Hey friends, happy April Fool’s Day. Happy April Fool’s Day. Today is Wednesday the 1st of April. This is episode number … Are you ready? Wait for it, 905. Today, I’m going to talk to you a little bit about treasuring times in your heart, treasuring seasons in your heart. We’re going to look a little bit at the life of Mary, and I’m going to answer some of your questions. I am so glad you guys are here today. Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right. Lots to talk about today. I really appreciate all of the questions that you guys are leaving for us. You can fill out the form at heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday, and you’re going to see lots of really great … There’s a form there, and there’s also lots of really great information for you that’s available about homeschooling, about mothering. Some of you may not know, I started a blog called The Busy Mom about 15 years ago, and we’re breathing a little bit of new life into the busy mom during COVID-19, because there’s so much up there that’s available that will be helpful for you guys right now. There’s lots of opportunities for you to learn about scheduling and running your home in a peaceful way. We’ve got recipes, we’ve got tons of information on homeschooling, lots of encouragement for mothers and marriages and all kinds of stuff. So, you guys can check that out.

Also, I want to encourage you to join me for this month’s scripture writing challenge. It starts today. And so, you can get it for free at momstronginternational.com. I’ll link back to all of these things in the show notes today, but I really have a passion to see you guys knowing the word of God and being equipped to give an answer for the hope that lies within you. There are so many things happening in the culture right now. They’re happening at such a rapid pace, and I have felt myself, over the course of the last three weeks, I think especially as I’m watching so many things get canceled on my calendar. This was the weekend I was supposed to be in Waco, Texas for Teach Them Diligently, and there are so many, I think … We’re living in very uncertain times, but the Bible doesn’t change. I was speaking to the members of MomStrong International last week, and I tried to come on once a week, I do a live teaching there over our Facebook page, and just really interact with the women.

There are lots of women studying the Bible with me right now, and I’m so thankful. I was talking to them about this panic that we’re seeing in the culture right now. A lot of us, we’re living through something that we’ve never seen before, we didn’t even realize that this is something that could even happen to us, and we haven’t been responding necessarily in a way that God would want us to respond all the time. Sometimes we do, and I’m seeing lots of really good news too, lots of neat things that God’s doing in families right now. I think this is a time for us as a nation to collectively look at our life as a nation, our life as churches, our lives as families and say to ourselves, are we honoring the Lord? I mean, God’s given us a chance to press pause.

And we were talking about this idea of hoarding and having too much, and I told the women at MomStrong International last week, I don’t think that prepping is a bad thing. I’ve had lots of guests here with me on the podcast that have been teaching you guys how to prepare for natural disasters, emergencies, things like that. Of course, we never thought we’ll be dealing with a virus that would cripple our economy and our nation. I just never thought we would be here. But the prepping part of me is really glad that we were ready. I told you guys I’ve gotten my toilet paper and paper towels and things like that on Amazon Subscribe & Save for many, many years. So when this happened, my pantry was already ready to go. I needed a few things, but it wasn’t terrible. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with prepping and having enough for your family in the event of an emergency, but when you start hoarding and we start taking a whole lot more than we need, I actually think that we’re sinning.

And so, I’m just going to keep encouraging you guys, don’t panic. Prepping is good, panic is sin. I want to be found faithful at the end of my life. When I stand before the Lord, I don’t want to stand there and say I had 15 cases of toilet paper from Costco that I was afraid to give to anybody because—wouldn’t want to be caught flat footed, wouldn’t want to be caught without that. And so, I keep asking moms, and we’re talking about this stuff over at MSI, and I’m going to keep encouraging you guys too, trust the Lord. You can trust him, you can trust him to take care of you, God understands. And I’m in the middle right now, of course, working on a manuscript and all the things that we normally do, so really life … except for my speaking season completely ground to a halt, which by the way, speaking of my speaking season, obviously, this is how we make a living, we have lots of books available for you at heidistjohn.com.

You can go to the store there. Obviously, I’ve written lots of books. If you’ve never purchased one of my books, now would be a great time. Now would be a really great time. Becoming MomStrong; How To Fight With All That’s in You For Your Family and Your Faith, Prayers For The Battlefield, a fantastic book for such a time as this. I’ve written the MomStrong Bible study. Of course, we do a monthly Bible study at momstronginternational.com, so if you’re not subscribed there, we’d love for you to do that. Everything that we do here at MomStrong International and at Heidi St. John is geared toward encouraging you to walk in right relationship with the Lord. I’m going to speak to you a little bit today out of the book of Luke, in Luke 2, and this starts of course at the birth of Jesus and goes into Jesus’s growing up. But it was encouraging to me because I’m in the middle of writing a book right now.

I’m writing a manuscript for a devotional for mothers. It’s going to come out next year at some point. I’m very excited about that, and this is one of the passages that I was studying, and I think you guys are going to be encouraging me. Listen to me read to you from Luke 2, starting in verse 41. This is Jesus speaking with teachers at the temple. Every year, Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus was 12 years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first, because they assumed he was among the other travelers. But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there.

Can you guys imagine? I left my kid at church one time, my husband was a pastor for a long, long time, almost 20 years. And so, we were at the church a lot, our kids practically lived there. And I remember one time in particular, I was home that night with the kids, but the kids had Awana, and Jay was doing worship team rehearsal and some of the things like that. Well, he came home at nine o’clock at night, and I’m getting the kids ready for bed and talking about their evening at church and all the things, and I said, “Where’s Spencer?” And Jay was like, “Well, I thought he was with you.” And I’m like, “No, he was in cubbies. He was definitely with you.” All of a sudden we were like, “Holy moly, we left him at church.” Jay went racing back to the church and the panic that we felt just thinking of our son there, worried and wondering why his parents would leave him.

And I’m imagining that Jesus’ parents really felt the same way. Here, they’re traveling all the way back to Jerusalem. Remember, they’d started out for Nazareth, and the Bible doesn’t say where they were when they realized that he wasn’t with them. But I can imagine the panic. The Bible says it took them three days to find out where he was … You guys, if it had taken me three days to find Spencer, I’d have lost my mind. Listen to this, verse 46; three days later, they finally discovered him in the temple, sitting among the religious leaders, listening to them and asking questions. So, he was totally chill, which by the way, Spencer was completely chill too when my husband found him. We also left him at a campground one time. Anyway, it’s a long story. But so Jesus is completely chill.

And the Bible says in verse 47, all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and the answers that he gave. 48, his parents didn’t know what to think. “Son”, his mother said to him, “Why have you done this to us? Your father and I had been frantic. We’ve been searching for you everywhere.” And Jesus in verse 49 says, “Why did you need to search? Didn’t you know that I must be in my father’s house?” But they didn’t understand what he meant. So, he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them, and his mother stored all these things in her heart. When I read that last part, I thought, how amazing Mary must have been? Instead of being frustrated and irritated and angry and annoyed and all the things, the Bible says that she stored all these things in her heart. And I got to thinking about, what am I treasuring right now? We’re in the middle of a pandemic, and I have been … I told you guys, frustrated at some aspects of it and worried at points.

And I think it’s easy for us as mothers, especially as parents to brush aside the everyday things that are happening with our children right now. And so, I’m just going to encourage you, let us be like Mary and take time and treasure the season that we’re in. Because even difficult seasons offer reasons for us to treasure them, and I am finding ways to treasure the season of COVID-19. I am asking the Lord to grow me, to grow our children, to make us more like him, and the Lord is doing it. And so, I just want to encourage you, God is still at work. He’s at work in the ministry here at MomStrong International, He’s at work in our nation. We have been teaching our children to pray for our president, we all wrote letters and sent them in the mail last week to him and just to say, “Hey, good job.” I can’t even imagine. That guy is carrying the weight of the world, literally, on his shoulders, and COVID-19 has given us a chance to pray for him on the regular.

I was telling my husband the other day, “Man, we should have been doing this more, before now.” And so, be praying you guys, treasure this time in your heart, ask the Lord to help you use it to the best of your ability and God will do it. I’m going to take some time today in the next few minutes I have left on the podcast and answer some questions. We’re getting lots of questions at Mailbox Monday, and there’s so many of them in there. I’m trying to answer some on Wednesdays as much as I can. I’m going to jump right in and if you guys have questions that you’d like to have asked or answered, rather, here at the podcast, just shoot me a message and you can do it at heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday.

All right, here comes a question. Heidi, I am a homeschooling mom of two, trying to raise my kids and serve the Lord. I want to bring up a sin I’ve dealt with on and off again since I was 16 years old. I am now 33. I started watching pornography in high school, but continued to struggle until I got married at a young age. I’ve been married for 13 years, and now have started watching it again every few months as a stress release. I cry after each time and feel stuck in the horrible cycle of addiction. There aren’t many resources for women who struggle with this sin, and I was hoping that you could get the word out and suggest resources to help me. I don’t want my kids to fall into this horrible sin or have my life marked indefinitely by this awful thing. Please help. So, a couple of things sweet mom … First of all, thank you so much for writing to me and for just your vulnerability and saying that you struggle with the sin of pornography.

I love that you call it a sin, and you’re not saying that it’s not, and that you’re not making excuses. I really love that, and there are a lot of resources available. I don’t know if you’ve found a website, but I found a website years ago because believe it or not, I do get questions from women quite frequently, more often than I used to, I think because of the internet. But there’s a wonderful resource called Beggar’s Daughter. I might actually see if I can get her on the show, because I think she would be an encouragement to me. But the woman who writes the streams, Jessica, she’s an author and she’s passionate about changing the narrative for sex and singleness and addiction, and she writes about Christian women in pornography and what the statistics don’t tell you. She says that statistics about pornography use among Christian women have always been a little difficult to find. It seems like we have clear cut statistics for men, even somewhat of an understanding that quote, a lot of men, even Christian men struggle with pornography. Women however, are a different story.

The earliest statistics I found on porn use among Christian women was a survey done by an online magazine in 2003. And it found that 20% of female readers admitted to having a porn problem. But what exactly does that mean? Because different from men, women’s struggle comes with qualifiers. What does it mean to have a porn quote problem? How do we define pornography? Is it erotica? Is it sexual fantasy? Is it lingerie catalogs and bridal magazines? Or is it the XXX underground where content like 50 Shades of Gray is acted out without censorship? She says, this is why she’s spoken out on the topic of women struggling with pornography, and she says she hesitates to use statistics. She says that women do watch hardcore pornography, and she’s got a lot of really great information for you to come break free from addiction without shaming.

She says pornography came from millennial children and it got the boys and the girls, and while it was just an escalation of sorts for men, it was a whole new world for women. And I think that’s absolutely true. That’s not to say that women, older than millennials, don’t struggle with pornography because that’s not true. I’ve heard from women who struggle with pornography in their 60s. This is available to women everywhere, and so I love her heart to set you free, and there are lots of resources available to you, and there are statistics out there I think that would comfort you just to know that you aren’t alone, and also, another link back to another one, there’s another wonderful article cru.org, about a woman. And she writes to the woman addicted to porn: You’re not alone. I was 17 when a man asked me for naked picture of myself. I knew it was wrong, but I got up from my computer, locked my dorm room door, prayed my roommate wouldn’t come back and gave him his pictures. That was the moment that she became pornography.

And she talks about her struggle with it and how she breaks free. And she says at the end, and I loved this, that freedom is always worth fighting for. Freedom is worth fighting for. Recovery is not easy, the only easy road is the one where you give up and stop trying and slowly waste away. But God created you for so much more than that, regardless of who you are and what you’ve done. You don’t need to be controlled by this struggle. You might have an addiction, but you are a treasured child of God. So, she writes about how she overcame her porn addiction and how it is a silent epidemic in the church, and I loved her heart. This is cru.org, but this is also Jessica Harris, who is the author of the book Beggar’s Daughter. I’ll link back to Beggar’s Daughter for you mama in the show notes today. But God doesn’t want you to live in shame, and we know that sin festers in the dark, and so I appreciate you for shining a light on this, and I am going to be praying for you today. God has freedom for you and freedom is worth fighting for.

All right, I’m going to ask one other question really quickly. Are you ready? Here we go. Heidi, what’s next? I homeschool my children and try to live a faithful Christ centered life. I participate in my local church, do you recommend I somehow get involved in my local politics to combat the culture? What would your advice be for a mom who wants to stand up for biblical values in the culture? All right. I love this question my off the bench mama friend. I love this because, you know what, those of you who are listening to this, men and women around the world who know that truth that is in God’s word and you are standing for it in the culture, God is using you. I always say, pray about what it is. Some of us are bothered by different things, some of you are going to be really warriors on the pro-life front, some of you are going to be fighting comprehensive sex education, which by the way, you guys, they’re not giving up the fight just because COVID-19 is dead doesn’t mean that these crusaders for really wrecking the hearts and minds of your kids have given up. They haven’t.

I mean, find out what really sticks in your craw, whatever you’re like, you know what, that just bothers me. That’s probably the issue that God wants you to get involved with. I believe with all my heart, that a Christian should absolutely be involved in politics. Politics determines policy. I have been a passionate supporter of President Trump. I speak about it every opportunity that I get, I believe we should be praying for our men and women in politics and who are determining really the policy and the laws for our nation. I’m always telling parents, be watchful. Even in the midst of this pandemic, there’s some crazy stuff going on right now. People taking advantage of it. I was just flabbergasted that when they tried to write the first stimulus package to help people who are not having income coming in right now, that Nancy Pelosi wanted stuff in there about voter registration, and she wanted money for the Kennedy Center. It’s crazy.

I mean, we’ve got people in the highest offices in the land right now who should be ashamed of themselves. So, do I think you should be in politics? Absolutely. I think if you’re walking with the Lord, and you’ve got a conscience, get into politics, find out what’s going on. But politics doesn’t have to mean running for Congress, politics can be getting on your local library board. We need good people with moral character to get on our library boards and our local school boards, your local parks and recreation boards. You’ve heard it said that all politics is local, it starts there. And so, I always tell people, also, look up your local pro-life groups, see what they’re doing, you can join 40 days for life. The fight for life continues in this nation, even in the midst of a pandemic. And so, there’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of room for you to get off the bench and onto the battlefield, lots and lots of opportunities.

So, I would encourage you to really pray about what God wants you to do, and then ask him to direct you. God will help you to get off the bench and onto the battlefield. I’m going to take just a moment here now, I’m almost out of time today, but just want to encourage you, I have lots of resources. We have a brand new webpage up called learnathome.today, and I’ve spent several days recording videos for that and compiling things on how resources for learning at home, so check that out at learnathome.today. And also, if you guys have ever been thinking about purchasing a book from me, we would really appreciate that support especially right now. You can find books that I have written anywhere that books are sold, Amazon, Barnes & Noble. We also have jewelry, we have a beautiful quiver necklace and an arrow necklace, and we’re selling those things in bundles right now. So, some cool opportunities that I normally just offered to people out on the road, but I’m not out on the road obviously, I’m here, and so we would really appreciate your support that way.

You can also give to the nonprofit organization which is Firmly Planted Family or you can give to heidistjohn.com. I am not a nonprofit, I am a for profit. I am feeding my family and hiring a staff to help me. But if you want to donate to us, you can do that, and I will link back to that in the show notes today. You guys, we’re praying for you. We’re praying that we would be the people that God says we would be, and that we would know his word and defend it. And so, I appreciate you listening, I appreciate every prayer that you guys are sending heaven word on our behalf, and just know that we are also praying for you. You guys, stay faithful. God is on his throne and he is doing good things in the world today, and you guys are a part of it. Thanks for listening everybody, and I will see you back here on Friday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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