Abide 01: The Thing You Really Need in Motherhood Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: Hey friends, welcome to another mini-series with Risen Motherhood. Emily and I are so happy to be back in your earbuds. In this series, we're talking all about God's Word and why it's so valuable.
For many of you, we know this might feel a little basic or old hat. It feels a little bit like Christian 101, but we're going to make the case for you that, even though most of us logically know how important God's Word is, we frequently forget this, or we don't give it as high value as we ought. Therefore, we don't reap the benefits. Stick with us. Today, we're talking specifically about Bible study and quiet times, and you're going to hear us mention the Abide Method. This is our free Bible study tool that we offer here at Risen Motherhood. It's also where we got the title of this mini-series from. If you want to check out the Abide Method, head to risenmotherhood.com/abide, and you can download it for free and start today.
One last thing before we get into the show. If you are listening to the show on the week it comes out, it's Mother's Day week. If you haven't requested a gift yet, perhaps consider nudging your husband to grab the Risen Motherhood book as a gift. There are still some places out there that will ship it quickly or you can pick it up at most local bookstores like Barnes and Noble. If you already have the book, another idea would be to consider making a donation to Risen Motherhood in honor or memory of a special mom or grandmother in your life. With any one-time gift of $100 or more, Risen Motherhood will send a handwritten note to the recipient of your choice, notifying them of your donation.
With that, let's get to the show. Some of you guys might have seen a few months ago, we launched the Risen Motherhood 2022 Survey where we were just trying to get a snapshot of what motherhood looks like this year—post-pandemic and all of the crazy mayhem that is 2022. We wanted to get a picture of motherhood. The first thing that blew me away really is just how many of you took the survey in our community? Were you not shocked, Em, that we had nearly 10,000 women take the survey?
Emily Jensen: It was incredible. I think the other thing that was incredible to see is just how God is at work in and through the gospel in this generation of moms. You and I have been at this for six-ish years now. We have brought a community along with us. Like we always say, peer-to-peer discipleship—locking arms in the trenches, saying, "Hey, we're trying to figure out how the gospel applies to motherhood just like you are"—we've gone on this journey together, and it was just amazing and rewarding and exciting to see how many of you are seeing the fruits of this in your life. The fruit of God at work in your life. The fruit of the gospel in your life is just so cool. I was surprised by how positive the results were.
Laura: Well, I think what's so interesting is—as we were writing the survey, preparing the survey, we looked at a lot of peer surveys—many of them that are designed for moms—and looked at some of their results. A lot of them are really disheartening and a lot of tough things happening in motherhood. It doesn't mean that that's not happening here. We have some of those stats from the survey to show it, but there was also—like you're saying—so much hope. You guys, these are some of the survey results. Just listen for one second. If you're in the R|M community or a mom who loves Jesus, these should be so, so, so encouraging to you that 91% of nearly 10,000 people that took it—it was like 9,800 and something—91% are reading the Bible on a regular basis, and 80% read it at least two days a week. 95% regularly attend church and sit under the preaching of God's Word, and 99% of moms believe that your theology matters to motherhood.
Emily: Woohoo. Rejoice!
Laura: Exactly! The R|M team did a celebratory dance whenever we were going through these survey results. We were like, "Oh my goodness." I did not think these numbers would be this high.
Emily: It just shows we do know the basics; this generation of Christian moms gets it. We are seeking to be faithful in these areas that really matter most, even though we know we're all doing it imperfectly. I think the interesting thing was—as we were going through all of these questions, and we were comparing the stats—is that we were also seeing a little bit of that "already, but not yet." We have this big piece that we can rejoice in, but then also we saw that 98% of you still experience some form of mom guilt.
Laura: 98%.
Emily: 98%—so all of you. [Laughter]
Laura: Who is that 2%? Who are you? I want to be friends with you.
Emily: Nearly 80% of you are stressed out by having to keep up with the work of the home. 40% struggle to put your theology into practice in motherhood, even though you want to. It's like that 99% is like, "I know this matters. I know I want to," but 40% are still struggling to actually enact that. More than 60% experience various forms of spiritual doubt, feel overwhelmed in motherhood, and are stressed by disciplining your children. And then 50% are stressed by the concept of health and nutrition in motherhood, which I think is just representative of many areas where we feel a lot of pressure to get it exactly right.
There are still things that we're wrestling with and struggling with.
Laura: A lot of times we think—Emily and I—as we were sitting down and saying, "Okay, what content should we develop? How can we meet these women where they're at?"
Emily: Based on these survey results, Risen Motherhood—our whole team—is getting together and going, "Okay, how do we respond to these survey results?"
Laura: Exactly. We want to do this survey so that we can meet moms where they're at. Yet it's like, we can create that content and we shall create the content. We still want to continue to do that. What we had to sit back and remember is that God's Word is still the number one thing these women need. We can throw all of these resources at you. We can create podcasts till we're blue in the face. What's funny is we have podcasts out about mom guilt. We have articles written about mom guilt, yet 98% of us—and I'm in that pot—still struggle with mom guilt. Is it the resourcing or is there something else at play?
Emily: I think that hearing God's Word and turning back to the Lord is the answer to our question. It feels both like a pat answer—like, "Oh, of course, that's the answer you would give: God's Word."
Laura: Of course, of course.
Emily: And it also feels like the unexpected answer sometimes because I think, in 2022, we are trained to go to Google, text our friends, go to Instagram and look at what our favorite mom influencer on discipline is talking about. We are trained, even as Christian women in this culture, to go to the latest online ministry and search their digital resource library for an article that can help us. Obviously, we are in the digital ministry space.
Laura: We appreciate that. We're for that.
Emily: We are for it. We think it's important, but maybe an unexpected answer that we've got to remember is that we need to turn to God's Word. We still have to turn to that as our number one, biggest influence—the thing that is setting the guides for all of our life and how we live. It's the foundation of our truth and the thing that is going to work in our hearts and transform us.
Laura: We were—Emily and I—at a women's gathering a few years ago, and there was a really busy schedule. A lot of women there. We had a lot of things to get done, but it was interesting because the leader would pause us really consistently. Actually, it was on the schedule, but it would take a lot more time.
Emily: Yeah, took a lot more time than you expected. "Oh, we're just going to open the Bible real quick and read this." It was like, "Oh no, this is going to linger for a while." [Laughter]
Laura: She would just have us read Scripture and then either share what we were thinking about it or what spoke to us or how the Spirit was moving. We would also pray about the Scripture.
This took up a ton of time at this women's meeting where there was a lot of important work that you feel could have gotten done or people that you could have talked to. It was really interesting because it could feel really tempting to say, like, "Oh, that's a waste of time." We should not have spent our time on that because we could have been moving the needle on creating resources or on making connections or solving all of the Christian world problems.
It was actually this phenomenal experience where we realized that being in God's Word was the most important thing that we could do. Talking about God's Word, praying it back to him, seeing how the Spirit was moving in and through our conversations about God and his Word—those were things that were really feeding us. We look back—I know I speak for both of us, Emily—we look back on that time and just think, "Wow, that was incredibly powerful."
Emily: Those were the moments I remember, that were most transformative—the times that we all had the Bible open and to hear all the women's voices in the room reading God's Word and then talking about attributes of the Lord from his Word. That was so worshipful and sweet and powerful and memorable, even though that would not have been my first instinct to like, "Okay, let's just spend the next hour meditating on this."
Laura: And at times for me—I'll be frank. I felt maybe a little uncomfortable or a little bit like, "Man, I don't want to do this, or is this the best use of our time?"
Because I can tend to be, I know, very productivity-driven, but like you said, looking back—or even once I was in it and I said, "Okay, I'm here for this"—things just really changed. The Lord worked in that and that's something that always comes to Emily's and my mind a lot of times is that we think often, "I just need another book to help me, or I need another podcast to help me, or I need to poll my mom friends and get the scientific reasoning behind why my kid is behaving like he is." What we really need in motherhood is the Lord. We need God and we need his Word.
Yes, we don't want to say that practical help and strategies are irrelevant, or God doesn't use life experiences and friendships and a lot of those practical tools—he absolutely does. We are shaped and formed by both the life that we live and God's Word—it is not just one—but we also want to say, "Hey moms, do we need to step back and give God's Word a little more credit for how much it is an incredible parenting handbook and an incredible life handbook for us?"
Emily: So good. I know we want to go back to the basics in this series and just say with a psalmist, "I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word" (Ps. 119:15-16). I know it's just so easy to forget God's Word in the midst of all of the things going on. We all have sleepless nights and busy mornings and huge task lists and lots of relationships that we feel we're trying to care for and be responsible for. We can just forget the essential thing, which is abiding in him. I love that passage from John 15 where Jesus says, "Abide in me, and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."
If we want to have these fruitful lives—we want to be able to deal rightly with our guilt and our overwhelm and discipline our children well and do all of these things faithfully—we've got to abide. And that includes studying the Bible, prayer, meditation, going to the Lord, trusting him to be working in our hearts and lives to give us strength and the joy that we long for. The power is in his Word.
Laura: Yes. Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to"—ooh, get ready—"judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Ooh. I'll just speak for myself. I often do not think of Scripture as that powerful. I know it logically, but this idea that it is penetrating, separating soul and spirit—that's like stuff of fairy tales, and yet, that's what God's Word is: living and active. It is not just another book. I think often, even for myself, I can get up in the morning and be like, "Okay, I'm just going to read the Bible, check that off."
We want to talk about that, though. Let's get into it a little bit. One of the things Emily and I did a very, very long time ago, when Risen Motherhood was just a baby—we developed something called the Abide Method. We thought, "You know what? We have not really brought that out in a long time." We haven't talked about it. It lives on our site, but we want to talk about it a little bit here and how to do it and give a little bit of 101. The Abide Method is really just a way of studying the Bible that requires nothing but a pen and paper and God's Word. It's pretty much completely free. You don’t need any special thing to walk you through it, and we offer it for free on our site.
You can go to the website risenmotherhood.com/abide, or it will be linked in our show notes in all of the places, but it's something that you can download, and you can pick up at any time to study God's Word. Before we get into exactly how the Abide Method works and how we developed it, we want to talk for just a second about "the quiet time" and all the things that loaded term means to us.
Emily: I think "quiet time" can have so many meanings. It can be this thing that we look forward to. It's something that we treasure. It's something we know is important, which essentially just means having dedicated time where you are reading, thinking about God's Word, and praying on a regular basis—that getaway with the Lord in solitude. Then, at the same time, it can carry with it this guilt and this shame if we don't get to it, or it can become a legalistic thing. I feel like in order to be a good Christian, I must check off this thing on my list every single day. If I'm not doing that in this season, then I can't grow with the Lord, or I can't be in his Word or I can't— whatever that thing is.
I think it's just really important to remember, especially as moms, that we are going to go through different periods of days, weeks, months, and even years where meeting with the Lord and being in his Word may not look like a perfect, polished quiet time, or even if we are able to have that perfect, polished quiet time that we envision in our minds, it may be less consistent than in other seasons. Even this past week, our kids were home from school and all of our household got sick with multiple viruses and kids were up in the night, and, like, I did not have my normal quiet time that week, but that does not mean that I ignored God, or I was a bad Christian. It's important to keep that in mind.
Laura: Or that you weren't like, abiding, just to use that word. The quiet time myth is a tough one because I think there is a beauty and a goodness and a helpfulness in this idea of saying, "Hey, try to have your quiet time every day." It's like "Eat your fruits and veggies every day" and "Get good rest every day." I think it is really important that we do try to prioritize spiritual disciplines and spiritual practices, that getting in God's Word is of very high value to us. But, like you're saying, Emily— you've got a newborn and you can't get in—you have no energy to read the Word, or you fall asleep every time you open your phone. I get that. We have been there. Don't feel guilt.
Seasons will come and go and change, and the Lord will sustain you through whatever you're in. As we give a lot of these ideas and tips and tricks for being in God's Word, and we say like, "Hey, God's Word is vital. God's Word is necessary"—as we say those things, don't hear it as a legalistic hammer, that if you don't get into the Word that exact day, suddenly, it's not worth trying ever again because you're just a bad Christian, and you've sinned or done wrong. But it's all about coming back and saying, "How can I prioritize this? How can I make this a goal in my life? How can I make this something that is as important as I know it should be?"
Because those are the things that, when we go back to those stats of feeling spiritual doubts or we think we—now I can't remember all of the areas that we're—the stress of keeping up with the work of the home, the struggle that we have about feeling, "How do I discipline my kids, or how does my theology actually apply to my life?"—a lot of those things are going to come through time and practice, but we have to be inputting God's Word in order for those things to be coming out. That's why we want to encourage you to prioritize it. It may look like the audio Bible. It may look like putting your kids in the bath and reading your Bible where you can.
It may look like taking a social media fast and realizing how much time we all really do waste on our phones, and that indeed there is time to read God's Word. It can look a variety of different ways, but we want to just, one, debunk a myth that quiet times are quiet. We've said that a lot of times on Risen Motherhood, but I feel like mom still need to hear it. Then we also want to encourage you—even if you're in a season where you can't be in God's Word or you've been in one, don't neglect it forever. Come back to it and always know that you are welcome at the throne to engage with the Lord. You're never too far gone.
Emily: I think it's good to remember that, just like we learn a lot of other skills and it can take time to feel comfortable with something, to feel good at something, to fit it into your routine and your habits—that is true of everything, like piano, baking, knitting, cooking—all the things. The same is true for getting in a rhythm with how to study God's Word. Especially if you've not been doing this for years and years and years, you're going to have to learn. It's going to feel boring. It's going to feel uncomfortable at times. You're going to have to work to make it a habit. You're going to have to set up scaffolding and cues and all of the habit science. Even those things are important.
I remember a friend told me one time—and this was helpful to me, especially in years or in weeks when I'm really, really busy—is that God's Word is not more or less powerful depending on the quantity that you get. A morsel of a verse is just as nourishing as sitting and reading six chapters in your daily Bible reading plan. God can use the morsel and nourish your soul just as much as he can use the many chapters. I know sometimes I have had a word or three words that I have meditated on from his Word. He has used that in my day as I'm thinking about that, talking to the kids about that, praying those words over. Sometimes I can rush through a big passage.
I think—don't discount like, "Oh, because I didn't get this big plan in, God can't work in my life." We have this book we just started re-reading called Joseph’s Shield. It's like a 120-year-old book or something, but it's about this little boy who—he and his sister are both orphans. While he's away from his sister and he's living in this other family's home, she challenges him to memorize one small verse every single month for a year and just respond to how God works in his life, through that verse. It is amazing to see the transformation. At the beginning of the book, he's trying to get the shortest, most irrelevant verse he can find. He's like a little—I forget how old he is, but he's like twelve or something. He gets the verse "Feed my lambs." He is like, "Oh, God can do nothing with this 'Feed my lambs.'" The whole story is how God uses "Feed my lambs" to work in his heart. Then by the end of the book, he's seeing the value of the Word of God. I don't know—that sticks with me.
Laura: That's really cool. The recognition that, just because you don't experience a spiritual high that day from God's Word, it doesn't mean that it's not working. More than likely, you're going to read it. You're going to receive it. Then you're going to go on with your day and the Lord may bring that to mind. He may not, but I absolutely know that, in especially seasons of suffering and doubt and difficulty, I have drawn on things that I have deposited years and years ago. Also don't give up or don't think it's not worth it if you're not in that moment, "Wow, Lord."
Sometimes we are blessed with those seasons, but more often than not, I think, for regular, everyday life, most Christians are kind of, "Take, receive, and trust the Lord to use where he will."
Emily: If we're thinking of the Bible in the right literary terms, we're also recognizing that we need all of those pieces over the course of time to understand context. Perhaps it's not like, "This perfect verse speaks to exactly what you're dealing with that day." Maybe it's a genealogy, but that deposit is going to help you understand something later, in the context of another verse, where maybe Jesus is speaking. We need all of those pieces of the puzzle. They don't all have to be relevant and applicable to that moment.
Laura: Yes. So, we're going to talk through the Abide Method quickly here. If you go to our website, there is a very thorough and exhaustive tutorial that you can access. If you feel, "Wait, I don't understand," it makes a lot more sense when you have a Bible and a pen in front of you and the actual tutorial. We promise. We wanted to just give you a high-level overview hopefully to whet your appetite a little bit towards it and to feel like that this is actually tangible and doable and something that you don't need a seminary degree. You don't need a bunch of training. You don't need any money to do. It's really quite simple, and, like Emily said, you're going to grow in this skill.
First thing to do is gather all the materials. So, we've already talked about what those are. You can do it alone or in a group, so it's a great thing to gather a bunch of mom pals or even invite your husband to do so. Obviously, you can meet in all sorts of ways. One of my favorite things is the alliteration with where to meet and how to meet. Donuts in the driveway or coffee in the cul-de-sac—thinking of something clever that you really don't need and feels superfluous, but it's fun to add to it. Beverages at the bonfire—whatever you want to do. But find a way to meet together with friends.
The Bible is always more helpfully understood when you're able to discuss it with someone else and see where you have hidden biases or you're reading your own situation into things. It's meant to be read in community and discussed. If you can, maybe find a friend that you can even Vox with about it. Then, lastly, is selecting your book or passage of the Bible, and I know this is one that trips a lot of people up, like, "Where do I start?" The answer is really anywhere. Literally, you can start anywhere, but if you want some ones that we recommend to start with: James, 1 Peter, Psalm 23 if you want just a one-chapter thing. The book of John is a great spot. Philippians.
A lot of those epistles in the back—the letters are a really great spot to start. Like Emily said, you can do one verse, and that is totally fine. In fact, it's really wise to do sometimes, and then other times, you might cull through a couple of chapters at a time. Maybe you're doing the Old Testament, and you're in a lot of the storytelling and things like that. Don't get caught up is what we want to encourage you. Do not get caught up in where and exactly how much you do. Just make a decision, go forward and in faith that God's going to use it, and work methodically.
Don't just like—one day you're in the Old Testament, the next day you're in the New Testament, but instead, say, "Hey, I'm going to work my way through this book of the Bible or these chapters of the Bible."
Emily: Trust it's like a process over the course of your life. This is a lifetime endeavor. In terms of the actual method itself, again, you'll see all these instructions there, but we just walk through what's called the inductive study method. This is not something that Laura and I came up with. This is a long-held Bible study technique where you observe the text and then interpret the text and then apply the text. Observing is just asking questions: "Who, what, when, where, why?"
What is it—back to second grade where you asked all those questions? It's asking that of the Scriptures and trying to understand what is actually going on here because sometimes we breeze right past that. The second question we want to really answer and understand is "What did this text mean to the original hearers? What is actually going on here?" and really dissecting that. You can sometimes use cross references and word studies and the help of commentaries.
This is where that discussion can come into play because it's important that we don't just jump straight to our modern motherhood in 2022 and say, "Because the Scripture says this, that's exactly what it means for me." To go, "Oh, whoa, whoa whoa. Wait. What did it mean to the original hearers?" Then, in application, after we understand those two things, we can start to pull those principles and consider how they might impact our lives today. We also have a gospel themes sheet so that as you are working through these, in order to find some of those principles, you can look at—I forget all the things that are on our gospel themes sheet, but we help you look through patterns of creation, fall, redemption—
Laura: Types of Christ…
Emily: Yes, all those things, so that you can start to see those things throughout Scripture.
Laura: That was a really, really fast overview and for some of you, you're like, "I totally know how to do that," and for some of you, you're like, "Oh, my goodness, I literally never heard of this. I have no idea what they're talking about." But, either way—it doesn't matter if you've been a Christian for fifty years and have all the degrees in the world or you became a Christian yesterday—this method can be used by anyone. If you've never tried it, it can feel scary and feel like you're floundering and you're flailing, but that's where, again, like we talk about getting those reps in— having that practice is really important.
Go to the website again and get the detailed tools and instruction. We hope it will be helpful for you. And now, thinking through what's next for this mini-series, we want to put a little money where our mouth is, I guess. Is that right, Emily?
Emily: I know the writing term is "show, don't tell." Just this idea that, because we believe so much in the power of Scripture, and we talk about that all the time, and we have talked about that over the years—we want to do a series that includes mostly Scripture. Instead of our voices coming in to tell you how to take gospel application, we wanted to take some shows to just read the Word to you guys and trust that, as you think through those things and meditate on those things and you do your own study, God is going to work in your heart. I know we did a show like this as part of the Fear series in 2021 called "The Meditation." We were just thinking, "What do moms dealing with fear need?"
We were, like, "They need the Word of God," and some of you may have already had a taste of this, but we heard so much feedback about this show. About how moms are replaying this over and over again as they're getting ready to go out with friends, as they're getting ready in the morning for the day, as they're driving around the car. It's been God's Word that is shaping them. It's not Laura and I—it's God's Word keeping them focused on his promises and his truth and that's really what they need.
Laura: What conventional wisdom would always say is that Emily and I keep creating new fresh content and adding our own thoughts and opinions and experiences and putting them out there and, to be frank, that's the content that does best at Risen Motherhood—as we share more things of our own thoughts and our own energies and the ways we take on life. But that's something that we are completely willing to sacrifice because we know that God's Word is the most important thing that we can give you. It is of such high priority to us that all of you guys are in Scripture, that, before you turn on our podcast, you’ve hopefully turned on an audio Bible, or before you read our book, you've read God's Word.
We just want to model that, I guess, and women have done that for us. We have been so blessed by other women who are willing to do those things and so we want to do that for you guys. We know that—if I'm most honest, I feel like I know some people will think this is boring. I know some people will think maybe this is a cop-out or that it's not as fun as what we maybe typically do, but it is something that we pray will serve you, that God will work in.
We've worked really hard to cull together these Scripture shows that are based on topics that moms are experiencing, specifically based on the survey results. We said not, "What can Laura and Emily say to that?" but "What does God say to that already?" Which is anyways what Laura and Emily are regurgitating. It's just a great way to give you directly God's Word.
Then, after that—once those Scripture shows are done—we're actually going to come back with a show on Scripture memory which is something that we also want to encourage you guys in. Again, another way to hide God's Word in your heart, to be meditating on it, to get you there so that you don't even need a Bible.
It's right there, tucked inside your minds and your hearts, and something that you can draw on any time. We're going to talk about that. Hopefully, just send you off into summer with a great encouragement and excitement for getting into God's Word and hopefully getting together with a group of people that you can do the Abide Method with.
Emily: I think—I remember a couple of years ago, my pastor, when we were studying Psalm 119, said this first, and it's always stuck in my mind: "The unfolding of your Word gives light; it imparts understanding." I think that is what we want for you guys. To see God's Word unfolded in our lives and for it to give light to all of the dark areas, the things that we're still struggling with. We have faith that he's going to do that in and through these next shows.
