#91: Sharon Jaynes: When You Don't Like Your Story
What do you do when you don't like your story? My conversation today is with the author, speaker, and ministry leader Sharon Jaynes! Sharon is an incredible voice in ministry all over the world, and her latest writing is all about helping us finding God's voice in the midst of pain.
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EP. 91 Sharon Jaynes
Tony: Hey everyone. Welcome back to the reclamation podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for faith and life. My name is Tony Miltenberger in today's episode 91 of the podcasts. I can just sit down with Proverbs 31. Co-founder Sharon Jains. She's an author speaker, and she's got a message for us today about what to do when you don't like your story.
This was such a lively and fun conversation. I love the way that she dives into the idea about using your pain for God's redemption, how that works, how to lean into it. If you are, have ever kind of just wondered about your past and how it impacts your future. This is a conversation you were going to want to hear as always the best compliment you can give us, leave us a rating or review it does help others find us.
Also share this episode with a friend. So close to 100. I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. None of this would be possible without you. I love doing this and I love doing it with you. So without any further ado, here's my conversation with Sharon Janes.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to be here with a author speaker, pastor to many Sharon Janes. Sharon, thank you so much for being on the episode today. I'm glad to be here. Well I. I was looking at your profile and it says that you've got a brand new book coming out. As a matter of fact, as this episode releases, it'll come out today and this is your 25th book, is that right?
Right?
Sharon: That is right . That sounds like, like what kind of person just sits down and does that, you know, a lot to say.
Tony: One of the questions that I always love to ask people that might be a good place to start. Is is how do you hear from God on what you're going to write next?
Sharon: You know, it's interesting people ask me, does the publisher tell you what they want you to write about?
Or do you tell them? I mean, how does that work? And listen, Tony, I cannot write about anything that I have not lived myself. So usually fall I'm writing one thing. God is already teaching me about something else and almost every. Every book. I won't say almost every book that I have written has come out of what God has taught me.
So that comes through my Bible study time that comes to mum, just what my personal experience of what's happening in my life at the time. And listening to God and learning those lessons to life, experience those two things, life experience, and the word of God. When those two come together.
Tony: No. I love that.
One of the things I love to get super in the details on if, if you're okay to share it is our daily disciplines we say around here that if you're not, if you're not dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions. What, what disciplines do you have? I mean, obviously you're in the word regularly, but like, is there, is there a morning routine?
Is there something that you do that you're like, I absolutely have to do this in order to have a good day.
Sharon: Well, I do spend time with God every morning and that includes reading scripture and prayer. So those, those are a must. I love what someone once said that on a regular day, I don't pray for an hour.
I don't want to say that, but he said if, if he had a regular day pray for an hour, if it was a particularly busy day, he prayed for two hours. Oh, wow. But now prayer is important. Getting in God's word is important and yeah. And Tony, it's not just reading God's word, but studying God's word. And I think there's a difference in sometimes I do it well, my, sometimes I do it not another way, but when God just has something in scripture that jumped out at me from a certain passage, I will stop there and, and study that.
It's not like I'm trying to get through the book of John or I'm trying to get through the songs. You know, I will just. I'll rate and then I'll stop for a while. I mean, I just read something about that. God really spoke to me about, about the many times the work, see that God help someone see in the book.
So I'm going to stop. I'm going to go back and study though. How many times God says that in the book of John, what it says about the word? See. So that's kind of how it happens. And sometimes when I do that and I get in there and study, it becomes a devotion. Cause I write devotions for lots of different online devotions, Proverbs 31 and girlfriends and God and cross-walk and various ones.
That's kind of how some of those devotions covered out, just digging into God's word. And then what happens, Tony? Almost every time I'm really studying something. God will have something happen in my life. It's like, I call it a modern day. Parable, something will happen in my life to help me understand what I'm studying better.
So, and then, and then that's how I'll write for not write I write a principle and a parable and then an Apple application to that. So when I'm teaching yeah. And I'm sure you do this in your teaching, we're teaching principles, but then we're training, teaching modern day parables, which help people understand it.
And that's how God that's how Jesus did it. That's how God still does it with me reading a scripture and then showing me something in my everyday life to help me understand Flash on that.
Tony: I love that. And I think that's so clickable. One of the words that has really struck me as I've heard you talk about this as this word of study.
And I think a lot of our listeners, a lot of our listeners identify as Christ followers, and yet they're trying to get closer to Christ. And I think study's an important part about. That it's more than just information it's it's application and taking that next step. So when you say study not to go down a rabbit trail too far, but what does that look like?
Do you, is there, is there a go-to commentary or do you just start chasing it around the scripture? Or how does that, how does that work for someone who's who's in the word and studying and writing as much as you are.
Sharon: You know what today we have so many great references just right at our fingertips Bible gateway club.
Bible hub is an amazing one. I mean, I think one way that I like to study is to look at. Different how different translations translate a certain verse and we've got Bible hub, you can put up a verse and it shows it in all of these different translations. Then there's other online things that we have that you can click on a word.
It'll show you the Greek and the Hebrew. Right. What that actually means. Someone asked me, do you know, Greek and Hebrew? I said, absolutely not, but I know people who know Greek and Hebrew and it used to be that I did have commentaries. I've got, you know, I'm looking at my shelf right now with the strong and the vines and as a different commentaries, but we don't even need.
Really need those big fat books anymore, because so much is just right on our computers when we have these amazing resources to go through. So sometimes it'll be a topic that I'll dig into. And a lot of times it's just a word, a word that I'll dig into. So, and again, I'm using those commentaries, I'm looking what other references to that word or to that passage that relate and Then I'm looking at other, other scriptures, like I've mentioned, I'm getting ready to, to just really delve into what it means to see.
So I'll read other passages that talk about saying some of them want apply and some of them will, and I'm not talking about cherry picking and just using the ones that I like, because sometimes when you're doing something you're studying something new, God will show you something. You're like, Ooh, I didn't know that.
And I'm not sure. I really like it. So yeah, so those two things, just looking at commentaries, looking at at what the words really mean in the Greek and Hebrew, of course, we know that Greek is their original language of the new Testament and Hebrew is the original language of the old. And, and honestly, sometimes we lose something in translation.
So, you know, going back and looking at that.
Tony: I often say, as, as the great theologian, the Google says
Sharon: careful with that sometimes who were, who were who were referencing there. But th th the, for the most part, the basic commentaries that, that we see the common ones, like the Bible hub and the resources on crosswalk and Bible gateway.
And those are very reputable. I think we can trust those.
Tony: How did, how did you get called into this ministry of, of, of writing and this ministry of speaking specifically for women? Because I mean, like you said, Proverbs 31 and some of the other ministries that you're a part of and have been a part of for so long.
It, you know, I, I'm a big believer that that kind of persistence over an extended period of time is really has a lot more to do about your calling than necessarily your willingness, because I'm sure that there are days where you don't want to write devotions, but how did you, how did you get that sense that you're called to, to help women navigate some of those really difficult seasons of life?
Sharon: You know, Tony, we could do a whole podcast on this. So I'm going to add, I don't know if I can tell this in a quick way, but I'm going to do my best, but my degree in college was in dental hygiene. Yes. I was a dental hygienist that majored in science and math. And I, we, we joke my husband and I joke that when we cleaned out my parents' attic when they passed away and we found boxes and boxes of cliff notes, he said, did you ever read a book in high school?
I said, no, but I was really good with those cliff notes. That probably helped me from, I started doing those two minute radio segments for Proverbs, but said that. I mean, I loved God's word for now. I became a Christian as a teenager, but the thought of writing was the furthest thing. From my mind, very insecure.
I grew up in a very rough home environment when I was constantly told that I was not enough. And, and that carried over into my. Christian life that I knew I was going to happen, but I always felt that I was never good enough as a Christian. So again, that's a whole nother podcast that we could do. But when I was in my thirties I really felt like God was starting to do something different in my life.
After I had my, my son, my first child I. Started having a love for reading, not just God's word, but other other books. I went back and actually got the high school reading list and read books that I was supposed to recognize school. If that opened up a part of my, my brain that had, had never really been tapped into, I started writing stories just to what God was teaching me.
The stories became a file, which became a file cabinet. Which became several file cabinets. And then in my thirties, as I was writing Bible studies for my church and I had all these, these stories that I had written, God started telling me. I don't, these are not just for you. These are not meant for a file cabinet.
They're meant. And I've been preparing you for years to share the messages I've been given you to other people. And and that's really how it started in my thirties. Someone told me as I I've. Stopped my job as a dental hygienist, I was account sort of pregnancy center teaching Bible studies.
I honestly stopped all of that and just prayed for about a year. I mean, I mean, I've prayed constantly for a year, but a year later after I started this, somebody said maybe you should meet Lisa Tarkir. She's this little girl in her twenties in Charlotte who starting Proverbs 31. And, and I met with Lisa and she.
So do you know, I've been praying for a partner for a year. So God had been preparing both of our hearts for year. And she said, I think God's telling me you're the one. So anyway, anyway, I started with Lisa at that, at that time and started the radio ministry that they had for many years. And Then God started opening doors and, and both Lisa and I joke that when we first started writing books, we both got rejection letter after rejection letter saying, nobody knows you, you don't have a platform.
I'm sorry. But then we just kept doing what God called us to do. I kept writing devotions that I wrote for layer cat, this fellow who had a. Ministry on money matters. It was called Christian financial concepts, and we just kept doing what God called us to do, even though the doors had closed. And then one day the vice president of moody publishing called me and said, have you ever thought about writing books?
So I said, actually I have, and so went to Chicago with four book proposals, met with moody publishing. They took all four of them and that's how it began. So I just wanna encourage someone who's listening that if you feel like God has a certain call in your life and you have had those doors slammed in your face, that doesn't mean that you heard him wrong.
It just means that you need to keep on being persistent, what God's called you to do. And one day. One day it's going to happen. Just like David and Goliath. One day finally, he was out in the wilderness taking care of those bears and those lions with those rocks and one day. The call came, Hey, there's the Goliath out there and I want you to come deal with it.
So I hope that encourages someone this sometimes God will call the most unqualified person. Amazing for him. I will honestly say Tony people say, where'd you go to seminary? Where'd you get your training, right? And I'm like in my den with the Lord in my book.
Tony: And I love that. And I think it's such a, I think it's such a great transition to the writing that you've got coming out.
Now, when you, when you don't like your story, right? Because one of the major themes in this writing is that no pain is wasted. And so talk to us a little about that idea about the importance of pain in our story and, and the difference between wanting to remove it and the, and letting God use it.
No,
Sharon: I think I haven't met a person yet. Haven't met him. Sorry. I haven't met a person yet. Who does not have parts of their story. They were, were not in there. I mean, one thing I say right off, I mean, the title was when you don't like your story, but it's usually not the whole of our stories. We don't like, it's usually certain parts of our story that we don't like and the certain parts we wish God had not included in the narrative.
Certain parts that we've tried to erase, that won't quite go away, certain parts that we really want to rip out. We want to rip out those pages and. I am not talking about taking those stories and pretending they aren't there, but I'm talking about turning those stories around and using them for a godly purposes purpose, because God turns our broken stories into a beautiful prose, unwanted pages into stunning narratives of victory.
But Tony, we've got to let him do it. We've got to work with him on this. He's not going to do it all by himself. And most of the time when we have a story that we don't like. We have to go through certain processes to be able to embrace that story and use it for good, you know, I love the word immediately in the Bible.
I love when Jesus heals immediately. Most of the time we are hurt in our life with the pain in her life. It, that that doesn't heal immediately. Usually there is a process, but with that process there, the first thing we have to do when we have a painful story is to decide that we want to get well. That wouldn't want to be better and we can't, God can't use it as long as we get stuck there.
And that's one of the main reasons I I wrote when you don't like your story is because I want readers and yes, my ministry is mainly toward women, but they're stories of men in here too, when I've really think this book is a crossover. But, but when we have those painful stories, we have to decide, do I want to get well.
Do I want God to use it for good. And so many times people get stuck there. And honestly, they're not really sure if they want to get well, I don't think they would say that out loud. Right? You remember when Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda and there were the people that were sick around this pool that were waiting for the waters to stir up an angel.
And God went up to a man who had been laying for 38 years. And you know what? He asked him, Tony, he asked him. Do you want to get well, you know, when we read that one thing, well, that's a strange question. Of course he wants to get well, but that is a question that we need to answer. Do I really want to get, well, do I want to leave this place of being a victim?
Do I want to leave this place of living under shame? Because we can get so used to feeling like the victim we can get so used to think. Yeah, I'm this way because my dad did this to me. I'm this way, because that person hurt me. I am this way because that husband walked down on me and we can get stuck there.
And we really. Are comfortable with that. We are a lot more comfortable with the pain in our lives then with the uncertainty of being well. So the first step we have to take is, decide, do I want to take that pain off the shelf as an idol? Because we can make it an idol, not in the sense that we worship it, but it kind of controls our lives.
Do we want to take that idol off the shelf? Quit Dustin. And I say this over and over. Stop picking at emotional scabs, stop picking at emotional scabs and allow God to heal it and have a beautiful scar that God continues because that every scar we have on our body and on our hearts tells a story.
Tony: They, one of my mentors said to me, he said, Tony don't ever, don't ever preach through wounds, preach through scars.
Sharon: And there is a big difference.
Tony: And th there, there has to be a huge difference. So when, when we talk about answering the question, do I want to get well and getting comfortable with the pain? W what's the next step, if we've decided, okay, I'm going to get uncomfortable with my pain and I'm going to take the next step.
W what does that look like in terms of trying to kind of, you know, get up and get in the pool ourselves, so to speak?
Sharon: Well, there's two things that are, are huge forgiving. The people who have heard us and then walking out from under that, that cloud of shame, I call it, leave the pain place and leave the shame place.
And forgiveness is. It's something it's, it's what our whole Christian faith is based on. And yet we have so much trouble with it. You know, I went to a football game one time and it was a college football game and I was on the edge of the road. And. Right beside me was where the concrete steps work.
People can't stick, tripping over that step right beside me. And I don't mean for you to think harshly of me, but after a while, it just got funny. I mean, nobody got hurt, but I just started giggling cause everybody kept tripping. And at halftime I measured and that step was about a fourth of an inch higher.
Then the other steps. And I think about forgiveness that step in our lives, it's a little bit higher than the other disciplines in the other steps in our lives. And it's the one that Christians tend to trip over time and time again. But if we don't forget those people who have heard us that we're going to continue to trip over it, we're going to continue to get stuck there.
I think one reason that people have trouble with it is because they don't really understand what true forgiveness is and to forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not saying that what that person did doesn't matter. It is not saying that what that person did, wasn't hurtful. Wasn't wrong. It's not saying it's okay.
What it is saying is that you're going to set yourself free. From, and you're not going to carry that burden around with you any longer. The word forgiveness actually means. And going back to that Greek again, it actually means to cut someone loose, to let someone go free. So let's look at the opposite of that.
If you're going to cut someone loose, the opposite unforgiveness means just strap them on. So that means the person that you hate, the person who's hurting, you're carrying around this bitterness. You have straps that person on your back, and you're carrying that burden around with you. And wasn't turning most of the time.
Those people don't care. Those people don't even know. And yet they're carrying that burden around. The, the word in the Greek is a fee of me and in my Southern drawl, I was saying that word one day. And I thought off of me, you know, it's a failure. But it sounds a lot like off of me. And so when we forgive someone we're saying off of me, we're taking it off of us, cutting the person loose, and we're giving that God giving all of that to God, I'm going to let him deal with it.
And we're deciding that we are going to be free. You've probably heard that statement, that unforgiveness is like drinking a poison and then waiting for the other person to die. And we really need to get a handle on that. Because that is so true and we will never live free until we forgive those person.
People who have heard us and we let it, let them go. LA Porte, Corrie 10, boom said, remember she was in the concentration camp. Here's your world war II. She said forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.
So forgiveness is the key that will unlock. The jail door for ourselves, you know, I'm from North Carolina. I know those listing thought I was from the Bronx or somewhere, but no,
we have Andy Griffith shows that still play here, the town drunk, his name's Otis. And when, when Otis. Has he's drunk and he comes into the jail sale. Otis gets a key off the wall and locks himself up in the jail cell. And then the morning he takes the key off and lets himself out. And I was watching that and I said, Oh Lord, we do that.
So many times we take the key off the wall and we lock ourselves back up and you're sitting there thinking. Got and got to sit in there saying, what are you doing? What are you locking yourself? Up? Back up. Jesus came to set you free. So that's number one. Forgiving those people for this, let it go and be free yourselves.
And I'm going to take a breath because I'm going to say before I go into the next one, and let's talk about that.
Tony: I, you know, I guess one of the questions that I had is I was listening to you and I was like, you're preaching and I love it. I'm here for all of it. And I'm thinking to myself, why do Christians, especially when, when.
When we should be the best at this. Why do we struggle with this extra? I mean, like you said, it's like the quarter inch step, right. And so many Christians, I know, struggle with forgiveness. Is this, is it because we haven't modeled it? Well, we haven't discipled each other in it. Well, is it because of does it go back to shame?
What's the connection with our hesitancy for like in the, in the Christian faith? Are we just not teaching it? Well, what do you think.
Sharon: I think that the world sees forgiveness is a weakness. So we have allowed that to infiltrate our lives as well.
Tony: Yeah. That's almost like a cultural Christianity in a sense, as opposed to, to being more a biblical Christianity around this topic, that makes a lot of sense to me.
Sharon: Right. And I think, you know, people think, well, if I forgive this person that I'm just being a doormat, I'm letting them walk all over me. Which is, I think forgiveness shows up a sense of strength, more than anything else that we could do. And there is no other time when we look more like God than when we forgive.
I remember when the story of Jacob and Esau and Jacob decided to go back. To his brother Esau and ESAL forgave him. He said, looking at your face, it's like looking at the face of God. And that's because of the forgiveness that he saw. Why do we have trouble with that? I think a center. I think it's just, it is our unredeemed flesh.
Yeah. I mean, it really is. And it's, it's our humanity, that's coming out. That's saying I'm not going to do this. And it's very UN uncross like.
Tony: I think for me, like it's, it's almost harder to forgive the people that I'm closest to than it is for me to forgive a complete stranger almost because I don't want to look, you know, like I don't want to look bad.
Like there's a weird flesh kind of, as I was thinking about like, man, who, who's the person in my life that I've struggled the most to forgive, and it's not a stranger, it's definitely the people who are closest to me and maybe that's cause I don't want to. I you know, I felt too vulnerable or maybe it's because I, I, I don't care what they think of me as much anymore.
I don't know. It's a weird, it's a weird paradigm. Isn't it?
Sharon: Yeah. Well, you're less invested in the people you don't know. Right. So, I mean, it's easy. I mean, it's easy to, you can walk away from that. You can't walk away from this people in your family who've hurt you. Tony Lee, as I mentioned earlier I, I was raised in a very difficult home situation.
My, my father drank a lot. He. He beat my mom, my mom fought back and those pornography gambling, all kinds of things that went on in my home. And I saw things a little girl shouldn't see her things or shouldn't hear. And I became a Christian when I was a teenager through one of my friend's mom in my neighborhood, but I always had to go back into that violent environment.
It's such a cool story. But three years after I became a Christian, my mom gave her life to Christ to the same woman. Three years after that, my main old daddy who was worse than Lee or Brown baddest man in the whole town gay kiss life to Jesus and became one of the sweetest man I've ever known. I may, it's amazing story, but you know what, when my dad would mess up, when he'd make a mistake, all those.
All those angry feelings would rise back up again. They were triggers that would make me mad all over again. I had gone to college for two years to get that dental hygiene degree I mentioned, and I started a job and I felt like God was calling me to go back to school. But I couldn't hear from him.
I felt the, I felt the pull, but I wasn't getting, I just couldn't hear from God. There was a barrier there and I went to, there was this. A group of men in my hometown who were mentors to us young in our twenties and teenagers, they actually started a coffee house called the ancient of days for us together.
And I went to Mr. Thorton and I told him, Mr. Chloe, pray for me. I really don't know what to do. And I'm conflicted. And he went to all these scriptures about asking you shall receive kind of scriptures. But wouldn't, you know what, he put them in context. So that means he read them. What was the before and after it.
And Tony almost every time it said something about forgiveness. And he said, Sharon, I think that your problem is that you have never forgive, forgiven your father for what he did to you and what he didn't do. And all of a sudden, I was like Mr. Thorpe, I'm not here to talk about my future. About my past.
I'm here to talk about my future. And he says, Sharon, your past. Is standing in the way of your future. And so that day in my twenties you know, I pray to forgive my father and and he did, and I did, I mean, the ashes, everything, the ruins were gone and those triggers CA they stopped happening with him.
So, and then after that it was like, God opened my eyes and it was exactly what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to get back to school. Everything fell into place, but it was, and I'm not saying once you forgive someone, you're going to strike it rich, and God's going to answer all your prayers, but I am going to say that when you choose not to forgive someone, your story is going to get stuck there.
Yeah. And the sub chapter, the subtitle of the book is what if your worst chapters could become your greatest victories that will never happen if we get stuck in unforgiveness, for those to those people who have heard us.
Tony: And I would assume it works the same way with the shame place, right? Like if we get stuck in shame, the same barrier pops up.
Sharon: Same thing. I think people are a little less familiar with the shame place. Like I said, they weren't like, think about shame so much how they tend to verbalize it. And I'm sure you've heard this as a pastor is maybe I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself. Sure. And when people say I can't forgive myself, that is the shame place.
And that is living under the shadow under the cloud of what I've done in my life is too, too dark, too bad. I can never come out of it. God could never use me. And if you go back and look through scripture, you don't see that anywhere. I mean, look at your God used, Oh my goodness. Every one of them were missing.
Every single one, I'm going to sit one and God just took him on to heaven and decided that he didn't need to be down here anymore. And right. Is such a good example of that. Isn't she? I mean, you know, I love how in the story of rehab, she was a prostitute. She was a harlot. She lived inside the wall, not in the city of Jericho, but in the wall of it, and she was a prostitute and there were know the story of the spies coming to her, she hid the spies and then they said, are you hang this red cord out here?
And when we do come and take over the city, we're going to rescue you. We going to start thinking, where did that red cord come from? That was her red cord. And then it went back and studied and the red cord was what she hung on her door to show that she was in business. Oh wow. So we would call it that like the red light district.
So, so that God took the sign of her shame, which she hung on the door to show she was in business business and used it to hang it out the window of her home. And made it the sign of herself Asian. So the shame that we have in our lives, God wants to move that cord from one place to the other so that people can see what God has done and their lives.
You know, I have so many, I have friends that who've had abortions in their lives and, and their past, and once they come out and they, they tell how God got them through. The no longer can the devil use it against them to shame them. And you know, that Romans 28 verse that God uses all. Thanks for the good.
That is the good, when we can take what we've gone through, even though shame places. So there's things we wish that we could take back that we have done in our lives. When we turn those around and tell other people how God has brought us through, then it helps them and Tony, Ashley. That's how my dad came to Christ.
Oh, wow. Yeah, because after my mom came to Christ, she said, I'm going to go to church with you guys, but I could never be a Christian because God could never forgive me for what I've done. And he went to church with us and he saw everybody all cleaned up on Sundays and he didn't see anybody like himself.
But about three years after my mom came to Christ, he was going through a business situation in our small town. He was going to be sued. He was going to be taken to court and exposed for literally God only knew what, and it was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. My mom left Rocky mountain, North Carolina, and went to Pennsylvania to a meeting.
She had her own business. My dad got in the car, drove those hundreds of miles. Couldn't find her stopped by a church said, is there a priest here who can pray for me? And she said, no, but I know a Baptist pastor out of the woods building his church. She drew a little map on a piece of paper. My dad got in the car, followed the map, found this man.
I mean, literally building with a hammer in his hand. And my dad was a builder also. And he said, can you pray for me? And the massive will Allen, let's sit down on this log and, and tell me, tell me what's going on. And then my dad told him this story told him everything. He'd done, man, listen, Tony, this is so good that man put his arm around my dad.
And he said, now, Alan, let me tell you what I've done. And the way my dad told me, he said everything I had done in my life, I'm going to start crying here, everything I've done in my life, that man had done to that. If God could forgive him and he could be a pastor, then he could forgive me, say what happened there.
This man told his story. He wasn't ashamed of it. He told what God had done in his life. And, and then from my father, it wasn't Jesus, wasn't just a cleaned up version of something he saw in this church that he went to where nobody talked about that kind of thing. But Jesus became real. And that man became believable and we'll, we're not ashamed to tell our story.
Jesus becomes real to people and they see him in a different way than they ever sent him before.
Tony: Come on. That, that that's I love that. I love that'll preach. That'll preach, and I love that. I love it the way God led your dad to that spot. What an incredible testimony. And, and it, it fits really well with one of the, the other major themes of the.
The book is, is that your, your connection and your story are connected. You know, that idea that when we share our story, we connect with others. How, how do you think for most of us we're called to to connect through the sharing of our story? Cause it, I mean, if we're honest, right? Like it feels like there's already quite a lot of things out there on the internet, you know?
And so how do you. I dunno, how, how are we called the navigate some of that in, and still find that connection.
Sharon: I think if you're willing to tell it, and again, I want to emphasize what you said, Tony, not sharing from a wounded place, but from a scar, if you've gone through something and God has gotten you on the other side, And you are willing to tell him he will bring people that we'll need to hear your story, and then we'll have a choice.
Am I going to share it or am I not going to share it? There will be people in your own churches, wherever you're listening from. There will be people in your church. Say my dad went to the church. He didn't see anybody sharing their stories. He didn't see anybody like him, but we must be willing. And willing, but we must be willing to tell it.
I mean, you're going to be in a small group, you're going to be sharing about your lives. And I know I've seen it time and time again, people in small groups telling about, about their lives and their prayer request and they're so cleaned up and then one person will be honest. And didn't know, it'll go back around again and everybody else to be honest.
Oh, for sure opportunities, you know, nobody can help a woman who's struggling in a bad marriage. Like somebody else who's already been there. Nobody can help a man. Who's struggling with alcoholism. Like somebody else who's already been there. So God will bring specific people to you. That need to hear your story and how God has brought you through.
So, you know, we don't need to be a personality on the internet. We don't need to have a big blog or a big following on Facebook. God will bring those people to you. We just need to keep our eyes open. It could be somebody in the grocery store line, you know, somebody who's struggling with kids wanting to climb out other.
The cart. And then we just simply say, you know, you were doing such a good job. I had the same trouble with my kid and then it could be something that's more. So just look for the opportunities because God will bring them. And I want to say one more thing, Tony, I've taken a breath. I think that one reason people hold back, of course we want everyone to think well with us.
Yeah. You know, there were certain parts of my story. I didn't want to tell. And I remember God's speaking to me now, when I say that, I don't mean he's talking to me out loud, but it's an impression on my heart that I know did not come from my own head. And I had this impression from him, Sharon, would you rather people think well of me or think well of you?
Oh, that was so convicting Lord. I want people to think well, of you. And you know what happens most of the time when we do tea or something, we think, Oh, they're not going to like me. They're going to judge me. They're never going to look at me the same. That very rarely happens when we're vulnerable. When we tell what we've gone through, people love us anymore.
Even people love us even more. And they appreciate the fact that we're being honest. So don't let the table tell you that you need to hold back because. It's going to have a BA I mean, he's going to do everything he can to keep you for telling your story. I mean, listen to this verse in revelation, it says they overcame him by the blood of the lamb and what the word of their testimony, your story has so much power that is in the same sentence with the blood of the lamb.
Oh my goodness. No longer. He doesn't want you to tell it there's power in that. Don't let him shame you into not doing it.
Tony: No, I, I appreciate that. I, I think one of the things that. People often wrestle with is whether or not they're ready, they're ready to tell their story. Right. And so we've talked a little bit about the difference between a wound and a scar.
Do you have a process that you go through to know if like you're ready to publicly share this part of your story? Or like, Oh, this might still be a little too fresh or is there kind of a a checklist or anything that you kind of like, eh, X, Y, and Z have to be in place in order for me to share. You know, this, this story about my dad or whatever the case may be.
Sharon: I do not have a checklist, but I do have a suggestion. If you feel like God is calling you to tell your story, find someone that you trust, someone that you trust with your heart and tell that person first. And don't start big and God usually doesn't put us in a place to start big. Anyway, he usually starts us out in small places, but tell someone you trust and then maybe go to a little bit larger group.
And I think, you know moving forward builds confidence. So the more you act courageously, the more courage you will have start out small and then, you know, move along as God. It's called me too. But as far as that part about when you are ready again, the devil will always tell you you're not ready. And, and when you say you've forgiven someone.
And then they do something that burns you up and you get so mad again and you, and you're mad all over again. You think, gosh, I really must not have forgiven him. I must not be well yet. Yeah. They're gonna always be triggers. They're gonna always be triggers that from things that we think we've let go off.
Yeah. And then something triggers them to think, Oh, I must not be ready because I'm feeling that all over again. Now listen, when we have those triggers and we feel those feelings again, what we do is we remind the devil that we have already let that go. Yeah. I've already forgotten that person that is in the past.
I've given it to God. So when those triggers come up that tell you you're not ready, then you remind the devil of what you've already done.
Tony: I think that that is probably. The one, the next step in living a new story. And I know that's one of the other themes of the book is that like what you've done in the past can help you do something new in the future.
What does that look like in, in practice, you know, from, from deciding that Hey, I'm going to share my story. I'm going to connect with others. How does that create a new narrative in our lives?
Sharon: Well, one thing I talk about is having a different ending to your story. So we've looked at a lot of steps to have how to have a different ending when we don't forgive.
When we stay in shame, then we're stuck there and the story ends there. However, when we do forgive, when we come out from shame, then the story continues, what it looks like. As God opens doors and allows us to help other people at NSF mentioned you know, there's the story of Joseph that we all know, and we all love when, after Joseph had gone through all that he had gone through.
I mean, I'm sure that. Kid was thinking, this is not how that dream was supposed to go. This story was supposed to go, you know, being sold by his brothers, thrown into prison accused of attempted, right. You know, on and on this poor kid. And then we know what happens. He interprets the Pharaoh's dream and he's my second in command in Egypt.
But when At the very end of the, of his story that we read about in Genesis. And when we know he had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, and he took those boys to be blessed by his dad. And Manasseh was the oldest one and his name means God has called me to forget. My pain and suffering and A-frame rent meant God has caused me to be fruitful.
And instead of blessing, the God has called me to forget Jacob crossed his arms and Joseph's like, no, dad, you got it all wrong. You're blessing the wrong one. But he blessed Abraham over a Manasseh. And what he did is he blessed. God has made me fruitful in my suffering. Over God has made me forget. You know, I think we many times just want to forget about it, but no, God doesn't want us to just forget about it.
He wants us to be free of it, but then he wants us to be fruitful in it. So being fruitful for us is using what we've gone through. No, to help other people. It tells us. And Second Corinthians one, four, God comforts us in all of our afflictions so that we can comfort those in any affliction with the comfort we have received from God.
I might've said that a little bit twisted, but what it basically says is that God doesn't convert us to make us comfortable. Those two little words, so that are so important in that verse. He conferenced us. So that. We can use what we've gone to, to comfort someone else. And once we do that, that is a different ending to that story.
That is when our worst chapters become our greatest victories, because those are what those things that we wanted to forget. Those things we'd want to rip out those. Stories in our lives are the ones that God wants to highlight and he wants others to see. And that's, what's going to give us victory in our lives and change the ending to the story because we're going to help someone else have victory in their own lives.
Tony: I love the fruitful in our story narrative, because I think that there's so much opportunity there, especially in this season of COVID and of separation for Christians to really impact some of the noise in the world. And it's not, like you said, it's not necessarily about, it's not even about that. The, the grandiose nature or the pain of the story, it's just about being faithful in it.
I think that's such an important message that you're really helping us in, in this writing. So I know that that one of the things that happens is that we may not feel. Called that we feel disqualified because of what's happened. Even, even though we know that that God wants to redeem our story, we kind of self-select out.
How do we fight against that in, in the narrative of our faith, in our story,
Sharon: Tony, I think it's, it's very typical for someone who has maybe had an affair, for example, to feel like, well, this disqualifies me. From doing anything from the Lord. I just picked that, that out of a hat. I mean, you know, there's many things that we could feel like disqualify us.
What if my one I'm not really good friends. His, he was going into he was finished seminary and was becoming a pastor and right about that time, his father committed suicide. And he felt like that that disqualify him. Like if I can't help my own family, how am I going to pass your church? And God had to take him through some healing steps and actually what that has done now, this is.
15 years out that situation in his life didn't disqualify Chris. It qualified him. Cause now people come to him who were struggling with feelings of suicide, who were struggling with a family member who is thinking about suicide. And he's become almost an expert about that subject. So when, what we've got when we've gone through something, God's brought us to the other side.
I mean, I think about when I lost a child I didn't want to talk to all these other happy people with people that had a chronic kids. I wanted to talk to someone who had experienced the same thing. So someone else who had lost a child, their pain, qualified them to know what they were talking about and that's who I was drawn to.
So don't, don't let what you've gone through that you've been victimized or abused. Thanks. That that disqualifies you. Don't let your own sense of mistakes. Think that that disqualifies you. I mean, we'll be ripping out half the pages of the Bible, if that were true. Oh my goodness. Peter, look at that one example.
What did Jesus say to him? He said, Peter, you're going to deny me three times. He said, but after you have returned, strengthen your brothers. Say I am sure that Pater felt so disqualified after he had denied. He knew Jesus, but Jesus knew he was going to feel that way. And he said, after you have come back, strengthen your brothers.
So I want to leave that, that message with everyone listening. The, because, I mean, if you were thinking that you'd been disqualified because of some certain parts of your story that you had been responsible for yourself, don't let the enemy tell you that. Say Jesus saying standing there, right with you just as he stood with Pedro, after you have come back, then go and strengthen your brothers.
Tell them about how I got you through how I picked you up, how I turned you around, use your story to help someone else to show them that there is hope.
Tony: And I think that's a, that's a beautiful message for all of us and, and not only have you written that you have lived that very well, so thank you.
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. I know my listeners are going to want to connect with you on the interwebs. What's the best place to find more of your writing and to pick, pick up their copy of the book.
Sharon: It's my, my web address is Sharon jains.com and my last night's very strange.
It's J a Y N as in Nancy, E S said, Sharon J a Y N E s.com. There, you can find blogs have lots of free stuff. Got lots of freebies there to download. Actually there's On the, on there, you can, you can order the book. You can order it anywhere. You can order Amazon CBD anywhere you buy books. And you can read a free chapter on the website.
You can also watch a short video that, that tells more about it.
Tony: It's a, it's a beautiful website, your team, and you have done a phenomenal job on it. Thank you so much. W one of the questions I always love to ask people as the last question is an advice question. If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice, and I want to pull you all the way back to just finishing your degree and dental hygienists history.
I don't know if I said that, right, but what, what's the one piece of advice that you would go back and give that younger version of yourself?
Sharon: I would say, just keep doing the next thing. You know, don't try to look at the big picture and what I'm going to be doing in 20 years from now 30 years from now.
Just, just do the next thing and I think that's just good advice for all of us that at any age I know we'd like to plan, this is January. We like to look ahead and plan what the year's going to look like. But as 2020 showed us that kind of silly sometimes. Amen. I would say that to that, that 20 year old girl, you just do the next thing that God is calling me to do.
We have no idea of what. Doors, God's going to open in the future and everything he's doing, he is getting us ready. He's preparing everything that's happening in our lives. He's preparing us for what he has prepared for us. So do the next thing.
Tony: That's a great word. Sharon, thank you so much for your time today and for your heart and for the way that you administered to so many of us.
This was a really good word today and a word that I know I needed to hear.
Sharon: Thank you, Tony. Thanks for having me.
Tony: I told you guys what an incredible conversation. She has so much fire and spirit. I love the way that she talked about holding onto your identity and what that means in light of Christ.
Again. So thankful for you being a part of this podcast community. It would really mean the world to me. If you left a rating or review, especially on iTunes, it really does make a difference. And as always please share this episode, it helps people find us how soon we'll get in touch, helps grow the things that we get to do here.
And again, none of it would be possible if it weren't for you. So thank you for being a part of this community. And I look forward to connecting with you guys real soon.
