From Break To Seminary: Lessons On Encouragement And Humble Faith

The quiet season wasn’t silence—it was preparation. After a soul-led pause, we’re back with fresh gratitude, stories from a women’s leadership cohort at Denver Seminary, and three hard-won lessons that make faith durable on busy, imperfect days. If you’ve ever tried to juggle calling, family, church, and your own growth without burning out, you’ll find language and practices here that lift the weight without lowering the standard.

We start with the simple phrase that rescued so many weeks: reasonable best. It’s the antidote to perfectionism and the ally of perseverance, a way to honor limits while showing up with integrity. From there, we step into charitable theology, a love-shaped approach to truth that holds firm to Scripture while staying humble with one another in the gray. Across denominations and perspectives, we’ve watched unity deepen when we refuse to weaponize certainty and instead let conviction and kindness share the same table.

To ground it all, we share an everyday framework for reading the Bible and praying with honesty: Am I asking God or telling God? Am I obeying the word or quietly rebelling? This lens turns devotion into transformation you can feel in your schedule, your tone, and your relationships. Along the way, we talk about the cohort of women leading in different contexts, the joy and stretch of graduate study with a full life, and the call to be intentional encouragers—people who ask the second question, offer prayer, and create a small domino of hope.

If this encouraged you, share it with a friend who could use a lift today. Subscribe, leave a review so more women can find the show, and tell us which practice you’re trying this week—reasonable best, charitable theology, or the asking-and-obeying check. Your voice helps this community grow.

Now get out into the world and be a woman who intentionally encourages another! 

#women #podcast

Transcript

Welcome Back And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Good morning, encouragers. It's Joe. How are you? I have truly missed being here. I, if you're just showing up for the very first time, hi, welcome to the Encourage Her Community Podcast. I called this Encourage Her because the whole mission is to be a woman who chooses to encourage. And hopefully, by me doing that, through this podcast forum, you will be poured into a little bit and then you'll be able to turn around and pour into someone else, like a domino effect. We can choose to be women who encourage. There are enough women in the world that criticize, that tear down, and that compare. That's not what we're here to do. We're here to build up, lift up, and encourage. So thanks for being here. I've been blown away, guys. I have really missed podcasting. If you could see my notes section on my phone, you'd be blown away by the amount of ideas God has given me during this kind of break this year. And it overwhelms me actually. I just I'm always kind of like, I have a tension in my spirit that I want to share. And Lord, the Lord has just said, take time, take time. But and I have. I've taken time and I've really enjoyed it. And I trust him. And yet you guys have continued to show up. I can't tell you, I don't know who you are, who's listening this morning, but I'm so grateful you're here. And I get to see through this app that I record, I get to see some data, not all data, but I get to see a little bit. How many countries, how many cities, and how many downloads. I don't get to see your name or, you know, your street address or anything like that, but I get to see the sheer volume of listeners. And I have been amazed. I've only recorded twice this year. And yet you kept listening. So that stirs me up and that adds fuel to my fire. And the Lord has been speaking just real slight whispers about possibly starting again, getting back into the rhythm of podcasting. And we'll see. I want to be spirit-led, so I can't promise I'll be here every Monday like I used to be, but we shall see. Dot, dot, dot. I'm just excited to be here today and recording. God's provided a little time and a little encouragement in my spirit that I would love to share with you. So first, um, I just want to say thank you for continuing to show up. And second, I want to share today a few takeaways. So the reason I've been taking a break, um, as I said, the Lord really led it, but the reason he's shown me he did that was because as the podcast grew, as I changed and matured, I felt really led to talk about scripture more. And there was a pause in my spirit because there's a weightiness and a responsibility to that. So I really wanted to be knowledgeable. Um, I have so I had some knowledge of the Bible, but I didn't feel like I had the total freedom to speak um with authority, you know, and I still don't totally feel like I have all the authority or anything like that. But I knew I needed to be more knowledgeable. And um, I just don't take that lightly, that responsibility. I think it's a big deal. So there's a reverence, right, with the word of God. So I um I'm in seminary, and what that means is I'm in school to get my master's in theology and Bible study. And it, I'll tell you, girls, it has been intense, very intense, and amazing all at the same time. I probably could use every adjective in the book to describe my experience. Uh, difficult, amazing, awe-inspiring, overwhelming, joyful, fearful. Um, and I'm loving it. I mean, I'm really loving it. I am like always a student, love teaching, I love the school environment, I've loved being in like the academic world again, and yet I have four kids, I am a wife, I work at church. Uh, so time, you know, has been the biggest thing. It's just time management. God has been good, God has provided. But I've learned so much, so much more than I can possibly express. It's actually like a watershed of information. A few people have used that analogy, and that is exactly what it feels like. It is overwhelming how much information I have taken in this past year. And I have another year to go. So I wanted to, I thought it would be fun to come on first and say hi and thank you. And then second, um, to check in and share a couple of like key overarching takeaways that I have gained from seminary without getting into the nitty-gritty of scripture just yet, but really just some kind of like highlight reel of a few things that I think are really applicable to your life, whether you're in seminary or not, just as a believer in um Jesus, you know, just walking on the earth and doing your life and encountering the people that you're going to encounter in your day, just feeling like you could use these just as much as I am. And they've really encouraged me. And I really feel like if you let them simmer, you can apply them as well. So the first one was we started off seminary. Um, if you don't know, if I haven't shared, I am in seminary at Denver Seminary. And what I'm in is a cohort. It's a women's only leadership cohort. So you can look it up if you're interested. Denver Seminary, women's leadership cohort. And I started off with about 25 women. I think we're down to like 17. Uh, over time, some had to stop because of life, and others have changed degrees, but we've all stayed connected and it's been an incredible experience, as I said. These women are all over the nation and doing all kinds of things. Um, some of them have full-time jobs in churches, outside of churches. Some of them are business owners, others are um working in a church part-time, doing other things. Some are moms, some are single. It's just awesome. Also, different denominations within the church, meaning different types of churches represented, which I love. And they started us off, this group of women and our professors, by using these two words. So, this is my first one: reasonable best. And at first it didn't mean a whole lot to me, although I loved the idea reasonable best. Now it means the world to me because they knew we are like, generally speaking, kind of a type A group of women. We all like to learn. We're all asking a lot of questions about the rubrics and things like that. And so they probably a lot of students are this way, but they probably got a sense about us. And they really drove that home. Like, you're gonna do your best. You're gonna show up with your reasonable best. You're not always gonna get an A. You're not always gonna be full energy, you're not always gonna understand everything, but you're gonna keep showing up and you're gonna be real. And I love it because it's true. Every week is different. This is a long process. We're about halfway through. And I've said to myself multiple times now, reasonable best, Joe, reasonable best. You did the best you could on that paper. Just turn it in, right? You've read that chapter, you know as much as you can know for this week. You only have so much brain capacity, reasonable best. And I just feel like you could apply this to your life, and I find it very encouraging because it's true. Every day is different. As women, literally, our bodies are different all the time. Um think about what it must be like to be a man to have hormones just like regulated after puberty. What for the rest of your life? Um, we just deal with a lot as women, and so we just gotta show up and do our reasonable best, right? No one's asking for perfection, no one is asking us to be a hundred percent every single day. Uh, it's just not real. It's just not true. And let's just be real, you know, let's be our reasonable best. So I hope you are inspired by that. I hope you remember those words. I think that they're really, really good. The second set of words are charitable theology. So charity meaning love. And, you know, the the true definition of charity would be like love that you don't expect in return or love that you just give away. And theology is what you think about God. And I would add to that what you think about his word or what he says in his word. Um, and they have really the the professors at Denver Seminary live this. So we witness this, and this is modeled intensely, but then also within our cohort, I have seen this play out, these two words in action, charitable theology. And what it looks like is women who are landing sometimes in different interpretations of scripture and still staying united and loving on each other and learning from each other. So God speaks the truest of Himself. His word has been documented for us in the scriptures, and there are certainly scriptures that are black and white. To give a couple examples, right? Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, not up for debate. He is the way.

unknown 9:59

Right?

Lesson Two: Charitable Theology

SPEAKER_00 10:00

If you are a reader of the scriptures, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, the scriptures say he is the way, the truth, and the life. That's black and white. There's really not a lot of gray there. Do not kill Ten Commandments. Um not a lot of gray there. Maybe a maybe a bit, you know, if you're talking about self-defense versus blah, blah, blah. But the idea is that we don't want to kill people. I mean, I think that's pretty fair. Um, there's many, many others, but just to give you those two extreme examples. Um a lot of scripture, however, is somewhere in between. It is gray. And what I mean by gray is I don't mean it's not true. Scripture is true, inspired word of God. However, it can be up for different interpretations. And we can land in different places in our understanding and also in our spiritual maturity as we journey with the Lord, as we get to know his word, and we have to have a grace and a charity with each other to understand we land in different places. I have heard people back up different stances of scripture from totally 180-degree positions, and they back it up with scripture, and it totally makes sense. And I'm like, oh wow, I see how you landed there. Wait a minute, but I see how this guy landed there. Um, maybe an example of that would be women preaching or speaking in tongues. Um, there's many others, but just the this the scriptures that maybe are less um clear, and we can interpret them and find a peace with an interpretation, but just have an awareness that if it is not black and white, that you have to hold it a bit open-handed. You can still stay in that stance, of course, right? We all will have different stances sometimes, but we have to still love each other and be the big capital C church. And I have gained so much wisdom from that. I have gained so much comfort and um, I don't know, just this grandeur of awareness of God from that and living in working through it in a community of just difference. And yet we're all united. Um, it's been beautiful, and I can't even really express how incredible it is, but I have definitely benefited from that. So just want you to take that with you. A lot of us can get isolated inside of our church walls and forget that, you know, not everybody believes exactly the same way. And that doesn't mean that they're wrong in every way. They may worship differently, they may believe differently, they may sing differently, they may move differently, they may preach differently. That doesn't mean they're wrong. So we might say we know that's true, but do we live that way? And living with charitable theology, open hands, with a humble, humble heart is an incredible way to live. And I think we learn so much more because I think we're so much more open. And much of what I've learned from others, it really has affirmed some things for me too. Like, no, I think I'm right. I think I am right on this. Yeah, of course, leaving up to the Lord that ultimately he knows the real truth. But charitable theology and reasonable best, two huge lessons I have learned from seminary and have been incredible life changers for me. The last one is a little more specific to scripture and Bible reading, but I think it's a cool practice that you could apply to any scripture in the Bible. And it's some questions that you'd ask yourself as you read. So you can choose any section of scripture and you'll be reading it, and you can ask yourself these questions. Who or which characters, which you know, people that they're referencing, are asking God and who is telling God? So who is asking something of the Lord, seeking the Lord, you know, wanting his wisdom, wanting his answers, sitting with him in it, and who is kind of pointing their finger at God and saying, I want this, this is how it is, this is how it's meant to be. Asking versus telling. I think that's huge. And I think we can absorb that and take that into our own prayer life. Are you telling God what you want? I know I've been guilty of that. Telling God what I want, telling God how I think it should be. And he wants to hear it. He doesn't condemn us for that, but it's a good practice to think about. Are we asking God or are we telling God? And then the second would be uh similar in a sense that are you obeying God's word or are you rebelling from God's word? Obeying it or rebelling? And it's just a I think that again is a very applicable, real practice for our own lives. Am I really obeying the scriptures? Am I doing what the scriptures call me to, which is a higher standard of living, not easy. Am I doing that? Okay, I am in this and that and the other way, but maybe I'm lacking in a couple areas. Am I really loving my neighbor as myself? Hmm. You know, there's some there's take it to your your quiet time. Ask the Lord, where am I obeying? And where am I rebelling? Maybe it's not an outright rebellion, but maybe it's subtle. Maybe it's quiet, maybe it's subconscious. So are you asking? Are you telling? Are you obeying or are you rebelling? And then you can also take those questions into the scriptures when you're reading. It's awesome, awesome practice. So, ladies, it's been fun. I know I just dropped a couple little things, but I wanted to share just some great takeaways, and I am praying about what to bring to the podcast and when and how often. But I'm just happy to be flexing this muscle a little bit and sharing with you. Really, my heart's desire would be that this encouraged you this morning, that it stirred you up, that maybe in the end, when you push stop, that something is different. Maybe you feel more encouraged, maybe you feel inspired, maybe you feel lighter. Um, you feel a desire to do the same to encourage someone else. That would be the greatest takeaway of today's message. So let me just pray for you as you start your day, and then um feel free to share this. You know, this podcast is free on purpose. There are there are no um asks on this podcast, no way for you to give. You just you can give by sharing and spreading in your own lives, in the little spheres of influence you have today. Who can you turn around and encourage? Who can you smile at, wave at, ask an extra question to? Don't just say, How are you? and keep walking.

unknown 16:56

Right?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Really ask them, How are you? How can I pray for you? Be a woman who's intentional today. And again, thanks for listening. Let me close us in prayer. Dear Lord, thank you for this day. Thank you for the desire in my heart to podcast today. Thank you for those who have been listening and those who will continue to listen. Thank you for all the shares and likes and all the things that make it happen that you do creatively to help draw people to the podcast. Thank you for community and sisterhood. That this life is not our own and that we are meant to be intentional as we live it. Thank you for all you do. In your name, amen.