Show Notes
Discover the heart behind some of today’s most beloved modern hymns and psalm-based worship songs. In this episode of Nuance, host Case Thorp sits down with singer-songwriter Wendell Kimbrough (@wendellkmusic) — known for his deeply honest, Scripture-rooted music — to explore how faith, work, and art intertwine in the life of a believer.
Wendell shares his personal journey from church ministry to songwriting, reflecting on themes of healing, authenticity, and spiritual renewal. Together, they dive into the stories and theology behind his powerful songs “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” and “Your Labor Is Not in Vain,” both of which have inspired worshippers around the world through Porter’s Gate Worship Collective.
This episode also contains two very special live performances by Wendell of “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” and “Your Labor Is Not in Vain.”
Episode Resources:
Wendell’s website: https://www.wendellk.com/
Wendell’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/wendellkmusic
The Porter’s Gate: https://www.portersgateworship.com/
Leaf by Niggle: https://heroicjourneys.wordpress.com/…
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website 👉 https://wecolabor.com
Get to know Case 👉 https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
From the dawn of civilization, music has been the language of the people, shaping memory, stirring courage, and giving voice to both our deepest sorrows and our highest hopes. In the marketplace, in the public square, and in the sanctuary, song has carried truth into hearts long before words on a page could. Today, we welcome a songwriter whose work does just that.
Wendell Kimbrough has given the church and the world melodies that breathe the gospel and ordinary life. In one of his songs, The Breastplate of St. Patrick, his lyrics remind us that Christ surrounds us before and behind, within and without. Strengthen us, strengthening us as we step into the challenges of the public square. And in another song, Your Labor is Not in Vain, Wendell assures us that even when our work feels unseen or unfruitful, nothing done in faith is wasted in God’s kingdom. So in this episode, we’ll explore how music not only echoes in our churches, but also reverberates into culture, shaping the way we live, work, and serve. Wendell Kimbrough, welcome to the conversation.
Wendell Kimbrough
Hey Case, good to see you.
Case Thorp
Yeah, good to see you. So friends, that was actually Wendell playing us a little background music. And I appreciate that. Now you and I were together just a few months back at the City Gate Conference.
Wendell Kimbrough
It’s all right. Denver. Or I guess we were in Boulder, right? Yeah.
Case Thorp
Yeah, we gathered in Boulder, just north of Denver. And this was a really neat gathering of other faith and work leaders around the country. And Wendell, I’m so glad they had you there, but honestly, I was a little frustrated with the schedule because I’m like, let Wendell play more.
Wendell Kimbrough
Well, I appreciate it. Taylor Linhart was there as well. So I felt pretty privileged to get to be there and be part of that with her. It was really cool.
Case Thorp
Yeah. Well, not only the worship leadership you did, but even your solo pieces. So maybe I’ll tell the organizers, next time, invite him back and just give him a whole session or more.
Wendell Kimbrough
We totally could have done a concert the first night. Yeah, between Taylor and I, that would have been fun. Next time.
Case Thorp
Well to our viewers and friends, welcome to Nuance where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp and please like, subscribe, share this video podcast, however you’re receiving it so that we can expand our audience. So Wendell Kimbrough is a singer/songwriter whose Psalm-inspired music is sung by congregations around the world. His songs give voice to the full breadth of human experience from exuberant praise to raw lament, offering worshipers a safe and honest space before God. Wendell’s collaborated widely with artists such as The Porter’s Gate, Graham Kendrick, Taylor Linhart, Paul Zach, Sandra McCracken, and Caroline Cobb. For 17 years, he served as a worship leader in churches from Washington D.C. to Alabama and Dallas. Now based in Holland, Michigan, Wendell’s pursuing a new chapter of his calling through the clinical mental health counseling program at Western Theological Seminary. He and his wife Hannah are raising their two daughters while continuing to root their lives in creativity, faith, and service. So dude, what’s it like to have been all over and now landed in Holland?
Wendell Kimbrough
Well, Holland’s a great place. We’ve just passed a year since we moved here and we’ve really enjoyed being here. I do feel a little like, wait, where am I? You know? And I think it’s the first time actually this summer, because I’m a student now, like I had a summer break. So I had like a good, six week period in there where I was not doing. It was like I had no, you know, I didn’t have a job that I had to wake up for or class I had to wake up for. Yeah, and it was just the first time in a while that I’ve kind of just stepped back and thought about my story, you know, I’m like, okay, God, you’ve taken us to some interesting places. You know, I grew up in a town of less than a thousand people in rural Mississippi and then, you know, I’ve been on staff at a big church in downtown Dallas and planted a church in DC and now I’m back in kind of a small town. I don’t know, just thinking about it’s been quite a journey. It’s a little hard to answer the like, where am I from question or where am I going? You know, we’re not quite sure right now.
Case Thorp
Well, your accent, like mine, betrays a little bit of where you’re from. Now, why pastoral counseling?
Wendell Kimbrough
Definitely the South. Yeah, no question about that.
Yeah, kind of long story short, I’ve been in church my whole life. I grew up, my dad’s a pastor. And I would say in some ways I’ve kind of been like a professional Christian my whole life, you know, like I’ve been someone who is aware of the fact that I’m being watched. And, you know, I’ve been on stages and platforms in ministry, so to speak. And, yeah, there was a point, you know, I was about 30 years old where my, I’d say my inside life and my outside life were just not in sync and the wheels started to come off and I had a lot of feelings, a lot of anger and sadness that I didn’t know what to do with. And, I kind of found my way to, I mean, in God’s grace to a, they call them men’s coaching weekends, but this Christian therapist led these retreats where a bunch of guys would go sit in a circle in the woods in camp chairs.
Case Thorp
Beat on some drums.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, no drums, but just tell their stories, talk about their lives, talk about their families growing up, talk about their pain, talk about loss. There were guys there going through divorces or who had had a major, just a major loss or grief in their life that they were processing. I started to learn to bring my inside out, bring what was in here and narrate it to other people who were able to love me, care for me, help me make sense of things that I didn’t understand.
It just started a really healing journey for me. And that’s kind of like, it made me like, hey, you know what? I think I might want to do more of this. So that was like 10 years ago and it’s, yeah, this is where we’ve landed.
Case Thorp
I want to be more, I hear you saying I want to help do this for others.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, absolutely. Where I’ve found life and where I would say I really kind of re-met Jesus in a new way in that space, I want to help others do that as well.
Case Thorp
Now, your music, wow. I just, I’ve really appreciated how you have spoken to my heart for several years now and we hadn’t met until just June. So know that your fruitfulness is happening. Your labor, that’s one of the songs we’re gonna talk about. So yeah, even Wendell Kimbrough’s labor is not in vain.
Wendell Kimbrough
My labor’s not in vain. I appreciate that.
Case Thorp
Tell me about your musical vision or your aim or what your inspiration is.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, I mean, I’m glad you asked the other question first, because they kind of connect. Like, I’m really trying to create space for people to be honest and feel their feelings in the presence of God and in the presence of others. So a lot of my work over the last decade has been taking the Psalms and making them, kind of rephrasing them into my own words and making them singable. And that’s, yeah, I mean that goes along with the kind of the journey that I was just sharing about. I, you know, I used to come to church kind of with the like, you know, it’s like, how are you? I’m great, how are you? You know, just that kind of like…
Case Thorp
Surface.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, kind of Christian mask a little bit. And at the church I was at in Alabama, we followed the lectionaries, so we had a psalm every Sunday, and they asked me to start writing music to go with the Psalms. So all of a sudden, I’m up on Sunday, and I’m having to sing these really heavy Psalms of lament, you know, Psalms of disorientation, to use, you know, Brueggemann’s word, like just…a lot more honest in church than I personally was comfortable being. But that was really life-giving for me, and it was really life-giving for my congregation. And so I kind of realized, we need more songs and more language to help us tell the truth about our real lives, our Monday to Saturday lives where we feel anger and confusion and futility and all these things that the Psalms talk about, but they’re not necessarily reflected in in a lot of cases, in our hymnody and also in our modern praise and worship music.
Case Thorp
Sure, sure. I was privileged to share or spend a month in Scotland on my sabbatical a few years back working with a free Church of Scotland plant that we had helped to make happen, our church, First Presbyterian Orlando. And I learned how they have a requirement that there is a psalm in every liturgy. And as worship styles have evolved and they do incorporate more of a contemporary Christian music sound, they still have this requirement. And I heard a whole lot of original tunes and approaches to the Psalms that I hadn’t heard before. Were you writing a new tune every week or you in the liturgy were given the tunes?
Wendell Kimbrough
I was writing a new tune every week. It was awesome, but it was a challenge. Yeah, that’s a whole long story, but I was kind of a recovering perfectionist. I would actually, at that time I was just a perfectionist and that challenge of, can you write a new little ditty every week for the congregation, it didn’t quite cure me, but it definitely got me on a journey away from my perfectionism. Cause I had to do something. I wasn’t doing, I wasn’t writing like a full, like if you listen to my albums, you know, like a full song, I wasn’t doing that every week. We would just sing a short refrain. So like if you just scrolled through my list of music on Spotify or something and picked a song, probably just the chorus of that song would have been what we would have sung on a Sunday. And so we sing the refrain, and then a reader reads a little bit of the psalm while I play the guitar behind them. And then we sing again, and then they read again. And so it just kind of sets the reading of the psalm in a musical space and gives the congregation a refrain to kind of enter into the psalm with. It’s a great format. I love it. I’m always trying to recommend it to churches who are saying how do we do more psalmody in our Sunday worship?
Case Thorp
Yeah, it is on the increase. It is on the increase for sure. Well, one of your great songs that has blessed me, St. Patrick’s Breastplate. Now you draw on some pretty old words here, historic words and prayers that he supposedly has given the credit for having written down.
What about this song stood out to you and why put this to music?
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, you know it’s interesting. So this was part of a Porter’s Gate writing project basically. So the question was, the question we were kind of trying to answer was like how do we write songs that help people connect their work life, you know, where we spend most of our week, to their relationship with God and not keep the two segmented?
And then specifically we were, you know, one of the questions asked of me was what about people who don’t work in white-collar, you know, corporate jobs? And I mean, you know, people for whom some days like work is just hard labor, and it might just suck. I mean, the truth is we all know work is broken and so like, you know, whatever, whether you’re white collar, blue collar, wherever you are in the socioeconomic world, we all feel the curse in our work. I actually can’t remember. It might have been my friend Dan, who’s Dan Wheeler, who’s a producer in Nashville. And we’ve written some songs together, including this one might have been his idea to take this prayer of St. Patrick, which I had heard before, but it wasn’t part of my prayer life. It’s not a prayer that I prayed often, but it’s like this framing, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ beside me, Christ within me kind of prayer. What if we took that prayer and juxtaposed it with scenes, images from work life. And then we started thinking about different vocations. We thought about being parents, which is a vocation. We thought about different kinds of jobs. We thought about entrepreneurs. Actually, I think that was the first image. There’s a line at the end of the song, it ended up at the end of the song, but it’s about just the risk of striking out to do something on your own that you’ve dreamed of for a long time and how scary that feels.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. The line, when I climb the first steps toward a long-held dream, Christ above me. And I leap out in faith and I hope to find wings, Christ beneath me.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, yeah. And that’s still probably my favorite line in the song. But we realized that we ended up putting it at the end of the song because it kind of leaves you in this space of like, you’re going somewhere and it allows your imagination to, you know, when you finish listening to the song, like you’re kind of imagining, is there a dream I’m, you know, that’s still ahead of me to chase?
Case Thorp
We’re gonna, he’s gonna play this for us in a minute. But there’s lines, like when I work hard, but someone else gets the reward. When I ask for a promotion and they shut the door. But the response, God’s eyes see me, God’s ears hear me. You’ve even got a line here that I can’t say fully because my mother will be listening when I’m busting my A-S-S, but it’s never enough.
Wendell Kimbrough
I meant to talk to you before we hit record, you know, just to ask if you needed me to sing the sanitized version of it or if I could sing the real thing.
Case Thorp
Yes, you can. Now, my audience can certainly take it, but I don’t know if my Victorian morality can say it, so that’s OK. Well, when you sang it in Boulder in June, I’m like, did he just say that at a Christian conference? Well, I guess he did. OK, well, if you would share it with us and let others enjoy.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, yeah, let’s do it. Yeah, let me sing it for you.
When my work takes me places I don’t want to go Christ before me
And my heart aches with sorrow as I hit the road Christ be with me
When the care of my family takes all that I have Christ within me
When I’m worn and exhausted, ashamed that I’m mad Christ defend me
I rise up today in a strength that is not my own
I’m held by the promise of God that I’m never alone
When I’m tossed to the side and I want to give up Christ beside me
When I’m busting my ass but it’s never enough (And I’m working so hard…) Christ beside me
When I work hard but someone else gets the reward God’s eyes see me
I ask for promotion and they shut the door God’s ears hear me
When I climb the first steps toward a long-held dream Christ above me
And I leap out in faith and I hope to find wings Christ beneath me
Case Thorp
The line towards the beginning, when I’m worn and exhausted, ashamed that I’m mad, Christ, defend me. I even thought my response might be, Christ, protect me, because I’m not so lovely when I’m worn and exhausted and angry and…
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, I think probably for me that line I’m thinking about, it comes right after the line about when the care of my family takes all that I have, you know, and I think nothing brings out anger that I’m ashamed of more than parenting, you know. Right?
Case Thorp
Preach.
Wendell Kimbrough
You get to these points where you’re like, man, I’ve been so patient. I’ve been so patient. And then you’re just like, oh, we have to leave now. You know, it’s like, we have to leave right now. Then in fact, that happened this morning, you know, and I do apologize to my seven year old for yelling at her.
Case Thorp
Maybe it should be Christ defend those around me.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, right, right. Well, and I think the line I think where that is for me, and it may not come across very well, but it’s like, defend me from my own self attack, you know, it’s like, I feel like that one of the worst things for your kids and for you is when as a parent, if you start the shame when you start to like, I’m terrible or whatever, like that energy then comes out, you know, so it’s like actually asking Jesus to step between me, between my inner critic and my heart, you know, and give myself a little grace. Like, yeah, you raised your voice at your kid and you shouldn’t have, and just go apologize, and you’re human, because it’s hard.
Case Thorp
Well, like the Psalms of Lament, this is sort of a modern day song for lament. Because I can just imagine someone coming home from work and letting this song wash over them. The line, when I work hard but someone else seems to get the reward, when I ask for a promotion and they shut the door. That can help the heart process and then immediately remind us of the good news of the gospel, these responsive lines inspired by St. Patrick, God’s eyes see me, God’s ears hear me. I know He knows who did the work, He knows who deserved the promotion.
You ever gotten feedback from a listener either at a concert or after the fact on what this song meant to them or helped them see?
Wendell Kimbrough
It is one of the songs that I hear from people. I’m trying to think of a specific time but yeah, just from a number of people will come up after a show and say, that one really got me, you know, or that one really spoke to me.
Case Thorp
Well, the ancient side of it too. I love the recycling of St. Patrick.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, it’s a beautiful prayer. Honestly, I had not really connected with the prayer when I’d heard it before. Just that section, the like, Christ behind me, Christ before me. But then, if you Google it or whatever and pull it up, it’s actually a really long prayer, and there’s a lot more to it. That’s kind of just like the section that gets quoted out of context, you know.
But this thing about God seeing me and God hearing me and the chorus, the part about rising up in a strength that’s not my own, I don’t think that’s a direct quote, but there’s lines in the prayer that are about that. Like the power that I need to face this hard day ahead of me or to recover from this hard day that I just finished, it’s not a power that I possess, but I’m not alone in this. Jesus is with me.
Case Thorp
Right.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, it’s a great prayer.
Case Thorp
Now, another song, Your Labor Is Not in Vain. I’m correct, right? That was a Porter’s Gate project. And you’ve mentioned that. Tell everybody what the Porter’s Gate project was all about.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, so Porter’s Gate is a… it’s just like a… there’s a guy named Isaac Wardell. He’s a worship leader at a… he’s now at an ACNA church in the DC area. He and I have been friends for a long time and worked on music together, but he… yeah, he’ll kind of spearhead these projects where he’ll gather a bunch of different Christian artists and some scholars.
And then some people to give kind of what you like testimonials essentially around a particular topic. And it’s like a little mini conference. So you got all these artists, musicians sitting in the room, chewing on content together, talking about it, kind of processing. And then we get broken up into groups and sent off to try to write some songs that get at some of the, you know, what did you feel…connection to this topic? Like, where did this speak to you? And the goal is just to try to write songs for the church that give us some language to sing about things that we maybe don’t… that’s like underrepresented topics that are underrepresented in our hymnody. So their first project was actually a faith and work project. So this idea of bringing your work life into church with you, not checking it at the door. And this song was one that I wrote, ended up being a group write with a couple other folks, but I sat down with, I guess it’s 1 Corinthians 15, I think is where the quote comes from, knowing that in Christ, Paul says, knowing that in Christ your labor is not in vain. But he’s nodding to Isaiah 65, I think it is. And so a lot of the imagery in the song actually just came straight out of Isaiah 65. So I don’t have Isaiah 65 pulled up in front of me, but for anybody listening, if you wanted to chew on this a little more, you could just pull that up and read it. Beautiful. Isaiah is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Just the poetry and the imagery is so imaginative and so evocative, you know. The other thing I’d say about this is years ago, I heard a sermon, it was about a friend of mine, a pastor, Matthew Mason, who’s now in the UK. It was on this idea of work, and it was based on Leaf by Niggle. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, the Tolkien short story.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. Very very very much.
Yes, and Tim Keller has it in the front of his very famous book, Every Good Endeavor. And when we learn, we read that in both the Gotham Fellowship and our Orlando Fellows Program, I teach them an RTS course. And so we spend a lot of time on Leaf by Niggle.
Wendell Kimbrough
Okay, that makes sense.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, you’ve hung out with Leaf by Niggle quite a bit. I mean, it’s such a… well, I’ll just say this. That was the first time I think I’d heard the story. The pastor kind of like read sections of it and kind of summarized the story in the sermon. And, I wept so hard. It just connected with something deep in me, this idea that the work that we’re doing, somehow God brings it to fruition and fullness in the new heavens and the new earth. I think as a musician, especially at that time, I was probably like 28, 29. I was really struggling as a songwriter, just trying so hard to create. I had a hard drive full of ideas and all these just disparate scraps of paper and you know just this kind of space where I’m like trying and I have all these ideas that I couldn’t quite finish and couldn’t, you know… just very frustrated and struggling as a creative and I think you know if you read a Tolkien biography I’m probably telling you things you already know but like he spent a lot of his life feeling that way, I mean he labored on the Lord of the Rings
Case Thorp
Yeah. Right? For decades.
Wendell Kimbrough
Decades with no clue that it would ever be successful, that it would ever get published and he really struggled with a lot of self-doubt, self-condemnation about that he was chronically late for things turning, you know, he struggled as an academic, like he was not hugely successful, he didn’t publish as much as he should have, you know, technically and a lot of that is because he had this passion for writing the Lord of the Rings. Anyway, so Leaf by Niggle is like straight out of his life. Like he is Niggle pretty much.
Case Thorp
Give us a quick summary for those that may not be familiar.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, it’s a little hard to summarize and you can help me, but like it’s this guy and he’s, what is he, a painter I think? And he loves to paint leaves. And he just has this fascination with the beauty of leaves and he’s always trying to paint the perfect leaf. But he’s just constantly getting pulled aside. He’s got this needy neighbor who keeps interrupting his life and he keeps having to help his neighbor and he’s kind of frustrated about that.
Case Thorp
Well, I think he set out to paint a whole tree, but because of all these distractions, he only has one leaf at the end of his life painted.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, that’s right. Something like that. He’s kind of allegorical. He dies at the end. And then he kind of goes to Purgatory. At least it’s not named that in the story, but he goes to this place where he has to work out a lot of stuff. But then at the very end of the story, he makes this journey into this beautiful country that Tolkien’s description is just so beautiful. Like he’s just so moved by the glory of this place and he’s like in this countryside and the light is like, you know, it’s like golden hour, you know, at least maybe I’m making that up but it’s like he’s just overwhelmed by the beauty of this countryside that he’s in and he’s riding along or walking along and he looks over and he sees this tree, this big glorious tree and he falls over because he realizes that it’s his tree. It’s the tree that he was trying to create his whole life. And somehow God has completed this work that he failed at. I mean in terms of his own, you know, awareness that he never could quite get to. And his tree, it’s not just a painting, it’s an actual tree, you know. And there’s his leaf, yes, as part of it.
Case Thorp
And there’s his leaf.
Wendell Kimbrough
And it’s unmistakable. It’s like, this is my contribution. And I just, yeah, I mean, we don’t know exactly what the new heavens and new earth are gonna look like and be like, but I love that idea that who we are, the talents we have, the visions, the dreams, the things that we long to create and maybe don’t, know? Those might not just be like aberrations of our, you know, our…
They may actually be a place in God’s story for the parts of us or the visions and projects and dreams that we’re not able to accomplish because the world is broken and so are we.
Case Thorp
We’ll put a link in our notes so you can go read Leaf by Niggle. It’s a great short story. Wendell, what a great lead in to Your Labor is Not in Vain, will you share?
Wendell Kimbrough
Yes.
Your labor is not in vain
though the ground underneath you is cursed and stained
Your planting and reaping are never the same
But your labor is not in vain.
For I am with you, I am with you.
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you,
called you by name
Your labor is not in vain.
Your labor is not unknown
though the rocks they cry out and the sea it may groan.
The place of your toil may not seem like a home
but your labor is not unknown.
For I am with you, I am with you.
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you,
called you by name
Your labor is not in vain.
The vineyards you plant will bear fruit
the fields will sing out and rejoice with the truth,
for all that is old will at last be made new:
the vineyards you plant will bear fruit.
For I am with you, I am with you.
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you,
called you by name
Your labor is not in vain.
The houses you labored to build
will finally with laughter and joy be filled.
The serpent that hurts and destroys shall be killed
and all that is broken be healed.
For I am with you, I am with you.
I am with you, I am with you
For I have called you,
called you by name
Your labor is not in vain.
Case Thorp
That’s just a desire I have too for folks who listen and watch this program that God is with you. We get so caught up in the busyness and the humdrum of life and just forget that. And Wendell, a, song like this, it helps us.
And I want folks to know that God is really with you. And then this last verse, I want folks to realize their labor will be redeemed one day in the New Jerusalem. So this last verse, the houses you labor to build will finally with laughter and joy be filled. That’s just powerful. Yeah. All that is broken be healed.
So when our parenting is not so great or when you get overwhelmed with a pastoral counseling class…
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, and then, you know, the serpent that hurts and destroys shall be killed. Like, God’s justice, God will make right what’s wrong in the world.
Case Thorp
You need to do a song about nickel.
Wendell Kimbrough
Yeah, like specifically. Yeah, there’s probably more to mine out of that ore. There’s probably more gold-in-them-hills, as they say. Yeah that song, that’s probably the song I’ve heard the most about from people, you know. Just a lot of churches sing it and I recently actually was on YouTube and found all these covers, you know, all these other artists or just churches like there’s some band somewhere in Eastern Europe. I can’t remember where, you know, that did a cover of this.
Yeah, I mean, this is a message that I think is core to the good news, but it’s doesn’t make it into our, you know, the like evangelism pamphlets, you know, where it’s like your sins can be forgiven so you can go to heaven kind of story, like that story is true, but it’s like it’s true without context. You know, it kind of misses the beginning and the end of the story. The creation was made for glory, and we were made for glory, and we were born with honor and dignity, you know, to be priests, and the longing in our hearts is to be that again, to be creative people with authority and dignity who make things that matter. If I’m reading the story right, that’s what Jesus promises. There’s a restoration coming where we’ll see the fruit of our labor.
Case Thorp
Well, with that, Wendell, we have to close. Thank you so much for being with me. Friends, if you’d like to learn more, encourage you to go to WendellK.com. That’s Wendell with two L’s, WendellK.com. You can also learn more about the Porter’s Gate Worship Project at Porter’sGateWorship.com. I have one of their albums and it is just fantastic. Wonderful worship.
Now also since 2020, Wendell has shared new music monthly with a community of supporters on Patreon. So go on Patreon and sign up and get new bits of music every so often. He’s got a single posting soon and so want to pay attention and listen for that. And then this Advent and Christmas, he has a record coming out on vinyl. So that’s kind of retro and cool.
Well with that friends, we wrap up today’s conversation. Thank you for inviting us into your day. If something you heard sparked a thought or stirred your heart, don’t keep it to yourself. Share this episode with just one person who might need it. And if you’d be kind enough, leave a review wherever you listen. It helps us more than you know. As a thank you, I’d like to send you one of our 31 day faith and work prompt journals. Just head over to our website, wecolabor.com, weco-labor.com to request your free copy. At the website, you’ll also find all sorts of resources and ways to connect with us across our social channels. If you’d like a regular rhythm of encouragement, well, listen for Nuance’s Formed for Faithfulness, our weekly 10 minute devotional released every Monday, designed to carry you through the liturgical year with grace and perspective for your work. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
