Episode 156. Mama Bear Apologetics with Hillary Morgan Ferrer

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Unedited Transcript

Hillary welcome to the show. I am so thrilled to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited for our conversation. I know I am too. You are one of the people and I don't get to say this often, so I'm going to say it here. There are people who like my people will come to me and say like you and Hillary need to chat.

Like, have you heard of mama bear apologetics girl? There are just times when that will happen with people when you're a podcaster. And I want you to know that there are several of my people that have been waiting for this conversation. So. So excited to have you. We actually have a group at our church that is starting this Sunday night.

They are starting your first mama bear apologetics book as a small group. And it's a group of moms. And so are, you are a big part of my people's lives. So I'm just thrilled to get to meet. That just touches my heart. I love that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm so excited. So you have a new book coming out and we're going to get to that a little later in the conversation, but I don't want to skip over the work that you have been doing with mama bear apologetics.

I know a lot of my friends, like I said, are very familiar with your work and are so grateful for it. But for our friends who are not, I would love to hear a little bit of your heart behind mama bear apologize. Yeah, absolutely. So it kind of starts in the, this is, I feel like such an unlikely person to do this ministry for one.

I just always had guy friends all growing up. I felt comfortable. I was a daddy's girl. I felt comfortable if I was the only girl in the room. And so doing women's ministry in itself was something that I would have never expected to do. Um, but apologetics has been a part of my life since I was probably around 12.

I would consider it 12 years old when my pastor did a C. On the wired Lord lunatic, that's the CS Lewis trilemma, uh, and then evidences for the resurrection and then the reliability of the new Testament. And I remember my little mind is, you know, floating of, oh my gosh, this is actually true. It's not just stuff.

My parents, it's not just something I believe anyways, fast forward, you know, like six years ago. And I find out from a friend of mine, I was actually just texting with her a little bit ago that there's this whole demographic out there of women who won't read something, unless it's by a woman and for a woman.

And I thought, what you want is this, this is not okay. Like who's, who's reaching the kids. I know we have a lot of, um, youth apologetics, but man, that. I think early on in my, uh, in the ministry, I, I found a statistic that mothers, especially mothers of young children get more questions per hour than their queen of England does during an interview.

And so leave it. Yeah. Or every mom's like, I know that. And so I'm like moms are the ones that are getting all of these spiritual questions first and who is equipping the moms. Um, in fact, I started noticing every single conference that our church had always had childcare. Unless it was an apologetics conference.

And then for some reason, apologetic competency, I've never had childcare. And so who do you think was going? It was like the dads who are already interested in mom, stays home with the kids. So I thought, you know what? The Lord has called me to moms specifically to moms. Um, and which I guess you and I talked about this briefly, I felt, again, that I was unqualified for that because I'm not a mom.

I probably will never be able to be a mom because of health reasons, but. I thought, Lord, did you call the right person? And I kind of felt him say, I called the exact right person. Cause you have something that moms don't have. You have time to research and I thought that's true. I do. So I just try to take everything in my research and.

Uh, try to put it in a way, not only that moms can understand, but how they can break it down for their kids, because some, I mean, sometimes like you hear something, you know, it as an adult, but then learning how to translate that for a kid, that's just kind of, it's more difficult to do. So it's kind of like that twofold grouping of what I try to do to equip them.

Ah, I love that so much, Hillary, and I just want to stop real quick on the whole not feeling qualified thing, because I know I have friends listening who are feeling the same way, insert their life experience, insert what God's calling them to do, but they may be, feel unqualified even in my own story. So my husband and I got married about two and a half years ago.

He's a lead pastor where we are here in south Mississippi. And. I moved from a town I knew and loved my whole life, Knoxville, Tennessee, big sec college town. I was discipled in college girls in and out of my home all the time. I mean, ministry was just awesome and nuts and crazy and beautiful. And I moved to a small town of 12,000 people.

And I remember coming here. It sort of feeling just, you know, all the joys of marriage, all the joys of a new season, but also the great loss of the community that I had and what my life looked like before I became a pastor's wife and all those things. But I've found that in that voice, God gave me so much time that I never had before.

And so it was in that season that I pursued a literary agent and I'm now writing my first book and I've started my podcast and all of these parts of my life that never would have happened in the previous season. Right. And so. I just want to give you the mic for a second. Hillary, if there's somebody listening who feels right there today, like I'm not equipped for this, or God's maybe made a big shift in my life and I'm trying to make sense of it and I don't feel ready for it or equipped.

How would you want to encourage them? Um, so I can talk again about the, the route that I take is not the route that anyone recommended that I take. Uh, so I decided to start back at, in, in grad school for apologetics degree. Cause I figured, you know, I should probably have an apologetics degree. And I remember talking to a key person in the program when I had this idea for mama bear, I felt like I was really supposed to do it and they listen to all my excitement.

And then he said, okay, this is what you do. Don't do any of that and finish the degree first. And I remember just feeling so deflated and, you know, as, as good, as good as it is, advice probably was, I thought that's not what I'm supposed to do. And so to this day, like 10 years later, I still have three credits left on that, that I haven't done.

Um, but, uh, but it's because I've been sort of busy and I think there's something there's kind of a beauty to. When you're starting, when you're learning something and you don't know what you don't know, at least personally, sometimes that gives me the boldness to talk about what I do know. Um, before I have all this other, it's like, it's almost like the more education you get.

Sometimes you feel even less qualified because you realize how much information is out there. Um, so I don't know. I just think that w if the Lord has called. To something. And I don't think it's just calling you to something. I think if you are in ministry, he's not calling you just to a certain ministry, he's calling you to a specific people.

And if you have a heart and a burden for a specific group that you see that is not being reached, I see that that is kind of where the Lord. He really takes it over. There is absolutely no reason on this earth, why mama bear should be doing as well as it is. Um, so many people have heard about it. There is nothing that we've done that.

I mean, there's been people that have been in ministry for 20 years that haven't seen the kind of growth that we have in. I do not attribute that to us at all. I, I get attributed absolutely do the fact that we had an unreached demographic who was hungry for this. So yeah. I would say go into that ministry people first, and you know what the Lord's going to teach you along the way.

And I was kind of lucky that my, my husband has his M M D T gym and PhD in philosophy, religion, and apologetics. So I kind of had someone that I could bounce stuff off of. As I was going, but, you know, find someone who knows more than you do. And, uh, sometimes it's not the people with the most knowledge that actually the boots on the ground getting stuff done.

Um, it's the lungs didn't know how to translate that for the average person or who just have a specific burden to a specific group. Um, and. That was the other thing. When I, when the first book was coming out, I was all fretting of, oh, if I don't do this, right, I'm never going to get another chance. And I really felt the Lord clearly say to me, I will be your publicist.

I will get this book into the hands of the people who need it. So I don't know. I just say, if the Lord is calling you and you feel his moving on that it doesn't matter. Just go into it with the attitude of, I don't care if. Five. If I really equip five people, those five people are going to be different because you did that ministry.

And it's no different than someone who equips, you know, 5,000. If you were faithful. With what God is giving you, then you are accomplishing his goal and accomplishing his purposes. And don't look at what the world says about success, because it really doesn't mean anything. Yeah. He is my publicist. That is the best that encourages me.

So much in the middle of this journey as well, because I think it's so easy and this is a rabbit trail. I'm not going to go too far down because we could have a whole episode about this, the idea of building a platform and all of the things that, you know, you go to a conference and learn that are important.

Doesn't matter in eternity. And like, there are some times I'll log in, I'll log onto my Instagram and I'll look at my follower account. And I think like, man, that number represents. 8,000 people who will spend eternity. Right. And like, God has allowed me a space in their life to speak into their life. And like, that is that, is it right?

Like, it has nothing to do with book sales. It has nothing to do with podcast downloads. It's just really easy to slip down the, the road of that becoming an idol. And so, I don't know. I just want to be honest with that because to our people too, because that is a very real struggle, but God is so faithful to bless our work when we're obedient.

And even we take the first step and we don't feel. You know, equipped or ready for it. So I'm so thankful that you did that because parents and the world needs the work that you're doing right now. And I'm just so grateful. I'm so grateful for it. So we've talked a little bit about, you know, neither of us are parents, but we, I know, I know, I know I have, I have a ton of friends who are young moms and even moms of teenagers now.

And I just can only imagine how discouraged parents could potentially be by today's culture. And so if a parent is listening right now and they just feel like man, Hillary, Rebecca, I'm in kind of the pit of discouragement, I don't know how to handle all of this and the conversations I'm having to have with my kid.

How would you want to encourage them? Um, one of the number one, things that I would say is that you are not alone. And I feel like the enemy always tries to move. I feel like we're alone in something. And he makes the loudest voices around us, the ones that are like basically calling us crazy for holding to a biblical design of sexuality and gender.

Um, but I want to say you are not alone. I get so many emails from parents just being like, what do I do here? What do I do here? Um, and I think that. As, as, as much as I can be a critic of technology and social media and just the way that it's just, you know, rewiring our brains at the same time, it's bringing like-minded people together in a way that you, you couldn't.

If, I mean, like you're in a town at 12,000, that's a big city for me, I'm in a town of 10,000 and that was coming from like Dallas and LA and Nashville. And. Pella. Um, so like again, um, it can sometimes feel like you're alone in that, but there are just people, other parents online, uh, in like on Facebook and on Instagram that are wanting that encouragement.

So that'd be my first thing is the enemy wants you to feel like you're alone and you're not. Um, and the second thing would be. The beauty of the biblical worldview. I think worldview is one of those things where it's like, we talk about it. You know, some people know we're supposed to have one, but they don't really understand, like, what is this comprehensive worldview?

And what it does is it explains reality in a satisfactory way into where all the little pieces that you see actually come together. For a coherent full and understanding. And we have a whole section in the new book on the biblical worldview of looking at, um, how things were created. Good. And then how things went janky when sin came into the world.

And then basically this in-between time where, uh, we are at war with ourselves, we're at war with our nature or war with sin. And I mean, this part explains why. Why does sin feel so natural? Um, why, why can't I just do what comes natural? Isn't this the way God made me know the Christian worldview explains him.

Beta's good, but then we've got worked. And so we're going to be at war with ourselves, but the beauty of that is that Christ came to give us a new nature, but we're not fully redeemed yet. And that's one of the things the Christian worldview explains too, is we're in that already. And not yet. We're, we're going to still have these desires.

We're going to still have. You know, things that plague us, we're going to have things that come naturally in us that we're not how God created in, in part of our, uh, living for eternity, which is that beautiful blessing. And that redemption the forward. Dempson not just our spirit, but our bodies in our spirit.

We are living for that time. And we are basically, um, submitting ourselves our whole selves, our bodies, our desires. I psychology. Our emotions, our heart, we're submitting all of that. It's not just a submission. It's a dying to self, uh, you know, it, when we live in a culture that keeps talking about, oh, I need to live my authentic self, my true self.

If you are a Christ follower, your authentic self is a Christ follower. It's someone who looks like Christ, but you got to know that everything in you is going to be waging war against that in the Christian worldview explains this. And it makes you. Since, so it's not scary and it's not catching you by surprise.

So I think that, that's the other thing, I think in some ways, knowledge is power and I, there's a phrase I use throughout the book that I say you can't refute. That's what that, what you don't understand. And so, yeah. Feeling discouraged, like you don't. I think that discouragement comes from not understanding.

And when we equip ourselves to fully understand those, those fearful things become a lot less fearful because we're like, okay, I see how that fits in to the larger picture. And, um, it's just not as scary. Yeah. Yeah, that's so good. So I know that not only parents are having to have some difficult conversations with their kids right now, but I just have to imagine as a child, what's bringing, brought into our schools, what's being brought into the news that we watch and all the things they're going to have to learn how to have conversations with their peers, with their friends, with non-believers maybe in a way that they've.

We don't know how to handle, right? Like with, with everything going on in the world. And so what are some practical ways other than going and buying a copy of the book, which is number one practical way of support. Yeah. To support parents in having maybe some harder conversations with their kids, you know, in, in terms of how do I equip them to have conversations with somebody that may have different beliefs than us?

Yeah. This goes back to the quote that I just said, you can't refute that, which you don't understand. Um, I think a lot of times we tend as Christians. It's just kind of a natural thing. We tend to go into answer mode and, um, I don't think that's very helpful in the sense of like, everybody's kind of lost in a different way.

And if you have this generic, how to get from ADB, that for everyone, you have no idea where they're starting from. So I would say. Learning what the person across from you really believes in making sure you fully understand the reasoning behind why they think, what they believe in the beautiful part about this is most of the time.

Well, I won't say most of the time, a lot of the time, the person hasn't really thought critically about their ideas. They kind of absorb stuff. Um, another phrase that I talk about in the book, Is that our brains have a hard time distinguishing between that, which is familiar and that, which is true, meaning that if you hear something over and over and over again, you start to just take that as, oh, that's true.

But if you start questioning, is that true? There's usually this underlying assumption. So like in chapter four, we go real brief. Over the different types of reasoning, the logical reasoning and the emotional reasoning. And I use a method that no, no self-respecting a logistician would ever use, but I think it's helpful that I break these arguments down to an assumption of fact claim and a conclusion.

And the reason why is people will all times, most of the time, they'll jump to the conclusion. That's what they wanted debate over. And then if you ask them for reasons, they're going to cite their fat claim, but what you usually have at play isn't. That is at the bedrock of everything. So for example, when we're talking about, um, gender, there is an absolute assumption that, um, our gender lies within our psychology and not within our body.

And people are taking that as just. Objectively true. And so they can use their conclusion is, well, you know, then someone is, you know, this person who looks like a boy is a girl. It's not that they feel like a girl. They are a girl. Um, it goes from well, because this is how they feel. And if their brain is their or their, their psyche, if that's the measure of what's subjectively true.

And that's what they're feeling well, then it is true that, that the other job. But we can't fight over those things. We have to go back to that assumption of well, is it true that our, our minds are where our true self lie. And you can probably start finding examples where that's probably not the case. So teaching kids, number one, how to listen, number two, knowing that not everything.

If you disagree with someone. More than likely. They're going to say something that you also agree with and you want to emphasize these areas of agreement. Um, so teaching kids how to listen and how to be quick to agree with things that are agreeable, but then number three, knowing how to ask the right questions that brings that person back from their conclusion to their facts.

And let's uncover that assumption that's behind there. And Hey, let's have a conversation about that one. Now that's going to take a lot of training, but I would say when kids can pick this up a lot quicker than we think they can. Um, yeah. And I think we, adults just as we're going about our day, we can be modeling that for them.

You know, you see a, you see a t-shirt at, um, I've seen t-shirts at Walmart that says do more of what makes you happy. And I'm like, Hmm, does that apply to everybody? Cause I won't go into details, but there's some. Weird things, bring them joy, shall we say? Um, and, uh, do we want to encourage that behavior them?

No, we don't. So pointing out the logical fallacies within these statements, that sounds so good. Oh, they sound so good. It's like a warm blanket wrapped around you, but let's critically evaluate this statement. And once kids start getting used to, this is the pattern. This is how I think about things. Um, once you've taught them to listen and to ask questions, they're going to bring that compassionate.

And then be able to reason. And when the person just refuses to reason the kid, your kid can be like, well, they don't really want to listen to reasons. Yeah. I was willing to have the conversation. Yeah. I was willing to have the conversation. Yeah. That's so good. I haven't, I love the way that you said that about the assumptions, because you're right.

Like that's the piece that we so often miss and, um, I've, I'm, I'm stirring on that because I've never quite thought about it that way. That's really, really good. I love that. Well, when I found out about your new book, I. I need you to know how thrilled beyond thrilled I was that you were tackling this because I think it's a book that needs to be written.

I can only imagine what you faced going down this path of overriding people. People can't see people can't see, but we're both like taking a deep breath, like shoulders, like rising and falling. So your new book is called mama bear, apologetics guide to sexuality. I want to hear.

What people don't know if you're not an author is like you had to develop kind of like the framework for this book you had to probably, it may have been a part of a two book deal. I don't know. I don't know your situation, but at some point you, you made the decision, like, okay, yeah, God, like, I'm gonna, I'm going to tackle this.

And so I want to hear your heart for that. And was there like a last straw where you were like, Somebody needs to say the thing and got it. Are you asking me to do it? You know, like I want to hear a little bit of the story. Okay. So this is good time. So, um, so let's get real here. Um, this is the book I swore I'd never write.

And I told God, Nope, I'm not touching that one just because I'm out of all the things in COVID. If you want to see people get really angry in the most irrational, in the most volatile and the most attacking it's around areas of sexuality. And I, I'm just not a big fan of that. I like equipping. I'm not as much like that frontline person who gets a rise out of yeah.

Let's, let's take on this cultural issue. Yeah. So the publisher asks me. Multiple times to write this book. And I turned him down every time. Um, and I would like to say there was some spiritual moment where the Lord was like, Hillary, I've called you to this. But the fact was, um, it was March of 2020, and COVID was just hitting the fan and.

They asked again for like a third time. And I was like, oh my gosh, John could lose his job. And this is money in the bank, at least something that would get us through at least part of a year. And so I finally said yes. And then for the next seven months, I was like, why did I say yes? Why did I say yes. So, uh, my heart was not exactly where it needed to be, but once I actually sidetrack, I told my husband had got this.

And he's like, what? They asked you three times. He's like fight known that I would've told you to do it the first time you need to write this book. So sometimes the. Me in ways that are just not quite so spiritual. Um, yeah, sure. Like I, I married the exact right man, but if we had gone through the normal way of dating and all that stuff, I would have self sabotaged that thing so fast, but we weren't normal either.

Yeah. We're cut from the same cloth long distance relationship. The second that you moved to. And we got engaged. And so it was like two, it was, it was too fast for me to self-sabotage and my husband, if, uh, if you read in chapter three, you'll hear how amazing he is. But, um, yeah. So after I started doing that, I started, so I'm going into this book.

I, we went through so many different. I, I, there was no rhyme or reason to this. It was basically like, I have no idea how to organize this. And so I eventually just started writing things that were on my heart and I still have, I mean, just all these different essays. And then my, my wonderful editor at harvest house was helping me kind of put this, um, in, and I also had a.

Yeah. Yeah. I also had a partner, Amy, who, who contributed to this book and yeah, there was just a lot of wrestling with topics. And I would say that the stuff this I wasn't expecting to have to go into it was after I was made aware of the new 20, 20 national sex education standards. And that I was like, oh my gosh, this is the thing that Christians have been saying forever.

Not even Christians, just conservatives have been saying forever that this agenda is coming in and they're all like, you're a conspiracy theorist. Well, they just came out and wrote it all out in these new standards. Yeah. Uh, exactly where they're coming from. So I had to boil down. Volumes of books into a single chapter to explain, um, all of these, um, ideas that surround this.

Cause I, I never want to just answer the questions I'm always looking for. What is the worldview underneath this, this causing all the problems. So, um, that was really stressful. There was just so much. So much dark research that I had to do. And I think in some ways God gave me a special protection in some ways, but in other ways, I mean, I was slipping into depression with some of the stuff I was reading.

I can't thank God I had people helping me with the porn chapter or else there would be some really dark stuff in there. And my, my editor was like, we don't want to have that one into the book for moms. And so, and now that I'm having to read the audio book, I'm like, thank God. I didn't put that in there.

Thank you, Kathleen. Um, yeah. So, but I think my heart for this group, As I was writing the book, I think it had been a source of fear for me, like serious, serious here. So in some ways, like in any kind of mama bear out there that are parent that is going from this really fearful place, guess what? We're taking the journey together in this book, it's going from fear to understanding to this.

Feeling like, yeah, this is a defensible position. This makes sense. This, this view of sexuality makes sense in the larger picture. It's, it's this picture of what flourishing looks like and how, how, if you follow, it's not like a one staunch model, but you know, these guidelines. And this is like the recipe for life and flourishing.

Um, so, uh, so my heart and I did kind of finally realize after I had several people kind of read it and they all said, well, I don't think I could have ever done this book. And I thought, well, maybe that's why I did do it is, um, I'm naive enough to say the stuff that it might be harsh. And I try to stay extremely loving, um, very loving, but still, uh, I don't know what, trying to expose some of the lies.

And I'll just say that the spiritual attack that came with this book, like I thought it was bad in the first book, but this book yeah. I learned about prayer for the last two books I've done. I cannot imagine I have not been taking prayer seriously enough. And so for this book, we had a whole prayer team specifically, and the launch team was a launch team and prayer team.

So anyway, so that's my heart behind this book is to take away the fear, um, that people have because, um, Man, we have these messages coming at us all the time. And one of the things I point out in chapter six, um, that, uh, that the enemy uses is repetition, repetition, repetition, because again, remember the heart, the brain has a hard time distinguishing between that, which is familiar and that, which is true.

Um, so anyway, in the afterword I have a whole, uh, it was going to be a chapter, but then I. The final chapter was a good write chapter. So I just make it made it an afterward, but it's called things to repeat to your kids until they want to gag. And it's just these little maxims of bite sized pieces of a worldview that if you keep saying it over and over again, that's going to be what burrows into their brain, instead of stuff like following your heart and, you know, whatever.

Um, these pieces are going to be what barrels into their brain, and that's going to be one of the things that helps them build that biblical worldview. Mm that's so good. You know, Laurie, I remember a few months ago you posted something on Instagram about writing the book and you ask people to pray for you.

And it was like in the middle of, I don't, I don't know if you were editing. I don't know at what point you were in, but that was the first time I had heard that this book was coming. And I just want you to know every time your name crossed my Instagram page. I made it a conscious effort to pray for you because I could only imagine I could only imagine what you were facing.

And so that's one of the reasons I was so excited to have this conversation. That had to have been so real and very dark. And I just want to honor you and celebrate you for like the work God's done through you, because I know this was a hard book to write, but you also through your own fear and God using that and getting to the other side of it, you like you just so eloquently said better than I could.

You are equipping women and mama. With fear over this topic to find freedom from that. And I put their kids. So I'm just, I'm so thrilled about that. And you know, back to this whole, the brain can better discern what feels familiar than what's true. I can imagine it would be a challenge to reframe a child's mind who may be.

Has become confused about their sexuality or their gender role, all of those things. And so if a parent is right in the thick of that right now, and they're having some of those conversations, Again, other than grabbing a copy of the book and working through all of this, what's something today that you would want to maybe encourage them as kind of a place to start.

I think one of the big ones that kids are getting really confused with right now, um, well, I'll, I'll also, I'll answer that in terms of gender, and then I'm gonna answer it in terms of sexuality, but in terms of gender they're being told that there's these infinite number of genders, all the, all these things.

But, uh, there, there was a passage in a book called to our bodies, tell God's story by a guy named Christopher West. That's a phenomenal book, but he breaks some of the stuff down to real simple ideas of just look at the language, the root word gen, uh, means that which produces. So you have stuff like generations and genitals and genealogy and all these different things.

If we want to look at, um, what gender is, it's basically what your contribution would be in order to bring forth life. There's a spectrum of this. You get a producers and you've got sperm producers, and then you have people that maybe have a genetic abnormality where they can't do either. Them's the options like it, uh, how you feel in your head.

You know that that is going to change this, this idea that they've, they've turned something that's fixed into something malleable and they've turned something malleable into something that's fixed. The thing that's fixed is our bodies. And now they're saying, well, we can change that. The thing that's malleable is basically how you feel on any given day.

I mean, I. Readily admit that I were, you know, back before I was married more so than now I would wear cammo. And, you know, I shopped in the little boys section at old Navy up until my twenties. Um, just cause I didn't like the girls styles. And you know, I liked being with the guys that I liked rough house, you know, I like, you know, having pushup con you know, contests and stuff like that.

It's like we have all this freedom as humans to, to pursue our interests, but they've made these stereotypes. Oh, if you don't like makeup, maybe you're more of a boy or a ma. If you don't like football, maybe you're more of a girl and they've made these malleable things fixed in the fixed things, our bodies malleable, that doesn't make sense.

And I think even children's and understand that, that doesn't make sense. So I would, again, go back to what is the theoretical contribution that you have to produce in like life is at an Agora is from then that that can tell you what your gender is. Um, and when, in terms of sexuality, Thing that I'm hearing from a lot of parents that they're getting is basically it's, you know, I'm sure they, I'm sure the teenagers have more sophisticated ways of doing this it's but it's kind of how do you knock it?

How can you knock it till you try it? Like, you don't know if. Unless you try being body. And so I would say for gender, one of the big things that's coming up right now that Christian parents need to be aware of is this idea of non-binary meaning I don't identify as male or female and for sexuality it's to be, um, bisexual.

Um, but I would say if we, again, if we go back to the original design, even saying that you're bisexual is assuming that you're having sex with at least two different people, um, When the biblical view is that, um, you commit to someone for life and that that's who you have your sexual relationship with.

Um, I think, I think we would be silly if we didn't think that random attractions can happen all the time. Sure. And you can eat attractions, you can feed, um, to yourself. It's kind of like, um, you can change your brain, you can tell your brain what to crave. And if you start going down that road of trying out all these things, well, guess what your brain is originally going to crave it, it doesn't mean that's who you were.

It means that you've literally changed your brain in order to start craving these things. And so why would you want to do that to yourself? Um, yeah, but again, it's because, uh, sexuality for the world. Um, pleasure and consent, that's it. And that's what we learn in the sex positivity chapter. Um, we need to, we need to start really showing what sexuality is from a very young age and, um, something that I think I saw from both Christopher West and Tim Keller that I think is super helpful.

I wish I'd had this when I was young, was describing sex as a, um, married couples, recitation of their bodily, or sorry, a bodily recitation of their marital. So, um, if you compare, so if you think of the marriage ceremony, um, this is where you say it in your words, and you were not considered married until in some.

Uh, traditions had it like the ceremony they went over and consecrated it and then came back out to party and oh, wow. Yeah, I know. I was like super uncomfortable. I think in the German tradition, there was even someone there to witness it. I'm like, oh yeah, I know it's new. Thank you. Um, but um, the way that I would compare this, and I wish I'd thought of this in time to put it in the book is say that you have a, not that a marriage is a covenant, you know, it's not a contract, it's a covenant, but think of, think of the idea.

Uh, contract does have words on it that you're agreeing to, and it has your name printed on there, but when is it actually considered a valid contract when you sign it? Yeah, so I can sign my name on a blank piece of paper. And that doesn't mean anything because I'm not agreeing to anything that would be like having sex outside of marriage.

It's not promising anything. Sex can only point back to a promise that was already. Um, and so like in signing a contract, you're pointing back and saying, yes, I agree to this right here. So if we think of just sex itself as a bodily recitation of marriage valves that were already made, it's always pointing back to a promise.

And at that point, I think, um, that's a lot healthier way to view because otherwise you have kids that just have this sex is wrong. Sex is wrong, sex is bad. And then they're supposed to flip the switch on the. Of their web, but if they're looking forward to those wedding vows and saying, I'm looking forward to bodily russet, reciting those wedding vows with my husband, it actually.

The normal progression and I think it would be healthier. That's a beautiful way to see it. I've never heard someone describe it quite like that. I think that's so good. So, so good. Well, before we hop on over to our Patrion page and do a little bonus section with Hillary to get to know her better, I'm excited about that.

I just want to give you the opportunity Hillary, to just share. You know, what's your prayer for women as they walk away from the message of this book. And then how can we be praying for you as you're walking into launch season? Thank you. Um, my prayer for women is that they would go from fear to just feeling confident that the biblical world.

Accurately reflects reality. Um, and you can be, it's like, there's a difference between belief and conviction when you're convicted that this is the truth. Doesn't matter what anybody else says. So just, um, uh, being bold to start early, um, and build that worldview with your kids. Um, that, that would be the number one.

Um, I've had some women say for my launch group that, um, there was one that read the last two chapters and she said that did for me what 20 years of counseling has not been able to do. So there's a lot of areas where I'm hoping that just, um, people that have been in bondage in some way to, um, To things that have happened to them or to sins or to not understanding how this work.

I just want this to be like removing the scales from the eyes and freeing people who have been captive to bad ideas. Um, yeah. Yeah. Like when, when she wrote that in the launch team, I told my head like literally woke my husband. I was like, I need to read this to you. I said, even if the book crap, you know, bombs and nobody likes it, I've got that comment.

That's that woman right there. Um, And that's kind of been the, the mantra of our ministry the whole way through, like when we first started mama bear apologetics. I don't know. Have you seen Hacksaw Ridge? Yes. It's been several years. Where he keeps going back and he just says, one more, Lord, let me get one, one more.

He's not focused on the whole field of soldiers he's focused on. I can do one more. Um, and so I think that's been kind of my, my mantra for this, and I can look at that one feedback that I got I'm like, that was one more right there. Okay. Um, that's so. My prayer is that we would just keep getting one more and one more and one more.

And the people that are held bondage to bad ideas would find freedom. The prayers for me personally, this might be the season that the Lord gives me a bit of a thicker skin. Um, yeah, my body responds to stress. Like I don't do you know what happened to me at the end of this book at all? Um, so at the end of this book, I ended up having some kind of tumor growing in me and I had to have probably one of the most gnarly surgeries and it actually made it to where I wasn't able to do a lot of the editing on certain chapters that I wanted to do.

And there's one chapter that I'm like, oh, I wish I could do that one again. Um, but yeah, so I had major surgery. The kind that they say your recovery is measured in years. Not. Um, so for anyone who wants to look it up, it's called the Whipple procedure. They like remove half of your pancreas, part of your intestine, your gallbladder part of your stomach.

It's just, you know, scar from here to here, all that to say is stress really affects my body. And just even with the launch team, posting little quotes, people are so ready to fight over anything. Sexuality. They've had so many. Bad examples of the church talking about sexuality, that they immediately place all the baggage onto anything that I say.

And so I, the book's not even out, I'm already having people accusing me of causing people to commit suicide. So, um, that's the kind of fight and they're willing to defend the people that they see that are going to be harmed by, by the message of this book without even reading it. Um, and that's hard on me because it's like, I I've always had.

For specifically the same sex attracted community that, uh, I think they've just been treated very badly by the church in general, but at the same time we can't change truth, but we have to change the way we approach things. So just we're going to be getting pushback. Not only from non-Christians. I mean, non-Christians, I don't know why they'd read the book in the first place, honestly.

But there's going to be a lot of Christians who have changed their theology. So we're going to be getting hit on both sides. And so if the prayer for me is that the Lord would protect my mind that I would just be able to, you know, if someone's angry and all that, just let it go. You know, I, I can't fight every battle, but also to protect my body, like the night that we were having.

The person who was talking about, oh, it's teaching like yours, that causes people to commit suicide. My, uh, my blood pressure went up to like one 50, over a hundred and it's like, I have no control over that. So just a protection for my. Yeah, absolutely. We'll be praying that for sure. I am just so proud to be your new friend.

This is like the beginning of our friendship, this conversation, but I it's been long awaited for me. I've been so excited to get to know you and I'm so thrilled to see what God does with this message. I know it's going to impact the lives of so many mama bears. So thank you for being obedient. Thank you for writing it.

And thank you for being with me today. This was so fun.