Okay, so I'm gonna start with some of the questions that people had specifically for the sessions that you just shared with us today. So the first question is, do you think Mary actually knew that Jesus would go to the cross soon because Jesus was preaching about his coming obedience when Mary was at his feet?

That's a great question. I think most scholars believe that she had an awareness of that that the other disciples didn't have. I mean there's no way to prove that really. You know when Jesus said that she did this to prepare me for my coming burial, it doesn't sound like she was oblivious to what she was doing.

It sounds like she had some idea of what she was doing and that she wasn't just mechanistically you know grabbing this alabaster flask and had no idea of what was going on. So again most scholars would say that because he had said time and time again that he was going to be going to the cross and his teaching about the cross had been intensifying and she obviously as his friend had seen the stress that he was undergoing, it seemed most scholars would agree that she had some idea of what was gonna happen.

Didn't really know about you know crucifixion, resurrection, the second coming, things like that but that whatever it was that he was supposed to do she wanted to be there and encourage him in his obedience. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay so the second question is what are some practical ways you fought to be a Mary rather than a Martha when your kids were young?

Yeah that's a good question. You know I think from the time they were really young even my son now he just turned 31 and my middle daughter's 24 and then my youngest is 21 so I had my son a long time ago and I remember maybe from like the time he was about six months on just communicating with him that I was gonna be spending time with the Lord and I would you know put him in a safe place whether it was in his playpen or in his crib.

I would try to do it actually when he was awake during the day at the same time every day so that they would start getting used to that but I would put him in a safe place and then you know shut my my bedroom door partially but not all the way and then I would go in there and spend time with God and the kids just kind of got used to that.

When my daughters came along I remember you know the phone would ring or whatever before we had cell phones when we used to have landlines and they would answer the phone and I'd hear no no she won't be out for about an hour she's talking to Jesus right now.

Yeah so they were super familiar with what I would do and just making that a priority making sure that they were in a safe place but communicating to them that I was gonna spend time with God and you know there were a couple times that when my daughters were young for example and they'd start you know fighting with each other and I'd look at the door and see fingers coming underneath the door you know it was after I finished or whatever they would be disciplined and it was like you know you you can't there's a short amount of time that I spend with God and I'm with you all the time and and I really need this and you guys need me to need this as well you just don't know it yet so they they got used to it.

Okay all right so on to some more personal questions how did you come to know the Lord? Oh that's a really long story and I don't want to spend too much time on it but let me see if I can do the three-minute version. I okay okay I I was not raised in a Christian home my parents are really nice great people very moral people but I was born in 1963 and my parents were very forward thinking and they picked up on being non-christians and wanting desperately to raise their kids right they picked up on the liberal ideology that was out there and so they picked up on the parenting philosophies where you let your kid do whatever they want to do you don't discipline you know violence breeds violence if you spank then they're gonna become violent people and you know you just let them do whatever they want if they want to color on the walls don't hinder their creativity it's all gonna work together in the end to be this brilliant package just roll with it and so they did that and it didn't work out too well by the time I was in my late teens I was what the 1970s would call a hardcore punk rocker I shaved my head oh yeah I had a mohawk at times every color of hair leather jacket combat boots lived a lot of my time behind I don't know liquor stores and cheesy clubs up in Hollywood but yeah so it didn't work out too well for my poor parents you know and they were again super nice but they just weren't proactive when it came to discipline they educated us and they set great examples but there was no consequences of disobedience and I remember being a young kid and just thinking I rule you know I mean really looking around at my family and thinking it's all about me and I could do whatever I want I can get away with whatever I want and so kind of like the rebel without a cause it was like you know life is bad and so I'm gonna just be super dark and rebellious and got caught up in that entire scene and everything that goes along with it including the sex and the drugs and all that stuff so for some odd reason I think because my parents highly valued education and I did as well I stayed in college through that time I mean I stayed in school and got good grades and whatnot so I would be college student by day and drug addict by night and you know just kind of even rolling into tests with a hangover but getting through it community college is pretty flexible right so I made it through all of that but I ended up living with my boyfriend who's now my husband and he we were having a party one night and there was a guy that attended the party who was an attractive guy and I hadn't seen him before and we just got into a conversation and was offering him alcohol and drugs and whatever and he kept saying thanks but no thanks and I thought you know what's wrong with this guy and he said I'm a Christian and I was like wow that's really sad and we actually my husband and I and the people that we were involved with at the time we got really involved in these like hardcore British bands and there were these bands and they would have these banners and anthems and sayings and there was a little it was like a large a large scarf that we had that was in our kitchen at the time on the wall and it said Jesus died for his own sins and not mine yeah yeah so the guy was sitting in there looking rather nervous and I was like Christian wow that's too bad you know and and so we started just discussing things and I think the fact that he was attractive helped but but I was going to school at the time studying chemistry and thought myself to be quite brilliant and you know Christians of course were lacking intelligence and so I just asked him some general questions about you know science and whatever and he didn't have great answers but they weren't like he wasn't stumped and confused or whatever and he somehow God allowed him to transition the conversation to just judgment and death and said you know when you die and you die in your sins and it was clear to all that I was a sinner you're going to face judgment and you'll be separated from God forever in hell and that although I didn't let let him know that scared me and so we talked for a little bit more and it turned out that he had come with his friend his friend was one of our friends and his friend said I'll go to church with you next week if you come to a party with me this week so that's how he ended up there but he gave me his number and said if you ever do you want to go to church or something give me a call so I acted like there's no way you're hearing from me but thanks anyways and I I mean ever since that night I was tormented I kept thinking about sin and God and hell and judgment and consequences and wrong and right and just was very vividly aware of the fact that if he what he said was true I was in real trouble and I I mean I would wake up at night in cold sweats and this one went on for weeks and finally I dug his phone number out of the shoebox I stuffed it into my closet and said hey about that offer to go to church and he said sure and so I went to it was Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa yeah it was in 1983 April 12th 1983 and went in there it was a Tuesday night it was like a college and career night and I remember walking in there thinking this is a nerd fest I mean these people I just could never be like this and they were singing little praise and worship songs and I just thought oh oh no oh no no but I'll sit through this and we'll see what kind of a deal I can make with God so I sat through it I really don't remember what the pastor said but at the end they did what they did a lot then they would do the altar calls and they said you know if anybody's here and wants to get right with Christ and I thought yeah and so I raised my hand and the guy who brought me looked over and smiled and I you know then they said if you want to if you raise your hand come over to the side of the room so I went to the side of the room and looked at them and they all kind of took a step back and looked at me and there were you know younger people that were there there weren't the pastors or anything and they I don't know if they really knew what to do with me I said yeah I want to get right with Jesus I'm living with my boyfriend right now I love cocaine I'm doing cocaine on Friday I just and they were kind of like wow one guy said you have a Bible and I said no I don't he's like you should get one literally that's what it was and so we know we talked for a little bit but I prayed with them asked God to forgive me of my sins and they said you know trust God and so I you know asked God to forgive me of my sins and I really did feel this God connection for the first time it was just the Holy Spirit was extremely merciful to I think the disobedience that I was in and whatever he was doing in my life and you know it wasn't a real biblical gospel that I got or even what I would call a traditional response but God saved me that night and I went back to where I lived and they were partying there or whatever and they said where were you and I said I was at church and one guy's like oh really what's wrong and he's like well you know what's gonna happen now and I said no and he said you can't party anymore and I was like really but I got up the next morning and I went to the the Calvary Chapel bookstore and bought a Bible because they didn't even give me one you know now looking back being in ministry it's like wow everything was done wrong but that's what's so neat is that you know God's Spirit is bigger than us and he I got a Bible I got a King James Version I didn't know there were other versions and I just really started to read it plans fell through for parties or whatever from that day on I have I walked away from that lifestyle I mean God really changed me from the inside out and yeah it's been an interesting road since but it was a definite genuine conversion and my family and those who know me from then are quite surprised we got another question about the session so I'll ask that after I ask this one question because it's in connection with your story so how did you meet your husband we met at a party yeah yeah I just thought he was really cool and he had a leather jacket and had a the you know the front of the Mercedes-Benz the Mercedes-Benz emblems he had ripped one off a car and had it hanging off his jacket oh yeah I was like that's the guy for me despise authority right yeah I've been raised this way so yeah we met we started dating we got along really good we had the same interests and we were living together when I became a Christian then when I went home that night or whatever talked to the guy with the party ended up talking to my boyfriend at the time who became my husband and let him know that I became a Christian and he was a little disappointed especially he was raised in a Jewish family and it was kind of like okay what does this mean and I said I don't know yet I'll figure it out I'll let you know so the story gets very interesting but I started to realize right away without even you know reading anything that the relationship had to change that you know I just knew it's weird how God puts this law on your heart and even not being raised in a Christian home reading from a King James Version you know just starting with you know the the Gospels or whatever I knew that God did not want us to have sex before marriage and I let my husband at my boyfriend at the time know that and it was like what was he gonna do force me yeah so it was like okay and he had his own separate journey but three weeks later he came through the door and we had other roommates at the time too but he came through the door and he said I'm a Christian and the roommates were like oh my we're moving out but we we ended up actually getting bad counsel we got met I became a Christian in April and we got married in August what happened was we were kind of attending Calvary Chapel and then you know it was kind of like well we've been living together and stuff and we want to continue our physical relationship so we need to get married like yesterday and so we went to Calvary Chapel for premarital counseling they discovered in the first session that we were living together and they said well this we got a backpedal a lot here I mean we want you guys to move out separately first and let's you know work on this and we were like oh man you know that's gonna cost a lot of money and that's a lot of work so we were at the same time going to another church that was somewhat local and they were extremely charismatic and they just you know I mean they didn't refer to Scripture as much it was kind of more like God showing us and the the guy who we were being discipled by and he was a nice guy but just didn't have a lot of information or didn't understand things the same way he said well that poor Calvary Chapel that's why you know they don't have the spirit he said they don't understand that if you guys can't go from right now the situation that you're into being married then no one can be saved and I was like really why is that and he said because God's in the business of making wrong right and you guys are living together and you're gonna get married and I was like well duh that poor Calvary Chapel we'll pray for them you know yeah and so we did end up getting married very shortly after we lived together and got married would not recommend that to anybody and you know I reaped the consequences of that for years and God is gracious and forgives us of our sins and takes a wretch like me literally and makes us you know white as snow and yet we do still suffer the consequences of our disobedience and so I did and that's okay it's a good thing but that's how I met my husband and we've been married yeah we've been married for almost 33 years now so yeah it's been it's been a lot of fun yeah okay so I've got a question it's a little long okay so bear with me it says I'll be honest Mary sounds a little kooky okay don't get me wrong I really admire her greatly and wish I could be like her but she sounds special as a more average achiever is it that I need to strive to be like her or are there other principles I need to draw from this and if so how can I assess that I'm pushing myself to be countercultural today for Christ in the same way that Mary had done okay so I think you know we're not going to be at a party where our sister's preparing food and we're gonna be sitting there at the feet of Jesus right you know we're not gonna have a dead brother in a tomb with a rock in front of it you know with the Jewish community mourning around us and Jesus coming saying you know Lazarus arise and we're not gonna be you know taking our life savings or whatever it is and pouring it on his feet and anointing him but I think the principles still remain and I think that we can see the principles throughout the New Testament even you know reading from the Gospels at the end where Jesus said you know whoever seeks to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it and we see Mary doing that we see her growth process and it's just a great example for us because the testimony that Jesus gave to her in the end that she had done that beautiful thing and that what she had done would be spoken of throughout generations and I think that all of us even if we would consider ourselves to be average or mediocre or normative we want to leave a legacy like that where you know those who follow after us whether it be our kids our grandkids our friends you know our co-workers our church community would say you know she was exceptional in living for Christ she made the better decisions she made the best decisions and you know she wasn't afraid of what the world thought or even her peers but her constant devotion love and service were to Christ so practically speaking I think it's just you know really living out the basics the things that we all know to be true making that time for Jesus daily being in our Bibles being in prayer praying without ceasing you know like the Bible teaches us in first Thessalonians 4 to pray without ceasing or first Thessalonians 5 it's like praying as if we had a constant cough that just didn't go away always communicating to God talking to God about everything you know being obedient to the call of Philippians 2 1 through 8 where it says that all Christians are to have this mind this attitude the attitude of Christ where we voluntarily give ourselves up for other people I think that when we live like that and when we do that as the years go by you know as the decades go by we're going to feel that we had a life well-lived and that we had you know we made decisions that were proud of we're made decisions we made decisions that were consistent with God's law and God's principle and that means that in the short term we are gonna have days where we say no to us and yes to God there's that verse I think it's in Romans 14 where it says put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh and I remember hearing Elizabeth Elliot speak once and she said you know sometimes it's just that sometimes it's a put on you put on the Lord Jesus Christ and you make no provision for the flesh and she said but when you put it on when you choose to do the right thing God meets you there and he'll get your emotions or feelings or desires lined up with what you're called to do so I think you know being like Mary is just being the person who chooses to do things God's way who saturates herself with God's Word who is humble enough to seek out godly counsel and who chooses to do things the way that God instructs us to do things rather than the way that her sinful nature or our sinful culture might be directing us to do does that make sense okay okay I think we have time do you think grace we have time for a couple more questions oh do you have another one so is that the one oh I think I asked oh yeah just kidding okay I guess someone is also curious of how your relationship is with your non-believing parents and how you witnessed to them that's a great question well my parents it's interesting my parents have three kids I'm the oldest and the only girl and then there are two boys after me my two brothers there's about five years between the three of us but my middle brother is named David and probably about two years after I became a Christian I'd been witnessing to my parents and to my brothers and my brother David became a Christian and he's a strong passionate Christian he's got four kids they've gone to Christian colleges they're on fire for the Lord his wife's a good friend of mine really sold out for Jesus and then my younger brother was the nicer of the three of us but he spent a long time just living his own life and he dated a Muslim girl for a while and when my kids were young and we were doing homeschooling we would always pray for uncle Mark and we you know I would pray that God would break up his relationship with his Muslim girlfriend which God in time did but uncle Mark got saved and uncle Mark is totally married to a Christian now totally plugged in with his church teaching Bible studies at church and so we'll get together for family gatherings and my parents just say where did we go wrong what in the world have we done yeah and my dad actually just got out of surgery yesterday my my mom is I've always been witnessing to them my brothers told me after they became Christians that when I returned home and said that I was a Christian my dad said to everyone don't worry it's just a phase you know so they thought it would be a phase and it continued on I've bought my dad a hundred different books apologetics books he's very smart he's a thinker and they all get returned to me by my mom a year later you know crisp condition the pages have never been ruffled but you know my dad is just he just doesn't want to believe he'll he attends every year he'll tend to Easter service with me they go to like Christmas Eve sometimes I'll try to talk to him as much as I can I try to be super gracious a couple years ago I said dad just tell me really what you're thinking I mean what is it that you believe what are you thinking is gonna happen to you after you die and he said I don't want to talk to you about that and I said why and he said because you're gonna disagree I'm like it doesn't matter I'm not gonna say anything I just want to hear you and he said you won't do that you always have to be right and I was convicted by that I said I'm so sorry if I've come off that way over the years but I do try to engage in thoughtful conversation with him a couple weeks ago I don't remember what the event was oh it was Easter my parents were over at my house for we had like a barbecue and my brother and I were there and we were dialoguing with my mom trying to reason back and forth with her and she she my mom she'll say she gets it but she doesn't actually believe that the Bible is the Word of God so she believes in a God and she kind of believes in a universalism like all religions are gonna be good and everything's gonna lead to God and my dad it just doesn't he just believes that when you die you turn to dust suck it up and get over with it you know if you can't believe that then that's too bad for you but yeah that's just the way things go so I'm always talking to them inviting them to things trying to get in conversations with them constantly praying for them I've got myself you know my brothers praying for them all the grandkids praying for them it just must be hard being them the Holy Spirit must be just wrestling them down to the ground so I wouldn't be surprised if God has a plan for their lives okay so our last question my child recently made a profession of faith how do I not discard her knowing only time will tell and encourage her without assuming her salvation is true that's a great question I I wish I knew how old the child was but I will say that Elizabeth Elliot said she became a Christian when she was five Cory ten boom said she became a Christian when she was five one of our pastors who was on staff who's now pastoring his own church he said he became a Christian when he was five my middle daughter who's 24 now and she's very passionate about the Lord it's fun to be around her because as a 24 year old it's like she is my sister in Christ I mean she's totally on fire for God and seeks him continually loves him serves others gives me good counsel she became a Christian when she was nine yeah when she was nine she took a shower and she came out of the shower and she looked awful she just it was as white as a sheep and I her name's Hannah I said Hannah what's wrong and she's like I'm a sinner and I'm gonna go to hell when I die and I was like oh boy she must have heard something in church or Sunday school kids been on the weekend I said did someone say something recently in church or kids men or whatever said no I was just standing that shower and I know I'm a sinner and I'm gonna go to hell when I die she's like mom you know the Bible she's like find all the hard passages yeah so I actually went to Luke 14 25 through 33 that basically says no one can be saved it's as hard as you can get and went through that with her and said are you really ready to give up your life and she said yeah and I said what's that gonna look like for you and she said I know what that looks like it means I don't have any friends anymore yeah and she's good friends that she was hanging out even though they were homeschool friends they were kind of like bad girls you know they just weren't nice girls gossipy and rude or whatever and she so loved her friends that was just her thing to this day she loves people but she loved those friends and it was like I have got to let go of that and be willing to have no friends even if it means you're my friend mom you know I'm not gonna have any friends yeah and I can remember that was a huge battle for her and the friends knew that she had this profession of faith and they made it very difficult for her they would walk in front of the house in a little hoard and just stand out there and kind of whatever and it was hard for her but I what I did was I said okay that's a legitimate conversion and I'm gonna hold you to a Christian standard and if you get to the point where I look at your life and say I don't think you're saved I'll let you know and you know it's not like she hasn't sinned since she has but there's always a brokenness repentance and ever since that nine-year-old conversion she's lived consistently as a Christian so I do think that that was legitimate for her and I guess that the long answer to a short question would be if they're kids and they say that they've converted then just hold them to a Christian standard you know and just say that's not what Christians do or this is how Christians behave and if they begin to live in a way that's contradictory to normative Christianity just say that you know just say I question whether you really were converted when you said you were yeah all right sounds good okay so to close our time together Stephanie we just wanted to ask you what your prayer requests were currently and if you guys want to take out a pen and paper just to write that down if you don't mind sharing no not at all that's that's a great that's a great request actually if you could specifically be praying for me right now at our church I'm writing the lessons for next year's Bible study and I just need help from the Lord it's hard writing Bible study questions it's time-consuming and the Bible study from last year that they're just finishing up now we have two different levels of it like a in-depth level and then a an abbreviated version and the in-depth level it's just ridiculous it's just too many questions so if you could pray that God would help me to engage with this text right we're going through 2nd Corinthians next year really extract the authors intent and then write thoughtful questions that are just gonna be useful for the the women that I get to interface with that would be awesome I've been working as the director of women's ministry now for 11 years and I feel like my prayer request is that God would help me to to do a better job I don't want to just settle down and be content with where I'm at but I want to be better at what I'm doing so that would be amazing if you guys could be praying that with me I'd like to invite grace up here we have a little gift for you and yeah so (audience applauding)