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This podcast is brought to you by MomStrong International.

Hi, everybody. This is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. Today is Wednesday, November 20th. This is episode number 847. Today’s episode is brought to you by MomStrong International. We are teaching moms to study the word to train up their children to walk in righteousness. Today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about what’s going on in the culture and I’ll be answering some of your questions. 

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So thanks for tuning in today everybody. As usual, thank you so much for leaving reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. I got a special favor to ask today. There’ve been a couple of people leaving reviews that are a little on the obnoxious side over at Amazon for Becoming MomStrong. And so if you guys have read the book and you don’t think I’m a homophobe or a bigot and you haven’t ever left a review for Becoming MomStrong over at Amazon, now would be really good time. Okay, that’s all I got to say about that.

All right, so couple of things happening in the news right now. Obviously, the Democrats are continuing their push for impeachment of the President of the United States. And last week, I ranted a little bit about … there’s a couple of things actually that I ranted about, but I ranted a little bit about my just disgust with the Democratic party here in the United States, and I said shame on them. I have never, and I mean never seen anything like this. The Democrats can’t win at the ballot box, so their only hope is then to hold a Salem witch hunt-style, phony political impeachment hearing. It’s disgraceful, it’s embarrassing and it’s wrong. And I hope that reasonable people on both sides of the aisle will come out in droves next November and teach them a lesson that they’ll never forget. You know what we’re doing with this? We’re teaching our kids that when you don’t get what you want, it’s okay to do anything to get it.

Now, you guys might not like Donald Trump’s style. You might wish he’d get off Twitter or think that he’s arrogant or even impetuous, but he hasn’t done anything that rises to the level of impeachment. Impeachment is a political death sentence. It’s the equivalent to a public hanging, and it should be reserved for true crimes against the nation. So you guys can say what you will. I think the President loves the United States of America, and I’m disappointed and frankly disgusted with anyone on Capitol Hill who would push for this impeachment inquiry. It’s a sad time for our nation’s history, and I hope you guys will be joining me in praying for President Trump. That’s exactly what I am doing. I’m praying for him, he needs our prayers. I literally have never seen anything like this in my entire life. So I hope you guys are praying.

And really, I mean, as I’m watching the pundits sort of throw this thing around, someone said to me on my Facebook page the other day, she said, “Heidi, you shouldn’t have any political posts on your page.” And I was like, “Wrong. This is my page. It’s my prerogative and politics matter. It absolutely matters.” You guys, politics determines policy. Since when did we start saying that we can’t talk about politics? I think part of the reason that we’re in the mess we’re in is because that’s been what we’ve been saying for a long time. We’ve been saying, “Hey, go ahead and be quiet about politics and religion. These are the things we don’t talk about at Thanksgiving. These are the things that we don’t engage, don’t engage.” And so in our lack of engagement, what has filled the vacuum? True fascists like Antifa. Hello, they are the true fascists. You don’t believe me, go to downtown Portland and just watch for a little while. It’s fascinating.

And I believe that the conversation’s important and I think we can have it in a way that brings life. It doesn’t have to be the screaming, yelling thing. So engage, you guys. Don’t be afraid to engage. It’s time for us to begin to engage the culture. I’d love to see Christians in every sphere of influence. I’d love to see us be in medicine. I’d love to see us teaching in the public schools and be on school boards and on library boards and in politics. Christians have the power of the Holy Spirit at their disposal. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and so when we have no fear of God, we’re going to have a really hard time doing anything that’s wise. And my goodness, we’re seeing that right now. And so I’m praying, really, I’m praying for our nation. I’ve been thinking a lot about holiness also in light of what happened with John Crist, something else that I have wrote about and have been very passionate about because I think that it’s time for our church to, actually, it’s past time.

It’s past time for our church to have a conversation about living a life of holiness, living a life of holiness. And we’re not really talking about that anymore in the church. And we’re not talking about it enough. I shouldn’t say we’re not talking about any more because I realize that there are some churches that are talking about it. And I watched the saga with John Crist unfold with just sadness. It makes me sad. Another so-called Christian celebrity bites the dust. And we feign that were shocked and we talk about how we need to be forgiving and how we’re all sinners and how, what a hot mess we all are and this is what I’ve been telling you for many years, frustrates me about women’s ministries. We stand around and we talk about what a hot mess we are and we’re drinking too much wine in the evening.

It’s wine o’clock and we wallow in our weakness. Where is our discernment? We’re upset because his public profile and career is damaged. Guys, this is a guy who doesn’t just have a sin issue. This is beyond John Crist looking at porn. This is John behaving in a predatorial way towards women while, all the while saying that he’s a Christian comedian. This is frustrating to me, you guys and it shows the pitfalls of fame and money. But we need to have people in our lives that will hold us to account. The most frustrating thing that I have read in this whole thing is that John Crist said that his team knew about his behavior since 2016 at least, and they let him carry on without so much as a, “hey, our guy is a predator warning”. Wrong on a hundred different levels. Why is this happening? Because we’re a milk loving immature church. And holiness starts in the quiet places of our lives.

It starts with a quiet personal commitment, personal to becoming more like Jesus. And if we can’t do that, we’re going to look just like the world or worse since we claim to look like Christ. And I wrote this and put it out on social media and the usual suspects came out and said, “How dare you judge and blah, blah, blah.” You guys, we are actually called and commanded to righteous and wise judgment. The minute one of us calls ourselves to… we call ourselves a Christian, then we are then subject to and accountable to the Christians around us. This is the church we’re supposed to be holding each other accountable. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t forgiveness. It doesn’t mean that there can’t be a do over and a reboot and redemption, a redemption story can totally can come from this, but we better start talking about the huge problem we have in our churches right now with a lack of accountability and the sloppy agape that we’re getting away with. And just a lack of basically just an overall lack of integrity. 

In 1 Peter 1:15 the scriptures say you must be Holy because I am Holy. He didn’t say that it was a, this is a multiple choice. You can be or not be, A, B or C. he said you must be Holy. So like most authors, I spend quite a bit of time studying words, right? And language is a cornerstone in our culture. And in recent years we’ve seen the language changed dramatically. We’ve seen reckless attempts by social activist to redefine gender in an attempt to get rid of our societal male and female norms. We’ve seen a shift away from kindness and our everyday language, which has given way to divisive speech. And it threatens to tear us apart even in the church.

But I’ve grown more and more concerned about the state of God’s people, particularly as it relates to holiness. So I looked up the word, of course, and according to the dictionary, so Webster, right? Holiness is the state of being sinless. Purity of moral character, freedom from all forms of evil. Well eh, because the dictionary just described God. Okay. And I can’t relate to that definition at all. So thank goodness that’s not what the Bible means when it calls Christians to live a life of holiness. God isn’t looking for a state of being sinless. Because He that we can’t attain such a thing on this earth.

Rather, the Greek word that’s used for holiness is αγιότης and it simply means this: We are to be as set apart people. It means we are not to be like the world that we live in, rather where to be different. Like God is different. Truly, there’s no one else like God. Oh men and women, how we need to be set apart. And part of that being set apart means we hold each other to account. And as I am thinking about this and I’m preparing for the podcast today, I’m realizing again that the church in Western culture is at a crossroad and we’ve been here for a kind of long time, like sort of an old Ford pickup truck out in the middle of Missouri, right? It’s like we’re paused at a four way stop on a dirt road, scratching our heads, waiting for Waze to tell us which way to go.

Should we turn left? Should we turn right? Should we go straight? Doesn’t seem like we know what to do, but we should. God has been clear from the beginning as to what he expects of his people and he expects holiness. He expects us to be different. Our relationship should be different. What we watch on TV should be different. The music we listen to, the way we look at sin, it should all be a part of our desire to walk in obedience to God that produces that desire for holiness inside of us. There is no room in the Bible for God’s people to view sin lightly and yet we struggle to be set apart. So I hope today as you’re listening to this that you are striving toward holiness. Remember you guys, God doesn’t expect perfection, all right? He expects surrender. You should write that down.

He doesn’t expect perfection. He expects surrender and if you want to see your kids strive to live a life that would please God, then don’t do your best to blend in. We have a choice to make and I am praying that we would choose holiness. It’s all right for Christians to call out other Christians. When we see them sinning, particularly when we’re talking about public figures. And we’re not talking about a judgment in terms of judging a person’s soul. Only God can do that, but Jesus said that we would know a tree by its fruit and there are consequences to sin.

We need people in our lives that would hold us to account. I am surrounded by people that will hold me to account. My husband, the women that work on my staff at MomStrong international and at the Homeschool Resource Center in Vancouver. We have a great thing going. If we see one of us stumbling and starting to get into a pattern of especially of habitual sin, oh my goodness, you guys, we should be talking to each other. We should be calling each other out. Let’s not wait until we’ve so tarnished the reputation of Jesus and so wounded the people around us that it takes years to recover. Instead, let’s choose holiness. Let’s choose surrender.

And in that surrender we say, “Lord, have your way. Have your way.” Some of you guys are listening to this right now and the Holy spirit is telling you, “you got to surrender. You got to give that thing up. You got to give it up. You got to lay it down”. There is something beautiful about being able to lay it down and just say to the Lord, “Lord, I see that I’m doing this. I see that I’m sinning before you help me to be set apart. Help me to walk in a manner that’s pleasing of You, and that’s worthy of Your gospel.” And the Lord will do it. He really, really well. So let’s be Holy. I have said that I’m going to start answering some of your questions on Wednesdays as well.

Love your questions. You guys, keep them coming. You can shoot them to me at my website, Heidistjohn.com/mailboxmonday. And remember what I said, please put a one or two word sentence in there, one or two word description of what you’re writing about and then in as succinctly as possible, get your question out there and we would love to answer it here at the podcast.

So this one comes from a mom, her name is Sarah and she has a question about birth control and this was a really fascinating question. It came in quite awhile ago and I kind of tiptoed around it. I was like, I don’t know if I want to talk about that or not. There are certain things that I feel like we can talk about them but they don’t really help. Right? We can talk about it, but it’s not really edifying everybody. But something that she said to me sort of peaked my interest. So I’m going to go ahead and tackle this one and I hope it encourages. I’ll link back to some resources also to help you further study this issue. All right. She said, “Last night I was listening to a podcast in which you described certain things that are disputable and indisputable in the Christian walk, you mentioned birth control as something that is disputable. When I was a younger married woman, I use birth control in the form of the pill. I thought that it prevented conception from occurring at all, but only years later found out that it does not always prevent conception. It will prevent implantation on the wall of the uterus after conception has occurred. When I discovered that I was completely devastated and grieved deeply, perhaps your statement was only alluding to natural family planning or the use of condoms, but I feel strongly that people need to know how the pill really works. I thought perhaps you had a platform in which you could share this with other married women who maybe don’t know the truth about the pill. In my mind, the use of the pill or any similar form of birth control would be an indisputable sin in God’s eyes. I look forward to hearing back from you.”

So Sarah, I realized that you turned that question in quite some time ago and I’m going to probably bum some of you out today by saying that I also… So I had a very similar understanding of the pill. I was told that it would prevent pregnancy. And it turns out that it prevents, it does prevent implantation. And so there’s a couple of ways for us to look at this. First of all, Randy Alcorn, who I very much respect, runs eternal Perspective Ministries here in my neck of the woods out in Boring Oregon. And he has an awesome article that was written on February 17th of 2010 called Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortion? A Short Condensation. Let me, I’m going to read to you just a little bit. I’ll link to the full thing as well as his book in the show notes today.

“The pill is the popular term for more than 40 different commercially available oral contraceptives. In medicine, they are commonly referred to as BCPs or birth control pills or oral contraceptives. They’re also called combination pills because they contain a combination of estrogen and progestin. The pill is used by about 14 million American women each year. Across the globe, it is used by 60 million. The question of whether it causes abortions has a direct bearing on untold millions of Christians, many of them pro-life who use and recommend it. In 1991 while researching the original edition of my book, Pro-Life Answers for Pro Choice Arguments, I heard someone suggest that birth control pills can cause abortions. This was brand new to me in all my years as a pastor and a pro-lifer, I had never heard this before and I was immediately skeptical. My vested interests were strong in that Nancy and I had used the pill in the early years of our marriage as did many of our pro life friends and why not? We believed it simply prevented conception. We never suspected it had any potential for abortion. No one told us that this was even a possibility. I confess I never read the fine print of the pills package insert nor am I sure I would have understood it even if I had. In 14 years as a pastor. I did considerable premarital counseling and warned couples against the IUD because I’d read it could cause early abortions. I’d recommended young couples use the pill because of its relative ease and effectiveness. At the time I was researching Pro-Life Answers, I found only one person who could point me toward any documentation that connected the pill and abortion. She told me of just one primary source that supported this belief and I found only one other. Still these two sources were sufficient to compel me to include this warning in the book.” 

And here is his warning.

“Some forms of contraception, specifically the IUD, Norplant, and certain low dose oral contraceptives often do not prevent conception but prevent implantation of an already fertilized ovum. The result is an early abortion, the killing of an already conceived individual. Tragically, many women are not told this by their physicians and therefore do not make an informed choice about which contraceptive to use.” Randy goes on to say, “As it turns out, I made a critical error at the time. I incorrectly believe that low dose birth control pills were the exception and not the rule I thought most people who took the pill were in no danger of having abortions. And what I’ve found in more recent research is that since 1988 virtually all oral contraceptives used in America are low dose. That is, they contain much lower levels of estrogen than in earlier birth control pills.” 

And so he does a lot of research on this. He quotes Pharmacists for Life. He has a study that comes from the physician’s desk reference, which is excellent and I’ve read the whole article. It’s much too long to read to you. Also, his book Pro-Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments is an excellent, excellent read. And so I’m going to let you guys chew on that a little bit. And then I want to kind of turn the conversation just really briefly to what God says about children. All right, so a lot of us have experienced unplanned pregnancies, right? I have. My fifth baby was an unplanned pregnancy and you guys are to like “What? Your number five, don’t you know how that works?” Yes, but we weren’t planning on having a baby and the Lord had other plans for us and so when we find out that we’re pregnant and it’s an unplanned pregnancy, what we need in any pregnancy is the perspective of God.

In Jeremiah 1:5 it says, “before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you were born, I set you apart”. God is the author of life. Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “I bring to life”, and so even if you feel like you’ve made a mistake, your child is not a mistake. God is not surprised by the creation of new life. He is the creator. And those whom he creates, He loves, and we know because of Romans 8:39. That nothing can ever separate you or your baby from the love of God. In Genesis 29:31 we read that God opens and closes the womb, right? 1 Samuel 1:5 the Lord closed her womb. God ordains all pregnancies regardless of the circumstances. That’s why when we talk about cases of rape and incest, I always say it is not the baby’s fault.

We don’t… The baby should not get a death sentence because it was conceived in rape. In Isaiah 44:24 this is what the Lord says: Your Redeemer who formed you in the womb, I am the Lord who has made all things. And God never forms a life without having plans for that life. Jeremiah 29:11 for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. You guys see that from God’s perspective, all pregnancies are from him and therefore are wanted by him. And so when we talk about babies, when we talk about a pregnancy planned, especially unplanned, the most important thing that we can do as God’s people is to always represent God’s point of view. We are ambassadors for the Lord. That’s what we do.

We represent the Lord’s point of view to the culture. And so I want to encourage you toward that today. This was kind of a heavy question, but I appreciated it being asked and I hope you guys are encouraged to look up what God’s Word says and to do your homework on the pill. My husband and I made the decision to go off the pill many years ago when we realized that it was preventing an already fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. And we were so dismayed by that because no one told us. We were told that it prevented ovulation. So check it out you guys and then ask the Lord to give you wisdom and he will. So thank you guys for writing to me today. 

As usual, I love it if you’d leave reviews for the podcast, we’d love to hear from you. Love your Christmas cards. Love it if you join me at MomStrong International for the Bible study. And speaking of the Bible study today is when I do my teaching. So I’ll be going there for about an hour and teaching live at the members only Facebook group. So if you’re a part of MomStrong International’s Bible study, makes sure that you join us there. If you’re not on Facebook, we will record those videos and then put them out over the MomStrong International forums. All right. Stay faithful. Stay in the word and I’ll see you back here on Friday for part two of my interview with the Creation Guys. 

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

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