Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse

About Hearing God's Voice in a Noisy World

• E's Greenhouse • Season 1 • Episode 20

Share episode

What if the hardest seasons of your life are actually blessings in disguise? In this heartfelt conversation, Denise  and her niece Sydney Powell discuss how God transforms our greatest struggles into our greatest strengths.

Sydney shares how her life-threatening peanut allergies made her feel "cursed" as a child, forcing her to be cautious when her spirit longed for adventure. Denise opens up about losing her brother in a car accident at 18, and how that tragedy awakened her to life's brevity and led her to seek God wholeheartedly. We discover how these painful experiences shaped them into resilient spiritual warriors.

"God's voice is very still and quiet," Denise explains, "Satan is loud, my own voices are loud." He meets us exactly where we are, communicating in ways tailored to our unique relationship with Him. Spiritual growth often requires saying "yes" to God even when His direction seems uncomfortable, and loving God first transforms all our other relationships.

Whether you're struggling to hear God's voice, facing difficult circumstances, or wondering if your prayers make a difference, this conversation offers hope and practical guidance. Join us for this intimate look at how two generations of faith warriors navigate life's challenges with grace, humor, and unshakable trust in God's goodness.

Subscribe now and share this episode with someone who needs to know they're not alone in their spiritual journey.

We love to hear from you! Send us a text

Denise Jackson:

Hello, I am Denise Jackson. This is Sydney Powell, my niece, so welcome to the conversation Rooted in Rising Growth from the Greenhouse. Hello, Like and subscribe.

Denise Jackson:

Yes like and subscribe. Sydney, we've been talking a lot about the goodness of God in the land of the living and we trust God in every one of these conversations that they're going to be for you at the right time in your life, and we were just talking about how God has moved in each one of our lives in areas that we didn't really feel like were the areas we would have wished for. But we both have learned to trust God and realize what a blessing it is that we've walked through these seasons that were really hard. So if you're in a hard season, this show's for you. So, sydney, just talk to us a little bit about you and maybe that hard season that you walked through early in your life and continue to walk through and how you felt about that, because I love that.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, we're just discussing. Sometimes God puts hard things in your life. For well, not sometimes, always he puts hard things in your life.

Denise Jackson:

Because we live in a world, and we live in a world that the devil controls, so he's going to try to manipulate too.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, he's never the cause of anything bad happening to you, but with the devil meant for evil, god has meant for good, amen.

Sydney Powell:

Bad happening to you, but with the devil meant for evil, god is meant for good, amen. Yeah. So, uh, we were talking about how some things early in life really um, affected my perspective of life, um, and my relationship with god and and how that's progressed through my life found out I had peanut allergies and, um, pretty bad I was when I little. It's a lot better now. There were some scares early on where, you know, a bad asthma attack or a peanut almost knocked me out for the count for good. So it just gave me a much different perspective on life.

Sydney Powell:

I was saying I never blamed god for those things, but I didn't like them about myself. You said you felt cursed. Yeah, felt like a curse. Yeah, because it was just different than everybody else. And yeah, I had to be careful of everything. Like I was a much more cautious kid than most and like we are kindred spirits, like in my spirit I'm like you, like wild, let's go, let's try everything. Yeah, so, um, like I really had to like tamp myself down. For me I need to as a young, young age four years old.

Denise Jackson:

that was a really bad episode and then from that on, uh, you had more, yeah, and so it was always a constant vigilance. And I think when you say it was a curse, it was a curse. The curse of disease and sickness is in the earth and that is not from God. He didn't want that. We brought that into the earth by the things that humans did Not you and me, but what the?

Sydney Powell:

humans did, but we're humans and who knows what we're causing.

Denise Jackson:

That's exactly right and how we're affecting other people. You know, in the earth and the devil definitely tries to use that, but the whole time God was using that for good in your life. You were so strong. I love to be with you. You are strong and she's creative, and when we're together it's just like fireworks go off, you know. It's just like we can imagine so many great things that can help people do things differently, and so it's just a joy when we're together.

Denise Jackson:

But both of us went through adversity. My brother I think y'all many of you know already was killed in a car accident when he was 18, and he was 20, too much younger than me and that was a really hard time in my life. But it also helped me see we have a limited time on this earth and recognize that and start seeking God with my whole heart to understand. You know one of the things that we both know, and recently I had a friend, mary, on and she was talking about this we know the voice of God. We know when he speaks to us and he speaks in a still, quiet voice. But how do you know it's God speaking to you?

Sydney Powell:

That's a great question. I feel like God has really been honing in my discernment over the past few years.

Denise Jackson:

Just because of Him, or did you ask for it to understand Him better?

Sydney Powell:

Oh, I asked, but I think me asking was because of Him.

Denise Jackson:

Yes, it changes our heart to want Him. It was something I didn't know. I was missing.

Sydney Powell:

Yes, Like I said, I grew up believed I was very close to God, loved God, I didn't know I was missing. Like I said, I grew up believed I was very close to God, loved God. I didn't know God, I knew him but I never.

Denise Jackson:

You knew him as this big overarching presence that loved you.

Sydney Powell:

I think it was yes, but it was always personal to me. Yes, me too. But I had tried so many times to sit down and read the Bible and I could not understand it. And if you're out there and you're trying to read your Bible and you can't understand it, that's okay, Because I think it is purposefully a little difficult to understand, because he wants you to seek Him in it.

Denise Jackson:

It's not just a book, it's a living word and it comes alive in us. I think, when our hearts change and we want the Lord and, like you said, that's something that he does in us he's always calling all of us. So if you've never heard Him, that, you think you've never heard Him. You probably, he's probably been speaking the whole time, um, but if you've never heard him, I just want you to know that this asking he doesn't push on you what you don't desire. Your choice matters.

Denise Jackson:

He gave you free choice and so it really comes to you being willing to choose and you can choose a little bit because, like I was, like okay, I don't want to choose this, because I don't want the consequences from that one, like humbleness or you know, and so he doesn't do it. He talks to you about it and starts putting it on your heart and you see it all of a sudden in the word. But he waits for you to say okay in the word. But he waits for you to say, okay, that's where I want to go. I think he's not rude. He's not a rude god, he's a patient god. He loves us. But back to his voice.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, we had talked about this last time we tried to record. But I had been dating a boy for a long time, like four years, and we he was very godly and holy, but we were not equally yoked in the direction that we were going and I did not at that time know how to discern my own thoughts from the devil's thoughts, from God's word. Also around that time, bible at Ear podcast came out. Bible in the Air podcast came out and I just felt like I had been hungering for that for so long, to be able to read and understand His Word. And through that I listened to it. I was working, I was traveling all the time and I was listening to it on planes and cars on the way to work and it just filled me up so much and gave me such a better understanding.

Denise Jackson:

Yes, yes, and he's really good, father Mike Schmidt. Yes, he is.

Sydney Powell:

He's really good. It showed me the character of God which I had never thought of before His perspective, yeah.

Denise Jackson:

And I remember what his perspective was as you're reading that whole story, how often he would come back to these people that were so horrible to him after he'd done so much for them over and over. I was mad at the Israelites in 20 Years in the Desert For a while. I was mad at them Because at first I started reading the Bible and I just thought this is too boring and I always get into the like generational thing, which is a really neat thing once you learn. But it wasn't. It was boring and I would just quit.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, I still have to listen to those parts.

Denise Jackson:

But then we start realizing how he ordered the generations to when Jesus was born and there are a lot of women in those generational things that were mighty and you just don't. You pass over those things and change the course of the world. And he used us. And he says that these mighty women, when they pray, kings of armies, flee. They flee and I think that's physical, but I think it's the devil and all of his little minions. They have to flee.

Sydney Powell:

When we start praying, they flee, yeah, and so in that discernment he's taught me spiritual warfare, yes, and I don't think you can have one without the other.

Denise Jackson:

No, yeah, if you learn how to fight, then you can hear God's voice. Yeah, because the devil speaks really loudly. So, like, how did we learn to discern?

Sydney Powell:

his voice. It was a painful process, but not because of God, because I was resistant to it. Yeah, because I was afraid of what the consequences of listening to God would be and, honestly, I feel like I'm in another one of those seasons right now, with work and not relationships. But His plan is always better for us than what we have for ourselves, and he is not a God that's going to send us into ruin, and I'm Even if he does, like the point is not this earth, but he really, yeah he doesn't want us to go to the worst places.

Denise Jackson:

He wants to use us to show our joy in the earth, and sometimes we go through hard things because we're in the earth, yeah, but I think that you know how do you go through those things with joy. I was reading the other day that from these doctors and caregivers who are with people when they die, and Christians as they're dying. For the most part, they are seeing people that they've loved, that have gone before them. They are seeing angels, they are seeing Jesus. They are talking about that in their delirium as they're passing from the earth, people who don't know the Lord are seeing darkness and they're afraid and they're crying out and it's like night and day in the way that we pass from this earth to the next, depending on who we know. So we know one or the other really well. Actually, if you're a Christian and you're a strong Christian in spiritual warfare, you learn to know your enemy too, and we know him.

Denise Jackson:

I know his voice when he starts saying these things in my ear that are not God's word. Like you are afraid, you are timid, you are going to get conquered. You are. And no, that's not true. Y'all, it is not true. God said he has not given us a spirit of fear. He put in us a spirit of power and love and a sound mind. And so when the devil starts speaking those words to me in the middle of chaos, I speak to him in Jesus' name and tell him to get the heck out of here. He's bound. He is bound by me because God put me in the earth strong, and he did you too. He put you in the earth strong and you in the earth strong.

Sydney Powell:

Well, yeah, that is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. When Jesus was in the desert and the devil was tempting him, yes, he didn't say flee from me or like get away. He quoted scripture back to him.

Denise Jackson:

What's interesting to me there is that the devil quoted scripture but perverted yes.

Sydney Powell:

It's always. That's why it gets so confusing, because it's always almost right. Yes, it gets so confusing because it's always almost right, yes, and you really have to know God, and if you are confused, go to His Word and ask for wisdom for it, because he will just open that up to you. That is the one prayer the Bible promises to always. Answer is for wisdom to know.

Denise Jackson:

Him.

Sydney Powell:

Yes, and ask for wisdom to walk with him. I think a lot of times we want to run with him.

Denise Jackson:

And we run ahead. He's like I'm back here.

Denise Jackson:

Just wait, Just wait. I'm in a season of I feel like just wait and do these things I've asked you to do. One of the things he's asked me to do is have these conversations so that you guys can know that you're not alone in this, and what we talk about you may be thinking about and not have anybody to talk to about that, and we want you to know that you have the Lord. He wants to hear from you, and you also have girlfriends and we're your girlfriends.

Sydney Powell:

It's such a gift, speaking of somebody who has known you for literally my whole life. Keep listening to her, you guys, because you're so inspiring. God works through you all the time. I frequently think about if I did not have the family I grew up with. Would I have the faith that I have now? I think God would have brought it to me in other ways, but what a gift.

Denise Jackson:

To be grown, to, grow up with faith.

Denise Jackson:

Yes, me too, and you know, like our I'm sure grandfathers and grandfathers before them did too, they prayed. But I really, in my heart, believe that these mighty women from at least my great-grandmother, bridget, through Marian and her sisters and my mom and her sisters, they are like warriors. They pray all the time. They have prayed all the time for us, and so I hope that our generation is doing the same thing, and I believe it is. Melissa I pray, jay prays, allie I believe Allie does. Oh yeah, they pray for not only themselves, but they pray for everybody that comes in contact with them, which is what we're supposed to do.

Denise Jackson:

Where the light is supposed to shine is the people that you run into every day. So you know if you are already a mighty prayer warrior when you walk out in the land. The land you're walking on is the land that the Lord, your God, has given to you. He has set your boundaries. My boundaries are set in Wimberley, texas, in Hayes County in Texas, in the United States. But in Wimberley, texas, are my boundaries, and when I walk around this land and pray, it changes things right here, and I don't have to see that to know that it's going to be for generations to come that will love the Lord and everybody I run into. That's an appointment from the Lord for that day and I take that pretty seriously. Do you feel like?

Sydney Powell:

that in your life. I don't relate to that as much, but I know that to be true for you. But I was just thinking about my mind wandered. I'm sorry.

Denise Jackson:

That's okay because you go, you're on planes a lot and traveling right, I have been in the past.

Sydney Powell:

I've been working from home for the past year and a half. That's a blessing, thank God.

Denise Jackson:

So your boundary is right there right now, because you own a home there. So every place you can walk right around that area is your boundary. So I'll just let you know that from the Lord, because I know that he tells us that.

Sydney Powell:

Well, yeah, I know he has me there for a reason right now. He gave me a job that I can work remote. I'm close to my sister and brother-in-law, niece and nephew, and my brother lives with me, so we are definitely prayer warriors for each other and and praying for you know the future generation, future generation and the people that you come in contact with.

Denise Jackson:

You know, for many years I traveled all over the world. It's like such a great adventure and I really do know that God put me out there for my employees all over the world, for the people that were my customers all over the world business. But then there were so many times when they needed someone to listen, to love them and to pray for them and I didn't ever feel like I mean, you know, I didn't start my corporate career until I was 40s, but when I did, I knew I was getting that's my land. Wherever I walked, I'd walk around Warrington, england, and pray for that town and some things have happened there. You know, like Jesus and His Word are coming to life in Warrington and in London, and at the time when I was walking, it was really switching way to the other side of not believing in God.

Denise Jackson:

So was I the only one? No, there were many, but God had put me there and Lee and we would walk around and pray for that town and those poor little rabbits that were all over the place. Yeah, so you get the chance. He's appointed you to the nations. He's appointed you to go places and to pray, and it's such an awesome gift. Yeah, like everything in our lives, it's really a gift from him.

Sydney Powell:

And it's so important to know that it's him doing the work and not us doing the work. I feel like it's easy to slip into, like, oh, I'm doing pretty good right now, yeah and pride, yeah, and pleasing men because we're out in the world.

Denise Jackson:

That's a hard thing, it's a hard balance.

Sydney Powell:

It's a hard balance but it's always through him. And this past year, well, I just moved to Dallasallas in the past year, year and a half or so and started going to new church and they have perpetual adoration and it has been just, which is constant praise of the lord that's what?

Sydney Powell:

in the presence and the physical presence. Yeah, because he's spiritually present, all around us all the time. To be in physical presence and it has been so transformative in my life. I love that I had done teen with a retreat there and started doing a Bible study at the church and those were great and that filled my cup and I met so many wonderful women that you might friends, forever that that you my friends forever.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, but what I love most about those days you go going on wednesday and thursday was I would pop into adoration after and just being in his presence an hour, two hours see, that's what I love about praise.

Denise Jackson:

Yeah, I go to praise and I love corporate praise. But I was telling her earlier, I get get to church early and the band is practicing and so it's like I'm just in the presence of the Lord and praising, like it's all, it's me and the band, and I just love that time. I just feel like he's holding me in his arms and, you know, just building me up, and then I can go out for the week and just feel like I have His power living in me again, instead of letting the world seep in yeah and oh my gosh, going back to the Word and asking for wisdom.

Sydney Powell:

This is I'm just remembering I have had so many times because I would go in after Bible study so I'd read my book in there and I'd be like multiple times, but one time in particular, I was like reading through the Bible study, reading the you know, the excerpt from the scripture, and I was like you know, the expert on scripture, and I was like this is way over my head. I do not understand what's happening right now. And I looked up and I was like, oh yeah, like you understood, no, not yet. But I was like, oh well, why am I trying to understand it? Why am I thinking that my brain can comprehend spiritual things that God is revealing to us? So I was like jesus, you're right here with me, like help me to understand when I tell you I went on a rabbit hole from a verse that I was ready to like dismiss as something like oh, I'll never get that, like I, that's for somebody else, or like I don, I don't, I can't understand that.

Sydney Powell:

From one moment doing that to the next, finding other verses and like relating this story of Jesus coming back to Jerusalem to the Feast of the Tabernacle, like all these things about like how the Old testament is revealed in the new, yes, and how important and understanding you did you have the old testament to understand the new test. And yeah, he heard me, it was immediate and it was like a download in my brain like it was not me and I just love that I got there and I'm like what do you want to teach me, what do you want to reveal to me?

Sydney Powell:

and it's. I've had so many questions because, um, yeah, I grew up catholic, I am catholic and faith has been shaken in man and, uh, I've had a lot of questions. I'm like why do we, why is it okay to pray to saints? Why is it? You know, like I don't want to be doing something that I'm not supposed to be doing. Lots of questions like that, countless.

Denise Jackson:

And that's good. Like he loves us to question. You know, like you don't just read the Bible. It's a love letter from a Father and he wants to reveal it to us. He doesn't want it to be empty, he wants it to be a living word. It's not for just the people that were in the Old Testament. Like you, forgot what does this mean? And a lot of times when I was younger I'd dismiss those verses and say, well, that was back then, and now he uses those same verses to like really give me a deeper understanding a lie I believed when I was young was that, um, it's a living word and what needs to like be revealed to you will be.

Sydney Powell:

But I think there's truth to that, but I think it's not that whole. It's not the whole just because you come across something that you don't understand.

Denise Jackson:

Take it as a challenge to get deeper with the Lord or ask Jesus to give you wisdom.

Sydney Powell:

Yes, no, that's what I meant.

Denise Jackson:

Yeah, if he gives you wisdom in that time, then go and seek and find and let him open your mind to it. But also, sometimes I'll read something and it won't make sense. And I'll read something and it won't make sense and I'll ask and he'll just say not right now, not right now, turn the page.

Sydney Powell:

And then I'll turn the page and I'm like oh, wow.

Denise Jackson:

This is what you wanted to tell me today. And so back to his voice. I want to kind of finish up this podcast, which I hate to do, but we're getting close to our time. No, we could do it forever. Yes, we could.

Denise Jackson:

But just hearing God's voice for me and I'll ask you in a second is, first of all, I have to be still and quiet, because His voice is quiet. Satan is loud, my own voices are loud, but His voice is very still and quiet and it doesn't say things the way I say them. So, like now and you know, when I was three I used to hear him. I would climb up in trees and sing songs to him, so I heard his voice.

Denise Jackson:

Then, as I got older and started trying to please people, I lost that. But then, as I started seeking in His Word, which His Word is His voice. So when you get in His Word, you're going to hear His voice. But then I began to hear His voice again in me. I would hear it, and it would just be so different. It would not be what I was expecting to be doing or acting like or saying, because His voice is the voice of the living God and it is not Denise Jackson. And so I would just say that you know, if you want to hear God's voice, if you want to know Him, ask yeah, and it's not always a voice in your head.

Sydney Powell:

You have the wonderful spiritual gift of being able to hear God. I don't have that.

Denise Jackson:

Yeah, sometimes I hear him a little bit verbally, but mostly it's in my I hear it in my head and I just know it's him and it's like like he doesn't let go. He's persistent too If he wants me to do something. We were talking earlier about some miraculous things that I have seen in my life and I'm telling you, when he wants me to do something that I feel like I'd be embarrassed doing like talking to somebody about the Lord that I know they don't want to talk about that. In my mind I'm like they don't want to talk about that. I'm going to get fired from my job if I talk about that. He is very persistent, and so that persistence also is one of those things that helps me to know it's him, because it's not what I want to do. I'm like digging my heels in saying uh-uh, uh-uh, this is just not what I can do, but he just doesn't let go. When he told me humble yourself before me, and I said, no, that's just not something that I'm willing to do. I don't want to be humble. That's not a good place to go he didn't let go.

Denise Jackson:

He was really sweet, but he would keep bringing verses up when I'd open the Bible, every verse on humility would pop up and it wasn't what I was looking for. And then he would just keep saying that to me. And then one day I just finally said, okay, it was just like my whole spirit just let go. And I said, okay, teach me to be humble, lord, and whatever that takes. Whatever that takes which you know, of course, fear helped up and I had to say my verse, see, had to give me a spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind and trust. That's what it really all comes down to. You meet God and you have to start trusting more and more. When I did that, that wasn't a hard thing to do. It was like, oh my gosh, why did I wait so long to say yes to you, lord?

Sydney Powell:

Because everything you ask of me is good and it's maybe not our vision, but it's His vision and His vision is always good.

Denise Jackson:

It's always better. Yeah, he gives us the desires of our hearts and that verse is so good. But it really doesn't happen till our desire and His desire align and he changes us. So you don't have to worry, you don't have to stress. Yeah, if you would like this life, all you have to do is to ask and then he's going to take you on a journey and teach you and use you mightily in the land it's so good.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, one prayer I that the holy spirit gave me when I was going through a time of discernment where I was trying to force my will on God. Like Lord, help this happen. Do you need a bottle?

Denise Jackson:

Make it happen, Exactly Like maybe pass this test right now, even though I didn't study it.

Sydney Powell:

Or even big things that, like you, think you want. But slowly and steadily, that prayer turned into Lord, let my will be your will, let my thoughts be your thoughts, let my Let my actions be your actions, and he brings you in alignment with him.

Denise Jackson:

Yeah, it sounds like a hard thing to do, but he does it for you. That's right. Everything in our heart has to change. When we say yes, lord, yeah, then he'll begin to do it. He'll do the work, he'll cut out those things that distract us, that hurt us really and make us new. So we've got a few minutes left and I want you just to say to talk to these girls and if you have any lessons learned from your life that you wish you had known earlier, that you want to share and encourage with, I'd really like you to do that.

Sydney Powell:

Yeah, I think we touched on a lot of them today. Seek Him. Seek Him and ask for wisdom. Like I said, that prayer is always something that he answers and helps to grow you and steadily walk with Him. He's patient God and we have to be patient with Him. Sometimes he's growing us in that way of patience a lot of times. Yes, rest is important. Yeah, I feel like this is for me too, because this is a lesson I've learned, but I'm learning that I need to relearn. It probably is that ask to be in alignment with his will and ask for the trust to follow his will, because it's not hard to follow his will, but it's hard when we resist. Yes, that's where a lot of pain comes from. Is the resisting of taking action when he's like this isn't for you anymore, or maybe here's this new thing for you.

Denise Jackson:

We'll just close that story with earlier that you did end up separating from that boyfriend oh yeah, and trusting God to bring the right person at the right time into your life that he's called.

Sydney Powell:

Well, yeah, I mean, he calls everyone to different things. I hope I'm called to marriage. He's called different people to singleness, that's true, and I really feel like I've grown, I've gotten to—this sounds so cheesy, but like I've gotten to date Jesus in this time of singleness and get to know him and I've grown so much more than I would have been able to in a relationship where, yes, we were very faithful, but we but it was that's where it was. Yes, I remember, during that time of discernment, her man. He told me this was one of the few times I feel like I really did hear him. He said you are delaying my plan. Wow, I was like, okay, and luke's getting married.

Denise Jackson:

Oh, so I was getting in the way of that, yeah, yeah, and I had to listen to him. You know we've talked about marriage. When Lee and I got married, it was all about each other. You know, we acknowledged God in our lives, which was great because he carried us with that little pity acknowledgement. But what I learned over the years was, when I love God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit more than I love Lee, I can allow Lee to become the man he needs to be, and I love Lee. I love Lee more than any human, lee. Yeah, I can allow Lee to become the man he needs to be and I love Lee. I love Lee more than any human in the earth. I love my children, my grandchildren, you all, but I don't love them more than the Lord. So when Lee falls or does things that I don't feel like he should have done to me, I don't feel resentment like I used to feel. I used to be resentful, I used to be afraid of losing him, all these things. But then when I let that go because I loved God more and trusted him more with our relationship, it changed everything.

Denise Jackson:

Okay, so now I'm going to pray for you guys, because it's important that we cover you with prayer and that you cover each other and us with prayer. So just grieve me, then, for all of us. Father God, I know you see your daughters and you love us so much and you want us. You sent us to be strong and mighty in this land and you want us to know that we each one of us are not alone. You're with us first and always, and you've given us people in our lives to encourage and build us up in our inner man, to remind us that we haven't been given a spirit of fear, but power, love and a sound mind to remind us to ask for wisdom in every situation, and we'll receive it, and especially when we open your word and we seek your voice. Father, I just thank you that you hear our prayer today In Jesus' name, amen.

Head Shot

Denise Jackson

Host