Holly Ruddock is an award-winning author, speaker, and spiritual mentor known for her bold faith and disarming humor. She believes in wild, hard obedience to God and isn't afraid of tough conversations — yet somehow still makes you laugh in the middle of them. As director of a school of ministry, Holly also mentors women to live their God-given purpose with courage for King Jesus.

Married for nearly four decades, she's a proud mother of 4 veterans, and Mimi to six beautiful granddaughters. For enjoyment, she loves adventures in her blue VW Bug, and spending as much time in her garden as possible.

My website is http://hollysueruddock.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/holly.ruddock

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you Holly.

What part of the world are you in today?

I am in South Louisiana, Hammond, which is between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

I'm intrigued.

There's some place in your heart that sees it as important for standing in the gap for others.

If that is accurate, where did that come from?

It's absolutely accurate.

I think it comes from starting as a child and feeling bullied and not really knowing how to stand up for myself.

But it's interesting enough, even as a young girl, I knew how to stand up for others.

And as I've gotten older, I began to just feel like this cause for spiritual justice, to make sure people are heard, that people who are hurting, people who have deep wounds, physical or spiritual, that not only do they have a soft place to land, that I have ears that want to hear.

Also that there's a God who wants not just mercy on their lives.

He wants them to be recommissioned.

And so to stand up for them is to also give them permission to feel but heal.

And I think it's really important that people are heard because that's the beginning of healing is that when they are heard.

And so I think sometimes for me, when I just make time to listen to somebody, they already feel like they're worthwhile, like their story matters.

And so standing up for others comes from a deep need in me to feel like defended.

I even think there's a part of us that wants to be defended in things.

And we have to come to a holy conclusion that God will defend us.

There's a song that is, he is our great defender.

And that his defense, a lot of times looks like redemption in situations that it doesn't look like a justice defense, but a lot of times it just is healing for us to go and help others heal.

That is his great defense is when we become whole, we get to go give the devil a black eye on what hurt us.

You talked about recommission.

Dive deeper into that, please.

Well, I think when we are injured spiritually or physically, we have to heal and come to a place where we realize that we're not out of the game, we just need to have a pause.

I liken it to military people coming home, and they get the rest, but then they get recommissioned, they get redeployed.

It's like this is not, we're not meant to sit back on our haunches, that we've got to take the kingdom of God, we've got to take the kingdom of God to a broken world.

And so we've got to heal so we can get back out there.

And a lot of times when you sit with people who have deep wounds, either church hurt, family hurt, wounds that have happened in their childhood, that there's this longing to do the will of God, but there's this cloud over them that causes them to, I would say, resist or refuse out of fear.

And to come in and give people, especially people who are just in a space of delay, I'd even say that they're, I don't want to say that they're resisting the Holy Spirit, they're just fearful of getting back out there and getting hurt again.

And to recommission them, put the sword back in their hands and say, listen, it will hurt again, and he will heal again.

That's how we do life.

That's how we take, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence.

You're not talking about those who've come from war, just because you saw it in a movie, you've had the experience by having children who've done military and come back home.

So have you seen that with them in terms of the renewal that's necessary that comes from God?

Absolutely.

I have two boys that were deployed at the same time and they both came home.

One came home physically injured.

The other one came home with PTSD.

And the renewing of the mind takes time.

And my son tells the story of learning what it means to just be a son again and not be in this warrior status.

And I think that's where we have to come to, even in our walk with the Lord, we have to be sons and daughters before we're anything else.

That brings us back to our place of healing.

And so when we had children that came home, our first job in their time of rest was to make sure the home was peaceful and that they felt safe and that they knew that we were for them.

And that to me is just a physical representation of what Holy Spirit does for us.

He makes sure that in our place of hurt or injury, he reminds us, I am for you.

Tell me about your journey to coming to meet Jesus.

I was young.

I grew up in the church and I came to know the Lord at a young age and experienced his power.

I'm just in a prayer language at a young age.

And even in my teen years, I didn't realize there was this, that people were drawn to me.

I never even heard the word anointed.

Like people would say later, Holly, you're so anointed.

I didn't even know what they were talking about.

But there was people that would just be drawn to me and they would want to sit down and just tell me their stories, even as a teenager.

And I thought that's, I never took it lightly.

I found it interesting that even young girls in situations in home lives would sit and reveal to me things that were happening in their life or things that were going on.

Suicide, they would sit down with me and tell me their story.

And I was like, wow, I don't know why you're telling me this, but let me pray.

And as I got older, I felt like maybe I just got too familiar or just, it became, I just kind of went through a difficult time in our marriage and I just went numb to the Lord.

And it was actually in the healing of our marriage that I came to know Father God in a stoop down sort of way.

He just came to my mess and I just learned about the God who sits on the bathroom floor with you and just holds you.

And that's when I came out of my ash and went, I'm going to make sure that I am that person for other people too.

I just, that was my encounter with him as a healer and redeemer in just my messy bits of life.

All right.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

You listened to the entire 12 minutes before.

What's a message you'd leave for future you listening to this?

Don't be afraid to make the hard decision, Holly Sue.

Don't be afraid to do the hard things, even if it's scary.

I still have to tell myself that now, and I'm sure I'll have to tell myself in five years, just keep obeying him.

Holly, this has been a great pleasure.

Before we leave, is there anything else you'd like to share with our amazing audience?

I think I would just share with them what I just said, that he is worth giving everything up for.

The disciple said, where would I go?

Where would I go?

He is so worth selling everything and following him into the unknowns because he, I don't want to be anywhere he's not.

Us as followers of Christ realize that comfort is secondary.

Following him is the most important thing in our life.

I love that.

Yeah.

Some really cool bites there.

Yeah.

Comfort is secondary.

Following him is primary.

Yeah.

So again, Holly, a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on what is Inspired by 12 Minute Contours.