Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 197 | How to Be a Godly Woman in an Ungodly World | Guest: Rachel Jankovic

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

Rachel Jankovic joins me to share her thoughts on being a wife, mother, and woman of God in a culture that tells you you’re missing out on life. Rachel Jankovic is a wife and mother of seven children. She is the author of You Who: Why You Matter and How to Deal With It, Loving the Little Years, and Fit to Burst. She is heavily involved with the Christ Church Ladies Bible Reading Challenge and invites you all to join in that great movement of Christian women becoming women of the Word. Visit https://www.christkirk.com/biblechallenge/ Follow @lizziejank on Instagram

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I am so excited about today's conversation. So many of you have been asking me to have this person on my podcast because you love her, you follow her, you read her, and she is awesome. I gained so much insight and encouragement from this conversation, and I know you will too without further ado. Rachel, thanks so much for joining me. Yeah, my pleasure. Okay, I think that there are a lot of people who are listening who know who you are, who have read your books and follow you on Instagram and on Facebook. But just in case, will you tell everyone else who you are and what you do? Yeah, my name is Rachel Jenkovic. I am a wife, mother of seven kids, live up in Idaho. I'm very involved in our church, our women's Bible reading challenge,

which is the thing that I do. I've written for mothers, mostly when I'm in that season. I didn't never mean to write parenting books. That was not on my to-do list or a plan at all, but God just sort of threw that at me, and that happened. And then most recently written a book called Youhoo, which is all about identity in Christ, the Christian woman. And on social media, you have something that has become very popular. You have, I think you call it pants on fire, right?

Where you call out a lie and you say what the truth is. Can you explain what that is? Yeah, that was, all these things are sort of connected, but that is about my new book, Youhoo, which where I'm really riffing off of that passage in Colossians about how you're being deceived by worldly philosophies. You're trading, you're trading these wonderful riches of the Christian faith for just cheap junk, you know, at which I see Christian women doing all over the place. And so because I wrote this book, and Youhoo is more the beginning of it, talks about

about the philosophical background of why we believe what we believe and why we haven't evaluated what we believe. Like we just have inherited a lot of our unbiblical ideas about the self. And then the second half is more trying to talk about what a Christian identity should be like. But in the discussion with people after they had read some of it, a lot of people would say like, oh, my goodness, I started noticing this. You said that this is everywhere and you're pointed out. And then people would start sending me things like, you know, here's a poster from my gym.

and I noticed it's a lie, you know, or I saw this and I thought that's a lie. And so I just thought it would be a fruitful conversation to continue, which is kind of talking about the things that are all around us, you know, like, oh, look at this, it's a lie. The pants on fire, I admit, just makes me laugh. It's just emojis, pants on fire. It's just a reference, obviously, so it's liar, liar, pants on fire. Right. But all of those posts, the hashtag Department of Hell No is what I have used on all of those.

So, yes. Okay, and tell everyone your Instagram handle so they can follow that or on Facebook. It is Lizzie Jank. It's L-I-Z-E-E-Jank, even though my name's Rachel. That's just how it happens. Yes, everyone, before this interview, I had to clarify with her because I hadn't actually met her talked about this before. And I was really worried that I was going to call her the wrong name, but she clarified her name is Rachel. I answer to anything. Oh, anything. So you have the freedom to call her whatever you want to. Okay, so everyone definitely check out Youhoo. Excellent book.

It has a lot to do with this kind of, I call it the culture of trendy narcissism. So the self-love, self-care, the selfishness is a virtue, the self-sacrifice is a vice. Kind of what led you? And both of us have talked about this a lot and you do such an excellent job of analyzing it from a biblical perspective. What led you into that realm of talking about this? What made you notice? wow, this is a problem. Yeah, well, when I first, I mentioned that I wrote a book called Loving the Little

Years when my kids were little. My first four were very close in age. My first four were three and under because we had twins in there. So it was like it was a welcome to motherhood trial by fire time that the Lord gave me. And because of that, I ended up writing a book about really dealing with myself in those years. You know, like how I found that my attitude was the problem, how God. God was, like, revealing a lot of these things to me. So that book I wrote, and then I wrote another one called Fit to First.

Is there something that I think that this is true? I think the most clinging, needy audience in the world is young mothers of kids. Like, the people who most beg you to, like, help me, help me. I need encouragement. I need whatever. They're very, very desperate and needy. Right. And I think that's a combination of how hard the job is with how,

undervalued it is in our society. So you end up with women just really needing help. Because of that, in college, I had studied the philosophy of the self. I wrote a thesis about the philosophy of the self. So before I even became a mother, I had thought through some of these issues. And what happened over and over is I would hear from women with questions where I'd be thinking, your problem is not your toddler. Your problem is that you don't know who you are, what you're for, how to go forward through trials. how to trust God in things because you know he's actually your creator, not, he's, he's not, you're not self-creating.

That's ungodly philosophy that snuck in. And so I just kept seeing it over and over. And then you mentioned it's very trendy right now. So as it was starting to kind of pick up like, if you're just listening to the world, you're going to have no bearing for how to go forward as a mother of children in a home, a difficult life in any way. you're not going to know how to do it. And so those things actually were connected that I felt like, wait, we need to back up and talk about not just for mothers, but just for women, but we need to talk

about how you, like what you even are, what you're for, who your God is and what that actually means in your daily life. So that's why that happened. They're all connected. Yes. You're absolutely right. Young moms, they feel like they need camaraderie. They need community. And if they they find that even in the realm of cynicism about being a mom or being a wife, then they will go to that. If that's the only kind of community that they can find, a group of women who are talking about, you know, how terrible it is to be a mom or even joking about how much of a burden their kids are, they are going to go to that because at least someone, it might be commiseration, but at least someone is empathizing with them or at least someone is talking about experiences that they have.

So I think that you're right. It's a foundational issue. Can you tell us what it is like being a mom of seven? I just have a five-month-old baby, and so I'm certainly not an expert in motherhood. But can you tell us some of the lessons that you have learned, being a mom of seven kids? Yes, I think I would say that I would say probably the overarching biggest lesson. This is actually what I talk about. They're connected. I'll say more than one thing. Yeah, go for it. It's always about me in the sense that it's always my responsibility to get right with God. That if my children are being crazy in some way, which they were when they were all toddlers and babies, how does it not be crazy? Right. That it was easy to feel like I'm suffering something, like letting my own attitude slip and slide because of these children. You know, like look at this mess and recognizing that the only thing that God has been.

really wanted me to have like clean and orderly with my own heart before him and receiving these blessings you know like i i think i always wanted to have children i never thought i would have seven children but i always wanted to have children uh and i think that when i actually was in that space where it was genuinely hard like the transition was hard into having those kids because it wasn't hard with one we had a shop downtown i was still catering things and and and doing wedding flowers and doing things. And then when we had the twins, so now it was me with four babies.

You can't take four small children with you to lead your normal life, you know? Yeah. It's like things are different. Yeah. And at that time, I think that what I really was learning is submission to God and to what God had called me to and to trust him, that this is the best thing I can be doing

because this is the good works that he prepared for me in advance to walk in. You know, like this is what I'm called to do. And even if I can't see it being valuable today, you know, that it will be. And, you know, now I'm an old mom. So now I have almost four teenagers. You know, like now that crazy kids turned into a much different kind of group. And now I can see the fruit of those years in a very different way and see how my little, like the things I would have wanted to grasp onto, like my creativity, my time for myself or my whatever. that God has handed that back to me, but instead of this little trickle of my creativity,

it's like this roaring river that is so much bigger than I ever could have done by myself when I have all these really incredible people around me that I'm like, the Lord called me not just to something better, but to something better, even in the same areas that I already love. And it was just that submission to his calling that has been so fruitful. Is there one thing looking back that you wish you would have cherished more when they were in that little stage? Cherished more. I don't know if it's like a season or a moment or a lesson or something.

Yeah. So I'm really, I'm not a sentimental mom, but I have to make that decision all the time. Really? That kind of surprises me. Are you not a sentimental person at all or just when it comes to motherhood? No, what I mean by sentimental, I mean like, like I deliberately choose to not get sad about the baby. Gotcha. Gotcha.

That I don't think it's fruitful to be sad about that. Gotcha. So what I think about, I don't mean that I don't love it. I do. No, I know. I knew that. Yeah. Why haven't I had a baby in four years?

How did I get old enough to not be having babies? Yeah. Surprise. But it is that I just, I often think of it as being, you know, God put eternity in our hearts that we cannot. hang on to the blessings as they're coming. And sometimes you want to be like, oh, this baby is being so sweet right now. Like, I want to remember this forever.

And it's like a month later, you have no clue that that even happens, you know? And it's, and it is the same thing that is trusting God that my memory is not what made that valuable. It's not like I still, this is a story and I love these people and I've loved them every day since God gave them to me. And that, but I would say in light of that that I think all the time, like they look so big to me now. And in another year, I'm going to be looking back at this is that, oh, my goodness, can you believe how little they were then? Right.

So I guess I'm always just trying to receive the blessings of the day to day with full gratitude for what God has given me today. Right. There is a lot of fear, I would say, among Christian moms right now, especially people like me who are new. moms. We just look at how culture has changed so much. Not only do they devalue parenthood and children from in the womb to out of the womb, but also just how basic truth is being warped into deceit, whether it's gender, whether it's when life starts. And we're worried. We're worried about what's to come, even knowing, even knowing the eternal truth of the fact that, you know, one day Jesus is going to rule in perfect peace.

There's just a lot of fear and anxiety. So what do you say to moms that are like, I don't know, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to raise my child in a godly way amidst all of these cultural changes. Right. Okay, so a couple things. One is I would say take that seriously and don't try to keep numbing yourself to that reality. Because I think that's what everybody wants to do is comfort each other instead of strengthen in each other instead of thinking like as mothers, we should look at our children and be able to say,

yeah, we're all going to die. Like all you kids are going to die. And when you like, and I talk with my kids often about this, which is funny, but about the like that there's no, that a Christian need have no fear of death if you're right with God. You know, like that you will be Lord willing, that they will be strong and faithful fighters. And if God has called them to be a light in a really dark time and then I want them doing that with their whole heart. You know, like that I want them so so in love with God and his purposes that they are still willing to be called to whatever he has called to. And I also think so we try to give a lot to our children. We're trying to give them a great education and a lot. Like we are constantly trying to make the home joyful and equip them through

laughter to be in this kind of time. But in all of that, we are thinking in terms of the biblical, that principle to whom much is given, much is required. And we absolutely are, like, it's our hope for them that God requires much of them and that, and that he will put them in places where they can be influential and where they can do great things for the kingdom. But that will never be a painless position that we're asking him to put them in, right? You know, like you're saying, Lord, use these children for your glory.

And it's not about us all having a snugly moment. It's about us faithfully serving our God. And all of that sweetness of fellowship and the home and all these things that we have is a side blessing of that offering. You know what I mean? Like it is something God gives us. But it's not the point. Like the point is not our fellowship, our fun times at home. The point is service to God.

And he gives us all that sweetness. in abundance around that relationship, if that makes sense. Yes, it does. I would say that the conversations that are had in the home for equipping that service to God maybe are more complicated. It's hard for me to know since I wasn't a mom 20 years ago and I am a mom today. It seems like the conversations around things like sex and sexuality and gender and marriage, all these things that maybe our parents took for granted because it was more mainstream.

They're a lot more complicated. They're a lot more complex today. So what advice, what kind of practical advice do you have for moms and dads who are trying to have those conversations with their kits? Okay. So the biggest thing I would say is be absolutely unapologetic and unashamed of the Word of God. Like, don't be trying to hide your children from the realities that happen in the Bible,

which is one of the things I think is interesting. is so many Christians try to protect their children from the Word of God. Like, oh, I don't want them reading that yet, or I don't want them to know about that that's in the Bible or the thing here. But the Bible is how God has revealed himself to us. And the idea of us trying to filter God's revelation of himself to our children is ridiculous. And all of these things, I think, I have had a lot of crazy conversations with my children. so many of them prompted by God's work, prompted by what is this about? Like, I mean, yeah, good luck to us all trying to explain, you know,

Lott and his daughters to our children in an age-appropriate way. You know, you're like, but I'm going to be unapologetic and unashamed of God's work. And that one of the things that you notice if you do that with your children is that they're very aware that there's nothing that it does not pertain to. you know that that god has spoken on human immorality like that they know this so they end up looking at the world through the lens of scripture and and there's nothing that's happening around us now that is worse than things that have been dealt with in scripture for us to learn from uh so i guess i would just say be and not along with unapologetic and unashamed of god's word

is it is read it know god's word and and embrace it and and talk about it with your children like be talking about it and I think that that will prompt all kinds of things um I do shelter my children from like there are things that we would be like no we're absolutely not going to go hang out at you know downtown during a growth parade we're not going to go do that kind of thing but my children don't have categories to put sin in and in all of those cases because of scripture we have a we have a companion category of faithfulness and how God dealt with it, which means that, you know, that's a good thing. Right, right.

Okay, talk to me about education, Christian school, private school versus homeschool versus public school. What did you guys decide to do with your kids and why? Our kids are in a private Christian school, but it's a classical Christian school. I jokingly say I was homeschooled as school. My parents were really involved. Mostly my dad was involved in starting our school that I went to when I was little. When my sister was in kindergarten, it was our first year.

And so our life was very, both of my parents at school and helping and teaching. And my dad went back to take Latin classes at the University of Idaho so that he could teach Latin to the kids at Logos when we were little. So they were very involved in this. And I think in the 80s, 89, 88 from where in there, he wrote a book called Recovery and the Lost Schools of Learning, which is all about classical education. So our kids go to the school that I went to. And in spite of the fact that we love, there's a lot of reasons I love a school setting and we love classical education for a lot of reasons. The one hill we would die on is Christian education, which is that what you're teaching your children.

needs to be from a Christian worldview, from a Christian perspective. And so the method, the actual method, while we've chosen classical private school, I can't, if we live somewhere else, I don't know that that's what we would choose. But what we're really all about is following those clear things that are said in scripture about like how we should be teaching our children all the time, you know, like, and bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And that we just believe very strongly that scripture makes up a plain argument for us to not follow a secular education path with our children. So what's your advice for people who do have their kids in public school?

Because there is an argument from people who say, you know, light should infiltrate darkness. Maybe we should go into the public school system and try to make it better. what is your thought on that right and my first thought is just that like like the great commission yes all christians have been given this but but we don't send our second graders overseas to to difficult mission environments so like good luck kids yeah yeah go they're not they're not equipped they're not trained they're not ready yet so um i believe that even if that's your whole your whole argument you would have to show that you're making more impacts than it's being made on your child you know that this is that your child is not being imprinted more heavily than they're

putting it out but otherwise i would just say it's not the place of children and to go be our foot soldiers in difficult places and so one of the things that we do at the school that my children go to when they're in high school they do a lot they're reading books by atheist self have in, they, because it's a classical school, they take rhetoric and apologetics and they do, they have to speak publicly all the time in class. But they will invite in, you know, the head of the local humanist association who will present things to them like, they're not being sheltered from the world. Right. They're being equipped to be in it and know what they're up again. Right. Right. That's so good. I think that that's also a temptation. On the other side, so you've got the

people who say, let's just infiltrate the public schools. But on the other end, I think that you have a lot of parents who think of Christian school as more of a bubble as a way to insulate, which it is in some ways. Like you said, we are protecting our children for a certain amount of time from certain things of the world, sort of as much as we can. But it's actually not a bubble. You are equipping them and then you are exposing them to the things that they are going to inevitably come up against when they're in college or elsewhere. Yeah. And they also, the reality is that that temptation to take your child away and hide them from sin in the world is forgetting how much sin is in their own heart. You know, you don't need other people's influence to make you sinful. But you can brew that up

all by yourself in your bedroom. You know, like you, you have all the sin you need right inside of you ready to go. So there's no sense in that kind of thing, like trying to show. And, like, trying to shelter our children as though we can keep them from having to deal with sin because that's what they're dealing with all day. You know, like that's what they're up against just with themselves. Yeah, that's a really good point. And you would agree that all of this, none of this is going to make sense. None of this even really matters outside of the biblical worldview, which is why it's so important. I love what you said about your primary responsibility is making sure as a mom that your heart is right before God, which means being in his word. And you said,

at the beginning that really what you do is getting women to read the Bible. Can you talk about that? Yes, again, it's like my favorite, my favorite thing. When I first started writing for mothers, I was always really nervous around the topic of Bible reading because you know, you know how fast mothers are to go guilty, right? Like you start saying, you should do this and everyone has a guilt back. Mom guilt, yeah. And guilt is a horrible motivator. Like just, horrible because all it does is get us to do enough to get rid of the guilt and then we stop you know like we're we're not actually motivated by guilt we just think we are um so in the last couple years i would say my position on that has really changed because i as we started what we called

the bible reading challenge it's year round in the academic year we read the whole bible so it's the whole bible in nine months and then in the summer we do just a new testament again so if you stick with us through the whole year. We'll read the New Testament twice and the Old Testament once and a bunch of epistles. If you do the bonus reading in such, a bunch of the epistles you will have read like five or six times in a year. And when we did that, I realized that was a breakthrough for me and realizing why not just work harder on telling people to get rid of the guilt.

Like stop it with the guilt. Get to know your God. You know, like this is not so. Some of the things we really emphasize, it's like if you fall behind, just jump in on today's reading. Like we treat it like it's a feast at a table. You don't come to someone's house for dinner and then be like, I'm sorry, I can't eat this. I didn't eat my breakfast this morning. Yeah. I'm going to have to work through some raisin brand first before I eat when you're off me. Right. So our emphasis is on people learning habits and and encouraging women to learn the

habit and the hunger for God's words, the hunger and the thirst for it. And it has been so fruitful and wildly fruitful in ways that has made me way less hesitant. When people are like, I'm just having this problem. Now I'm just like, are you reading your Bible? Like, read your Bible. Like, you should be reading your Bible, which I love that it has given me so much more confidence in God's word as the actual answer. Like, this is actually what we need and it actually will change your life if you are doing this.

So I guess we are, we have, I think our Facebook group has close to 18,000 women. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. We say we're very theological diverse. We're like, theological diverse literally on the same page. The whole point is that we are, what we're encouraging each other to do. We're not teaching the Bible. We're teaching a love of the Bible. And I've just seen it being, it's so fruitful because, you know, the passages says his word has gone out and it will not return void. It will accomplish the thing for which he sent it.

You know, that it will do what God sent his word to do. And then if you ask yourself, well, what is it that it's going to do? And it says corresponding passage, and I think it's in, man, I can't quote it. Exactly. But it's the one about about it being, you know, how God's word will. I like how I'm, you know what I'm talking about, though. This passage about it's good for correction and for. Yes.

Yes. I'm pretty sure it's First Timothy. Yeah. Three, maybe First Timothy three. So I was going to say, I like when I always start, though, whenever you start to say where I think that is, you're like, uh, I'm not sure. Oh, yeah. I am not good. That's one thing I'm good at. I can recall verses, but I cannot, I can very rarely tell you exactly the chapter in verse, which I think it's okay. When we're old, we'll be able to do that because we'll keep reading the Bible from now

until then. Yes, I hope so. That's one gift that I want to have. So can people, can people join in right now? Could they join the Facebook group right now? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Anytime you join. We do, so like the plans roll out like one in September and one in May. But people are welcome anytime. And from any time you join, you just jump in where we are.

And this time in a year you will have read the whole, you know, will have been through everything. So jump in whenever that's it. We're all about not waiting until the first of the year or a Monday or a, you know, we're like, don't do it perfectly. we're very get it done like listen on audio if you can't we have apps to help there's um it's on you version it's on the bible reading app a lot of things that connect with just turning your audio bible on to keep up with it um and another it's an active facebook group so if you are in the group

all this sudden you'll get this impression that like the whole world is reading the bible yeah because if your whole feed is full of people saying i never noticed this before and look at this and yeah that's been a really fun thing but i'd say the end of the end of the end of that passage in 1st Timothy is where it says that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work and I and I can think of nothing more powerful in the world than if you say well could we get all the Christian women to be thoroughly equipped for every good work in front of them and what kind of a difference do you think that would make in the world like pretty substantial difference if every Christian woman was so thoroughly equipped. Yes. And and

we've seen it that Christian women who are in the word have so much more confidence in when they're talking to their friends like, no, that's not biblical. You know, no, you can't do this or this is why they are way more confident in that. So I love the idea of like, think we can change the world if women will just read their Bible. Yes. What's the name of the Facebook group? It's the Bible reading challenge. The Bible reading challenge. Okay. Yes. And there is a men's group, but the men, it turns out, I don't think are as in

encouraged by regular life companionship as the women are. I think that that's that the men's group is not nearly as active with like, look at my laundry, but I'm listening to the Bible. Yes. Yes. But there is a men's group and that plan is translated in multiple languages. There's a Spanish group, a French group. There's people all over the world that we are literally on the same page with. It's been wonderful. That is awesome. There aren't very many resources like that for women that are literally bringing women just into the Bible rather than creating almost like an emotional filter in front of the Bible. Like if we think about Instagram filters or something, making something look different or more polished, not as many so-called flaws.

And a lot of women's devotionals do that. Like here's the pretty filter in front of the Bible because you can't emotionally handle what's in here. And because I think we're so afraid of mom guilt and we don't want to put, we're afraid that mom guilt or any kind of guild is going to push someone away from the word. So we kind of make it the Bible. We don't want them to feel that. Yes. So we make it a suggestion. It's a suggestion. And let me make this really easy and chewable for you. Why do you think that is particularly true of women? Like, why do we view women as unable to take the word of God seriously? I don't know that, but I, I mean, I have theories. But I, I, I have. think a lot of it is that women's ministry is a huge mistake. So there's that. I think that. Can you

unpack that? Yeah, I probably should because that's a pretty explosive. I'm actually very involved in what is women's ministry. But the thing that I think it should be is a ministry of women, not a victim culture women's ministry, which is what has happened. I think, I don't know this. I'm kind of just think I have looked like is there a history of this anywhere and I have not been able to find it. But I suspect that women's ministries grew out of essentially women's auxiliary type things that the women would gather to do women, what was seen as women's work for the church, right? So they're like, what are they doing? They're making food for people. They're knitting things for soldiers. They're like they were getting together to work together. Right. To minister to others.

And as that became unnecessary in different ways, as women's work became, I mean, I can't think of real any urgent, you must knit things for someone or they're going to be cold. And so as that became less important, I think that we still had this idea of the women should go off together to do something. But the reality is there's only one ministry of the word in sacrament. And that is church. Like that is worship, right? And so if you end up taking all the women away from where they're supposed to be being fed and rebuked and corrected and built up, then and then you take them somewhere else. And we've made it where the women get together to minister to one another, right? Like so then it is this victim culture problem of we all start talking all the time about how needy we are and how tired we are and how.

And so then you have this relationship of the more spiritually equipped women thinking their job is to just encourage and equip these women. And we all sit in a circle and gaze at each other and notice all our problems, right? Like all we do is look around. Instead of, and what the Bible Reading Challenge really has shown us locally even here is that we have 70 something mods in the Bible Read Challenge Facebook group who are all women in our church. And we don't have rules. So the mod's job is to be the moderator, encouragers. The moderator? Yeah, the moderators in the group.

Their job is to be cheerleaders and encouragers. And we're not enforcing rules in the group. So it's not like 75 police officers of the group. It's 75 women who are using hospitality and encouragement to try to drive other women to the work. And so what I think you can see there is the difference between a ministry to ourselves and a ministry of women behaving like biblical women who are wanting to encourage other women to be in the Word. And the fellowship of working together is so sweet. You know, like working together, whereas if we were getting together to say like,

how can we encourage one another? Well, we're way better at encouraging one another to faithfully work together. And it's almost like a big group of running partners. Yeah. Like we're working hard together and we're encouraging one another in the Lord and in the word. But it's not like, it's not like, oh, today I need to bring you a blessing that will help you today.

And in the course of this, we've also seen a number of times, probably 10 different times that I know of where a woman in a church somewhere is doing the Bible Rain Challenge. She's all excited. She's like, I want to invite all my friends to read the Bible with me because this is amazing. never saw all these connections and so excited. So she goes to the leader of the women's ministry and they say, no, you cannot. Like, you cannot tell the women in our church about this because they can't handle it.

Say it like, like the women in our church, they will feel guilty. This is too much for them. It's like a weird mothering problem instead of a faithful co-laborer being like, you can. Come on. You know, like we're doing this. Come alongside of us. And do it with us. Wow.

How do you think there's weird stuff going on there? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it kind of goes back to the Garden of Eden. The woman has always been especially deceived and more susceptible to deception. And that's true today. That's like the most popular Bible verse of all. You brought it up.

Yes. The gollable women. Gollable. But, I mean, it's true. And I've talked about this. I'm sure you've talked about it too. If we're all honest with ourselves and we lay down our process, it's not that men can't be deceived. Obviously, Adam was deceived as well, but women are so

susceptible to deception. And some of it is because of that self-victimization that we are in. We deceive ourselves. And how do you know you're being deceived? You don't. That's the point of deception. So I love what you guys. I love what you guys are doing. And I love, I think it's such a more actually positive in empowering, if you will, view of women that we are made with the capacity to be able to seek after God and to serve other people. But I do, sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, I do think it's a two-part thing. I think there's the women who are identifying themselves as victims who need the

encouragement of the women that they think are not victims. Like, I'm the victim of how hard I'm having it. And you seem more together. So you should minister to me. And I think on the other end of that, because I told you I had exposure to the world's most clingy audience, you know, at the writing for young mothers. Yes. And on the other end of that, when you think of the Word of God as like a huge banquet table that is just loaded with stuff to strengthen us and to equip us and to encourage us.

And I think if you, I'm sure you've had this experience, I know I did when I would blog some for mothers, is getting those desperate messages from people like, like, can you just say something about this? Like, I need to be encouraged in this area or I need to be whatever. And I started to see that. I always resisted it because I was like, I have, I actually have responsibilities right here. Like, I'm actually not going to get up in the morning and worry about you. Like, I have closer responsibilities. But I have always thought that that is, it is like people who are under the table looking for you to drop crumbs to them. And I think that temptation goes two ways.

You have the people under the table who have become beggars. Like, they have made themselves the poverty stricken under there begging for crumbs. And then you have people who actually are reading. God's word who have started to be like, you know what I should do? I should throw biscuits under the table. Like I should just be constantly making mess down there for them to eat. Instead of pulling people up to the table. Yeah. There's a seat right here. There is a plate here. Like you don't belong under the table and I shouldn't be throwing food under the table. Like you should all of us be sitting together enjoying the table fellowship as as partakers of Christ. Like we could all sit here

together and enjoy each other and that that is more strengthening and encouraging than anything I could pass people under the table. Yeah, which is exactly what you guys are doing through the Bible reading challenge as you're saying, hey, there's actually a place right here for you. And there is, there is a place for people like you who are, you know, have been reading the Bible for years to say, okay, this is how you do it. Right? Like, this is how you do it. Here's how you use your utensils or however long you want to go with the metaphor. And this is how you do it. This is how you enjoy it. I think that is better and more effective than just throwing people the scraps after you've eaten them. 100% better. And it's also way more exciting because all of a sudden you see the power of God's word in their life.

Right. And it's a wonderful, wonderful thing because you see it in your own life and you see it in the lives of others. And it is very humbling. It's like nobody needs me to filter this for them. But we can talk over it and encourage one another. That's wonderful. Absolutely. Okay, will you direct people anywhere you want them to go to your stuff, to the Bible Reading Challenge, to your book? Right. I would say if you go to Christcirk.com slash Bible Challenge, that is the website where there's the printables, there's links to all the apps, there's, you know, I think there's an invitation video, and there's links to the Facebook groups and everything is right there. So if you're interested, in the Bible reading challenge.

And I have to say, everybody, it's about six chapters a day, which is intimidating. If you've been told to your whole life that you should just meditate on one verse and that'll be enough. But if you time yourself reading Ephesians, probably like 11 to 15 minutes of reading, you know, like at six chapters. You can read it that fast. Read it just like you're reading a blog or something else, not like trying to bring everything out of it. But if you're interested in it, it's absolutely doable, jump in. and that's probably the best research for that. And otherwise, I guess I'm on Instagram.

My publisher, Cannon Press, has a lot of videos of me doing various things. But I have no one-stop shop to touch up with me. Yes. Follow. Okay, so it's, will you repeat the URL? Yes, Christkirk. It's K-I-R-K. Christkirk.com slash Bible reading challenge.

Bible reading challenge. That's okay. We'll double check and we'll put it in the description. I like you. I can't remember in this moment. That's okay. That's okay. And people can follow you on Instagram and check out all of your stuff. And I think you have a Facebook page where people can go to because you post a lot of things on that. Okay. I have an author page on Facebook. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Rachel. This was extremely insightful and encouraging.

And I know people are going to gain a lot from this conversation. Great. Well, nice to chat with you, Allie.