What’s up, listeners? I’m Wanda Thibodeaux, your host, and this — for the entire show — is Faithful on the Clock, the podcast for Christian professionals where every note plays on the piano to get your faith and work aligned. Today’s show is gonna be a little bit different, because I am introducing a fantastic new resource, everybody. We’re talking Faithful on the Clock’s brand new devotional, Grace in the Grind. Let’s get the details.

All right, everybody. I am super excited to tell you about Grace in the Grind: 52 Devotions for Thriving in the Workplace. This is a book that’s gonna help you connect with God and really get you thinking even more deeply about how you bring your faith into your office or your leadership. And the first thing I want to tell you is that Grace in the Grind is based on the video challenges I offer on LinkedIn every Monday. You can find archives of all the videos on the Faithful on the Clock YouTube channel, and I also have a lot of them up at faithfulontheclock.com if you search Challenge Me Monday. But I’ve been doing those for a number of years, but then I thought, you know, we could really go deeper with these. So, every devotion in the book expands on a challenge like you would see online. And this is a huge part of what differentiates Grace in the Grind from other devotionals you might see at like, Barnes and Noble or on Amazon. This is especially designed for professionals. You guys are doers, right? Action takers. So, whereas a lot of devotionals out there, they’re really awesome for being mindful, and there’s absolutely value in that, but this book, this is a book that is meant to encourage you toward real change. It is not a cat-poster book where you read it and then just feel all warm and fuzzy. You will be challenged. You will be pushed to grow, not just as a professional, but as someone who truly wants to serve God in the work that they do.

And so, I just want to read a preliminary review from my good friend, Jeff Meyer. He’s a pastor and leadership coach who’s got some really amazing books out of his own. And I won’t read the whole thing, but this is what Jeff had to say about Grace in the Grind, just enough to give you the flavor here: “Wanda’s new devotional isn’t just another feel-good faith resource. It’s a brave, bold, and deeply insightful journey into the messy, beautiful, and transformational work of living with God at the center of it all. Week after week, her challenges are not fluffy. They’re real. They ask something of you. And that’s why they work. Whether it’s the simple but profound reminder that “gratitude is directly proportional to the value we place on something,” or the gut-check reality that trying to save face often leads to isolation, Wanda invites us into a deeper level of honesty, with God, with others, and with ourselves. And through it all, her voice is warm, grounded, and wise, a trusted guide who points us toward maturity, mutuality, and a richer experience of grace. This isn’t just a book you read. It’s a book you experience. And if you let it, it will change you.”

Then we’ve got Peggy Bodde. She is the founder of Sacred Work and author of Sacred Work: A Christian Woman’s Guide to Leadership in the Marketplace. Peggy writes: “As someone who has spent 25 years in corporate leadership and founded Sacred Work, a ministry dedicated to empowering women through leadership and career coaching, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges professionals face in aligning their faith with their work. Wanda Marie Thibodeaux’s Grace in the Grind: 52 Devotions for Thriving in the Workplace is a timely and transformative resource for anyone navigating the intersection of faith and career. Wanda’s devotions are deeply rooted in Scripture yet refreshingly practical, offering tangible lessons on trust, humility, and perseverance. Her writing resonates with the authenticity of a mentor who understands the grind—and the grace that sustains us through it.”

So, thank you, Jeff and Peggy, for those kind words. But you know, I don’t give you those reviews to brag or toot my own horn. I share them because I really want to be completely honest about the fact that this book does not shy away from what’s hard, okay? It’s meant to be a mirror for the way things really are, even if it’s not all pretty. But it’s meant to also help us to ask the kind of questions and do the kinds of things that are gonna make working in our Christian faith better, right? And part of the reason I took this approach with the devotional and, you know, really felt confident leaving what you might consider the traditional devotional template is because I genuinely want you to think. I want you to put in some effort and go deeper than just the superficial interpretations to really figure out how God wants you to live. Because Jesus, I mean, of course, He was more compassionate than anybody. He came to this Earth out of love. But part of that compassion was being honest with people about where they were making mistakes. He didn’t just let them keep on in sin. No, He was very clear, even as He healed people, that all of us need to repent. And we use that word, we often see it as, you know, you stop doing what you’re doing. You change. But if you look up the definition of repent, and we talked about this a little bit in — I think it was Episode 126 about the difference in David. But what it really means is to feel or express sincere regret. It’s about being remorseful. And it’s that feeling of remorse that actually prompts us to act differently. So, what Jesus is saying is, “I want you to feel bad about what you’ve been doing and have a little temporary guilt about it, not so you just sit in that and despair, but so you start actually living the way God wants you to live.” And so, my goal here, I will be blunt, it’s not to make money. As a writer, I can tell you, books don’t make a lot of money. But the goal is — it’s kind of like, if any of you out there are Star Wars fans, in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Obi-Wan and Anakin go into a bar, and there’s this guy trying to sell Obi-Wan some shady stuff. And Obi-Wan pulls a Jedi mind trick and says, “You want to go home and rethink your life.” And the guy basically repeats that and goes home and rethinks his life. And I bring that up because I have been told that my writing does that. It makes you want to go home and rethink what you are doing. And so if you are looking for a devotional that’s not just a cat-poster, that really asks you to confront yourself a little bit while at the same time giving you the message of hope of who Jesus is, that’s what Grace in the Grind is. It’s a work that’s meant to lift you up, but also to get you out of your emotional comfort zone and encourage you to change, in the spirit of Jesus’ loving call to repentance.

So, some of you out there might be asking, okay, how are you releasing this? You know, what versions have you got? And I am really happy to tell you that after many months of work, I am releasing this in both softcover and hardcover, you’ll have an ebook, and for those of you, I know you grab titles to listen to on the commute or when you’re doing stuff at home, I’ll also have an audiobook version for you. And the audiobook version, when you pick that option, you’re not gonna hear some AI-generated voice or somebody else reading the book. You’re actually gonna hear yours truly, just like you are now. And the reason I opted to record it myself instead of hiring somebody was because I really wanted it to feel as personal as I could make it. And I wanted that consistency between this podcast and the devotional. But I’ll make sure that there are links in the show notes and that they get updated as they need to be. There are a couple of little quirks about how things need to flow between IngramSpark and Amazon, so if you don’t see the option you want from one of those sources, that’s a technical side we have to work around a little, but I’ll tweak all that as we go along to make sure you have as many choices as possible as soon as possible.

Now, I have been dropping some mentions of this book here and there in previous episodes, and I’ve been putting out material on social media to tease this out. Hopefully you’ve seen some of that. But our official launch date for Grace in the Grind is November 5, 2025. So, it’s going to be live on Amazon and IngramSpark in just a few days here. I’ll have a page on faithfulontheclock.com that gives you easy links to both those options. So, set your calendar for that. And you can use whichever method is easiest for you there, but as you look at the price of the book, I do want to mention that this devotional is packed with extra stuff. Other devotionals, they just stick to the scripture verse. But in Grace in the Grind, what I’ve really tried to do was pack in extra value with endnotes. I’ve got over 50 of those in the book, and those will either bring you to a source that backs up an assertion I make, or they bring you to previous work that I’ve done, extra articles and videos and things like that. Because I really wanted to help you see what I’m saying in a bigger context of life, right? I wanted you to be able to really see my rationale and have somewhere to go to, like I said, dig a little deeper and see more nuances around the verse or situation. You will not find that in other devotionals. And that is part of why I’m saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind book in that it deviates from the norm and why it’s not something you’ll find from traditional publishers who tend to look for a more templated or safe approach.

So, all of that being said, I am just so thrilled to be able to gift this book to you. And I can’t wait to hear all of your feedback, your reviews — I do take those to heart and welcome them, so don’t be shy about leaving me a note. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the next couple of weeks and beyond. After all of this gets done and the book goes live, in our next show, we’re moving into Thanksgiving with a show all about gratitude, God, and perceiving proper value. I guarantee it’ll shift the way you tell God thank you. Put in your order for Grace in the Grind, and I’ll see you in two weeks, everybody. Be blessed.