Introduction (00:00)
Hi. I’m Kayla Wilder, and you’re listening to Love, Faith & the Miles in Between. This podcast is about the amazing ways that God shapes us and the exciting moments on the journey. If your heart is ready for renewal and discovery, this space is for you.
Welcome
Hi! Welcome in. Thank you so much for joining. Welcome to Episode 2. I’m so glad to be sharing this with you all. Um, thanks for thanks for tuning in, no matter where you are, if you’re in your car, at home, if you’re on your way to work right now, if you’re just starting out your day. Thank you for listening.
I wanted to talk about God being your travel agent. That’s the title for this episode, When God is Your Travel Agent.
Give Your Worries to God (00:54)
And I think that it’s a beautiful thing and an important thing, and I feel like it slips just underneath our… what’s the word? Like consciousness?
Like, I feel like it’s really easy to like, feel like the goodness of God in the in the moment and then get caught up in the everyday, like, you know, hour by hour minutia of the situation and the bigger picture kind of, you know, not necessarily slips through the cracks, but, you know, it’s not, it’s not always there in grasp. And so I wanted to, I wanted to shine some light on it in this episode.
So yeah, um, first of all… He is the best travel agent. He always has the best plans for us. We usually have an idea of what we want to do and where we want to go. Right? And that’s my favorite part of the getting ready to travel, like pre- pre-boarding, pre-packing your, um, your bag, pre-, you know, the pre experience is, uh, just sitting down like on the computer or scrolling on social media, looking at all the places that people have gone to. Um, and just seeing what everybody recommends, what like pops out to the eyes.
“I want to do this. I want to go here,” and just like making up your list of everything that you want to do. It’s so much fun. Um, and it’s so exciting.
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But for me and tell me in the comments, if you’re the same— for me, I did notice at one point that it can be like it can be a production, you know what I mean? Like making sure that you go to the right places, especially if you’re big on social media, making sure that you go to the places that have the most hype around them.
Making sure that you get in like all of- oh your friends and your family’s recommendations, because that’s, that’s something that I just, it would just completely slip out of my mind. “Hey, what about this place? What about that?” And I’d be like, “Oh, oh, oh, oh my gosh, we’re only here for like another day. Yeah, we probably we should have done that.” Right? It just slips under the radar.
And then of course, when you’re there, you want to make sure that you have the right kind of time, right? Because there’s so much pressure. Like when, when are we going to get another chance to do this? And so the reservation at the restaurant has to be right. And we have to make sure we buy the tickets beforehand. And the outfits need to be good and the pictures need to be right.
And it’s just, you know, it’s just, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. Um, it’s a lot.
However, when we just give it all to God, you know what I mean? When you just say, “God, I want to go to this place and I’m gonna leave the rest of it to you,” He brings it together so seamlessly, so perfectly. And not only do you have the experience that you were hoping to have, but you connect with Him so much more deeply for it.
My Ibiza Story (4:35)
So I wanted to tell my story of Ibiza, which is an absolute must-go, right? Um, I went to Ibiza in February. So my friends and I, we were sitting down in a cafe and somebody found tickets for, I think €28. They found tickets for €28 and I think it was… was it Wednesday? I think it was a Wednesday or Thursday. It was nearly the weekend. Um when we, when we found them and it was like, “Oh my gosh, look at these prices. This is crazy. Should we just… should we just go? Let’s just go.”
Now of course, like I wanted to go, very much wanted to go to Ibiza but… is it a go in February kind of vibe? But as I sat there and thought about it, it was like, “No, like I, I can’t like, I can’t, I can’t pass this up. Absolutely. For €28? Yeah. Let’s go.” Um, and we bought, you know what, I think it was actually like a week prior. I think we bought the tickets for like the following weekend, now that I think about it. Anyway, um, I bought the tickets, we got the tickets and we went.
And so we get there and you know, it’s cold outside. Spain’s weather is not very different from California. So like winter time is like 55°F and it was February. So, you know, getting getting a little warmer, like slowly but surely. Um, so yeah, it was cold and, you know, it was quiet. It was quiet because nobody was there. And yet the trip turned out to be amazing… and one of my absolute favorite memories.
The beautiful thing about visiting a place in the off-season is that you get to see it as a home, right? The island is a home for people. Um, and so you just get to experience everybody going about their day. We landed, dropped our things at the Airbnb, and then we walked around, um, just to get the lay of the land.
And this is something about Spain is that their, uh, restaurants and businesses don’t open until later, right? If it’s 8 a.m. or even 9 a.m., you’re not going to find a lot of places outside of, you know, the typical cafe to go to. Um, but we were walking, um, in the city, close to the beach, and we found a restaurant where they had just like started to pull the chairs off of the table and the kitchen was like just being started up. And, you know, there we were out there shivering in the cold.
And we, we talked to, um, I forgot who we talked to and they let us in, they let us in and, um, they let us order anything off of the menu, you know, the full, the full kitchen was open and we had the nicest experience of just sitting there, just the group of us in this in this restaurant. Well, we were out, like on the deck. Um, inside was still pretty, pretty, pretty closed off.
Um, so we got to eat there, just the group of us in this otherwise closed restaurant. And yet it wasn’t like we were putting any undue pressure on, um, on, on the manager or on the staff that were there. They were so sweet and they were so kind.
And it was like its own kind of VIP experience, like where you get to feel the fullness of this, this local community and the kindness of people just because it’s good to, to do kindness.
Um, and I had never experienced anything like that before. Maybe it might not be like as, as rare, but I’ve just never been at— before that I’d never been in a situation where I needed to ask somebody if I could, if I could come in and eat before they opened. Um, but it was super sweet. It was super sweet.
And yeah, you don’t really get to experience that when it’s high season, right? When everything is, um, going and you know, there’s tons of people.
So after we finished eating, we went for a hike out in the nature. There are cliffs that rise up out of the sea and they tower over the whole city. And, um, this is the city of— were we in Eivissa? E-I-V-I-S-S-A. These cliffs are covered in like, the like, I don’t know, cacti that I’d never seen before in my life and like these beautiful little flowers.
And you definitely could— actually, no you can’t. I was going to say you could go cliff diving, but no you couldn’t. No you couldn’t because like the cliff itself is sheer, but then like just past it are other rocks. And so no, you can’t. You can’t do that.
But it’s perfect for like, taking pictures and just standing there and looking out over the Mediterranean and looking out over everything. It’s, it’s gorgeous. It’s so beautiful.
And I don’t know if anybody goes hiking in Ibiza like Ibiza is known for party culture. You know, we’re on a yacht, we’re in the clubs. And I’m not saying that I didn’t do that. I don’t anymore. We did go clubbing, but like, not not that way. And it was it was the best. It was the best.
The entire time, my friends and I just we really got to enjoy a nice weekend together, a nice, wholesome weekend together, even when we went out in the evening. Um, the clubbing experience was not like, it wasn’t like it’s not what you’re used to, right?
We went in and there was us and a couple other groups of friends and like the place where we were at was pretty small. There was like a foosball table and like arcade games, like over like on the wall. And we just, you know, we sat, we danced. Not that, you know, no sections or anything, we just had like, you know, an area where we could where we could rest for a moment.
Um, and it was just free and it was fun. And we were all just being silly and having a good time. Yeah. And that’s, that’s not what I was expecting. You know, that’s not what I was expecting, but it was perfect for me.
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Scripture (11:54)
And that leads me right into Proverbs 19:21: “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
Heart Talk (12:06)
So I started calling these trips Quiet Travel, and I’m so excited to share them with you guys because it’s it’s not always that, you know, you go out and you do all of the crazy things that were on your mind, and that’s okay.
God’s renewal comes in so many ways, right?
It’s not always that you get a new job or you get a new home, or even that you like, get a new group of friends. Sometimes He renews your heart, renews your life, breathes newness into it by just taking you somewhere and you having a different kind of time and realizing that it was better.
And that’s the other wonderful thing about God as our Heavenly Father, He— hallelujah, thank You Lord. He, because He really could have just said, “You’re not going. Girl, you think I’m let—huh?” He could have just said, “You are not going to Ibiza.”
But He did. He did, He did. He’s so kind. He’s so compassionate. And His ways are so very highly above our ways. Instead of a hard no, or the money not being right, or not having free time, it was a “Yes and Amen.”
“Father God, I would like to go to Ibiza. Is that okay?” And His answer was “Yes. Yes, that is okay. And I want you to do it like this. I want you to go at this time with these people. And these are the kinds of things that you’re going to do.”
No pressure to post for the gram. No worrying about like making sure that the story is the greatest. None of that. Just “This is a place that I, the Father, know that you wanted to go to. And it is My will that you enjoy your life and do the things that you’ve always wanted to do. So I am going to send you, and I’m going to send you in a way that keeps you close to Me, and that teaches you more, shows you more about My love and the things that I have for you.”
Prayer (15:35)
So that’s what I wanted to say regarding God being your travel agent. If you have a story, a testimony about God setting up a vacation, um, a missionary expedition, um, or working or whatever, wherever, however. If you have a story about God, uh, taking you somewhere and it being everything that you needed, please email us at info@amourabroad.com.
It’s so important that we spread the gospel. Spread the good news. And yeah, that’s that’s all for this episode.
Thank you for, uh, thank you for joining. And no matter where you are, unless you’re in the car driving, go ahead and bow your head and close your eyes and we’ll close this episode out with a prayer.
God, thank You for Your kindness. Thank You for taking our lives into Your hands and guiding our steps with Your perfect wisdom. Give us courage to trust, grace to understand, and eyes to see what You’ll do when we surrender to Your plan.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Outro (15:55)
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Love, Faith & the Miles in Between. If you enjoyed today’s topic, please share it with a friend and remember to subscribe to the newsletter for more travel, faith and love stories.
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