June 8, 2017 Show with Karen Hodge on “Transformed: Life-Taker to Life-Giver” PLUS Armen Thomassian on “The Need for Pastors to Give Themselves to Prayer & the Ministry of the Word”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's.

Our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this eighth day of June 2017.

I'm delighted to have two guests on today for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. For the first hour we have Karen Hodge, who will be discussing her book Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver, which she co-authored with Susan Hunt.

And then the second hour we have for the very first time Armin Tomasian, a former atheist who currently pastors Calgary Free Presbyterian Church in Alberta, Canada, and he's also one of the speakers at the upcoming Foundations Conference in New York City, a conference run by Sermon Audio, and he's going to be addressing the theme, The Need for Pastors to Give Themselves to Prayer and the Ministry of the Word.

So make sure you stay tuned for the next hour as well. But now I'd like to introduce to you Karen Hodge, the wife of Pastor Chris Hodge at Napperville Presbyterian Church in Napperville, Illinois, and she is the PCA Coordinator for Women's Ministry, and as I said she's going to be addressing her book Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron,.

Karen Hodge. Thank you Chris for having me on today. I look forward to our time together.

As do I, and am I pronouncing, is it Naperville or Napperville?

It is Naperville. Sorry about that. I'm thrilled here. No, it's great.

Well, as I typically do when I have a guest on for the first time, I'd like to have you tell our listeners something about the religion of your childhood, if any, and how the Lord eventually, through his providence, drew you to himself and saved you.

I love telling my story because really I am a child of the covenant. There was never a time that I didn't know the Lord, and I was raised in a Christian home. I grew up in South Florida, in West Palm Beach, Florida, and both of my parents were believers, but I grew up in a Southern Baptist church.

In many of the writings and the teachings in that church, I would not have called them Reformed at the time because I didn't really know that that's what I should call it, but I realize now that God was shaping me and forming me through those writings and teachings.

Fast forward, I met my husband and we went on to Reform Theological Seminary where we began to grow in our Reformed understanding and grow in our faith together, and I've been very privileged to be under great teaching, not only the fact that my husband is my pastor, but many other good pastors throughout my life, and so that's really my faith story in a nutshell.

And did you go to the RTS there in Orlando, or did you go to the one in North Carolina?

Right, and now there are RTS campuses everywhere, right? In the beginning, they really were only in Jackson, and we went to the Orlando campus. It was brand new, and we actually had R .C. Sproul and Richard Pratt come and teach at our church, and I thought, okay, well, if they're the ones that are teaching there, then that's where we want to go.

So it was just starting out and now has developed into a much larger campus with many more professors there, but that was back in 1990, and it profoundly shaped Chris and I, where our ministry would go.

Yes, in fact, one of the presidents.

Of one of RTS's campuses, Michael Kruger, he was actually a member of the church where I'm a member now, Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was a pastoral intern, and then he later became a Presbyterian and now is president, one of the presidents of RTS.

Oh yeah, I love Mike and Melissa Kruger. In fact, next week we will have the PCA's General Assembly, and they are my keynote speaker for our Wednesday luncheon for all our ruling and teaching elders wives, talking about what it means to persevere in a ministry marriage, and so they're a great example of a couple that love the church and minister so well together.

So I'm excited to be.

Able to see the Krugers next week. Yes, and although I have interviewed Michael, I have never met him face-to-face. He was a member of Grace Baptist Church before I ever moved to Pennsylvania, but I am excited that, God willing, he will be speaking at the G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

He is on a very long roster of speakers there, January 18th through the 20th, and I'm going to have an exhibitor's booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio there. So I'm looking forward to finally meeting Michael face-to-face, and he is also going to be on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio again within the next several weeks.

Oh good. Yeah, he's quite a brilliant individual. He is. And now tell us about Naperville Presbyterian Church. I know that it is a congregation, as you just mentioned, in the PCA, known as the Presbyterian Church in America.

Tell us something more about Naperville Presbyterian Church.

All right, well Naperville is a western suburb of Chicago, and what drew Chris here, my husband, about 10 years ago was the fact that this church was planted, what they call in the PCA, as a flagship church.

It was one of the original churches in the PCA over 30 years ago, planted here to plant other churches here in the Chicagoland area. And as you probably know, it's a city of 9 million people, so we need a lot of churches.

And so we really see this as a gospel hub here in the western suburbs, and we love being here. It's a church of about a thousand people, and we're delighted to be here. I find the Midwest, even though both my husband and I are both Southerners, we find the Midwest a very warm place and a place that is receptive to the gospel.

These are people that are making a difference, not just here in Chicagoland, but in many cases around the world, because Chicago is a sending place, and it's a place of influence, and we also have the academic institution of Wheaton College that is closed, and so having professors and students who are part of our church also shapes the culture of our church.

So we are...another thing that I'm glad to always tell people is that by God's grace, He's continuing to make our church look more and more like heaven. It's a multi-ethnic, multicultural church, and it really reflects Chicagoland.

We live in the fastest-growing Asian suburb in Chicagoland, and our church is beginning, by God's grace, to reflect that.

Yeah, the Lord is definitely bringing about a revival, and has been bringing about great revival amongst the Asian community here and abroad for quite a number of years. It seems to be the primary place where there's revival going on.

And well, if anybody is interested in looking up more information about the Naperville Presbyterian Church, go to npchurch .org, N-P for Naperville Presbyterian Church, dot org, npchurch .org. Well, tell us about this book, Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver.

Obviously, you've got to especially explain that subtitle, and how you and Susan Hunt, who's a very well-known Reformed author, how you two got together to work on this.

Project. Well, Chris, it might help by describing our relationship first, before I get to the contents of the book. Sure. I was a newbie church planter's wife at 29, and I called the office that I now am in charge of, and Susan Hunt had this same position 20 years ago, and she answered the phone, and I said, I really said, in essence, could you give me the 10-step formulaic kit for starting a women's ministry from scratch?

But of course, that does not exist, and so it was on that day that I tell people, I think my trajectory and how I related to women's ministry really was formed, because instead of giving me some kind of formulaic answer, Susan invited me into a relationship with her.

She began to pray for me, and she began to equip me and come along side me, and to include me in opportunities to learn and to grow, and then as the years went on, teach alongside of her, so she has been a friend, and truly, in every sense of the word, I mean, she really coined the term spiritual mother, and she has been my spiritual mother.

She has lived what she has taught in my life, and so we have a really sweet relationship. So fast forward to about 18 months ago. One of the things that PCA Women's Ministry has done historically in the past is bring together women, and every time we've done this, we've done it in the southeast in Atlanta for conferences to equip about every couple of years, and when I took the job, I think mostly because I live in Chicagoland, and we have ministered on the edges, geographically speaking, of the PCA, I thought, you know, a lot of times people think, you know, we're always going to the south in order to be equipped in our denomination, so what would it be like if we actually went to the edges of our denomination and put on conferences that were contextualized to those geographic regions, and so in 2016, we did eight conferences called Transformed.

It comes out of Romans 1133 through Romans 12 to that passage around North America, and we went to places like Los Angeles, Ontario, Philadelphia, Dallas, South Florida, Birmingham, Alabama, you know, in Chicago, Illinois.

I mean, we went to places where many times women don't have access to equipping, especially in our denomination, and Nancy Guthrie, Melissa Kruger, and Courtney Doctor were our speakers to teach through that passage.

Now, when Susan and I were having this conversation, I think a lot of times we can have conferences that are one and done. We go in and we do equipping, and they can be effective, but sometimes they don't go the distance, and so Susan and I had a conversation.

What if we developed a resource that could be a natural follow-up to unpack that passage of Scripture in a broader way for the women who come to the conference, and we had close to 5 ,000 women come from those eight cities, yeah, and so what we wanted to do was place in their hands a resource that they could go back into the context of their local churches and unpack the truth of what spiritual transformation looks like in the context of community, and thus the book came about.

So that's probably more than you wanted to know about the backstory, but it's important because I think it flows out of the context of a relationship with Christ, and Susan and I have with each other, and I think you get a feeling for that as you read.

Through the pages. And this is a Gospel-centered study on Eve, Sarah, and Mary. Tell us how specifically this addresses to each of those three main biblical characters. Well, we start.

The book in 1 Peter, and the verse that references holy women who hoped in God, and what does that look like for us as women who hope in God? What does transformation look like? And then we take apart the lives of Eve, Sarah, and Mary in several chapters for each one of those, and how God, through his relationship with them, as they listen to him, their lives are transformed.

And so they are pacesetters, if you will, for what spiritual.

Transformation looks like. I'm going to give our email address for our listeners. It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. If you have a question for our guest on the theme, Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver, that she co-authored with Susan Hunt, a Gospel-centered study on Eve, Sarah, and Mary.

When you write in, please at least give your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. But if you are writing about a personal and private matter, I understand if you prefer to remain anonymous.

Let me just read a couple of the endorsements for this book. First, from Christina Fox, who has been on this program before. Christina Fox says, We all want to change and transform our lives, theologically rich, Christ-exalting, and based on our Helper-Life-Giver design.

Transformed will help you become what you behold. And the aforementioned Melissa Kruger, who we just heard about moments ago, author of The Envy of Eve and Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, she wrote, Reading Transformed is an opportunity to sit and learn from two gifted and godly spiritual mothers.

This book is a helpful encouragement to think biblically and live covenantally. And we do already have a listener question. Let's see, we have Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. And Jenny says, What are the greatest challenges the wives of church planters face, domestically and overseas?

Is monetary funding still the number one issue?

I have a heart for church planting wives, having done that in my life. And I would say funds are always a problem. But the number one problem that I see is the loneliness and isolation that can happen, especially when you're planting a church that's not near other churches.

And that's exactly what we did. We did a scratch church plant in South Florida. And when we're lonely and we're isolated, many times the enemy can whisper lies that we're never going to be a part of meaningful community or that nobody can really understand how we feel.

And I think one of the joys of being in community is having people speak into our lives and remind us what is true, to preach the gospel to our soul. And so as you see a church being built, you know, prayerfully, that's exactly what happens, that God organically uses the planting of a church to build a gospel center community.

But many times for church planters wives, they have to reach out to sometimes people who are in faraway communities, perhaps maybe somebody they went to seminary with or a faraway friend that can remind her what is true, especially on those days when you feel like nobody understands and nobody knows where you are.

Now, as far as finances, I know that the PCA is, I believe if I'm not mistaken, the largest of the evangelical Presbyterian denominations. Is the denomination responsible for a lot of the funding of plants or do they still need to raise a considerable portion from brothers and sisters in Christ, not only within their own congregation of the plant, but from outside as well?

Plants are funded. They're certainly not given money just from the denomination to do it. They're funded through churches and presbyteries and then also individuals. And so it's upon the church planter to raise those funds.

And so part of what they do when they go call to an area is they go through an assessment in our denomination, but then they go into the fundraising stage. And sometimes that can be really discouraging because there's a lot of good and excellent ways for us to invest our money in kingdom ventures.

And so sometimes you get a no. And so it takes a lot of faith to go out there and boldly ask that God would provide the money.

That you need in order to plant a church. Well, thank you, Jenny and Ben Settle in Pennsylvania. And guess what? You have won a free copy of Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver by Karen Hodge and Susan Hunt, a gospel-centered study on Eve, Sarah, and Mary.

This is compliments of our friends at Christian Focus Publications and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. We'll be shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And remember their website, it's cvbbs .com, C-V for Cumberland Valley, B-B-S for Bible Book Service dot com. Actually owned and operated by Todd and Patty Jennings, members of the PCA. And they have been faithful supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and ship out all of our winners, their free Bibles and books when they submit questions.

So keep your up for a package with a return address on the shipping label that says cvbbs .com. And we do have a listener, Bibi, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says, is there anything commendable that we can teach our children about Eve where she could be serving in any way as a role model, knowing that she, along with her husband, were a part of the worst tragedy that ever occurred in human history the fall?

Oh, great question. Yeah, we like to blame Eve for everything.

Well, Adam did, certainly.

Adam did. Yes, we see the great blame shift there. But I think when we want to understand, especially what biblical womanhood looks like, we go back to the blueprint. And we actually see, before she's named Eve, we see woman there in the garden.

And I think we can learn so much about her divine design there, that she's an image bearer, that in Genesis 2, Adam has named all the animals. And there's only one thing that's not good. And that is that none of those were sufficient for true biblical community.

And so, it's not good for him to be alone. And so, God gives him woman as a helper. And then, after the fall, this amazing thing happens. Adam's capacity to name is restored. And he calls woman now Eve, which means life or life giver, thus the tagline of the book.

And we see that even though this declaration of death is still ringing in the air, there is the capacity being restored to bring life. And I think one of the things that's amazing, and especially as we teach young women, especially those who are not married or haven't birthed biologically, just like Eve at this point, she has not had any children.

And yet, Adam says, you have the capacity to give life, spiritually speaking, not just biologically speaking. And then we see the cultural mandate to go and be fruitful and multiply. And so, Adam and Eve, even after their exile from the garden, begin this journey.

And we see, part of what we show in the book is that as you walk through Genesis 1, 2, 3, and then 4, we see Eve's transformation. In Genesis 4, Eve says, early on in the chapter, she says, I have gotten a son with the help of the Lord.

And she finds out that Cain and Abel aren't the promised ones that are promised there and that are going to actually crush Satan's head in Genesis 3, 15. And so, then time goes on and you read at the end of chapter 4 that God then has given her another son.

And so, this shift from I to God, this I orientation to God orientation, I can't think of a better thing to tell a young person or any person my age, I need to remember this. We live in a society that is captivated by I, me, mine, individualism, autonomy.

And yet, when we have a Godward orientation, He is glorified. And then we actually see a blessing in their family. And so, I think there's a lot to learn from Eve, even though she does get blamed for a lot of the foundational issues that we struggle with in our own sin and in our own heart.

And so, I hope that's helpful to you to think about how we come alongside young girls, especially.

Well, Bebe, you've also won a free copy of Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver, compliments of Christian-focused publications. So, please keep your eye out in the mail for that. And make sure you give us your full mailing address as well, so we can have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship it out to you.

Okay. You have in this book a number of women mentioned throughout the book. In fact, every chapter involves a woman. You have Andrea, Lauren, Ellen, Helen, Chandra or Chandra, Ronjanette, and Cindy and Abby.

Who are these women?

They're women in Susan and I's life. And Cindy goes to church with me here at Naperville Pres. And Ronjanette and Chandra are on my women's ministry team and so on and so forth. And really, what those stories represent, hopefully, as a woman reads those, she can slide her feet proverbially into their shoes and think deep into watching these transformation stories that unfold in the book.

And so, these are women we've done life with, we've walked alongside, and we've seen how God has transformed them from being a life-taker to being a life-giver.

I'm going to read a question from Slovenia. I'm going to read a question for you, and then I'll have you answer it when we return from our station break. Okay. In fact, actually, I don't have your email address, so never mind.

I was going to email you the question as well, but I'll just read it to you. Okay. Kim in Slovenia, she says, as a missionary, most of the women with whom I work do not have Christian husbands. Please ask Karen what, in her experience, has been the best way to study God's word with these women and encourage them in their walk with the Lord with husbands who do not share their faith or are even openly hostile to their faith.

Any help or guidance you can share would be greatly appreciated. And that, as I said, is Kim in Slovenia, and we'll have you answer that question when we return from our station break. If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Karen Hodge regarding transformed life taker to life giver, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. And again, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. Don't go away.

God willing, we'll be right back with Karen Hodge right after these messages. I believe you'll also find World to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets.

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Welcome back. This is Chris.

Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is Karen Hodge, and she is discussing her book co-authored with Susan Hunt, Transformed, Lifetaker to Lifegiver.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Karen, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. Before the break, we had Kim in Slovenia who says, as a missionary, most of the women with whom I work do not have Christian husbands.

Please ask Karen what in her experience has been the best way to study God's word with these women and encourage them in their walk with the Lord with husbands who do not share their faith or are openly hostile to their faith.

Any help or guidance you can share would be greatly appreciated. Karen, do you have any help for her? Sure. First of all, I wanted to say to Kim that.

God sees you, and what you're doing is eternal, and it is very important. And we want our worlds to change. We want our worlds to be transformed, but it's not possible unless we renew our minds in God's word.

So sending women to His word is absolutely the best thing to do. In our book, in chapter 2, we actually go through 1 Peter 2 and into the beginning of chapter 3, and there are some words that really redirect me and refocus me when I think about what it means to live out my faith as a woman.

I mean, thankfully, my husband is a believer, but I work with a lot of women here, even in Chicagoland, whose husbands are not believers. And so rather than give you advice, I'll read you a little scripture here from 1 Peter 2, 21.

Of course, Peter is encouraging, in this context, believers to submit themselves. We don't like to talk about the S word, right? Most women back off from that, because it gets right to the heart of the issue, our unwillingness to surrender, or to yield, or to submit.

And yet, as Peter goes through this passage, he is unpacking what it looks like in government, and in the home, and in the different relationships we have in the community. But then he brings us to the reference point, and that's Christ Himself.

In verse 21, it says,. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps. And Peter goes on to say the way that Christ submitted Himself on the cross was by continually entrusting Himself to His Father.

And then you go down several verses in chapter 3, and I think Peter shows us where the rubber hits the road, in the most personal relationship in a marriage. And then he says, in the same way, in the same way that Christ has entrusted Himself and submitted Himself to His Father, wives be submissive to your own husband, so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and behavior.

In other words, as the Word of God transforms our lives, it will, by God's grace, transform our relationships, especially when we think in terms of marriage. And it can be done without words, because the gospel transforms our attitudes, our actions, the way that we serve, the way that we relate, and it can be even done without a word.

And so I would just encourage Kim to continue to disciple women, so that they won't give up hope that the Lord might, in His good providence, work in the lives of their own husbands by seeing how the Word has.

Actually transformed them. Amen. Well, thank you, Kim. And guess what? You have also won a free copy of Transformed, Life-Taker to Life-Giver by our guests Karen Hodge and Susan Hunt. Thank you for providing an American address where your daughter lives, where we can ship this book because that saves a lot on the shipping costs that our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service graciously take care of.

So thanks for listening, and keep spreading the Word in Slovenia and beyond about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Now, this is not an unusual thing, these women of whom Kim speaks, women with unbelieving husbands and even husbands that are hostile to their faith.

I don't know if it's still statistically true, but being in the Christian radio industry for over 30 years, I have heard the phrase that women far outnumber men numerically in the church globally. Is that still a reality?

I don't even know if it ever was for certain, but is that a reality? And this would obviously mean that there are many women out there who are.

Facing the same conflict. I can't tell you statistically, but I can tell you anecdotally that when we go into churches, women far outnumber the men, and thus the reason why I give my life to cultivating women's ministry, a place where women can be encouraged and equipped to understand their biblical design, but also what that means to live it out in the context of whether they're in a workplace, or a home, or a neighborhood, as a mother, as a sister, as a friend, because now more than ever, women need to be equipped and they need to be encouraged because the culture certainly is not encouraging them to live a life like that.

Yes, and it's interesting that the Word of God commands older women to train up the younger women in the faith, and that possibly could be due to the fact that there were more women in the church even then, but it certainly is interesting that that is a part of the design of the church, that God himself, through his breathed-out Word, he wanted the older women.

To train up the younger women. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, Chris, because I think a lot of times women and men often perceive women's ministry as being programmatic, and the reality of the situation is that when Paul was giving these instructions to Titus, it was about what it meant to have a healthy church rather than have some kind of program, and he said, if you want to have a healthy church and plant one, then men need to teach, older men need to teach younger men, and older women need to teach younger women, and they don't need to just teach them in content, but also to show them what it looks like in the context of relationships, and so that's why we can sometimes gloss over those parts of Scripture because they're so immensely practical, but they're also very spiritual, and so that's really what women's ministry does.

It brings those older and younger women together, hopefully in an organic context where they can be life on life, and that's when discipleship happens at its best. Yes,.

And it's interesting that Paul also commends Timothy's mother and grandmother for his being.

Trained up in the faith. Well, I know a lot of women have made a difference in my life, including my grandmother and my mother, and I love the fact that he makes that reference there, that he was profoundly shaped by women, so women's ministry actually impacts young men in the church.

As well. Amen. We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, please forgive me if this is a part of the contents of Transformed. I was just wondering if you believe that the impatience of Sarah and Abraham to wait for a biological child was at the root of what we even see now today of the conflict between the heirs of Ishmael and the heirs of Isaac still in battle with one another and involved in hateful, bitter strife.

Could this sin be all laid at the feet of Sarah and Abraham, not to take away from the great heroes of the.

Faith that they were? That's a great insight, RJ, and I think there's something to that, that our sin doesn't just impact us, but it has the potential to have the collateral damage to impact generations, and certainly Abraham and Sarah, at different times in the story, decide to take matters into their own hands, and we see ultimately that it wreaks havoc.

It wreaks havoc in a multitude of different ways, but ultimately when they yield to God's best to actually bring Isaac into their life and then ultimately being willing to be open-handed with him, to surrender him to whatever God's will is for his life, shows that Sarah has been transformed in her thinking about who God is and his plan, that we see that Abraham and Sarah are willing to even sacrifice their own son to follow him, to follow their father God, and so I think it's an interesting insight that much could be made about that, and it certainly, as we watch the news,.

It informs us, doesn't it? Yeah, sure it does. Well, thank you, RJ, and you have also won a free copy of Transformed, Lifetaker to Lifegiver. Please make sure you give us your full mailing address in White Plains, New York, so we can have cvbbs .com ship that out to you as soon as possible.

Well, if you wouldn't mind going through some of the unique stories that you have in the book, let's start with Andrea's story and how these intertwine with the lives of Eve, Sarah, and Mary, which are the primary focus of your book.