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When you see the word “ministry,” it’s easy to think about people or organizations making big moves for God — feeding hungry children, rescuing those in slavery or speaking in front of thousands of people. But what’s so easy to overlook are life’s greatest ministry opportunities packaged in everyday moments.
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!
Meredith Brock: Hey friends, thanks for tuning into the Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. My name is Meredith Brock, and I am here with my co-host, Kaley Olson.
Kaley Olson: Hi Meredith, great to be back with you.
Meredith Brock: For those of you who might not know, Proverbs 31 hosts the She Speaks Conference every summer in July, and at the time we are recording this episode, we just wrapped up the conference, so I'm going to get this out of the way. If it sounds like I'm a little bit stuffy or like I'm holding my nose, it's because I am. I have a really bad cold.
Kaley Olson: Oh, no. Oh, no. Well, you know, Meredith, I don't think it's a true She Speaks unless you get sick afterward. I think people have spiritual gifts, and one of yours might be getting sick after She Speaks.
Meredith Brock: It's true.
Kaley Olson: But anyway, for those of you who don't know anything about She Speaks, it's our annual conference where we equip speakers, writers and leaders in their calling. We pack in two and a half days of amazing breakout sessions, worship and main stage sessions with our president Lysa TerKeurst and many of our Proverbs 31 writers and speakers. It really truly is an amazing conference. I had so much fun last weekend, and we'll tell you more at the end of the episode about how you can get more information on She Speaks.
Meredith Brock: Absolutely. I'm very excited because today we have a special guest who we just got to see at the conference. She's been around the ministry for a while, and some of our listeners might recognize her from the First 5 app. Welcome, Ms. Whitney Capps.
Whitney Capps: So excited to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.
Kaley Olson: Well, we're so glad that you're here, Whitney. You heard her say at the beginning of this episode that this is a place where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season, and we've actually gotten a lot of really great feedback from our listeners on the variety of topics and ages on the podcast. So Whitney, will you let our listeners get to know you a little better and maybe tell us what season of life you're in right now?
Whitney Capps: For sure. I kind of like to say that I'm in that middle season of motherhood. I have four boys. My oldest actually turns 13 next week, which is so bizarre. And then I have an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 6-year-old, so all of my crew, they're in school and we're actually starting at the end of this week, and so I'm in that middle season trying to figure out how we move toward those teenage years, but we're kind of out of those toddler years. Chad and I, my husband, we're still kind of making it up as we go along, but the difference is we're getting more sleep now than we used to.
Meredith Brock: Oh, boy. Whitney, I am envious of that stage—
Whitney Capps: Yeah, I know you are.
Meredith Brock: ... because I am right behind you. My oldest is 6 years old, and so for me I'm like, "Oh, man, there's ... You actually get to the place where you get more sleep. This is real? It's not a myth. This really happens to you?"
Whitney Capps: It's not. And I will tell you, we just for the first time ever ... You'll appreciate this, Meredith. We went to the beach this past summer, and it was the first time that we had gone to the beach in probably the better part of a decade where Chad and I actually enjoyed vacation.
Meredith Brock: Wow.
Whitney Capps: You know, because when you have little kids and you go to the beach and ... You know, you get everything set up, and you're sweaty, and kind of ill, and then somebody's ready to go back to the room.
Meredith Brock: Yes, 100%.
Whitney Capps: And I remember saying, "You will have fun." You know, this is not really the best vacation environment.
Meredith Brock: That's right. That's right. I may or may not have lived that exact scenario just a few months ago. I mean that is life on the beach with small children. Right? It's not anything—
Whitney Capps: I totally understand.
Meredith Brock: ... like the pictures. That's all I have to say.
Whitney Capps: That's right. That's exactly right.
Meredith Brock: Well, Whitney, we know you actually gave a keynote a couple of years ago that I just loved, and that message is the message that you're going to give today, right?
Whitney Capps: It is.
Meredith Brock: And we loved it just so much that we wanted to make sure that all of our listeners got to hear it today. So I'm really excited. Remind me, what was the title of that message?
Whitney Capps: Yeah. Well, the title of the message was called Me-nistry. Now, I'm pretty southern, so let me spell it for you because I'm not saying ministry. I'm not messing up that phrase. I want you to think about the word ministry, and we're going to look at how sometimes we can, if I'm honest, kind of jack it up and it becomes me, M-E, dash N-I-S-T-R-Y, me-nistry. And the reality is for a lot of my life, ministry, and not just what I do for my church, not just what I do with Proverbs, but kind of the everyday-ness of my life, took on a me-nistry vibe as opposed to a ministry vibe.
Kaley Olson: Wow, yeah. Whitney, I remember whenever you gave this keynote a couple of years ago at She Speaks, and I think that I still have my notes and refer back to it, so I'm excited about it. Will you tell us maybe a little bit how you got started in ministry and what that journey has looked like for you?
Whitney Capps: Absolutely. Well, the reality is, I have only been in ministry for about three years, which is probably a little bit surprising for those who may be familiar with Proverbs 31 Ministries, because I actually joined the P31 team in 2008 and I started speaking locally in my home church and some churches around where I am in 2001. But again, for the vast majority of my early years in ministry, it was me-nistry. It was about me, and this has really been a shift that God has done in my heart and in my life through some hard seasons, but has really made ministry so much more enjoyable and so much more satisfying, and I wanted to share it because it's a journey that I would love ... If anybody feels this struggle, I would love, one, to say me too, but then to encourage you that the hard lesson of taking the me out of ministry is so, so worth it.
So let me just kind of walk you through what me-nistry looked like and felt like for me, and you guys can weigh in if you have ever had a season like this, and maybe you're more spiritual than I am for sure. I know y'all are. Maybe you only see it happen a day, and maybe rescue yourself from it, or maybe there's an hour, but for me it was this prolonged season where everything I did was strategic and post-worthy and cropped and edited, and this was even before Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat were kind of ubiquitous. But even before social media was an actual thing, I was always thinking about how I looked ... And I don't even mean my physical appearance, but how was I being perceived? Did I look like a good Christian girl? Did I look like a good woman who was committed to her career? Did I look like a woman who was sold out for her church and always said yes, and what was people's perspective of me? How was my next career step going to move my career trajectory forward?
Everything felt strategic and purposeful, and if I'm really honest, if we peel back those layers, it was an element of control where I wanted all of this to have a purpose. And I would use words like, "Oh, I just, I trust the Lord's purpose in my life," but anytime the Lord did something, rather than being grateful and resting in His timing and in His care and in His provision, I was wondering how He was going to use this. What was the agenda, what was the purpose, and what was the next big thing? Does that make sense?
Kaley Olson: Makes total sense.
Whitney Capps: Or does that make me seem severely, severely jacked up and sinful? This is all so true.
Meredith Brock: Oh, my gosh. No, I mean, seriously Whitney. I think that you just said a line that I thought was so good. You said, "Resting in His provision," and I think for me, oftentimes I am excellent at resting in my own provision for my own self and really finding—
Whitney Capps: Oh, Meredith, wow.
Meredith Brock: ... that rest that He will provide what He sees fit in His timing, and that's true rest, and gosh, do I need it. That's so good. I love it.
Whitney Capps: And it's so hard to do because we often are good church girls who think our job is to help God out, right? And a lot of us, especially if we're type-A-ers or women who are accustomed to kind of taking care of ourselves and not needing anybody, we can also let that play into our relationship with the Lord. So there's this difficult tension between what's my responsibility versus where am I rebelling against God's sovereign control in my life, and so I want to say, it's for sure a difficult tension to be managed. So what I hope for the next few minutes, I want us to look at a character in Scripture and look at some of this tension, and I want to point out to all of us some hallmarks where when we see these triggers pop up, it might be a signal to us that we're slipping out of ministry and into me-nistry. Okay? So hopefully this will help because I think it's a really ... like you said, Meredith. It's such a difficult thing to put our finger on.
And so I want us to look at this guy named Moses. If you're not super familiar with his story, we are introduced to him in the Book of Exodus. So in terms of the chronology of Scripture, Genesis, Exodus, which is the second book of the Bible, and Moses is this amazing character that I think through his story we're just going to look at a few specific interactions that he has here. I hope ... one of my goals for today is that we would rid ourselves of the cancer of comparison and competition and trying to fight for position, because it really just eats us alive. And again, we can be so good at masking it that we can push it down so far that we don't even see it in ourselves.
So sometimes, because it's easier ... Now, and see, this is the real sinfulness in my heart ... I can much more quickly see what's wrong with everybody else faster than I can see what's wrong with me. In fact, I would venture to say 98% of the arguments I have with my spouse are because I'm really good at seeing what's wrong with him rather than what's wrong with me. So just to help us all out ... I'm sure nobody else struggles with that, but to help me out, let's look at this by looking at Moses and kind of diagnosing him, and then we'll try and hold that mirror up to ourselves.
So in Exodus chapter 3, it's kind of a famous passage of Scripture. It's where Moses is having a dialogue with the burning bush, and we discovered that the burning bush is really the mode through which God is speaking to Moses. What it means by the burning bush is he's in the desert and he's tending his sheep, and he comes across this strange sight and it's this bush that is burning, but it is not turning to ash. That's what the Bible means when it says the bush is burned but it's not consumed. And so it's almost this kind of eternal flame that is happening, and Moses notices it.
Now, just as an aside, when I had heard this story before, and if I had explained this story to you, I would've said that Moses was tending his flock, his sheep, and God called to Moses from the bush. But let me read to you what the Bible says. This is Exodus chapter 3. It says Moses, “an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked,” he being Moses, “and behold the bush was burning, but it was not consumed, and Moses said, ‘I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.’ When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’”
Now, I used to think that God called Moses' name and then Moses turned aside to see the bush. That scripture actually says that Moses noticed this miraculous thing that was happening in his midst, and he stopped what he was doing to notice the miraculous. Now, I will say, I think we slip into me-nistry when we stop looking for the miraculous activity of God.
Meredith Brock: Wow, that's good.
Whitney Capps: We miss it. We miss it because, and again, maybe this is just me, but I tend to put fires out rather than ask God, is there something you're trying to communicate to me? So if Whitney had been tending sheep in the middle of the desert ... which, tending sheep is a really important job. He was doing it for his father-in-law, so there's a lot of significance here, and I'm a task-oriented gal ... I probably would not have stopped to see this strange sight. I would have not turned aside, and I might have missed God calling my name, and I think sometimes we slip out of ministry when we forget that God is in our midst doing miraculous things around us all the time, but we may be so focused on the task that we miss the message in the middle of the mundane activities of life.
Here's a for instance. Have you ... I have the spiritual gift of getting behind the slowest moving line at the grocery store. You know what I'm saying?
Meredith Brock: Yeah.
Whitney Capps: There'll be 13 lines open, and I will find the one where we have to have a price check on aisle seven. Well, of course, I'm in aisle seven. So I have that spiritual gift, and you guys, often I'm behind a woman and she's clipping coupons, and I can tell you I get frustrated and I'm anxious because I am always in a hurry. I'm always moving to the next path. And when I read this, I thought, how many times have I missed a moment of ministry to that woman, maybe to entertain her fidgeting, fussing toddler to keep him or her distracted while mom's trying to pay, or maybe to help her unload the rest of her buggy, and I'm just getting wrapped up in “I'm going to be late for carpool” or “I'm supposed to be at church and they're waiting”? You know, we miss these moments of ministry because we're caught up in me-nistry, or we want the burning bushes but we miss them because we're putting out the fire.
So I just think it's an invitation and such a great picture of Moses stopping to turn aside, and often, ministry is just that. It's stopping and turning aside to see what God might be doing right in our midst, and I love that Moses says that, and that is the very minute that God calls his name, and I can tell you as a woman, I desperately want to hear God speak to me. I desperately want to hear Him call my name, and I think sometimes I put out the very fires where He is speaking to me.
So I think that's a good indication of ministry versus me-nistry. Am I turning aside? Am I missing those burning bush moments because I've got my head down and I'm focused on the task at hand? So that's kind of one of our first lessons, so if you're taking notes ... no big deal if you're not, but if you're taking notes maybe just to think, how many times have I missed those burning bush moments? Do y’all want to jump in before I move on to the next point?
Meredith Brock: Well, I just love it, Whitney. I think honestly what you're teaching is so ... That idea of stopping and turning aside is so counter-cultural to what the—
Whitney Capps: Oh, for sure.
Meredith Brock: ... American culture tells us. I mean, it's all about the hustle, right?
Kaley Olson: Yes.
Whitney Capps: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Meredith Brock: You hustle. You hustle to get ahead, you hustle to get an edge, you hustle to this and that and that, and to really stop yourself and be willing to turn aside and see the burning bush and allow yourself to wonder, and then allow the Lord access to your heart, is exactly what our culture tells us not to do. You know? And so I—
Whitney Capps: That's exactly right.
Meredith Brock: I think it's so good to remind ourselves. I know it's so difficult for me with two kids and a full-time job and a husband that works and a dog and a cat and all this stuff. I realize I can go weeks on end of just hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, and then before I know it, just this grossness starts to spew out of me and I realize it's because I'm not stopping and turning aside to see what the Lord's doing.
Whitney Capps: Well, I think you're so right, and you're describing something that I often call the ministry of the urgent, and it's that me-nistry of the urgent. And you guys, when I look at Scripture, God and people who followed [inaudible 00:16:29] Him never had that panicked sense of urgency. Their urgency was for the gospel, but it was never a panicked sense of pressure-filled kind of heaviness. I think anytime we feel that sense of urgency, it might be one of those clues, like you said, that we're slipping into me-nistry.
Well, let's look at the dialog that Moses has with God, which man. I mean, just talk about an opportunity for ministry. The Lord speaks to Moses, and the Lord says this: "First of all, do not come any closer. Take the sandals off your feet, for the place for which you are standing on is holy ground." And God said, "I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob," and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God, and then the Lord said that He's seen the affliction of His people who are in Egypt. Then He goes on to talk about that despite the fact that they had been working as slaves and hearing, really, silence from the Lord for 400 years, He is not unaware of what they're going through, and so I think this is another hallmark of ministry.
Sometimes I slip out of ministry into me-nistry when God is either silent or I feel like He's not moving as quickly as I would like for Him to. So I can kind of jump in and try and start helping myself rather than waiting on the Lord. One of the things that's so lovely ... I won't take the time to do it, but if you read this passage out loud, and just as an aside, sometimes it's really beneficial to read Scripture out loud because you hear things that sometimes jump out to you in a different way, but if you read it out loud, the Lord uses the pronoun “I” ... I think I made a note of it somewhere ... I think it's like nine times in just a couple of verses, and He's saying to Moses, "I know. I have seen. I am not unaware." And so we want to be careful that we don't presume that because God is inactive or because He is silent that He is ignorant. That's never the case. God always knows.
So we don't ... as we've talked already. We don't have to hustle. We can rest in that. But the Lord says, "I've seen and I know, but now it is my timing, and Moses, I want you to go to Pharaoh and I want you to say to him, 'Let my people out of Egypt.'" That's in verse 10. And in verse 11, Moses said, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" And I just love this question because, really, at its core, Moses is going to ask God the two basic questions of humanity. Who am I, and who are you? This is that first question and Moses says, "Who am I? Why would you pick me to go to Pharaoh?" Which is a really, really interesting question because I'm not sure that any character in all of human history was better equipped for the assignment that God had given him or her than Moses.
Let me make my case for you. Moses is the baby that was born Hebrew, but he was born under the curse that all Hebrew boys should die because the Hebrew population was outgrowing the Egyptian population. So Moses should have been murdered as an infant, but his mother put him in the basket. He was the baby in the basket that was sent down the Nile River, and Pharaoh's daughter plucks Moses from the water and raises Moses as her own adopted child, which is just a staggering picture of God's grace. So Moses is raised, though his nationality is Hebrew, he's raised as Egyptian royalty. Scholars say that he knew their language, he knew their military, he knew their palace, he knew their economy, he knew their customs. By the time that Moses had fled into the desert because he has chosen to be Hebrew rather than Egyptian, scholars say that he had probably led several military conquests on behalf of Pharaoh and had actually been in charge of the Egyptian army.
So then think for just a minute. God is saying to a Hebrew man, who was raised in Egyptian culture, "I have chosen you to go back and deliver my people." Well, honestly, of course Moses is the guy with this job. He is perfectly equipped to do this thing that God is calling him to do, and yet Moses says, "Who am I?" Now, I'm reading into Scripture, so this is speculation, but I wonder if Moses was hoping that God would read back Moses' resume to him. Does that make sense?
Meredith Brock: Yeah, totally.
Whitney Capps: Like I wonder if Moses was hoping that God would say, "Moses, man, let me tell you the stuff that's inside of you that's going to make you successful. Let me tell you the things that have led you to this place. Let me tell you why you're equipped. Let me tell you why you're the perfect guy for this assignment." That's not at all what God does. Look at how the Lord responds. In Exodus chapter 3, verse 12, He said, "But I will be with you." So the Lord doesn't say one thing about Moses. Instead, He said, "I will be with you."
Now let me just say this. I think this is a key indicator that we are in me-nistry rather than ministry, is when we look for God to build us up and affirm us, and I can tell you straight up y'all, I have been there. This is probably the most slippery slope for me in terms of sliding into ministry that's all about me, is when God asks me to do something and I am genuinely terrified to do it, I start looking for ways that He's going to build me up. I start trying to look at my gift set. I look at things that I've done, and you guys, this doesn't just have to be in traditional ministry. This could be you maybe wondering why you have a special needs child. You may wonder why you're having to care for a spouse who has a chronic illness. You may wonder why you're in this job with this boss who is aggressive and hostile toward your faith. You may wonder why you're in this circle of friends and God wants you to be a [inaudible 00:22:08].
We can look at all of our situations and try and go, "Okay, why has God put me here?" to make us feel better, and I'll tell you, when we try and start asking God to prop us up, we're making it all about us. We're in me-nistry, because look what God does. He doesn't affirm Moses, God affirms Himself. And I can't find a situation in Scripture where God builds up the person that He's calling. Instead, He always affirms Himself, because all that really matters with the assignments that we've been entrusted with is that God is with us, not the gifts that we bring to the table. And so anytime we're asking God to give us a resume, to build us up, to make us worthy of the call, we slipped into me-nistry because we want to see that God is worthy of the call. Does that make sense?
Meredith Brock: Wow.
Kaley Olson: Oh, my gosh.
Whitney Capps: And I think that's what we see Moses wrestling with right here.
Meredith Brock: Yeah.
Kaley Olson: Wow.
Meredith Brock: So good. So good. That's great, Whitney.
Whitney Capps: So I think ... I love that God responds, like He's tender and He responds to Moses, and He doesn't give him what he wants, but yet He does comfort him. I think sometimes we can miss the comfort of God because we wanted God to give us a different version of comfort. Moses hears God say I'm going with you, and then he responds with another question. In verse 13 Moses said, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they ask me, what is his name?" Moses said, "What am I supposed to say to them? What am I supposed to say to them?"
Now up to this point in Scripture, God had revealed Himself as El Shaddai, which means God the Rock or God Almighty. If you go back and look in Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 18, and a couple of other places, the covenant name of God had been El Shaddai. And so I think to some extent, Moses is testing God to see if God would say, "I'm El Shaddai." I think we know that we are moving into me-nistry and out of ministry when we begin to test God rather than trust God.
Moses was kind of putting God in a box, which I can tell you again, so guilty of. God, I know that you're at work if you do this, if you act like this, if you open these doors, if you move this direction, and God is a God who doesn't exist in a box. One, He created the box, but if we put Him in a box, He will blow it up. Have you ever been in the wake of God blowing up one of the boxes you tried to put Him in? I have, and essentially that's what He does to Moses here. I think God knew what Moses was wanting, and God offers a revelation of Himself and His character that had never been articulated or spoken before.
God says, "I am Yahweh," which is the covenant name for God for really the rest of human history, and it means I will be to you all that I am. What a sweet promise for God to give Moses, this man who really was given a Herculean task to go in and ask Pharaoh to deliver, and just to give up the million and a half slaves that he had in his power and his control. This was a massive, massive job, and God didn't say, "Hey, Moses. I'm going to be El Shaddai, God Almighty." He said, "I'm going to be to you all that I am. So I am going to be judge, I am going to be defender, I am going to be protector, I am going to be mouthpiece, I am going to be provider, I am going to be judge and jury, I am going to be the water part-er. I will be to you all that I am."
And so I just think for me, when I look at what was happening with Moses here in wrestling with what God was calling him to do ... and again, I'm not talking about ministry in you have to preach, you have to teach, you have to be a Sunday School teacher or small group leader. I'm talking about whatever it is, whatever your assignment is, whatever season of life you're in, when we begin to turn that away from “what is God's purpose” to “what is my agenda,” we slip from ministry and into me-nistry.
Meredith Brock: That's so good. Whitney, I love ... one of the things that has just come to my mind while you've been talking about this is I'm picturing in my mind Moses and him walking up to Pharaoh knowing like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm about to have to ask this guy for this stuff," and I've been in lots of positions in my life where I've had to walk up to people and ask them for stuff. I feel like that's been a theme of my life, and one of the things I love what you're saying, where God always affirms Himself. When He says to Moses, "I will be with you," and what that does is it turns the tables from Moses being the one that does it.
Whitney Capps: That's exactly right.
Meredith Brock: So the anxiety, that anxiety can be gone when you don't make it about you. And I just think, wow, that is so powerful, so powerful, and you don't have to carry the weight.
Whitney Capps: Well, I think you've hit it on the head. You just said, it's so liberating, and yet we ... because we want control, we don't realize that control becomes a burden. We think control is freedom, but control is a burden. It's exactly what you said, Meredith. It turns it on its head, but to rest in ministry, which says, "God, if you will go with me, I'll do anything you ask me to do," at the same time says, "Because You're with me, I don't have to control any of this. I'm not worried about the result. I'm not worried about my success. I'm not worried about the position. I'm not worried about my appearance. God, I just ... if You're going to go with me, then the answer is yes and amen and I trust You in that." And it's just, it's exactly what you said. It flips everything on its head and says, "I surrender. I surrender."
And so I think that the really ... the interesting thing about me-nistry, and I'm going to just kind of wrap this up so we can have some dialogue, is when we make it about us, what we'll find is ... most of us don't even realize that we're doing this. My goodness, we'd never say it out loud, but we're really looking to be known for what we do rather than who we are, and being famous in any way is simply being known for what you do rather than who you are. To be known as being somebody's mom or being the best worker in the office or as being the valedictorian or the girl who got the scholarship, whatever it is, rather than being known as I am a daughter of the most High God, and He knows me and He sees me, and the fact that He knows me and He sees me is enough. I don't have to be famous because I'm known by the Famous One, and that changes everything.
Now, it's not easy. This, again, Lysa says this often, right? If preach is easy, [inaudible 00:28:59] hard.
Meredith Brock: Yeah.
Kaley Olson: Yes. Amen. Amen.
Whitney Capps: But that's like so, so beneficial for us to at least acknowledge the traps so that I can say the Lord saved me from myself because I can feel me slipping into me-nistry.
Meredith Brock: Oh, gosh. Yes.
Kaley Olson: Wow.
Meredith Brock: Yes.
Kaley Olson: That's so good. Whitney, what you just said about like being labeled and ... not really being labeled, but labeling yourself by what you tie yourself to, I think the Lord's just really been challenging me a lot lately with what I tie myself to, and I think at Proverbs we have a really cool opportunity to be known for working at Proverbs and being a part of ministry in this way, or as a mom, tying yourself to your kids like you said, or like whatever other accomplishments that you have. I think that I've noticed whatever else I'm tying myself to or whoever else I'm tying myself to besides God is going to ultimately weigh me down, and it's going to be that burden—
Whitney Capps: Oh, that's so good, Kaley. Yeah.
Kaley Olson: It's going to be that burden that I start to feel that I'm just like, I'm tying myself down to the ground when I don't need to be tied down to anything here. I just need to be tied to Him. And it sounds so I think Christian kind of cliché words, but I think it's liberating whenever you think about He's the only thing that I can be tied to.
Meredith Brock: Yeah. So good, and it—
Whitney Capps: Absolutely.
Meredith Brock: So good. I think for me, when I look at my strengths, you know, the StrengthsFinders test and all these different personality tests, I pretty much always score like off the charts for the achiever type person, and where it's like I love accomplishments, accomplishments feel good to me, I can honestly say through my whole Christian life, I have had to fight this anxiety of I've got to accomplish something for the Kingdom of God. Like I need to achieve for the Kingdom of God. And just in this last ... Really, I would honestly say in the last five years, the Lord has really ... and maybe it's when you get in your 30s—
Kaley Olson: So right where we're at.
Meredith Brock: ... something shifts.
Whitney Capps: That's right.
Meredith Brock: Something happened to me when I got into my 30s, and I realized I was kind of just ... in your 20s, you think you can do everything, at least I did. I really thought I could pull it all off when I was in my 20s, and then I got into my 30s and I realized, whoa. And this sounds ... I kind of feel like an idiot saying this, but I'm just going to be honest. I'm going to be transparent here. I realized in my 30s I can't do it all, like I really can't. And then that turned into this anxiety where I was like, oh, my gosh, but I need to. God needs me to do this. And then it was like the Lord spoke so clearly to my heart like, "Meredith, it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with Me," and just like you said, He said to Moses, "I will be with you." He didn't say, "You've got this, Mo. My man, you've got this. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
No, no, no. He didn't say anything about any of that. It was just all about Him and Moses being [inaudible 00:32:00] and being tied to the Omniscient One, just like you just said, Whitney. And so, man, what a powerful message. What a needed message.
Whitney Capps: Thanks, you guys. Thanks.
Meredith Brock: I really ... so grateful you were on today.
Kaley Olson: Yeah, me too, Whitney.
Whitney Capps: Well, I've loved it. Let me just ... I want to leave everybody with this one last thought, and this is one of the things ... I sometimes leave me ... I have seasons of sticky notes, where there is a sticky note that I take it with me to my car or it'll be on my mirror when I'm getting ready, and this was this season's sticky note, and it is sometimes we're waiting on the magnificent thing, you know, that next big thing, that magnificent thing, and we think we're waiting out this season of mundane and we're sort of wait ... God, I'm just getting through this season. And I wrote on a sticky note, "Don't look for the magnificent and miss the mundane because every call is magnificent because it comes from the Magnificent One."
Whitney Capps: And so it's the reminder that I'm not working toward something; I am in relationship with someone—
Kaley Olson: Wow, that's so good.
Whitney Capps: ... and that changes everything. So again, you got like preach is easy, [inaudible 00:33:08] hard. If I could do it, I wouldn't need the constant sticky note reminders—
Meredith Brock: Me too.
Whitney Capps: ... but it is that reminder that He is the greatest pursuit of my heart. And the reality is, for a lot of us, it is very mundane. Taking my kids to school every morning can feel mundane, but it's magnificent because it came from the Magnificent One. Going to the grocery store and checking out and waiting behind that woman who has coupons and is doing the best to make ends meet is magnificent because it came from the Magnificent One. And so it's just reframing all of those perspectives, sitting in your cubicle, doing a good job, being faithful to what God has asked you to do is magnificent because it's His call for you. So, man, you guys, I'm super, super grateful that I got to hang out with y'all. It's just good to hear your voice and good to be with all the folks who are listening and to be on the podcast.
Meredith Brock: Well, thank you so much for being here, Whitney. Honestly, this has been so good for my heart. I think coming off a busy week like She Speaks and just being reminded that we get an assignment, whatever that assignment might be, from the Magnificent One, and so therefore that assignment is magnificent, and so good. So good. If you're listening and the Lord is speaking to you, we would love to hear about it on social media. We'd love to continue to get the message out there for the world to hear. So Kaley, tell them how to do it.
Kaley Olson: Yeah, Meredith. All you have to do is tag @proverbs31ministries and use the #p31podcast so that we can follow along with what you're posting. We would love to connect with you and just leave a comment on your post or whatever it is. We just want to know that you're posting and that it's out there.
Meredith Brock: And we promised at the beginning of the show that we'd tell you a little bit more about She Speaks. So all you have to do is simply visit shespeaksconference.com, and you can join the interest list to be notified when registration is open for next year's conference.
Kaley Olson: Yeah, and we would love to have you there. All right, everybody. That wraps up today's message. Whitney, thank you again so much for giving your time today to share such a powerful message to help us know the Truth and live the Truth of God's Word better every day. We'll see you guys next time.