Love: An Anchor for Your Soul (Part 1)

In the opening episode of Season Two of Lioness Women, Rooted in Christ, Jen Porter invites listeners into a new and more intimate season—one rooted deeply in faith, truth, and identity in Christ. After a year of amplifying other women’s stories, Jen steps forward to use her own voice, answering a clear call from God to speak boldly about faith, courage, and who we are becoming.

This episode introduces a new series focused on Identity in Christ, born out of prayer, listening, and discernment. Jen names the chaos, pain, and exhaustion so many women are carrying—from the noise of the world to the relentless battle of thoughts in our minds. She speaks directly to the internal war women face: self-condemnation, fear, doubt, and mental fatigue that quietly erode confidence and clarity.

At the heart of the series is a simple but urgent truth: we need an anchor for our souls. Jen unpacks how being rooted in God—who is unchanging, faithful, and abounding in love—allows us to lead our lives, families, and communities with steadiness rather than reactivity.

Using the metaphor of a deeply rooted tree, she explains how identity grounded in biblical truth produces strength, resilience, and lasting fruit. The first identity explored is Love—the foundation of everything. God doesn’t merely give love; He is love. And when women truly grasp that they are the beloved—fully, freely, and perfectly loved—it transforms how they see themselves, relate to others, face hardship, and live with holy confidence.

Jen closes with a reminder from Hebrews 6:19: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” This episode is an invitation to begin again—rooted, anchored, and loved.

Share this series Identity in Christ with the women and girls in your life!

Creators and Guests

Host

Jen Porter

Jen Porter is a faith-centered coach and podcast host who empowers women to live boldly from their identity in Christ, rooted in truth, courage, and holy confidence.

What is Lioness Women: Rooted in Christ?

Welcome to Lioness Women, a space for faith-fueled women to connect with their purpose and amplify their voices. These Lioness Conversations highlight purpose-driven women who share how their faith in Christ shapes their leadership, courage, and calling. 🦁

Hosted by Jen Porter, leadership and empowerment coach, this podcast shines a light on women who are leading with wisdom, strength, and grace — in boardrooms, businesses, ministries, and movements around the world.

Through raw, inspiring conversations, we explore how women of faith are building legacies, overcoming fear, and transforming their industries with bold vision and unshakable belief. If you’re ready to rise higher, lead with purpose, and stay rooted in Christ — this is your community.

Faith-Based Leadership | Christian Women | Women of Faith | Christian Podcast for Women | Kingdom Leadership | Spiritual Growth | Eternal Impact

Jen Porter (00:00)
Hey, Lioness, welcome to the show, Lioness Women, Rooted in Christ. You are entering at season two. This is episode one, and it is a brand new series that I am so delighted to be able to bring. It has been on my heart for quite some time, and I think it's gonna be really impactful, very deeply meaningful. So I'm so glad you're here. Please.

ask others to join in on this incredible series. We're going to be focused on our identity in Christ. Now I want to give a little bit of context as to where this came from. Last year I did an entire year on lioness conversations. Every single one of the episodes was an interview with a woman and it was telling her story of her

overcoming challenges, becoming a courageous woman, and doing really cool work in the world. And all of those took an interview format. This year, I'm actually going to use my voice more. Part of what I feel like I'm called to do is to share more. I have been a coach for almost a decade. And if you know anything about coaching or you've experienced it or maybe are a coach, you know that it is a lot of

listening. In fact, my first career was in recruiting and so I've literally made a career out of asking other people questions. What that means is that I am not always the person that is sharing and yet there is so much inside of me and so what I feel like God is calling me to do in this new season is to use my voice. Now I will have interviews, I will have Lioness guests that will come on and I'm really excited about you meeting specifically three people

that will be part of this first series, Identity in Christ. But I am stepping further into my calling and my courage. I took a lot of months last year just in a listening posture, praying, asking God what He wanted of me and for me, and that is where this new season was birthed.

I in fact changed the name of the podcast from Lioness Conversations to Lioness Women Rooted in Christ because I felt that God was asking me and inviting me to be more explicit in my own faith, to be more courageous in speaking about what it is that I believe in, what's inside of me and why that matters. So come along, it's gonna be an amazing journey.

And I know that you're gonna be more rooted, you're gonna have more clarity, you're gonna definitely have more courage, and you're gonna feel that sense of community as you move along this journey with me. So, so glad you're here. Thank you for being here. I wanna share a little bit about what this identity of Christ comes from. Here is the what.

This is, we need an anchor for our souls. I'm going to say it again. We need an anchor for our souls. This world is no joke. The current state of things is really chaotic. There's a lot of just inflammation in our communities, in our society, in our world. There is...

There's a lot of anger. There is a lot of deep sadness. There's so much hurt. There's a ton of suffering. And the way in which people are reacting seems to add a lot of fuel to this fire that's around us. Now, we are not able to solve all the problems in the world, not even close. But we are called to...

operate in our own sphere of influence. And we are called to be leaders of our own souls, leaders of our lives, and leaders of our families and our communities and our workplaces. So where we do have a sphere of influence, it's essential that we are really grounded and rooted in something that is good and is gonna actually have a positive impact on those around us.

Otherwise, we're gonna leave a wake of destruction in our path. We've all experienced it, maybe we've participated in it, and it is not how we wanna live our lives. We're called to something way higher and much deeper. So if you think about yourself as an individual, think about the way in which you see the world right now, the lens in which you look out into the world and see what's happening.

It probably feels really chaotic. It probably feels scary. If you're paying attention, there's a lot in the world that, and when I say the world, yes, I mean globally, universally, but I also mean next door. I mean in our cities, in our towns, in our churches, in our workplaces, in our families. There's a lot of things that are heartbreaking.

There are things that are uncertain. There are tragedies. There are things that are just crazy that are happening. And I want you to think for a minute the impact that all that is having on you.

How are you responding to? What is the reaction? What's happening in your body, in your mind, in your soul, in your spirit as a result of what's happening around us, around you? Okay, there's a battle that is happening in our mind and most women experience this.

Men too maybe, but I just think we're a different breed when it comes to what happens in our minds. So throughout a day, there is a battle that is happening. And that battle that I'm referring to, there's multiple ways you can look at it, but what I'm referring to right now is the battle of the thoughts.

I have worked with so many women. I have talked to so many women. I have polled women. And what I hear over and over is that their thoughts are actually condemning themselves. Right? Our thoughts have the ability to condemn us.

And whenever we say those thoughts out loud, if there's somebody around you who loves you, they're going to say that is, that's not true. That's not true. The way that we can berate ourselves, the way that we can talk to ourselves very harshly and

And then there's the whole other part of the battle that is like kind of these fears that come up, you know, the uncertainty, the self-doubt, the imposter syndrome that comes up. All of that is extremely draining and it is actually not productive at all, but it's happening throughout our day. There's this montage of

thoughts that are invading our mind that distract us from our focus, cause us to question ourselves, not show up as powerfully or as lovingly as we want to, and

we end up exhausted, just purely exhausted, and there's nothing good that comes from it. And so some of the work that I do with clients is actually how do we interrupt that cycle? How do we intercept that? So that we have some power over what's happening inside of our mind, and it's not just a free for all.

that is just like an invasion, right? So there's the battle that's happening in our minds. And then what is the impact on our hearts? Okay, if you're listening to this, you're probably a woman who has an intention to be good and loving, effective, impactful in the most positive ways.

until even leave a legacy of kindness and faithfulness and courage. You you want to live your life really well. And in order to do that, we actually have to be pretty grounded and know who we are. So I created this series all around our identity in Christ so that

we can tackle the battles that are happening in our minds. We can reclaim the thoughts that go through our head and align them with truth so that we can find ourselves grounded in God, in our faith, in who He says we are so that we can live the lives that we're called to and

that we're not so consumed with ourselves that we actually don't have much to give to others. So imagine being so deeply rooted in truth, capital T, truth about who you are, who God is, and what that means and how you walk through your days. So my hope for you...

is that you are rooted and established and grounded in your faith so that you can stand tall, that you can face whatever it is that your day entails, that you can carry out what you're made for.

and that you can do it with a holy confidence. I'm not talking about like boastful confidence. I'm talking about that deeply rooted deep down inside. I know who I am and that's how I'm going to show up in the world. I'm actually going to show up in the world differently because of that. There's going to be

Some metaphors that we use along the way, the tree is one that really, really resonates with me in so many ways. You know, our roots need to go very deep into the ground to find the nutrients and the nourishment deep in the soil, that water that we, our roots need to find. That is what gives us the strength to stand in our trunk.

really really tall and then that trunk leads up to the branches then those branches if they if we are flourishing way down deep in our roots then our branches are going to have they're going to bear fruit there's going to be something beautiful that that the world actually needs.

that will come from our branches. So we all want to be like a nourished tree. So I love there's these metaphors that I'll use like the lioness and and the tree and others that that I hope will resonate with you. We're going to talk about eight different identities in Christ and these all are biblical. They come from scripture. We can stand on these because the God of the universe said that they're true.

It's not us trying to conjure up an identity or a brand and say, this is who I want to be. Or if I say this enough, I can convince myself that this is who I am. I just need to do that visual, like look myself in the mirror every morning and say these mantras. There is a time and a place for that. But what I'm talking about is you can do all those things, but it has to be rooted in truth for it to really.

be part of your root system, right? The roots that go deep in the nourished ground. So we're gonna start with love. So love is...

the foundation of everything when it comes to who God says He is, why He came, why He sent Jesus to die for us, to live and show us and teach us how to live, but then to die for us so that we could be reunited with Him and not be separated.

So all of this, the foundation of all of it is love. And the greatest commandment is to love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, might, and strength. And to love others as yourself. So God is love. It's not that he just created love. It's not that he just commands us to love. He literally embodies love. And so to be in the presence of God is to be in the presence of love.

have the Holy Spirit inside of us is to have love inside of us. And so it's one and the same. He is love, love is God, it is the root of everything. And you know, in Exodus 34, 6, I love this verse. It says, Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger,

and abounding in love and faithfulness. He is slow to anger and abounding in love. That is this God, that is the character of God. When we engage with God, when he engages with us, he is slow to anger. He is abounding in love and faithfulness. That is just who he is and he cannot change. He will not change.

It's one of the other things that I love most about God is that he is unchanging. He is steady, faithful, trustworthy, true forever and ever and ever and amen. Meaning, when I look at the world and I, there's nothing else in the world that is actually fully trustworthy. There's nothing that is

worthy of putting our full trust in, there's nothing else worthy of us surrendering for. Only God is worthy of that because He is consistent, He will never change. You know, we put our hope in a lot of things, we put our hope in other people, we put our hope in ourselves, we put our hope in our careers, in our jobs, in our paychecks.

in our retirement plans, and yet all of those things could fall short and will. All those things will let us down. God is the one who will never fail. He will never change. He will never lie. He will never steal. He will never give up. He'll never forsake us.

And so all of that creates this amazing foundation for us to lean into to find that anchor.

for our life, for our soul, for our hearts, for our minds, for our spirits. We have to have something in this world that is unchanging so that we can face all of the trials and the challenges and the uncertainty and the loss and the tragedy and the heartbreak. There's so many things that can come against us. We have to have something stronger than all those things to stand firm in. Hebrews 6 19 says it really well. We have this hope.

an anchor for our souls firm and secure. It's talking about God. God is our hope which is an anchor for our soul firm and secure. So love is the foundation and we are loved.

You God calls us the beloved. He calls us loved. And when we grab hold of that, I don't think it's one of those things that we can stay in the awareness of that constantly. I would love for that to be the case, and we can maybe get close, but we lose sight of it. You know, minute by minute, we lose sight.

And yet we can come back to this place, but when we grasp it, that we are truly, deeply, fully, perfectly loved, it changes everything. It changes how we relate to people, how we move through our day, how we fulfill our responsibilities, what we think about, what we think about ourselves, how we speak, the words that we use, how we think about our future.

how we deal with loss, how we deal with breakup, how we, everything, mean, how we see our bodies when we look in the mirror and see our bodies, which I know is tender and challenging for women especially to look at ourselves lovingly when we look in the mirror. We're sort of trained to look for the imperfections and the places that we wanna sort of fix.

and yet like move all that aside we are so loved it is crazy town like we are the beloved and and gosh my prayer my hope is that you can taste you can just grab hold of just how loved you are because when we are found in God

And when we are with him, when he is with us, that is just this amazing, truly supernatural, meaning it goes beyond the natural, it goes beyond this world. The love that we get to experience, the intimacy that we get to experience, it will literally change us. And so that's where I'm gonna start, is we have to know just how deeply loved we are.

Because if we don't understand how perfectly loved we are, no matter what we do, no matter what we've done, no matter what we will do, that love is not earned. We can't perform well enough to receive that love. That love is just a free gift. is given. It just is, period. It just is. We are loved, loved by the God of the universe, the one who created.

all things and created you. That foundation is what we need to start with.

Because from that place of being deeply loved, that's how we make decisions, it's how we show up, it's how we relate to others, it's how we do our work, it's how we understand what we're called to and what our place is in this world. It's the foundation for everything. I'll leave you there. We have this hope as an anchor for our soul. Our souls can be firm and secure knowing.

that we are deeply, deeply loved by the God of the universe who is abounding in love and faithfulness.

If this topic resonates with you, if you're thinking of some other women who need to hear this, maybe some girls who need to know their worth and their value and their identity, please share this with them and invite them along this journey of focusing on who God tells us we are, who we are in Christ.

And I look forward to sharing more in the next episode. We're going to go deeper in this concept of love before we move to week two. So there'll be another episode on love and I look forward to sharing that with you. In the meantime, hold on to this hope as an anchor for your soul. I'll see you on the next episode of Lioness Women, Rooted in Christ.