Transcript
Speaker: In a village, you do not always get to be the recipient. In a village, you must also be a villager. You must not just take and consume, you must also yeah
Speaker: Hello, friends, and welcome to Verity Podcast. My name is Felicia Masonheimer, your host, founder of Every Woman a Theologian, which is the ministry that hosts this podcast. Whether you're listening on iTunes, Spotify, or watching on YouTube, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us for this Thinking Biblically series.
Speaker: If you're popping in on this episode and have not listened to the previous three, I encourage you to go check those out. We've talked about how to think biblically about the tradwife debate, how to think about denominations and church attendance, and most recently, how to discern through devotionals, Christian devotionals and books in the current publishing industry.
Speaker: If those topics interest you, would love for you to check out those episodes. And if you've enjoyed this series, this podcast, please don't hesitate to subscribe, share, and review. it helps other people find us.
Speaker: If you are not familiar with me or with every woman at Theologian, I'm so glad that you've joined us today. And if you stay tuned to the end, I'll share a little bit more about what we do and the resources that we create for the church around the world.
Speaker: Today we're talking about what scripture says about finding your village. And it's so interesting that we're doing this particular episode when we are because I just talked about this topic on Instagram yesterday and it just happened to align with what we're doing today. So I'm actually going to share some of what I discussed on Instagram here in this episode because you all resonated with it so much. I did save those stories on my profile on Instagram. I'm at Felicia Masonheimer.
Speaker: If you want to follow me there, if you wish to see a shortened version on social media about what we're talking about today. Now, the idea of finding your village is a phrase that comes from our broader cultural conversation about community. It's not necessarily a Christian phrase, but it's what we say about building community, at least in America.
Speaker: And so in order to kind of define that phrase, finding your village, we have to define what even is a village. And you might be like, I know, Felicia, it's a little collection of little town where people live. Yes, but it's important to kind of drill down to the true definition of a village because I think it plays a big role in our understanding of actually building a Christian village as believers in Christ.
Speaker: So I did a little bit of research, and villages look different across the world based on where they are located, whether it's in South America or Africa or Europe. I decided to look at medieval Europe because this is a ah time period I love to study, but also it does seem to echo the shape of villages in other areas, other continents around the world.
Speaker: But in the medieval era in Europe, ah an average village was around 100 to 300 people living in a rural area, an agricultural area, usually between 20 to 50 families.
Speaker: The largest villages were about 400 to 500 people, and the smaller ones were 5 20 families, to people. Each family in the village would have a trade or a job, um usually agricultural, and it was all dependent on one another. So if there's a butcher, you know, they need the butcher who had who's, you know, slaughtering the animals. You had the the baker, and then you usually had the the miller. So the miller and the baker were separate. This is interesting. You you don't need this fact, but I think it's cool.
Speaker: um They would raise the wheat, they would take it to the miller to be ground into flour, but then you would take your wheat to the baker and into the Victorian era, the baker would bake your bread. Like, you didn't bake in your own house. You might cook over an open fire, but you would actually take your bread to be baked at the bakery and then pick it up from them. So you might have miller, baker, butcher, but then you also have the farmers, you have the stonemasons.
Speaker: um A good example of a village in rural England, this would be in the eighteen hundreds so not in the medieval era, but kind of how it went forward in history, is the show Lark Rise to Candleford. If you've never seen this show,
Speaker: I love it. It's such a pleasant BBC show. um But in that show, you kind of see how the whole town works together, every person having their role or their job, and how it all kind of dovetails as a village. But you also see in shows like Larkrise and Downton Abbey being another example, how It's a small community.
Speaker: And a lot of the relationships are based on proximity. They're based on interactions that you have at the post office and at the market. When you go to the butcher and when you go to get a dress made by a seamstress, you're interacting with these different people, their relatives, their spouses, their children. You are getting to know people by exposure.
Speaker: And by living next to them. And a village would have promoted that kind of basically exposure relationship, proximity relationship.
Speaker: We don't have the same kind of communities today. If we wanted to, a lot of people could actually work remotely in their home, drop their kids off at school in the pickup and drop off line.
Speaker: They can do pickup for their groceries and literally never interact with somebody if they didn't want to. And this is so foreign to our ancestors. It's so foreign to them because, yes, it's convenient in many ways, but it is preventing interpersonal interaction and the kind of proximity relationship that builds over time.
Speaker: And we'll circle back to that in a minute. So in these villages, there would have been a joint schooling effort, often a one-room schoolhouse kind of model, or sometimes tutors would have multiple students. You had the church, which was central to the community. at least in medieval Europe, their church was very central because you would be coming there on Sunday for mass or for worship.
Speaker: And then community events on the Village Green were usually guided by the church calendar. So the things that you're doing for like the gathering um are things like celebrating Michaelmas, celebrating Easter, celebrating Pentecost. They're getting together for these holidays, and that's guiding their year.
Speaker: And those are the times when they're they're they're gathering as a community, taking a break from their labor. So looking at how a village operated in this one particular time, one particular place, gives us some guidance on what it can look like for us if we say we want to find our village. I read an article from Harvard, and I have ah it linked in the show notes. It's called, What is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness, and How Can We Fix It? It's very short And it basically shows some bullet points of of a study they did on who is lonely, why they're lonely, and what they can do to fix it.
Speaker: And it was really interesting to read what they believed was causing their loneliness and what they thought would Fix it.
Speaker: So what the main thing that they said caused it was technology. 73% of those surveyed that technology was contributing to loneliness, which I think we'd all agree. 66% said insufficient time with family.
Speaker: So that closest, the closest relationships, your family, insufficient time. 62% said overworked, too busy or tired. 60% said mental health challenges that harm relationships with others.
Speaker: And 58% said living in a society that's too individualistic. And then 50% said no religious or spiritual life, too much focus on one's own feelings and the changing nature of work I was kind of shocked by how high that last one was. 50% said that that's what they believe caused it. And if you look back at the centrality of the church, at least in the European village, centrality of Christianity to the community, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: And America, at least, and those that many of those of you listening, America, Canada, we come, and even Australia, are coming from the European settlers coming in and the society as it is is, is shaped by that European idea.
Speaker: It's bringing over that Christian centrality, the centrality of church culture to society. This was built into the American colonies. was built into society. It was assumed for most people that that would be the same. And so without that, without church and spirituality being the center of someone's life, you lose the community structure.
Speaker: And this is why we're going to look at what Scripture says, what the Christian God says in Scripture about how to fix this loneliness epidemic, because the Bible actually provides real instructions for cultivating community.
Speaker: We learn what it looks like. We learn how to walk it out. And it's really helpful to see what this looked like in the early church and how um we can imitate that today.
Speaker: Now, before we look at these verses and kind of break it down practically, want to mention something about the village. So people will talk online. I see it Instagram reels all the time, especially in motherhood spaces.
Speaker: I just need a village. I just want a village. You look for the village. You can't find the village. So we need to talk. We need to get something out of the way right away. Number one, a village is not three people.
Speaker: It's not three families. A village is a network of at least 50 people. Like if we're going to be accurate to what a village is, it's a minimum of 50, five, zero people. It's not five people. It's not three people. It's not three other moms. That is not a village.
Speaker: That is a few friends. And we need to talk about this right away in Christian community because I think at the heart of this is something that nobody's calling out. The Felicia has to call it out.
Speaker: If you're expecting three women to bear the full weight of your entire life and everything that you're going through and all of your hardships and all of your difficulties, especially if some of those people are long distance and you're texting and FaceTiming and voxering and all of those things,
Speaker: you are going to be disappointed and you are placing unrealistic expectations on those women. A village is meant to be a larger community of people that is made up of both inner and outer circle, acquaintances in France, people who go in and out,
Speaker: who are available and then sometimes unavailable, and then you have to be available. In a village, you do not always get to be the recipient.
Speaker: In a village, you must also be a villager. You must not just receive, not just take and consume, you must also receive. give. So yes, it's great to be invited to things. It's great to have people throw parties. It's great for them to host small group. It's great for them to invite you. You have to invite though, and you have to host, and you have to reciprocate, and you have to give of your time, and you have to sacrifice as well to be part of a village. And the village needs to be more than just a couple people.
Speaker: When we get this wrong in Christian community, we not only end up disappointed, but we end up placing extremely unrealistic expectations on what Christian community is.
Speaker: And then we find ourselves offended, we find ourselves bitter, and we find ourselves angry and unforgiving. Something that's so interesting in this Harvard article is that in the solutions that people suggested in the survey to their loneliness, one of the solutions, so three quarters of people who were surveyed highlighted these solutions to loneliness.
Speaker: Reach out to family or friends, so be the initiator. Learn to love myself. And third, learn to be more forgiving of others. And fourth, find ways to help others.
Speaker: Notice that of those four, three of them were outward facing, giving back to the community. And I want to tackle this on the very front end of this episode because I don't want you tuning out at like 15 minutes and like missing the rest. I've got to talk about this right now before we even look at these scriptures because this is fundamental to Christianity. You cannot be in Christian community if it's all about what you're getting.
Speaker: If it's all about, I want a village for me to feel satisfied and fulfilled, you're going to be really disappointed because being satisfied and fulfilled comes from satisfying and fulfilling other people.
Speaker: That's what it looks like. Now, that's going to look different person to person and season to season. So, for example, two years ago, my husband and i went through the year of hell.
Speaker: It was terrible. We lost money. Our car broke down for three months. We needed a full engine replacement. We had two miscarriages. We went through four rounds of fertility treatments. Our children were stalked by a sexual predator. Our dog nearly died. Two of our goats died. It was devastating. It was one thing after another.
Speaker: And in that season, people showed up for us in such an incredible way. They were so helpful, supportive, kind. They prayed for us most of all, which was the most wonderful thing. They brought us meals after our miscarriages. You know, I had brought meals to people after they had babies, but to bring a meal to somebody after they have a miscarriage, like how kind is that?
Speaker: um But I also lost friends in that season because due to the fact that I was drowning in suffering, I couldn't follow up with people. I couldn't reach out to people. I could not be the person that was pouring out in that season.
Speaker: And because certain people believed that having me in their village meant that I needed to constantly be affirming or pouring into them, when I no longer could do that, that friendship ended.
Speaker: So this is an example to me, when I look back on that season of going, number one, I never know what somebody's going through when they pull back or don't have capacity.
Speaker: If they're not available for something, I am never going to shame them for that. Now, I don't think that's appropriate long term. If we're talking year on year on year on year of this, then that's a problem. But I'm going to assume that there's something going on in that season that's keeping them busy. I'm going to be understanding and choose understanding.
Speaker: But also, now that I am out of that season and in a new season where I can actually start pouring out again, where I can actually give of my time, give of my resources, I have the emotional resources to give, I'm now stepping back into a pouring out season where I actually have the capacity to do that.
Speaker: I'm seeing, look, there's a shift. And now I can contribute to the village in ways I couldn't two years ago. And when we understand the seasons to this and we understand, number one, grace and responsibility, we can be good villagers and we can also be good receivers.
Speaker: So I want to talk about that right out of the gate because the way the culture presents your village is give to me, help me, pick up my kids, bring me food, show up and just listen to me in the middle of the day.
Speaker: And if a woman can't do that, they're a bad friend. Not necessarily true. There are a lot of reasons why she might not be able to do that. And there's a lot of grace that has to be given. And I think if we come to Finding Our Village,
Speaker: Giving people the grace that we give ourselves, if we give other people as much grace as we give ourselves, we'll be surprised at how much better our relationships are.
Speaker: So now let's look at what the Bible says. Okay, so first we're going to look at Acts 2 because this is the early church. This is after Peter preaches his sermon at Pentecost and 3,000 people become believers.
Speaker: They disperse back to their cities, but there's still a massive collection of them in Jerusalem. So now they've got all of these new believers coming into the church. And so they're like, okay, now what do we do? How do we gather? And it gives us a framework for the the early church. What did they do?
Speaker: Acts 2.42, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. so teaching through the law, the Old Testament, how Jesus fulfilled that. The fellowship, what's the fellowship? The fellowship is the gathering of the individuals in worship.
Speaker: to breaking of bread, so eating together. um There's a debate over whether this means like the love feasts that they would do where they would um gather to break bread just to eat together, or if they mean the Eucharist, so communion.
Speaker: It could be both. Both are discussed. And the prayers. So when it says the prayers, those are liturgical prayers. I talked about liturgical prayers in our prayer series. I talk about this verse there. So you can check that out if you're like, what does that mean?
Speaker: So day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Okay, so they're going to the temple. They're still going to the Jewish temple because they're Jewish Christians.
Speaker: Going to the temple. And then they're going home and they're breaking bread together. receiving their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with people.
Speaker: So what we're seeing in this Christian village, this gathering of believers, is number one, worship is central to it. This is not a hangout.
Speaker: Worship, which is based on the apostles' teaching of the Old Testament law, because the New Testament was being written, the gathering of Christians together, who encourage one another, fellowship, breaking of bread in communion or eating together or both, and praying together. So there's praise, there's worship, there's the word, they're eating together, they're gathering together, they're encouraging one another, they're praying together.
Speaker: That is what Christian community looked like in that early time. Now, As we know, it is it doesn't stay in this honeymoon period forever. In fact, just a little bit later in Acts, we see, I think it's Acts 15, we see that the church grows so big they then have to divide it up and create the role of deacon so that people can be served and so that they can get enough food because the apostles were serving the food and didn't have time to teach. They had to bring in the deacons and the deaconesses to help deaconess. distribute food to people and and make sure the widows had what they needed. So they're starting to set up this administration to programs to help the people.
Speaker: And then it continues to grow and they end up having issues of division, which if you look at the epistles from Paul, Peter, Jude, James, John, you can see all of them are correcting certain behaviors in the church. So right away, right away, we're having people problems.
Speaker: And this should be a huge comfort to you because if you're trying to find your village, you're going to have a honeymoon period where it seems like everything's perfect and great, especially if you come out of an unhealthy group, unhealthy church, and suddenly you find a healthy one. You're like, this is fantastic. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker: Everything is hunky-dory. We're going to be great. And then you get two, three years in and stuff starts to be human and it gets tricky.
Speaker: Guess what? Same thing was happening in the early church. They were not exempt from this. They were not doing it better. They think it issues had major issues. And you even see fights between apostles. I don't i don't know that it was, um maybe it was Barnabas. I'd have to double check that. But Paul has a fight with ah an apostle. They split up.
Speaker: Or was it John Mark? Anyway, I didn't have that prepped in my notes, but there's a there's a fight recorded in Acts that they go separate ways. So we know what was happening even among apostles.
Speaker: People were human. They're having issues. They're having struggles. And that's why as we go further into the the New Testament, we get more and more instructions on how to do Christian community because it's tough and you have to walk it out.
Speaker: So let's look at a little more of what the New Testament says about this. So i want to look at Hebrews 10, 24 through 25. It says this, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.
Speaker: So fellowship is meant to stir up. So some versions say spur one another on. um I was a wrangler, basically a cowgirl, in New Mexico for a summer in college.
Speaker: And I led trail rides in the mountains of New Mexico outside Santa Fe. And I had to wear spurs. I rode a Mustang. His name was Lunatic. Story for another day.
Speaker: um Wonderful horse, but he was a little bit wild. And when I had ridden horses for years, I'd been in equestrian sports, but this was the first time I'd worn spurs. I'd never worn spurs with a horse before. So they told me to bring them. I come out. And I mean, they're like legit cowboy spurs. And I'm like, why?
Speaker: i asked, like, why am I wearing these? And they said he's used to he's used to being ridden with spurs. He responds to them. You don't have to hurt him, but you do need to press them into his sides to keep him moving because he's stubborn.
Speaker: And it was true. Whenever I didn't wear the spurs, he was not as responsive as when I did because the spurs just increased the pressure and push him forward into obedience. So if you consider how to spur one another on to love and good works, consider the spur, the pressure forward by the whole church community to choose love and good works. Notice that some Christian communities will spur you on only to love, but not to good works. So not to holiness, not to action.
Speaker: They'll say, just love everybody. Just love and welcome them, but don't say anything that's uncomfortable. But other Christian communities, they'll spur you on to good works, but not to love. So it's legalism.
Speaker: Do more things for the Lord. You know, make sure you're performing. It's interesting. They're both here in Hebrews. Spur one another on to both love and good works, not one or the other.
Speaker: Both. Then he says, do not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some. Okay. So this verse is one of those clobber passages that churches that are more on the legalistic side will use to try to get you in church three times a week.
Speaker: So Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, you better be there or be square. And I have some friends who've come out of churches like that and they said, oh yeah, Hebrews 10, 25. I've heard it a bajillion times. Now I said in my episode on denominations that you cannot be a believer in Christ, someone who says they're indwelt by the Holy Spirit, walking with Christ, and remain long-term outside the church body. I stand by that statement. You cannot do that. Go back and listen to that episode. I made the biblical case for it. It is an oxymoron to call yourself a Christian and not be in a church body, to remain that way.
Speaker: That is not what Christianity is. At the same time, Church in the early Christian era that we're looking at here and Acts 2 was not happening three times a week.
Speaker: They did not have Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. There was no Awana. There was no prayer meeting on Wednesday night. This was a society for the Jews built around Saturday Sabbath,
Speaker: And so many Christians who were Jewish would gather on Saturdays, but Christians who were Gentiles could not do that. So they would gather early, early in the morning, either Saturday night or Sunday morning, usually Sunday morning to celebrate the Lord's resurrection.
Speaker: And that's when they would worship. But they didn't have time off the rest of the week to be, you know, attending three times a week. So we have to be so careful not to add on to the gathering that's being spoken about here in Hebrews 10.
Speaker: It's not saying every time the doors are open and the pastor's there, you need to be there. I'll be honest with you guys. I don't think I have ever attended a regular Wednesday night service in my entire Christian life or ministry.
Speaker: Like regularly, have I been at church on a Wednesday? No, I have not. Now, I've taught studies at home and i've I host now. I teach at the church on Wednesdays. But consistently, no, that's not the measure of holiness. But what it does say is you need to prioritize the main meeting. Why? Because you need to encourage one another and all the more as you see the day of his return drawing near.
Speaker: You need to not just be encouraged, but also equipped by the apostles teaching, breaking of bread and the prayers. And as I said in our denominations episode, when you choose not to do that, you are cutting yourself off from the grace of God that is empowering you to go where he's trying to take you.
Speaker: So you are cutting off your maturity. You're saying, I don't want to mature any further in my walk with God and in my walk with other people. And I'm not going to submit to how God has chosen to do this, which is through the institutional church.
Speaker: So with that challenge, what else does the Bible say about Christian community? The next thing it says is bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6.2.
Speaker: Bear one another's burdens. Now, when I see this quoted lately in my Instagram feed, what I've been seeing is not bear one another's burdens, but keep track of who is bearing your burdens.
Speaker: And that's not what this verse says, my friends. It doesn't say, keep track of who is bearing your burdens and make sure that they are fulfilling the law of Christ. Not what Galatians 6 says.
Speaker: It says, you all, you, are you bearing other people's burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. Where are you at?
Speaker: with fulfilling the law. This reminds me of my children. I have children, all in rotation, who love to come and tell me when someone else isn't fulfilling the law of the Misenheimer household.
Speaker: I mean, we've all done it as kids, right? Well, she wasn't supposed to get peppers and tomatoes until 1030, but I can see that she got some and put them on her plate. Meanwhile,
Speaker: person in question here has not finished cleaning their room, which they were told to do half an hour ago. This is what's happening. But with Christian adults, we're saying, well, they didn't bear my burdens the way that I thought, so they're not fulfilling the law of Christ. Nope.
Speaker: Love does not keep a record of wrongs, 1 Corinthians 13, and that will get you a long way in building Christian community. If you are keeping track of ah who is bearing your burdens and how effectively they're bearing them, my friend, you are not paying attention to whether or not you are bearing anyone's burdens.
Speaker: You are not paying attention to whether you are fulfilling the law of Christ. And that's what this verse is about. We need to stop reading the Bible, thinking about other people, and read it as something that points to our own areas of growth.
Speaker: All right, 1 John 1, 3 through 7, the whole section is great. I'm reading verse 7 here, i think. It says, this passage says,
Speaker: and the blood of jesus his son cleanses us from all sin okay this passage It's just beautiful, but this is an important part of it because it says that when we're walking in the light, the way Christ is it is then that we have fellowship with one another. But when we're not walking in the light, we not only remove ourselves completely,
Speaker: from peace with God. So I'm not saying that your salvation is removed. You still have the justification of Christ. It's not like, oh, suddenly I've lost my salvation because I'm not walking in the light.
Speaker: But you do lose peace. You have more anxiety. You're walking in sin. You're choosing sin regularly. You're not going to have the peace that God gives. But when you walk out of the light, you also lose something else. You lose fellowship with other Christians.
Speaker: What does this look like practically? Over the course of my ministry, the way I've seen this play out, somebody starts to step into um a sin issue. Let's say starts dating somebody, pressures them, um and they start sleeping with them.
Speaker: They know what's wrong. They are aware of it. They want help. So they try to keep one foot kind of in the world and one foot in the church.
Speaker: But when accountability comes, when people say, hey, we're here for you, we pray for you, but I think you need to break up with them, or here are some things you can do for us to help you step out of this relationship or set some boundaries in the relationship, if they don't do that, if they choose to continue walking in sin in that relationship, is they continue sleeping with their boyfriend, it pulls them further and further away from their fellowship with other believers.
Speaker: They're no longer walking in the light. And now they don't have fellowship with the people who are in the light. And there's this increasing conflict and this guilt and the shame that the enemy wants there because he can pull you further and further and further away from your Christian village.
Speaker: He uses sin and the shame that comes with it to pull you out of fellowship with other people. And then he tries to make you blame those people, the ones who told you the truth.
Speaker: He tries to make you blame them as the cause of your loneliness. The answer is to turn around to say, I'm not going to keep walking in the darkness. I want to walk in the light again and run back to anyone and everyone who supported you.
Speaker: So when I was coming out of erotica addiction, I went to about three different women asking for help. And two of them really didn't follow up with me or help me at all. They were too busy or they just kind of lapsed. They just didn't really know what to do. But the third one did. And so she was willing to meet with me and follow up with me and hold me accountable. But I also had to stop walking in the darkness. I had to stop reading the stuff and watching the stuff and engaging with the stuff and actually say, okay, I'm sitting here talking to you, telling you what I'm struggling with, and I need accountability, and now i'm actually going to obey and stay in the light so I can stay in fellowship with you instead of sitting in front of you in my accountability meeting
Speaker: Full of guilt and shame and feeling in conflict with this person because of the sin that I'm committing. I wasn't actually in conflict with her. It was the light in her that was making me feel bad.
Speaker: And that's what the enemy wants you to run from that discomfort instead of running from the darkness. So don't let the discomfort keep you from the light. Step back into the light so you can have fellowship within your village.
Speaker: but right, the last thing is 1 Peter 3.8. It says, finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.
Speaker: this is This is the final message that Peter wants for the people. Unity of mind. So you're thinking in one one direction towards the Lord. Sympathy. Sympathy.
Speaker: So not being quick to judge motives, but actually saying, wow, I have compassion on you. Brotherly love. So love for one another, like a familial love.
Speaker: A tender heart. So a heart that's patient and welcoming. a sanctuary, and a humble mind. The humble mind is, I think, the thing that's most missing from the Christian village conversation right now.
Speaker: Because we like to think that we're contributing more than everybody else. We like to think that we have more on our plate than everybody else. We like to think that we deserve more than everybody else.
Speaker: And the problem with having a proud mind is that you don't realize that you have it. There's this quote by Christian artist Josiah Queen in his song Alters Over Stages that I think is such a great illustration of what pride does with our mind.
Speaker: um It says this, even angels in the sky can fall down to the depths, clip their wings with their pride, and rot what's in their chest. The funny thing about pride is that you have it all your life, but the moment you think you don't, it's gotten in your eyes.
Speaker: And I think that is such a great illustration of what happens with pride because our pride really makes us think that we're not proud. And that's why it's so important to have a humble mind and to not overestimate our contribution to the Christian village.
Speaker: A lot of women I talk to online will say, well, I'm the one that's doing all the inviting. I'm the one that's doing all of the work. I'm the one that's, and I would say, you are doing a lot of work. You're not doing all of it.
Speaker: And I say that as somebody who was trained by a mom who told me growing up, you will do 80% of the inviting and the hosting. Do it anyway. And that leads me to some practical principles for building a Christian village.
Speaker: I recently talked about this on Instagram, mainly talking about how I teach my girls about friendship and about cultivating a strong community. And I shared three principles that I teach them that I want to share with you, followed by three red flags that I look for in building relationships with other women. And I say women because my audience is predominantly women. But if you're a man watching this, I think this is just as relevant for you. It just might show up differently in masculine friendships.
Speaker: And then lastly, I have some practicals for how you can cultivate a village. And a lot of the things I'm going to share with you are basic skills of etiquette that we don't teach in our culture anymore. Because as we've thrown off social etiquette, as we've thrown off teaching social skills, we've actually increased our social anxiety and made it difficult to form relationships in the church.
Speaker: I saw on Substack recently, someone stated that it takes 100 hours to go from meeting somebody to acquaintance, and it takes 200 hours to go from meeting somebody to an actual friendship.
Speaker: And he pointed out that it's possible that we aren't actually struggling with community in the church as much as we aren't devoting enough time to building that community because it takes time and you can't shortcut it.
Speaker: The only way to get there is with time. So let's circle back to what I talked about on Instagram regarding friendship and what I teach my children about this. Number one, this is a rule I have for myself, and this is a rule I have for my daughters.
Speaker: We don't do best friends. We don't use the best friend moniker. I don't call people my best friend. I encourage my girls not to have best friends, but to have an ever-open circle of close friends.
Speaker: And that circle could be as small as three for a period of time. It could expand. At times, I've had 12 close friends. sometimes Sometimes, I've had three close friends. they've gone in It's gone in and out based on proximity, availability, contact, etc.
Speaker: Why do I discourage best friend labels? So,
Speaker: i have never seen this bear good fruit. And i don't mean personal satisfaction because I'm sure you can get personal satisfaction from having a best friend.
Speaker: But I'm always considering how does this impact the other people in the village? How does me having a best friend that I say is my best friend and I talk about as my best friend and I openly label as my best friend, how does this impact the other people in the village? What does this say? Now, I have my own opinions as a woman in ministry. i think that women in ministry, if you have a best friend, you need to not be talking about that.
Speaker: I know, unpopular opinion. I think it alienates women and it also creates a hierarchy of closeness that is not healthy when you are ministering to women.
Speaker: There can become this kind of jockeying for like closeness to a ministry leader, closeness to church staff or church leadership. And it just is, it is not a label that I think is helpful or healthy. I think it's unnecessary. And i think it creates this like, oh, she's friends with her. That's her like innermost circle of people. And I'm not part of that. I can't have access. I just I i would be so, so cautious with that because we must prevent cliques in our churches, especially among women.
Speaker: And so as a leader in my church, My job is to not be bound to an exclusive little group in the church lobby, but to be open and looking for the women who are coming into that church body. I can't have this predetermined little like best friend club that I'm, you know, latched on to.
Speaker: And so personally, i do not use the label best friends. I discourage from my girls from doing it. Why else do I discourage my girls from doing it? Because the best friend label encourages possessiveness and exclusivity.
Speaker: And I have seen many girls in that elementary, middle school, high school era use the best friend label as a label of ownership. And I've seen adult women do this too.
Speaker: Well, I'm best friends with her, so you can't come be friends with her. It's like this weird girl code thing. And guys, it's totally unbiblical. It's unchristian. We don't get to be like, well, you can't be close to her because I'm close to her.
Speaker: The world is huge, my friends. People are allowed to be friends with other people. They're allowed to be closer with someone than they are with you. don't own them. And so this is why i think we just need as Christians be so careful with this. If you want to use the best friend label, absolutely. But if you become possessive, if you become exclusive, if you become someone who can't bear your friend being close with another woman, red flag, you got to let go of that idol.
Speaker: Second thing I teach my girls, abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset regarding friendships. Abundance mindset. Now, I don't mean this in a new age woo-woo way. I mean this as the world is huge. i I say to my girls, there's always more friends to be had in God's kingdom.
Speaker: So many amazing people in this world. You haven't even met them yet. The girls I knew in high school, I'm not friends with them anymore. It was a season. i have a few that I talk to once in a while, but i'm not close with them.
Speaker: I'm close with women that I met five, 10 years ago. I'm in my late thirty s So I just encourage my girls, look, you might stay friends with the girls you're friends with in an elementary school. And I hope that for you.
Speaker: But I also want you to keep an open mind and an open heart. Don't have a scarcity mindset. Oh, there's not going to be enough friends. And if I lose this one, I'm never going to make another one. No, you will.
Speaker: Because if you cultivate the skill of community, if you follow the Bible's teachings on how to love others, how to give to others, how to see them, and I'll give you some practicals in just a second.
Speaker: If you do that, you have that abundance mindset, you're not going to walk around in this state of jealousy and possessiveness and fear of losing the friends that you have.
Speaker: But it does take work. It takes you being willing to grow and push yourself. Push yourself to have the skill set to create conversations and to meet people.
Speaker: And so we actively train our girls on this. I mean, we are actively teaching how to hold a conversation, how to greet people, how to leave a conversation, how to introduce or bring new people into a conversation. This is a skill. It must be taught just like laundry, just like cooking, or just like cleaning. It's essential.
Speaker: All right. The third thing I teach my girls, you are not always the victim in the story. Someone might do something that you don't like. And it might be downright rude. It could be just unkind.
Speaker: Last year, my daughter was in a situation where where she was used to transport a love letter from a friend of hers to a boy, and they weren't supposed to do that, and she got stuck in the middle. It's really uncomfortable for her, and it made her very angry because she felt she had to do it to preserve that friendship.
Speaker: Well, We were able to talk about how difficult that situation was, how it was wrong that she was put in that situation. But at the same time, we need to look at the whole picture and talking with her about, hey, you could say no.
Speaker: You could say, no, I'm not going to do that. I know it's wrong. You chose not to say no because you wanted to please her. So what can we do next time? So yes, there was ah a bit of that um victim experience in that story, but there was also responsibility in that story. And so having to look at both sides, I think some moms, some women,
Speaker: In their effort to always be on the side of their child and there in her corner, they're actually enabling a victim mindset. And they're enabling this idea that my child is never wrong. My daughter's never wrong. Well, guess what? When she grows up and she enters into her college relationships and into her church small group when she's 31, she's If that's how she was taught, she's never wrong. She's always the victim.
Speaker: Now she's going to struggle in her relationships in the church. And she's going to bring that in every small group in Bible study she goes to where nobody else is ever the victim. It's always her.
Speaker: So as Christian mothers, it's so important to show our daughters how to recognize all the parts of the story and how to take responsibility for their part in it as well. All right. Now I give my girls three red flags to look for.
Speaker: The first is girls or women, when they're older, who equate constant affirmation with loyalty. So you're only loyal to me if you constantly affirm my decisions, who I am, and you're constantly are building me up and complimenting me.
Speaker: That's loyalty. now Now you're in my corner. Now you're a girl's girl. girl I always tell my girls, you know what? A real girl's girl stands for what's true, whether that offends another girl or not.
Speaker: That's a girl's girl. Girl's girls don't lie to other girls. So if somebody is telling you that loyalty, oh you' to be loyal to me means telling me that, you know, you support me no matter what. No, no.
Speaker: True support is the truth. That's support. That's loyalty. A truly loyal friend will tell you the truth. And if they do not, they're not loyal to you. They are loyal to avoiding conflict.
Speaker: The second red flag. Women who say they hate drama or hate gossip. Spoiler alert, they don't. They don't hate drama. They don't hate gossip. It's um it's almost comical at this point.
Speaker: Every woman who's ever told me they hated drama or hated gossip ended up being the center of the drama and a gossip. So I don't know what it is that they like have to like say it out loud, like just reveal it.
Speaker: But just pay attention if someone says that because if they have to say it, it's often not true. And that's another little red flag that might be helpful is if someone has to tell you,
Speaker: that this about themselves. It often isn't true. I think that they wish it was true or they're they're actually subconsciously aware that it's not true and they want to protect themselves or defend themselves from it. And so they say this to kind of cover for it for when it inevitably happens.
Speaker: I'll be honest with you. I don't hate drama at all. I love drama. um The world is a stage. It's full of drama. Drama is everywhere. Life is a drama. So I just openly say, look, drama, as we see the human experience of human conflict, that is ministry life.
Speaker: Ministry life is a drama of people having conflicts and resolving and coming together, and breaking apart and then coming together again. And I'm just honest. I just say, you know what?
Speaker: I love drama. I was in drama for nine years as a teen, and life is a drama. And I think if you just, maybe just own it. Just own it. Don't create drama.
Speaker: Don't create conflict. But you know what? I find life so interesting. People make life so interesting. Sometimes in bad ways, sometimes in good ways. All right, the third red flag expecting your friendship style or your size of a circle.
Speaker: So maybe you prefer a smaller circle to a larger circle to be the same as all your friends. So you prefer to have a smaller circle. She has a larger circle. You prefer to hang out one-on-one. She likes to hang out in groups.
Speaker: This is when a woman's preference becomes the rule. So what she prefers for friendship, she then creates a rule out of it. And this is what friendship should look like. This is what community should look like. It should be a place for me to vent all of my latest feelings, a place for me to, you know, have only two people.
Speaker: Well, maybe one of those two women has a larger group that she would like to spend time with. You can't get angry at that. You can't be like, well, it needs to look the way I prefer it to look.
Speaker: So if there's a demand for a specific friendship style to be the rule, that's a red flag. Because in a friendship, one of the things that we have to work towards is being willing, being humble-minded and saying, okay, well, this person prefers one-on-one, so I'm going to make time for that.
Speaker: This person prefers group setting, so I'm going to challenge myself to be a good part of that group and get to know the people who are there because I care about my friend and I want to get to know the other people in her circle.
Speaker: That's a way of loving each of those people. All right, so let's move from... the advice I give my daughters, the red flags I share with them to how to practically begin cultivating a village as we wrap up the episode.
Speaker: These are practicals. And whenever I talk about these online, and I've done it quite often, I have an article about it. um The article's on Substack. I'll put it in the show notes. It's called, Your Church Should Not Have to Make You Say Hello.
Speaker: But when I talk about this, people inevitably tell me, they're like, I wish you'd give me a book or tell me how to do this. Nobody taught me how to do these things practically. i just feel so behind. You are not alone in this.
Speaker: I am deeply grieved by how many people in our society simply have not been taught how to hold a conversation or how to bring someone new into a conversation or how to greet someone who's new. And so, so much of our anxiety around this is simply because we weren't taught how.
Speaker: Think about it. I once played a soccer game, never played soccer in my life. I was so anxious. Why? I didn't know how. I didn't know how to play. i was anxious because I felt stupid. And so, so much of these these skills that we need, they used to be more innate. They still had to be trained.
Speaker: um But nowadays, we really don't train on them. So I want to give you a couple book recommendations. These are not Christian recommendations, but they're really good.
Speaker: And they were so helpful for me in learning some of these basics. My mom did a lot of training, but we don't all have Anne Duran as our mom. So um to help those of you who are wanting to learn, um here are a couple book recommendations. So this is my favorite series on this.
Speaker: These are female-specific. um It's the How to Be a Lady series. Now, if you're like, lady, that sounds kind of prudish. Well, no. A lady is someone who has composure, who knows how to to converse, knows how to carry herself with confidence. So that's why it's called this A Contemporary Guide to Common Courtesy by Candice Simpson-Giles. I absolutely love it. It's a short read. It's easy.
Speaker: This one, As a Lady Would Say by Cheryl Shade, is also part of the series. This talks about what to say in certain situations. So if you're one of those people who's like, I literally don't know what to say. I mean, it has everything from like when someone criticizes a lady's significant other, when you run into a friend who's having dinner with someone other than his or her spouse,
Speaker: when someone gets lost and needs help or someone introduces their baby girl or baby boy. All of the things to say in those situations. So these two are fantastic. There's also a third, a lady at the table. I need to reread this one. Table manners are my weakness. I love food.
Speaker: um Other series, Lessons from Madame Chic, 20 Stylish Secrets I Learned While Living in Paris. This one has a lot of stuff that's like preferential on like style. So I kind of skip the style section because I live on a farm, but it does have a lot of manners and conversation tips that are good.
Speaker: And then this one, What Would Audrey Do? Timeless Lessons from Living with Grace and Style is another good one. The others are my favorite, but this one is good too. So There are some recommendations. These are not theological recommendations, my friends, but they're practical. And ultimately, the basis of all etiquette and courtesy is love for others.
Speaker: And that's why as our society in the postmodern movement just took over and we became a godless society, social etiquette went away.
Speaker: Because it's not about caring for other people, the heart of the Christian ethic. It's not about caring for other people anymore. It's about caring for me first. Me first.
Speaker: Manners have no place in a society that's me first. So we don't teach it. And then we're socially anxious and we don't know what to do. Another reason we're socially anxious is because we're thinking about ourselves in that moment.
Speaker: And that's the thing I talk about in my article on this, that during that greeting time that's one minute long and it's like a timer. And trust me, I get just as who during that greeting time in church as anyone else.
Speaker: But what I've learned is the more I think about myself, the more anxious I am. The more I think about others, the less anxious I am. How can I make someone else around me comfortable and welcomed? Takes away the anxiety. So let's get to my practicals as we wrap up.
Speaker: How to cultivate a village in the Christian church. Number one, greet people. Greet people. Jesus talked about this in Matthew. He said, if you greet only your brothers, what credit is that to you?
Speaker: Even the pagans do the same. You know what he's saying? He's saying, if you only greet the people you know when you are at synagogue, when you are with your gathering of believers, you are literally no different than the worst of the worst in society.
Speaker: That's how it would have impacted his Jewish readers when he said, you're the same as the pagans. That was such an insult. It was such a shock. No Jewish believer in God listening to Jesus at that moment would have wanted to be compared to a Roman.
Speaker: And Jesus did that. He said, if you greet only the people you know, you are no better than these Roman pigs. He wouldn't have called them pigs, but that's how it would have come across.
Speaker: So knowing that Jesus was rebuking in that moment, let us sit with that rebuke ourselves and ask ourselves, when I get to the church lobby, am I just hunting for people I know?
Speaker: And leaving the people who are new who've only been coming a couple weeks, who've never set foot in a church before, leaving them against the wall, being greeted by nobody maybe except the assigned greeter and the pastor.
Speaker: Not the pastor's job to welcome people. It is our job, church. It is our job. And I just perish the day that we walk past the person who standing there next to the cookies and coffee because we're so focused on our comfort.
Speaker: We can't even pick up the tiny minuscule cross of saying, hi, what's your name? How long have you been coming here? Why is that so hard?
Speaker: The second thing to cultivate a village, get good at small talk. All right, we all hate small talk. Where are you from? What do you do? I get it. But small talk leads to big talk. It leads to deep talk. You can only get there by getting to know somebody. And when you are willing to ask good questions, you actually get to the point where you create space for someone to feel safe.
Speaker: that When we learn to get good at small talk, even if we hate it, it is the way that we get to knowing someone's heart. So each Sunday that you do this with someone, you build on it each Sunday until they know you better.
Speaker: You don't have to do the same conversation every Sunday with them because you're able to keep layering on that relationship. Oh, how was work this week? I heard you were going away for a trip last week. How did that go?
Speaker: You might have to get a notebook and write this stuff down. I tend to have to write stuff down in a notebook. Who do they meet? What are they like? What are some things I need to remember about them? If you're bad at names, writing down their name, writing down something about them, even telling them, hey, I'm bad at names. I'm going to write your name down so that I remember. I think this is adorable. It's so sweet. um Another thing you can do, and i I talk about this in my article on greeting people in the church,
Speaker: Julia Child, in one of her biographies, it said that she struggled so much with conversation when she first married Paul, her husband. And Paul was a political figure. He was really well connected in France. And he had a lot of these state dinners he had to go to.
Speaker: And she came to these dinners feeling so uneducated, like she had nothing to share. she didn't know what to ask people. She felt stupid. And so she dedicated herself to getting better at conversation. And she started by choosing several topics she wanted to learn about that she could talk about, like art, eventually cooking.
Speaker: um But she also wrote down three questions on an index card that she could ask people at the table. And she put it in her purse. and She reviewed it before and during the dinner. So she could ask people questions. And I think that is such a hack for people who struggle with small talk.
Speaker: Write down three questions on a note card, put it in your bag, bring it with you for when you are in that greeting time. Now, I like to usually start if I don't know somebody by saying, hi, what's your name? Because a lot of times in my church, at least people won't share their name.
Speaker: They'll just say, hello, shake your hand and then move on. Don't let them move on. Say, hi, what's your name? My name is, how long have you been attending here? Don't say, are you new here? Because a lot of times somebody will sit on one side for five years and then switch sides. And then you're like, oh, they've been attending here forever.
Speaker: I say, how long have you been attending here? What brought you here? Are you local to Petoskey, my city? And what do you do for a living? Or what keeps you busy these days? That's another good one. So those are just an example of some questions you can ask. And by the time I get to what keeps you busy, the time is up.
Speaker: And then sometimes I can check in with them at the end of the service and say, so nice to meet you. um I'd love to hear more about that next time I see you. All right. Next thing, practically, for cultivating a village When you enter a room, when you enter Bible study room, you enter small group room, you enter church.
Speaker: Enter the room with responsibility. What do I mean by this? So my mother taught me to enter a room and understand that when I enter it,
Speaker: I am responsible, if i am if I have been attending this church for a while, right or this Bible study, I am responsible to make anyone who's new feel welcome because I was there first.
Speaker: And I didn't know this, but Emily Post teaches this in her etiquette book, that if you are an existing member of a club, a group, a study, an anything, You were there first. Anyone who comes in new, you are now responsible to welcome. You are a host.
Speaker: My mother taught this to me, not in so many words, but she was adamant. You are to be the welcoming one. You are to go out of your way to welcome them in. So you take responsibility for the room. You don't come in waiting for everybody else to serve you, talk to you greet you. You come in with that responsibility. Now, because of the way our society is, as I've gotten older and realized that 89% of the rest of the world doesn't do this because they weren't taught by my mother, then what I have also done is even when I'm the new person, I take responsibility for the room.
Speaker: Because if you wait for people to greet you and welcome you, most of the time they won't do it. So it's better to just take the role of host, even as the guest, which is a sad state.
Speaker: It's more difficult. It's more uncomfortable. So for those of us who are actually the original members of the situation, it's something to remember that when your guest has to take the role of introducing themselves, it puts them in such an uncomfortable position. We should want to avoid that at all costs.
Speaker: So if you are a member of a church you've been attending for a year, you're the host. Anybody else who comes into that church newly, you are responsible to greet them.
Speaker: Not your pastor, you. So take that responsibility. Here's a fourth one. This one is important. This is important. Stop rushing depth in your quest for a village.
Speaker: Stop rushing depth. I hear this on Instagram a lot. I want deep conversations. I want deep relationships. I have a hard time finding it. And i bet if I sat in a room with these women, I could tell you within about 10 minutes what the problem is. The problem is that they're rushing depth.
Speaker: Here's the truth. Demanding spiritual depth without intimacy and knowledge pushes people away. It's unsafe and it's unkind. You have to be patient.
Speaker: People aren't going to be comfortable going deep with you if they don't know you. They don't trust you yet. You can't have depth without time. So this is where people who say, oh I hate small talk, I just want depth.
Speaker: Like, you can't have depth until you take the time for small talk so trust can grow. And this is the part of Christian community where you have to pick up your cross.
Speaker: Yes, what you want is depth, but that's about you and what you want. What do they need? True community and true friendship is based on not just what you want and you think you need, but about what they need.
Speaker: So if you want community, you have to be thinking about what others need, not just what you want. This is the heart of Christian village building. So you want depth.
Speaker: Wonderful. Absolutely. You don't have to stay talking about manicures and school sports and surface level things. I'm not telling you they have to do that for days and years.
Speaker: No, but you will have to start somewhere and then slowly begin to build on that. And usually I would say within three, two to three one-on-ones, you can start to get down to some deeper stuff and you can start to see, is there enough commonality here for this to continue?
Speaker: So the first meeting, you're kind of checking each other out. Second meeting, you can kind of get down to more of the behind the scenes and and the motivations of how they arrive at their conclusions or their life story. By the third time, you can start to discuss more of, well, how did you get here? and And where are you at with the Lord? And what do you think about church? So it doesn't take that long, but it does still take time and patience. If you rush depth, you will not have it.
Speaker: So take your time with this. Be patient with them. And also, i would add on to this, many of the women who say they want depth also want an echo chamber.
Speaker: And I'm not picking on you. I just want to point this out. If you're not aware of this, this is a problem. If you say you want depth, Be very careful in saying that and actually meaning I want someone who thinks exactly like I do.
Speaker: So when I post on Instagram, sometimes women will message me and say, I know we just be best friends. We like all the same things. We think all the same things. And I always laugh when I see those messages. I'm like, that's so sweet. But it's actually not true because none of my friends and I think all the same things or like all the same things.
Speaker: I have a few friends who are in theology-adjacent ministries, but they don't homeschool. I have friends who are not in ministry at all and who public school. I have friends who live in New York City and don't have goats or chickens whose children go to the public school there and whose politics are very different from mine.
Speaker: We're still friends. We still pray for each other. So Be very careful that when you're looking for depth, you're not saying, i want depth that checks every single box and we we share all the exact same opinions about everything.
Speaker: Friendship is not an echo chamber. Iron sharpens iron. That means there's going to be some difference. this next point kind of builds on this. It's diversify your friend group. So I call this Taylor Swift syndrome. um There is this tendency to want to build like this girl squad that looks exactly like you and likes all the same things. And this is like Taylor Swift circa 2015. She posts these pictures of her and all her girlfriends and they like literally look like clones of each other.
Speaker: So we don't want that in the Christian church. We want a group of people who reflect the diversity of the church. And I don't mean in a DEI way that we're now DEI-ing our friend groups. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, though, that you're open to people who are different from you.
Speaker: If, let's say, you homeschool, do you have any friends at public school or private school? Or are your opinions about homeschooling so loud that you've pushed all those people to the margin?
Speaker: Maybe you are an avid sports mom and you're so loud about how important sports are in your kids' lives and how everybody should have their kids in sports that you've pushed all the other moms to the margins. You know, whatever the thing is for you, you have to be very careful that your opinions are not pushing so many people away. You can't even diversify your friend group. You only have a collection of people who are just saying little yes men around you. Not healthy.
Speaker: And that goes for our theology and our spirituality too. And this brings me to my last point. In your friendships and in building your Christian village, stop looking for a mirror and look for a window.
Speaker: What do I mean by that? I mean this. A person who looks for a mirror wants to find a friend group, find a village that is a mirror of their own face, their own preferences, their own abilities, their own comforts.
Speaker: But a Christian who wants to build a Christian village wants to build a friend group that's like looking through a window. Where, by being friends with them, your world expands.
Speaker: And when you look through their lens, you get to see an entire world that's different than your own. When I talk to my friend who is an emergency room doctor, I see my city and my community through totally different eyes.
Speaker: I learn what people are struggling with and I learn how she prays over our region. When I talk to my friend who is a nurse and I learn about what that looks like to care for people in her particular industry, specialized nursing, I learn something.
Speaker: When I talk to my friend, who is a public school mom when I homeschool and I learn about the challenges her kids are facing in the public school environment and how they're being a witness in their classroom, my eyes are open to what that environment is like.
Speaker: By having a friend group that is a window instead of a mirror, my life expands and it gives me the ability to have compassion and sympathy and unity of mind with other Christians in the church.
Speaker: And that doesn't mean we have a jillion people in our village. But it does mean that the village that we have is not overburdened by our expectations, that we're not coming to it with a list of demands, that we're not constantly keeping track of who's bearing our burdens while we don't bear any burdens for anybody else.
Speaker: Christian village is going to look a lot like the heart of Christ. And it's going to be imperfect. And there's going to be mistakes. and there's going to be fights. And there's going to be hurts. And yet, God redeems it all.
Speaker: So I hope something in this episode encouraged you, helped you. i know probably it convicted and challenged some of you. But listen, I want to end with a story. About 14 years ago, I had a very close friend.
Speaker: I heard very much about her. I did ah almost everything with her. And my friend eventually began to back away from the relationship with me. And I could tell because we used to talk at work all the time. We would chat and um she began to avoid me.
Speaker: And so I reached out to ask why. And this friend told me that I was critical and I was negative and that she did not feel comfortable staying close to me because she needed basically to choose righteousness and needed to continue growing as a person. And she couldn't do that while in relationship with me.
Speaker: And I was livid. I did not handle it well, as one might expect from an emotionally unhealthy person. Okay. She recognized the emotional and how she backed away from it. And then the emotionally unhealthy person reacted as one would and got mad, did not take responsibility and blamed her.
Speaker: But about two years later, as I mulled on the ending of that friendship and how sad I was to have lost her, I realized how responsible I was for my part in that relationship.
Speaker: I realized that she was right all I was negative. I was critical. I wasn't bringing positivity and truth to that relationship. And if she had not had the boldness and the bravery to tell me the truth, I could not have changed.
Speaker: I could not have learned That the path I was walking was one of hypocrisy, that I was claiming Christ while being a completely immature person.
Speaker: And so I share this story to tell you that it's possible for emotionally immature women to grow, but it often takes someone telling them the truth and they will not take it well because they're emotionally immature.
Speaker: But if they are walking with Christ, eventually they'll listen to the Holy Spirit and eventually they'll wake up to what God wants to do in their heart and he will bring them into a healthier place.
Speaker: That's my story. Her wisdom and pointing that sin out led to my own growth. And I'm certainly not perfect, but I have made a lot of progress in that area.
Speaker: And I hope the same for you. You might have a difficult woman in your village. You might be the difficult woman in your village. And somebody told you the truth and you didn't like it.
Speaker: Listen to the Holy Spirit. Let him lead you. And he'll lead you to the kind of Christian community that we see described in Acts 2 and Hebrews 10 and Galatians 6 and 1 Peter 3.
Speaker: That is what Jesus wants for you. and it's what he wants for every person that's a part of the Christian church. If you're new to Every Woman a Theologian and you've watched to the end, you guys are the MVPs. You can head over to our website at FeliciaMasonheimer.com to see all of our resources, books, and Bible studies. We also have a bunch of free resources, free downloads on discipleship, how to start your Bible study routine, all of the church holidays, including Halloween and Christmas. You can check those out at our free resources tab on the page. We'd also love if you join us for our annual theology conference in northern Michigan. You can check that out on our website as well.
Speaker: Thank you for listening, and I'll see you next time Verity Podcasts.
