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Peace in an Age of Anxiety | MomStrong International Week 3/4 781

MomStrong International

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Our lack of peace is a cultural crisis—we truly live in the Age of Anxiety. Listen in today as I talk from personal experience about the peace of God and how the Apostle Paul says we find it. You don’t have to live in constant anxiety and fear—God sent His son to set you free!

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Ephesians 4:1-3

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

Scripture Mentioned in Podcast

  • 2 Corinthians 11:23-29
  • Philippians 4:11
  • Philippians 4:4-13

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St John. Thank you so much for joining me. Today is Wednesday, June 19th this is episode number 781. We’re going to be talking about week three from the MomStrong International Bible Study and I am calling this one: Peace in the Age of Anxiety.

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so if you’re not following me over at MomStrong International, I want to encourage you to do it. This is the time of the week, Wednesday, when I go through the Bible Study. And for the summertime we are studying the fruits of the Spirit—and just really trying to unpack what God’s heart was in giving us these fruits of the Spirit, these evidences that God is at work in us. And so, I hope you guys are digging in with me. Today is a great opportunity for you if you haven’t joined us yet. If you’ve not downloaded the study, if you haven’t joined MomStrong International beyond the Scripture Writing Challenge, summertime is a great time to do that because we don’t have….well I do because I’m writing a book and I’m traveling. Wait, am I going to get a break? I’m looking at my engineer—not in the foreseeable future.

Well, today is a really good opportunity for all of us to get into the Word of God regardless of how busy we are. The Bible teaches us that we need the Word of God. We need it. It’s a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. And also when you join MomStrong International. You can bring your kids into it with you. They can do the KidStrong section. There’s a Scripture Writing Challenge in cursive over at MomStrong International for the Bible Study section. And we would love to see you become a leader. You can lead an MSI study group in your church. You can lead one in your neighborhood, at your Homeschool Co-Op—I am just thrilled to see so many of you really wanting to study God’s Word. Timothy was instructed by Paul to study, to show himself approved unto God a workman who does not need to be ashamed, who can rightly divide the Word of truth.

And at MomStrong International that’s what our goal is—to help you prioritize the study of God’s Word, to learn it, to love in it, and then to lead with it. And so this is a great time. Visit me online MomStrongInternational.com and you can download this study today. I only have, you know, 15 minutes to go over week three with you, but the study goes much further and in depth than I will be able to do here. And it’s an opportunity for you to really dig into and unpack the truths of Scripture that help us in everyday life. So we really need them. So MomStrongInternational.com.

Wednesday is my day to just say—hey you guys, are you studying the Word with us yet? So if you’re not yet get into it, summertime is a great time to do at MomStrongInternational.com.

All right, this is a really awesome week. We’re studying peace, right? We’re on week three now. We’ve been studying the fruits of the Spirit. We talked about anger, and today we’re really going to talk about peace. And this is a study that is near and dear to my heart, a topic that I have dealt with a lot in my life—because as many of you know, if you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, I have struggled with severe anxiety most of my adult life. And really the Lord has given me victory. It’s not that I don’t have days of anxiety, or moments where I feel anxious—but I’m not living with this constant knot in my stomach anymore. And a huge part of that healing was based on my walking with the Lord and allowing Him to replace my anxiety with His peace.

And peace is something that we all want. But really in the culture right now, I don’t see a lot of people with it. I feel like the tension in the culture right now so thick, you could cut it with a knife and we’ve got no issues even in our own homes. Let’s set the culture aside for a second. The chaos of children, the stress of marriage, and work, and daily life. I think that we’re more worried now than we ever have been. Even though you could argue that we live in the safest, most comfortable, technologically, and medically advanced society in human history—we are the most anxious. Studies show that even preschoolers and elementary age children are being diagnosed with anxiety disorders. And so it’s hard to think that peace in the culture could ever be a reality. But God teaches us that peace is not dependent on our circumstances.

Piece is the unmistakable sign of the presence of God in our lives. It’s like joy. Joy is not dependent on our circumstances. There have been many times in my life when I have been filled with an inexplicable, indescribable joy—in the midst of terrible struggles. And that’s because those are the fruits of the Spirit. Evidence that God is at work in us, that He’s moving through us, and that His Spirit is at work in us. So the Holy Spirit, this peace that comes from God, is woven into our character as we mature in our faith, right? And so this virtue, this peace, it grows and it brings with it freedom. Freedom from discontentment, freedom from ungratefulness, freedom from the battle to become somebody that we’re not. And we could spend tremendous amounts of money, right? Trying to achieve peace. And I’m telling ya—it’s an industry. According to the anxiety and depression association of America, the United States citizens spend over $42 billion a year in the treatment of anxiety disorders. And that doesn’t include the amount of money that we spend on vacations and relaxation so that we can reduce stress in our life, right? We get medication to silence the symptoms and pay for therapy to help us learn the tricks to achieving peace. And often these are very necessary and they’re helpful things to seek out. But our lack of peace is a cultural crisis. It is a spiritual crisis. We truly do live in the age of anxiety.

I wanted to address really quickly my own struggle with anxiety again, because I think it’s important for you to understand something. I am not knocking medication. I think medication sometimes is necessary. And certainly for me it was a very helpful at a point in my life when I was so broken on the inside that I could not quiet those voices long enough to even hear from the Lord. And so a lot of you are listening to this today and you’ve got a host of stressors in your life, right? You might have come from a dysfunctional family. Maybe you’re coming out of an abusive relationship or an abusive marriage—and you’re struggling with anxiety, and there is a place, absolutely, for getting professional medical help. I think there’s a place for getting counseling. We want to be getting counseling from men and women who know Jesus and who can give us biblical counseling. But as I talk about peace that comes from God, and living in an age of anxiety, and looking at pieces of fruit of the Spirit—I am in no way saying that I think medicine is wrong.

Here’s where I think it’s messed up. So I spent most of my adult life, until about five years ago, off and on anti anxiety medications. I think I tried every one of them in the book. My anxiety was so severe. And some of you are listening to this and you’re going—wait a second, I heard her speak at a conference 10 years ago. You didn’t look anxious to me. Well people can be very anxious and not look like it, all right? We are very good at hiding things. And part of the reason why I didn’t share my struggle with anxiety until about it maybe six or seven years ago, was because I was so concerned about what people would think about me. I thought—man, if they know that I’m struggling with anxiety, if they know that I have struggled with depression, then they’re not going to respect me, then they won’t listen to me. And you know what? That was a lie from the enemy. It’s the enemy who says that we can’t share our weaknesses. It’s the enemy that says that we should be more concerned about what people think of us, than about coming to the Lord and just saying—Father, help me. Give me freedom from this and in my life.

And it’s a long story, too long to go over today. I will just say that when I experienced the peace, finally, that passes understanding—it came after years of me crying out to the Lord and just saying—Lord, I need your help. I need your help. And it came after, not before, I was willing to just confess it to the multitudes and say—hey, this is it. This is the deal in my life. This is real. This is tough. And my kids have watched me, right? And our close friends have watched this, but my life has been so public that it just felt insurmountable to me. And I have never been more at peace. Not that we don’t have struggles, but a lot of things have helped me over the years. I read a book a long time ago called Search for Significance (I’ll link back to that in the show notes today) and on and off of the medications—but what it really was, was seeing myself the way the Lord sees me, and being able to put my life, and my past, and my future in His hands. And then leave it there. Because so often what we want to do is we want to take it with us. Lord, I’m worried about these things. I’m going to give it to you today. But then we don’t leave it with Him. We take it back again.

And nobody knows what it was like to suffer like the Apostle Paul. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 11 starting at the second half of verse 23. Paul says, I have worked harder, been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. 2 Corinthians 11:23b-24

I don’t you guys know this, but 40 is considered a death sentence. So they gave him just enough to not kill him, right?

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. 2 Corinthians 11:25a

This guy is actually kind of ruining the prosperity gospel right now.

Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. Then, besides all this, I have the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray, and I do not burn with anger? 2 Corinthians 11:25b-29

You see, while writing the book of Philippians, Paul was in prison. He was facing torture and possibly execution. And yet look at the statement that he made in Philippians 4: I’ve learned the secret of being content and in every situation. And so really that’s what it comes down to. And so if you’re listening to this today and you’re going—I just, I can’t get out of this pit that I’m in. Yes you can. Yes, you can. The Lord will help you. It’s part of the reason why I speak about this so often. And it’s why I carry my essential oils with me. You guys have heard me talk about that. I think that God has given us the tools because trauma is real and nobody knew it better than Paul. Right? And he’s saying—I’ve learned that I can be content in whatever situation that I find myself in. And you’re going—wait a second, how can somebody who’s been beaten, tortured, starved, sleepless, homeless…How can he be content? I’m discontent with my kids misbehave. I’m frustrated when I didn’t get the relaxing evening that I wanted. And yet Paul is under constant physical, emotional, and psychological stress, and yet he’s at peace. How?

Well, I guess it would be easy for us to say—well, of course he can be at peace. He’s, you know, Paul. But before you guys start to think that contentment is a natural talent or something that we simply have because we’re amazing—I want you to look closely at this verse. He says he learned it. He learned the secret of being content. That means that it’s something that doesn’t come naturally, and this is absolutely what the Lord’s been teaching me in my life. I had to say—oh my goodness, Father, I’m anxious again. I gave it to you and I took it back. Show me how to not take it back. It’s a learning process. Psalm 85:8 NIV says, I will listen to what God the Lord says; he promises peace to his people.

See, God’s not going to put that in His Word if it’s not possible for children to attain, to achieve, to experience, right? God desires to give us His peace. He doesn’t say it’s going to be easy. That’s never the message of the Bible. In fact, Jesus said in this world you’re going to have trouble. But guess what? Take heart—I have overcome the world. I’ve done it and I’m going to continue to do it. And so even though it’s not easy and it’s not instantaneous, as we mature in Christ, we can step into a greater degree of contentment and rest as we learn to do everything through Christ who gives us strength, right? So the juxtaposition of Jesus becoming our peace and breaking down every wall at the cost of Him bearing the wrath of God the Father on the cross is a hard reality. But this reality can bring us to a place of really grappling with a deep cost of salvation. God sent His Son, Jesus, who died on the cross for us—so that we would be set free.

And if we don’t take the full instruction of God’s Word and reconcile His love and His anger—then we sell salvation short and Jesus died in vain. So let’s love them enough to learn the whole counsel of His Word, not just the parts that are socially acceptable. And in this way, we honor His sacrifice to create peace for all of us. So I’m going to look really quickly at Philippians 4:4-13. So if you’re listening to this and you’re studying along with me at MomStrong International, I’m about on page 43 right now. So I’m down in the study. So when you download the study, you’re going to get a month at a time. I’m on week three, which is why I’m on page 43. So if you want to follow along with me that’s where I am.

I know a bunch of you are doing this in groups, so I’ll give you just a second. Philippians 4:4-13 here’s what it says— Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Phillipians 4:4-11

Notice he doesn’t say the peace of God might be with you. He says, the peace of God will be with you. Paul is not just telling us that he has it easy, he’s telling us how to get it. He’s telling us how to get it. So what is he saying to do in this passage? The first thing he’s saying is rejoice always. He doesn’t say rejoice when things are going great. He says rejoice always. Now there’s a difference between going—Yay, I’m just so happy that I was in this car accident. Or, I’m just so happy that I got this unexpected bill…like Jay and I right now dealing with them in massive water problem in our home. Two years ago it was the pipes outside our house, had to dig a big trench in the middle of winter, run a whole new line. And then we just learned about a month and a half ago that every pipe in our house has to come out, has to be re-piped. It is expensive.

And I was so frustrated. I was like—well, I guess we’re going to have to take out a loan. I mean, who’s got that kind of money just sitting around? And I started to get frustrated, and Jay so rightly reminded me… he was like—Heidi, the Lord has always provided for us, always provided miraculously. So let’s rejoice because God’s going to show Himself faithful again. And that’s what Paul is saying. Rejoice always. He’s in the middle of your suffering, in the middle of your struggle. Let your gentle Spirit be known to all because—why?, because the Lord is near. And then he goes on to say: don’t be anxious about anything. Now to know about you, but that’s a tough one for me. Be Anxious for nothing? So that phone call I get that I didn’t want to get, that sin struggle that I know that my child is struggling with, that issue in my marriage that I’m concerned about, this financial thing that’s in front of me—be anxious about nothing?

Yep, that’s right. “Yeah. You right.” As my daughter Sierra would say. Be anxious for nothing. But hear is his instruction—But instead by prayer and supplication…supplication meaning letting the Lord know what you need…with thanksgiving. So Father, here I am. This is my need. Thank you so much that I can trust you. Thank you that you sent Your Son. Thank you that you love me. Thank you that you’re good—and you let your requests be made known to God. And then as a result of that, the peace of God, which the Bible says surpasses our understanding—will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. And that guard that the Lord sets there is what keeps us from going off the rails. It’s what keeps us walking in right relationship with Him.

You guys just as important stuff. We want to be walking in such a way that our lives say that we trust the Lord, that we believe that His Spirit is in us and that He will never let us down—and He never will.

All right, this is so good. And speaking of good, the verse today from the MomStrong International Scripture Writing Challenge is found in Ephesians 4:1-3—I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. That is God’s heart for you. Lean into it today, you guys, lean into it. God wants to set you free. He came to set you free—free from your anxiety, free from your fear. He wants to replace that fear with His peace and it really is miraculous.

Hope you guys are enjoying this study.  You can download this study and dig into it even deeper at MomStrongInternational.com. And also, when you subscribe to the Bible Study—that $8 a month is going a whole long wait to helping us write these Bible Studies for you every month and get ’em out there. We’re just thrilled to have you join us.

The next episode at the amazing Dr. Duke Pesta who is the president and founder of the Freedom Project Academy—and he does some amazing videos online, exposing a lot of things happening in the culture, and really bringing clarity to it. He is going to be on the show with me on Friday and you are not going to want to miss it. So come back on Friday and let’s see my guest Dr. Duke Pesta. In the meantime, you guys cast your cares on the Lord for He cares about you. Have a great day, you guys. I’ll see you back here on Friday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

 

Chivalry & Disputable Matters | MailBox Monday – 780

Current Events

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:21 — 18.8MB)

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“Dear Heidi, I just don’t know how what to teach my boys about how to treat women!” This question came from Amy, and she’s not alone. The modern feminist movement bears little to no resemblance to its original mission. Today, I’ll be answering Amy’s question as well as talking about disputable matters.

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Psalm 16:8-11

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

Scripture Mentioned in Podcast

  • Psalm 11:3
  • Romans 14
  • Romans 14:1-4
  • 1 Corinthians 8-10
  • 1 Corinthians 5:1-11

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you guys have joined me. Today is Monday, June 17th episode number 780.

Man, do we have a lot of stuff to impact today! You guys send in awesome questions. We’re going to be talking about chivalry. You know, I guess we can kind of debate about whether or not it’s dead and talk about disputable matters, homeschooling with your hubby at home and a couple of things—it’s going to be a jam-packed episode.

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged

So wow, lots of stuff going on. Thank you to everyone who came out to the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference. That was an incredible time of just sharing God’s heart and hearing from you. We are so thrilled every time we get to meet you guys and just hear what God’s doing in your heart. You guys are up against a lot in Colorado—moment of silence. You got baker’s being sued—what, for the third time in a row now because he wants to celebrate a homosexual wedding with the cake? You got people coming after your homeschool freedom, you got all kinds of stuff—not the least of which Denver’s having the same problem that Seattle’s having in that itself has a little bit like weed.

I live in Portland. So can I just say—I will stand in solidarity with you. There’s a couple of things coming up. I want you guys to know about. First of all, I will be speaking for the NW Slavic Action Summit at Smirna Christian Church on Tuesday, July 2nd. That event starts at 6:00 PM. You are not going to want to miss it. I have been really encouraged in the last couple of years to see the Slavic community get off the bench and onto the battlefield. I learned several years ago that most of them are not registered to vote and they’re watching their freedoms being taken away from them a little bit at a time. So, I’ve got a couple of local friends here in that community, really wonderful people who are trying to get this community involved in what’s happening around us so their voices can be heard. And I have agreed to come encourage them. So Tuesday, July 2nd in Vancouver, Washington, the NW Slavic Action Summit at Smirna Christian Church. You can find out more about that event online and I will also link back to it in the show notes today.

After that, July 11 through 13th I’ll be at CHEA, one of my favorite events in homeschooling that’s happening in Pasadena. And then the 19th or the 20th I’ll be in Phoenix for the AFHE convention. If you guys are anywhere in the area for those conventions come on out, they’re going to be an incredible time of encouragement and I just have such a heart to encourage this generation of homeschool parents. You guys are up against it! There’s a lot going on, but God is doing something incredible right now in the hearts of His children and it’s a joy for me to be able to meet you on the road and just give a little bit of a shout out, and a high five, and hug your neck. So coming out and say hello. I would love to see you.

All right. I want to say thank you also for those of you who keep reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. Again, we read every single one of those. The staff reads them. We are so encouraged and I just wanted to say thank you. This one mom, she wrote—as a mother to little children I have so many areas where I need wisdom for women who have walked what I’m walking through. Heidi addresses current events with relevant biblical truth. She’s not afraid to be honest about godliness. Considering our culture and all things she brings hope and the truth of Christ despite the sad current events, our children will grow up to see being taught as normal.

And that’s absolutely true. Thank you for that review. I really appreciate it. It’s true that our children are being taught that right is wrong and wrong is right. So many things are upside down right now in the culture—but I also think that God is doing an incredible work in that we are seeing the spirit of fear pushed back in the church right now. Psalm 11:3 says—if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? And there’s no doubt that there has been a massive foundational shift in our culture, away from God’s Word and shifted to the authority of man’s word. And this transformation didn’t happen overnight. It’s been happening for many years while the Church has sat silently by and watched it continue. And it occurred in much the same way that a person is carried by the ocean’s tide when playing in the waves, right? That’s what we tell our kids. Watch out for sleeper waves. We call them sleeper waves here in the Pacific Northwest.

If you’ve ever been out on to the Oregon coast, one of the first things that we teach our children is to watch for patterns in the water so that they can see a rip current, otherwise called a sleeper wave. You’ll be standing there, maybe you’re knee deep, and one of those rip currents can come up and literally take your feet out from underneath you and drag you out into the ocean. And a lot of people die that way. And because one minute they’re having a great time and the next minute they look up and they don’t even know where they are and they’re struggling to stay above the water. And this is exactly what’s happened in the culture. It’s been sort of a steady erosion of biblical authority. And now we’re seeing a weakened church—absolutely not watching for these sleeper waves.

They’re not watching. We haven’t been watching for awhile. And a loss of biblical authority has happened within much of the church. And one of the things that I want to do here is to turn your eyes back to the authority of Scripture. The Bible teaches that Scripture is our go-to for everything, for all things related to life and godliness. The Bible says that it’s helpful for reproving, it’s helpful for teaching in righteousness, for opening our eyes to sin, and walking in right relationship with the Lord. And the concession that I am seeing of biblical truth, especially in regard to human sexuality, to the origin of life, to the authority in the inerrancy of Scripture—has allowed this infiltration of secular ideas to come into the church. And so the culture really has invaded the church.

And like I said a couple of weeks ago, my pastorJeremy was saying that culture is an incredibly powerful thing. And what happens is we tend to bend to the culture. And so like Israel of old, the first order of business for the church must be repentance inside the church before there can ever be influence outside of it. And so my heart here at the podcast, and all of the team that brings us to you every week, is to say— let’s follow the Lord. Repentance starts with the church. And you’ll know when we’ve experienced repentance because we see a change in attitude. We see a heart change, a desire to want to follow the Lord. And so that’s really the heart here. And I hope that it encourages you.

I love to answer your questions for a couple of reasons. One, I want this podcast to be a place where you can bring tough questions and we can talk about them together. One of the things we’re going to discuss today is this issue of disputable matters because there are gray areas in the Bible and in our walk with the Lord—where people who are sincere about their faith can disagree. And so we’re going to talk about that a little bit today. But before we get into it, I want to take you to today’s Scripture Writing Challenge. If you’re not following me over at the Scripture Writing Challenge, I want to encourage you to do it. It’s a free thing for you guys to get in there to get into the Word every day. There are copy pages for your kids. They can practice their handwriting—there’s cursive behind the paywall. In other words, we also have a Bible Study that you can subscribe to you. It’s about $8 a month and we’re going to take you a whole lot deeper, do more for your children. But for the free version of it—I’ve been doing this for many years. I’m writing a Scripture Writing Challenge for you every month and it goes along with what we’re studying at MomStrong International, so you can download the copywork for your children. We’ve just started doing it in Spanish. So if you have friends where Spanish is their primary language, or even I’ve heard from a lot of you who are saying—thank you, we’re trying to practice our Spanish—this is a great way to do it. So, my friend Marlene who works with me at Heidi St. John, she is the one who does all that. So shout out to my amazing friend Marlene for what an amazing job she’s doing there.

All right, first question. Goodness gracious you guys. First of all, you’re going to hear me say this over and over. I think it’s really important for us to have our heart set on God’s heart for us. So the first question comes from Amy, and Amy says—Dear Heidi, I’m not sure what to train my boys to think about women. Amy, you are not alone. This is one of the things that is so frustrating for me as I’m watching my young men go out into the world—that this idea of masculinity is being very much redefined and challenged in the culture right now. So Amy goes on to say—I’m not sure what to teach my boys about women. I have always believed that they should be chivalrous to open doors for women, to allow them to order first at restaurants, etc, etc—that men were born protectors of women and children. But lately my boys are feeling dismissed and even made fun of when they step out and act even remotely chivalrous. What is your suggestion?

All right, so first of all Amy—thank you for the question. I love that you brought this up. Today we are seeing the emasculation of men and it is accelerating at a rapid pace. We’re watching drag queens pretending to be women. This is being normalized in our libraries, which if you haven’t been following me and my absolute frustration with the American Library Association, I don’t even take my kids to the library anymore because they have made it absolutely 100% clear that they are not about protecting our children. They are about the indoctrination of children. They’ve made their bathrooms safe spaces for transgender and like….let’s say that my husband decides: today I feel like a woman. The American Library Association would say—then you go right on into the ladies restroom. Um, no, not on my watch. If that’s the way you guys feel about it we have turned in our library cards. We are not going back until we see a change.

These guys are bringing drag queens to the library for goodness sake! Parents, when this happens to your local library, and it will because this is a push that started on the west coast and then moved rapidly to the east coast, and now is encroaching into the heartland. When you see this happen, go to your libraries and let them know. And frankly, the most effective thing I’ve seen toward this right now is from a guy here in our area who went with me to a library board meeting and said— listen, I have done my homework. I realized that the last library bond only passed by 400 votes. If this is the way you guys are going to play the game. We will make sure no library bond is ever passed again. You could have heard a pin drop because they don’t want their funding threatened in any way. They don’t care about your kids. And they’ll bring drag queens in to read to your kids about how they don’t necessarily have to be a boy or a girl. They could be either or both…or you know—one of 15 genders. But they don’t want their funding threatened.

And can I just encourage you guys get off the bench, get onto the battlefield? I mean the reason why Amy’s sons are feeling like they can’t be behave as men anymore is because we have been teaching in the schools now for some time, and promoting in our libraries—that men aren’t special, that men could be women or women could be men. And it’s backwards. God said in His Word—I made them male and female in my image. And I want to just encourage you guys to encourage your boys.

I mean this is what I’m doing and I’ve told my sons—you’re going to be mocked for this. If you see a woman standing on the bus and you’re on the bus with her, or on the subway, or on the train into downtown Portland—offer her your seat. That’s actually a good thing to do. Women are created responders—born responders. Men have been created differently than women and they are supposed to be protectors. When I walked down into the streets of downtown Portland right now, I’m thinking if there was a military invasion right now, I would be dead because so many of these guys down here—they’re more like women than they are like men. And there’s enough of us women. We don’t anymore. And really, I would say 90% of the women that I talk to—you feel the same way that I do. And I saw an article on Fox News the other day. It came across my desk and I loved it. It was written by a woman named Carol Roth and she said—link back to it in my show notes. Dear militant feminists, stop messing it up for the rest of us.

And I just wanted to go—louder so that people in the back in hear. Here’s how she started out. She said— My husband has opened the car door for me every single time we have arrived at our vehicle since we met nearly 22 years ago. Colleagues and strangers open doors and let me enter a building or room first. Other work associates let me order first at the restaurant. And, here’s an almost “secret”… I absolutely love it. The website Eater, which describes itself a “the source for people who care about dining and drinking in the world’s best food cities,” recently ran an article that explained that many restaurants are doing away with classic training and etiquette, like serving the women at the table first and not using phrasing like “ladies” or “gentlemen” because they are eliminating “soft sexism.” [source]

You guys, this is ridiculous!

These are merely a few examples in a long list of grievances that are good manners being killed because some women don’t understand what equality or sexism really means. A restaurant serving women first is a sign of class, elegance and respect. If you are offended by that, have a hard think about why you are so angry. So, ultra-“feminists” here’s my request: be miserable if you want, but stop ruining chivalry, manners and civility for the rest of us. [source]

[clapping] I’m just—Yay! I want to stand up and say thank you.

She goes on to say—I am very grateful to the women who came before me, who fought for my and other women’s rights including voting and equal pay. While I appreciate immensely their sacrifices and hard work, I also can relish in the fact that because they have done so, there’s no other place or time in history where it is better to be a woman than right now in the United States of America. There are women around the world who are truly oppressed, who aren’t allowed basic human rights, who are caned for adultery, who can’t do basic tasks without the accompaniment and approval of men. We can continue to fight for them, while still appreciating the manners of a man—or anyone, for that matter—who is holding the door open for you. [source]

It’s a fantastic article. She wraps up by saying—So, to the women who are offended by civility and manners, I again politely ask you to stop screwing it up for the rest of us and ruining common courtesy in society. And to the chivalrous men, your courtesies are appreciated by many. I say thank you as I virtually curtsy in respect, not in deference. [source]

This is a great article and she speaks from the heart of so many women that I know in the culture who are very sad that our young men have been told that they can’t hold the door open for women anymore. It’s just not true. So Amy, keep teaching your boys to be gentlemen, a real woman will appreciate it and be thankful for it.

Next question comes from a listener who has a question that I actually haven’t had in a little while and I was very thankful to hear about it. She asked to remain anonymous. She said—Heidi, I’m writing to ask about issues in the Bible that are debatable. Not issues such as homosexuality, but things such as women wearing skirts only, or when to baptize. I’m interested in hearing how to deal with these opinions among friends and family. When my kids were baptized I had thought a family member would come but didn’t because this person doesn’t agree with when we decide to baptize our kids. It hurt a lot. And still does. Even though I’ve made my decision through prayer and reading, it doesn’t matter to this person. I’m upset that our kids weren’t supported in this amazing event and that this person would not be excited or happy about it at all. So here’s the question—Is it okay to support a person with a decision that differs from theirs without trying to convince that person of their differing opinion, and how to do this best…the best way to approach this from both sides.

Okay, so this is something called disputable matters. And the Apostle Paul talks about this in Romans 14. If you haven’t studied Romans 14, this is a great time to do it. And he talks about the weak and the strong. He says in verse one of chapter 14—Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. [Romans 14:1-4]

So first of all, I think we need to really decide what a disputable matter is. And so the difference between indisputable matters and disputable matters is very straightforward. So for example, the resurrection of Jesus is an indisputable matter. This means it’s something that we confess as a bedrock truth of our decision to follow Christ if the gospel is going to make any sense and if people are going to be saved. So in other words—if Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then our faith is futile. It means nothing. And the witness who claimed that they saw him aren’t telling the truth. So therefore we remain in our sin. And so that is an indisputable matter.

But in contrast, Paul allows people to differ on matters of honing certain days and with each side fully persuaded in his own mind. Paul is saying—listen, don’t argue about this stuff. It’s not worth it. And today there’s a tendency to refer to a disputable matters as sort of people saying—well, we’re indifferent about it, like theologically. So on the whole—that terminology is probably better. So in contemporary linguistic language—disputable matters is less likely to be misunderstood than indifferent matters. So we don’t want to be indifferent about things.

So it’s all right for your friend to have a position on baptism. I will say—I would have gone. So whether I agreed when you were doing it or not, I would have gone because I would see that your heart is to follow the Lord. And if at some point we can talk about it, I would, I would be willing and wanting to talk about it. Let’s discuss this stuff, right? Because we need to be walking around. What we’re doing is we’re given a black eye to the church, right? So, Paul is encouraging us—hey, let’s get it together why this issue on disputable matters is such a big deal.

Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8-10 are parallel passages. Another great passage for you to study. As I’m talking about this, I’m thinking we should totally do this at MomStrong International—so look for that this fall. I think we’ll make a study out of this because it’s important and I don’t have time to go as deep into it as I would like to right now. But when you understand the longer passage in 1 Corinthians, I think it really helps us to understand Romans 14. So in 1 Corinthians 5, which is a really it’s part of Paul getting us ready for 1 Corinthians 8-10. It helps us to see what qualifies as a disputable matter and what does not. And then it goes on to say when we really should pass judgment on our brothers.

So 1 Corinthians 5 says—It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.  And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? [1 Corinthians 5:1-2]

So here’s the situation. A man in the church was having sex with his stepmother, and Paul says that in a spirit, not of self righteousness, but of grief—that man should be confronted with his sin. And if he refused to repent, he should be put outside the fellowship. You know what that means? That means they are passing judgment. They’re saying—no, you can’t say that you’re walking with the Lord and do this horrible thing that even the pagans know to be wrong. But then Paul goes on to say in verse seven—you’re boasting isn’t good. Right? And so this echoes a statement in verse one where he says—a man has his father’s wife and you’re proud. So why would they be proud in boasting about this terrible sin? The only thing that I can think of is if they have taken the ground that so many in the church are taking right now in making excuses for homosexuality, for exercising Christian liberty…and everything from being mildly drunk, which the Bible says—hey, don’t do that—to excepting sin as if it were normal inside the church…and Paul is saying—that’s the indifference I was talking about a minute ago. Right?

And Paul notes we can’t be indifferent about these things. If you want to see grace, and tolerance, and liberty and not be judgmental—look at us. One of our brothers is sleeping with his stepmom. Lame, right? This is church who has gotten it completely wrong and they’re not exercising wise judgment.. And they’re not taking what they know to be true from the Word of God, right? So Paul explains why we should use decisive judgment in cases like this. He talks about how a little bit of yeast is going to work its way through the whole batch of dough. So he’s saying get rid of the old yeast so that you can have a new batch without this contamination, right? Without the yeast in it. And in verse 11, he goes on to make a really harsh statement, right?

He says—not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. Right? So Paul is saying—it’s up to us inside the church to judge each of us inside the church. A righteous judgment is a hallmark of a person who’s walking in right relationship with God. And then he goes on to talk about disputable matters in Romans 14. These are behaviors which Christians are not to pass judgment on their brothers concerning. In fact, what he’s saying is these are not matters in the Word of God, to which God has said—Hey, this is sin—right?

And so a disputable matter is something that God does not explicitly condemn. And so it’s going to fall into the circle of Christian liberty. And whenever I talk about Christian liberty, whether it’s out on the road or here at the podcast, people always want to throw stones, right? Because there is something that maybe the Lord has spoken directly to you about. And to you it’s sin and the Bible addresses this, right? But to me it isn’t sin. But if I know that it’s sin to you, and I do it in front of you…like let’s say that you believe that alcohol is a sin, that drinking is a sin in any situation. And I know that you believe that and I decide to drink in front of you. Well then I am blowing it because I am not being sensitive to your personal conviction on this issue, right?

And so it’s different to me than your friend not coming to the baptism because that’s just…that to me, these are dispute disputable matters. But there should be freedom in that for you to say—man I don’t understand and I disagree with you, but I can see that your heart is to follow the Lord. And so we want to be encouraging each other to follow the Lord and to be kind because Satan has a strategy in this. All right? And that is to divide us over issues that carry no eternal significance with them, right? And he wants to tempt us.

First of all, the enemy wants to tempt us not to judge our brother when we should in primary areas that have been revealed in Scripture, right? So sexual immorality, clearcut doctrines that Christianity wouldn’t be able to stand—such as the resurrection of Christ—without, right? The second one is to tempt us to judge our brother when we shouldn’t, about something that has not been clearly revealed to us in Scripture, right? And so we want to be very, very careful. Randy Alcorn says that there’s a third strategy, and he says—where there is indisputable sin, would be to tempt us to judge it with a spirit of self righteousness rather than what Paul encourages, which is a spirit of grief and humility.

So this a tough issue, but I have seen entire churches split over the most ridiculous things. A long time ago I was out on the circuit speaking, I want to say this is probably 10 years ago at least, and a young woman came up to me and their whole co-op split over the issue of organic food because “after all”, she said—“what would Jesus eat?” I was like, are you serious? Like this is wrong. That is the disputable matter. And so there are lots of disputable matters. Climate change is a disputable matters. Politics can be a disputable matter, although I think it’s becoming less and less as the far left launches into this infanticide, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual—these are all things that God says very clearly in His Word, are sin. But these many of the issues that hang up the church, whether or not we should wear skirts or pants, whether or not there should be contemporary Christian music.

A long time ago, the argument in the Church was contemporary music versus hymns—and man did people get all up in arms over it. And I think the enemy had a field day with it. So we need to be asking the Lord: Father, give us your heart. Tell me when to speak and when to be quiet. Show me when I need to exercise sound judgment. Because it’s actually sin that I’m seeing and where it’s a gray area and I should withhold judgment and give my brother and sister the benefit of the doubt.

So anyway, I’m over. I’m really over. I’m so sorry I’m over today. I love mailbox Monday. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today. If you want to get ahold of us, reach out to us. You can email us podcast@thebusymom.com or you can write to us at Heidi St. John c/o Firmly Planted Family 11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682.

Thanks for listening everybody, and I will see you back here on Wednesday.

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Heidi St. John
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Faith-filled Fatherhood with Steve Demme – 779

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Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:55 — 20.6MB)

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What makes the role of fathers so important?  Join me today as my friend Steve Demme and I discuss the role of fathers in the culture today.

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • 1 Peter 3:8-9

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

Steve and his wife Sandra have been married since 1979. They have been blessed with four sons, three lovely daughters-in-law, and five special grandchildren. Their fourth son John has Downs Syndrome and lives with them in Lititz, PA.  Steve graduated from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the creator of Math-U-See and the founder of Building Faith Families.

Connect with the AUTHOR: Math-U-See | Building Faith Families | Facebook

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TRANSCRIPTION:

This podcast was brought to you by our friends at Melt: Massage for Couples.

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you guys joined me at my little corner of the Internet. Today is Friday, June 14th. This is episode number 779 and it is meet my friend Friday—and you guys know how much I love having people on the show who are going to encourage you and bless you. Today is no different. My friend Steve Demme is on the show with me today. It’s been quite awhile since he’s been here and I will introduce him in a minute, but we’re going to take on fatherhood today. Fatherhood is so important and it’s under attack in the culture right now. Steve knows a lot about fatherhood. He’s been married to his wife since 1979 and they have four sons, three daughters in law and five amazing grandkids. So we’re going to talk all things fatherhood and culture today.

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so I want to say thanks to everybody who’s come out to join me at the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference. I will be there today and tomorrow—so if you’re in the Denver area, come on out. You can find information—just go ahead and search for The Rocky Mountain Homeschool conference. On Tuesday, July 2nd, I will be speaking at the NW Slavic Action Summit at Smirna Christian Church. I will link back to that in the show notes today. Then from the 11th through the 13th I’ll be in Pasadena for the CHEA convention and then in Phoenix, July 19th and 20th for AFHE. This is a very busy season for me and I appreciate everybody who’s coming out and saying hello. Also, want to say a big shout out to our sponsor over at MELT. You guys remember me talking about this last week. This is an awesome opportunity. Father’s Day is this Sunday, and so there’s still time for you guys to get free access to that Melt Couples Massage Course that we’ve talked about on this show a whole lot of times now.

You can get the masterclass for 30 days for FREE when you hop on over to purchase their Almond Oil from Amazon. And honestly guys, I looked it up just to kind of see what are people saying. They have 557 customer reviews at four and a half stars. This is great stuff. It’s a purchase price of $18.95—totally worth it. Makes a great, great, great Father’s Day Gift. Your husband will thank you for it. So check it out. If you want more information, go to my website TheBusyMom.com/Melt for more information. Hurry up because this offer is going to end as soon as Father’s Day is over.

All right, I’m going to get right to my guest today because I don’t want to miss a minute of time with him. Steve and I have been friends for quite a while, hanging out on the speaking circuit with homeschooling. And he’s, you know—my kids love him and we have all kinds of funny stories that we can share. But Steve has a real heart for families. And one of the things I love talking to him about is his heart for parents in particular and for building strong families. And actually some of you are going—man, that name, it sounds so familiar. That’s because Steve is the creator of MathUSee and the founder of Building Faith Families. And so, I’m excited to let him talk to you about the projects he’s working on now, and we’re going to chat about fatherhood. Hey Steve, welcome to the podcast.

[Steve] Thanks Heidi, is lovely to be here with you and all your listeners. Thanks for having me.

[Heidi] Yeah, I’m glad that you’re here. It’s been a while. It’s really been too long. I apologize.

[Steve] This is the old journey. Start with a single step.

[Heidi] That’s exactly right. You have been out on the circuit speaking this season as well. And you also just finished writing a book, right? Finishing a book project.

[Steve] I did.

[Heidi] Right on.

[Steve] I wrote a Christian approach to personal finance with a 15 or 16 year old student in my head as I was writing. I don’t know if you do that when you write, but I’m writing to somebody—and I’m writing to a young person. And so it’s Personal Finance from a Christian Perspective, tons of Scripture, lots of math applications. In the first book I wrote on this topic was in 2008, some of the units were outdated. And so this was supposed to be the revision year. And as I started to do it, I ended up rewriting the whole program, rerecording it and filming it in front of live students and online students. And it’s awesome.

[Heidi] that is awesome

[Steve] So it’s at the printer right now and it’ll be out in a couple of weeks.

[Heidi] I am excited. So you have been doing this now for quite awhile, you know, ministering to families and you started out with MathUSee. Which anybody who’s been homeschooling for more than 10 minutes knows what that is. But you’ve got so much more on your heart than math, and so much more than personal finance. You really have a heart to see families be grounded and be strong. Where does that come from?

[Steve] It started when I was in seminary and I was wanting to find a vision for education. I had a class on Christian schools and I did something radical. I got out my Young’s concordance and I looked up every Word in the Bible I had thought had anything to do with education, teach, teacher, teaching, instructing, instruction. And I ended up writing a paper on the millennial view of education. And the idea was—what will education look like if there’s a millennium? And I just based on Scripture, mostly Deuteronomy and Proverbs, but throughout the Word of God, I said—parents should be the primary educators of their children and the curriculum should be based on God’s Word. That’s not a radical thought today, but it was 40 years ago. And then the second thing that happened, my wife and I were invited to a homeschool conference back in, I think it was 1982—one of the first homeschool conferences. And we started seeing families who had already been homeschooling and we loved the fruit.

We saw moms and dads whose best friends were still their teenagers. We saw young men that would look you in the eye and give you a firm handshake and young ladies that could have an intelligent conversation. And it just resonated with our heart. And the second thing was though—at that point I’d already been a youth group leader, and run summer camps, and I had been a high school teacher—to see that kind of family harmony and that heart connection between generations, was something I hadn’t seen in any other sphere that much. And once you’re involved in youth work for a while, you start realizing that the most important influence in a child’s life is not the youth leader. It’s a mom and a dad.

And so I started redirecting my energy—instead of working with young people, working with parents. And in particular, I think dads are a key part of the family. And I think that’s why it says at the end of Malachi—God is going to turn the hearts of the fathers to their home and going to turn the hearts of the children to their dads. And that’s what I see happening in a nutshell. When I travel around, I speak at men’s conferences, I speak at homeschool conferences, I speak at a church retreats, and I really believe that that’s what God’s doing in our culture. And I don’t give a rip what the media says. I don’t give a rip with the news paper says—God is turning the hearts of dads towards their home. And I just did a talk in Virginia this past weekend and I had a room filled with men, men standing around the edges on the sides, and in the back. And my talk, it was about how to build up your wife. And these men were taking the time to go listen to some tall, bald guy talk about how to build up their family. And I think that appetite comes from the Spirit of God. And so I am not hope-less. I am hope-filled that God is restoring our country from the heart level and He’s doing it by working in the hearts of men. And I’m really at good courage.

[Heidi] That’s so encouraging. I know it’s encouraging for me because these are the things we talk about on the podcast all the time. I spend a lot of time trying to encourage the hearts of women, and mothers in particular, toward their children and toward their husband. And I agree with you. We have also seen incredible things happening out on the road and as you and I both have. We are crisscrossing the country, we’ve kind of been like ships in the night. Like this season—I haven’t seen you at all. But I’m so encouraged by what you’re doing.

Talk to the dad right now, who feels like he has…like he’s missed an opportunity. So I get letters like all the time, there’s a dad who’s listening to this right now and he’s got—maybe his youngest is eight, but he’s got a 15 year old and a 17 year old. And he feels like he missed an opportunity to speak into the life of his kids. And now he’s just kind of putting his hands up in the air and going—why bother? Talk to that man, to that dad for just a minute.

[Steve] All right, so here’s the deal. It’s never too late number one. One of my favorite names for God is redeemer and God just works. And you know, because you read the book I wrote called Crisis to Christ and in 2012, we’d been homeschooling our kids. They’re all in their twenties and thirties now. They’re working for Demme Learning and we decided to have a family business instead of just working for me. I thought this would be really easy because I loved my kids. I thought they can handle more and more of the business, it frees me up to do more speaking and writing. But I didn’t realize—I learned some painful lessons that year, that there’s nobody that can build up my kids like me. And that can hurt him like me. You know, with the authority that God gives men—now again, who can even say that in our culture today without almost getting stoned. But it’s in Scripture, he made the husband the head.

And so that authority though, carries with it tremendous responsibility. And what I found out was, is that I’m homeschooling my kids. I’m trying to protect them, provide for them, give them something better than I didn’t receive growing up. And then to find out that I’m a source of pain in their life and that I’ve wounded them. It was almost more than I could take. But you know what—if I can just put a little parenthesis here, remember Enoch in the Bible. He had lived for decades and then it says he had his son. And it said after his son was born, Enoch walked with God. Something about having a son. It stirs a man. It makes them want to be a better man. It makes him want to leave a lasting impression. It makes him want to encourage his kids. So to that man does even wanting to be a good man—I first of all said, that’s good stuff. You’re on the right track.

So then what happened is I ended up getting therapy. I ended up getting a counselor, ended up going deep and trying to figure out where my own issues came from, taking them to the cross, letting Christ work through me. And then I was back and I was being restored to my sons. And it wasn’t like, you know, I’d thrown them off a bridge or anything like that. But I’m a dad and dad’s have tremendous influence in the life of the kids. And so I went back to my sons and I said—you know, I know that I’ve asked your forgiveness when I had done something wrong, but you know—I’m your dad. I had no idea I was doing these things. Thank you for pointing out my blind spots and whatever it takes, let’s be reconciled. And it took a couple of years. But you know what? I’m in the best place I’ve ever been with my sons and my wife, but I had to do a lot of dying. Which if I can put this in here—I believe God designed men to die. Because he told him—lay your life down for your wife. Love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave his life for her. And so I don’t know about ladies, I’m not a lady, but I’m a man—and I had to do a lot of dying in 2012 and I continue to make dying a good thing. I embrace it now in a different way instead of kicking against it, because to what Jesus said—if you lose your life, you find it. And I can’t tell you how good of a place I am and how I didn’t like the dying—but that’s what Jesus did. Jesus laid his life down and it’s because he laid his life down that we’re all alive today. And we’re going to live forever because He laid his life down. And so dying is not a bad thing. And it’s going to your children in humility and repenting, and going deep, and creating a safe place where they can approach you and point out your blind spots, and your frailties and places where perhaps you have blown it. It’s not fun, but it yields really good fruit. And God walked through with me. It wasn’t me on my own as the Holy Spirit that carried me through and help me and was my like comforter at my side. So that’s what happened.

So to that father who’s thinking he missed the opportunity, my kids were all adults—and I think we were within a whisker of them all moving to a different state. And now we all work together in the same business and I see them almost every day. And I had lunch with one of my sons just today, and I’m making plans to meet with my other boys on a regular basis. We’ve been doing this now for the last couple of years.

[Heidi] So good. It’s so important. One of the things that Jay has talked about with me out on the road, the season we’ve been talking… We’re coming up on our 30th anniversary this fall.

[Steve] Congratulations!

[Heidi] Thank you! And we’ve been talking about seven things we’ve been learning, you know, seven things we’ve learned in 30 years. Of course there’s a whole lot more than that. But somebody asked us recently about this issue of submission, you know—what is the role of submission in marriage? And I was so encouraged and blessed to say to hear Jay. He said basically exactly what you said. He said—listen, you know,  we hear a lot about—wives submit your husband’s. We don’t hear very much about—husbands, love your wife like Christ loved the church. What did he do? He laid down His life for her. And Jay said—you know, I have always seen my role in our home is one of God saying: Jay St. John, you are in charge of making sure that your family flourishes, that your children flourish, that your marriage flourishes, that your wife flourishes. And then your children and your wife will respond to that loving leadership. And it was such a beautiful picture. I think of exactly what you’re saying. It’s laying down and the fruit that comes from it is amazing. And I’ve definitely seen it in your life. And I think one of the things that, you know, we talked about earlier was sort of this downplaying of fatherhood in the culture. And I guess I would argue that probably a root cause behind it is the loss of our understanding of what true fatherhood looks like.

And so we are kind of messing that up. Like we keep hearing things like “toxic masculinity”, and boys aren’t allowed to be…. Men are sort of under attack. So one of the questions that’s coming to the podcast is from a mom named Amy. And she’s saying—I don’t know even how to tell my boys how to treat women anymore because the culture’s so backwards and upside down. It’s kind of a full scale war on men. But I think the sniper attacks at fatherhood are very specific in saying that fathers are not allowed to exert leadership in their families. They don’t want  to be distinguished. The culture says we don’t distinguish you from mothers in any way. But God says it’s so much differently. And so when you get asked out on the road, which I know that you do, from parents that come up to you and they’re asking questions about the role of fathers and understanding fatherhood and teaching their boys to be men and really encouraged them to be masculine—because that’s how God made them. How can we, I guess, encourage parents to encourage their boys to become men who will someday become fathers, and then flourish in that role?

[Steve] One of the big lessons I learned in my, Sandy’s and I’s relationship—by the way, we just celebrated 40.

[Heidi] Wow.

[Steve] 10 days ago.

[Heidi] You’re 10 years ahead of me. Congratulations! That’s amazing.

[Steve] You know what though? That was my last newsletter, and I don’t know if you saw it, but I’ll have to send it to you if you haven’t. But we were sitting in dinner, we went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. We have—it’s the only the second time we’d been away for a week, just the two of us since we’ve got a special needs child. And we looked across the table and I said—Sandy, you know what’s the best thing that’s called, you know, going on? And she said—this is a celebration of all the work that we have done. You know, when I say work, most of that work is internal. It’s stuff that I had to face. I had to face my weaknesses and my frailties and with God’s help, humble myself, etc. But one of the biggest lessons I learned is—that when God says—wives—just talked about this Saturday—wives submit to your husband. First of all, that little statement there, that letter was addressed to wives. It wasn’t addressed to husbands. It’s not my job to make sure that my wife is submissive or has the right attitude towards me. My job, the letter addressed to me is—lay your life down, love your wife as Christ loved the church.

You don’t read anybody else’s mail. And if Sandy wants to submit to me, great. If he doesn’t—not my department. My department is to focus on Jesus and love like Jesus loves me. Point number two—it’s really hard to be a father until you’ve been a son. And let me see if I can explain that. That verse John 15:9 to me unlocked this whole truth. And Jesus says as the father loved me, that’s how I’ve loved you. And I start thinking about that and I thought—how did the Father loves His Son?

Because if you want to be a good dad…there’s only one perfect father in Scripture, or anywhere else—and it’s the Heavenly Father. And how did He love His Son? And He loved Him and He expressed that love at His baptism in a beautiful way. He said, this is Steve’s translation—this is My Boy. I love Him to pieces, and He’s well pleasing in my site, right this minute. And when you think about it contextually as before Jesus did anything, and this is what a good dad tells his sons—I am so glad you’re my son.

I had a guy tell me the other day at a conference, he says—I tell my son on a regular basis, if there was a mile of 10 year old boys all standing head to head, I pick you every time.

[Heidi] Oh, I love that.

[Steve] That’s the kind of love that the Father was saying when He said—this is My Boy, I would pick Him every time. And then He said—and I love Him to pieces, just the way He is, and He’s well pleasing in My site. And because of what Jesus has done for us, and taken away our sin, and closed a cloaked us in His righteousness—we too, we belong, we’ve been adopted into His family, we are loved with an everlasting love and we’re well pleasing in His sight. And that irrespective of what we do or don’t do it—there is nothing we can do to make God love us more than He does and nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

And so what I’m saying is, for me in my journey, I had to learn how to be a loved son before I could be a loving father. I had to get my eyes up on my heavenly Father in a whole new way and rebuild my relationship with Him because there were flaws in it. And that’s what I discovered in 2012. And being a loved son, which is what Jesus was, prepares me to be a loving dad. And now that I’m receiving those things from my Dad, I’m able to pass them on to my sons, which is—I’m able to love my boys like I have been loved. Which is what Jesus says—now love one another just like I loved you. And I thought—okay, that’s the vision for Godly Fatherhood, is to keep your eyes on the Heavenly Father and just like He loved His Boy, and just like His Boy loved us—that’s how we’re supposed to love our boys.

So I’ll give you some examples. One of the things that we do, my wife carefully picks out a birthday card for each of my boys. Two weeks before their birthday, this card appears on my desk . And I began praying, and I began seeking God for Him to help me to see my sons like He sees them. To see their heart, and their Spirit, and not the external—but the real man. Just like He talked about David, he didn’t look on the outside. He looked on the heart.

And I start making notes and then I prayerfully write a letter to each of my boys on their birthday. And I’ve been doing this now for many, many years. And pretty much though, the essence of it is— I’m so glad you’re my boy. I’d pick you every time. I love you to pieces and you are well pleasing in my sight if you never do anything. I love you right now with all my heart. And think about that. How many people here would love to have a letter from their dad saying those things? And that’s one of the things that I try to communicate to my son’s on a regular basis. I don’t care how old they are. I don’t care if I’m 80 and they’re in their 50’s—I’m going to keep writing them letters. I’m going to keep taking them out to lunch. I’m going to keep loving them. And I want them to know that I am so glad that they’re my boy.

[Heidi] That’s so good

[Seve] But I keep my eyes on my dad. You see, because that’s the whole point. That’s how He loved His Son. So that’s how I want to love my sons. And I can keep going along that line, but that’ll get us a taste.

[Heidi] I love it. Well, and we’ve only got about a couple of minutes left, but I wanted to turn the tables just a little bit because Father’s Day is right around the corner. And we’ve been talking to dads about how they can love their sons in particular, you know, their kids in general—their sons in particular. But let’s talk for just a minute about how the rest of us can really encourage and love on our dad or our husband. What are some practical ways that we can encourage them in the role, this specific role that God has given to them? What comes to your mind, my friend?

[Steve] Well, when I read the commandment to honor your father and your mother, I’m just so focused on being honorable.

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] You know what I mean?

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Steve] That’s scripted to me is a two-edged sword in the sense that I want to have the right attitude towards my parents because each of us has parents and we want to have the right attitude. Whether they’re living or not. We want to honor our parents, but we want to be honorable for our kids. I don’t want to just walk into the room and assume that they have to genuflect and start standing up and giving me honor and all that. Frankly, Father’s days are a little hard for me. Because we’re getting together Sunday as a family, and the whole family’s going to get together. And, sorry, I’m starting to cry on this end.

[Heidi]

[Steve] Yeah. I got some great kids and they’re wonderful. And I don’t know what they’re going to do. But yeah, for a dad, I think probably when it says in John—there’s no greater joy than I have to see that my kids are walking in the truth. And that’s the greatest joy I receive—it’s just watching my sons love their wife, love their kids, love each other. You know, my boys are each others close friends and I love the way that they honor their mom. So it’s a little uncomfortable for me. I would rather…

[Heidi] I know that’s how come I told you I was going to turn the tables on you.

[Steve] Yeah, I didn’t know what to say to that one. But for me—we’ve learned each other’s love languages in our family. Which one of my sons is quality time, which one is touch, which one is gifts. Me—I’m words of affirmation. So cards means something to me, and words mean something to me. And I remember, I do remember what kids say and they go deep so.

[Heidi] Well and you’re good at that. You’re good at words of affirmation. I know Saylor just misses you. We were looking at pictures the other day and she was like—where’s the big tall man and everything. Last time you saw Saylor, she was sitting on your shoulders.

[Steve] Yeah. That poor peanut, we were doing shoulder rides. And then she broke her arm in a hundred places or whatever.

[Heidi] I know it. What in the world I am telling you what—I can’t get away from the trouble, if you know what I’m saying. Well, I love you, my friend. I’m just so thankful for your heart, for families in your heart to encourage fathers  in particular to be the men that God would have them be because of how loved they are. And I think that message of how loved we are needs to be out there more often. So I appreciate it.

I’m going to link back to you in the show notes today. So everyone’s like—how do I find this guy? I’ll link back to all things Steve Demme in the show notes today. But Steve, what is it that you want people, listeners— to leave them with? Where can they find you? How would you have them search you out?

[Steve] Well, I have my own podcast. Which I’m only at number 203. I just 201 I think I interviewed Joni Eareckson Tada. So listening to the podcast would be one avenue. The second one would be—I have a newsletter, which goes out once a month. And then I have a whole bunch of free resources on my website. But if I could say one last zinger here—the reason dads are under attack is because the Devil is not stupid and he knows that they’re the key.

[Heidi] Yes.

[Steve] And that’s why we’re under attack We are. So spiritual warfare comes into play here. I mean, this morning I was out on my prayer walk and things weren’t just….I wasn’t connecting. Right? And you know what I sensed? I just sensed opposition. And so I did a lot of—I bound the strong man in Jesus’ name. I applied the blood of Christ. I resisted the Devil, not only for myself, but for my family. And you know what? It broke. So one of the things that I do, and I’m on my prayer walk, I might not be able to write letters that are editorial, and I might be PC policed to death and all that kind of stuff—but they can’t stop me from praying. 

[Heidi] That’s right.

[Steve] I can pray my heart out, and I can bind the strong man and I can pray any way that the Spirit of God directs me. And whether I even have a voice or not, I can pray in my Spirit. And that’s one of the things that we need to do as men. And the second thing men need to do is they need to have other men in their life. I saw a quote the other day—isolation is the Kryptonite of men. And once we get separated from good godly fellowship, then we get picked off pretty easily. So we need to be cogent and fighting the good fight and the Holy Spirit will help us to do it. But we also need brothers to link arms with and that’s one of the things that I’m doing a lot of—is just connecting men with other men when I speak.

[Heidi] Well, you’re doing a fantastic job. You are really do fit that title of ambassador and it really is a privilege for me to call you my friend. Thank you so much Steve for taking the time to come and bless our people.

[Steve] Back at ya Heidi.

[Heidi] Thank you so much. If you you guys who want more information about Steve Demme and his ministry to families. I will link back to Steve’s information in the show notes today.

Want to just remind you, you can get ahold of me anytime. You can write to us at a Heidi St. John c/o Firmly Planted Family 11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682. Make sure you hop on over to MomStrong International. We’re going to be coming up next week talking about peace in an age of anxiety. I know you guys are going to be encouraged. Jump into the study right now so that you can catch up with us. You can do that at MomStrongInternational.com have a great day everybody, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.

Write to Heidi:
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Freedom From Anger | MomStrong Internationa Week 2/4 – 778

MomStrong International

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:20 — 15.3MB)

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The Bible has a lot to say about strong emotions and our responses. Let’s dig in and see what’s there about anger and patience—since one seems to be tied to a lack of the other. Thankfully, God has much more than just commands for us to follow; the gospel also gives us resources for endurance and faithfulness while we’re in the trenches of motherhood and the busy grind of everyday life. 

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Luke 11:13

Scripture Mentioned in Podcast

  • Ephesians 4:26
  • 1 Corinthians 13:4
  • Ephesians 4:1-3
  • Ephesians 4:27
  • Proverbs 15:21

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Hey friends, this is Heidi St John. Thanks for joining me today at my little corner of the Internet. Today is Wednesday, June 12th—this is episode number 778. Today we’re going to be diving into week two of our Bible Study at MomStrong International and we’re going to be talking about how to become free from anger. God has freedom for you.

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So thanks everybody for tuning in today. This is a busy week for me. I leave today for Denver. I’m going to be speaking for the CHEC conference there with my friend Ken Ham. Really excited to see what God does this weekend. I’ve heard it’s a full house, so if you haven’t gotten tickets yet or you’re interested in coming, you might want to hurry up and check that out. I’m going to be, hopefully getting in sometime this evening, so cannot wait. I’ll be doing the opening keynote and the closing keynote, and we’ve got a great weekend plan for you in Denver for the Christian Educators of Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Convention. So, looking forward to seeing you guys there. Also wanted to let you know that coming up, I’m so excited about what God’s doing here at MomStrong International as we carry on through the summer Bible Studies, and this is a great, great, great time for you to make a habit of getting into the Word of God with your kids of studying His Word.

As the Bible says, to show yourself approved workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing— or rightly handling—God’s Word. And there are so much miss information out there right now—that was a nice word—false teaching is what it is. There’s so much false teaching out there right now and you have the ability to know and discern God’s Word, and you can do that through studying His Word. And so we want to encourage you to join us at MomStrong International. Also to join us for the Scripture Writing Challenge—speaking of which, today’s verse is found in Luke 11:13. This is out of the Scripture Writing Challenge. This is today’s verse. If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

I love this because it’s exactly what I was just saying to you. You have the Holy Spirit and God wants to help you understand, and study, and apply His Word to your life. So check it out at MomStrongInternational.com. We are in the second week of our study on the fruits of the Spirit and let’s go ahead and open up this study in prayer.

Father, we thank you for the opportunity that you give us here at the podcast to study Your Word together. I thank you Lord that you are intimately acquainted with our hearts, that you love us. That your Word says that You love us and care for us. We thank You that Your Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Lord, as we talk a little bit about anger and Your desire that we be free from it, and that we don’t sin in our anger—Lord, I pray that you’d help us. Lord, if there’s anyone who’s listening to this, who can already feel that touch of Your Spirit that is thinking—Oh man, that’s me. I’m angry. I’m struggling with anger. Lord, would you just be present right now? Holy Spirit, we need your help. Father, there’s so many things that are happening in the culture right now that are discouraging and frustrating and can lead to us feeling defeated and alone. And Lord, I pray that we will be reminded by Your Spirit that we are never alone, and that You have victory for us. And so thank you Lord, as we study your Word, that You will help us. Thank You for Your help. Lord, I thank you for the Holy Spirit and we just invite You into this conversation and we bless Your name. Father, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. In Jesus name. Amen.

All right. If you’re in the MomStrong study with me, go ahead and open it up to week two. We’re talking about patience this week as we study the fruits of the Spirit. Maybe you’re like—wait a second, anger is not a fruit of the Spirit. No, but the fruit of the Spirit that we’re talking about this week in particular is patience. And we’re going to look at it through the lens of being free. Really, when we get angry, right? And we, when we lash out in anger at somebody—we’ve lost our patience. Am I right? Uh, yeah. You’re right. That’s what it is, right? And so the Bible teaches us in Ephesians 4:26—that we can be angry and not sin. And in fact, here’s what it says—be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

This is kind of a hard thing, I think, sometimes for us to teach our children because we’re not…I think as a general rule we are a bunch of chickens. Do you guys know what I mean? I mean, I think it’s hard for us to address frustrations that we might have particularly outside of our family. So let’s say there’s a frustrating situation that you’re experiencing in church, or a frustrating friendship that you are engaged in. And rather than address it, we allow a root of bitterness to grow up in our hearts, thus beginning to test our patience, right? Which is a fruit of the Spirit. And before we know it, we’ve let the sun go down on our anger multiple times…so multiple sunsets, and we’ve not resolved this and we end up being angry—and in our anger then we end up sinning.

And that’s what God doesn’t want us to do. And so as we become MomStrong over at MomStrong International, we’re going to take a little look at it because I want us to be able to say—Father, I see this as an issue in my life and I want you to help me. The Bible teaches us in 1 Corinthians 13:4 that love is patient. And so when we exercise that patience, what we’re really saying is—I love you. So think about this with me for just a minute. Our kids are really good at revealing lots of things about us as parents, right? And one of the things that often gets brought to the surface is just how little patience we have. Whenever I go through the checkout stand at the grocery store in the middle of the day, this doesn’t happen to me so much anymore because my kids are older, most of them. But people used to say to me—Oh, why aren’t your kids in school? And inevitably one of my kids would say—oh, we’re homeschooled. And almost always the response would be—oh my goodness, I don’t know how you do that. I don’t have the patience for that.

So everybody listening to this right now, mom in the shower, mom doing the laundry, mom out on a walk, mom doing the dishes—stop for a second. If you have a supernatural amount of patience, raise your hand. Nobody. I’m not even in your shower with you, aren’t you glad? And I know you didn’t raise your hand because none of us has that supernatural patience. Patience is a fruit of the Spirit. It’s evidence that God is at work in our lives and we need it because I think motherhood, and parenting in general, and fatherhood— it’ll test us. It’ll take us right to the brink of what we know that we can do in the natural. So think about this. When our little person needs three full minutes to determine which doughnut is the one for this morning’s treat in the grocery store. But you’re pressed for time, it’s going to raise your blood pressure a little bit, right? When you’re verbally processing. High schooler wants to talk through birthday party plans for an hour while you’re trying to get paperwork done or trying to get something done ahead of a deadline—it might test your ability to enjoy that moment with her and test you to multitask your stuff with grace. Right? When you’re recycling sits forgotten in the garage again, it’s going to find that last nerve inside your head and twang it like little out of tune fiddle. So what do we do? Another spilled drink, another breakdown, another choice that makes me ask them—What were you thinking? Right?

I never thought I had an issue with anger until I had kids. And I know it isn’t just me. So I know that this study is going to really encourage you. I’ve learned that it’s a lot easier to have patience when I’m basically in control of my schedule in my life, but then all of a sudden some things, you know—they don’t work the way we want them to. We get hangry, right? That’s my husband. He’d be like—Yep, that’s me. And maybe we lose sight for just a minute. And the Bible has a lot to say about strong emotions. God understands our emotions. He created us.

So this month we’re going to dig in and see what’s there about anger and patience since one seems to definitely be tied to a lack of the other. I praise the Lord because He has so much more than commands for us to follow. The gospel gives us resources for endurance and faithfulness while we’re in the trenches of parenting, while we’re in the trenches with the grind of everyday life—God says He has help for us. Ephesians 4:1-3—therefore I the prisoner of the Lord. This is the apostle Paul, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of which you’ve been called. Wow. Therefore, I Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling, which you have been called with all humility. Moment of silence. With patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Now as we read this together, we noticed that Paul is explaining why it’s important for us, and exactly how we need to walk in this passage. And he’s actually saying the why also, which is why I love this so much. He’s saying—listen, I’m going to implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called. So the calling to which we’ve been called, the calling to which you teenager who’s listening to this right now, the calling to every mom and dad listening to this right now—our calling is to be stewards of the message that is the gospel. It’s the message that is the gospel.

And when we lash out in anger, the first thing it does is it tells people around us—we’re actually not walking in the Spirit. I think this is so interesting because the very first characteristic that the apostle Paul brings to the Ephesians in his letter is humility. Really, when we lash out in anger, what we’re saying is—I’m more important than you are. I have reached my limit. You have pushed me to my limit and I can no longer be full of patient, I can no longer be full of self-control—another fruit of the Spirit. And he’s telling us that the very first fruit of the Spirit, humility, helps us to experience the freedom to live out all the others. Because if we don’t have humility then we’re gonna have a hard time with the other ones.

If we don’t have humility, we can’t be gentle, right? If we don’t have humility, we’re not going to care about patience. If we don’t have humility, we’re going to really struggle to show tolerance for somebody else who might be having a struggle because—hey, we don’t have that struggle. So there you go. Get over it, right? So as we read this, Paul is giving us instructions on not only why it’s important for us not to be angry, but also how we apply the principles of his words. I want you guys to think with me for just a minute.

Let’s step back for just a second and think about this. What’s the danger of letting the sun go down on our anger? In other words, when Paul says—don’t let the sun go down on your anger—does he mean that literally or as a principal? Now, sometimes—I think it’s both, because I think sometimes you’re in a situation where you can’t address it right now, and the sun’s going down. So let’s not get all hung up on whether or not the sun is going up or going down. I think what the Apostle Paul is saying is don’t let very much time go by before you resolve this. Because what happens is you become very, very vulnerable to a root of bitterness. And when bitterness sets in, we are in trouble. When we start harboring our anger—some of you guys just need to let it go, right? I’m not saying every little thing that bothers you—go confront that person. Sometimes, we need to go—Lord, should I be angry about this? And the Lord’s gently going to say—nope, let it go. And we’re going to have to let it go. Right? But sometimes we really do need to address it. And so this principle works in marriage, this works in our friendships—we don’t want to be known as men and women who harbor anger, who are not letting the gospel actually play out in our lives.

There’s an episode, I love in Veggie Tales, and there’s an episode in Larry Boy—which is a spin-off of veggie tales called Larry boy and The Angry Eyebrows. Have you guys ever seen this, oh my goodness—one of my favorite shows ever. In the episode, Larry’s arch nemesis, Awful Alvin….I’m gonna let that sit right there. He sends out a fleet of flying eyebrows that attached to people who are harboring anger, possessing them until they’re consumed by their own rage. I’ve always thought that’d be so funny. Like every once in a while I’ll say to my kids—Ooh, I can see you’re angry eyebrows. Right? And it just kind of makes you laugh. It’s sort of disarming.

And The lesson of the episode is summed up by Bok Choy, the wise teacher of Super Hero 101 at the local community college. He says, “Be warned….If you hold on to your anger, your anger will hold on to you…” This is a great way for kids—and maybe even adults—to grasp this concept. And so, This is what Paul means when he says—“Do not give the devil a foothold”. That’s Ephesians 4:27. Because when we harbor anger, it quickly turns into bitterness, which syncs into our heart like a harpoon—and pulls out gossip, and passive aggression, and manipulation. And we see this all over the culture today and I have seen it in my own everyday life, right? We’re going to get hurt. People are going to let us down. Friends are going to gossip about us. Friends are going to steal things from us, right?

Whether it’s the affection of another friend, or sometimes intellectual property or whatever it is—and we can get angry and hung up. And the Bible says—in your anger, do not sin. Why? Because we are in ambassadors. We’re ambassadors of the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. In Proverbs 15:21, the Bible teaches us that a kind word, a gentle word, turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. And so this doesn’t mean that we should shy away from confrontation—something we’re talking about in this study  this month, and we’re going to give you opportunities to support this with other verses out of God’s Word—but it’s very clear all throughout Scripture that God is saying you are an ambassador of the living God. The Apostle Paul said—it is as if God is making His appeal through you— and God cannot make his appeal through an angry Christian.

Now, I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life to wrestle with the idea of anger. I grew up in an angry home. And you know, I could sit here, I guess all day long and try to analyze why there was so much anger in my home—and some of the anger was justified. A great deal of it wasn’t. But I can tell you that the end result—it’s very, very damaging. And we don’t want to be known as angry parents. We don’t, we don’t. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my kids to leave my home and think of me as this angry, screaming mom running around my house like a clown with my hair on fire. I don’t want that. And I also think that when we struggle to control our anger, our children begin to seek God as angry. And we’re going to dig deeper into this in the study. So I don’t have time to go into it today, but I want to encourage you—download the study at MomStrongInternational.com. You can see it. It’s right there.

I want to dig into this idea of God’s anger because God, He has something the Bible calls wrath. The Bible says that the Lord is a jealous and avenging God. That the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. And I think sometimes when we don’t understand what that means… I mean God is angry at wickedness, right? God is a God of justice. He’s also a God of mercy. And I think sometimes Christians, and non-Christians alike, we can wrestle with this idea of God’s anger. And as parents, if we don’t show our children what it means to have self-control and to get control of anger in our own lives when our children learn about God’s righteous anger, they misinterpret it and they go—well, my mom was a jerk. She was angry all the time. My Dad, he was, he was awful to me. And if that’s the way God is, I don’t want anything to do with Him. So we want to teach our children what God says about anger. And if you’ve ever struggled with the concept of God’s anger and God’s wrath, this is going to be a study that you will love because we’re gonna unpack it for you a little bit and we’ll see that God’s anger and His love fit together in a beautiful way. But God knows that as human beings created in His image, image bearers of the King of kings and the Lord of lords, as ambassadors for the message of the Gospel—we must be controlled by love.

Our worldview is shaped by the culture that we’re living in right now. And the culture subscribes and—I don’t even think they do it on purpose—to a philosophy that’s called Expressive Individualism. So this is the belief that everybody has within them an identity to be discovered, a true self just waiting to be actualized. Robert Bellah, in his book “Habits of the Heart” wrote that 80% of Americans agree with this statement: “an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue.” In another study, 91% of Americans (and 76% of regular church goesr) agreed that “to find yourself, look within yourself.”

Oh my goodness. You see, at the heart of modern societies, is this idea that we get to define right and wrong for ourselves. And in fact, the culture says this is the only authentic way to be a human being. And the net result of that has been the creation of a deep distrust of any authority figure—whether it’s parents, whether it’s a pastor, whether it’s the Bible, or even God Himself. And so because of this, culture has no problem with a God who loves unconditionally, but it can’t fathom the idea of a God who holds us accountable for our wrong beliefs and actions. After all, we’re just following our heart so we can be happy—what’s wrong with that? So Tim Keller was the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City for many years. And after each service, he was known for holding a Q&A time to answer the questions of skeptics. And an objection to God’s wrath was almost a weekly occurrence, right? One answer that he gave to a woman’s objection was, “Why aren’t you offended by the idea of a forgiving God?” And when the woman heard his answer, she was taken aback.

But what he was getting at was this: we live in a certain culture that shapes our objections to the counter-cultural truths of the Bible. And those of us who live in 21st century Western society typically don’t have any problem with what the Bible teaches about forgiveness and turning the other cheek. And you love your neighbor and all that. We’re totally fine with the idea with a loving God, but we struggle to understand the wrath of God. Whereas those who come from a more traditional cultural, they have a revulsion to the idea of a God of unconditional love, but the doctrine of a God of judgment is not a hard pill to swallow for them at all.

And so as hard as it might be to believe, Western society isn’t the final court in which to judge what the Bible says. Instead, the Bible is counter-cultural in all societies—just at different points. And this is why we have to let the Bible stand in judgment of culture, not the other way around. And God’s saying—you can be free. You can be free to follow me, free from your anger, free from a wrong understanding of what it looks like to walk in right relationship with Me.

God set you free. For those of you who have grown up in an angry at home, I’m here to tell you, I understand where you’re coming from. God wants to set you free. You are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through you. It’s as if God was saying to the world, through your life—come back to me. Come back to me. And so if you’re struggling to understand that or you’re struggling to come to grips with an anger issue in your own life, or you’re struggling to understand how God can be both loving and wrathful—join us at MomStrong International. We are digging deep into the Word of God. You’re going to love it. It’s going to encourage you and bless you.

And also, I want to encourage you, we would love to hear from you if you’ve got questions that you’d like to see addressed at the podcast. If you’d like to find out more about MomStrong International, check it out at MomStrongInternational.com. It’s a great time to jump on board with this and to experience the freedom that God has for you as you study His Word and make it the primary go to for your life.

You guys, you are loved. God loves you. He has good things for you.

Thanks for listening to everybody. We so appreciate it. We thank you so much for leaving reviews for the podcast at iTunes and we read them everyday. I’m going to read a few more for you when we come back to the podcast on Friday. Have a great Wednesday everybody, and I’ll see you back here in a couple of days.

Write to Heidi:
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Joy for Every Season of Life | Mailbox Monday – 777

Current Events

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:00 — 15.8MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

Years ago, I made the difficult decision to undergo a much-needed hysterectomy. As difficult as it was, God was there. Join me today as I talk about the tender transitions we all make in life, and encourage you that God is in every season.

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • Matthew 7:7-8

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

TICK REPELLANT RECIPE
Add to a jar:

  • Witch Hazel – 1 cup
  • 10 Drops of Geranium
  • 6-5 Drops of Cedarwood
  • 3 Drops of Lavender
  • 3-5 drops of Lemongrass

Shake up the jar. Divide into your spray bottles. Shake before each use. Spray on skin, clothes, shoes.

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:
This podcast is brought to you by our friends at Evangelical Christian Credit Union.

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St John, welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’ve joined me today. Today is Monday, June 10th. This is episode number 777. This is also Mailbox Monday. And I’m gonna be answering several questions from listeners today. Everything from seasons of life, to hysterectomies, to essential oil recipes for ticks, and whatever else is on your guys’ heart.

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So thanks for everybody who prayed for us this last weekend as our son graduated from our homeschool. It really is…I’m trying to think of a not-emotional way to say it, but it is a very emotional season. This graduating. Even though this is our fourth child, we’ve got now more out of the nest than we do in. And as I’m looking ahead to the next couple of years, because I’ve got two kids in high school now and then I’ve got our little caboose baby who’s going to be in fourth grade. And I can’t help but just be so thankful to the Lord for what He’s done in allowing my husband and I this incredible privilege of homeschooling our children all the way through high school. And people sometimes say, you know—I can’t believe you do that. Homeschooling just seems like the weirdest, most wackadoo thing there is in the world to do.

And that’s exactly how I used to feel 22 years ago until the Lord got a hold of me. And so, if you guys hear my voice crack today, it’s because I’m thankful—I really am. And some of the questions are sort of emotional. So you take this emotional Heidi, and you asked me emotional questions, and you’re probably going to get an emotional response. I’m just warning you. If you’re not following me in the June Scripture Writing challenge, I really want to encourage you to do it. We are in, obviously, we’re to the 10th of June already. I think doing this podcast might be aging me a little bit. Every time I get on here, I’m just like—for goodness sake, it’s like it’s the 10th of June! And I can’t believe it. You know I feel like I just want time to slow down.

The culture is changing so fast around us. Our kids are growing so quickly. We’re seeing rapid-fire changes everywhere. And being in the Word, and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit, is a powerful thing. Last week I was flying home from Teach Them Diligently in Columbus. The last of the Teach Them Diligently Conferences for this season. Incredible, incredible ministry that happened there, just a week ago. And I was, you know, I’m on the plane, on my way home, and I’m listening to music. By the way, if you haven’t heard Bethel’s song Stand in Your Love—stop what you’re doing. Look it up on Spotify and listen, you guys will be so blessed and so encouraged. But I was listening to that on the plane. Tears streaming down my face. Like—thank you Father, that in the midst of this crazy world that we’re living in, in the midst of such darkness and such depravity, and so much discouragement, we can stand on the truth of Your Word. Thank You that Your Word doesn’t change. Thank you Lord, that everything that we do is seen by You, that You see us, that You know us, that You love us.

It really does help with these transitions in life, the seasons in life. And we’re going to be talking a little bit about that today because of the questions that I’ve been getting lately at Mailbox Monday. But before I get into your questions, I want to just hit on today’s verse of the Scripture Writing Challenge. It’s Matthew 7:7-8. This is an incredible verse that talks about God’s heart for you. So listen in as we sort of look and see—oh my goodness, He loves me. It says—“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

I love that He doesn’t say that the door might be opened or maybe if you do it right, I’ll listen to you. He says, seek and you’ll find, knock in the door will be open unto you. And I think we need to remember that today—is we’re seeking the Lord.

About, I don’t know, maybe it was 10 days ago. I was just kind of hit a dry patch in my life, sort of in my walk with the Lord. And I found myself just alone in my room, on my knees, near the edge of my bed, just saying—Father, I need your help. All these plates in the air, demands that seem to be never ending. I have children who need me at every stage of their life, grandchildren who I pray for and love. And, the Lord in His mercy… and I’m saying this to the mom who’s worn out and weary right now, and it’s just like—I give up. The Lord in His mercy, met me right where I was. No condemnation, no angry chastisement—because the Father knows that when we move away from Him—that dry season comes with us, right? When we stopped drinking from the living water, when we get so busy that we can’t open our Bibles, when we’re not crying out to the Lord in prayer—we can very quickly get parched. That’s why Jesus said—come to me. I’m the living water. We need that living water every day.

And so if that’s you today, I want to just encourage you the way the Lord encouraged me. And that’s just to say—come back to me. You know, ask, seek, knock. I’m listening. I love you. I want what’s best for you. That is the heart of the Father. And so I’m encouraged by that. Always encouraged by God’s Word and what God is doing in His Word—in the world right now—because He’s definitely at work. And so I want to just encourage you, if you haven’t joined me over at the Scripture Writing Challenge, I’ve been doing this for several years. It’s free. You don’t need to pay anything to join up. We write that for you. It’s an English, now it is also available in Spanish. And I want to encourage you, MomStrongInternational.com. We’re also right in the middle of our study on the fruit of the Spirit. And, in fact, on this Wednesday I believe—I’m gonna be talking about freedom from anger out of the MomStrong International Bible Study that’s just about $8 a month. And I’m telling you, your membership goes a whole long way in helping us get this podcast out to you and the team of people it takes to create it. So check it out at MomStrongIinternational.com.

Also want to remind you that we have a sponsor. I’m so blessed to be working with Evangelical Christian Credit Union, and summer’s here, right? And so for some of you it is a great time to just check into some things that maybe you wouldn’t check you into into the fall. So if you’re ready for a change of pace as I am, I just wanna encourage you checkout Evangelical Christian Credit Union. Because I don’t know about you, but if you’ve got kids around your house who are trying to earn a little bit of extra money with their free time, this is a great opportunity to talk with them about budgeting. And so my friends that Evangelical Christian Credit Union have tools that you can use to teach your children about money management. And the summertime is an awesome time to do it. So you can help your kids save or spending money for a family vacation. You can budget for special purchases this fall. You can revisit the way you organize your child’s allowance, or if you don’t do an allowance—our family doesn’t do allowance. What we’ve done is have our children work for things that are outside their normal chores. I don’t pay my kids to clean the kitchen. I figure I give them room and board. That’s just me. And when I do pay them, it’s for things that go above and beyond. Like—hey, would you please clean out the car and and wash it and whatever. If I’m going to go to the car wash and spend 10 bucks, I’m happier to give that $10 to my child to teach them that there is a reward for their work and also teach them how to budget their money.

So we’re never ready for our kids to grow up. And certainly I’m getting a dose of, of that reality as my son is getting ready to go to Bible college this fall. But it is our job to make sure that they’ve got the tools they need to succeed financially. So start them young and I want to encourage you, check it out. You can learn more at ECCU.org/Heidi. I would love to hear from those of you who have been working with ECCU you, I have been hearing from a bunch of you over at the podcast and even on my Facebook page. So I’m excited to see that it’s going so well. So ECCU.org/Heidi.

Alright, something is in the wind because you guys are all about asking me kind of questions that are different than what I’m used to getting here at the podcast. And so I’m going to address some of them. And this one comes from a mom, Alicia. Hey, sweet mama. This is for you. I have actually been exactly where Alicia is right now. And so I thought I would take a minute and just address her question. She said—Hello Heidi. I am a mother of four kids. I’ve recently been having some health issues and had been recommended to schedule a hysterectomy. I’ve been reading your book and saw you had a hysterectomy after your seventh child. How was the experience? Was the recovery difficult? How did you get over the grief of having your uterus removed? The thing that brought so much life.

So first of all, Alicia, the grief is real. I grieved quite a bit over my hysterectomy and it wasn’t because I necessarily wanted more children. It was because all the sudden this season of my life was coming to a very abrupt end. And lots of times people ask me, and they’ll ask my husband—that certainly was the case when we were in Ohio, recently. Jay and I did a marriage workshop together, which we love to do, love to talk about our marriage—the ups and the downs, right? Because that’s life. No marriage has just, you know, this constant high and this amazing, you know—look at our life so amazing. Life is hard, right? And, and I’m always telling people—look, God… He grows us in the deep. He’s not growing us in the shallow places of our life, right? He grows us in the deep. And the hysterectomy for me was a very deep grief. It was a very difficult season. I was having some pretty significant issues. Went in to see my doctor, who’s also a friend of mine. And within five minutes she was like—Heidi, here’s what’s going on.

And there was absolutely no option for me. And frankly, you know, people ask me about it all the time. Are you glad you did it? Absolutely. Oh my goodness. I felt so much better after I got over the recovery part, which was for me on the brutal side because I waited so long to have the hysterectomy—there was a lot more damage done that probably wouldn’t have been had I known sooner. So,the recovery for me was very, very difficult. I don’t know that it’s like that for everyone, but I really want to address—first of all, I would say when you’re done with the hysterectomy, anybody who’s looking into that, listen to your doctor. Rest, don’t be Heidi St. John and decide—oh, I’m feeling better and then just stop your pain medication and try to get your life back.

That was a huge mistake for me. But you know, I learn everything the hard way as you guys know. So I wrote about this, I blogged about it, and I thought I would just read a little bit from that blog post and I’ll link back to it in the show notes today. So this, this blog post was written quite a while ago in April of 2016, and this is what I said. I said—Life is just.so.short. I remember the season well, when my doctor informed me that “changes” in my body meant that I would likely not bear any more children.  Here I was thinking I would go quietly into menopause. You know, wait like most women do for those “signs” that tell us we’re transitioning from one season to the next. So much for going quietly. Here I’m being drop-kicked into it. It wasn’t really that we had planned on having more children, either. It was the idea that it had been decided for me—that’s what hurt. That… that was a little harder to take. This new season is requiring fresh faith. And surrender. Trust that God knows the future.

I’ve had a few months to process this news now but here’s the fact.  Like millions of other women, I’m entering a new season of motherhood. I’m moving on. Tonight, I felt my unborn grandson moving and turning and hiccuping inside his mother—my daughter. I have been doing a bit of soul-searching as I find myself in this new season of life—this season of in-between. In-between parenting a toddler and mentoring a young mother-to-be. As I was doing laundry, a blanket caught my eye. It boasts a  “Daisy Kingdom” pattern from 1990. I love this blanket. I stitched it together in my kitchen while I waited for my first baby to arrive. It has graced seven cribs now—and it’s time to grace a new crib. Time is moving on. I went downstairs and gave the blanket to my daughter. It’s hers, really. But my heart aches just a little for how quickly those past twenty-two years went by. They told me it would go by fast. But I didn’t believe it. The days can go by so slowly, can’t they?

As I went about the house tonight, I thought of other things I wouldn’t need any more, things I had been holding on to “just in case.”  A newborn car seat snuggie. A handful of hand-made burp cloths. A breast pump. Nursing covers. I put them in a box and I gave them to my daughter. A surrender of sorts. I glanced up in my closet and saw bins of baby clothes, and noticed that little green coat that baby #7 outgrew too quickly was peaking from beyond the bin.  I asked her to wear it so long that the bin it should have been put away in was on the shelf months before I finally put the green coat next to it. It was time to move on. “This is silly,” I thought to myself. Look at those bins, just taking up space in my closet. And in my heart.

Newborn. Up all night.  The sound of little feet. Math lessons. Tooth fairy. Grasshoppers. Cricket catching. Driving tests. Graduation. College. Married. Time is always moving forward and the new life starts again. Our kids grow so quickly. I think it’s impossible to grasp the brevity of the life we live and I wonder if we knew how fast time goes, if we would stop longer or linger more. Tonight as I brushed the toddlers teeth and put her dirt stained little feet into the sink for a quick rinse—I had to smile to myself. The world might see motherhood as little more than a stopover on the highway of life, but I want to see so much more. I want to soak up the seasons of my life in such a way that it pains me to see them past.

And tonight I felt that pain a little more acutely. But something something tells me that if it hurts, we’re doing it right. So if it hurts and you’re struggling as you move from one season of life to another, I actually think you’re doing it right. I think when it doesn’t hurt, then we’re probably not appreciating it. When it hurts too much than we’ve lost sight, that God is doing something in the new season as well. But, I just want to encourage you, for those of you who are looking at changes in your life, whether it’s a change—and remember that post was written, oh my goodness I’m almost four years post hysterectomy now. So that post was written several years ago. But I’m telling you what—every once in a while, and probably the last few days for sure. I can definitely feel that that acute sense of loss as we move from one season to the next.

And the Lord wants to be with us in every season—He says he never changes. So even though we changed in our, our lives, change in our seasons change, God will never leave us. He’ll never forsake us. He’s with—Mom, He’s with that mom right now. He’s with you, Mama. As you graduate your child from one season to the next. He’s with you as you get ready to prepare for a hysterectomy or prepare for a life changing a move, or whatever it is—God will be with you. He’ll never forsake you. So I hope that encourages you. Hang in there. There are good things are coming, really good. Things are coming. So I just want to thank you for that letter Alicia, and my heart’s with you today.

All right, next question. And it’s really more of a statement that came from a listener named Amanda. She said—Heidi, after listening to your podcast this week, I signed the petition on the show Arthur and shared it with some friends. A couple of hours later I was driving in the car listening to a children’s podcasts that reads stories. We have listened to a few podcasts like this for years. One particular is called Story Time and it’s by Bedtime FM. I was on episode number 96, The Inventor. I was shocked when the child in this story had same sex parents. We turn it off immediately and I’m disappointed I can no longer trust the content. I contacted the podcast and have included their response below.It’s so sad that our children can’t just listen to the stories without agendas being pushed on them and I wanted to let your listeners know about a great Christian podcast called Kid’s Corner. So there you go—she’s helping you out. Help a sister out—Kids Corner. My kids ages four, seven, and 10 ask for it all the time and if there are any other Christian based podcasts for kids, I would love to know about them. We have a couple of others, but most read Bible stories, which is great, but we would like other content as well that can be trusted to be safe. Thanks for always keeping us informed and off the bench.

So Amanda, thanks for sending me this. First of all, really quickly—you guys know that this world is not our home, right? So when we stand up for truth and righteousness in the culture, we’re going to be persecuted. We are going to be made fun of. That’s what Jesus said, right? He knew that was coming. The Word said that if it hates us, we shouldn’t be surprised because it hated Him first. So we want to be able to speak the truth in love. We want to be able to get off the bench and onto the battlefield. And as we’re doing this, keep in mind that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is by our side. So I’ve been watching a with a fair degree of interest. My friend Ken Ham, who’s been talking about what’s happening in the culture, just like I do. And I loved what he said the other day as he was talking about the next drag queen thing that’s happening in Ohio. There’s an article on Live Site News, and all link back to it today. It says— Ohio Drag Queen Program for kids shut down after families and taxpayers rise up.

And parents, I’m telling you—your voice makes a difference. It matters. We’re not saying that we don’t love people. We’re saying—you cannot indoctrinate our children this way. You cannot teach that this is normal when it’s not normal and it’s not good, and Ken Ham said—beware many forces are at work to undermine parental rights and capture the hearts and minds of the younger generations for evil purposes. This is a reminder not to be complacent and recognize we’re in a spiritual war. Christians must “contend for the faith as we read about in Jude 3 and 4”. I agree with Ken, we’ve got to be contending for the faith and you can contend for the faith in the public square. Absolutely contend for it in your church—but contend for it in your libraries, contend for what God says is good because we know that whether people believe it or not is sort of irrelevant.

All you gotta do is read the Bible and see what happens to nations who decide to walk away from what God says is good. And certainly that is the case in the culture right now. We’re seeing it everywhere we go. So,I want to thank you for letting me know. I love to hear you guys getting off the bench. So when you get off the bench, send me an email podcast@thebusymom.com. Let me know how are you are getting off the bench. And then I would love to feature your story here at the podcast. So if you want to send me a story of you getting off the bench, just go ahead and put #OffTheBench in the subject line. And we might feature your story here at the Heidi St. John podcast.

All right. So the next question came from Sarah, and Jody, and a whole bunch of other listeners who wanted to know about my tick repellent—because I said I’d been using an essential oil tick repellent when we lived in Chattanooga for several months, which I love Chattanooga. Shoutout you Chattanooga, I just loved being there and I miss it. One of the things I don’t miss though are the ticks. And we had issues with ticks until I discovered how to make a tick repellent, like a homemade tick repellent. I’m telling you what—it was incredible. It worked really well and it smelled good. So you don’t have to smell like, you know, deet—to repel ticks. And so really quickly, I’m going to give you a sort of my recipe for a tick repellent. And I hope that this helps you. You guys can write this down. Actually I’ll send the show notes Melissa and Marlene, and we’ll see if we can’t get this in the show notes today. But I love to use a Witch Hazel. So I would start with witch Hazel, which you can get at Walmart— it’s very cheap and you can get it anywhere, you know, basically any grocery store should have it. So I would do, if I was going to put it in several different bottles, I would start with just a jar, put a cup of witch Hazel in it, and then add: 10 drops of Geranium, probably five or six drops of Cedarwood, at least three drops of Lavender, and at least three drops of Lemongrass, maybe five. And so you’re going to put those in your jar, right? Shake it up really good. And then, just pour that into a little spray bottle and then—bam. Shake it and spray it on you, on your clothes. You can put on your skin, you can put on your shoes. And the scent is what helps keep ticks away. And it’s amazing. Trust me when I say it’s completely amazing. Eucalyptus is also a great repellent, but if you use that, you’ve got to use caution around pets, which is why we didn’t do it.

Lavender is kind of like an all purpose insect repellent—and in recent studies, Lavender essential oil has performed well as both a tick deterrent and a method of preventing tick eggs from hatching. So it’s safe to use on babies. Make sure that you’re using a pure essential oil, and not one that’s just a fragrance or an adulterated oil. You guys know, I love Young Living. I’ve been doing that for 10 years probably. And you can find out HeidiStJohn.com/Oils. So Lemongrass —hello! It’s a natural tick repellent. It’s safe to use in soaps and shampoos. If you put it directly on your skin, just mix it with a carrier oil—or better yet, just use the recipe that I just gave you.

Also, I love Geranium. This one’s particularly potent and you can actually apply this directly to you or on your animals collar. So a great stuff. So check it out. I hope that little tip of the day helps you guys.

All right. It’s time for me to go. I want to say thanks for everybody who’s listening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for leaving reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. We read them every single one of them and it encourages us greatly. Also, don’t forget to check out my friends at Evangelical Christian Credit Union at ECCU.org/Heidi.

Have a great day everybody, and I’ll see you back here on Wednesday.

Write to Heidi:
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Tell Your Story: How to Find Your Voice with Tricia Goyer | 776

Becoming MomStrong, MomStrong Sisterhood

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:33 — 16.2MB)

Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS

How did you become an author? It’s one of the questions I get all the time and today, my dear friend and author of over 75 books, Tricia Goyer joins me to encourage you that YOU can find your voice! God has good things in store for you as you share His words with others. Be encouraged!!

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • John 15:16-17

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

Tricia Goyer is a prolific author of more than seventy books. She is a homeschooling mom of ten, grandmother of four, and wife to John. She is the founder of Hope Pregnancy Center in Kalispell, Montana and now leads a teen mom support group in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Connect with the AUTHOR: Website | 7-Day Writer Challenge | Write That Book Subscription Group | Instagram | Facebook 

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Friday, June 7th—this is episode number 776. You guys know that I love to have friends on the show with me on Friday’s who are going to encourage you in your walk with God and to find out what it is that God has uniquely created you to do. And today’s episode is right in line with that. My friend Tricia Goyer, who has authored 75 books, roughly, is on this show with me today and we’re going to talk about how you can learn to tell your stories.

Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so I want to thank everybody who’s been coming out to say hello out on the circuit. My son graduates from high school tomorrow, from our homeschool tomorrow. So I’m in kind of graduation mode. Today is rehearsal for us rehearsal. Oh my goodness. All those things, and tomorrow’s graduation. And then next week on Wednesday I’m going to head to Denver for the CHEC conference. I’ll be there with my friend Ken Ham. So come on out—that’s June 13th through the 15th and I cannot wait to see you guys come on out to the CHEC invention in Denver, Colorado. Also want to let you know that we are right at the very beginning of a brand new study at MomStrong International. We’re studying the fruits of the Spirit and next Wednesday I’m going to be diving into week two of that, and we’re going to be talking about how to become free from it anger. And that’s another thing I love about Tricia. She’s written about this topic extensively, so I’m excited to see what God’s gonna do in your life as you study the Word with us—you can find that study at MomStrongInternational.com. We’ve got almost 13,000 over there now doing the Scripture Writing Challenge with us every single day. So we’re excited that you’re there. Speaking of the Scripture Writing Challenge today’s versus found in John 15:16-17, it says You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.

I love that Jesus is saying, listen, this isn’t up to you. It’s up to me. I chose you. I appointed you. I’ve got something I want you to do. I want you to bear good fruit and that’s what my friend Tricia and I are going to be talking about today. Tricia is a mom of 10, and she’s written at least 75 books. She’s a prolific author and an incredible writer and just a good friend of mine. And we’re going to talk a little bit today about how you can tell your story. I’m really excited about this. It’s a question I get a lot at the podcast. Tricia, my friend, welcome back to the podcast.

[Tricia] Thank you Heidi. I always love chatting with you.

[Heidi] Well, we’re going to have a hoot and holler and a good time today because I was telling you before the show started that I get this question a lot. People will say—how did you raise seven kids and become an author, and a speaker, and a blogger? And the first thing I always tell people is—it’s grace, right? So particular grace over my life to do this particular thing. And so that has to be at the very forefront of our conversation. We want to do what God asks us to do, but there’s so many, men and women who listen to this show and they have a story to tell and they’re trying to figure out how they can tell it. And nobody knows better about that than you. So I thought—let’s start there. I’m sure you could ask this question at least as much as I do and probably more. When someone comes up to you and says—Tricia, I want to write a book. Like this is a massive question, right? This is not your, this isn’t your 30-second answer that you can give on your way to a workshop at a homeschool conference. But when someone comes and talks to you about that and they want to be become a blogger, they want to become an author. What the first—I’m dying to know, cause maybe you’ll help me. What’s the first thing you say?

[Tricia] I think the first thing we need to do is realize that if you are asking that question, that God has a call on your life—because no ordinary people who want to do this, want to put their words out there, want to get criticism, went to get edits, want to get rejection, went to get bad Amazon ratings, or all those sorts of things.

[Heidi]Oh, that’s brutal too—those bad Amazon ratings. It’s a thing.

[Tricia] Exactly! So if you are asking it, then God has called you to spread the gospel. And the cool thing is today, I mean through blogs, you were mentioning, and you know, Facebook, and the Internet—we can reach people all over the world. It’s so amazing when I check on my website to see there’s people from all over that are able to hear the gospel. So, you know, before missionaries had to travel and, you know, get in boats and leave their families, and going to other side of the world—we can do it right from their homes. But the first thing is dedicating yourself to God and saying—God, I know that you’ve called me through this. Help me. And kind of giving it over to Him. And for many years I wanted to get published because I wanted to look good. I’d been a teen mom. I wanted to prove myself. And it wasn’t until I relinquished my kind of pride and said—God, this has to be your thing and not what I want—that God started opening doors. So the first thing would relinquish yourself to God. But then the second thing…

[Heidi] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I must, I must stop you. I’m going to stop you right there because I think you’ve touched on something really important. I don’t want to miss it. What is coveted right now in the culture? So much of what is covered is platform. So we’re looking for how many likes can we get on Facebook? How many followers can we get an Instagram, how many reviews can be get on Amazon, all those things. And basically what you’re saying is—that’s a wrong motivation.

[Tricia] Right.

[Heidi] So if our motivation is—and most of the time, and I don’t know Tricia, how that worked for you—but certainly it was the case for me. I didn’t set out to be an author or a speaker. I saw something that God was doing in my life and it became an active surrender. And so I’ve talked to lots of people at conferences and I know you do too who, you know, for whatever reason want to get into it. And I think what you’re saying is so important because the very beginning is—check your heart.

[Tricia] Yeah.

[Heidi] Why, do you want it? Because really, it’s actually no fun to have people give you bad reviews on Amazon. It’s no fun. You know, hello—social media is not that fun anymore.

[Tricia] Yes!

[Heidi] And so, I love that you’re starting there because if we’re going at this because we want platform, because when accolades, or because we want people to know who we are—it’s probably a bad motivation.

[Tricia] Right. And it really, that’s what it was. Me getting on my knees, like literally on my knees, and lifting my open palms to God and saying—this is your thing and it’s not about the book sales or the publication. If you just want me to write for our church newsletter, or to speak for…

The first time I spoke was when I gave my testimony about God healing me from abortion in front of my church. Like, that was the hardest thing.

[Heidi] That’s hard core.

[Tricia] That’s hard. The hardest thing, like, being vulnerable. But if you’re not willing to start there, like, in your local Bible study, in your local mops group—I mean you need to start just sharing your story. And that’s what the next thing I was going to mention is—care for the people that God has already brought in your life.

And you mentioned the big platform, like we all want to be seen, and known, and be on these bestsellers list. But if you’re not caring for the people that God has given you—that’s your neighbor across the street, you know, this right in front of you. I for years have been led a post abortion Bible study in my church. It was just those women there, you know? And if you’re not reaching those people and ministering to them—why is God going to give you a huge platform if you’re not going to take care of just the people He’s already brought you.

[Heidi] Yeah.  So to be faithful, I mean, I love that the Bible says, you know—he who is faithful, this little, can be trusted with much. And I think it’s that faithfulness in the smaller things, and just recognizing that God is at work within what you’re doing.

A long time ago, when Jay was a pastor in Portland, I started a newsletter for the church worship team and it was called The Worship Team Word. So funny, because as you’re saying that, I’m like—oh my goodness, I still remember doing this. And I loved it. I loved going to people and talking to them and saying—Hey, can I get an article from you? I have always loved words and always loved writing. And I think you’re probably the same way—while other people are, you know, knitting a baby blanket, learning how to crochet—we’re figuring out how to start a blog and how to, you know, because you just, you love it. It’s that natural bent inside of you. So I love that. Like, what has God put in front of you right now? Start there.

[Tricia] Yeah. And then I think the next thing we need to do is to clear the time in our schedule because if it’s a calling, we need to be diligent on doing it. And I think this is the busy moms hardest thing, busy parents—the hardest thing is carving out that time. And so for me, I wake up before my kids get up, you know, have my quiet time with God, which I definitely need that before I start my day. But then I just sit down for the first, you know, 30 minutes or hour of the day and just start writing. And if you write 30 minutes a day, by the end of the year, you will have some good stuff there. Like there’s stuff that will—especially if you’re doing it—like coming straight from reading God’s Word, or having that time with Him—He’s just going to pour through you. But we get so busy about things that don’t matter and I, you know, I talk to people like—turn off your Netflix, don’t watch TV, don’t scroll Facebook for an hour. Like all this stuff that we’re busy doing, but we’re not busy sitting down and doing the calling that God has called us to. So really, it’s clearing this schedule, even if it’s 30 minutes a day. And you know, I started writing, I had three little kids at home. I had like a one year old, a three year old, and a five year old. And I would say—this is Mommy’s writing time. And I would set Barney, this ages me that Barney was on the TV.

[Heidi] Yup, that was me too!

[Tricia] But they learn to respect that time and it actually has been the best thing for my kids because they have seen like—look at how God is using mom. And they’ve got to meet amazing people and travel with me, and see me speak, and see these books come out. And you know, we want to tell our kids like—you can do amazing things and God wants to use you, and He has good plans for you, but we’re saying we can’t do it because we don’t have enough time. Because, you know, we need to make sure that our kids are the priority—which we definitely want to make them the priority. But it also trains them to see that this is important to follow what God has asked us to do.

[Heidi] Yeah. And that they have a gift that God wants to use. You know, and you’re saying—hey, you can actually do this. God wants to use you and you’re setting the example. So like we’re always saying over here at the podcast—if you want your kids to walk in right relationship with you, let him see you walk in right relationship with God, right? If that’s what we want for our kids, it has to start with us. We can’t give them what we don’t have.

And so I love that you’re saying—hey, set the example, let your kids see that it’s important to you. I also think it requires, at least it has for me over the last six or seven books that I’ve written—different seasons require a different commitment level from me.

[Tricia] Right.

[Heidi] So sometimes I’m writing books very late at night or very early in the morning, and I can’t do it at all during the day because I’m taking care of my kids, or I’m running the homeschool resource center, or whatever it is.  Talk to the mom right now who is, she’s, you know, hip-deep in little people and she’s thinking— I’d love to write, I want to be Tricia Goyer. I want to write 75 books. Um, where does she start? She’s hip-deep in little people. She she really wants to focus on her marriage, the most important thing is to set that foundation. How can we encourage her?

[Tricia] Yeah. Well I think definitely we need to say—you know, if you’re not taking care of the people in your life, you don’t need to be writing words. It’s like—be loving your husband, make sure you’re giving that to your kids, make sure you’re making sure their needs are met. But also there is time in the day. Like if we can take time to go shopping or hit the clearance rack or whatever, if we have time to do those things, we can make time to do the writing thing, to do the calling.  And like I said, 30 minutes a day, at the end of the year—you have something. So just know that it’s those small steps, those small obedience that makes a difference. And also don’t feel like as soon as you sit down and write something—it’s no good, and this is horrible. Like, it takes practice. It takes time. Writing takes knowing yourself, trusting yourself, and putting away that fear. And I think fear is another thing that really stops us.

[Heidi] Yes!

[Tricia] We don’t want to be embarrassed. We don’t want to get that rejection. Actually I went to a Christmas party once and this lady, I had just had my first book publishing and she was like—I’ve written three books. I’m like, really? Tell me about them. She says—Oh, there in a desk drawer. I don’t want to get a rejection. So I haven’t done anything with them. Which of course, what is the enemy want to do? He wants to silence us. He wants us to keep those stories inside. And you know, at first it may not be publishable. Like we might need to have a critique partner, or have editing, and hire an editor, or have a friend that we know, you know, they can look over and give us honest critique. But it’s a learning process and you know, I just have my high school diploma. I don’t have any creative writing degree or anything. It was just me going back and forth with my friends. I met some at writer’s conferences, which I highly recommend Christian writers conferences. But it was just us sharing back and forth until finally one of us got published, and then the other. But it is the diligence of getting the words on paper, sharing it with other people, being able to take that routine and keep going.

And I’ve, when I first started writing, there was people that were way better writers than me. They had degrees and they just were perfect with their words. But they weren’t diligent. They gave up too easy. And I was like the little engine that could, that—here I am with my three little kids running around my ankles as I’m jotting down notes as I’m, you know, checking to see if the chicken pot pie is done yet in the oven. And it’s just that diligence of keeping going. And it goes back to—that if God has called you to it, why aren’t we doing it? And just knowing that your story will make a difference. Like, you’re the only one that can tell your story.

I tell my story, of you know, my past abortion and finding healing from that and being a teen mom—I’m the only one that can tell that story and people are impacted by it. And just this last convention season, I was there at a conference and this woman heard me on this podcast talking to you, Heidi, about that. And just, it’s amazing that she’s able to share her story now because I was willing to step out and share my story. And so someone else not only needs to have the encouragement to share their words, they need to share their stories, impact other people.

[Heidi] Yeah. And it is scary, but it’s worth it. And I love, you and I talked about you sharing about your abortion. I know it’s so powerful because this topic of conversation is so hot in the culture right now and I feel like the wind is at the back of the pro-life movement largely because women like you have stepped up and said—this isn’t the answer.

[Tricia] Right.

[Heidi] And—I’ve been there and I’ve done that and let me tell you there’s healing, but there’s also a better way. And it takes courage to do that. You have to be able to step out of your comfort zone and get your words out there. What happens when you are criticized, because I know you have been, I’m sure. And I have also been criticized because as a person who puts my thoughts out on paper a lot or even out on social media—you know, the nature of it is that you’re opening yourself up criticism.

[Tricia] Right.

[Heidi] How do you, how do you handle that critic? Or maybe a better question is—how can you prepare for the criticism that will come?

[Tricia] Exactly. We’ll just know, I mean—there’s people that will disagree with you. You know, when I first talked to you in about my abortion, or being a teen mom, there’s people that say—no that couldn’t have happened. You know, cause they told me it was just a blob of tissue. I mean, this whole story of just being lied at a planned parenthood. I had actually had a director called me on the phone and telling me I was lying, which is unbelievable.

[Heidi] Unbelievable!

[Tricia] But even when I wrote my book for teen moms, I ended up getting a whole bunch of bad reviews on Amazon saying I was just trying to get popular from all these teen moms. I mean, just a crazy stuff that like—why would I,  like, be vulnerable just to get popular? That like, it makes no sense to me. But what I realize is, first of all, the enemy wants to shut us down. So of course he’s gonna, you know, be whispering in people’s ears, he’s gonna have people attack us because he doesn’t want to share in our story. The second of all be like—only God really knows our heart that knows that I’m doing it for the right reason.

Like I’m doing it because I found healing and I want other people to be healed. I found hope and I want other people to have hope. I found truth and I want other people to have truth. So even now when I read a bad review, first of all, I’ll think they probably are someone who doesn’t agree with my message, so that’s why they’re shutting me down. But even if someone loves Christian fiction and they just don’t happen to like one of my novels are one of my books. It’s just—I’m not the author for them. Like there’s other authors out there that they can go and read and that’s okay. Like, I cannot make everyone happy. Like, if I were to cook dinner, I mean, I do it every night. I’m going to have someone, one of my kids is gonna complain about something they don’t like carrots in the pot pie, or whatever.

But knowing that when we send our work out there, there’s always going to be people that is just not—that’s just not our audience. That is not who God has given us to share the message with. But just knowing that there’s other people that are the ones that God has given us, this is kind of our territory that He’s given us to share with. And if we’re being silent, if we’re letting fear hold us back, if we are not either speaking the truth or sharing the truth, or writing the truth, then other people are not hearing it and they’re in want of that. And so we need to be the ones to do it for the good of the gospel and the good of the glory of God—and realizing that it’s about that. And so, sometimes those criticisms do hurt. Just going back to like—that’s not my audience, that’s not who God is sending me to—and I’ll just continued to speak, and write, and encourage those who God is sending to me too.

[Heidi] Yeah. And I think once you do that and you realize that you’re worth comes from the Lord, and that He’s the One—it’s the audience of One that you’re trying to please—I think it takes the fear out of it. The other thing that, and a you and I’ve talked about this before too, but I love that the Bible teaches us that God didn’t give us a Spirit of fear.

[Tricia]Right!

[Heidi] Because we learn that fear is a spirit, right? It’s a spirit that’s not from God, that comes in to keep you from doing what God has created you and gifted you to do. So, these are awesome. I kind of want to get to the nitty-gritty cause there’s a mom who sitting there with a pencil and paper and she’s like—what do I do next?

So you know, people always say—how do I get an agent? And I always telling people that is not the first place you start. You want to see—am I going to be able to stick with this thing? Can I carve the time out? Do I have, what it takes? Is this something that really just makes my heart sing? And so, if someone wants to figure that out, they want to figure out how can they tell their story—you are doing something really awesome right now called the 7-Day Writer’s Challenge. And in the next like minute and a half, tell us what that is.

[Tricia] Sure. Well this is what I get all the time— how do I become a writer? And so I did a 7-Day Writer’s Challenge and it just steps people through seven things that they can do to start their message. So first of all, they need to understand what is the theme of their life. Like what story do they have to tell? It’s also making a white space, you know, how to put your words on paper, how to think about your market. So through these seven days, and it’s a free course that I have and we’ll have the link in the show notes—bui I just want to encourage people. And I have to tell them, like, email me, respond to this message. Let me know who you are and let me know your story because I want to be there to encourage people.

I remember being that 22 year old, being at my first writer’s conference. Totally like—am I supposed to be doing this? And there was this women that came along beside me and said—yes, I believe in you. I want to support you. And that’s just what I want to be. It might be probably a short email from me back. But just knowing that someone cares, someone believes in you, and that you can do this.

[Heidi] Yeah. So it’s totally free, right?

[Tricia] Absolutely.

[Heidi] This is a no strings attached thing. And then after they do that, can they continue on or is at the end of it or does it work?

[Tricia] Yes, we’ll actually have an online subscription group, it’s a monthly group. And I do lessons every day from writing book proposals, how to write a blog post, if you want to start a podcast. So I’ll have those lessons and videos there. And then we have experts who are either writers, editors, agents, publicists that come Monday through Friday for an hour and do a teaching.

[Heidi] That’s awesome.

[Tricia] Yea, and so that’s $29 a month. But if you just want to do the seven day course—I am going to love you through that seven day course. If you want to continue on, we do have—it’s called Write That Book Subscription Group and we are just pouring into this community. We have about 120 women in there now that are just like I was, and just like a lot of your listeners that are wondering—am I supposed to be doing this? And I’m there to encourage them and give them the steps. Like, this is what a book proposal looks like. This is how you write one. This is how you talk to someone at a conference, and…

[Heidi] You should do a whole teaching on how to prepare your heart for editing.

[Tricia] You know what? I think I’m going to write that down cause I think that would be really good when you get, you know—and I tell people that I’ve written 75 books, two books ago, I got it back and there was more red than white on the paper, which the book ended up being so much better because my editor’s like—you’re just glossing over the stories. Let’s dig a little deeper into here. I mean it ended up being so good, but yeah, you have to realize that God has also brought people like editors to help you clarify your message and tell it in a better way.

[Heidi] Yeah, I agree. And one of the things I said to my editor…I’ve been privileged to work with several great editors over at Tyndale and one of very first edits they came back from Becoming MomStrong— I mean, I was in tears. I was like—oh my goodness, like, chapter 13 just became chapter seven. And I was like—this is upside down. Wackadoo, and all messed up. And I was praying about it and I came back to my editor and I was like—you know what, I think you’re gonna make me a better writer. And she did. She made me a better writer. And so I think we gotta beat you, you know, kind of peel back the layers and get ready for that. And, yeah, but writing is an exciting thing to be doing. I love it. I know you love it and I thank you so much Tricia, for sharing your gift.

If people want to find you online, they can find you at TriciaGoyer.com. Is that right?

[Tricia] Yep. TriciaGoyer.com

[Heidi] And then for the seven day challenge. Do they email you? What did they do for that?

[Tricia] I will send you a link that you can put in your show notes, and it will take you right to the page where they could click on it. They also get a free little ebook about not to give up on the book of your heart. It’s a little ebook that I put together that they’ll get for free. Yeah. Then they’ll join the challenge and then they could email me and we’ll get going.

[Heidi] I love it. I love it. Tricia Goyer, I love you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come and encourage the listeners here at the podcast today. I think you’re fantastic.

[Tricia] No, I think you’re fantastic too. I love you and I love all your doing. Heidi, thank you so much.

[Heidi] For those of you who want more information about my friend Tricia, you can find them in the show notes today. If you haven’t noticed, we are having the notes now transcribed, so we’ve hired a transcriber and she’s doing a great job so you can get all the notes, all the links, everything HeidiSt.John.com/podcast. Thanks for listening to everybody.

As always, please leave a review for the podcast over at iTunes. We really appreciate your comments there. It helps us to get the podcast out to other listeners, and I hope you’ll join me in Denver.  Have a great weekend everybody. I’ll see you back here on Friday.

Write to Heidi:
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

The Fruit Of The Spirit vs. The Fruit Of Our Actions | MSI Week 1/4 — 775

MomStrong International

Podcast (hsj): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:12 — 14.6MB)

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There is a huge difference between “fruit of the Spirit” that makes us like Christ, and “fruit” that comes as a result of our actions. When we read the Bible, we need to read contextually. What does this mean? Reading the Bible in context means we need to gain a full awareness of the passage or paragraph rather than just pulling out one verse. Let’s jump in to our first week of the MSI study on the fruit of the Spirit!!

Transcribed version of the podcast is below

Today’s Scripture Writing Challenge Verse

  • John 15:9-11

Resources Mentioned in Podcast

Join me at the next Heidi St. John Conference on  August 24  in Lee’s Summit, MO

Scripture Mentioned in Podcast

  • Philippians 4:12-13
  • Galatians 5
  • 1 Corinthians 1:10
  • 1 Corinthians 12:4-12

Join us at MomStrong International for our newest Bible Study and Scripture Writing!

Don’t Miss These!

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody. This is Heidi St John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Wednesday, June 5th this is episode number 775—and we’re right in the middle of the week. My son is graduating on Saturday, so the festivities are ramping up around here, but I’m going to be spending a little bit of time with you today digging into the first week of a brand new series at MomStrong International on the Fruit of the Spirit. I can’t wait.

Stick around.  I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so for those of you who are brand new to the podcast, I want to welcome you. We have been doing this now for many years. I think we’re going on seven years. Can you guys believe it? I was talking about that with my husband today and we were like—oh my goodness, we’ve been doing this for a long time. I have kind of a funny history. Many of you been listening from the very beginning. I started out doing like an hour long show and then I realized in pretty short order—I can do that. At least not three times a week. And I really wanted to come in and do, you know, three times a week—a little shot in the arm. And so at that point we decided to roll it back a little and we did a five minute little shot in the arm—five minutes. Well, by the time I got done saying hi to everybody and saying goodbye—there was no time to talk about anything I wanted to talk about. So eventually we sort of made it into this, right around 20 to 30 minutes.

Typically the podcast or not less than 20 minutes and they’re not more than 30 minutes—depending on what’s on my heart for that day. But the Lord has been faithful to grow the podcast. We average about anywhere from a 60,000 unique downloads and episode to 160,000—which was about what the yoga podcast got. You guys were all—that was a thing. And actually we’re going to get back to that at another point in time and really go back and talk about it again. But what I wanted to say is thank you.

Thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends. Thank you for listening. Thank you for praying for us. As you can imagine, it takes a lot to get this podcast out to you three days a week. And I want to just encourage you, there’s a couple of ways that you can help support us. First of all, please visit our sponsors. We’ve been blessed to take on some sponsorships this year at the podcast, which is really helping us because we’ve invested in getting some people here helping us who transcribe it, people who mix it down, people who help us get it out on social media. So it takes a team of people to get the podcast to you three days a week. So you could visit our sponsors. We have Evangelical Christian Credit Union and I will link back to them in the show notes today.

They have been a fantastic sponsor for us. Also, we’re running a promotion right now for Father’s Day from my friends at MELT. And if you haven’t checked that out yet, definitely you’re gonna want to do that. We love working with them and they always have a really great promotion for you that’s specific to the audience here at the Heidi St. John podcast. So check it out. But anytime you guys hear us promote something to you, those people are actually paying to have a spot on this podcast. So go check out what they’re doing and give me your feedback. I would love to hear what you think about the sponsors that we’re bringing on. Also, you can support us financially, by clicking on the e-giving link in the show notes and by reaching out to us via mail. And here’s our address. It’s 11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682.

We love hearing from you. I love getting your letters and obviously we love your financial support as well. So keep praying for us. We’re going to keep bringing this podcast to you for as long as the Lord allows us to do it. And we’re very, very pleased just to see it growing the way that it is.

Today’s the first day of the study at MomStrong International. So you guys know that I started MomStrong International about a year and a half ago. And we’re coming up on 13,000 of you who subscribe every month to the Scripture Writing Challenge—that challenges FREE. If you haven’t yet done it with us, you can jump in at any time. But the best time of course is at the beginning of a month because we start a new study. So the idea is that we’re writing studies for you and those studies are relevant. We’re hoping to address what’s happening in the culture in real time.

And so—we’ve studied five traits of false teachers, we’ve studied what it means to walk in right relationship with the Lord when it comes to parenting and marriage. For the next couple of months we’re going to be digging into the fruits of the Spirit. And I’ll be talking a little bit more about that today. But you can become a leader with MomStrong International. And what we’re hoping to see happen is for MomStrong International to be in churches all around the world. And so you can become a leader at MomStrong International. It doesn’t cost you anything extra to do that. The studies themselves are just $8 a month. And if you’ve never downloaded one I want to just encourage you to do it. You’d be amazed. It’s a very meaty study because what we’re trying to do is not water down the Word for you. We think that you guys can actually study God’s Word.

The Bible says that we are to study His Word to be able to give an answer for the hope that lies within us. And so, it’s part of the heart here at the Heidi St. John podcast, and also at MomStrong International—to equip you through listening to the Word through the podcast and also through studying the word with us at MomStrong International, to be able to go out into the culture and be a light and really bring the hope of the gospel to a world that desperately needs it.

One of the ways that I do that also is by speaking. Coming up, I’m going to be at the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference June 13th through 15th at the Crowne Plaza at the Denver airport. That’ll be next week. This week I’m focused on my son Spencer’s graduation from our homeschool. Really excited to launch this young man out into the world. He’s looking at going to Bible College in the fall, and we’re just excited to see where God takes him next. These years that we spend with our kids, parenting our children—you know when our kids were little, it can seem like it takes so much time, and it does. But the time is going by so fast and I want to encourage you, if your children are home especially—lean into it.

One of the questions I get frequently here at the podcast is—how did I become a speaker? How did I become a writer? It’s a really long story, but I always tell people the main take away from how the Lord brought me to this place in my life—is that I do it with my family. My husband travels with me. Our kids are often with us on the road—many of you guys have met them. And through the years, about 15 years that I’ve been doing this, our kids have grown up. Most of them now, I guess I’m coming up on the most part, I can’t even believe it. Four of the seven are adults now and a walking with the Lord on their own. And the three that we have a home, two are in high school and I’ve got one coming up in fifth grade. And you guys—oh my goodness—the hardest, best thing you will ever do is invest in your kids. Invest in your kids, invest in your marriage.

A couple of weeks ago I was real tired. Some of you guys saw me post this on Facebook. Sometimes, you know, I’m just like the rest of you. I get too many weeks in a row without a break. Too much time on an airplane, too much travel, not enough time in the Word of God. And I can hit a dry spells in my own life. And definitely, a couple of weeks ago I was just like—DING, dry spell! And my sweet man noticed it. And it was having an effect on our relationship with each other. You guys ever get into a spot with your husband, or with your wife, when you haven’t taken the time for whatever reason? It could be because you’ve got a newborn. It can be because work is pressing. It can be because of an illness in your family, or just a stretch of travel—or whatever it is. And we were, I mean not hitting a horrible spot—but we were hitting a wall, and we hit a rough spot. And he surprised me a couple of weeks ago and took me out for the evening and we ended up spending the night at McMenamins Lodge in Kalama. And I linked to it because, first of all—it’s just a wonderful night for us to get away. And secondly, it reminded us that just hitting the reset button and going–oh yeah, that’s why. That’s why we’re working so hard. That’s why we care about the podcast. That’s why we homeschooled our kids, because the Lord brought us together as a married couple to do something for the Kingdom of God. And that’s how He sees all of you. Every single one of you that’s listening to this, whether you’re married or not, God has something that He wants you to do. And sometimes we need to take a step back and hit the reset, and take a rest, and take a pause.

And it’s amazing to me how God uses that to refresh us and get us back out onto the battlefield. So if that’s where you are right now, I just want to encourage you—it’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to say—you know what, Babe? We need to spend some time together. Spending some time alone with your spouse is one of the reasons why I love taking on the sponsorship partnership that we have with MELT. Which we’ve been doing for several years here after I wrote a post called Hot Monogamy, just talking about the importance of nurturing the romance—that part of our marriages that we so often lose sight of when the kids come and the mortgages come and the pressures of the world seem to weigh in on us. And the marriages that survive, listen up the marriages that survive, but not only survive—thrive—they thrive through intentionality. They thrive because we’ve decided to invest in them. Your children will thrive because you decide to invest in them—because you say no to some things in order to say yes to other things.

And so wherever you are in your marriage, in your parenting right now, if you’re feeling weary—and a lot of us get to June, right–we’re done with school and we’re looking at a little bit of a break. Take a break, take a break. One of the ways that I take a break, is just by getting alone with the Lord. And so that’s part of our heart for continuing the study at MomStrong International through the summertime. You guys don’t have a lot of the normal things on your plate that you do. It’s a great time to develop a habit of being in the Word of God.

If you’re not studying with me and you’ve kind of been on the edge and just sort of thinking about it, you guys—with 13,000 of you following me with the Scripture Writing Challenge, we want to see even more and more and more of that number coming over to the actual study—because really, the Scripture Writing Challenge is just to wet your whistle. It’s just to have you see the power of being in God’s Word. And then hopefully you’ll start doing the study with us and we can dig even deeper, and grow even more in our relationship with the Lord. And so this month, and for the next two months, as we study the fruit of the Spirit—it’s important for you guys to understand that there’s a big difference between the fruit of the Spirit that the Bible teaches that makes us like Christ, and the fruit that comes as a result of our actions.

And oftentimes when I’m out on the road or teaching at my women’s conference, or wherever it is—I see these two conflated. And so I want to differentiate between those at the podcast today and just say—we’re going to dig into the fruit of the Spirit, which is what makes us like Christ. So when we read the Bible, and when we study the Bible—we want to read it contextually. And so what that means is that we read the Bible in context so that we can gain a full awareness and an understanding this complete of the passage or the paragraph, rather than just pulling a verse out of the sky and studying this verse and that verse. When we pull out one verse at a time—oftentimes we miss appropriate that verse and we use it in a way that it wasn’t intended to be used.

So for example, an example of this is found in Philippians 4:13—I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So is the apostle Paul giving you the freedom to enter an Olympic marathon with no training and then anticipate a winning that’s based on the belief that God’s going to strengthen you—you know, supernaturally? No. Right? That’s laughable. So if you want to understand where it’s coming from, you got back up a little bit. And instead of focusing on Philippians 4:13, we’re going to go back to Philippians 4:12 and then read verse 13. So it says,  I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

So the actual context of Philippians 4:13 is the provision of God, how God provides for us, whether we are in a time of want or we are in a time of plenty. And this has certainly been the case throughout my life as Jay and I’ve gone through seasons of struggle, and seasons of just absolute rapture and joy. God is in all of it and He wants us to walk in right relationship with Him. And so, this month we’re studying the fruits of the Spirit. We’re going to begin a study on it and I just want to encourage you to jump in, grab some women from your area. Women, you can become a leader. And once you download the Bible Study, you’ll see we do something every week called Kids Strong. It’s an opportunity for you to take what we’re learning and then apply it to your life right now. So, you apply it to your life and then we’re going to teach you how to teach it to other people because really that’s the heartbeat behind the ministry that is MomStrong International—is to teach us as we studied together to rightly divide God’s Word. So we first learn the Word, then we learn how to love other people according to what God’s Word says, and then we learn how to lead other people in right relationship with the Lord. To take a position of leadership in the culture. It’s something that I am so passionate about. In fact, my women’s conference coming up this next year—it’s going to be focused on leadership and leading like Jesus does and what does it look like to shine, to shine the love of Jesus, to shine it in our marriages, to shine it with our parenting, to shine it in the culture. God says that we are going to be known for our love, right?

The Bible says that they’ll know you are Christians by your love—which is guess what? It’s a fruit of the Spirit, right? It’s a fruit of the Spirit. And so we want to be looking as we walk through the fruits of the Spirit, and be careful in the way that we handle God’s Word so that we understand there’s a difference between the fruit of our action, and the fruit of our Spirit—the fruit of God’s Spirit, rather. We want to be careful in how we handle God’s Word, which is the Word of truth. And then, be sure that we understand why it matters. That the fruit of the Spirit is different than the fruit that comes from our actions.

Bruce Hurt defines the difference in these two things as a spiritual attitude fruit, which is what we’re studying in Galatians 5, right?–love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—and a spiritual action fruit. He said, every believer manifests all the actions of his spiritual attitude fruit to some degree, although often one or several traits will be predominant. The spiritual attitude fruit precedes spiritual action fruit. Did you guys here that? Our spiritual attitude fruit proceeds, or it comes before, spiritual action fruit. If the spiritual attitudes are present, the fruit of good deeds will invariably follow. In 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul Describes believers filled with, or controlled by, the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding and thereby walking worthy of the Lord, pleasing Him. And here comes—bearing fruit in every good work. So we want to note that spiritual action fruit is preceded by a spiritual attitude fruit that Paul describes in Galatians 5.

And oftentimes in parenting our children, and many times Jay and I have been praying to see us a particular fruit in the life of one of our kids. And there’s one day in particular I remember calling him at work and just…this thing that we’d been praying about with one of our kids. And I was like—honey, oh my goodness, I just saw fruit on our little tree. He was like—no way. Yes, it’s true.

We had been praying for this particular kid, and praying that the fruit of the Spirit, which was in this case the fruit of self-control—would manifest itself in the life of my child by watching this child demonstrate the action that comes from the attitude of self-control. Having an attitude that saying—I’m going to allow myself to be controlled by the Spirit instead of controlled by the flesh. And wouldn’t you know it, as I was talking to my husband on the phone, the same kid that I was just saying—he’s got it! we figured it out!—came careening through the kitchen, did the exact opposite thing that I was just telling my husband that we’d finally got figured out and I was like… nevermind, false alarm, no fruit. Talk to you later. Right?

Because  we pray for these things, It’s not just going to happen. The fruit of the Spirit is a vibrant, singular, rich fruit with heart attitudes, right? That not only support and balance each other, but they enhance each other. Right? And so, we want to see that in our kids. We want to see that in ourselves. And like I’m always saying—we can’t give our kids what we don’t have. So one woman said—I want what you have. I want to be gentle and kind. And in the same conversation said—no, Jesus seems like a good person, but I wouldn’t want to follow Him. This is a major disconnect and we’re going to be studying it at MomStrong International this month because this is such a major disconnect that it’s heartbreaking.

Because without the Spirit of God that changes us to become like Christ, we’re not going to be able to pour His heart out to the world around us.

And so instead, I want to encourage you to practice the work of daily surrender, and become malleable in the hands of the Father, right? So let’s not confuse the fruit of the Spirit with the gifts of the Spirit. That’s another thing, right? Paul’s instructs believers in Corinth, in 1 Corinthians 12:4-12 that there is one Spirit and Lord—but varieties of the gifts that He gives to certain people in certain times for certain reasons. And so, we’re going to be studying that a little bit at MomStrong International and discover why it’s important that we make a distinction between these things. So in this next season of our lives, I’m going to encourage you—let’s purpose to dig really deep and discover what the fruit attitudes of our hearts are, and where we need to fertilize them with the Word of God to bring nutrients to our walk with Him.

So where are we need to apply protection so that worms of bitterness and anger don’t infect our fruit and bring rottenness, right? And we want to ask the Lord to help us have a mature fruit that grows in a tranquil heart, so that it can be the desire that fuels a willingness to grow in right relationship with God.

Are you guys ready to do this with me? Study with me this summer. Take this season that God has given us that’s not quite as busy—certainly not as busy as the fall. We’re not surrounded by Christmas decorations and having to do all those things, right? This is a great time to grow stronger and your relationship with God. I want to encourage you to do it.

Join me at MomStrongInternational.com. We want to hear from you. I want to hear how it’s impacting your life. What’s the study doing in your life that’s helping you grow in right relationship with God?

I want to remind you guys, I will be at the Rocky Mountain Homeschool Conference from June 13th through 15th, coming right up, at the Crowne Plaza Denver airport. When you see me, I might be a little teary eyed having just graduated our fourth son from our homeschool. You guys, it’s amazing how fast it goes by. Your children have been given to you like arrows in the hands of a warrior. Let’s study so that we can give our kids an absolute launch that we know has been done in the power, and the strength, of the Holy Spirit. I love you guys. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you back here on Friday.

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11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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