Podcast

Samantha Larson - Season 5 Episode 7

September 20th 2026

Samantha Larson grew up in the Chicago suburbs, the oldest of four, keeping her dad company while he prepared his sermons. But it was years later, packaging muffins on a night shift at a grocery store bakery and convinced God couldn't do much with someone who felt she'd failed at so many things, that she heard the Lord ask a simple question: "If you could do anything, what would you do?" That moment set the course for a career in soul care; residential work with teenage girls, foster care, and now case management with single moms in transitional housing.

In this episode of Work Is Calling, Wayne and Samantha explore what it means to treat difficult, draining work as a sacred calling rather than just a job. Samantha shares how she learned to expect God to show up in the middle of a workday, why she once won a resistant client's trust with coffee and doughnuts instead of harshness, and how she fought against the fear of running herself into the ground. She speaks candidly about wrestling with self-confidence and people-pleasing, the boundaries that protect her from burnout, and why she believes God has not asked her to be God.

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