The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Kaley Olson:
Well, hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm Kaley, and I'm here with my friend Shae Hill, who is going to tell you a little bit about today's episode.

Shae Hill:
Hey, Kaley. Some of my favorite times are when I get to join you on the podcast. So, so happy to be with you today.

Kaley Olson:
Yes.

Shae Hill:
OK, guys. So we have been journeying through a couple different episodes with Dr. Joel Muddamalle, and today is another segment of that. We've been having these conversations where we get a mic in front of Joel and get him to help us process some of the everyday questions that we carry in our hearts — but through the lens of someone like Joel, who we call our “resident theologian” on the podcast and at Proverbs 31 Ministries. Really, we’re just getting to walk through these questions with biblical Truth. And today's no exception.

In today's conversation, you're going to hear Joel not only break down this concept of failure but really the fear of failure. I don't really know anyone who loves being bad at things, but whether you identify as a perfectionist or not, I know that you're going to find something in today's conversation that is for you because the truth is all of us have fear around something. And a lot of us have carried fear of failure in our hearts. So I'm really excited for you guys to get to hear from Joel today around this conversation.

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's something we don't like to admit, but [fear is] something everybody has in common, which is why I think today's episode's going to be cool.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, I think all of us can identify with that in some sense. I think the older that we get, it may change. When we were younger, maybe it was like, I don't want to fail — I want to make sure I get a spot on that sports team … But it's like, that does follow us in different ways as we get older. You know?

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, absolutely. It is not something you grow out of.

Shae Hill:
No.

Kaley Olson:
But, guys, something really cool about today's episode is that it's all based on Joel's new book, called The Hidden Peace: Finding True Security, Strength, and Confidence through Humility. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy because while humility is a hard-lived practice, it really is the way of the gospel and a message we all need to hear. You guys can preorder your copy today and support our friend Joel — I mean, how cool is that? — by visiting the link provided in the show notes.

Shae Hill:
Yep, it's his first book. I'm super excited for him and super proud of him. I've gotten to read some of the early versions of this book, and it's just so good. I'm really, really excited for you guys to get your hands on it.

But one of the parts of today's conversation that you'll hear is this beautiful connection between humility and self-awareness. One of the ways to keep growing in self-awareness is actually through self-inventory. So we've actually put together an assessment, with the help of our friend Lysa TerKeurst, and it's called, “What's It Like To Do Life With Me?” We'll tell you a little bit more about it later, and how you can use it, at the end of the show. But for now, let's dive into the teaching.

Joel, I'm so excited to be back on the podcast with you today. Sometimes we glean questions from YouTube, or I know you do a “Theology Talk Tuesday,” and sometimes we get some questions from there. Today's started with … I feel like you and I both have this question, and we need to figure this out.

Joel Muddamalle:
For sure.

Shae Hill:
So before we really get into the question, I'm going to tell you — I'm going to confess something to you.

Joel Muddamalle:
Oh?

Shae Hill:
I absolutely hate being bad at things. This may be stating the obvious, but I don't know … I don't know if everybody thinks this way, but if I start to feel like an activity or a game — or, I mean, really anything — could be something that I would not excel at, I really don't want to do it. It's not because I'm afraid of looking bad at it in front of other people. It's like I can't bear the weight of my own embarrassment. So I’ve —

Joel Muddamalle:
Wait, wait, hold on. Hold up. Wait a minute.

Shae Hill:
I'm more competitive with myself —

Joel Muddamalle:
So the fear?

Shae Hill:
— than I really am [with others]. I'm not really worried about being competitive with you. I'm competitive against myself.

Joel Muddamalle:
OK.

Shae Hill:
So if I feel ... Yeah, it's just different. If I feel like I’m going to be bad at this, I'd rather just not try at all.

Joel Muddamalle:
But because why?

Shae Hill:
Because I don't want to seem incompetent or weak or like I can't do something.

Joel Muddamalle:
So it's not so much about the failure but about the perception of what the failure does, or how that would —

Shae Hill:
I think it would be like: If I fail, then that means I wasn't capable of doing something. But again, it's not really the perception because I'm not really worried about what other people think of me, but it's what I'll think of myself, that I fell short.

Joel Muddamalle:
See, I worry about what other people think of me.

Shae Hill:
I feel like that's harder.

Joel Muddamalle:
Well, thanks.

Shae Hill:
No, I just —

Joel Muddamalle:
Appreciate that.

Shae Hill:
No, I just feel like that … I mean, what's going on in my brain can sometimes be crazy town, but to have thoughts going on about yourself and then to have to think about, Well, then what are other people thinking?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, for sure.

Shae Hill:
I'm not saying I don't struggle with what people think of me at all, but I'm just speaking more to my wiring. Do you ever struggle with this?

Joel Muddamalle:
Always. I mean, I just told you: I really care. I do. I care about what other kind of people think. Yeah, I think that … So, OK, if you're going to go confession, I might as well go to confession as well. Probably my earliest memory as a kid … I think I was like 4 or 5. You guys might not know this, but I'm Indian. Did you know that?

Shae Hill:
I did.

Joel Muddamalle:
You did know that.

Shae Hill:
Thank you for the reminder.

Joel Muddamalle:
For everybody else, I’m from India. I was born in the Chicagoland area, the greatest city of all time. [Home of Michael] Jordan. I grew up watching Jordan win the three-peat, repeat the three-peat. We had Chicago deep-dish spots across the street from us.

Shae Hill:
You were just thriving.

Joel Muddamalle:
Thriving. Portillo's Chicago-style hotdogs … Oh my gosh, they're so good. But my mom and dad were working, and they were young when they had me. So they actually sent me, when I was 2 years old, to India to live from the ages of 2 to 4.5. So fascinatingly, my first language that I learned was not English. It was Telugu, which is one of the major dialects in India. I could comprehend and understand English decently because my grandparents, my aunts and uncles all said it to me and talked to me, but I did not know [English very well].

So fast-forward: I come back [to the U.S.], and my parents are like, “Hey, we need to put this kid in school.” So I go to a private, Christian elementary school, which you'd think is a safe place. Of course, it's a Christian elementary school. These people love Jesus, right? These little [inaudible] children.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, they love Jesus. They're nice, right?

Joel Muddamalle:
Be nice, right?

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
So I walk in, and I speak not even a lick of English. I probably have … My vocabulary is, like, six words, but I have high comprehension, so I understand when people are talking to me. So I walk in, and I'm like, Oh gosh, where do I sit? In the front row, there's my seat, and I could recognize the four letters of my name, J-O-E-L. So I'm like, Cool, that's where I'm supposed to sit.

I won't ever forget. I'm walking in … I don't know if I'm supposed to have such clear memories of being this young, but I do. There was a bunny who was sitting in a plastic cage in the far left, just staring at me the entire time. I'm thinking, I don't like bunnies. So I'm walking in, and I sit down, and the class starts, and all of a sudden the teacher is doing an icebreaker. Do you like icebreakers? I hate them.

Shae Hill:
It really depends.

Joel Muddamalle:
Well —

Shae Hill:
Usually, no.

Joel Muddamalle:
So there's an icebreaker. I get this icebreaker.

Shae Hill:
They feel forced.

Joel Muddamalle:
Oh yeah, and that can be traumatic. So I'm doing this icebreaker, and the teacher asks this question: "Hey, does anybody have any pets?" Now, I've always been a dog person, and I loved dogs in India. There were stray dogs everywhere. I would just pick a dog and say, “That's my dog. That's my pet.”

Shae Hill:
My dog of the day.

Joel Muddamalle:
My dog of the day, exactly. I love … I'm a dog person. So I understand what she's saying. I'm like, I want to prove to these people, like, yo —

Shae Hill:
I can hang.

Joel Muddamalle:
— I can hang. So I raise my little brown hand up, and the teacher looks at me: "Joel, yes. What pet do you have?"

And I say, "Dog." Very confident. “Dog.”

Shae Hill:
Dog.

Joel Muddamalle:
I think I'm done. But she had a follow-up question. You know what I hate, Shae?

Shae Hill:
The follow-up question?

Joel Muddamalle:
Follow-up questions. So then she goes, "Oh, what is your dog's name?" At which point, I am like, I don't know how to speak English. My vocabulary is pretty much “dog,” “mom,” “dad” and “pizza” at this point. So I just say, with much less confidence, "Dog." At which point, I start to hear the ... I don't know. What do you call them?

Shae Hill:
Snarky comments in class, yeah.

Joel Muddamalle:
Snarky comments and the laughs. The entire time, that bunny is staring at me. It won't stop staring at me.

Shae Hill:
You're like, Well, thank God that bunny's not my pet.

Joel Muddamalle:
I'm sweating. Then finally she goes —

Shae Hill:
You do tend to do that.

Joel Muddamalle:
I sweat?

Shae Hill:
When you're panicking.

Joel Muddamalle:
Oh yeah, we can tell that a different time, different story. But the teacher asks another ... I don't know if this teacher is listening [to this podcast], but if you are listening, I believe in forgiveness, and God is good, and there's redemption and restoration. But I really hope in the future when a child is sweating in front of you —

Shae Hill:
Profusely.

Joel Muddamalle:
Profusely.

Shae Hill:
At a young age.

Joel Muddamalle:
At a young age … Get the child off the hook. Do not ask more questions. So the teacher, I think for her benefit, is like, "Hey, no, what's the dog's name? Your pet's name?"

Shae Hill:
She thought you didn't understand?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yes. To which I go, "Dog."

Shae Hill:
Again?

Joel Muddamalle:
Again. Yo, the whole room is erupting. I swear this was the only time that bunny stopped staring and started laughing at me. It was … To this day, I don't like bunnies. I just don't like them.

Shae Hill:
Don't trust them.

Joel Muddamalle:
So this was actually a pretty formative moment in my life. I left that day … So the story goes from here that I don't remember anything else from that day. My mom and my dad say, and my aunts and uncles (my aunt lived actually with us at the time) say, that I came home crying. I said, "I want to go back to India. I hate it here." Basically, they said in about four weeks, I lost my Indian accent, and I learned English. I remember having this embedded emotive feeling: I will never be the laughingstock of any situation ever again. I am always going to do whatever it takes to be the best, the smartest. To your point, to your story, if I walk into a room and [feel like I will fail at something], I'm going to walk straight out of that room. I won't even give them the opportunity.

Shae, you know what's so fascinating? Fast-forward all these years, and I'm over here, and I've earned these degrees, and I've got initials in front of my name and after my name, and I'm still struck with that moment. I get panicked if somebody asks me, “Joel, what does John 3:16 say?” I'd be like, “Oh, wait, I know that.” There's a fear of being found out, [a fear] that I don't know, that I'm weak, that I'm vulnerable. So that was just a massive fear moment in my life.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, it's interesting because, I mean, it's so common to say or to hear, like, “Well, no one's perfect.” It's like we know that, but we are so uncomfortable with our own weaknesses. So our weaknesses propel us to have a deeper fear of failure, of failing. I don't want to be bad at things. I do not want to fail. I also think in our culture, failure and anything less than success can be seen as not an option. So there's that pressure added to it. It's a whole mess, and whether it's something as serious as the situation that you gave, where you're giving an answer to something or whatever … like you're on a podcast or you're giving a teaching, and you're like, What if I just black out and I forget what I'm supposed to say? Or I don't give the correct answer? Or it's something more silly, like my example that I don't like to play people's token family game that I've never played before because what if I can't catch on and they're just waiting for me to get with it? But we just create little coping mechanisms, I guess, whether it's avoidance or overcompensating, to not have to fail.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, we try to gain control —

Shae Hill:
Exactly.

Joel Muddamalle:
— over situations. Try to gain more power, more strength, more intellect.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. So, Joel, when we're looking at this question of “why am I so afraid of failing,” what do you think God would say to us, or what does God's Word tell us about how not to just identify our weaknesses or our fears but really move through them like you've taught?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, so I want to get there. This was actually … I've spent the last 18 months or a little bit longer, and you know this Shae, really well, actually … Honestly I’ve spent my whole life really trying to figure out what happened to me in that moment of fear when everything became chaotic. The chaos turned into interior and exterior dysfunction in my relationships, in the way that I viewed life and the way that I viewed success and the way that I viewed —

Shae Hill:
Yourself.

Joel Muddamalle:
You know what was absent in all of that? Peace. I just felt restless, and I felt like I knew in my mind that I wanted to regain peace. I wanted to get to a place of stability. I wanted to get to a moment of just feeling like I didn't have to work for my worth. But it was absent; it just kept eluding me.

So here's what I found out about fear. Fear will typically do one of two things: Fear is going to turn you inward, or it's going to turn you outward. So what happened for me is that fear actually turned me inward.

So here are some descriptions of what an inward life looks like with fear: You become self-obsessed, you try to control things, and you fight after hustle culture. The goal is totally about self-preservation by your own means. You begin to shut people out. You even shut down really good opportunities because you're afraid of what the outcome might be because you can't control it.

But throughout all of Scripture, what's actually hiding in plain sight for us, in order to experience the peace that God desires for us, is actually this gift that so many of us … I'm going to say it, and everybody's going to have a visceral reaction to it. They're going to be like, Oh, what? Are you being serious? But I am being serious now. I'm going to try to show through the [biblical] text. Why? It's the gift of humility.

The gift of humility actually helps us go [from turning] inward and being self-obsessed to actually going outward, where we are able to turn to God and become aware of our weakness, be aware of our fears, be aware of our inability, which actually leads us to the source of true strength, true stability, true peace. So humility is a gift that actually helps us to embrace the strength and the power of Jesus Himself.

So what’s the payoff for humility? If you're like, Joel, I didn't ask for this. I'm trying to run out the room because I've only heard of “humility” in a negative context … well, maybe it's because the context that you've heard it in is not a biblical context. But a biblical context of humility actually gives you self-awareness without falling into the vicious cycle of self-obsession. So, Shae, this is what I've come to know. This is what I ended up writing throughout my writing process for my forthcoming book, The Hidden Peace. Humility is fundamentally an intimate awareness of the magnitude of our sin and the magnificence of God's grace.

Shae Hill:
That's so good. Gosh, when I think about my own life, not only do I hate being bad at things, but I've recently started learning — just from the community around me and the Christian leaders in front of me or people who I'm learning from — how uncomfortable or easy it is for me to numb out from my own sinful nature. Because I would say our weaknesses and our failures and all those things are evidence of living in a fallen world, and we try to resist that. So through that, I feel like I resist the fact that I am still a sinner. I am. Just because I'm walking with Jesus doesn't mean the sin in me just decreases. Are there absolutely things that I've triumphed over by the power of the Holy Spirit and overcome? Yes, but I'm more painfully aware of my sin the longer I walk with Jesus, not the other way around. I'm more aware of my deep need for Him the longer that I walk with Him, and that comes from being aware of my sin.

Joel Muddamalle:
Notice how [you have] that awareness but it doesn't drive you. So lack of humility … Without humility, it's actually going to drive you deeper into yourself, but the presence of humility actually drives you into presence with Jesus. It actually gives you a way out of that overbearing feeling.

Shae Hill:
Yeah, I love how 1 Timothy says this. It's in 1 Timothy 1:15-16, and I feel like it just gives us a great place to go into this next portion, but it says, "This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life" (CSB).

Joel Muddamalle:
It's so good.

Shae Hill:
I just love how that shows us … It's like an invitation that being aware of our sin and delighting in our weaknesses is the beginning of living a beautiful, full life with Jesus. So where do we go from here, Joel?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah. I think maybe one of the things that people are just wondering right now is: This sounds good, but can this actually live good?

Shae Hill:
Right.

Joel Muddamalle:
Right? So one of the things, Shae, you've heard me say before is that a theology that is unlivable is absolutely unhelpful. So we're committed to a lived theology. So notice what happened here in 1 Timothy 1:15-16. Christ came into the world. Christ, in the incarnation, entered humanity. He lived [with us]. So the incarnation itself was actually an act of divine humility. The technical term here is Christ condescended — He left heaven, the perfection of heaven, and came into the chaos of humanity and the world in order to bring reconciliation and restoration for you and me. So the power of humility and the incarnation is that what Jesus does for us is … He actually restores our relationship with God. When we are restored in our relationship with God, you know what else is restored? Peace.

Shae Hill:
Amen.

Joel Muddamalle:
When we are connected at the hip with Jesus, we walk a little bit straighter. We're able to process hurt a little bit better. All of these things that we are fearful of … It's not that the fear dissipates, but Jesus gives us the strength to process through those fears and through those hurts in such a way that we come to the other side and we actually are better. We actually regain our true humanity.

Here are the three things that I have come to find humility is for us:
The first thing is that humility is a protection. You see, humility actually protects us from thinking too low of ourselves. You may have heard the famous phrase — it's actually attributed to C.S. Lewis — that humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but it's thinking of yourself less often. Shae, it’s very dangerous to disagree with C.S. Lewis, so I'm not going to do that, but I am going to suggest that biblical, theological humility actually doesn't start with us. It actually starts first and foremost with God. When we are actually aware of who God is, we can know who we are. And if we know who God is, and now we know who we are, we can know how to rightly relate to other people. This is my most simple definition of humility: awareness of God, which creates awareness of ourselves, which helps us relate to other people.

Well, why is this a protection? Because when we know who God is, we can know who we rightly are. If you read Genesis 1-2, I find it super fascinating that God created everything to be good. There are all of these creation narratives, and there's a summary at the very end of each of them, and just says, “It was good … It was good” (Genesis 1:12; Genesis 1:18; etc.). It's almost this tactical note to let us know that there's nothing that God does that is not good.

Then the crown jewel of creation — it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31) — is the creation of humanity, of Adam and Eve. Important detail here: Before Adam and Eve were ever given a vocation, before God told them, “Hey, by the way, you've got this work to do in Eden, to cultivate, to guard, to protect it” … Before any of that, the first thing that God said over Adam and Eve ... Can you imagine? You are coming into existence, and the first thing you see is the beauty of God's creation, the glory of it. You look up, and there's Yahweh Himself. The first thing that Genesis 1-2 tells us God said was a blessing over humanity. Why? Because they're made in the likeness and image of God. They're made with innate dignity and worth. Humility, Shae, protects us from thinking too low of ourselves. It reminds us who we are in Christ. It reminds us of the great value and inherent worth that we have because we're made in the likeness and image of God. So it's a protection.

The second thing that humility is: It’s a prevention. Humility prevents us from thinking too much of ourselves. So it's polar opposites. One is a kind of self-dejection, self-loathing, ultimately a lack of self-worth. Humility is like, “Nah, ain't no time for that because you're made in the likeness and image of God.” But humility is also a prevention. It prevents us from thinking too highly of ourselves. If we think too lowly of ourselves, people are going to walk all over us. And nobody ever said, “Today's a great day for people to just walk over me.” Right? No, that is painful. So humility protects us from being walked over, but humility prevents us from thinking too highly of ourselves because when that happens, we are the ones walking over people. The reason why is because we're actually not following the Spirit, but we're following pride.
Here's what pride does for us, Shae. Pride promises us clarity but is actually deceptive the entire way. So pride's like, “Hey, by the way, there's this massive mountain, and it's beautiful. You should come up and take a look.” We're like, “Yeah, cool, let's go on this mountain hike.” Pride's leading you on, and it's like, “Look, isn't it beautiful? Isn't it?” You're like, “Yeah, this is amazing. This is beautiful.” Pride takes you to the very top of the cliff and says, “Hey, peer out over the edge and see how beautiful everything is.” And you're like, “Yeah, this is epic!” You peer over … and then pride pushes you off of that cliff into a pit of despair and dysfunction, ultimately to your utter destruction. What humility does for us is: It's a guardrail. It prevents us from buying into the seductive allure of pride, and it reminds us of who we actually are in light of who God is, and that's super important.

Now the last one. So we've got protection, prevention … The last one is: Humility is a preservation. Humility keeps us totally, deeply, intimately rooted in the life of Christ so that we can live out the beauty of our true humanity that God always intended for us, that Jesus actually ensured to be possible by His life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension. Humility, in a really powerful way, actually [allows us to] regain our true humanity. It helps us to live with vulnerability but without being destroyed or self-obsessed. It helps us find power and strength and courage not from within but from outside, from Jesus. So humility is such an unexpected gift that God has given to us, and that's where I think I've just found such great relief and comfort for my fears because of the power of humility.

Shae Hill:
So for the listener today who’s hearing this conversation about humility and failure and how they intersect, what would be your encouragement to them? For someone who is just crippled by fear or really struggles with perfectionism or doing things just right the first time, what would you say? [Is there] another perspective of just encouragement that humility would be for them?

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, I would just remind them that, like I shared in the beginning, ultimately fear of failure robs us of peace. Putting on humility, cultivating a life of humility, is actually what leads to the life of peace that we're all longing for. I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to take Jesus' word. So in Matthew 11:28-29, this is what Jesus says. It's an invitation to His disciples, and it's an invitation to us today: "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened …" (CSB). It's like [a call to] anybody weary, anybody burdened, anybody tired and exhausted of just —

Shae Hill:
Everything.

Joel Muddamalle:
Everything, all the things. So this is for you. "Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because" — this is Jesus; this is what Jesus says of Himself — "I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:28-29, CSB). What a powerful invitation that Jesus has for us to take on His lowly life, His humble life, in an exchange of yokes that actually gives us the gift of His rest, the gift of His peace. The ancient Hebrews had this idea of shalom. That's what we would translate in English as “peace.” Shalom, the type of peace that Jesus provides with the presence of humility, is a type of peace that is present in the midst of chaos and also powerfully in the absence of it. It is both internal and external; it's something that cannot be stripped from us by the world or even by the enemy himself.

Shae Hill:
That's so good. I'm thinking about just how refreshing it is to be around people who are walking out humility. They don't act like they have it all together. Once again, we know no one's perfect, but to be around people who are humble enough to mess up sometimes or to laugh at themselves or to delight in their weaknesses, in their own quirky ways or their personality, however that displays itself … Those kinds of people are so refreshing to be around because [their humility] creates an environment of, like, we are all figuring this out together, and we are not trying to act like we're something that we're not. So I feel like not only is humility a gift for ourselves, but I think it's a gift to our communities as well.

Joel Muddamalle:
Yeah, absolutely. I love that.

Shae Hill:
Well, thanks for this teaching today, Joel. I am so excited to get your book out into the world and for people to have it in their hands and for all of us to dive into even more of the gifts and benefits that humility has taught you. So thanks for putting in the work to get it to us.

Joel Muddamalle:
You bet. One of the things I love at the end of the book, Shae, is that we wrote out almost like a daily process with daily verses of Scripture to live out humility. It's almost like a devotional that's built into the back of it. So if you're like, Wait a minute — how do I actually do this? How do I actually live this out? I think that resource at the very end of the book is something very tangible and specific that's so helpful for you to actually cultivate and live this out in a daily way.

Shae Hill:
I love that! If there's anyone who could help us take something as difficult as humility, something maybe that we've been resistant to, and break it down in a daily way, I feel like that's you. So thanks for doing that, and I can't wait to pick up a copy.

Joel Muddamalle:
Thanks.

Kaley Olson:
All right, friends, we are back. What a good teaching, Shae. You know how you said you hate being bad at things? We talked about how we all have that in common, but I would say as an Enneagram Type 1 — whether or not you follow the Enneagram, it's a helpful tool for me — I would say I hate getting things wrong. I like being right and find security in that, and it's an area the Lord is humbling me in. Maybe you guys can relate. Maybe you could say, “I'm afraid of being wrong.” That's my failure area, but [this teaching] was so good, so I've got to go back and listen. Thank you for such a great teaching.

Shae Hill:
No problem, thanks for having us. I feel totally exposed after airing all of my failures in today's conversation and the things that I hate being bad at or that Joel kept poking. I was like, OK, I didn't know this was going to be counseling for Shae on the podcast today.

Kaley Olson:
Maybe it'll be a really great catalyst for some good conversation because you can listen to it.

Shae Hill:
Totally.

Kaley Olson:
Pass it along to a friend. He or she could listen to it, and you could just have a great, humbling conversation.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. Ultimately, you know what? If we are growing in humility, then it is a good thing.

Kaley Olson:
Yeah, there you go.

Shae Hill:
That's one of my takeaways from today's conversation. But I want to make sure we also pick up about the assessment I talked about at the beginning of today's episode, and it's called, “What's It Like To Do Life With Me?” It's an assessment that you can actually follow not just for yourself but also alongside a trusted friend, which I think is a really cool distinctive that I want to make sure we highlight. Through this assessment, you're going to have a series of questions where you can see, How am I doing? How does my friend think I'm doing? [Some of these are] areas that you could grow in, ultimately just trying to help us all grow in self-awareness. This has been a really, really helpful tool that I've used personally. So if you want to take a look at that, you can look at the link in our show notes. The good news is: This resource is yours completely for free.

Kaley Olson:
There you go, absolutely free. Also, guys, don't forget to preorder your copy of Joel's book, The Hidden Peace. If you liked this teaching today and want to dig deeper, then this is a resource for you. Y'all know Joel pours his heart and soul into studying Scripture, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of the book he's worked so hard on. So you can get your copy today using the link in our show notes.

Shae Hill:
When you preorder today, you can start reading his book right now with the first three chapters.

Kaley Olson:
Oh, that's amazing.

Shae Hill:
Yes, you don't have to wait. A little tidbit for our podcast friends there. So make sure you go and start reading right now.

Thanks so much for tuning in today, friends. As always, at Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything.