Latest / Coffee and Bible Time Podcast / Spiritual Warfare Isn’t What You Think—Here’s How to Actually Fight It | Emily Wilson Hussem

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Spiritual Warfare Isn’t What You Think—Here’s How to Actually Fight It | Emily Wilson Hussem · Coffee and Bible Time Podcast

• 1:01
  Ellen Krause: At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.
• 1:03
  Ellen Krause: Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living.
• 1:07
  Ellen Krause: Each week, we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk.
• 1:18
  Ellen Krause: We are so glad you have joined us.
• 1:21
  Ellen Krause: Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast, where our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living.
• 1:33
  Ellen Krause: I'm your host, ellen, and today we're talking about a topic that affects all of us as believers, and that is how the enemy works to pull us away from intimacy with God.
• 1:47
  Ellen Krause: And joining us today to discuss this is Emily Wilson Husem, a speaker, worship leader, author and encourager of women.
• 1:57
  Ellen Krause: Her newest book, sincerely Stoneheart, so incredibly creatively exposes the subtle ways the enemy lies to us, and we'll be using it as a launching point to explore how women today can resist spiritual attack and walk in truth.
• 2:17
  Ellen Krause: So, emily, welcome to the podcast and truth.
• 2:23
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So, emily, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's a gift to be with all of you with you and with all your listeners out there, whether you're in the car at home.
• 2:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We're so delighted to be with you today and sharing this conversation.
• 2:30
  Ellen Krause: Absolutely Well.
• 2:31
  Ellen Krause: I just want to start out by saying, emily, that you are so incredibly self-aware, Thanks, and just such a gifted writer.
• 2:42
  Ellen Krause: You have effectively put into words what I have felt, what I have lived, what I have thought, that I didn't even know were stumbling blocks to my relationship with God.
• 2:55
  Ellen Krause: Yes, many I did, but the lies are very deceitful.
• 3:00
  Ellen Krause: I did, but you like.
• 3:03
  Ellen Krause: Yeah, the lies are very deceitful.
• 3:04
  Ellen Krause: So I just hope our listeners, by the end of this conversation, will also gain greater insight into the enemy's musings, so that we can all be on guard and pursue a closer relationship with God.
• 3:15
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I hope so too.
• 3:17
  Ellen Krause: Emily, I just want to start with a verse from John 10.10 that says the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
• 3:25
  Ellen Krause: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly, says Jesus.
• 3:31
  Ellen Krause: I just kind of wanted to ground our conversation in that verse.
• 3:37
  Ellen Krause: Knowing that you've written this book from the enemy's perspective, how has this verse sort of shaped your thoughts going into the writing of this book?
• 3:49
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:50
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This verse really was the foundation of writing the whole book.
• 3:56
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I am, you know, I have self-awareness, but really the book came out of 14 years of ministry with women.
• 4:02
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I've been walking with women on retreats and at conferences and at events and in teaching for 14 years now and I have seen that all the enemy tries to do every single day is steal our peace, our hope, kill any sort of, you know, rootedness we have in the Lord, this destruction of, like you said, our intimacy with God.
• 4:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The enemy wants to destroy all of that and pull us away from the Lord as much as possible.
• 4:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So that's what I've seen over these years is how the enemy has really worked to destroy women, but how those of us who have seen in freedom, all of us who have seen and know the freedom found in Jesus, this life of abundance that he's promised us so many women for all of these years that I've talked with and loved and listened to they are in that place where the enemy is just stealing all their hope, stealing all their peace.
• 4:55
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So I thought let's unpack this and share about the life of abundance that's promised us and how we can really, in our everyday lives, claim that and live that and root ourselves in the life of abundance that Jesus promised us.
• 5:08
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It was the exploration of that that brought me to write Sincerely, stoneheart.
• 5:13
  Ellen Krause: And I think we're going to get into what some of these are.
• 5:16
  Ellen Krause: But just having read about some of these in book yesterday, even I found myself falling into one of the traps that was in there within our family dynamics and I had I was just so glad I was self aware enough to say, my goodness, like this is flat out an attack of the enemy and we are not going to let this distract us from our goals.
• 5:43
  Ellen Krause: And so well, let's talk a little bit about understanding the enemies.
• 5:49
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, how did the?
• 5:50
  Ellen Krause: concept for Sincerely Stoneheart.
• 5:53
  Ellen Krause: Help you think differently about the enemy's strategies.
• 5:58
  Emily Wilson Hussem: For sure.
• 5:58
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So Sincerely Stoneheart is in the spirit of CS Lewis's the Screwtape Letters.
• 6:03
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You do not have to have read the Screwtape Letters in order to understand my book and what CS Lewis did and he readily admits that he was not even the first one to do this.
• 6:11
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He said there was someone who wrote Lies from a Devil hundreds of years ago.
• 6:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And really what it did writing from a senior demon to a junior demon, teaching that junior demon how to destroy women what the Screwtape Letters did for so many people and what Sincerely Stoneheart has been doing for women since the day that it published is really like unveil, the way that the enemy works on us in a way that you know, writing this book, what the Screwtape Letters did was have people reading going aha, I've fallen for that.
• 6:42
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Aha, oh, my goodness, this is what's going on in my life.
• 6:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This is what's at play here.
• 6:47
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This isn't just some like happenstance thing.
• 6:50
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This is the enemy subtly working on me to pull me away from God.
• 6:54
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So what I've done in Sincerely Stoneheart right, looking at the devil's playbook against women after all of these years is writing out these lies right, and we'll get into many of them Belovedness, distraction, dissatisfaction, prayer, right.
• 7:09
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So many lies, so that writing it in this way of oh my goodness, this is how the devil works on me.
• 7:15
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So women can say, aha, I've never seen it like this before my eyes are opened, I can't unsee what I've seen now in reading this and really understanding the way that the enemy is trying to steal, kill and destroy.
• 7:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And not only that, once we see it, we can't unsee it, but we can also make change.
• 7:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Like you said, you saw in your own family.
• 7:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: After reading Sincerely Stoneheart, you see this dynamic in your family and you think not only am I going to see what's happening here, I'm going to do something different and I'm going to make a change about it, because this spirit of writing really brings light to the darkness.
• 7:54
  Ellen Krause: So it's important for us to be spiritually aware, but not fearful, but discerning.
• 8:04
  Ellen Krause: How do we go about doing?
• 8:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: that, yeah, absolutely.
• 8:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: That's really a matter of being rooted in prayer with the Lord, right?
• 8:12
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We don't live our life like, oh gosh, the enemy's after me at every turn.
• 8:16
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We stand on the truth of the resurrection.
• 8:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We stand on the promises of Jesus.
• 8:21
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We stand on the truth of the resurrection, we stand on the promises of Jesus.
• 8:27
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And when we are vigilant and when we are aware of what really the enemy is trying to do in our hearts and in our families and in our motherhood and in our relationships, whatever life season you're in, the ways that the enemy is trying to get into those relationships, we don't live in fear.
• 8:37
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We live in truth and we live in vigilance to say how can I protect my relationships from the ways that the enemy is trying to destroy them?
• 8:45
  Emily Wilson Hussem: How can I protect my marriage from the ways that the enemy is going to subtly sneak in?
• 8:49
  Emily Wilson Hussem: How can I protect my own heart from dissatisfaction and anger and sin and envy?
• 8:57
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's not a matter of living in fear, right?
• 9:00
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's a matter of saying no, no, I'm being watchful and I'm being, just like you said, discerning about where the Lord is calling me to make good choices.
• 9:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Protect my own heart, protect my relationships and make sure they are rooted in the Lord's heart and what he wants for me and all of my relationships in my life.
• 9:21
  Ellen Krause: Does that make sense?
• 9:22
  Ellen Krause: It does, it does, and it's very, very important to bring this to the forefront so that it's almost like you can immediately spot these things head on.
• 9:34
  Ellen Krause: So let's talk about.
• 9:35
  Ellen Krause: What are some of these lies that we commonly believe in?
• 9:39
  Ellen Krause: Your experience and you've ministered to so many women what are some of the most common whispers that the enemy is doing to women today?
• 9:48
  Emily Wilson Hussem: yeah, one of the biggest ones, of course, has to do with identity, our identity as beloved of god, our chosenness and the lord's love for us.
• 9:58
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So so many women all these years I've listened to them and they really cannot bring themselves to believe that they're beloved.
• 10:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: They struggle so much to believe that they're loved truly, unconditionally by God because they've been through so much pain and they've been through so much heartache and they've experienced so much conditional love in their lives, love that was based on their behavior or how they looked or their actions or whatever it was.
• 10:25
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So I won't give away too many spoilers for your readers so they don't know everything that happens in the book, but I deal with belovedness early on in the book in a letter called Looking for the Keys.
• 10:36
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Each letter has a title like a song and Looking for the Keys.
• 10:40
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I really have reflected on this so much in my own life in those moments where I struggled to believe my belovedness and how I've watched and watched myself so much in life strive and look like looking around frantically for my belovedness in awards, in love from a boyfriend, in accolades, career, whatever it is All of these things have been frantically trying to find my identity in and have come up short every time I talk about it.
• 11:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Like you lose your keys and you're looking for your keys.
• 11:15
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Listeners out there, maybe this has happened to you.
• 11:17
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You go for an important appointment and you realize your car keys aren't in the right place.
• 11:21
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I don't know if some of you are more organized than I am, but I sometimes can be disorganized.
• 11:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And you go and you can't find them and you're looking around everywhere and you're like thinking, oh my gosh, maybe it's a winter time.
• 11:32
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You're like, oh, is it in my coat pocket, or this and that?
• 11:34
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And you're running around because you are on this time crunch and you're like I have to find the keys and you're totally panicked.
• 11:40
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And that analogy and I bring a lot of different analogies that came up in my heart over the course of writing this book that analogy painted the picture for me of this is the way I've tried to find my identity in my life Frantically looking through every pocket maybe it's here, maybe it's here, maybe it's here, maybe it's here when the reality is that the keys were in my back pocket.
• 12:02
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You ever look for if your glasses wear and you're looking around for your glasses and they're on your head the whole entire time Like they were here all along.
• 12:11
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The lie that so many women believe I'm not beloved, I'm not even lovable, I'm not even likable.
• 12:17
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So many women believe that lie.
• 12:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When you're looking around for the keys you're looking for, you're on for identity and it was in your backpack all along.
• 12:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Jesus has always been there, always ready to tell us who we are, to speak to us of our belovedness and our identity, and it's not supposed to be a frantic search.
• 12:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The Lord's love is always there, it's always waiting for us, and that's, I think, over these years, one of the biggest lies that I've seen women believe.
• 12:44
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Because the enemy wants to strike us at identity.
• 12:48
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Because when and many of you know this when our identity is rooted in Jesus, it's so much harder for the enemy to work on us when we know who we are and we stand firm in who we are in Christ.
• 13:01
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Oh, my goodness, that gives us a surety, a sureness of the way we speak, act, the choices that we make.
• 13:08
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And we are so much harder to work on for the enemy when we know who we are and whose we are in Jesus.
• 13:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So I think that that foundational aspect is where the enemy really has tried to work on so many women for so many years?
• 13:22
  Ellen Krause: Absolutely, and if we don't have that, we start to look for it in so many other places, right Like our appearance, our possessions, our company, all these things and then we get lost.
• 13:34
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And so many women are like I'm so lost, I don't know why I'm lost.
• 13:37
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I'm like, well, let's talk about your identity and go from there.
• 13:40
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You know when our identity is rooted there.
• 13:42
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You know where you are on the map.
• 13:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You're not just like, oh my gosh, I'm totally lost.
• 13:48
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You know who you are and whose you are Changes everything everything Absolutely Well.
• 13:54
  Ellen Krause: Another thing that seems to really get us off track is comparison and the whole distraction, shame, self-doubt, keeping us from trusting God fully.
• 14:07
  Ellen Krause: There's kind of a lot many things wrapped up in there but how does that impact us?
• 14:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Comparison is like whew, it is one of the ways and social media has made it so much worse, and I think you can speak to your own experience with comparison.
• 14:25
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Everybody has their own experiences, but the enemy really and I saw it as I wrote this book wants to pit women against each other.
• 14:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants women to hate each other because when there is unity among women, that's the way God designed the world right For unity and harmony and beauty and peace.
• 14:45
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But the enemy sneaking in to destroy all of this in the fall, the comparison is what the enemy wants to keep at the forefront of.
• 14:53
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Every friendship between women, every way that women see one another.
• 14:58
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When women are celebrating with one another, the enemy is losing.
• 15:02
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I know that the enemy hates that, the comparison that he's tried to sew of trying to be more beautiful, trying to be skinnier or funnier or get a better report card or be faster, all of these different areas of our lives, when we think, man, I got to be better than her, I got to do better than her, and not only that, when a woman who's more beautiful or who gets a boyfriend or whatever it is, the enemy really wants us to hate each other.
• 15:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants us to hate ourselves.
• 15:30
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I really believe that, not only ourselves each other, because it really fractures our relationships and we're not able to truly love one another.
• 15:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: As women call each other higher, as women celebrate one another as women, when that hatred of one another comes out of that comparison game.
• 15:48
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I don't know what your experience has been like, ellen, in comparison in life, maybe in school, growing up.
• 15:55
  Emily Wilson Hussem: What has been your experience of the way the enemies use comparison between women?
• 16:01
  Ellen Krause: Well, I mean, I feel like it's something that you notice as early as grade school.
• 16:07
  Ellen Krause: I will tell you my first thing that I really remember noticing and that was in my neighborhood growing up and I was just a very young girl and my body type is that I have like this tiny little pooch like in my abdomen.
• 16:24
  Ellen Krause: I was born that way, I just have it.
• 16:26
  Ellen Krause: My girls have it now.
• 16:28
  Ellen Krause: But I remember there was another girl in the neighborhood whose stomach was perfectly flat and at that super young age thinking gosh, why is it my stomach perfectly flat, like hers?
• 16:43
  Emily Wilson Hussem: What's wrong with me and?
• 16:45
  Ellen Krause: isn't it crazy how it just, even at such a young age, we're already comparing ourselves and thinking what's?
• 16:51
  Ellen Krause: Wrong with us Like no, that's how God made me.
• 16:56
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's so sad to think of so many little girls and I talk about that in the book too, in the letter called Take it and Run With it.
• 17:02
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So many young women like that at a young age were like just a sentence said off the cuff about the way their body looks or their intelligence or whatever it is, and how those moments are ones that the enemy will use against a woman forever.
• 17:18
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Remember what that person said.
• 17:20
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Remember what that person said.
• 17:21
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Remember what that person said and, going back to that verse, it steals and kills and destroys your peace and your confidence and all of those things.
• 17:30
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And it's amazing and I had to go back to myself as a little girl too, just like you have here, to see where the enemy started sneaking in when I was just a teeny, tiny girl, with that comparison with those things that people say, and you're like, oh my goodness, this has not been just my adult life, this has been since I was small and it kind of breaks your heart in a profound way.
• 17:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But the beauty of that is bringing those moments and those struggles to healing with the Lord.
• 17:56
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So thanks for sharing that that moment of you as a little girl.
• 18:00
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's such a tender, vulnerable thing.
• 18:02
  Ellen Krause: How about you?
• 18:03
  Ellen Krause: What personal lives have you had to overcome in your own walk?
• 18:09
  Emily Wilson Hussem: For me.
• 18:09
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I share about it in the book.
• 18:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I really struggled as a girl who loved Jesus.
• 18:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: In college, people were awful to me.
• 18:16
  Emily Wilson Hussem: They were so awful.
• 18:17
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This was back between 2000 and 2010.
• 18:20
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I was in college, at Arizona State, and I was a girl who loved the Lord, I loved my faith and people made fun of me.
• 18:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: They called me names behind my back, they would gossip about me and it was such a struggle, oh my goodness.
• 18:33
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It was so painful because it wasn't like right and many of you might've had this experience out there.
• 18:37
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It wasn't like I was forcing my love for Jesus on anyone.
• 18:41
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I was just living it in the way that I wanted to Going to church on Sundays.
• 18:44
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I wasn't going to parties, I wasn't sleeping around, which were very common things to do at a quote unquote party school like Arizona State, and people were awful to me about it.
• 18:52
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And there came a time when someone sat me down and said you should probably know what people are saying behind your back, because it's pretty bad.
• 18:59
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And he said nobody wants you around.
• 19:01
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We just don't want you around anymore.
• 19:03
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And yeah, it was horrible.
• 19:09
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It was a really tough experience, but it shaped me and it's a beautiful testimony that I get to share with young people.
• 19:12
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Because I came into a fork in the road of.
• 19:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Am I going to keep living my faith?
• 19:16
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Am I going to keep doing this?
• 19:17
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Do I even want to be called names and made fun of and walk this hard road?
• 19:22
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You kind of feel like a salmon swimming upstream when it would be so much easier for a salmon to just turn around and go the other way.
• 19:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But I came to this fork in the road of.
• 19:30
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Do I want to do this?
• 19:31
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And the answer was yes.
• 19:32
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The answer was looking at scripture and Jesus not saying I offer you a Tempur-Pedic mattress and a Chick-fil-A number one.
• 19:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He says if you want to follow me, pick up your cross and follow me right and in the Beatitudes, right.
• 19:45
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When they hate you because of me, blessed are you.
• 19:49
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And so I kept on that path.
• 19:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But that lie that nobody wanted me around stuck with me.
• 19:54
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It still affects me today and the Lord and I have been on this amazing healing journey and it's been so beautiful.
• 20:00
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But there are times where it still comes up when I'm at social gatherings, am I annoying people?
• 20:05
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Am I bothering people Like do people want me around?
• 20:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Like those like come up every once in a while.
• 20:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I've healed a lot, but those things, as you know, they affect us so deeply.
• 20:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Just one thing one person said and some of you out there listening you could probably pinpoint right the thing that someone said.
• 20:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You're like, oh yeah, haven't thought about that in a while and it's affected me a lot.
• 20:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And the beauty about speaking about these things is that it offers us an opportunity to just be even more healed by the Lord.
• 20:31
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When we say these things out loud and talk about how they've affected us, it gives them less power over us, you know.
• 20:36
  Ellen Krause: Yes, yes, I completely agree, and I think that that's really what Sincerely Stoneheart does for the person who reads it, because it allows you to go into a very real, practical situation in our life.
• 20:55
  Ellen Krause: You're thinking about how that has impacted a personal example of this particular thing, enacted like a, you know, a personal example of this particular thing, and then I think we'll store that in our minds to be able to say, okay, comparison's going on right now I'm going to put an end to it because I don't want to take a part in that or gossip you talk about in the book.
• 21:16
  Ellen Krause: Let's jump into technology.
• 21:19
  Ellen Krause: Just a little bit.
• 21:21
  Ellen Krause: how has technology just become this double-edged sword and how is it being used?
• 21:28
  Ellen Krause: To distract us Totally?
• 21:30
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Well, as you and I both know, technology can be used for amazing things.
• 21:34
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We're having a conversation here right that I hope, edifies your listeners and really gives them something to think about and pray about.
• 21:40
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But technology in and of itself can, as we know, be used to steal, kill and destroy so many aspects of our lives.
• 21:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When I started writing the book, I got to thinking about the worldwide web.
• 21:53
  Emily Wilson Hussem: As I unpacked all of this, I thought web a spider builds a web to catch prey.
• 21:57
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And then I started thinking oh my goodness, we're all stuck in this web.
• 22:02
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We're all prey to this movement of trying to trap us all in this web.
• 22:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We're all trapped in the web.
• 22:11
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Walk through an airport on any given day.
• 22:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Is anyone speaking to each other?
• 22:15
  Emily Wilson Hussem: No, I imagine, like flying in the 1970s, people were having conversations, talking about life, reading their newspaper, of course, but the newspaper ends.
• 22:23
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's not a black hole.
• 22:25
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Once you finish that last word on the newspaper, you're going to fold it up and maybe talk to someone.
• 22:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But this web that we're all in?
• 22:31
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I thought, oh my goodness, we're all trapped.
• 22:33
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The web started at home and then it is in our pockets and we're all interconnected in this web and the enemy uses it at every single turn to his advantage to distract us, firstly, from the people in front of us, and that's one of the things that, oh my goodness, changed my life forever.
• 22:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: After writing Sincerely Stoneheart, there's so many changes I've made in my life after realizing, oh my goodness, the enemy realized people.
• 23:00
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When they feel seen right by a person in person you're looking at each other when they feel seen, when they feel heard, when they feel seen by a person in person, you're looking at each other.
• 23:04
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When they feel seen, when they feel heard, when they feel known that's God's design they feel a sense just of worth and value as a person.
• 23:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So how could the enemy sneak in with this web to make it so that nobody looks at each other anymore?
• 23:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You try to talk to a teenager.
• 23:21
  Emily Wilson Hussem: In this day and age it's terrifying.
• 23:23
  Emily Wilson Hussem: They look at you like a deer in the headlights.
• 23:25
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You're like you're talking to me.
• 23:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Why are you talking to me, what?
• 23:27
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And I'm like, oh my gosh, I am so afraid for the future of our world.
• 23:32
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I don't know if you have that experience, but when you try to just talk off the cuff to a teenager there are really many of them.
• 23:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Not all of them I won't paint with too broad of a brush.
• 23:45
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Many of them are really thrown off.
• 23:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And so the way that the enemy tries to distract us just from connection with one another, from seeing one another, there's such a huge breakdown, and one of the biggest ones is in the family unit distracting people from one another in a family so that everybody's on their screens all the time.
• 24:01
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Nobody has any real conversations, you know, so that nobody looks at each other or talks to each other.
• 24:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: That's all like just coping with life on screens.
• 24:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And one of the other things that I'll mention is the enemy using screens to distract us from all of our feelings, like all the ways that we feel and all the things that we're going through.
• 24:21
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And I talk about how the enemy wants us to spend our life running away from our problems rather than taking them to the Lord in dedicated prayer.
• 24:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants us to use screens and technology as our main coping mechanism.
• 24:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I feel sad or I feel angry, so I'm just going to scroll on Instagram to just hope, like hope, those feelings go away.
• 24:42
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And what I talk about in the book that I've realized in my own life is that, like you scroll for a little while and the feelings are still there, like it doesn't make anything go away.
• 24:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It doesn't actually help, it just numbs us, and numbing us to our deep feelings, the way God designed us to feel deeply and to have angst and wrestle with things and things going on in our lives.
• 25:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants to be there with us and for us to go to him, and the enemy wants that to be the last thing that we do.
• 25:12
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So all of these distractions in our life the enemy tries to put at the forefront so that we don't go to Jesus.
• 25:18
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Have you seen that play out in your own life or in your family, ellen?
• 25:22
  Ellen Krause: Oh, my goodness, I sure have.
• 25:24
  Ellen Krause: It's interesting because several years ago my daughter worked at a restaurant.
• 25:30
  Ellen Krause: She was like a hostess of a very, very busy restaurant in a touristy town.
• 25:35
  Ellen Krause: And she came home and she said Mom, it's so sad to see families sitting at tables out to eat at a dinner and they're all on their conversations, like you said, where you're looking at people in the eye.
• 26:03
  Ellen Krause: I think it's just it does.
• 26:05
  Ellen Krause: It numbs us from having to have relationships, it numbs us to have difficult conversations, perhaps to say how we're feeling, and so it's a danger for sure, I think, for the family unit and something that we need to take ownership, I think, of.
• 26:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Totally, totally To change.
• 26:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And I talk to so many moms or families or even women who are single to say I feel like technology is controlling me and that I'm not in control of it anymore.
• 26:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And what I tell them is that it takes one conscious choice right For a mom, right in her home, to look at, okay, how is this all going?
• 26:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And if it's not going according to you know the way, what God wants for us, we need to make concrete changes and we need to live out those changes.
• 26:54
  Emily Wilson Hussem: If technology is controlling us, we need to get back in control of technology and do some.
• 26:59
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Parents or, you know, people have to make some choices that people are going to be unhappy with.
• 27:04
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, you bring a basket right.
• 27:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I totally, totally feel what your daughter said.
• 27:09
  Emily Wilson Hussem: As a person who is a waitress myself, nobody looks at each other.
• 27:12
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Bring a basket to the table right At the dinner, you know, and everybody puts their phone in the basket and that's it.
• 27:18
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So like it might take some getting used to you to be like, oh my gosh, gosh, we used to just look at our screens the whole time.
• 27:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It might take some getting used to, but it's a.
• 27:26
  Emily Wilson Hussem: There are worthwhile changes to be made to take back control of our use of technology.
• 27:33
  Ellen Krause: Yeah, you know one thing my husband is actually a really good conversationalist.
• 27:38
  Ellen Krause: I mean not so much, but we actually have like these little cards too for the dinner table, and they're so fun because they ask things that you just wouldn't even think of to get a conversation started and just to hear another side of what someone in your family thinks about something that you never even would have thought to talk about.
• 28:01
  Ellen Krause: So I love those little chat pack type card things.
• 28:05
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I love them too.
• 28:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I think they're so fabulous.
• 28:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I love when someone puts them like on a table at a wedding and they're just like little things for people to chat about rather than like, oh, what do you do for work.
• 28:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's like, no, let's just have some real conversations and learn about just the people at our table and have fun with it.
• 28:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I love that there's a lot of different companies that make them, but they're such a beautiful little tool for connecting with one another.
• 28:27
  Ellen Krause: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 28:29
  Ellen Krause: Well, there's just one more that I wanted to talk about that really hit my heart, and it was this need for women to value their worth based on their productivity and their performance and you talk about how it even starts.
• 28:46
  Ellen Krause: so young is the grades that you get, and I definitely could relate to that.
• 28:51
  Ellen Krause: But the part of it that really struck me that I'm going to take home is the part about prayer.
• 28:57
  Ellen Krause: You know we're talking to God, but he's not sitting right there.
• 29:02
  Ellen Krause: You're having a one-on-one conversation, like he's there spiritually but not physically, and you sort of get this sense.
• 29:11
  Ellen Krause: You describe it just as like is this a waste of time?
• 29:15
  Ellen Krause: Is this?
• 29:15
  Ellen Krause: I know God, you're there and you're listening, but it's not something that you can chuck off your productivity list and really think.
• 29:23
  Ellen Krause: You know, I've accomplished a lot Now over the years.
• 29:27
  Ellen Krause: I've definitely grown, grown, grown in that and I'm so grateful for prayer.
• 29:33
  Ellen Krause: I think it's like the closest connection we have to God and being able to talk to him.
• 29:38
  Ellen Krause: But I just want to see if maybe you would expand on that a little bit.
• 29:42
  Ellen Krause: I thought it was just so.
• 29:43
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Thank you.
• 29:44
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It changed me forever too, and a lot of women who read Sincerely Stoneheart.
• 29:48
  Emily Wilson Hussem: They bring that up as one of the most impactful parts of the whole entire thing in looking at prayer Because, like you mentioned, I talk about how we go back to when we were small and how the report card was such an important part of our lives and some of you out there every family.
• 30:03
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's a different pressure or stress on the report card, but many women I've talked to over the years said oh my goodness, if I didn't get good grades, I was worthless and I got punished or whatever it was.
• 30:15
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And we are taught to orient everything that we do to this collection of letters to show how valuable we are and how smart we are and how good we are.
• 30:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Nothing to do with the heart, nothing to do with our gifts, nothing to do with anything like that.
• 30:30
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's this set of letters to say how smart are you, how hard do you work Right?
• 30:33
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And so as children, we're taught to believe productivity is everything.
• 30:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I have to produce or I'm worthless.
• 30:41
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I have to produce or I just I'm useless.
• 30:44
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So it carries on into our lives, and especially in this culture of hustle, hustle, hustle, do more, do more, do more.
• 30:51
  Emily Wilson Hussem: This lie that was already sown into many of us when we were small comes into fruition in our lives as single women in the workforce, as mothers right Taking care of children, as mothers right, taking care of children, women doing all different kinds of things in all different seasons of life.
• 31:05
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We are taught that you have to check something off the to-do list.
• 31:08
  Emily Wilson Hussem: And if you haven't produced something, if you haven't made something what a waste of time, like you said.
• 31:13
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So the enemy sneaks in there to say prayer isn't productive, prayer is a waste of time.
• 31:22
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You could be, look at your to-do list, look at all these things.
• 31:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You could be doing all these things.
• 31:25
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You could check things off, you could, you know, make the dinner or do the things or whatever, and you'd have something to show for it.
• 31:32
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When you pray, right, you sit with the Lord, you quote, unquote have nothing to show for it, and the enemy wants us to be like oh yeah, okay, then prayer is going to be plan V on my list, after plan A, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, a, j, k, l, m, o, p, and so you just never get around to it because it's not seen as something productive.
• 31:52
  Emily Wilson Hussem: If I knit a sweater, I can hold a sweater, I have it there.
• 31:57
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But prayer changes us internally Things that we cannot see and the enemy, boy oh boy, wants us to believe.
• 32:04
  Emily Wilson Hussem: What a waste, so that we never do it when it is the most important work we can do.
• 32:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It is the central, essential part of the wellspring of everything that all the rest of the productive things that we can do can come forth from that place with more peace and with more joy and with more hope that we receive in being rooted in prayer with the Lord.
• 32:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Realizing that and talking with so many women who that line right, that that line of you know that I talk about productivity in the book.
• 32:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You think man, oh man, I have fallen for that lie too many times and I need to make a change.
• 32:39
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, like I book, you think man, oh man, I have fallen for that lie too many times and I need to make a change.
• 32:42
  Ellen Krause: Yeah, like I said you, putting the words to it and thinking about it, I feel like it takes this heavy weight off and says, no, that's not true.
• 32:53
  Ellen Krause: This is one of the most valuable uses of my time is building my relationship with the Lord.
• 32:59
  Ellen Krause: So thank you for just how you so eloquently put that together.
• 33:05
  Ellen Krause: And, emily, as we start to wrap things up here, I know we could talk about all 42 of the letters.
• 33:10
  Ellen Krause: They're just amazing, but what would you say is just a final word of encouragement to women battling spiritual lies?
• 33:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, god wants freedom for you and I think that can be such a trite thing.
• 33:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Sometimes you could put it on a tote bag and be like, oh yeah, the Lord wants freedom for me.
• 33:28
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But I mean that on the deepest level, in that he wants you to wake up in the morning believing the truth.
• 33:35
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants you to put your feet on the floor, believing the truth.
• 33:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: When those lies come in right, like you said, you want to stop it as quickly as possible, all of those ways that the enemy tries to destroy you in life.
• 33:47
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The Lord wants you to be free to say I'm not going to gossip, I'm not going to choose this sin, you know, and of course, the Christian life is easier said than done.
• 33:56
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But the Lord wants you to be free from those lies.
• 33:59
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants to set you free from those insane things that people have said to you over your life.
• 34:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: He wants to speak truth into those and it only comes through going back to him again and again and again and again.
• 34:11
  Emily Wilson Hussem: We think of all the people who went out to meet Jesus.
• 34:14
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I love the hemorrhaging woman, right, she could have been hopeless.
• 34:18
  Emily Wilson Hussem: She could have stayed at home and been like I have spent all I've had.
• 34:22
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's not worth it.
• 34:24
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But she goes to find the Lord, she goes to seek him, she reaches out to him.
• 34:29
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Then he sets her free from this ailment.
• 34:31
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The Lord wants us to continue to seek him and continue to live in that freedom, because it changes everything.
• 34:38
  Ellen Krause: Absolutely Wow.
• 34:39
  Ellen Krause: What a great way to leave a word of encouragement for our listeners out there that once you are aware of what so many of these things are, it gives you the opportunity to be free of that and take action like we've talked about Emily.
• 34:57
  Ellen Krause: Where can listeners connect with you and get your book?
• 35:02
  Ellen Krause: Sincerely Stoneheart.
• 35:03
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 35:05
  Emily Wilson Hussem: My book Sincerely Stoneheart is available wherever books are sold.
• 35:08
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's available on Amazon.
• 35:10
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I have a group discussion guide that's totally free.
• 35:12
  Emily Wilson Hussem: That's available on my website, emilywilsonministriescom, under my books.
• 35:17
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You can find that there.
• 35:19
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Women have been walking through this all over the world and it's so beautiful because it started so many real conversations that really you know so often we would never talk about most of these things with other people, but the group discussion guide, I hope can, you know, provide a springboard for you to have conversations with the women in your life, whether that's your mom, whether that's your Bible study and whether that's your small group at your church, to really share in your hearts together.
• 35:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So again, that's available at emilywilsonministriescom under my books and, since you haven't shown her, amazon, barnes Noble, wherever you get a book.
• 35:53
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Lots of Christian gift shops have it and I would love for you to pick up a copy and you can connect with me online.
• 35:59
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I'm over on Instagram trying to edify the world rather than distract.
• 36:04
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Give you know wonderful encouragement for the journey.
• 36:07
  Emily Wilson Hussem: So I'm just grateful for what you do in this world Coffee and Bible Time.
• 36:11
  Emily Wilson Hussem: What an edifying ministry for so many women around the world.
• 36:15
  Ellen Krause: Thank you, Emily.
• 36:16
  Ellen Krause: I appreciate that so much.
• 36:18
  Ellen Krause: Before I let you go, though, I have to ask you a couple of our favorite questions for our guests.
• 36:22
  Ellen Krause: What is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?
• 36:27
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Yes, I have a big old Bible with a hard blue cover.
• 36:31
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I should have brought it to show you.
• 36:32
  Emily Wilson Hussem: The translation is RSV, revised Standard Version, and it's got big old journaling.
• 36:38
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's a journaling Bible and I know you guys are into that.
• 36:41
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's you know.
• 36:42
  Emily Wilson Hussem: It's one of those ones where you had to find the right pens in order for it to not leak through.
• 36:46
  Emily Wilson Hussem: But I just love highlighting and writing and writing on the sides and writing whatever prayers are on my heart to the Lord, so I love that it has that, you know, area on the sides for me to be able to do that.
• 36:57
  Ellen Krause: So do tell then your favorite journaling pens are.
• 37:01
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Oh gosh, I don't know the brand.
• 37:03
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I know this, but this is not something I know.
• 37:06
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I bought them a while back when I got the Bible, and I've just been using them ever since, so I'm sorry that I'm not a good resource on that.
• 37:12
  Ellen Krause: No worries.
• 37:13
  Ellen Krause: Well, I just thank you so much, emily, for being here, for sharing your heart, for saying, bringing to life things that so many of us have thought of, but giving us an opportunity to see them for what they are and to prevent them from distracting us from the truth of God's love for us.
• 37:35
  Ellen Krause: So, thank you so much.
• 37:36
  Emily Wilson Hussem: Oh, it's been such a gift.
• 37:37
  Emily Wilson Hussem: I am, you know, just along with you on the journey.
• 37:41
  Emily Wilson Hussem: You and I are in this together, along with all the listeners, so thank you to all of you for just sharing in this conversation today.
• 37:47
  Ellen Krause: Well, if today's conversation stirred something in you, please share it with a friend, and don't forget to check out our community and resources at coffeeandbibletimecom.
• 37:58
  Ellen Krause: Until next time, keep delighting in God's word.