The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley: Well hello friends, and welcome back to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl and any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I am here with my friend and co-host, Meredith Brock.

Meredith: Well, hi, Kaley! It's great to be back with you today. But before we get started, I have a question that I need to ask my Southern friend, and that is you Kaley.

Kaley: Okay.

Meredith: Okay, I need you to tell me why Southerners eat such weird breakfast foods. Why can't you guys just eat muffins and fruit? I don't get it. There's all these things that Southern people do. This morning, my husband who grew up in the South and I grew up in the Northwest.

Kaley: Okay.

Meredith: And like, "Man, we should make some grits." Grits does not make any sense to me. And then there's like [inaudible] of Southern food where you guys have biscuits and you do weird things with bacon. Please explain to me why breakfast is such a big deal in the South.

Kaley: Well, I do believe in three square meals a day, Meredith. But I will say that I don't eat a good hearty Southern breakfast every day because I care about my arteries. Normally, I eat a smoothie because I eat that every weekday. And I do a smoothie, but on the weekends, Saturday mornings are a big deal for me and my husband. And so every day before he goes into work on Saturday, we have a big breakfast, and I mean he's not from the South either. So we'll do something like pancakes and bacon, but every now and then, bring out the deer sausage and —

Meredith: The deer sausage. Stop the train. I feel like your grandma. What do you call your grandma?

Kaley: I call one of them Memo and the other one a-mama.

Meredith: Okay. All right. I feel like we're right back in Mississippi. Here we are. I'm expecting it any minute to get a phone call from your mom or dad and be like, "Look —

Kaley: I would love that. But you know what I would also love? I want to know, listeners, what you call your grandparents.

Meredith: Yes.

Kaley: Because I call mine a mama because my oldest cousin who always sets the precedence for grandparents' names, right? The name was supposed to be grand mama, but he couldn't say his Gs and so a-mama came out. And I call my granddad D daddy. But I want to know what you call your grandparents.

Meredith: Me too. I'm dying. You want to know what I call my grandparents?

Kaley: What do you call them?

Meredith: Grandma and Grandpa. There's really nothing unusual about that, but I find great pleasure in hearing the creative things that people call their grandparents. It's just great. I love it. Well, enough of these shenanigans, Kaley. What are we doing here today?

Kaley: Well, I'm excited today because whenever we were looking at the topics and figuring out our podcast content schedule over the next couple of months, something came to me and honestly I'm not sure why I've never done this before on the podcast, but I want to have my sweet friend, Wendy Blight, on the podcast to talk about prayer. Because Wendy's been a mentor to me and someone I look up to who studies God's Word with such reverence. And is just one of the people who makes me feel a little bit more peaceful when she walks into the room. Meredith, I don't know if she has that same effect on you —

Meredith: Absolutely.

Kaley: But she certainly does on me.

Meredith: Yeah. She has such a presence and such wisdom about her. She's actually written four different books and she's been a part of Proverbs 31 for about 18 years, you guys.

Kaley: What?

Meredith: That's amazing. I bet you lots of our listeners didn't even know we've existed that long. But Proverbs has been around for over 25 years, which is amazing. Wendy has played a role from being a volunteer writer on our devotions and our First 5 team, but now she's playing a really pivotal role with our online Bible studies team as the theological content coordinator. And we're so grateful to have her on that team and here with us today. So welcome to the show, Wendy.

Wendy: Hey, thank y'all so much. I'm just so excited to be here today.

Kaley: Oh, we're so glad that you're here. And like I said, I asked Wendy to come on the show today to specifically talk about prayer, but even more specifically praying through the armor of God. I've seen her write devotions about this, and so I've just been curious what is the background of this? How did you study about it? And so I'm excited because I know I've read about it in the Bible. You read about the armor of God, but in my mind, I think of just the armor and protecting myself and the breastplate of righteousness and things like that. But I haven't studied about how it correlates with prayer. And so I'm excited for our listeners to hear you teach on this today, Wendy. So go ahead and take it away, my friend.

Wendy: Great. Thank you, Kaley. Well, it would be very easy to just jump right into talking about the armor of God and how we have this beautiful gift from God to pray when we encounter spiritual warfare. But the reality is before we can understand the armor, we have to know why we need it. And we need it because of something called spiritual warfare. Then, if we want to talk about that, then we have to know what spiritual warfare is and what it isn't. And so you and I talked about this. The very first thing I want to say is not every bad thing happens because of spiritual warfare. And the reason I really want to just put this out there is because we don't want to give that much credit to Satan.

1 John 4:4 makes it very clear. It says, "Greater is the One who lives in us than the one who lives in the world." And that One, that capital One who lives in us is the Spirit of the living God. And the little one that lives in the world, that's Satan. And so God gave these words to John to ensure that God's children, that's you and me, will never forget that God is greater than anything we're going to face on this earth. Physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, including the schemes of the devil. And a few years ago while I was actually teaching at our She Speaks Conference here in Charlotte, I received a call from my daughter Lauren, who was in New York city for a summer internship. And through tears, she explained that she was experiencing some really horrific allergic reaction and she was leaving the emergency room for the second time.

They had stabilized her twice and finally were sending her back to the dorm with a few EpiPens. Well, my husband heard this and immediately arranged for her to get on a plane and fly home. And no one could have ever prepared me for what I saw as she walked towards me at the airport. Honestly, I could barely take in what I was looking at. Lauren's body was swollen and covered in welts from head to toe. And we sent a picture to a friend of ours who's an emergency room doctor and he said, "I want you to head right here to the emergency room right now." He met us at the door, put her in a bed in the emergency room and initiated treatment. Hours and hours later, despite everything he did, her condition kept getting worse. And finally he said, "Wendy, I'm going to have to hospitalize her and deeply sedate her."

And my husband and my son were out of town at a basketball tournament. So I was by myself just watching these drugs drip into her veins without any relief. And I remember laying next to her in that bed, curled up to my 20-year-old, always my baby girl, tears flowing. My heart was pounding and I was so afraid of what was going to happen. And what's so crazy y'all is that that day in the early morning, I had taught on spiritual warfare at She Speaks. But in that moment, the truths I taught, the prayers I prayed, they just escaped me because fear and terror just took my heart hostage. And I don't know if you've been there, but I couldn't even pray. I didn't know what to pray because all that kept rushing into my mind was, what if they can't control this?

What if it attacks her throat over again and she can't breathe? What if I lose her? But then it went further and the question that came is, was this because I'm teaching on spiritual warfare? If I had agreed to this assignment from you God, would this not be happening to me? So then I was angry at God and I said, "If this is what happens when you step up in faith for anything, it's not worth it." Just those lies that come over you. But the good thing is I called one of my dearest Proverbs 31 sisters and she prayed with me and what she prayed with me was God's Word and she just redirected my mind from the fears and anxieties and she reminded me about what I knew to be true about God and about Lauren and about myself.

And I think she must have texted other people because over the next hour, my phone was just flooded with prayers and scriptures. And that's where I want to stop my story because before we jump into all those things that I was doing right then, I want to talk about this armor of God that we started with earlier. And we need this armor because we have an enemy and it's an enemy who doesn't want us to live in hope and healing and freedom that we can have being as a child of God and in God's Word. And that spiritual warfare that we need this armor for began back in Genesis with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Satan engaged Eve in a conversation which she allowed, causing her to question the instructions God have given to Adam and Eve. Questioning that led them both to disobey God's command not to eat of this tree in the garden or they would die.

They both ate, they both suffered consequences, and through their disobedient act, sin entered the world. And then it's been downloaded into every generation of humanity since. So that includes us, right? Then, that sin ushered in a spiritual battle between Satan, God's creation, and His created ones, and that's us, God's children. And we still contend with that today. But let me say, even though we're learning about spiritual warfare, today is about so much more. It's about equipping and empowering us to walk victoriously through those battles because victory is already ours in Jesus. And so we're going to walk through a five-step process using the acronym ARMOR to learn how to actively order our thoughts, so we could walk in step with God's battleplan, and not fight on our own. And so we're going through the words ARMOR. Align your heart with truth. R - Recognize the enemy and know God's battleplan. M - Model Jesus' example.

O - Order your thoughts and stand. R - Rejoice and walk victoriously. So are you ready? Let's just jump right in. The armor of God. First we A - Align our heart with truth. There are three steps. Knowing the enemy, respecting the battle, and knowing our role. So first, we have to know the enemy, okay? We've identified him already. He's real and he's powerful. And his name is Satan. Originally, his name was Lucifer. He actually was one of God's most brilliant creations and angel. But his heart filled with pride and instead of loving and worshiping God, he plotted against God because he wanted God's power and all that God had. So when he initiated this, but you probably could just call a coup in heaven, God threw him out along with a third of the angels. So now we've got the enemy, we know him. Now we've got to respect the battle and Jesus plainly sets up two important scriptures to help us with this battle.

John 10:10 says, "Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy." So what Jesus is saying, he's the thief. Second, John 8:44 Jesus says, "Satan has always hated the truth because there's no truth in him. He's a liar and the father of lies." So he's a thief and a liar. Let me just tell you some of his most effective tools to be on the lookout for when we feeling are shame, guilt, discouragement, despair, bitterness, and unforgiveness. Those are the emotions. And we're going to talk about those in a little bit. But just remember those words. So now we know our enemy, we respect the battle. But the best part of this part right here in aligning our heart is aligning our heart with our role in this battle — who we are. Because of Jesus, those of us who call ourselves children of God know the end of the battle before we even jump in.

1 John 5:1 says who we are. He writes, "Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Simply said, this verse gives us the assurance that when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, when we believe He's the Son of God, we become a blood-bought daughter of the one true God. And then a few verses later in 1 John 5:8, a question is asked, "Who is it that overcomes the world?" And the answer in Scripture says, "Only he or she who believes Jesus is the Son of God." So let's link these together. When we link them together, what we learn is everyone who believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior is born of God and is a child of God. And because of that, we are overcomers. Because Jesus overcame and we live in Him, we are overcomers.

Our role as beloved blood-bought daughters of the One true God is to stand in that positionally that we are an overcomer. And then, as if that position is not enough, God then gives us tools and equipment to fight the battle. So that's where we're going to go next. We're going to move from A - Aligning our heart, to R, which is to recognize the enemy and learn God's battleplan. This again has three steps, okay? Knowing the enemy's tactics, learning God's battleplan, and putting on and taking up the armor. So the first thing is know his tactics. And I mentioned it earlier, he's a master at using our emotions because emotions aren't bad in and of themselves. The danger comes when we allow those feelings and thoughts to linger like I did that day in the hospital.

And when they linger, it's like they seep into the marrow of our bones and they take us hostage. They steal our courage, our strength, our peace, our hope. And Satan knew my weakness in the hospital room that day. And actually, it's one of my vulnerable places, fear. We all have a place. Mine has been fear my whole life, and he attacked me there before, and he was doing that again. And then you add my little girl's life on top of that, those “what ifs” came rushing in. So we know his tactics and now we have to, second, learn the battleplan. And the one word I can think of to just give it one word is “truth.” That's God's battleplan. Truth to combat his lies. And what I did in that hospital room is I allowed my feelings, my emotions to trump the truth I knew.

And anxiety and fear took over and without anybody to fight with us, we're no match for Satan. And so my friends' texts pointed me back to the truth I knew, especially Ephesians 6:12. Ephesians 6:12 reminded me who my battle was really against. And it wasn't her infection and it wasn't any doctors and it wasn't God. It says in Ephesians 6:12, "We are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world against mighty powers in this dark world against the evil spirits in the heavenly places." Now, that sounds overwhelming and scary, but if you go back to the beginning, remember when I said that God threw Satan and a third of the angels out? That's who this is talking about, and that's an invisible battle. We see it in so many places.

I wish we had time to talk about this invisible spiritual conflict between good and evil. And in the hospital room that day, thank goodness for community, for friends, because they started to put truth in front of me reminding me of who I am. That I'm a child of God, that I am God's beloved, and that every one of us, when we believe in Jesus, we're His daughters, and that He's in complete control. And so I began to just feed my mind the truth and eventually it overcame the lies. And this is because when we know and stand on the Truth, Truth will trump our feelings every single time when we know it and we stand on it and pray it. And praying God's Word was a game-changer for me. So we're going to move now to part three.

We know the enemy's tactics, we've learned his battleplan, and now we're going to put on and take up the armor that we talked about in the beginning. Over the years, God has armed His people for battle. He armed David with smart five smooth stones and a slingshot, right? To pipe this nine-foot giant. He armed Gideon. Gideon's 300 soldiers with trumpets, empty pitchers and torches to fight an army as numerous as locusts. And God does the same thing for us, except ours is like a suit of armor called the armor of God. And so we're going to jump into that now and we find it — if you have your Bible in Ephesians 6:14-17, there are seven pieces of armor. So let's start with the first five because they're what we call defensive pieces of armor. These are things that we stand firm in because we already have them or we put them on. And each piece of armor reflects visually a Roman soldier's armor.

So it's something His audience would have been familiar with at the time. And so it just brings this visually alive. So let's start with the belt of truth. Like a soldier's belt, Roman soldier's belt held this equipment that they needed to protect them in battle. And it was the very first thing they put on. So when we talk about the belt of truth, it's the very first thing that we should put on every day to encircle and protect us so that we're not vulnerable. And that Truth is who we are in Christ. That's the truth that we should put on every day and walk in our day with. Breastplate of righteousness is the second one. This represents our positional, what you call right-standing before God that we have because of Jesus. Jesus died for us and we get the standing that Jesus has before God. Like the breastplate for the Roman soldier, it protected his vital organs — especially his heart. Well, this breastplate of righteousness guards our hearts from the blows of the enemy.

Then we look at the shoes of the gospel of peace. Just like a Roman soldier had sandals that provided him a firm foundation as he walked, the good news of the gospel of peace, the good news about Jesus. That's our firm foundation upon which we can stand, but also that we have to share with other people. Then there's the shield of faith. Just as the Roman soldier had this big shield that he held in front of him to fend off the arrows and spears and swords of the enemy, God gives us a shield but it's our faith. And the stronger our faith, the more easier it will be to fend off our enemies. But it's called a shield, we have to take it up, right?

We have to pick it up, it says. And then the fifth one is the helmet of salvation and this is my favorite really. Because you think of that soldier and how the helmet protected his head. Well, the helmet of salvation, our salvation, protects our minds. And our minds are where our thoughts and knowledge live. And so we have our salvation to ensure that we know we're a saved child of God, we're covered by the blood of Jesus, and we have the mind of Christ. And when we have the mind of Christ, we can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's in 2 Corinthians 10:17. Those are the five defensive pieces. Now we move on to the sword of the spirit. This is my favorite really. I know I want to say everyone is my favorite, but the Word of God, this is our offensive weapon.

Just as a soldier spear allowed him to lead a charge against the enemy, our sword is our best weapon — and doesn't it make sense it would be, because Satan has one primary weapon, lies? So we need one offensive weapon to go against him. And that is truth, the Truth of God's Word. And now we get to move to M because we watched Jesus use this to defeat Satan in the wilderness. And so we've aligned our hearts, we've recognized the enemy, and now we model Jesus' example.

Just after God validated Jesus' identity with these very words, "This is my son." Satan slithered up to Jesus in the wilderness and issued three temptations attacking His deity and His position as the Son of God. But with each temptation, Jesus did not engage conversation with Satan. Remember how Eve did? Jesus did not with every temptation Satan spewed forth Jesus answered back, "It is written." Clearly and concisely quoting God's Word. And Kaley and Meredith, this to me is one of the most equipping and empowering examples that Jesus has ever set for us, because we have the very same weapon available to us to fight lies, temptations, anxieties, addictions.

The very thing Hebrews 4:12 living in active Word. What we have to do is just pick it up and wield it. That means speak it and declare it and pray it. So how do we do that? That's what takes us to the fourth letter. This takes us to O. We've aligned our heart, we've recognized the enemy, we've modeled Jesus' example. Now we order our thoughts and stand firm. So this is three parts. Again, these are really fast steps. We have to recognize the lies, tear down the lies, and replace the lies. So let's be more practical. When we think about our thoughts, sometimes they become so deeply embedded in the soil of our hearts like my fear has done. They become one with us, they truly hold us hostage to the point we fixate, feed and nurture them. We almost grow comfortable with them.

And so we have to ask God, we have to pray and say, "Open our eyes Lord and help us to see what are we focusing and fixating on." And those are the things that are going to be the lies that we need to take captive. That's 2 Corinthians 10:5. So how do we tear them down? That's part two. We've recognized them and this is the easiest thing to say, this is to confess. It might not be easy to do it, but if we do it, that means you confess it. And I say do it out loud, write it in a journal because getting it out is so important.

And for me that day in the hospital, fear had taken me hostage and it trumped the truth I knew. And the last thing is that we have to replace it. So if we confessed it, then we're pushing it out and we're going to replace it with the rhema Word of God. So that's an interesting word. Some of you may not know that word. It's r-h-e-m-a and by this time, need a personal word. There's a word called the logos Word of God, l-o-g-o-s. That's a general word from God. It communicates His ability to do something, maybe His general will, on something. His overall words in the Bible. But sometimes, when we're seeking after God and we're praying, we will get a personal rhema word. It's almost like a giant highlight. I mean a highlighter will come and just light up words or you feel like words jumped off the page.

They are literally answering a prayer for you or giving you direction. And so that's what I needed that day. And this is where the last piece of God's armor comes in from Ephesians 6, and that is prayer. Pray in the spirit, Paul says, at all times and on every occasion. So I prayed in the hospital that day; I picked up my sword and I began to pray His truths and promises up and down that room over the doctors, over my daughter, over myself, and I wish I have more time. I'm going to give you two examples so you can see how I prayed, but I took Isaiah 41:10 and what I did was I prayed it as if God was speaking it to me. Like I was His daughter, which I am. He said, "Wendy, do not fear for I am with you and Lauren.”

“Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. You are not alone. I will hold you with my righteous right hand." And then from Psalm 91, “
Wendy, I am your shield and your defender. I will shield you and your sweet girl with my wings. I will shelter and protect you both. My faithful promises are your armor. You don't need to be afraid anymore." That was so powerful to me. Those names of God and the things that He promises. And so the power of prayer lies in wielding the Word of God, praying His Word back to him. Because listen to this, from Isaiah 55:11, it says, "So is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty. It will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purposes for which I sent it."

This is what happens. God is saying when my word goes out, I do stuff with it, I honor it, I'm at work in it. And this takes us to our last letter, which is rejoice and walk victoriously. We've aligned our hearts, we've recognized the enemy, we've modeled Jesus' example, we've ordered our thoughts, we stood on the Word. And so when I go back to my story and I think about the fact that when we walk in the fullness of the armor, which is like what I started to do when I remembered the Truth, we can be assured of walking confidently through any spiritual battle. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:10, "We could be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power." His power, not ours.

So in the hospital room that day, my whole heart changed and I remembered that I know the Truth, I believe that Truth, I declare the Truth, I pray the Truth. And so I did that and God moved. Within 24 hours, my daughter's hives began to subside, her swelling lessened, and she was off this out-of-it sedation, her smile returned. And what I want to tell you is God does not always work in one night. In fact, I say I've only had a few times where He's moved quickly.

But you know why He moved quicker this time? I think it's because of the many spiritual battles that I had walked through before fighting fear and they were long fought. One lasted nearly a decade because I had been a victim of a crime and I fought fear so much. What these battles did was equip me with the Truth. I know, believe, claim, pray, and now teach today. I have lived this over and over again and I can promise you as we close, the more we put this five-step process into practice, the more we walk in victory before the battle even begins, because we aren't surprised that we're going to have one during the battle. Because we remember God's faithfulness from the battles before. But especially on the other side, because in the battle we experience God's presence, His promises, His power and His provision.

Kaley: Wow Wendy. That was so good and I know that in our script today you have a prayer written down and I want to be able to link to that in our show notes. And so if you're listening to this, Wendy has written a really pretty prayer that we're going to have. You can download from our website, because I think that this could be something special that you hold onto as you implement this five-step process in your life. But Wendy, I have a question for you. As we were talking through the tools that Satan uses, you mentioned that we can go to different things — like fear I know is what you personally I think said that you go to a lot. And so I'm just curious for people who may not be fearful people, what other ways can the enemy, I guess, go to war against them in their head? Can you explain that a little bit?

Wendy: Yes. I can give you two specific examples from my own life. And one is peace. That is something like anxiety. One of the things that we, especially having just these last few months with the COVID-19 and that has stolen a lot of people's anxieties, the circumstance has. And it's the five-step process, does a change, you would go to verses on peace. And you would find God's verses on peace and you would claim those because the power lies in praying the Word back to Him. But also this is maybe very specific, but the Lord just laid it on my heart to talk about jealousy. I was a very jealous wife early on. Some because of what happened to me having been sexually assaulted. I think I just had no trust and began to just be afraid of losing my husband. But I had to really learn that jealousy stemmed from not trusting God. That once I put God on the throne of my heart instead of wanting my husband so badly to be the one to take care of me and make me feel safe and that if I lost him, I would lose everything.

So sometimes, it's just trusting God with a loss. Maybe you've lost a job, or a child or... So there's loss and jealous. Really anything that we walk through, any emotion that we feel. God's Word has the answer to whatever it is that we are walking through — it truly, truly does. Well you can use a concordance, you can Google the word and find scriptures to pray.

Meredith: That's good. Don't judge me for asking this question, okay? I'm going to take it all the way back and make it real simple and ask just like a beginner's question. And that is: we don't use the word, at least I don't use the word, “warfare” at all in my everyday conversations. We're not familiar with that. For the most part, America is a country of peace, and so even the concept of this warfare and battle, it feels like it's far away and distant from my reality until something hits that feels really tragic. When you started with the example of Lauren, which first let me pause — is Lauren okay? That's what I want to know. We never resolved.

Wendy: Yes, but it took about a month.

Meredith: Oh wow.

Wendy: But she eventually was fine. But yeah, they never discovered. It was not an allergy. They think she had some terrible virus that attacked her.

Meredith: Wow, that's crazy. I'm so grateful that she's okay though. So praise the Lord for that.

Wendy: Thank you.

Meredith: But for me, I'm trying to decipher. I've certainly been in circumstances where I've thought to myself and I've even asked the Lord, "Is this warfare? Is this battle or is this just the consequences of bad decisions?" And so help me and help our listeners know, how do you know? How do you know if this is warfare and you're supposed to go to battle or if it's... Untangle that a little bit for me.

Wendy: Sure.

Meredith: What an everyday situation might look like and how you would process it.

Wendy: So I think the important thing is what I started with — that not every single thing is Satan's fault. He's coming after us. But what I can tell you is sometimes circumstances will come. Hurricanes, disasters, those kinds of things come at us. People lose their homes, and those things come at us because we live in a fallen world.

The world itself is falling apart, and then when we have bad things happen to us that we cause ourselves, those are by our own choices that we make, and that requires us first coming to the Lord and confessing that and dealing with that. But here's what happens — whether a bad thing happens to us by someone, whether we make it ourselves or whether it's bad things. The virus that we're struggling with now, disasters on the earth. These or the death of people we love. I'm walking through with a friend who lost a child. What happens is those things are not necessarily the sin or the warfare part. But this enemy that we have, he's the one that wants to come into those places that totally have nothing to do with him overall. The fallen world is because of what happened in the garden.

But those places, that's where he slithers in and tries to then turn it into a battle between Satan and God for your heart, for your mind, for your marriage. Does that make sense to you? Does that help?

Meredith: That's tremendously helpful because like I said, for the average everyday person who's just living out their life, trying to get by, when a tragedy strikes, it's easy for us to say, "Wow, Satan's really coming after me." When oftentimes, those can be the consequences of someone's terrible decision, all that kind of stuff. But I love how you put it, Wendy, that those are often the gateway for Satan to attack you. And so in those moments, because you're in a vulnerable position, because you're in need or maybe feeling emotions that you're not familiar with, it's a perfect time for him to just scoot in there and feed you lies and attack you and engage in battle with you. And if you're not prepared, you'll be the one losing and he'll be the one winning, right? So I think that's really super helpful. I mean, today's lesson Wendy, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Wendy: Can I say one thing that God just... I feel like this is really... Sometimes this happens to me. I feel like this is for somebody listening. But sometimes I don't want people to think all the emotions are bad and I feel like there's someone out there right now, maybe there's more than one. But that you feel like you're struggling with anxiety. I just feel like somebody is really struggling and I want you to know that don't let that lock you up, don't let that paralyze you, because sometimes you just sit there and ride the wave of it. And while you’re riding the wave through it, and going to the other side, don't feel bad, don't feel like you're not strong enough. Just speak truths, pray through it, get to the other side, and just keep riding those waves, because I promise you, you will get on the other side of it. You will. Just continue to call out to the Lord and pray and believe that He's with you and he's walking with you and He won't leave you.

Meredith: That's really good, Wendy. Thank you.

Kaley: Yes, absolutely. Wendy, thank you so much for being on the podcast with us today. I know this was a message that I needed clarity on and you helped bring me that clarity, so thank you, and I'm excited to go dig through my notes and apply this to my life. Meredith, why don't you point our listeners to a couple more resources that might be helpful as we end our time together.

Meredith: Absolutely. Well, first I want to point you to this prayer that Wendy has written. I really do think if this is an area that you're wrestling with or are curious about, we're going to make that prayer available to you and that's a great place for you to get some ammunition, okay? Let's go ahead and resource ourselves to enter into this very real battle that we are in.

Meredith: Also, maybe this has gotten you curious about really studying the Word of God for the first time. We'd encourage every single one of our listeners to go download our First 5 mobile app. It's a great place to start learning how to study the Word of God. Many of you hear us mention it and we talk about it a lot, but it really is a tool to help you spend the first five minutes of your day in God's Word and it will really help you know and learn the Truth in such a new and fresh way that I really enjoy it. So like I said, you can go into the app store and search First 5 or you can go to first5.org on our website and you'll see all the daily teachings there as well.

Kaley: Yes, and we also want to point you to Wendy's book, Hidden Joy in a Dark Corner. In this book, Wendy shares her testimony and how her walk with the Lord grew through some really hard experiences. And you can purchase this book on our Proverbs 31 bookstore at p31bookstore.com and like Meredith said, we'll also link to a couple more resources from Wendy in show notes on this website. Well folks, that's about all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us, Wendy, and thank you guys for listening. We pray today's message helps you know the Truth of God's Word and live out that Truth, because we believe when you do, it changes everything.