Hi everyone- welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox, and I'm going to be the guest speaker today and take a look back at some episodes in case you missed any- the ones that were most often downloaded, as well as the episode that was the most controversial. I had originally thought honestly, 2020 was kind of a wreck.
And I thought then looking at the 28 episodes that have been published since beginning this podcast this year, there were some really phenomenal concepts talked about, Bible verses, guest speakers. And I thought at first, let me talk about each episode for one minute. Cause I like timers. I like things to be in order.
And then thankfully I realized I'm really not doing anybody a service by talking about all 28 episodes for one minute apiece. So I decided to take a look back at the episodes that have been listened to the most. And I thought, okay, I have this number of episodes that were the most downloaded. I should speak about each of them for certain number of minutes. And then I decided to throw that idea out the window, too.
I'm really getting so relaxed in my advanced age. Just kidding. So I printed out a few highlights of quotes, Bible verses and resources. And I'm pretty good at shuffling cards, but not shuffling pieces of paper- I know it's so old fashioned that I actually printed things out. I am just shuffling and I'm going to grab a few and talk.
So the first piece of paper that I have grabbed is actually episode two, so thank you to Melissa for talking with us about fear. I have a couple of quotes from this episode for you- if you'd like to go back and listen to the whole thing, it was published in June of 2020. Melissa said,
Melissa: I think we do hold onto fear. I've found that fear is kind of comforting, because we know it, it's something we can expect.
We can expect to be afraid of something. And the releasing of it is hard because when you release it, you're going into another unknown. Living in fear is something that's easy for us to do because it's familiar. We're always afraid of something. We're afraid of success. We're afraid of failure, we fear what's to come, but if we own it, we can move forward.
Barbara: Melissa also talked about a situation in her life. After her mom died, she had invited her father to move in with her and her husband and their child.
Melissa: the blessings just poured down on us, from what we thought was a horrible situation of having to sell the family home we were married at, to buy a new home, to do more renovate, all these things that we thought were hardships turned out to be a blessing. The best thing about it is seeing my daughter's excitement in the morning when she can come downstairs and watch paw patrol with her Papa. It's been really nice because her daycare closed. So now a blessing was having my father here because she was no longer able to go to daycare. He became the daycare so that I was able to continue with my studies, which was a blessing that I know a lot of my classmates and those around the country who all of a sudden found themselves needing to take care of children while figuring out how they were going to do their work or do their work from home. We're facing the blessing in our house was that we didn't have that struggle, but I definitely acknowledge and prayed a lot for all of the parents who were having to do that.
Barbara: thank you, Melissa, for that testimonial. And. I just want to acknowledge since this is a Bible study podcast and we talk about blessings. I know I've talked about this in a few different episodes. For Melissa and I in our Lutheran faith, it's not fair to say, if you do this, then something wonderful will happen. Sometimes that does happen. But sometimes it takes a really long time and you're like, okay, I'm still waiting for the wonderful, and there's a different podcast episode specifically on the topic of waiting, but I just want to express gratitude and thanks that some of the fearful and hardship times in Melissa's life did end up feeling like blessings for her and her family. So that's episode two from June of 2020.
All right. We're shuffling some more. Let's see what another, either most listened to episode or most disputed episode was. This is really funny. You heard me shuffling and I picked episode three, maybe we'll end up going in order. I spoke with Deb about church and society and social justice. And the first website that I wanted to share as a resource today is www.UMCjustice.org . Deb is a United Methodist minister and UMC stands for United Methodist church. So all of the resources are listed on the podcast website, which is www.40minutesoffaith.com . There are partial transcripts of each episode there for you in the podcast section, as well as all of the resources that are discussed during every single episode.
So we were talking about becoming wise and active citizens, and Deb said,
Deb: it means thinking before doing- it's very easy to just react to a scene that's happening, but I have found that if I stop, take a breath, pray, think about sort of the biblical implications of whatever struggles are going on in society.
and then at that, of that model, that tends to be something that's much more long lasting than just doing the first thing that comes to my head, which is usually something out of anger rather than something out of love.
Barbara: Deb also gives us two other examples.
Deb: I had a confirmation statement said to me one year, well, Deb, I only have like 1% faith. I'm not sure I want to get up there and say, I'm going to follow Jesus. And I said to her, God could do a lot with that one percent. And so we don't have to totally know what it is we believe, or we don't have to be totally a hundred percent rooted in our faith journey if God is leading us, if we hear that voice of God saying, I want you to go do this. Sometimes we just have to go and we grow in that whole process.
Barbara: Finally, Deb mentioned a lot of things, but for the purposes of today's summary:
Deb: I had a pastor friend tell our church if we're not failing at stuff that we're not trying hard enough. Which was freeing for us. It was like everything we do doesn't have to be a success. We just have to go out there and say, Oh yeah, this works. But yet this didn't work so well, how can we tweak it? What do we need to do different?
Barbara: thank you very much to Deb in episode three, for talking with us about church and society in June of 2020. All right. We're doing the great shuffle again here.
Okay. We have episode six, which was released in July of 2020, and this is the one that I received the most amount of pushback from. I'm open to engaging in conversation. And that's one of the things that Sara and I talked about. I am interested in knowing that I might not always be right. I still have room to learn. I don't know everything. And to continue to engage in conversation with each other. Sara says:
Sara: I'm someone who doesn't like confrontation at all, but I like to think that, especially with some of these challenging topics, I want to add spice and stirred up, because I think it's really important that we talk about these things in church.
If we can't talk about it and how they relate to our faith, I think in many ways we're doing a disservice to ourselves and to others. Because they're important. It helps us understand who God is and how we interact with God as well.
Barbara: the topic of this episode was inclusive and expansive language. I attended a workshop at my school, which is Wartburg, theological seminary. And this is a position that has come out of my faith body, which is the evangelical Lutheran church in America. I didn't make this up on my own and it wasn't Sara's idea. She's a student at the school also.
So we had a conversation about what it is that we learned during this workshop and how it might apply to our churches and in the lives of people who we know. I asked Sara about inclusive language and she said:
Sara: that's a tricky one because it can be different for all people. But I think it, especially in relation to how we understand, God means being willing to use God or God's self, instead of saying he all of the time. which can be tricky, especially when we read the Bible and it's so full of he's.
And then trying to distinguish between, is this he talking about God, the father, is it talking about Jesus, the person? It's being willing to at least have those conversations and look at what does it mean if we just refer to God only as he all the time.
Barbara: There's obviously a lot more to the episode that I would encourage you to check out, but I have two more comments from Sara when we're talking about inclusive and expansive language and how we bring that into our faith groups and talk about it with other people. Sara says:
Sara: one of the biggest things that we can do about this is have a dialogue with people. It means being willing to hear what other people have to say and genuinely hear that in our seats, it means listening actively without just thinking about what next defensive point you're going to make, but really being open and trusting that the spirit is going to help guide those conversations and be present in that. It comes down to what Dr. Sam Giery talks about it as viewing people from the lens of Christ and not from our human lens, because it's really easy to look at someone and say, well, you did X, Y, and Z wrong.
And how dare you? But that's not how Christ has redeemed us sees us. And so being willing to approached conversations that way, I think it's going to be really important moving forward.
Sara: part of that is just being willing to have those conversations and meeting people where they're at and growing slowly with them, instead of going straight for where you want them to be, because we're not all at the same point in talking about inclusive language or racism or sexism or any of that.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's partially just a product of how we were raised in the society that we live in. but. Change doesn't happen overnight. It definitely is a process and being willing to commit to the process instead of just expecting change to happen immediately.
Barbara: So thank you to people who have given feedback, both positive and constructive criticism. I don't need to always be told about how wonderful everything is.
If there's a concerning situation, your comments are welcome. If you learn something new and helpful, of course, that information is welcome as well. And I look forward to continuing to bring interesting topics of diverse natures to future episodes. All right. We've got the big shuffle going on here. Let's see.
What's next.
Okay. In episodes, eight and 10, Heather talked with us about human rights. The conversation was so comprehensive that it ended up being two episodes. So we have both episode eight and 10 from July of 2020. I shared with Heather a document that was published by the evangelical Lutheran church in America.
The website is E L C A.org about human rights. And there are a series of social messages and social statements that discuss. Important topics in this day and age, including situations that might feel like ethical dilemmas. There are certainly some issues that might be considered controversial there. And I haven't gone through all of them yet in podcast episodes, but look forward to doing so in the future.
When we were talking about human rights, Heather said:
Heather: as far as how we can do better, it starts inside of us. We have to first rid ourselves of any judgment that we have towards specific communities, and really do some soul searching.
We have to pray and ask God to uncover that. And it can be painful, to reveal these works that we were trying to ignore or that just weren't coming to light. And then, once we work with God on healing those things, because he is the great healer and we may feel really bad about some of the thoughts or ideas that we've allowed to stagnate internally.
But God can remove all of those things from us. If we have a heart for him to do it, and if we allow him to do it, and sometimes it takes a little while, maybe we won't be healed right away, like a miraculous healing that Jesus performed many times, but it takes some work and effort depending on how long you've allowed those things to fester.
So the first thing I think is you have to work internally and you have to work with God on relieving you of those things. And I think also times when God really relieved people of those things very quickly, including myself- there's been times where I prayed on different things for relief and God relieved me of them right away.
So he knows where you're at with that and he can work with you on it. So, another thing we have to remember is, it's not my right to determine another person's worth. And their rights. So the statement that you read said that no person has more rights or fewer rights than another- I don't set the rights of anyone.
I don't even set the rights of myself and I don't establish my own worth or another person's worth or how I should treat them with dignity or not. That isn't up to me. God established that when he created you, and my brother and my sister and, myself. So God gave that worth to me. And it's not my place to take it away from anybody, but to recognize and to promote and help those that maybe society isn't treating with dignity, in different ways.
So, we have to keep those things in mind and I think that is one way we can do better. Then after you feel that your conscience is clear, then you can pray and ask God to lead you forward in what type of action you can do externally. So first internal second, external. And how does that look for you?
It's going to be different for every person. Not every person is going to have people coming in their house to talk about this and not every person is going to be on the street doing peaceful protesting and not every person is going to be working in the homeless shelter with that community. So just because I do things one way doesn't mean that when you have this awakening or this realization of an area that you need to be healed, that you have to follow in my footsteps.
And so that's something as we work with others on human rights issues. Make sure that they are in relation with God on that directly and that we're not telling them, Hey, this is what you should do, but here's some things that you could do. And why don't you ask God to tell you which one of them is going to be your lane?
Barbara: Heather also talked about spiritual gifts and here are some of her thoughts.
Heather: thinking about, spiritual gifts, there are gifts of grace that are mentioned in Romans, and prayer that you mentioned is absolutely one that I think we should all be doing, but some people are going to be led to specifically pray, and to be a prayer warrior and to pray for a certain thing or a certain cause, certain group of people. For other people there's gifts of mercy. And that might look like, Hey, I'm going to go out and I'm going to serve at a homeless shelter, or I'm going to go serve the refugee community in my area. Or I'm going to invite people to fellowship with me either through my church or my home, or however that looks.
There's also people that God gives the gift of generosity and he blesses them financially. I hope we don't pigeonhole anybody or ourselves into thinking the only way that I can help with this is either to become a community activist or to give money because that's not the only way.
And the easiest and the most cost-effective way is to pray and ask God to bless that specific sector, that specific issue. But, if you have resources and you feel led to share them, whether they're time, money, or your home or whatever your faith, we should be sharing our faith.
And that is a resource that's renewable. And I should mention this because it's really important. I think there's been a lot of talk about dignity. I love that we're talking about that today. I want to make clear that as you help or as you're inclined to repent of any judgment that you've had for certain people, I don't feel that you are going to lose anything by trying to help others. You don't lose dignity by trying to help others to recover theirs. And so the fear that I think that some in the Christian Church have that they're going to somehow give up their rights. To see the rights advance of another group.
That's not based in God's teaching at all.
Heather: God doesn't give you dignity only to take it away and give it to somebody else. He's only asking people that have the resources or the ability to help his children that may not be able to fully realize the dignity that some of us are able to, because of the way society is structured is only asking us to help them.
Those that have less opportunity for that. It doesn't diminish mine at all. In fact, it increases my dignity to show love and to show forbearance. And to allow God to work through me, to on behalf of other parts of his church in his kingdom. So I hope that people see that my heart is really heavy right now about how the Christian Church is so divided on this specific topic and how some people are seeing this as a scary thing that for me, who is called to support and advocate for the black community. It's really hard for me to see that there are Christians that I know are loving people, but they may have a hard heart about this. And they're seeing that this is somehow an affront to their faith or their freedom. I hope that their hearts change on that.
And I may not be the one that can be that, but I'll do my best with people that are open and receptive to it.
Barbara: Thank you, Heather, for talking with us about human rights in episodes eight and 10 this summer.
Okay. The great shuffle continues. Next. We have episode 11 that was released in August, 2020. And my friend Casely talked with us about international faith. We talked about a Bible passage in second Corinthians, chapter five, verses 16 to 20. And I'm not going to read that passage right now, but I would strongly encourage you to look it up.
Casely: It's so refreshing to read and to be reminded again, that who we are is as a result of what Christ has done on the cross to settle the relationship that We have with God, and we also enjoy and encouraged because of what God has already done, that we will settle out a relationship with each other. Each of us has this fresh start. I like that fresh start. And in the last, 25, 30 years, I've had the privilege of being a global missions pastor at two big churches.
One was in Boston, Park Street Church. And then also here in Maryland Annapolis Bay area, community church. And I was fairly content with what I was doing, doing global missions all over the world, whether it is sending people to go to places like South Sudan or South India in leadership development, in training of pastors in church planting, or going to Ghana to do evangelism and discipleship, go into Uganda to do HIV AIDS ministries.
We're going all over the world, ESL programs in El Salvador, in Poland. And I thought I was all set. And then the Lord redirected me- a phone call came through. They were looking for a secretary for the global Christian forum. And the friend said, I think you'd be a very good candidate for that. And I said, I don't think so.
And she said, why don't you pray? And I committed to prayer. And after praying for two weeks and after consulting with so many different people, I was at a point where I was like, it doesn't hurt to make myself available.
And I think that's a good place to be. when you say I'm available for God to use me, I don't know what the future is. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm just going to be available. And there's been one thing after the other, just confirming just the willingness to be open. And I feel very confident that I am doing exactly what God wants me to do at this time.
Barbara: We also talked about persecution:
Casely: That is the side aspect of our lives. These days, that Christians in many, many places where they are minorities are being persecuted and it comes from whether it's discrimination in housing or employment, or even family issues and marriages. And then sometimes sadly Christians lose their lives all over the world. we are told that this century we have lost more than all the previous centuries combined.
So it is a very sad occurrence. It goes on, every day. I think as Christians, there are four things we can do. I think the first is to pray for perseverance and for faithfulness, for those that are going through periods of persecution. But secondly, also to pray for protection for them, we know that nothing comes to any of us without going through the gracious hands of our sovereign God.
But we also know that he calls us to pray that we'll be protected from the evil one. So we should pray that Christians who are in all parts of the world should pray for brothers and sisters. The third thing I think we can do also to use legal means, government to government advocacy, whatever ways that we have, especially those of us in the Western world, where we have freedom of religion, enshrined in our constitution is respected by all other non Western countries. Also, most of them have freedom of religion, but they don't respect it, especially they are Christian minorities and we can use our influence in government, in policymaking to us that they just respect the constitution that they have, especially because we respect and allow everyone who is in the Western world to practice their religion, that they have.
The fourth idea is that, of Christianity in the Western world do feel marginalized- they will not call themselves persecuted, but they sometimes consider ourselves as being irrelevant to the societies in which we live in because people don't really appreciate the values that we have because we are more pluralistic in a more secular society.
And just as we find ways of allowing all faiths and all religions to practice in safety in the Western world, we should also, of course not discriminate against the very Christian heritage of the Western countries. We should have a balance where we can celebrate our Christian heritage as well as allow others to practice their religion.
And I think that will be a good witness to the whole world.
Barbara: Thank you Casely, for speaking with us in episode 11, about international faith this summer. Okay, we got the big shuffle. In episode 15, I spoke with Michelle about addiction and faith. Michelle told us a very powerful resurrection story, she called it, and I have a few quotes and I'd strongly recommend that if you haven't listened to this episode, or if you know someone who might be interested in hearing some of what Michelle has to say to share this with them.
Michelle: I don't like the term highly functioning because I wasn't functioning. I was going to work. I was doing all the things I never got into trouble. I never lost my driver's license. I had a really good masquerade going. I was a professional in the community- people did not know that I was suffering in silence and w near the end of my drinking days.
Again, many relationships falling apart, abusive relationships. I was also getting into prescription drugs. So January 5th, 2015 was my last drinking and drugging day. the next day I was found unconscious in my apartment after not showing up for work and taken immediately by ambulance to the emergency room and ICU, where I was suffering from alcohol poisoning and prescription drug overdose and attempted suicide. And I honestly, I truly believe that I was ready to check out. I was in so much pain because I didn't know how stop drinking anymore. And I didn't know how it was going to survive. I wasn't taking drugs with it. I was no longer able to go to work without a drink or a drug, engage in a conversation, leave my house. I had no control anymore.
Barbara: Michelle also shared with us some examples of her journey in recovery.
Michelle: what I saw was these perky little makeup, perfect hair, perfect husbands and families, and just perfectness. It's just all the superficial stuff.
Barbara: Yeah. We wear masks, not even COVID masks, like social masks. Like my life is great.
Michelle: we are trained as a society to where those social things even from a young age: don't let anybody see what's going on inside. And as an alcoholic, I can tell you I was consuming more and more alcohol at each sitting because thirst was never quenched. That thirst was a God-sized hole in my heart.
Barbara: I will never forget that. So there are so many resources from this episode on the podcast website, 40 minutes to faith.com the episode. Was aired in August of 2020 it's episode 15. And it's in the podcast section and there's also a separate resources tab, but I haven't figured out how to get a clickable table of contents. So that's going to be my homework assignment. Okay. But I would encourage you to either listen to the episode or check out the resources on the podcast website. Thank you so much, Michelle, for sharing your personal experiences with us about addiction and faith. And there's a lot more to it.
And we have another Michelle in episode 12, so not right in a row, but near each other. In August, 2020, I spoke with a different Michelle about spiritual direction. And I asked her if she could give a definition so that someone who may have never heard of spiritual direction can have an understanding of what's involved.
Michelle: spiritual direction is an art. It's an art of accompaniment of one Christian - in a Christian context - of one Christian to another. That enables them to pay attention to their experience of God, their capacity, to respond to God who initiates reaching out to us God, who is love.
And it offers an opportunity to grow in depth and in breadth, in our prayer and relationship with God as we live into what this means in our daily lives. Spiritual direction can be known by other names. You might say some would say spiritual companions, soul friends, spiritual accompaniment, and in a broader sense, it would fall under this area of having a mentor or a deep listener on the spiritual journey.
Someone who comes for spiritual direction. Can trust that they will be listened to and honored for wherever they are in their life journey. It is not about proselytizing, but rather listening deeply for the movement of the spirit in an individual's life and meeting them right there in that journey.
Michelle: Spiritual direction would come often in a time of transition- maybe growing into a deeper stage of faith and they're doubting and they need someone to help us with that through maybe they're in grief after moving or losing a job or the death of a loved one or a new diagnosis of an illness.
And having a companion on the spiritual journey where the Holy spirit is the director and the spiritual director, companion is one who helps us foster a listening for that movement of the spirit and train in how to go about that, that in spiritual journey action, a person brings their life story. And their experience of God and their, gifts of prayer and struggle with prayer.
Barbara: Thank you, Michelle, for sharing with us in episode 12, about spiritual direction. And Michelle now has her own podcast as well. And I'll put a link to that on the podcast website.
I'm going to pick one more, even though there's a few more left and maybe we'll have to do another episode of this, of the best of. In episode seven, I spoke with Carol about gloom and all of these Bible verses again, are going to be listed in great detail on the podcast website, but it wasn't only about gloom.
We talked about diagnosis and about hope. So this summer in July, Carolyn, I talked about her faith journey and the diagnosis of her son and her moves all around the world as a military spouse. And Carol is currently a social worker.
Carol: I really liked to help people. I definitely had some questions about politics and just things in the world.
And I guess I just started looking back on things that I was raised on, things that I feel like people had different views on from what I did. And either I need to be more open minded or I need to look at the Bible and see what it says to make sure that these things that I'm feeling I want to support line up with the Bible. So first it just kind of started with looking at social programs itself because I'm like, you know, wait a minute. There are people out there who are trying, but it's not their fault. So the more I looked I was just like, Oh, this class sounds really interesting. And it kind of all ended up under the program. Social work, definitely not something I had on my radar at all.
I'm taking classes that the changes in the world are happening right now. I mean, you were seeing so many oppressors that's group and they've always been there.
They've always been there. It's like you said, that it was in the Bible. They were there in the Bible. we need to do something. And education is something that no one can ever take from you.
So there's always something to learn. I was with all the changes going on and me questioning how I grew up, as a conservative Republican, most people are not really towards.
Social programs. I kind of always felt like it was bad or it's like a bad use of money. I was just kind of really questioning everything. I was lucky to be able to go to a Christian college and that definitely helps, relate worldly views back to the Bible or what's going on.
If you think about it, Jesus was kind of a social worker. He was always hanging out with the crowd nobody really wanted to, but those are the people who needed him. And there are so many people in the world. Who need us. I've just learned about all the programs where there's just gaps and people are just falling into them.
Barbara: regarding the diagnosis of Carol's son, she said:
Carol: we definitely had some times of sadness. There's also times of blame of your like, maybe we should've done this or if he was on a stricter schedule or, then I watch too much TV or just did anything that I guess you're just trying to really find a period.
cause no one really wants the comma. They don't want it to keep going. You want an answer and there's there just really wasn't one. so once we got that, then he qualified for ABA therapy, which is applied behavior analysis. And on the spectrum now, there's not like Asperger's and Autism.
Nolan was diagnosed with ASD level one. So autism spectrum disorder level one, which means high functioning and, the doctor says, it just may be his personality’s a little quirky.
We could not get the ABA therapy covered by Tri-Care until he had the diagnosis. So I've also learned so much through that. That, even as kids are borderline, sometimes they may go ahead and give that diagnosis just so they can go ahead and start those early services.
Barbara: Thank you Carol, for talking with us in episode seven, about gloom and faith and hope and diagnosis.
So we didn't get to talk about all of the episodes that were the most listened to, but I would invite you to. Find your favorite podcast distribution service, or go to 40 minutes to faith.com. You can listen to all of the episodes there as well. We look forward to your comments on the website. Your prayers are also very welcome as we pray for you.
I also pray to keep an open mind myself, to keep learning and to share what I have learned in the spirit of continuing a conversation about faith, about the challenges in life and about the many blessings in life.
Resources:
https://engagingfranciscanwisdom.org/ Michelle’s podcast