Latest / High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm / A High Level Wife is TENDER: What That Means

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A High Level Wife is TENDER: What That Means · High Level Wife Podcast with Chelsey Holm

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and here we do Marriage God's way, and we are high-level wives who are tender, tenacious, and taking back territory the enemy has stolen.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: And today I want to dive deeper into the word tender.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean, right?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like maybe you're thinking about a tender fillet of steak.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're thinking about tender as that sounds raw and potential hurts because it sounds vulnerable.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our culture has convinced women that softness is dangerous.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've had decades of culture telling women that you can be just like a man and you can do anything that he can do, and you know, you can be just as hard as he can.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can hit harder and right, like if you've been hurt, you need thicker skin.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe that lie.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I told you, I had a teacher tell me in high school that I wear my heart on my sleeve and I needed to guard my heart because I would be easily hurt.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I took that to heart.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what I did is I began guarding myself and not allowing myself to be exposed or to be as vulnerable.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that's who God made me be to be.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm vulnerable.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I throw open the curtains because I know that through my vulnerability, my God fights for me, right?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know that.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I also know that more walls and less trust and protecting yourself and staying guarded and not letting anyone in is a problem.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because the longer we protect ourselves from being hurt, the harder it becomes to receive love.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just from our husbands, but it's from God Himself.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I shared in a previous episode recently that God has been teaching me to, well, first of all, revealing that I had had this deeply seated subconscious belief to expect to be disappointed.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was projecting that onto God Himself of not fully believing that, like, yes, he is able and yes, he can do it, but not believing that he actually wants to give me good things and wants to delight in me.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I struggled to receive love from and good things from God himself.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because the enemy doesn't need to make you evil, right?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's so silly.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like he simply just needs to make you hard.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so today I want to redeem the word tender because biblical tenderness is one of the strongest characteristics that a woman can possess.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what we're discipling the women inside high-level wife to put on and to embody.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you eight layers of this word tender and just the richness of this word.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So layer one is tender toward God.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Kings 22, 19, we have King Josiah, and it says, because your heart was tender.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Notice God didn't compliment his intelligence or his leadership or his courage or his strategy.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was his heart.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And tender means responsive, teachable, quick to repent, quick to obey, not defensive, not argumentative, not explaining away conviction.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting passionate on this because I also have dealt with wives, and the Lord has dealt with me that this is exactly what I used to do.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I used to do the opposite of these things.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was reactive, I was not teachable, I was not quick to repent.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I actually took on a spirit of an air of self-righteousness, uh, obedience, no, thank you.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do what I want.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely defensive, definitely argumentative, definitely explained away conviction as often as I could.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: a tender wife asks, Lord, where do you want me to change?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of, here's why I am the way that I am.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen hardened women in their 60s and above that don't understand tenderness and are the complete opposite of it because they've spent years not being tender and doing all those things I just explained.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: A tender heart is fertile soil.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's the broken ground.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord needs to do a mighty work in and through us.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hard ground rejects seed.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever tried to dig a hole in hard ground?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, on the side of our house over here facing the east, where the sun rises, two years, I guess a year ago, a little more than a year ago, maybe two years ago, my oldest son and I decided to put a border in and turn it into a flower bed, whatever, like you know, with landscape paper and mulch and a couple bushes.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: I planted yellow lilac bushes, and I'm really hoping that I'm going to get to see them bloom, but probably not.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not within another, it's probably next year.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: We won't be here, but that's okay.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're renting our house, so I will we will get to return and see the the flourishing of that.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that side of our house, it literally only has two windows that are upstairs in my husband in my bedroom.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the wall is just all blank.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, we needed something there.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so my son and I set about to till up this earth and to make it hospitable, fertile soil, that these bushes that I intended to plant would grow and flourish.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a road to teller, we did this by hand, and it was back-breaking labor to break up the soil because it was hardened, it was dried out, like it rejected much of what we were doing, but we persisted.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to understand tender ground produces fruit.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's the it's the roots that go down deep that are able to produce the fruit and the flower and the foliage, and they can do that through the hard seasons, right?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not just when you first plant them and they're still happy, but they haven't taken like hard seasons, okay?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: So ask, is my heart still easily moved by God's word?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or have I become familiar with truth without allowing it to transform me?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: So much of the Western church, this is where they are.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're where is the power, the living, breathing, active, sharper than two any two-edged sword?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Word of God.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where is it changing our lives?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Layer two, tender toward people.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4 32 says, Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Tenderhearted does not mean being ruled by emotion.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Emotions are real, they need to be named, but they need to be then taken under the authority of Christ.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: It means choosing compassion over self-protection, mercy over bitterness, forgiveness over offense.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Tender people are not naive.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Don't listen to the world on that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lie from the pit of hell.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Tender people simply refuse to let pain dictate their character.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is impossible without Christ.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: We can do none of this apart from Christ because every wound tells us to harden ourselves, but Jesus says, Remain.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Remain.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Layer three, tender mercy.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 103, Luke 1.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word used in these is racham.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it comes from the word for womb.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any more delicate, intricate part of the woman's anatomy than the womb and how it conceives and implants and creates life?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like what?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like so much symbolism here.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But God describes his compassion using the safest place a human being ever knows.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Protection, nurture, life, warmth, nearness.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: His mercy isn't distant, it's deeply personal.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: He calls you, he chose you, his mercy is personal.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And a wife reflects God when people feel safe near her.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do people feel safe near you?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they on guard?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't listen to yourself on this.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Ask those around you whom you trust, who know you best.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because truth always flows through love.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is exactly how Jesus interacted with people.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was truth and grace together in the perfect tension.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Truth and grace, all truth, all grace together.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Layer four, tender does not mean weak.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Think of Jesus.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: He was the most tender person who ever lived.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh and dwelt among us.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: But guess what?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: He also flipped tables, he confronted Pharisees and he walked toward the cross, bearing the cross.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Did you know how heavy that thing was?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was like 300 and some pounds.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So was he weak?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Tenderness is not the absence of strength, it's actually strength, strength under the control of the Holy Spirit, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: It goes hand in hand with meek meekness, which is great power under control.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the very essence of meekness and the perfect example of meekness.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's strength under control in the Holy Spirit.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is what we are submitted to for our self-control.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So a woman can be incredibly feminine and gentle and compassionate and soft and open to receive and responsive and absolutely relentless against darkness, right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Tenacious and taking back territory.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is biblical tenderness.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Five, the enemy wants you hardened.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Think about Eden.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: That serpent didn't simply tempt Eve to sin, he tempted her to stop trusting God's heart.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's still his strategy, right?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Betrayal, right?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what the way that he tempted her was, you know, why is God withholding something from you, right?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that when you eat of this, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like him, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like that was the temptation.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that Eve felt like she was betrayed by God, that God was withholding something good from her, that she was disappointed, right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: That God would withhold something for her, but she wasn't trusting God because she took her eyes off of God and put her eyes on something else, anything else, right?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So church hurt, marriage wounds, mother wounds, father wounds, every hurt whispers, don't trust again, protect yourself, stay guarded.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: But slowly, slowly, when we we are not taking these thoughts captive to Christ under his authority, slowly that tenderness becomes suspicion, that compassion becomes criticism, curiosity becomes control, intimacy becomes self-protection, and the enemy doesn't just steal joy, he steals softness.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Layer six, tender creates safety.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Think about kids, kids flourish where tenderness lives, and marriages heal where tenderness lives, right?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the last time your child was injured and you tenderly cleaned the wound and you tenderly dressed it and put a band-aid on it and probably some hugs and kisses, right?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and that's how the healing process starts.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, repentance grows where tenderness lives, and people confess where tenderness lives.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit is welcomed where tenderness lives, because tenderness literally changes the atmosphere of the home, not because it's quiet, but because it's safe.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard, like, you know, your kids are crazier at home than they are outside?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're comfortable at home to fully be themselves, right?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you as a wife putting on tenderness, allowing the Lord to develop that in you and restore that in you helps you to create and to become a safe space as an extension of abiding in Him.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Layer seven, tender growth.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the Song of Solomon, the tender vine, or in Matthew 24, the tender branch.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Tenderness is always creat connected, you can't talk connected to life, growth, new beginnings, fruit, hard things crack and living things bend.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: A tree survives storms because it moves, a hardened heart snaps.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when my husband was recently replacing the thumb pump in the basement and the pipe, he just gently pushed upon it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But because it was had no give, it cracked, it snapped in half, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it produced another necessary trip to the hardware store in our frustration as the rain poured down.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we were rooted in the joy of the Lord that even through that, God is good, and we were able to carry that out.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we had such a great night of connecting through the chaos, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because we were seeing God's hand at work.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: A tender heart yields to the spirit and grows.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Layer eight.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the last one, and we're gonna wrap it up here.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Tender toward the spirit, and this is so important because one of the greatest gifts a wife can cultivate is spiritual sensitivity, right?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have, and and certain of the my daughters are very sensitive to the spiritual, right?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to be able to tune in, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just like a radio station, to be on the right radio station to catch the frequency, the radio waves, so that we can hear what the Lord is speaking to us today, to be able to recognize his voice, to hear his voice, and to respond to it, to hear his conviction.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can you hear his conviction?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Can you recognize his prompting?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can you quickly repent because your heart is grieved by the Holy Spirit over your sin and over your turning away from the Lord?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you quickly forgive because you know the grace that you have received and the forgiveness that you've received?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can you quickly bless because you're looking for the hand, the hand of the Lord, and how you want to be an extension of his hand over those around you that God puts in your path and in your household and beyond?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you quickly surrender?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: If God can create a spirit of surrender in me and a heart posture of surrender, in me, this girl who doesn't do what anyone tells her to do, right?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me what to do.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: If he can do that in me, girlfriend, he can do it in you.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: You need to understand that the Holy Spirit rarely shouts.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: He does not.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of um when the Lord came to Elijah in the cave, right?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't in the wind or the fire or the earthquake, right?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was in a whisper.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: So can you hear the whisper of the Lord so you can respond to him?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you too focused on everything else, on the fire and the earthquake and the wind, right, around you?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you so filled with distraction and noise in your life that even if he was whispering, you wouldn't hear it because everything else is too loud and drowns it out.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: His tender heart whispers, and a tender wife hears it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bring it on home.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why tenderness comes first, because a wife who is tender toward God can become tenacious against darkness.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And together she begins taking back territory that the enemy stole.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: She takes back peace and joy and oneness and trust and intimacy and prayer.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: She takes back her children, her marriage, and her home.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't do it by becoming harder or stronger or faster or smarter.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't wait for the conditions to be perfect for her to then do it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: She does it in the presence of mourning and sorrow.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: She does it in the presence of disconnect.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: She does it in the presence of distrust and lies.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: She does it in the presence of extreme vulnerability and rawness and hurt.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't wait for the perfect conditions.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: She does it in spite of them because she is rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: She does it by becoming softer before God and stronger in Christ because in our weakness, his strength is made perfect.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 423.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a big difference in that because protection builds walls, but guarding keeps Christ on the throne, knowing that in Psalm uh 118, where it says, the Lord is helping me, the Lord is on my side and he helps me.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Understand that one isolates while the other discerns.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: One is driven by fear and worry and anxiety and what she sees around her and her own understanding.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: But the other is driven by wisdom.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So today, don't ask God to make you stronger first.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ask him to make your heart tender again.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because the strongest wives aren't the hardest to hurt, they're the quickest to surrender.
• 21:06
  unknown: Right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: When we're talking about biblical strength, true biblical femininity, they're the quickest to surrender.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So ask the Lord, and this is my final challenge to you for this episode: ask the Lord, has my heart become hard anywhere?
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then ask him for the courage to soften only where he leaves, not through naivety, but through trust in his goodness.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because you need to understand that a wife's heart, when her heart remains tender before God, she becomes incredibly difficult for the enemy to manipulate, distract, deceive, or definitely not discourage or destroy.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Tenderness isn't surrendering to circumstances, it's surrendering to Christ.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And from that place, she can be tenacious in truth and take back every piece of territory the enemy has tried to steal.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this beautifully establishes the first word of your new identity statement before moving into our next episodes that are going to be about tenacious and taking back territory.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So get ready for that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Put on a tender heart, dear sister, and I'll see you on the next episode.