The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Shae Hill:
Welcome back to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth with for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Shae Hill, and I'm here with my friend and our resident theologian on staff here at Proverbs 31 Ministries, Dr. Joel Muddamalle. Joel, I'm so happy to be here with you today.

Joel Muddamalle:
I'm so excited, Shae. Super excited for this one.

Shae Hill:
We are doing something a little different today.

Joel Muddamalle:
I know. It's wild.

Shae Hill:
We're kicking off something. It is exiting the Slack channel, and here we are. We are making it happen.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, for sure.

Shae Hill:
Will you tell our friends what we're doing today?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, so I'm really excited, Shae, because every now and then … I've been on staff here for seven, going on eight, years, and one of the things that frequently happens is we'll be walking, or we'll be sitting having lunch as a team, or we'll be having theology study days, and every now and then, people will just be like, "Huh, I had this question about the Bible. I had this question about theology. I had this question about Scripture." And they'll be like, "Joel, what do you think?" And one of my favorites … It actually pops up consistently now — we just talk about this maybe once a quarter with our dear friend Madi Greenfield. Every now and then, we'll just get a message from her, or she'll be in a conversation with us, and she'll be like, "Joel, why didn't Moses make it into the promised land?" And it just really bothers her.

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
And we have to think about these things. So one of our hopes and, I think, our goals for this conversation and the conversations to come is to think honestly about the Bible, to share from our hearts honestly things that we're thinking through and that we'd love to have answers for. And to start with, I would just say: What is theology?

Shae, there was a 17th-century astronomer — his name is Johannes Kepler — and one day he was looking up at the stars, and somebody asked him, "What is theology?" I think Johannes Kepler has the very best definition of theology. He says, "Theology is simply thinking God's thoughts after Him." And so everything that we do in this conversation and the ones to come is just trying to think God's thoughts after Him. So we don't want new thoughts. We're not trying to be innovative with some thoughts. We're just trying to see what is the natural flow of the Bible and of Scripture in the lived experience of God's people, and that really is just theology.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. So we're taking these conversations, and we are going to take this opportunity to answer questions that sometimes come from our friends or here amongst staff members, but also from you guys, [our listeners]. We read our comments on YouTube or reviews on podcasts or even Instagram DMs, and you guys are constantly sending questions that you have. So we are calling all of these special podcast episodes “Ask a Theologian,” and then each podcast episode will tackle a different question. So today we are going to discuss: How can I be joyful when I'm grieving this Christmas?

Joel Muddamalle:
That's a tough one.

Shae Hill:
It's a tough one.

Joel Muddamalle:
So here's … To preface this: You might be looking for answers, and I'm just going to preface this by saying I don't necessarily have answers. But I will have some responses. And this is conversational. I would just say personally, for me, let’s say Christmas — though I think you could put any holiday season in there. And let’s just say, "How do I grieve, and what does this look like?"

Then I think there's some guilt along with the grief because it's like, "Wait a minute, it's supposed to be Christmas, or it's supposed to be Thanksgiving. It's supposed to be a joyful time, and yet my heart is sorrowful, and I don't want to get up in the morning, and I don't want to go into the kitchen and see everybody because there is a situation or a circumstance that has caused a grief in my life.”

I think one of the things that is really challenging for us, especially when we look at the Bible, is we get the incredible opportunity, Shae, to look at the Bible from beginning to end, holistically, as a whole story. And part of the way the Bible is written is sometimes we don't get the best indication of how many years pass in between chapters, in between verses, things like that. So when we think about grief, I want us to actually locate and start the conversation all the way back at the cross.

Now, you'd be like, "Joel, why the cross?" Think about Easter. Shae, what do we celebrate on Easter? When you think of Easter, what are the images and the thoughts and ideas that come to mind?

Shae Hill:
It's definitely, like, a celebration. We've definitely taken it all the way to another extreme of the Easter bunny or Easter eggs and all of that stuff. But it's normally a happy occasion of all the pastels and the spring things. Everything's coming to life, and we're celebrating Jesus has risen — let's celebrate [Him,] really.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. So you nailed it. Jesus has risen. I don't know your church tradition, depending on how you grew up, if you grew up in the church or not, but I grew up in a church tradition where there would be this phrase, like, "He is risen." And then everybody would repeat —

Shae Hill:
"He is risen indeed."

Joel Muddamalle:
Yes.

Shae Hill:
Did we go to the same church?

Joel Muddamalle:
I don't know. So there's this thing, and the focus, the emphasis, is on the risen-ness of Christ. Yet I just go back … This is from our friend — and I would say for both of us [Shae and I], our mentor — Lysa TerKeurst. But Lysa has taught us both, and me for sure, the importance of the human condition of the biblical text. And I just go back, and I just wonder: How long did it take for those first disciples of Jesus? At the year calendar mark when it came across what we today celebrate as Easter, [how long did it take until] "He is risen — He is risen indeed," for them to say that, maybe?

The overwhelming weight of their emotion to start with was grief. It was sorrow because they were looking at the cross. They were remembering the agony of Christ as He was being crucified, of Him being whipped, the 40 lashes minus one. There are some stats that I read the other day that said out of 10 people, I think it's 65-70% of the folks who were being crucified, when they were getting lashed through this process, would die before they even made it to the cross. So this is pretty horrific, in a sense.

Yet before we get to or we are in this place where we are 2,000 years later, [looking at] the beauty of the cross and the beauty of the resurrection, and we can say with a smile on our face, "He is risen, and He is risen indeed," there are these first-century followers of Jesus who had to have a process in which they walked through the grief. They dealt with the grief, and they lived in the tension of the reality of the grief, with the hope of what was to come. And it was over time, a long period of time, that the weight of the situation, where it's mostly overwhelming grief with some joy and hope for the future, is now where it is now. We're more on the hope and anticipation side — but we didn't get there without time. Time was absolutely a factor in it.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, there's no resurrection without the crucifixion.

Joel Muddamalle:
Amen.

Shae Hill:
And before He did resurrect, for those couple of days, they would've thought, Was this all a scam?

Joel Muddamalle:
Oh my gosh. We could have a whole … We could talk Holy Saturday. A whole other episode, yeah.

Shae Hill:
We could. But I think it just goes to show there are layers and complexities with not just holidays but also … When I'm thinking about grieving and these time stamps throughout the year, anniversaries come to mind. A lot of us have meaningful dates on the calendar where something comes and there's grief associated with a loss of a family member or something significant that happened that changed the course of our life. There are just so many layers to dates and holidays, and I think especially with Christmas. For me, as the year is closing and I'm thinking about everything that happened this year, I can start to get really nostalgic. And if this year's been rough, [it’s hard to] go into Christmas feeling like you're just supposed to put on a happy face and say, "It's the most wonderful time of the year," and in your heart, you just feel like it's not.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, that's so good.

Shae Hill:
So to know that there are biblical examples where people would've felt the same angst at least makes me feel better.

Joel Muddamalle:
I want to just camp on that for just a second because I don't know about you, but every now and then, I get the Facebook notification: 17 years this or 15 that. And there's a memory or whatever, and those memories are awesome, right?

Shae Hill:
Until they're not.

Joel Muddamalle:
Until they're not, yeah.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, exactly.

Joel Muddamalle:
Until you look at a picture — and I'm getting to the age now where this is happening more and more — but I look at a picture of one of my dear cousins and his parent, his dad, who died about five years ago. So every year we would get this awesome picture of his dad and my dad and the two of us at this wedding, and we have this fun picture of all four of us dancing on the dance floor. We were young. We were 13 years old or something like that. Every year that picture would come up, and we'd share it with each other. We'd be like, "Oh my gosh, can you believe ...?" Then my uncle died some years ago.

Now we go from whenever that picture showed up and we loved it and it was so beautiful the first couple years to that picture re-showing up, but it wasn't like, "Oh, this is amazing." It was grief. Grief for my dad, grief for my friend, grief for me. Now we're five, six, seven years into it, and there's no formula for this that I can give you. I can just say experientially now we're like, "Man, that was so fun. Those were fun moments." Uncle had this way that he would do this dance thing with this handkerchief that he ... just fun things. And there's still grief, but the weight of the grief and the joy and the sorrow has shifted as time has taken place.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. It's not just the initial incident that happens that causes the grief. It's the years that go on after that that sometimes can catch you off guard, where you're having unexpected feelings and symptoms of grief; you're far removed from the physical event happening, but your emotions almost are caught off guard. It [feels like it] literally just happened, almost like a little bit of PTSD or something like that.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, because your body's reacting to that. The other thing about it, too, is I think that we live in a culture and a society — and I could be wrong about this, so you could be like, "Joel, I don't agree with you," which would be interesting to say — but I think we live in a culture and a society that wants to lead us into a conclusion that grief is not something to have. Grief is an indication. If you're grieving, it's an indication of your weakness. And if you grieve and that weakness is present, that weakness is an indication to the world of your lack of value, that you're incapable, that you're unable, that you lack strength.

I was actually at a concert just the other day with my wife. Britt and I went to this awesome concert. And the gal who was singing … There was this question-answer thing, and she said something I thought was so profound. She was talking about grief, and I think over a short period of time, they'd lost some family members. She goes, "Go on and grieve because they were worth it."

Shae Hill:
Wow.

Joel Muddamalle:
And I'm like, yes! The grief, the fact that you and I grieve, is an indication of a substance of love that we had for someone or something or some situation. So you and I would never grieve if there wasn't actually love and affection on the front end.

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
So what happens if our mindset shifts to grief actually being a kind and gracious indication of something that was true love, that was true joy, that was true goodness? Now we experience grief in its absence.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. We're only grieving because the weight of what we lost was so significant and wonderful.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. What a tragedy not to grieve. Because if we didn't grieve, then it would call into question the depth of that thing that we had before.

Shae Hill:
Right. Right. So we're here on “Ask a Theologian,” and all of our listeners are super relieved to know that I'm not the theologian, but you are. So we're talking about, “How can I experience joy, or how am I supposed to be joyful, during this Christmas season if I'm struggling with grief?” And when you look at that question, when we see that question, where do you see this in Scripture? Where are we going? Tell me where we're starting out.

Joel Muddamalle:
There's so many places. And to piggyback before on what we were just talking about: One of the most important prepositions, Shae, throughout the Scriptures, is the preposition “through.”

Shae Hill:
That's good.

Joel Muddamalle:
It is the most important preposition in the Bible, I think. It's important when we go back to Eden and we look at Adam and Eve. This was a conversation we [Shae and I] had actually with Lysa the other day, and I'm so convinced of this now: Eden was ideal, but Eden wasn't perfect, as in, complete. It was perfectly ideal. Now, why am I camping on this idea? Because God gave Adam and Eve work to do. He created them, He blessed them, and He spoke to them. And then after He did these things, after He created them, He blessed them, and He spoke to them, then He gave them a divine command: "Go and multiply. Be fruitful. Take the image of God's Spirit on to the ends of the earth" [paraphrasing Genesis 1:26-28].

Now, I think it's super fascinating that what the enemy does, what the serpent does, is he steps in and suggests to Adam and Eve that they don't have to go through the vocation that God has given them (Genesis 3). They can go around it, they can go under it, they can bypass it, or they can short-circuit it. And if they can do that, they can get to their destination faster. But what a tragedy to end up in a destination and look at ourselves and be like, I don't even really know who I am. I don't like who I've become when I've gotten to the destination.

So this preposition “through” doesn't just show up in the garden of Eden conceptually. It shows up very specifically with language. When you think of the Israelites, they have to go through the Red Sea, which is an image of death, actually, which is just massive. They have to go through the wilderness. They have to go through the exile period.

Jesus is the perfect example. Jesus actually has to go through His human life. Jesus has to go through His own wilderness experience. Jesus has to go through Samaria; that's a very specific one in John 4. The text says it was necessary: Jesus had to go through Samaria. Why? Because He had to meet the Samaritan woman at the well. And then Jesus had to go through the cross. Jesus can't short-circuit it or go around it or bypass it. No. In fact, the temptation scenes in the wilderness (Matthew 4) are Satan's opportunity —

Shae Hill:
For Him to bypass it.

Joel Muddamalle:
— for Him to bypass it. It's actually a retelling of the Eden story. It's actually Jesus showing Himself, once again, that He's the better Adam. Where Adam and Eve in Eden bought into the half-truth and tried to short-circuit the process, Jesus is like, "Nah, I ain't doing that. Miss Me with that. I am going to be obedient to the will of the Father all the way through." And so when we think about grief and we think biblically and we look at these scriptures, we see that grief is a through preposition. It is something that takes time and that we actually have to walk through.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, grief is not an emotion or something that God is asking us — especially, in particular, in this conversation, at Christmas or holidays … Let's just say anytime we're “supposed to be happy,” [God doesn’t ask us] to take that grief and put it on a shelf. We can't separate that experience from where we are. But I think He's asking us to go through, I think — through what we're feeling and through what season we're in, in actual time — and at the same time to allow those things to coexist and not to bypass that.

So if you're listening today and you're feeling like, I am overwhelmed with grief; I don't know how I'm going to make it through Christmas, I would just say one option is that God is not asking you to put your grief on a shelf and show up and put a happy face on and pretend like everything's fine.

Joel Muddamalle:
That's so good.

Shae Hill:
You can actually walk through this. It's not going to be easy, but you don't have to fake it. And sometimes that's the most challenging part: figuring out, How am I going to operate in all of this? I think sometimes we feel alone in our grief because we sometimes forget that God is grieving with us. I feel like this verse is shared quite a bit when someone's going through something hard, but it felt really timely to share in this particular conversation. And that's Psalm 34:18. It says, "The Lᴏʀᴅ is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit" (NIV). So not only is God inviting us to go through our grief, but He's saying, I'll go with you through this. You don't have to battle through this alone.

Joel Muddamalle:
That's so good. If you were to ask me, "Joel, how can you sum up the momentum of Scripture, the focus of Scripture, in just a phrase?" I would just say simply, "God with us." That's it. It's God with us.

Shae Hill:
It's God with us.

Joel Muddamalle:
God is determined to be with us, and it's actually His with-us-ness … I don't even know if that's a word, but I'm going to say it.

Shae Hill:
It is today.

Joel Muddamalle:
It is today. It's the fact, the promise, the presence, the power, the authority of Him being with us, that actually, in a miraculous way, makes it possible for you and me to process through grief and not be absolutely crushed by it.

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
Because His shoulders are so much bigger. His hands are so much more powerful. He's literally holding all things together. And when it feels like we can't move forward, He is absolutely with us.

I love Exodus 3. We're talking about the preposition “through,” and one of the moments of immense grief for the people of Israel was when they were in captivity in Egypt. I think this is one of those things that sometimes I don't spend enough time just thinking through. Again, timeline-wise, there’s the Joseph narrative, and they go to Egypt. Egypt is a place of rescue. There's a massive famine that's taking place. Joseph becomes second in command. Egypt, for all intents and purposes, was a type of promised land. But I think it's really important that we understand Egypt was a type of promised land. It was not the promised land.

Shae Hill:
That's good.

Joel Muddamalle:
It was a pit stop. It wasn't the destination. And anytime you and I stay longer in a place that we weren't intended to stay in, that place can become a prison in our lives.

Shae Hill:
So true.

Joel Muddamalle:
So Egypt ends up becoming a literal prison for them. They get enslaved, and they're crying out and they're suffering, and they're just wondering, Is there anybody who's going to lead us out? God, are You actually going to be faithful? And in Exodus 3:7-8 … I love the details, the technical details, of Scripture. This is what it says. It says, "Then the Lᴏʀᴅ said.” Notice the actions of God. "Then the Lᴏʀᴅ said, 'I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard them crying out because of their oppression, because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, the Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites'" (CSB, emphases added).

In just these two verses, we find this pattern. If you're wondering right now, How do I know, how can I be certain, that God even cares? I want you to know that God's character is the same yesterday as it is today as it is tomorrow. And so if this is true of the people of Israel back then, it is 1,000%, Shae, true of God today. So look at what God does.

One, it says that God sees. He observes. God is not absentminded, twiddling His fingers, trying to figure out the next thing for Him to do. He's keenly aware and looking and watching humanity.

The second thing: It says that God hears. He's paying attention. He's listening to the situation and the circumstances of His people.

The third thing: God knows. This refers to His omniscience, that He's an all-knowing God. There's not a moment of this that catches Him off guard. It's not like God is up in heaven sitting on a throne and going like, Uh, oh-oh ...

Shae Hill:
Didn't see that coming.

Joel Muddamalle:
Oop, Pharaoh came up! Oh, I didn't see that coming. God knows.
Then I think the last one … If this last one wasn't there, I would have a lot of concerns, right?

Shae Hill:
Totally. Because if He knows, why isn't He doing something about it?

Joel Muddamalle:
Why doesn't He act?

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
If He doesn't act, then I think, well, yeah, we've got probably evidence of a cruel God.

Shae Hill:
Exactly.

Joel Muddamalle:
But it says that God acts. And look at the way it says this. He acts by saying, "I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians" (Exodus 3:8, CSB). Now, if I'm an ancient Israelite, I am expecting God Himself to come down, right?

Shae Hill:
And I would be thrilled about that.

Joel Muddamalle:
And I would be absolutely ecstatic about it. But I think it's super fascinating in this that as the people were in grief, the agent of the relief of their grief was actually Moses and Aaron. And I don't think the people of Israel were expecting Moses and Aaron.

Shae Hill:
No, I don't think they were either.

Joel Muddamalle:
They tried to kill Moses. He was an exile.

Shae Hill:
They tried to send him back —

Joel Muddamalle:
They tried to send him —

Shae Hill:
— to where he came from.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, yeah. They're like, "No, you're going back to the bench."

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
Right? I just wonder how many of us have found ourselves in seasons of grief, in situations of grief, and we ourselves have created our own picture, our own framework, for how the relief from that grief is supposed to take place. And instead, we have a good God who is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-hearing and all-acting, and because He knows and He sees all these things, He's taking into account the billions of things that we don't know, that we can't see, that we are unaware of. And so He's going to choose to act in a way that is specifically good for us to lead us through our grief process. But what if we're sitting there waiting for the thing that we've conjured up ourselves that we think is going to get us out of it, and the whole time God's actually acting and we just don't have the eyes to see or the ears to hear the agent of grief, the relief that He's given us?

Shae Hill:
Right. And really, the gift is Himself through that process. Not overlooking the fact that He is here with us. And not only … I think it's important to remind our friends listening today that God's with us in our grief, but there's one other unexpected gift that came to mind as I was thinking through this conversation of grief and how to bring that into this holiday season or the Christmas season and whatever that looks like. And one of those gifts is that God allows the grief that we experience to grow compassion in us. And just like you're talking about, Joel, God may be using an unexpected agent to bring relief into our life, and I would say that if we're looking for opportunities to be used by God, we can be that relief and that balm and that source of empathy and compassion to other people when they're in their grief.

I don't know about you, but when I'm going through something hard, it gives me an acute awareness of other people who are also going through something difficult. And it just is a good reminder of like, "Oh yeah, this is a fallen world, and there are people walking and struggling every single day." Romans 12:15 says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn" (NIV). And you might say, "Shae, I don't know how I can do that. I'm not even in a place to be able to meet someone in their grief right now. I feel consumed by mine." The good news is that we have a perfect model for someone who does this for us, and that's Jesus.

He mourns with us when we mourn. And Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin" (CSB). I just think we have such an incredible model in Jesus to be able to walk through grief knowing that He's with us. And I'm taking this as a reminder in this Christmas season not to get bogged down in the details of my own life but to allow the grief that I'm experiencing to try to tenderize my heart so that I can be more compassionate to other people who are also in that grieving place.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, that's so good. I love that. I think, too, of just the power of what happens when we participate in easing the grief of another person. What if — just what if — when we actually participate in that, that is God's way of being like, And by the way, I'm going to ease you through your own grief process? I do think, again, it's one of those things where the negative side of grief, if we allow it to, can lead us deeper into isolation. It can lead us deeper into loneliness. All of those things can happen. And yet there's a part of grief that actually can be an invitation for us to sit in that space for sure, process through it for sure, go through therapy, do all of those things for sure, but don't stay there. Look for ways to be [what] 2 Corinthians 5 [says] — to be ambassadors of Christ.

It's like, of all the things … I just think about this: Of all the things that Jesus could have told us to remember Him by, it's the most suffering moment. He's like, Remember the bread because it's My body broken. Remember the wine because it's My blood shed. I'm like, Jesus, couldn't You have done the transfiguration? Couldn't You have picked, 'Hey, remember when I healed these people’?

Shae Hill:
Right. You want that to be your legacy, yep.

Joel Muddamalle:
I want that. And yet it's like, man, that's so fascinating to me. It's the moment of the most immense grief that is what we ought to remember. Again, I think that's a kindness from God because if Jesus Himself had to go through that so that He could be a faithful and empathetic High Priest for us, what an opportunity for us to see that there's not a moment of our suffering, of our pain, that is wasted.

Shae Hill:
No. And I think about some of the last words that He gave to the disciples. His prayer for us was to be unified (John 17:20-23). And I don't think that just meant unified in belief or unified in spirit as we all share, but I think that means be unified in your suffering. Be unified in your joy. Stick together. [It’s like Jesus is saying,] I've given you the gift of this body so that you guys stay connected.

Joel Muddamalle:
That's so good.

Shae Hill:
I know that in one podcast we're not going to be able to solve all of our grief feelings or problems or situations that we're facing. And that really wasn't the intent of our conversation today. I think a really big misconception is that the Bible ties stories or biblical lessons up in neat, nice bows, and then we just move on. I'm hopeful that through these conversations, people are able to see — and I'm able to see as my eyes are opened — that it's actually a lot more complicated than that, while also being simple at the same time. Things are not just going to be tied up in neat, nice bows. There are going to be some cliffhangers. But through these conversations, we can gain some eternal perspectives for what we're going through, even if we can't land in a perfect place on this side of eternity.

Joel Muddamalle:
For sure.

Shae Hill:
Joel, is there anything we didn't say that you want to say before we close this out?

Joel Muddamalle:
No, so good.

Shae Hill:
OK. I think it was awesome too. I want to read this prayer as we close today. I know that I mentioned we're not going to close every single one of these episodes out in a neat, nice bow, but it just felt right with some of you guys walking into such hard things this Christmas season. I just wanted to pray this prayer over you, and I actually did not write it myself. I got it from our Proverbs 31 Ministries social team, which is incredible. And they wrote this prayer actually two years ago and put it out on social for those who were grieving during the Christmas season. And so many of you resonated with it. And so I am resurrecting it and bringing it back for this conversation. So wherever you are, if you're driving, do not close your eyes, but just receive this prayer as a blessing over you.

Jesus, as we ache for what we have lost in this Christmas season, we turn to You for comfort and peace. Your birth is the very reason we can grieve with a confident hope. We can believe that what's ahead of this life is filled with immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine. Though we hurt and though we can't see evidence of Your hand working all the time, we believe You. We believe Your Word is true. We ask You to draw near to our broken hearts, to hold us close through our tears, to remind us that You came to give us abundant life, and that life starts with right now here with You. Keep our eyes on You this Christmas. Amen.

Friends, if you enjoyed today's conversation, I actually have a resource that I want to tell you about before we go, and that is this beautiful study guide that I've got right here. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see it, but it's called Pointing to the Promise: An Advent Study Guide. Our team put this together for you to walk through this Christmas season with hopeful expectation and not just arrive to December 25 with your eyes wide and be like, "Oh, yeah, I forgot that it was Christmas." I especially wanted to talk about that study guide today because I think as you're grieving, it's easy to allow that grief to make you feel disconnected from God, and I don't want that to happen to us this Christmas. So look at the link in our show notes to go buy the Pointing to the Promise study guide, as you can use that as a companion through Advent in this season. I think that's going to be a huge blessing to you.

Joel, I want to ask you: How can our listeners stay connected with you as we're continuing to do these “Ask a Theologian” podcast episodes? What's the best way for them to find you?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, so I would say on my Instagram on Tuesdays, I do a thing called “Theology Talk Tuesday.” So my Instagram is @muddamalle. M-U-D-D-A-M-A-L-L-E.

Shae Hill:
Two D's, two L's, one M ... or two M's.

Joel Muddamalle:
Two M's, one E.

Shae Hill:
One E.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. M-U-D-D-A-M-A-L-L-E.

Shae Hill:
I was not helpful to people. Now they're more confused.

Joel Muddamalle:
Honestly, you're going to start typing it, and you'll see it — there’s not many of them on there. But on Tuesdays I do this thing called “Theology Talk Tuesday,” and honestly, one of the things, Shae, that I think we're super excited about is as you ask questions on there, I get hundreds of questions every Tuesday. But specifically on there, I'm going to post one question that is specifically for “Ask a Theologian.” And if you ask those questions in there, we will use that as really the questions and the content for us to navigate through on these episodes. So we're super excited about that.

Shae Hill:
That's amazing. We're super excited about that. Guys, wherever you drop your questions, if it's a comment on YouTube or if you go find Joel’s “Theology Talk Tuesday,” I assure you we will be looking at your questions, and we're excited for the episodes to come. So thanks for tuning in today. As always, here at Proverbs 31 Ministries, when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.