Made4Good
What does it really mean to do good works? Are they just random acts of kindness, or is there something deeper—something God designed us for?
Join hosts Josh Hudson and Mark Ogles each week as they dive into what the Bible says about good works, drawing from Scripture and insights from their book, Made4Good: A Good Works Study. With engaging conversation, practical takeaways, and a touch of humor, Josh and Mark explore how we are created, redeemed, and equipped to serve for God’s glory.
From Ephesians 2:10 to Matthew 5:16, they unpack how good works aren’t about earning salvation—but living out the faith we’ve been given. Expect thought-provoking discussions, real-life applications, and encouragement to step boldly into the purpose God has prepared for you.
Whether you're looking for inspiration, biblical wisdom, or just a reminder that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58)—this podcast is for you.
So grab a cup of coffee, open your Bible, and join us as we discover what it means to be Made4Good.
Made4Good
Finding Joy Through Service: How Helping Others Heals Your Heart
What if the act of helping others could actually heal your own emotional wounds? It sounds counterintuitive, but the evidence is compelling. Good works don't just benefit those on the receiving end—they transform us in profound ways, acting as a form of therapy that science and scripture both affirm.
Drawing from Isaiah 58:10, we explore how pouring ourselves out for others can transform our darkness into light and our gloom into brightness. This biblical promise finds powerful echoes in modern research showing that acts of service and generosity literally change our brain chemistry—reducing stress hormones, increasing happiness, and improving overall wellbeing. As Sarah Conrath's research demonstrates, regular volunteers experience "increased life satisfaction, happiness, self-esteem and psychological well-being" compared to non-volunteers, with benefits lasting for years.
We unpack the fascinating concept of the cognitive triangle from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, revealing how intentionally engaging in acts of service (behavior) can positively impact our emotions (feelings), which then reshape our perspective (thoughts). This creates what we call the "treadmill of doing good and feeling good"—a virtuous cycle where service leads to joy, which motivates more service. The challenge is simply making the decision to step onto this treadmill through small, intentional acts of kindness.
Ready to experience this transformative cycle firsthand? We challenge you to help someone this week in a way that lifts you both, then pay attention to the emotional benefits you receive. Whether it's inviting someone for coffee or offering assistance, you might be surprised at how serving others serves your own heart. Listen now to discover how you can start your journey toward emotional healing through good works.
Welcome to Made for Good, the podcast where we explore how to live out our purpose through good works. Hey.
Speaker 2:I'm Josh and I'm Mark. Today's topic is a powerful one. We're going to talk about good works as therapy. We often think about doing good as helping other people, but what if I told you that serving others actually can have a profound impact on us? Well, this is one of those cases, josh, where science and scripture both confirm, or are in agreement, that good works leads to emotional healing, greater joy overall and really a stronger sense of purpose.
Speaker 1:And Mark. Out of all the episodes we've talked about so far, this is one of the ones where we just need a little bit more help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a pretty heavy topic and we're not therapists. So we reached out to a couple of friends of ours who are certified therapists and are very experienced years and years of experience. What they shared with us was very insightful and it really confirmed what we read in the scripture. So let's get into Bible basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's so many examples of how serving others brings about personal transformation, joy that we want to talk about today. There's three, and specifically that you'll hear just throughout this episode. We're going to start in Isaiah 58, 10, where it says if you pour yourselves out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And this is an amazing promise. When we give ourselves, what this is saying is God's going to lift us up in the process.
Speaker 2:So you're saying that these good works, this pouring yourself out for the hungry, is going to lead to an emotional good feeling. I love that that phrase your gloom shall be as the noonday. Yeah, so what we have here is a really a renewal, both emotionally and, I think, even at a spiritual level, both emotionally and I think even at a spiritual level. So serving others really shifts our mindset from what's wrong in my life to how can I be a blessing to other people, and it brings light to their life as well.
Speaker 1:That's so true. We've used Jesus as our model throughout these episodes, and that's what we'll do again today. It's interesting that he poured himself out for others, but I guess the question is but did that bring about joy for him?
Speaker 2:So what you're asking is did the good works that Jesus did while on earth, ultimately him giving his life, did that bring him joy? Does it sound joyful? But I think that if you look in Hebrews 12, verse 2, it says Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. So in that, right there, next to each other, you've got joy. And enduring the cross, jesus understood the impact of what he was going to do, the impact on the whole world, the good that he was going to do.
Speaker 2:Although the good work was difficult, it was. Ultimately it was horrible in that he gave his life for us. He endured the cross, but he did that knowing the joy. So if you go back to your verse that you mentioned in Isaiah, does pouring yourself out for the hungry seem like? Is that a fun thing to do? It doesn't seem very fun, but it led to joy. It led to our gloom being as the noonday, in other words, bright, sunny, and the gloom is gone, you can see the light of the day. So, jesus, enduring the cross was profitable. It was profitable for us.
Speaker 2:In fact, that reminds me of the passage in Titus 3.8. This saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. This is Paul teaching Titus what he should be teaching those that he's preaching to, and he says and here's the key these things are excellent and profitable for people. While it doesn't say necessarily that they're emotionally profitable, I think it means that that these things are profitable for people. If we can devote ourselves to good works, we can grow spiritually as well as emotionally, and we can have a true sense of the purpose in life.
Speaker 1:Here's what we think is really interesting about all of this. Is that what we've said so far this is backed up in science as well. Studies show that acts of generosity reduce stress, increase happiness and even improve physical health. There's actual research showing that giving giving lowers cortisol, the stress hormone which helps with anxiety yeah, that's true, josh.
Speaker 2:You know there was a paper. Actually, it was a chapter that was written in a larger book, the the name of the book was. It was edited by Sarah Conrath. This is back in 2014, where her chapter was titled the Power of Philanthropy and Volunteering, and she drew a very clear comparison between doing good and feeling good. She says this giving behavior, the philanthropy, this giving behavior, ultimately leads to a lower cortisol, which is you said it was a stress hormone, and responses as a consequence of reduced feelings of shame.
Speaker 2:Giving money to others literally gets under our skin, with implications for longer term health. And she says also, as with money, how time is used seems to be more important than the amount of available time. In terms of predicting psychological well-being, sarah Conrath also says all known studies find that regular volunteers experience increased life satisfaction, happiness, self-esteem and psychological well-being, and fewer depressive symptoms, even a few years later, compared to those who do not volunteer. So this is a lasting impact on our emotional well-being. And what are we talking about? We're talking about just volunteering our time to help others. So doing good helps us to feel good and feeling good helps us to do good Mark.
Speaker 1:I've heard this before. This is not this is not necessarily a scientist, but wasn't once said if you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If you play good no no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:We're not quoting professional football players here, or college coaches. By the way, take the sunglasses off, we're inside. You don't need that. And where did you get that cowboy hat?
Speaker 1:I mean really, this is embarrassing. No one knew until you said something about it. On a serious note, what we're saying is, the more we serve, the more joy we experience, and it makes us really just want to continue servicing. It's like an endless cycle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you take a look at another passage in 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 16 and 17, it says Now may our Lord, jesus Christ himself and God, our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. And so what we had in the previous passage in Isaiah, we had good works producing good feelings. Right In this case. As Christians, we've been given comfort and hope through grace given to us by God, the Father, and our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ. We've got the comfort of our hearts and that should actually lead us to good works, because, as we've said in our foundational verse in Ephesians 2.10, we are created in Christ for good works.
Speaker 2:So the comfort that we have, the emotional feeling, the good feeling that we have, should produce good work. So it's really the opposite of what we saw in Isaiah 58, where the good works produce the good feeling. And now we've got the good feeling, the comfort of your hearts producing the good work. So we've got this cycle, this treadmill of doing good and feeling good, and feeling good and doing good. But how do I jump on that treadmill. Another thing that we learned from our friends who are certified therapists is this concept of a cognitive triangle.
Speaker 1:I don't know if listeners, or maybe just myself, knew we were going to talk about geometry.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, this is conceptual geometry. There'll be no math. We did establish that. So we're not doing sines and cosines, but we are talking about cognitive triangle. It's really just three points in how they're connected together.
Speaker 2:In cognitive behavioral therapy, cbt, there is something called a cognitive triangle, and what it really is is a way to model and show the relationship between our thoughts, our feelings and our actions or behaviors. So in this case, what we want to do is project onto that triangle what we've been talking about doing good. That's the behavior, the action and feeling good. Those are our feelings, josh. What's missing out of that? To make our third element of our triangle Thoughts, Thoughts. Okay, so we've got to make a decision. We've got to jump in on this treadmill of doing good, and so you know again to use that word that is overused intentional intentionality. We've got to make the decision now to jump in, and so that decision is really the thing that's keeping us off the treadmill of doing good and feeling good is that we're sitting back, we're seeing it, we see the good there. How do we take advantage of it? How do we help others and help ourselves? Well, it's really taking action.
Speaker 1:This aligns perfectly with 1 Corinthians 10, 31, where the Bible says whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. In other words, when we keep serving, we glorify God and grow in joy.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's ultimately what we want to do. I mean going about good works. Why do we do them? To glorify God, and in this doing good and glorifying God, we can kind of experience the light that is being in his kingdom. And so that leads us into our mission.
Speaker 2:This week. Our challenge is for you to make the decision to engage, thought, to do good and then to feel good. So find a way this week to help someone Again, in all these things, it doesn't have to be a huge. We're not asking if you write a big donation check. Help someone in a way that maybe lifts you both up.
Speaker 2:One way to do that, josh, is if you invited somebody to coffee, number one, the two of you are getting caffeine, you're getting the benefit of coffee, but you're also getting something out of it where you're getting a relationship being built, which is what we talked about in the previous episode but you're also helping, engaging, maybe encouraging someone. So just make the decision, send the text. Hey, do you want to go get coffee today? Or, if you're not a coffee drinker, you know, maybe you want to go to Chick-fil-A and get lunch or something like that. But pay attention to how you feel after you do that, yeah, and experience Maybe the joy that you have when you're driving back home and it was a really good conversation. I went there. It so often happens to try to help that person feel good and what happens. Maybe I was successful in doing that, but I feel good about doing good, right.
Speaker 1:Well, a shameless plug here. We are monitoring our social media accounts for any questions or comments, so we would just say keep them coming. And then I'd also just like to, before you end, mark, I know I've said this my third time. You have embarrassed me three times. Well, probably going to be three times. You've embarrassed me two times. Are we going to talk about that secret project yet, or not?
Speaker 2:Well, look, it's just really for people to read between the lines, you know, but I'm not really ready for us to give any details, but it's coming, okay. So those who can read between the lines can see that. Then they may know where we're going with this.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, that's our episode for this week. If you found this helpful, we'd ask that you consider sharing it with a friend. And until next time, well, do good and remember you are made for this. Thank you.
