This is the first in my summer series where I’m rebroadcasting old podcasts that I think bear repeating. This week: Permission to say No.
Join my newsletter list at ruthamos.com.au (or not, as you choose, but there are benefits!)
Living a quiet life
This is the first in my summer series where I’m rebroadcasting old podcasts that I think bear repeating. This week: Permission to say No.
Join my newsletter list at ruthamos.com.au (or not, as you choose, but there are benefits!)
Today’s talk with Steve comes with a trigger warning. Steve talks about the occult (not in any detail at all) and about OCD. He also shares with us his journey of letting go of false treasures and idols in his life and how he has learned to put God first.
Beth’s interview (Steve’s wife) is episode 61.
WYSOCS is the West Yorkshire School of Christian Studies, now thinkfaith.net
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVfwlh9XpX2Y_tQfjeln9QA
Today’s interview with Alison was recorded in the summer, you’ll hear us reference the bushfires like we thought that would be the biggest thing happening this year! Alison talks about what church means to her, and I think that her definition of church is still useful, even in these strange times when we’re all meeting online.
Oh the Deep Deep Love of Jesus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLTu1xv2-Us (I couldn’t go past the epic version).
Today’s guest is Alison and she’s a family friend of mine. And actually I was thinking I cannot remember a time when you weren’t around.
Alison also was very helpful to me when I was working at the uni and you were working at the uni. And we could just have a conversation in the same sort of arena that helped me to figure out how to be a Christian in that space. So just yeah, I’m excited to have a chat to you today. And hear more of your story and because, you know, how it is with old family friends like you never actually find out detail. So today’s detail. So how did you become a Christian?
Well, it’s quite a long story, but I’ve always had, ever since I was a little girl, I remember having a hunger for something more. I didn’t know where to look cause I was never brought up in a Christian environment. But when I came to uni, I connected with EU and I met a few people. But I still didn’t kind of like feel that … well giving your life to the Lord at that point seemed a little bit radical. And I was very intellectual because I was studying science. And you know what science is like. You’re looking at what you can see, what you can feel, that’s what science is all about. So I was approaching life from a very intellectual perspective and anything of the miraculous like the virgin birth, I couldn’t really get my head around it. But at the same time, life was a bit tough and I was away from home and struggling and one thing and another. So I got in contact through some of the EU friends with a Baptist pastor.
EU is?
EU is the evangelical union.
Yeah. I thought I’d clear that up. So, you got in touch with the Baptist pastor …
And got to know him and his wife. And I was a bit like, you know, pretty much not very good place, which I won’t go into. And, you know, in the end, I used to go visit Doug and Grace a fair bit. And Grace at one stage said, you know, I’d had a little bit of experience with reading a little bit about the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And she said, well, would you like me to pray for the baptism in the Holy Spirit for you. So I said, yes, please. And she prayed and absolutely nothing happened. I went home feeling a bit well … a bit disappointed, I suppose. But she gave me a book to read, and I can’t remember the author, but it was called As At The Beginning, and it talked about how people just seeking the Lord in their own homes. There was a section on in their own homes they just prayed. And I put the book down at that point in time, and I just prayed and I asked the Lord to touch me. And he did. It’s like I received the gift of tongues. And I just knew that he did something deep in my life, hard to put a finger on exactly what was happening. And even back 50 years ago, it’s you know. But I do know that that was a turning point in my life.
Yeah, absolutely. And did you end up like going to church with that church and being part of that group then?
No. [laughs]
Life took a different course. I’d already applied to go to ANU and do a PhD in genetics. So that was very soon after I went off to Canberra. And to be perfectly honest, life fell apart. In ANU. And it’s like everything got derailed. Academically, emotionally, spiritually, everything got derailed. So that after a couple of years of that, I got you know, I used to visit Doug and Grace back home. And they’d set up a place at Sorell called Beth Shalom. So I came and joined them for a couple of weeks or so, I thought, and ended up staying two and a half years and became a member of their community, which was a community at that point, and you’ll remember that maybe, which was really deeply involved in ministering to deeply disturbed people. So, you know, I was part of that for a couple of years.
Yeah. Wow. So did you complete your PhD at that time?
Not at that time. I threw everything in at ANU. It was like it was totally finished. So I went back to uni and started doing psychology. And I also through Doug, had got a position. He was involved with Mental Health Services and he knew, he had connections with people there and through that I applied for a course in welfare officer. So I did a welfare officer course, for a year. So that was the idea was that I was going to be the community’s welfare officer. I got involved. So I turned learned a lot about mental health and drugs and alcohol and stuff. And we had a few alcoholic people come through Beth Shalom at the time. So I had personal experience as well as, you know, the training of being involved with people like that. And so, yeah, I sort of changed from being interested in science and genetics to being interested in how do you help people. So that’s why I went and did psychology for well I did part time. When I left Beth Shalom I got a job with Mental Health. Working with the alcohol and drug dependency unit and doing psych part time right through to honours. And then after that, I finished up with the alcohol and drug dependency and did a PhD in psychology.
And then started working at the uni from that point?
Yeah. Yeah. Sort of off and on. As you know, it’s hard to get work at a uni. I worked as an RA for my supervisor for a year. Sorry, that’s a research assistant. And then I got a job at Monash for three years. Worked at Monash for three years as a ‘junior academic’. I suppose I’ll call it. Yeah. And that was a bit tough.
Yeah, I guess it is. I guess psychology has got to be one of the hardest arenas to be Christian in at the uni.
I find it was and it still is, you know, still involved in the psychology department at Southern Cross where I now work. Very, very antagonistic to anything that’s not … Like any science. I suppose, anything that you can’t see, feel, touch, you know, it’s it’s like the sort of debates about is there free will or not? And yeah people say there’s no free will. We’re all just machines, that kind of attitude that people have.
So how do you how do you bring your faith into a situation?
With difficulty. [laughs]
I mainly pray for people, I suppose, people that I get close to. It’s, you know, I’m still learning in that regard to bring my faith into a situation where it’s just, you know, it’s just not highly regarded, you know, just having coffee conversations and people saying all sorts of negative things. So it’s a bit tricky, I must admit.
And you worked at the radio station here as well for a while.
That’s true. My friends, who I had been very closely involved with, Neville and Joan, who were well known in Hobart for many years I’d been involved with them before. While I was doing my PhD, I used to spend Sundays with them. And after my three years at Monash, I got a letter from Joan saying what I liked to come back? Maybe more specific than that to come back and join them at Hope Foundation, which was more this, not so much the radio side, but more the spiritual counselling side of the ministry. So I joined Hope Foundation and I worked for them and the radio for seven years. All by faith. No income. Full time.
I suppose it’s awesome to have had that living by faith situation when you’re working in such a antagonistic place that you’ve had seven years where if God didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have been able to get through.
Yeah, exactly.
And you know, when I left Monash it was a you know, I knew then that I was, you know, I was giving up my career. And although I hadn’t been awfully happy at Monash, it was still like a real loss, I suppose. And I knew that I was putting myself in a situation where my old age might not be provided for. I wasn’t gonna get any income, you know, where was I gonna go?
And yeah. So for seven years, we virtually basically lived on the smell of an oily rag and yeah, it was it was good times. We had good times, good relationships. I know your folks were involved as well. You know, towards the end of those seven years, so. Yeah, but eventually I felt it was time to move on from there. And so this is one of the amazing things that happened. I decided I’d go and look for the uni so I came down to Sandy Bay and went to the psychology department and wandered around the staff. And I said, does anyone have any any jobs for me? And … no, no, no. The next day one of the staff members rang me up and he said. My RA’s just resigned. Would you like to come and work for me as a research assistant? I said, yes, please. So that gradually from there, I kind of had my little toe in and gradually there things built up a little bit. I got some teaching. I got some tutoring. I worked in various places, not just in the psychology department, work in psychiatry as a research assistant down here at the hospital. So I was doing that for quite a few years. And every now and then I’d get a six month, 0.6 of a contract or something and did a bit of teaching stats – statistics to students and things.
This is not abnormal. This is really. Yeah.
You’ve been through all of that.
You know, to our audience, it may sound weird, but that’s the way the uni runs really, isn’t it?
And there wasn’t … There was … I suppose if I had stuck it out long enough, there would have been a future there. And in fact, I did apply for a job in Launceston at one stage, a full time permanent position. And I got to the interview stage, but I pulled the plug on that because I just bought a house down at Huonville and I didn’t want to up stakes and leave. And yeah, I decided that that didn’t you know, that wasn’t for me at that time. But things didn’t … workwise I wasn’t getting very far. And then I’d also during these years developed a connection with a friend through the Internet, as you do. And she was running a house church and a ministry called Great South Land Ministries up in Coffs Harbour. So they come down a couple of times. They actually ran intercession seminars here in Hobart. In various churches around the place. And eventually I I felt led to go up and join their house church. So that’s what took me up to Coffs Harbour where I’ve now been for 14 years. So, yeah. So that was a bit of that was probably amongst other times, but that was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done because I didn’t want to leave Tassie. Nothing in me wanted to leave Tassie. And whatever work I had here, you know, I didn’t have anything to go to employment wise. It was like, what do I do? I applied for a couple of jobs in Coffs and got knocked back both times. So it’s like I just really had to just get out of the boat again into the water and head off to Coffs Harbour thinking, you know, if nothing works out, I’ll come back in six months. But, you know, that first year was pretty hard because there literally wasn’t any work. I did census collecting for a while. Well, that was hard work physically just walking up and down streets with census forms. And eventually after about a year, I got some casual work in the psychology department at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour. And I think that was about two years subsequent to that, they advertized the one year teaching position temporary. So I applied for that and I got that. And then because it had been advertised externally, I was eligible to make that permanent after two years. So, you know, that’s one of the things that I’ve always been amazed by, just giving up a career way back and going to work for a Christian organisation. I never expected to get that career back. And so just to be it just to be able to just to have that full time academic position as a lecturer in psychology was a real blessing and a real move of God because they’re not easy to get those jobs.
So so, yeah, I was there now. I worked there for several years and gradually cut back my hours because I was getting older and I’ve kind of almost retired, but not quite at this point in time.
So there’s been like some really big times in your life where you as you say, you’ve got out of the boat, you’ve just walked in obedience. I’m just thinking for people listening, they’re probably going, well, how did she know that was what God wanted her to do?
Well, I knew I knew that. I knew that I knew that I was meant to because I think growing up in Tassie. Tassie was very precious to me. And sometimes God says to you the things that are the most precious to let go of. And I’d already in one stage prayed and said Lord I let go of my love for Tassie, so I’d done that. Subsequent to that, I kind of knew in my heart even I didn’t want to know in my head that this was not not just a spiritual letting go, but it meant something more than that, physically, practically. So when my friends in Coffs said, I think it’s time for you to move, I thought, yeah I knew that it was right. You know, it wasn’t like somebody just said out of the blue, come to Coffs Harbour. It was something I’d been processing for a year or two. And yeah, it took me a year or two to actually do that step of moving. So that was because that was a it was a process.
And I think this time was going to the radio station joining Hope Foundation. Again, it was a process because I was very deeply connected with, you know, with that ministry from before even the radio was up off the ground. You know, though, I mean, I spent a lot of time with Neville and Joan with your relatives. The Jewitts and Reg and Ath Chopping, you know, those various people. So I’d kind of developed, you know, a deep kind of connection with the ministry. And so, again, Joan wrote and she said, how about coming and joining us? And again, it was.
It spoke to something that was already happening.
It spoke to something that was there. And so, again, it wasn’t easy. I remember giving my resignation, I wrote it and took it in to my professor and then put it on his table and took off. Because, again, you know, somebody to go into something religious out of an academic environment, you know, must have been pretty bizarre from their perspective. So, yeah, there were the two big, big changes. Yeah. So it was like it wasn’t a once off I mean, it was a process which took probably years in the making. And all through my life, even though it’s had its ups and downs and chops and changes, there’s been a desire to really follow the Lord and to really be not just somebody that goes to church, but to have the ability to contribute is the way I’d put it to be able to minister, to be able to serve in whatever gifts I’ve got. And, you know, at the uni and at Coffs I never had that attitude of wanting to be a professor or anything. I knew it was a gift of God to be there and to be serving. And I love working with honours students and I love the young people. And so that’s a real privilege.
So you talked about church like and I know from talking to you that you don’t want to be the kind of person that just turns up at a church service for an hour each week and then goes home. Can you give us some idea of what you think church should be like?
Yes, I’ve had various experiences of church, not just here and even, you know, overseas. It’s a church where everybody contributes. Everybody has a role where people are ministered to and cared for and where people are nurtured. And where people contribute their gifts. So, for example, I know I’ve got a teaching gift. When I was going to St Thomas’s Howrah, I was encouraged to preach so that, you know, given the opportunity to actually utilise whatever gifts you have and to be able to exercise them, I think is important.
And the other thing I think it is really important, which one of the things the main thing I learnt from being involved in the house church for several years was to be real, not to hide. So not to say you’re feeling fine if you’re not. Not to pretend, not to hide behind religion, but to be open and to be vulnerable. And I think it’s really important that church is a safe place for people. They can come with their warts and all, yet not feel that if they’re having a bad day they’ve got to come and be happy and cheerful and all good kind of thing. But to feel safe, to feel free, that they can be nurtured, particularly for young people or for people that are going through real, you know, major issues in their lives. But it’s you know, I think a family is a good word to describe it. Yeah. Where people feel safe and comfortable and are given the opportunity to grow and are challenged as well.
Provide opportunities for people to minister to you know, like I’m looking more now at getting out into the community more. Like talking to people at coffee shops and things. How do you connect with the world in general? Because the church isn’t just a lot of people within four walls, it’s got a mission. It’s got a mission to the world. Jesus says go out into all the world and preach the gospel to all of mankind. And if we just sit in a church, and sing hymns and go home again, what impact are we having on the world? So, yeah, I think a church is a dynamic organism. It’s the body of Christ. It’s being Jesus in the world and having the impact.
I’ve just been reading the Gospels recently and it talks of a massive crowd following Jesus, you know, massive. Like he fed 5000 people. And that was only the men I think. Women and kids were added on. And people were just all over Judea and Galilee were following him. And I think wouldn’t it be great if people were drawn to the church like that? And they were drawn. We have something to offer. We have you know, we have the Holy Spirit to offer to minister to people, to meet them where they’re really in pain, their basic physical and spiritual emotional needs. So that’s how I see the church is a dynamic expression of Jesus in the world today.
Yes, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. When do you feel close to God?
When do I feel close to God. I’m feeling closer to God now. Now, more than I have been in the past. I like sitting on my back verandah watching birds and talking to him there. I tend to mull over things which is kind of like a thinking and praying kind of activity.
I’ve been spending a lot more time in worship recently listening to worship music a lot more. One of the things I was doing in Sydney was walking the streets and kind of singing lowly because my voice is wonky, but singing the Hallelujah Chorus or something as I was walking along and that just gave me sort of made me just feel joy as I was walking around and feeling that out of that joy that I could greet the people that I was walking past and and feeling that the Lord was with me. I’m really one of the things I’m really seeking more is to know his presence, you know, in a deep way, to know the presence of his Spirit, to be able to be sensitive to his Spirit. You know, when you see somebody in the street to be able to be sensitive perhaps to His Spirit and say, look, that person needs someone to listen to or something.
So, yeah,it’s a big learning curve. Work in progress. But yeah, I do feel much closer to the Lord now. And I think one of the things I experienced not all that long ago was the depth of his love for me. And because I had been that, I did go through a pretty dry time because the house church kind of folded and then I was left, like, where do I go from here? I didn’t know where to go from here. But then the Lord touched me. I was feeling pretty, pretty in not a good place and but I was telling him that. But then out of the depths of my spirit, an old hymn came up. You probably know it. It was called Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus. Deep, unending, boundless free. It kind of just welled up inside me. It was like him saying, This is my love for you. Deep unending, boundless, free. And it just welled up. And then I dug it off YouTube, I think, and just listened to it over and over and over again.
And you know, it it was like a real revelation of even in my midst of where I was at, which was, as I said, not in a good place, you know. He knew and he loved me even when I wasn’t on top of things. And to me, that was such a change in perspective. And to know his love in a new way and to know that, you know, he cares for me, whatever. And I think out of that, because, you know him in such a depth of his love, that gives me a response of deeper love for him. So that gives me that desire. Well, look, there’s a world out there that’s broken. Something in me wants to go out and say, look, out there, you people out there in this broken world, God loves you. God is good.
And that’s the other thing I wanted to say was, you know, all through my life as I’ve been sharing, you know, God’s just given me the steps along the way. He’s provided for me, as I’ve said, the job, you know, a house. I’ve now got a house that’s fully paid off. You know, things that I when I left the radio station, I had nothing. Absolutely, you know, a little broken down, tatted up car was about all I owned. So God’s provided for me. He’s kept me safe. I’ve done a couple of trips overseas which were less than safe. So he’s kept me and he’s been good. And I think I know the goodness of God because I can look back over my 50 years and I’ve seen him keep me safe and provide for me.
And I think one of the things that I’m really feeling now is that there’s so much pain out there, so much lack of understanding of who God is, that you hear people saying that. Well, with the bushfires in particular. You hear people say this is a judgement of God. And I I can’t accept that my God is good. God doesn’t bring bushfires. He doesn’t destroy people’s livelihoods and their homes. And I think people just have this this feeling that if something goes wrong, it’s God that did it, and it’s not God. But to have that understanding, to be able to share that minute, that that knowledge somehow that because God’s been good to me and he’s no respecter of persons, he’ll be good to you. He’ll be good to the person I meet in the street. And somehow to be able to communicate that to the hungry people out there is really what’s on my heart.
So that’s the thing that you would like to tell everyone if you could.
That’s exactly it. If people would listen and that’s why I’m starting to do a bit of writing and things, is to try and say, well, this is my experience of God, oh, I now it’s different to everybody else’s, but I’ve experienced him. I’ve got something to say that, because I’ve experienced the goodness of God, you can, too. Is really what I’m trying to say.
It’s fantastic. Thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to share with us?
I think that’ll probably cover everything. Thank you Ruth.
Thank you very much.
Catherine is an actor. She lives in Kentucky and I recorded this interview with her over the internet. There were a few Skype issues in as we chatted which mean that there are some delays and jumpy bits occasionally. But I’ve cut out the worst of it. Catherine’s acting skills helped us out a fair bit as we repeated bits and pieces of the interview. Catherine talks in this interview about the acting life, the spiritual children that she has ‘adopted’ over the course of her life, and how she has chosen not to have biological children, among other things.
Asbury University https://www.asbury.edu/
Seattle Pacific University spu.edu
Deadly Misconduct https://rjamos.com/book/deadly-misconduct/
My Year of Saying No. https://ruthamos.com.au/book/my-year-of-saying-no/
Walking on Water Madeleine L’Engle. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/96880/walking-on-water-by-madeleine-lengle-preface-by-sara-zarr/
The Tale of Despereaux https://www.katedicamillo.com/books/tale.html
Matt 11:30 “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
“Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy fits the world’s greatest need.” Frederick Buechner.
1 Corinthians 10:31 ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.’
Matthew 5:13 ‘You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?’
All right, so I’m going to ask a question, it’s probably very rude, but, having seven daughters is not a very culturally acceptable it’s a countercultural space so can you talk about that?
Actually, it’s it’s funny. People are usually very, very polite to me, even people that probably think you should only have one or two children because they assume that we’re trying for a boy.
So it’s funny. You know, you see them, though. First of all, you see somebody do a double take because they say how many children we have. We’re out and about. And then you see them counting. You can see the little head knod. They’re kind of counting heads.
Your youngest is a baby.
Yeah. Oldest is almost 11.
Right.
And then they open their mouths and then they look again and they burst out laughing and they say they’re all girls.
So I like to think, you know, that that that’s actually you know, people are generally very positive because they just get taken by the fact that I’ve produced these seven daughters.
And they’re like, ‘Oh, my goodness.’.
I always wanted to have a big family. I’m actually an only child. My parents were told that they would never be able to conceive a child.
So you’re a miracle child.
Right. And even after I was conceived, my mom went to the doctor and said, I’m pregnant. And the doctor said, no, you’re not pregnant. You have cervical cancer. And I have to do a DNC immediately. Don’t go home.
And my mother went home.
So I grew up with parents who really enjoy children. And they were very pro-children and be very positive about big families. And my best friend growing up was the eldest of 10. And it looked to me from the outside like they were having an endless run of fun and games. I’m sure she would have had a different perspective ask you that question, but it looked like a lot of fun to me.
So I grew up really thinking, oh, children are a blessing from the Lord. That’s what I want. And at one point when I was, I think in my early 20s, I would deliberately wear this as a bit of a as a bit of a defiant badge. I would say to people, I’m going to get. I’m going to have 10 sons. Just to be very kind of countercultural.
But it was also a warning because I thought, well, I don’t want to have a relationship with somebody who doesn’t want kids. Absolutely. So I’ll just say this. And that will kind of weed out the men from the boys. So I was always told, ‘you’ve really got to stop saying that. No one’s gonna date you. No one’s going to want to have a relationship with you ever because of this thing.’
Because nobody else nobody else in the world wants a large family.
Well, apparently so.
So then I actually met my future husband and we were friends for about a year internationally. And then he came out to Tassie to do the overland track. It’s a long story. And I we were literally on the first day of the overland track went up to Marion’s look. It’s beautiful up there. And I think he turned to me at one point to say, how many children would you like to have? Oh, here we go. And I told him he started laughing and he said, well, I grew up telling everybody I wanted to have 12.
So that was a moment where we both kind of thought this is a friendship that has some possibilities.
You got through the first hoop.
So I’m very blessed.
Look, I have incredibly easy pregnancies. I don’t even get nauseous really. So I think that would have been way more difficult to have a large family if I’d been the kind of person that has to go to bed for nine months for sure. So we’ve been really we’ve been very, very blessed.
And would you say that you and your husband are both extroverts?
I have trouble with that. I don’t really understand that whole … My husband enjoys that kind of thing, personality tests and everything. I think he made me take a personality test once and it was the probably the worst evening of our marriage.
Every few minutes, I would say. ‘is it over yet? Do I have to do this?’
But anyway, my husband is a shy extrovert. So he’s a kind of person that gets lots of energy from people. You know, he loves it when we have a hostel full of people. You know, we’ve got seven little kids sleeping in the bedroom back here. We’ve got 12 people sleeping out there. And we’ve got people coming over the next day. He’s as happy as a pig in mud.
But he’s also a lot more quiet than I am and tends to be a better listener. So he’s very gifted with people who …
He’s the kind of person that, you know, he’ll go to a party or a cocktail party, you know, meet and great kind of party, and he’ll find the people that no one’s talking to.
And he’ll sit in the corner and have a big in-depth conversation.
Absolutely. Yes. Which has been a wonderful gift.
And so he and I are very complementary to each other. And we actually love. We love running the hospitality ministry together. When we first got married my husband was very intentional about sort of sitting down and saying, ‘Okay, these are your gifts. These are my gifts. How can we how how do you think God wants us to work together?’ I’m so grateful for that.
I think a lot of … I think sometimes in certain areas of the church, in a reaction to feminism, we’ve gone in another direction that’s also not Christian.
And we’ve kind of said, oh, you know, the man is the vision caster and the woman is one size fits all. And, you know, she comes in and she’s 100 percent on support.
And it’s really irrelevant what her what her strengths and weaknesses are because she’ll just slot in, you know, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a supporting role at all. And, you know, I’m not I’m not dissing that.
I mean, Jesus said that the least will be the greatest and the is a servant will be the greatest of all. But I do think that God created us all with specific strengths and weaknesses, specific vocations, specific passions. And so I’m really grateful that I married somebody who was really aware of that and really sat down, said, ‘oh, well, look, you’re good at this. I’m good at this. How does this fit together and what kind of picture does that make?’ And I think that’s really, that’s a really wonderful Genesis picture of how Adam and Eve were created.
That being a helper, it definitely means that there’s a supportive role as well. But it also means that you’re helping by bringing to the table things that weren’t already there. That God put in you. And so it’s a it’s a beautiful, beautiful picture of kind of gospel partnership. Yes. So I got into a tangent there.
Going back to the family just because I like to ask these things. Do you do you have family devotion time every day or how does your faith show itself in the family situation?
Yes. We’re really blessed because we both work from home, which isn’t always easy.
Sometimes it’s like, you know, it’s easy to step on each other’s toes. But it’s also. We wouldn’t have it any other way. We love it because we work from home and often we are working with travellers in the evening. So my husband actually takes some time off during the middle of the day. And so he has some time with the girls. We homeschool. So he actually helps with them. He does some of them schooling. I don’t think of it as a helping so much. It’s more like he has subjects he’s passionate about and he actually loves working with the girls on those we usually just read a bit of the Bible together at breakfast, basically. But as I said, we’re a very talkative family. And so the older girls sit up with us one night a week with the travellers and our 10 year old is a hilariously confident evangelist.
And I don’t know how she does it, but she asked people questions that you wouldn’t think you would get away with. I mean, I don’t know. And she comes back, you know. Well, it’s just funny. We’ll meet some friends at the park or something. And she goes and chats to some some of them will I’m chatting to someone else, and she comes back and she’s like, well, this is why they’re not going to church anymore. You know, this is what happened. And, you know, this is where they are with the Lord.
And, you know, it’s like, wow, okay.
Sure.
But yes, she was chatting with an atheist traveller who was about to leave the next day or something. He said something to her that she found preposterous. And she was polite about it. But she was like, you know, I wish you weren’t leaving tomorrow because we really need to talk about this.
That’s so great.
And we really do try to, one of our one of our biggest prayers constantly is for protection for the children. We’ve actually had quite a few conversations with people that have come out of live-in ministry as children, people who’ve grown up at L’abri fellowships around the world and say, look how do you do this without messing up our children. So we are actually quite intentional about what we involve them and don’t involve them in.
And but I think, on the whole, I think we’ve been through different periods in missionary history of of how you deal with children. And I certainly don’t want to, you know, condemn anyone for, you know, choices that they’ve made that are that are different, at least the Holy Spirit has to deal with each person as to how they’re going to balance family ministry and such. But.
We found it nothing but a blessing so far, and I you know, I love one of my favourite authors right now is Rosario Butterfield. She’s written a wonderful book called The Gospel Comes With a House Key.
Nice.
One of her other books, because she came out of the gay and lesbian community, in one of her other books she talks about the fact that she, as a Christian, has had really an open door to people from that community. And at the same time, she’s had adopted and foster children and people have said, you know, oh, my goodness, you know, how can you have people from that community in your home when you have children there? And one of the things she said was, ‘look, my children see me sitting down with transgender people, you know, people who are profoundly depressed. People from communities that perhaps other Christians will not be around. What they learn when they see me showing them unconditional love is that they are safe with me. My children are safe with me. Like if they have a temptation, if they have a struggle, if they have a mental issue or psychological sexual issue, they’re not going to afraid to tell me about it, because I know I’m safe.’ And I think that’s that’s something that’s really encouraged me. Just to remember, you know, our children have heard people ask us hard questions and they’ve heard us answer. And we don’t get stiffened up. You know, we don’t stiffen up about it. And I’m hoping that that that we have the same the same result.
Absolutely. Oh, that’s wonderful.
All right. So so last couple of questions that I always ask. When do you feel close to God?
So I actually feel really close to God.
This sounds really bad.
When I’m asking him for things and he provides.
He provides and that’s a way I don’t I know how, you know, some people love to use the five languages in their marriage. And I wouldn’t say that gifts was my love language necessarily, but I feel like the Lord has shown me so much mercy and kindness and grace and attention with giving me things. Sometimes really tiny things like recently I mean, it’s not tiny in one sense, but it isn’t. I’m not talking about Cadillacs. I’m not talking about a Lamborghini.
But recently I was really low. I was actually feeling quite terrible for months and I did actually have a pregnancy loss. And because of that, I was tested … my bloods were tested and they discovered I was very low on iron. And that helped to explain why I’d been feeling so low. It was not based on any difficulties I was having in life. It was actually just feeling really low. So I went and got an iron infusion. But anyway, in the meantime, I was like, oh, gosh, I really need some meat.
And we were a bit low on money that pay period. And I was like, I don’t have any more money to buy any meat or I you know, like it’s not in the budget for me to go out and buy a bunch of meat. And I was actually just praying. I was like, ‘Lord, I’m really low in iron. And I really need some meat. But it’s okay. You know, I’ll make do with what I have.’ You know, and I’m cheerily go about, you know, try to plan and everything for the rest of the week, thinking it’s going to be a lean week. So like literally the next day, I don’t know if it was the same day or the next day I get this text message from my neighbour that I haven’t seen in six months or something.
She lives down the road. I don’t think I even knew her surname, she sends me a message and she goes, ‘would you like some meat because … we actually ordered a quarter of a cow and we had no idea what that was.’ Because they’re like tree changers.
That’s a lot of meat.
And they moved down here to be have a better lifestyle for their kids. But they come from a city, you know. So they were just like flooded with meat. You know, I was just laughing. It was like, yep, I’d love to take the meat thank you.
But this is not somebody I’ve ever exchanged a cup of sugar or milk or anything with you know, it’s completely random.
And the number of times that things like that have happened to me immediately as a result of prayer. I mean, I should probably be writing them down, but it just it really happens all the time. And I think about the fact that, you know, in the Lord’s Prayer, you know, we ask the Lord for our daily needs.
And I know that sometimes people will say, oh, you know, don’t pray for selfish things, pray for, you know, unselfish things. And I and I do pray for other people as well. But I think, you know, there’s a passage that says what father among you, when his son asks for bread, is going to give him a stone. And there’s another passage, of course, where God says, you know, don’t worry about what you’re going to wear because God attires the lillies of the field even better than Solomon in all his glory. And, you know, if he if he does that for them what is he going to do for you? And I think just that constant reminder that the Lord is listening to my prayers because of because of Jesus, because I’m clothed in Jesus’ righteousness is wonderfully, wonderfully encouraging. And that makes his presence and the reality of the relationship so, so tangible. Yes. So asking God for stuff, I feel close to him.
I’m just reading reading John Piper’s Desiring God Christian Hedonism. He says that if we ask God, it gives him glory.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like if you were a paraplegic and there was somebody who was looking after you all the time when somebody came around to visit, you would give that person glory. By the way, that they served you and the other person, you know, it’s just we can’t do anything by ourselves. We need to ask him for everything.
And asking reminds you that you’re reliant on him. Yeah. So because the thing is I mean, I know if I forget to ask, I know the Lord was still provide for me. But I do find that it’s a different kind of provision because I think that he loves to show his faithfulness by little things like that, by the meat that comes a day after you pray for it. You know, things like that, it because it reminds us that we’re reliant on him. I mean, I’m relying on him minute by minute and I can’t take another breath without his provision. But it’s something I take for granted. But when you actually come to the Lord with even really small things that are troubling you it gives him an opportunity to show his faithfulness and your dependence in a really beautiful way.
Yeah, I totally agree. So what’s one thing about God or Christianity that you wish everyone knew?
I wish everyone knew …
There’s a few things. Probably one of them is … the fact that God created diversity. I think that diversity has become a dirty word among some Christians because it gets associated with with other concepts, but really, I mean, I can’t even remember my husband remembers the number of species of God created.
I mean, so that’s only that’s only the beginning. Is that I mean, not that the shear biodiversity. It’s just showing us in an amazingly visual way that God values diversity.
And there’s a wonderful passage in Revelation where it says, hey, you know, I think it’s in revelation. God desires that, you know, that there’s gonna be every tongue, every tribe, every nation is gonna be coming in. The kings of the earth will be presenting their gifts. The earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the ocean. People, when they come into heaven, they’re not going to all look the same.
You know, we’re not gonna be replaceable, disembodied spirits. You know, we’re as we come to the Lord, we bring our heritage, we bring our stories. We bring our culture, our languages.
And he’s made human beings to be incredibly diverse and irreplaceable and unique. And so when you when you come to Christ it’s not a flattening out. It’s not a it’s not a cutting off, but it’s actually being born into an amazing life. Where you’re more yourself. You reflect a facet of God’s nature.
Because we’ve been made in his image we’re his image bearers and that through sanctification, you become more and more the person that God designed you to be.
And even looking culturally, you know, the best kind of missionaries are the incarnational one’s right? In history, the ones that take Jesus, coming and divesting himself of his rights and coming into the world and being a human man in a certain culture at a certain time, speaking the language, wearing the clothes, eating the food, singing the songs, they take that as a model. And you see missionaries who from the 19th century England who go into China instead of dressing everyone in English clothes and teaching them English hymns. They come in and they say, How can I learn from your culture? You know, let me wear the clothes that you wear. Let me speak the language you speak. Let me eat the way that you eat. And through that, you know, there’s an amazing indigenous Christianity that’s born there that becomes a beautiful, vibrant piece of God story, not replicating Western Christianity everywhere, but actually, you know, discovering what does African Christianity look like?
What is Chinese Christianity look like? What is Uyghur Christianity? You know, you look like what does Aboriginal Christianity look like?
And you know, God God cares about that. God cares about diversity. And the only real diversity, the only true like absolutely soul, deep diversity you can have as when you’re reconciled to Jesus and transferred into his kingdom.
Yeah, sure. It’s not a sort of club where you have to join and fit in now. It’s a family where you you are free to be fully yourself.
That’s right. I’m excited. I have a very optimistic eschatology. So I’m very excited about the spread of Christianity in the global south. I think that Christians in the west can get very, very pessimistic because of the time we’re living in now. Yeah, we tend to see we also sometimes because there are are battles we do need to fight. We sometimes tend to see the dark things. And there are very dark things, abortion laws being passed that are barbaric. But there are also things happening in our culture even today that are stemming from Christianity. I mean, this is a tiny example, but recently one of my daughters went into she had a gift certificate to Fullers. She went into Fullers. She got a mermaid sticker book. And she brought it home with my husband. I was looking at it and I was like ‘we didn’t have anything like this when I was little.’ When I was little, if you got a mermaid sticker book, they were very sexualized. Yeah. Like the women had tiny little waists, big breasts, you know, Playboy looking personas. This one, you know, it’s beautiful like they are, they’re clothed mermaids. But I mean, they look they look happy. They look athletic. They look like little girls. They look, you know, like they’re going about their business and having an interesting life.
And it sounds like a tiny thing, but little things like that actually do change your perception of who you are. And I know, you know, when I look back through history, because my family, we are obsessed with history. We love history. That kind of dignity for women, for children or for any vulnerable group comes directly from the gospel. So I think, you know, oftentimes we notice the things in our culture that are wrong. And as I said, it’s important to those because we need to do something, reach out to people. But they’re also really good things that are happening in our culture. And we often are only seeing the glass half empty.
And so, as I said, I’m very excited about the fact that, I mean, what is it? China has more Christians now than Australia has people. I mean, it’s it’s a difficult certainly a very, very difficult time to be a Christian in China. It’s hard, we have Chinese travellers that stay with us. And we’ve learned so much about what it’s like to be Chinese.
But there is exciting things happening. So I’m very excited about what God’s doing in the world.
And I hope that one day, you know, there’ll be some people that have been impacted by travelling through here, being welcomed and hopefully feeling loved and accepted and hearing something really different about the world, hearing something really different about who they are and what the possibilities of their life is.
Yeah, fantastic.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Not particularly. I mean, I guess I don’t know. Do you have show notes? You can look at the website and see what our hostel is like. Please tell people to come stay. It is a Christian hostel, we’re openly Christian hostel but it’s fine for anyone from any background to come. And they don’t have to be interested in discipleship or counselling or spiritual formation.
They’re welcome to just come and enjoy a safe and welcoming environment. And yeah, and enjoy Tasmania and enjoy having a nice, safe, warm place to come back to.
And if you are in Tasmania, look out for the Pilgrim Hill Arts Festival next winter.
It’s usually I think we’re going to try to have it on at the same time as the Willie Smiths Sweet Midwinter Festival. Which is in Huonville as well. So we used to have at the same time as Dark Mofo, but actually another artist’s exhibition has now started in Hobart that goes at the same time as Dark Mofo, which we’re delighted about. Yeah. And so we made a decision to go on a different weekend because we want to create more opportunities for Christian artists, not less. Yeah. Not being competition, but rather, you know, people can exhibit in one and then another.
Fantastic. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us.
Thank you so much for coming out. And I’m sorry I didn’t warn you not to bring the mini.
It’s fantastic. The Mini is fine.
Thanks so much, Ruth.