If you think you have blown God's plan for your life, I need
you to hear me you. There's some people that God has
whispered promise to Christian and they have discounted God's
faithfulness because of their unfaithfulness.
Why do you think we are so quick to equate our mistakes to our
worth? Well, I mean, I think the enemy
is a lot of times the one that's like whispering why do you think
you deserve better? Why would you deserve good?
I know for me, just looking even at my early part of my marriage
when my husband was addiction pornography, I looked at my past
and I thought, why did I think I would have anything different?
Making a mistake does not make you a mistake.
And if you think it does, welcome to the Lisa Bevere
podcast. Today we're going to be talking
about mistakes. Listen, I want you to hear me
making a mistake does not make you a mistake.
And if you think it does, you are mistaken and Christian.
I love that we are talking about this because so many people
think that God is looking at their past and measuring the
failures of their future. But here's the thing.
God believes better things of you than you actually believe of
yourself. And just he's not like, oh, I'm
just going to resign her to her past failures and mistakes.
He actually is the one who alone holds our future.
Having a past doesn't mean you don't deserve to have a future.
And the only one who can control your future is God.
And so we want to be people who surrender both our past and the
hope of our future to him. So we don't have to say because
we've made mistakes, we're giving other people the right to
control our future or discount our lives.
And Christian, we had a very sincere question.
Come in. Yeah.
Can you share that?
Yeah, when you talk to your community around, like, what do
mistakes mean? How do those keep you held back
there? We even had one heartbreaking
message that said I thought I deserved an abusive relationship
because I wasn't worthy of a healthy 1.
I. Think that's so just crazy
because it it highlights, you know, the necessity of we need
this worth to accept anything good and we're accepting these
terrible things, not just, well, you know, who am I to say I
deserve the best marriage in the world?
It's like I'm accepting a terrible circumstance because of
my own worth. So why do you think we are so
quick to equate our mistakes to our worth?
Well, I mean, I think the enemy is a lot of times the one that's
like whispering, why did you think you deserve better?
Why would you deserve good? I know for me, you know, just
looking even at my, my early part of my marriage, when my
husband was to pornography, I looked at my past and I thought,
why did I think I would have anything different?
Why, why would I think that? But here's the here's the here's
one of the things I always use and, and you could, it'll be
easier for you than it was for me is I would think what I want
this from my daughter, what I want this from my daughter, what
I ever say to my daughter, Oh, you deserve something bad.
Well, I don't if I wouldn't say it to my daughter, I don't have
any daughters. So I have sons, but I have
granddaughters. Then would God say it to his
daughter? Would God say you're not worthy
of a good relationship, you're not worthy of a healthy future?
No, God would never say that to somebody.
And so I think we do need to actually come from a place of
like, hey, now, that doesn't mean it's going to automatically
happen. That doesn't mean that maybe I
brought some baggage into that marriage and I need to actually
get my mind renewed and get help to be able to build a healthy
marriage. I think so many young couples,
they're kind of just bloundering in their marriage and they don't
have anybody around them that's older, that's gone through the
hard seasons. It can actually help them to
move forward. But you know, what I love is we
have a very crazy couple as our parents of faith.
We've got Abram and Sarai, who became Abraham and Sarah.
I mean, let's just think about this.
I mean, if you look at the story, and I love to read the
scripture and really think about the story around it, which I
think the chosen is done for a lot of people.
But when we look at Abraham and and Sarai, because that's what
they were before they were Abraham and Sarah, these are two
people wandering through the desert.
She's barren, they've been married a long time and she's
not getting pregnant, and she comes up with a very stupid
idea. Why don't you sleep with my
handmaiden and then I'll just raise this child up as my own.
That's. Desperation, because I would
never. I've yet to meet the woman that
would say, yes, I would do that. I would be like, hey, sleep with
my handmaiden. And then we know Hagar when she
becomes pregnant, then, you know, she's, she's kind of
prideful, like, hey, I'm pregnant.
You're not. And then Sarah's not.
Not yet. Sarah Sarai beats a pregnant
woman like I would be. You know, like, let's talk about
bad behavior. Crazy was right.
On yeah, don't be crazy. I mean, I'd be like, hey, Jerry
Springer show, come on, get these people on.
Beats her, said Hagar runs away. God has to send an Angel and she
thinks her son's going to die and God's like, go back, submit
to the crazy woman. And then, you know, brings back
and then then what happens? So I figures out this boy
doesn't love me. Abram loves the son.
He's content with having that son Ishmael for his own.
But she, her life is empty and and she's like, Oh my gosh.
And now she's in this place of utter despair.
And in this place of utter despair in the Scripture, we
find out that God shows up. And it what's so crazy in in
Genesis 17 verse 15, it says, and God said to Abraham, As for
Sarai your wife, you should not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall
be her name. I will bless her And moreover, I
will give her a son, but I will give you a son by her, and I
will bless her and she shall become nations.
Things of people shall come from her.
I'd be like, Are you sure? Are you sure that's who you
want? You do remember what she did?
Offered her maid to her husband, beat the pregnant woman.
Then Abram fell on his face and laughed, laughed out loud and
said to himself, shall a child be born to a man who is 100
years old? And shall Sarah, who is 90 years
old, bear a child? So he's kind of like, huh, this
is pretty funny. Then he says, oh, and Abraham
said, oh God, that Ishmael might live before you all the days of
his life. And then God says, no, but
Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his
name Isaac. I will establish my covenant
with him as an everlasting covenant.
And then he's like a year from now.
So in verse 21, but I was, that was my covenant with Isaac, whom
Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year.
So he's like a year from now. Things are going to be very
different a year from now. So Abraham, it's very
interesting. So God changes Abraham to
Abraham and Sarai to Sarah, and when I talk.
Before the blessing comes, which is.
Interesting. Before the blessing he had to
give them capacity. They haven't done any in my
opinion, they haven't done a lot right other than looking for a
city whose builder maker is God. And and you know, of course, he
hasn't done the whole sacrifice Isaac yet.
They're just kind of wandering around, kind of hit and missing
here. And so God changes Abram to
Abraham and what he did, what's so beautiful is he took a
syllable from, I mean, took a letter from his own name to
expand Abraham. So the, the rabbi explained to
me, he said, when you're talking about Hebrew, it's not just like
a consonant or a vowel, It's a vision.
And God said, I'm going to give you vision.
I'm going to give you a letter from my name and I'm going to
give you vision that you're going to be the father of
nations because he's like, I have one child kind of in a
messed up way. And then he took Sarai, and
Sarai is actually a masculine name and he made it feminine.
So he made Abraham seed and Sarah soil.
He gave her back a receptivity, but that so God was like a year
from now, that's what's going to happen.
Which is so neat because I feel like their mistake was derived
from like that control and her operating knowledge.
She's a true identity. Masculine way that takes her.
Go ahead, have her. Isn't that interested?
They weren't. Put them out they.
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now we go all the way to chapter 18 and in verse one it says the
Lord appeared to him Abraham by the oaks of Mamroth and he sat
at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.
So now we've got these angels they come by and he lifted up
his eye. Look behold, three men were
standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran to the
tent door Meadow. He said, hey, if I found favor
in his sight, don't pass. And then what he does is he he
under promises and over delivers.
He's like kills a calf. Sarah's in the tent.
They're making bread. Everything's going to happen.
He like, hey, just stay here, eat a little bit.
And then Abraham ran just her, took a calf, tender and good
gave it to the young man who prepared it quickly.
I don't think you can like slaughter that quick, but I
guess it's quick for, for that. And then they're all sitting
down and they're ready to eat. But then the three men said to
him, where is Sarah your wife? And he said she's in the tent.
The Lord said, I will surely return to you about this time
next year. So now we've got next year, a
year from now to about some little bit of time has gone past
and Sarah your wife shall have a son.
And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him.
Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years.
The way of women when she was having a period had ceased to be
with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself
inside of herself, not out loud, not out loud saying, after I am
worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure?
And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying,
Shall I indeed bear a child now that I'm old?
Is anything too hard for the Lord at the appointed time?
I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall
have a son. But Sarah denied it, saying I
did not laugh, for she was afraid.
And he said no, but you did laugh.
OK, so now I want to, I want to highlight some things.
First of all, if angels came to my house and knocked on the
door, they would not have to say to John, where is Lisa, your
wife? I would be there.
I'd be like, I'm here. I've called Christian and Arden,
they're bringing Azie and Tatum. I've called Addison and Julie,
Maddie and Alec, they're on their way.
It's going to be 30 minutes. Can you guys just wait a little
bit? I'll make you some pasta.
I would be fully present, but Sarah is listening in on a
conversation that she really should have been part of.
Was that cultural? Or it could have been cultural.
But I also think they asked for her.
Where is she like why is she not here?
And then they said where is Sarah your wife?
Why didn't you just say where is Sarah?
And I believe that they said your wife because Sarah and
Abraham has started living like brother and.
Sister. He even called her his sister,
right? Yes, so they're they're in a
season of disappointment and discouragement.
Sarah is listening in on conversation she probably should
have been part of. And so we hear, OK about this
time Sarah's going to have a son.
She laughs, and I don't think she laughs because she really
was filled with joy. She was so used to
disappointment that it was painful to hope again.
And I think Sarah believed the lie that a lot of people
believe. They think after I've made so
many mistakes, I've blown God's plan for my life.
And if you think you've got blown God's plan for your life,
I need you to hear me. You are not that powerful.
And So what happens is those men's leave.
They deal with Sodom. But what's so crazy is once
again lies says he's a sister and she gets put in a harem.
And at that point, at that point, God intervenes and he
gives Abimelech a bad dream and he's like, you're a dead man
because you took this guy's wife.
And he's like, why have I touched her?
He's like, OK, so God, God has Abimelech bless them.
But here's the thing. When people are restored in
their relationship one to another, no longer living like
brother and sister, when they're man and wife, no longer laughing
at the promises of God. But understanding is anything
too hard for God and believing that a year from now everything
can be different and and Christian.
I this is one of the the time periods where you see God
speaking specifically to his daughter Sarah.
See, Abraham hadn't told Sarah that God had said that she was
going to have a child and it was going to be Isaac Abraham.
I was also disappointed. He didn't want to.
He wanted to be Ishmael. He was like, come on, let
Ishmael live in your sight. So we've got this situation
where the husband isn't speaking to the wife about what God has
spoken to him about. The wife is laughing because he
said why? He didn't say Sarah, why'd you
laugh? He said Abraham, why did Sarah
laugh? It was like he was saying you
didn't tell her, did you? You didn't tell her that I had
just talked to you in the last chapter, that I changed your
name, that I changed her name. That I'm getting away to do
something new and astounding. That I'm going to take two
flawed people and out of you both, I'm going to create a
nation and kings and people groups are going to come
through. Two people who actually are
flawed and made a lot of mistakes, but have learned to
turn that over to God. I love how the message says that
Abraham gave God permission to make somebody out of nobody.
And I think all of us can come to that place where we can have
a false sense of actually pride and make it look like
insecurity. Oh, yeah, no, I just, I'm just
nobody. I'm.
And that shame, I'll just keep, I'll just punish myself.
And God saying, come on, a year from now everything can be
exactly the same, or a year from now you can actually believe God
and you can actually dare to hope and dream again.
And I feel like that's what he's calling us into.
It's not to get out of the failures of all of your past and
all of your fears and stop living shallow, fruitless lives
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There is a link in my bio. So let's get back to the table.
I love that you position all this around vision, not so much
deserving or worth because we know if, if it was based on
that, then nobody, even someone that's not living in the crazy
Harlem relationship, none of us would be deserving on that
basis. But it's all about that vision.
And I found when I dealt with my own shame mindset and as I wrote
on it, I discovered or I felt like, OK, sin is this chain that
links us to the complete wrong identity.
But shame's kind of like this loose noose that's like, oh, but
I still want to keep you back from what God can do and opening
it past, well, what is he going to do for me or how am I going
to be blessed? But like, what does he want to
do through me? What does he want to do through
the generations? And so you sharing that around
vision, I think really can find shame to be what it is.
It's it's pride or disbelief or it's hopelessness.
So how would you encourage people to get out of those shame
loops and those perpetual cycles and lies in their mind?
Well, I mean, you've brought up so many things I think so many
people are struggling with right now.
And I, I do think that there's some people that God has
whispered promise to Christian and they have discounted God's
faithfulness because of their unfaithfulness.
And yet scripture says even when we are faithless, he is
faithful. So even when foolish stuff was
happening. And again, there are examples,
I'm not dishonouring them. They were our examples even when
foolishness was actions in the past and having a child outside
of what God said between the two people to have even when that
happened. See, God can move beyond that.
Moses, we, you know, John, I just watched the 10
commandments. Oh my gosh, that is such a great
movie. Every single line had depth in
it. It was crazy.
I was like, they just weren't make good movies like this
anymore. But there's a moment where where
Moses perceives that God's hand is on his life, but he does it
in his own strength. And so many of you out there,
you felt you've known that God has got something more for you,
but you try to do it in your own strength.
And you birthed in Ishmael or you killed an Egyptian and God
is saying, I've taken you on the backside of the desert.
But now it's going to take more faith for you to believe that
you can speak. Because by the time God circled
back with Moses, he was like, I can't even talk.
And yet he was skilled. He was skilled.
He was trained up in Pharaoh's household.
He was skilled. He was knowledgeable.
He was more qualified than anybody.
But he thought that one action had disqualified him.
And that is where I find a lot of people are they think, no,
no, it's too late, I'm too old, it's too sad, I'm too bad,
whatever it is. And it's that shame and it's the
enemy trying to keep you captive.
He will always use our history to undermine our destiny.
And so you need to actually allow God's word to create some
pathways for you. I love that the Bible says thy
word is a light unto my path. So it actually illuminates the
path. God's word lights up the path,
but the darkness of your yesterday's will cause you to
circle back to where you've been and miss out where God wants to
take you forward. So God has a plan.
The enemy always has the scheme. You're always going to see the
tension between those two. The devil's scheme in God's plan
and every single day you make a choice.
Which one are you going to go into?
And so I love that this whole idea that God says I'm going to
give you people that are barren to have to believe me.
People that have to leave all that's familiar and look for
only what I can give them and that people that have some
battles, you know, they I mean, it's there's a couple
disobedience. He takes a lot.
God tells him go alone. He takes a lot.
You know, it's just it's just crazy how many different times
then he, you know, rescues lot by interceding, but then lot
ends up in a really bad situation and actually creating
the MO bites, which is you think about that.
That's that's kind of bad. But when people have gotten so
used to discouragement and disappointment, they're afraid
to hope again. And hope is the anchor.
Hope is something we all need. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. And like you said, hope is the
vision. And so we faith is the
substance. Hope is the vision.
And so people need to dream again, but not their own dream.
Not like here's what I'm going to be and here's what I'm going
to do. Because then you'll just do it
again in your own strength. You've got to say, God, what is,
what is the way forward? What is the plan?
What is the legacy? How do you want to do that?
I love that you're sharing that faith.
Is this necessity along with the going from the mistake to the
vision? I'd love to ask more to what can
we really do to make sure we are following that path and we're
not just hopping into those same habits or, or patterns?
Because I look at, you know, Nebuchadnezzar and Saul, both
men that made mistakes, both men that, you know, the Lord used
and appointed. We see Nebuchadnezzar go through
his own crazy seasons, but then he's restored.
And then we see the opposite for Saul.
He just gets crazier and further away.
So along with faith, I mean repentance, what else should we
really be making sure that we are getting and and giving back
so we can get all those mistake cycles?
Well, I mean, it's interesting, Saul was insecure.
It's very interesting you see him insecure, but he doesn't go
from insecure to security in God.
He goes from insecurity to pride.
And so when we do not submit our insecurity and let God deal with
it and say I'm secure with you in you, then we go to a fallen
form, which is pride. And so he became arrogant and
pride. What do you mean?
I've only killed my thousand and David's killed 10,000.
Hey, you know, why did they sing that?
He he goes from being like, oh, that's great for the king them
to like, I need the honor. You see that play.
And so we have to always be submitted to what is what is our
motive here? Am I the focus or is God the
focus is the Kingdom focus or is it my Kingdom?
Am I building something for myself or am I or I'm honoring
God. I mean Abraham and Sarai or
Abraham and Sarah, they they they like shifted everything.
It's said that she honored Abraham and called him Lord.
Now that's interesting because I don't think she was calling him
Lord in the beginning, I think. I don't think they were even
sharing a tent I. Don't think they were.
I think I think things were really sideways on them.
And what I love is it isn't how you start, it's how you finish.
And you know, we see that all through Scripture.
You know, we see it in the book of Ezekiel.
We see it the warnings. It's not how you start, it's how
you finish. And so God is saying to a
generation of people, the enemy wants you to think your life is
captive to how you began. And I am telling you that my
mercy is new every single morning.
And you can finish well, but you need to begin to run.
You cannot sit there in your past.
You cannot go back to that place of pain, which is also very
interesting to me because I find that people will go back to
places of abuse to try to find healing and you'll never find it
there. Like you'll see.
Like, OK, I'll use myself again as an example because I feel
like I've done everything wrong. First of all, my dad was a man
who is very hard to please, Hard to please.
So what did I do? I dated guys hard to please, you
know, I thought if I can win their affection, it's almost
like winning the affection I never got from my father.
But guys that are hard to please are hard to keep.
And and so I was like, well, that that didn't workout well.
And what I love is God said the reason why he chose Abraham to
be our father of faith wasn't about what Abraham did, but what
Abraham he knew Abraham would do.
He said, I've settled on Abraham because he will teach his
children my ways. So God is always thinking
legacy. We're thinking past and we're
thinking this moment. And God is like, I see something
in the future. I see that if I can get this to
you and through you, then you're going to raise up children who
will honor me. And, and at the end of the day,
God is looking for long term obedience.
He's not. He's not measuring us by our
short term disobedience. What would you say to someone
that is sitting in the consequences or aftermath of a
mistake? So, you know, just the sweet
woman that has responded. I feel like I deserve that
abusive relationship. I've hear you tell her, hey, you
know, receive God's love for you.
Receive that new vision. You are not deserving or kept in
something bondage from your past.
How do we move forward in those really terribly difficult.
Yes, whether it's, you know, the marriage or even if it's
something I accepted a job because I didn't think I was
smart enough, like a Moses example.
What's your advice on how to move?
Forward First off, I mean, when, when we're in that kind of
situation where you're like, I didn't deserve a healthy
marriage because I wasn't worthy of it.
First of all, we got to take this outside of the marriage and
we need to deal with your relationship and your
perspective of God, that you think that God would punish you,
that you would think that God would say you don't deserve
love, you don't deserve. And, and here's the thing, I
love that if you can actually receive a right perspective of
God, God will pour his love into you and then you'll be able to
have a healthy response to your situation.
I mean, there's, there's a lot of times there's marriages.
Listen, John, I have been married 43 years, but I have
read so many studies where they talk about how couples find
themselves in a horrible place in their marriage, but they
decided, hey, we want to work. We want to work on our marriage.
And five years later, we had a good marriage.
I was listening to this interview with this rabbi.
And he said that when his father would counsel different couples
and they're coming in and they have a bad marriage, he said
they would sit down and the the first person would start saying,
well, he doesn't do this well, she doesn't do this well, he
doesn't do this well, she's not doing this.
And he'd say stop, stop. None of that's going to help.
And the first thing you would ask him is do you want to stay
marriage? And they're like, well, no,
we're we're going to tell you all of our problems.
And they said he'd say, no, I need to know, are you going to
fight for your marriage or are you fighting for a reason to get
out? And he said, that is what I have
to work with because if you're looking for a reason to get out,
you're going to find it. But if you are looking and you
want to fight, I can help you. If not, I can sit down with you
and we can find a way to dissolve this marriage in a way
where you can be friends and not enemies at the end of it.
Now, I believe that marriage is a covenant.
I don't believe it should be quickly dissolved.
I don't think it should be like, oh, we got married and and I
feel like he's not, he's not emotionally meeting on my needs.
He can't only Jesus can. I mean, I'm just, I mean, I
think, I think Christian, I both have great husbands, but they
can't meet all of our needs and and nobody is supposed to meet
all your needs except for Jesus. And another shocking thing is
women when they have problems with marriage, they don't, they
very rarely go to the husband. I was listening to Pastor Josh
Howerton said Doc, that they go to their friends and women are
the ones that initiate 70% of the divorces and it's usually at
the advice of their friends. I mean, what if they went to
their husband and said I, I have, I have not tried in this
marriage or I have been, I've been afraid to dream in my
marriage. But we got married and we didn't
get married for this. We got married in hope.
How can we rebuild hope into our marriage?
I, I know that if I'm feeling alone and isolated and
disappointed, you must be feeling the same way.
You want to fight. What can we do?
How can I love you better? I think we all get trapped into
the how can you love me better? How can I love you better?
And then the two of them talk and build a marriage.
I know that there's been seasons of my 43 years of marriage.
There were years that were amazing and then there were
years that were really hard. And I'll be honest with you,
there were more years that were hard than were easy.
But recently I, I, I, he's the, he's the husband of my dreams.
But you know what? It, it requires commitment, it
requires self sacrifice, it requires service and it requires
work, just like anything in life that is worthwhile.
And I, I find that there's way too many easy outs in our
culture right now where people are like, oh, just quit, just
quit. Well, I mean, here's the thing,
God has committed to us and if we say, well, you know, that's
it, I'm tapping out on my marriage.
He's not going to reject us. He's not going to reject us.
But what I have found out was we sometimes have to learn the
lesson in another way. And usually it's it can be just
as difficult all over again because ever we would go, there
we are. We're taking ourselves and
sometimes we think it's always the other person.
When we're alone, we find out. Are we rejecting the?
Vision and so you know, if that sweet baby girl is listening to
us, baby, you are worthy of more you, but you you need to fight.
You need to fight to get what God actually believes you
deserve. And he's not against you.
He's not, he's not punishing you with your marriage, but marriage
is definitely an iron sharpen iron growth on both people's
part. Yeah, and I know that's a that's
a bigger conversation and and really done well, I think you
would say this too in community and with people that can help in
that particular issue. You have a great episode you did
on divorce at length. If someone's like, well, wait,
what about this, this and this and that caveat and that.
I encourage you to go watch that episode.
But even more than that, seek someone that can help you and
fight for your marriage with you.
I want to ask the question for, you know, someone that's maybe
said, Lisa, I'm fighting for that worth.
I'm fighting for believing that God loves me, but I also know
how important it is to have people around me that believe
that and speak into that too. But I'm in a family or a
community where people only want to see me from my past, or I
have people that verbally speak down to me.
What's your encouragement for them in that situation?
Or, you know, even going into the holidays where they're like,
I don't want to be around my family because they see me this
way. Yeah, well, I, I, I feel your
pain. I mean, I, I, I feel like that's
what I grew up with. And all of those narratives were
in my mind. And, and, and the truth is those
are things that have been spoken over you.
And the only way, the only way you're going to get those things
out is if you renew your mind by the word of God.
And sometimes what that means is you have to actually say what,
who does God say? I am?
He says I am beloved. He said I, you know, he says
that I am chosen like go who through the scriptures write it
all out, that he thinks I am a treasure, that I am a woman of
virtue. I am a woman of worth.
I am a woman who fears the Lord. You can form your own thing, but
there's only one person that can cause you to shrink.
And it's not your husband and it's not your family and it's
not the friends who don't see the potential in you, and it's
not the community that isn't supportive of you.
It's you. And when God actually put
something in your heart, when God whispers the truth, you
always have a choice. Are you going to to listen to
the lies of who you were in the past?
Or are you going to lean in to what God says about you in the
future? You know, it says forgetting
what is behind and straining for what is ahead.
That's what Paul said. He said, I've got I forget
what's behind. He was a murderer.
He was a religious zealot. He said, I'm going to forget
what's wrong. I'm going to strain need for
what is ahead. See, it's so much easier to stay
and what's behind. It's a strain to move into
what's ahead and God is inviting you into the harder thing, but
it is the better thing. You need to renew your mind to
the word of God. Stop playing the victim.
You're not a victim. You're a threat to the plan of
the enemy. And I love that.
There was just so many things when I even Christian, I wrote
my first book I heard. Who do you think you are?
Nobody in your family has even, you know, ever written a book.
What what do you have to say? You haven't gone to seminary.
You can't do this. You can't say that you can't be
there. No one.
I mean, all those things. I just, you have to just keep
moving forward. And it will require courage to
lay hold of the promises of God. That's what we, that's what we
do. We are not passive people.
It's through acts of faith. Faith is an action.
It means you move forward and you don't have to be hateful.
You, you don't have to, to say that's it.
I'm never coming home for Christmas again.
You, you can just be like, you know what?
I, I understand that you see me that way because that's how I
used to be, but I'm not that person anymore.
You can say that you don't have to come back down under it.
And I know sometimes when Christmas times and holidays,
people go into pecking orders and you know this, this isn't
just a holiday thing. This is a timeless thing.
Sometimes when you go back among family, people go into pecking
orders, but you do not need to shrink.
And, you know, they all thought Joseph was a horrible brother, a
tattletale, A braggart. But the truth is Joseph was sent
before them for their provision in the future.
And so if you can lean into the promises of God and not get
bitter at the words of people, I believe that God will anoint you
to be provision for the very people that right now are trying
to shrink your life. Yeah.
I think that's so good and you know, knowing that Christ is our
Redeemer and he is our judge and he is our portion.
I think is such a a sweet word, but also a powerful statement
too. I would love to ask you as a
mother, well, as someone that was a young girl that believed,
you know, I'm this I'm that I don't deserve this to now being
a mother and grandmother of legacy.
Can you just empower the viewers right now of, you know, we set
the vision, but what is at stake if we don't adhere to it, if we
just stay in the laughing posture rather than the
accepting? What's at stake for us, for our
marriages, for our children, if we don't pioneer into what God
is offering and inviting us to? Yeah, well, I mean, everything,
everything is at stake. And here's the God is a
generational God. And so what's what, what a lot
of people miss is God came to Abraham's father before he came
to Abraham and he offered the promise to Abraham's father and
he was like, Nope, I'm just going to stay and idol maker in
the land of earth. So God will offer it to one
generation. And then if they say no, then it
goes to the next generation. So you can actually say I, I
don't want it. It's too much work.
I, I just want to be comfortable.
I just want to live in the past. I'm not going to dream, I'm not
going to fight, I'm not going to pray.
But what happens is that fear that you fight, it's going to
grow and the next generation that battles going to be harder.
I've learned a long time ago, our children either inherit
God's promises or our fears. And so you have to decide what
do you want to pass on? What do you want to pass on in
your marriage? You want to pass on fears or do
you want to pass on promises? Do you want to pass on pain or
do you want to pass on hope? Do you want to pass on lessons
or do you want to be an object lesson?
You have to think about it every single day.
We make choices that go into our future and we want those to be
choices that go into the future with strength.
And so I just want to set before you, just like God said, I'm
going to set before you. Life, death, blessing, cursing.
Choose life and how we choose life.
We don't stand at Mount Sinai and say we choose life, we
choose Jesus. We choose Jesus and Jesus
becomes our pattern. And because he's our pattern, we
deny ourselves and denying ourself isn't just like, well,
I'm not going to let myself have that.
Denying ourself. Part of that is denying the
limitations and the shame of people and embracing the
identity of God. See, we were outsiders.
Now we're insiders. We are outside of Christ now
we're in Christ. We were we were aliens and now
we're children. We have to embrace the identity
of God and we have to fight for that.
And then it says, deny yourself, take up your cross.
What does that even mean? It means that we live at the
intersection of everything that God has done for us.
Whatever that is that he's done for you, that is what you get to
carry into your world. People are looking for people of
confidence, of faith, of healing, of freedom, whatever
He's done. So you can carry that forward
again, the promises, or you can carry the pain and the fear.
And we carry the promises forward by following Christ.
So I just believe that if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ,
the word of God is going to light a path before you.
You walk on that pathway. You believe the promises of God.
You renew your mind not to what you've heard, but what God is
saying about you, and you lift your eyes, you listen to the
Holy Spirit. You worship God instead of
setting yourself. And that way you'll move forward
and strengthen confidence. So good.
Well, thank you for setting this vision for us, for women
watching everywhere. I've just seen the faithfulness
of God, Christian. I mean, I've been, I've been
married now 43 years and I've been a Christian since in 1981.
And I've made more mistakes. And all I've seen is the
faithfulness of God. All I've seen is the grace of
God. All I've seen is the mercy of
God. And I want other people to, to
walk into that freedom. And, you know, one of the things
that God said to me is your past is not your future unless you
want it to be. He said if you keep looking
back, you're going to go back, Lisa, or you can lift your eyes
and you can go forward. And I think that's really what
we're all. We're all ready to move forward.
Yeah. We.
Don't want to be salt pillars. No, we.
Don't want to be salt pillars? Don't turn to sod.
Don't do it. Yes, don't want to be salt
pillars and we don't want you to miss any episodes.
So make sure that you are subscribed if you're enjoying
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