Podcast

God’s Rescue from People-Pleasing and Shame. Cheryl Lutz

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? We’ll hear from people just like you and me, who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.

My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His Word and His love through these conversations.

Hey guys, you may have heard me talk about some of the ways the Lord’s rescued me from shame by loving me into the truth of my identity as a child of God. Because of our topic today, I just wanted to make you aware that I have an original list of 31 identity statements titled, Wildly Loved, Finding Our Worth in the Heart of God Who Calls Us His Own. You can receive access to this [00:01:00] list and several other inspirational PDF bookmarks When you subscribe to my website, kellyhall.org.

My guest today, Cheryl Lutz, shares how her need for approval drove her to a place of physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion. If you’ve ever been worn out by trying to please everyone around you, you probably know something about the weariness of perfectionism and possibly the shame of believing you’ll never be enough.

Cheryl is the author of a beautiful book called Securely Held: Finding Significance and Security in the Shelter of God’s Embrace. She’s also a speaker, podcaster and has walked through a long and multilayered journey of healing. She’ll be sharing segments of her story today, but primarily how God, through His Word and His Spirit, has transformed her life,

Cheryl, welcome to the podcast. How are you today?

Cheryl: ​I’m doing pretty well, Kelly. It’s nice to be here with [00:02:00] you.

Kelly: I’m so glad we’ve finally been able to work out getting together. And I’d love for you to start by just telling us about yourself where you live and what’s going on with you.

Cheryl: Yes I am an author and a, biblical… certified biblical counselor and a speaker, inspirational speaker, a podcaster and a recovering people pleaser and I live in north northwest Georgia in the Blue Ridge mountains. It’s just a beautiful place that God provided for my husband and I, he is a,  been a pastor for

over 30 years and he’s not currently pastoring in a church right now, but he’s teaching and doing some other things. And we have four adult children and a bonus son by marriage. And I have I’m a proud Mimi to Elle, Luna and Yoda, two grand dogs and a grand cat.

Kelly: Yeah. You’re a busy lady. I know you have a busy speaking schedule since your book came out and it’s just a wonderful book.

And so I’m [00:03:00] so thankful to have this opportunity to talk about it today. Now you described yourself as a recovering people pleaser, and I would love to hear how that false identity inserted itself into your life, how that became a part of your dealing with the world.

Cheryl: Yes. Yes. From a very young age being a middle child and a phlegmatic personality, I was always just trying to keep the peace in the home. There was a lot of strife and I said, I don’t like to throw my parents under the bus and get into a lot of detail because they were products of their own dysfunction. And I don’t want my kids, adult kids telling all the terrible things. I, mistakes I made, but as the way it shaped me…they, my mom didn’t grow up with a father. He died when she was an infant and my dad lost his father when he was a young teenager and his father had been sick a lot. They had a void, a father void, a daddy void in their lives.

And that, of [00:04:00] course, affected them and their parenting as my issues affected my parenting. And so I had that void as well of not really understanding God as father and always striving for validation and striving to keep the peace in relationships so that to keep things happy. And I could never keep my father’s. I could strive to gain my father’s approval, but I could never keep it. I could lose it and then have to try again to gain it again. And so it just started a pattern of that striving to keep others happy and to gain their approval and validation.

Kelly: Yeah, I wanted to speak into one of the things you mentioned. So as this people pleasing became a part of your life, you mentioned that you could please your father in the moment, but it would never last. And so I know that must have affected your relate your view of who God was. Were y’all involved in church growing up?

Cheryl: My mother would take us to the Baptist church.

My father didn’t come and so he [00:05:00] wasn’t a believer at the time. So my mother would take us the 3 sisters. So the 4 of us would go and but our church was outside of our community and it was in a wealthy area. And I wasn’t from a wealthy area. And I never had the clothes and the shoes and the purses of the other girls. I just never fit in. And so then it was more just of. Striving to try and fit in with these girls that I just. didn’t fit in with. Yeah, that was my church experience. Okay,

Kelly: so you really didn’t meet with God in that place and you had a false view of God. Is that right?

Cheryl: Yeah. I wasn’t good enough for him.

Kelly: Okay. That’s how you felt. Yeah. And so you’re busy people pleasing. You felt like you weren’t enough. I’d love for you to explain how you came to the point where you realized this was an issue.

Cheryl: So as we got into high school, we started fussing with my mom more about going to church.

And so we just quit going all of [00:06:00] us. And I had always been the teacher’s pet the good student the goody 2 shoes, but about my sophomore year in high school, I started drinking. I had discovered I had terrible social anxiety and extreme shyness and I found, liquid courage, so I started living a double life on the weekends, started into the party scene and carried that out. And I had made a profession of faith in middle school. And I really wanted Jesus to be my savior, but I really didn’t understand about having him as my Lord. And that I was covered, by his blood and so I, the rebellion continued through college and, but when my mom received a cancer diagnosis and she ended up dying at age 50.

And I was 21 and I came face to face with death. Wow. And it was sobering. I thought I know where my mom’s going. Do I know where I’m going when [00:07:00] I die? And I just returned to my 1st love and I, then I ended up marrying a pastor and becoming very involved in ministry and. Those patterns that had been in the world of striving to keep everyone happy, striving for approval.

I moved it and started Christianizing it. I was doing the same thing, but I was doing it in the church and since they were good works for God. I thought, oh, this is a good thing. It’s a good thing to try and keep everyone happy. Which is a lie always arranging the chessboard, right? And you can’t the same with my father.

What gains their approval 1 day disapproval the next. Yeah, you can never be enough. You can never be perfect. You can never get it right. And there’s always someone that doesn’t like you for some reason. And so much of my identity I didn’t realize was in being nice and being liked.

Kelly: Yeah. I’m very empathetic as you’re describing this story, I’m imagining this [00:08:00] shy girl who’s a people pleaser who doesn’t feel like she fits suddenly thrust into the space, fish bowl of a pastor’s wife. And with that role comes all kinds of unspoken expectations. And so then along with that, it probably exacerbated your people pleasing skills as you probably perfected them.

Cheryl: Exactly. We started having children right away. We had three children under five. My husband’s 10 years older than I am. So we started our family, right away and just parenting in a fishbowl, trying to parent from a view of what people are thinking or what they expect. Yeah. And that’s deadly,

Kelly: deadly. Yes. That is so difficult. Can you describe what brought you to the point where you finally were able to get help and discover that, this is not working life as I’m doing it is not working.

Cheryl: I was early forties and I was, I just came to a place of physical, [00:09:00] emotional and spiritual exhaustion and my health had completely fallen apart. I was having what seemed to be seizures almost every day and it was the doctors couldn’t figure out anything that was wrong with me. They believed it was all emotional and there is an emotional component.

But there was also a spiritual warfare component, which, of course, they wouldn’t be able to understand. But I also there is a physical component, but they took a while to figure that out. And at 1 point, my husband asked me if I would be willing to see a therapist and that is the only reason I went is because he asked me to.

I did not think I needed it. I was a pastor’s wife. I was a women’s ministry director. I was a Christian. And those are all lies from the pit. None of us is above mental health struggles. And we need to be open and honest about that take away the shame that we feel within the church, especially in leadership.

And never be afraid to get help. And so a few sessions in at some 1 point, the therapist said you’ve [00:10:00] made people an idol. And that was very sobering to me. I had never thought of it that way. Yeah. But Kelly, then I went home though. And I’m so I listeners don’t do what I did in the sense of, yes, absolutely.

Turn to God’s word. But I turned to it more almost like a weapon and going through the Old Testament, the New Testament and how sinful and terrible idolatry is, which is true. But then I started just slapping Bible verses on my issues. So

Kelly: you were looking at a behavior management approach instead of connecting to God’s heart and hearing what he had to say about this and looking

Cheryl: at the root.

Yes. Why had I made people an idol?

Kelly: Yes. And so often I just, I love it when the Lord meets us in those places and he shows us what is at the very root when he puts words to the root of our wound, to the root of why we’re struggling. It’s so freeing. He sees what’s hidden.

So I just, I love when [00:11:00] God. Does that when he uncovers what’s underneath it all. So as God was uncovering that for you, how did you find, I know it’s such a long process, but how did you actually find healing from those wrong ways of thinking and what was that? The, what is at the root of people pleasing? How do we understand that?

Cheryl: As much as I did not want to, I had to go back and through therapy and other things address. The buried wounds that I had, buried childhood wounds that it just festered. They were buried alive as 1 person put it. And so going back, addressing those working through the pain of my past, looking at it.

And I even did therapy, which goes back and reprocesses traumatic memories. And what God was showing me at the root of people, pleasing perfectionism, striving for validation. Is not really [00:12:00] understanding who we are as God’s children because of our relationship with Jesus. His beloved son, so I had a disconnect.

I understood Jesus saved me from my sin, but I had and I understood God as a righteous judge as holy. And those things are absolutely true. But I had a disconnect with him as a loving and tender father.

Kelly: yEs, that makes so much sense. One of the books that I mentioned to you before that helped me so much is the book Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland, because it really focused on Jesus heart and it focused on his tenderness and his tone.

So many things are misunderstood throughout the whole Bible when Yahweh God is speaking or when Jesus God is speaking, we can misunderstand really the Point of it. But when I read that book, I was able to see that tenderness of God’s heart in a clearer way. And it was just really [00:13:00] beautiful.

Cheryl: Wonderful. Yes, absolutely. Kelly, because it’s we think of God’s wrath. Which is true. He was poured out on his son, but he paid the price. And it was God the heart of God, the father that was willing to give his only begotten son so that we could receive rescue and forgiveness. And you think of what a tender and that is not a love.

You can describe right that he did that for us. Yes. No, that he had a plan for us. And that he did choose us and rescue us and we need to just sit and meditate in the love, the heart of God, the father toward those who are in a relationship with his son, because when he looks at us, he sees Jesus, he sees Christ’s righteousness.

Kelly: Yes, I love that. So at the very root of people pleasing [00:14:00] is a wrong view of ourselves. We’re walking in a false identity. But when we look at the heart of Jesus, when we look at the heart of God, we’re able to walk in the truth that when God looks at us, he sees. His son, he sees the righteousness of Jesus and he loves us more than we can imagine if we could just picture his face right in front of us, we would see a sparkle in his eye, a smile on his face and absolute delight poured out on us as he just invites us into all that he has for us, the riches of what it means to live as God’s son and not live as an orphan, not live in poverty.

Cheryl: Yes, stop living as orphans. Yeah. We’ve been grafted in. We have a father.

Kelly: Yes. And I guess the poverty I’m talking about is poverty of soul. We have so many riches of peace, hope, and joy, and the lavish extravagant love of God pouring out on [00:15:00] us if we just open and receive that. It’s so freeing. Yes. So you, I know you have this really big story, but I would love it if you could just highlight one of those significant places where God rescued you from a wrong perspective of yourself.

And also, you’re so good at just bringing in Bible stories and. That’s how God speaks to us. And I know there have been some really personal stories that God’s used to rescue you from wrong views. I’d love for you to share that as well.

Cheryl: Absolutely. Kelly, because I appreciate what you’re saying because our stories are powerful.

Yeah. And God, uses them to change lives, but it’s always Joni Erickson Tada said 1 time, but it’s God’s word that changes hearts. And yes, we need to share our stories and then always bring it back to the word you’re talking about so that the heart can be changed. And so at the book, each chapter has, personal story from me, a personal story from a [00:16:00] friend of redemption and a personal story from scripture. And my favorite, one of my favorite stories is in chapter 12 and it’s the bleeding woman and love her. Yes. And I just related to the shame she felt over her illness. Because I had. Walked the road of having a physical illness that was undiagnosed and no 1 could help me.

The doctors kept just saying, go see a psychiatrist, which I needed to do. And I’m not minimizing mental health struggles because I have them and there is no shame but yet. We put that shame on ourselves and in the church, we can put that on others. And that’s not from God.

And so walking that road of shame and discouragement and desperation for some kind of hope that I wasn’t always going to be in this pit of sickness where I could not lead a normal life. And so reading the bleeding woman’s story and [00:17:00] understanding in that culture. Having an issue of blood all those years made her untouchable.

She couldn’t enter the temple. She couldn’t participate in family worship. She was untouchable to her husband. It’s like being this shameful outcast. And as she sees Jesus and the disciples, passing by her town, she knew by faith, and she’d seen the other miracles or heard of them. She knew if she could just touch his cloak Christ’s garment that she could be healed.

And we see her shame because she didn’t go to him and ask for healing. She went behind him and just followed until she had that opportunity to just reach out her hand and grasp the, just the corner, of his cloak. And when she did, she was immediately healed of her bleeding. And Christ, he stops, Jesus stops, [00:18:00] and he says, who touched me and his disciples said, master, there’s people everywhere.

What do you mean? You touched you and he’s no power came out for me. Someone touched me. And at that point, I’m thinking she had to have been scared to death. Here, the untouchable woman just touched. The master and so she came to him and on, just fell on her knees and told him. And at that point, it’s like her identity was sickness and the bleeding woman.

She’s referred to in scripture and Jesus’s daughter. That was her identity. She became a daughter of God through Christ’s healing touch. That’s what he did for me, helping me to understand that I am his daughter. There’s no shame. I had nothing to prove to doctors, to the church, to myself. I [00:19:00] was God’s daughter and I experienced that emotional healing and a lot of physical healing.

I still struggle and that doesn’t mean the bleeding woman who had this miraculous healing. That doesn’t mean she never struggled with anything else. Physical. We live in a fallen world. And there’s sickness and there’s sin and there’s disease and there’s death, this is not our home, but I experienced a measure of healing that I can go forth now and minister and be his hands and feet as he’s called me to do.

And just being so grateful for removing the shame of a physical illness, removing the shame of a mental struggle. Whether it’s depression or anxiety or another releasing that shame. And in that same chapter friend, Natasha, Daniel shares her story of struggling with infertility. And there’s a lot of shame women feel when they cannot have a child, a biological child when everyone around them is getting pregnant.

It feels they must have done [00:20:00] something wrong they’re being punished. We don’t understand the ways of God, they’re higher than ours, but he had a purpose for Natasha because he provided 5 children without her womb, through adoption. But 1 of the verses that she was hung up on was the 1 that says delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

And she’s saying, Lord, I am delighting in you. I am serving you and you’re not giving me the desires of my heart. And she had to wrestle through that to see that is a principle, but not a promise that we’re going to receive everything that we want that we desire because that’s not what’s best for us.

We don’t understand his ways and he, we know that he is good. We know that he loves us. We know that he is all powerful and he will provide what is best for us. And that does not mean it doesn’t hurt. She grieved, I grieved, the [00:21:00] bleeding woman grieved. So don’t just, I did a lot in my life of

minimize and move on. Do you know that happened that hurt? I’m heal me Jesus and just move on. Not really addressing the pain and not giving myself time to grieve.

Kelly: Yes. That is huge. It’s just huge. When you think about, so what you described in your story and in Natasha’s story and in the bleeding woman story, there was.

A long delay in in a lot of confusion, a lot of wrestling, a lot of heartache, there was exclusion and misunderstanding. And certainly you experienced judgment as, she did and Natasha felt that as well. And so I just, it’s so important. Freedom only comes as we tell God the truth about our feelings.

And we just pour them all out. And as we do in those places of sorrow, our souls are just expanded to receive [00:22:00] his love and his wisdom to replace that. And one of the things that is always there when we wait for a long time is we have thoughts of, is this my fault? Is, has God abandoned me? Is there something I’m doing wrong?

Is, and so absolutely it has to be wrestled out and it’s the only way we can be set free. From lies and walk in the truth of God’s extravagant love for us. So I love that you describe all those parts of your story. And then we see the freedom that came for you and Natasha and the bleeding woman as God uprooted the lies.

Yes. That one moment where Jesus looks at her and describes her as daughter, calls her daughter out in front of everyone who has called her outcast. Yes. Such a tender moment.

Cheryl: You just picture that, the beauty of that. Yes.

Kelly: I think he spoke to her deepest need of feeling [00:23:00] That father’s love that’s, and you wonder, did she experience rejection from her dad?

Did this start when she was really young? Was she even married? Would she ever able to get married because of this? We don’t know, but we know that when Jesus called her daughter that he spoke into her deepest wound and healed that place.

Cheryl: Yes. That’s beautiful truth. Beautiful truth.

Kelly: And that’s what you described as well in your story. Because I have often engaged with the Lord in waiting places, and my prayer so often has been, how long, oh Lord, are we going to have to wait? Come on. I love this quote that you included in your book by Elizabeth Elliott that says, restlessness and impatience

change nothing except our peace and our joy and that really resonated with me But my question for you is can you describe how learning to wait on God? Relates to having a secure [00:24:00] identity in Christ.

Cheryl: Yes. Yes We have to learn to step back, we all want that The immediate, we want immediate healing.

We want immediate answers. We want an immediate solution, but it’s through the waiting. He is working behind the scenes. Yes, we don’t know what he’s doing and Kelly, I describe in 1 of the chapters a deep struggle we have with 1 of our sons. And it’s a pain you cannot describe. A mother’s heart father’s heart, when you 1 of your children has gone out into the, out into the wilderness, the prodigal has walked away and they’re living in a way that is very dangerous.

To themselves and others, but what I didn’t realize in that when I wanted God to fix it, heal it. Immediately, he was working in my heart. I’m thinking it’s about my son. He’s working in my heart. He was working in my husband’s heart. He was working in our [00:25:00] family and he was rebuilding, from the bottom up and there’s a verse that says that he restores the years.

The locusts have eaten. Oh, I

Kelly: love that scripture. I have that taped inside my kitchen cabinets.

Cheryl: The locusts came in, and just destroyed, but he restores those years. Sometimes it takes years. As he’s restoring, and just really while we’re waiting, he’s working, he’s doing a deeper work in our heart.

Whatever circumstance we’re wanting him to fix. He’s fixing our heart. He’s doing a deeper work. So don’t push it away. Don’t try and rush it, do the C section too soon. You could lose the baby, his timing and believing what he says about us. Jerry Bridges, you mentioned before, he said, he’s all loving, all knowing and all powerful.

It’s like a three legged stool. If he’s all knowing and all powerful, but he doesn’t love us, it’s going to [00:26:00] tip. If he loves us and he’s all powerful, but he just doesn’t know, it’s going to tip. All three of those are true, and all three are working together while we wait. Absolutely.

Kelly: So as we learn to trust God’s word and his heart more than what we see and we feel, our understanding of who God is grows.

Like you described the three parts of the stool. We begin to see that the God of the Bible is the God who loves us more than we can imagine. And he is worthy of our trust and he is faithful. So that deepens our faith. It deepens our understanding of who God is. We fall in love with him in those places.

But my question that I’m trying to understand is how does that relate? How does this change our understanding of who we are in Christ?

Do you have thoughts on that?

Cheryl: I’m thinking of the verse about Jesus. He said he learned [00:27:00] obedience through the things he suffered. And I’m thinking he was the perfect son of God. How can he, but he was also man, man and God and together. And somehow he learned, the heart of God through his suffering.

That’s his identity as God’s son, his beloved son and Kelly, you and I, it is our relationship with Christ, his beloved daughters. And we’re learning a deeper understanding of who we are and what God’s doing through these things that we suffer. I don’t know if that makes sense or answers your question. It

Kelly: does answer my question.

And I really think that as we experience his faithfulness. We begin to really believe we are beloved daughters of the king. He is caring for us in very specific, personal, tender ways. And as we experienced that, I think that makes it easier to believe just like when Jesus spoke to the bleeding woman who felt so abandoned by God.

For so many [00:28:00] years, I think. And when he said daughter, I just think he healed all those feelings of being abandoned and she experienced his healing and his tender love. So I really think that’s what’s happening as we grow in our faith and our understanding of how much we’re loved by God, our identity in Christ becomes more secure.

We’re not having to strive and grasp for what we want. And we suddenly see God loves you more than I can imagine. I can trust him to provide. More than I even think I need.

Cheryl: Yes. And Kelly, I was thinking as you were talking back to when God called Moses to go back to Egypt and deliver the Israelites and Moses says, who am I?

And I know Kelly, you’ve probably asked that question because I know I have. Who am I? Who am I to be a pastor’s wife? Who am I to be a speaker? Yeah, the girl who couldn’t give an oral report in middle school. I would start shaking and crying. I was so shy. Who am I to be a speaker? [00:29:00] Who am I to write a book, be an author?

Sometimes we got to get to the more important question. Who am I? Who is God? Yeah. Is he revealed himself to Moses as I am and so when we start understanding who God is, then we can start understanding who we are in a relationship with him,

Kelly: that’s what God was saying to Moses. I will be the one who supplies everything you need. The one who called you is faithful. He’s going to do it. God’s going to do it. He’s going to get you through. Yeah. Thanks for talking through that. I love to think through things like that. I appreciate your input and insights.

You include a lot of personal stories, as you’ve mentioned. And I, as you said, that just helps us so many times, see what it can look like to trust in the Lord with all our heart and to walk out in our true identity. So I appreciate those stories. I’d love it if you could share a story from [00:30:00] your book that helped you see God’s character and your identity in a fresh way.

Cheryl: tHe Moses story as well as the bleeding woman, and I’m thinking of the woman at the well, just the shame she felt over her past and we knew she was an outcast because of the time she was at the well, drawing water and Jesus came through and it says he. He passed through, Samaria Jews went around Samaria.

Why did he have to pass through Samaria? Because he saw someone there who needed him, and not only was she Samaritan Jews don’t speak to Samaritans. She was a woman, so he was not supposed to be speaking to her. And just seeing him tear down those walls of

Prejudice and the things that divide us. Yes, and he went to this woman and here she was, talking to him about drawing water and physical water that we need to quench our thirst.

And [00:31:00] he told her about the living water. The only thing that will really quench our thirst and God was showing me I needed to drink deeply of the living water. And I needed that refreshment of really understanding who I am because of what he says about me. His conversation with the woman at the well, it’s like one of the longest conversations recorded in scripture, so interesting, this woman he wasn’t supposed to be talking to, I had a rebellious past of, abusing alcohol and these things, whereas my husband.

, of course, he was a sinner because God’s word tells us we all are, but. He never had those, he, he walked the path from a young age, and so I did feel less than he never made me feel that way. I felt that way, ashamed and of my past and how Jesus just brought it into the light.

Where’s your husband? He asked questions. He just drew her out, just ask her questions. And that’s what we can do with those around us [00:32:00] caught in a lifestyle that is contrary to God’s word. Instead of seeing them and stepping back, go to them with the tender heart of the father as Jesus’s hands and feet and ask questions, draw them out.

So he’s bringing it all into the light, and healing starts taking place and then she becomes 1 of the 1st evangelists.

She runs back to her village and tells everybody, come see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done.

Kelly: Yeah, she did. It was such joy. I, the thing about this story that always captivates me is, first of all, we know that women were not allowed to divorce men. So the fact that she had five divorces means there was a lot of rejection in her life.

So I see a lot of wounding and I wonder if she was also rejected by her father. I just wonder how much of her life was just, I am not enough. Yeah, one long story of rejection. And then Jesus comes in and someone who’s been through as much as she has, she would have been very suspicious of men.

And so I just think the [00:33:00] fact that she stayed in this conversation with Jesus, she must have just seen rivers of life pouring through his eyes. Like I always just imagine he, she must’ve just been thinking, what is different about this guy? And Jesus transformed her and healed her.

And then, like you said, she became the first female evangelist to the Samaritans. It was just, she had this huge role and is remembered to this day as the one who preached the word of God first into that village.

Cheryl: Yes, Kelly. So realizing our past does not disqualify us for ministry. God uses it. It’s one of the things he uses because he, I wish I could go back and live differently, but that’s not possible.

But God promises to work all things together for good, even our sin. If you see the love and power of God, even use our sin when we repent and turn away from it and give it to him and leave it at the cross. He uses that [00:34:00] then to minister to others

Kelly: it’s so beautiful. thAnk you so much, Cheryl.

I’d love for you to just close out our time with any words you might have of encouragement and then tell us how people can, how you would prefer people get in touch with you.

Cheryl: Yes. Yes. So I wanted to share the Bible verse that God really used in the old Testament. And it’s what. My ministry Securely Held is based on, and it’s Deuteronomy 33, 12, when Moses is blessing the 12 tribes of Israel about Moses, he said, let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.

And Kelly, it’s the picture of the shepherd. With, because at first I thought rest between his shoulders. It’s the picture of the shepherd with the lamb across the shoulders being securely held.

Kelly: That’s beautiful. That’s on the cover of your

Cheryl: book. Yes, that [00:35:00] was the vision, that women and men to understand that because of our relationship with Jesus we are securely held by our heavenly father. It says we’re beloved. Then learning to serve God and others from that place of rest and security. Of who we are in Christ and your listeners can find me. My website is CherylLutz.Com and I’m on Facebook and Instagram Cheryl Lutz securely held. I’d love to connect.

Kelly: Okay. That’s great. Cheryl, it was just such a delight to have you here. Thank you for the hard work that went into writing this book.

And I know you lived it first. But it’s a beautiful, encouraging work of God that I just am praying he will use it to transform many lives. To walk free into the identity that God has for them.

Cheryl: Thank you. That’s that is my prayer. If you’ve written a book, you’re not in it for the money or you’re pretty stupid because it’s very hard to make, a lot of money on a book unless you’re a very famous. But what you pray is that God would use [00:36:00] it to help.

Help others, not waste what you’ve been through.

Kelly: Exactly. Lord, don’t waste my pain. My husband and I have prayed that so many times.

Cheryl: So thank you, Kelly. Thank you for having me. Thank you for trusting me to, to speak to your people. I appreciate it.

Kelly: Thanks so much.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great if you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend, or leaving a review. I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kellyhall. org, and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the Unshakable Hope Podcast.