The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

The older we get, the easier it is to recognize that life is a combination of suffering and joy. While we look forward to the joyful times, our suffering has the potential to draw us closer to the Lord ... if we choose to steward that season well.

Show Notes

The older we get, the easier it is to recognize that life is a combination of suffering and joy. While we look forward to the joyful times, our suffering has the potential to draw us closer to the Lord … if we choose to steward that season well. 
 
 So, how do we do that?
 
 Today on the Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, First 5 writer Lyli Dunbar draws from her own life experiences and the book of Daniel to show us four ways to steward our season of suffering well. And guess what? They all start with the letter “P” to make note-taking easy. 
 
 With this episode, you will…

  • Learn the importance of establishing a routine of getting into God’s Word daily in order to build a strong foundation to stand on when your world gets shaky.

  • Discover scriptures in the Psalms you can run to that will help you practice trading the tendency to panic with the power of prayer.

  • Understand how worshipping during hard times helps you trust that God is working even when you can’t see it.

Related Resources:
  • Establish a consistent, weekday quiet time with our First 5 mobile app. It’s free (yes, free!) — all you need to do is go to your app store on your mobile device to download the app and join us in our current study. 
  • Take your daily study of God’s Word a little deeper with our First 5 Study Guides. These guides are meant to be a companion to a study you can find within our First 5 mobile app, or stand-alone as an individual study. Each Study Guide includes helpful study tools such as maps, historical context and an overview of the book(s) you’re studying. Find out more about our Study Guides here!
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:
Hi friends! Welcome back to the Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. My name is Kaley Olson, and I’m here with one of my dear friends and coworkers who is stepping in as a guest cohost today: sweet Hannah Schindler.

Hannah:
Hi.

Kaley:
Hi, Hannah. Hannah, I would love for you to introduce yourself to our podcast audience because they’ve never met you before. So, tell us what you do for Proverbs 31.

Hannah:
Yeah, absolutely. I am the senior project coordinator for our First 5 app. So a little bit about the First 5 app. It might sound like, “why First 5?” It is to spend your first five minutes in God’s Word before you go and open up Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok if you’re on Tik Tok, any social media basically. It’s our way of going through the entire Bible and having a five-minute teaching on that day’s Scripture that we’re reading.

Kaley:
That’s awesome. So what exactly do you do for First 5 and how do you support the app?

Hannah:
So as the project coordinator, I call myself the content liaison between all of our content that’s created by our First 5 volunteer writers. And I think that word “volunteer” is so important to realize — all the hours that they put into writing these daily teachings. And then I’m the one who sends it to the company who hosts our app out in California. So, we do not host it in-house currently, and so I am the one who gets the content moving from Proverbs to the company out in California. And then I help oversee a lot of our projects. So from strategizing our weekend teachings, who’s teaching when, what are we sharing to projects for the future? I get to be the host for our weekend audio teachings in First 5, so I get to do a lot of different things. No two days looks the same for me.

Kaley:
No. Me either. But I think for our listeners, it’s really cool to hear what it takes to get something that you see that’s in an app format live every single day. So, I know you and the team put a lot of hard work in every single day to make sure things go live and I’m really grateful for you. But you know what, Hannah, now that we’re well into 2020, I feel like I should make an announcement for our audience about something really cool happening later this year with First 5. Are you cool with that?

Hannah:
I would love nothing more.

Kaley:
Awesome. Well, we will finish the entire Bible in 2020.

Hannah:
That’s amazing.

Kaley:
Seriously?

Hannah:
I know, I’m speechless. It’s still surreal.

Kaley:
Yeah, but I mean, we started the First 5 app in 2015 and it’s taken us five years to go through the Bible — or a little bit more than five years, I guess, now that we’re into 2020 — but I think that’s amazing because there’s something to say about slow and steady winning the race and the fact that there’ve been so many people along the way, spending the first five minutes of their day in God’s Word, but taking it small bites at a time, and doing a chapter at a time or a set of chapters at a time is really cool.

Hannah:
Yeah, I know. I think it’s so incredible for us to see how God has been so faithful to this ministry that’s committed to helping people explore God’s Word for themselves. And so, selfishly, one of my favorite parts is our weekend audio teachings. And I think I love it because our team, they have a strict word count for daily teachings because our goal is to get it to our audience in five minutes so that we’re honoring their time and knowing — hey, five minutes might be a lot for the mom who has three kids and then is also having to get ready to go to her job.

But with our weekend teachings, they can go from 12 to 20 minutes, and sometimes — with our director of theology, Joel Muddamalle, who I know y’all have met — it can go maybe to 25, 30 minutes, but it’s such a great way for us to hear the heart behind the message from our teacher and apply this teaching to our life. Kind of like what we do here on the podcast.

Kaley:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I’m really excited because today on the podcast, we actually have a First 5 teacher with us. We wanted to let our friend, Lyli Dunbar, share a teaching that she did a couple of months back on the book of Daniel. Y’all’s teaching is so good. Hannah actually recommended it to me for the podcast and so I’m really excited that we get to share it with you guys today and we have her with us live. Welcome Lyli.

Lyli:
Hello. It’s such an honor to be here. Thank you, Kaley, for this invitation.

Kaley:
Of course.

Hannah:
Yeah, we’re so excited, Lyli. And like Kaley said, Lyli is one of our First 5 writers, and started writing for First 5 in 2017, and that actually was the year that I came on staff. So, it’s fun. We started around the same time and she’s actually joining us from Florida today. And I love how our First 5 volunteers again get to do what they do from around the US, and we actually even have a First 5 writer who just moved out of the country. So, it’s really cool to see how we’re not stopped by just meaning to be in the same city, and through technology, we’re able to be with Lyli even in Florida right now. So Lyli, with that, we’re so grateful that you’re here and why don’t you go ahead and dive into your teaching.

Lyli:
Thanks Hannah. The title of my teaching for today is “Four Ways to Steward Your Season of Suffering Well.” So this teaching’s on the book of Daniel, and when I opened up my Bible and started reading through Daniel, the first word that jumped right off the page at me was right in verse 1, and it was the word “besieged.” Daniel’s life was literally turned upside down when the Babylonians invaded Israel. And so, I looked up the original Hebrew word was translated as besieged in my ESV Bible, and it implies being confined or shut in. So, it paints a picture of being surrounded on all sides by an adversary. So, as Hannah said, I live in sunny South Florida and I’ve never experienced a military invasion here at my house where I’ve been overwhelmed or confined or imprisoned. I’ve never served in our military like our brave heroes.

But I have hunkered down at my house and I have felt walled in more than once with water on all sides because I live in the land of the hurricane. My husband and I have also experienced a lot of besieging because we’ve had some health issues and we both had a major hospitalization where we’ve been confined for an extended period in a hospital battling for our health. So, and just as I sat down on the day to type down the notes for this very lesson, I remember I got an unexpected phone call that morning and my husband and I just stood in our kitchen and we linked arms and we prayed for protection because we just felt like it was spiritual warfare and just obviously an attack from our enemy. So, we can be standing in our own kitchen at home and feel besieged, besieged by circumstances out of our control.

Just this morning my husband had to pull up some boards on our kitchen and dining room floor because we’ve got a leak. We don’t know where it’s coming from. We had to call the roofer. It’s been crazy. You know, you feel besieged unexpectedly at any moment. So as I read through Daniel chapter 1 and 2, I’m challenged because Daniel has a very untroubled inner life, despite all the turmoil surrounding him. So I read these two chapters over and over and I noticed there were four distinctives in Daniel’s life that I think really helped him stay on course even after life as he had once known it was disrupted. So let’s go over the first point. First, Daniel determined to live purposefully. Verse 8 of chapter 1 says, “Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food or with the wine that he drank, rather than allow his decisions to be dictated by culture or by his circumstances Daniel continued to choose obedience.”

One of the cross-references I discovered for this passage was in Psalm 119, where the Psalmist declares in verse 105 that God’s Word would be a lamp to lead him. And then in verse 106, he says he has sworn an oath and confirmed to keep God’s righteous rules. Then, down in verse 112, he says he inclines his heart to perform God’s statutes. The mindset of the Psalmist here and in Daniel chapter 1 was exactly the same. There was a set course of mind to stay the course, even if everything around them was unsettled. So I want to be that woman. I want to be that woman who stands on their promises and says, “Yes, Lord, yes to you, Lord, fully and forever.” But that type of resolve, it’s not established in one day. It’s not established on the day my roof caves in; it’s got to be established way in advance.

And Daniel, he had a habitual practice of, every day, yielding his day to God in prayer and in his actions and his interactions and the “ifs”, “and,” “nor,” “but”s of life did not change his pattern of behavior when his city was besieged. When we’re suddenly besieged by the unexpected circumstances that we don’t know are coming, we can stand firm if we’ve already established our hearts by trusting in His Word above everything else. So that’s the first way. Now, the second way or the second distinctive I noticed is that Daniel stewarded his season well, and it starts in chapter 2 and go down to verse 14 where it says, Daniel replied with, big word, “prudence.” And then again, in verse 23, it says Daniel thanks God for giving him wisdom and insight. So that word, “prudence,” here it implies having discretion and being full of understanding and wise counsel.

So, Daniel not only knew the word of the Lord, but he let it guide his actions and his responses. A prudent response can really defuse a difficult situation. And I want to learn how to do that better, right? So I don’t have those prickly moments. So let’s turn to Proverbs 15; it’s a passage I personally find really convicting. If you look at verse 1, it says, “a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” And in verse 2, we see how our tongues are to be used as instruments to communicate wisdom because it says “the tongue of the wise commends knowledge.” And if you skip down to verse 4, it says, “a gentle tongue is a tree of life.” I really want a gentle tongue. And in verse 5, it says, “whoever heeds reproof is …” there’s the word again … “prudent.” So skip down to verse 23, and it says, “to make an apt answer is a joy to a man and a word in season.”

How good it is. So Daniel, he distinguished himself through his measured responses that were well timed and carefully worded. That’s hard to learn. This is a reminder to me that I need to seek the Lord for my words. That he would give me the words to communicate difficult things and difficult circumstances when I’m facing those seasons of adversity, and I can ask the Holy Spirit to help me. I can get down on my knees right there on my bed in the morning and say, “Holy Spirit, help my words. Help me to communicate the right words at the right time, rather than just reacting at the heat of the moment.” So we’ve covered two ways that Daniel stewarded a season of suffering well. First, he lived purposefully and he continued to walk in obedience. And second, he was rooted in his communication.

Now let’s look at the third. It’s in chapter 2, verses 17 and 18. Now here we see where Daniel invited his friends to join with him, to really get down on their knees and intercede and pray and plead for God’s mercy. Prayer, prayer was Daniel’s first response — not panic, panic. This, when my heart just starts beating and beating and beating, where do I turn to first? Daniel turned to prayer. You know, I look at the Psalms for example, which are full of prayers and so many of them are prayers in the midst of suffering. And I think, for example, like Psalm 28, if you look at verses 6 and 7, let me read them to you. It says, “blessed be the Lord for He has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield, in Him, my heart trust and I’m helped, my heart exults and with my song, I give thanks to Him.”

Wow, that’s amazing. I want to have that heart. You know, both Daniel and the Psalmists trusted that God was merciful and that God, a merciful God, would help them and provide exactly what they needed when they lacked strength themselves and when they needed God’s protection the most. I love the encouragement in Psalm 32 verses 7 and 8, where it says, “Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer a prayer to You at a time when You may be found surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach Him. You are a hiding place for me. You preserve me from trouble. You surround me with shouts of deliverance.” That so encourages me that God’s my hiding place and I can press into prayer instead of giving way to panic. And this is what helps me to persevere. So it helps us all to persevere when we’re called to walk that difficult path.

Now there’s one more way that Daniel stewarded his season of suffering well, and it’s found in Daniel’s prayer in chapter 2 verses 19 to 23. Here, the text says that Daniel blessed the God of Heaven who reveals deep and hidden things. In verse 23, it says exactly, I’m going to read it to you. It says to you, “Oh God of my fathers I give thanks and praise for You have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of You, for You have made known to us the King’s matter.” So, I see how through all that he experienced Daniel, he didn’t take the credit himself for what happened. He humbly acknowledged that God alone was his source of strength and he turned to worship and he worshiped God through that prayer and he adopted that attitude of gratitude, right?

He adopted a posture of praise and he did not give way to pride and as leaders a lot of times I think that can happen and he did not do that. The Psalmist, David and all the Psalmists, often they do this as well. Let’s turn to Psalm 34 and look at a few verses. This is one of my favorite Psalms. It says, “I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad.” And if you keep reading, he goes on to acknowledge that he sought the Lord and the Lord heard him and he was delivered from all his fears and his troubles. God gave him that overwhelming peace. And it says in verse 5, I love this. It says, “those who look to Him are radiant.”

Isn’t that a great word? And their faces shall never be ashamed because the enemy loves to cover us in shame, right? But those who look to the Lord are radiant. It seems so contradictory to imagine seeing a face radiant with God’s joy and peace and God’s light in a dark, dark season, in a dark, dark place. But that’s exactly what happens when we fix our eyes on Christ and we proclaim His name. You know, Paul talked about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, where he challenged the early believers, and he challenges us, to not lose heart during difficult times. In fact, Paul said we’re called not to proclaim ourselves, but to proclaim Jesus as Lord because God shines His light in our hearts. And now he says, we’re like jars of clay. We’re showing the surpassing power that belongs to God and not to us because we’re His servants.

So just like Daniel, our lives can shine brightly for God in a dark place as we praise His name, people will see Him in and through us. So we’ve covered four ways that Daniel stewarded a season of suffering well, and they all started with the letter P because I like alliteration to help remember things. So first he purposed to stay obedient. Second, he was prudent in his responses. Third, he turned to prayer instead of panicking, and finally, he praised God and he humbly acknowledged that God was the source of his strength. Now, Hannah and I have talked about this a little bit before, but my family and I have been going through a bit of a roller coaster. 2019 was a crazy year and when the year ended, I was, we actually kind of celebrated. I am so challenged, though, by Daniel’s even-keeled response through the ups and the downs in his life.

He always had that same temperament. And I know I just, I struggled with that. So yes, he was in captivity, but his spirit, his spirit was free and his heart was so settled and at peace because he trusted. He trusted that God was God, that God was sovereign, and he didn’t allow unfavorable circumstances to impact who he was, to impact his character. You know, another person whose example really challenges me is the apostle Paul. You know, I read my New Testament, he wrote most of it and he wrote most of it from a prison cell. It’s kind of crazy to think about the fact that he would do that. And when I was preparing this teaching, I was reading through Ephesians 3 around the same time we were going through Ephesians as a church body. And I noted that in verse 1 of Ephesians 3, Paul, he identifies himself as a prisoner, a prisoner of Christ.

I found that term so intriguing. And then down in verse 2, just a few words later, he says, he had received a stewardship of God’s grace. And I thought, “wow, Paul understood.” He was appointed for that season. He was appointed to be a steward of the gospel through his own suffering. And I want to have that mindset. I want to be purposeful like Paul and Daniel to steward my suffering well and help others see that God is the one who’s getting me through. It’s His wonderful grace that is helping me and it’s His wonderful grace that sets sinners free. We need His grace in our lives. So man, this teaching has been for me, you know, it’s great to revisit it this time because I really needed it this week and I wanted to close by just sharing a few verses from Psalm 31 that really, really encouraged me as I prepared this teaching.

So if you skip down to verse 21, the Psalmist says “blessed be the Lord for He has one justly shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city, I had said in my alarm, I’m cut off from Your sight, but You heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to You for help.” And then go down to verse 24 and he gets, he gives us kind of marching orders and I think we can take as we finish off this teaching today, he said, “be strong and let your heart take courage, all of you who wait for the Lord.” So for anyone right now you’re sitting and you’re listening to this teaching and you’re saying, man, this is for me. I am feeling pretty besieged right now. Be encouraged because the steadfast love of the Lord will give you strength to stand firm as you steward well your season of suffering, so we want to wait well. Lord, help us to wait well as we’re walking through this season and remember God is fighting for you and He will always see you through.

Kaley:
Wow, Lyli, that was great.

Hannah:
Yeah.

Kaley:
I mean I, first of all, want to point out that I just feel like you are such a woman of resolve and I think that I can, I can tell that because let’s just celebrate the fact that Lyli used so much Scripture. She did a teaching on Daniel 1 and 2, but then we were hopping all around the Bible and I just think it’s so amazing how God has worked in your life and it’s proof that you have been a student of His Word and just studied and I want to talk about that for a little bit because there might be some people who are listening to the podcast who are in a season of suffering or maybe just an unexpected season or maybe fearing an unexpected season. I know I’m there a lot and they might be wondering, “Well, what does it look like for me to actually establish a quiet time or a routine to be a woman of resolve?”

And so I think it would be fun for us to go around and share some things that help us connect to Scripture because I think quiet time can look different for anybody, right? Like it can look different for you, Hannah, or you Lyli, than it does for me. And so Hannah, I’m going to put you on the spot but I’d love for you to share with the audience some things that help you connect to Scripture.

Hannah:
Absolutely. So one thing for this year, Kaley, my husband and I talked about we wanted this year to be a year of harvest, but the first thing we talked about for a year of harvest was a harvest in our relationship with God and knowing His Word. And so we talked about how if you don’t, if we don’t know God’s Word, if we’re not reading it, then we’re missing a huge part of our relationship with Him because this is His way of communicating with us.

Yes, with the Holy Spirit as well, 100%, but God’s Word is His, these are His words. And so for me, I started a Bible reading plan to read the Bible in a year. And so there’s a devotional that is going over, currently it’s Genesis and Matthew and then a Psalm. And how right now it was interesting whenever Lyli said something about mercy, the devotion I read this morning was on mercy. And, so, I’m someone who I like to sit in the quiet.

I don’t want music, I don’t want any distractions. And so while the plan is in my phone on the Bible app, I am using my physical Bible so I can take notes when it comes to reading the Scripture. I find that to be so helpful. So I can notice little rhythms and patterns maybe of God repeating Himself. And so really trying to focus on, “well, what does this word mean?” And things like that. So that would be that, yeah, that’s my rhythm and routine right now with my quiet time and with the Lord.

Kaley:
That is awesome. Lyli, what about you? What do you do to make your quiet time meaningful?

Lyli:
I think it changes from season to season. So right now, I, for those of you have been following along with my story, we got custody of our grandson in May, so instant motherhood at age 52. I’m, you know, laughing just like Sarah in the Old Testament. So my mornings look really different. I have to have him up and ready to go to school at a really early time. So I have just grabbed, I have a book called The Daily Light on The Daily Path. One of the ladies at church recommended it to me years ago, Billy Graham and his kids used to read it every morning. I thought, well, if it’s good enough for Billy Graham’s kids, I can handle it.

So it’s just a collection of Scriptures on a theme and it took me a little while to adjust to it, but I just have that right there on my nightstand. And so, first thing when I get up, I open up to the day, the morning reading, and I just read through it before I get out of bed and remind myself of what Lysa Terkeurst always says, “Word before world.” And so, read through that and then no matter what happens after that, if the day gets away from me and I don’t have time to get back to my Bible, at least I’ve gotten some word in me and it was quick.

So that has really worked for me. And I find that when I’m going through a really hard season, I turn a lot to the Psalms. I mean I just, I pour into the Psalms, and a lot of times, I’ll read through Proverbs. So you know, if today was like, let’s say the 15th of the month, I would read Proverbs 15 and tomorrow I’d read Proverbs 16, and I’m just looking for that wisdom and I do that in addition to whatever else I’m trying to get through. If I’m doing a reading plan or if I’m doing First 5 app just because I’m really seeking God to show me which way to go through a certain situation. I find that that really works for me.

Kaley:
That’s awesome. Well, I mean that’s what I like about this podcast that we have going on here because it’s for any girl in any season and so Hannah and I are in very different seasons and you are, Lyli, and there might be a really busy mom listening right now who, if there’s one thing she came to this podcast for, it probably was just what you said and that was you do what you can right now and you let that time in the morning be meaningful. That way, if you don’t get back to it, then you’ve got what you had in the morning. So that was really great. Something that I’ve been doing. And like Lyli, you said it’s different for you in every season. And so something that’s been great for me is in the morning I listen to the Bible while I’m getting ready. And so, of course I read my Bible as well, but I’ve tried to make it a daily habit of listening to it in different translations from beginning to end.

And I think that that’s been really cool to hear it spoken out loud while I do that. So that’s been really cool. And then another thing that I love and that I’ve just found more peace out my day when I do it is when I write Scripture and there are different journals that you use to do this. I mean you can do it with our First 5 Experience Guide, we get to later where you write out like a verse that’s meaningful, but I mean you could just do it with any old journal. But to me there’s so much power in writing or I guess rewriting God’s Word and really underlining things and getting creative with it and digging more deeply into that Scripture. And that’s been really helpful for me. So maybe these are some really great ideas for you guys as you’re kind of looking for ways to dig deeper into God’s Word so you can be that woman of resolve.

Kaley:
But Hannah, I would love to know if there’s anything that you wanted to point out about the teaching or anything that meant something to you.

Hannah:
I love, Kaley, what you were just talking about and what made me instantly actually go back to the four points that Lyli said of Daniel lived purposefully and he praised God and he went to Him in prayer and not in panic. And Lyli, at the very beginning of this, you talked about you can even feel besieged unexpectedly in your own home. And so it just made me think of all of our podcast listeners currently. Typically, we are in blessings and burdens at the same time or we’re in a season of blessing, but there’s also something that’s daunting going on as well. And so I think it’s really powerful to be reminded to go to the Lord first, even before going to our friends.

And even before going to our family, there’s such power in going to God first and going to Him in prayer. And so I love how, Lyli, you shared, you and your husband in the kitchen, wrapped arms around each other and you just prayed. And I can envision that. It’s such a beautiful marked moment. And I feel like God’s been teaching me a lot about marked moments recently. And so I think sometimes we’re afraid to have marked moments about tragic things and situations that are daunting.

But I feel like this teaching reminded me, again, even writing out what you were saying, Kaley, so whether it’s Scripture or even a prayer for you to have a marked moment with the Lord and what He’s teaching you right now, even in a situation that you don’t want to be in, you know, and that might be difficult, but I feel like they’re such, it’s so powerful even to look back on what was the Scripture that was talking to you two years ago, if you’re writing it out to then even, what can you do to write out a prayer or even just a cry out to the Lord and see how far God has brought you because He’s been faithful in the past and is faithful now and will be faithful in the future as well.

Kaley:
Sure, absolutely. Well, I mean, stories like what Lyli shared with us today or even what’s going on in our lives, if we don’t take the time to really write it down and process what’s going today, then we won’t remember the stories. And that’s testimony-building too. And so, you know, you might be listening to this and think, “Well, I mean I’m not on a podcast or I don’t have a huge social media following or whatever.” You have a story to share that can be helpful to a mom in a really busy season or to another friend in college or whatever season you’re in. The Lord is doing something in your life right now. So I love that, Hannah. Marked moments and I think we can look at the teaching that Lyli gave us on Daniel and definitely see the marked moments in his life that still impact us today.

So really, really good stuff. Well, as we wrap up today, I do just want to point out how grateful I am for our First 5 volunteer writers. I know Hannah at the beginning of the podcast said that keyword, “volunteer,” and I know Lyli would never say this, but on average I’ve heard — and Hannah, you can correct me if I’m wrong — but I think this is a good estimate, that each First 5 teaching takes about 12 hours to write.

Hannah:
Yeah. It’s like 12 to 15 …

Kaley:
… 12 to 15 hours of really intense theological study to produce a teaching for five minutes. And I just, I mean y’all, that’s 12 hours of research and I don’t want to let this moment go without telling all of our First 5 writers out there if you’re listening. Thank you Lyli. Thank you for all the hard work that you do because it means that you are so committed to making sure that we get theological, biblical truth in front of people that we know we can trust. And thank you. Thank you so much for what you do for us.

Hannah:
Yeah, thank you Lyli.

Lyli:
Ah, it’s such an honor. And you know, as a Bible nerd, it’s great to keep my nose in a commentary and keep learning. So, I used to tell my friends I was more of a New Testament girl and then I started writing for First 5 and now I’m in Ezekiel and I’m in Chronicles and I’m learning everything about the Word and just, I’m never going to come to the end of it, but it’s such a joy that we get to study the Word together right? In this format.

Kaley:
Absolutely.

Hannah:
Yeah. I love that. Even working here, it’s crazy in seeing how Christ is in the Old Testament too. I think we envision and expect Him just in the New Testament, but it’s just, it’s amazing. We could talk about it for hours, Lyli, I know that we could, but if you are listening to this, we don’t want you to miss out on these incredible teachings. All you need to do is download the First 5 app, which is available both with Apple and with Android products and it’s free guys.

Kaley:
What?

Hannah:
All of this content. So Lyli’s teaching, that’s free. Daily teachings, it’s free. A free reading plan to go along with all that we’re studying together, it’s amazing.

Kaley:
Yeah, it really is so incredible how the Lord has blessed us to be able to offer stuff like that for free, but you know, while the app is free, one way that as a nonprofit we do have to fund things to make them free, but one really cool way that we fund the app is through our accompanying First 5 Experience Guides, and so you might see us post about these on social media if you’re on there and follow us and wonder, “What is an Experience Guide?” So let me tell you a little bit about them.

If you’re looking for a way to make your daily study of God’s Word a little deeper or longer, our Experience Guides are a really great resource for that. You can use them alongside the daily teaching in the app or you can use them on their own if you want to study a specific book of the Bible. So I love them. I know whenever I use them it really enriches my study of God’s Word and if you want to check them out, you can purchase yours today at p31bookstore.com.

Hannah:
I love it. Also, if you are enjoying this podcast, we’re always so grateful for a review on iTunes. It helps us to get the word out about Proverbs 31 Ministries to those who might be looking for another podcast to listen to.

We’d love to see what this podcast has meant to you.

Kaley:
Thanks Hannah. That was so sweet of you to ask people to write a review; that’s always the hardest part. But seriously, guys, we do really appreciate any reviews that you give us. Like she said, it helps us spread the word and helps other people really understand how impactful this has been. And I love going on there and seeing what you guys write, and I know everybody who’s a part of the podcast behind the scenes also appreciates that as well. Well guys, that’s about all we have time for today. Thank you, Hannah, for joining me today.

Hannah:
Thank you.

Kaley:
Thank you, Lyli, for joining us via internet from Florida, and thank you friends. Thank you all for listening. We pray it helps you know the truth of God’s Word and live out that Truth because when you do, it changes everything. We’ll see you next time.