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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: Well Hey everyone, and thanks for tuning in to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm joined with my co-host for today's episode, Ellen Adkins.
Ellen Adkins: Kaley, I'm so happy to be here.
Kaley Olson: I'm so happy you're here, and I'm joined by our teacher for today, Wendy Blight. Hey, Wendy.
Wendy Blight: Hey, Kaley. How are you?
Kaley Olson: We're so excited. that you are here and both of you, as a reminder to our listeners, both of these ladies are on staff here at Proverbs 31 Ministries and bring such wisdom to the table. And I am excited about where we are headed for the next four weeks in our own little Advent mini series. What a fun time we're about to have. Okay, so our heart behind the series is to help you, our listeners, our friends joining in focus on Jesus in this season. I, let me just admit it, I'm busy. So that means I know that you're busy too. We know that you've been through a lot this year and we know you know the Christmas story or at least part of it. Maybe you are listening to this and you don't know, we'd love to introduce it to you. But a lot of times we need a reminder not to miss it in the middle. of the busy-ness Advent is more than a chocolate calendar you buy from Target or Trader Joe's and all those are fun. Sometimes it can be a word that can feel super churchy. And so I wanna set the stage before we even get started and have Ellen share with the class what Advent is all about. But first I have to tell you now that there's more great content on Advent you can find in our free first five mobile app, so just download it on your app store and pop into the app for daily teachings. But Ellen, back to you. What is Advent?
Ellen Adkins: Oh my goodness, I'm so glad that you asked, Kaley. So for hundreds of years, Christians all around the world have intentionally set aside the weeks leading up to Christmas as a time to prepare their hearts for the celebration of Christ's birth. So instead of getting caught up in Christmas festivities, they recognized the importance of intentionally setting time aside, leading up to Christmas morning. So during this time, they took a time and space to remember the eager longing for Christ's arrival, but they also looked forward to their own longing for Christ's return. So during this Advent season, Christians would remember that Jesus's arrival brings hope, joy, peace, and love, and how we can live those virtues even as we wait for Jesus's. return. uh So close your eyes, okay? Unless you're driving, then don't close your eyes. Close your eyes if you're driving. But close your eyes and picture the weeks leading up to Christmas. So hope, joy, peace, love. Do those words describe your life as you prepare for Christmas? Well, it might. Sometimes I think a lot of us would say that our lives are more often marked by brokenness or sorrow, chaos and hostility.
Kaley Olson: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's true for a lot of our listeners. Lots of situations, we were just praying before we even started recording this and thinking of the situations that you're in. And we know sometimes you get to the end of the year and life is just hard. And so we wanna talk about the hard, but we also wanna talk about those promises of hope, joy, peace, and love. And I wanna say this before we even get started with Wendy's teaching, ah Advent is not something that you have to do. Advent just serves as a reminder. And our prayer really is that this series that we're doing over the next few weeks would just, enter into the space that you need it most and give you a moment to just re-center your heart and your mind on Jesus in this Christmas season. And if you're listening in as not Christmas, this is gonna bless your socks off regardless. so um Wendy, you're gonna kick us off and you're gonna talk about how Jesus's arrival brings hope. And I'm so glad that you said yes to being on this Advent series because you love Christmas. I do. Wendy, so why don't you jump in and give your teaching?
Wendy Blight: It has. It's always been my favorite holiday. em It's the only one I decorate for and I count the days and I mourn when it's over. But in fact, think, Kaley, I love it too much because several years ago, a friend of mine asked me this simple question, what do you love about Christmas? And I was like, I rattled off everything, trimming the tree, fragrant candles, twinkling lights, baking, shopping carols, all of that. And she looked at me and laughed and she goes, wow, that's really interesting. And I said, what? She goes, my Bible teacher didn't even say Jesus. And I was like, I wanted to say that's a given, but I didn't say it. And so she was right. And I, of course I think of Jesus. If you walk in my house, I have nativities and... Christmas cards and Christmas Eve is centered around when we go to worship first. But when it came to my mind, I forgot to say Jesus and it really impacted me. And that's where Advent comes in because it truly does help my heart to prepare for that miracle of the arrival of baby Jesus, whose name is Emmanuel God with us, which is so important. And it helps us anticipate two things. And I love we're covering the second here, because we always talk about the first, the birth, but second, His second coming in the last days. And so we're gonna end each one with that. And each week is carrying, like they said, hope, peace, joy, and love. And I'm so honored um to share about hope.
And even more specifically, its connection to brokenness. Because in our brokenness, Jesus and His arrival into this world, can bring us hope. And in our everyday conversations, this is how I hear hope most of the time. You know, I hope my child gets a high score on the SAT because I'm at that age, kids are going to college, or I hope my mammogram comes back clear. But both statements, and this is what's so important about human hope, both statements express our desire for something to go as we want to now so that something good will happen in the future. Because of that, they carry with it uncertainty because we don't know what for sure is going to happen in the future. Biblical hope, which is what our focus is today, is distinctively different because it's not a wish or a desire for something good in the future. It is a confident expectation for something good in the future. And it's not rooted in our desires or in the people around us, but in a person whose name is God.
And our hope is certain because it's grounded in His character and his promises. And we see inklings of this in the book of Genesis, the very first book of the Old Testament. We see hope for something bigger and greater that will be coming in the New Testament. That's how we read the Old Testament, looking forward to the new. So God finds Adam and Eve hiding in the garden and they're ashamed and they're trying to cover their sin with fig leaves. God steps into the picture, offers them an alternative solution to that. covers them not with fig leaves, but with animal skins. That foreshadowed a new way that in the future, he was gonna deal with sin and guilt in the future. So in response to the serpent's lies to Adam and Eve, God then spoke to the serpent and he issued this warning in Genesis 3:15. He said, I will put enmity between you and the woman. And then it says he, And that's her seed, Eve's seed, will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So that offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, though at great cost.
And that cost was his very life. This is the very first mention of God's promised suffering servant, Savior Jesus. That's the seed that it's talking about. So biblical hope that we're talking about in the New Testament goes all the way back to the Book of Genesis. And then we see this promise carried forward many times, but we're gonna focus now on Abraham's, this Abraham's ultimate test in Genesis 22 on Mount Moriah. God asked Abraham, no, he told Abraham, sacrifice your son Isaac, but y'all, he was the very seed through whom all these promises of God were gonna flow. And something else I noticed this time I hadn't noticed before, I don't know how I missed it. Isaac carried the wood for his sacrifice up the hill just as Jesus would one day carry the cross. And that really, even saying it now gave me chills again. But in the last moment, God provided in his grace a substitute sacrifice, a ram, and Abraham called that place the Lord will provide. And for centuries, y'all, The Israelites looked to that hill waiting for the promised Messiah. And he eventually came in God's perfect timing as a baby in a manger named Jesus. All right, so I've set you up with some context. Now we're going to go back to the word hope. Hope, remember, is a confident expectation of something good in the future.
But God is not only our hope, he is the source of our hope through Jesus. And I'm going to walk you through this while I'm saying it. So Paul praised this truth in Romans 15:13. He says, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, did you notice the word Paul used here to describe God? He says, God of hope. That is Theos, Elpis in Greek. These two Greek words tell us God is the author of hope. Elpis means strong. joyful, confident, expectant. So Jesus, the promised seed that we just met and saw in Genesis 3:15, the seed we met again on Mount Moriah with Abraham and Isaac eventually came. Jesus, that promised seed paid the highest price. It was his life to ensure that we have the hope of salvation and eternal life. When we give our lives to Jesus, our trust increases. allowing us to not just survive, but to thrive in those broken places. And the more I studied, the more I realized I had this totally wrong view. I thought if I was good, this is what I grew up with, really into college. If I was good, bad things wouldn't happen. And God's word says just the opposite. Painful trials are part of this life and so is brokenness.
First Peter, let's look at First Peter for a second. First Peter 4:12 says, don't be surprised at the painful trial you're suffering as though something strange is happening to you. If we look back through the Bible, Abraham, David, Joseph, Paul, all endured hardships, some due to their own choices, but oftentimes not, and it can seem unfair. And in these situations, scripture gives us this confusing yet really powerful command. James 1:2 to 4 says, consider it joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials, because you know the testing of your faith produces perseverance. It doesn't say if, and I know you've probably heard that before, but it does say when, and we need to remember that. And this is the great chain of hope in Romans 5:3 through 5. Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts. And so Kaley and Ellen, I lived a brokenness journey firsthand. um It was the hardest trial I've ever faced.
But when Kaley asked me to share, it's the very best way for me to show how God turns even the deepest, darkest places of brokenness into hope. My story began the Saturday after I graduated from college. And two weeks after, my boyfriend, now husband, asked me to marry him. And that Saturday, I had plans with a few of my dearest friends to spend our last day together before we all went our separate ways. We met by the pool at our apartment complex and reminisced about the past four years and made plans to meet a few hours later for dinner. And I left the pool, I rushed back to my apartment to get ready. And as I hit the top step to go to my room, I saw an armed masked man waiting at the top. And he spent that afternoon committing horrific acts against me. And when he was done, he walked out of my life never to be seen again. And that Saturday, June 7th, 1986, forever changed my life. At age 21, it felt as if that stranger shattered my every hope and dream. I didn't have a strong faith at the time, but I did know enough to ask, how could this loving God I heard about growing up in church watch and allow such evil and do nothing to stop it? And I lived for years feeling no one understood the terror and the loneliness and the helplessness I lived with every day. And they stole the joy of all I'd accomplished in college, the new position I had at the university and the beautiful future that awaited me with my fiancé. It felt forever gone.
You see, there's no instruction manual for what to do next. So I locked myself in a prison of fear that I felt that was how I would protect myself. For over a decade, I fed it, I nurtured it, and I allowed anger and bitterness to consume my heart. Until one day, a precious devotion book given to me by my friend, Lendi, opened my eyes to God's word. Each devotion included a scripture and an inspirational message from the author on that verse. And God used those daily scriptures to show me He had not forgotten me, He loved me, and He had good plans for me. And then one day he brought me to Isaiah 45: 3, I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel who summoned you by name. Those words, they spoke so deeply to my heart, to my question, why had God allowed this to happen to me? Did he allow this trial? Because on the other side, I would receive the blessings and treasures I couldn't find any other way. Part of me didn't want to believe that. Like what kind of God would do that? But then I'd been in the Bible reading the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Joshua and the disciples, and God used all their darkness in their trials to do great works for him.
And he taught me suffering and brokenness have a purpose beyond our limited earthly perspective. Peter wrote, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, another translation says for a season, you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold may be proved genuine and result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. You see, sometimes it's necessary to walk through a trial. And God assures us in verses like this that they're not without purpose. And God identifies with our pain and brokenness because he sent his one and only son into our broken world to be broken for us. God had a plan then and he has a plan now and he asks us to trust in it.
And we trust him because of who he is. Now the hard question is why does he require? Why does growth require brokenness and loss? And you know what? I can't answer that. I can't answer that question today, but what I can tell you is that when I lived in His word, when I lived in those verses He personally brought before me, begging for answers, my answers came on the other side of recovering from that tragic afternoon I spent in that room with that evil man. And so if you're walking through a difficult time, whether it's a job loss, a grief, an illness, fear, anxiety, sit. with the words from your Abba father. Open your heart, even if it doesn't make sense right now, especially when it's due to no fault of your own. It might be a job loss, the loss of a loved one. Maybe you've lost a child. I've walked alongside one of my best friends with that. Infertility, a broken marriage, paralyzing anxiety. There's so many things and you want an answer. You want a reason and a purpose.
We just... take those to God, that is my answer because when we go, when we surrender our brokenness, that's when he reveals personal refining. That's where he shows us the places he knew where I needed, my faith needed to be matured, or it may be the simple reality that we live in a fallen world and bad things happen. And sometimes it's a combination of both. The promise we have from God is that he is with us in and through it. always, and I'm gonna read to you one of my favorite verses that held me. And when I read it, I want you to think of a cross. It says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. your right hand will hold me fast. Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you.
And then when we know we've sinned and are responsible for where we are, we can go again to David's word in Psalm 139: 23 and 24. He knows he, and he's going before the Lord and he says, search me God and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, see if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way of everlasting. It's so hard to do that, but sometimes we've made a mistake and we've got to sit with God with that. And for years, I believed I was the victim and I had every right to be bitter and angry and hate this man. It felt good. I remained steeped in that place of darkness and brokenness. But you see, by holding on to this victim mentality, obsessing over what happened to me, I allowed the enemy to use my emotions to keep me from living in everything Jesus died for me to have with the hope and believing in the full life God had for me. But you see, it was my choice. It was my choice. And when I stopped asking why God allowed this and instead began seeking Him and His word and my brokenness, He revealed those treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places from Isaiah 45:3. He turned my brokenness into beautiful, using it to point me to a new calling. I went to school to be a lawyer, graduated from law school, but then he's brought me now to be a Bible teacher.
And I also wanna share that for nearly two decades following my attack, on the anniversary of that day, despite the wondrous healing work God had done, something deep within me just triggered a sense of sorrow and grief. And maybe you understand, but my body intuitively remembered the trauma. Then one year as I stepped out of the shower, I suddenly realized it was not June 7th, it was June 8th, one day after the anniversary of my attack. A day of mourning had passed and I hadn't even remembered it. And if that wasn't enough, just hope washed over me, like real hope for the first time I kind of felt that inside of me, calming my heart and soul. And God spoke these two truths. He reminded me, you are a new creation now, Wendy, the old is gone and the new has come.
I want to say that again, because I feel like someone, the Lord wants someone to hear this right now. You are a new creation. The old has gone and the new has come and it's a mighty supernatural work that only your God could do. And then he impressed on my heart. I wrote these in my journal all those years ago. This is your life, sweet child. This is why I allowed so many years of pain and suffering. And then right before me in my Bible was this passage. I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and he heard my cry. He lifted me out of the miry pit. and out of the mud and the mire. And he set my feet upon a rock and he gave me a firm place to stand so that many would see and fear and put their trust in him. And I had no idea who those many were. To whom would I sing my new song? But over time he showed me. God opened doors for me to share my story. It poured out teachings that one day turned into books, teachings like I'm sharing with you today. Friend, He took my shattered heart and piece by piece created something good and beautiful. He restored hope for my future. And that vicious assault that day serves as a beautiful backdrop to my calling. And what I once thought destroyed my life now gives it purpose. So if you find yourself on this journey from brokenness to hope, don't give up. Don't give up. Remember Jesus is more than your brokenness because His very arrival in the cradle and His very presence living in you bring hope. Hope found in the redemptive plan God has for your life and your circumstances. And you know what? Nothing and no one can ever take that from you. There's no circumstance too difficult, no choice too reprehensible and no pain too deep for God to redeem. And our hope doesn't end here on earth. I'm just gonna share a few verses before I close. 1 Peter 1:3 through 5 says, is the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading kept in heaven for you. And then Isaiah 65:17, see, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The formal things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. So we've learned today, friend, God promised hope in the Old Testament, Jesus coming broad that promised hope in the new, and we will have the fullest fulfillment of that hope when we step into eternity and walk through the gates of heaven into our forever home. But until then, remember, God has a plan and a direction for your life that's written in Jesus' blood. Your part is to take that first step. surrender your brokenness and your sorrow, your pain, and place it fully into his loving hands, because you know what? He's waiting. He will reveal to you the treasures of darkness. He will lift you up and expose the lies. He will speak truth into those lies and give you a firm place to stand and put a new song in your heart, a new hope that one day you too then go and share so that many will see and fear and put their trust in him.
Kaley Olson: Wendy, that was so good. That was. I think it was the perfect teaching to kick off this series, because I can just see um women, and I have experienced this with family and loss and things like that, heading into the Christmas season and doing so with a victim mentality. I can just see people heading back, because it's, isn't it crazy how Christmas is, it's such a tradition. And it's warm and it's fuzzy until it's not. But what I wanna spend a few minutes unpacking, um and then Ellen, we'll have time for your questions too, is what you shared in there about a victim mentality and how it relates to hope. I thought, oh, I've never heard it in this way before. But I wrote down, one of my notes I wrote down was if victim mentality is a feeling, then so is hope. We can't choose both. Like I can't really hold on to both if I'm going into the holidays, if I'm truly going into Christmas, wanting to embrace the gift of who Jesus is and what he came to do. He came to bring hope to my brokenness, for my brokenness. um But you talked a little bit about laying that down and having to surrender that. But then I think what I would like to know from you, Wendy, is if victim mentality is such a feeling, then how do we feel hope? Because I think a lot of people are like, I just don't feel it. I can read scripture, but if I'm in the midst of feeling something really, really, really hard, sometimes I see it as words on a paper, but it doesn't really penetrate it in. So how does somebody truly experience hope? Is it? time over time, is it a gift of the Holy Spirit? Like, can you just talk about that a little bit?
Wendy Blight: Well, I think first of all, you have to let go. The thing about being a victim mentality, it's a defense mechanism and it feels good to hate the person. It feels good to be mad at the person. It feels good. Those are all emotions, the enemy.
Kaley Olson: Or it feels good to walk in with a bad attitude. Yes. Because you have an excuse and it's probably a good one.
Wendy Blight: Yes, because you can defend it and everyone would agree with you. Whatever, most of the time when we've been hurt by someone, whatever that looks like, or hurt by who we think God, God hurt us, we think that way too. So first of all, You can't get to hope if you're not even gonna take those first steps towards being willing and open. And that's time over time. That's what you said. But when we open the Bible, then what we have to remember is the word that we are reading is not words on a page. We have to remember the Bible tells us in Hebrews 4:12, that word is living and it's active and it's sharper than a double-edged sword, it penetrates to soul and spirit, joints and marrow. So what that means is we have to know and believe that when we read that word, especially when we know the Lord as our savior, the Holy Spirit's living in us, the word on the page in the Bible ministers to the spirit inside of us, and they start to really speak to each other, and those words move us. So. That is to me what started happening as I exposed my heart. This would have never happened had I not been in the Word a lot. And that devotion book, I don't even know if I was a believer until I started to read that devotion book. That's why I wanna say that you... you may not be ready to start in a Bible and that's okay, then get yourself a devotion book that might be written, but make sure it's grounded in a scripture. Like every day it's a scripture. And then when you do that, Kaley, that word will, it's not like, that's special for her. No, every person who just opens their heart to receive the word of God, God is going to begin to minister, whether it's to bring him to salvation or whether it's to bring them healing or forgiveness, whatever it is, but you gotta be in it.
Kaley Olson: Yeah, that really is like a miracle. Sometimes miracles take time. oh Miracles take time. I also wanna mention, mean, you mentioned our devotionals are a great opportunity. So is First Five. The app is free and it's five minutes. It's a short scripture and a passage, um a short passage of scripture that you read and a short teaching. And I think, man, what an opportunity to just spend those first five minutes of your day and center your heart on the Lord. If you don't feel a difference today, it does take time. And I love that. love that. Ellen, what you got?
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, I was... Thank
Wendy Blight: Oh, she's gonna ask me like a hard theology question.
Ellen Adkins: No, no, no. was honestly, I was very convicted by this teaching because I feel like I can live a lot of my life with just like this low grade cynicism. And I think that we live in a world that really fosters cynicism. Sometimes the thought of putting hope in something feels silly, even like hope in God. Sometimes I pray and I'm like, man, I feel silly praying this, because I don't think it's actually gonna come to fruition. And it's just so interesting because I think when I'm honest with myself in those moments, the reason why I'm prone to cynicism or maybe why cynicism feels easier in those moments is because I don't have a view of God in His goodness. Like I am having a very small view of God. And I think that, man, just thinking about Can you read that definition of hope again? You might need to look at
Kaley Olson: I have it at the very beginning. said biblical hope is a confident expectation. Is that what you're talking about?
Ellen Adkins: Yes, but it was like rooted in oh God.
Wendy Blight: Yeah, so our hope is certain. Okay, hold on a second. um Well, I found this part. Biblical hope is distinctively different. It's not just a wish or a desire for something good in the future. It's a confident expectation for something good. It's rooted not in our... in our desires or in people, but in a person and that person is God.
Ellen Adkins: Yeah, so that idea of our hope being rooted in the person of God, I was just thinking like, man, it's so important for us to have a right view of God. And so I was just curious as you have walked through your life, you're somebody that I feel like you know and believe God's goodness so certainly. How did you like cultivate that in your life? And how could I cultivate that in my life as well?
Wendy Blight: Honestly, most of it has come from walking through hard places. That every time we entrust him with the hard place and he brings us to the other side, even if it doesn't look like I want it to look like. I've walked alongside my six, seven son that played college basketball, hurt his back. I have been praying for that child for the last, he's 27 now, that happened when he was 21, six years for God to heal. that I know he can, I've laid hands on people and seen him heal people and he is yet to heal Boblite. And I don't understand, but I watch my son in church one day, I said, let's have you go upstairs, let's have the pastor lay hands on your back again. I'm like, just, I believe this. And he just kind of looked at me and then when we got in the car, he said, mom, God's writing a story for me, why don't you just let him write it? I'm like, Whoops. I mean, y’all, that was from my little boy, but it was, I'm trying to make him all better. And he woke up at six. I didn't, he didn't even tell me this. the woman in charge of FCA where he, wasn't even gonna talk about this, but who leads FCA at the school where he's assistant coaching, sent me a picture of him at 6 a.m. this morning, teaching that. FCA basketball player. I was stunned. He didn't even tell us, but he's pressed into God through this pain and he keeps pushing through and he said, I trust God with my pain so if you're, maybe this was for you, if you're suffering chronic pain, but I will tell you, I've watched him be angry at first and now it's not, it's surrendering it, but it's surrendering it and then putting it in the face of the enemy saying, you're not going to keep me from doing what I can do. yeah.
Kaley Olson: Yeah. I like, okay. I think that we as believers have such an opportunity to have hope on display and show that we have confidence in like not only that God is who he says he is, but like Jesus is a person, God is real. Sometimes I think we can compartmentalize him to truly a book. that we open and close and keep shut. But I think that there's the voices of others and the stories and the hope on display that we can have encourages the cynicism out of other people. Because I think the root of cynicism goes all the way back to Genesis as well, when the enemy said, did God really say? And cynicism is really a questioning. It's really, did God really say is also, is he really real? Is he really like he doesn't? He doesn't want you to believe that. He wants to squash your hope. And I think hope can feel silly. But I think the more we truly lean into the fact that like God is so real and he is working, the more we share how he's working, the more it fosters our hope. It also fosters hope in other people that it's not silly to hope. It's not silly to trust God. It's not silly to pray bold prayers. He wants that of you. And he wants that for you. Friends, as we end our time together, I wanna share a story from a girl named Ellie. Here is what she says.
Your encouragement for today devotions have truly changed my life in such a way that I know God is using me to reach millions of others with words. It's not me, but it's him. I wake up every day at 3 a.m. to read my Bible and look forward to Proverbs 31 like it's part of my daily life. I have... Parkinson's and lupus and I'm on chemo right now, but I send these devotionals to friends across the country. It's a great feeling when I receive feedback telling me that they needed the prayers. Thank you so much for all you do and are doing it doesn't go unnoticed. And Ellen, I had you pull these stories in I'm not gonna lie. I didn't look at this one before you added it in. How fitting for this lady named Ellie, who is very broken right now and has lupus, on chemo, and has Parkinson's, and she is sharing the hope of God's word with so many other people around the world. I just am so encouraged by this because this is exactly what we talked about in action. These kinds of stories are only possible because of those of you who faithfully partner with Proverbs 31 Ministries. And I want you to know that your generosity is allowing women around the world to access free, biblically sound resources like those devotions Ellie was talking about in this podcast like our first five app and so much more. So from us to you, thank you.
Ellen Adkins: And we will see you next week for the second installment of our Advent series where we talk about peace. At Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it changes everything.