Grace-Fueled Resilience: Embracing Hope and Finding Healing When Church Hurts Happen w/ Natalie Runion

When the sanctuary becomes a battleground for our hearts, where do we find the courage to heal? This episode welcomes the remarkable Natalie Runion, acclaimed author and founder of Raised to Stay, who courageously unpacks the trials of church hurt and the harrowing yet hopeful path to recovery. Our candid conversation traverses the rugged landscape of spiritual wounding, as Natalie shares her own turmoil in grappling with the pain inflicted by those meant to shepherd her faith. Discover how she nearly relinquished her ministry dreams and how, through acknowledging pain without succumbing to it, she found a redemptive understanding of God and His church.

We then venture into the delicate process of rekindling one's call to ministry after such profound hurt, revealing personal transitions that illuminate the beauty of serving within a church community. Hear the poignant story of an audition that reminds us of the deep-seated love for ministry work and the pivotal decisions when faced with the evolving tides of church life. Natalie's insights offer a beacon of wisdom on staying rooted in Christ amidst adversity and the indispensable influence of longstanding church members in shaping a resilient, discipleship-rich church environment. This is truly an episode for anyone navigating the intricacies of faith, hurt, and the unwavering pursuit of spiritual wholeness.

Book: Raised to Stay
IG: @raisedtostay
FB: Natalie Runion
Bible: NLT Journaling Bible
Sharpie Fine Tip - No Bleed Through
App/Website: Blue Letter Bible

Transcript

Mentor Mama: 0:07

Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. For those that may be listening for the first time, our podcast is an offshoot from our main platform, YouTube. Our channel is called Coffee and Bible Time, where our goal is to help people delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. We also have a website and storefront with Bible studies, prayer journals, courses and more.

Mentor Mama: 0:32

I'm Mentor M ama, and today we're going to be talking about encouraging people to stick with the church through hard and hurtful seasons, and I know what you're thinking, but I really want to acknowledge at first that church hurt is real. It happens every day. Unfortunately, we've seen the effects, with church membership being down and church leaders leaving the church. But I want to propose to you what if God is using this season of hurt to mature you, to help you grow in your faith and strengthen your spiritual walk, because along with hurt also comes hope and healing. Our church family, just like any family, experiences times of hurt within the body. But today we're going to examine how we can question behaviors and beliefs without quitting Jesus and detaching ourselves from the family of God.

Mentor Mama: 1:37

Our guest today, Natalie Runion, experienced a time when she was ready to walk away from the church after being hurt to the point where she actually buried her dream of pursuing Christian ministry. But thankfully God wasn't through with her, because she is here today to share with us how to pursue love and forgiveness during the time of hurt and not abandon our faith, but endure and fight the good fight to get to the side of healing. Natalie Runion is an author, speaker, worship leader, songwriter and the founder of Raised to Stay, a ministry for those in the church who are finding their own healing, calling and voice in church leadership. Natalie and Tony Runion live with their daughters in Colorado Springs and they attend New Life Church, where Natalie recently served as a pastor. Natalie is the host of the Raised to Stay podcast and the author of her recently published book titled Raised to Stay Persevering in Ministry when you have a million reasons to walk away. Please welcome Natalie.

Natalie Runion: 2:51

Hey there, it's so good to be with you guys.

Mentor Mama: 2:53

You know, Natalie, I'm so encouraged by your authenticity and your willingness to write down your experience, to share with others and really help people navigate this type of a situation where they've incurred hurt in the church. So why don't we just start out by you telling us your story?

Natalie Runion: 3:20

Well, I grew up in a pastor's home, grew up in the church. I mean so much so that we lived in the parsonage. If you don't know what a parsonage is, it's a house the pastors live in on the church property. And that was our life. Our entire existence was all focused around what the church was doing and camp meetings, revivals, youth camp and it was such a family that it became almost more like we saw those people more than we saw our actual biological family, and I loved them. I loved the church. I loved everything about being part of the church and I did. I wanted to go into full-time ministry.

Natalie Runion: 3:54

It was my dream to go to a Christian college and be a youth pastor or do something in the arts with church. And then my senior year of high school, we walked out a pretty formative experience where one Sunday we showed up, walked over to church just like we did every single Sunday, and we were told it's your last Sunday. You got to pack it up and go and there was really no explanation, there was no closure, it was just pack your house and leave. And I remember you know us driving to this family's home that was allowing us to live in this apartment over a bar and they had on the property and just feeling like David running from Saul, like the very people who are supposed to come to me and protect me and teach me have betrayed me. How do you reconcile that, at 18 years old, when you have done nothing but obey God and love his people?

Natalie Runion: 4:46

And it was in that season I chose not to go to a Christian college and I ended up going to a public university, and at that public university I wrestled with my faith for the first time, and it wasn't a rebellion, it was more of a detangling from some of the things that I had learned growing up that were placed on me by people about a Jesus that maybe wasn't the Jesus of the Bible. And so that four to five years in a public university, fighting for my faith, wrestling with God, is really what formed a lot of my view of God and a new view of his church, as I realized that I did love him and I did love the church. But there was going to have to be a significant amount of healing before I would ever choose to step back into full-time ministry.

Mentor Mama: 5:33

That must have been just such an incredibly difficult time, especially being so young, at such an impressionable time in your life. You know you described it as just you felt shattered, and one thing I thought that you said was so interesting was that it's okay to you know when you're experiencing this wandering, it can actually be a time when you want to be heard, validated, understood, and how does that help? Tell us a little bit more about what you? You met by this wandering phase.

Natalie Runion: 6:12

Well, I think a lot of us feel alone.

Natalie Runion: 6:14

We see other Christians, especially now on social media Thank God, at the time there was no social media but we see other people walking out these perfected journeys that appears like on social media, and we can feel like we're the only one who could be possibly experiencing anything like this.

Natalie Runion: 6:30

And so when we find people who are willing to listen to our stories, empathize with us, but not let us stay wounded, not let us stay hurt, but hear us validate it. Like gosh, I've been there too, but let me talk to you about how the Lord brought me out of it. There was just this hope that came from people listening to me and not just gaslighting me and saying, oh, it wasn't like that, or you're not remembering it right, but truly looking at me and saying, hey, on behalf of the church, I'm sorry that happened. And it took several conversations with Christ followers and other church people for me to first realize I'm not alone and, second of all, to understand that everybody's healing journey isn't linear. We all are going to go on these journeys with Jesus, but he never leaves us in that, and so when people are good listeners, that's a beautiful ministry.

Mentor Mama: 7:20

Yes, it's so, so important. So many people want to talk and talk and tell you things that maybe can make things worse. Right, it is so important to be a good listener. Well, you describe this concept of deconstruction, which has been fairly prominent within Christianity in the last few years. Tell us how in your book that that is part of the conversation now.

Natalie Runion: 7:48

Well, we can't deny that it's not a hot topic If you're a Christian, if you're a pastor, if you're a church leader, like that word. Deconstruction has been used in many contexts, and sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly, but it's all about how the person's using it. That helps us understand their story. And so, for Raise to Stay, the book, I wanted to validate the people who were afraid of that word, deconstruction, and help them understand that deconstruction is not deconversion, like just because somebody is deconstructing their faith doesn't mean they're walking away from Jesus. It could just mean that they're detangling from some religion that isn't even Jesus, that was put on them through a denomination or through an organization that wasn't our God at all. And so I think it's really important in this book for us to validate the process by which somebody detangles from some of that stuff but doesn't leave them there. We don't stay in the rubble of deconstruction. We start moving towards the hope and the holy of rebuilding something that is actually Jesus for people to feel safe in.

Mentor Mama: 8:56

You have a quote in this area of the book that was so encouraging to me, and not just for hurting the church, but maybe for people who have children that maybe are wandering. You said God does not give up on us if we're gone a day or 50 years. And I just think that sometimes we tend to think, oh, the longer either I stray away or someone we know, the worse it's going to get, but with my relationship with God. But I think that what you said there was so encouraging.

Natalie Runion: 9:39

I use the story of my daughter getting lost in the mall as I'm talking about that because, you know, at the time, my youngest was only I think she was maybe seven, six or seven. She's itty bitty. We're in this huge city, Colorado Springs, at this mall that is packed that day because of events going on, and I have never lost a child before. I've never had that fear grit me like that before, and when my husband came running down the hall of this mall and like where is it, where's our kid? And we couldn't find her.

Natalie Runion: 10:10

The image of moms who were all of this play area near us, these moms jumping up and running to us and being like what's her name, what is she wearing, how old is she, what color is her hair though, the way these women just got up and just went into action was such a picture for me of heaven, of how even the angels are scouring, like you know, get, get them back. Like, however long it takes, no matter how many resources we need, we're going to get this child back, and that's just how I see God being with us, is he's his eyes never leave us, but he is always watching and he is always in pursuit, and, I said, nothing is stronger than the power of a bunch of moms coming together, other than the love of Jesus, who doesn't give up on us.

Mentor Mama: 10:59

Yes, yes, I know, when I read that to I I experienced. You know something like that as well, as a mom, and it does. It definitely, definitely grips you for sure. Well, can you tell us the difference between church hurt and church abuse, because I think people might be, you know, wondering what the difference is and how to tell the difference.

Natalie Runion: 11:24

I always start these conversations just by being honest that I'm not a clinical counselor, I'm not a psychologist, so obviously I am not here to tell anybody that their experience was not abused. And so I just want to say that, first off, that if you have been abused by a leader, if you've been spiritually, sexually, physically, emotionally abused by a leader, first of all I believe you and I would never say you weren't. I do know it's happening, we know there are wolves and sheeps clothing, and so I just want you to hear this from me those listening that I sit with you in the sorrow and the pain of what it feels like to be abused by a shepherd and it's not right and it's never going to be okay, and we will always fight for your health and your safety in the church. I want to preface that first.

Natalie Runion: 12:11

But when I talk to people in the church community who have been hurt by the church, typically that hurt is not anything that is causing them psychological damage. It is more of an offense. A lot of times that festers into more than just an inconvenience or something that made us uncomfortable. It becomes something that is a relational hurt. It is losing a job, losing a position. It is, you know, really losing people we loved, and I think that's why it hurts, and I think that anger is our secondary emotion, because we're sad we are frustrated, we are confused, and so, with church hurt, this isn't anything that necessarily is going to cause me long term psychological damage.

Natalie Runion: 13:05

Hurt is more going to be something that comes at the hands of people who I was in relationship with and they betrayed my trust, they betrayed my time or you know, or worse. But I do think that abuse that whole category, is something where those offenders, those who are abusing God's sheep, need to go to prison. They need to be taken off of positions of the church. They should not be holding high levels of office in the church, and those who are saying they've been abused need to be believed the first time. And it shouldn't take, you know, several years for there to be some sort of a third party investigation. We just need to get the abusers out so that people are safe.

Natalie Runion: 13:47

With hurt, it takes longer, you know. Hurt is something that can't be necessarily pinpointed. It's something that might be, you know, very subjective, and so it's really hard to necessarily go to our church leadership and say somebody is hurting us, because it can really depend on the relationship, on the situation. But what we have to take ownership of is are we going to let that hurt turn into offense or are we going to let God heal that hurt so that we can continue on mission with what we're doing? Hurt can be healed easily enough to keep us on mission.

Mentor Mama: 14:24

Abuse is something that takes much longer and something that requires a lot more, I believe, third-party care on both sides yes, I know, speaking from my own experience in the church and the church that I was a member of, had a situation that was very hurtful and I think one thing that our church did really well was have some skilled I'm not even sure like there's some kind of an organization or something that really knows how to handle these situations and I think that, at least for me, it helped. I don't know that it helped everyone, but it's nice to know that there are.

Mentor Mama: 15:14

I mean it's sad to know that we have to have those right, but at the same time, at least there are skilled people that can help you walk through that.

Natalie Runion: 15:25

And I would say for church pastors or leaders listening that there is probably church hurt on your staff and you don't know about it because it's not stuff that your staff is going to be running to you to talk about. What they're doing is they're probably talking amongst themselves. So these third parties are more effective even than doing like random or anonymous surveys that go out to your staff, because people are more like to open up to a third party than they are to tell the senior pastor, who may or may not be healthy enough to hear the information.

Mentor Mama: 15:58

Yeah, absolutely. Well, how would you tell someone when to stay and persevere in ministry or church and when to leave?

Natalie Runion: 16:09

I wish there was a cookie cutter answer, because that's the number one question that I get. Here's what I always say. Number one you can't stay where you're not safe. And so if they're in an environment where you are not spiritually safe, emotionally safe, physically safe, you can't stay there. And God is not in heaven handing out trophies for longevity. He's not up there, like you know, a well done, good and faithful servant. You stayed somewhere where you were being abused, like.

Natalie Runion: 16:35

God is not asking us to stay in abusive churches, just like he and us. We wouldn't encourage people to stay in abusive marriages. So I think it's really important for us to be able to have this conversation with each other and say no, if you're being hurt, get out If you're being. Even if you're, you're not being celebrated, even if you're somewhere where people aren't nice and there is no community. I mean, there's other things that the church is also for, and community is one of those, and mission work is another. And if you're in a church that's not healthy spiritually, I don't believe that God is asking us to stay in dead soil. So I always say you have to know the difference between if you're safe or if you're just uncomfortable, and I think a lot of us, when we get on a church staff or we end up in a high level volunteer position, we get uncomfortable right Because people are hard.

Natalie Runion: 17:23

Ministry is hard, and so we have to understand that hard is not always wrong. Abuse will always be wrong, but hard can be holy, and so that's really for all of us. We have to have a lot of wise counsel in our lives. We need to have a lot of people who are speaking into our ministries and into the gifts that we have, so that on difficult days we can pick up the phone and say, hey, can you help me unpack what happened today and have a voice of reason speak into it. I've had voices say, natalie, you got to stick it out, you got to see why God has brought you here. And then I've had voices say get out. And you know you don't jump every time somebody tells you to do something, but it does help you make a decision.

Mentor Mama: 18:02

Yeah, praying about it. And I know for me, I was on church staff after I had been in corporate America and it was such a big transition for me because in corporate America I was given my assignment and I did it and it was done. And when I got into the church environment it was I had so many people telling me how to do my assignment and that was that was. I mean just a whole frame of mind, like I do need to be cognizant of what other people think and how this is their church, and so I know that it can be. It can be really hard to be on staff sometimes.

Natalie Runion: 18:48

And I think, too, we have to realize that a lot of our staff people aren't lifetime Christians. A lot of our staff people didn't go to seminary. A lot of our staff people did come from corporate America who did have high level degrees. So you're working with people across the board, some who have only been believers for a couple of years, others who have doctorates and theology, and so how do you, you kind of manage a team or a staff that is at all of these different levels, all these different expectations? I mean pastors have a lot of weight on them.

Mentor Mama: 19:19

Yeah, yeah, they sure do. Well, in your book you phrase a couple different coin phrases the hurt and hard and the hope and holy. Tell us a little bit about the relationship between those phrases.

Natalie Runion: 20:31

Well, when I was starting to do the Raised to Stay Instagram account that was in 2019. And that was when deconstruction was really coming to the forefront of social media. And what I realized on those accounts is that there was a lot of the hurt and the hard. There was a lot of the hurt, there was a lot of that, but it stopped there, and what I realized was that we weren't leading people to healing. We were just all just bleeding over each other. You know just kind of all complaining and being frustrated and you know going after leaders, and while there's certainly a time for exposure and there's a time for honesty, there was no healing happening. I was like where's the hope in all of this? Because not all of us want to quit, like some people might want to, but not all of us do. And so for me, in the book, it was really important that we didn't just talk about the hurts and the hard and the and the all the things that happen when we are in the bad place, but that we talk about this hope, this living hope that we have, and the holiness that comes with the promises of our God, who says that he will finish everything that he starts, and so it was interesting because I didn't have a final chapter of the book and the book was due in a couple of weeks and I was like wait, what is my final chapter? And so I get a phone call from the church that had hurt my family when we were 18. And the new pastors of that church were in my youth group at that time and they were in the room like when everything happened and they called me and they said Natalie, we're having the 100 year anniversary of the church. We'd love for you to come back and be one of the worship leaders. And you know, I almost said no because I was like wait, I've healed from that. I haven't been back, like why would I go back? And the Lord just was so impressed me on my spirit, like finish the book, let me finish what I started. And so I got on a plane, flew back home, went to it and it was incredible. I saw all the people I'd grown up with. The pews looked the same. Everybody was still sitting in their same spot, so they'd always sat in.

Natalie Runion: 22:36

And after we got done leading worship, there was a moment in the offering time where the pastor went through, each of us that was on the platform and introduced us and he got to me and he said this is Natalie Thomas. He used my maiden name. He said her dad was one of our favorite pastors to ever pastor this church and the whole room went up in applause and the Lord reminded me then like they never hated you. It was like one or two people who made a decision. They were just as confused as you were, and what you thought was in exile was actually an exodus. I kept to you, I protected you, I spared your family and there was just this aha moment of the Lord finishing what he started.

Natalie Runion: 23:14

I got off the platform. All the old ladies were running up to me and hugging me and saying things like tell your daddy we miss him. Tell your mom we miss her singing, Tell your dad he was my favorite hunting buddy. I mean, it was just this like big boy reunion. And do you know, we moved back to Kentucky. Since the last time that you and I spoke, we moved back to Kentucky and my parents attend that church now, and so when I talk about the hope and the holy, that's what I'm talking about, 30 years later, that there would be that kind of reconciliation, because that's what our God does. So we can't just talk about the heart and the hurt. We have to talk about the hope and the holy and the healing that will come, as we're patient with the Lord, knowing that his timing and our timing doesn't always line up.

Mentor Mama: 23:57

Yes, yes, and I just I applaud you for being willing to do something that was hard, that you knew it was gonna be hard, going back and doing that, but trusting God right, sensing the movement of the Holy Spirit and guiding you in that way. And what a beautiful closing chapter. Well, tell us about how you personally decided to return to church ministry after that time of being hurt. What was it that influenced your decision?

Natalie Runion: 24:36

Well, I was a gym teacher for 10 years. I graduated from college with a kinesiology background with physical education as my main major, so I went into teaching and I was in public schools. But there was a church near the school where I was teaching, where I started to lead worship, and it was an entry point back into the church for me, this craft of writing, of singing, that I believe the Lord used as a buffer Like I'm gonna let her do something she likes, you know, to get her in the door of the church. And there was one particular situation and when I was about 33, I had been teaching full-time, part-time worship leader, full-time teacher.

Natalie Runion: 25:20

And I remember holding an audition for the praise team and one woman came in. She was so excited, she just was so prepared and she was awful. She was just awful and I had to be the one to break the news to her that she wasn't gonna make the team. And I remember sitting with her and just trying to beat her on the bush like in a nice kind way to let her know it's not gonna happen, and she just starts weeping in front of me and it was so heartbreaking, I started to weep with her and it was in that moment that the Lord showed me that I still had a deep love for his people, enough where my heart would break for something that was breaking a sister's heart.

Natalie Runion: 26:03

And that was the beginning of me leaving teaching and leading into this worship space, where I was starting to lead worship more and more and I took a full-time position and I was 33. That's how many years since college before I was really ready to step back in. But it was these little altars along the way that the Lord used to show me that I was ready. But for some of us we'll jump right back in, but others of us need 10, 15 years, and it's all God's timing.

Mentor Mama: 26:32

Yeah, yeah, it sure is. What does the word stay mean to you in your book Raise to Stay?

Natalie Runion: 26:43

I'm asked that a lot.

Natalie Runion: 26:45

My critics get on me because they think that I'm telling them to stay in an abusive situation when I'm not.

Natalie Runion: 26:51

My heart behind that word stay is out of John 15. That if we will abide in Christ, that he will abide in us, and that if we remain in him, he will remain in us. And so, in other words, if we stay with Jesus, he stays with us and as a result of that, we produce good fruit. So, even in storms, even in hard seasons, even when we're tempted to disconnect from the vine, that we understand that he is our life source, he is our lifeline. And even if we can't stay in a church, even if we need a season where we're not on a church staff or we're not involved in a community though I don't recommend being gone for long if there is a season we need to take a minute that connecting to the vine every single day, remaining with Jesus, staying with Jesus, is how we will continue to bear good fruit, even in barren seasons. And so that's really where that word stay has landed for me in that phrase raised to stay.

Mentor Mama: 27:49

And it almost seems like now that we live in this zoom world, you can still at least maybe watch another church or something like that I wanna just ask you about. You've described a huge hurt. There are other types of hurts in the church and that people have they're. Maybe they don't like the style of worship, or that maybe the leadership decided to change, or leadership decided to do something else and they aren't happy about that. They feel, you know, it's just a different type of hurt.

Natalie Runion: 28:30

I think when you see your church going through changes, what would you say to those people as far as, like you know, staying it's hard when you've gone somewhere for 25, 30 years and that senior pastor who has married you and buried people you love and known your kids since they were infants I mean it's one of the hardest losses when you lose a healthy shepherd. And it's really hard when somebody else comes in and then the DNA starts to shift and carpet color changes and pews turn to chairs and you know the music style changes and with all of that I always go back to are we called to people or are we called to love people? And I think that sometimes we get so caught up in who's behind the pulpit, who's leading us in worship, the styles of things, that we forget that the church was never meant to serve us but we were meant to serve the church. And when we feel that conviction, then again we have to go back to, almost like the abuse versus hurt conversation.

Natalie Runion: 29:41

Am I in a church that's no longer biblically aligned? Am I in a church that's no longer operating in that Holy Spirit? Is this new leadership? Are the changes irreverent? Are they out of alignment with the Word of God? Or is it just not my personal style?

Natalie Runion: 29:58

And I don't think it's wrong to leave a church because you don't like something. I just think you have to know that everywhere you go, there's going to be something you don't like. And so if we love the people and we want to serve the people more than we want to be loved and more than we want to be served, we're willing to stay in position and help bring about change. And I will say to this, to our dear saints, who I know you are locked in to some things the new pastors need you, the new leadership needs you, the people who are coming in need the saints who have been around for 20 to 25 years to mentor them, to teach them culture, to help.

Natalie Runion: 30:39

And if everybody abandons ship, if everybody jumps ship because they don't like something, then we're really missing out on opportunities to disciple the next generation, be part of a massive movement of renewal and revival. All because of personal preference. So it's always a heart check for me of why am I upset about this? Is it unbiblical or am I just discontent? And Lord, change my heart Like it's always a Lord. Search my heart before it's there, it's Lord. Search their heart.

Mentor Mama: 31:08

Yes, yes, well said, I love how you just kind of summarize that up heart check. And is the church still, you know, biblically sound and and, and, and. Then let's, let's see how things look, as far as saying we're going oh boy, it's so hard. Well, as we start to wrap things up here, why don't you just tell us, you know, what are your hopes for people that read this book?

Natalie Runion: 31:40

I hope people know they're not alone. Some of the greatest compliments that people give me words of encouragement are I finally feel seen. I feel like you. You have been in my room reading my journals. You know I didn't know other people had gone through things like this.

Natalie Runion: 31:58

I pray that people leave the book feeling like they can do it, like they can finish, but also understanding that God has never taken his eyes off of them, that even through all of the things that they've had to walk out and in the book I talk about Joseph and I talk about you know Paul and the different disciples and apostles who went through their own seasons of wondering like, where is God right now?

Natalie Runion: 32:23

We all go through that. So I pray that through the stories of the Bible and through my own personal stories, that people leave with a better understanding of a kind God and a Jesus who went to the cross and took all of that so that they could run with freedom and that they're not continued to be bogged down by unnecessary offenses, unresolved hurts or, if they've been abused, that they would take action and go find a counselor, go find a church that will help them heal, but just to know that they have as many resources as they want, spiritually and physically, to be able to get back into community and and be able to and be introduced to a Jesus. They've been desperate to know.

Mentor Mama: 33:03

Absolutely. Tell our listeners about your online ministry and how they can find out more information about you in your book.

Natalie Runion: 33:14

Yeah, our largest community is over on Instagram under Raise to Stay, just at Raise to Stay. It's a pretty vocal community. I oftentimes have to turn my comments off because people get pretty crazy, but it's a really safe space, I think, for us to wrestle with hard topics. And then on Facebook, under Natalie Runion, you can just follow along in the Raise to Stay public group. We also have a private group where things are kept a little bit quieter on Facebook, called Raise to Stay, for those who are looking for a safer, more intimate space to have conversation.

Mentor Mama: 33:45

That's so beautiful. Well, we will make sure we have links to those in the show notes Before we go. I have to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions. What Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?

Natalie Runion: 33:59

I have a journal Bible. That's NLT. I love NLT because it allows me a little bit of flexibility between New King James and the message, which I know for studying purposes. But I teach out of NLT, but I study out of New King James and a lot of times for cross-referencing out of the message. And I love the journal Bible because it gives me space to take notes. I'm a big note taker so that's my go-to.

Mentor Mama: 34:25

Awesome, okay, great suggestions. Do you have any favorite journaling supplies, then, that you like to use?

Natalie Runion: 34:33

Okay, well, I'm a creative, so I believe that the holier you're, you know, the more colorful your journal is, the holier you are. So I love, I just love the flare pens. I use flare pens all the time, but for my Bible I use the Sharpie fine tip that does not bleed through, because it makes me so mad when they bleed through. So I use a Sharpie fine tip on my Bible that's a non-bleed through, and then I use the flare pens for journaling.

Mentor Mama: 34:59

Excellent, yeah, oh, those are great. Okay, well, last question what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

Natalie Runion: 35:10

I love the Blue Letter Bible. I don't know if anybody has ever gone to that, but you can get like how to say things in the Hebrew and in the Greek. You can get the commentaries, you can listen in and hear the word Like you can push the little microphone and it will tell you like in real time, how to say it, especially for teaching, when you want to be able to say a word and it's authentic, like or authentic. I think that's a word. I don't know if that's a word, yeah, and it's authentic, sound Like it just helps to be able to have that, to hear it, so that you know you're saying it right.

Mentor Mama: 35:43

Yes, yes, oh, that's a great website, okay, awesome. Well, natalie, thank you so much for being here today to share your book Raise to Stay. We just we need a movement of Christians. We're willing to allow God to use the hurt to mature us and move us in a direction of perseverance, and to be stayers to advance the kingdom of God. So thank you for sharing that with our listeners today.

Natalie Runion: 36:13

Well, thanks so much for having me.

Mentor Mama: 36:15

All right. If you'd like to go dig deeper into this topic, be sure and get a copy of Natalie's book. We will have the link in the show notes. Lastly, head over to the Coffee and Bible Time website for our prayer journals. That will help guide and document your prayer life at coffeeandbibletimecom. Thank you so much for joining us on our podcast today. We love you all. Have a blessed day.