S2S Sisters: "God, Grace, and Godly Womanhood" by Darla Weaver

Lesson Transcript

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might according to His glorious power. Well, hello everyone. I think we might as well get started, and welcome to Strength to Strength Sisters. As we say here in Kenya, Karibu sana. We're so happy to have you all here this afternoon. I'm so excited. This is our second call.

The vision of Strength to Strength Sisters is to encourage women to be catalysts in advancing the kingdom through biblical teaching, testimonies of faithful women, and thought-provoking discussion. Our prayer is that God will be glorified through this talk today. Let me introduce myself, first of all, for those of you who don't know me. My name is Jameela Kurtz. This summer, my husband Luke and I celebrated our 20th anniversary. We've been blessed with nine children from ages two to eighteen.

We have four daughters and five sons who we homeschool. We've lived in the beautiful country of Kenya, East Africa, for the last six years. We enjoy relating here to the different people, groups, and cultures in our semi-urban setting. We love the example that the early church gave, where they baked, they break bread, they got together and fellowshipped all in their homes. And being able to open our homes to whoever God sends for a meal or a bed for the night is one of our greatest joys.

The passion of my husband and I is to include our children in our work here. We've had amazing experiences as a family. God has been so good to give us this wonderful opportunity where we can serve Him here in Kenya. From my birthplace in the island of Jamaica to being raised in the States and now living in Kenya, I can definitely say that I, being in the way the Lord has led me, remember being a little child and wanting most of all to create beautiful spaces for others to enjoy and feel loved and blessed.

Around the age of eleven, I started on a journey that has changed my life, heeding the radical call of joining a kingdom church. It's been worth it all. You know, whether I'm sitting and learning lessons with my children or talking to the neighbors or traveling to all the different remote places in Kenya, I just love people and sharing the beauty of God's love with them. I'm so excited to be a daughter of the Lord, and I want to be faithful to love Him and serve whoever He brings across my path.

Let me just start with a few announcements before we start today. This talk is for ladies. So if you're mistakenly on this call and you're not in that category, we would kindly ask that you remove yourself right now. There's going to be a question and answer session right after our talk today. We're so excited to have you all join us. Feel free and don't be afraid to participate in that part of the talk. If you do ask a question, we ask that you could please turn on your camera.

There's a chat box if you prefer submitting a question that way, where you can type your questions in. These recordings will be available on YouTube, and also there's a podcast platform. And just so you know, your faces won't be recorded unless you're speaking. We are so excited to have Darla Weaver join us today. Darla is a personal friend of mine, and I feel very honored that I can introduce her. She's going to speak to us on God, Grace, and Godly Woman Him.

Darla has been married for twenty-five years to Marlon Weaver and is the mother of eleven children. That's right. I think she's an amazing mother. All of them are still at home. Her firstborn is twenty-two, and her youngest is almost two years old. They live in East Providence, Rhode Island, where they regularly host believers and unbelievers in their home. They mentor wherever God calls them, and they believe in putting Jesus Christ and His kingdom first in whatever they do.

She was raised conservative Mennonite, but didn't truly meet Christ until they were married five years and had two children. Their lives were a mess of anger, lust, and lies, but Jesus made all things new for them, and it's been twenty years of redemption and healing. She is passionate about the kingdom of heaven and walking in obedience and growing in grace, making disciples first with her own children and then with whoever God brings into her world, mentoring, serving, and sharing the good news.

Darla told me that's her heart's desire to serve whatever God calls her. One note of interest: the first time I met Darla was here in Kenya. I think you remember that, Darla, don't you? We had just been in Kenya one week, and it was just before their family moved back to the States. I am just so honored to have her as a friend. I'd love if you all would just join me in prayer right now so we can pray before we turn the time over to Darla.

Dear Lord, we just thank you so much for this opportunity, and we just ask, Lord, that your shekhinah glory would just settle. Lord, we thank you for technology. It's quite amazing, Lord, the thousands of miles that are between us all. But Lord, we just pray that now, in this moment, that you would be in our midst. Lord, we just pray for Darla that you would give her clarity of thought. Pray, Lord, that all of our hearts could be open, Lord, that we could just hear a message from you.

Lord, we just love you, and we're just so grateful for all that you've done in our lives. We just ask all these things in your name. Amen. Welcome, Darla. And we're just anxious and ready, and we're praying for you. I'll turn the time over to you now. All right. Thank you, Jameela. You'll have to forgive me if I get a little coughy because I'm still getting over a head cold. Can everyone hear me okay? Everything's clear? Okay. All right. Awesome. Perfect.

Yes, Jameela has been one of my soul sisters since I met her six years ago. I think instantly we felt a real connection, and she has been such an encouragement to my life and yet another proof of God's grace. And the topic today is one that is incredibly precious to my heart. Forgive me if I get emotional. Without that grace today, I would not be here. You know, really, I should be in a broken marriage. I should have my children in the world. My life should be in pieces.

But because of that grace of God and His unmerited favor, I am here. I'm able to share about Him, and I am excited to do that. I'm just praying that the Holy Spirit would open up your hearts and would open up my mouth in what He wants us to listen to and what He wants me to share. And I'm just excited and worshiping today a God so full of grace. And I just pray that each one of you would feel that grace today in your lives as you go forward. So, all right.

So there's a woman in the Bible that we're all very familiar with, right? She came into the house where Jesus was, a religious leader's house nonetheless, and broke a bottle of very expensive ointment over Jesus' feet, weeping. And you know, in Luke, it says she began washing His feet with her tears. Now, that's like true crying. It's not trickling like I have right now. And trickling can be beautiful. But this was like the ugly crying. I don't know if you've—yeah, I'm sure we've all experienced that.

You know, when you're just—you're crying, you're very swole out, and you're just flooded with tears. And that's the kind of crying that I think of when I think of this woman wiping the feet of Christ. She was saturating them. And then she dried them with her hair, His feet. She dried with her hair, kissing and rubbing His feet with that expensive perfume. Understandably, the Pharisee in the room, whose name was Simon, was horrified. I mean, does Jesus know who this woman is? She's a sinner.

She's not fit to be near Jesus Christ. She's not fit to be in His house, in her opinion, in his opinion, much less wiping His feet with her hair. And I'm—you know what? Just to be honest, I think if I was in a situation like that, I would probably gasp kind of in horror and back up a few steps. I mean, it would seem rather embarrassing and inappropriate to have that kind of emotion, not to mention long hair and tears and expensive perfume. It just seems kind of radical.

So then Jesus goes on to tell Simon the Pharisee a parable of two people who owed money to the same banker. One owed a great amount and one a smaller amount. Neither had the money to pay their debt. And so the banker forgave both debts. And Jesus asked the Pharisee which he thinks loved—which person does he think loved the banker more? And Simon the Pharisee answered, "The one who owed the most money." Now, I'm paraphrasing it just a little bit.

And Jesus told Simon, "You're right." And then Jesus painted a picture of my life and the driving force behind everything that I do. He did it in just a few words. He said, "Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little." Jesus then tells her, "Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." You know, and right there, my friends, is grace. It's grace unmerited, and it's grace undeserved. And for years, I was that woman.

I was that woman that was so broken, so ashamed, so trapped and confused, you know, striving to clean myself up to be good enough for God. You know, I grew up in a conservative Mennonite home, conservative, very conservative Mennonite church. And if there's anything I knew about, it was obedience. I mean, not that I did so well in that area. Okay, I did really poor in that area. But I certainly knew that anyone who wanted to escape those fiery flames of hell needed to obey.

And so I gave it my best shot, which obviously was not good enough, except, I mean, I kept trying, kept working hard at it, but I kept getting in the way of myself. I had so many passions, so many desires, and none of those seemed to line up with what I was told good Christians are, what good Christians do. And so it was rise and fall, mess and confess, clean up my act when things get out of hand, which, you know, was most of the time.

Until finally, like Jameela said, at twenty-five, married and with two babies that I loved deeply and that God used in my life to bring me to my knees. And He used and has continued to use my children to teach me the heart of Papa God, the heart of grace. My children have been some of my best teachers in that area. So finally, I gave up. I surrendered to the fact that I was going to that hell that I had heard about growing up all my life.

I lived in dread of it, but I recognized I was completely incapable of stopping myself. Praise God. Nothing was working. Prayed this intercessory prayer a couple of times. Nothing worked. And instead of my best efforts making a difference, they just seemed to drag me down. You know, Marlon, my husband, had given up several years before, and he made it very clear he had no desire to know a God who seemed about as cozy as a porcupine. You know, he seemed—I want to say he seemed callous.

I don't know that he really was. It was a cover-up. It was a facade. I was terrified. He just stopped caring. And then one weekend, we both came to face to face with grace, and our lives were changed irrevocably. You know, Jesus met us at our very worst. He met us when we had nothing good to give Him anymore. All we had, we had brokenness, a broken marriage. We had sin, so much sin, lust, pornography, anger. I mean, you name it, and we just about did it all.

And I knew, you know, I was at the point of just hopelessness. And that weekend, we came face to face with grace, and Jesus exchanged our brokenness and anger and sin with forgiveness and love. Mercy and grace washed over us, replacing our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Grace turned us inside out and upside down, smashing our preconceived ideas of who God is and what He wants from His people. And He transformed us into brand new creatures. And that is the key right there, my friends.

True grace will never leave a person unchanged, all right? It will shake them to the core. It's going to bring you to the foot of that cross, broken and weeping, ugly weeping. Grace is going to raise you to new life and fill you with a worship and awe that will infuse every aspect of your life. You will gladly break every expensive bottle of perfume that you have over the feet of Jesus. And we are completely unashamed of our great and desperate need of a Savior.

That is grace, holy grace and completely undeserved grace. You know, and so one thing that comes up sometimes, my testimony is more dramatic, right? I was living a life of great sin. I had tried to live a good life and couldn't get it together, and so I gave up. But you know, there's a lot of people, young people, I think, well, older people too, who have grown up in homes where they have gotten a picture of grace. They've seen their parents loving and serving Christ, and they themselves, you know, they want that.

And so pretty much all their lives, they've grown up wanting that. They've tried to follow the teachings of Christ from a young age. And so the question that comes up sometimes is, does that make His love for Jesus any less because He or she hasn't gone, like, into the lifestyle that I went into, the depravity of immorality or a godless life? Does that make their experience any less grace-filled? Does that make their love any less?

And I say no, because no matter how good you've been always or how good you wanted to be, no matter how well you've obeyed your parents or your church or the teachings of Christ, every one of us is in need of grace in equal amounts. There's a saying that I love from years ago when Marlon and I first got saved. One of our mentors told us, he said, "The ground at the foot of the cross is level." You know, you come to the cross as you are, broken and lost. You recognize your complete inability to save yourselves.

And Christ redeems our soul and sets us free to become a slave of Him. You know, nothing is left unturned in a life like that. And it doesn't, you know, irregardless of whether you've grown up always wanting to follow Christ or if you've grown up surrounded by fear and legalism and law like myself. I mean, the grace needed is the same, and the gift is the same. It's free. One of my children, and he's given me permission to share this, he's always been a good kid.

You know, he's always been one of those who, well, let's just say if we would have stopped having children after him, I told my husband, I said, "We would look like amazing parents because he is just that kind of young man." He's quick to help. He's quick to confess when he does something wrong. He's, you know, but ever since he was a child, he's like wanting to follow Christ.

And he made that decision, you know, at a relatively young age, not super young, but it wasn't until a few months ago when he reached a point in his life where he was really struggling. He fell in an area that was very important to him. And one night, we sat in the living room and we were talking about this. And I saw, I watched my son as his tears just ran down his face.

And he's like, "You know, I feel so terrible." He said, "What do I have to offer Jesus like this?" And I was like, "Son, that's exactly where Christ wants you. You come to Him with all your failures. You come to Him and you say, 'Jesus, I just want to give all of myself to you, all my brokenness.'" And I'm like, "That is where grace comes in." Without us recognizing that need, we don't need a Savior.

If we didn't need to be forgiven, if we didn't recognize our ugliness without Christ, we would never need that cross. We would never need a Savior. And you know, it was amazing watching that light come on in his eyes. And he said, "I've never looked at it quite that way." And I said, "Just praise God that He's opened your eyes to your need of Him as a Savior, that in and of yourself, you can do all kinds of good things and keep yourself pretty good.

But at the end of the day, you are just as hopeless without Christ as the alcoholic down the street or as some of these poor confused souls walking down the street here who aren't sure if they're men or women or what they're supposed to be doing. You are no less lost than that person is, no matter what kind of home you've grown up in. Grace sets you free from the demands of perfection and puts you on a path where obedience flows from a heart of relationship." I love that. "Relationship, trust, and love.

It washes over you in the cleansing tsunami of mercy and forgiveness, setting you free from the demands of the law and death." This was what was amazing to me when I met Grace. I began obeying because I wanted to, not because I have to. And that changed my whole world and my whole worldview. So let me put it this way. You have two women, one God. One woman, when asked to do something by God, hurries to obey. She obeys because she's afraid. She's afraid what will happen if she doesn't after all.

God is a holy, righteous God, all hell, fire, and high standards. And if there's any chance of staying on that narrow, straight path, obedience is not just expected, but required. So she obeys. But her soul is never completely at rest, and she's often overwhelmed how far she falls short of perfection. When she thinks of God, she doesn't think intimacy. I can assure you that when I thought of God as a young person growing up, I did not think intimacy. Intimacy and God were in two different camps in my mindset.

But this woman believes she believes that Jesus died for her. And she knows that according to those words written on paper and ink, she is loved by Him, but it's a head knowledge, not a heart knowledge. And then there's the second woman. When asked by God to do something, she delights in obeying a God she has an intimate relationship with.

There's no fear in that kind of love because she knows that even if God asks something excruciatingly hard, and sometimes He does, He is only asking because gold is refined by fire, and out of deep pain comes startling beauty. If she stumbles and questions and weeps and fear and hurt, she ultimately chooses obedience, not out of fear that God will condemn her if she doesn't obey.

After all, Jesus has taken her condemnation and nailed it to that bloody cross, but she obeys because she knows and loves and trusts, and she wants to do nothing that would mar her relationship with her Papa God. She has a healthy respect, also called fear of the Lord, not because she's afraid that He's going to call down punishment on her, but because of the holy God He is and His irresistible love for her.

She walks in repentance and forgiveness when she fails, and she experiences moments of overwhelming love and worship, where she would walk away from everything that she holds close on earth to walk into the arms of a God that she has an intimate, trusting relationship with. You know, the one thing I also had to think about, you know, being a mom, mom of 11 children, children are obviously a big part of my life. And I had to think, you know, when I ask my child to do something, I expect obedience.

I mean, my husband likes to say, "I don't want them to ask why. I want them to ask, I want them just to obey." Like when you tell someone to jump, you don't ask how high, you just start jumping. And that's kind of like you want obedience. You expect obedience because you're teaching them and you're training them obedience, not because you're stronger or more powerful than they are, but because ultimately you are teaching them how to obey God as they get older. That is the point of obedience.

But what if when you ask your child to do something, he cowers in fear and hurries to obey because he's afraid of what will happen if he doesn't? He's always looking over his shoulder, wondering if he measures up. He knows intellectually that you love him, but he's too afraid to trust and love your heart because of the big stick that he believes you are always carrying behind your back. You know, I think if we're all honest, we would say there's something very clearly wrong in that kind of a relationship.

You know, that's abuse and brokenness. It's fear and torment. It's not an intimate relationship of trust and love, but something that I have found in my own life, but also in a lot of women's lives, a lot of professing Christian women's lives, that that's how we live our life. Always looking over our shoulders, always wondering if we measure up, haunted by our humanity and never able to reach those levels of perfect obedience that we think we're required to live. And we try to do it in our own strength.

We fail to understand that grace means our sins and failures are nailed to the cross, paid in full, no condemnation, no fear of death, but a life filled with abundance and rest. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the meaning of grace. Just give me a second here. You know, I was actually kind of surprised when I looked up grace in the Webster's Dictionary, good old Webster. It means a whole list of things.

You have unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification, a virtue coming from God, a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance, approval, favor. I love that one. You know, I love being God's favorite. And that's just not for me. That's for everyone who has accepted the finished work on the cross. You are also God's favorite because you're a redeemed woman through the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace means mercy, pardon.

You've been forgiven, not just a little bit, but completely and privilege. As a daughter of God, I can experience great privilege. So about a year after salvation, one day in my Bible time, I sensed this quiet voice. You know, it's a quiet voice that made me sit up. It made me flinch, to be honest, and pay attention because I knew right away who that quiet voice belonged to. And he was making it clear that he wanted a relationship with me.

I remember in my heart him going, "What about me?" And I was like, "What about you, God?" You know, Jesus was my big brother. He was my Savior. I trusted him. That is the night I got born again, I met Jesus Christ. I actually met God also. I just didn't recognize it at the time. And while I respected God, I had a very healthy respect of him. I certainly didn't dream of having an intimate relationship with him. And so began my journey of learning to know God, to truly know him, not just about him.

You know, I have a personality. I tend to be either all in or all out. And I was very determined after becoming a Christian. I was going to be the best Christian ever, the best Christ follower. I was going to do it all. My heart was incredibly tender to the Holy Spirit. And it didn't take long for the Holy Spirit to start weeding out the things that needed weeding out. We all know what that's like, right?

So gentle, so persistent, so kind, not condemning, but just continually pointing us towards the foot of the cross. You know, my only problem was I was long on obedience and law, but short on grace. If people didn't believe things quite the way I thought they should, you know, I freely extended judgment and admonishment. I'm embarrassed to even admit that, but I was very passionate. I was very black and white.

And thankfully, I was surrounded by a lot of gracious Christians who kept loving me in spite of my big mouth and my even bigger opinions. They just showered their grace on me, and they just loved me unconditionally. And because of my past addictions to pornography, emotional lusts, and basically anything in the world, I struggled to believe that God could love me as much as someone who had never lived the way I had lived. I mean, how could he? He's a whole all my life I heard he's this holy God, righteous.

And I just imagined him up there surrounded by this, you know, fire and everything that I wasn't. And so I knew I was saved. My life had been completely transformed. Everything turned around. But I just thought I was kind of lesser than, you know, a little bit second. I mean, I couldn't keep my mouth shut about Jesus. I was witnessing to everybody I met. I was witnessing to the people in our development.

I started inviting these people into my home, these women for we had a brunch, and I was so pumped about sharing Jesus Christ.

And I shared Jesus with my family, which made them very uncomfortable, not because they didn't believe in Jesus, but because they were a little concerned that when I started using words like grace, filled with the Holy Spirit, you know, in the culture I grew up in, when people started using those terms, typically they started dropping things like obedience and not, you know, being separate from the world, what we perceived as. And so I started spouting words like, "I love Jesus." Like, "He has saved my soul.

I'm excited about him." And I got people, I got phone calls from family saying, "Well, what does this mean? Are you going to go charismatic now, now that you're talking about grace?" And I was like, "I have no idea. Like, I just want to follow Jesus. Like, I don't really care what he wants me to do. I don't think it'll mean getting crazy charismatic, but I just want to worship him. I just want to live for him." But irregardless, I still saw myself as used goods, saved but used.

And then there came a day when God opened my spiritual eyes to the fact that when I became a follower of Christ, that old Darla was dead. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, I was literally a new person. That Darla had been buried in baptism and risen in new life. My sins were under the blood forgiven and forgotten, and it was completely transformational. I don't have time to go into that. My whole journey through that and realizing that God loves me. He loves me because of Jesus Christ.

And he no longer sees the old Darla, but he sees someone who is as pure as the person who had never gone down that path that I had gone down. You know, and over and over as I struggled to break free from my old habits and ways of thinking, because those things are ingrained in us. And even as we come to Christ and we find forgiveness, we find new life. Our lives are transformed. You know, our brains were created to work a certain way, right? So those old habits died hard.

Those old, that old belief system that God is waiting to smack me over the head whenever I'm not obeying in a perfect way. That old belief really died hard. And you know, in my struggle, Marlon, he would just remind me over and over that that's not who I was anymore. He would go, "Darla, that's not who you are anymore. That was the old Darla. You're a new person." You know, he reminded me that grace, not law and fear, was now in control.

And so as I kept walking this journey, I began talking to God about how I wanted freedom from the parts of my past that haunted me. Having, you know, like I said, having been steeped in corruption, my mind struggled to break free. And I learned that with grace, instead of cowering away from God, I learned to run towards him. You know, when I made mistakes and when I stumbled and when I failed, I just ran to him and I would confess.

And there's another key thing I want to bring in here, and that is confession to believers is also incredibly important. For me, one of my biggest, I don't want to say confessors or confessees, I don't know. One of the people I confessed to the most was my husband, and for good reason. He had to live with me, but also because he's the one I sinned against the most, right? But I also learned to go to my children and to repent.

And what I didn't realize was that as I was doing that, as I would mess up, I mean, I had a very hot temper. And I guess I had absorbed this belief as a parent, you shouldn't go to your children and make yourself vulnerable. You just kind of, that would make you weak.

And I remember so clearly the Holy Spirit opening my eyes to the fact that when I sinned against my children, even if I thought it was their fault that I sinned in the first place, I needed to go to them in humility and true repentance and say, "I am sorry. I am wrong. Will you please forgive me?" Not only was I modeling, not only was I learning, I'm still learning to model grace, but they in turn were learning how to extend grace.

And so I think as parents, we rob ourselves and we rob our children of something very beautiful that as a parent, as a mother, if you're a mother today, or even if you're not a mom, it doesn't really matter. As a woman, young, old, middle-aged, if you, as you walk in humility, recognizing and repenting of the sins that you have sinned against people, even if you feel like the other person is also wrong, take responsibility for where you're at and repent. Allow grace to flood over you.

And as you repent of that, you will watch as people will extend grace to you. And it keeps you humble and it fills you with a life of humility and joy. There's no secrets. There's no facade. In walking in grace, there is no facade in grace. So gradually, as I continue walking with God and growing in my relationship with him, I began trusting him with every aspect of my life. And I do mean every single aspect.

My battles for my mind, my battle with anger and a short temper, my struggle to submit to my husband, which tended to, you know how it is, depending on how spiritual we feel on any given day affects how submissive we are for, you know, walking in the flesh, especially surrendering my sexuality as a woman and the fallout from believing Satan's lies for so many years in that area. And eventually, my wrestlings to understand a God who seemed far away when life seemed brutal and hard.

You know, I lost my mom to dementia. It's been over eight and a half years ago. In the years that she should have been enjoying her quiet house, her grandchildren, she loved her grandchildren. You know, she was only in her mid-50s when the illness started making itself very, very obvious. And I didn't understand. You know, I was still fairly early in my journey of trusting grace in my life and trusting this God of grace that I kept coming up against. And then my mom started losing her mind.

And nothing makes you feel more vulnerable to see someone who you love deeply and who has raised you to watch as they slowly lose the grasp of reality. And what was worse was that she knew it. She was fully aware of it. And I'll be honest, I was, I was, I was struggling. I was angry. I was heartbroken that God would allow something so terrible to happen to someone who loved life so much. And you know, we helped take care of my mom for the last couple of years of her life.

And I experienced grace in ways that I had never experienced those years. We lived, we had moved to the home farm to take care of my mom and to also work as a family. And my dad lived in a little house in the same property. And so every morning at 6:30, he would bring my mom over before he would go to work. You know, he was still working full time. So he would bring my mom over right at 6:30 in the morning. And that's pretty early for me.

But before we had moved to the farm, before I started taking care of my mom, I had sensed the Holy Spirit prompting me to get up at 5:30 in the morning to spend time with him. Now, okay, so I had just had baby number seven at the time. And you know what sleep is like with babies? I mean, it's not always much sleep. And I was like, "God, I'm only getting a few hours of sleep some nights, but I feel like you're wanting me to get up early.

So I'm just going to do this." I also had a set of twins who are now this amazing 13-year-olds. But at that time, there were these two-year-olds. And it was crazy. And so I needed an extra dose of grace. So I would get up at 5:30. And you know what? I didn't have time for deep biblical studies, deep theological stuff. I would just simply open the word of God. I would read some scriptures and I would just talk to God. It was nothing, nothing super put together or whatever.

But God started, he met me there in those 5:30 meetings in the morning. And he gave me grace to smile at those little twins with joy when they would show up at, you know, 5:45 because they were hungry for breakfast. And then we moved to the farm. And my mom started coming over every day. And because I had already been getting up at 5:30, I kept getting up at 5:30. My boys and Marlon were getting up at 4:00 to milk cows. So I would get up at 5:30. And you know, 5:30 is just not a fun time in the morning for me.

If there's ever a time I feel depressed, it's 5:30 in the morning. I just, it's, I don't know. I haven't had coffee and I haven't, I just want to stay in bed. And I would get up and I'd go downstairs and I would grab myself a cup of tea and I would sit down again with the word of God. And I would just say, "Jesus, I need you." Because this was not easy. I never wanted to live on the home farm. I hated my home farm. There were too many memories there. And I had told God, "I will go anywhere in the world, please.

Timbuktu, Mongolia. I don't care. Just not the farm." And that's where we went. And so I would meet with God in the morning. Morning after morning, I would get up. My heart would just feel kind of discouraged and sad. And I would just talk to God. I'd read a few verses and it never failed. By the time that my father would drop my mom off and she would come over to me and her face would light up, she still knew who I was. And she would say, "I'm so glad to see you, Darla.

I'm so glad you're here." I was security to her. And she would stand about, I don't know, maybe six inches behind me as I would make breakfast. And by then often, one of the twins was up, you know, 6:30, bright and early, smiling. And they would sit on the counter beside the stove as I would make breakfast. And I would marvel as the grace of God would pour over my soul. And I could truly greet my mother with a smile of joy. It wasn't something I had to put on. I'm not that good of a fake.

Like I just couldn't do that. But I truly was able to say, "Mom, it's good to see you. I'm good that I'm here for you." And I would welcome my boys in and my husband in. And we'd eat breakfast. And I just remember that season of life as being incredibly precious to me. God was teaching me grace. My grace is sufficient for you. And I look back on those years as some of the most precious years of my life. My mom died about two and a half years after we'd moved to the home farm.

And you know, my mom was always a very strong woman. She could take care of herself. She would say as much. Very strong. She had a couple of businesses and she worked from home, but she was just an incredibly smart person. And shortly before she lost her ability to speak and to think, she said, "Darla, all my life, I have been able to do everything myself, but now I can do nothing. And God has allowed this in my life to break me." And I remember thinking that is only the grace of God.

I saw God moving in a situation that felt completely unredeemable and so horrible. I didn't understand. And yet I saw and I felt and I sensed that we were covered and surrounded by the grace of God, undeserved grace, unmerited grace. I didn't do it all perfect. He didn't give me grace according to how well I obeyed him. He gave me grace according to how well, how big I saw my need of him. And I just go to him. And that's his heart to us as women.

We go to him in our brokenness and our broken marriages and our broken homes and our broken relationships with people in the body of Christ. And we go to him and we say, "God, we need your grace. I don't have the answers and I can't make myself like these people or I can't make myself forgive. I need your grace." And that is what he wants from you. He just wants you to recognize that you need him.

And that's beautiful that when you recognize that, you know, we also experienced grace when we found out that the little girl, and for those of you who didn't notice, we have 10 boys and one daughter. No problem. I love my boys. So incredibly proud of my hands and row of young men. But my daughter, Emily, ever since she was a little girl, she had cried out and prayed for a sister. "Dear Jesus, give me a sister." And when we were preparing to move to Africa, I discovered I was pregnant.

And I was like, "Dear God, I know I'm supposed to trust you in this, but this is like the worst timing ever. I'm supposed to move across the world pregnant. That just doesn't sound like fun." And I stood in front of the mirror one day and I was crying. I think I cry a lot, but anyway, I was crying and I said, "I just don't understand why now." And it just said, he was saying, "Trust me, I have a plan." So we moved to Africa. We find out a week and a half before we leave for Africa that we're having a girl.

And I say, "Now I understand. We're having a girl. Thank you, Jesus." And Emily was, we were all so excited. We get to Africa and a few months later, we discover that this little girl is going to die. She has 0% chance of living. She has anencephaly, which means she had no forehead, like from here up, it was completely flat. I had never experienced anything quite like that. I remember it felt like someone had punched me in my gut in the doctor's office. I was in a strange country. Nothing made sense to me there.

I didn't even understand what they were trying to say half the time because my English was so different than theirs. And I just said, "God, what am I having? Like how can this even be?" And we again found grace. We met grace. But you know what was really precious to me in that time of our life was my little girl. After Hadassah, we named her Hadassah Faith. She was, I had her about a week after we discovered she was going to die. And we held her, we kissed her, we wrapped her in her little pink blanket.

And we said goodbye, just for now. And I was worried about Emily because I thought, what happens to a little girl who's 12 years old, who's prayed for this baby sister for so many years? What happens when it seems that God just rips it away from her? It doesn't make sense. And I said, "God, please help her not to turn bitter against you." You know what I didn't take into account was that God cares for the heart of a 12-year-old as much as he cared for the heart of, I think I was around 35 at the time.

Age doesn't matter. You know, I found out a long time later that when I would take my afternoon naps, and I still take afternoon naps, I'm just saying, grace, grace gives me the strength to take an afternoon nap. But when I would take my afternoon nap, my little girl would go back to the back bedroom where all those totes of baby girl clothing were stored. I'm sorry, I didn't have totes of baby girl clothing. It was maybe like a quarter of a tote.

And she would get those little dresses out, those blankets, and she would just stroke them with tears running down her face. And she would tell God how sad she was that her little baby sister died. And God met her in that back room in Kisumu, Kenya. And he poured his grace into her heart. And I know that today, Emily is the beautiful young woman that she is. And part of the reason she is, is because she met God in a season of her life where she was so vulnerable and in so much pain. God showed up with grace.

You know, Emily never did receive her sister. After that, every time she would go, "What are we having?" We're like, "Well, what do you think?" She's like, "It's another boy." And you know, she's come to just love and treasure her brothers. And she surrendered her dream of having a baby sister. Although she says, "Mom, it's still possible. You're only 45." So we shall see. Grace, right? And I say it takes a lot of grace to have a baby at 45. But I know God is there and he, you know, he knows what's best.

You know, how could I not love and worship and trust a God like that? How can my children not love and worship a God that they see pouring grace into their parents' lives? And as we portray that grace to our children, as we learn to walk in grace, that grace is reflected off of us to our children. And they can never run away from it, even if they choose to walk away from God. And you know what? A young person can be raised in the best homes possible. But sometimes they still choose to walk away. And I know this.

I know that grace is pursuing them. I know grace is still pursuing every one of those people out there who have known and seen God moving and working, and they've chosen to walk away from grace. You know, I also discovered something else very astonishing to me. The more I experienced the grace of God, the more my heart extended grace towards others. You know, one day, I mean, it was amazing to me because I wasn't known for being very gracious. And one day I asked my husband if I'm becoming a weak Christian.

I had a horror of being a weak Christian. I wanted to be on fire. I wanted to rock this world for Jesus Christ. I didn't want to be some weak, some weak, you know, Christian. And he said, "No, you're learning grace." And I'm like, "Really?" And he's like, "Yeah, you're learning grace." And to be honest, I was a little terrified of that grace because it's so much easier to give strong opinions and answers than it is to recognize and admit that I, Darla Weaver, does not have everything figured out.

But the more God washed me in his grace, the more I found my heart moved in compassion instead of judgment. And I'm still learning and growing this. Believe me, I don't think I'll ever stop learning that until I step into eternity. I just need to check my time here. I have to what time, Christina or Jamila? Our meeting will end at 4:00. Sorry, I'm just trying to do the time change in my head. Okay. We'll have a period of Q&A before that too, so. Okay. All right. So then I'll just keep talking.

You know, one of the things as a young Christian who wanted to obey God desperately, I found myself putting works on the pedestal of my first love instead of Jesus Christ. He would do a beautiful work in my life, and I would in turn, I would put my works up there instead of Jesus. My heart was pure, but I was very passionate. And there came a season in my life when God opened my eyes to the pride that I crept in. And he took me to Revelations 2, where he's talking to the church in Ephesus.

They had many works, patient endurance. They couldn't bear evil. They had not grown weary, but he had one thing against them. They had abandoned the love that they had at first, and they were warned to repent, or he was going to remove their lampstand from its place. And that cut me to my heart. And I remember it just weeping in repentance.

You know, it was incredibly humbling to recognize that in my passion to keep truth pure and to hold a high standard, I was more in love with my works of self-righteousness than I was with God himself. And it was incredibly humbling. But as it is with God, his discipline drew my heart even closer to him because that's how grace operates, right? It shows us our sin, but instead of condemning us and pulling us into despair, grace offers forgiveness and healing.

And because of that grace, we find the strength to walk in obedience. We find joy, courage, hope. It brings us to our knees in repentance and then offers forgiveness. It lifts our hearts in worship and a longing to obey to an even greater level. Grace sets us free. You know, a woman who is really, truly walking in grace will not make excuses for sin or disobedience or character faults, but she recognizes that she will never be able to overcome on her own. And she'll cry out for God to do the work in her life.

And because he is a faithful God, he will answer, and she will marvel at the great things that God has done. And you know, as you grow in grace, it will affect every detail of your life. It will cause you to weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. And if you're married, grace holds a hand towards your husband, truly forgiving and delighting in the knowledge that God is covering you with grace, even if things aren't what you wish they would be.

And if you're unmarried, grace washes you with quiet confidence and trust, believing that God's hand is on your life and you can rest in his all-knowing providence. Grace shows up new every day, sometimes earth-shattering, and sometimes in the quietest whisper in the deepest recesses of your soul that you will miss if you're too busy being a Martha instead of a Mary. Grace changes everything. And this is something that I have found so amazing.

The more that you walk in grace and the more that you cry out for God to show you his grace, you will irresistibly draw the hurting and the lost and the seeking and the lonely because of the quiet warmth of the Holy Spirit filling you with grace. You know, it's been 20 years since Marla and I have had our lives transformed, and I am still blown away by the grace of God in my life personally.

Just in the last number of months, he has met me in an even deeper way and showing me his heart for me and relationship with me as his daughter and how much he loves us, how much he loves each one of you. So I'm going to close out with a couple of verses in 1 Peter that grabbed my heart recently. "To those who, through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, have received a faith as precious as ours, grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Ask him for it, pursue it, revel in it. True grace will cost you everything, but in return, it will give you a rich and satisfying life and relationship with the one who has created you." All right. We have 10 minutes. Thank you so much, Darla. I think my heart is overflowing. And I think many of your hearts are overflowing too. And I want to hear from you. Who has a question that they'd like to, anything, a question or even a testimony?

I'd love to hear someone else's story of grace. I think we can all, yeah, when that grace meets us, it's life-changing. I, yeah, a lot of what you shared, Darla, resonated with me so much. Yeah, tears and wow, it's amazing. And God bless you for that. What if you're the mom with the big stick? The mom that it's so easy to get out the big stick. You know, I feel like having been raised, you know, where obedience is the focus, you know, kind of the law kind of hangs over you.

You're that person that obeys because you're afraid. You're afraid of your dad. You're afraid of the church. You're afraid of God. You're afraid of hell. You know, that's so what if you're that mom that is giving that to your children? You know, I realized it came to the place where I realized that it was easier for me to get out my stick and or whatever and punish them and to keep them all in line than it was for me to extend grace to them and be soft and just, I don't know.

I think that's probably been my biggest challenge is how I guess it's in what I'm experiencing and the grace I experience from God and what he gives me has helped me. But I feel like I'm still have so much to learn in relation to that. Yeah, I can very much relate to that. I think especially, you know, in our marriage, Marla is more the disciplinarian and I am more the mercy. So I would tend to let things build up inside of me and then I would blow my top, so to speak. Like I would just until I couldn't take it.

But I learned as I continued to ask God to show me who he is. You know, he wants us to ask just to come to him and say, "God, I want to know you. I don't know what that looks like. I just want a relationship with you." Just asking him that. And then as that happens in your heart towards him, and you don't always see it when it happens right away. You know, I can look back now over the years and I can see the hand of God working, which gives me hope and faith for the future.

But as I recognized who I was in God and recognized his grace towards me, it changed how I dealt with my children. And especially I would say like for Marla, who tended to use law a lot quicker, we both had to come kind of meet in the middle. We find ourselves parenting very differently now than we did, our older ones.

It's not what I would call, it's not permissive parenting, but it is grace-based in the fact that when I find a situation happening that I, you know, you feel that reaction in your heart where you're just like, "Oh," like I tell myself to just step out for a little bit. Or I'll send my child to my room for a while and I say, "Can you just go to my room?

I'll be up." And I give myself time to calm down a little bit, to just think through things and to let some of the heat die down in both of us, both the child that sinned and my own heart so that I don't sin. You know, I say, "Go to your room or go to my room. I'll be up shortly." And then I cry, "I'll go to the bathroom. I don't care where it is. I'll say, 'God, help me. Help me to portray grace to this child,'" but not in a way that portrays God as a God that doesn't sin doesn't matter because sin is sin.

And if your child sins, there needs to be a consequence. But then just to talk to your child and to just be like, I've been honest with my children just this week in a situation where there were two children that were at it with each other. And I said, "You know, I'm not really sure what to do here." Because how you treat each other will affect how you treat, you know, your wife someday. Of course, this was one of two of my sons.

But I just discovered that gradually as I continued to grow in grace, you know, we were supposed to God, the Bible talks about growing in grace and knowledge. As you grow, you will find organically it's changing towards your children. And then another key for me was I had given my children permission many years ago when they were young.

I said, "If you see," I said, "You know how mom gets angry and they're like, 'Mm-hmm.'" And I said, "Okay, so when you find my, when you see mom is getting angry, I'm giving you permission to tell me that. I'm giving you permission to say, 'Mom, you're getting angry.'" And you know, I only told them that after I knew God was asking me to humble myself to my children because that was very hard for me to think of doing that.

And I said, "God, if you're asking me to repent to my children and you're asking me to make myself that vulnerable, you're going to have to give me the strength to do that." But that is what they did. And they would say, "Mom, I think you're getting a little bit," you know, like, they were scared to say I was getting angry. They would just be like, "Mom, you know," and I would be like, and the Holy Spirit would be right there. And I would be like, "You're right.

And I am sorry." And there were many times that we would just sit on the floor and we would just pray. And I would like, "Guys, I'm feeling angry, but this is not from the Lord." And then just to repent to them that even when they did wrong, go to them and say, "I'm sorry for my sin." Not, "I'm sorry, but it's your fault that I've seen in the first place." No, no, no, that's not repentance.

And the day that I heard my like five-year-old son, maybe he was six, go to his younger sibling and say, "I'm sorry, Emily, for what I did to you," without me telling him to, I was like, "That's grace." And every time you mess up, you just go repent to them. And actually, you confess it to them. You repent. Sometimes we cry together. And it drew our hearts together and it portrayed grace to them. And I found it affecting how I raised my children. Still affects it. I'm still learning. I still have to repent.

Thank you. Yeah. I did say that if you ask a question, we'd love if you could turn your video on to ask the question, or if you'd like to put one in through the chat, remember that's an option too. Who's next? Anyone else? Darla, thank you so much for coming on today and talking. I am a little bit hot-headed as well. And I never realized I was actually until I became a Christian. And wow, I have a little bit of an anger problem. And you know, children touch your buttons and they know how to get under your skin.

And so it's something that I'm learning to deal with right now. I do need a lot of God's grace. It's extremely humbling to go to your small child and ask for forgiveness. So I'm learning to do that. Sometimes, you know, my children are quite young. Elliot, my oldest, is only four. And sometimes I don't know if he really understands, but I'm hoping that he will learn from it. I always thought I needed to be a perfect parent in front of my children.

And you know, I know now that that's not right because that's not true. That's not the way life is. So I like your advice about, you know, go up to my room and I'll be up in a minute so you have time to de-escalate. That's good. And I really like the idea of, you know, if mommy's getting mad, let me know because then, you know, you hear these little innocent beings that look up to you saying, "Mommy, you're getting angry. I could really see that helping me." So thank you for that advice.

Just on that note, do you have any other advice? Sometimes I really do feel the Holy Spirit working within me and I say or do things and I'm just like, "Oh, that was not me. That was the Spirit working within me." And I can't even believe that I had that in me to completely de-escalate the situation and make a positive outcome. But it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes I give into my flash before I even think I'm yelling or something like that.

So any other advice you have kind of on that area, I'd be happy to hear it. You mean how to keep yourself from yelling when you feel that heat rising up? I mean, you know, it's kind of like our muscles, the more you use it, the better, the stronger they get. I think our spiritual muscles are similar to that.

For me, I just, I've learned to recognize the triggers in my, like when I feel that certain feeling rising up inside of me when I, because that was one of my weaknesses as a young Christian and as a young mother, I demanded perfection from myself. And I felt like if I don't do this right, then I'm going to be the cause of my children not walking with the Lord in their adulthood. And so what that does is create a standard of perfection that you can never come up against, that you can never measure up to.

And so understanding that grace isn't being perfect. Grace is recognizing when you have done wrong and then going back and repenting to them and confessing it humbly. And so for me, when I sense that, well, first of all, when I realize that I'm not supposed to be a perfect parent, if I was a perfect parent, able to parent my children perfectly, they wouldn't need Jesus. I would need Jesus. They need to see my desperation for Jesus Christ. They need to see my desperation and my vulnerability in front of them.

That's why I think confession in front of the body of Christ is very important. I love, that's why I think a regular time where the body of Christ gets the local body and there's a time of sharing confession because that is a place to confess sins against our children also. And I've had to do that when I was, you know, lost it with my husband. And there were times in our weekly communion where the Holy Spirit was like, "You need to confess this to the body.

How free do you want to be?" And so I think as we, like for me, is recognizing I'm not called to be a perfect parent. I'm called to be a surrendered parent. I'm called to be a parent who points my children towards the cross. And so I took that burden of perfection off of my shoulders and I said, "Okay, Jesus," and then show me what it looks like to be the mom that you're calling me to be. And then when I find myself getting that hot feeling inside of me, I mean, I'm just like starting to bubble.

I'm starting to like, I usually try and take a step back. And that is somewhere I have not been maybe being consistent in my training of my children when we're not heated. So I look at my training, you know, where am I missing it in my day-to-day training with my children? Am I letting things go? And then it builds up inside of me. And then when I feel that just that anger rising that I know I'm going to lose it if I'm not careful, I will just, I will send myself to my room.

And I'll just be like, "Guys, I need a break for a minute, okay? Just give me a few minutes." And what I have learned is this has been a great tool to teach my children as they have gotten older is like, because I have some very hot-headed children. And I'll be like, "Guys, I know what it's like, okay? So I want to help you learn some tools to control your anger. Just take, you have permission to go into another room when you find yourself getting hot." And they have done that.

I have heard them literally pray out loud to God to please help them because they're going to lose it with a sibling. I don't know if that is any help at all. Yeah. I know it's a lot of pressure being a mom. You know, you see when you see your son angry and hit your daughter, you're like, "Oh, that's my fault because I'm angry sometimes." And you know, but I'm learning a lot about myself. And you're right, we're not perfect. And that's a good point that we can't be perfect because otherwise we wouldn't need Jesus.

My husband last night was telling me that, you know, I do strive for perfection. And he goes, "You're never going to be perfect, but." Right. That's right. Yeah. It's a good reminder. And it's so important that our children and just anyone, even working with new believers that come into our body, you know, I'm thinking of people that are looking for Christ that aren't believers yet. I have discovered that they need to see us without having everything perfectly put together.

They need to see that we're real human beings who struggle and cry. They need to see us repent sometimes. They need to see us go back and apologize and to be real about who we are. And then they see Jesus working. It draws them. Amen. I have a question. You have all those boys. I have five boys and two daughters. And sometimes the house just gets so loud. And the only way I can be heard is if I yell. And I really do not like yelling. Like I've even thought maybe I should get a whistle or something like that.

But what do you do when your house gets too loud and you need to get everyone's attention? And everyone says, "You're yelling, Mom." I'm like, "Yeah, I know. I don't want to be yelling. I'm not yelling. I'm raising my voice so you can hear me." Wow. Yes. I know the feeling. One of my favorite things is go outside. That's what the outside is for. So one of the basic rules we have made as a family is no yelling in the house. We have inside voices. We have outside voices.

Now, I am not by nature like a very quiet person. Like we love to laugh in our family. We do things noisily. We laugh loud. But we do try to, and probably living in the city has helped us with this, living in an apartment. We don't live in an apartment now, but we did for a while. And that is, you know, keep it toned down in the house.

So we just, you know, like I tell my four-year-old when he has a really naturally loud voice and I say, "Son, use your inside voice, not your outside voice." And he'll instantly drop his voice a couple. Or if they're, if typically if my children, if my boys get too noisy, then that means they're kind of getting too rowdy. They're starting to go crazy loud. And so then I'll just remind everyone that, you know what, in the house, we don't act like that.

And so I'll either send them outside or I'll have them all sit on the couch for 10 minutes quiet. But yeah, there's times I have raised my voice and said, "Guys, this isn't enough. Like I cannot, you know, I'm a noisy person, but I can only handle so much noise before it just becomes stressful." So yeah, I just, yeah. We work on just having them just speak quieter on a regular basis. Like, "Guys, tone it down. Like you're not living on the farm anymore. You're not, we don't live in a barn. We live in a house.

So let's act like it." But it's a continual battle, yes. So Darla, I have a question for you. Just knowing how, you know, growing up, you grew up in a setting, you know, like a lot of us know about where you kind of probably knew how to, you know, make it look pretty good but not be quite there. So as you, I was just thinking, I'm not sure if I can get this together. As you found God's grace in your life, have you balanced that with the fear of man that you used to have?

Like do you have any words of wisdom for us when it comes to that, like dealing with the fear of man? You're saying finding grace, like balancing grace and fear of man, is that what you're asking? Right. I just thought, you know, I'm sure that's something that you've worked with to be free from. Because I think sometimes, at least for myself, in my parenting, a lot of my trauma comes because of my fear of man. Right. Right. Yeah.

I mean, there again, it's been a journey of years of just, you know, asking God to help me to do the things that he calls me to do because he's asking, not because it's going to make anyone happy. Because I can be a people pleaser. I can be, you know, a person. I want everyone to just like me. You know, I just want them to think I'm a nice person. And so what happened, especially in parenting, was I found myself disciplining my children so that they would make me look good. And that applies to everything.

Doing this because it makes me look good or this person thinks this or I need to look, act or think like this because it makes me look good. It really comes down to pride. It comes down to it's all about me versus glorifying and lifting Jesus Christ. And so, you know, I don't know that there's really a black and white answer to that other than just for me, it's been a journey of when I find that, when I find that wrestling happening in my heart, I don't know that that wrestle will ever completely go away.

But when I find that wrestling happening, like that fear of man wanting to stand up and make me do and act certain things, I just try and take a step back. And sometimes my husband can help me with this because he's not so emotionally based. But like what's driving these feelings? What's making me feel like this? And often it's because I've taken my eyes off of Christ and I've put them on myself and other people.

And then just simply going to the cross again and saying, "God, I want to, I want," because I remind myself someday I will stand in front of God and I will answer to him. And when I want to know that what I am doing is honoring him and it's his heart. At that point, it's not going to matter what the rest of the world thinks about me and my child training or my being a wife or anything, you know? Like it's only going to matter what Jesus Christ thinks and my heavenly Father.

And so I bring myself back to that again and again. And I find that that helps to lessen that struggle with that fear, that fear of man and performance. You know, I want to be a Christian who's based on relationship, obedience-based relationship, not performance. And it's a work of the Holy Spirit, truly. Yeah. Because I can really, I understand just what you mean, you know, in having a span of children and the difference, like you said, not permissive parenting, but the grace-based parenting.

I think one of the things that I enjoy so much is having my children get closer and closer to their adult years. Right. And then just walking along with them because, you know, as moms, we tend to be fixers. And then as the children get bigger, we can't fix all their issues anymore. We need them to understand God's grace in their life. Right. Right.

Well, and as you understand that grace, what I have found is so amazing is that as you accept it from God, it releases you from, like as your children get older, there's that fear of, are they going to walk away from everything that we've worked so hard to teach them? Are they going to get a hold of this grace? And for me, recognizing that I want them to have a relationship with God and God is big enough to guide their hearts. And I need to release them to him as they get older. I need to hand them over.

That doesn't mean that I'm not an important influence, but it means I'm no longer controlling them. But I'm choosing, I'm extending grace, not if they fail, but when because, you know, they're going to mess up. I mean, I mess up. And sometimes young people mess up in pretty big ways, in ways that are devastating. And for me, when God started doing a work in my heart saying, "Darla, surrender that control of your children to me.

Trust me that my grace is big enough to cover your children and start taking," you know, it doesn't mean I don't have a voice in their life. And I praise God that every one of my children so far, they treasure me and Marlon's opinions and our voice and they want our advice. And so I'm happy to give my advice. But it's not from a place of a control. And there again, that's a work of the Holy Spirit. Like help me to love my children unconditionally with unconditional grace.

Not that I excuse their sin, not that I explain it away, but so that they know that they're loved. Because it's that love that drew me to the, it's that love that saved my soul. The law had already condemned me, but it was grace. It was grace that set me free. And it was God's grace and mercy and love that redeemed me. And I want my children to see that. I love them unconditionally. Yes. That's so beautiful. Does someone else have a question that's just burning that they'd love to ask? Or a thought?

The time is growing closer for where we should be closing, but I don't want to cut off someone if they have something they'd like to add. Hi, Darla. Thank you so much for sharing today. That was such a blessing. I just want to say that there are some things that really resonate with me in hearing your testimony. There has recently been a time in my life where I feel like I've had to come to that ugly weeping place and lay everything down besides that I only will find my security in Jesus Christ.

And that there's just no place quite like that. Amen. And just want to bless you for making yourself vulnerable like that today. Sometime it would be really interesting to hear you talk a little bit more about what you just briefly commented on when you mentioned coming to a place where you embraced your sexuality. And that's probably a huge topic, probably more than what we have time for today. But I didn't know if there's anything that you just had real briefly on that to share. Yeah. That is a very big topic.

And it's one that, again, is very, very close to my heart because of my misconceptions, misunderstandings, the lies I was believing as a woman, what that looks like and as my sexuality as a woman. But grace played such a part in pointing me towards a God of intimacy and a God who has created me as a woman with womanly desires and longings and whether they were emotional or physical. Like those are all gifts that God has created us.

And what his heart is, is that those questions and desires would pull us towards him because he's given us those desires. And you know, yeah, it's the tip of the iceberg. But for me, just understanding the heart of God and intimacy, whether it's an intimate relationship with him as my Father God or as a wife in a marriage relationship, bringing God into that, getting on my knees, literally getting on my knees before God and saying, "You know what? I want to understand how and why you created me this way.

And I want you, I'm inviting you into the most vulnerable parts of my heart and life, into my sexuality as a woman. I was very, very broken in so many ways. And I had given myself over to so many lies. And then when I met Christ, I had to deal with all those lies. I had been believing that who a woman is, what defines her worth, how God views her. And I had to literally not only start over, but I had to redeep, I had to deprogram my beliefs. And God was so gracious.

And one of the ways he did that was through my husband, the Holy Spirit, giving him so much wisdom. And I just learned, you know, when you start talking to God about your sexuality, how more vulnerable can you get? Because we tend to think our sexuality is in one place and God is in another place. But God is saying, "I created you as a woman. I created you with each one of these longings and desires.

Now let me show you what that's supposed to look like." And he shows us that by coming into the very intimate parts of our heart and life. But we have to welcome him into that. And when you do that, I didn't know what that looked like. And when I did that, I said, "Okay, God, here I am. I'm inviting you." There was no stone left unturned anymore. I had nowhere to hide. I said, "Here I am, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now what?" And he has showed, it was absolutely a huge turning point in my Christian walk.

And I would say it was probably about four or five years after I was saved when I was already walking in a lot of healing. But I didn't understand the kind of intimacy that God wanted with me. And so it was incredibly vulnerable to me. But let me tell you, sisters, there's nothing better. And he has shown up in ways that have rocked my world and has made me fall in love with him in ways that I never dreamt possible. So it's worth pursuing to start asking him all of it. I don't care how ugly it is.

Thanks so much for that. And as much as I hate this, but I think we need to bring this to a close. It's been such a wonderful time. And I think that we all, I just, yeah, I just love how you said that, Darla. We can all just ask God. Amen. Just ask him and unleash his grace and his wisdom in our lives. And I just want to say right now that just letting you all know that Lord willing, Darla is planning to join us again in March. And we're going to have a special event, especially geared toward young girls.

But I think it's something that we'd all find interesting to listen to. And we hope that you all will join us for our next scheduled talk, which is Lord willing in February with Deborah Brissell, faithfully running the race, seeing eternity, running the race faithfully to the end, even unto death. Our sisters and brothers have done this through the ages. I will be presenting a glimpse into the lives of some early Christian and Anabaptist sisters who faithfully ran their race toward Christ and eternity.

So we're looking forward to that. This is incredible how God is using this platform. I'm here in Kenya and it is almost past midnight, but this has been a wonderful way to spend this time. So I just want to say God bless you all. Till the next time, go in grace. Let's embrace that grace. And I know that if we all can embrace that grace, then we are going to be movers in the kingdom. Darla, do you mind closing for us in prayer? I would love to. I was actually going to ask if I may have that privilege. Yes.

Well, I'd love to give it to you. So let's just all join together across the miles. Go ahead, Darla. All right. Father God, I just thank you so much for your love, for your mercy, and for your grace, God, that you have for each one of your children. God, I just ask that each one of the women on here today, Father, that they would just have such a hunger and a longing to know your grace to a deeper level.

Father, in my heart, as I continue to grow in grace, Father, and learning about your love and for us, children of yours, Lord, I just pray that you would fill us up, make us overflow in such a way that it comes, that everyone that comes in contact with us, Lord Jesus, that they would sense you, that they would know that there is someone who walks with God. And Father, that is only done through the power of your Holy Spirit.

And so I pray that grace and power over each sister on here today, Lord God, I just pray your grace would cover them, that they would find your grace in the very smallest of ways as they serve you, Lord, and that they would just rejoice in being your daughter. I just love you. We praise you. We worship you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Darla, for joining us today. God bless you, everyone. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you so much, Darla. Thanks, Jamela. Yes. See you next time.

Walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work.