Pivotal People

Finding Joy in God's Timing: Navigating Unfulfilled Longings

• Stephanie Nelson • Season 4 • Episode 114

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Author Rebecca George shares profound insights about her book "You're Not Too Late" which explores finding joy amid unfulfilled longings and learning to trust God's timing in our hurry-up world.

• Rebecca is an author, podcaster, and pastor's wife living near the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee
• Her book "You're Not Too Late" tackles how to handle unfulfilled longings in relationships, career, and other areas
• Most longings fall into two categories: relational (marriage, children, reconciled relationships) and vocational (career, ministry, business ventures)
• True joy comes from abiding in Christ, not from achieving our desires
• We often equate God's goodness with getting what we want, but His faithfulness isn't contingent on our circumstances
• Desires can become idols when they consume our thoughts and prevent us from seeing what God is doing now
• Rebecca and her husband unknowingly prayed at the same bench years before meeting—a beautiful testimony to God's divine timing
• The book includes practical exercises, scripture references, and case studies to help readers process their own waiting seasons
• A free 11-session video series accompanies the book for individual or group study

Find Rebecca on Instagram @rebeccageorgeauthor and her book "You're Not Too Late" wherever books are sold.


Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential

Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
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Speaker 1:

I'd like to welcome Rebecca George to the Pivotal People podcast. I'm super excited because I just finished her book this week. It is so good. It's not her first book. She actually is a seasoned author. This is her third book.

Speaker 1:

She's also a very experienced podcaster, and I say that because her podcast, Radical Radiance, has been going for about five years. I've listened to it and I think she's at 365 episodes, so if you have a little downtime you don't know what to do. You can catch up on those. She also has a great Instagram following. She has wonderful free resources on her website, and the whole reason she provides all of this is because she is really committed to helping women draw closer to God, and with this specific book, she's really speaking to people who are wrestling with unfulfilled longings, whether it's for a child or a spouse, or healing in broken relationships all kinds of things that cause us to wish our situation was different than it was. So I love this book because it was super practical. It helped remind me that I don't have to feel like I'm alone in the waiting. The book is called You're Not Too Late Trusting God's Timing in a Hurry-Up World. Wow, what a topic. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2:

Oh, stephanie, I'm so happy to be with you. Thank you for having me today, rebecca said very little about who you are.

Speaker 1:

Could you tell us a little more about who you are, where you live, who you do, life with all?

Speaker 2:

of that? Sure, I'm happy to. Well, I am an East Tennessee gal, if you can't tell by my accent. I live right outside of the Smoky Mountains in a lovely little town and I'm a pastor's wife. My husband is the lead pastor of our local church here in Maryville is the name of our town and so that is a huge part of my life local church ministry. And, as you beautifully said, I also write books. I have a podcast. I speak on the road quite a bit and you nailed it, my heart really is to just walk alongside women and encourage them in their walk with Jesus. My podcast, called Radical Radiance, really has that similar heart of having conversations that point people to what it looks like to radiate Him in all that we do our life, our work, our relationships, and so I hope the books that I write, the messages that I speak, all of those things just kind of point to that end. So those are a few hats that I wear.

Speaker 1:

I would love to know. I hadn't planned to ask this question, but it just prompted. Could you tell us a little bit about what is it like to be a pastor's wife?

Speaker 2:

Oh gosh, we could do Stephanie, we could do a whole episode on this. I have been married to my husband almost six years and I think our story is a little bit maybe non-conventional. We were a little bit older when we got married and my husband was already a lead pastor when I married him. So I didn't like marry the youth guy that became the executive pastor, that became the lead pastor. He was already kind of in that role and so it was interesting for me, kind of jumping into the deep end of ministry in that way. We got married in 2019.

Speaker 2:

So if people are doing the math, it was about 10 minutes, not 10 minutes. That's what it felt like 10 months before the pandemic started, and so I don't know that I have a great answer for you, because our first few years were actually really challenging, just navigating what the church and our nation had never navigated before. But I think there's kind of a both end to it. Like it is absolutely awesome to get to watch your husband live out his calling and preach the gospel, lead people to Christ. I mean, I get to have a front row seat to that all the time, which is just incredible and it's the hardest thing I've ever done right, like the criticism that comes along with it. Just the weight of the leadership responsibility is heavy, and it's heavy all the time right, like you're never off the clock per se, and so there is both a beauty in it and a great challenge, I think, for any pastor's wife that's walking alongside her husband in that way.

Speaker 1:

I've always looked at our pastor's wives, thinking, you know, that is a full-time job. It's not necessarily a paid job, but it's certainly. You know, members of the church, I am friends with our pastor's wife. I love her. I mean, I look at her and think I don't know how she does all she does and at the same time she's ministering to all of us. You know, informally she's ministering to us. So it is interesting that you said you stepped into your marriage when he was already lead pastor. It's unusual, isn't it, that a lead pastor would be in the first place.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's a whole nother conversation, yeah that's a lot of casseroles he was getting. I'll tell you that. Yeah yeah for sure. So let's move on. Let's talk about your book. Not just your book, but all the concepts you talked about spoke to me and I'm sure spoke to many others. I want people to know that Rebecca's book is really practical. Its format is really good. So it's a book you're reading, but at the same time I think of it as a workbook.

Speaker 1:

That kind of walks through your own life in a very simple way. So she's bringing in scripture, she's bringing in personal stories, she's bringing in biblical stories. It made it very easy for me then to apply it to my life and to be honest just with myself, just in this book, with your questions. When we're talking about longing, remember CS Lewis said you know, we're just always longing for joy. We might get glimpses of it, but it's the longing that keeps us, you know, wanting to draw closer to God. You talked in the very beginning about let's talk about this relational and vocational longing. Give us some examples and get people thinking about what is that and where does God fit in with that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, such an important question. And I think as I approached the book I began kind of surveying my own life and considering how have I struggled in seasons of longing, of waiting, what are those? Maybe sin challenges or just struggles that I've encountered? And then in what different areas of my life have I longed for things? And I say this in the book, I won't solve for every area of longing that will experience this side of heaven but I think a lot of our longing roots back to the two things you just described of it's either relational we're waiting to get married, to have grandkids, to restore a relationship that maybe feels like it's past the point of reconciliation those types of things would be a relational longing. Or a vocational longing.

Speaker 2:

We want to grow in a career, we want to get involved in a ministry or organization, we want to start a business, things like that and so as I kind of survey my own life, I have experienced a lot in both of those camps and I think what bubbles up in me the despair, the wondering if God will show up and doubting how is he going to write the end of the story will show up and doubting, you know, how is he going to write the end of the story, the resentment that sometimes builds in our hearts when we maybe watch other people experience what we long for, the comparison and envy that accompany that, the isolation we feel like we're the only ones that have dealt with it All of those things, I believe, play into our longing, and if we choose to see it this way, I think there are opportunities to trust in the Lord, to experience His joy despite the waiting.

Speaker 2:

We can talk more about that, but I think it is a sneaky lie of the enemy that we have to get what we want to be able to experience joy this side of heaven. And so I talk about that a lot at the beginning of the book, which I think is really foundational. But yeah, those are those two areas, and then there's a million ways that it can look in our different lives, depending on personalities and our different challenges there. But yeah, I love that you started with that.

Speaker 1:

Well, what I liked about the format of your book is how each chapter you're not just talking about, let's say, the concept of joy. You put it next to what we're experiencing, which is generally the opposite of that right. So what I liked about that is that it gives us permission. You talked about people feeling isolated. When I read something like this in a book and I joy and despair that's your first chapter but when we stand back and, as an author, you're teaching us that despair is what draws us closer to God, absolutely. This cycle of bringing us closer to God and this longing for joy is, and I love. Please talk more about the whole idea of we don't have to achieve our longings in order to get joy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally. I mean, I'm so encouraged when I go read the Psalms and I just read how the psalmist David cried out to the Lord like how long, oh Lord, or I'm going to have to deal with this situation before you show up. There's a million examples of that and I think that encourages me that I can go to the Lord in my despair and like he can handle it, he's big enough, he's powerful enough, he's mighty enough to walk with me through that. He already knows the state of my heart anyway. So I think that's a big piece of it too is a willingness to confront that and to take it to the Lord.

Speaker 2:

And then, yeah, I think many times, especially in our culture that wants things really fast, we can tend to approach our life with Christ in this way of like yes, I know God's in control, yes, I know he's good, yes, I know that he's faithful. But what that means is I'm equating that with my circumstances. Right, so I get the thing I want, I meet the guy, I get pregnant, I reconcile the relationship and God is in control and God is good. The problem with that is the opposite also has to be true, right, if I'm not getting what I want. If I don't meet the guy, if I don't reconcile the relationship, my heart struggles to understand that God is still in control and he is good, right. And so I a little bit had to unhinge those two things from each other, like if I'm in the deepest valley, if I'm in a season of suffering or in a season of blessing or in a season of a mountaintop. That does not hinge on or God's character, god's nature, his faithfulness doesn't hinge on those things coming true, he is faithful, he is in control, he is good Full stop. It doesn't hinge on my circumstances.

Speaker 2:

So I think that challenges the way that we see joy, and I define it in the book as joy truly is what happens in us when we abide in Christ right.

Speaker 2:

That word abide in the original language means to be held or kept, and like, think about that, like we are held and kept by the Creator of the universe and in abiding in Him. That's what gives us joy, that's that's what causes us to have joy in His presence, and so that allows us to have joy anywhere, anytime, in any valley. And so I think and I'm pointing the finger so much right back at myself I really had to confront that in realizing, like man, I can experience that, despite what I'm walking through, I can experience that despite what I'm longing for. And, man, I don't want to miss out on a whole life of joy because I was so focused on the thing that I would have chosen or the way I would have chosen to write the story. I just want to have my eyes open to the story that God is writing for his glory, for my good, even when it's not what I would have chosen.

Speaker 1:

And so what I love? I'm sitting here just hanging on every word Rebecca is saying, because you're giving us permission to go ahead and accept God's joy, even as a mother of adult sons. And as a parent, sometimes you feel like, well, I can't be happy, I can't be joyful when my son is experiencing XYZ. But God, says yes, you can.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you can. It's not contingent on circumstances. Really, I'm a bad mom. How could I possibly be joyful Because you can, you can have permission to do that. Joyful because you can. You can have permission to do that as you age.

Speaker 1:

One of the good things about aging is that you have more experiences that you can look back on, and one of the things that I thought of as you were talking about abiding in joy and having permission to have joy is that you can look back at your life and say, wow, I really wanted and I'll tell you one, you know, I really wanted this one professional success. Okay, I had a project, I really wanted this professional success and it flopped out of the gate, absolutely out of the gate, and I told my brother about it. And I didn't even want to tell people about it, I just only told my brother and I said here's what happened, flopped out of the gate. And he looked at me and said but do you really care about that? And I said actually, not really, not really. Okay, Like the despair you're talking about.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you look and you say I've had enough of these experiences to know that you can have a professional failure and you say I've had enough of these experiences to know that you can have a professional failure and you still have the people you love in your life, it's still a beautiful day outside, you still have the opportunity to hug your husband. Seriously, does that little professional failure going to define you Now? When I was 30, I don't think I would have gotten past it, but when I was 60, I was kind of like, not really so. Sometimes I think God changes our heart, not our circumstances, and even the relationship. When I have a relationship that I would have prayed that would be reconciled, it never was reconciled, but you know what happened? It stopped mattering to me. Other relationships took its place. So it's not always the outcome we're hanging on to, and when that happens which I didn't even think was possible I can look to God and say thank you, god, thank you for taking that despair away she has so many great quotes in this book.

Speaker 1:

You're just going to have to read it you also talk about. She has so many great quotes in this book, you're just going to have to read it. But I love this. Whatever desire you're chasing, it can easily become an idol. When we worship the idea of what we hope the outcome will be, even if I'm saying this is now my words, even if our desire seems to be a really good thing. You know, I want to be a missionary, I want to be a minister. I want to be a minister, I want to be a Christian speaker. Aren't those really good things? So, rebecca, you elaborate on that. Those are your words.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I love that you bring that up because it's such an important part of our longing right? I kind of define idolatry in the book as anything that we elevate to a place of prominence in our lives that was meant for God alone, right? So in our Western Christianity in 2025, we're not worshiping a golden calf, right? It is much more insidious, I believe, than that. We're maybe taking a good desire that originally was God-given the desire to reconcile a relationship, get married, whatever. I'll stick with the example of marriage for me, because I talk a lot about that in the book.

Speaker 2:

When I was walking through a really long season of singleness, it was all I thought about, right. And so then, when I was confronted with having to plan a friend's bachelorette party or going to a shower or being a bridesmaid in another wedding, I did it 12 times. I was a bridesmaid 12 times before I married Dustin. When I would do all of those things, it was really hard for me to show up with joy for my friend and experience the blessing that God had given in her life, because I was so focused on the thing that I wanted and how. I didn't feel like God was writing the story at the pace that I would have chosen so that thing had become an idol in my life, and there's a million ways that can play out.

Speaker 2:

But I really believe, stephanie, it causes us to miss what God's doing in our current season. I mean, I can think of examples in my own life where that has happened and I think in writing this book it really convicted my own heart of, like man, as I look to the future, I don't want to miss what God is doing right now, and I'm so prone to do that when all I can focus on is the thing that I don't have yet. And so listeners are probably like how do I stop that Right? Like what do I do? And number one, I think first we have to recognize and be willing to recognize that that thing has become an idol in our hearts, maybe even just saying that out loud, maybe you're feeling convicted as you're listening to this. You know, you know the state of your heart and really confronting that and taking it to the Lord. You've seen, because you've read the book, I go back to a prayer in Psalm 139 throughout the book.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite verses, by the way.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1:

That was your theme verse.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, and I think it's so important that the psalmist says search my heart, o God, try me and know my anxious thoughts and if there be a grievous way in me, lead me in the way everlasting. And I found myself going back to that verse almost as a prayer prompt for myself, when I was starting to kind of ruminate on something or I could tell something was becoming an idol. I would just pray God, search my heart, try me and show me where I'm having these anxious thoughts, where the way I'm thinking about a situation differs from your truth, and then lead me back to that. Give me your perspective on the situation, help me understand why. This is what brings you the most glory and we're not always going to understand that fully this side of heaven. But yeah, that prayer helps me a lot. So Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24, is that passage. So I think confronting it, really being willing to take it to the Lord and challenging yourself to show up with joy anyway, helps me, if I can truly lift my head enough to go like man.

Speaker 2:

My friend who's having a baby. God has blessed her with this child. She has the shower next weekend. I'm just coming up with a random example. I don't want to miss that. I don't want to miss celebrating her, celebrating what God has done. So, god, would you grant me the joy that doesn't feel like it exists in my heart today. Would you walk with me through that couple of hours, would you give me the words, would you allow me to show up and celebrate her? And so, yeah, I think it's a willingness, it's a confronting it to the Lord and kind of pushing back against that and showing up with joy anyway, you know, your story reminds me of my best friend from college, college roommate, so I guess we've known each other 45 years Wow.

Speaker 1:

And she didn't marry and have children and she had hoped she would. But two of her sisters did and she ended up having eight nieces and nephews. And she actually is extremely close to all eight nieces and nephews, and how wonderful for each of them that they have this aunt who they can turn to and they do.

Speaker 1:

And now they're all young adults. My husband and I recently found out that we're having our first grandchild. Oh, congratulations, thank you. Honestly, I did not know what a volcano of joy this was going to be. They haven't even had the child yet, but she's my best friend and I told her, and I did tell her after. My daughter-in-law said I was allowed to tell people Before that I just told strangers on the street. But anyway, my friend was so sincerely happy for us and she was just, she wasn't faking it, she was exuding happiness.

Speaker 1:

The next morning she called me back and she said I just can't stop thinking about it. This was exuding happiness. The next morning she called me back and she said I just can't stop thinking about it. This is so wonderful. Dial it back. I look at my friend and I am not making this up. I had already said to myself I want to be the kind of aunt that she is, and so I've started to cultivate more one-on-one communication and get-togethers with each of my nieces and nephews, so I am learning from her. She does not have the void in her life that she might have thought she would.

Speaker 2:

She has a full life.

Speaker 1:

She has more friends, people just love her and people love her. I will tell you because they had the experience I did. She is seeing her blessing and she is not being envious. I know that we're going to go a little over time because one of my favorite stories in your book was okay. So you're talking about you waited, you know you waited and you were concerned about being single and you were waiting for this guy. So let's point out, people, that she did end up getting the lead pastor, so it's not so bad. But will you tell the story of the bench?

Speaker 2:

I would love to.

Speaker 2:

I would love to, but man. This is such a testament to how God is at work in ways that we could never know. So both my husband and I love to hike. We live right outside of the Smokies. Before we got married, when we were both single, we both kind of had a moment that that I'll quickly share. His happened first. He loves to fly fish. It's his favorite place in the world to be is on a trout stream somewhere in the Smokies, and one day, many years ago, he went to his favorite trail, hiked up the trail, fished for quite some time. It got a little rainy and so he was hiking back down the trail and as he did, he was just struggling with his own season of singleness and wondering if it would ever be his turn and just really frustrated. Quite honestly. And when he tells the story, he said I was coming back down the trail and I saw this bench along the way and I stopped and sat there for a minute. There was a waterfall in the background. It's just beautiful. And he said I prayed for my future wife, just totally in faith that, like Lord, I know you've given me this desire and I trust that you're going to do something with that. And he said when I finished praying, I stood up and kind of in faith, I thought you know what? I'm going to take a picture of this bench and hope that one day I'll bring my future wife there to this place where I prayed for her.

Speaker 2:

So, skip, many years later I went on a hike with a friend and it was a new to me trail. I'd never done this particular trail in the Smokies and I was kind of having a similar day of man Lord, I've been a bridesmaid 12 times, like when is it going to be my turn? Are you ever going to provide? Are there men out there who love Jesus anymore? Just all of those questions. And we stopped at a bench and took some pictures. I did a back bend on a bench and took some pictures. I did a backbend on the bench and my friend took a picture and I thought like, oh, that's a cool picture, I'll post it to my Instagram when we leave at him. And so he told me the story of the day that he went fishing, not having any clue about the story of the day that I went to a trail and took those photos at a bench.

Speaker 2:

No-transcript. And Stephanie, god had sent us to the very same bench, on the very same trail and all of the Smoky Mountains, years apart, to pray for one another at two moments where we actually had no clue how or if either of us would get married. We just were navigating this desire that was God, given that we didn't know what to do with. And I just love that story because only God could have written that, only God could have so specifically sent us to that same place and, as I said a minute ago, I think it's just such a good reminder, such a sobering reminder of His power, of His provision, even when we don't know how the story ends. So I love that you bring that up. I always know when people have read the whole book because they asked me about that story.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I love. Well, that's so neat, because what's really neat is that you each had a picture of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah right, I'm like God's like. You know what. I'm gonna make this super easy for them to be reminded that I am so in the story and you waited. And you know, rebecca, it's interesting. I'm not minimizing your experience as being a bridesmaid 12 times, but you know what I heard when I read that. What I heard she is so dearly loved by 12 friends that 12 women wanted you to be in their wedding. That's what I heard and you know at the time. Maybe that's when we're looking at our situations of despair. There's probably another side of that coin that we're missing.

Speaker 2:

Because that's what I saw.

Speaker 1:

Wow, everyone loves her. She's in 12 weddings and that's pretty special and yeah. So the book was encouraging for me because I think, especially in our world and I hate to say this, because everyone says it, but in our world of social media and comparison, it is so much easier to compare ourselves to other people in every way, like vocationally, I mean it's, it's too much. And I look at it as a retired person thinking I am glad I had a hard enough time comparing myself to the person in the cubicle next to me.

Speaker 2:

Now if.

Speaker 1:

I was comparing myself to thousands of women trying to do the same thing I was doing at a young age, you know, when I was past the point of saying, does it really matter? I can still hug my husband, you know, I don't think I would have said that when I was 30. So it's super important, I think, for people to read a book like this just to be reminded that the same basic truths God has always told us hold true today. How are we looking at it? How could we look at it? And again, I said this in the beginning the reason I think your book is helpful is not just a book you're reading about. You walk us through our own experience, other cool resources that you have, and I love this. Could you talk to us about your online Bible study, your willingness to jump on book club calls, etc.

Speaker 2:

Sure, I just am so grateful for how my publisher kind of structured this message, because you're right in that I didn't feel like it was one that I just wanted readers to just like read a bunch of stories about my life and be done with it. Like I really wanted there to be space for them to process with the Lord what he was showing them, and so we have a really rich section at the end of every chapter that has scriptures to read, questions, a case study of how this might play out in the lives of people across age, demographics, in all of these challenges and waiting. So that's a huge piece of it. We also did an 11-session video series that comes complimentary for free with your purchase of the book. There's just a QR code that you scan and you put in an access code and you can have access to that, and so my heart for that really was for small groups, for life groups, for book clubs, for people to gather and do this together, and really I don't want you to listen to me talk for half an hour.

Speaker 2:

I want to just give you a quick jolt of encouragement five to eight minutes as you kind of jump off and have kind of a jumping-off point for conversation, and so I pray those are helpful to you. Whether you're leading a group or you're. You're doing it alone and you just want an extra little jolt of encouragement, so I think that's a huge piece of it as well. And then, yeah, I just I love getting to be a part of what God is doing in your group. So if you end up doing this in a small group setting or something like that, and you want me to come say hey, come pray for your group as you open, I just love getting the opportunity to do things like that. So, yeah, we tried to do everything we could to make the experience as rich as possible.

Speaker 1:

I love that, and so where can people find?

Speaker 2:

you. Yeah, I'm the most active over on Instagram. Rebecca George author is my handle. I'm a CCA Rebecca, so that keeps it easy and then you can grab the book anywhere books are sold Amazon, Barnes, Noble Christian book, anywhere you'd like to grab it.

Speaker 1:

And it's worth it. I want to thank you so much for taking your time. I know how busy you are with this book launch and how many podcasts you're doing, but it's been a total blessing and fun experience for me to read your book and learn from you. I always say I love this podcast because I get the gift of talking to these wise people and these great authors. So thank you for your time and I wish you the best of luck with this book launch.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Stephanie.

Speaker 1:

And I'm going to read your other books too.

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Stephanie Nelson

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