Million Praying Moms: Beth McGlothlin, episode 82

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If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for your wilderness journey

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right here at When You Love a Prodigal, and even help and hope for your own life journey.

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This is episode 82 with Brooke McGlothlin of Million Praying Moms,

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and we're talking about making prayer your first and best response to motherhood.

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So, Brooke McGlothlin, you're here today, and I first actually was introduced to you

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when you interviewed me for the Million Praying Moms podcast for my,

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when my book came out three years ago, just three years and a month ago,

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but we did that a little later.

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And so that was a delightful conversation that we have, and I love your passion for prayer,

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because that's the thing that is what I'm all about is prayer.

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Nothing else is going to help more with these loved ones.

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Most often are children or adult children.

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Sometimes they're a sibling or a spouse or somebody else,

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but the majority of them are children at some age who are really breaking our hearts.

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So, Brooke, tell us a little about yourself.

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Introduce us to your family.

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Just let us know you, and then we'll move more into talking about prayer.

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Absolutely. First of all, Judy, thank you so much for having me.

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It is really just a pleasure.

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I cannot believe it's been that long since we did that initial show on the Million Praying Moms podcast.

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So I really just thoroughly enjoyed that, and I thoroughly enjoyed your heart for Prodigals.

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So thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be here.

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Definitely a pleasure.

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Yeah, absolutely. So I am from the mountains of Virginia.

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I live in southwestern Virginia.

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I have been a Virginia girl my whole life and have been married for 20 years.

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This past summer, I was married for 20 years to Corey, my husband,

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and we have two boys who are ages 17 and 15.

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I have a senior in high school, which just seems impossible.

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It must be long.

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Oh, it just is killing me.

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And then I have a freshman as well in high school, and one of them is a driver,

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and one of them is right around the corner.

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So lots of things have been changing, lots of reasons for me to pray right now.

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But yes, I...

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But bribing is definitely a prayer.

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Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

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So I have been praying. I've been praying, Mom, for a very long time now.

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And prayer is just a huge piece of my personal story.

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It is what God used to draw me into deeper relationship with Him

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and to understand Him on a better level.

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And so I am really passionate about it.

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And out of that passion, the Lord allowed me to create a ministry called

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Million Praying Moms, where we do help moms look at prayer not as a last resort,

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but as the first and best response to the challenges of parenting.

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And along the way, God's also given me the privilege of writing a few books for moms,

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my latest of which was Praying Mom.

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And so it's just been a wonderful blessing to get to do ministry this way.

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It is indeed.

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So I remember reading, because I read a lot of what you've done, about your favorite things.

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And I just thought you might tell us a few of those.

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Oh, absolutely.

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Okay, so some of my favorite things.

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Well, I'm a reader, for one.

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I would read if I had no other responsibilities whatsoever.

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I would read all the time.

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You too.

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Good, good.

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We're kindred spirits that way.

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So when I was a young girl and we would go on vacation, we always went to the beach.

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And I would take a stack of like five to seven books, usually always fiction in that time.

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And I would read them all.

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And all I really wanted to do was sit on the beach and read.

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And I loved that.

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And so I'm definitely a reader.

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I don't have quite as much time nowadays to read like that.

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I understand that too.

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As I used to.

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There are seasons where I get sucked into, you know, a series of books and I'll read for just long periods of time.

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And I really just love to do that.

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So that's one thing.

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Another of my favorite things, goodness, I love fall.

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So I'm a really happy girl here in the mountains of Virginia.

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Right now we get our four seasons and I love when the air gets cooler and I love when the leaves start to change.

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It just breeds life into me.

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It really just like I get a new energy.

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I get a new feeling.

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You know, passion gets reignited for what I'm doing.

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And I just love this time of year.

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So you're in your best time right now.

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I am. I really am.

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I love being able to live in a place where there are four seasons.

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So that's been a blessing.

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I've never done that.

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Oh, you're missing out a little bit.

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You might tell me I'm missing out though because, you know, where you live is pretty great too.

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Well, I've lived in California and I grew up in Texas and I've been in Florida for more than 30 years now.

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And I love January in Florida.

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And I'm really glad that since the hurricane last week, it's been 10 degrees cooler.

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And we're all like, you can go outside and you're not going to sweat.

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But I don't really need snow.

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So I'm not a snow fan.

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Gotcha. Gotcha.

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Well, those are just a couple of my favorite things.

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I love dogs.

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We're a dog family.

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We recently got a cat though.

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This is an interesting little aside.

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My husband actually rescued this cat, found him on the side of the road in a mud puddle and it had just rained.

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And so he pulled over on the interstate to talk to someone for a minute and found this cat in the mud puddle.

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And it literally like came running to him and climbed up him and nestled in his shoulder.

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And it was a little tiny kitten.

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Yeah, we feel like it had probably gotten dumped along the side of the interstate.

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There were a few of its brothers and sisters that were up the road a little bit that had not been quite so fortunate.

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But anyways, we rescued this little cat and it's a pure white cat with yellow eyes and his name is Nermal.

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And some of your listeners might recognize that as being one of the cats from Garfield.

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So we have fallen in love.

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I never thought I was a cat person, but all of a sudden I'm a crazy cat lady.

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Well, when you have 30, let us know.

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We'll know you're a crazy cat lady.

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So I'm just curious.

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Prayer is such an important part of life.

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How for you did it turn into more than just something you did into a ministry to other people?

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Well, I think motherhood for me, I really kind of kicked my feet out from under me in all of the best ways.

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It didn't feel like the best ways at the time.

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But I look back now and I see that it was when I became pregnant with our first son, when I was 27 years old,

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I had checked off every major item on my life to do list, if you will.

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In fact, like one of the last ones was that I wanted boys.

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I actually prayed that the Lord would give us boys.

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And when we found out he was a boy, it was like, check, there you go.

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And so I'm a very goal oriented person.

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I'm an achiever.

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I like to just get things done.

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And I've been able to up until that point had been able to achieve everything that I set my mind to with a lot of hard work.

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And at the time, I thought I was really following hard after what God wanted me to do.

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And so I would have said at that time it was a lot of hard work and prayer.

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But I did not have any idea what a praying life actually looked like until I had children.

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I think before children, it was just me setting a goal and asking the Lord, hey, would you bless this?

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And when I had children, I realized that prayer comes from a desperation for the Lord.

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It is a if God doesn't show up, nothing's going to happen kind of thing where you realize how little you bring to the table and how much you need the Lord every single day.

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And there has just not been anything in my life that has shown me how much I need Jesus.

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Not every day, not just every day, but every single moment of every single day like motherhood.

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And so for me, that's how it started.

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I began crying out to the Lord and asking him to be honest, Judy, I started out asking him to change my children.

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I wanted him to make it easier. I mean, I did.

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That's the truth. I wanted him to make it easier for me because I was finding it very hard.

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And to round things out, had another son 23 months later.

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And so I had two children very close together who are what I like to refer to as those boys.

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They are the ones that are two hundred and fifty percent boy who are impulsive and aggressive and full of energy all the time.

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And I am a raging introvert. So you can imagine how that stressed me.

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I do understand that. Yeah, it stressed me in the beginning.

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Plus, on top of that, I have a husband that works shift work. And so he wasn't always there at the hours of the day when the boys were the hardest.

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And so God used them to show me very, very quickly that I needed him more than I ever thought that I possibly could.

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And when I began to understand the power of connecting with God in prayer, I just didn't want to keep it to myself.

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It built such relationship between me and the Lord that had never been there before.

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And I say that and I was 27 when I had my first son. I had gotten saved when I was nine.

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I had begun walking very closely with the Lord when I was 20, 21 years old.

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So by this time, I had been spending lots of time in God's word and I understood God's word to a certain degree.

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But I never had the relationship that I had with him until I began to pray. It changed everything for me.

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Because, yes, children have a way of unveiling some of the needs in our lives and we just can't be in control anymore.

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I remember that the Lord told me because my first daughter cried for months and didn't sleep almost ever.

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And I was just like, we have made a mistake. This is not working.

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And the Lord said, Judy, you're not in control. And this little girl is going to help you understand that.

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And that was for me the same kind of thing where I thought I knew how to pray.

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But then all of a sudden, I was desperate for the Lord.

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I had prayed many times before I had children.

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It wasn't that I just all of a sudden started praying when I never had before.

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But it was just different. It was a I need you right now kind of prayer.

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And I had not prayed that way before.

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So let's talk just a minute about your title, The Million Praying Moms. That's audacious.

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It is. And so where did that come from?

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And I don't think you're there yet, but maybe we're not.

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We probably don't know if you're there yet or not.

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That's true. If you look at our numbers, we're not there yet, like the ones that you can actually see.

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But who knows as we reach beyond social media and, you know, those kind of things, who knows how many we've actually reached.

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But I think the reason for that is that there's a few different reasons for that.

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One, I really do want to reach a million moms or more with the message that prayer is not a last resort.

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I want to give moms the opportunity to have their entire lives changed as they become praying moms, the way that God changed mine.

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Because I don't believe, Judy, that there's really anything special about me when it comes to prayer.

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I don't think that God, you know, looked at me and pointed at me and said, Brooke gets more of me through prayer than I'm going to give anybody else.

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I just don't believe that. And so I believe that this gift of partnering with him in communication is something that is available to every single person, whether you're a mom or not.

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It's available to us as children of God. And because of that, because of what I've seen God do in my own life and because of what I've seen him do and other moms as they walked with us through this,

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I have just a passion of mine that moms would know that that's available to them.

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So often I hear moms say, I don't know what to do or my kid has this issue.

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I don't know how to help this. I don't know how to give my child the answers that they need to be able to do life the way they want to.

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I just feel lost, especially Judy, in today's world where there's so much available to our kids that we didn't have, that my generation didn't have,

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when we were growing up. There's literally things I don't know how to do.

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And yet I believe that God tells us that he will give us wisdom when we ask for it.

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And I can promise you that every, like I'll testify every single time that I've asked God for wisdom when it comes to my children, he's given it every time.

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And that's a promise. All we have to do is ask for it. And at its heart, that's what prayer is, is speaking to the Lord and asking for the things that we need.

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It's a relationship with him and then listening to him in return. So that's part of why Million Praying Moms.

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But we also believe that each mom, while I said that I don't believe there's necessarily anything unique about me that sets me apart to give me something of God in prayer that others can't have,

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I do believe that each mom is uniquely designed by God to be the mom of her children.

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And so we like to say we're Million Praying Moms, but you're one in a million. And God has a plan for you.

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And that's a great line, too.

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Yes, absolutely. So that's a little bit about the heart of it. We really do want to reach a million praying moms, and it may take time, but that's okay.

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So kind of an overview of your ministry of Million Praying Moms and the things you do. I will get to some specifics, but just what is it that you do to begin to draw in these future million praying moms?

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Well, the heartbeat of Million Praying Moms and maybe what makes us a little bit different than other prayer ministries, because there are other wonderful, worthy prayer ministries out there,

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even some that work specifically with moms. But the heartbeat of what we do is help moms learn to pray scripture.

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That was an extremely important part of my testimony. When I first came to the Lord and started praying for my kids, I had a few foundational beliefs about God.

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As I said, I'd been walking with him for a long time. And so by that time, when I had my kids, I had already established in my heart that I believed that the word of God was true.

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So to the point that I could say with confidence, if what God's word says is true, and if what I think or believe are two different things, then I'm the one that's wrong.

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I might not always understand it, or it may take some study for me to get to the point where I can understand it and embrace it, but I do believe that it's true.

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And so that was a foundational piece. The other two things that I believe to be true, among many others, is that the word of God was living and active, that it was unlike any other history book.

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The word of God is a history book, but it's so much more than that. It has the power to change hearts, to divide the human heart, and change us at our core to be more like what God wants us to be.

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So I believe that to be true. I also believed from Isaiah that the word of God would not return void, and that it would do exactly what God purposed for it to do when it goes out from his mouth.

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And so if those things were true, if in fact the word of God was true, if it was living and active, and if it would do exactly what God purposed for it to do, then I just couldn't think of anything better to pray than God's word.

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So I began a journey of looking into the scriptures to try to figure out what I should be praying for my kids.

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And in the process of doing that, what happened was that I got to know God's word better, and I thought I already knew it pretty well.

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And as I looked into God's word for the specifics of what I needed for my children, I got to know his word better, I got to know God's heart better, and it began to change me from the inside out, making me look more and more like Jesus, and changing me into the mom that I had wanted to be in the beginning.

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And I know now that that's the process of sanctification. That's what God does in our lives as we go to his word over and over again.

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That is why. Having children is one of his best tools.

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Absolutely. But that's why I'm so passionate about praying God's word, because I know that moms come to us because they want to pray, and they know they should be praying, but they don't necessarily know how.

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If I can get them praying God's word, then God is going to do that in their life as well. So it's like the sneaky backdoor thing. Like I want to help them learn to pray, but I just know that if I can get them praying God's word, this is what's going to happen in their lives.

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So it's a fun thing, a fun little aside that we get to watch God do. So the main thing that we produce at Million Praying Moms is helps and resources for mothers to pray God's word over their children.

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We have prayer journals, we have topical prayer guides, we have prayer calendars, lots of different ways that moms can intersect with the word of God that we're just handing them and saying, for example, if you want to pray for wisdom for your child, here's a topical prayer guide to help you do that.

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And these are the scriptures that you're going to pray. And we've just gone ahead and written out the prayers for them based on those scriptures.

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It's a great way for a mom who has no experience whatsoever praying God's word to start, to get started. And my hope is that as we give her the beginning of those things, that it will ignite something in her and that she'll be able to go off and do it on her own.

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And God can use it to do a work in her life as well as answering her prayers for her child.

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Absolutely.

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And all of us almost, some people are competent and confident in their parenting, but most of us are terrified, at first at least, and looking for all the help that we can get.

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And so we read books, and they can be very helpful. But nothing is going to help like the word of God is going to help. But it has that double whammy kind of thing.

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It helps with our children because we pray God's word for them. But it helps us too, and God does a work in our lives. And he's really pretty good at that kind of double response.

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Yes, it's beautiful.

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And taking the things that we weren't thinking of. So I want to get into a few specifics on some of this. Okay.

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First of all, I noticed since it was fairly early in the school year, and this will come out pretty soon, so it'll still be in the early part of the school year, you all did some really good things to get people into school, especially because it's been rough for two years, with not enough school and lots of issues and more homeschooling.

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But lots of things that have been challenging for people. So tell me a little about the resources or the tools that you all provided for people as the kids started back to school.

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Absolutely. So we produced a new prayer journal called Everyday Prayers for the School Year.

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And one of the things that God has given me the privilege of doing over the last few years is partnering with newer writers to give them an opportunity to get started in their writing journey.

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And so the author of Everyday Prayers for the School Year, it is a Million Praying Moms product. It is produced by or in partnership with Million Praying Moms.

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I wrote the foreword for it and read through it and did the editing and all that fun stuff.

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But it is written by my dear friend, Tara Cole. And Tara just has a tremendous heart for parents and for prayer.

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And she is a teacher, so she has a tremendous heart for teachers as well. And it made her the perfect person to write this book.

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The other reason that I loved that Tara wrote this is because she was homeschooled herself all the way through, but she is not homeschooling her children.

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And so she has different perspectives on educational choices for families and personal experience in those things.

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And we really wanted this book to be for all moms, regardless of their educational choice for their children.

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So we released that. It came out right about the back to school time. But along with it, we produced lots of really fun things to get moms praying.

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So you didn't necessarily have to buy the journal, although it's a great one if you do, but we had prayer prompts on social media.

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We had five days of back to school prayers for our moms that were both on Instagram and on Facebook.

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Tara created a whole line of lock screens for your phone that were made up of those prayers so that you could just download them to your phone and have them there.

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And we're in the middle right now of doing something called Prayer Club, which started at the beginning of October,

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where Tara is actually leading people through that book and praying specifically for 30 days for their kids.

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So we really have tried to put feet to what we're doing and recognizing that we don't all go to the same church,

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but we all belong to the same God and we can come together and pray for our children.

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It's always such a powerful experience when moms come together to pray for their children.

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So that was one of the things that we did in the back to school season to encourage moms to start praying.

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That was just a lot of fun and turned out great.

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So it helped me. Good. One of the things that I do a lot of is take scripture and turn it into blessings.

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And so I have been writing blessings for my children and my grandchildren.

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I have 10 grands. And so before school started for each of them, the night before, I had sent it to their parents or to them, the older ones.

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But I sent them a blessing based on the prayers that were in the book.

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So I've got the book and I use those prayers.

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And then I wrote blessings for my kids because they're used to getting blessings from me.

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And that is so beautiful. Can I just say thank you for doing that?

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I want to tell you a quick story. My grandmother passed away.

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Goodness, let me say it's been at least 10 years ago.

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She passed away. And when she passed, my mother and her sister gave me her Bible, her personal Bible.

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And in that Bible, my name is written in the margins.

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And I have prayers for me and my other cousins and things like that. I was in her Bible.

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And that is absolutely precious to me.

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And it really forms the basis of what I'm hoping we can accomplish with our prayer journals.

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I have a whole Navy, my grandfather's Navy chest full of prayer journals that I have filled out over the years and prayed for my children.

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And what a legacy you're leaving for your grandchildren. Amen.

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I'm so grateful for grandmothers like you. Thank you for doing that.

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Well, one of the blessings of that is one of the older boys that I communicate with a lot has had some real challenges the past couple of years.

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And we weren't sure where he was coming out.

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And so I sent him this blessing and he immediately texted me back and he said, that's what I'm praying for me, too.

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And so you go, yay, Lord. Yay, Lord. How powerful. Thank you. Thank you very much.

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Well, you've written, I think that added up to eight books.

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Maybe I got that wrong, but five and three, I think you said.

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But talk a little about how you ended up writing the books and then especially about your latest book on praying mom.

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Well, I had always wanted to be a writer. When I was a little girl, I used to go sit.

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My parents live on five acres. Most of it is wooded.

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The part where our house is, of course, cleared.

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But most of our backyard is just straight uphill in the woods.

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And I spent a lot of time when I was a little girl.

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They still live there, by the way, just kind of sitting at the edge of the woods and just looking out over the field that was kind of off to our right.

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And I would just write things.

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And I don't even remember what I wrote about, but I just always have felt like I was connecting with the Lord when I was writing something.

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And so I always thought I would be a fiction writer, to be honest with you.

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I thought I would write stories. And for whatever reason, God has not allowed me to do that yet.

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I don't even know if I want to anymore, to be honest, but I haven't done that.

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But I have always loved writing. And when I was in graduate school, I had a professor.

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Most of my graduate degree was writing so many papers, so many research exams, things like that, not a whole lot of testing and a lot of writing.

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And I found that writing helped me understand better.

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I could study for a test and I could regurgitate it the next day, but I didn't retain a lot of it that way.

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Writing caused me to actually have a deeper understanding of what I was learning.

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And I had a professor who told me I was good at it. And it sparked something in me.

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And it just helped me to begin dreaming. Like, what would it be like if I could do something like that?

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Years went by. I finished my degree, got married, had children.

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And then my dad had two brothers that were very close. They were very close, the three of them.

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And both of them passed away from the same genetic lung disease within 10 months of each other.

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And we were all very, very close. Our family was a close family, a very strong family.

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And I started writing to process my grief when they passed.

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And once again, people started reading it and saying, you're a good writer. You're a decent writer.

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And so again, it sparked something in me. And so I began.

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That was about the same time, you know, when my kids were really young, it was about the same time that I started praying for them.

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So I just started writing down my prayers and kind of developed this little electronic book, if you will.

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At the time, it was called Warrior Prayers. And it was for mothers of boys.

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And it was just filled with prayers from God's word that I was praying for my kids and wanted to share with other moms.

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And I worked really hard to sell copies of that. It was I think I charged like a buck for it.

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It was really, you know, it was a short little e-book, but I learned how to market it and I learned how to get it out there.

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And after I had sold about 10,000 copies of that little e-book, I say I and it was the Lord.

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He taught me how to do it. He connected me with people who could help me.

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I had a publisher approach me and say, we'd like to take that book and have you expand it because it really wasn't big enough to publish as a book the way that it was.

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And so that's my first experience with publishing.

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The publisher came to me and asked me if I would consider doing that.

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And lo and behold, that had been my dream the whole time.

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And so I had the privilege of partnering with Bethany House Publishers to write my very first book, which is actually still my bestseller, believe it or not.

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Which is praying for boys. And that was such a privilege to labor over that book.

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I wrote it when my boys were young.

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It is filled with stories of what I felt like the Lord had shown me about what manhood was and how we as mothers can pray for our sons in those areas.

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And again, it's built on praying God's word. So beautiful. Yeah.

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So that's the story of that book. And then it just kind of went from there.

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I wrote four books in rapid succession and then took a long break.

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So there was about a four year window after my fourth book that I stepped back and just kind of lived because I had written all the stories I had to write or was going to share at that time and needed to just live a little bit and kept doing ministry online.

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But it was a little bit of a break before I wrote Praying Mom.

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That's really special though.

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And I like the concept of praying warriors. And that's a beautiful approach. Bethany also published my book.

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They're wonderful. My prodigal book. Yes. Yes. I love Bethany House.

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They're good people. So as you have made this a priority for your family and have prayed specifics for them.

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So how's that affected your family? What's the outcome?

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Yeah, I think there's lots of great ways to answer that question. Normally I get asked that question a lot.

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Normally what people are asking for when they ask that question is tell me something you prayed and how God answered it specifically.

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And there are those times I can tell you the story of my son's eighth grade year and he was having trouble with a bully.

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And there was a lot of trouble actually. There was a good bit of trouble to the point that every day when we would drop him off at school, I kind of started feeling like we were leaving him in the lion's den for a season.

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Like not that I feel like I'm not making a statement on public schools.

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What I'm saying is it just felt like I was leaving him in a place where he was getting attacked by one person in particular during that time.

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And so we began to pray that the Lord would shut them out of the lions.

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Every day when we were driving to the school, my husband still works shift work after all this time.

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And if he was with us, we would pray it together. And if he wasn't, then I would pray it by myself.

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But we would pray that as he entered the school that the Lord would shut them out of the lions.

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And a couple months into that process, this person, the bully, was kind of found out by the school and admitted that they were actually trying to hurt my son.

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And I don't even know. Like, there's so many questions I have about that. I have no idea why they were fixated on my son or whatever.

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But this all came out. And as a part of the punishment, this person was actually removed from the school for a time.

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And their parents took their phone away from them. And when my son came home from school and told me that, I said, Do you realize what just happened?

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God just shut the mouth of the lion. That is exactly what happened.

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God took the mouthpiece, that phone, away from this person so that the mouth was shut.

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And that is probably, it still probably ranks up there as one of the most direct answers to praying God's word that I have in our history.

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And God has done things like that from time to time.

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One of the best things that God has done in our home because of the passion that he's given me to pray is that my children have been exposed to a praying home.

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One of my goals was to try, as much as it depends on me, knowing that not everything does depend on me, to create or raise children who would understand that they can go to God for everything.

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And so to do that, I have to model going to God for everything. And so we do that. We pray all the time in our family out loud.

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And I know that there may be listeners right now who cringe a little bit at that because it's very common for people to not want to pray out loud.

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And they'll pray in their closet or they'll pray in their mind and they have a vibrant prayer relationship with the Lord that's quiet.

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And I just want to gently and lovingly ask them to consider taking a step of faith and praying out loud because it changed the tone of our home and it modeled.

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Our children need to understand what prayer sounds like, what genuine, true love for the Father sounds like.

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And, you know, it's just given them the language of prayer, if you will, the words that they can make their own and model as they are praying to the Father.

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And to this day, my children will pray if you ask them to do that. And it's because it's normal for them.

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It's a normal part of their everyday lives to pray.

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And that has been one of the very best gifts that prayer has brought to our lives.

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I also know, Judy, that when I'm praying God's word for them, I may not be praying for something that's happening in their life right now.

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I could be praying for something way down the road, but God can use his word whenever he wants to.

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So I'm planting seeds that God is watering in their lives and growing in their character.

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I don't always get to see the immediate fruit of that, but I know and have faith because I believe God's word is true, that that is what he's accomplishing in their lives.

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Well, I think that's beautiful. And I think it's really true.

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Yes, you ask specific things and sometimes God does exactly what you asked for.

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Other times you're asking much more character things that will take time to work out.

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You're asking internal things that are going on inside of them, the struggles that they're having, and you may not see that answer right away.

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And of course, when you're talking about prodigals, which is what we got to deal with with our son and which most of our listeners are dealing with,

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then you've got some very specific things to pray for.

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And a lot of times, though, you're waiting a long time to see the answers that you're hoping for.

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And that's when you have to trust God that his character is such.

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And he said that he's hearing us and he will answer.

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And we learn patience, maybe not very willingly, but we do.

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And so and the safest thing to pray is the word of God, because otherwise it's my thoughts and what I want and everything.

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And I can pray those things because he says, come and tell me what you want.

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But when I pray the word of God, then I can know that that's just what God will do and I can trust him.

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I have an assurance that it won't be what I want.

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Well, that's very true. And I think probably one of the hardest things about being a praying mom is recognizing that yes is not the only answer God has a right to give us.

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Sometimes he says no.

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And sometimes he says, I have a better idea.

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Yeah. Or sometimes he says, wait, you know, there's a time recently in the last year that I prayed very specifically for God to do something in the heart of my child.

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And he did the exact opposite. And I was like, what in the world?

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What just happened here? It all turned out fine.

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But he did the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do.

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But I have to trust that he is working all things for the good of those who are called according to his purpose.

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All things, the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that he allows in our children's lives as they are growing

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and trying to find their way in this life, everything, all things he works together.

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So that's so true. Well, tell me just a little more about some of the resources that we can list for our listeners to take advantage of.

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Absolutely. So I would love it if people would get engaged with the Million Praying Moms podcast.

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We're actually just kicking off a new format where we're doing it two times a week instead of a seasonal approach.

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So on Mondays, I offer what I call the Monday Prayer for Moms.

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And I'm actually praying over moms and talking about the scripture that we're praying, teaching on it a little bit as a way to kick off their week.

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So that is something I'm really excited about. It's five minutes long, guys.

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Like you can listen to it on the way to work or as you're folding laundry.

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It's not ever going to be longer than five minutes. So I'm really excited to offer that.

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But another thing that I really encourage people to do is to take advantage of our Pray the Word Challenge.

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This comes in a prayer calendar format that you get every month delivered to your inbox.

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And we are praying through the entire Word of God together.

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And that is something that we are just loving.

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We have just gotten through praying through the Psalms and the Proverbs.

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Well, actually, we just started the Psalms. We broke it up into a few different pieces because the Psalms is a long book.

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But we just got through doing the Proverbs. We've done first, second and third John.

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And it's been just a delight. And you can join with us wherever we are, whatever we're on.

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Or you can go back and start in whatever chapter really kind of grabs you, whatever you want to start with.

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Maybe you want to start in the Proverbs. You can do that.

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So we have really just enjoyed that so, so much.

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And the goal is that we would eventually pray through the entire Word of God for our children.

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And when you join that program, you get a free digital prayer journal so that you can actually like print it out.

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I have mine in a three ring binder. It's a substantial document.

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It's got about 200 pages of blank prayer journal space in it,

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which is enough room for you to get through several of our monthly prayer journals.

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And I just write out my prayers for them. And I love it so much.

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It's such an amazing habit that we have gotten into. And I just can't speak highly enough of it.

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So I would encourage everybody to grab our prayer calendars because they're the best.

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So those are some of the highlights of what we offer.

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There's lots of different ways to get involved.

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We have some free prayer challenges that you can join as well that are five day prayer challenges

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that you can get delivered to your email inbox.

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All of that stuff you can find at millionprayingmoms.com.

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There's lots of great ways to get involved.

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So as we close, anything that you haven't gotten to say that you would love for these people

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who have a hurting heart for someone in their life.

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Yeah. It's never too late to start praying.

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If your kids are on this side of heaven, then you can start being a praying mom today.

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And Judy, I know prayer is such a huge part of your heart as well.

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And so this probably won't be the first time that your listeners have heard this,

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but it is a passion of mine. I had posted something on Instagram a few years ago.

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And just congratulate, I had a friend whose son graduated from high school and she wrote something about him

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and said that there had never been a day of his life that he had not known the privilege of having praying parents.

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And I was so impressed by that. And I posted her story.

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And when I did that, someone messaged me right away and said, well, I blew it because mine are already gone.

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And I just didn't know. I just didn't know what it meant to be a praying mom.

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And I've blown it. And my heart broke because she has not blown it.

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You only know what you know, right? And God matures all of us at different times and in different ways.

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And I said, you have not blown it. You can start praying today.

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As long as your kids are here, it's never too late to be a praying mom. Start praying now.

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And so that's what I would encourage them with.

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I know there are moms listening that are hurting right now because they have done everything they know to do.

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But God is faithful and God is trustworthy. And he is going to love you through this.

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And I just encourage you to deepen your relationship with him in prayer

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because that's one of the best ways to make it through whatever he calls us to.

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All true. So true.

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So, Brooke, we are going to be giving away two copies of your book, Praying Mom.

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And I noticed on your website you have some nice printable things.

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And so we're going to also make a couple of those available.

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Wonderful.

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The prints that you have. And we will list some of the ways to follow through for our listeners.

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And so I would really encourage you to go to millionpraynmoms.com

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and see what you can get that will be helpful to you as you walk through sometimes this valley of the shadow,

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but at least through dark times with the loved one in your life.

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And thanks so much, Brooke.

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I'm so grateful that you would come and be with us and encourage the people that are listening to our podcast

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and believing that God's got a lot to help them, to give them a bigger vision and new ideas

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about how to be praying for their loved ones.

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Yeah, they hear a lot about it from us, but it's always good to hear from other people as well.

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So let me close with the prayer for you.

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Father, thanks so much for Brooke and for Million Praying Moms

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and all the women that she works with that I've seen and ones I know even.

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And so I'm just so grateful for her emphasis on a deepening relationship with you.

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That prayer is not just asking for things, but it's coming back to you with your words

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and thanking you and praising you and honoring you as we pray for our kids.

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And that she didn't just do all that, but she's providing resources to help the rest of us do it.

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So thank you, and I pray that you will use the things that people have heard today to touch their lives

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and that they will find some new ways to enter into conversation with you, Lord, on behalf of their loved ones.

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So thank you in Jesus' name.

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And to my listeners, I'm just so glad that you're here today.

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And I pray that you would find yourself at a new level of relationship with God and with your loved one,

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because as you've heard us say over and over and over, maintaining relationship is key.

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And prayer is one of the ways that you make that happen. So thank you.

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And I'm sure I should say something else to my listeners, but they know what I say usually.

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So blessings. God bless you. God bless you. Thank you so much, Brooke.

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Thank you for having me, Judy.