Sometimes you feel crazy in love with your spouse. Other times your spouse might drive you crazy. And sometimes it's both all at once. Marriage is a wild ride, but it's a beautiful, grand adventure as well.
So navigate all the ups and downs and in-betweens with Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage, a podcast from Focus on the Family. I'm Erin Smalley, and I co-host the podcast with my husband, Dr. Greg Smalley. We sit down with amazing guests to talk about all things marriage, like how do we stay connected or how do we continue growing as individuals or as a couple? Each episode will help you tackle problems you may be facing or just help you make your relationship even sweeter.
Listen to Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage and other podcasts from Focus on the Family at focusonthefamily.com/slash podcast. That's focusonthefamily.com/slash podcast.
Well, our best advice is to form a warm connection with people. And then what happens is the gospel naturally enters in.
So sharing the gospel will never feel like a sales pitch or an awkward pivot. and the two skills you need are so easy. Asking good questions and telling great stories. If you have a couple of stories of what God's been doing in your life, and you're able to ask good questions, you will be amazed at what God's able to do. That's Dr.
Heather Holliman, and she and her husband, Ashley, are with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller. John, as believers in Christ, we're called to share our faith. I feel like when I was a fairly new believer, I did that more.
Intentionally, if I could say that. Compassionately. Yeah.
So I say that with my self-conviction that, you know, every day we should get up and say, Hey, Jim Daly here reporting for duty, Lord. That's good. And say, What do you have for me today? And sharing the faith with people around you should be, you know, pretty natural. And we want to help you today.
We want to equip you. I don't, you know, I don't think if you're introverted, that's okay. If you're extroverted and it comes more naturally, that's okay. The whole goal here is how to encourage you in sharing your faith with those around you for their benefit so they can have eternal life and bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth right now. Yeah, and this is a high calling for each of us as followers of Jesus.
So we're so glad to have Ashley and Heather Holloman here. They're popular guests here, and their heart passion is to help you engage others well.
So they've actually had their own organization, their own ministry called Seated and Sent. Heather is an associate teaching professor. At Penn State. She's a speaker and an author. And the book that they've written together is called Sent: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus.
And this is an imminently practical way for you to kind of reorient your life so you're really aware of the people around you for the cause of Christ. Ashley and Heather, welcome back to Focus on the Family.
So good to have you. Thank you so much for having us again. Yeah, we're so excited to be here together. Thanks for traveling. You know, sometimes the viewers and listeners don't realize you're flying across the country to be here in studio with us.
It takes a lot of commitment, and I really do appreciate it. We wouldn't miss it. Thank you for having us. This is Joyce. Let me start with kind of an out-of-the-field question here.
We had Gary Thomas on a while back, and in that context, Gary was talking to us about. Kind of this, the me-focusedness of our culture today. You know, we're thinking of ourselves so often, even in the church, it has seeped in. And he was talking about eternal salvation. You know, that at the core, if you think Jesus died, rose again only to give you eternal life, you're not thinking correctly because what he wants is to give you eternal life, but that other Impact is so that you can bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth and share the gospel with others to bring kingdom to this earth.
I went, wow, I don't think I've had that broader perspective like that. What do you think of that comment? No, I love that. It's. At some point, we are going to leave this earth and be with Jesus.
And if that's going to be an amazing, better life even than this, why not take us now? I mean, if that's what, if God wants the very best for us, maybe it's because he has really great things for us to do here. Yeah.
You know, and being on mission with him, the adventure of absolutely. And we've got that great series from Ray Vanderlaund, That the World May Know, in his RVL Discipleship series. He's a Jewish scholar. We've been doing that with Ray for 30 years, I think. And in there, the main point that Ray connected with me and so many others with is.
When sin entered the world, chaos entered the world. Jesus came to bring God the Father's shalom, his peace into this chaos. That's what you're talking about. That's right. How do we do that with seated and sent?
And how do we identify? This is my main mission, Lord. Thank you.
Well, really, what happened to me was I was reading the book of John one summer, and I noticed the number one way Jesus describes the Father in the book of John is the Father who sent me. And I kept thinking. This is the most important thing Jesus is calling to mind about his own identity.
So imagine the chills I got when I read John 20:21, where Jesus says, As the Father has sent me, so I send you. I thought there is something I'm missing about this idea of this sent identity, which Ash and I have really worked out over the years. What does it look like to really know your scent? What are the mindset shifts you have to have? It's changed my whole world to think this is the most important thing about my identity, and that Jesus is seeking this and saving the lost, and He's inviting me to do it.
You heard me in the opening talk about that maybe clumsiness, or you know, you start with energy in this area of evangelism, but in that context, with the church specifically, how are we fumbling a bit in this space when it comes to? Knowing what the book of John says and then applying it to bring honor and glory to the Father. Yeah.
The greatest thing that's happening in the course of human history. The greatest thing is that God is keeping His Word and drawing the people to Himself. It would be enough to be a part of that. But we've and that's what we celebrate. But we've forgotten somehow to celebrate.
We get to be a part of helping others be a part of what God is doing and being a part of God's family. And that's what really caught my attention like 20 years ago. I grew up in a great church. I grew up in a church that taught me to share my faith, very gospel, Christ-centered church. And I was like, Yeah, that's never going to happen.
I'm more introverted. I stumble over my words. I think of the best things to say 14 days later. And I thought of sharing my faith. Um Like Going to the dentist.
Well, I, you know, once or twice a year, I probably should do that, but something bad is going to happen and it probably will hurt. And I think, I don't know if we've intended to do it or not, but in the church, at least in the West, we say, yeah, we all know this is bad and hard to do, no one wants to do it. Go do it anyway. And what we've discovered is: no, this is a great thing to do. God is, as Heather said, as the Father sent me, so I send you.
It's this grand invitation that we get to be on adventure with Jesus. He's doing the heavy lifting. Can we just join him in it? And see God unfold beautiful things. We have to start somewhere different, I think.
Heather, let me ask you. I mean, it's kind of a ball of yarn in there. And what I mean by that is. My ability.
So, if I'm more extroverted, as Ashley was saying, I might feel more equipped, capable of engaging a stranger, walking up and saying, You know, I had that piece of cake one time and it reminds me of God.
Some extroverts can really connect those dots. And you go, Wow, that was amazing. But speak to that idea that even the gifting part of it: is this something that we could say to the Lord, Lord, you know, I'm not strong? Who else, Moses? Had this issue where he stuttered and said, Lord, don't send me.
Send someone else. Send somebody else. I can't communicate. Boy, that's right at the heart of the whole thing, right? Even in a more forceful way that caught my attention.
Of course, you're the word PhD, so I'm going to leave this to you. But this context of evangelism becoming more of an identity than an activity. It's who you are. It's who you are and not. what you're doing and I don't know if you want to speak to this.
As someone who's an introvert who doesn't have the gift of evangelism, you had to learn. To do it by faith. What Paul tells Timothy: do the work of an evangelist. And behind that is. There's a great God who's going to empower us, who's going to go ahead of us.
You know, it's not all on me. And I get to see it unfold. If I will just take the next step of faith, I'll watch it on. Speak to that equation of effort. and outcome.
Because I think for us, you know, again, it's this equation where we're saying. They're almost saying like You know, we've got to accomplish it. It doesn't leave it to the Lord. I think I read somewhere that there's 11 touches before somebody comes to Christ, 11 encounters with believers. I don't know if that's true, but I like the concept of it, that you're not necessarily going to close the deal.
And I think we, as extrovert evangelists, love closing the deal.
Sometimes it happens. But to understand a person is going through a process of investigation, inquiry, trying to match their heart and the yearnings of their own heart, this is the seeker person. And we come along. Different Christians to touch them in different ways that the Lord is orchestrating. And I think getting to the point is.
Trusting God is the maestro, and that we don't have to do the conducting. We just need to be the faithful moment person to say, Hey, have you ever thought of God? Right, exactly. For years, I thought, I'm going to screw this up. And God is wringing his hands.
Oh, don't let Holloman in on this. He's only going to. If you have that impression, and I have to tell you a story that set me free from that. Years ago, I was struggling with there were days I felt really good at this. Like, man, I'm really, I can do this.
And other days, I felt really inferior. I'm horrible at this. Why would God ask me to do this? And I needed a different reason of why I was sharing my faith, living out the calling God had called me to. And God took me back to the most inglorious moment of my whole life as a parent.
Here I am on focus on the family sharing the story.
Well, I love it. But we get snow in Pennsylvania. I love to shovel this driveway efficiently and effectively. You know, don't slow me down. Amen.
And don't drive over the driveway until it's clear, right? That kind of thing. Absolutely. They're very rigid.
Well, my daughter, who's like three at the time, she's like this tall. The shovel's twice her height. Comes out and her kind of Ralphie's brother from a Christmas story. Exactly. No snow.
The Michelin man. Right. And she goes, Dad, Dad, I'm here to help. My first thought is, you're just going to slow me down. And I tell her, You're just going to slow me down.
Go back inside, see your mom. And she, you would have thought she had taken acting lessons because I had crushed her spirit. She drops the shovel, she slumbers back inside. And immediately the spirit was convicting me: Ash, did you ever think that maybe she just wanted to be with you? And did you ever imagine?
Did you ever imagine that maybe, possibly, perhaps that might be a little bit more important than how effectively or efficiently? You shovel the driveway. That's right. So I'm like, God, why are you bringing this up? This was like 10 years ago we dealt with that.
He goes, Ashley, and this is not a verbal, audible voice. I'm sensing God's Spirit speaking to me. And I sensed Him say, I really don't need you to reach the grad students of the world. And you might actually slow me down. You're gonna make my work harder.
You might make my work harder. But when I thought about reaching this part of my kingdom, Before you were even born, I thought of you and I wondered if maybe you might enjoy doing this with me. How special it might be that we would go after this part of my kingdom together. That's why I invited you into it. It wasn't about your greatness or lack of greatness, it was about my greatness and kindness to invite you into this.
That has set me free since that day of saying, Well, God. I'll try not to slow you down, but let's go do this together. I think the question is this idea of waiting upon the Holy Spirit. Because we certainly in the west, we're not good at waiting. Waiting?
And we're wanting to dictate to the Holy Spirit. Right. Come on, Lord, we got to get going. Speak to that idea of presence and waiting and sensing the Lord's movement and then moving with Him, not out in front of Him. Ashley, I think, is better at that than I am with the long-term investment, good conversations.
I mean, someone that he was able to lead to Christ, it took four years of listening, being able to have good conversations, listening to the Holy Spirit. I think once you have a warm connection with people, though, and you're sharing your life, you really, what you're doing is kind of as you're talking, just kind of checking in with God. And I do think God has put questions on your mind or. Giving you insights into what to say.
Well, even Jesus said to the disciples, you know, when he says, You'll be my witnesses, you know, he sends them to an upper room and they wait and they wait. Yeah, and they don't wait for like a better cultural situation and they don't wait for another strategy, they actually wait for a person. They wait for the Holy Spirit to come. And then when He comes, He fills them. And now we have the church and everything is different.
And so I think you're so right. Um Let's not get out ahead of God. He's really good. At speaking and leading and directing our lives, and he knows exactly what the person we're speaking to needs and where they are.
So, what I'm hearing so far is: don't get out ahead of God and also don't miss the opportunity in front of you. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and our guests are Heather and Ashley Holliman, and we're talking about their book, Sent: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus. This is a winsome book, it's rich in stories and biblical wisdom. There are questions at the end of each chapter, so at the least, get this and go through it with your spouse, but maybe consider a small group study. This would be a great way to kind of have a community to reset your thinking and to go on mission with God together in the context of that small group.
We have the book here. Get a copy, call 800, the letter A in the word family, or click the link in the show notes.
Well, Ashley John mentioned my plane experience. I think you had a better one. What was your plane experience? Oh, this was remarkable. Remarkable.
Okay.
Well, no, no, no, no. No, because I teach it. It's remarkable because I'm always this close to screwing it up.
So hopefully we're giving people a lot of confidence that anyone can do this. But what did you do?
Well, just that you used to not be this way. No. Once you understand your scent identity, you're waking up thinking, like, God, who are you going to send me to? And you really believe that the person you're sitting next to, you've been sent to. Which is crazy for an introvert.
Yes, and I'm watching this. It's amazing. One of the things we talk about in the book is just how do you develop a mindset for living the scent life? And part of it is this identity part. You are this.
Just like, well, why do we play? Because we're playful people.
Well, why do we share our faith? Because God has made us sent people. But the other way we talk about it is just developing a great appreciation for the goodness of the good news and the lostness of people. And how do you cultivate that?
Well, I was really counting on that. I'm sitting on a plane and I was like, okay, God, help me to remember the goodness of your gospel and the lostness of people. Motivate me to share your good news with them today. And the guy sits down on the plane and he's being followed by his wife, a child that's having a hard time on the plane, and presumably one of their mothers, a grandmother. And he, instead of going back to help take care of this family, Even before the flight ticks off, he starts ordering drinks.
And all that kind of good will on my heart. just evaporates. because I'm like, dude, go put your drink down. And go help your family. And I'm just trying not to get mad.
And so that's going through my mind. I was like, well, God, maybe I can intervene somewhere. Give me your mercy. I don't have it. Holy Spirit, help me here.
And so I asked the most innocuous question: hey, where are you headed? And he goes, we're headed to X and X place. My father-in-law, just a few hours ago, this is like at six in the morning, so middle of the night, passed away from a major heart attack. I've been consoling my wife the entire night. We have no idea what we're going to do when we hit the ground.
She's destroyed. I'm just trying to hold my family together. I had totally misread the situation, and all the compassion, all the empathy, all the goodness of the gospel floods back into my soul because you pair the sentence with the goodness of the gospel. And we just started a conversation and I tried to understand and ask good questions, you know, see where he was spiritually. They were believers.
And so I didn't need to introduce him to Jesus that day. I just needed to remind him of the goodness of Jesus and point him back there. And by the time we got off the plane, he was, you know, he was like, I can trust God with this, can I? I said, you sure can. But yeah, that's where the spirit leads.
God is He's the great maestro. He was already doing this. You know, so often when we're encountering, especially. Angry people. Yes.
There's always a story behind that. What they're expressing. And I've tried more and more not to match emotion for emotion, if I may say it that way. You're angry, I'm angry too. Let's get on each other.
So, how do we say, okay, what's at the root of that? And that really is what Jesus would do, right? Right. The woman in adultery, the woman at the well. I mean, he was so good at.
asking the right question. And he did that as the father sent me to the woman at the well So, I send you. And so, we're living with an expectation that that's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. That's going to be normal for a sentent person. And for listeners who don't travel, like we are all giving plane examples, it's changed our entire neighborhood.
It's changed how I see myself as a professor. I think I'm sent to these students to be an agent of blessing. It's no accident if you're in my class. I tell my students this. You know, this is a good little sidebar because so many times, you know, I worked in the business arena before coming to focus, and I had a really good business mentor.
He said, When I was thinking of coming to focus, he said, We need good Christian business people in the business world who can reflect Christ. I mean, we are doing ministry no matter our vocation, whether you're a pastor or you're working with a company or whatever it might be, be the best believer in Christ you can be because you're going to be doing ministry in that setting. Wherever you are, yeah, wherever you are. It's the most exciting thing when we teach on living a scent life about the theology of place. Like, John, you talk about God.
Sovereignty. What if it's no accident where you live? What if it's no accident the doctor's appointment you have or the grocery store you shop at? And over the years, now that we've been living this way for 10, well, most of our marriage, but really intentionally the last decade, it is amazing what happens and life becomes such a great adventure. It's so true.
And in terms of having those spiritual conversations, too, you have to be a good listener. And you've written other books on this, haven't you? The ability to hear how a person's coming at you. I mean, it's beautiful that the professor said, I want to know everything you know about Jesus. I don't know anything.
So tell me. That's pretty wide open. That's awesome. But it often will come through a person's pain. That's right.
They're in an inflection point in their life. They lost a child. They got a divorce. Their father died like the plane trip.
So you have to be kind of in tune and be emotionally capable of pulling that conversation along. That's right. Other people, it's loneliness, it's disappointment, it's loss of a job.
So speak to that ability and perhaps then how some people can be fearful that they're not really gifted that way or they're not equipped or don't feel equipped. And they don't want to say anything stupid to do harm to the gospel? No, you don't need to worry about that. When we pair the scent book with the Six Conversations book, which you've had us on to speak about, the best thing we learned in all our research on how to have better conversations was how to listen to people's core values, and then you're able to share the gospel through that.
So I was talking to an atheist professor who was really struggling with her semester. And all I said was, you know, tell me about your semester. And she was talking about how embarrassed she was because she had to do a presentation that didn't go well and it wasn't her best work. All I said to this professor, who knows I'm a Christian, I said, it sounds like you really value excellence and you have a really hard time when you haven't done your best work. She said, that is exactly how I am, and here's what she said.
What do you do, Heather? What do you do? How do you recover when you know you haven't done your best work? And I said to her, Well, you know, I'm a Christian.
So when I don't do my best work, it doesn't change how much God loves me and cares for me. She was so fascinated by this. She said, can you come back next Tuesday? Come back to my office. I want to talk more about this.
So you're listening for what people are sharing and you're connecting it easily to what God's doing in your own life. Yeah, because I think part of what makes us different, the extroversion, introversion, gift, maybe not the gift. Heather is really good at that just happening, like in the moment where I, again, I joked, I think of these things to say 14 days later, but that's okay. The great maestro can help us with this because I will go back to a person and say genuinely, I've been thinking about you over the last two weeks. And I had this thought or this question, could we get together again and talk more?
That makes a great impression. And they're like, you were thinking of me? Yeah.
And so it's a natural, it's not meant to be like. A trick. It's just how God uses it. Can we extend the conversation? Can we talk more?
And so you can recover from even like, oh, I had this great conversation. I wish I would have asked him this. Go ask them. Go to have another conversation.
Some of this is wrapped in courage, though. It does take a bit of courage. And I guess the other thing is practice. You may not do well every time, but you need to keep going, keep trying, keep doing, because the Lord will hone that skill in you. But speak to that idea of perseverance through our Or fumbling.
Well, our best advice is to form a warm connection with people. And then what happens is the gospel naturally enters in.
So sharing the gospel will never feel like a sales pitch or an awkward pivot. And the two skills you need are so easy. Asking good questions and telling great stories. If you have a couple of stories of what God's been doing in your life and you're able to ask good questions, you will be amazed at what God's able to do.
So, you actually don't, people are amazed when we talk about living the scent life. They're like, oh, I can actually do this. I'm going to go talk to my neighbor. And when they ask me how I'm doing, because I have a warm connection, I can say, well, actually, I'm really struggling with a lot of fear, but I have to tell you what I read in the Bible, how God's been helping me with that. Because you have a warm connection.
They're not going to say, oh, I don't want to hear about that. Yes. They're going to listen. It's going to be life-changing. You know, let me ask this because at that point, I had a Christian friend who is a well-known national ministry leader.
And he said, you know, you just shouldn't go out of your way to be hated. Yeah, because that's not the gospel. And wearing badges of cold connections is not an achievement. Yes. In watching Jesus himself, he spoke the truth.
Why would the woman at the well go to the village and tell everybody, I've met the one, I've met the one. She had to have had a warm interaction, even though Jesus was speaking truth. That's right. So he had to have done that in such a way that opened her heart. Right.
To the possibilities. Yes. He did. He did. He did.
And the most, let's just go love people really well. And how hard that is actually.
Well, also, we have a really good tip we've learned just last year. Make the problem you're having in conversation the topic of conversation. In other words, you can say to people, I've never done this before, and I'm actually really nervous, but I want to tell you about Jesus, but I'm afraid it's going to be really weird. Guess what? The Yale Relationship Lab talks about awkward conversations.
They end up liking you more. People like that powerful. And when we told a pastor, he said, I really want to live this way. I really want to share my faith. But at the gym, if someone says, what do you do for a living?
It shuts it down. We counseled him. We said, okay, this is what you say. You say, I want to tell you what I do, but I'm really nervous that when you hear what I do, It'll shut down the conversation.
Well, guess what? That conversation partner is going to feel a warm connection because of his vulnerability.
So he's tried it, it's gone really well.
So make the problem the topic of conversation, and you'll find a warm connection. You know, for me, what that is evidence of is how God created us. That's so self- Obvious. Right. You know, He made us for a relationship.
So when we treat things with relationship, people's hearts open. And Yale can tell us this, and all the psychologists can tell us. There's all the social science researchers. More importantly, God will say, Yeah, they're discovering the way I created you. Philippians 2 is really the most important passage of scripture for us that's guided us because it talks about the mindsets of a loving connection, you know, valuing others above yourself, taking on their interests.
So you'll find that living your life becomes really easy. You expect, well, not easy for you. You still have to trust God every day, but it gets better, you say.
Someone asked, Does it ever get easier? I said, It doesn't get easier, but it gets better because the more I do it, the more I practice. You're more comfortable, the more I'm comfortable with it. And the more I see God show up. Yeah, that's so good.
This has been great. I think you get the idea of what's happening here. Sent so many good principles about being willing to share your faith with others. And you guys have really brought thoughtful ideas and concepts. And let me turn to.
You, the listener, Focus on the Family is here for you. We want to help you have a thriving relationship with the Lord so you can pass along your faith to your family, your friends, and others you meet. That's what we're here to do as believers in Christ. If you're not sure where to begin, we have lots of great resources to help you. Our website is full of articles and insights to encourage your faith walk.
And another outstanding resource is Ashley and Heather's fantastic book, Sent: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus. I'm telling you, if you want to learn how to reach others for Christ, this is the book that can help you. It will give you a solid foundation and equip you to speak boldly about what you believe. And if you're in that spot, you really do need this book. We'll send that to you for a donation of any amount today.
And no amount is too small. When you get to Focus on the Family, you're actually participating in the ministry and helping us reach other people. Over the past 12 months, we've helped close to a million people grow stronger. In their faith, which is just incredible. It is, and this kind of ministry is only possible with support from friends like you.
You're helping couples strengthen their marriages and parents learn to raise their children in positive, healthy, biblical ways, and others who are just trying to navigate life struggles. And beyond that, you're reaching people for Christ, which is the theme of today.
So please donate and be a part of the ministry. Yeah, give us a call. Our number is 800, the letter A in the word family, or you can donate and get resources, and the details are in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.
Sometimes you feel crazy in love with your spouse. Other times your spouse might drive you crazy. And sometimes it's both all at once. Marriage is a wild ride, but it's a beautiful, grand adventure as well.
So navigate all the ups and downs and in-betweens with Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage, a podcast from Focus on the Family. I'm Erin Smalley, and I co-host the podcast with my husband, Dr. Greg Smalley. We sit down with amazing guests to talk about all things marriage, like how do we stay connected or how do we continue growing as individuals or as a couple. Each episode will help you tackle problems you may be facing or just help you make your relationship even sweeter.
Listen to Crazy Little Thing Called Marriage and other podcasts from Focus on the Family at focusonthefamily.com/slash podcast. That's focusonthefamily.com/slash podcast.
Yeah.
