Today's discussion centers around the profound themes explored in Natalie Runion's book, "Raised to Stay." We delve into the complex realities of maintaining faith within the church while grappling with personal and communal challenges. Natalie shares her insights on the importance of perseverance in ministry, emphasizing that love for others should transcend the challenges posed by interpersonal wounds. This episode provides encouragement for those navigating the difficult terrain of church dynamics, offering wisdom on remaining steadfast in one’s commitment to both Jesus and the community. Join us as we explore these vital conversations that resonate deeply with our shared experiences and spiritual journeys.

Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the importance of perseverance in ministry, especially when facing adversity from individuals within the church.
• Natalie Runion discusses her experiences with church hurt and the significance of maintaining a relationship with Jesus through difficult times.
• Listeners are encouraged to engage in open dialogue with their children about faith, particularly when navigating hurt from the church community.
• The conversation highlights the necessity of community support and mentorship in overcoming personal and collective struggles within the church.
• Natalie reflects on the concept of entitlement in ministry and encourages a perspective of service rather than seeking personal gain.
• The podcast underscores the value of forgiveness and the process of giving one's hurt to Jesus, as a means to heal and move forward.

Hey there and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

This podcast is all about providing clarity, insight and encouragement like mission and my name is Aaron Sandemier and I get to be your host.

Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to have with us on the podcast Natalie Runyon.

We sit down and discuss her book, Raised to Stay.

This was a book recommended to me and then one that I've recommended to a lot of people since then.

Just a insightful discussion on what it means to be raised in the church, to see things in the church and at the same time remain in love with Jesus and really appreciate Natalie's heart and her insight and her wisdom.

And she makes a podcast job host job easy.

And so it's just fun to sit down with her and really enjoyed having her on the podcast.

Do want to ask you to continue to subscribe to the podcast?

I know the podcast I subscribe, subscribe to are the ones I listen to show up on my feed every Monday or Tuesday.

And I know what I'm going to listen to throughout the week.

I'm not only a podcast host producer, but I am also a consumer and so I listen to a lot of podcasts and that's just the way the way it works for me.

And also continue to send in your questions for Back Channel with Foe.

That's where we get to sit down with Dick Foth and get to learn from him his wisdom, his insight and experience.

And it's always a joy to spend time with him.

Well, there's no time better than now to get started.

So here we go.

Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.

Excited to be back today with a return guest.

Natalie, welcome back to the podcast.

Good to be back.

Thanks for having me.

No, it's looking forward to it.

Last time we were talking about protein bars.

We're not talking about protein bars today.

We're talking about other things.

But excited to jump into your book Raised to Stay.

But before I do that, will you share a little bit about yourself?

Yeah.

I live in Kentucky with my husband Tony.

We've been married almost 19 years.

Two teenage daughters who are 14 and 17.

I've been a pastor's kid.

My kids are being raised in a ministry home and you know, grew up in the charismatic church in the Midwest.

Fell in love with the church early.

Saw my parents go through some pretty bad church hurt right before I was graduating high school, so changed my whole trajectory.

I ended up going to a public university instead of going to a Christian college.

Majored in science, found a beautiful ministry on campus Called Campus Crusade for Christ.

That changed my life and got involved leading worship which when I graduated college ended up putting me back into ministry as a worship leader in local churches while I was a full time teacher.

So I was bivocational until I was about 33 and then the Lord allowed me to go full time into worship ministry, which I did for 10 years before the Lord called me into different areas of ministry that I'm in now with raised stay, which is really talking to pastors, leaders, churchgoers about our tension of wrestling with God's people but wanting to stay with Jesus.

And this has been the last five years of my life, really traveling, getting to see the global church at her best, and also wrestling with people at their worst.

And I would say that this is a, a beautiful and brutal space that we exist in.

And so I'm, I'm honored that the Lord has trusted me with this.

I have gone back and forth with him many times and said, lord, you can feel free to take me out of this whenever you want because this is a hard job.

But I do believe he's raising up people in this age and time to really encourage the church as he prepares to return.

Wow, good word.

And man, I could go 12 different directions there, but I won't do that to you.

So persevering in ministry and you hit it right off there.

Persevering in ministry when sometimes the people you're dealing with aren't the friendliest and kindness and kind of like hugging a cactus, as I say.

So how have you learned to persevere?

It has really been through making sure that I understand that my mandate in ministry is not ever going to be about position, status.

It's always going to be surrounded by how I love people.

And this is, this is the part that my parents did well.

I mean, we all know as parents we struggle with what am I doing right, what am I not doing right?

My parents did a lot of things well.

And one of the things they did well was they taught us the importance of loving people.

Before, we loved a position, a title.

And I think then when we got hurt, when we got wounded, when things happened that felt like a betrayal, the love for the people was even greater than that betrayal.

And so I kept going back to the church.

That perseverance had nothing to do with people deserving my perseverance.

It had nothing to do with people earning it.

It was truly my relationship with Jesus and watching how he persevered for the joy set before him.

We know on the cross he could have called 10,000 angels down.

And he didn't.

He stayed.

And he stayed not because he wanted to prove anything, but because of us.

He stayed because of us.

And that's really when I get wounded by the church, and I, and we all have.

I've wounded people in the church.

It always goes back to persevering is staying with the people, staying with Jesus, even when institutions and organizations fail us.

Wow.

So the reality is many of the people listening to this podcast, they're.

They've raised their kids in the church.

Maybe they're a lot of admissions at the same time how.

And you said your parents did many, many things well on encouraging the love for people.

And so when, when the hurt came, they were able to focus on that love.

Any words of wisdom for parents, maybe that they've raised their kids in the church and they're in.

But when their kids, they've held some of that hurt rather than being able to focus on loving people and maybe walked away from that.

Any.

Any thoughts on that, Natalie?

I mean, I'm in it.

I'm in it with my kids 14 and 17.

And I think if we're honest, we all have this fear that they're not going to choose Jesus.

They're not going to choose not even ministry, but they're going to walk away from their relationship with God.

So, you know, I've watched my own parents walk this out with my sister.

And again, you can raise two people in the exact same home, exact same experience, and two different outcomes.

And the thing that I love that I'm watching not only with my parents and us as adult children now and then, watching my friends walk this out is how open dialogue and constant conversation in the wrestling is so beautiful, even when we disagree, even when there's tension, even when there's very obvious arguments and there's a lot of parent guilt.

There's a lot of parents who say, well, if I would have just like, done this differently, if I would have been home more, if I wouldn't have traveled.

And I travel all the time.

And I'm thinking, lord, are my kids going to be in therapy?

Because, you know, I travel.

But I love that what I'm seeing is people getting in the trenches with their children, with their prodigal, with their one wrestling.

And they're not defending the church, they're repenting for their part in creating environments that were hurtful or wounding.

They're also challenging their prodigal to stay connected to Jesus, even when they can see that they're far away and they Keep speaking scripture over them and praying for them because we know God is the holy hound of heaven.

So he's constantly pursuing those who are in the wrestle.

He says he's the God of Jacob, which means he loves a good wrestle.

He's not scared of it.

So to watch my friends do this, my parents do this, where they're not fearful, but they're just offering space for that wrestle in a way that will obviously bring them back to Jesus, has been really encouraging for me as a parent who, hey, the jury's still out.

I don't know what direction my children will go, but I do know this, that God loves them more than I do.

And so as much as I worry about them, he loves them even more.

And so I just want to encourage parents like, God's eyes have never come off of you or your children, and he's very aware of where they are and he will.

He will bring them back.

Yeah, it's so true.

Hounds of Heaven makes me think of Black Sheep and Ben Fuller.

So it's the one.

Anyway, I've been listening to him a lot lately, so.

So how does knowing that Jesus is with us in the wondering, wandering wondering and wrestling, how does that help us or impact us?

When I write those words, I think about my own journey because I think growing up in the 90s, there was such a Christian evangelical culture that so many of us followed.

And there were very clear yeses and very clear nos, very rights, very wrongs.

I think the lines have blurred over the years and I was always living in a constant place of like, I don't want to mess up, I don't want to sin.

I mean, I think that's the heart of every believe.

But to the point of becoming a perfectionist and fearful of failure, to the point where I wouldn't step out in obedience.

And when I learned that Jesus was not at all mad at me for asking questions, he wasn't mad at me for struggling with theological concepts or even being bored with religion or the things that he tells us to throw off that the church tells us to carry.

There's so much in this that when I realized that Jesus would go with me, whether I was behaving or whether I wasn't believing, whatever that looked like, that he would never leave me, there became this kind of change in the way I perceived him as judge, though he is judge to being a true father and friend.

And that gave me both a love to want to be obedient to the things he was calling me to do, but also a Holy fear to know that there are black and white things that the Scriptures are very clear about.

And there is a cost to not following the precepts in the Word.

And therefore, though God is Father and friend, I will also stand before him and be held accountable for how I wandered, how I wandered, how I wrestled.

And so giving our kids that permission, giving our spouse that permission and that it's actually out of our control how the Lord journeys with us in this process.

And so when I realized, like, wow, he's not up there angry or frustrated with me because I'm having these questions about theologic, you know, theological things or faith or deconstruction, he's actually like resting in that with me and just patience.

And I just, I don't know, there was just something so sweet about that.

And then to be able to offer that to other people.

Yeah, was, was very freeing, I'm sure.

Do you think, at least Aaron Sandemier said, is when people question me, I think I become defensive.

And so I think that's, I project that on to God in the.

And that when, if I ask questions or am wondering or wondering that somehow he's going to be on the defensive.

And that's obviously illogical academically and illogical to think that.

But do you think that plays into some of our conversation when we think we're afraid that he's going to come defensive?

And normally when people come defensive, they don't.

They're not gentle in their defensiveness.

It can be wrath and judgment and anger.

Or is that just my thoughts of it?

No, I mean, I've heard it said too that a lot of times we project our fatherly figures here on earth, we kind of project that onto God as well.

That if our, our earthly fathers weren't patient or defensive, that we kind of see God through that lens, that that's how he's going to be.

Which is why it's really important that we have a lot of people speaking into our lives who are trusted leaders, trusted voices to give us a multi dimensional example of what mentorship, discipleship can look like, to give us different lenses on how God is through the Scriptures.

And we, it's.

It's hard because even I want to defend the church.

I want to defend.

When people say I've been hurt in ministry, I want to be like, well, they didn't mean it.

But here's the deal.

Like, the thing about God is he's a really good listener.

And thank God because I talk a lot, you know, thank goodness that he is a Good listener.

But that we can offer that to each other in that the season of big questions and that and model on earth the kind of father that God is, who is slow to anger, quick to love.

That it's his kindness that leads us to repentance, not shame.

That there is conviction, but not through condemnation.

It's through the kindness of the Father.

And so when I feel that kind of prick in my heart of oh, I shouldn't have said that, I shouldn't have done that, that there is a kindness that comes from the Lord that leads me to a place of saying, man, I don't want to be like that.

I don't want to do that again.

And so I do think that depending on our earthly fathers, the men in our lives, the leaders in our lives, that we do assign that to God.

And that's why it's so important to be in the scriptures to know who God really is.

Yeah, I think I had a very.

And he's still living a patient and loving father.

So probably it's more Aaron.

That's the one that is the driven my kids would call me.

The listeners know, they call me when I'm on vacation, they call me Ron.

When we're at home, they call me Aaron.

Because the double A personality, you know, dream driven this comes out.

And so probably that's more to me speaking into to my issues than my dad's.

But at the same time, you know, I don't want that my kids to per.

You know, what the.

How they see me to be projected on our heavenly Father.

And so good word for sure.

We've had lots of conversations in our home about the.

The Ron and the Aaron and which one they like best.

So anyway, it's your kids, man.

They will tell you the truth whether you want to know it or not.

So actually it was very good.

It let me realize that maybe I did need to tamper down some that type double A personality.

So.

So have you personally experienced.

You write about the ways that God is.

You've experienced God disrupting your life to kind of test your faith.

Can you, can you share a little bit more about that?

Well, I'm kind of like a type B. I'm probably type C more I am sort of like the creative, right.

Like I'm kind of swing by the seat of your pants.

If it feels good, do it like you know.

But then at the same time as a woman, I do struggle with control.

I struggle with needing things to have definitive outcomes.

I want to make sure everybody's safe.

Nobody's going to get hurt.

We were living in Cincinnati, knew everyone, grew up there, and the Lord invited us out to this large, mega church in Colorado Springs.

And it was terrifying to leave everything we knew and to go out there and not know anyone.

It was the first time that I would be walking through a grocery store and not run into an old friend or go to a church and be trusted.

And how that was maybe one time that I can look back and say, the Lord literally had us uproot out of everything that we knew to go into the unknown, to go where we knew no one, nobody cared we were there.

And to sit in this wilderness where we were just us, our nucleus as a family.

It was a horrible.

Because God allowed it.

A horrible ministry season where I was being stretched and I didn't have the safety net of familiarity and really learned that God will oftentimes send us out to a wilderness not to punish us, but to draw us closer in.

And that's where raised to stay.

This ministry was birthed, was in a desert season.

And I think that it teaches us that when we're connected to Jesus, that good fruit can be produced even in the desert, when we're holding on to the living water and that there are these streams when he says that he will lead us by, you know, these streams and along still waters and he'll restore our soul.

Sometimes that's just putting little bits of water in front of us just to sustain us.

He's feeding us by ravens, right, to get us to the next thing.

And I've seen that now in my life, I would say over the last 10 years, especially him saying, okay, great, you did that.

We did that together.

Now let's get a little more uncomfortable.

Let's get a little bit more.

And we could see him as seasons of punishment.

We could see it as we've been disobedient, or we could see it as an invitation to draw closer to the Lord and learn where our resources and our source really come from.

Wow.

And I think that probably resonates to a lot of listeners in missionaries listening in because they've taken this step of faith and they've moved out and they thought it was going to go a certain way at least, and it's maybe not going that way.

And the quote you wrote in the book, I'm here doing what you asked me to do, and yet it feels the hardest in a season.

I Am the most obedient.

I'm being the most pressed.

You promised you won't leave or forsake me, and I'm trusting you to be my defender.

But this feels like a season of punishment.

And so as I read that, that I'm sure that there's at least I've felt that way as a missionary at.

And I'm sure many of the listeners have felt that way.

Can you just.

How did you wrestle in that season with that?

Just that.

That quote?

Once again, I'm here doing what you asked me to do.

And I'm sure missionaries would say, God, I know you've called me to this place to do what you've asked me to do, but this is hard.

I'm in a season when I'm being the most obedient.

I've left home, I've left.

I've traveled around the world.

I'm learning a culture, learning a language.

I'm being obedient, but I feel the most pressed.

God, you promised you won't leave or forsake me, and I'm trusting you to be my defender.

But at the same time, I'm here in this foreign country, and it almost feels like it's a punishment.

Will you share a little bit more about it?

It's interesting because when you're in it, you're not necessarily looking through a lens of redemption yet.

You haven't seen the other side.

So you're in it, and there is no end.

There is no, how does this end?

I can look back on it now and say, oh, God's been so faithful.

And look at how he turned this into a whole ministry, and he turned it into this, you know, story.

But when you're in it, you think, this is how I'm gonna die.

Like, this is the cost of following Jesus.

And we see it through scriptures.

I mean, Paul's like, if you could take this thorn from my flesh, that'd be awesome.

And I honestly think that was persecution.

I think that thorn in his flesh was the constant shipwrecks and being betrayed by his friends and enemies and being hunted down in the wilderness and in the sea.

I mean, he literally, literally couldn't catch his breath before somebody else was coming after him.

And I think for a lot of us, that's what it feels like when you're in it.

Like, I didn't sign up for this.

Like, I signed up for.

Yeah, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't think that I would be waking up every day and questioning if you Hear me if you see me.

And.

And so I think when you're in it, it's really hard to.

To see what ended up.

And so I had to do several things.

I, first of all, had to keep journaling and being in the Word and worshiping.

I had to stay in a faith community, even though that faith community felt unsafe, not physically, but because I was going through a hard season, and I didn't know how to articulate that it was that place that was causing the hard season.

I had to keep mentors and people in my life who had known me prior to this season very close.

People who didn't identify me as Natalie the worship leader, but Natalie the little girl who was a dreamer and loved people and reminded me of who God had made me to be.

I had to have voices, yeah, in my life who weren't necessarily on the field with me or in the church with me or in that space, but just knew me as someone who wasn't this broken version of myself.

I had to lean deeply into my spouse.

I will tell you that my husband, along with God, are the two reasons I'm still in ministry and to have a spouse to look at you and say, I know this is hard, but we have to figure out why God brought us here and to be unified even in, like, hardship, and to walk that out.

And so I would say, while you're in it, you know, you have to make very clear, kind of, like, line in the sand moments where you're like, I'm not compromising my time with the Lord.

I'm not compromising communication with my spouse.

I'm not compromising discipleship and mentorship.

These are things that are fundamental principles.

Paul and Timothy, you know, we see it, and Ruth and Naomi, we could trauma bond over the things that are hurting us, or we can find people who will keep calling us higher and remind us why we can't quit.

And that's challenging when everything in your fiber just wants to go back home and, like, go work at a Starbucks, you know, 100%.

100%.

Where people where you're.

You feel like you belong, you matter, and you're known.

And you talked about walking through grocery stores where nobody knew you.

And it is challenging when you don't feel like you belong.

You don't feel like you matter, you don't feel like you're known.

Trauma bond.

What did you mean by trauma bond?

You know, it's easy to find people that have been wounded like you or hurt like you.

And your whole relationship is developed around this Just frustration of things being hard and difficult.

And, you know, it's misery loves company.

It's people who want to pull you in the pit.

And what's crazy about trauma bonding is that it looks really healthy in the beginning.

If we look at the relationship between Ruth and Naomi, like they honestly could have trauma bonded over losing their husbands, losing their people, being out on their own wandering.

But no, like, their comment to each other was, your God will be my God and your people will be my people.

And there is this resolution that they weren't going to let what happened to them define them in this way.

And I think in the church, it's really easy when we're on mission, when we're in these seasons of pain, to find people to sort of wallow in our wounds with us.

But we know all that happens in that is that we just keep spreading infection, that we keep on.

You know, people like to find commonalities where they can gossip, they can complain.

That makes us feel less alone.

But when we start partnering with people who aren't going to let us stay wounded, who aren't going to let us, they'll let us have a moment, but they're not going to let us live there.

And they start calling us higher.

There is something so precious about those friendships where people look at you and they're like, no, this is a season.

It's not forever.

Grab my hand.

I'm going to walk with you through this.

And that's why community is so important.

Even those of us who have been raised in this and think we don't need it, we are going to need the church until the day that we die.

Because God says, you know, Jesus says, don't forsake the gathering of the saints.

Like there's something beautiful.

So I'm going to bond over something.

I want to bond over the promises of God, not the horrific, temporary circumstances that I find myself in.

No, now, when you just said it, you probably saw me smile, and I thought, well, I got at least ask the question.

But I do think it is.

And it's.

It's easy.

I know in my life there was some seasons where, you know, with other people and with myself, I would give.

Give them 7 to 10 minutes kind of to.

To unload.

And.

But that's about all I could, because after seven or 10 minutes, I'm like, man, we got to.

We got to help refocus this.

And.

And I wanted to be a safe place where people could share where they were at their hurts.

And maybe it's more than seven or 10 minutes.

But that was kind of a mental thing for me is like, I can be.

I can take seven or 10 minutes of it, but then I do need to be able to.

A place to say, okay, I've heard let's PR this.

And then also let's think about how we can begin to, in the days ahead, look towards healing and recognizing, you know what?

I don't heal people.

God does.

And so we can walk together as we find healing at the feet of Jesus.

And I'm willing to walk with you.

But you're right, it can get real easy to commiserate and share an unproductive rumination of all the things that.

How we have been hurt and one upmanship and stories and man, it doesn't end well.

So when you said trauma bond, that's why I thought, well, I gotta ask her about it.

So next question I got for you.

The island of offense.

What is it?

And how does an island of offense impact us?

That chapter, you know, I was really looking at Paul and how he gets shipwrecked three times.

And I was thinking of like, what are three things that have shipwrecked me in my ministry that the Lord has entrusted to me?

And one of those has been offense.

Because, you know, I think offense is why John Bevere writes it's the bait of Satan.

There is something about offense that feels so justified, so real, so right.

When someone does something to us that hurts us, that harms us, that hurts our families, that offense feels like, yeah, like, of course.

And so we can choose to stay offended.

And the difference between hurt and offense is that hurt happens to us, but offense, we pick up.

And, you know, I. I didn't choose to get hurt, but I can choose if I'm going to let offense take root and cause bitterness.

And the thing about offense is that it's a double sin.

It's a sin that we pick it up and then it's a sin that we ask others to carry it with us.

And when I'm offended by a pastor or a leader or another Christian or my spouse or whatever, and I let that rumi, like ruminate into something that becomes bitterness and it takes root, then it's really hard for us to heal from that initial hurt because now it's become our identity, it's become our personality, it's become something we carry.

And this shipwreck, this island of offense could be something that keeps us from getting back in the boat and finishing our mission.

And I've watched it over and over again.

Christians die on that island of offense because they refuse to humble themselves and to first repent for picking up the offense.

But two, forgive the one who trespassed against them.

And the scriptures are clear, if we don't forgive, we're not going to be forgiven.

And so this offense thing, I mean, we can argue about it all day long, but I really do believe that it is the pandemic of the church at the end of the day.

Wow.

Wow.

I've led a devotional a few times.

Basically, I have these small wooden boats and the things that we put in our boats, and we choose to journey with us.

And one of those is, you know, the offenses.

And is it really helping us on the journey?

And it might feel comfortable.

It might be something that we get comfort from, but at the same time, it's.

It's not helping us.

Not helping us and not helping those around us.

So how does it.

How does the thinking that it's the job of the church, or in this context, say for missionaries, the mission or the leaders to make our dreams come true lead us to an idea, a mentality of entitlement?

I keep trying to think when this started to become something in the church, because I don't remember it as a kid, the church becoming this launching pad for ministries or people to become famous or write books or write albums, whatever it is.

Like, I.

The church was never, in my mind, like a talent agency.

I think with the, you know, like, your pastor is not your talent agent.

Like, nobody owes you a platform, a microphone.

And honestly, when I was a kid, like, you had to earn a platform or a microphone.

You couldn't just get up there and be like, I have a word.

And people were like, preach it.

Like, you had to, like, know the pastor, be part of that community, be trusted, proven right.

And I think what the thing with social media is, we started seeing pastors become celebrities.

We saw worship leaders signing album deals, staff people becoming authors.

And suddenly it was like, in our mind, we saw the church as this launching pad for our own personal gain.

And I'm guilty of this.

I mean, I'm.

I don't know how old you are, but, like, I'm 46.

I'm Gen X millennial.

Like, I'm right in that, like, middle.

We watched it happen in our most formative years, like, 20 to 25, when our frontal lobe is being developed.

We're being informed.

This is what the church is now.

And so I think it's really hard when you have a talented person come into your church and they want to use that platform to grow a ministry, push their agenda.

And they're charismatic and they're popular.

It's really hard for pastors to know how to lead those people and to give them chances to grow in their calling without making their head get big.

Right.

And so I see it with my own friends, disappointment, disillusionment.

I think a lot of church hurt is because of those unmet expectations where they thought they were going to go in and be given a microphone and, you know, whatever.

And they were doing what everybody in ministry does, scrubbing toilets, wiping babies butts, you know, in the nursery, you know, doing all that.

And they were like, oh, I didn't know this is what ministry is.

And it's like, whoa, we need to go back then to the Gospels.

We need to go back to the, to the Word and reframe what it is that the last shall be first, the first shall be last.

And that's.

I think a lot of people have left the church because it wasn't what they thought it was.

Wow.

So I'm 49, to answer your question.

How old am I?

I'm 49.

We went and they were doing these orientation and there was a long, like they took like an hour to talk about entitlement.

And I'm thinking, what of all the things we could be talking about, we're talking about entitlement.

But I will say now it was like the wisest session ever, because now that I've been in this for all these years, it is very easy to begin to feel like, oh, this is my right and I'm entitled to this.

And when people start telling me their rights, it lets me know we're not on good stance.

Is when people start quoting their rights.

If you feel safe, you don't normally quote your rights.

If you feel like you're valuable value, you don't feel is right or.

And so it's, it's kind of one of those red flags when somebody start telling me, you know, their rights.

And, and, but it's just made me think of that session when he talked about entitlement.

And then in your writing, it made me think about it again.

And once again, I was young and younger then and thought, I don't know why this guy's talking about this.

But now it made so much more sense himself.

The areas I see it in, and I see it in Myself, don't get me wrong.

Like, I see it in pastors, kids.

I see it in ministry kids, because, you know, we were forced to grow up, so we saw things that most people don't see.

So we feel entitled.

Like, I've earned this voice because I've seen things most people my age have not seen.

I see it in, in those who've gone to seminary and college.

Well, I have a degree in this, therefore I should just be automatically trusted.

I see it in those who have grown up in the same church their whole lives.

I've put blood, sweat and tears into the soil here.

I should be able to say what I want, do what I want.

So this is not going to go away.

Especially nepotism in churches and ministries where parents are passing batons to their children who have not necessarily earned the expertise or the education to carry that.

And so it's important for all of us to do heart checks before we step onto any platform, take any assignment, is, do I feel entitled to this or do I feel called to this?

And there is a huge difference.

Entitlement says people will serve me.

Called says I will serve.

And I would tell kids, if you've grown up in the same church over and over again your whole life and you're offered a job there, I would say, first go work somewhere else and then come back so that you really understand how gifted and not gifted, what an honor and a privilege it is to be invited onto that church staff, not because you earned it, but because you're called to it.

Yeah.

And that's that idea of my friend Dick Foth.

I don't know who says it or read it originally, but that idea that when you walk into a room and you say, here I am, versus walk into room, and there you are, you know, it's a.

And that.

And that an honor to serve rather than, you know, it's an honor for people to be around you.

And I think that's where the entitlement is.

It's.

It's an honor.

You think that it's an honor for people to be able to spend time with you.

So it's.

It can doubt.

So most people, I would say, if they've been in church at any time at all, have been hurt, any.

Any words of encouragement on how somebody can begin to make those steps moving forward when they've been disappointed or they've been hurt by someone or by someone in the church.

Well, first of all, own it.

Name it.

It's really humbling to say, I've been hurt by Someone I let somebody in who wounded me.

I've let my guard down.

It's painful.

I say there's no hurt like church hurt.

It's the worst possible because it's like somebody stabbing you in the back while looking you in the eye.

I mean, it's.

It's somebody you do life with and somebody you serve and love.

This is.

This is painful.

Paul says it in Corinthians.

He said, I've been betrayed by my enemies, and I've been betrayed by those I thought were my brothers.

And that's painful.

And, And I wanted to say, acknowledge it, name it, write it down.

If you can, go to the person and try to have resolutions, you know, hold.

Be the.

You know, do what the scriptures tell us to do.

Go to your brother, talk it out, go to your sister.

And if nothing resolves there, you know, there is a point where you do have to decide, you know, is this a healthy thing for me to continue to pursue, or can I forgive and move on?

And then the third thing is look at biblical counseling.

Talk to someone about this, what happened.

Let somebody who's not connected to it, who's HIPAA trained to, like, keep everything private within that room.

Like, process that.

Process that hurt, Process that pain with someone who can hear what you're saying and hold you accountable to maybe some things that you haven't thought of or, or been able to pr.

And finally, don't give up on the body of Christ because of one or two or even ten people.

The church is good.

I see the church and her glory everywhere I go, all around the world.

And I want to encourage you that there are more safe churches than unsafe churches.

There are more healthy pastors and unhealthy pastors.

And there's a family waiting for you.

And, you know, I have never regretted going into a church, even in wounded states and trying again.

And I'm still in.

And I'm still in a church after everything I've seen, I still serve in my local church when I'm home.

And that's because God shows up there every single time and redeems what the enemy has tried to steal.

And so there are many steps that you're going to have to take, but it is so worth it to find God in these places.

Yeah, for sure.

For sure.

And one of the other things, you're very good at taking phrases.

So one of the other phrases was share about you giving your Judas to Jesus.

And so I think it is.

You talked about it is.

I think when you're vulnerable to Say that somebody else has hurt me, you know, because it does some level of vulnerability.

And I think the people that we let in that are closest to us, it really does hurt.

And sometimes when you.

You're.

You're working with, serving for, caring for someone, and then they end up hurting you, I think it hurts even more.

But how do you.

How do you.

How do you give your.

Your Judas to Jesus and truly be able to begin that forgiving process rather than just kind of false, False forgiveness or.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's.

It's not linear.

I mean, this is a.

Probably a process for a lot of us.

I think back to.

There are people that I still haven't had resolution with that were some of the most painful hurts in my ministry.

In the ministry God's given to me.

And it came from leaders who were supposed to protect me, women who were supposed to mentor me, who found me as a competition.

And when you don't get the resolution, when you don't get that conversation to kind of put a pen in it, Satan can use that to really get a strong, you know, a stronghold on our lives and make us suspicious of everyone.

And I think about how, like, they were all sitting at that table and Judas was there and how Jesus still let him sit there and take communion.

There was still this family feel.

And I know we've all been in staff meetings and different environments where the person wounding us is sitting across the table from us.

And I think the flip for me has been, but Jesus was there, too.

And just at that table, yes, there was Judas, but Jesus was there too.

And he knew and he knows and he sees it.

And when we say, let God fight for us, it's in those moments that we won't be able to raise our voice and say, this, this person's bad, you know, and like, expose it.

But to really rest in that promise that he's for us, he's not against us, that he sees everything, he's not unaware, and that if we will be patient, he will eventually allow that Judas to expose themselves in a way that doesn't put all of the onus on you.

You're not the one exposing and causing this harm.

But God will do it in his timing.

And it's really been hard as a control person who wants to control outcomes when you're not being.

And I want to just clarify this.

Judas is not sexually abusing you.

Like things that are illegal.

We're talking about just unhealthy ministry leaders who are gossiping talking about you, making it hard for you to do your job.

Eventually, one of two things will happen.

The Lord will either call you away from that table so that you don't have to be under that person any longer, or he will expose that person.

And both of those take time, intercession, fasting, and wise counsel.

And so when you are faced with a Judas across the table from you, just know this, God will expose it.

But while you're waiting for the exposure, to make sure that you are being well loved, well cared for, and you have places to process what's happening, to know if it's your time to get up or to stay and contend for healthy culture.

Good word.

My mom would always say we're not talking about the immoral, illegal and unethical things.

And so that kind of is the tagline on that.

But.

But for sure, I think it does.

It helps us a lot.

You mentioned earlier on in our conversation that you know, the main reasons you're still in ministry today.

Jesus and your husband.

So how.

How is a spouse?

So a spouse.

Sometimes there's a Judas and hurts, you know, hurts.

Say, I don't know, whatever direction I take this, it'll be the wrong one.

But one of the spouses is hurt, you know, and so the end then.

And by another person.

And then that person, maybe it's the husband or wife, they're able to say, hey, I'm going to forgive this.

I'm going to begin that nonlinear process as you mentioned.

It's not linear, progressive, but it is a process.

And they're walking through that.

But the spouse that was not directly involved, they kind of take up defense or they're maybe indirectly hurt by it or offended by it.

Any words of wisdom for them?

Because when you share, like my husband was one of the main reasons I stayed in, it speaks to me of his character, that he must be a man of very, very strong character, that he didn't necessarily.

He walked with you and cared for you and walked with you in that process, but he didn't also, he didn't pick up the fence and go on the attack in that way, too.

So anyway, I don't know your husband, but it just.

When you shared that to me, it spoke of his character.

So any thoughts on how a spouse can.

Can walk and care for the person who's been hurt and at the same time not pick up that offense where even when the spouse has been hurt, has laid it down.

Does that, does that make any sense at all?

Yeah.

And it's funny because you know, I've been out of full time church staff now for three years.

So, you know, there was a point where church staff conversation dominated our marriage.

And not because my husband wanted it, but because I'm a verbal processor and every conversation was about, you'll never believe what happened.

And I could see it.

He is so patient.

He is so.

He's more pastoral than I am.

I always say this like he's not a pastor, but he should be.

I could see that it was, it was definitely wearing on him towards the end of this where I was just constantly coming home with these things.

And he did his best.

I mean, you know, I always like, joke like the poor man, like, he probably needed a therapy as much as I did by the end of this.

But what he kept doing is he kept pushing me back first to the Lord.

He never made me feel bad for wanting to talk about these things, but he kept guiding me back to the women especially that the Lord had placed in my life.

Who were those mentors who were in the situation with me who had the training of deliverance and, you know, counseling and biblical direction and saying like, like, just pick up the phone, call them.

What is their thought on this?

And continuing to push me back into community.

I think for a lot of spouses, we kind of isolate into our home.

Like us four, no more.

You're right.

Forget the church.

They did this to us.

They're bad.

Everybody's bad.

Everybody's out to get us.

And how quickly we become victims when there are literally people the Lord has placed in your marriage, in your home who will remind you you're victors, not victims.

And when I look back over that season and again, it wasn't that long ago, I see this man who was so patient, so willing to listen and to lean in, who I knew it bothered him.

He wasn't like, not mad that I was being treated this way.

But we, we knew we had in a unified way made the decision to move to this place and to take this role for me.

And I, one day in the kitchen, I was like basically telling him, I think I made a mistake.

I don't know that I heard from the Lord.

I'm so sorry.

I had us move all this way to be here and I'm crying, I'm a mess.

He's not like, I mean, he's a very.

He's a athlete.

You know, I just remember him breaking down with me in the kitchen and sitting in the tension of this moment.

And he looked at me and he said, we have to find out why God brought us here.

And realizing he was using we language, even though I was the one who was on staff, he wasn't.

And you see this flesh of the flesh, bone of the bone, like in covenant, what marriage really is.

And I really believe as spouses, we don't have to have the answers.

He wasn't going to go bang down doors and punch people in the face.

He wasn't going to go do that.

But to pray with me, to sit with me, to do biblically what we're told to do, which is to get in the in and to, you know, pray in community and find those people.

And I watched him go through that and I just thought, you know what, like, if he can do it, I can do it.

He's right.

We're, we're unified.

And if he says we need to stay and figure this out, I'm going to trust that.

And so I do think you just have to keep that open communication, keep on leading people back to community.

Don't isolate, pray together, fast together, make decisions together.

I mean, trust me, I wanted to quit four years before.

He was like, we're getting out of here.

Right.

So I'll never forget the day he said, let's go home.

I was like, oh my gosh.

Like, yes.

But that was like almost seven years in.

Yeah.

You know.

Wow.

Wow.

Well, he sounds like he has the size that he could go knock doors down so he could have and, and, and do it with some, with some gusto.

So got one last question for you.

You shared in the life of David, he did not use vindication, plotting revenge and scheming to get God's promises.

What are some take home points for us today when it comes to recognizing in David's life, he didn't use vindication, plotting revenge and scheming to get God's promises.

And then I'm going to ask you to pray for us.

In all of the hard seasons of my life, as a high justice person, when there has been injustices in the church, my first reaction is to defend myself, to make things known, to do the, the exposing and to be the one to try to save everyone else from these injustices.

And what I learned is that none of that actually expedites the promises of God in our life or over the people that are being directly affected by this individual or this situation.

And that a lot of times, you know, me inserting myself and I always think of David when he caught Saul in the cave and he could have killed him.

All he did was cut off the side, you know, the side of his robe or a piece of his cloak to let him know he was there.

I think about that a lot because I think about our prayer and our intercession and our perseverance, wise counsel, counseling, all of those are ways we kind of cut the edge of the cloak off the enemy and say, I'm still here, I see your schemes.

And I am not going to fall into thinking that revenge is actually going to get me any more peace, any more promises of God, when the Lord has literally said to just be still and know that I am God.

And when I think of David, we see obviously the trajectory of David's life, what happened when he served Saul.

And you know, the hardest thing to remember, you guys, is that it's godly to serve our Saul.

And that's tense, that's intense.

When you think about our knee jerk reactions as humans is to take our Saul down.

And so I do think that the biblical principles of prayer, fasting, community, those are little ways we can cut the little, little hem of the cloak off of our enemy and say, I see you, you're on my turf.

But I know that God's revenge is going to be greater than mine ever could be.

And to not want to see somebody fail, I've also sat in rooms where I've watched pastors have to physically confess to things that were going to ruin their lives.

And I took no pleasure in that.

And my husband has been in those rooms with me and we've left and we haven't been high fiving like, yeah, we took the giant down.

It's wow, like, God help us, that never be us, like, and the heartbreak of watching a man fall and have to confess before his brothers that he's done these things.

I take no delight in watching people fail.

So I just, I want to encourage everyone, like, yeah, you could get the revenge, but understand that if it's not led with God and all of that, there's going to be other issues that are going to come up and you'll never learn to fight the way that God teaches you to fight, which is letting him fight for us.

Wow.

Good word, Natalie.

It's always a joy to spend time with you and appreciate your willingness to communicate and the ability, God, the spiritual gifting God has given you to do that in a phenomenal way.

Will you pray for us today?

Of course.

God, I thank you for every man, woman, young person listening.

Now, Father, who has said yes to your call?

God who has sacrificed so much, Father, to say yes to the great commission of going and making disciples and taking it to the far ends of the earth.

We know that it's not without pain and sorrow and part of this world, God.

Of just not being yet with you in the kingdom, God.

And that there are some days we wake up and we feel like we're right in the palm of your hand.

And other days like we feel like Paul, where we're shipwrecked and we're not quite sure if it's worth getting back in the boat.

And so I just pray, Lord, that wherever anyone is right now, God.

That they would know that they are in the palm of your hand.

That your eyes have never left them, Lord.

That they have been called, they have been anointed and appointed for such a time as this.

And that Satan hopes they'll abandon their assignment because he's terrified that the church will outnumber the kingdom of darkness.

But what he doesn't realize is that we already have and we will.

And.

And God wins in the end.

And so I pray for just a supernatural strength to overcome your church right now, God.

That where there's persecution, you would make your people safe.

That you would put them in the cleft of the rock, God.

And provide safety and protection and resources, God.

For wherever they are, Lord.

For those who are on the cusp of wondering if they should walk away, Lord.

That you would remind them, God, that you stayed.

So we stay, God.

And that we remain in position for the joy set before us, which is the salvation of every lost person.

To know your name and to find salvation in the name of Jesus.

And I pray for every family, for every prodigal represented, God.

That wherever they are, that they would hear their name being called from the far ends of the earth, God.

And that they would come back to the last place that they encounter you, be it the mission field or the church or of relationship around a table, God.

That they would remember the last place they encountered the presence of God.

And they would run to that place, God.

For where the spirit of the Lord is, there's true freedom, God.

And we pray that for every person here.

Thank you, God, for trusting us with your people and for calling us into these dark places to be the light and the salt, God.

I just pray, Lord, for a supernatural strength to finish this race and to hear those words.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

Sam.