 Thank you so much for the joy to be with you all. So I want to share the goodness of God in my own life. And I know that some conversion stories begin with an intellectual journey with a search for truth. Mine begins with a cocktail waitress in a bar. It was the summer before my freshman year and the cocktail waitress was me. Now as an aside, I had been a happy evangelical my whole life. I was very happy with my spiritual life. For as long as I can remember, my journey began when I was about four years old in Vacation Bible School. That's when I invited Jesus into my heart. And it was after hearing the story of King David and I came home and said to my mom at the age of four, the reason that the Lord loved King David wasn't because he was perfect. It was because of the way he loved the Lord. It was because of his heart. And I want to love the Lord the way that King David loved the Lord. And I began at that point to grow in a relationship with Jesus. I developed a love for scripture from a very young age. Was steeped in scripture study, memorized countless Bible verses, went to Bible camp, was involved in young life, excellent youth ministry. I was on evangelization ministries mission starting in high school. I was always discipled by an older woman of the faith from the time that I was in middle school all the way through college. That was very shaping and a true gift to be discipled well. And I had parents who not only taught the faith well to me, they lived it out and showed me the importance of giving back. They were leaders in the Christian community as I grew up. I was very, very satisfied with that part of my life. But the part of my life that I wasn't so satisfied with was actually my love life. And so when a handsome Brit sat down in my section on a hot summer night when I was waitressing, I perked up because I figured that I had one chance and one chance only to score a date with him. And so I was gonna do all I can do. You see, my adolescent fantasy had walked in to the place where I was working a summer job and it was bringing me one step closer to a dream that I had had since I was in middle school. And really the likelihood of that dream may be coming true more than justified a little lie. At least that's what I told myself. So starting at the age of around 12, my friend Megan and I began fantasizing about our future dream life in Europe. So I grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, which is not a particularly cosmopolitan city, but we did have two European families in Duluth and one lived next door to me and one lived across the street from her. We thought they were so sophisticated, so interesting and they invited us into their homes and their lives as their babysitter. And so we got kind of a sneak peek of behind the scenes view of the way that they lived. And every summer these young, dashing, handsome European men would come over and they would do summer internships and visit their family and we were utterly smitten with each and every one of them that crossed the door. And we would say to each other, someday I'm going to marry one of them, I'm gonna grow up and I'm gonna go live in a castle in Europe. So fast forward seven years to this hot summer night. I was bored and I was frustrated. I wanted to go out with my friends, my high school friends, but I'd been called into work and then who walked in? Oh boy. I saw this guy walk in, sit in my section and there was just something really different about him. He just looked a little different. He had this striped shirt on that makes him look a little bit French. There was just a little air about him and when I went over to start serving him, he opened his mouth and began to speak and this English accent came out and it was like I just died on the spot. I was sold right then and there and I wondered what brought his foreign self to my fair city and lo and behold, he was one of the young dashing cousins sitting right here in front of me and that handsome European asked me if I would play tennis with him and so this is where the lie comes in because I don't actually play tennis but what I very smoothly told him, I said, oh absolutely I would love to ran home to my little sister and I said, can you teach me to play tennis in a week? And she said, you? Absolutely not. Athletics has never been my currency. So when the handsome Brit called me up, this is where the lie came. I apologetically explained that the doctor had asked that I just lay off of my game of tennis for a little bit, it'd been a little too hard on my 19 year old knees. Could we go to the theater instead? He agreed, went along with the plan and the rest is history. We married three years later, we moved to Germany and we set up home in a former monastery that had been converted into condos. I thought it looked like a castle and it seemed to me that my dream had come true. But backing up to before our marriage, my now husband Leo, which is spelled Leo, pronounced Leo, was a cradle Catholic, had absolutely no intention of leaving the Catholic Church. So I knew I was gonna need to be the one to make a switch. I wanted unity in our marriage and I had a personal relationship with Jesus, so I figured, well, I'll just take that personal relationship with him and move over here to this church and I would be just fine. I would go on much as before. My RCIA experience was less than stellar. I had an older priest who met one-on-one with me and he told me a lot of stories that didn't seem to land particularly in a relevant place and went on many, many tangents. He presented the sacraments to me as optional things, things that were different than what I had grown up with. There was some extras. You know, if I wanted to take advantage of them, I could. As a result, when I came into the church and was baptized, I'm really, I was utterly uncategorized and the scriptures were not particularly meaningful to me because I just didn't understand them. Nothing had been explained very well. The first five years of our marriage were spent in Germany and they were hard ones for me in the Catholic church. Both my parents had been deeply involved in our church growing up. My dad later became a pastor at a mega church in Washington, D.C. I was really steeped in the best that the evangelical world has to offer. When I was younger and before he went into the pastor and was ordained, he was still so involved at church that he finally gave him a key because he would stay so late after every service that he was the one that always locked up. As a result, my experience in church growing up meant that I was used to feeling welcomed. I was used to church feeling like home. I was used to the people in the church feeling like my extended family. And that is not what the church in Germany felt like. And when we moved to Guadalajara, Mexico five years later, the Catholic church didn't feel any more welcoming there either. Four of our seven children were born when we lived internationally and during that decade, they were certainly taking the majority of my time as they continue to do today. But I was always a part of a small group Bible study during those years and unquestionably, those small groups were a lifeline to me. And the first small group that I was involved in was led by an Anglican woman and it was a Bible study we were going through Titus II and she was teaching this group of young moms how to love their husbands and how to love their children. It was a wonderful study. Every woman attending was a young Catholic mom. It was the first that these women had ever really encountered scripture in a relevant way. We absolutely loved it and we wanted more. So I just knew, well, surely she would want to continue leaving. We were such a delightful group and we were hungry. What more could she want? But when the study ended, she told me that she was not meant to be the one that was continuing to lead in the future and I was so mad. I couldn't believe she would let an opportunity like that go, especially Catholic women wanting to study scripture. I just thought, what is wrong with her? And she just insisted I've gone to prayer over it. Someone is to lead this, but it's not to be me, she said. Well, I was 23 at the time and I knew it was not to be me. I knew that nobody would listen to anything I said. I was by far the youngest in the group and plus I wanted to be fed. I wanted my needs to be met. Months went by and we did not meet and I then went to a prayer meeting and I met a group of women who were very serious about their faith and deep, deep women of prayer. I didn't think I would ever see them again that was kind of an unusual gathering and I didn't really get to know any of them particularly well. But some weeks later I got a strange call from one of those women and she had asked for my phone number from one of the women there and she said, I know this is out of the blue, I'm calling you because I feel the Lord has asked me to because I have a word of knowledge for you. I had no idea what that was at the time and she said, God impressed upon my heart that you were to lead a Bible study. Now, this was frankly weird. Weird that she would call me out of the blue, weird that she would say those things and also because she didn't know anything about my story but I got off the phone and it definitely had arrested my attention so I went to prayer and I said, Lord, that was really bizarre and I am sure that I am not supposed to lead this. So if I am, you're gonna have to tell me, you're gonna have to tell me directly. And then I did something which I do not recommend that you do but this is what 23 year old me did. I opened up my Bible to a random place, I put my finger on a verse and this is what the verse said, it was 1st Timothy 412, do not let anyone look down on you because you are young. But set an example for the believers in terms of your speech, your conduct, your love, your faith and your purity. It's like that was, that's pretty good God. But then I started talking back to him but Lord, I am by far the youngest. So I'm just gonna volunteer myself for leadership, I'm just gonna say I would love to just lead you all and teach you all something, there's just no way, they're not asking me to lead, I'm not gonna do it. But I made a deal with the Lord and I said, Lord, if I called the oldest person in this group who I do believe was at the ripe old age of 30 and if I float this idea to her and she doesn't think it's crazy, then I will say yes. I called her, she picked up on the first ring and we began meeting as a small group Bible study and that group met all those years and it was absolutely life changing for us, we grew in our faith, we grew in our friendships, we walked alongside one another and bore each other's burdens in those early years of marriage and family. We then moved to Guadalajara, Mexico and while the people there were incredibly warm and welcoming, the Catholic Church did not feel like this at all. I didn't understand the role that Mary played in their lives and coming from a Protestant background still not really having received any formation in the church, I was absolutely scandalized, to be honest, by what I saw. So often I'd have a friend when I would go to her home take me to a statue of Mary in her house and she would gesture to her and she would say, this is the most important person in our house and I would just think to myself, I think this is idolatry, that's how it hit me at that point in my life. You see, there was so much spiritual beauty around me but it was spiritual beauty that I didn't understand. No one had explained it to me so it was largely lost on me. And around that time I was leading a small group, Bible study, in my home and this was an unusual group. It was a group of agnostics, it was a group of seekers, it was a group of people that had at some point engaged with the Catholic Church but at this point none of them were attending mass and we were talking about things like is it reasonable to even believe that God is real? Is the Bible something reliable? Can I trust what is in it? Why, if God is real, does he allow suffering in my life? That sort of thing. And a new priest came to our small English-speaking parish and he heard through the grapevine that I was leading the study and he didn't like it. He didn't like that I was a lay person. He didn't like that I was a woman. He didn't like that I had not studied theology. And so he sent me a clear message that I was to stop. He didn't come to me directly, he didn't talk to me but he talked about me to others and the message was delivered back to me. But I couldn't stop because if I knew that if I stopped these people would simply drift away. This was the one safe place that they were able to come with their doubts and explore them and start to begin to consider opening their hearts to the Lord. And it makes me think of Jeremiah 20 verse nine which says, if I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones and I am weary with holding it in and I cannot. But because I didn't stop, he started talking about me at Mass. So we would come to the end of Mass and just before the final blessing he would say, there is a woman in our parish who is leading an illicit Bible study. She is at risk of eternal damnation and you should have nothing to do with her. And he said this week after week after week for months on end. It was for me, I'm so upsetting. It was an extremely small parish. Everybody knew who he was talking about. He was talking about me. And I went from utter disbelief to being completely embarrassed. It was in front of my children that was confusing to them and very upset over the way that he had chosen to call me out. And my husband wanted me to fight back to go toe to toe with him. But I felt like the priest could see through me. I felt that he knew I wasn't a real Catholic because I didn't know enough. He had judged me before he got to know me instead of meeting me where I was and helping me and answering my questions. He condemned me and that was the end of it. Sometime later we moved back to the United States and as I settled into my new life there I wanted with everything in me to leave the Catholic Church. I've been Catholic for about 10 years and after that experience of having been publicly shamed in that way I was ready to go back to my life of being a happy evangelical. Now after a time we were living in Annapolis, Maryland a woman approached me in our parish and she asked me if I would like to be involved in the starting of a family club and this interested me exactly zero, zero. In fact, I remember telling Leo that this is exactly the kind of thing that I'm so sick of because I'm gonna go to this meeting and this is how it's going to go. It's gonna be a group of women gathered and someone's going to say we should do a family movie night in the parish hall and then someone's gonna say why don't we organize an event where we bless our animals and then someone will say let's take the children and sing at the nursing home. And I said to Leo none of that is going to help any of them grow spiritually. And he looked at me and he said why don't you stop being so judgmental and just go. So I went. And I kid you not. The first person you spoke said why don't we do a family movie night for the kids in the parish hall? And then the next person spoke up I think in the spirit of St. Francis we should have an event where we bless our pets and then the third person spoke up and what did you say? Let's bring the kids to the nursing home and have them sing to the people there and I was checking out 100%. I'm thinking this is exactly what I expected. But then one woman spoke up and she said you know that's all great for everything out here. But who's gonna help me in here? Because I wanna know God personally and I don't know how to do that. Who can help me with that? And there was silence. And then a woman said Lisa Brennick Meyer leads Bible studies and they all turned to me and they said will you teach us? Will you lead us? Now can I remind you that I'd given up on the Catholic Church? So I didn't really wanna get roped into something that was going to mean that I was going to be stuck there. So I had a very good idea. I said to them I'm gonna have to go home and ask for the blessing of my husband. And I knew this was a slam dunk because well here's the thing. I have a lot of spiritual zeal and I have a strong tendency to over commit. Leo's known this about me always so he's always asking me please do less. Please settle a little bit. So I knew when I came and asked him he would say no you know what we've got enough on our plates right now we don't need to add one more thing. So I figured that would get me out of the whole thing without telling them I just didn't really want to do it. So I came home and I told him about the meeting. I shared with him that they had asked me if I would lead the study and he looked at me and he said I think maybe you were born for this. So I said yes. And we began with eight women studying the Gospel of Mark in our parish basement with our children next door being babysat. Our numbers doubled every year and I was utterly terrified of getting in trouble. Remember my experience in Mexico and so I began to study. My original motive was not very pure I just didn't want to get in trouble with anyone. So I began to sit at the feet of Scott Hahn of Patrick Madrid, of Jeff Cavens, of Kimberly Hahn and everything changed. I all of a sudden realized I've been sitting on riches. I had no idea a treasure trove all this time but they met me where I was and they explained Catholic doctrine from scripture. I needed that starting point. If their starting point had been tradition which I know, I know is the word of God I know we are to trust believe it but if that's where they had met me I wouldn't have been able to embrace it. They met me where I was with scripture and explained from there everything, everything changed. I was finally getting the explanations that I had been waiting for and asking for for 10 long years. This was the starting point I needed. I didn't have trust yet in the Magisterium I didn't even know what that word meant but their teaching met me where I was. Four years on from that point those eight women had grown to 100 and we also had 50 children in a children's program and I was writing Bible study for both of them. Women were coming to know Christ in life changing ways. Marriages were being saved, families were being changed families were coming into the church. The whole church itself was being renewed by this group of women. But not everyone was happy. And I was called in to a small committee meeting with our parish priests to deacon and some members of the parish council. I'll be honest I thought they called the meeting to thank me for what I was doing in the church. So I really went in there with an open heart but they didn't like what I was teaching and specifically they didn't like that I was teaching that salvation is in Jesus alone. I was teaching on the gospel of John. So in my mind that teaching was rather unavoidable but I was told I needed to shape up or they would ship me out. What I was teaching was what the Catholic church has always taught and has always believed but that is often an unpopular message and we can even find ourselves in a parish. Sadly, where that message is unwelcomed and I was told by both my priest and my parish deacon that I needed to stop teaching in that way. And that would have been the easiest way to respond. To just stop, to walk away, to decide that it wasn't worth the effort. And it seemed to me the right thing to do because although I had read these incredible teachers when your priest tells you a different message it feels as if that is the Catholic church's teaching and I knew I could not stay somewhere that did not believe that salvation was in Christ alone. So I made a quiet decision that I was going to leave the Catholic church. I knew it was gonna be one of the most painful decisions I would ever make. I didn't know how it would go with my marriage and I was probably most of all burdened by the hundred women that were studying with us because I didn't know how they would respond and where they would go. I knew it would rock their faith so I just sat in that place of tension. And around that time one woman made a tremendous difference in my life. She had just had a baby and so had I and I had little Jane on my hip and she had little Caroline in a baby carrier and I met her at a party. I hadn't shared with anyone what was going on at my parish because I knew it would scandalize the women and it would cause them to lose their very newfound faith and their belief in just the beauty of the church. But she seemed like a safe person to talk to because we really didn't have many mutual friends and for whatever reason I shared honestly with her what was going on. And she listened and she told me I shouldn't have been treated that way and that she was so sorry. And those words were just a tremendous balm to my heart. And she said she would understand if I was done, if I was too hurt, if I couldn't give it another try. But she said might you be willing to talk to one more priest? I think I know of a priest who might be of real help to you. You know it would have been easier for her to say oh that's just awful. How horrible that they treated you that way and just left it at that but she was brave enough to challenge me to do something that to me sounded incredibly scary. But there was something about her that made me trust that perhaps this could make a real difference. And she connected me with this incredible priest who started meeting with me for spiritual direction patiently working through the hurts that I had experienced and he was so kind to me. I came in with my defenses up and he just caused them to melt away. And he taught me that not all priests are representing the Magisterium well. I didn't know that. And he changed my life. I never felt like I was a project for him. I never felt like he had a timetable for me that I needed to stay on. I was lovingly, patiently led home. I experienced finally that welcome that I had craved. And because of those two people, I did not walk away. We so often think conversions happen because of some major milestones. Something big happens or a celebrity Catholic speaker comes and says something and just with their charisma sets the room on fire. But I'm here to say that the fact that I am here as a very happy Catholic woman, the fact that that original group of eight women has grown into a movement of over 45,000 Catholic women studying the Bible across the country, falling in love with Jesus Christ as their personal savior is a large measure due to that one woman and that one priest both being willing to gently speak the truth in love. Walking with purpose began with a simple question. What can help me in here? Who can I ask about the questions on my heart and where can I go to have those conversations? And I believe that those questions need to be rooted in the truths of scripture when they are being answered. I believed and I believe wholeheartedly that we need to live out Romans 12.2, that we are to be not conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And that is why I've written Bible studies year after year because my friends, we are in the midst of a battle and it's not just a battle in our culture. Do you know where the battle wages fiercest? It wages in each and every one of our minds and that battle is described in 2nd Corinthians chapter 10, verses three through five and St. Paul writes, for though we live in the world, we are not carrying on a worldly war. For the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to demolish strongholds. We destroy arguments in every proud obstacle that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take every thought captive, in obedience to Christ. All sorts of arguments and lies seek to draw us away from what we know to be true of God. The lies are whispered, they're whispered into your head each and every day and seeds of doubt can form. Our trusting God can be eroded and it can cause us to seek our security and things other than him. And this can happen subconsciously. We're not always aware of all of the messages that come into our mind and the ways in which we subtly agree with them. So we have to discipline ourselves and develop a different mindset and we need to stop and ask ourselves, based on my knowledge of God, what do I know to be true of him? So we struggle with the lie that we are alone but we know he never leaves us or forsakes us. We struggle with the lie that we are unlovable but we know that he loves us unconditionally. We struggle with the lie that we are powerless and hopeless but we know that he is all powerful and promises to come through for us. But all of these thoughts can be in our minds at the same time, both the truths and the lies. So what we need to do is found at the end of that passage in 2 Corinthians 10, we need to take every thought captive to Christ. So practically how do we do that? Well, a thought comes into our mind and instead of playing around with it, which is what we tend to do, what we can do is choose not to follow the rabbit trail of what ifs and if onlys and instead to grab a hold of that thought to look at it, perhaps even to write it down and to compare it to the truth of God because if that truth is not consistent with the truth that we find in scripture, then this is a lie that needs to be rejected and the truth needs to be declared. That is how we take a thought captive to Christ. But the only way that you will be able to do this is if you know how to recognize the voice of God. If you know his voice well enough to know that is a lie, that is his voice. And you know what? There are no shortcuts here. You absolutely must discipline yourself to saturate your mind and your heart in scripture. That's it. This is where God speaks to us so clearly. The more you know his word, the more you are going to be able to recognize his voice. Am I saying that is the only way that God communicates with us? No, I am not. But I am saying that I have found no word where I can find a more condensed place to hear his voice, to get to know him better and to know his truth. It gives us this glimpse of our father's thoughts and heart towards us. The Bible is unlike any other book that you will ever read. We know from Hebrews 412 that scripture is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. The word of God is living and active. It's not static, it's dynamic. That means it can be speaking one thing to my heart and another thing to another person's heart at the same time in different ways to you in one season of your life and this way and later in a different way. It is sharper than a two-edged sword, which means it can go straight into your heart with pinpoint accuracy and hit the mark. It can reveal your true motives. Why we do what we do. It can reveal our thoughts. It can start to unearth hurts that we have buried. In the book of Proverbs, we're told to be attentive to God's words to incline our ears to what He is saying. We're not to let them escape our sight, we're to keep them within our hearts for they are life to those who find them and healing to all flesh. God's words are life to those who find them and they bring healing and I know this beyond a doubt from my own experience. I remember well, all too well, a period of time when I was walking alongside my beloved child through a period of deep, intense emotional darkness. Fear at a grip of my heart and on my mind that was utterly paralyzing and no amount of praying was getting rid of it. I'd get caught in a cycle of worry and the next thing I knew, I would have wandered into a different room and 45 minutes would have passed by and I didn't even know what I was doing. I was so consumed with worry for my child. There was no rest and during that time my dad bought me a book by Mark Batterson called Praying Circles Around Your Children and in it I read the story of a father who decided that he was going to pray every word of scripture over his child. So I decided to do the same and I bought a Bible and committed to reading the entire Bible in a year and praying every word of it over the life of my child. So if I found an example to follow, I underlined it and I wrote a prayer for my child in the margin. If I found an example, I didn't want him to follow, I would write of that. I wrote of the promises of God and I claimed them over my child's life. Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, book after book, the Bible became filled with prayers for my child. There is something incredibly powerful about praying God's word back to him. We can be assured that we are praying within his will and months into this intense time of prayer I could see the tide starting to turn in my son's life and I do not believe that is a coincidence. But something else was happening at the same time because nothing was calming my heart in the way that this did. It was something supernatural that was happening but the hours I spent reading scripture were releasing heavenly power, divine weapons that were engaging the spiritual warfare that we were in the midst of. But because scripture is living and active, it was also doing a work in my own heart. And those divine weapons, that divine weapon of scripture proved to be more powerful than fear or worry. Another way we can wield the sword of the spirit using scripture as a weapon in the spiritual battle is by quoting it out loud. Do you know that the enemy can hear you? So when you speak out your self-defeating thoughts, he hears that, he remembers that and he will use those very words against you and do you know what happens then? They make sense to you. They lodge in your brain more because they were your thoughts to begin with. We need to watch what we are saying out loud because we can choose instead of speaking of our worry, our doubt, our fear to speak words of hope. And I call doing this the eye declares and the first time I prayed the eye declares, I was in a real cycle, a spin cycle of worry. My stomach was churning, worries were kicking up a storm in my mind so I decided my head right now is full of lies. I need to declare some truth. So I decided to start declaring truth out loud. This is something that you can do yourself over and over again until I felt peace. So I want to demonstrate this for you so you can see how you can use God's word in prayer for yourself. So say you were struggling with a fear of the future. Here are some eye declares for your what if. I declare God that you have not given me a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and a sound mind. Second Timothy one, seven. I declared that you are my peace, not perfect circumstances. Ephesians two, 14. I declare that if I present my request to you with a spirit of gratitude, your peace will guard my heart and my mind. Philippians four, six and seven. I declare that if I will seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, all these things will be added to me as well. Luke 12, 31. I declare, Lord, that if I trust you with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding that you will make my path straight. Proverbs three, verses five and six. I declare that God's plans for me are not to harm me but to prosper me, to give me a hope and a future. Jeremiah 29, 11. Say you are struggling with pain from your past. Here are some I declares for your if onlys. I declare that God has thrown my sins as far as the east is from the west. Psalm 103, verse 12. I declare that God will restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Joel 2, 25. I confess, I declare that if I confess my sin, God is faithful and just and will forgive my sin. First John 1, 9. I declare that when you forgive, Lord, my sins that were like scarlet become white as snow. Isaiah 1, 18. And I declare, Lord, that you are doing a new thing in my life. You are making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43, 19. I declare that I am a new creation in Christ. The old has gone, the new has come. 2 Corinthians 5, 17. Say you are struggling with suffering. Here are some I declares for your pain. I declare that when I am weak, you are strong within me. 2 Corinthians 12, 10. I declare that no temptation has seized me except what is common to man. And you will always provide a way out so that I can stand up under it. 1 Corinthians 10, 13. I declare that God will restore, support, strengthen and establish me. 1 Peter 5, 10. And I declare that no amount of suffering can separate me from the love of God. Romans 8, 25. I declare that I am uniquely equipped to provide comfort to others because I truly understand because the comfort you've given me can be poured out to others who are suffering in the same way that I am. It's from 2 Corinthians 1, 3 to 4. And I declare that my light and momentary troubles and afflictions are achieving for me an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. 2 Corinthians 4, 17. And perhaps some of you here today are struggling in your marriage. Here are some I declares for you. I declare that God's arm is not too short to save you. He can reach into your heart and reach into your spouse's heart and draw the two together. Isaiah 59, 1. I declare that if God is for you, who can be against you? Romans 8, 31. I declare that you can hold firmly to hope because God, the one who promised, is faithful. Hebrews 10, 23. I declare that when we lack love, you, Lord God, can give us divine love for each other. Romans 5, 5. And I declare that what God has joined together, no man should put asunder and separate. Mark 10, 9. I declare that you, God, are our lamp and you can turn our darkness into light. 2 Samuel 22, 29. I wonder if some of you are worried about your children or your grandchildren. Here are some I declares for them. I declare that you, Lord God, who began a good work in our children will bring it to completion. Philippians 1, verse six. I declare that you can reach down from on high and take hold of our children and draw them out of deep waters. 2 Samuel 22, 17. I declare that our works as mothers and fathers will be rewarded and that our children will come back from the land of the enemy, Jeremiah 31, 16. I declare that there is hope in my future and in my child's future and that our children will come back to their own border, Jeremiah 31, 17. And I declare that all your promises are yes in Jesus and that not one word of your promises has ever failed. 2 Corinthians 1, 20, 1 Kings 8, 56. And I declare that you, Lord God, are able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine. Ephesians 3, 20. And maybe some of you, because of hurt in your heart and life experience and disappointment, are struggling with doubt, are doubting the goodness of God. Here are some I declare when we are lacking trust. I declare that just because I don't understand what you are allowing does not mean that you are not good because I declare that your thoughts are not my thoughts. And your ways are not my ways. And as far as the heavens are above the earth, so far are your ways higher than my ways and your thoughts than my thoughts. Isaiah 55, 8, and 9. I declare that your grace and your goodness sometimes visit us in unexpected forms. But Deuteronomy 32, 39 says you wound and you heal, but those wounds are always allowed so that a deeper healing can occur. I declare that you, Lord God, are gracious. You are slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love to the thousandth generation for giving iniquity and transgression and sin. Exodus 34, 6, and 7. I declare, Lord God, that you are a son and a shield that you give grace and you give glory. And I declare that you do not withhold any good thing from those who walk uprightly. Psalm 84, 11. I declare that your steadfast love never ceases. Your mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Oh, great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3, 22, and 23. I declare that you are good. You, Lord God, are a stronghold in the day of trouble. And I declare that you know those who take refuge in you, Nahum 1, 7. My friend's scripture is enormously powerful and effective in renewing our minds. There is nothing like it. But you can read the Bible cover to cover and find that it has no effect on you if you have not done the preparation of really inviting the Holy Spirit into the process, just inviting him to speak to you personally through it, to inspire something in you. So don't leave the Holy Spirit out of the picture. We're promised in John 16, 13 that he will guide us into all truth. Ask him to do this for you. I challenge you to consistently, as in daily, saturate your mind with scripture and memorize it. Because when you do this, you are planting seeds of truth in your mind that the Holy Spirit can draw on later. So you can read a scriptural passage with a powerful principle in it and God can bring it to mind at a later date and hit you right where you need it. Reading and memorizing scripture is actually building a scriptural library that you can carry around with you wherever you go if you will memorize it. But you need the Holy Spirit for scripture to make that journey from your head to the heart. And that is where the true encounter with Christ happens. If you want to mature as a Christian, if you are tired of being tossed by waves and being swept along by lies and worries, then grab hold of your Bible. Anchor yourself in the truths of its pages and go to it with a passion of a lover who is longing to hear the voice of the beloved. And I promise you that the one who is called faithful and true will meet you there. You know, God didn't waste a single bit in my story. So I thank him for the resistance. I thank him for the obstacles. I thank him for the heartache because this is what gave birth to a powerful movement of women all over the country, delving deeply into scripture. You see, this is what God does. He takes the ill-equipped. He takes the weak. He takes the broken. And if they are being willing to be used for his glory, then he does in and through them beyond what they could ask or imagine. Because of how great we are? No. Because of how great he is. Do you think you have limitations in serving God in this way? Good. Good. Because that means there's room for the Holy Spirit. That means that you'll depend on him and ask him to do the work in and through you. Few things will stretch and grow your faith like step me out and taking a risk, but I encourage you, say yes and get ready to see what God will do through imperfect people who surrender to him. Thank you.