Podcast

17. Can I Borrow a Cup of Hope? Amy Lively

Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kelly Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions, such as, How do I trust God’s heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine? How can I believe God is good when life doesn’t seem good? My prayer is that God would renew our hope in these conversations, and that each of us would experience the very real power of His presence and love.

Before I drop you into my conversation with my guest today, I just want to give you a brief intro and overview. Amy Lively married her childhood sweetheart in 1990. She and her husband planted churches where she served in all kinds of leadership capacities and is now pursuing a Master’s degree from Asbury University. As we discuss her new book, we’ll gather some inspiration from first Peter about how to survive the end of the world as we know it.[00:01:00] In other words, we’ll learn about ways to set our hope fully on Christ in those uncertain seasons when the pain and problems of life come barging in.

Welcome friends. I can’t wait for you to meet Amy Lively. She’s written a new book called Can I Borrow a Cup of Hope? How to find faith for hard times in first Peter. Welcome Amy. I’m so glad you’re here.

Amy: Oh, thanks for having me Kelly. So nice to sit with you face to face after we’ve spoken a few times and had lots of email correspondence. This is my favorite way. I’ve already had way too much coffee today, but just to sit with a friend and share back and forth: That’s my heart.

Kelly: It’s so fun. I want to say initially that I was blown away by this book. You are a skilled Bible teacher and a masterful storyteller; My two favorite things in the whole world.

Amy: Oh thank you. That’s a huge compliment. Sometimes when I’m reading [00:02:00] God’s word and I’m just sitting and processing it and comprehending, understanding it, first it always goes straight to my heart. No, I take that back. First, it usually comes as, I wish I could tell so and so what they need to learn here if they would just … but that’s my flesh reading the Bible. Then it comes to me personally, very personally of: Hey, let’s look at that log in your eye and work on that first, just me and the Lord together. And sometimes, it’s praise, it’s just praising God through his Word. But then it comes out third person, as if I’m telling somebody what I just learned. And that’s when I know that there’s a message in there that needs to be shared.

I’m not a writer who loves to write. I go, Oh, I’ve got to write today, but I am a teacher who has to teach and who can write. That’s when it comes out in a blog or an article or a [00:03:00] post, or sometimes a whole book comes out.

Kelly: Yeah. I love that. I wanted to tell you too, that it feels very friendly. You have this beautiful sense of humor. You’re clever. You make the word of God accessible. I walked away with a full cup of hope.

Amy: Honestly, if you’re the only one who reads it, which is not my hope, but if you are the only one who reads it and that’s your takeaway, then it has done its job in all the labor, like literally countless hours of labor has been worth it just to hear that God’s Word through my words into the printed word can turn our hearts towards Christ.

And to find that “lively hope” is what the King James calls it, which is my favorite. And to realize that no matter how bad things get, there is hope it’s not a wish, it’s not a dream. It’s not a fantasy. It’s a real person of Jesus Christ who fills us up and sustains us.

Kelly: So I want you to tell us more about that in just a minute. But first, [00:04:00] can you tell us how this book actually came to be. You’ve written another book called How to Love Your Neighbor Without Being Weird. And you’ve launched neighborhood cafes. And I think, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think you’ve been teaching 1st Peter for a decade.

Amy: I did. I started teaching the material in this book. And again, it just came from my own time with the Lord of reading scriptures and reading 1st Peter. And it was the chapter, it’s chapter five in the book, how to survive the end of the world. That was the first thing that jumped out at me from first Peter.

And this was back in 2011. And I was teaching in my own home, my own neighbors and friends who would come for the neighborhood cafe Bible study, which is, it started just as my own way to love my own neighbors and grew into an international ministry, which was fun, but I was just teaching, in my own home and in 2011, do you remember the Mayan calendar was expiring?

[00:05:00] And so there was a lot of end times talk: “oh, their calendar is hundreds and hundreds of years old, and it ended in 2012. so that must mean the end of the world, right?” But culturally, it was a topic and there were billboards in my little Midwestern town about the end of the world would be on such and such a day. And of course, that day comes and 2012 comes and nothing happens.

But so I taught those principles in that chapter of Peter which says the end of the world is coming soon, therefore, and then he gives us 5 strategies for surviving the end of the world, which are not, as culture was telling us to, to stockpile food in your basement and buy weapons and get your go bag ready or how to survive a zombie apocalypse. But so I taught it then and I made it funny. It was, cartoon graphics and comic fonts but then came 2020 and all of a sudden for all of us around the world, it felt like the end of the world is coming [00:06:00] soon. Is this the end?

We not only had the insane mass trauma of the pandemic, but then we had political unrest and upheaval and we had prejudice and racial problems. And then in the middle of all of that we have our own things happening to us all the time. Our kids, making bad decisions, people who we love just whose lives are a train wreck with sickness. And we have getting old and we have disease and we have marital problems and financial crisis. All of these things are always happening.

In the middle of all that, I was asked to teach a summer Bible study at our church in Colorado, their women’s ministry that I was leading at the time. And I knew I wanted to do first Peter, but all of a sudden it wasn’t funny anymore. This could not be funny and it wasn’t, nothing was funny about it at all.

I sat down with the book of first Peter and just opened it up again and said, okay, Lord, what, [00:07:00] where shall we go with this? And right there in chapter one, verse 13 jumped out at me: therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that we brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ and hope fully became the theme of the message of being full of hope in Christ, no matter what is happening all around us.

So that was when the entire book, then the framework of that came into being of working just chapter by chapter through this little book, five chapters, 105 verses with so much power and so much strength and so much hope that became the framework of the book.

And then, during that time, this was a two hour weekly Bible study and it was COVID. So we were masked up coming in and going out and sitting every other row and six seats [00:08:00] apart. And we couldn’t take breaks.We couldn’t have snacks. We just filed in, don’t talk to anybody, file out, and so for two hours, I had to teach the entire thing for two hours. And we had people watching online and we had people who were there and. I thought I just, I need more, I want to tell them more than just the words.

And so, you’ve found that each chapter has a theme, and my friends came to my mind, of women who had lived this out chapter by chapter in very specific and significant and glorious ways that they suffered so, so terribly. But gave all glory to God and their cups were so full of hope.

And each one of them, so selflessly, kindlessly, bravely came and shared her story. Three of them actually flew to Colorado and gave a live testimony. And then my friend, Michelle wasn’t able to come. She gave a video [00:09:00] testimony and that’s where their stories came from.

Kelly: Those stories are powerful.

Amy: They are.

Kelly: I wanted to read something that you wrote at the beginning. . And so you’re reminding us of Jeremiah 29:11, that God promises a future and a hope. And you say, how does God’s hope-filled plan for the future work when your life is falling apart? These tests of faith feel like drinking from a teacup while driving through a pile up, trying not to spill a single drop. My dreams sloshed over the sides and stained my carefully laid plans until my cup is dry. Can I borrow a cup of hope? So can you talk to us about the definition of hope?

Amy: When I am facing a challenge or a suffering I tend to go back and forth between hopefully, hopefully it’ll be okay, hopefully everything will turn out alright, hopefully it will go my way, [00:10:00] actually is what I really mean.

Hopefully: I have these hopeful fantasies and hopefully it’s an adverb.Like hopefully is a word that you can really pull out of a sentence and nothing is lost. Hopefully: it’s just a description of the speakers’ or the writers’ emotion about the situation. It’s what we wish would happen.

And then I, on the other end of the spectrum, I go hopelessly: Oh it’s hopeless. This will never work out. It’s hopeless. This is over. It’s hopeless. Nothing good can be redeemed out of this. So I have these hopeless fears and these hopeful fantasies. And I just go back and forth between the two, sometimes in the same thought, the same breath back and forth, but setting our hope fully in Christ is such a different understanding.

Kelly: Yes.

Amy: Incredibly different. To have our hope fully in Christ means that no matter what is happening, we [00:11:00] know that our salvation is secure. We know that our Father loves us. We know that his provision will take care of us. We know that he will meet all of our needs in Christ. And we know that he has a long view of this situation, a very long view.

How can I put the stories that I’ve lived through, that you’ve lived through that, that the stories in the book, that they’ve lived through and say, this is for a little while, like this feels like forever. But God has this long view, but that helps us to trust him. It helps us. To give him the time to work things through.

Kelly: One thing that was very different about your Bible study that was a lot of fun is you have these QR codes throughout the book. I do. I just loved that. I have, so I used one of the QR codes and now I’ve downloaded a screen saver with that verse.

Amy: Oh good. Yeah. That is the key of the of the whole book, this hope [00:12:00] fully. In fact, it was the working title for a long time. Until it became, can I borrow a cup of hope? And so just remembering that you’ll start to catch yourself when you say, hopefully now they’ll start to, to notice like, Oh, hopefully the situation will work out or hopefully it’ll all be okay.

And you’ll realize. If you’re like me, you’ll realize that it’s oh that’s just emotion speaking. There’s a lot in the book about the filtering out that or just not filtering, recognizing that emotion and acknowledging that it’s there and then deciding, making a thoughtful, prepared, sober minded decision on how you’re going to handle that emotion.

Kelly: Yes. That’s one of the places I marked in the book you were talking about, because that’s something I talk about a lot. We need to notice when our emotions are controlling us rather than truth controlling us. And you told a story about you when you were swimming in Colorado. Do you remember? That story and how you wrestled [00:13:00] through all of these emotions underwater.

Amy: I did. It was so good. I was underwater because if I had been in my car, I definitely would have drawn some stares. And or if I had been, at home or something, I would have been shaking my fist at the sky, but as it was, my whole body was engaged in swimming. That’s it’s a very good place to rant. Just go underwater. No one can hear you except the Lord.

Kelly: Yes. So you got out all the negative emotions and then you began to preach truth to yourself and let that be the word that transformed you. That’s what I love about the hope fully. That’s what transforms us.

Amy: That’s why that was Peter’s brilliance in the way he laid out this letter is that it begins with to the elect exiles. Elect exiles. I’m like, how can you be elect and exiled?

That means God’s chosen people are scattered and sent away to places they never wanted to be. And that’s where. That’s where we begin with our suffering. Whoa, [00:14:00] I didn’t book this ticket. I didn’t sign up for this race. I don’t want to be here. But then he ends with the glory of God. Now you’ve got to go through 103 other verses to get there.

And so that’s the journey through the book through first Peter is we begin with our suffering for a little while. And even the prophets questioning like, Lord, what are you up to? And to realizing that we are chosen, we are God’s elect. We are his priests. We are with him as his people and other people are watching.

And by the time you get to the end of the book, you’re going to meet another woman or another reader, another person who has an incredible story to tell. After you’ve met Michelle and Kelly and Jen and Sarah, then you meet yourself and you meet yourself at the end. To realize that there is a story for God’s glory that only you can tell, and he has perfectly prepared you [00:15:00] and been with you at every plot twist and every turn.

He has cast you in this role to really, to bless you through your pain as you find him, as the glory of Christ is revealed to you.

Kelly: I’m so glad you included that in the book. People don’t realize what a powerful story they have. And as you teach out of practical illustrations, people are able to discover their story and what God’s doing in their heart.

Amy: Yeah, I hope so. Cause the people in the Bible didn’t know they were in the Bible and as their stories were passed along, they didn’t even realize they would be written in the Bible. And the Bible didn’t exist until hundreds of years after Christ , as we know it and it’s Old Testament and New Testament forms.

They’re just, moving their sheep from one town to another. They’re just having Sabbath dinner. They’re just following this new rabbi in town. They didn’t know that their stories would become so sacred. And I don’t think we do either [00:16:00] sometimes. Our stories don’t have the weight of scripture, but they are the way to scripture for people who are watching and saying, wow how’d they deal with that, calmly with such peace, with such grace? It gets people’s attention when we handle ourselves and then, and sometimes, we can be tempted then to think that, oh, I don’t have a story like I don’t have….I’ve had an easy life. I’ve had a nice testimony. I’m just a normal person.

We have our micro stories within the grander story, and we all have the story of we were all lost and then Christ has redeemed and saved us, but we have these micro stories of just how we handled a situation at our kid’s school or how we handled a personal illness or how we handled a marriage problem or how we handled a difficult neighbor.

These scenes where God is teaching us to trust him and to follow him and to walk in his ways and to represent him and to bring him glory. [00:17:00] Literally go out, lasso up some glory and bring it to him from the darkest places that, that we’ve been. So we all have stories of where we have walked through something that has brought us closer to God’s glory and can share that with other people.

Kelly: I want to read what you wrote about Peter. Peter became a friend of mine during this. I was surprised. So, this was in your soul renovation chapter about being transformed.

“As you’ll discover in Peter’s story, his before pictures were a disaster. He made promises he couldn’t keep. He put his foot in his mouth when he spoke without thinking. He could be argumentative and power hungry. Yet Jesus looked into the eyes of this mess of a man, chose him as one of his closest friends, and called him as his first disciple. If God can renovate Peter, [00:18:00] He can do the same for us.”

Amy: Yeah. Peter. There’s no escaping Peter’s story. He was writing to eyewitnesses isn’t it so interesting that after his denials of Christ, they are never mentioned again.  Paul always said, Hey, I was persecuting the church. Remember what I did? I persecuted the church and Peter had multiple instances that he could have said, Hey, I was the one who did this and who messed up that and I sunk in the water. That’s, it’s never mentioned again, his mistakes after he receives the Holy Spirit, after he receives that power and starts walking in that is also never mentioned again that he walked on water.

Never. It’s not like:  “I, Peter, the water walker”, all those things are never mentioned again. But the eyewitnesses, if Peter had not been transformed. And certainly that’s, God’s transforming power upon him. But Peter had to let that happen. Peter [00:19:00] had to cooperate with that. And so do we. Peter walked through his sanctification just like we do.

But if he hadn’t done that, if that hadn’t happened with him, the people who got this letter they would have burned it because they would have said, he’s such a hypocrite. How can the man say, pray without ceasing? Pray earnestly. How can the man who not only fell asleep three times in Gethsemane, fell asleep at the transfiguration. More than once, he is the one who has fallen asleep and he uses words that mean “pray wakefully” is what he tells them.

So they knew all his mistakes. They’re recorded forever for all of us to see and all of us to find ourselves in there as well. But then we all have that same ability to be transformed into the image and likeness and power of God.

Kelly: Yes. One of the things that gives us hope when we walk through hard things, and that’s what this whole book is about. How do we survive the end world [00:20:00] as we know it when the crisis hits, when we have to persevere through a heartbreak. We want to know that none of this pain is being wasted and part of the thing that gives us hope is when we know we are being transformed. And when we look at how Peter was changed in the ways you described, it gives us hope in that realm also.

Amy: Yeah, that chapter is about the theme of contrast or before and or after, the darkness before Peter says out of the darkness and into his marvelous light. That is about that transformation. Even if someone says I’m not suffering, I’m fine. I’m doing fine. First of all, I would say, Oh, you just wait because something usually happens.

But also there are other themes of the book as well, about that transformation that before and the after and the renovation that happens in our own heart. And then there’s also that crowd of watching people, the people who watched Peter’s life and then later saw his transformation and could believe and live and [00:21:00] receive comfort and encouragement from his words, as well as the people who are watching us, they, whenever there’s an accident on the highway, people slow down, they stop, they watch, they get out their phones.

Some of them actually stop to help, but that’s rare, more rare, but they are watching to see how we handle these, these collisions, I call it, when our faith in God has a head on collision with real life. What are we going to do? It should make a difference. What we say we believe about the end, not just the second coming and all of the end of the world things, but the end of our hopes and dreams.

What do we say that we believe in? How do we really live that out? Because. There’s a whole chapter in the book and in first Peter about the people who are watching. There’s so much talk about the world who is really ready to pounce and scorn people who call themselves Christians ready to put another list on of the reasons why this is a faith not worth following, but [00:22:00] we have the privilege through our testimony that the people are watching to show a better way and to show a more glorious Savior.

Kelly: Yes. That phrase you mentioned when real life collides with God’s word. I caught that because that’s what I have been asking God for decades. What does it really look like to walk this out? What does it really look like to trust in you with all my heart? And that’s why the subtitle of this podcast is where real life intersects redeeming love. I need practical help. I can’t just hear flowery statements like trust God with all your heart, praying without ceasing, I don’t get it.

So I need practical help. I need God to show me. That’s what this book does. It answers a lot of practical questions about how to walk it out in real life when your heart is breaking and when nothing in life looks the way you think it’s supposed to.

Amy: Oh, good. Yeah, I wish it was a [00:23:00] checklist. I wish it was a, a three step guide to suffering. And I, we can pull out some catchy things, like how to survive the end of the world, but really when you’re in it, oh, wow, You’re just reeling.

Kelly: Right. You need Jesus to meet you in that place. Yeah. Your hope is fully in him. What I would like to do is read a few quotes from the stories that you like you to talk to me about some of these stories. So one guy you talked to was Joe, who was a friend, the husband of your friend, who got cancer.

So you’re with him and the cancer has really been taking a lot of of his energy and he is starting to fail. And you said, Joe, what is the Lord teaching you through all of this? And he just replies so beautifully. When I was first saved, I used to think it was great to pray once a day and that was good enough.

As I got older, I would pray more often and have more communion and fellowship with God. And [00:24:00] now, I feel like I am with God always. I want to glorify God in what I’m going through. How does someone get there?

Amy: Yeah, and we don’t want cancer to make the… be the thing that has to draw us into that, but just still takes my breath away.

Joe, such an amazing man. I wish everyone could have known him and his kindness, his gentleness and his humor and his strength. Even when he became frail and his strength as well as his wife, Michelle and his whole family, this was like talking about that collision. This was watching a train come from miles away and knowing that you were sitting on the tracks and that it was coming for you. It was every moment was precious and they would have done it for 100 years. But they knew that this was coming. And the, the closeness that Joe was able to find with the Lord and that peace in his soul.

Yes, Joe cried and yes, Joe grieved [00:25:00]and he may have had, his doubts and I’m sure he processed through anger of all that was happening but the cover over it all was love. The banner over it all was love and peace and trust and for Michelle as well.

It was an incredible thing to behold and still is. Sometimes the longer it’s been since since Joe passed, the harder it may get because you miss him more and more

Kelly: You continue to grieve little deaths for the rest of your life on earth. Yeah. I’d love for you to talk to us about the story of Kelly, what she went through,

Amy: Yeah. So Kelly has wonderful family, husband, Mike and three kids, but her son, Josh is how I met her.

Josh was in his twenties. He lived in the tiny mountain town in Colorado, where I live for part of the year. And he went to the gym one morning and on, on his bicycle and was riding his bicycle back home very early in the morning. [00:26:00] And he was struck by a jeep and had a very traumatic brain injury, many broken bones, very severe injuries.

And the way God orchestrated his mere survival of that accident is his own miracle. But now these six years later that Josh is still making incredible strides and still astounding his doctors and still smiling. While not talking or not eating or not, I would say not walking, but that’s not quite accurate because he is learning to walk assisted.

His mind is there. He communicates by tapping his toes and using devices, where he points to letters with his eyes. And of course, his family can interpret for him a lot of what he wants to say, but to watch how their family has come through that that entire process.

We just were [00:27:00] speechless, just speechless to see how God has carried them through and. I would ask her, what were you hopeful would happen? Because the hopelessness was very easy: It was that they would not have Josh, but the hopefulness would be the way you might see on a movie, where they just fast forward through all these scenes and somebody goes from, being a little bit awake to all of a sudden they’re walking or running and that’s just not going to happen.

And it’s, it will still be years of Josh’s recovery. They’re just, they’ve just maintained that faith and gratitude was something that God spoke to them from the very, very early days of just find something to be thankful for. And they have done it.

Kelly: Part of the story is not just how his family has walked through it with faith and hope. It’s Josh himself. Yeah. How could he not give up on God or feel left, because his mind is completely aware of what’s happening. But you mentioned that one of [00:28:00] his favorite verses before all this even happened was in first Peter.

Is that right?

Amy: Yeah, it was from first Peter chapter two their stories told in chapter two, which is the theme of that versus that we are chosen. We’re not only chosen just so we can be saved and go to heaven and have a happily ever after life.

We’re chosen for the here and for the now. And so we’re chosen for that. And we’re also, when God chooses us, he equips us. He doesn’t give us a calling and then say. Good luck with that. Go figure that out. And I’ll give you a grade at the end. No, he, when he chooses us for something, he stays right with us.

Just carrying us through that. Have you seen that that famous poem of the footprints in the sand, where there’s two sets of footprints and then there’s only one. And God says, that’s when you. I carried you. Have you heard like the next part that says what’s that big, long rut in the sand?

And God says, that’s where I pulled you kicking and screaming. But he comes with us. And Josh had been, he had spent a lot of time [00:29:00] memorizing scripture and he told his college classmates when they said, what are you doing? He said I’m memorizing scripture in case I ever can’t just pick up my Bible and read it.

And so he had it implanted in his mind to sustain him through those times when he not only couldn’t pick up his Bible to read it, but he couldn’t open his eyes. He was in a coma for months and months. But he had that word to sustain him.

God had gone before him, as he was in the Navy training to be a Navy SEAL and had an injury that ended that path. But it did put in place medical care for the rest of his life as a veteran’s care, which specializes in these types of brain injuries from combat injuries.

So sometimes we don’t see what God’s doing until it’s in hindsight. And that gives me hope when things are inexplicable for a young man to be sidelined with an injury during this very noble [00:30:00] endeavor to be a Navy SEAL would be inexplicable. Like why is this happening? And yet it provided for him at another time when he needed it.

Kelly: Yeah, that’s so powerful.

Amy: I do have to say, just as a teaser, Josh did ride a bicycle from Colorado back to Arkansas a couple of years ago. So just to show you how well he’s doing. It was one of the recumbent bicycles, a tandem, as in, he had a person riding with him, but he pedaled the entire way. Yeah. So that’s the kind of stamina and perseverance that God will give you.

Kelly: Absolutely. Amazing.

You unfold a strategy that you find in first Peter, where Peter points us to Jesus’ heart. And there are five things we learn from Jesus, actually about how to survive the end of the world.

Amy: Yeah. So here’s first Peter 4:7-11:

The end of the world is coming soon. Therefore, [00:31:00] and that’s where he gives the strategies. Be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. And so that then he says above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. Whoever speaks as one who speaks oracles of God, whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

And so the strategies that we see in there are: first of all, Pray mindfully and that is prayer. That is seeing all sides of the situation, that is trusting God that is focused and clear. But we also learn [00:32:00] that Peter’s Prayer, one of, one of Peter’s prayers was just, Lord, save me, Lord, save me.

And that’s enough. That’s enough. Lord, save me. But then we also learned a prayer from Jesus that I call it the prayer that never fails. And that is: Father glorify your name. And no matter what I’m going through, use it to glorify yourself. Use it to show people your love and your goodness and your grace, how Father glorify yourself. So pray mindfully is the first one.

And then love soulfully, love, to love one another soulfully is, the Greek words that Peter are used to describe that kind of love is a stretched out love like Jesus stretching out his arms on the cross and stretching out to love the unlovable and the really difficult people through really difficult times. So that kind of love that just gives that sacrificial love that bleeds and that hurts, it’s not [00:33:00] romantic love. It’s not a fickle love. It is a deep, enduring love like Christ had for us.

And then the next strategy is to share cheerfully he says without grumbling and that’s really hard for me because I am a grumbler.I will admit that, but to show hospitality and just whatever God has given to us to share it. Sometimes. That means that we allow other people to share what God has given them with us, that we allow them to use their spiritual gifts to minister to us. But we also sometimes I think what pulls us out of the darkness is the act of giving to someone else and it’s a very hard thing to do. But just learning what has God equipped us to do, Peter says as one speaking as the oracles of God, like that’s a pretty high standard, but as one’s serving with the faithfulness that God, God [00:34:00] supplies.

Kelly: Yes. We often don’t want to have our lives interrupted,

Amy: And that’s the serve gracefully, with the grace that God provides to serve other people and give them what God has given us. And then the last one is to praise joyfully, just to use, use that in everything, God might be honored or glorified through Jesus Christ.

And Jesus did all of this, did all of this in one day, just at the last supper as he served and washed the feet and gave all the glory to God and prayed with prayed earnestly in the garden of Gethsemane and the high priestly prayer of John 17. He did all of this and God will never ask us to do something that he hasn’t done himself. Already for us and then Peter just puts it into nice words for us. Yeah.

Kelly: And you work this out in such beautiful ways throughout the book. It’s very practical.

Amy: I don’t want to make it seem simplistic as here’s your checklist, but [00:35:00] there are things that will come to your mind when you’re facing something and you Remember Something about praying,

Kelly: the reason it doesn’t come across as a checklist is because this book is deep and it’s profound. It’s a thoroughly researched book on 1st Peter and I learned things I never knew before. And you bring in stories that helps us learn what it actually means to persevere in our own hard story

Amy: When we combine scripture with the faithful testimony of other people is so powerful, so grateful to them. I love them all so much.

Kelly: Yes. That reminds me of that verse. We will overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony.

Amy: Yeah. So the blood of the lamb and the blood of our testimony sometimes. Yes. Yeah.

Kelly: Tell us about this book because when you told me at first that it was a hybrid book and Bible study, I thought, what does that mean? And I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Can you talk about how it’s arranged?

Amy: Yeah. So it’s a, it’s a new format and I’ve been writing this book for so long. I forget [00:36:00] how really cool that part of it is. Reading a book with a group of friends or having a Bible study together with a group of friends, just doing life with a bunch of a group of friends in a small group or a Bible study, and that’s how my heart is. And so that’s how I wanted, I wanted to read this book with you and write this book with you. And so I bring people into the book.

And one of the ways that we do that is, it’s, so it’s, first of all, it’s obviously a book. You can pick it up and read it front to back. Great. I hope you do it with a pen in your hand because I write all over my books, but it’s also broken up into obviously chapters, but within each chapter, it’s broken into lessons.

And so each lesson has its own theme. And at the end of the lessons, there are some questions and I call it the 2nd cup. That’s what I’ve called these kind of homework. If you will, questions. Ever since I was teaching, my neighborhood cafe and in my 1st book, I hope I always get to do that 2nd, 2nd cup and it’s just let’s just take this a little bit deeper.

And if you have the [00:37:00] interest, if that lesson spoke to you, or if you want to spend that more time, there are questions to go deeper and the 1st lesson in each chapter starts off super easy, like no pressure. Like the first one for the first chapter relating to a story I told about getting lost is Hey, can you, do you have a sense of direction?

Do you, can you use GPS? Have you ever been lost? And that’s designed so that if you’re in a group of people, just gets the lips moving, gets the wheels greased and gets people talking and sharing, but then they go deeper and they go deeper and they go deeper. And while the book sticks to. First Peter, as well as the accounts of Peter in the gospels and Acts for the vast majority, the second cup will go all around scripture and bring in the Psalms to bring in the old Testament stories and bring in the other gospel or the other stories in the new Testament, the other epistles to just go deeper and to study.

But whenever there’s study for me, I always have to ask. So what? So great. You’ve learned [00:38:00] this great fact now. So what? How do we bring that into our hearts and live that out in our lives? So it’s also application. So it’s conversation, application, and revelation all in the second cup is what you find there.

And if you don’t have time to do it, just turn to the next page, read the next chapter. So you just keep reading it like a book. And then there’s also a prayer to close out each lesson. Just let it becomes devotions. Comes to a place of turning this back to the Lord and putting it all back in his hands and recentering that focus of hope onto him.

So you can read it like a book. You can do it like a Bible study. You can do it with a small group of friends and you can also have it as a devotional. So that’s where it’s a hybrid. It smashes all of those things up together.

Kelly: Yes, it was beautifully done. I loved the whole arrangement of it.

Amy: Oh, good. I learned that from Kriegel, who is my publisher. So I have I have lots of resources on my website for small groups.

If they if they want to do it as a group, [00:39:00] you can’t do all of the questions in the book as a small group, it would just take forever. And so I highlighted certain questions and they’re in bold print and they have a different color of the cup. And I have a sheet that just beautifully puts all those on 1 sheet for each chapter. I want to make it as easy as possible. That’s why all the scripture readings are accessible through the QR codes. You can just snap that QR code. And then I’ve got all the scriptures right there.

Kelly: Yeah, that was great. I loved another thing too. I had mentioned already all the QR codes and the fabulous treasures you can find there.

But you told this story of this sweet woman who her husband came to her and said, I’ve been having an affair and her life fell apart. It was the end of the world as she knew it. She was coming to your house early in the morning to go through scripture with you would just hand her one scripture and y’all would pray together and she’d see you at night.

But one of the things you did is you often brought her to the Psalms and through one of the [00:40:00] QR codes, you can get those Psalms on a one page that’s decorated in a pretty way, too. I was just amazed by all your resources.

Amy: So much fun creating those. The meaning of the words is just enhanced by a beautiful layout of a way that we can just really focus on the sustaining life giving words that just will walk us through the valley of the shadow of death.

Kelly: Absolutely. Amy, this has been a beautiful time. Thanks for joining me today.

Amy: Thanks Kelly appreciate it.

Kelly: You can connect with Amy at amylively. com. And if you scroll down into the show notes, you’ll find a link to check out her new book.

Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe and leave a review. To continue the conversation and for free resources, be sure to visit me at kellyhall.org. Thanks so much.