Sent: Living A Life that Invites Others to Jesus: Dr. Heather Holleman

Evangelism is not something I'm doing. It's who I am. And I thought, I don't want to do things for Jesus.

I want to do things with Jesus. Visit familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. So I'm sitting on the back deck in the middle of summer in Michigan watching crew staff training. You weren't there.

I wasn't there. I don't know where you were, but I was sitting out there with my iPad and I'm watching remote and they introduced this woman from Penn State. She's a professor, PhD. She's going to speak. I've never heard of her. I'm like, should I watch this? I don't know.

Do I have time? And she starts her message and 15 minutes later I'm crying. Wow. Because God was speaking through her in a powerful way to my identity as an evangelist. Do you remember me telling you?

I'm like, you have to watch this right now. You remember coming home, you walked in and you said, you have got to listen to this woman. She is right up our alley. She is talking about things that resonate with our hearts and everyone's hearts.

And really with God's heart. And I texted Jim, our producer, immediately, we have to get Heather Holloman on Family Life Today. And guess what?

She's sitting in the studio right now. I'm so excited to be here. I'm having a great time already. That was a nice little introduction to me. No pressure. This great talk. Yeah, no pressure.

You just got to deliver like you did on the stage that day. But Dr. Heather Holloman, how long have you been a professor at Penn State? Almost 15 years. Oh, really?

Yeah. And I still love it. I still get excited every fresh semester.

So I do. I love students. And you teach? I teach advanced writing. I know this sounds very nerdy, but advanced really essay writing and professional development. But I'm working with the Schreyer Honors College now.

So it's a lot of curriculum development to help these high achieving students succeed. And you're also married. How many years have you been married? We're coming up on 23 years and we have two daughters.

One is at University of Pittsburgh and the other is applying to Penn State in graphic design. So you're going to be an empty nester soon. Yes. How does that feel? Well, we're excited because we love ministry. We love serving people and helping churches develop a culture of evangelism. So we have a lot of work before us. We have a lot of fun things and we love writing books together. So maybe my husband and I might have another book in the future. I know you guys do that too. You've written together. Like you've co-written, right?

We have. It's not easy. No, it's not easy. It's not easy. You got to be spirit filled. Yeah. But I mean, what a blessing to be able to do it as a couple.

It's awesome. And I think too, Heather, I feel like every woman listening is going to be like, I want to be her friend. I want to be her friend. I want to be your friend too. I love warm, close connections are the foundation of a happy life, according to all the research. So I'll take all the friends I can get.

Good. Well, I think one of the reasons, you know, I was in tears watching and I've watched it several times since and shown it to almost everybody in our family. And I'd love to hear your perspective on this because you were talking about your call as not just a woman and a professor, but God's call on you as a woman of God to share the truth, share the gospel with others. And I know as a pastor and probably my number one spiritual gift would be evangelism. I just, if there's a group of Christians and a group of non-Christians standing, I'm always going to run to the non-Christian group. I just, I want to share the gospel with them. I relate to them.

I want to just love these guys. And something was hitting me when you were speaking about my life at this point. I'm sitting often in a studio like we are today, surrounded by Christians, which is awesome.

It's wonderful. And I was like resonating with, I need to be out in the streets. I need to be, you know, where I've often in my life. So I felt this. Yeah. Are you still on fire to share the gospel? Because you told story after story how God had used you. So I'd love you to share, not that message, but the heart of that sent identity and what you do as a professor, because it was so cool to hear that you don't stand in front of students every day and just teach. Right.

You have a bigger call than that. Well, maybe where did that passion come from, Heather? Well, I always knew that I had a gift of evangelism. That's one of the reasons my husband, Ashley, co-wrote the book with me, because he claims he doesn't have this supernatural gift, but he does the work of an evangelist empowered by the Holy Spirit and God uses him so powerfully.

He led our 85-year-old neighbor to the Lord and discipled him during COVID. But I love talking about Jesus, so when I enter a room, the first question I have in my mind is who here doesn't yet know Jesus? It's just something the Holy Spirit does. But what happened is I was reading the book of John, and I noticed that the number one way Jesus describes the Father in the book of John is the Father who sent me.

And as someone who loves vivid verbs, you know, as a writer, I just kept looking at that word. You know, okay, Jesus understood his identity as sent. And then when, in John 20-21, when he says, as the Father has sent me, so I send you, I just really was overwhelmed with, you know, evangelism is not something I'm doing.

It's who I am. And I thought, I don't want to do things for Jesus. I want to do things with Jesus. And what is Jesus doing?

He is building a kingdom for himself. And that's where the talk was really about the three core principles that if you believe them, your life is going to be a supernatural adventure. And the principles are easy, that God is always at work to draw people to himself, that for whatever reason, he uses people to lead others to Jesus, and he's continually inviting us into that work every single day. That was the talk, and it was the stories of me really believing it's no accident where God has placed me in the classroom, praying for students, being available when they want to talk about the Lord. You know, it is not an easy environment, obviously, the college campus, but I find that when I tell students I'm a Christ follower, they're really curious, and they think it's a bold statement, and they'll start sharing their lives with me. So I think it's important to identify that I'm a Christian as soon as I can to students.

So you do that early in the semester? I used to do it later in the semester because I wanted students that may have a preconceived idea about Christians, that they're hateful or too conservative. I wanted to kind of prove my love to them first and then tell them I was a Christian, and often they'd be surprised. Like, we can't believe you're a Christian, you're so nice to us, is what one student said. But this semester, I told them really early on, and it's been great. I thought, you know, that maybe there'd be hostility, but I've only experienced students being really curious or saying, I'm so glad you said that. I've been nervous to tell people I'm a Christian on campus.

What's that sound like when you tell people, like, what do you say in the classroom? Well, it's easy because I teach professional development. So we were talking about resumes and cover letters, and I just said to my students, sometimes when you're writing a resume, you may be hesitant to include things that you really care about, like your religious involvements, or maybe you're involved in a church or a club. But I said in my own life, I like to let people know that I am a Christ follower. You know, I was very clear, I follow Jesus. I love talking about Jesus, and so that's something I include in my professional portfolio. And, you know, they were dead silent, and then they want to know about it. They're interested, and a student came up to me and said, you know, I've sort of forgotten about my faith in college.

Where do you go to church? Those kind of things. And I love just the authenticity of it. There's nothing wrong with identifying who you are in front of students, so I love that. And the talk was also about you sent people not only have a rich theology of place, so your neighborhood, your classroom, the gym, but you become people of prayer, and then you get to see divine activity as you pray for people. I ended the talk talking about asking great questions and sharing great stories of your own personal transformation. I want to hear some of those stories.

Okay, right now. Yeah, I'm like, oh, tell us. My favorite story right now, which I do have permission to share, is I have a dear colleague who, you know, likes to say that she's an atheist, and it's very important to her that, you know, we know that she's an atheist. We're really good friends.

I love talking to her. She likes to hear what I'm learning from the Bible, and it's just amazing. But one of the things I prayed early on was, God, please send others to help. That's something, you know, Paul prays. There are all sorts of ways you can pray.

I list seven of them in my sent book. But I said, God, would you please send other people to help me here with this professor? I can't be the only Christian that she knows. And I had no idea that God would answer that prayer by sending students into her office. So she calls me in, and she says, Heather, you're just going to giggle.

I was like, why am I going to giggle? She said, I had a student that came into my office and said, I'll call her Dr. S. She said, I believe that it's end times. I'm a Christian, and I think the end of the world is coming because of COVID and all this stuff. And this professor says, well, if you're a Christian and you think the world is ending, aren't you guys supposed to read the book of Revelation? And the student said, I've never read the book of Revelation.

That's a good idea. So this professor said, I haven't read the book of Revelation. What if I studied it with you? So she has Bible study every Friday with this student.

Come on. No, and then when I was at staff training, when I was at Crew 22, I got a phone call when I was walking around Milwaukee, and she said it happened again. And I said, what do you mean? She said a student came into my office wanting to understand the Christian faith. And the professor said, well, if you're trying to understand the Christian faith, aren't you guys supposed to read the book of John?

And the student said, yes. And this professor said, well, I'll study the book of John with you. So I said, Dr. S., you are in two Bible studies. You know that everyone is praying for your salvation at this point. So I like that story of just the divine activity of when you have people in your life that you really want them to know Jesus or return to Jesus, you're not alone. You can ask God to send others to help. You know, Jesus said the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

You know, ask the Lord of the harvest. And just stories like that abound. There's all sorts of opportunities and people, mostly because of the spiritual language I use, they'll come up to me and say, you know, I've heard you talk about God. You know, a prominent woman in our town said, I hear you say that word.

And she said, who is God and how can I know him? Wow. Wow.

That is so cool. That comes, though, because, like, when I'm with you, I sense your love, your devotion, your excitement about God, about Jesus. Well, that must be the aroma of Christ. That's the joke that I didn't believe when I was a grad student, that verse about the aroma of Christ. I said, that cannot be true. I walk into a room and people sense something different. How can that be? And the story I told was I walked back to the English department and a grad student who really intimidated me said, could we go get coffee? I really sense something different about you.

There's like an aura about you when you walk in the room. And I said, it is true. But I mean, that comes from your own personal walk with Jesus.

That's what I'm getting at. I think a lot of us, we can get in the grind of life. Yeah. We can get tired. We can get disillusioned. We get our eyes on ourselves.

Yes. Yeah, Heather, literally after listening to your message and your sent identity, it reminded me of a story. And I preached recently at a church and I told the story and I said, this is coming off of a message I heard from Heather Holloman, so I gave you credit. But I was coaching high school football when my three sons played football. I wanted to be there with my sons and also impact young men.

And it's a long story about trying to tell it as fast as I can. And I'm a pastor in this area. So they know me as a pastor and the head coach wanted me to help coach. And he said, you can even do a chapel service on Thursdays for the boys. So I'm at a public high school. The whole team comes every Thursday.

It's awesome. It's like peer pressure to go to chapel. And so I get to talk about the gospel every Thursday night with these kids. And I got a buddy of mine who played college football to be with me. I need a brother in this coaching room that knows Christ. So Rob and I are the two Christians. And let me tell you, that coaching room was wild.

These guys are just great guys and I love them all. And we go undefeated and every night on Friday after the game, the whole coaching staff would go to this bar and drink and talk about the game. Rob and I never went because we're like, we probably shouldn't go there.

You know, it's not a place where Christians should go. And we're on like week 10. Ann's dad comes up, who's my high school coach, to watch our son play, his grandson, and we go home after the game. And he goes, hey, so what did all the coaches do? He was a high school coach.

What did all the coaches do after the game? I go, oh, they all go to RJ's and they party and they talk about the game. He goes, why aren't you there? And I go, well, Rob and I don't go because, you know, we're like, that's probably not a place where we should go.

And my non-churched, non-Christian father-in-law says, aren't you trying to reach those guys for Jesus? And I'm like, well, yeah. And he goes, well, I think that's probably where you and Rob should be. And I look at him like, you're right. I call Rob on the phone.

I'm coming over right now. We're going to RJ's. He goes, what? I go, I'll tell you later.

I pick him up. We're driving there. I go, let's pray.

Let's pray God does something. We walk in the bar. The entire bar stands up and gives us a standing ovation.

Oh, my goodness. They just love that you were there. The coaches all look over at us and these people in the bar are like, who are these guys? Why is everybody clapping?

Anyway, long story story. I sit down beside our special teams coach, Jack, and they're all drinking their beer and I get my Diet Coke. And 15 minutes in, Jack turns to me when you said the aroma, the fragrance. And he goes, I got to ask you something. I go, what? He goes, I've been watching you. He goes, you never cuss. Not one time have I heard you cuss. Why don't you cuss? He goes, we all cuss. Every play and practice you never do.

Why not? That's awesome. And I said, well, I've been watching the blood of Jesus. And I went, no, I didn't.

Yeah, nobody knows what that means. I mean, long story short, I just said, well, Jack, I believe the tongue's an extension of your heart. And what comes out of my mouth is really what's going on in my heart. And my heart's been transformed by Jesus. In fact, he's the one that said that. That's why. I said, I'm not perfect.

There have been many times, but I'm very careful about that. All I got to tell you is we went back every Friday night because we kept winning all the way to the state finals. And six weeks later, Jack gave his life to Christ. See, I just love that. I just love that. That scent identity, it's like wherever you are, God's got a reason for you to be there.

Exactly. Open your eyes and see what's happening. Well, even because of my tendency to get in the grind and I'm pretty, like I want to get all my things done on my list every day, I can get my eyes off of people.

And I can get very task-oriented. And so I've been trying over the years, before I even get out of bed, like, Jesus, I pray that you'd open my eyes, that I could see people the way you do. That's great. Use my tongue, Lord, to say the things that you would say. And you guys, God answers that prayer. He does.

He answers it. Be very careful. I remember Dave and I were coming in to do radio and we were on the tram in the Orlando airport and I noticed, and this is where I feel like you pray that prayer and God will give you those eyes. I noticed and I saw a woman that seemed a little flustered, seemed a little sad and a little confused. And so I kind of scooted up to her a little bit and I said, are you doing okay? And instantly she starts crying. And she said, I just lost my husband recently and this is the first flight I've ever taken without him in like 40-some years. And my daughter's going to meet me. I don't even know what to do or where to go because my husband has always done that for me. And so I'm like, you know, I get teary and I just put my arm around her.

I said, I can't imagine how hard that is. I'm so sorry. I said, isn't it sweet that we have a God that sees you and knows? Like, I'm going to help you get to your daughter. That's perfect. He sent you.

Yeah. And so it was the sweetest gift. It was just like five minutes and I helped her make sure she met her daughter. But I was like, oh, Lord, that was the greatest blessing to me that you allowed me to see. And so, Heather, you're doing that every day. You're seeing these students. You're really being Jesus.

But that's what I was getting to, Dave. Like, how is your faith ignited? Like, what are you doing personally? You're like on fire for Jesus.

Well, I mean, the answer's really simple, so probably everyone's like, oh, we know that. But it's really reading God's Word and connecting with Him every day. I really take seriously the habit of connecting with the Lord and having a prayer journal.

And it's not hours. You know, it might only be a half hour before work, but I tell the Lord the things I'm thankful for. I write down the names of five people that I'm praying for that don't know Him that I know I'm going to see that day. And I like praying the same things that Paul does, that God would give them a spirit of revelation. And I love that from Psalm 119 where the priest says, you know, let not my heart be drawn to what is evil.

I pray that for people. I read God's Word. I mean, we know that it's God's Word that is at work in people. And I love Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. The other reason to spend time in God's Word is whatever I learn that day, I love telling people throughout the day.

Me too. As a great evangelism strategy, I'll say, I just read something really great in the Bible. May I share it with you? Nobody says no.

Nobody has said no. And it also gives me something to text my girls, my daughters, because I don't want to always be talking about Jesus with them in a way that makes them feel bad, like that they need to perform for me or do anything. But with kids, I really do love sharing something joyful that I read in Scripture with them. You know, as a family ministry, you're a wife and a mom.

How does this send identity? How do you transfer that? How do you teach that?

How has it lived in your marriage and in your home? Help parents understand how we can do this. Well, since we live in a neighborhood, probably the most important thing is to let the whole family know that we have sort of like a personal mission statement. We're there to bless neighbors and to pray that God would open their eyes and that they would come to faith. And so what we've done is all sorts of things.

And I guess you could apply it to whatever situation you're in. But when they were little, we did a lot of gathering of the neighbors to bless them. We did neighborhood fitness groups. We had a walk to school campaign.

We had Saturday morning pancakes. But then when the girls were teenagers, they did say that it felt too much, that we had too many people in our home all the time. So we did dial things back in the teenage years, but we still always made sure we had times where we were gathering and connecting with people who didn't know Jesus. Most recently, we did donuts and coffee in the driveway for the neighbors, and 40 neighbors came.

Forty! Really? So just have donuts. And I don't know if they knew it was a church event. We did it with another Christian couple. They took the lead on it, and then we all got the coffee and the donuts. But they know that we're churchgoers. They know that we love them.

So it's a lot of acts of service. And the girls know that if someone's sick, I'm going to be making a meal. If someone's had a baby, I'm going to be making a meal, which is unusual for people who didn't grow up in church. The meal train idea, they don't know what that is.

So my husband did a Facebook group during COVID so we could all connect. And when a baby was born, he said, let's do a meal train who would like to sign up to bring food. And this couple was like, what do you mean? People are going to bring us food? For how long?

I was like, I don't know, six weeks? They were like, what is this? You bring food? Is that something that our church does? And especially in the South, people do that all the time. So weaving it into just the natural way that your family works. So almost like whatever we're doing, inviting people into that. So you have to be so intentional.

It's intentional, yes. I mean, you're a professor, you have a full-time job, you're a mom, you're a wife, your girls are busy, they're doing things, you're active in so many things. But this is a priority for your family.

It is, and it's also something spirit-filled. I had to pray and ask God, I don't really know what will bless these neighbors. What can I do that will not take a lot of their time?

What's something they need to do anyway? That's where the walk to school idea came. I said, look, just bring your kids to the front of our house and we'll walk the mile instead of driving them in the minivan because we were just outside of where the bus would pick up. We walked for eight years.

I have walked thousands of miles. Four people came to the Lord through that walk to school campaign. Part of it was I was walking with a professor who had converted to Hinduism. And I just said to her one day, what does your tradition say about Jesus?

You know I'm a Christian, what does your tradition say about Jesus? And that single question led her to explore Christianity. She prayed to receive Christ.

She led her husband and children to the Lord. And it was all just in the context of neighborhood living. And I do say to my neighbors, does it bother you all that I talk so much about Jesus?

And nobody ever says yes. But my most recent thing that I write about in the book sent was doing a, I call it a soup and story night because we have a lot of professional people in our neighborhood and so it's hard to gather them. So we do a soup night on Monday nights and I said just come, come in your scrubs, come in your work outfit and we'll have soup because you know it's cold all the time. And I called it soup and story because they would say, what can we bring?

And I would say nothing but a story about your day. And I was researching the epidemic of loneliness. And I said to the neighbors when they came that night, I said, look, I'm lonely, you're lonely. We're gonna do this. We're gonna be together. And one of the women at that, around the table, she said, well, how do we begin? And she said, what if we all went around the table and you can either share a breakthrough, a breakup or a breakdown? I'll go first. I'm breaking down.

And she just needed to, she just needed to connect. And so there's all sorts of things you can do. But I did pray, like what would help people? And I thought, you know, what if you did an hour dinner after, nobody wants to cook dinner.

Have them stop by for an hour, get your bowl of soup, get some fresh homemade bread, tell me a story about your day and then be off on your way. So that's our current thing that we're doing. And the fire pit.

Don't forget the power of the fire pit. I am so inspired. Are you serious?

Are you? And are you gonna start inviting some neighbors over for soup? I've got great recipes, a Thai carrot soup.

Ooh. Well, also you have to do food allergies. We got vegans. We got dairy free.

We got gluten free. I had to learn so much about soups. Did you make all your soups too?

Homemade soups. You don't have to. But I did because that was part of the draw. Come and get a nice, cause we have a lot of people that deeply care about health. Yeah. So I wanted good. And I made the homemade bread. That took some time. Well, I mean, yeah, I'm inspired.

You know, I've taught this before and I'm sure you're familiar with Jesus and the Beatitudes saying you are the light of the world. Yeah. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Right. When you look at the original Greek of a city set on a hill, it literally means a city strategically placed on a hill. So he's getting at, they knew in those days there were city planners. You didn't just throw a city up anywhere.

They were put strategic places where people in the dark would find safety and refuge. And so I believe what Jesus was saying to his disciples is just as a city isn't just randomly thrown anywhere, you aren't either. So what you're saying, I've always tried to understand this, like where we live, I mean, we chose this house, but God is saying I've placed you as the light in that cul-de-sac, in that apartment building.

You're living that. So it's like every listener listening should be like, wait, wait, wait, so where I live isn't random? No, no, no, God's place of you. Yes, Acts 17.

He searches out the exact places. And it does make it a supernatural adventure at that point. Yeah. But back to your question about how to incorporate the kids, the other thing is to bring them into the prayer time of praying for neighbors and helping them realize that they can be agents of blessing in their school. So even say, do you have people that you would like to put in the prayer journal that we can pray for who are having a hard time?

And that does help kids get less self-obsessed because teenagers, you know. So the prayer journal is really a powerful tool in a family. I love the prayer journal. I love just asking God for what we need and reflecting back at the end of the day. And I love the idea as a family talking about this. How can we love our neighbors? How can we serve our neighbors?

What would that look like? And then to partner because Jesus is all about that. Partnering with Jesus of asking Him like, Lord, what would be the best way for us to be, as you said, Dave, that light? Now, you might be thinking, I have a completely chaotic schedule in life, so there's zero chance I can incorporate what she's saying into my life. Well, hang on because Heather both understands that and also derails the idea that it's not possible for busy schedules. Proactively becoming agents of blessing as a family isn't something we typically think about, but it's such a beautiful way that God uses us to change other lives and mold us at the same time.

It's a win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win. I'm Shelby Abbott. You've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson talk with my friend Heather Holliman on Family Life Today.

Isn't she the best? She's written a book called Scent, Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus. You could pick up a copy of that book at familylifetoday.com, or you could give us a call at 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today.

And you know, I'm excited too because coming up tomorrow and Friday, Dave and Anne Wilson are going to have Paul Miller in the studio. He's written a book called Love Walked Among Us, Learning to Love Like Jesus. His writing is an encouraging and convicting look at Jesus' life on Earth, and then through that lens, it gives us practical answers to really tough questions. This book is going to be our gift to you when you partner with us financially at Family Life. You can go online to familylifetoday.com, as I mentioned earlier, or you could give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. And feel free to drop us something in the mail.

Our address is Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. All right, here's Dave, Anne, and Heather with how to make this agents of blessing thing work in your life. . I'm hoping that families, after listening to this broadcast today, are like, you know, let's have a conversation tonight. God's placed us here. We have a scent identity. What can we do? Be creative.

There'll be some new ideas, whether it's a fire pit or marshmallows. Or football games. My husband said to me, stop doing things for people and start doing things with people. So if you're really busy and you can't do one other event, ask yourself, what am I doing that I can invite other people into? And I thought, well, I'm walking to school every day. I make soup on Monday. You know, so, and we do watch football every Saturday.

So, you know, invite people, make a little tailgate. I just want to note, I did not mention football. I brought up the football.

You did, yeah. Now coming up tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be joined by Paul Miller. He's going to talk to us about the ins and outs of what it looks like to love like Jesus. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. See you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.