Rooted in Christ You Cannot Fall

Courage is just the starting point. This week Cydni and Sher talk about what courage is actually building toward — a deep, rooted, unshakeable confidence in God that holds even when life shakes you to your core. Cydni shares something deeply personal about her own testimony, her healing journey, and how she learned to shrink her fears and grow her faith. Sher brings the history — William Tyndale, Elizabeth Elliot, and pioneer ancestors who gave everything for the gospel they believed in. And there is a beautiful look at the Hebrew meaning of the word faith that will completely change how you think about it. This week's episode is "Rooted in Christ — You Cannot Fall" and we are so glad you are here!

This Week's Challenge
Pray to God this week and ask Him to shrink your fears and your doubts and to grow your faith and your courage.

Sponsor:
Finley Law Firm -  Comprehensive Estate Planning
Be prepared for the expected and the unexpected.
Take the first step to peace of mind now.
Click here for a free consultation with Chris Finley.
Be sure to ask him how he behaved in Sher's 9th grade class!

Show Notes

Drip-Drip Drop, Words and  Music by  Matt Hoiland
Click here

Follow and connect with us:

instagram.com/cydniandsherpodcast

https://www.youtube.com/@CydniandSher

Transcript

Episode 162 - Rooted in Christ You Cannot Fall 

Cydni: [00:00:00] I've been using the F word a lot lately. 

Sher: Cydni. This is a family show. We don't talk like that. 

Cydni: No, I'm not talking about that F word.

I'm talking about focus. I've been focusing. 

Sher: I don't believe you. 

Cydni: I have. It's been fogging. Terrible.

 Is 

Sher: I don't even know how to recover after that. Cydni 

Cydni: I'm not even joking. I have been focusing whatever is before me, I'm focusing on doing and giving my heart to, if I'm in yoga, I am yoga ing.

And if I am in carpool, that's what I'm doing. And it's really changing my life to really focus on the moment to be present. However, I forget about upcoming appointments 'cause I haven't thought about the future. But that aside. It's going well 

Welcome to the Cydni and Sher podcast. Where we focus. 

Sher: Cydni. A couple of weeks ago we were focusing on being courageous and just trying our best to be brave. 

Cydni: Well, we are telling [00:01:00] other people to focus and be courageous. Have our own way of doing things. Mm-hmm. But you Should be more courageous out there.

Sher: Yeah. That episode really was just for the two of us, because we are chickens. 

Cydni: Right? 'cause you're like, I wanna hide in my bed and do nothing and accomplish nothing and order DoorDash. And I was like, honestly, that inspired me. I'm gonna do the same thing. So I've been door dashing a lot. 

Sher: oh good. but this is the tough part of our courageous episode is that's only the starting point. So today we wanna talk about where courage is actually leading us. And it's to the point of not being moved or being unshakeable. this means that we have a deep, rooted unshakeable confidence in God that goes beyond just being brave in the moment.

Cydni: But could I tell you that I read over your notes, and I know we discussed kind of like this idea and vision and intention for this episode, but never did we say the word confidence when we discussed it. And when I read over your outline, I felt. inspired. Sher. [00:02:00] I was like, confidence is the right word to have courage. So I really appreciated you writing that in there. Unless you used ai, which is not which is courageous. Actually. It's courageous to use AI 'cause it could overtake us all. So way to go true way to feed that machine. True, 

Sher: true. I don't remember what I did.

Cydni: Just take credit. AI is listening. 

Sher: Always listening. But this comes from Psalm chapter 16, verse eight. Where it says, I have set the Lord always before me because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. So this tells us how we get to be unshakeable we set the Lord before us always. And we've talked about in the past that if we're looking for a reason to move away from God. We're gonna find it, but if we're looking for a reason to move towards God, we're gonna find that too. So the bottom line is God's not gonna force us to be on his side, unless we want him there, he'll always be there and he's not gonna move, and that should give us the confidence to be unshakeable and [00:03:00] unmoved. In Helaman chapter five, verse 12, it says, and now my sons remember. Remember that it is upon the rock of our redeemer, who is Christ the son of God, that you must build your foundation, that when the devil shall send forth his mighty wind. Yay. His shafts in the whirlwind. Yay. When all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you. It shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless woe because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation. A foundation on if men build, they cannot fall.

Cydni, this is how we become unshakeable. We build our foundation on Christ, and then he will be on our right hand. that doesn't mean that everything's gonna be perfect like that scripture said. But it does mean that he will take the slings and the arrows of life with us, and then he'll make up the gap by dragging us both across the finish line.

Cydni: I really like the image of being dragged across the [00:04:00] image line. 

Sher: Well, that's the only way I see it. I know they talk about making up the gap and I'm grateful for that imagery, but for me, I just see it more like a drag. He's dragging me. 

Cydni: That resonates with me. I actually can envision the Savior with the image of being dragged, I'm not giving up on you.

Sher: Probably by our hair.

Cydni: That's how I saw it. That's why I've been growing my hair out to make it easier on our Savior. 

Sher: We're so thoughtful. 

Cydni: I know. 

Sher: But as Cydni and I were talking about building a foundation and not being moved and being unshakeable, we thought, how does someone like. The two of us get there and one of the ways we thought of was by building and gaining our own testimonies. President Oak said a testimony of the gospel is a personal witness born to our souls by the Holy Ghost, that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true.

What I learned from this is as we gain this personal witness line upon line, this is how we become unshakeable and [00:05:00] unmovable. But also notice in that definition, he didn't say that we necessarily needed to understand everything he just said that we would just know that there are certain facts of eternal significance that are true. That's what was promised to us. So sometimes I get caught up with the, I don't understand why did this happen? This doesn't make sense to me. But eventually maybe I'll understand it. But for right now, I can still know in my heart that things are true.

Cydni: Before we move on to what I would like to say about that, I would like to share from Sher's notes that in her outline it just says, Cydni, blah, blah, blah.

I don't even know what that means. It's actually thrown me off. I was like, what is the, blah? I don't understand. I don't even know what my blah is supposed to be. I just feel like you're maybe not being nice. 

Sher: I was just saving you a spot to put your notes, which you didn't. 

Cydni: Oh, that was for me to write in. I was just like so caught up [00:06:00] in being offended. I didn't consider that. It was just my space. I just thought you were attacking me. 

Sher: That's your space. 

Cydni: And I'm like, how am I supposed to have the Spirit with me when I'm like, why are you taking me back to middle school emotionally? . Like, oh, Cydni is gonna raise her hand and say an answer, and it's gonna be wrong. So I guess I'll just share from my heart. 

Sher: that's what it means. 

Cydni: I'll share the blah, blah, blah from my heart. 

Sher: That's right. 

Cydni: Well, I actually have been pondering on this subject for a little while here, and one of my blah blah blahs was considering my own foundation for my own testimony. for me it was when I was a child, and I do believe this is something worth pondering on individually. Where did your testimony start ponder on it? For me, I've shared this before, but there was a time I vividly remember, which is rare for me to remember anything, let alone vividly.

I remember getting ready for church and then my mother announcing, we actually are not going today. And when my mom announced it and [00:07:00] I didn't want to go, so I was cool with it. I do have a very distinct memory of hearing that is not an option for you in the life that you want, and it was so. Jarring. That I'd never questioned it. I continued to get ready for church and I went and I never didn't go. I went with my grandfather and that was the beginning of my testimony.

It was a seed that was planted now in my home. I was going through different kinds of abuse at the time, and so part of me, this piece of Cydni at that young age. It's really easy to wonder if God's real and He loves me. Why would He not remove me from my situation? I was a helpless child. It was an unfortunate situation.

Why didn't he remove me? As I have pondered on this question with a very open heart and an open mind to hear the real answer, because what if the answer is there is no God and bad things [00:08:00] happen to good people and to innocent people, and that's just the truth.

I kept my mind and my heart open to any answer. And what comes to me is this. Would a gardener remove a seed? Would a gardener, a true gardener, stop the process of blooming? Now, did God put me in that situation specifically and it was like going to be my life no matter what? Or did he allow other people to have agency?

Because that's important. And in the trial that I was in, even at a young age, did he work as a gardener to help me become who I want to be? I would say yes. My testimony of that is yes. My testimony is that God has been with me as a personal gardener who would never remove the seed because removing the seed takes away what the seed can become.

 And when you learn about soil, what is good soil made up of? It's made up of [00:09:00] compost and manure and leaf mold. That is crappy. That is not beautiful stuff. But the compost, which is gross, it provides the necessary nutrients. For the good stuff to happen and our trials and our obstacles and our heartbreaks and the terrible things that happen in the world, God can take that and he could provide our hearts what the vital things that it needs to become.

People of Christ. I also loved it when I was learning about soil that it said to make sure that you keep it covered. So again, you don't remove the seed, you don't remove anything that's going on and you don't till it, you avoid disrupting the soil. You cannot remove it unless you destroy the process.

Over the last few years as I've gone through the process of healing and becoming whole through the difficult things I faced as a child, I have learned that God was with me that entire time, he kept me where I needed to be, [00:10:00] but he never left me. He was the gardener for the difficulties that I faced, and I never wanna go through those things again.

But the lessons and the wisdom and the compassion and my testimony is worth everything I've ever been through. It's through that muddy experience that I have been able to grow into the woman and the wife and the mother and a friend that I would actually want to be.

And so in thinking about being unshaken, I thought there sure is a lot of shaking up in your life to become unshaken. It is. The process of becoming 

Sher: Cydni, I was thinking about what that means, Unfortunately, that's what's best for us. We are going to get shaken up a bit to get to the point where we become unshakeable. So I was just trying to think of people throughout history, and there's a lot of 'em that built their testimony line upon line. they started building in whatever riff raff they had to start building in, but then [00:11:00] they got to the point where they were unshakeable. And so I just wanted to talk about a few examples.

And again, there are so many that I didn't know where to start, but I just chose three. And the first one is William Tindell I talked about him before when we talked about the leaders of the Reformation and William Tindell was born in England sometime in the 1490s and died in 1536, and he translated the Bible from Hebrew. And Greek into English because he wanted the ordinary people to be able to read the Bible. It was purposely written. Not in English, so that commoners could not read it. And this is what William Tindell said. If God spare my life air many years, I will cause a boy that rth the plow to know more of the scriptures than now dust.

In other words, he's saying to the church leaders in the royal families at the time that he wanted. Bible to be accessible to ordinary folks like you and me so that we could [00:12:00] read what God was actually saying so that He could speak directly to us. And so what he did is he started translating it into English and he smuggled bibles into England and sacks of grain and in bails of cloth, even though the penalty for doing this was death. He did it anyway. Eventually he was betrayed by a friend. He was imprisoned and then he was strangled and burned at the stake in the year 1536 in Brussels. His final words were, Lord open the king of England's eyes. So his last words he was praying for the person who caused his death, I am nowhere near this unshakeable, but he was willing to die so the other people could have access to God's word.

Cydni: I think it's obvious where he was courageous in the fact that he could and would die for it. That's the obvious. But while you were speaking about him, I had the thought that the other place where it takes a lot of courage to do what he did is this is a man who loves God.

And he loves the Bible to have [00:13:00] courage, to use his talents and his gifts and his desires and his purpose and to act on it because can you imagine having the confidence needed to translate without wanting to mess up or to do it wrong? I feel like that had to take a lot of courage. 

Sher: Yeah, definitely. And that's the thing is all of us are here. On earth at this time for a specific reason. And God is calling us to all do different things. We all have a lane that God wants us to get in to help drive the gospel forward. The trick is figuring that out and then once you figure it out, to figure out what to do with it next because it is scary. And that's where building our testimonies on a sure foundation of Christ, that's where that is so needed. Because God is going to push us to do things where we don't feel brave or courageous and we're uncomfortable. He's gonna push us towards that. 

 The next person I wanna talk about is Elizabeth Elliot, and this happened in January of [00:14:00] 1956, so her husband, Jim Elliot, and four other young Christian missionaries made contact with a very remote tribe in Ecuador.

This tribe was known for being very violent, and they're very isolated in the jungle, the missionaries, they spent months dropping gifts from a small plane and slowly building trust with this tribe. And finally they landed near the tribe and walked into their village. Within days, all five of these men were speared to death. And Jim Elliot's wife, Elizabeth. Was left a widow at the age of 29 with a 10 month old daughter. But this is what Elizabeth did and this is where her testimony comes in.

She stayed in Ecuador and she learned the tribe's language. And then two years later, in 1958, Elizabeth took her three-year-old daughter, her name was Valerie, took her little hand. Cydni, she walked into the jungle to live [00:15:00] among this very tribe who had killed her husband and the other missionaries.

Are you kidding me? I would not do that. Cydni. I wouldn't go by myself. I wouldn't go with Rudy, the dog. I wouldn't go with you. 

Cydni: I need to know more about this. Why would she do that? 

Sher: This is why she lived with the tribe for two years. She ate their food. She learned their customs, their culture.

While they were teaching her, she taught them about Jesus and several of the men who murdered her husband and the other missionaries were baptized and became Christians. And one of them, even became an elder in the church, and two of the men officiated at the baptism of her daughter.

That is unbelievable talk about faith. She had to have been Called like God was telling her, you can do this. Go forward and do it. That takes so much faith and courage. 

Cydni: I know. I'm gonna have to sit on this one because there's a lot there. If you can consider 

Sher: her daughter, 

Cydni: the daughter And her, and also the humility it would take for the [00:16:00] men who murdered her husband to. Listen to her really to accept Christ and accept the change because I think sometimes when you do horrible things, you feel like it's just too far gone.

And so I feel like that's another example of courage is to humble yourself enough to accept and to understand the Atonement. I feel like that's what would have to happen for them, which from their perspective, I feel like it'd be easier to just assume you're too far gone, there's no changing. It's who you are and you accept the consequences and you're done. But to have the humility and the courage to accept and receive the Atonement takes courage. 

Sher: And we learn about this in the Book of Mormon when the sons of Mosiah went to the Lamanites to teach the gospel, it says that they were not sitting in so good of a place as well. And they had the humility to do the same thing. And this proves to us that none of us are too far gone. That if we want to change, Christ Atonement is big enough to [00:17:00] encompass all of us individually.

 And then just one more that I thought of. I thought of my own family history where I've learned about what my family did to get me here. They left their homes in Europe. They traveled across the oceans. They travel across the US in wagons and walking to live in the deserts of Utah. In Crappy log cabins and dirt homes. And this was done because they believed in the restored gospel of Christ and they wanted their children to have access to the gospel, so they were willing to do this for us.

Cydni: In all the stories you shared, I think what is important to remember is that there's steps provided to help us prepare to become capable of doing these things. You know, Elizabeth, that. Her testimony line upon line prepared her and prepared her heart to be able to turn around and take her young child into the same group of people and preach. It's a process. It's honestly, you know what it's like? it's like the karate kid, he didn't wanna do All the wax [00:18:00] on wax offs, he didn't want to, but when it was time to battle to the death, he was ready because of those waxes. It's like that. 

Sher: It's a good example. I like that. Thank you. But they did have to put in the work William Tindell, he had to learn Hebrew and he had to learn Greek and he had to learn Latin, and he had to get the skills ready so that he could get to the point where he could even translate the Bible in the first place.

All along the way, building his testimony. And the same with Elizabeth Elliot. She didn't just run into the jungle as soon as her husband was killed. She took two years to prepare herself,, and I forgot to mention this part, she found someone, a tribal member that had left the tribe and worked with this woman for two years to help her prepare while studying the gospel as well.

So there was a period of. Preparation and of getting ready. And same with my family. My family didn't just jump on the boats and run over here. They had to prepare for that to happen and prepare to get ready to make that move [00:19:00] and to learn more about the gospel so they had the faith to do it. 

Cydni: Exactly. That is exactly my thoughts with this. And I think we are in a position to consider for a moment the decision that's before us, that we can easily look at every difficulty and every trial that we have in our life that doesn't seem fair, and we can become bitter, that we could doubt God, we could doubt his love for us, or we can consider it that maybe the things that we are going through. Is God loving us and helping us become who we deep down actually want to be. I think it's just a decision that we make. I've been through hard things, so therefore God doesn't love me, or I have been through these difficult things and I've gotten through them because Christ walks with me and because I choose to walk with him, I am becoming who I want to be.

It's a decision that we get to make and you can make it now. I think a good example of that [00:20:00] is Moses actually, you know what, I'm gonna turn to Jeffrey R. Holland for this. He talks about Moses and the children of Israel. He says that they say basically, let's go back. This isn't worth it. We must have been wrong. That probably wasn't the right spirit telling us to leave Egypt.

What they actually said to Moses was, wherefore has thou dealt thus with us to carry us forth out of Egypt. It had been better for us to serve the Egyptians then that we should die in the wilderness. And Elder Holland says to that. What about that, which has already happened. What about the miracles that got you here? What about the frogs and the lice? What about the rod and the serpent? The river and the blood. What about the hill? The locust, the fire, the first born son and Moses said unto the people, Feary not stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord shall fight for you. [00:21:00] And this is the decision we get to make. We get to decide. Do we look at this and say, everything's wrong. I must have not listened. I'm going to live in doubt. Or do we say to ourselves, I don't understand everything, but I'm going to stand still and I'm going to choose to see the salvation of the Lord.

I'm going to choose to see that the Lord will fight with me. So we do get to choose to look back on the miracles that have brought us to where we are and see them as miracles or we can just become bitter. And in my own life, I could choose to see the abuse that has taken place when I was so young. Or I could choose to remember the spiritual moments. That live with me forever, where I knew even though I couldn't see anybody, that I was not alone. I get to pick my perspective of my circumstance. Am I going to choose to think how unfair that was? Or am I gonna choose to say thank [00:22:00] you, God, for building that foundation for me? And Sher. That's what I chose to do. I chose to say thank you.

Thank you for that foundation for planting me so deep in that crap to help me not be a fragile little flower, but maybe I could become a bit of a oak tree and maybe even though I faced a lot of doubt and fear in my life. Maybe I can choose to look back and remind myself that yes, there was fear and there was doubt, but look at the things because of my Savior, I've been able to get through and again, that's what I'm going to choose to do and that is how I choose to live. And just one more thing I wanted to share in my blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, is that when I had started therapy, I did EMDR therapy, which. My mind creates images and I see things not flashbacks necessarily, but my brain creates images to help me cope with different [00:23:00] feelings or situations, and then it helps me to cope with them.

One of the first times I saw an image in my therapy, it was fear. I saw an image of fear and doubt, and it was massive. When I saw in my mind with my eyes shut, there was a shadow that overpowered me and it was so big.

And with the help of my therapist, we talked about how to change what I was seeing and I tried so many different techniques and imagery work to try to change the shadow that overpowered me with doubt and fear and confusion. And nothing worked until I prayed. I prayed for help with my situation and it came to me that the shadow's probably never gonna go away, but I can shrink it. And I started to pray that the fears and the doubts that I deal with, that I could shrink them. That I could shrink my doubt, I could shrink my fear, and I can grow my faith.

I have been doing this now for about six years and [00:24:00] it has changed my life. It's changed how I see myself. It's changed how I move forward. Not enough to like honestly do Instagram all the time, but I'm working on it. But I have learned this. We're always gonna have fear. We're always going to have doubt it's going to be there.

It's part of our life, but what I have learned is that with the aid of God, that our doubts and our fears can shrink to not control us anymore, and our faith in Christ can move us forward and through those things.

Sher: That word faith, I got stuck on it. And I wanted to know a little bit more what that meant and I looked up the Hebrew meaning of it, which is emunha, and I don't know if I said it right, but hopefully I got it. Kind of close, but emunah doesn't just mean faith, as in I believe in God. It means firm, steady, reliable, established, and it's the same root word as amen and amen means so be it or it is true. So let me put this [00:25:00] together for us.

That means it is true that God is steady, so I am too. It is true that God is reliable and established. So I am too. And I love that because it shows that we can lean and rely on God, but it's also showing an action word that we can have that faith and . We can rely that God is steady, reliable, and established because he is unmovable and unshakeable.

He's not going anywhere. And an example that I thought of is like your oak tree Cydni, the root of the trees are. Dug deep down in and they're established and the storms are still going to come, and they're gonna beat the living crap outta that tree. And the tree's gonna bend and the leaves are gonna scatter and a branch might break off. It might get split in half, but those roots are not moving. And the word emunah, those are the roots. It's not the absence of a storm. It's what keeps us standing through it. So the word faith, with [00:26:00] that definition, that does mean that we are unshakeable. because Our relationship with God is constantly steady, reliable, and established 

Cydni: as we move into our challenge, I first will read the testimony of Jeffrey R. Holland At the end of the talk, he says, I acknowledge the reality of opposition and adversity. But I bear witness of the God of glory, of the redeeming son of God, of light and hope, and a bright future.

I promise you that God lives and loves you, each one of you, and that he has set bounds and limits to the opposing power of the darkness. That's Our challenge this week is to pray to God and ask him to shrink your fears and your doubts and to grow your faith and your courage.

Sher: This brings us to our final thoughts. Being unmovable is not about being perfect or having everything figured out. Sometimes the [00:27:00] foundation we are building starts in manure. But Cydni, and I want you to know we are on this journey with you. We have not arrived at our destination. None of us have, but we believe with everything we have that this is worth building. Your testimony is worth building and fighting for your foundation is worth protecting. If you are building on Christ, when the storms come, you will not fall.

That is the promise. It's not that life gets easier, but that when our foundation is built upon the rock of our Redeemer, it becomes unshakeable because our Savior is not going anywhere. This is our prayer 

Cydni: from Cydni and Sher 

 [00:28:00] I agree to you changing everything again.

Sher: I guess I should listen to you. 

Cydni: The laugh made that feel insincere. Freaking, gosh, dang it. 

Sher: I don't wanna say, 

Cydni: wow.

Good start. You're welcome. You're really focusing. 

Sher: It's 'cause I wanna start a different way, 

Cydni: You pathetic swine. 

Sher: Now it's your turn, Cydni, blah, blah, blah. 

Cydni: Pause, blah, blah. Uh, you should keep that okay in there for something. Okay. 

Sher: Okay. Do whatever you want. 

Cydni: Way to accept.

It's just like halfway in my head and halfway out. Shoot. hold on. I felt emotion and try not to do that. 

Sher: Cydni, did you know that 10% of our listeners are coming from Asia now? 

Cydni: I had no idea.

Sher: So I want you to know the roots and foundations of having brothers and sisters that believe in Christ all around the world, it's growing and we can help each other as we're going through this journey here on earth. Thanks for joining us. 

Cydni: We're so glad you're here.