TLP 419: Girl Defined | Kristen Clark Interview

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I remember after that one year thinking, I am way more worse off now, way worse off now than I was before I even started this, and way more confused, and I, for the first time,

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I just didn't understand a lot about God's design for womanhood specifically. Welcome to Truth.

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Love. Parents. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, AM Brewster. It's time for another awesome interview today. I hope that all of you will stay with us all the way to the end because it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, today's discussion about how

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God defines womanhood is an absolute must because our society is daily lying to us about the topic.

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We need to understand it whether we're males or females, and our kids need to understand it whether they're boys or girls.

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And as always, you have a chance to win an amazing resource. When you're done with the interview, head over to truthloveparent .com

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forward slash giveaways to enter to win. And lastly, if you haven't subscribed to Truth. Love. Parent on YouTube, you totally should.

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It's so much more fun to watch the interviews. And with that, I give you my interview with the co -founder of Girl Defined Ministries.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parent. I'm AM Brewster, and I have a special guest joining me today that is not your typical

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Truth. Parent special guest. Normally, our interviews have something to do with parenting. However, my guest today co -authored a resource that is not about parenting, and any guys listening today may immediately stop this episode when they hear the title of her book because they think of this just show, which isn't for them.

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But let me tell you, that would be incorrect, okay? We're going to talk about a resource today that God can use to have a very significant and important impact on your family.

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Now, you know me, okay? Again, I'm being mysterious. I'm not just saying who it is and what we have.

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So let's go ahead and dive right into introducing our guest. Her name is Kristen Clark, and she and her sister,

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Bethany, it's not Bethany Baird. It was when the book came out, but it's Bethany Beale. Did I get that right,

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Kristen? Yes, Bethany Beale. Nailed it. So her sister, Bethany Beale, and she wrote this book called

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Girl Defined. And Kristen is here to talk to us about it today. So welcome, Kristen, to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me.

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And I love how you made sure to keep all the guys around. And I will tell you that we have had guys read this book, dads and young men, because they're like,

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I want to learn more about women because I'm going to either marry one or, you know, I have sisters or I have a mom. And so, hey, it can be a book for everyone.

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It is. And I'm about to tell a story here in a couple of minutes that will show you how I kind of ended up reading this. So you guys listening like, why is he reading a book called

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Girl Defined? There's a reason. It's a funny reason. I'll tell you in a second. But first, Kristen, I'd love for you to tell us more about yourself, about your sister and about the rest of your family.

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Yeah. So Girl Defined is a ministry my sister, Bethany, and I founded back in 2014. And our passion from the beginning has been to help young women understand

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God's design for womanhood. And so it started out as a little blog. We had no idea what we were doing. We're like everybody back then,

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I'm going to start a blog. And so we started it with this passion to help young women understand God's design as we were still learning and growing in it.

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But we just saw the beauty and impact that understanding his design had in our lives. And we were so compelled to want to share it with others.

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We are the oldest of five sisters. I guess I'm the oldest. Bethany is right below me. So just, you know, we're a family of girls and the girl issues.

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And I remember what it's like being young. It's so hard. You struggle with so much. You're longing for answers and you just want to know, does

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God's word have anything to say about the things I'm facing right now? So that's where it started. And it, you know, started out as a blog and then ended up turning into a

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YouTube channel. A publisher found us, some books came about. We recently launched a podcast, a conference. It's just cool to see what

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God does with the meager efforts that we bring and how he just multiplies. So that's a little bit about the ministry.

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I've been married to my husband, Zach, for almost 10 years. We don't have any kids, not because we don't want them, but God just hasn't given them to us.

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And it's been a whole nother journey of just infertility and trusting God with his timing. And he's grown me a lot through that as well.

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But I am a Texas born and raised girl, so I'm pretty proud of that too. You said five girls in the family, is that right?

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Five girls and three boys. So big family. We're a big Texas family. Yes. I forgot from the book that you mentioned the boys, you talk about your sisters quite a bit, but I forget about those boys.

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Now before we talk too much about this book, and I do, I want to talk to it again. Like I said earlier, I kind of alluded to it.

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I kind of need to confess something to you. So Truth Love Parents book review team is always very busy.

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We have new and old titles being sent to us all the time. Actually this particular book was written longer ago than I thought it was.

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I thought, I always like to be like when it just comes out, be one of the first people to get an interview. But this book has been out since 2016.

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Yet when it comes to the review system, our experiences are kind of a mixed bag when it comes to the books that we read.

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So recently I was reading a book that even though, you know, I made it through the first couple of chapters before setting it aside,

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I knew from the first paragraph of the foreword that I wasn't going to be able to support this work. However, many of the books we're receiving these days are actually fantastic.

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And I'm finding more and more of the books that we're getting are really great. And I like to joke, especially when

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I'm on podcasts with other people and I'm giving interviews and whatnot, that I find myself reading a lot of mom books because I just do.

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That's probably most of my reading. Well, when this book came across my desk, I did not want to read it.

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Okay. Now, I wasn't judging it by its cover or anything like that. I just believe there had to be someone else who would be a better choice to read through a book called

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Girl Defined. I mean, it was even if it were a mom book, like mom books talks about parenting and parenting is one of those things that, you know, guys do too.

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And there's a lot of crossover. But I told Kristen before we started recording, basically I was sitting there going, anybody else want to read this?

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Any takers? Anybody, anybody at all going once, going, you know, I was I was trying to decide, you know, who else could read this?

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But there wasn't anybody. The Lord wanted me to read it. And I'm so glad that he did. So I really wasn't prepared, okay, to learn about my

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God -ordained biblical femininity. I just really wasn't prepared for that. And so that's my confession.

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That's how it all started. Okay. I really didn't want to read the book because I'm not a girl.

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But like I said, I am so extremely glad that I did read it. I'm not kidding, okay, about this.

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It was providential that I was the one to review the book. I'm going to explain a little bit more in a minute, unpack this a little bit as we go along.

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But before I do, go ahead and tell us a little bit of what I know what prompted you to start the ministry

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Girl Defined. And obviously this has grown from that. But specifically as you and Bethany were writing this book, it kind of explained to us your calling and how the

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Lord guided you to write this particular book. Yeah, you know, just being a woman myself and growing up in this culture,

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I remember and still still today face so many messages that are counter to God's word about what it means to be a woman.

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And, you know, I was very intrigued by the modeling scene when I was young and I had had people from the time

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I was a little girl and I shared this whole story in Girl Defined offer me modeling jobs like, hey, we want you to work for our company.

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And they would hand me their business card. And my parents were like, oh, we're just not so sure about the modeling scene for our daughter.

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You know, there's just a lot of pitfalls. And especially as a young, impressionable, young Christian girl that they're trying to raise, they just weren't a fan of it.

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But when I got to my later teens, a company approached me and they said, hey, we're family friendly. We would love to hire you.

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You know, are you interested? And I was like, you know, I am. But here are some of my stipulations. And I said, like, if I, you know,

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I need to be able to wear what I want to wear and not feel like pressured to wear what you want me to wear. And I'm just different things.

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And they said, oh, for sure. Like, if you're ever uncomfortable, you can back out of a job. You can deny a job, whatever. So I was like, this seems too good to be true.

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So I took the job and for one year I was in this modeling world. And, you know, it was so eye opening to me because as I was wrestling with my own insecurities as a woman trying to understand

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God's design. But hearing these messages of, you know, beautiful women are more confident, they're more valuable, they have more worth, they're more accepted.

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You know, being popular matters so much. And just where's my identity? Like, who am

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I? And all these questions. And I remember thinking, wow, now that I'm a model, all of that's going to go away.

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I am going to be the most confident. I'm not going to have any insecurities. I know who I am, you know, kind of thing.

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And I tell you, that year in the industry was so eye opening and revealing because I became more insecure with who

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I was. I became more confused about my identity. I was placing all of my worth and value in the opinions of others.

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And so when I would get a job, I felt good. When I would not get a certain job, I would feel really bad and rejected. I became more self -consumed and just obsessed with my outward appearance.

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And I remember after that one year thinking, I am way more worse off now, way worse off now than I was before I even started this and way more confused.

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And so I got out of it and I was like, I don't want that. You know, that just wasn't the path for me.

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And I, for the first time, really dug into God's word. You know, I grew up in church, I grew up in a

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Christian family, so I understood a lot. But I just didn't understand a lot about God's design for women, for womanhood specifically.

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And so that's when I went on kind of a journey biblically just to discover what is God's design for me, what it doesn't mean to be a woman.

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Where do I find my worth and identity? What does God say about true beauty and really learning? And I will tell you those few years of just digging in,

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God brought so much freedom and purpose and joy back into my life as I got on his track for womanhood.

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So I've just experienced it so personally. And I see other women in that place that I was, young women. And I just want to,

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I want to help them so much because God's design is so beautiful. I think it's interesting that your story and my story actually have a lot of unique touching points.

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Yes, I'm not a female and I didn't grow up in Texas. But it's interesting that even when we grow up in a Christian home and we go to church, we love the

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Bible, we read the Bible, sometimes it takes one of those hard, life -changing moments for us to really act like we believe the

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Bible. Like, okay, oh, so there's everything we need for life and godliness. Like I knew that, but now it's so real to me because I had a similar situation.

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It wasn't until I suffered a pretty significant breakup trauma, right? When I was in college,

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I found myself turning to the scriptures like, you know, like, well, she said she loved me and now she said she doesn't love me.

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But I thought the Bible said that love was eternal. And so now I'm digging in to find the answers because I realized

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I didn't have them at that particular moment. I wasn't remembering them or not believing them. And you went through a similar thing.

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It took that scenario, even though you were a female who had lived 16, 17 years in a

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Christian home and been taught and had a Christ honoring mother who was modeling for you. It took that experience for you to go, man,

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I need to understand God's word. And I just want to say just an aside here to parents, don't think that that's not going to happen with your kids.

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Okay. Yes. Teach them, definitely teach them how to be a woman that loves the

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Lord. I teach them how to be a man that follows after God. Use this book when teaching your daughters and use this book to teach your sons what type of a woman he should be looking for, but also understand that there's a very good possibility.

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It's going to take some hardship or some difficulty in their life. That's really going to drive them back to the scriptures.

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But if you're a parent who's always doing everything you can to protect your child from those difficulties and those hardships, and they don't have them, and they're never forced to really dig into the scriptures and look for answers themselves, you start to have an issue.

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So instead of protecting our kids from everything, we want to prepare them to answer it. And so the beautiful thing is that Kristen knew where to find the answers.

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She knew to figure out who she was as a woman, she needed to go to the scriptures. So anyway, that was all coming to me as you were talking.

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I'm so glad you shared that story with us. And I'm really glad that you and your sister, oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, it's so true what you're saying, because, you know, if you think about it as Christians growing up today, you think about how much discipleship we're getting in the church or from our parents or from godly mentors.

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Like so often, it's such a small percentage compared to how much influence we're taking in from the world.

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And so you think, oh, a couple hours a week, you know, on Sunday and a little bit here and there, like that's not enough. You know, I say like the world is discipling us all the time as men and women.

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It is telling us who we are and what we should think and what we should believe and what's right. And what's wrong. We are constantly being discipled by the world.

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And so if we aren't whether parents or young people, so intentional to say, yeah, there's a lot of messages.

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And in fact, they're pretty appealing. Like they're pretty enticing, but what does God's word say? What does he say is true and right?

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Who does he say I am? How does he call me to live? And until we really get serious in our own faith or just recognize as parents, like I have to be so intentional to make sure my children are being discipled, getting truth.

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It's hard. It's hard being a young person today. I think with social media, just in general, the pressures are, they're so strong and they're right there at our fingertips.

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They're just available and speaking to us every day. Oh, so true. Amen. And I'm so very glad that you and Bethany both submitted to the

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Lord to write this book again. I just want to say, I did love it. And here I'm going to tell you why. Okay.

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So I found the book to be winsome and wise as, as I would expect. I believe that a book that's

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Christ honoring, that's going to glorify God and help other people needs to be. It's also biblical and it's necessary.

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Meaning the content in there is stuff that we need to be talking about. Okay. But I loved it primarily because I realized at least in my own mind, what a great tool it could be for me specifically in parenting my daughter.

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Now, before I continue, I am curious, what age did you imagine would be your core demographic when you guys wrote this book?

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That's such a funny question because our publisher, they said, you know, we only published to 18 and older and our target audience is like 13 and older.

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And so we were like, Ooh, is this going to be a problem? And they said, no, just write it to the 18 and older crowd, but write it in a way that the younger girls can relate to as well.

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And so we were like, okay, so it's kind of a question, but I think really any young woman.

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And I will tell parents, Hey, if your daughter's 10, 11, 12, she is not too young to start learning about God's design for womanhood because she has questions.

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I guarantee. I remember being nine, 10, 11. You see those magazines at the grocery store when you're with your mom and you see these big, bold words and you're going, what does that mean?

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What is that? And you have questions and you're curious and you're already starting to form your worldview from a very young age.

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And so I encourage parents like, don't wait until they're older or until they start openly asking questions, you know, catch them when they're young.

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And so this book can be a great resource for parents to use as a discipleship tool for their daughters, whether they're teens or even younger to say,

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Hey, let's learn about God's design for your life as a girl. Yeah. And I'm not surprised to hear that.

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Well, first of all, that the publishing agency was wanting to kind of focus more on the older girls but at the same time, to me, it definitely resonated that it could very easily work for the younger girls.

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And that's what I told my wife. That's what I told my sister. My sister's actually listening to it. She's listening to the book and she's been enjoying it a lot too.

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She in her mind, she's thinking, you know, cause our daughters are in the 11, 12 range.

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My niece just turned 12, a friend of mine, their daughter's about in the same range. And cause she's listening to it, thinking, you know, about her daughter.

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I was reading it and thinking about my daughter and she, my daughter's 11. She's going to be 12 this October. And in our home, we believe very strongly that a child needs to start transitioning to adulthood way before they turn 18.

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Okay. If you wait until they're turning 18, you have wasted so much time. Yeah. My son, he turned 13 last year.

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And we had this whole manhood ceremony for him where a bunch of male family mentor members and mentors took some time to challenge him and to celebrate his transition out of a childhood into adulthood.

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And we're planning to do the same thing with my daughter and my wife and I were on a walk today talking about this concept, specifically how do we prepare her for this transition from childhood into adulthood?

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And then how do we work her from young adult to more mature? And I personally thought after reading it, that Girl Defined could be a great facet of preparing her for that transition because it deals with so many important.

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And like you said, very timely topics that girls her age definitely are dealing with. I mentioned earlier that again, any dads listening needed to keep listening because I understand how a lot of men feel very ill -equipped to teach their daughters how to be

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God honoring women, women, excuse me. I'm not saying that response is correct. I just understand it.

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I understand how they have that struggle, but to be honest, it bothers me. It bothers me when guys kind of relegate certain things to their wives.

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Oh, that's a wife thing. That's a mom thing. You know, I don't really, I don't really talk to my daughters about that.

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And I think that's really sad because I think I know that God put us into our children's lives for a reason.

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And I have something valuable to speak into my daughter's femininity. Just like my wife has something very valuable to speak into my son's masculinity.

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So what happens anyway is that these men put that responsibility solely on the mother and obviously mom needs to be totally involved.

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But again, I believe that dad needs to be as well. And this book can be used to not only help prepare dads and moms to teach their daughters what the

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Bible says about being a godly woman, but husbands can also use this book to help their wives grow in God's plan for them as well.

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Because it doesn't matter if you're in your twenties or your thirties or your forties, there are temptations. Like, like Kristen said, the world is lying to you and men, you need to be washing your wife with the, with the word, with God's word.

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And there is so much of God's word in here in the applications, really easy to grasp and understand and to help the ladies in our lives.

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So obviously I believe that women of any age will benefit from studying more about what God wants them to be.

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So I wanted to share that with you. And I wanted to share that with our listeners because I don't know how many other dads, you know, would have considered reading this book, but I believe there's tons of value for the whole family, especially the men of the house and then the wives and the mothers and the daughters.

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Now, as I kind of mentioned, my wife and I are discussing inviting two of our good mom friends and their almost 13 year old daughters to do a book study with my wife and my daughter.

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I'm so excited about them doing this together that I really wanted to be part of it. But I do think in this particular situation,

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I'll just leave the book study to my wife. So anyway, that was, that was my personal journey with your book.

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I don't know how many other people have had the same experience. You mentioned that some guys have definitely read it, but, and I, and I hope you're encouraged that the

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Lord used this book in my family in a way that you may not have originally expected when you wrote it. But yes,

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I am. Now let's, let's go ahead and dig into the book a little bit more. Let's talk a little bit more about the details.

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Okay. Personally, I loved the first part of the book because you do a fantastic job showing how, like you mentioned, the world lies to us about femininity.

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The whole first part was just fantastic. And it took me a minute as I was going through, I was like, you know what?

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They're not really providing the answers yet. They're just detailing the problem.

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And that's really actually a fantastic way of going about it. And I'm glad you did that. So let me ask you this specifically, how is the world lying to our girls?

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How is the world lying to our women? Yeah. We unpack three pillars early on.

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We call it counterfeit femininity. You've done me wrong. And it's just popular messages that are so accepted.

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And I would say very, very much in Christian circles as well. And there are these messages that we as women are like, we need to be liberated from any form of traditional femininity, traditional family.

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Like we just need to be liberated from all of that and pave our own way, you know, find our own truth, make ourselves happy, follow our hearts.

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And it's very much a message that centered on self and us discovering ourselves and just being liberated from anything that we would ever see in God's word.

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And, you know, as Christians, we have to rewind and go, well, what is my ultimate purpose as a Christian? It's to glorify

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God. It's to reflect him. And so if I don't understand who he created me to be, or I forget what my bullseye is to glorify him, then

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I'm going to get totally swept up in these messages that are coming from most celebrities, you know, young girls who are online on social media, they're seeing it from all of their peers.

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They're seeing it from influencers the movies they watch. I mean, the books they're reading, it is just a message that's permeating every angle of their life.

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If they're just, you know, living in this world and soaking up the message of messages of the world. And so that's a huge lie, but one that sounds so good, like, you know, you just follow your truth.

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You just pursue what feels good for you as a woman. Ditch all of that old fashioned thinking like the

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Bible is so outdated. Like there's so much more the world has to offer. And you know, it's ironic.

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Doesn't that sound very similar to the message that Satan brought to Eve in the garden? Like, are you sure God sent that?

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Are you sure that's what's right? Like, have you considered this? This is so much better. And you know, it's the same old lie just packaged in a new way for us today.

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Definitely. And so what's another lie that we encounter? Yeah. Um, you know, there's, there's so much about sexuality right now going on, um, in our culture.

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It's, it's even more intense than ever. Even when we wrote this book a lot has changed over the past few years, but that's another lie, just that sexual freedom, um, sexual autonomy, just, you know, it's my body and I can do with it, whatever

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I want. And that's the message that our young women are receiving. And they're being told like, yeah, sex is for you to enjoy and to embrace however you want to do it with whoever you want.

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It's all about you. Um, there shouldn't be any boundaries. There shouldn't be any restrictions. You know, if someone tells you, um, to save sex for marriage, that's oppressive language and that's what our young women are hearing.

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And there's just so the, the sexualized content that they're consuming without even trying.

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I mean, you just, like I mentioned earlier, checking out at the grocery store and you just glance over and see these magazines that are so sexualized with these provocative messages, you know, intentionally done that way toward attracting young women, teenagers.

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Um, it's just so sad, but the messages are blatant in their face. And so if we don't have a biblical understanding of sexuality, then yeah, it's going to be so easy just to follow our hearts and follow the world because that's what's normal.

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That's what's trending. That's what everyone around them is doing. And as you were talking, I was flipping through my copy here.

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I went to one of my dog -eared pages and I found some of my, uh, my highlighting and I highlighted this ultimately.

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And you were talking at this point about some people that you knew that you grew up with, that you went to church with, uh, that these people walked away from God and you wrote ultimately, it wasn't their wrong decisions that led them down that road.

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It was their wrong thinking. It started the first time they questioned God's word. It started the first time they believed a small lie.

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And these lies that we're talking about are not small lies. They're huge lies. Um, they're, they are, like you said, they're making us want to question

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God's word. And sometimes it's not even questioning God's word. Sometimes it's a situation where we're just not thinking about God's word at all.

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This is the environment I live in and I just accept all of this as truth and I'm not even comparing and contrasting it with God's word.

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So powerful and so absolutely necessary. Now, I have a really important followup question to what you just said before I ask it.

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I want to let our listeners know that at the end of today's interview, I'm going to tell you how you can earn a chance to win a free copy of Girl Defined.

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So stay tuned for that. Okay. Yes. In fact, I heard, and I was told that these even might be autographed books, which makes them that much cooler.

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So there's that. Yes. Yes. They will be, they will be signed and we'll even write a little message in the inside. Nice. Awesome.

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All right. So Kristen just talked about how the culture lies to our girls. Okay. But Kristen, in your opinion, is there ever a time it's okay to maybe go with the cultural flow?

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You know, I would say these days it's going to be rare. Um, as Christians, we are more and more finding ourselves swimming against the cultural flow.

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You know, I, we, when we talk to young women, when we office use this analogy, that if you're not intentionally pursuing

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God's word wholeheartedly, constantly searching his, his word for answers and truth, um, it's like we're swimming in like a river.

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And if we're just passive about it, like, Oh, I go to church. I'm a Christian. We are automatically getting pushed downstream, pushed in the cultural flow.

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You have to be intentionally pursuing God's word, which is swimming upstream these days, culturally.

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Um, if you're going to pursue him, you can't just be like, Oh, I'll just somehow transform into a godly woman one day.

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Like, no, it doesn't happen. We have sinful hearts and we are prone to be deceived. And that's, that's something we all have to battle.

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But, um, if we're not intentionally pursuing God's word, then I think the cultural flow is almost, it's hard for me to think of any case where the cultural flow what's popular is in line with God's word.

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I mean, these days, it's hard to really think of many examples. Definitely. Now every now and then you've got, you know, styles and fads and things like that.

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We're both using zoom and that's really a big cultural thing right now. Obviously some things can be redeemed for God, but I definitely believe that when it comes to the stuff, like what you're talking about, where, where we're identifying ourselves, we're defining ourselves.

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That's all wrong. It's just wrong. And I am a biblical counselor. And so many times in my counseling,

24:44

I hear people using the excuses that the world is crammed. Yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but, and I'm going, but the problem is what you're saying is no,

24:52

God's word is not going to work in this. Uh, we need something else. And every single one of those are alive.

24:59

Every single one. Yeah. The word is sufficient and we have to believe that, you know, it starts with faith.

25:04

Like, okay. God's word says that it is sufficient for all things. Like I can go to his word and I'm going to find what

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I need for godliness and I have to trust him. And then I have to do the work to go find that. Right. It doesn't just appear in your brain.

25:16

Like God calls us to be faithful. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yes. Now one of the things my wife and I appreciate it about Girl Defined is that you don't simplify biblical femininity down to just getting married and having kids.

25:29

And that was one of the first questions she asked. I was reading the book and she hadn't. And she was like, she was kind of like looking over my shoulder, like, what do they say?

25:36

And I told her that and she was very surprised because you know, a lot of other resources do that. But you suggest that women can be everything

25:44

God created them to be, even if perhaps they aren't married or they don't have kids.

25:50

And that really should thrill our listeners and their daughters. Not because getting married or having kids is bad. Okay. I'm sure that we could both argue that they're wonderful gifts from God, but because not everyone can or does get married or have kids.

26:04

So Kristen, how does that work? What does biblical femininity look like for a single woman or a wife without children?

26:12

Yeah. You know, this was when we wrote this book, I think it was so, it was just God's timing all around because my sister,

26:18

Bethany was completely single wanting to get married, but there weren't any guys on the horizon. I was married but didn't have any children and was wrestling through seasons of infertility.

26:28

So really that struggle of like, Oh man, God made me as a woman. And I know having children is, you know, a heritage and I want to pursue this good gift and blessing, but God's not giving it to me.

26:38

So I kind of went through a little bit of an identity crisis myself of like, what does it mean to be a woman? You know?

26:43

And so I feel like God really used each of our seasons as we were writing about biblical womanhood to challenge our perspectives of biblical womanhood, to not be just,

26:53

Oh, a godly woman gets married and has children. Like that's what it means to be a biblical woman, just like you're saying. And because neither of us were in either of those seasons of having kids or for my sister being married, it really challenged us to dig deeper and go, okay, what, you know, if biblical womanhood is for every woman, then it has to be for women who aren't married or for women who don't have children.

27:10

So what is it? As we dug in, we came up with three pillars, you know, we were studying Genesis and we were looking all throughout the godly women, um, in the

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Bible, Proverbs, Titus, like we're trying to find every passage about womanhood and just try to understand what is

27:23

God's heart. And so as we were doing this, we came up with three different pillars. And the first pillar is that she helps others.

27:30

I'm sorry. My dog is barking a lot in the background. It's okay. It is totally fine.

27:38

What kind of dog do you have? That depends on what it makes it okay or not. Well, she's a multi -poo.

27:44

So I don't know how small, cute, little white dogs. See, my family always defined that as dog food.

27:51

So your dog food is barking. That might be a problem. If you had a dog barking, it would be okay. But your cat's barking.

27:57

I had a feeling something like that was coming. It's totally okay. My husband just got home.

28:04

Okay. Well. It's totally fine. Let's talk about, we might cut it out. You might also leave it.

28:09

We could possibly leave it because, you know, the audience is getting such a high view of you.

28:15

They need to realize that you're just a normal person. You know, they need to know that. I'm a normal person. And who has a dog that's a fake dog.

28:22

She has a faux dog. Right. Well, now, now they know apparently a lot more than they bargained for. So they do.

28:28

All right. But let's get back to this pillar. Yeah. She helps others. Now, normally, you know, you think help and you're thinking

28:34

Genesis, right? Help me a wife for the man, but you expand on that idea.

28:41

We do. And you know, it is foundational biblically because we do see in Genesis before God had formed any humans, what did he do?

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He intentionally made a man and he gave him jobs. And he said, here, I'm going to put you in this garden.

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He gave him rules. Here's the animals. Don't eat this tree. Then he brought the woman onto the scene and he calls her his helper.

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And that word is one that a lot of women and even young women will cringe at like, Ooh, I don't want to be a helper because we have been taught that we just need to do our own thing.

29:09

We need to be independent, you know, girl bosses, like I'm not helping anyone I'm helping myself. And it's this mindset that has us to cringe at even being called a helper.

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But in fact, this is a powerful word. It's not a word that is putting the woman under the man in the sense of worth and dignity and value.

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God created the man and woman to be equally valuable, but purposely different in role and function.

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There's, there's a distinction there, but it's complimentary. It's beautiful. It was God's intentional design.

29:36

And so that same word that God uses for helper, he also uses for the Holy spirit and saying that the

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Holy spirit is our helper. So it's a very high and Holy word, as we say, and it's a beautiful word and one that we need to start as women.

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We need to dig deeper and not just hear words and have a cultural lens and go, Ooh, I don't like the way that feels, but we need to say, you know,

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God loves women. He loves men. He created us. So what does it mean when he says that she, he created a helper for the man?

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What does that mean? Let me try to understand God's heart and God's purpose and his intention here and dig deeper.

30:09

And so that's really what we were hoping to challenge women to do in this first pillar. And as we dug deeper ourselves, we were seeing, you know,

30:15

God wants us as women to have a heart, um, to be a helper in our marriages, but when you're not married, you know, my sister wasn't married when we wrote this and she was, you know,

30:24

God wants me to have that heart of service, of loving others, of pouring out for others, cultivating that in my life, whether I'm married or single of helping others.

30:33

That was a distinct part of womanhood from the beginning. And yes, it's been marred by sin, um, distorted by sin.

30:40

Uh, but we need to look and say, okay, God was up to something here. So how can I, as a woman, wherever I am, whether I'm young, old, how can

30:47

I look around where God has me in my school, in my family, in my church, with my siblings, you know, wherever, and say, how can

30:53

I be a helper? How can I be a benefit? How can I be a blessing, um, to those that God has placed around me?

30:59

And so that's really just a heart posture that we believe that God wants us to women, wants us as women to cultivate.

31:05

Definitely. Now I don't want to give away all of the pillars. Okay. Femininity.

31:11

Um, and obviously you unpack these ideas and so much, and you apply them in such a fantastic way, but I am curious if we'll, we'll leave the third one, um, as a surprise, but I'm curious if you'll talk a little bit about the second one, because again, the second one could leave some girls thinking, you know, if they, if they misinterpret it, if they don't understand it correctly, they could lead them down the wrong, the wrong trail.

31:33

But your, your second pillar is she produces life. Talk about that a little bit.

31:38

How does that work for someone without kids? Yeah, exactly. Well, that was my story, you know, wanting kids and God not guaranteeing us that blessing and helping me to, to understand womanhood from a bigger, broader lens.

31:51

So when he created us as women to have a very unique gift, right? So God created females to be able to carry children, to get pregnant, to give birth, to bring new life into the world.

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Culturally today, that's, that's not praised and upheld as a beautiful attribute of womanhood. It is so diminished and almost viewed as a burden that women have to carry.

32:11

And we're trying to figure out every way to get around that because it's oppressive to us as women to have to do this where the man can just be so free.

32:18

I mean, that's the message we're hearing, but scripturally, biblically we see God painting this picture, um, as a beautiful thing, women gifted exclusively to carry life and bring new life into the world.

32:28

But does that mean every woman is going to be able to have children, every woman get married and, you know, give birth to children?

32:34

No. But I think it speaks again to a deeper part of our womanhood that God is calling us to be fruitful.

32:40

Now we should have a heart and a desire to cheer on this aspect of womanhood, whether it's ever something

32:47

God gifts us with or not. But I think it speaks even deeper and more spiritually that we are called to produce life and whether it's physical life or spiritual life,

32:55

God is calling us to be life producers. And so as I was wrestling through my own infertility and, you know, just crying out to the

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Lord and saying, Lord, you have not given me this ability to produce physical life. Although I long for this, how can

33:07

I be a fruitful woman in other ways? How can I bear life in, you know, in the life that you've given me?

33:14

And really that was just through producing spiritual life. And so I started pouring my time and energy into mentoring young women.

33:20

I started meeting one -on -one with women, and it was just so encouraging for my heart to see that there's more than one way to produce life as women.

33:27

But that's something that we need to champion, whether in our own lives or in the lives of others, because God has a heart for women giving birth.

33:34

It's a beautiful thing, but at the same time saying, am I a woman? Am I being a woman who is also producing spiritual life?

33:40

And that model in Titus two of older women mentoring younger women, we see that picture laid out in scripture and it's something that God wants.

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I believe each one of us as women to cultivate in our heart and pursue as we reach out to the next generation.

33:52

And we've been encouraging our daughter to do that her entire life. Obviously she's not to the place where she can have children, but she is somebody who can be a blessing and help other people build other people up in their spiritual life.

34:06

That's what she needs to do. She needs to be that for her friends, for her brother. And guess what? It's not just my daughter. It's everyone in my family can do that.

34:14

So another fantastic observation from your book. Another thing though, I really loved about Girl Defined is yours and Bethany's ability to tell what

34:22

I would say is an engaging story. Okay. You share so many anecdotes from your own lives and the lives of girls you've known and women you've known also women from the

34:33

Bible, others from culture. Why was it so important for you to share these stories? And again, yours, you've been very transparent and very open.

34:40

So has Bethany in the book. Why is it so important for you to share those stories and yours in particular? Yeah. You know,

34:47

I think as humans, we learn through stories. I even saw Jesus model this right. Constantly telling parables and giving examples.

34:53

And for us, I think some of the best lessons come through our journeys and through what has, what

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God has taught us in ways that we have followed him, ways we haven't followed him and how he's refined us and sanctified us.

35:05

And as we examined our own journeys and are still very much on the journey of growing in biblical womanhood thought, wow, these are relatable things and we want to bring biblical womanhood down to earth.

35:15

You know, we want it to be relatable and understandable. And so it was a combination of using our own stories of what

35:20

God has taught us the good, bad, and the ugly. And then looking culturally at examples, biblical examples, and bringing that all together to help young women or women or men, whoever's reading this book to get a, a well -rounded picture of biblical womanhood.

35:33

And, you know, since our target audience is generally a little bit younger, you know, younger women, I'm in college age girls, 20 somethings.

35:41

I just think it's hard to keep people's attention these days, unless you write interesting things. And so we're like, we want to make this a book that we would have wanted to read when we were younger.

35:50

So that was also part of our goal with trying to be engaging as much as possible. And you do a fantastic job of it.

35:56

Now, at the end of the book, at the end of the book, you talk about wimpy women. Okay.

36:02

What defines this title and how do you think it's best to be avoided? Yeah. You know, there's this idea in culturally and in the church,

36:12

I think that, Oh, if you embrace biblical womanhood, you're just going to be a doormat, right? We've all heard that term. Like I'm just going to be a weak and wimpy woman.

36:18

I'm just going to be brainless. Like I'm not going to use any of the gifts. God has given me. I'm just going to be serving men.

36:24

It's this horrible picture. Not at all what God's word paints for womanhood.

36:30

And so instead of buying into the world's definition of what a strong woman is, which is so self -centered and all about our own agenda, rather true strength comes when we humble ourselves and we open up God's word.

36:42

And we say, God, who do you say I am? Who have you, um, who do you call me to be? How do you want me to live?

36:48

And we submit our lives to Jesus Christ. And we follow him in him. We find strength in him.

36:54

We're strong. And so according to God's word, the real wimpy women are the ones who just follow the flesh, who follow their cell, who follow the crowd, who just go with the cultural flow, who are in the world and being of the world, right?

37:06

Like we see this picture of true strength are the ones who lay in, deny themselves and pick up their cross and follow

37:12

Christ. Like it is hard. You have to be spiritually strong in the Lord, um, and seeking him wholeheartedly.

37:19

And it's by his grace that he enables us to walk this journey of following him. So we say to girls, like, don't be wimpy.

37:25

Don't just follow your heart. It's not the message of God's word. Follow God. That's where true strength is found.

37:31

Amen. And amen. Preach it sister. I'm so glad that you and Bethany wrote this book.

37:38

I'm so glad that I again was the one chosen to read it. And I'm really looking forward to how Girl Defined is going to help equip my daughter to be a biblical woman who fears the

37:47

Lord and fulfills her calling. But the book Girl Defined, again, is not your only resource.

37:53

Okay. You've got Girl Defined Ministries. Okay. And you and your sister have a plethora of amazing content.

37:58

Tell us a little bit more about that and where our listeners can connect with you to access that content. Yeah.

38:03

So everything is on our website at girldefined .com. And, um, yeah, Girl Defined was our first book.

38:09

I would say most foundational, an amazing place to start. And then of course, for young women, the next biggest question that comes up is all about love and relationships and romance.

38:18

And so we wrote Love Defined, which is all about God's beautiful design for love and romance and biblically what that looks like, marriage.

38:25

And then our most recent book is Sex, Purity, and the Longings of a Girl's Heart, which I would say was by far the hardest one to write because we were digging into God's design for sexuality and female, male, these longings, sexual desires.

38:38

You know, I'm single. How do I honor the Lord in this? What is his plan for this? Um, how do I battle sexual sin? Just all of these questions that we all face, you know, it's not like it goes away once you get married.

38:47

So, um, just a really relevant book for the times, I think. And we were grateful for the opportunity to write that. So those are some of our resources.

38:54

And we have an annual conference. Before you start talking about everything else, I do want you to know that having read this, I'm actually looking forward to reading the next two.

39:01

I have it on my list to do it. I haven't gotten them yet. I have not gotten them yet, but I am definitely looking forward to it because when

39:08

I saw the other two, I was like, man, that could be so valuable for my, for my daughter too. That could be so valuable for them.

39:14

I need to read this. So I'm excited. Okay. Well, I'll send you copies. So we'll get those in your hands.

39:20

No worries there. You guys might not be the only ones to get a free book out of this. Look at that. I might've won too. Hey, as the host,

39:27

I think you deserve some free books. You've done some hard work. Will it be autographed? Yes, for sure.

39:34

Only, only the best, only the best for you. There was only one other author who ever sent me an autographed book and it was

39:40

Ken Ham. So that puts you in a very prestigious company right there. So you and Ken, you're the classy ones.

39:47

Okay. I don't think I deserve to be as high up as Ken, but I'll take it. All right.

39:53

So anyway, you've got our YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If, if you have daughters or if you're listening and you're like,

39:59

I'm always on the go, we have our YouTube channel. So a great, a great way to get biblical content and just like shorter segments.

40:04

And then we just recently launched our podcast called the girl to find show available everywhere, longer form content like this conversation.

40:10

So really conversational, really fun digging into all of these sort of topics. And then we have an annual conference that girls come from all over the world to attend every summer.

40:18

It's kind of like the summer kickoff before you go into the fall and it's the girl to find conference in San Antonio, Texas. So if anybody out there wants to come brave the heat for a

40:26

Texas summer, you're welcome to join us, but we're on all the social media, but you can find all of that at girl to find .com.

40:32

That's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today with all the great stuff you already have out and no doubt, all the things that you have in the works,

40:40

I'm sure we'll have an opportunity to talk more with you and Bethany in the future. In fact, if I like these books, you're going to send a, we will definitely be talking and hopefully we can also get

40:47

Bethany on the show. So thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thanks so much, Aaron. It's been a pleasure.

40:53

All right, listeners, if you would like to get your hands on a copy of this autographed book, just follow the link in the description of this episode to be taken to Kristen's special guest page at truthloveparent .com.

41:04

Now when you get there, you'll actually see a picture of Kristen and Bethany. Kristen is the one on the right, if I'm remembering correctly.

41:10

So you get to see both of the authors there. You'll be able to find more information about Kristen links to her ministry and links to purchase

41:17

Girl Defined from Amazon. And I've told you this before, but it's important to remind you. If you purchase the book on Amazon using our links, you not only bless

41:25

Kristen and Bethany, you bless yourself and your family, but you also bless TLP because we receive a commission off of your purchase.

41:32

In fact, nearly everything you purchase on Amazon using our affiliate link earns us a commission. So please do that.

41:37

But if you want to try to win a free copy for yourself, just go to truthloveparent .com forward slash giveaways.

41:44

I'll have a link in the description for you. There are three different ways to enter your name into the drawing, and there are two books to win.

41:50

Also, please subscribe to the show, share this episode on your favorite social media outlets, subscribe to Truth Love Parent and Girl Defined on YouTube and spread the word about these ministries.

42:00

And I hope you'll join us next time as we dig into God's word to discover how to parent our children for life and godliness.

42:06

To that end, we'll be discussing part four of our series on the biggest parenting challenges you will ever face.