Have you ever felt like you're in a never-ending battle with comparison and self-doubt? Jenn Schultz, the compassionate author behind "She's Not Your Enemy," joins us to share her journey from a people-pleaser trapped in the pursuit of perfection to someone who's found her true worth through faith. Together, we navigate the treacherous undercurrents of insecurity, jealousy, and loneliness - all while learning to anchor ourselves in the truth of who we are in God's eyes.
Scripture offers us a sanctuary, a place where we can silence the noise of comparison and hear the voice of our truest ally. In our deep and vulnerable conversation, Jenn and I discuss the strength we can draw from passages like Psalm 103 and Ephesians 1, using them as a compass to guide our way back to our true identity. We also examine the Armor of God, not as a suit for battle against our peers, but as a reminder to stand firm against the real challenges of life, enveloping ourselves in compassion and understanding for those around us.
Ending on a note of hope and joy, we consider the power of faith to overcome rejection and conflict, finding fulfillment in the communities we build and the roles we play within God's Kingdom.
Thanks for listening to Coffee and Bible Time, where our goal is to help people delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living!
Jenn Schultz:
that might have felt like gosh. I'm the only one who's going through this. Nobody else understands, nobody else gets it being able to share and connect with them and that's something that I talk about in the book several times, because when we're able to be vulnerable, it breaks through so many walls of I have it all together, I'm fine, I'm good. Those walls that we put up to protect ourselves. They also isolate us, and when we really can get vulnerable about these things and talk about these hard things, I mean it just connects us and bonds us in ways that we never would have otherwise.
Ellen Krause:
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. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.
Ellen Krause:
Well, facing unhealthy comparison, rejection and hurt is more than a relational challenge. It's actually a deep rooted identity crisis that can sometimes blur the lines of who our real enemy is. In this episode, Jenn Schultz, author of the book, S he's Not Your Enemy, sheds light on the problem, emphasizing its connection to how we perceive God in his view of us. Jenn will guide us through the transformative journey of overcoming the feelings of insecurity, jealousy, unworthiness and loneliness, and the need for forgiveness.
Ellen Krause:
Seeds of doubt about belonging and worth have been planted in many people, leading to the toxic belief that our value is tied to other people's perception of us and vice versa. The solution to that problem involves confronting these lies with Scripture, where the Bible separates us to live loved and wholeheartedly through him. Acknowledging our vulnerability to comparison and competitiveness allows us to face our insecurities head on, to cultivate a culture of community and leave the habit of self-protection behind so we can focus instead on building God's kingdom together. Jenn Schultz writes and speaks about messy faith, shaking off shame and pursuing God's purpose confidently. She is a wife and mom who reads too many books at once and loves decaf coffee.
Jenn Schultz:
Hi thank you so much for having me, Ellen. I'm really excited to be here.
Ellen Krause:
Jenn. What a joy. And it's such a delight for me because it's very hard to find someone else who loves decaf coffee.
Jenn Schultz:
Just saying right Coffee, it gets a bad rap, but goodness, it's saved me in a lot of ways. It's made a big difference on my life.
Ellen Krause:
Yeah, and you know what? I think we are the true coffee lovers, because it's just not the caffeine we're in search of right, it's that true coffee taste, the whole experience.
Jenn Schultz:
So hey, all right. And to find a decaf coffee that tastes good, I mean, that is just a mission in itself. So once you find one that's delicious, you hold on to it and never let it go .
Ellen Krause:
Definitely, and I can vouch for Bold3 Coffee.
Jenn Schultz:
Good to know. I usually get mine from Trader Joe's. Now their French roast is pretty good, so I'm a fan.
Ellen Krause:
All right, extra tip there. Well, Jenn, in our culture today, it can feel like our value lies in what we have to show for it, whether that's proving ourselves with rank and achievement, or making ourselves known and validated through likes on social media, or gathering the most and best of everything to kind of fill this obsession we have with perfection. So let's just start out by having you share with us your own personal journey, from proving yourself to be what you call a good Christian to being authentically with God.
Jenn Schultz:
Absolutely. I definitely grew up with a character of people pleasing and perfectionism. That is something that is deeply ingrained in me. I want to make people happy. I want people to approve and accept me and I want to do things well. I want to, you know, complete things and hand together the pretty package and show everybody what I did, so that that has always been a part of my character. I've also been a part of the church community for a very long time and just found so much validation in getting people's approval there, like, oh well, I'm the good girl and I do the right things and I say the right things, I have all the right answers. That just kind of puffed me up and made me feel good and somewhere in there I really started believing that my only worth really comes from how happy I make other people and how well I'm doing in comparison to other people.
Jenn Schultz:
I think you know you think of comparison. There's usually jealousy involved and I think that that's true. But I know for me my struggle with comparison was looking at other people and just trying to gauge how well I was doing compared to these other people and it's made me feel at odds with people. It made me feel like, well, God must love her more because he's blessed her with something that I want, or he gave her all these incredible gifts and she's doing something amazing with her life, or I would think maybe she's doing really well, like she just must be spiritual. She must be, you know, be holier than me, you know, thinking that she must have it right and I have it wrong, and just going into this spiral of I'll never get it right, I'll never be enough, I'll never be good enough, feeling like I had to prove myself to God based on how well I was doing compared to somebody else.
Jenn Schultz:
And I realized that I was looking at other people first to kind of determine my worth, instead of looking to God first. And once I started realizing that, once I started tackling these issues and realizing that they were getting me nowhere honestly they were getting me to this place of burnout, of just you know, striving and shame and saying yes to everybody, having no boundaries, really just being ashamed of the woman in the mirror and not not able to feel any sense of worth on my own. I just I realized that something needed to change, something had to give. I had kind of I got to this place of just burnout and panic attacks and just this worry about what people thought, and it really took me going back to the word. It took people directing me back to scripture and saying what does God really say? What does God say about himself and what does he say about you? And that changed everything for me.
Jenn Schultz:
That was really where I could start seeing whoa like my worth does not come from how I'm doing compared to somebody else. It comes from who God says I am, and he is trustworthy because of who he is.
Ellen Krause:
Yes, if we could only encapsulate that and like have it sort of be like the screen around us at all the time, reminding ourselves of that, we would maybe tend to fall at all those. I just like you, I constantly was trying to make people happy through you know achievements or you know doing things for them, and I can completely relate to that and I think many people that are listening right now have struggled with it and are struggling with the consequences that they have seen as a result of this. And you cite some interesting studies in your book and I wanted to just sort of talk about some of the consequences that you've seen in the youth when they succumbed to the demands of constantly trying to prove themselves.
Jenn Schultz:
Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like the enemy is really. He's working. He's very, very much at work right now in the spiritual battle. You know we're coming out of a pandemic and so we have. We're kind of moving into just this place where we were isolated for so long, like on purpose we had to be, and so where a lot of us are feeling lonely, we're feeling disconnected. Less and less people are going to church physically or even online or in any case, younger generations are more lonely or than ever.
Jenn Schultz:
It's, you know, studies are showing that younger generations feel like they don't have any friends or they don't have anybody that they feel close to.
Jenn Schultz:
It's also studies are showing that we are really driven by scarcity. We're driven to productivity and trying to earn and gain lots of accolades and awards and approval, because we really feel like that's where our value lies and it's just it's only getting more compacted. For the younger generations is what I keep finding. It's, you know, we're passing down this legacy of you're only as good as how much you produce and you're only as good as you know how you show up on paper really and or how much money you make or how much education you have, and it's really just this, this awful thing that that the younger generations are feeling this pressure so much, and that's kind of what we're passing on to them. But it's also how the enemy is lying to us. He's really. His goal is to really divide us from God and divide us from each other. He wants us isolated, because that's the best place he can get us, to take us out.
Ellen Krause:
You know and I definitely want to talk a little bit more about the enemy, I would say was when I was reading some of your notes just two about the youth that are facing body image issues and eating disorders and just depression, suicide, anxiety, all these things that just feel so overwhelming. And I really love how, like at the very beginning of your book, you say that if there's anything at all I hope you take out of this book, it's the very clear picture of who your enemy is and who it is not. So let's talk about that for a little bit, because I think you know, for some people it might be obvious, but for others I don't think it is.
Jenn Schultz:
Well, it feels very much like the woman who rejects you, or the woman who has everything that you want, or the woman who is too much for you and asks too much of you or is going through something you can't relate to, and that's really what every chapter in the book is about. It's about one of those women, but really, at the end of the day, she's not really the enemy. The enemy is known by a lot of different names. You know, in the Bible's call the enemy Satan. Satan is the enemy of me. Satan, the accuser, the adversary. I believe Satan actually means adversary. It's in the book and I'm blanking on it right now.
Jenn Schultz:
I believe Satan actually means adversary, that you know. It says he's a liar, the father of lies. It says that he goes around, he prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. It says that he masquerades as an angel of light. It shows passages in the Bible show that he manipulates scripture so that we question God. We feel suspicious of him. We feel like he's holding out on us and that's exactly what he wants. He wants us separated from God. He wants our spiritual death and I think it's just.
Jenn Schultz:
It's really important to be able to identify that that's the real enemy at work here. As much as women can be at odds with each other and even be malicious towards each other, it's really the devil at work there. You know, there's a scripture in Ephesians 6 where it says that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but it's against the rulers and the authorities of the world. It's really the devil at work there, and so I just I think it's so important, it's so needed to really stop and take a step back and say you know who's really trying to divide me here, who's really trying to attack me? It may feel like this woman, and she may actually, you know, be malicious towards me, but it's, at the end of the day, she's got a story too. She has experiences in her life that maybe I don't know about. And if I take a step back and look at the bigger picture, there's so much more at play here. There's so much more of a spiritual battle going on than we realize.
Ellen Krause:
Yes, and I feel like you know everything that you just said. It can be so hard, though, when you're in the heat of the moment and one of these things is happening and you're like so how do we make this transition from okay, recognizing this other person isn't the real enemy? How do how do we deal with the enemy and the spiritual forces that work against us? I mean, honestly, I've been asked a lot.
Jenn Schultz:
You know what the hack is for not comparing anymore, not not being at odds with people. I don't think that's what you're asking, but I feel like that's. A lot of people are looking for quick fixes and the thing that has really changed me is to be on this steady practice of going back to the scriptures and going back to God, to have at the ready scriptures that I know are going to help me to have the right kind of you know, to have the right kind of mindset to be able to fight off the lies of the enemy. I know these are scriptures about God. They're scriptures about who he is and who he says he is, like Psalm 103 that talks about you know. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and a bounding in love. I love Ephesians one as well, because it kind of gives this outline of how God sees us as chosen, as adopted. We were adopted into his family because that brought him joy. There's you know that we're forgiven, we're, we're redeemed, we have a relationship with him again. I mean just so many things that so many questions that we have are answered in that.
Jenn Schultz:
I know a lot of my, my comparison, stemmed from these insecure questions, which are actually valid and important questions. I don't say insecure as as a means of like shaming people like gosh, you're so insecure, just get over it. I mean, these are really important questions that we ask. We ask are we worthy, are we valuable? Does, are we loved, you know, do we have a purpose? And it's so important that we get the answers from God and we get the answers from scripture.
Jenn Schultz:
And that takes a mindset change which involves a lot of just steady practice of going back into scripture, a steady diet of scripture, you know, of our daily bread. That's got to be what it is. It's not something that changes overnight. I feel like those, those thought patterns that we build, even the lies of the enemy, they, they get stronger with time, as much as we feed them. And I think when we, when we switch the diet, it feels a little bit unusual at first. It's like, well, wait a minute, like what's true here? What's actually right? It doesn't feel right that I'm loved. It feels like I'm only loved if I do these things. But the truth is, if we, if we keep going back to the truth, we keep applying it, we keep using it and eating it and feeding our minds with it.
Jenn Schultz:
I mean that's what's going to make the mind change over time. So I think, if, if you're in a place where comparison is a really big struggle for you, I really encourage you to get back into your word, get back to these scriptures that you can hold on to and keep returning to when the lies start to interfere, and and I think part of that too, is knowing the enemy and knowing the lies that he uses to get at you. I mean, he's an accuser If you're, if your mind is accusing you, if your mind is, you know, making you question God.
Ellen Krause:
Those are not from the spirit.
Jenn Schultz:
They're not from God, those thoughts are from the enemy, and so being able to differentiate the two. It really comes from having a strong knowledge of the truth, and I love you guys, because that's what you're all about is studying the scriptures and getting the truth from them, and so if you're here, I feel like you're already at an advantage. You are already, hopefully, pursuing scripture, pursuing truth, and so that's just what I encourage you to do is build up this foundation of who God really is and what he says about you Absolutely.
Ellen Krause:
It reminds me of an interview that I did not long ago with the movie, a gal who is in the movie, After Death, and just the people that have experienced sort of this this afterlife, and this is from chosen ministries or angel oh my goodness, I'm drawing a blank the same company that produces, The Chosen, Angel Studios. They did this movie and every single person that they interviewed said that they felt like God loved them more than anyone else in the whole world, like that's the feeling, not that he does, but that's how he makes us feel. This is how much he loves us, and I love your suggestion of sort of soaking in those truths about who God says that we are, how he knows the number of hairs on our head. It's not just some crazy, you know, you're out there somewhere and no, this is a God that fully, fully knows who we are. One of the scriptures that you cited in the book was the armor of God. Tell us a little bit about how that passage of scripture can help people.
Jenn Schultz:
Well, I think, first of all, if you, if you know who your enemy really is, then you're going to armor up in the right way against the enemy. It's, I think, something that I found is I kept going back to that scripture. You know, the gosh, the shield of faith, the belt of the sorry, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth. I believe you know like I'm at, my brain, hopefully, is remembering these as accurately as they are. But when you think about armoring up, sometimes we think about it in terms of why I have to armor up against other people. I have to make sure that I have all my stuff on straight so that when I'm fighting somebody else, that I get it all right. It's like, wait a minute, that's not in context.
Jenn Schultz:
We're we're armoring up in the spiritual battle to fight our real enemy, and so I think it's really important that we, that we we know who the enemy is, that we're fighting, so we armor up in the proper way to fight against the right person, the right being, and I mean, I think it's it's it's also important there's there's a whole different kind of set of apparel that the Bible gives us when it comes to interacting with other people and that's putting on compassion, putting on love, putting on just gentleness, putting on peace, you know, and that's how we're meant to approach other people.
Jenn Schultz:
So this, this, this armor of the spirit, is meant to go against the enemy, whereas are these, these other traits, were meant to put on with other people. So I think it's important to kind of make that distinction. But yeah, how we battle up is we battle up with prayer, we battle up with the spirit, we battle up with the word of God and that is our defense. That is is meant to set us up in a place where we can be able to face the enemy and face whatever lies he has to throw at us, whatever tricks he has. That's what it's there for.
Ellen Krause:
Absolutely, if you're listening to this. This passage is Ephesians 6, verses 13 through 17, which I'm just going to take a moment to read. It says put on the full armor of God so that, when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And, after you have done everything to stand, stand firm then with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil. One, take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
Ellen Krause:
I had a lot of fun looking into a commentary in preparation for this podcast just on this whole section of the armor of God, and one thing that I found so interesting, and especially as it ties back into your book, is that the all of those parts of the sword mentioned initially are sort of defensive, but then, at the very end, the sword of the spirit is allows the church to actually strike back with the truth of the gospel of peace and uniting love in Christ, rather than using that the sword to divide us.
Ellen Krause:
I think that that was kind of the gist of your whole part of the book, where we don't want the enemy to divide us, to use people, circumstances, but yet we want to be coming together as a community. We don't want to divide in that process. Jen, in your book you address, like you said, all of the women who we confuse as the enemy, including the woman who may not include you, the woman who has what you want, the woman who disagrees with you. Why, why do you think it's just so easy to get caught up in the comparison trap?
Jenn Schultz:
You know, I think in a lot of ways society has a setup for that. I think, you know, we're we're kind of encouraged to build ourselves up by our bootstraps and climb the ladder. We're encouraged to compete with each other to end up on top. And you know, it's interesting because not all competition is unhealthy and not all comparison is unhealthy. Comparison actually is such a great tool for us to kind of know where we belong. It helps us to know what we have to contribute and how other people can fill in gaps for us as well, and it also helps us to be motivated by what other people are doing. We can look at what someone else is doing and, instead of being threatened by it, we can just say, wow, I'm impressed by that. I want to try that. Maybe I could do that, you know, instead of making it some kind of this the toxic thing that sometimes we can turn it into. I think that is.
Jenn Schultz:
I think it's so much because of society, where we have, you know, so much access to information, to people right in the palms of our hands, and the problem with that is we don't know the whole story. All we typically see is the highlight reel. All we see is the. You know the likes. How many people liked that post, even if it is a post that's kind of more honest or more raw or vulnerable or talking about you know something that you're struggling with and the likes that go with it and a lot of comments that go with that. It's like ooh, what's that person doing with that person? We just have so much access to people all the time. It's like unprecedented for us.
Jenn Schultz:
And that knowledge is not always a good thing, especially when we don't have the whole picture or even we don't have connections with the person that we're paying close attention to online. You know, we can know a lot about somebody without even knowing them, and what we do without celebrity is without actually knowing them or having any real connection to them. But we feel like we do because we, we see, you know this highlight reel, we see whatever they choose to post and and it's a dangerous thing, it kind of it's it's altering our view of reality in a lot of ways. It's making us feel like we're connected when we're not. It's making us feel like everybody else has it together and we're the only ones that don't, and that does lead to a lot of what you were saying at the beginning, just the depression, the body image issues, the, the anxiety of gosh.
Jenn Schultz:
I must not be doing as well as other people, I must not be where I'm supposed to be. We're, we're just being informed by culture and by you know what other people are doing around us, instead of being informed by by God, by the Holy Spirit, by the word. So it's really, really important to have boundaries set up, I know, for me, around especially social media. If I make that the priority in my day or if I, you know, use every spare minute I get to scroll through social media, it messes with my head. I really do need to be good about boundaries and I'm not always.
Ellen Krause:
Like. I wish.
Jenn Schultz:
I could say that I'm always good about let me turn my phone off, Let me, you know, delete the app whatever it is. Sometimes I get caught up in it too, and I think it's just so important to know that that picture is not always the correct picture We've got to be getting our main source needs to be God.
Ellen Krause:
Absolutely One of the comments that you made in the book to that. It's a hard truth, but recognizing that we were never meant to be long in this world and sometimes that can be hard because we are here right now but if we can, like you said, take that step back and recognize and use comparison in a way that is positive, that can sort of help put up guardrails for us. I think. Well, Jenn, you have been so vulnerable throughout the book and one of the things that you shared was your journey of infertility, and this is a common struggle that so many people have and I know could use some words of encouragement. Tell us about what you learned during this time in your life.
Jenn Schultz:
It was a very difficult time. Now I am three children later, which is such an incredible gift and blessing that I just never knew if I was going to be able to have. But I mean, give me a minute and I'm right back in it Like it's just. It's one of those things that I remember being such a gray time in my life and I was in this place of needing God like I never was before. I remember, you know, it's not like people stop getting pregnant when you can't, so I would. I would get you know the cards in the mail that would say oh, we're expecting a baby, or you know, here's the sonogram picture.
Jenn Schultz:
And just feeling devastated and feeling torn and guilty, because I wanted to just be happy for my friends and I was like there was a side of me that was just super happy for them, but I was also just devastated at the same time, just not knowing, you know, will this ever happen for me? I'm feeling super guilty about that, like I should just be happy. Why can't I just be happy for my friends? And that was such a time of learning how to work my heartbreak out with God one on one. There were a lot of going through Psalms, praying through Psalms, learning how to be gut level, honest with God in my prayers and learning that he is okay with that, he welcomes that, he invites that, he invites that for us, he wants us to wrestle with him. I think learning that about God, learning his compassion in that time and how far it extends, how he like gets down on bended knee to see us at eye level, that was such such a thing that brought so much comfort to me and it made me go deeper in my relationship with him than ever before. Because I had to. I just had no other choice. Like I didn't know where this was going. I knew that it was a desire of my heart. I just had nowhere else to go but God and that was exactly where I needed to be.
Jenn Schultz:
So I look back on it and see it as such a time of me deepening and developing my faith and really connecting with some people like I never had before, because I'd never experienced something that difficult, and it it's put me in a position now to be able to even help people, to be able to talk to people and and share people that might have felt like gosh. I'm the only one who's going through this. Nobody else understands, nobody else gets it being able to share and connect with them. And that's something that I talk about in the book several times, because when we're able to be vulnerable, it breaks through so many walls of I have it all together and fine, I'm good.
Jenn Schultz:
Those those walls that we put up to protect ourselves. They also isolate us, and when we really can get vulnerable about these things and talk about these hard things, I mean it just connects us and bonds us in ways that we never would have otherwise. So those were all things I feel like I learned from that time. I definitely want to encourage anyone who is going through that. It is so hard. Your, your struggle is so valid and so real. Keep going back to God. He is still with you in this time.
Ellen Krause:
Yes, yes, for sure. There's other sort of things that can happen in our young life that can follow us all the way into adulthood, and the feeling of rejection is one of those and I can remember especially just like in sports or like when they were picking names for like, do you want to be on my team or their team, and how rejecting that felt. But there's obviously many more examples of that. Tell us a little bit about how you address that in the book of dealing with feelings of rejection.
Jenn Schultz:
Well, I mean, I think it's important to start by saying that rejection is real and it's painful. I found it so interesting. I found some research that basically says that our brain processes rejection and physical pain the same way, like on the same, then the same parts of the. It activates the same parts of the brain, basically, which I found so interesting because you do you feel it feels like a gut punch right when somebody rejects you, or it feels your body tenses or your breathing picks up, or it just you feel it. It's a real painful thing and it doesn't stop in high school Like we think. Oh it's, you know, it's only only in the high school cafeteria that you need to worry about that and it's not true.
Jenn Schultz:
I mean it follows us, follows us into our jobs, into you know church. Honestly, sometimes it follows us into you know mom's groups and just all kinds of places where we we connect with people. We can. We can feel rejection. Sometimes it's just being slighted, sometimes it's on accident, sometimes it's on purpose, and I think the the thing that helps me to deal with it, and something that we talk about in the book, is just knowing that there is a place that we belong and it's in the kingdom of God. We have a part, we have a role. God has us here for a reason. He doesn't. He doesn't make spare parts. He doesn't have a you know this backup plan just in case the first plan didn't work. You aren't. You know, somebody is understudying Like you are there for a purpose and for a reason, and something I try to encourage people is is, if you're feeling rejected I'm, I guarantee you there are other people who are feeling it.
Jenn Schultz:
Maybe it's your job. Maybe this is God opening up the door for you to invite somebody else in who might not have have been included otherwise, who might be feeling the same feelings of rejection that you are. Maybe this is God stirring up your heart to gather together a new group of women who who don't have friends or who feel like they're on the outside. Maybe you can be the one to start that, instead of waiting for somebody to do it for you. So those are all things that kind of came out of that that chapter.
Ellen Krause:
And those are are such great tips to kind of tip it upside down, right Almost. You're taking it into your into your hands, to turn a negative into a positive. And one of the things that I think of in this area, too, is volunteering, because if you are feeling rejected, or maybe even it's a relationship that's ended and you feel rejected, I feel like volunteering and getting out there to help someone else, whether that's an elderly person or whoever it might be, it just can do wonders. For because because they'll be so appreciative of anything that you have to give, and so, even while we're here on earth, we can try to battle those and turn it into a positive.
Jenn Schultz:
Yeah, there's something that you're meant to do that is just for you, and maybe this that's your. The rejection is your prompt to go find it.
Ellen Krause:
Yeah Well, as we start to kind of wrap up this discussion, I just want to talk about healthy disagreements, because you know we don't always agree on obviously everything. And so how to? How does engaging in healthy disagreements help us discover truths?
Jenn Schultz:
Well, something that I dug into a lot as I was considering disagreements and conflicts, because, for me, I am the person who avoids conflicts.
Ellen Krause:
I've run it in the opposite direction.
Jenn Schultz:
It makes me shake and like, nope, I don't want any part of that. And for other people, I mean they run into it like that, let's run into the fight, let's do this, which is hard for me to grasp. But some people are just like let's deal with it, let's have it all out on the table, and I don't think either way is a wrong way. We just need to find some middle ground in it. But I know something that was very helpful for me was God's perspective of Shalom and the concept of peace according to God and according to the scriptures, which was very different than my view of peace. My view of peace was always you know, don't fight, like let's stop all fighting and let's make sure that everybody is keeping things status quo and everybody's you know, we're all good. And what I came to find out about Shalom is it's actually just this, this, this wellness overall in every area of our lives.
Jenn Schultz:
And and we can't be, well at the expense of other people. We it's wellness for everybody like that's God's heart for us, that's his goal for us. And when I started to look at it like that, as opposed to conflict avoidance, it changed my perspective. I mean, when it's it's about everybody's wellness, it's like well, wait a minute why why?
Jenn Schultz:
are you bringing up that argument? Why is that so important to you? Let me ask questions, Let me be curious, instead of immediately criticizing, shutting it down. No, you shouldn't be thinking like that. Forget it, Because again there's. There's more to the story that you don't know. There's more to someone's experience that you don't know, and I think when we when we're curious, it leads us in a space to be more, more generous more understanding, listening to someone's story instead of immediately getting defensive, and or running away like I tend to.
Jenn Schultz:
So that was, that was something for me, I think, when it came to disagreements is what am I looking for? I'm looking for for healing and wellness and wholeness for all the people in my life. What can I do to contribute to that? How can I?
Ellen Krause:
hear them out.
Jenn Schultz:
Even if we don't come to agreement, if it's not something that the Bible explicitly like, has an opinion on, and so we have differing opinions, maybe that's something we can just leave and keep, keep moving on. You know, like maybe it doesn't have to be, I have to have the final word, I have to have the final say. My opinion is the right one. Learning what my own motivations were and and I think as well like I think it's really important that whatever conversations that we're having, that we're having them in person, because it's so it's easy to be bold and tactless from behind a screen, it's easy to throw something on a keyboard than it would be to actually say something to someone in real life. And so maybe putting down the phone, maybe getting coffee with someone and just saying, you know, let's have a real conversation about this, I want you to hear what you have to say, approaching it with humility, but also being able to express yourself as well. So I think those are all important things when it comes to conflict.
Ellen Krause:
Yes, so important as we try to conquer our insecurities and build God's kingdom together. It's just, it's so, so crucial and that that sort of the spirit can really help us to yield that in a positive way, fruitful way, so in a in a peaceful way, just like you said so well, jen, thank you so much. How can people find out more information about you and the book?
Jenn Schultz:
Well, I am. I mean speaking of social media, I am very active on social media. I'm at jennschultzauthor. You can find me there, but I do like actually engaging, so send me a message. Let's talk a little bit more. I am at jennschultzauthor. com and the book, if you're interested, is on Amazon, at Barnes, noble just wherever you buy books. You'll probably be able to find it. So, anyway, you want to reach out and contact me. I'd love to love to chat with you.
Ellen Krause:
Excellent, all right, well, we will make sure we have those links in our show notes Before we go. Jenn, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions. What Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?
Jenn Schultz:
So I typically go. My go-to is the NIV, but I've I recently bought I actually have it with me the she Reads Truth Bible, just honestly because it was so pretty. But it's also the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible, and so it does. I like having a different, a different translation, just to help me think about the scripture differently, to to make sure that I'm not limited to only only one perspective or only one view. So that's been fun. It's a journaling Bible.
Jenn Schultz:
I found it to be really helpful to do like calligraphy, as I'm as I'm not the best at it, but I kind of do it in the margins and just kind of it makes me stop and focus on the scripture and just be intentional with it, helps me to just really soak it in.
Ellen Krause:
So that's the one that is my go-to at the moment. Awesome, okay, I know a lot of people really like that Bible. Well, that really ties into this next question then Do you have any favorite journaling supplies that you'd like to use to enhance your Bible study experience? And they have them with me.
Jenn Schultz:
I came prepared I, so I use the, these dual brushes from the brand is Tombow. I mean, I think you can get them a lot of places, but I just have these, this colorful set of calligraphy pens that, again, like I, just I'm not great at it but I just love to sit and write them in just this really kind of beautiful, flourishing kind of way that makes me sit with the scripture for a longer period of time and just be intentional with it.
Ellen Krause:
So yeah, oh, I love that. So you're kind of just like you said, focusing in on sort of one nugget of truth that you want to kind of claim for the day, as you do that, do those pens and they don't bleed through.
Jenn Schultz:
You know the darker ones do a little bit, but I haven't found a lot of issue with it, like it's not. It doesn't leave behind prints or anything. It just as you flip it. If it's a darker color you might see it a little bit more. But honestly I haven't had any issue with liquids.
Ellen Krause:
Oh, that's so cool, awesome, okay. Last question what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?
Jenn Schultz:
Well, I am a Word nerd, so I love to dig into just the meanings behind the words and I love Bible Hub for that, because I feel like it's really easy to find the word in context in a scripture. You can use strong concordance to find the Greek or the Hebrew meaning of the word, and it just allows for me to have, like this, richer experience, because I can not only find the, the Hebrew or the Greek definition, but also the other places in the Bible that it's located. So I really enjoy Bible Hub.
Ellen Krause:
Excellent recommendation. Yeah, that's a good one, all right, well, we will put links to all of Jenn's favorites in our show notes. Jenn, thank you so much for being here today to work through number one, recognizing who our real enemy is in our lives and then just pointing us to the path of finding true joy when we realize our unique roles in God's kingdom.
Jenn Schultz:
Thank you so much, Ellen. It was great to talk with you today.
Ellen Krause:
Thank you and for our listeners, be sure to get a copy of Jenn's book, S he's Not Your Enemy, today. You can find the link in our show notes. Well, we love you all. We appreciate and thank you for listening. Have a blessed day.
