560: Untangling Your Faith While Decluttering Your Home: An Honest Conversation
In today’s episode Kathi dives deep with author Amberly Neese, as they discuss how their clutter journeys and spiritual journeys collide. Feeling guilty about getting rid of things we no longer need, or being paralyzed by the fear of needing more in the future, reveals what we believe about the goodness of God and how much we can trust Him to provide for us.
How do we untangle our faith while working through our cluttered closets?
Recognize how God provides for our needs – often through the generosity of other people.
Take the words “bad” and “good” out of the conversation in regards to buying. Recognize the patterns and make different choices in the future.
Think of the person who will receive the items you donate and pray for them.
Keep what you use, and be okay without the excess. A house with less clutter allows for more peace and joy.
Amberly is giving away 2 copies of her new Bible study – Untangling Faith: Reclaiming Hope in the Questions Jesus Asked. To enter to win, leave a comment below telling Kathi and Amberly what is it that you are untangling in your life?
Pre-order your copy now in order to access the online study with Amberly. Simply send your purchase receipt to Amberlyby email.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to be notified when the next episode is released. When you do you will also receive a free Clutter Free Kit with handouts and video interview with Kathi!
Untangling Faith: Reclaiming Hope in the Questions Jesus Asked
A six-week Bible Study focusing on the questions Jesus asked in the New Testament
Are you struggling to provide guidance to your children in their faith deconstruction? Have you ever struggled to find your faith footing? Join Amberly Neese as she explores the questions Jesus asked as a way to reclaim that faith. Chapters explore our own questions like: Can God Be Trusted? and How Can I Grow in Faith? Amberly’s unique humor and wit help the whole group find their way through deep and rich issues of personal faith, doubt, and growth.
In her trademark style, Neese combines Bible study with delightful humor to create a refreshing and engaging experience that will encourage and equip others to pursue deeper relationships and true belonging by loving, serving, and helping others (including our kids) do likewise. She describes Untangling Faith as an exploration of the big questions of faith through the lens of the questions of Jesus.. The study is designed to encourage, empower, and equip participants to ask questions, seek answers, and find hope in the journey.
Components for this six-week Bible study, each available separately, include a Participant Workbook with daily reading and reflection, a full Leader Guide to help plan full group sessions, and video sessions with six 20 to 25-minute segments (with closed captioning). Order your copy here.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.
Meet Our Guest
Amberly Neese
Amberly Neese is a speaker, humorist, emcee, and encourager with a passion for “GRINspiring” others. She is currently on two national tours, writes Bible studies with Abingdon Publishers, and tries to save the world one coupon at a time.
With a master’s degree from Biola University, Neese serves as a professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University. She and her husband, Scott, have two adult children and live in Prescott, Arizona, where they enjoy the great outdoors, the Food Network, and all things Star Wars.
Have you struggled with grief this past year? Your life has fallen apart due to one big crisis or perhaps a series of crises that feel like death from a million paper cuts. Sweet friend, you are not alone. Join Kathi and her trusted friend and fellow trauma navigator Michele Cushatt as they discuss Michele’s newest book “A Faith That Will Not Fail: Ten Practices To Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart.” The practices in Michele’s newest book are not homework for you to complete. Not even close! They are less about doing and more about being. Kathi and Michele discuss these practices as they share very personal stories of grief and trauma. Listen in as they give a sneak peek into some of the practices that can be found in Michele Cushatt’s latest book, such as:
When we’re overwhelmed, we need to make things smaller, not bigger.
One of the best things we can do is get grounded in THIS moment.
How these practices and more help us lead a clutter free life.
A Faith That Will Not Fail: Ten Practices To Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart
Life can be hard. Although there are moments of beauty and goodness, more often than not, life is marked by fear, struggle, disappointment, and loss. And we don’t know what to do with it. We’ve tried to find hope and security in various people and places–but each has proved unworthy of our trust. We need more. Something–or Someone–who won’t fail us when our world falls apart.
In this book, beloved author and Bible teacher Michele Cushatt presents a better way. By exploring powerful personal, historical, and biblical stories of people of extraordinary faith, she curates and shares ten practices to help you deepen your confidence and certainty in the God who can be trusted with your worry, questions, confusion, and grief. As a woman who has been through immeasurable suffering, she writes with both deep compassion and practical insight as she guides you to:
understand what keeps you from trusting God and how to navigate doubt with trust
learn simple ways to foster shalom and gratitude on a daily basis
develop a fresh, eternal perspective that delivers both peace fro today and hope for tomorrow
savor daily “Faith-Builder” practices to strengthen your confidence in God’s love and purposes for you, no matter what happens
There is hope in your hardship and a God who is both with you and for you. These ten practices point the way to the only One you can truly trust, and ultimately, to a faith in him that will not fail.
Order your copy of A Faith That Will Not Fail: Ten Practices To Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart here.
If you pre order Michele Cushatt’s newest book “A Faith That Will Not Fail: Ten Practices To Build Up Your Faith When Your World Is Falling Apart,” you will receive the companion book “A Faith That Will Not Fail: Five Minute Faith Builders” as well as an add on to the book, The Practice of Prayer, 11th practice that extends the Faith that Will Not Fail book for five days.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.
Meet Our Guest
Michele Cushatt
A storyteller at heart, Michele Cushatt communicates on leadership, resilience, and faith in the hard places. An experienced executive and three-time cancer survivor, Michele is a (reluctant) expert on trauma, faith, and our deep need for authentic connection. She lives in Colorado with her husband and six children. Learn more at michelecushatt.com.
Do you feel guilty that you’re not doing more? Keeping your house up to snuff? Taking care of yourself and others? If guilt seems to follow you around wherever you go, then this episode is for you!
Kathi is talking with author and Bible teacher Barb Roose about her struggles with perfectionism and performance, and how that affects both her closet and her faith in God.
Here are Barb’s 3 rules for a better closet:
Don’t wear it if it makes you sad.
If it doesn’t fit your current body or style, get rid of it.
Don’t let fear or shame make you keep clothing that doesn’t fit your current size.
Barb says that our closets are full of memories, and our relationship with God is the same way. How can we move on from experiences in our past that bring up feelings of guilt today? Barb has been on a spiritual journey: moving from a place where guilt robbed her of feeling like she could connect with God, to a place of freedom and understanding of how big God’s love is.
Her life has been changed by focusing more on the promises of God, and less on her performance for Him. Her favorite prayer in a time of need? “Save me O God.” That 4 word prayer is a whole prayer. Barb reminds us of God’s promise from Isaiah 43: “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.”
So take a deep breath, remember God’s promises to you, and then do the next right thing.
Giveaway
Barb is giving a copy of her book to one lucky Clutter Free Academy listener! To enter, let us know in the comments below what is one thing, figuratively or literally, that you want to declutter from your closet.
Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey
Looking for less guilt and more Jesus? That is what Barb Roose promises you will find in her new book, Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey. Inside you will find an exploration of Jesus in the Old Testament as we see Jesus through the Psalms of David. Each week features one psalm that focuses on how Jesus is showing up in the reality of life. God has a much bigger plan and we have a hope that is not just for today, but is a hope for eternity, especially when life is feeling really hard.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.
Meet Our Guest
Barb Roose
Barb Roose is a popular speaker and author who is passionate about teaching women to live beautifully strong and courageous in spite of their fears so that they can experience God’s great adventure of faith and purpose for their lives.
Barb is a real woman who has experienced depression and anxiety, parenting challenges, family addiction trauma and long seasons of walking by faith in unanswered prayer. Rather than teaching audiences to follow God to get what they want, Barb inspires audiences to discover that God is all they need!
Writing creative and challenging Bible studies brings Barb great joy! She’s the author of multiple Bible studies, including: Surrendered: Letting Go and Living Like Jesus, I’m Waiting, God: Finding Blessing in God’s Delays, Joshua: Winning the Worry Battle and Breakthrough: Finding Freedom in Christ. She is also the author of multiple books including Surrendered: 40 Days to Help You Let Go and Live Like Jesus Devotional, Winning the Worry Battle: Life Lessons from the Book of Joshua and Enough Already: Winning Your Ugly Struggle with Beauty . Her newest book is Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey.
Barb lives in NW Ohio and she is the proud mom to three adult children. Barb enjoys traveling, reading, walking and whenever possible, she prefers to eat dessert first.
In this week’s episode, Kathi sits down to chat with Amanda Hope Haley, author of Mary Magdalene Never Wore Blue Eye Shadow, about how to grow in wisdom every day. They invite us to take a journey of rediscovering who God is as we strip off mistaken ideas that can clutter our understanding and read the Bible with fresh eyes.
You’ll learn from Amanda’s journey of unlearning some of her preconceived notions about the Bible. You’ll also learn how we can grow in wisdom through:
Approaching the Bible boldly, with fresh eyes
Pressing into uncomfortable and confusing passages
Allowing the Living Word to teach us something new
Thanks to the generosity of Harvest House Publishers, we have a few copies of Amanda’s book to give away to our readers!
One Grand Prize Winner will receive a copy of Mary Magdalene Never Wore Blue Eye Shadow, along with some lovely things to provide a cozy reading atmosphere. Curl up with some slippers, tea, a journal, and pens to enjoy this book and dig into truths from the Bible.
Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.
Meet Our Guest
Amanda Hope Haley
Amanda Hope Haley has a master of theological studies in Hebrew Scripture and Interpretation from Harvard University. She is a lover of the Bible–its God, its words, and its history. Amanda and David live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with their always-entertaining basset hound, Copper. You can learn more at amandahopehaley.com
There you are, going about your everyday life, minding your own business and it hits.
Out of nowhere.
A phone call. A text. A conversation. A situation.
You didn’t expect it or maybe you’ve been running from it, but you can’t run any longer. It just became real and rocked your world.
Maybe it’s a diagnosis, a divorce, a demotion, a detour, but all of a sudden you’re experiencing tough times.
I remember it like it was yesterday. We were minding our own business, enjoying a family vacation visiting my husband’s parents in Pennsylvania. While feasting on pancakes after church at a large rural restaurant known for their just-tapped homemade maple syrup, I could tell our youngest, who was 11 at the time, wasn’t feeling well. I took her to the bathroom thinking she needed to throw up and a few minutes later she was in my arms, sprawled across the floor, with her lips turning blue after her body collapsed in what I assumed to be a grand mal seizure.
What was going on? I remember thinking to myself, “I must be dreaming, this isn’t happening to me, am I being punked?”
This was the straw the broke the camel’s back. You see, we were already going through tough times as my husband had quit his job as a pastor at a large church in the DFW metroplex about four months earlier. At God’s prompting we decided together that it was time for him to take a leap of faith and pursue the dream that God had placed in his heart years earlier.
In the previous four months we experienced so much “stuff” that I started to keep a list on my phone. I called it “My Redemption List.” This was a list of all the bad things that were happening during our leap of faith season. Every day I believed and decreed that God was redeeming those things one by one as well as the entire season for our family.
But this was a low blow. This one really hurt. Shortly after this bathroom experience our daughter, our sunshine, was diagnosed with epilepsy.
Maybe you’ve been there too… or are there… or for sure will be there.
You’ve been standing on a promise, following a dream, or just living your life.
You may have just been knocked down and feel like you have been punched in the gut. The wind has been taken out of your sail. Where do you go from here? How do you keep the low blow from keeping you down? Should you get up or move on?
How to Overcome Tough Times
You may not be able to control a lot of the things that happen in life, but you can control how you respond to the blows. You have four choices. They are truly up to you. But how you respond will determine what happens next.
Give Up
It’s been too hard for too long to stand on the promise without seeing the results. You just don’t know how to keep going. You can choose to give up and move on.
Give In
You can give in to what’s happening. Give in to what you feel, become negative and live in what is happening in your natural circumstances. You may be tired of being tired so it seems easier just to give in.
Give It Over to God
You can’t do it, but God can. You can choose to lay it at His feet, maybe for the first time or the millionth, and seek Him. Seek the giver, not the gift. Let Him be your source for everything you need right now.
Give It A Loud “Heck no satan!”
Stand your ground, hold onto the promises God has given you and move forward bravely with boldness.
So, what response do you choose?
Maybe it’s a mixture of these.
I would propose you spend some time with God and give it over to Him. Then, give it a loud “Heck no satan! Not this time, Not ever.”
Don’t give up. Don’t give in.
“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.” Proverbs 24:16a (NIV)
Get up!
Next Steps: What’s your battle cry? When you get punched in the gut or life doesn’t go as planned, what’s the promise you stand on? If you don’t have one, dig into the bible today and come up with a life verse to stand on when the going gets tough.
Here is a battle cry you can use today as you give it over to Him…
“The Lord is my light and my salvation-whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life-of whom shall I be afraid? For in the day of trouble He will keep me safe in His dwelling; hear my voice when I call, Lord; be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you, “Seek His face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek. I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” –Excerpts from Psalm 27
Fighting the good fight,
Tiffany
Tiffany Jo Baker MA, CLC
Tiffany Jo Baker is a mom who has birthed seven children, but only two of them were her own. This three-time Surrogate, Speaker, Writer and Couples Life and Fertility Support Coach, continues to help women and couples birth their dreams and thrive thru infertility. If you or someone you love find themselves on a harder than expected path to parenthood, you can find hope, free resources and more to help navigate the road and relationships while trying to conceive at www.tiffanyjobaker.com.
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)
I walked into the beautiful home of a new friend for the very first time. She is a single mother of 3 young children, successful entrepreneur and multi-business owner. As I was ooo-ing and ahh-ing over the impeccable decor and the stunning architecture of her home, she repeatedly asked me to overlook the “mess.” After a couple mentions about the kids’ toys I stopped and quickly replied, “One of my superpowers is that I only see messes in my own house, not in others’!”
It’s so true. So many of us have unlimited mercy for other people’s “messes,” whether that be a cluttered home, a wayward child, a disconnected marriage or even difficulties getting pregnant, but when it comes to the messes in our own lives, we seem to have run out of compassion. Why are we so hard on ourselves? We can be rocking it in so many areas of life, but we beat ourselves up over the one or two areas that may be a little bit messy.
God’s Word is clear. The second greatest commandment that Jesus gives in Mark 12:31 is for us to love others as we love ourselves. Leave it to Jesus to be able to strategically maneuver two crucial commandments into one simple message. In order to love others well, we first have to be able to love ourselves well! No matter who you are, the number of degrees you may have, or the amount of talent you may possess, it isn’t realistic or possible for any of us to have success in every area of our lives all at the same time.
It sounds ridiculous even saying it right now, yet, we can become our own biggest critics when life isn’t going as planned.
Do what Jesus says. Love yourself and others well. Have mercy for your own mess.
One Small Win: Today, I want you to think of one area of your life that is messy. Now, take a look at it through the superpower of mercy, just as you would see it in someone else’s life. How do you see your mess now?
______________
As a Couples Life & Fertility Support Coach and 3x Surrogate that has carried five children for three families dealing with infertility, Tiffany Jo Baker spends her time speaking, writing and helping women and couples birth their dreams and navigate the road and relationships well while trying to conceive. Married for 18 years to her polar opposite, yet best friend, together they have two teenage girls and have built a life and family based on faith, core values, humor and forgiveness. She loves to laugh, eat french fries, find amazing deals and create new memories.?? www.TiffanyJoBaker.com
Tiffany Jo Baker is a mom who has birthed seven children, but only two of them were her own. This three-time Surrogate, Speaker, Writer and Couples Life and Fertility Support Coach, continues to help women and couples birth their dreams and thrive thru infertility. If you or someone you love find themselves on a harder than expected path to parenthood, you can find hope, free resources and more to help navigate the road and relationships while trying to conceive at www.tiffanyjobaker.com.
