Latest / In His Circle / Courage In Spite of Fear | What Miriam Teaches Us | Ep 38

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Courage In Spite of Fear | What Miriam Teaches Us | Ep 38 · In His Circle

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to In His Circle, where real women share real stories and discover God's faithfulness in everyday life.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Tiffany Windsor and I'm Heather Brigstock, and we're so glad you're here.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're joining us from your kitchen table, your morning commute, or your favorite quiet place, we pray these conversations encourage your heart, strengthen your faith, and remind you that God is still writing beautiful stories every single day.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: So come and pull up a chair and join us in his circle.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's so great to see you again this week.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am so thankful to be here with you, Tiffany.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so thankful.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: We always have the greatest conversations, even in prep for what we're going to talk about on air.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel really charged up today.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I am right there with you.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your timing is always perfect.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: The last time we got together, I was so excited because you had just started back up the Bible studies, and I am learning so much, and I am so grateful.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're sticking with this into the holidays through December.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I know you have it all mapped out and I need to look at it again.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we're talking about the women of the Bible.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: When you presented Miriam last week, I learned so much and it came to life for me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: What I heard from you today as we were talking before we came on air is there's a lot of things that are going on in your life right now.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need to get into all of the specifics, but again, the story of Miriam came so much more to life for me.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Will you talk about that today?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I would love to.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest with you, when I was looking and realizing that Miriam was the woman that we were studying last week, I was a little discouraged because even though um, and we mentioned this, out of over a thousand names in the Bible, only 10% are women.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so she's mentioned several times.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly she's significant in the Bible, but still I was like, oh, what are we gonna pull out about Miriam?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it was funny because I had talked to my youngest son, Clayton, and I'd said, Okay, if I give you the word, the name Miriam from the Bible, what do you think of?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, honestly, mom, not much.
• 2:14
  unknown: Great.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he was in my first grade class, so clearly he should have picked something up if anybody did.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the more that I was digging about Miriam and her life and legacy, the more I realized just how much was in there.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then Tiffany, like you and I were just talking, I am really overwhelmed with the sense right now that the trajectory and the path that the Lord has us on with the Bible study, I just think that the Lord is doing something really special.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it makes me feel humbled and thankful to a God who not only knows our name and sees us, knows how many hairs are on our head, in whose hand our breath is, keeps our heart beating, but just cares enough to continue to develop us.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've been struck lately with the brevity of life.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We've lost a few friends lately, and it seems to kind of come in waves.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's made me reflective on just how important it is to live our days with meaning and how short life is.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that God doesn't get tired of each new generation, each new life investing and telling the story and growing that person and putting things in our life to help us grow closer to Him.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes each step feel really significant.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what we learned with Miriam.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I printed out my notes because it's been, and you know this, it's been a kind of a whale of a day, and I'd forgotten that we were podcasting, and then you were talking about Miriam, and I've been thinking about it, but then I printed out my notes again because I wanted it to be fresh.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And last week we were studying Miriam and just a couple of different things that I think were impactful for me.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: The name Miriam, and a lot of people that study Hebrew, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, so but I do know that there are word trees.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about root words in English and word trees in Hebrew, just to kind of draw a comparison.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: The English language, we have so many words.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're very descriptive and articulate with our language.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew language operates more in pictures, and so they have these things called word trees where they would have sort of a root word, and then you can add a letter here or a letter here, and it draws kind of a different picture, and so the name has meaning both in the way it's drawn and the way it sounds and what it means, so so many things.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The name Miriam, we see the root mar, which means bitter, and we talked about that because when you think about the time that Miriam was born, she was born during a time of bondage, and the children of Israel were were literally slaves in Egypt.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had one sweet lady that was in our Bible study last week remind us that you know today you you have a lot of people that are trying to disprove the Bible and say, oh, the Hebrew children were never there in Egypt.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But even the very fact that those things have been tried to be erased shows us even more so that it's true.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's countless archaeological finds that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the fact that they try to hide them is really impactful because people want to make these stories seem false and they're not.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: The archaeological finds are so profound.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking really quickly about a find that they had just recently I was reading in the news, and one of the words that they found, it wasn't the word Hebrew, but it had the same center sound like E-B R E, so Eber.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And they said it's very close, and it showed an enslaved person, and just once again, it shows you that uh the God of the Bible is real and true.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Miriam would have been enslaved, her parents would have been enslaved, and you think about them naming their daughter, their first daughter, Miriam, which means bitterness.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You also see the word rebellion, and we talked about the power of a name and how someone sometimes lives up to their name.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've often thought about this, like George G.W.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Bush, right?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was George Washington Bush, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: His parents named him that as a baby, and he grew to be the president.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I you just think about George Washington Carver.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he had the name George Washington Carver, and inside of him are these seeds.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, he felt like he was endowed for greatness.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Zig Ziggler says that up.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: My dad used to tell me that as a child, you're endowed with the seeds of greatness.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when you have a name like that, you kind of have a reputation to live up to, and the power of a name.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you see this girl's name meaning rebellion.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, I don't see it as a bad rebellion, but almost like a fire.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about the oldest daughter, and I'm the oldest in my family, the oldest child in my family, and I think about my oldest who is a daughter, and just the fire that's inside of her.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: I sense a fire inside of me, the passion.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times they say, don't mess with the oldest daughter.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she just has something, she's protective, she's driven, she's hardworking, she has a standard that she's gonna uphold.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see this with the life of Miriam.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other part of her name, Drop of the Sea, it's formed by combining a word for drop with sea relating to the water and the sea.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll we'll see in a little bit that her name does connect with that.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the first story of Miriam we see in the Bible, she's the firstborn daughter, and she's very protective.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: She's a woman of significance because she's named.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's the first woman called to be a prophet.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: She's part of a core group of women committed to preserving the lives of the males in Egypt.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So Pharaoh has ordered all of the boys to be killed.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Miriam is here and she's protecting her brother.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's putting her life on the line.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like the midwives, we talked about the midwives who easily could have been killed, but here they are protecting the lives of these baby boys.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things, the takeaways that we had for that is just realizing that we have a call on our life.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And regardless of whether culture says it's right or wrong, what God says is right is right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And as women of the word and women who love the Lord, we are called to stand in righteousness, whether it's easy or whether it's hard, and whether we're alone or whether we're together.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I see that Miriam did that, and it was really impactful as a young girl.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: She did this, she protected her brother.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: The first time that we see Miriam, she's actually watching her brother who's been put in a basket in the bull rushes, and her mother's left her there to kind of watch what's going to happen to baby Moses.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I was reading about when they're learning about the character of a person in the Bible, they take the verbs about them and they kind of put it into a song or a poem.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: The words for Miriam, it says, and she stood and she said, and she went and she called.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, that was very resounding.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: She's a woman of action and of purpose.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't loud and abrasive.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't like, look at me, look at me, but she was a woman of action.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: She was intentional.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a cause, and she wasn't afraid to take a stand.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: She showed courage because courage doesn't mean that you do not have fear.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Courage is doing the right thing in spite of the fear.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the enemy is always there whispering in your ear and trying to tell you what the outcome is going to be.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about this false evidence appearing real.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's what fear is.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look what could happen, or think what people might do, or or this or that.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the voice of the enemy because God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Here is Miriam, in spite of the fear, in spite of the possibility of her getting in trouble, or even worse, she does right and protects her brother.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses grows to be, you know, the vindicator, the one that actually leads his people out of Israel.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that this is something that I had written down in a world filled with social injustice, unfairness, and deviations from the Bible and God's truth, we as women are called to take a stand.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I feel really strongly about that as Christians.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're citizens of two countries, an earthly and a heavenly country.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we're going into a political season.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that it is sometimes uncomfortable to say this, but you are called to be a Christian statesman or a Christian stateswoman.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are citizens of heaven and praise the Lord for that.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Once you're born again, you're redeemed, we do have a home in heaven.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're seated in heavenly places.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: But just as sure as I'm sitting here, you are a citizen of this country as well, and you are called to be salt of the earth, not salt of the church.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it is time for you to stand up, step out into the light, and salt your area.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we do that by advocating for righteousness.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that you have to go out and wave a picket sign or charge the city building, but you do need to vote.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So most elections are determined by between 10 to 30% of people.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people sitting home are evangelical Christians.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's pathetic.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to get out and vote.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: We need to figure out who the people are that are running in our area and make sure that we're advocating for righteousness in government.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: They may not be your best friend, they may not be your pastor, but they're closely aligned with your values and are promoting the things that are important to you and to our country.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that our country was founded on Christian values, that we were a country born with a mission-minded mindset.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we advocate for those principles.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I was listening to someone talk, and this is a quick deviation, but they said, you know, in our Declaration of Independence, it says we're endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the very fact that it says we're endowed by our creator gives credence to the fact that we have a creator.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we look to that creator for his values.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: All of our values come for the creator that gave us our certain unalienable rights.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We can't pull the two things apart.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: We can't have our cake and eat it too.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have to get our unalienable rights from the same creator that endowed them to us, but we also have to hold to the values that that creator holds to.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They go together, just like two peas in a pod.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as Christian women, we're called to be righteous.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the things that I learned from the life of Miriam.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Miriam was really bold when they crossed the Red Sea and went through just the miracle of seeing Pharaoh's army being drowned.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Pharaoh, the strongest, most powerful leader in the world.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And his army, I mean, I can't remember how many chariots and all of his horsemen, all of his soldiers that were literally drowned, and they get over on the other side.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Moses sings a song, and then Miriam, the Bible says, leads the women as they sing a song.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you can look at that how you want.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's in the Bible for a reason.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: These same women that were oppressed and that were trying to save the lives of these babies.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here they come.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: They've seen their captors be washed away in the ocean and they're celebrating to the God of gods and the Lord of Lords.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so powerful.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Remember to praise the Lord.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that we enter into his gates with Thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's something I think I have forgotten over the past few days is to remember to come to the Lord with a thankful heart, reminding ourselves the things that we have.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what Miriam was doing.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: She was just putting a pin right here.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Look what the Lord has done.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: What a great victory he wrought in Israel.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And think about the victories that he's wrought in my life and your life.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so so powerful.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: As all these things happen, the very last part that we see of Miriam is so profound because she messes up.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Explain that to me.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I feel I feel so sad, but you know what?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: It hits home.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: It really does.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because she's not perfect.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: She and her brother Aaron speak against Moses and they're kind of jealous about has God used just Moses?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Look at this Ethiopian woman he's married, look at who he really is.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is God just speaking through Moses or isn't he speaking through us?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're drawn by bitterness and envy as women.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really easy for us to get our eyes off of Jesus and put our eyes down on ourselves.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Poor me.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get to do this.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Poor me.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: My husband didn't listen to this.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Poor me.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the enemy loves to play that soundtrack.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's got music that goes with that song in a thousand different tempos.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he just loves that and he puts it on repeat.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And pretty soon your head goes lower, your eyes sink down, and the only thing that you can see in your vision is yourself and how bad you've been treated or what you're missing out on.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Miriam did.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And a scary thing happened.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: God called her on it immediately.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that God came down and sharply rebuked them.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Miriam actually got leprosy and was cast outside the camp for seven days.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably humiliating at best, but also it was redemptive because the Lord allowed her to really see herself for who she was, like we all should.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're all just dust, sinners saved by the grace of God, Lord willing, filled with the Holy Spirit, cracked vessels that God can shine through.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's just so important that we remember who we are, remember that we have a calling, but also that the power that moves inside of us isn't it's not my words, it's the Lord working through us.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your actions, it's God working through you.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So in the realm of influence that God has given you in the garden that He's put you in, I think it's a constant reminder to me and hopefully to you, just to make sure that our motives are clear and that we don't allow our heart to be full of bitterness.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Bitterness is a weed and it goes down like a tap root, and you know, it just it's like a poison.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And nasty roots create nasty fruits, and it's just the way it is.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have a root of bitterness, the things that you're producing in your life, they're gonna be a little bit skewed.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so something that boy, I've been there.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I just have to ask for forgiveness, ask the Lord to clean my heart, make sure that my motives are pure, my intentions are really to just give God the glory, make sure that we're pointing other people to Jesus, and then and then let the Lord do the work.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: But whew, that's Miriam in a nutshell.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in my notes, this has really stood out for me as you've been talking about this.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: God has a special role for women.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there are so many times when women are afraid to step up.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you talked about this, doing right despite the fear equals courage, false evidence appearing real.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I know this happens with men too, but since my focus in in all of this is about women, when you talk about bitterness, I may be jumping here, but when you talk about bitterness and I read using our words for good, it seems like that's really connected there.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: I have been blessed, I I'm not a bitter person.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know now it's because I listen to the Lord more than I listen to my own thoughts.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like bitterness comes when you feel like things aren't going your way.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: But if we don't step into that mindset of this has to be my way, and we let the Lord lead, I don't see how you can be bitter.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: It makes total sense, and I love that.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it really stems back to the battle between the flesh and the spirit.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is a battle every day.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I tell my kids this story.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: They all know this story, but we pull it out of the book every once in a while.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story about a man who had two dogs, a black dog and a white dog, and he ran a dog fighting event, and every night he would have his two dogs fight each other, and people would place bets.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Every night they would come because it was completely random.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some nights the black dog would win, some nights the white dog would win, and it was always different.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that always stayed the same was that whatever dog the man bet on won.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they finally picked up on it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, How in the world are you?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so random.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can't tell the difference.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: How in the world do you know which dog is going to win, the black dog or the white dog?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, It's easy.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, It's the dog I feed that day.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so powerful.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a picture of our spirit and our flesh.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can feed our spirit or we can feed our flesh.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the one that's going to win is the one that we feed.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's a constant reminder to stay in the word.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you give the devil an inch, he'll take it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he'll take a foot.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we fight.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: And greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not afraid and we don't back down, but feed your spirit.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: We feed our spirit by reading the Bible.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Saturate your mind with the Bible.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say this more than a discipleship book.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: A discipleship book is good, but read your Bible first.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't understand it, you're washing your brain.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the more that you wash your brain, the more you're going to retain.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to have a cleaner mind because of it.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Read your Bible.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Pray to God.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, well, I don't know what to say.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, say something.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Even if it's just a few sentences, say something.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because the more you practice to pray, the more it's going to be easy.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then in your situations, feed yourself with good.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And people like, what does that mean?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that means control the things that go in through your senses.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the things that you see through your eyes, that affects you.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: The things that you listen to, that affects you.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: The things that you touch, the people you hang around.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you put up guards so that the things that come into your body are things that are wholesome, pure, and holy, because absolutely when you get squeezed, that's what's going to come out.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever is inside is going to come out when you get squeezed.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you feed yourself with the good.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And bitterness can't live in a heart of thankfulness.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Bitterness can't live in a heart where the scripture is being read and spoken all the time.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: It might be there for a little bit, but it's going to feel pretty uncomfortable.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for bringing all of these stories to life for us because every woman can relate to this story.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it may be something from the past, it may be something from this morning.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: But here's what I'm finding.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: The more that we dig into the Bible and we really truly learn about these stories and especially about these women, we can relate and we can move forward in our lives with so much more clarity and release the heaviness.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that is by turning to God through learning what these stories are teaching us.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I thank you for that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thankful for you, Tiffany.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: You um you wrap it up with a bow so well and you make it apply so well.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am very thankful.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: If today's conversation encouraged your heart, I'd love to invite you to join our growing community over on inhiscircle.substack.com.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you'll find articles, seedlings, devotionals, podcast episodes, and a community of women encouraging one another as we walk with Jesus.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know a woman who needs to hear that God can use her without requiring her to have it all together, would you share this episode with her?
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we all need the reminder that courage doesn't require perfection.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, keep spending time in God's Word, keep listening for his voice, and keep taking that next faithful step because we're all learning to walk faithfully one step at a time.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: May God's peace guard your heart, may his word strengthen your spirit, and may you always remember you have a place here in his circle.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Tiffany Windsor, and I'm Heather Brickstock.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.