what are some cues that I may be feeling rejection? You know, if you're like Monica and you've built up walls and you don't let people in or maybe you're protecting yourself from going too deep in a relationship or always keeping the relationship one direction away from you, those are some good signs that you might have some lies that you're believing that you're not valuable, that you're not loved, that you're not worthy. You don't wanna accept help from others. And so those are spaces that God is truly inviting you to, in inviting himself in and saying, let me be a part of that and heal and mend you, you know? Yeah, he truly wants to heal and mend us. And you know, just something as you were talking and sharing, Angela, it's something that God reminded of something that even happened this morning on my way driving here. I got a flat tire, oh my God. And I think a lot of us can feel that way in life, right, that you have a flat tire, that something is trying to slow you down, that there's certain things that are sucking the life out of you or deflating you. But we're coming here to tell you today that do you know that God wants to breathe his breath? I love that the Holy Spirit, like in the beginning, that we see that God breathed his breath on us and that breath is Neshama. It's the divine essence of God. He breathes it into us and even in those broken places, even in those dry places, even in those hard places, he just wants to breathe on you today. So today, receive the breath of God, receive Yahweh that he wants to blow upon your mind, he wants to blow upon your heart and blow new life into those places that are slowing you down, that are hindering you and stopping you from your destination. Because in Christ, we know that when we trust in him, that the victory is all his and that he wants to get us to a place of wholeness and healing so that we can walk out all that he's called us to be. You know, Sidney, he does that a lot of times by breathing his word into us. Today's scripture comes from Luke 6, 22 through 23. And it says, blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy because great is your reward in heaven. You know, I love how God's word continues to wash over us. And it says that he watches over his word, that it would not return void. And so even this very scripture that we read in Luke, and it says, maybe you feel rejected, maybe you feel like you're being insulted and all of this is coming towards you because of your faith in God. Maybe you're in a family that they don't understand. You're a crazy Christian to them and they don't understand where you're coming from. God says, rejoice in that. Because when you do that, when you're despised and used and people insult you because of your faith in God, he says, don't worry, I've got eternal riches for you. Riches that aren't just temporal and fleeting, but something that you're gonna enjoy for ages and ages without end. And I love God's promises, Sidney. I love his word because it truly is something that it's not like a word from a friend that can be good for a moment. It is something that sustains me in the innermost parts of my being and it lasts for eternity. Ooh, girl. That's some good stuff right there. We could just say a lot and pause on that. You know, one thing I just always think about in the moments where I'm feeling rejected, where I feel like the world is up against me. You know, one thing that we can do that has just been such a game changer for me in so many different moments of my life, I get on my knees and I start praising him in all things. I start thanking him for the adversity. I start thanking him for whatever trials I'm going through because I know that he is faithful. I know that he's in the midst of it. So I just want to, we just want to encourage you today that after the show, you can even do it right now that you can just get on your knees and begin to worship the king of kings. Begin to worship the Lord of lords. Begin to thank him and to praise him for what he's about to do in your life. You know, even in church right now, we're learning about like giving praises, our first offering that we give to God. And praise is like, you know, Thanksgiving is when we thank God for the things that, you know, thank you for my house or thank you for my family or whatever it may be. But praising God means I'm praising you for what hasn't happened yet, because I know that you're a man that you should not lie, no son, a man that you shall not repent. If you've not said, if you've said it, then I'm going to believe that you are going to perform your word. So today we just encourage you to make an altar before him, to make a place where you just step into the place of where God is, step into his presence, step into that place and just receive him and just say, God, I love you, thank you, Abba, like you are for me, you are not against me. Sometimes we have to speak those things, Angela, into our lives and into our heart, no matter what the circumstance looks like, because we know things are going to be shaken in turn, but with our God, he is faithful. Yes, and it can be hard when you're sitting in the midst of pain and you're sitting in the midst of discouragement and doctors reports and you're downtrodden and downcast, but if you can take a moment and say, God, I don't know where this is heading, but you do. Lord, I don't feel the goodness, but I trust that you're good. If you can take a moment just like David did and encourage yourself in the Lord, declare the scripture even when you can't see it, just like Sid's saying, declare it. And the scripture says, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. In other words, I can get my faith up just by declaring the word, because when I speak it out loud, my ears hear it and my spirit can receive it anew. So keep standing, keep believing, keep declaring. And the God who is faithful to deliver in every circumstance will surely deliver you. He surely will deliver you. It's something that I don't know if you've studied the Hebrew calendar, but right now it's the Hebrew month of Sivvon, Angela. And what's really powerful about the month of Sivvon, it's the third month. And this is a time actually like yesterday, it was the day that God gave Moses like the 10 commandments and was like speaking his word to the people. So in this month, remind yourself, maybe you have to go back to say, what are some of the words that God has spoken over me? What are some of the things that prophetically I am waiting on? Trust and believe and go back and read those things and pray those things and seek his face because we know that they were in a wilderness at the time, but there is a promised land. So you're not gonna stay stuck here forever. And I even hear like Phil Lord is saying that right now that somebody that you are at the end of wanting to end your life and God is just saying, I'm taking that bullet for you, what you want to kill for yourself, don't do it. Then we know that the spirit of suicide is so rampant right now in our culture and we declare decree you shall live and not die. It is not worth that the enemy has been speaking lies over you of rejection and torment, but we bind it right now in the name of Jesus and we break off the power of suicidal ideation that's been permeating into your mind that's making you feel like that you should not live, that you should not exist. That is a lie from the pit of hell. And we are here to tell you today that God loves you, that he is for you and that there is life in you. He came to give you life and life more abundantly. And if that's you today, we just want to say we see you, God hears you and let this be a confirmation what the enemy meant for evil. God is turning it all around for his good because there's a plan and a purpose on your life. Many of us have been in that place where we wanted to end it all. There's been multiple times in my life where I just was like, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. The voices are so loud where you want to drive off the cliff you want to jump off the bridge you want to take that pill, you want to take that gun but God says, I see you. And I'm telling you friend, if you are battling with that today, give us a call at 888-665-4483 because we would love to pray with you and to stand with you and let you know that you are not alone because the one thing that I know about the spirit of rejection is it will lead you into a place of isolation. We'll lead you into a place of no hope but Jesus paid the ultimate price for us that you are the pearl of great price and he laid it all down for you. So today, if you've come across this TV station and maybe you're scrolling or you're on YouTube or however you come across us, we just want to encourage you today to let you know that God sees you, that God is with you and that he is a God of life. Angela. What do you have to lose? You know, a lot of times we go to our friends, we go to the ends of the earth looking for that which God has already provided. What do you have to lose to trust in Jesus? He took nails in his hands so you wouldn't have to. He was pierced in his side, crushed in his body so you wouldn't have to be. He is the solution and he is more than you could ever need. God sees you as Sidney says, he loves you and you are fully accepted. You are valuable and you are worth it. I love that you are valuable and you are worth it. And that's the whole reason why we have hope today. It's for moments like these to create a space for you to know the truth of what God says about you so you don't feel isolated, you don't feel alone, you don't feel rejected, but you know that God loves you, that he's for you and he is the God of hope. Have a great day. On tomorrow's Hope Today, making a difference by providing hope and change in the community. George Spencer of Greater Pittsburgh Area, Mad Dads shares how his organization is seeking to bring out positive change from the social ills that currently plague our neighborhoods. That's tomorrow on Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.