Courier Conversations
This Podcast of The Baptist Courier and Courier Publishing will be a conversation of topics that Inform, Instruct, and Inspire Christians about current events Worldwide. We hope you'll find this podcast informing and encouraging in your daily walk with Christ.
Courier Conversations
Introducing Courier Conversations for Women
🚨 Follow Courier Conversations for Women: https://courierconversationswomen.buzzsprout.com
Welcome to the very first episode of Courier Conversations for Women, a new faith-based podcast from the Baptist Courier designed to encourage, equip, and disciple women through the truth of God’s Word. Hosted by Mary Margaret Flook, reporter and social media manager at the Baptist Courier, alongside Hannah Miller, trustee and experienced podcaster, this inaugural conversation introduces the heart, vision, and biblical foundation of the show.
In this episode, Mary Margaret and Hannah share their personal stories—from singleness to marriage and motherhood, missions, homeschooling, and ministry—and explain why this podcast exists: to magnify Jesus Christ and help women grow deeper in their love for Him. Drawing from Scripture, biblical counseling principles, and real-life experiences, they discuss how the glory of God shapes everyday life, womanhood, relationships, parenting, purity, patience, and spiritual growth.
Rather than offering feel-good advice, Courier Conversations for Women is rooted firmly in Scripture as the ultimate “plumb line” for truth, helping listeners apply God’s Word practically in every season of life. Whether you’re single, married, a mom, or navigating a new chapter, this podcast aims to encourage discipleship, deepen delight in Christ, and point women back to the gospel as the source of true joy and transformation.
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with questions or topic ideas. Follow the Baptist Courier on social media for updates and more Christ-centered content for women.
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Welcome to this very special episode of Courier Conversations. Today is special because Courier Conversations for Women is live. Be sure to click the link in this episode's description to follow this new show with content designed specifically for ladies. For now, enjoy the first episode right here.
Mary Margaret:Welcome to Courier Conversations for Women. This is the very first episode specifically geared towards ladies. My name is Mary Margaret Flook. I'm on staff here at the Baptist Courier as a reporter and social media manager. And I have my friend here, Hannah Miller. Hannah is one of our trustees at the Baptist Courier. Hannah, how long have you been a trustee with us?
Hannah:I was doing the math earlier when you asked me, and I believe it's about four years, because we do five years, we serve five years, and this is my first kind of rotation, uh, so to speak. And I'm getting to the end, so four years uh at this point. And I also remembered I did the math with uh how many children I have, and I was like, I'm pretty sure I was pregnant with my fourth the last time when I was asked to come on. So yeah.
Mary Margaret:Well, we're super grateful to have you on board. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and then I'll kind of introduce myself and then kind of we'll share the vision for uh this podcast. Absolutely.
Hannah:And first of all, thank you so much. You've we've met at church, and I think you're gonna get it to that point, but we just kind of really hit it off, and so here we are doing this, and I really appreciate the honor that you've given me to be a part of this and be a part of Courier Conversations and just get to know you better uh through all of this. We've already had a lot of really fun conversations kind of leading up to this episode, and I'm really looking forward to where the Lord's gonna take it and kind of take us, take our relationship and our friendship, but also this podcast as it proceeds forward. But so for myself, my history, I'm a South Carolina native uh to the upstate of South Carolina and born and raised here. Uh my dad's a family doctor, my mom is a nurse, I'm one of nine children, and we were homeschooled all the way through. My mom was one of the first homeschoolers in the state of South Carolina, and uh so we did I did that all the way through. Then I took a gap year, and then I went to up in Pennsylvania, then I went to North Greenville University, which people in this area are very familiar with North Greenville, uh, which you were a North Greenville student grad as well. And uh then I did so I did that, met my husband there, and then we got married, and he was in seminary when we got married in Louisville, so I moved up to Louisville with him, and we spent another year and a half there before moving back, and then we started having kids, and I now have five children, and I homeschool three of the five. Uh so far, the youngest two are still too little. And so, as far as you know, when I was in college, I started doing radio once a week, uh, very not amazing, um, with an amazing co-host. He was amazing, Tony Beam, and I don't know what he saw in me at the time, but I started doing that, and then I ended up doing that for quite a number of years, I think 13 years total, um, if I'm not correct. And then I started my own podcast a few years ago, and then that's I think how you you were like, Oh, you do a podcast, and then you were like, hey, I have this idea. Hannah Miller show, go check out. If you're into politics and church and culture and stuff, that's that's more that vein. Um, but yeah, so my husband and I have been married since 2012 and uh have five children together, and we reside in the upstate. He is now an epoxy coating specialist, so he does epoxy coatings uh for like tanks in the ground, uh diesel tanks, uh w wastewater containment, all sorts of things. Uh it it doesn't matter. Uh he'll do it if it but uh so anyway, so that's kind of where I'm at now. And my oldest is eleven and a half, and my youngest is two. And so yeah, that's kind of a a little bit of a little bit of my story as as we proceed in the podcast. Uh there there'll be more that kind of gets piecemealed out, I'm sure.
Mary Margaret:And your dog just had eight, what, eight puppies today? This morning.
Hannah:I was late getting here because my dog was delivering puppies.
Mary Margaret:So you have a lot of kids and your dog has a lot of kids.
Hannah:Yes, my dog has eight kids and uh and I've got five. Uh we have three horses as well and eight chickens, so you know.
unknown:Incredible.
Hannah:Wait, it's it's a riot over there, you know.
Mary Margaret:We're just living it up, having a great time. That's awesome. Well, yeah, so like I said, uh I'm I work here at the Baptist Courier. I've only been here a year and a half, so I graduated from North Greenville University December of 2023, studied communication, minored in Christian studies. Um, shout out to North Greenville, it really is a great school, and feel like I really grew a lot closer to the Lord during that uh season, especially through the Christian studies department. Um the professors there are just like family and they really, really pour into you. Um let you ask cool questions. Um yeah, the most important thing about me obviously is our I'm sure you can say the same thing is our faith in Christ. Yeah, absolutely. Um and yeah, just love the Lord and I know you do too, and and really hope to spread that love to others. Um personally I'm super passionate about uh evangelism and mission. So I grew up my parents were missionaries, so I grew up in Bolivia and Dominican Republic um as a kid, and so I feel like uh mission kind of having like a missional mindset is kind of has been ingrained in me since I was uh born, pretty much, um, which is you know, just growing in in a love for the gospel and and just sharing that that good news um with others. So yeah, we can kind of get into the the vision for this podcast specifically geared towards ladies. Um kind of the background is super simple. I really came thought of this idea like three weeks ago, maybe. Um, and you were like the first person that came to mind. You walked in the church doors and you saw me and you were like, you I pick you. Yeah, I so I actually I kind of got this idea from the Pillar Network, which is a network of like-minded Southern Baptist churches that are specifically passionate about church planning. Um and they do a podcast specifically for women uh about once a month, and kind of theirs is a little more geared towards pastors' wives and women in ministry. Um but I was like, wow, that's a great idea. I love that. Um I think sometimes um as women we can feel like unseen, or maybe like some of our issues maybe don't get spoken to as much, or whatever, whether that's true or not. I think sometimes we can feel that way. Um and so I hope that kind of through this podcast um we can just be an encouragement to ladies out there who want to love the Lord more and be faithful in whatever season um that they're in. And so yeah, like Hannah said, I thought of you, and I was like, you have a podcast, your experience, I am not. This is my very first podcast. I have the symbols, worth of knowledge, but you know, and I literally went up to Hannah and was just like, hey, do you want to like do our podcast and help us with that? And you pretty much just said yes. You barely asked any questions at all or anything, and you just said yes, and I was like, wow, this is great. So here we are.
Hannah:So easy. Three weeks later. Um yeah, you came up to me, and I don't even really remember with thinking I had I had a lot going on in my mind right at the moment, and you're like, hey, I just had this idea. What do you think? And I was like, Yeah, sure, I'll help however you need. And I I don't think I even knew really what that was gonna look like. I didn't either, you know, and so I was like, I don't know, maybe she just wants to bounce off like titles of a podcast off of me. Yeah, sure, I'll help with that. Or maybe she wants to you know interview me on a certain topic. Sure, I'll I'll help with that. I don't know. And so I just kind of wanted you to be like the main person.
Mary Margaret:So I'm glad you said yes before you knew what all this would look like. And it made me title the dotted line before I even knew. Yeah, me and Hannah go to the same church, um, which is awesome.
Hannah:Yeah, and we go to Ridgewood Church uh here in Greer, which has just been amazing. We how long have you been there? About a year and a half. Okay, so you got there right before we did. We started visiting last year. Let's see, what what is it? Is it now October? So we started visiting, visited a couple times in like August of last year, and it was the first church that we'd visited, so we kind of started making the rounds after that, and then after the holidays, we were like, no, Ridgewood is really where we think we need to be.
Mary Margaret:And we had met um at a trustee meeting before. Um it was like a hello. It wasn't like much else.
Hannah:Like I knew your bio because it had to be approved by the trustees and you know, all that stuff. And then you came in and waved at everybody and waved. Yeah, that's about that. And so we kind of met there. I think we chatted a couple of times, but so I knew of you, and then I don't know, it was it in the children's hall that I was like, wait a minute. I actually like really like I know you and I recognize you from the Courier, and and then we kind of hit it off and had a conversation, and then we've had a few conversations, and some great text conversations too.
Mary Margaret:Yeah. I just um yeah, so circling kind of back around to why we started this podcast and kind of what we're hoping to achieve through it. Um, truly our goal is to magnify Jesus Christ and encourage women to love and worship Jesus more. So, whatever we talk about, that's gonna be our end goal. Um, because truly everything comes back to that. And I really don't say that lightly at all. Um, I don't think many people understand how like absolutely gorgeous and deeply satisfying the glory of Christ is. Um and what's kind of cool about the glory of God is that it's kind of this, it can seem like this big theological concept, like we're made to glorify the Lord. But I think it's actually super practical in our lives as well.
Hannah:I think that's one of the ways too that learning to apply the scriptures practically to our lives is something that I think um people can be particularly weak in. And and you know, and I'm excited about this podcast because uh for myself, and even if nobody else, you know, is like but it's gonna be really good for me in kind of retraining me because I I did mention this or I did not mention this earlier, but my background in training is actually in biblical counseling, which counseling is all about, you know, biblical counseling is all about applying the word of God to your life and the lives of your counselees who come to the room. And so while I've done it sporadically over the years and and have had uh counselees throughout my married life, it's not something that, you know, when I do my podcasts and I did the radio, I kind of have got had gotten into the political world and the cultural world, and there was less of that, uh, just it by nature of I'm talking about more of the constitution versus the scripture. Um although, you know, I do talk about the scripture obviously because scriptures can be applied to all of our lives. And it should especially be applied to politics and things like that. And so I but as far as a counseling and really diving into kind of more of a hermeneutic of the word, just not as much. And I'm really excited just for my own self to be brushing up on those skills and you know, doing that with you, coming alongside of you to do that together. I think it's really gonna be an iron sharpening iron kind of thing.
Mary Margaret:So yeah, and we're both learning and growing things different seasons and I think you challenge me in a lot of ways of things that I don't think about.
Hannah:Um and vice versa. You know, our first conversation we met to have lunch and talk about a little bit about the vision for this. And I almost was like, wait, I don't we're not really on the same page. Yeah. And so at first I thought, oh, that might be problematic. But then as I thought about it and prayed about it, I thought, you know what, that actually might be great because we're coming from two different seasons of life and approaching these things. And I think both are obviously they're valid seasons of life. With, you know, I'm I'm a married gal with five kids. I mean, I still feel like I'm 17 sometimes, but I'm not, you know, and I'm just a couple years out of college and single still.
Mary Margaret:So yeah.
Hannah:Right, you know, and so having kind of coming at things and all the different topics that I think are gonna crop up over the course of time is having the different seasons of life. It's not necessarily that one of us is wrong, right or wrong. It's just this is where I'm at in the season of life. And there's gonna be a lot of women uh who are out there who are coming from uh either one of those seasons of lives that might find it beneficial.
Mary Margaret:So yeah, super encouraging. Um yeah, so we just we we truly do want to honor um and glorify the Lord. So, you know, we might talk about certain specific topics, but ultimately, like it's all gonna come back to, you know, loving Jesus more and being in his word. So um, you know, you're a mom and you need more patience with your child, like the answer isn't to hyperfixate on patience, it's to remember the patience that the father has shown you as his child first and then reflect that image to your children. Or if you're single and you're struggling with purity, the answer is not to come up with 20 rules and boundaries so that you won't cross over and that you can stay pure, which that could be helpful, but like that's not the point. Like um the answer is uh is going back to the word of create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. It's um remembering Matthew 8 that says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And ultimately the answer uh like for any sin or many things we struggle with is going back to Psalm 16. Um, 162 says, Psalm 16.2, which says, I say to the Lord, You are my Lord, I have no good apart from you. Um Psalm 16, 11, you make known to me the path of life in your presence, there's fullness of joy at your right hand, our pleasures forevermore. And so kind of going back to that glory aspect of like it really kind of all goes back to that. Like if we're deeply and truly satisfied in the Lord Jesus Christ, then our taste for sin, our taste, uh, you know, our frustration with kids or frustration and singleness or whatever it is, like it's it's gonna be overpowered by our love and our delight in Christ.
Hannah:Yeah, I I say it all the time in counseling that you know we have to have and and you're you're starting to hit the nail on the head there is when our focus is off of ourself and off of our spouse or our child or whatever the problem, and I'm putting air quotes around that, whatever the problem in our life is, when we pivot from having our focus on that thing to having it on the Lord, um, that's when we're starting to get the right focus in life. And we stop reali, you know, we start making our child or our spouse or this person at church or whatever the enemy and we realize, you know what, my spouse, you know, we're on the same team. Uh they're not my enemy. It's, you know, it is Satan and it is sin that are my enemy and the enemy of my flesh. And when we pivot and we start making it about those things, about glorifying the Father, becoming more like his son Jesus Christ, and realizing that my enemy is not my spouse, or my enemy is not this child that frustrates me so badly, or a season of life that you're in. Or a season of life that you're in, or this, you know, coworker at at your work or or whatever it may be, that is not my enemy. My enemy is my flesh and you know, the principality of air, yeah, of the air. You know, it's it's those those things that are really and truly my enemy.
Mary Margaret:And the answer isn't in within yourself either. That's right.
Hannah:Like it's not and when you I mean just try harder. Right. And when you start understanding kind of that correct dichotomy, so to speak, you you begin to realize that I'm not gonna be able to just try harder, uh, etc. It really has to be my heart posture toward, and then we can start addressing the issue. Um, when it's you know, when I start when I take the boxing gloves off and realize like my spouse is not my enemy, this child's not my enemy, and start having a correct posture towards them, that's when things we start seeing things really happening in the being transformed by the renewing of our mind. And that's typically step one. So anyway, I don't know.
Mary Margaret:That's good. Really good. Yeah, and honestly, ultimately, like the purpose of of our life, of our parenting, of womanhood, of singleness, of marriage, of your job, like it's all it's all to the glory of God. And so if we keep um, if you catch that vision, it's pretty motivating on those days that that are hard that we find ourselves in. Um last night my my roommate's dog peed on the floor again, and I've cleaned that up like 30 million times, and I'm just like was gonna get angry, and it's like uh, but it's like remembering those fruits of the spirit, and obviously, you know, for mom, it might be the child spitting up on you again for the third time or having to wake up and not get any sleep, but like in every in every season of life, there's things that are just like uh but I think always bringing it back um to just why am I here and like being in his word. It just it helps us from not hyperfixating on issues and problems in our life that can, especially as women, like we can really hyper-fixate on and like yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Hannah:Women tend to be uh what is it? Um we get historical and hysterical and when we whenever we're whenever we really need to solve a problem, you know, somebody approaches us about something. So it's that can tend to be where we go and w what we do instead of actually moving forward and we drudge things back up again and again and and those kind of things.
Mary Margaret:But yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, and and the main place obviously that we see God's glory, speaking of that, is God's word um and and looking staring at Christ, who is the image of God, the perfect image of God. Um and so we really wanna make sure our everything that we say on this podcast is rooted in God's word. Um this isn't a podcast about feelings or you know, to make you feel better or I don't know, it might say. I mean, we're I we might go to the book. We'll talk about that, but it's like we're gonna always bring it back to we're gonna use the the word to uh to you know to to test our feelings, not the other way around.
Hannah:Yeah, the actually in the front of my Bible. Uh and uh my oldest daughter just got baptized this last Sunday, and I I wrote it in the front of her Bible because it's what my mom wrote in front of mine. But underneath where, you know, like the page of it says this holy Bible is presented to so-and-so on such and such a day. And mine, uh, underneath the Holy Bible, my mom had written the plumb line. And so underneath my daughter's, I wrote uh the pu the plumb line of what is good and true. And because, you know, when you think about a plumb line, which not everybody may know what that is, but it's a it's a weight that you put on the end of a string. And when a carpenter holds it up to see if a board is straight and true, they they use that. They have to hold that thing up and it hangs straight because of the weight at the bottom. And so it's a plumb line to tell them whether something is straight or whether something is crooked. And the scriptures are what we want to come to in life to see what you know, the choices that we're making, the behaviors that that we have, the feelings that we have, you know, the the choices that we have to make, all of those things are they straight or are they crooked? And the only way to know if something is straight or crooked, like literally this morning I had I had my dog gave gave birth to a couple of puppies, and she had eight puppies, and we could not tell at first if one the first one was black or brown, because it was super dark, you know, it's kind of covered, it's wet. And I was like, I think it's brown, but a dark brown, but it could be black. The next one was born, and I was like, We're gonna have to have another one born so we can kind of compare. Yeah. And the next one was born, and as soon as it came out, is black as sin. And I was like, first one's brown. You have to have something to compare it to. Yeah. And so that's my point is we want the scripture to be the plumb line of this show and the things that we talk about and the advice that we give. It's not just our opinions or feelings.
Mary Margaret:Yeah, absolutely. So anyway. That's good. That's good stuff. Um, yeah, honestly, that's I think we hit most of it. Um Of just wanting to honor and glorify the Lord. And honestly, like my heart of hearts is really I want, I want other women to just be passionate, like deeply passionate about God's glory, about God's word, um, to not put that off on other people. Like you don't need to be a seminary student or a pastor or a career person or like you don't need to be any of that to be passionate about the Lord and passionate about his word and to know that and to disciple others. Like I think we need more discipleship um happening. Oh man, we don't have enough time left in the show to like get on that topic. Yeah, so maybe next time. Yeah. So just yeah, that's just really loving the Lord um being in his word. So we will talk more. There's so much to dive into all this.
Hannah:But before we go, make sure there's uh what was the email for folks to email in if you have a topic that you're like, oh wow, there's two ladies that are now hosting the show, and I would love to hear their perspective on this. What's the email for them to email in?
Mary Margaret:So it's just thebaptistcourier@ gmail.com. Okay, easy enough, yeah. So thebaptistcourier@ gmail.com, you can put in the subject line Courier Conversations Women, and we will would honestly love to hear any any topics you want us to disagree with. Input, questions, yeah, whatever. Anything if you disagreed with something. Yeah, sure. Um anything you agree with. Give us an opportunity to argue. Yeah, we can that would be fun. Yeah, that would be great. Uh also feel free to we on our social media accounts, follow us on uh Instagram, like us on Facebook, on X. Just The Baptist Courier there, those places. Okay, great. Um, and BaptistCourier for for X, which I want to say Twitter, but X. Uh feel free to subscribe to this podcast. We're planning on doing this starting out at least uh I think we're doing the third week of every month. So stay tuned for that. And thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you soon.
