She Believed HE Could, So She Did | Becky Beresford

Women feel this tension that I felt. I want them to experience this freedom of saying, I don't have to be enough. I don't have to do all these things. I don't have to believe in myself, but I can instead believe in the capacity, the care, and the character of my God.

And that is enough for me. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Our guest today believes our culture has been lying to women. The world defines female empowerment as believing in yourself or looking within to find the power to succeed. But what happens when women grow weary from trying to do it all?

Is there a better way? Oh, this is going to hit a nerve with a lot of listeners today as we present a conversation with Becky Barris Ford, author of She Believed He Could So She Did, Trading Culture's Lies for Christ-Centered Empowerment. You can find out more at the website buildingrelationships.us. And Gary, I find it interesting that Becky used to believe and even promote some of the lies that can shackle women today. Well, you know, Chris, I thank all of us as we get older and mature a little bit. Hopefully we look back at some of the things we said and thought and taught earlier in our lives and we think, ooh, I wish I had a little clearer perspective on that at that stage in my life. So I'm excited about our conversation today. And this book, I think it's going to help a lot of people reflect upon things they might have believed and even taught that really were not true.

So it's going to be a good time today. Well, let's meet Becky Barris Ford. She's an author, speaker, coach with a master's certificate in spiritual formation and discipleship from Moody Theological Seminary.

We love that place. She lives in North Carolina and is happily outnumbered by her husband and three boys. Her featured resource is her book. You can find it at the website She Believed He Could So She Did, Trading Culture's Lies for Christ-Centered Empowerment.

You can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Well, Becky, welcome to Building Relationships. Hi, thank you so much for having me.

I'm so excited to be here. Is what Chris said true? Did you promote and believe some of the very things that you speak against today?

Yes, I did. And actually God had me write an apology letter to my readers, all of them for it. And it was a very humbling moment. I mean, when I first started being a writer back in 2015, I wanted to encourage women and help them in their walks with Jesus and basically point them towards their identity in Christ. But I didn't really want to touch on things that could be kind of like hot topic issues or something that, like a hard truth that might cause them to be offended or just get some pushback on. And so I kind of tried to do more encouragement and happy things. And so I said a lot of these these cultural lies that we hear today that women are kind of being bombarded with, like, you are enough, or you can do hard things, or, you know, you be you, believe in yourself, follow your heart. Like, they all sound good and they're well-intentioned, but the thing is, in all of those statements, Jesus is left out of the equation. And so it's all about us. It's all about self, trying to empower yourself, make yourself feel better, rely on yourself, depend on yourself, when really the Bible wants us to rely on God. We want to practice God-dependence, not self-dependence. And so when the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I was preaching the wrong, or I wouldn't say wrong gospel, but an untruth, like a fake watered-down, not-all-the-way-there gospel, which I'll talk about in a little bit, it was eye-opening for me.

And it was humbling. And the Lord's like, yes, well now you have to go back to these people that you have been saying these messages to, and you need to apologize for it. And you need to say, I want to present the full gospel that brings freedom for our souls, that doesn't make us rely on self, but has us shift towards relying on our Savior. Why is it so important for you that you have a passion to help women embrace this, which for many is a different kind of empowerment, right, depending on God rather than on ourselves?

Well, I think so many women are experiencing the tension that I felt, which was culture is telling you, you need to do it, you can hold all the all the plates, you can do all the things, you can, just believe in yourself. And so we're getting these messages, and then at the same time the Bible is telling us that we need to depend on God and believe in God. But we're we're trying to do both at the same time, where I'm trying to rely on myself and I'm kind of trying to rely on my Savior, but they can't happen simultaneously. And if you think about driving a car, like if I have my hand on the wheel and then like someone else has the hand on the wheel and we're both trying to steer, we're going to crash, like we're gonna end in an accident.

So you have to pick one or the other. And obviously as daughters of God, as sons of God, he wants what's best for us, which is not having that burden to do all the things, to be enough, to be honestly the Savior of our own story. He doesn't want that responsibility and burden to be on us. He wants us to hand that back over to him, because that role was his responsibility to begin with. That is literally why we're not enough and that is literally why Jesus came to die, so that we don't have to be enough and we can rely on him for what we cannot produce, we cannot earn in our own measure.

I'm passionate about it because women feel this tension that I felt myself and I want them to experience this freedom of saying, I don't have to be enough, I don't have to do all these things, I don't have to believe in myself, but I can instead believe in the capacity, the care, and the character of my God, and that is enough for me. And it's just a weight that feels like it's lifted from our shoulders when we lean into that truth. Yeah, so the title of the book is, She Believed He Could, So She Did. Tell us about the title. Where did that title come from?

Yeah, so that has a story of its own. Back in 2015, when God called me into writing, I saw it as a form of discipleship and it was a really cool shift away from working one-on-one with women, and so I was like, okay God, if this is discipleship, what kind of book would you want me to write? And so he placed a totally different book on my heart that I ended up pitching for three different, three years to different publishing houses, to different agents, and I was getting rejections after rejections, and no's, and not yet, and so I felt very confused because I felt that God wanted me to write and write a book.

I thought that book, but I was getting no's, and in the publishing world they're basically saying you're not there yet, like you're missing the mark, you're not measuring up to meet the standards of our house or our agency, and so I literally felt like I was failing as a writer, and so there was this, that was my professional life. Personally, what was going on in my life at the time, it was like a storm. My husband and I were going through a very hard season in our marriage where we both needed to heal from some serious past trauma, and it was one of those points in our relationship where I was like, Lord, I don't know how this is gonna work, and he had given me the word miracle in 2019 to pray into, and I was praying for him, like I need a miracle in my marriage, Lord, and you're you're the one who's gonna have to bring this about, and he did, like he's an eleventh-hour God, like in December God did a radical healing in my husband's heart and mind in life, and that was kind of a ripple effect for our family in a lot of ways. He has definitely done a big miracle, but during that time when this book was being birthed, I felt like I could not measure up as a wife. I was trying to be enough for him, trying to fix things, and I just kept feeling like a failure in that area, and then we have motherhood, so I think all moms feel like they're failing in one point or another within their journey, but we're a special-needs family as well. Our oldest is autistic, and so that adds like an extra layer of I don't know what I'm doing, and so we would try all these different things, and it wouldn't help, or it wouldn't help as much as we were hoping, and then trying to have this dynamic in our family and helping all my boys thrive, helping all of their needs, and again I just was not doing it well. I felt like I was continually failing, and I wasn't enough for my kids, so I'm not enough for my husband.

I'd be able to help my husband. I'm not able to do all these hard things for my kids and be enough for my kids, and then we had like other stuff going on in our life too, like chronic illness and financial strain, so like I said it was a storm, the perfect storm, but it was a God storm that he was allowing to happen because I got to this point one day where I was considering quitting writing, and my husband had bought me a sign, and it was from a Christian bookstore, I will say that, and it said she believed she could so she did, and I took that sign and I put it on my writing desk with all this stuff happening in my personal and professional life, nose rejections, failures, and I stared at that sign one day, and I'm like I'm done. I'm throwing in the towel. I'm sorry God, and the Holy Spirit revealed to me that the feelings of inadequacy that I was feeling were not wrong because they could point me to Jesus, but what was wrong is the sign, and so I went and I got a marker, and I crossed off the S in the she, so it said she believed he could so she did.

I'm like there it is. That's the message of the gospel that we believe in God and his sufficiency, his strength, what he can do, what he's already done for me, and it's not about me. It's not about me having to be the Savior of my story.

I already have one. His name is Jesus, so it was so freeing, and then I shared that with on Instagram. I took the picture of my sign, and I shared it, and the response that I got from women was just like oh now I can I can agree with that.

I can agree with that statement. The other one didn't sit well because of the tension. It didn't sit well, but that that's the gospel, and that's when I knew like this is more than a post.

I think this is a book. So Becky, how can recognizing that you're not enough be an encouraging and even freeing message for Christian women? So this, out of all the lies, I have seven of them in my book, and this one is the one that gets the most pushback, and I think the reason is because when people are saying I'm enough, they're actually communicating something different.

So what they're trying to say is I am loved. I'm accepted. I'm perfectly and wonderfully made. I'm chosen.

I am called, and all of those things are 110% true. They're in the Bible, but the actual phrase you are enough is not, and there's a reason for that because I looked up the definition of the word enough, and basically what it's saying is when you say enough, you do not need anything else. So like if I if someone's giving me pie, and I had my first piece, and they come and they're like do you want another piece? I'm like no I've had enough. I don't need anymore. I'm good, and so when we say I am enough, even though we may not mean this, we're actually saying I am enough. I don't need anything else, and that includes a Savior, and so we are not enough, and that is why Jesus came to die for us and came to be more than enough for us so that we can actually be more than enough in him, and what's interesting is the very beginning in the garden, we were enough in God. We were enough in God, and then Satan came in, and he actually tricked Eve into believing that she was not enough.

That was his lie saying you're not enough. You're lacking in knowledge. You're lacking in this way.

God's withholding from you. How about you reach for something more to be enough, even though she already was enough in God, and so she did that, and it was a really, really cruel self-fulfilling prophecy where she bit the fruit, and then in that moment that's when she became not enough, and so women now that don't know Jesus, it's like they are trying to answer that I'm not enough, that I'm not enough, that original lie the enemy had planted in them, and they don't know Jesus yet, but when we are in Christ, we actually are more than enough in him, and the Bible says we are filled to all the fullness of the measure of God, and I will take that level of enough over my own self-made enoughness any day. You're taking me way back in my own life, Becky, as you talk, when I first realized John 15 verse 5, where Jesus said, I'm divine, you're the branches. You stay connected to me, you bear fruit, and then he said, without me you can do nothing. Whoo, I remember when that dawned on me, and I wept, you know.

I can't do anything without you, God. It's transforming. Well, let's look at one of these other things. Many people say, you hear them say the phrase, follow your heart.

Yes. Why is that something that should raise a caution flag, and what's the biblical way of framing that? Yeah, so I think when people say, follow your heart, they're trying to say, do whatever makes you happy, right? Follow your heart to whatever you think you deserve, and your dreams, just put that up on a pedestal, follow your heart. And I know for me, like, my heart does not know what it wants. Like, it changes all the time. You know, from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, I could want something totally different. My heart could want something totally different, and so that's why God doesn't call us as believers to be happy. He calls us to be holy and whole in Christ. That is our main calling as believers, and that doesn't mean that God is up there in heaven being like, I want all my kids to suffer and be miserable. Like, he's a good father, so he wants what's best for us. But a lot of times, our hearts do not know what's best for us.

But God, God does. And so our hearts, when we take our desires, when we take the things that we want and we lay them before him and say, okay God, I want my heart to be aligned with yours. I don't want to follow my heart. I want to follow my King. I want to do what you want me to do. And so if this heart does not align with your will, if it doesn't align with your word, I want you to change it, transform it to be more in line with yours so that I'm following what you want for my life.

I love the Bible because these are human people who are like us, imperfect. They make mistakes all the time, and it's very clear. Like, this is what happens if you follow your heart. If you want to be like David and follow your heart, it's probably going to lead you to adultery and murder.

You know, it's not going to end well. But if we choose to follow one who we trust, because we can trust God's faithfulness, we can trust his character, we can see what he's done, and we see how the people throughout the Bible, they literally build monuments to remind them of how faithful God is. We follow who we trust.

And I don't trust myself all the time, but I trust my God because he's always come through. His character never changes. His desires never change.

They are always constant. So that's why following our heart is like unsteady and shaky, but following God's heart, that's steadfast, and it's always going to end in the best that he wants for us. That's powerful. I've often prayed, God, I want my heart to beat with your heart.

That picture, our hearts beating together. Yeah. Another phrase that I hear is, speak your truth. Unpack what's wrong with that idea and the biblical pattern of responding to that. So our culture is like, they have a weird relationship with truth. Like, they're like, we want the truth, but only if it can be my truth, and I can change it, and I don't want, I want it to be subjective, I don't want it to be absolute, and I definitely don't want the truth to offend me or change my life. Like, I want to live the way that I want to live, but I want the truth. And so it's like, but is that really the truth?

No. Jesus, when he walked the earth, never shied away from speaking the truth in love. And there are absolutes, absolute truths that just can't be changed. You can look outside, for example, and you and your neighbor could both step outside and look up in the sky, and the sun is shining, and you can say, it's daytime. Look, the sun is here. And your neighbor could say, no, it's nighttime. It's like, well, no, one of you is right, and one of you is wrong.

It can't be daytime and nighttime at the same time. Like, nature shows that absolute truth, real truth, exists. So when we think about sharing our truth, I think what people are more talking about is sharing your story. What's going on?

What's your experience? Which is very valid. It's an extremely important part when you are healing, when you are in community, to share what is going on in your life. That is an important part. So if speak your truth, if you're meaning, share your story, go for it. But the healing part, the transformative part, the saving part in our life, that comes from speaking the truth and believing the truth. And Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life.

It's not, I am a way, a truth, and a way of life. He's saying, there's one way, and there's one way towards freedom, and there's one way towards salvation. And so in this chapter is written in the context of healing for a lot of women as they're sharing their stories. If we want that real deep healing to happen in our hearts, we have to embrace the fact that there is truth and his name is Jesus. And he wants to have the truths of his promises and the truth from the Bible to come into our hearts and heal our hearts.

And the only way that's going to happen is if we say, it's not my truth, but it's God's. Well your book focuses on the power of discipleship. How is the church doing with that? And what can we do to bolster, you know, disciple making? Which is what Jesus challenged us to do. Yeah, when he, when Jesus came, he didn't come to make converts. He came to make disciples.

And today when I look at our churches, I feel like we've lost the art of discipleship and making disciples. And we may not even fully know what a disciple looks like. Like, what is a disciple? And basically, to me, a disciple is somebody who literally is like a little Christ.

When they used the term Christian, which was only used a few times in the early church, they were calling them that because it was almost like a mocking way. Like, oh look at you, you're a little Christ because you look like him. You act like him. You do the things that he is doing.

You have a heart like his. And so in the very beginning of the early church, people were actually called the followers of the way, or saints, or brothers and sisters. They were referred to as family. And so we have to live in a way, if we are making disciples, we have to live in a way that looks like Jesus. Not converts that, you know, they come and accept Christ as their Savior, but there's also the Lord part, which is the I'm surrendering my life.

I want you to transform me and make me more like you, Jesus. And that is the heart of a disciple. They're willing to let God do whatever he wants in their hearts, in their lives, send them wherever they want, wherever God wants. And so that emphasis on discipleship is not in the church as much.

But it doesn't have to be like this secret formula. Really what it is is doing life on life with people and living out the gospel with one another. And you don't have to pour into these masses of people. These could be people that God puts into your your home, people that are in your small group, just a few people that you guys are doing life together. You are growing closer to Jesus together, and then you teach others how to do that as well. So it's organic discipleship. I just saw that in in Jesus's ministry, too.

He really poured into the 12. And he talked to the masses, but his emphasis was on these people that he was entrusting the gospel to. And that spiritual multiplication that happened after that is what changed the world. It wasn't preaching to the masses and making converts. It was all about disciple-making. And so my heart would love, love, love to see discipleship come back into the church. I've often wondered what it would have been like had I lived in the day of Jesus to have just been hanging out with him for three and a half years. Yeah. As the 12 did.

They listened to his sermons to the large crowds, but then around the fire that night they're asking, now what did you mean by that? You know, what he did is the examples, what I hear you saying, that what we should be doing is just hanging out with people, spending time with people. Having relationships.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well the culture today tells women of all ages to believe in themselves. Now you don't think that that brings real empowerment.

Speak to that issue. So I think I need to kind of make a disclaimer. When I'm saying believe in yourself or don't believe in yourself fully, I'm not saying you can't be like, oh I did a good job on that, good job, and you give yourself a pat on the back.

That's okay. We can be proud of what we're doing without being prideful, but there comes a line where we start to trust in our own performance and what we're doing above what our Father can do. And so when we cross that line, and we can see this in Scripture, where people were, they were believing in what they, they were believing God, believing God, trusting him, and then all of a sudden they took matters into their own hands. And they started to take control and not really trust in his faithfulness to come through.

And that is when it kind of gets into shaky territory again. Because believing in yourself and even doing hard work, that is a biblical thing. We can be diligent. God wants us to be diligent and work hard, but we don't earn our salvation. We don't earn our sanctification.

And so that's an important thing to remember. But we can be diligent, but ultimately dependent on God at the same time. So we don't depend on our own strength. We don't look inside and be like, I believe I can do this. We say, I know God can do this.

I believe in what he can do because of what he's already done and what he promises. And so I'm going to put my trust in that versus myself. We're dismantling some commonly held misconceptions and lies on today's Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. Our guest is speaker and author Becky Barris-Ford.

She's written the book, She Believed He Could, So She Did. You can find out more about it at buildingrelationships.us. That's buildingrelationships.us. Becky, before we took our break we were talking about having confidence in God as opposed to confidence in ourself. That's ultimate confidence. What's it look like to practice godly confidence? That is, confident in who God made us to be. Yeah, well there's another line here that talks about the you-be-you mentality or the you-do-you, which I'm sure we've all heard as well.

But then again, we're taking Jesus out of the equation. So who am I, right? I know throughout my my life I have changed who I've wanted to be. My view of myself has changed, but God's view of me as his daughter has not changed.

That remains steadfast. My identity in Christ remains steadfast through it all. So Christ is the only foundation that everything else, including our identities, can be built on. I think that godly confidence comes not from me trying to be like this best version of myself, but instead it comes from being a unique spirit-filled version of God's Son. So we're all uniquely made.

We all have giftings that God has given us on purpose. He gives us dreams that are from him. And so we can be confident in what he's given us. We can be confident in who he's made us to be versus me trying to figure out who I am, which can change all the time. Me trying to be the best version of myself.

I don't even know what that is. Does that mean I've done things really well today? Is that the best version of myself? It's kind of a standard that is wishy-washy, but when we look at Scripture, we see that we're called to be like Jesus, little Christs. You know, we're meant to be a reflection of him to this world that is getting darker and harsher and needs to see Jesus in us.

And so when we know who we are and whose we are, we can face all the hardships and the trials that life throws our way with godly confidence in who we are in him. So what is the role of the Holy Spirit in empowering Christians? I feel like the Holy Spirit just, he doesn't get as much credit as he should get. Like, we talk about the Father, we talk about Jesus, and I'm like, there's a Trinity and the Holy Spirit is just as powerful.

You know, he's just as important. And when it comes to enablement and empowerment, the Holy Spirit is the number one source that God has given us, the number one helper. Because, like, I think it's amazing, when Jesus was talking to his disciples and he was about to die, he's like, hey, it's better for you that I go.

It's better because then the helper is going to come and he's never gonna leave you, he's never gonna forsake you, he will be with you, and he will speak truth to you, and he will teach you. And so they probably are like, no one's better than Jesus, you know. But on the day of Pentecost, I'm pretty sure they got what he meant when the Holy Spirit came down and empowered these disciples who were literally hiding.

They were scared in the upper room. They had just seen Jesus die not long before and they were, they were scared. And then, after the Holy Spirit comes and empowers them to go preach the gospel, they are out there in the streets and thousands are brought to Christ that day. It's just, it's just incredible what the Holy Spirit can enable us to do. And it's the resurrection power of Christ that is in us. If we let that, like, really sink in, like that, the God who created the universe is in us, that's how much he loves us, that he says, I'm not gonna leave you to face this world and face these trials alone.

I'm gonna be not just with you, but in you. The Holy Spirit is the literal, it's referred to as the dynamus, hopefully I'm saying that right, or dynamite power of God. It is an unstoppable authority that Satan and his demons can't even mess with. And sometimes I wonder, like, what does that even look like in the spiritual world when a believer walks into a room and it's dark, but then that light, it just shines because the Holy Spirit God is in us.

What does that look like? I don't know if anyone else has ever thought about that, but it's got to be powerful. And so when we remember that and then, then allow the Holy Spirit to teach us, to convict us, to transform us and sanctify us, it's a beautiful freeing process where we don't, again, have to rely on ourselves to tackle all these, these hard things that are coming our way.

We have a Holy Spirit in us who is there to empower us to do so. Yeah. What are some of the lies that the enemy wants women to believe about their identities and how can a woman counteract those lies?

Hmm. The enemy, I think he has two biggies that he, he either wants to make us scared, but a big one in my life that I feel like might be even more than that, is he wants to make us feel ashamed. So when we, when we mess up, which we will, and when we fall down, which we will, Satan wants to step in and tell women, oh look at you, you call yourself a child of God and you messed up in this area.

Again, shouldn't you know better by now? And he kind of tries to shame us into a corner and he wants us to stay in that corner because when we're in that corner and we're hiding out of shame, we're not going to make a difference or as much of a difference, I should say, for the kingdom because we're going to feel disqualified. And God does not call perfect people. He qualifies us because he is perfect.

So there's a really big distinction there that we can actually use against the enemy. So when he comes and starts saying all those accusations, because that's just his thing, he's always going to be doing that until we meet Jesus. He's the accuser of the brethren and so he's going to come, he's going to accuse us of all the things we've messed up. We can say, yeah I know I did sin in that area, but guess what? I'm forgiven because of the cross, because the blood of Jesus covers me, because of what he's done for me.

I don't have to be perfect and it's okay if I'm struggling in this area because God is changing me and transforming me and sanctifying me. And so I'm going to lean into what God's already done. So thank you for the opportunity, Satan, for me to say thank you, Lord, for forgiving me and I'm asking you to help change this area of my life. Thank you for reminding me, Satan. So we can kind of like twist it, twist it on him.

He's going to, he hates it, but I think shame just in all the different areas of women because, and men too. It's just, it's such a, the accusations are always flying, but we can take those accusations and use them as an opportunity to practice walking in God's power, walking in God's forgiveness and grace. Yeah, the power of forgiveness. Well, you know when you think about that, that God who is holy can forgive us of our sin and just receive us into his presence.

I mean it's, it's pretty powerful. You know in Genesis where God said to Adam, it's not good for man to be alone or isolated and God's answer was the creation of Eve and he said I'm going to make him a helper suitable for him. Speak to that word helper. How does that word affect the way a wife would view herself in a marriage? This was fascinating and really cool for me as I studied the word helper because I think growing up I had thought helper meant almost like assistant to my husband, like whatever he needed I was going to be there and I was going to do it and that is my job, that is my role because I am a helper and that's just how God has made me too.

I'm a helper so I went whenever something's in, someone's in trouble or something's broken I want to try to fix it. So that's how I kind of viewed it, but as I studied helper, what helper actually means in the Hebrew is ezer kneg do and hopefully I said that correctly, but basically that means a life saver and so that means that Adam when he is in trouble, when he is being attacked, she comes as his life saver and helper which the word helper, this the same word, this ezer is used of God to describe himself when he comes to the rescue of his people and so Eve is actually a warrior. She is actually someone who says I see that he is in need and I'm going to fight for him, I'm going to help him, I'm going to step in and battle for him and you can apply this to marriage and you can also apply it to brothers and sisters in Christ too where you see my brothers are being attacked right now, I'm going to battle for them, I'm going to you know help in this way or however the Lord puts it on our hearts, but we are going into warrior mode. It's not necessarily just this assistant like helping, which serving of course is helping too, but I feel like if we just focused on the serving part we are missing the whole other deeper level of helper that God intended for women, the warrior heart of women and so that really opened my eyes in my own marriage, not seeing myself as like just this assistant. I actually was, I'm equal, the rib is taken from the side, she stands beside him, she doesn't stand behind him, she doesn't stand in front of him, they are equal and they are united and you can go to battle united and you are there to fight for your husband and he is fighting for you and so it really helped open my eyes that like this is how God describes himself as an Ezer, a lifesaver, you are a lifesaver to your husband. You know Becky there's a lot of division in the church today over a lot of issues, but on this issue of male female relationships, how do we pursue unity in marriages and unity in our churches?

Yeah I mean we can definitely see this a lot and to give another disclaimer, I know that women have experienced hurt and pain and discrimination, I know I have in my life. There's a chapter in my book where I talk about the popular phrase the future is female and I cross that out and I say actually the future according to the Bible is found together. The enemy wants to divide us and he wants to make us blame one another and shame one another and kind of point out these differences that are we view it in a negative light and that's that's the enemy's game, but when we think about God's original plan back in the garden, men and women were made to rule together, to have dominion together, to multiply together. It is not a part, it's not one over the other, it is together and so when we talk about being together in unity I think something that we can focus on is that we are building the kingdom as disciples. First and foremost we're all called to be disciples and so that means we are united in Christ and like I said before a united front will always win the war against the enemy's schemes to divide and so a big way that we can celebrate unity together is to actually celebrate one another's giftings. We're all made uniquely and we can also celebrate each other's differences because this is how God has made us to specifically reflect his personhood in different ways. So I think if we kind of have a kingdom mindset and not play in to the enemy's scheme to divide because it's always gonna be there, that will help our marriages and our churches because we know the ultimate goal is to spread the gospel. The ultimate goal is to build up each other in Christ and when that is what we're fixing our eyes on it's a lot easier to ignore all the other distractions that the enemy is going to try to throw our way. Yeah, you talked about that the whole female empowerment you know concept in our culture and we talk about personal rights and a woman's rights and so forth. What are our God-given rights as God's children, male or female? Yeah, so when we think about Jesus and we're supposed to model him and have our lives look like him, he was the Son of God and so when he came down and made himself like he became a human he could have had all these rights and be like well I'm the Son of God so you need to listen to me I'm the Son of God so you you got to change and dah dah dah he didn't do that instead what he did was just the most opposite polar thing that you would think as a king what a king would do he took his rights and he laid them down and he said I'm choosing to serve and I'm choosing to be humble if you look at his life the beginning and end the book ends of his life remarked by humility a stable a manger and a cross I mean that tells it all he lived an intentionally humble loving life and so if we want to say what are our God-given rights and if we want to model ourself after Jesus that means humility is our God-given right it's not the easy right at all by any means but if we want to look scripturally at what Jesus did and what he taught his disciples by washing their feet and going on the cross for them like in saying love your enemies bless them pray for them like forgive them that is humility and so it's totally the opposite of culture that says me and my rights my choice what I want and he says well no it's actually about love it's actually about service and humility to the point where it's worth it to lay down yourself for the sake of somebody else Becky you share that you and your husband went through some difficult times in your marriage how did the concept you've just talked about impact your marriage yeah it changes it all because I can't sit here and think okay God I can't pray for transformation and I will say I will admit I have done this I'm like okay Lord change my husband change this about him change that about him dah dah dah dah because it hurts me and I'm like focusing on myself and how I'm being affected but when the Lord just stepped in and he transformed my prayers to be like Lord bless my husband bless him into healing bless him heal my heart Lord how do you want to change me how do you want to transform me it becomes not an accusational prayer I don't know if you guys have ever done that but like you're praying but you're really kind of like jabbing like God this person's done this I need you to change this about them and did it instead it's Lord work in their heart to bring healing and your truth and your love into their life but first start with me like you need to do your work your holy work in my heart so that I can love him the way that you love me and you know a quote by CS Lewis that keeps always rings in my mind when I'm having a hard time forgiving him or that CS Lewis forgiving my husband when I'm having a hard time forgiving him is that we can forgive the inexcusable and others because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us yeah and so when we have a humble heart we also realize what have we been forgiven for and if God has been able to forgive me for those things that are many and many and many like all the time then by his strength and power I'm going to be able to forgive my husband or anyone else that has hurt me my kids might whoever because he's forgiven me and he loves me so it's a different shift and it helps us heal and it helps us forgive and it helps in the unifying restoring process of a relationship yeah you talk about cultivating holy courage in whatever circumstance we face what does holy courage look like holy holy courage is usually a courage that isn't our own so once again there are so many times when I start feeling scared about a certain circumstance that I'm in and I'm like oh my gosh God how's this gonna work out what's gonna happen and that's when the Holy Spirit reminds me that I don't have to work up all this courage and bravery on my own I can I can actually lean into Jesus and borrow some of his because God is the most courageous person that has ever been when we when I think about courage I think one of the most courageous things that you can do is to love somebody and know that they're not gonna love you back to know that you're probably gonna be rejected and so God so loved the world that he gave his only son for everyone and not everyone knows them and some people hate him and they they will try everything to get other people to turn away from him you know they reject him and yet he still loves and so that's such a courageous act and that's our God who empowers us with his courage when we're feeling scared we can lean into his courage and say I I'm scared God but I know that with you by my side you will help make me brave yeah powerful story powerful truth you know talk to the woman who's listening today who has bought into you know some of these concepts of believe in yourself or follow your heart how do you begin to change something that that you've kind of believed all your life self-reliance how do you begin to change that I think the very first thing to do is to surrender it's an honest place of sitting down before the Lord and saying God am I believing some of these things am I living my life in a way that reflects that I believe some of these lies and if so I'm gonna sit here with open hands and say I want to surrender those lies to you I want you to transform me with your truth are there things in my life that I'm trying to hold on to that I don't trust you with if so I'm going to sit down with open hands again and I'm going to say these are yours Lord I want I want to live a life that is surrendered to you Holy Spirit and I think and I think I know that God honors those prayers when we surrender everything that's how salvation starts and that's how sanctification is worked out it's a continual act of surrender and I never want anyone to feel like I have arrived at this because I have to choose this every day to not live empowered by self but to live empowered by the Savior and the first thing you have to do is to have an honest conversation and honest release to the Lord of this this is your life my life is yours God and I'm surrendering all these things that I'm believing let them line up with your word Lord and transform them if what I'm believing is not true well Becky this has been a fascinating conversation they're really focusing on I think something that's so important not only for women but also for men and so I want to thank you for being with us today thank you for writing this book and I believe the book is going to help a lot of people understand that we don't have to we don't have to be strong he is strong we just have to be connected to him so thank you for being with us today thank you for having me this has been a thought-provoking discussion for women and for men and if you want to go deeper check out our featured resource at Building Relationships dot us the book by Becky Barris forth she believed he could so she did you find out more Building Relationships dot us and coming up next week you can't control your children's mistakes or hardships but you can parent with hope hear that encouraging conversation in one week a big thank you to our production team Steve wick and Janice backing Building Relationships with dr. Gary Chapman is a production of moody radio in association with moody publishers a ministry of moody Bible Institute thanks for listening