Episodes
Talking about walking away from toxic people can feel like a too-challenging (and maybe unbiblical?) conversation. But, shoot: Relationship expert and author, Gary Thomas, convinced us through his latest book and this interview that knowing when to walk away from toxic people is a critical practice for Christians.
Jesus walked away from toxic people (or let them walk away from Him), and we should to ... for the sake of the Kingdom.
Why? How?
We dive in with Gary, and explore toxic discipleship, marriages, friendships, and the most critical one for us: how we can stop being toxic to ourselve...
Guys? We got some big changes coming to Hole in My Heart Ministries, and we are excited to share them with you today.
In addition to the changes, we are exploring a couple of your questions with some answers:
Why does marriage have to be between one man and one woman? (We share our top three--well, four--favorite reasons.)
How do we walk with and speak truth to a believer who believes a same-sex, romantic relationship is right for them? (We offer some specific help.)
Let's dig in!
//: Highlights:
"You guys didn't assume the 'Why marriage?' question. That's what's been really unique about...
God puts a dream inside of all of us.
Wait. Does He?
How does that work? And how do you know if it is a selfish one or something that is literally from Him? And what about those of us who feel like expendable folks--with "worthless" or no dreams?
Lauren Chandler, wife to Matt Chandler (yes, that Matt Chandler), and mother of three, is a worship leader, author, and helper of us in this conversation about how can we balance our dreams with God's desires.
It's a poignant interview that includes God taking a starry-eyed Lauren through an addiction group (Celebrate Recovery) to help her see her...
Many people abuse hearing from God. But just because they misuse the process, does it mean we shouldn't engage?
Jim Samra, someone who literally wrote the book about it, helps us to think about how we can wisely approach listening to God. (And that book title is pretty funny: 'God Told Me: Who to Marry, Where to Work, Which Car to Buy ... And I'm Pretty Sure I'm Not Crazy.')
Jim also guides us through questions such as, "How mature do you have to be to hear from God?" "What if you are living in sin--does God still speak to you?" "How does the Bible interact with this process?" "Can and shou...
This is another episode where if we could pay you to listen to it, we would. We believe it is that important.
Heather was born female, but in her young twenties, fully socially transitioned to male. Now, she is again living as her born-female self, and is running toward Jesus.
How did this happen?
You know, for all the conversations we have about gender/sexuality/etc., it's funny that we keep waiting for the answer to, "How did this happen?" to be something other than the gospel. Something other than learning how to suffer well alongside each other. Something other than surrendering idols a...
This is another one of those episodes seeking to answer questions we receive often:
At what age do we start talking with our kids about sexuality?
How do we do it, exactly?
What about gender stuff?
How do we help alleviate some of the blurring of the lines that is going on with gender these days--without holding onto stereotypes?
Who better to help us out than author and teacher, Dannah Gresh? She has been in the ministry of educating young people regarding sexuality for many years. (And if you think she is speaking old-school purity movement stuff, think again. This woman is on fire, and ...
The purpose of this podcast is to "explore how the gospel is good news for everyone every day."
Most often, we talk about how the gospel relates to sexuality/gender (as those conversations have been neglected for too long in the Church), however part of the good news of the gospel is it eliminates walls and barriers between people—racial barriers included.
Our friend, Kinita Schripsema, helps us to launch into this conversation from a place we need to start: the heart.
Kinita was kind enough to let us ask many dumb questions (although she was gracious to not call them dumb!) in order to get...
We get a decent amount of questions about how to engage healthy friendship (and touch) as single people.
So, we asked one of our dear single friends, Meg Baatz, to help us navigate some more of this friendship quagmire. Some of the questions we explored include:
What is the difference between finding community as a single person or as a married person?
What is Meg's journey with finding community?
Why are people so awkward when it comes to being friends with people of the same sex (if those people experience attractions toward the same sex)?
How can we all be friends?
How can we engage heal...
This interview kicked our tails.
Do you know what to do when you encounter someone who is experiencing homelessness?
We thought we did ... sort of? Give them a few bucks? Offer a pack of things you have ready in your car? Pray with them?
Terence Lester, activist, speaker, and author of I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People, helps us practically navigate how we can better see people experiencing poverty and homelessness and thereby learn a lesson on how we can really see everyone.
//: Highlights:
"We are all poor in some way. When we understand that (when we understand wh...
Friends. We need them. They can also be a big challenge. It can be hard to put them in their proper, healthy place (neither diminishing them nor elevating them)—whether we are married or single.
Today, we primarily look at how to have healthy friendships through the married lens, but single people? We believe and hope and pray you will be blessed, too.
Kelly Needham, author of the new book Friendish, helps us explore questions such as, “Can we have covenant friendships outside of marriage?” “What are signs of when friendships are moving into an unhealthy direction?” “Are our spouses suppose...
When Brad Klaver was ten, he watched three men in his church get publicly excommunicated for either experiencing attractions toward the same gender or for being in same-sex relationships. He made a vow to himself, "I will never share this part of me."
Twenty-five years later, married to his wife and dad to four kids, God allowed this now-pastor to go through breakdown so he could experience breakthrough. Join us as we engage Brad's journey with his wife, friends, and church in this final story in our broken/beloved pastor series today.
[Also listen in as we get hammered by a rainstorm and g...
It's week two of our Broken/Beloved Pastor mini-series, where we try to break down stereotypes and halt the gossip train when it comes to pastors who leave their positions for various reasons.
Today, we dive into the painful and gorgeous story of Johnny and Amanda McKenna. The middle of their journey includes him almost killing himself to hide his double life of affairs, pornography addiction, and alcoholism--while serving as a pastor.
But there is a beginning and new ending to this story.
Come and hear pieces of the whole broken and beloved journey with us today.
//: Highlights:
"I const...
This episode surprisingly convicted us because, well, we don't think much about food.
But, good grief, what we miss out on when we see food as a way to shovel nutrients (or happiness) in as opposed to a way to know God more deeply.
Food Network star, Melissa d'Arabian, invites us to the table with our creative, creator-of-food God. Through her vulnerable story and experience in the food entertainment industry, Melissa teaches us how to know Him more through eating.
This is a sweet one.
//: Highlights:
"God could have created a nutrition-delivery system that was far less delicious and far mo...
The Church is precious. It's Christ's beloved and broken bride.
But sex and sexuality conversations have notoriously challenged us for the last ... thousands of years.
New York Times bestselling author, Mo Isom, helps guide us through some of these conversations we have forgotten, and does it with storytelling and great passion. (She takes us to church!)
Grab a pew, and join us.
//: Highlights:
"A lot of my issues grew out of the fact that my family thought the church was talking to me about the hard stuff, and the church thought my family was talking about the hard stuff. So really, no o...
Touch can be ... a touchy subject.
Some of us can overemphasize it and others can shun it. When Laurie recently said to Matt, "I wish I could live in a touch-free world," she realized just how touchy (and painful) non-sexual physical touch can be.
Instead of bury it, in classic Hole in My Heart Podcast fashion, we are bringing the conversation to the table. Matt, Laurie, Steve, and guest, Hayley Mullins, toss around questions ranging from what to do when we idolize touch, to how to carefully speak the "love language" of touch with those been affected by sexual assault.
This is another raw a...
How many of us have fought (and do fight) with heart-pumping, air-constricting anxiety?
How can we practically do battle with it? Bestselling author and popular speaker, Rebekah Lyons, helps us put on our boxing gloves to practically combat it.
//: Highlights:
"We don't know freedom until we know bondage. So let's acknowledge we are so hungry for God's rescue, and let's ask Him to do a mighty work." --Rebekah Lyons
"I questioned, 'Am I a fraud?' I thought there was a healing that happened, and I was loud about it. And yet I found myself in a place of frailty and desperation again." --Rebe...
There is intense pain in the world and in our hearts--based on national or personal tragedy.
We may be quick to jump to anger, to text someone, to Twitter, to do something. These actions may not be wrong, but they can be wrong-hearted if we skip an important step: going to the Father with lament that leads to forgiveness and eventual love for our enemies.
It feels impossible--really, truly loving our enemies--but as believers we are called to do the impossible with the One who empowers us.
But how in the world can we do this lament that leads to forgiveness that leads to genuine love for ou...
Therapist Matt leads us through a way we can pray that helps us envision the God who Sees Us and prepares us to lament.
When Laurie was a guest on Moody Radio, the station manager, Jack Haveman, was prompted to share this deeply personal and powerful story of God's breakthrough.
Friends? This podcast thing we do began as an act of obedience to God's prompting two years ago.
We. Had. No. Idea. How. Much. it would bless us and others. No clue.
Listening back to clips together got us feeling all the podcast feels again: Mostly, we felt the desire to fall on our faces and worship God who is knitting together this gorgeous thing called the Body of Christ.
God is on the move, dear siblings in Christ. God is moving in and through the Church, and He wants to move even more through those whose hearts are fully submitted to Him (2 Chronicles 16:9).
Tune in with us as we re...
A recent survey says that 90 percent of clergy believe it is their responsibility to speak on important social issues, but the top two issues they feel unequipped to speak on are LGBT+ and same-sex marriage.
We need help.
Thankfully, there are pastors like Bruce B. Miller who are willing to lead us as we lead others.
In addition to walking us through beginning steps we can take as a church to better engage conversations around sexuality and LGBT+, we explore questions such as:
What if the staff/elders/deacons aren't united? Can we be on different pages theologically?
Do we have to do a ser...
One in two women and one in four men have encountered sexual trauma. The enemy's attempts to shred humanity through sexuality is pervasive, but those of us who have encountered sexual assault are not hopeless.
Author and teacher, Dr. Dan Allender, guides us through this hope-filled terrain utilizing decades of experience and research in the field of sexual trauma. He unpacks answers to questions like:
Why is shame linked to sexuality, and why is contempt often linked to shame?
Why and how do repressed memories resurface?
How can we engage painful past memories without pushing "eject" on our...
Lament. We've talked about it. We love it. Let's dig deeper than we ever have into it on this episode.
If we don't lament, what kind of people will we be?
Is there a line of honesty with God we shouldn't cross?
How do we really do it?
Pastor and author, Mark Vroegop, guides us through these questions and more with wisdom that can only come from someone who has suffered much, and has found his way out of the darkness by singing the minor key tune of lament.
Hear his story and practical care for our souls during today's conversation.
//: Highlights:
"People who know how to lament are com...
She has a huge platform: Hundreds of thousands of followers, millions of books sold, and many Christians are at least familiar with the name "Ann Voskamp." And yet when Ann writes, speaks, and engages social media, she does not hide behind the numbers. She writes grittily, authentically, and with boldness.
How is this possible? How can someone with such a great impact on the world maintain such a humble, vulnerable, and others-focused life?
We explore these questions as we engage Ann on living an authentic life. We talk the cost, the gifts, and the practical how-tos. (And of course, because...
Matt and Laurie are doing an impossible thing (writing a book together?!) about their "impossible" marriage.
Hear a little bit more about the start of their adventure!
Everything we do—good, evil, neutral—speaks to our longing for heaven. World-renowned teacher of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and bestselling author, Christopher West, leans into this longing and unpacks it with outrageous wisdom and tenderness.
This is one we are all going to be going back and listening to several times. It is that rich.
(And don't worry: Those of you who want some of that goofball action, we make sure to talk about rats dying in Wendy's grease buckets. Yep.)
//: Highlights:
"Here’s the whole Bible in five words: ‘God wants to marry us.’” --Christopher West
...
This is the story of a man who experienced attractions toward other men from a young age, found football, found God, found the Air Force (and excelled), and as a ministry leader came to grips with his same-gender attractions--now as a married-to-a-woman man.
God helped this man, Mike Rosebush, remove shame about his attractions, but people and circumstances placed him in conversion therapy. A major part of conversion therapy is seeking to make people change from gay to straight. It did not work.
However, as a licensed psychologist, Mike found himself in a position of counseling others who h...
The crew is back together!
Laurie, Matt, and Producer Steve dive into their first-ever Q & D (Question & Discussion) podcast. Together, they explore areas they have wanted to dive into more deeply including:
More of Matt's story of when he felt so purposeless he decided to end his life in junior high (and then launched into a coping mechanism of pornography addiction)
Some of our angst about left/right polarity and clinging to our "rights" as Christians
How parents who are fighting with their LGBT+ kids can seek deep relationship with one another
How false forgiveness has been used to sile...
{Week 10 Core Need is the need for purpose: filled with a sense of profoundly mattering.}
Unless we are feeling severely depressed, every human intrinsically feels this need to matter, to have purpose, and to make a mark on the world. Sometimes, this purpose-need gets redirected from receiving our marching orders from Jesus to staring at marriage: It will complete me.
Let's bust that whole thing apart with "Breaking the Marriage Idol" author, Kutter Callaway. We also explore your responses to what you grew up with as a paradigm for marriage (was singleness an option?), dig into the need to...
{Week 9 Core Need is the need to be unique: delightfully special.}
We've explored the need to be included (belong), but how does that interplay with our good need to be unique?
We talk through this balance with foster and adoptive parents, Brett and Janelle Beimers. Their decision to adopt and foster models Christ's desire for radical inclusion (belonging), but they still need to cultivate each of their children's unique sense of self. How do they do that? What are the challenges to engaging both needs simultaneously--while also balancing the unique path of foster and adoptive life?
We expl...