 Welcome to Hope Today. It is a great day to serve the Lord. It is a great day to be rescued by the Lord. We're gonna be talking about that in just a little bit. But we have a great show for you. I'm Tom, I am here with Angela and Anna. Tell us about our guest, Anna. Yeah, it's also a great day to talk about your value, your worthiness and who God made you to be. So is it possible to live a life of contrast when it comes to your identity? Can you be confident and humble, independent and supported, career-focused and family-focused? Well, our guest today, Caitlin Skaggs says yes! Her heart is to see women live into the depths of their value and worthiness declaring in her book that you are both worth it and wonderful. And Angela, I know this is a passion of your heart too and we wanna bring in the men perspective too because God wants men to live into who they are too, but Angela... I love this topic and I don't think we could ever hear enough about it. Worth it and wonderful is an idea, a concept and when it gets deeply rooted in us, it changes our entire perspective, even for our fellas, Tom. Yes, absolutely, we need to know our worth in Christ. And today is Purim, it's the Jewish holiday that celebrates how the Jewish people were saved from annihilation in ancient Persia as told in the book of Esther, you all know the story. And it began at sundown last night and ends at nightfall this evening, but there is someone who didn't think that she had what it took and she was encouraged to take a stand. And of course, they celebrate that. We were talking about the little cookies that are made, Heyman's hearts, we've heard them called or Heyman's hats. Although, Anna, you have a really unique perspective. You're gonna call me out on this. I was like, it's Heyman's ears, right? The cookies are Heyman's ears. Everybody's like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm like, oh, okay. My wife grew up though, two doors down from a Jewish family, some of her best friends, the one girl was her same age and so she was always over there for that celebration. Great time. I love it, so fun. And you know, even here in the story of Esther, it reminds me so much about she recognized who she was, right? Mordecai called her to rise, like stand. And when she recognized her value in her position, it freed and redeemed and really restored the value of an entire people. And that's what I love about Purim. Like there's so much to celebrate and that's the focus of the holiday. That's what we're here for today to celebrate life and your value. Yeah, and also to celebrate that God rescues his people. Like God was so in love with his people as you would read in the story of Esther that he had Esther be born for such a time as this to be in the position as queen, to be able to save her people. That was no coincidence. God had it planned. And let me tell you the things that God does in your life too, it's no coincidence. He is coming after you to rescue you and show you who you are meant to be. So when we come back in just 60 seconds, we're gonna get right in with our guests and unpack all the beauty of your worthiness and value. Stay with us. When Laura called our 24 seven prayer line, she had so much fear that she didn't want to leave her house. She had lost her husband of 54 years, just six months earlier. Laura was flipping through TV stations when she came across Cornerstone Television. She felt compelled to call. One of our prayer partners talked, listened and prayed with her for 45 minutes. At the end, Laura said how much the ministry had helped relieve her fear. Praise God for how he's using CTVN. When you give, you become part of what he's doing. This month, when you give, we'll send wild expectance as our way of saying thank you. This book will inspire you to live your life as God intended. To give and request your copy, visit us online at ctvn.org slash donate or call us at 888-665-4483. Hope happens here. Our guests today longs to see women live vibrant lives marked by possibility. Instead of living in oversimplified and cautious existence marked by others' expectations, personal insecurities and fear. Author, Caitlin Skaggs, join us to share how the Bible consistently affirms your value and invites us to live bravely and beautifully in our true identity. So, Caitlin, welcome to Hope Today. So good to be here today. Oh man, I cannot wait to just dig deeper into this conversation about worth and value. And can you share with us, at the beginning of your book, you talked about an aha moment when you realized that you get to live who God meant you created you to be, not who the world says you should be. Absolutely. It was one of the most freeing moments for me. It was this eyes-wide open moment where I realized I was feeling all this pressure to choose, all this pressure to be who the world says I should be and to live up to those expectations. But when I realized that those expectations mean nothing in the wake of who God says I am and what he did for me through Jesus, it was freedom. It was freedom to live with joy and delight and embrace every complexity of who he made me to be. Yes, absolutely. And you were reading a book on growing a successful business, being a successful leader, and there were two phrases. One was the tyranny of the ore and the genius of the and. Yes, so in a business concept, an example would be, well, you can't be charitable and profitable. The tyranny of the ore would say you've got a pick. Which way are you gonna go? But this business book said, no, you can do both of those things. You can be charitable and profitable. And as I was thinking about it, I thought, why is this only for businesses? Why can't this be for all of us that I can be responsible and fun-loving and adventurous? I can be a great mom and a great career woman and that really helped open my eyes to it. But then, of course, I wanted to filter that through a biblical lens and say, but is this truth? Is this actual truth, too? Right, and so talk to us a little bit about some of the paradoxes in the Bible that we can hold onto as that truth. Well, I thought about those. The first shall be last and kingdom upside down and the light shines brightest in the darkness. So I was realizing that scripture really is speaking to us in contrast and opposites. So I knew I was onto something there that this wasn't just an inkling, this just wasn't another self-helpism, that there was some gospel truth for all of us. So I think about how scripture says we're fearfully and wonderfully made. There's even a translation that uses complexities. It actually uses that word like God knows where complicated and he's okay with it. In fact, he's so okay with it that he sent Jesus for us because he said, you are supremely worth it. I will send my own son because you are that worth it to me. So that's where every idea in this book is rooted. Right, I just love that. Because our identity, when everything else shakes around us, when people try to tell us who we are, who we're supposed to be, the identity that is secure in Christ always remains firm and true. So you've had quite a journey through your life and you started off out of college as a police officer and you really, that was key to growing your faith and making you become bold. Can you share that story? Absolutely, it's so funny to think that that's where it all started. It feels so surreal, but it did, it's true. You know, I was really blessed to be raised in an incredible Christian family, but I think each of us has that point where we have to grab onto our faith with both hands and say, this is my faith and this is between me and the Lord, nobody else. And that's what happened to me in a police cruiser. I was so overwhelmed by the darkness every night at work. I got into this profession thinking I could help people and save people and every night I was disappointed because who was I helping and who was I really saving? And there was a moment of true despair where I remember sitting in my car after one horrific call and just truly having a cry out to the Lord moment of like, what is all this for anyways? And fortunately our sermon series was in the book of Luke, one of my all-time favorites because in Luke we look Jesus in the eyes and we realize there's never a place too far gone and we can always get our hopes up. So that's what I did. I pursued Jesus and it changed everything. Wow. And so you said, let me see if I can find the quote. You said, hopelessness doesn't need to be the conclusion. It wasn't for me and I don't want it to be for you either. There's somebody watching today that is feeling hopeless. Can you just encourage them? What would you say to them? Yeah, I would just say to you that there's never a place too far gone when it comes to the love and the redemption and the freedom that you can find in Jesus. So race after him, pursue him with everything you have and just be expectant that he's gonna show up and redeem all the parts that hurt and all the parts that are hard and feel too far gone. He is for you. He is for you. I think that the Lord, it seems to me the Lord really delights to rescue those people that seem the furthest off. Have you ever seen that? Have you seen someone come to God that was far away? You thought, well, that's a hard case there. God delights in bringing the hard cases to himself. I think he absolutely does. Which you're getting at makes me think of the ministry that I work for. My full-time job, I work for New Hope Girls and we work in the Dominican Republic helping girls that have been brought out the ultimate darkness, trafficking, abuse, exploitation. And that's been profound for me too because watching those girls walk intact and whole in the Lord is the ultimate transformation. Cause I think the world would say, well, you're too far gone. There's no coming back from something like what you've experienced, but Jesus says, watch me. Watch the freedom that I will give these girls. Watch how I literally set the captives free from everything they've experienced. What I found really interesting about the ministry you're a part of, we got to talk prior to. And I love how you guys incorporate this value of celebration. And I really believe when you're talking about the paradoxes and the contrast, you're living that. So can you tell me a little bit about how that shows up in that ministry with these young girls who have come from devastating circumstances? Absolutely. So birthdays are a really big deal for these girls, for us. We let them pick their theme and we make it all about them and there's prayer. We lay hands on them and pray over them and just tell them, we speak words of who they are in the Lord. You are creative for more. That's what our saying is for our girls. Creado Padamas. And the reason we do that is because we know the darkness exists and we can't change what's happened to them in the past, but you can believe that the future forward is full of hope and it is our joy to live in that hope with them each and every day. I love that because I think a lot of times when we hear hard stories, we think there's no joy there. But you all with New Hope Ministries, you are finding it and being intentional about celebrating life and truly like seeing the actual exchange of ashes for beauty, of mourning, for dancing, you know? And I love that principle. How would you say that today if there's a woman or a man who's watching and they are in their sackcloth? You know, like we're talking about Esther, they're mourning and they are sorrowful. What is something that they can do today right where they are, even though their circumstances haven't changed to really get them to a place of exchanging those ashes for beauty? I think a part of it starts honestly with lament and with feeling the heavy and acknowledging it's not meant to be this way, Lord. It is not meant to be this way because choosing joy isn't choosing to act like it never happened, but it's acknowledging it before the Lord in this holy lament of saying this should have never happened, but it did. But now I'm trusting you to pick up every broken piece and make sense of it, Lord, because he can in only a way that he can. Come on. So good. Yeah, I love that so much because I was just, as I was praying over this program today and the conversations that we were going to have, I thought to myself, the closer that we draw to Jesus, the more we find life. And how often do we seek a job for our identity and life or a relationship or a certain look of the way that we address that something that will fulfill us and show us our identity, but our life, our identity is all hidden in Christ. And as we go closer to him, we come back to life and he brings that beauty from the ashes. So I want to just unpack these contrasts a little bit. There were a few in your book that just really captured me and the first was lovely and fierce. So it's one of my favorites. That's my favorite kind of person. If you are lovely and fierce, it means that you have this kind of inner beauty that radiates and you're just delightful to be around, but you'll also dig your heels in and you'll fight for the holy things that are worth fighting for. So of course I go back to New Hope Girls, our founder and who's one of my best friends. She embodies lovely and fierce and I introduce you to her in the book, but just this idea of she submits herself before the Lord in prayer and she trusts that he is ultimately the one that is gonna right all the wrongs, but she also says, Lord, I'm here. I'm ready. Use me. And she's ready to get to work for him. Right. I love this concept of warrior and I was joking with Tom because he was at a... I'm the guy here, everybody. He was at a men's retreat this past weekend and he said how they spoke into the men talking about how they're warriors, which is so true. And Tom's like, that's man language. And I was like, listen, we women are warriors too. And you talk about like kicking indoors. It's one of my favorite concepts because to me, when I say kicking indoors, I mean, there's some funny stories in there about where all that came from, but it really is saying that you are so worth it that there's nowhere I won't go for you, right? I will go there and I will go to the blanks and that's what I see Jesus doing is he went and met with the hard people, the difficult people, the smelly people, but he knew that they were worth it and they had inherent value. And that's to me, what these beautiful warriors do, what my colleagues in the Dominican Republic do and what these lovely and fierce women of God do is we just say, we'll do the hard things, Lord. If you ask me, I'll be brave. I'll be brave with my life for you. You know, I know all about lovely and fierce. I'm married to Jean Hollis, okay? I know completely about lovely and fierce, you know? And my daughters as well, you know? But what a great concept, what a great understanding that God wants us to go all for, you know, all for those people, to rescue those people. Just tell me a story. Tell me a story about somebody that, one of those girls, is there one that just pops into your head about one of the girls that has been rescued? Yeah, there's so many. This one little girl, we'll just, we'll call her Maria, just protect her identity, but the first time I met her, I was down there and she was weeks out from her rescue. She was still raw and in her eyes, there was no life. And she didn't want anyone to be near her and she was fearful. Everything made her afraid. And little by little, we started with painting and art and I watched my boss Joy. I watched she mirrors how you can work with these girls and just bring them out of themselves. But two visits later, I showed up. So you figure this is now over about a nine month span and the first thing she wanted to do was have a tea party with me. And she just wanted to sit down and she was so comfortable and she was so sweet and she served me my tea and she made this beautiful spread. And what that says to me is she was so broken inside but she now has the capacity to love and to give that love freely. And I think what a powerful transformation story that someone so broken, so betrayed can heal in a way that they can give the very love that they were denied for years. So she is just incredible. I love that story because it does show the power of love. You know, God is love and to see him rush into every crack over years of trauma is powerful that he can do it like that. It doesn't take a lot. It takes one touch of Jesus and a life transformed. I love your position there. I love that you guys are ministering there. We all ought to be like that. That's what we should be are characters of his love that changes every crack. Right, absolutely. He does restore and rebuild. And so I know that, Caitlin, you have children that you get to raise and their value and their purpose. And another contrast that you talked about was that a woman can be both family-focused and career-focused. So tell us a little bit about how you do that with balance. You know, it's hard and it's a process. And I think it's one that we all walk through. But what I try to see is how the two pieces feed each other that when I am investing well in my family, the lessons I learn in that space, I can bring to the work environment. And then the work that I do helps inform the way I parent and the way I encourage my children. And I also want my children to be aware of, this is a big world with a lot of opportunity and we are to live in this world and not be of this world. So what does that look like? So I truly see it as modeling for my children, getting their interests peaked. You know, before this current role, I was a spokesperson at a university and they would see me on TV as the spokesperson and then they would play TV at home or play news at home. And so it's fun to see how it brings that. But I think the important thing is be present where you are in that moment. Don't be at work feeling guilty you're not at home. Don't be at home feeling guilty you're not at work. Really have to just be where you are fully present. It's really truly so beautiful. All the different contrasts that we can live in and it's not an or, it's the and. And thank you for writing your book. The each chapter is an example of these contrasts that we both can live into. And so we have just like 30 seconds left before we go to our scripture. Can you just look into the camera and really encourage a woman in her purpose? Absolutely. God delights in who you are. He made you with intention and he made you on purpose for a purpose. So rest in that beautiful truth that he loves you and he is for you. No matter what you're facing today, you can turn to him and trust that he'll walk with you through the good days and the bad days. He will be present with you. Caitlin, thank you so much for worth it and wonderful. If you want to be encouraged in your God given identity, take some time to read Caitlin's book. It will encourage you and cause you to be lovely and fierce and go after all that God has for you. And the word is where we find all this truth and Angela, you have our scripture for today. That is true. We have Psalm 139, 14 for you today. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. Your workmanship is marvelous. How well I know it. I think our conversation today was very clearly, you know, speaking to the complexities that we are. Even you men are complex. I know some of you are looking at each other and say, mm-hmm, that's definitely a word for the women. We're simple. We are completely simple, believe me. But I love it. Sports, food, we're good. Oh goodness. You know what I just, I want to say because I know our conversation today was so woman focused, but men who are watching realize that God infused purpose and identity in you two as men and women, we were created in the image of God. And I thought about how God is described as lovely and fierce. And he is a warrior. And as men and women, we are warriors. When we walk together and who God made us to be, it's not that men are better than women or women are better than men. But when we realize that we are equal in Christ and that we are so fully loved and what a beautiful picture that we get to represent as men and women together on this earth of who God is and his love for his people. Well, one thing I love about that, and sometimes guys struggle with the love for Jesus, that he's the lover of our soul. And we need to be those people that understand where we fight and where we love, where our hearts are completely his. So we're standing there. And Caitlin, could you speak into that a little bit? About men also being fierce but also loving because a lot of times we've got the fierce side down. You know, but as men of God, we need to be loving and caring and nurturing all those other sides of God that sometimes women seem to represent better. Sure, and I think even if it's a struggle, really the end goal is an identity that mirrors the identity of Jesus. And that's who Jesus is. So all self-confidence, all manly man aside, it's not about the masculinity. It's about who is Jesus and using him as the ultimate guidepost. So I think that's how I would encourage men is to really lean into that and say, well, that's what Jesus modeled. So I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna be faithful and obedient. The other reason it's super important is because when you do that, you reflect the glory of God to a hurting and broken world. So if that's what obedience, if that's the outcome of obedience, it's super important to do. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe you've been hearing all this and you've been wondering where you fit. Well, maybe you had to make this either or choice and God says, no, I've got better for you. I've got more for you. I just want you to take that moment right now and cry out to God and say, God, I think I made a wrong choice somewhere. What's so great? And Caitlin's seen it with what she's, when she works with these girls that the world would say are damaged but the world would say that they can't be healed. But through God, you can be healed. They can be healed. All of us, we can begin to see who God made us to truly be. God has built things inside of you that haven't been released yet. Trust him today that he's gonna release those. You can call our prayer line. You can pray about that with one of our prayer partners. They'll be happy to just pray with you. But cry out to God and say, God, I wanna know the purpose for which I was created. Yeah, I think it's important for you to realize like the scripture we read today, you are wonderfully complex and the Lord knows you very well. He knows you exceedingly well that in that weak place, he's with you. And in your strength, he's also with you. Every part of who you are, God wants to infiltrate and pour over. He loves you and made you so. Yes, I'm listening to everyone share. I'm just thinking about somebody who is watching today and you have had a lot of lies spoken into your identity. Maybe from a very young age, somebody who was significant in your life that was supposed to be a safe person spoke lies to you about who you are. And those have been so ingrained and you hear yourself just repeating those same lies about your identity. Today is the day to bring all of that to the feet of Jesus because he wants to pull those lies out of the darkness and bring them into light to say, this is a lie and I will tell you who you are. He wants to speak his truth into your heart telling you that you are a masterpiece. You are his chosen woman, his chosen man. He has beauty ready for the ashes that you have been sitting in. He wants you to shake off that dust and rise up into your identity because time on this earth is short and you are here for a reason. Don't sit around any longer in the dark and the shame and the guilt and the less than you were not given a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love and a sound mind. That's really good, Anna. Caitlin, thank you so much for being with us and for sharing. It's a great message, an important message for all of us to hear and to know. And again, as Anna just said, as we've been saying to you, you were destined for a purpose in God. You know, I just know there's somebody right now. I don't know what age you are, but you're feeling like you haven't seen the full release of what God wants in you. Well, God says, yeah, you haven't. I'm gonna do that. Be prepared. Be prepared to see something fresh and new. Have your heads up. Her preacher say, have your antennas up. Have your eyes open to receive from God because when you do that, you begin to walk in that purpose you were created for. And begin to find God and find His hope today. On Tomorrow's Hope Today, discover how God speaks into your unique personality and life story to make the gospel come alive for you. Podcaster and author Jesse Eubanks invites you to discover who you are, encounter the heart of Jesus and strengthen your relationships. Don't miss Tomorrow's Hope Today. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.