The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley Olson: Well, hi, friends. Thanks for tuning in to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm here today with my friend and my co-host, Meredith Brock, who's gonna give us a little sneak peek into today's episode. Kaley, like How do you hear me? We haven't we haven't recovered.

Meredith Brock: No. We have not recovered from this teaching, you guys. It's so good and so needed. We have a new friend, on today, Anne Beiler, and she shares her story Yeah. About some really terrible things Mhmm.

That happened in her life. The death of her daughter, some abuse. But what God taught her through that was so transformative. I can say what she taught today was fresh. I've never heard it before about confession and how it leads to authentic connection with God and with others, and it is the transformative work that you need in your life.

Kaley Olson: So, goodness, get ready, buckle up. It's a good one. I know. It's so good. But before we let you listen; we do have a few things that we want to ask you.

If you enjoy this podcast and wanna support Proverbs thirty-one Ministries, you can do so in a few ways. First, Proverbs thirty-one Ministries is a nonprofit organization, meaning that we're primarily funded by the generosity of those who donate financially to the ministry. You'll hear us end every show with our desire to help you know and live the truth because it really does change everything. And we do that every day through free resources like this podcast devotions, the First five app, and more. And when you give to Proverbs thirty-one Ministries, you help us continue to provide those resources for free.

You can partner with us today by clicking the link in our show notes or by going to proverbs31.org and clicking give at the top of the screen. Another way you can support us is by leaving a rating and a review wherever you listen to this podcast. And here's what one of our listeners said. Meredith, I really liked this, this review that I found on Apple Podcast. It says, this podcast has become a staple in my life.

It never seems to fail that when I need it most, the podcast always ends up covering a topic that hits the nail on the head. I love each of the regular speakers on here, and I love that it feels like an easy, comfortable, inviting, and relatable podcast that never makes me feel inadequate in my faith but challenges me to go deeper in my faith and to share it with others. I also love how fun the girls on this is funny to for me to read right now. I also love how fun the girls are on here, and listening to a Southern accent never disappoints. You're welcome, my friend.

Keep it up and thank you so much. But you know what, Meredith? Sometimes, in the dailiness of doing what we do. Yeah. And, you know, writing budgets, writing podcast scripts, leading media, like all the things, sometimes we can confess that we lose sight.

That's right. And I am so thankful, like, to be able to go on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever, or even get emails that just say, like, hey, this is making a difference. We're not tuning our own horn here. We're just saying, like, God, thank you that the work that we do every day is helping somebody. And so, if that's you, we wanna know.

We want you to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to the show, and we're gonna stop talking because we gotta get into Anne's episode. So, let's head on in.

Meredeth Brock: We are excited to welcome our new friend, Anne Beiler, to the show today. Hey, Anne.

Anne Beiler: Hello there. How are y'all doing today?

Kaley Olson: We're great. We're so good. But you know what, Meredith? I would be better if I had a pretzel today.

Meredith Brock: Me too.
Kaley Olson: And an Auntie Anne's pretzel because okay. You wanna know what's wild? I think that, like, this has got to be the coolest person we've had on the show. It might be.

Because, Anne, this is your first time on the show. We've never met before. But guys, here's the cool thing about Anne. This is not your first time to connect with her. The degree of separation is a mall.

Meredith Brock: Yep. That's right.

Kaley Olson: Yep. And so, she is best known as the founder of Auntie Anne's, the world's largest pretzel franchise. And so, if you've been to a mall and ever snacked on one of those salty treats, you can thank our new friend Anne for that.

And I'd like I want one right now. I an auntie. They're so good. They're so good. But there's a lot more to Anne than pretzels.

And I just think that this is the cool thing about how God can use something like pretzels to also be one thing a person does, but that's not all. There is two people. Right? And so, Anne was born and raised in Pennsylvania, where she grew up on an Amish farm and is married to a teenage sweetheart, Jonas. Together, their story includes pain, grief, and God's redemption.

And yes, even pretzels, like I mentioned before. Anne is passionate about encouraging women by sharing her story, helping them to live authentically by breaking the silence about their past, and embracing a lifestyle of confession. And so today, she is here to talk with us about, about just that, about embracing a lifestyle of confession. And so, Anne, we are so excited to hear from you, and why don't you take it away?

Anne Beiler: Well, thank you so much, and I am thrilled, to be on the Proverbs 31 podcast.

And, you know, as I was thinking about doing this devotional, I really thought about all the people, all of us who long for peace. We long for connection. We just long for God's presence in our lives. And my story I'm gonna weave my story, throughout this, the next twenty minutes or so of this devotional and the subject of confession. The reason I chose that is because there was a time in my life when I didn't have peace, when I felt disconnected from God, when I felt like life was over for me.

And it was all because of, the pain and the trauma and things that we that I experienced in my life that kind of I felt like I was separated from the very things and the person the most important to me was God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, and then again, my husband, Jonas. And so when I say we long for peace, it's really, we can lose that peace because of our life's problems. And there are two things that all of us have in common, and that is, we were created to carry God's presence in our bodies. And then number two, we all have a story to tell. And so today, I'm so excited that I can share this concept of confession, which was really, as a very young Amish girl, my theology was formed.

It was very, very simple. And that was like, life is good, And God is harsh. I grew up in an Amish culture, and my parents took us to church every Sunday and every Wednesday night. And I went to Bible school and learned all of the stories and loved God. At the age of 12, I accepted Jesus into my heart.

And, you know, life was good for me. But I came away with this theology that I really want to please God and please my parents. And the reason I felt like God might be harsh was if I can if I don't keep all of the 10 commandments, God would be displeased with me. Nobody really said that to me, but it's really what, my how my theology was formed in that culture. And so, I set out to be a good girl.

Well, I can the good news is that over seven decades of real life's experiences, my theology has changed from, life is good, God is harsh, to life is hard, God is good. And I so believe that with all of my heart. So today, when difficulties happen, hard things come our way, I land on the foundation. You know what? Life is hard, but God is so good.

And that's what I have experienced. And even Jesus said, in this life, you will have, troubles. And so today, I wanna talk about how, a little bit about my, trauma, the difficulties, my life of pain, blame, and shame for a number of years, deep and dark depression, and how that the subject of confession impacted me in such a way that today, I live with what I call the ongoing lifestyle of confession. So, confession is found in James five sixteen, the verse that that I discovered, during the experiences of my life. And it's simply it's a very small verse in James five sixteen tucked into almost the end of the Bible.

But it simply says, confess your faults one to another and pray and you'll be healed. And then it also says the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much. And that the thing that catches my that has caught my attention in that verse is the very first the very beginning. Confess your faults, your sins, your struggles, your wounds, your heartaches, your disappointments, how you feel, one with another. And listen, that's when we can do that, that is real connection.

And so, the lifestyle of confession, what I just described in a in a nutshell is it sounds simple, but it's really not very easy. It has not been easy for me. I wanna go back to my story, and that is growing up in the Amish farm. Mom and dad really gave us a great foundation to stand on. And I really believe that, you know, I'm gonna be a good girl all of my life.

I never, I was always obedient. And, everything really happened, changed for my husband and I at the very we were married about seven years, and we had two beautiful daughters. And I'm gonna keep this this part of my life really, really short, but just so that you can understand why confession is so very important to me. And the, the death of our daughter, Angela Joy, she was 19 old. She was killed instantly on our little farm when my sister accidentally drove over her with a farm tractor.

The trauma of that day, I remember as if it happened yesterday, and there's still times that I feel, the trauma of that day. But the power of confession has brought me to a whole other level to where I can talk about that and I can feel it, but it doesn't bring me down anymore. And so, after the, Angela made her ascend into heaven and, I knew where she was, I began my very slow and gradual descent into a world of, darkness. I began to just a world of spiritual confusion and emotional pain. And as the days and the months went by, I couldn't get a grip.

I mean, I'm a Christian. I followed Jesus. I wanted to be a good girl, but now I'm so I felt so confused. I still believed and trusted in God, but I was very confused about why would God have allowed this to happen. I mean, I was a good girl.

I tried to keep all the 10 commandments. And a couple of months after Angela was killed, the grief and the loss of that, broke me to the point where I didn't know what to do with me. I became silent, and my husband and I lived in a very silent marriage after during that time. And a few months after that, I was invited by my pastor to come and talk with him. So, I went, and we talked.

And, before I left his office, he took advantage of me physically. And I was stunned. I was shocked and didn't know what to think about it, didn't know what to do about it. But I made a choice that day when I left his office. I felt, immediately, I felt like I did something wrong, and I felt very ashamed.

And as I walked out of his office and I closed the door behind me, I made a choice that I will never tell anyone what he did to me because why? Because I knew somehow that nobody would believe me. And number two, I didn't know how to talk about how do I share this information. So, I made a choice to keep this secret. Now I didn't know that this one secret would, keep me enslaved in the world of sexual abuse for almost seven years by my pastor of abuse of every kind.

By the end of those seven years, I was broken to the point I weighed ninety pounds. I knew I was I totally believed that I was unforgivable, I was unlovable, and I was unchangeable. And life, as I knew it, was over. I could no longer dream. My family life was very surfacy.

I'm trying to hide my secret, and nobody knew about this. So, for nearly seven years, I lived in this place of darkness. And when you so when we keep secrets, you know, Satan took me in he took me into the dark world. And I continued, and he gave me every tool that I needed to stay there. And until, this is where my confession comes in.

After nearly seven years praying by my bedside, asking Jesus to forgive me every single day and asking him to help me and asking him to deliver me, one day as the Holy Spirit within me, compelled me to get up and go tell Jonas, my husband. Well, I can only tell you that was not in my plans. I believe that Jesus and I could work this out all on our own, but I didn't understand the power of a secret. And the power of the choice that I made that day is the life that I began to live and which I lived for about seven years. But the good news is this, that day, somehow, holy spirit within me helped me muster up the courage that I needed to get up and go tell Jonas, my husband.

Well, that story is in my book, and I don't have the time to tell that story. But my husband, his response to me, in a few hours was he decided on his knees before he came back to the house that he was gonna love me as Jesus loves him. That was his response to my confession. And so, as I made the confession and I began to slowly feel like the shackles were falling off and the light was beginning to come in, but the journey toward wholeness was very difficult. And that's where confession came in.

What I discovered the next few years was that there were three types of confession. One is the bedside confession, which all of us, we all do this as followers of Christ. Very comfortable. Number two, I learned how to journal. I wrote down the things that I was feeling, not so much my experience, but what I was feeling, which was journaling was more difficult for me.

And then number three was the James five sixteen model, the one to another, which was very, very hard and not easy to say the least. So those three types of confession were the three things that really kind of, kept me going in the right direction. Because anytime you make a confession, you're bringing your deeds into the light. Now confession does not predict an outcome, but it does require an obedience to a principle. And so, as I began to walk in this way, first John one seven says, walk in the light as he is in the light.

And then if we do this, then we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. So, I made the confession. The shackles began to slowly fall off, and I began to walk toward the light. And what I like about this, verse is number one, it brings when you bring this is step number one. You bring your deeds into the light through what?

Through the through the power of confession, the principle. And then number two, it says, if you do that, bring your deeds into the light, then you will have fellowship. And then when you have fellowship, then you will be cleansed. Isn't that amazing? So, my piece that I mentioned at the very beginning of this podcast, you know, came about through confession to Jonas.

And then I began to have fellowship with him, and then I began to feel cleansed. I love the story of Jesus. When he showed his wounds to his disciples, they didn't believe, Thomas in particular. We like to pick on Thomas. They didn't he didn't believe that it was Jesus.

He said, prove to me that you are the Christ, that you are Jesus. And Jesus, the Son of God, humbled himself in that moment. He could have rebuked Thomas, but instead he humbled himself. And he showed Thomas his wounds. He said, put your fingers in my wounds.

And then and why did he do that? And then it says that Thomas knew him. And I believe that that principle, as we learn to share our wounds, bring our deeds into the light, find a good friend, find someone that you can totally trust. And as we do this, I declare that there is really no other way to know each other unless I know your story. Oh, yeah.

You know, we talk about all these things. We talk about shopping. We talk about Bible study. We talk about going to church. We talk about raising our kids.

But we can talk to someone for a lifetime and never really know them. So, I believe that the power of confession connects us. And in our pain, we do actually connect if we can open up and talk about it. You know, I go around the country telling my story, my personal story and my professional auntie Anne story. And I don't feel the connection with people when I share the auntie Anne story.

It's about success. And oftentimes, that can it can maybe intimidate people. I don’t know. But I do know when I share my story, I always feel connected. So, we do connect, I believe, in our pain.

Our lifestyle of confession impacts us, deeply. It impacts our families, our churches, and even in business because confession is really about transparency, about being open, about being truthful. And as I went through my dark years, five years after I made my confession to Jonas, we opened up our very first pretzel store in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Again, the power of the confession, I didn't know the one confession I made took me into the dark world for almost seven years. The other confession I made to Jonas took me into the world of light.

And I began to live a lifestyle of confession and which meant to me, I'm gonna be open and honest and transparent. I'm not gonna keep any secrets anymore. From who? From myself? From God?

From Jonas? I'm not gonna pretend, you know, you can pretend and you begin to believe your own secrets, maybe in your own lies and your own lifestyle. And, you know, in that lifestyle of secrets, I complained a lot. I was very defeated. And so, as you begin to share your story and you begin to live this openness, this lifestyle of transparency, it will impact you, number one.

And then number two, it will impact your family. And I was able to take that into the business world, transparency and openness. I love a quote by so by Richard Dobbins. So he said, Satan builds his strongholds in the secrets of our lives, and then he reinforces them by silence. And when I break my silence, then I break the stronghold.

Wow. What I did that morning when I confessed to Jonas, I broke my silence. And listen, y'all. I broke my stronghold. My stronghold was killing me.

My stronghold was my secret. So, the one confession that I made to Jonas was so difficult for me. I when I think about that moment, I always remember how hard it was. But I have to tell you, confession is powerful. As I mentioned, life changing.

Over time, this was not an instant. You know, I told Jonas my secret was out, and I began to live a life of openness and transparency. No. This was months, even years to overcome the pain, the blame, and the shame. But I can tell you one thing, that one confession to Jonas that day, if I would never have told him, there would be no Auntie Anne's.

And I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine a world without Auntie Anne's soft pretzels. I love the way God redeems. When he began to redeem my life through the power of confession, I didn't know how far reaching that beautiful, that powerful, that hard confession would go. I had no idea. But in Proverbs six five, you know, I I I think when we find ourselves in in places like I'm describing, we're always looking at somebody else to change.

And we, you know, we kinda like in our pain and blame and shame, I would blame everybody. I'm whining. I'm complaining. And it's a very defeated lifestyle. But what I've discovered, listen, y'all, it's really up to me.

And there's a verse in Proverbs six five that says, set yourself free like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter and like a bird from the snare of the fowler. Now listen, if you if you can picture that, I know that you can see the struggle. And that's what I can tell you. What you may be experiencing right now, you may feel like you can never tell. And you're so stuck in this place of defeat and this place maybe even of anger.

I wanna encourage you, take the high road. Make a choice today to tell someone about something that you hate about yourself, something that you feel like you're stuck in this place, and you can't move forward. You don't even know what to say. I understand. I lived in that lifestyle for so many years begging and asking Jesus, please deliver me from the evil that I'm in.

But it wasn't until I got up and made the confession. And then Proverbs six five is a powerful verse as well, set yourself free. You know, confession really started in the beginning. In the very beginning, it was when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. And he comes looking for them and calling for them.

And he said, hey, y'all. Where are you? And what did you do? And I can only picture as they had their face-to-face meeting, as they came out from behind the bushes. And that's what I did.

I came out of my bedroom, out of my dark bedroom, and I went and told my husband. I think in the same way; God went to Adam and Eve. And they had to tell him what they did. And when they did, the good news is this. He went and it says that he it didn't say that he forgave them, but it does say that he went and clothed them.

And I believe that that's what confession does to us. When we open our lives and we confess to God and to others, maybe one or two people, somehow, as stated in j first John five seven, the verse that I read, somehow, in that moment with Adam and Eve, I believe that as God made the clothing for them, they felt cleansed. So, the power of confession is actually it's a cleansing that continues to keep cleansing. And from that day to this day, I can just tell you the lifestyle of confession is an ongoing journey for me. Have I arrived?

No. But am I moving forward and practicing this concept? Yes. And when God redeemed us, Jonas and I were married fifty-six years now. And when he began the redemption, after my confession, I could never have imagined the world that he was taking us into.

But I wanna state that he has totally redeemed me. I wanna leave you with one quote by Brennan Manning. And this really describes what I've tried to share with you today. And he says, a gradual transformation takes place in the process of confession. Gradual transformation.

We go from an attitude of self-hatred to an attitude of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is not being self-centered. When we accept ourselves for who we are, we cease to hunger for power or acceptance of others. We no longer care about being popular or powerful. We're not afraid of criticism, and we no longer desire to please others.

So being true to ourselves brings inner and lasting peace. Accepting ourselves then allows us to choose acceptable behavioral patterns that are beneficial to ourselves and those around us. Now I know that's a lot right there, but I hope that maybe you could relisten to that part of the of the podcast and let that marinate in your mind and in your heart. And so, in closing, I just wanna say, the concept and the principle of confession is a wonderful way to live. And I just encourage you to begin today.

If you're holding in, you're just struggling with things, friendships, relationships, husband, family, just you're just frustrating. Your life is frustrating. Begin the journey of James five sixteen, the one to another confession, and you'll begin to free yourself and be able to experience the life that Jesus actually paid the price for. Thank you so much, and God bless you all.

Meredith Brock: Wow, Anne.

What a powerful story. But not just a story, the teaching, the scriptural teaching you have delivered on and the theology of confession really Yeah. That you have unpacked for us today is so helpful. I think oftentimes as I was just sitting here reflecting, when we hear that word confession, guys, the image that comes to my mind is like, okay, I'm going into a Roman Catholic church, I'm gonna go in. There's this strange, perception of what it is.

Yeah. You know? And I think oftentimes people envision it, think of it as confession is for, telling the sin acts that you have done. Mhmm. And the way you have reframed it today is it's really confession is confessing your feelings, your shame, the things you even said.

I love that you said, confess the things you hate about yourself and the things that you have done or things that have been done to you. I think that so much more broadens, and brings it into a healthier understanding of what Jesus meant, you know? Absolutely. And what the author James wrote in James five sixteen, that's a better understanding. And I can't help but think, Anne, you know, I wholeheartedly believe today that there is a listener driving in her car, folding laundry.

I don't know what she's doing, but your teaching today has pricked something in her and she knows she has been carrying it for too long. Mhmm. And she knows that this secret, whether it was done to her or something that she's been doing Yes. She feels the conviction of the Holy Spirit, but she's just too scared. Yeah.

And walking out and doing it. What would you say to her? What would you say directly to her?

Anne Beiler: First, I wanna say, I love you. Mhmm.

Whoever you are. But the good news is that God never leaves you. Mhmm. He loves you and he cares for you. And I also wanna say that I think that you said it well, that confession is we see it, in my opinion, is subjective.

It's always subjective. Yeah. As a little girl in the Amish church, if you may if your sin was bad enough, you had to make a confession in front of the whole congregation. And I remember as a little girl sitting at church, and that was my view of confession. Wow.

You know? And then the other view is, you can confess to a priest, a Catholic, in the in the Catholic religion. It's you confess to a priest. And that that's a way of form of confession. But and then if you committed a crime, you confess in front of a judge.

So in every one of those cases, it's very subjective. It's hard to do. Yeah. But the confession that I'm talking about, I believe what James is talking about, is actually to set us free. Yeah.

Mhmm. Mhmm. And if we can if we can believe that and see that in in my in our own lives, if I could just tell somebody. And I know people in your audience are longing, longing to tell their story. Yeah.

Longing for somebody to come to them and say, hey. You know, tell me you sure. How are you know? But no. We have created such a wall that nobody even knows.

Right? Nobody knows that we're carrying all this pain inside. You know, the tragedy is not in dying of physical death. Mhmm. But it's what dies inside of us Wow.

While we live. So, I wanna say to that lady, those ladies that are out there, you can begin to live again, and you can start to feel alive again as you make your confession or as you begin to tell. And I also wanna say that when we make a confession, it's not about predicting an outcome. Saying, oh, okay. If I go tell Jonas about my confession, then he'll probably fill in the blanks.

It's not about the outcome, predicting it. But it's about just this is the most important part. It's about setting yourself free. And then Christ has you bring yourself into the light. That's where God lives, in the light.

And when you get there, then they'll work out the things that need to be worked out.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. Wow. That's I mean, okay. Here's what I liked about this teaching, is that there was something you brought into the confession of trauma, things that have been done to you, or things that you have done, which I think is what Meredith just asked about.

Like, there's that hard thing, that, like, one confession that you made. But then you talked about the habit and the dailiness of confession. And I got really fired up about that, because I think just, I mean, whether it's in the home, in the workplace, wherever we are, women well, at Proverbs, we believe that women really can make or break the atmosphere of a home, of the environment that they're in, And a woman can bring in negativity and can bring the place down, or a woman can bring in the gospel. She can bring in how she's growing in Jesus and live that out, and then watch transformation happen in her husband, in her friend groups, in her children, and things like that. And I wanted to ask you about, like, how did you see that transformation happen in your marriage?

Or you spoke a little bit about leading the Auntie Anne's Pretzel franchise company and how that was, like, fun for you. That was an adventure. And I thought, did this have anything to do with it? What did you, what transformation did you see through the habit of confession just in your daily life and the way that you led?

Anne Beiler: Oh, how many minute how long do we have for the podcast here?

You know, I think, the short answer that to that was I was scared to death. Mhmm. Hated me. I didn't even know how to communicate anymore. And so, as I made my confession and Jonas came home to me that day, and he told me his story, what, he called a counselor.

And the counselor encouraged him to love Anne as Jesus loves you. And if you can do that, there's hope for your marriage. So, the short answer to the question is I began to feel hope. And in the five years between my confession and Auntie Anne's, Jonas and I, he studied he began to study counseling, psychology. And he became a, a counselor, a layman's counselor, free service to anybody that would come to him.

We never charged anyone for anything. And so, the I think the journey for us then was as we learned about psychology, as we actually learned human behavior, along with biblical principles throughout the bible, we studied together. And together, the hope that he gave me initially at the very beginning Yeah. We're not gonna get a divorce. I don't wanna get a divorce.

So that hope, is really what transformed me over time. Yeah. And going from that to then, starting the Auntie Anne's company, I still felt a lot of, my self-esteem was I had no self-esteem. I still felt unworthy. But what I kept feeling from Jonas was that he loved me, and he didn't say it every day.

He lived love in front of me. And so, I've always said that the two people that I rejected, Jesus and Jonas, are the two men now that became they walked beside me. Jesus on one side and Jonas on another side. Listen, y'all. We need somebody.

We need to connect with Jesus, God, holy spirit. Yes. But we need God created us to connect. So, I believe that the connection that I made, I worked very hard at overcoming the things that I hated about me. And I started taking responsibility for my behaviors instead of blaming everyone else for the situation that I that I was in.

That's so good. That's key. That's critical. Mhmm.

Kaley Olson: Yeah. I could just see so many women being set free to live fully known. Yeah. Especially in the workplace because at some point, you're gonna come to the end of yourself. That's right.

And either you can admit that you don't know what you're doing, and you need help, or you can keep pushing through and pretend like you don't and make everything fall apart. And I just feel like there's freedom in, just allowing yourself to be fully known and coming forth just as you are and creating that foundation of openness and trust. I'm so impressed and thankful for God.
Meredith Brock: And I could ask you, we could be on here for hours.

Kaley Olson: I know.

Meredith Brock: Asking all the kinds of questions, but, unfortunately, we have to come to the end of today's teaching. Sure. We are so grateful for your bravery and your vulnerability today because I really do think, there are some people that needed to hear this Yeah. Desperately and they've been living in the dark and they, this propelled them forward to step out into the light. And so, I really wanna encourage you guys, connect with Anne.

You can go to our website at AuntieAnneBeiler.com, but that is spelled beiler.com. And you can also purchase Anne's book, The Secret An Inside Out Look at Overcoming Trauma and Finding Purpose in Pain. We're gonna link that in our show notes, but goodness gracious, y'all get your hands on that because it sounds like a good one.

Kaley Olson: I know. I know.

I can't wait. 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.