The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley Olson: Well, hey friends. Thanks for tuning into the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaylee Olson, and I'm here today with my friend and my coworker, and my cohost, Shae Hill. Hey, Kaley. Happy to be with you today.

I'm so excited you're here. Shae, we just wrapped up our annual She Speaks conference where we get to spend a few days with hundreds of women who are called to be communicators. And during our time together, we train them to be effective in their calling to write, speak, or lead in ministry, and it's always such a fun time. But it's exhausting. Right?

Are you recovered?

Shae Hill: I think I'm starting to recover. Yes.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. Starting to recover.

So amazing. It was so amazing. But now that we're a little bit more refreshed and, like, slightly recovered, I wanted to ask you, what was your favorite moment at the conference, or what was the highlight for you?

Shae Hill: I think one of the highlights for me was on Saturday, everyone, all the attendees got to choose their own workshop schedule, and we had so many different options that they could attend. And I actually got to assemble a panel workshop, which is, like, my dream.

Like, let me assemble a team of people and let me just ask the questions. Uh-huh. And, I mean, my panelists were, like, friends, some that I had only met online, but then we got to meet in person. And I knew it was gonna be really good, but it really blessed me, like, just being together with those women and getting that face to face time. Yeah.

So that was probably my favorite part was that that Saturday workshop experience. What about you?

Kaley Olosn: That's awesome. I was thinking about Saturday as well, but, from a different perspective, at the very end of the conference, usually, every year, we like to just kinda have, like, a marked moment where people pause and really pray over what they feel like the Lord is asking them to do. And it's special every year, but this year, it was just really special.

There were 650 women in the room all kind of being ready to just be sent. You know, it's like they we spend two days with them just kind of, like, in this little cocoon where we minister to them and, speak to their hearts about what they're walking through and their calling and, like, give them practical tools to help them live it out. But then there comes a moment on Saturday night where we're, like, okay, now go. And just getting to see them, like, actually be ready to do that was really, really cool. I remember that moment too.

Shae Hill: I remember Meredith kinda giving us the charge and saying, don't wait until Monday to do what you know that the boys asked you to do, and it's, like, end of day Saturday at this point. And I was like, oh, gosh. That's so convicting and so good. And looking around the room and seeing all the women write down what their next step was, like, I could just only dream of the possibilities of what will come on the other side of that. It was amazing.

Kaley Olson: I know. It's amazing. Well, speaking of Meredith, I'm actually really excited, Shay, because guess what? We get to hear from Meredith Brock, but not, like, in a podcast teaching like normal. Meredith was a keynote speaker at She Speaks.

And, oh my goodness, it was so good, Shay. It was so good. I was sitting side stage listening to her talk. And I was like, oh, this is not just a message for women who are called to be communicators. This is a message for any woman who feels like she's gotta work hard to prove her worth, and I was really blessed by it.

And I know our listeners will be too. So, guys, be sure and hang out after the message is over because I'm gonna spend just a few minutes with Shae processing what we heard in Meredith's message. So, let's jump in.

Meredith Brock: Y'all can take a seat. I mean, I think that's the way we wanna start She Speaks.

Am I right? That was incredible. Thank you, Kyle and Lauren so much. That was amazing. Man, it's just nice to look at you guys.

You look great. We have been thinking about you and praying for you and preparing for you for a whole year. So, I just want to take a minute and just gaze at you because you look good. Well, if you don't know me, my name is Meredith Brock. I am indeed the CEO of Proverbs thirty-one Ministries.

How that happened, I don't know. But I have been working with Lisa in Proverbs thirty-one for thirteen almost fourteen years. It'll be fourteen this October. I've been a Christian for twenty-seven years. That's amazing.

Praise God. I have been a wife for nineteen years, praise the Lord for Mack Brock, he's a good soul, patient, patient man. I've been a mom for almost fourteen years, which is wild. My little man turns 14 or now he's big this summer. I have been a foster mom for five years, and I have been the CEO for just like a green three years, y'all.

I may have been at Proverbs for a while, but I have just been the CEO for three years. But what I have actually been for forty-four long years is a self-identified try hard. Now you asked what Meredith, what is a try hard? Somebody explains that to me. Well, if you look it up in urban dictionary, I think it's the most appropriate definition that you can come across.

It says somebody whose effort level and emotional investment is excessively high, for the level of play in which they're competing. Yeah. My effort level and emotional investment is excessively high, basically for everything I do. Going to the grocery store, excessively high. My investment, deep.

It doesn't matter where we're going or what we're doing, I will be deeply invested. If you ask my teenage son what a try hard is, he'll do something like this, mom. I mean, it's like you're just you're just always doing the most, mom. You're just always doing the most. And I also identify with that.

I am always doing the most. So, this is actually my fourth time speaking at She Speaks. I've taken some years off; this is I just want you guys to know I am not a professional speaker; this is not what I get paid to do. And so, I've tried really hard to be a good She Speaks speaker. And I've had some incidents that I'm gonna share with you today.

One of them, some of you might have been present for, was way back, was pre-COVID. I was teaching a workshop, which is much more my speed. Like, let me teach you something. We're going to do some steps. Right?

And so, at the time, I had to advance my slides. So, I had my computer here. I was advancing my slides. And then I had my paper notes. Why?

I don't know why I decided paper notes was a good idea, but that's how I do it. And then I was holding the microphone. And I am and there's a lot going on because right at the same time that you are advancing your slides, flipping your pages, you're still running your mouth. Right? But you don't you're doing all these things at the same time.

And so, at one point, I'm advancing my slides, I'm talking, and I go to flip my flip my page and it won't flip. And what do you do when you when you can't flip the page? Lick your finger and turn the page. Except for me, I got my hands confused and I licked the microphone. True story.

True story. Hence, the headset microphone that I am currently wearing. If I lick that today, I give you permission to laugh. Okay? Because that would be very weird.

I don't know how I would do it, but I can guarantee you if anybody could do it, it would be me. Right? Okay. Let me share another story if that's not enough for you. Okay?

In 2020, we had to quick flip She Speaks to totally online. Right? And so, we're hustling as a team doing what we can, and it the whole day it's like you're going from this camera to this camera. I'm hosting the whole day with my girl, Shae. And we're sitting at the table, and it is a long day.

It is a long day of like we're going here's the keynote and then we're cutting back over to us as hosts and we're trying to move everything. And you know if you're on camera or if you come on stage, what do you do right before you come on? Hey, am I good? Check my nose, my teeth, my zipper, we're good, right? You do all those things.

And all day long, Shae and I would be like, Shae, we are good? Okay, cool, cool. And so, we're closing in, we're landing the plane, it's the end of the day, I'm so tired. One last time we gotta do this, right? And so, the producer goes, okay ladies in five, four, and I say Shae am I good?

And she goes, oh gosh it's happening. And I was like, what? And she was like, you've got a giant bugger and they're about to cut right to my face y'all, like, tight shot on my face. And what do you do? You immediately just start laughing.

It's all I could do. And so, they cut to me and I'm like and you I just I'm letting you know if you wanna see it. It's on my Instagram. You can go look at it right now. I go; there's not I was trying what I was trying to say is we've got not just one but two more speakers.

And I said, we've got one. And I turned my head this way to try to hide my nose and remove old said bat from the cave, you know. And the whole time Shae's like, oh, she's falling apart and just takes over and keeps on going. Right? And so those are just two just two of the instances of me trying really hard at She Speaks.

And I guess I'll share just one more. There's just one more that I wanna share with you. And this didn't actually happen at She Speaks. It happened at another event. I'm doing a q and a with Lisa, like women in ministry, wives who are married to people in ministry, all that kind of stuff.

So, they are asking questions. My family, my mother-in-law and father-in-law, he is a Southern Baptist preacher. Good man. One of his wives is, like, one of my best friends. I feel so lucky to say that about my mother-in-law.

And so, they asked a question and I'm talking about their, like, their relationship and what it has looked like as I have observed it. Once again, your mouth is moving, and your brain is thinking about something else. Right? Okay. So, here's what I here's what happens.

They ask the question. And I said, you know, my father-in-law, he has a beautiful body of believers. I paused just like that. Why did I do that? Why did I pause right there?

Why did I pause after beautiful body? Why couldn't I just have said beautiful body of? No. No. No.

Right there. Beautiful body of believers. What is wrong with me? Okay. Just thought before we got any further that I would just level the playing field for all of us.

Okay? Give you the chance to say at least I didn't do that. Right? Okay. So go ahead.

Turn to your neighbor and say at least I didn't do that. Okay. Alright. So now back to my original point, which is like I'm the ultimate try hard. Right?

Good night am I ever. And so, I wanna give you I wanna explain to you why I am the ultimate try hard. Okay? I grew up in a really crazy unusual family. I was surrounded by a lot of drugs, alcohol, every kind of abuse and very extreme poverty.

By the time I was 18, I had lived in 10 different houses, two trailers, a car, and a homeless shelter. And because of this extreme poverty, and just the harsh environment that I grew up in, I developed this core belief that nobody cared about me and that nobody was coming to save me. And so, naturally, I said, gosh, I've got to get myself out of this terrible situation, and the only person who can save me is me. And so, I am going to work really, really hard. And I don't know if it was the amount of PBS Uh-oh.

Oh, we're good. I heard it cut out. Or what, but just lick it. Right? That'll make it I don't know if it was the amount of PBS Kids that I watched or what, but somewhere in me I developed this idea that if I tried really, really hard and got really, really good grades, if I worked really hard and did every single extracurricular activity I possibly could, I could build a resume, get a scholarship, and go to college, and I could get out of.

Right? And so, I did just that. I worked crazy hard all the way through all of my school years. By the time I was 17, I would be the first in my family to ever graduate high school on both sides of my family. I had, thank you, praise the Lord for that.

I had college scholarships waiting for me, and it appeared as though all of my trying hard had paid off, right? Except I got myself into a little bit of trouble. There was a little bit of underage drinking and some drugs involved and everything I had worked for was suddenly at risk. And that's exactly what it took, for me to realize that I couldn't save myself. And thankfully the Lord sent a girl named Emily Bankhead into my life who told me about Jesus, and that's when I accepted him into my life.

And it changed everything for me because for the first time in my life, I realized all that had happened to me. Jesus saw and he was right there with me, and he was weeping over it, waiting for me to come back to him because he had loved me through it all. And when I realized that I was like, oh my gosh, I don't want another soul to go through this world without knowing the love that I now know. And I can imagine that a lot of you most of you in this room right now have had some kind of experience like that, and because of the love that you have experienced from Jesus, you have decided, I'm going to make my whole life about him. I'm going to give my whole life in service to him because I don't want another person to live without that kind of love.

And so, after I came to know Jesus, man, I did what I always knew to do, I tried hard. Right? I turned right around and tried hard. And so, here's what I did, I went straight from having all those college scholarships to like, okay, I'm gonna go to Bible college. So, I actually turned into a hairdresser first to be able to pay for Bible college.

When they let me into Bible college, it was hysterical because I was like, do you know who I am? Do you know my daddy sells drugs and you're gonna let me in this place? But amazingly that alone was a miracle, and they let me in. Okay? So, I became a hairdresser to pay for college.

I got into bible college. After that, I got into grad school. I actually got a bachelor's in bible. I got a minor, wait for it, in outdoor recreational leadership. So, if you need a campfire started, I'm your girl.

Okay? Come up. I can start that fire. Okay? I also got a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling.

And so, you would think right now, you're thinking, mayor, you are on your way. You are on your way. Right? Okay. Because she's doing it.

She's checking all the boxes. Shortly after that I got married. I started working for this church that was growing really, really fast. I was the only woman on the leadership team, and guys I was just in my mid-twenties checking all the boxes, right? And then there was this moment when the Lord made it very, very clear, stand down, Mare.

It's time to stand down. And I was honestly so confused because I wanted so desperately to make a big impact with my life. I wanted so desperately that all that pain that had I had lived through and the promise I felt like as a 17-year-old girl when I came to know Jesus, I knew he spoke so clearly to me. I'm gonna use all that pain. I'm gonna use all that heartache for my glory.

And so, I held onto that promise all those years working my little fanny off to get to where I was and I felt like I had arrived. I mean to be on staff in leadership at this rapidly growing church, the only female and then for God to be like, 'slow your role girlfriend'. I was very confused and honestly quite disillusioned with who I knew God to be. I was like, 'wait a minute, you're a God of big moves and miracles and now you're asking me to get small? Like this is confusing and I was angry.

You know? And so, I stepped down and during that season it was really hard for me to read the Bible because every story that I read was of God doing big giant moves and things that felt like that's what I wanted to do. You know? And so, all I could bring myself to do was read in the Psalms. And so, I found myself in Psalm 145 verse 13 through 17, I'm gonna read it to you.

It says, your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures through all generations. The Lord is trustworthy in all that he promises and faithful in all he does. Verse 14, the Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. And in that moment, I felt so clearly God say to me, Meredith, I cannot lift an unbowed head. And I realized for all those years I had been lifting my head, holding it up, and now he was inviting me into a new way of living and understanding his kingdom.

And so I did it very imperfectly I'm sure, I bowed my head, I took a position that made absolutely no sense to me and I chose to believe that that promise that God made me as a 17 year old girl would somehow come to fruition, that he would use all the pain, all the brokenness in my life to glorify him. He had planted, I believed wholeheartedly, had planted that desire in my heart and that would somehow have to make it happen. I stayed in that role for a few years. My husband and I decided at the time to start a family, and that's when I met Lysa Terkhurst. I started working for her part time doing a little bit of management, it wasn't anything fancy.

And during the time I worked really hard, I researched really hard, I strategized really hard, and guess what I did? I tried really hard to ensure we were making all the right decisions that we could for maximum impact for the kingdom. Ten years into Lisa and three kids deep, they asked me to take the CEO position for Proverbs thirty-one so that Lysa could take on the role of chief visionary officer. So really the way that broke down was my job was to run the day to day of the ministry, make sure it's all happening, and for Lisa to create the content that would drive the direction of our ministry. And so, you would think right there like, Mayor, you're there.

Right? CEO of like a giant women's ministry, like God did it. That's that promise of the 17-year-old girl, right? Like God has made it happen and all you're trying hard has paid off, right? Except it hasn't.

Because guys, in the ten years that I had not been the CEO, Growth for Proverbs 31 was easy peasy. It was always up and to the right. And as soon as I stepped in one year in, all of a sudden growth became really, really hard. And I was mad. So that was facing me, I was weighing like, what's going on?

God, I thought I thought I got there. Like I thought I got to the place where you were gonna use my life and I was gonna be able to make a big impact, but now this is hard. And at the same time that was happening, our family was going through a really, really hard adoption process that seemed to go on forever, and there were a million ups and downs and so much uncertainty. At the same time for the first time in my life I started having some health challenges. Guys, the pause, she came for me.

And if you don't know what the pause is yet, oh, you will meet her, and she will make herself right at home. And so, I was working my way through all of that, and I was to be quite honest, I was like, God, why all at once? This is just so hard. I'm mad, I'm sad, I'm confused, and God was silent. And I was reading my Bible, and I was praying, and I was talking to the people who I knew were close to God and they weren't saying anything to me that was helpful and felt like God was speaking to them, right?

You know, you've had these moments. And so here I was one Sunday sitting in church, my pastor's preaching and he says, he starts talking about the last commandments that Jesus ever gave and he's kind of going through this list. And he says, Some of Jesus's last commandments were go and sin no more and love your neighbor as yourself. And in those moments, in that moment it literally dawned on me, like I was like, I can't do that. Like I literally can't go and sin no more.

Like I just want you to know since I've walked on this stage I have sinned. Like, she's got a super cute pair of overalls with little dogs on them. I like them. I've coveted them since you've sat there. The other one, love your neighbor as yourself.

Y'all don't wanna talk to me about my neighbor's dog. It never stops barking ever. And so, I realized like holy cow I literally can't do any of this. And that the Christian life itself you're set up for failure from the moment you say yes. Like literally you can do none of it, you can do none of it.

But through the power of the Holy Spirit in you he can do it. And so, when that kind of sat on me I was like, okay this sounds really nice and warm and fuzzy or whatever but like what does the rest of scripture say about this? Does it follow suit through the whole book? And so, I started diving in, where else do I see this idea that it's not up to me? You know?

And so, we took it all the way back, yeah, we took it all the way back to our man Abraham. K? We're gonna start with Abraham, and we take a quick look at his life. K? God made a big, huge promise to Abraham, didn't he?

What did he say to him? He says, leave your home and I'm gonna give you this land. Right? You're gonna be the father of many nations. All the leaders in the room are like, sweet.

Give me the five-year plan. I'll make it happen, God. Right? Or at least this lady does. And so, if I were him, I'd be like, sweet, awesome promise.

Let's do this. K? And so shortly after the promise is made to Abraham, they enter into a covenant in biblical times. Like a covenant for us, there would be a whole marriage ceremony if you're entering into a marriage covenant. For them they had this thing called the like it was a blood ritual.

Many of you have probably studied this in scripture or at least read about it. It's really weird. What they do is like they cut animals in half and the two people they lay them out and the two people who are making the covenant walk through the sliced animals together in essence saying may this happen to me if I break this covenant. And so, you see in Genesis I think it's 15, yeah, Genesis 15, Abraham does this because God makes him a prophet promise and he's like, God, I'm gonna let's do this. Like this is a prominent a covenant that we're gonna make together.

Abraham splits all the animals, he gets ready to walk through. He's alone. There's God's not in form at this point. He gets ready to walk through and guess what happens? He falls asleep.

I'm not kidding you, that's really what happens, he lays down and falls asleep. Now whether we know if God struck him with the sleepiness, we don't know. Or if Abraham was just like, been a long day killing animals, I need to lay down and take a nap. You know? But here's part, after Abraham fell asleep, guess what God did?

He walked through by himself. In essence saying, this has nothing to do with you. I know you can't even fulfill this promise, so go to sleep. I will fulfill it on your behalf. Okay.

Now let's look at our friend Moses. Moses y'all he's got a whole situation running from the Egypt Egyptians, he's got like a whole mass of Israelites behind him, it's a scene. Here we are, we're landing in Exodus 14, he's literally there are chariots running after him with thousands of Israelites. They're on the side of the Red Sea. Gods made him a promise.

He knows deep down inside that he says, I'm going to get you out of this slavery situation. He's standing on the side of the Red Sea. Listen to what Moses says to the people, verse 13, Moses answers the people, don't be afraid, stand firm and you will see the Lord's salvation, wait for it, that he will accomplish for you today. Nothing about what they were going to do, it was all about what God's going to do. I'm going to read the second the next verse just for a bonus.

Okay? It says, the Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still. If you read the message version, hold up wait for it because I think some of y'all need to hear this, k? If you read the message version here's what it says, and you keep your mouth shut. True story, I just needed I just needed you to know that.

Okay, now let's fast forward to our friend Joseph. K. Joseph, he is a kid, he gets called in, he gets anointed, he's literally a kid y'all. They say he's somewhere like maybe preteen. My son is 13 years old; I cannot imagine that this would happen to him.

That a priest would come and say, you're gonna be king of Israel one day in front of all of his siblings. And you know, that's stuck in David's heart somewhere. He didn't let go of that. I was 17 when I felt like the Lord told me he was gonna use my life and I never let go of it. It stays in the back of your mind no matter where you are.

Right? So, then he goes back out into the fields. He's a shepherd boy shepherding the sheep. We all know what happens after that. He goes and kills Goliath.

Is this the moment? Is he gonna be made king? Nope. Not the moment. Okay.

Then what does he do? He goes and Saul plays the harp. Is this the moment? Nope, that's not the moment either. Then what happens?

Saul's going to kill him and then he goes out and he's a fugitive, guess what? Do you know how many years they say he was a fugitive for? Seven to ten years in the desert with that promise brewing in his heart saying, When God? When God? When are you going to do it?

You know? And he even has opportunities. We know in scripture it says in in first Samuel 24, you all know the story, Saul goes into the cave to relieve himself. David's right there, he couldn't. He could've done it.

He knew the only thing that was standing between him and the promise of him becoming king was Saul was already sitting on the throne. He could have made it happen right there, but he chose not to. He pulled back and he waited. And then you'll see this is wild, years go on between that and when David is actually thrown to king, but you'll see there's another battle that breaks out. Not between not between Saul and David and his men, it's between Saul and a whole other people group that has nothing to do with David.

And they're running at Saul, and we all know the story. Right? Did the did the other people group, I can't remember their names, did they kill Saul? Nope. Did David go kill Saul?

Nope. Yeah, Saul kills himself. That's wild, like David had didn't have to do anything to make that happen. Literally nothing. Saul did it to himself, the irony of that cannot be lost.

And so, guess what happens now Saul is dead, David's no longer a fugitive, and you read two Samuel two, the actual verses in that section of scripture says David goes up to the city and he's made king. Not, and he seizes the throne. Nope. Not, and he went up and he took overpower. No, no, no, no, no, no.

He was made king at that time because God made him a promise and God did it in his time and in his way. Man, there's so many other stories that we could look at in scripture, but where I want us to park our minds right now is that doing ministry, having an impact with your life, you got you guys, is all about our King and by our King. And here's the wild part, for our benefit. Like it's for our benefit. Ministry is all about our King and by our King for our benefit.

I want us to go back and remember Psalm 145. I'm going to read that verse to you again in verse 14. It says, the Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down. When he lifts your head ladies it's his responsibility to keep it lifted, not yours. It's no longer about your strength, your ability, your connections, your grit, your skill.

It's all about his grace that will hold your head up in his time. Now some of you might be sitting here thinking, hold on, I thought I was coming to a conference where I'd be equipped to take action on my calling and now, you're telling me to put my head down, what? And you absolutely did come to a conference about taking action on your calling, but this is where you have to start because only, he can do it not you. We are utterly and completely dependent on him, completely dependent. And when you are dependent you don't have to carry the way to figure it out ladies, you don't have to make it happen, you don't have to grind it out or hustle anymore, it's him that does it.

And Jesus will lead you right to that place if you'll let him. I was really when I was young 17 all the thoughts of wanting to make my life count swirling around in my mind, I happened to have a really great mentor, and I was so grateful for her. And she one time when I was processing this idea of like, I feel like I'm gonna miss it. Like, I'm worried that I'm gonna miss what God has for me or more likely I'm gonna screw it up. Like, I really feel like I'm gonna mess this up and I'm just so scared and how do I know for sure that this is the way that I'm supposed to go?

And she looked me in the eye, and she said, Meredith, Jesus is a much better leader than you are a good follower. If you are just surrendered to him, he'll get you there. And so, I want to say to you before we get any further into this weekend, you're not here by accident. God has something special for you this weekend, he always does. He always has something for you.

He's just waiting for you to open your hands instead of closing them on top of what you think should be happening when. I'm going to be honest, for me right now guys I'm still in the thick of it. Every day waking up remembering to surrender and not make it about me, not try to lift my own head and keep it up because I just can't anymore. We have to remember that he is the promise maker, and he is the promise keeper. Not you, it's him.

We serve a very good and capable God, and he has not left me, and all the forty-four years of a mess I've made, and he has not left you just like he did not leave Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David. That God is your God, and he sees you just like he saw them. And he is just as much with you as he was with them. And so, my prayer for us is that may we be women that keep our heads bowed and wait patiently until he lifts it in his time, and in his way. And I want to leave you with this final thought, and that is, what you do for Jesus matters so much less than who you are to Him.

You are His daughter. The actual prize that He fought for and won on Calvary. You are his prize. Just you, you don't have to do anything to earn that exactly how you are right now. You are his beloved bride, that when he sees you at the end of that aisle, his eyes tear up.

And she's he says, she's here. She's here, and I love her so much. And that's where any kind of impact starts, and that's where we have to start this weekend. We're gonna go into worship for just a few minutes, but I wanna pray over you that the Holy Spirit would break through any of those places of resistance to His love and His tenderness for you, and that you would invite Him into your heart this weekend in a way that you never have before. Let me pray for us.

Jesus, thanks for being the one that fought for us. That for some reason you call us your prize, and that we are your bride. You see us in white. And when we step around that corner at the end of the aisle, your eyes feel filled with tears because you love us so deeply and you can't wait to be with us. Lord, help us remember that you are the promise maker and that you are the promise keeper and that we are simply to be your bride.

We love you, Lord. We trust you with all the hopes and dreams in our heart. May we surrender all of them to you knowing that you are good and capable. In Jesus' name, amen.

Kaley Olson: Alright, Shae.

I feel like I am equally in tears from laughter at Meredith's message True. As well as tears of maybe a little bit of conviction. Totally. But now that we've heard the whole thing twice for me and you now and first time for our listeners, here's the question that's burning inside me that I wanna unpack with you. Okay.

The line that Meredith said, God cannot lift an unbowed head, kinda lives run free in my mind because I've heard it in her She Speaks message, but a couple of times throughout her tenure at Proverbs thirty-one, she's used that reference. And, Shae, if I'm honest, it's hard for me to see where the line is when it comes to boldness and doing what I know I'm called to do versus being overly humble and almost ducking my head and hiding. And so, I think that our listeners are probably there too. So, I wanna kinda process with you. What have you learned about having a bowed head in your role at Proverbs or just in life?

However, you wanna answer the question.

Shae Hill: I mean, so much. This message is so good. I mean, when she talked about being, like, a self-identified try hard Yeah. I feel like I was really personally seen in that moment.

Yeah. I think about so many times in my life, I think the God cannot lift an unbowed head, how I can know kind of where I'm living in relation to that statement has so much to do with my internal motivations. Oh, wow. And I have to really check that to see, like, am I doing this to prove something? Whether it's to prove my worth or to prove that I can handle all of this or am I doing this because I really feel like God has placed something in front of me and asked me to do something.

Also, things that I, like, don't necessarily want to do because it makes me feel uncomfortable or afraid. I feel like that's a great opportunity for, to be in a posture of humility and dependence on the Lord. Mhmm. But, yeah, I think it's, for me, it's more so checking my motivations of, like, is this a trail that I'm trying to blaze on my own? Like, is this something I'm trying to force?

Mhmm. Something Lysa Terkeurst has said for years. Like, how you say, like, this statement is, like, your, like, Meredith Key statement. It's kind of related to this, but something Lisa has told me for years also is just asking the question, like, does this feel like pushing a boulder up the hill? And it doesn't mean that we don't do hard things, but sometimes I'm trying to force boulders up the hill that don't actually need to happen.

Yeah. And I feel like that comes into play here too of just, like, pausing, checking your motivations, and being humble enough to rely on the Lord, whether it's something that you feel really confident pursuing, but you're a little scared or something that you're like, no way God's asking me to do that. You know? So that's kinda how it how it how it unravels for me. What about you?

Kaley Olson: Well, I think for me, kinda like you, I can check myself, and I'm either really trying hard to keep doing what I feel like I'm supposed to do, in my own strength, or I might swing the other way. And maybe, I don't know, look back I can look back at times where, I think, in my twenties, there were, some moments where I might have been a little too eager and maybe overly confident. And whenever you have conversations with people who are kind of like, hey. You're coming across as this. You could swing the other way, like, really, really hard and, like, duck.

Mhmm. And be like, well, I tried it this way, and that wasn't the right way to do it. And so now I just need to, like, be timid and shy and meek or whatever. Totally. And I think there have been a lot of times where I've, like, misinterpreted, what Meredith would say as, like, you know, the I cannot lift an unbowed head.

And I think that might be where our listeners are too because not everybody has a Meredith Brock personality. Sure. Like, very enneagram 8, like, charge, like, lead the way, like, lift your own head. There might be a lot of listeners out there who look at what the Bible says about turning the other cheek or look at what the Bible says about humility and have a totally false view of what that actually, like, looks like in real life. And this teaching was not about ducking your head and hiding from what God has asked you to do, but I think the bowed head is more about total surrender Mhmm.

To what God is doing in your life and confidently living out your yes with the direction that he is setting in your life Yeah. At the pace that he is setting in your life. Yeah. That's true. Not your own pace, not forcing your own direction.

And so, I guess as I kinda wrap up, I just wanna challenge our listeners, whether you're tempted to do everything in your own strength or whatever, or if you're tempted to run and hide, neither of those are the way. Like, what does true surrender look like for you, and what does it look like for you to live, like I said, in God's pace and his timing and his direction for your life. So, I really enjoyed getting to listen to this teaching again today. But before we let you guys go, we do have a few announcements. I'm sure some people listening might be wondering, how can I get in on She Speaks next year?

I'm so glad you're you asked, and we are going to drop in a link for you to enter your email below to be notified as soon as we open registration for next year's conference. And for those of you listening who consistently support Proverbs thirty-one Ministries each month through our monthly partner program called The Well, I wanna say a special thank you for your generosity. Your partnership allows us to reach women all around the world with free biblical resources just like this podcast. And that's all for today, friends. At Proverbs thirty-one Ministries, we believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it changes everything.