The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Do you ever find it hard to let God work on your behalf? Are you tempted to trust in your own strength rather than let God work things out for you?

Show Notes

Do you ever find it hard to let God work on your behalf? Are you tempted to trust in your own strength rather than let God work things out for you?
 
 As believers, we have the most incredible opportunity to put our full trust and confidence in our heavenly Father. But, so often, we get caught in the trap of thinking “Surely I’m not the right person to do this” or “There’s too much against me for this to actually work out.”

Today on The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, Lynn Cowell will help us understand what it means to develop unshakable confidence built on Christ. 
 
With today’s episode, you will…

  • Grow your confidence in God as you hear references to stories in Scripture that show how He moved through others who trusted Him to do the impossible.
  • Identify and address the fears that keep you stuck, and learn what practical steps to take to walk in your calling with confidence.
  • Renew your passion to do what only you’ve been called to do, knowing it’s more important to please God than others.
Related Resources:
  • Discover more about unshakable confidence with Lynn’s Bible study, Make Your Move. Purchase the Bible study and DVD set today from Proverbs 31 Ministries’ online store.
  • Is there a tween in your life who needs a little encouragement as she makes the transition from being a little girl to becoming a teenager? Check out Lynn’s book, Brave Beauty: Finding the Fearless You, available on the Proverbs 31 Ministries’ online store.
  • Plan your next church women’s event with the Proverbs 31 Ministries’ speaker team in mind! Click here to inquire about having speakers like Lynn Cowell, Chrystal Evans Hurst, Nicki Koziarz and more at your next event.
 Click here to download the transcript for this episode.

What is The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast?

For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!

Kaley Olson: Hello, friends. Welcome to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl and any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my cohost, Meredith Brock.

Meredith Brock: Well, hey, Kaley.

Kaley Olson: Hi.

Meredith Brock: How's it going, girl?

Kaley Olson: It's great.

Meredith Brock: Good. I'm excited to join you today on the podcast. We've got a great show in store for you and for our friends online, for everybody. I can't wait for them to hear, but I want to know right now.

Kaley Olson: Yes.

Meredith Brock: What do you like the most about summer?

Kaley Olson: Ooh, I honestly, I like hot weather.

Meredith Brock: You like hot weather?

Kaley Olson: Does that make me sound weird?

Meredith Brock: It's because you're from the south-South.

Kaley Olson: I am from Mississippi, but the thing I just, I like not having to layer and layer and layer and be cold, because being cold and having cold feet and cold hands and a cold nose is the worst. I like summer.

Meredith Brock: We're totally different. We're completely opposite. Yeah.

Kaley Olson: That's great.

Meredith Brock: The colder, the better. I lived in Alaska for six years. I am perpetually in a state of being hot ...

Kaley Olson: That is true.

Meredith Brock: ... at the Proverbs 31 Ministries office. I wear a tank top every day to work, because I know I will be hot. So for those of you who would like a nice sauna to work in, come visit the Proverbs 31 Ministries office, because that's what it is. But what I love about summer ... you want to know what I love about summer?

Kaley Olson: Yes.

Meredith Brock: Thanks for asking, Kaley.

Kaley Olson: Oh, you're welcome.

Meredith Brock: I love the swimming pool. I love going to the swimming pool. Seriously. It's so fun to me.

Kaley Olson: That's so fun.

Meredith Brock: It's like my favorite thing. I look forward to it every year where I'm like it's swimming pool weather. Finally. I love it. Even though I, and I guess that's because I'm cold. Like when you're in the water, you're cold.

Kaley Olson: Yeah.

Meredith Brock: So there it is folks.

Kaley Olson: That's nice. I did buy a blow-up swimming pool last year.

Meredith Brock: I bet-

Kaley Olson: I put it in my backyard.

Meredith Brock: I'm proud of you for doing that.

Kaley Olson: It was great.

Meredith Brock: That sounds nice.

Kaley Olson: It was great.

Meredith Brock: This was really good.

Kaley Olson: Well, we're going to transition now ...

Meredith Brock: That's right.

Kaley Olson: ... into welcoming our guest, and I'm very, very honored to get to welcome our guest today. It's my dear friend Lynn Cowell. Welcome, Lynn.

Lynn Cowell: Hi.

Kaley Olson: Well, it's great to have you on the show today. And for those of you who might not know Lynn, if you read our devotions, you know Lynn or if you've been to a speaking event, I'm sure you've seen Lynn, but she has been with the ministry for 11 years, so ...

Meredith Brock: Good job, Lynn.

Kaley Olson: ... long before we had great social media and the podcast and all the things, really. Like 11 years. That's a long time.

Meredith Brock: That's awesome.

Kaley Olson: And I think she was actually a volunteer. This is a funny memory that I had. You were sitting at the front desk when I came in to interview for my job at Proverbs.

Lynn Cowell: How fun.

Kaley Olson: And I think that's the first time that I met you. So Lynn's an author, a speaker, and she's really fun, but I'd rather let her tell you a little bit about herself. So Lynn, why don't you tell everyone.

Lynn Cowell: I'm so excited to be here today. So as you said, I've been a part of Proverbs 31 for a long time, and I actually began as a data entry volunteer.

Meredith Brock: No. That's amazing.

Lynn Cowell: All of the glamour.

Meredith Brock: Yes, yes.

Lynn Cowell: But today I write and I speak to tweens, teens and women of all ages. Me and my husband, Greg, who I've been married to for 32 years, but I've been crushing on him since I was 10 ...

Meredith Brock: Oh, wow.

Kaley Olson: Whoa.

Lynn Cowell: ... we live just three miles from the office, and it's just us now and the occasional backyard deer. All three of our adult children live in three different states, but when we do get together, we love hiking, singing '80s songs, and anything combining chocolate and peanut butter.

Meredith Brock: Yes, I love that. I love some chocolate and peanut butter. Well, Lynn, we are thrilled to have you here. I hear that your message today is about confidence, and so let's just jump right in. I can't wait to hear it. Go for it.

Lynn Cowell: Great. So today I'm pulling some content from a video teaching from my Bible study, Make Your Move: Finding Unshakable Confidence Despite Your Fears and Failures. Those words, unshakable confidence. Some days those two words feel like they couldn't possibly go together, at least not for someone as strapped to people-pleasing as I have been, and not for this Enneagram 3. And not all that long ago, I stood stunned in a parking lot wondering what just happened. I was asking myself were all those adjectives shouted at the top of her lungs true? In a rage of emotions, someone I dearly love and who loves me had just attacked me, my character, my motivations and everything I live for. And as she stormed away, I stood on that pavement and my wounded heart wondered, is it true? And if it was, I couldn't go back into that party.

I hate to admit it, but there have been times when there would have been no question what my next move would have been. I would have completely fallen apart, sure that whatever she thought, whatever she said was definitely true. And yes, I've reacted this way many times from the 19 rejections to my first book, to a disagreement with one of my children, or simply when I've been misunderstood. But God and I have been doing a lot of work together leading up to this particular day. In fact, we've been working on this people-pleasing cycle for the majority of my lifetime.

All too often my confidence has spiked or crashed depending on the words and the actions of others toward me. The closer the relationship, the greater the potential impact. My volatile confidence couldn't be depended on, because it was dependent on unpredictable people, people that I haven't always been able to please. But little by little, something's been changing and that something is someone — me. After years of struggling under the weight of living to please others, I was exhausted and desperate to develop my own unshakable confidence.

I know, it sounds grandiose, unshakable confidence, but I'm learning that not only is it not impossible, I'm convinced that it's exactly what God has for us. So I've been reading God's Word for years, and I believe that this Christ-confidence is the type of confidence that God wants for me and God wants for you, too.

I think sometimes confidence gets a bad rap, because we're uncertain of its true meaning, especially when it comes to Christian women. I mean, isn't it closely related to pride or arrogance? Actually, confidence means full trust, belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing. For you and I who believe in and follow Christ, this confidence is built on believing in the powers, trustworthiness and reliability of the Trinity: God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

When my confidence is in me, it changes, fluctuates, is shaken. Just watch what happens when someone comes at me or I feel rejected. But what happens when we invite the Holy Spirit into our every day? What changes will we see in ourselves as we read His Word and we believe what God says over what someone else says, including ourselves? That's what I've been doing to develop this assurance that I have been desperate for. Reading stories of women in the Bible, especially some really obscure women who haven't gotten a lot of face time, women like the daughters of Zelophehad, Abigail, Debra, Rahab, the daughters of Shallum, and Sheerah all displayed this type of confidence, the type of confidence that is exactly what you and I need to overcome the fears and the failures of our lives.

I've been particularly drawn to two women in the book of Exodus named Shiphrah and Puah. Their story begins in Exodus 1. A paranoid Pharaoh fears the sons of Israel who have settled into Egypt. Their number has grown so great. Would they revolt and take over his country? He has to stop them, so he summons the Hebrew midwives, commanding that these two women kill Hebrew male babies as they're born.

If these two wrestled with people-pleasing like I have, this is the perfect combination for intimidation. Someone in authority that I want to impress giving me a direction I shouldn't keep. Yet these ladies ... well, let me read it to you straight from God's Word in Exodus 1:17. "The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do. They let the boys live." This is unshakable confidence. Under pressure to perform, to conform to demands placed on them, they don't. They did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do. I want to be like Shiphrah and Puah, able to keep going forward no matter what comes my way.

When I read the Bible, I often ask questions. Where did a power so brave and so bold and, to me, absolutely beautiful come from? And how can you and I get it? Well, the answer is right there in the verse we read. The midwives feared God. But wait, what about all those verses in the Bible that tell us, "Do not fear"? This is one of those times when it's really helpful to dig into the meaning of the original language of a word used in the Bible. This fear in the original language is [Hebrew 00:09:15]. It has two meanings, and one of them applies here. A very positive feeling of awe or reverence for God.

Although Shiphrah and Puah didn't have God's Word available to them like we do, they got it. They rightly feared God, and this fear of God more than fear of people is what gave them the power to push back on adversity when it came at their confidence. These gals had two really important pieces in place. One was what they did have, fear of God, a respect, reverence and awe of God's greatness. The other is what they didn't have, fear of people. They proved this when they chose to disobey Pharaoh in order to obey God.

They also proved that they didn't fear the people in their community. There had to have been those who were angry with the women, seeing their actions as putting them in danger. I mean, Pharaoh had already taken out on the Israelites by doubling their work, making it worse than ever before. Pharaoh expected their obedience, but instead with Shiphrah and Puah's obedience to God, the Hebrews' prosperity didn't stop like Pharaoh expected. You know Pharaoh probably took out his anger on God's people.

Bottom line, Shiphrah and Puah would not be people-pleasers. They were God pleasers. I tried to think of a time when people-pleasing wasn't a struggle for me. As a young woman, it was paralyzing, causing me to be unable to make simple choices. I thought I had this problem out of sight, hidden from people, until the counselor I was seeing called it right out. At the end of our session, she handed me some papers with the title across the top, Fear of God, and gave me the instructions, read this. Fear of God. It can sound a bit creepy, can't it? Isn't God love? Doesn't a girl go to counseling because she needs to know that she's accepted, adored and all those very real needs in our lives? Yes, I did need that, too, but understanding the fear of God was where my counselor thought we needed to start.

Apparently, in order to become healthy in the way I interacted with others, I had to get healthy in how I saw God. And she explained that I craved the approval of people more than I craved pleasing God and until that was reversed, I would never be set free from people-pleasing or my wavering confidence.

Learning to correctly fear God involved me learning more about Him, discovering who He is and who I am in light of His greatness. It's taking me a really long time. My progress has been slower than it could have been, but I'm still in process. And yes, there have been times when I've allowed others to control my confidence, but as I'm growing, there are more times when I'm standing on Christ-confidence rather than giving into living for the approval of people.

I remember one night that was really pivotal for me. Many of the parents of my kids' friends were friends with each other, and I could see that was a good thing. So Greg and I invited one of the couples over for dinner. Man, can I tell you, I was sweating it. I don't usually have people over that I feel a need to impress. I'm a really casual gal, and I can't remember what I made or what we ate on that night, but what I remember is the way I felt. There was a jab about the Scripture on our wall, the poke about how we spend our weekends. Nope. That night we didn't make the cut. Talk about a confidence crusher. Yet when the couple walked out the door, my heart was at peace. I had wanted to be a part of the popular group at my kids' school, but there was a bigger part of me, a growing part of me, that wanted to honor the Lord more, and it appeared in this situation I couldn't do both.

It's in situations like these that we can let the fear of people become more important than our fear of God. What will they think of me? How will they treat my kids? Will we be known as that family? The answer often is yes, but is it different what we're supposed to be when we care more about God's opinion of us than other people's opinion of us? Whether it comes to the way that we love all people everywhere or in the words we use, the places we'll go, or the things we do, we belong to Jesus.

1 Peter 2:9 puts it this way. "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." The King James Version calls it a peculiar people. This very way that we're different, that we're more concerned about honoring God than making people happy, well, it not only makes us different, but it brightly shines God's greatness to those around us. With the power of the Holy Spirit living out of us, we can display the love and compassion of God with the confidence of God.

Even though I was growing to fear God and to desire to please Him more than pleasing people, I remember that aching feeling of wanting to fit in with the cool moms. They got coffee and lunch together. They volunteered together on all the projects. I never did make it in. Honestly, grown-up politics are not all that different from grade school politics, I discovered. There are those who are in and there are those who are out, but knowing that God loves me, approves of me, and is for me gave me the confidence I needed to keep moving forward in what He has for me and to finally be okay with not making it in.

Hanging in our kitchen I have one of those large farmhouse style signs with a portion of Joshua 24:15 written on it. Even though nowadays it's only Greg and I, it's a reminder that I need for the two of us. "But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." I have it where I can see it often, because it's a reminder to me that serving the Lord and scoring points with people, sometimes they just don't go together. And when they don't, with the help and the part of the Holy Spirit, I can determine to choose God.

This is how confidence, unshakable confidence, is built. Unshakable confidence is built on our unshakable God. It's a confidence that's built as we choose to fear God or care more about God's opinion of us more than we fear people and their opinion of us. All people, whether they are not followers of Christ or they are.

So how do we get rid of living for the approval of people? How do we move from caring about what others think of us to knowing what God says of us? Proverbs 2:1-5 gives us some advice. "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, indeed if you call out for insight and you cry aloud for understanding and if you look for it as for silver and you search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God."

So first we have to want to fear God and be rid of living for the applause and the approval of people. We have to want a right standing with God more than we want anything else. Nothing can entice us to turn from Him, because our reverence and our awe for Him is everything to us.

Verses six through eight go on to say, "For the Lord gives wisdom. From his mouth come knowledge and understanding. He holds success in store for the upright. He's a shield to those who walk as blameless, for he guards the course of the chest and protects the way of his faithful ones." That's what I want. I want what the fear of the Lord gives: wisdom, knowledge, understanding.

When we choose catering to people, fearing people, we absolutely never know what we'll get. We can turn a blind eye to the rules, even break the law for our boss, but that won't keep him from letting us go. We can go out with the neighborhood gals and act in a way that we're not proud of, trying so hard to be one of them, but chances are they'll still talk about us the next day. We can buy the clothes, get the car, move into the house, but it doesn't mean we'll fit in and we can do everything we know to do and still get blasted in the parking lot.

Or we can forego all of that and make our move. We can make our move toward God, be intentional to live out His two commands, love God and love people. We can move toward living in awe and respect of the One who will lead us toward Himself, which is the way to becoming the best version of ourselves, reaching the potential of the woman He's made us to be. It's simple, but far from easy.

And that pretty much sums up what I've discovered about God. His life, His way has and always will be my best choice, and that choice is simple. Honor and fear Him with my life, but it's far from easy. What is easy is doing what I think other people want me to do because I fear their rejection. The results, though, usually leave me miserable. As soon as I take a step back and I see the wrong move I've made, I feel regret.

But as I'm choosing to follow Jesus and honor Him, even when it has been so difficult, I'm building a confidence that doesn't slip away whenever someone disagrees with me or I feel I will disappoint someone.

Because Shiphrah and Puah feared God more than they feared a man, the women made the choices that were best for God, for themselves, for their community. They made their decision not living in the moment, but living in light of eternity. We don't usually think of eternity, right? We're more concerned about what's going on on Friday night than about forever. FOMO can drive our next decision. Fear of what people will think if ... go ahead and fill in your own blank. This is exactly when fear of people drives our actions, because the fear of rejection is more important to us than the fear of God's rejection of our actions.

When we fear God, we not only acknowledge that He's our Creator; we acknowledge that He has the right to be our Lord. Our actions are based on our reverence for Him. Because we fear God, we keep His commands and we serve Him. As Deuteronomy 10:12 says, "And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul."

When we fear God, we line up our lives with God's Word, not with what we think will make people happy. That's exactly what Shiphrah and Puah did. They lined up their lives with honoring God. For Shiphrah and Puah and the entire community, the results are told in Exodus 2:20-21, as God fulfilled their desires. "So God was kind to the midwives, and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own."

Fearing God more than fearing people. It's how we build unshakable confidence, because it's not based on what is shakable, ourselves or other people. It's not based on something we can lose or have taken from us, and it is not easy. But I believe that you, like me, want the blessing of honoring God more than anything else and you want the confidence that comes with it. Most importantly, though, when we choose to honor God first and foremost, He doesn't leave us alone and without. He provides for us with relationships and community even better and more fulfilling than what we've been left out of.

That blow up in the parking lot, I knew I could stop no matter where I was and no matter who was watching and remember, if even for a brief moment, who I truly was and who God says I am. With His help, I was able to walk back into the party and carry on a conversation, something I could have never done years ago. It's not that the words didn't hurt. No, my heart was deeply hurt, but even as the words had been hurled at me faster than I could respond, they didn't strip away my worth. No matter what rejections come our way, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us and the confidence that comes from who He is in us, we can keep going forward and fulfilling what God has for us.

That mess didn't go away fast or easy. It took time for some hard conversations and boundary-creating. The thing I was able to take away was what was not taken away. When a confidence is built on Christ, it's a confidence that stands.

Kaley Olson: Wow, Lynn. That was so good. I feel like I'm very convicted in certain ways right now. I don't know if you are.

Lynn Cowell: Please do tell.

Kaley Olson: Here we go. Here we go.

Lynn Cowell: Dive right in.

Kaley Olson: Well, I don't know. Whenever I hear this, I automatically just think like, okay, in my season of life, what ... where is the Lord challenging me? And something consistent has always been control for me, which I think is like a fear of God thing.

Meredith Brock: Yeah. Lynn, raised her hand, for those of you who are listening, since you can't see this. Thank you for being honest.

Kaley Olson: But I just was thinking through like all of the times where I want control and control isn't being confident. It's actually like rooted out of insecurity, and I feel like we want control because we want to know the outcome. I don't like being surprised. If you want to throw me a surprise party, that's fine, but I don't like the thought of living open-handed and just being like, "Okay, here you go." Like, "It's up to You, God, I'm going to trust You with this."

It's so much easier said than it is to actually live, and it's fearing God in the wrong way, not the right way. Like, "Are You sure? Because I think that I can make a better decision about this than You could." Or like those Egyptian ladies like, "Well, can't we hide the kids ourselves or can't we do this?" Or like they could have done something different, but they chose to live out of obedience in that way.

And I just always think about this verse that my dad taught me whenever I was really young, and it's one of the ways that God speaks to me whenever I'm about to make a decision or if I'm in a tough spot. It pops up somewhere, and it's Proverbs 3:5-6, and it says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths."

I've always read that verse and memorized it and held to it as like a trust verse, but trust is so hard and I don't ...

Lynn Cowell: That's right.

Kaley Olson: You don't really learn that until you get older, and it was this verse that I read as a kid, and then now I'm having to live in it. But one of the things that I was thinking about, and I don't know. Joel Muddamalle, our theology director, can probably listen to this later and tell me if this is right. But one of the takeaways that I get from the last one in verse six, "In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths." It doesn't mean that I've got to acknowledge Him and hear which way I'm supposed to go. It means I acknowledge Him as I'm walking and He will make straight my paths. And so it means I'm giving Him the control, but I'm still acting in obedience, instead of having everything figured out before I do what He's called me to do.

Lynn Cowell: So good, Kaley. That's good. And that's like ... it's a confidence issue. Are you having confidence in you or are you having confidence in the Lord?

Meredith Brock: You know, Lynn, I was thinking as you were teaching. I think people-pleasing is such a trap and one that I just feel like Satan loves to suck us down into. I come from a different vantage point. I'm an Enneagram 8, so I don't really struggle with people-pleasing. But you know what I struggle with is that I have so much confidence in my abilities. And so what that does ... I wanted to ask you what would you say to someone? Because for me, that means that I have pressure on me all the time, because it comes down to me at the end of the day. So what advice would you give to someone who is struggling with their confidence, who maybe isn't stuck in the people-pleasing cycle, but is stuck in the cycle of I've got to keep it all together. Like, it all comes down to me. What would you tell them?

Lynn Cowell: Well, one of the things as I've been studying confidence is that sometimes we think confidence is something you're born with. Like somebody sees someone like you, Meredith, and they're like, "Oh, if I could just be confident like Meredith," because they think it's something you're just born with it, right?

Meredith Brock: It's all a façade, people.

Lynn Cowell: But what I see in, and you know, since we're women, we'll be talking about women. What I see sometimes in what I perceive as being a confident woman is that confidence is built on someone. Say she's got a great marriage or she has some kind of relationship or she's a part of a group that's working for her or it's built on some place. She has a great job or she lives in a certain part of the city or it's built on something like her education. But as I think about life and what life does to us, those are all things we can lose.

Kaley Olson: [crosstalk 00:26:45]?

Lynn Cowell: We can lose someone, something or someplace overnight. And if our confidence is built on someone, someplace or something, then when we lose that thing, we lose our confidence. But when our confidence is built on Christ, He's the only thing that can't be taken from us or the only thing we can't lose.

Kaley Olson: Wow, that's so good, Lynn. I think for me, a lot of my confidence has been built on my abilities. Like I'm a very, I'm a capable person. I can get some stuff done, y'all, but as I've gotten older ... I just turned 38. I'm squeaking in on that 40, y'all. I'm coming for her. But I recognize, because in your 20s, for myself, I was a little insecure and worried about my abilities but kind of proving myself like trying to prove that I can do this, I can do this.

And then I got a little bit of confidence, because I'm like, "Shoot, look at me. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it." But there was always this little sneaky suspicion in the back of my head that it could all fall apart at any minute, Meredith, because you're not as good as you think you are. And I'm finding, I have not mastered this, but I'm finding as I'm getting older resting in that, because it's true. I can't do it all. I can't. I really can't, and I shouldn't. And living, letting that sneaky suspicion that you can't do at all, you can't do it all, admitting it and saying, "This is the Lord's. My life is His anyway." And so I don't have to hold it all together and my confidence is not going to come from my ability to do it all. It's going to come from Him in me. So such good stuff.

Meredith Brock: I love this conversation. I also just want to pause for a second and can we do a shoutout to our girl Puah? She had to be confident with that name.

Kaley Olson: Oh, my gosh.

Meredith Brock: When you said that, I have never noticed that girl's name a day in my life.

Kaley Olson: Poor child.

Meredith Brock: I mean, come on, give the girl a break.

Kaley Olson: Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for making our transitions always so entertaining, Meredith.

Meredith Brock: You know, you never know what you're going to get.

Kaley Olson: I hope you never lose that part of yourself. Lynn, whenever we were talking about the podcast beforehand, you said you had a couple of questions that you wanted to give our listeners to think through.

Lynn Cowell: Yes. So this week, watch your thoughts. Pay close attention to your actions and ask yourself, as you're paying attention to your thoughts and what you're doing, what is motivating me to do what I'm about to do?

Kaley Olson: Oh, that's good.

Lynn Cowell: Is it because I fear people or is it definitely because I fear God?

Kaley Olson: Ooh, that was good.

Meredith Brock: Great challenge. Great challenge, folks. I hope you write that question down. Put it on your mirror somewhere in your car. Ask yourself that.

Kaley Olson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we'll include those in the show notes as well. So as we're wrapping up here, Lynn, I just want to thank you again for being on the show with us today. Thoroughly enjoyed your teaching, and I know firsthand you truly live this message, because I've seen you go through it and I've seen you in the, what, short three or four years I've known you just live it out. And so I'm just so thankful for you.

And I know on here we joke a lot that our podcast might be for a 20-year-old or a 50-year-old, but you guys, I'm always amazed at the reviews and emails we get from people letting us know how a specific episode spoke to them. So if the Lord is using these messages to challenge you or speak to you, please let us know by leaving a review on iTunes.

Meredith Brock: We also wanted to take the time to connect you with Lynn and some of her fantastic resources. First, Lynn doesn't know this. This is the first time she's going to hear this, but I recently recommended her book, Brave Beauty, to the sweetest little tween I have ever met, because she was just struggling through who she was, and it made a tremendous difference in her life. I heard from her parents. They both texted me. So if you have a tween ...

Lynn Cowell: That's so sweet.

Meredith Brock: ... pick up that book. But also every single one of us should be reading and studying Make Your Move, because it's going to make a big difference in your life, in your confidence, in your relationship with the Lord. You can get that at Proverbs 31 bookstore. That's p31bookstore.com, and a portion of every single purchase made through that bookstore goes back to funding the incredible ministry of Proverbs 31 and this podcast right here.

Kaley Olson: Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned earlier that Lynn was an author and a speaker, so I wanted to let our listeners know that Proverbs 31 Ministries actually has a speaking team. Did you know that?

Meredith Brock: What?

Kaley Olson: You know that, but you know, listeners. So Lynn is on it as well as other incredible gals like Chrystal Evans Hurst, who we heard a few weeks ago, Lisa Allen, Whitney Caps, and so many more. They travel and speak at church or women's ministry events and who knows? Maybe you're planning an event and you need a speaker. So to find out more, just go to Proverbs31.org and click on training and events and then click on event speakers. All right. That's about all we have time for today. Thanks for joining us. We hope today's messages help you know the Truth of God's Word and live that Truth out, because when you do, it changes everything. Bye, guys.

Meredith Brock: Bye-bye.