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God is for Me: A Study of God's Heart through the Stories of Women in Scripture · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the Central Schwenfelder Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're talking about God's heart through the stories of women in Scripture.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: And on centrally speaking, we do try to connect the church world with the world that we're living in.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it is so important that uh the church is being able to speak to women and also to uh those that might have uh issues in the past.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: So it's wonderful to be able to have uh Lisa Radcliffe with us today, uh, who's written on topics such as this.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, she's an award-winning author, speaker, an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: She's written three books, including Hidden with Christ, Breaking Free from the Grip of Your Past, which uh offers hope rooted even in her own story.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then a book called A Time to Laugh, uh, My Life Over 50, showcasing uh humor in a devotional format.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: Her upcoming uh Bible study, God is for me, uh, explores God's heart for the sexually harmed and will be available as of uh February 4th, uh, 2026, uh, through abundance uh books.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Lisa's speaking engagements blend humor and hope as she addresses challenging topics such as healing after abuse, living abundantly in Christ, and the transformative power of God in one story.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: She also leads abuse prevention workshops for parents and ministry leaders.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Lisa and her husband Doug have been married for over 40 years, raising three sons and enjoying their nine grandchildren.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Lisa, welcome to the show.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: We're glad to have you here.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jake.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad to be here.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, we're so glad to have you speak on this topic for us.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: And um, since you've written uh several books and now are getting ready to uh to uh publish this next one, That God is for me, a study of God's heart through the stories of women in scripture.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe you could tell us what led you to write this book and why'd you write it now?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, in 2018 is when my first book was published.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I got a lot of feedback from that, from survivors, either emails, phone calls, just in person from speaking engagements, things like that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was working with um some support groups in the area and doing some one-on-one coaching.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: After that book, I also got my um mental health coaching certificate.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been doing some of that.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what I kept finding, it was very common for the survivors to feel that the Bible doesn't address sexual harm, or that God doesn't care about victims of sexual harm, or that survivors can't be used in the church in ministry in any way because of their past.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as when I heard those things, it shocked me because, you know, I'm a student of the Bible and I I know that it's filled with stories of sexual harm and God's reaction to it, his compassion, his justice, love, all those kinds of things and much more that show us his heart for those victims, but I couldn't find a book.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I kept looking for something that would help these women understand God's heart for them.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't find it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I found a lot on the effects of the sexual abuse, things like trust and forgiveness and shame and how to deal with those things, but I couldn't find anything that really came directly from the Bible as far as what was God's response, what should they expect from him going forward, those kind of things.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, well, I guess I'm gonna write one because I just couldn't find what I was looking for.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it came from.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's interesting that you weren't able to find a book like that because society really has been talking about this quite a bit uh lately, hasn't it?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes, and there are a lot of books out there from the psychological standpoint of it, but I just wasn't finding anything from a biblical standpoint, you know.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And considering the stories are there, I thought there have to be there has to be stuff written about this.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's what I was looking for, but didn't really find what I thought was needed.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: So many uh uh looking uh for maybe uh for help recovering psychologically, yeah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then I guess I've noticed uh a lot of people looking for uh justice too, once uh these things uh you know, abuse has taken place and thinking like the hashtag me too uh movement.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh but I guess uh we're we've been missing out in the church about uh just talking about how God cares, uh cares for people.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: I guess you're agreeing with that.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh uh, why do you think we've forgotten this perspective?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, typically the church has covered up sexual sin in the past, especially if it's in their midst, you know, among their own people.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: They want to keep silent about it.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that is to protect their own reputations, things like that.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but the Me Too movement and other social confrontations of abuse, like uh Rachel Den Hollander is a is a good example of that when she took on U.S.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: gymnastics.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was the right person at the right time because she was not just a victim, she was also a lawyer and understood how the system worked.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the timing of everything came together.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then she also challenged the church because she had it been abused by um a youth pastor and saw the abuse in the church and what that it was being covered up most of the time, and it wasn't being handled very well.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she really took on that too.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think that really caused the church to realize that there's been a lot of damage done.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a lot of damage to their own members, and um, it didn't do what they thought it would do, which was protect their reputation.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: It just really damaged the church's reputation because of that, damaged the name of Christ as well when they did that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's why you it hasn't been talked about a lot in the church, but I think the church's silence has put it so far behind society now, when they should have been a leader in this.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, these are these are principles that are in God's word from the beginning to protect the vulnerable, you know, to to uh seek justice.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those kinds of things are all over the Bible.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: They should have been leading when they when they weren't.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know one of the scriptures I use a lot in the book is Ephesians 5.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And verse 11 says to take no part in the unfruitful work works of darkness, but rather expose them.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what the church has not been doing.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think by being silent, they really have been taking part in in the deeds of darkness rather than exposing it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then verse eight tells us the why.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: It says, because you were darkness, but now you are light, and the Lord walk as children of light.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what the church is called to do.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to be the light and we're supposed to expose darkness.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's that's what has happened is we just haven't done the things that that we've always been called to do.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and like I said before, is one is it's very uncomfortable to talk about these things in church.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to to to be talking about this stuff in church.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Even when we have something like we'll have um an event coming up, we still are very careful about how we even announce it in church because of the younger people who may be there.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot we have to we have to be careful about too.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I know that there have been pastors that tend to skip the hard, ugly stories in scripture, thinking that they could get those same biblical principles from an easier passage, you know.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we just won't do this one.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's not helpful, but it happens.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the the language of trauma is a relatively new thing.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't really have trauma language before the even latter part of the 20th century is really when we started to talk about trauma and understand it universally in a certain way.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the effects of abuse really weren't understood or or not able to be talked about in a way that we could understand.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had to mesh that with our understanding of scripture and bring those two things together.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just a hard thing to do when it's a newer concept.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that combination of things is why the church has been a little behind and a little silent on on these issues.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Some of your um uh book, though, is uh even uh before let's say uh abuse or trauma, it's just uh that God cares uh for for women.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: And as you start your book, I mean your first example uh is is in uh it's in Genesis, and most would think of maybe Adam or Eve or uh Cain and Abel or Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but uh you you talk about Hagar uh as someone that God cares for that uh didn't have uh the cards uh fall the right way for her, did she?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh who is she from for our audience?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: And why do you why is she so important uh as you start with an opening chapter in a book like this?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh it's it's interesting that that's who I started with, um, because she isn't a well, a well-known character in scripture, but she she was a servant of Sarah, Abraham and Sarah, and they used her to be a surrogate for their heir.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't know how she felt about that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I talked to some people who said, well, you know, she was a slave then, and it was probably an expected kind of thing.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: But what we do know is that was not God's plan.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, his plan was he was going to provide the heir, but they took it into their own hands.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: So at best, they were disobedient and didn't trust God.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: But at worst, this was a form of trafficking, at least from today's perspective, a woman could read that story and relate to it from a trafficking standpoint because they used her to gain something for themselves.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: That is the definition of sex trafficking, is to use sexual whatever for the benefit of somebody else.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we could say that today, and and anyone who's been trafficked could look at that story and relate to it and say, oh my, what happened here?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what we know about that story is she gets pregnant, Sarah mistreat, mistreats her, and she runs away.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: But God finds her in the wilderness and he shows compassion to her, which is the first thing we learn about God's heart is that he's compassionate.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: She acknowledges that he sees her and that to the point that she gave him the name, a God who sees.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought that would be a great place to start this book, uh, because so many survivors need to know that God sees them.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: He sees what they're going through, he sees the hurt, he understands, and he has compassion on them, and that they're not alone in their hurt.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what gave Hagar the ability to go back to Abraham and Sarah and remain in there for for a while, for well, many years.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: What it was it, maybe 13 years or so, is that she knew she wasn't alone anymore, that God was with her in this.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, she does become a really uh important person right from the beginning of uh the Bible.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: And frequently people don't know who she even is, let alone that that God sees and cares and knows.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and even that conversation that he has with her when he's he's going to bless her offspring, which I find fascinating, because this offspring was going to be the one who's gonna cause his people all kinds of trouble and be a constant battle with and draw those people away from him.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yet he gives her these promises that he's gonna bless them and make them a great nation.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I just find that for people who have really been abused, hurt, just in dramatic ways, I think that says a lot about who God is, and they can learn a lot from that.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: As your book uh moves on, you do talk about some uh other women that uh most wouldn't have any understanding of uh at all, like uh a story about a woman who was the Levite's concubine, uh, and then also Tamar.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, could you say a little bit about these uh two women and why they're so important uh to what you're trying to communicate?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the Levite's concubine is found in Judges 19.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's one of those chapters that pastors tend to skip over.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just go right through that.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Judges is hard anyway, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, so sure.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, we could definitely skip over chapter 19.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: But um, it's so important.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much there for us to learn from her.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most violent story of sexual abuse in the Bible.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: This woman actually is attacked all night long by a mob and dies in the morning as she's crawling back to her master.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot there for us to look at.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we have to look at that whole chapter because of the way it ends as well, because God uses this incident to turn his people back to him.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are thousands of people who are going to lose their lives because of it, but he's in that.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: He's in the justice, he's in the redemption and the restoration.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the story of this woman and what she went through.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Tamar is King David's daughter, who was raped by her brother Amnon.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And again, there's so much in this story.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I put a lot of emphasis in the book on the reaction of the family, because a lot of what I'm doing in the book is also relating it to today, you know, and sexual abuse and how it's handled and what it looks like and how to learn from it, all those things.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Her family had the two extremes that we see.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Her parents totally ignored it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't do anything.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: There was no consequence, there was nothing, they didn't do anything to Amnon, they didn't bring any justice to uh Tamar, nothing.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But her brother, Absalom, was the opposite direction.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: He went so far that a few years down the road, he kills the brother that raped his sister.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So those are the extremes that we can see in a family and how they react to these kinds of things.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And some of that is, and even today, when we see abuse or rape that happens within a family, maybe between siblings, maybe other family members, they want to usually keep it in the family.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to talk about it outside the family.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want anyone to know, don't want to ruin our family reputation.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: They sometimes don't even want to believe it themselves.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if you don't talk about it, then maybe it didn't really happen.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: It seems to go that direction.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: But Absalom also does something else.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: He tells Tamar to remain silent and not tell anyone about it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: That is something that nowadays, especially, I think, abusers count on silence to continue to abuse.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: The first step in healing for a survivor is telling their story.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen that over and over again.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Until somebody actually starts to talk about what happened to them, healing is going to be a very difficult thing to achieve.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So silence can be very damaging.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible in that story is in 2 Samuel, it tells us that she lived as a desolate woman in her brother's house.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that means without hope, all because of the silence and the non-action in her family.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So silence is not the answer for survivors.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: They need a place to tell their story.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't it be great if churches could be that place where they feel safe to tell their story to someone?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, wouldn't that be nice uh to be able to have a safe spot to process, talk, and come to heal?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you've talked uh so far about uh women who have been uh taken advantage of.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but then you have Rahab, the prostitute uh from Jericho, who uh doesn't have at least anything that we know about being uh taken advantage of, but practicing actually things that you wouldn't think uh God would want to be for somebody like this.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: Uh why do you find that God is for Rahab?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Rahab is one of my favorite characters in the Bible, and that's because of the transformation in her life.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this woman, talk about a difficult past, right?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: She's a prostitute, but in her story, she's gonna go from prostitute to, I don't know if I have the generation right, Drake, is it's great-grandmother, I think, of David, and then being mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus to being commended for her faith in Hebrews 11.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: How does this happen?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, right?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's a huge transformation.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: So why I include her, I don't know.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And now, honestly, I have not known a lot of prostitutes, but I have talked with women who have been prostituted.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know any who have not experienced some sort of sexual harm just because of that part of their life.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And even if prostitution was her choice, I've I've known women who have done that because, you know, money, whatever, whatever the situation was, but they still suffered some sort of harm from it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's not um an occupation that is without harm.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: It just isn't.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if it was by their own choice or by force, this story, this woman in the in the Bible can be such an encouragement that their lives can completely change.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It demonstrates God's kindness.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the the heart aspect we look at in that chapter, because Romans 2 tells us that that it's his kindness that leads us to salvation.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we see that in Rahab's life pretty clearly.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's just the fact that she goes from from the prostitution to saving her family through, you know, the when the walls come down to Jericho.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to give you the whole story, you know, but but it's such a great story.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then she she's an outsider with Israel, and then she becomes part of Israel when she marries an Israelite, and then she becomes the mother of Boaz, and so on and so forth.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just an amazing story, I think.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: It is an amazing story, and uh an unlikely story, someone you would not expect at all to be in the Messiah's uh lineage, uh, and coming from at least a background like that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yet God is for her and her faith.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um, let's talk about another woman that you point to, and that's uh Bathsheba.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_03: And this is uh the one that uh David uh saw from his rooftop and brought into his house, and then uh eventually uh you know uh conceiving and and having a child, uh the child dying, but and then becoming the mother of of uh of Solomon.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: In this chapter, you uh state that uh those around David probably should have exposed what was going on.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think might have happened if they did?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: What would you expect?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: I do wonder what would have happened.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know when Nathan finally did bring it all to light, David was very repentant about the whole thing.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me wonder if somebody had stopped him before that and said, This is wrong.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do this.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Would he have been repentant?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we never would have gotten to that point.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know because it didn't happen that way.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot there's a lot with Bathsheba and this story.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: The original version of this chapter was very different from what is going to end up in the book.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I did a lot of rethinking because I really want the book to be about God's heart.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: But this story just is one that just is hard for me because when I look at the at the biblical narrative, I just don't see anything that that puts any of the blame on Bathsheba or anything like that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and um, so many people just want it to be an adulterous affair.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I that's what I hear, you know, as well.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they committed adultery.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's our modern understanding of adultery that, you know, there was something going on there and you know, she had something to do with it.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we just don't see that in the in the text at all.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Coming from that perspective, I I cut out a whole lot of that because, you know, is it rape?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something else?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: What is this?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I cut a lot of that out and tried to focus more on what is God's heart and what was it for this woman.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I really kind of zeroed in on restoration.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because again, this is a woman who goes through a lot.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she loses her husband, she loses a child through this whole thing, but God's restoration, I think, is evident here because He she does marry the king, you know, she does have Solomon, he does become king.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot there that God restores after she's lost so much.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of focus in on that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And again, what could David's your original question back to that?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: What could they have done?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a good question.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: He was king.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: If they were gonna challenge him, where else could they go?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's the highest authority in the land.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm um, I would guess that that's why they didn't challenge him at all.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: But again, you know, when we look at what God expects, looking at again, Ephesians 5, Proverbs 31, 8 and 9, it says to use it's a a mother speaking to the king, the mother of the king speaking, I guess is a better way to say it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And she says, use your power for those who can't speak for themselves.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then Psalm 82 about you know, God expecting justice for the vulnerable.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much of that kind of thing in scripture, is still true today.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he still expects us to to protect the vulnerable and um do the right thing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that is something that his men could have done.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they could have done it in a number of different different ways.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: When Uriah took that note to to Joab and said it that said kill him, he could have said no.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: But could he?
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is these are things we don't know.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can you say no to the king?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Could Bathsheba have said no to the king when she found out why she was there?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is probably they couldn't, nobody could really say no, but somebody needed to stay.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: End up and finally Nathan did.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as God's prophet, he could say as an authority, but he kind of made David say it anyway.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Who is the final authority?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: And David was the one who pronounced that it was wrong.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so that's uh the Bathsheba story.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting one.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: And we go into some things that people might not think about when they read that story or have heard it taught.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I guess that it brings up an interesting question.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if if uh they exposed it earlier, maybe it wouldn't have gotten so out of hand.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: These are the things that we just don't know because we don't know.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, when you when people read this book, they're gonna realize that my brain thinks in questions because one thing just makes me ask another question.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I just really want to know, but you know, we don't know.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: So right.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it does make me ask a lot of questions.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh woman that you deal with in the in the book is the woman at the well that uh Jesus meets in John chapter four.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: And we know from the dialogue that he has with her that this woman too has a past history, uh, five husbands.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_03: How is her story of help to Christians today who might be struggling with past issues?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that the majority of survivors have in common is shame.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's such a hard thing to overcome because it's who they think they are.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not what they've done, but who they are because of what they've done or what's happened to them.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a really hard thing to overcome.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the woman at the well is an excellent example of that.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we have to ask these questions.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: How did she get in that position?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's not easy to have gone through five husbands, you know.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what was that?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: We don't we don't know again, but how did God treat her?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: We know that he goes to where she is, he seeks her out, he's there on purpose to see her, and he has a conversation with her and he gives her an offer of salvation.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then he does something kind of unique, I think.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: He talks right into her shame because he says, Bring your husband.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when it's exposed.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't have a husband.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the man she's with isn't her husband, but he's gonna use that shame for his glory.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: So he takes that very thing and he uses it to impact her entire community.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was a woman who was an outcast, even in her own community, which is a lot of speculation of why she was at the well at the time of day that she was, so that she wouldn't run into other people because she doesn't, she's an outcast.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he uses that.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that women today would be able to relate to that because they come into our churches feeling that sometimes, that they're outcasts because of their past.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what could the church, what could the God that the church is talking about have for them?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it for them?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we can see the in the chapter in the book, I also go into some other outcasts that are in the church and look at those people and how God used them for his glory to further his kingdom, all those kind of things.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that other people who feel like an outcast will look at this chapter and see that God can use them too.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's my hope, anyway.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, that's that's a good hope.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: We've uh talked about a lot of different women in scripture uh so far that um illustrate God has a um a care for, has a plan for.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_03: Who's your favorite of all the ones that uh you discuss in your book?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: So we haven't discussed all of them.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, we're not gonna be able to, I'm sure.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: No, no.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um my favorite is the chapter on Esther, and it's because it gets to the truth of what really happened to Esther, and it's for for um our generations and our kids, it's not the veggie tail version of what happened to Esther.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it also explores the two most commonly asked questions by survivors, and that was why did God allow this?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And where was God?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that chapter is going to speak to survivors who feel stuck in that with no answers to those questions.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this is, I think the Esther is the perfect story to talk about those questions because God isn't mentioned in the book of Esther, yet he's there all over it, you know, and so that's a good place to look at this.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a difficult chapter for people, it's going to be difficult.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I do a little more detail in that chapter than any of the others because of the nature of it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we look at the hard truths that God could have intervened in another way, but didn't.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll see that Esther's suffering and then our own suffering has a purpose and is part of God's plan for us.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: That can be really hard for survivors to look at and to understand.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll also take a little bit of a dive into Psalm 22 through that chapter and look at Jesus' suffering on the cross and the fact that God never did abandon him and that that was his purpose and plan for him as well.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a difficult chapter, but I, in my opinion, it's the I it's my favorite.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's I think it's the best one in the book.
• 27:15
  unknown: Okay.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then you end with uh an explanation of Psalm 56, uh, which I find interesting that you would choose a psalm uh uh that's not uh on the tip of everybody's tongue.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh why why do you choose this psalm?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: And how can that be a help for those who are experiencing some type of trauma or suffering?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the funny thing was, I couldn't have told you about this psalm before I wrote this book.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: I knew a couple of the verses though, didn't know that that's where they were.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: But as I was writing it, I was really struggling to come up with a title for the book.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then a friend of mine wrote a blog post that was called This I Know That God Is For Me.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, what?
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I got really excited about that title and uh because I thought it was trying, it it conveyed what I was trying to convey.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I looked up the passage that it came from, which was Psalm 56, and I found what I was looking for.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great psalm.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: It talks about being trampled by enemies who lurk and watch and waiting to attack, and it sounds just like a predator.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: But then it also talks about that God sees our anguish, that tossing on our beds, um, like when you can't sleep because something's keeping you up.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: He keeps our tears in a bottle.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love that imagery because it's it they're so meaningful to him that our tears are meaningful to God and that I can trust him.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it also talks about he won't allow those who commit crimes get away with them forever.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's keeping track and his justice will prevail at some point.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what I was looking for.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: That combination of things.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's not the most common psalm, but it speaks to God's heart for the oppressed.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew I found the title for my book when I read it.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: So it will be a very interesting book when it comes out uh on February uh the 4th in 2026.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Book again is That God Is For Me, a study of God's Heart through the stories of women in Scripture, written by Lisa Radcliffe, um, published through Abundance Books.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: Lisa, thank you so much for coming and uh sharing about your book, and we wish you uh success in that and speaking about it and uh also success in your writing for the future.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Drake.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I really love being here.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_03: Great to have you.