It feels like the topic of sexual identity is more prominent now than ever. People are discussing it, our kids are asking about it and people are struggling now with it more than ever. The question is how do we love each other the way Jesus would want us to love while discussing these questions and choices. Join Stacy, Jacque, and special guest Jeff Baxter, the Next Gen Pastor at Mission Hills Church, as they discuss how to handle these conversations in a healthy way.

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Resources

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Books:

📚 Living in a Gray World: A Christian Teens’ Guide to Understanding Homosexuality | Preston Sprinkle

📚 People To Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue | Preston Sprinkle

📚 Embodied: Transgender Identities, The Church and What The Bible Has To Say | Preston Sprinkle

📚 What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? | Kevin DeYoung

📚 Go and Grow: 5 Keys to Moving Your Faith Forward and Adulting in the Real World (Student, Mentor/Parent editions) | Jeff Baxter

Webpages:

📱 | https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx

📱 | https://www.beresfordresearch.com/age-range-by-generation/

📱 | https://www.prestonsprinkle.com

📱 | https://www.centerforfaith.com

📱 | https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/topics/lgbt/

📱 | https://www.gotquestions.org/sexual-immorality.html

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Anchor + Waves: Channel Credits

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🎙️ HOST:: Jacque Carlson, Stacy Ludwig

🎉 SPECIAL GUEST:: Jeff Baxter

🎛️ PRODUCER + MIXING:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions + The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Christmas can be filled with all the joy of the season but sometimes the true meaning of Christmas gets pushed aside unintentionally with all the fun things we try and do. Join Stacy and Jacque as they talk about how to walk through the season a little more intentionally. The ladies discuss ideas to help you plan and respond to everything coming at you a little less. They discuss ways to consider what you want the season to look like and how to keep it about Jesus.

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Resources

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Kids Books

📖 Advent Story Book: 24 Stories to Share Before Christmas by Antonie Schneider

📖 An Orange for Frankie by Patrica Polacco

📖 I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by Lloyd and Karmel Newell

📖 Jotham’s Journey series by Arnold Ytreeide

📖 Joy to the World: Christmas Stories From Around the Globe by Saviour Pirotta

📖 Let There be Light” by Illustrated by Jane Ray

📖 The Christmas Blessing by Erin Guendelsberger

📖 The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado

📖 The Legend of the Candy Cane by Lori Walburg

📖 The Tale of Three Trees by Angela Elwell Hunt

📖 The Three Gifts of Christmas by Jennie Bishop

Family Advent

🗓️ Jotham's Journey : A Storybook for Advent by Arnold Ytreeide

🗓️ Bartholomew's Passage : A Storybook for Advent by Arnold Ytreeide

🗓️ Tabitha's Travels : A Storybook for Advent by Arnold Ytreeide

🗓️ Family Advent Devotional by Matt & Lauren Chandler

Devotions

🙏 Emmanuel by Ruth Chou Simons

🙏 In the Lord I Take Refuge by Dane C. Ortlund

Movies

🎥 Best Christmas Pageant Ever

🎥 How the Grinch Stole Christmas the original or 2018 “The Grinch”

🎥 I Can Only Imagine

🎥 It’s a Wonderful Life

🎥 Klaus

🎥 The Muppet Christmas Carol

🎥 The Star - Animated

🎥 The Very First Noel Christmas: Journey with Three Wise Men on Their Wondrous Quest to Find the Newborn King

🎥 Veggie Tales: The Star of Christmas

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Anchor + Waves: Channel Credits

=============================

🎙️ HOST:: Jacque Carlson, Stacy Ludwig

🎛️ PRODUCER + MIXING:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions + The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Welcome back to another exciting episode here on Anchor + Waves! We love bringing you stories, ideas, and tools to help you through the tough and joyful moments in your life. And pressing on our hearts has been the topic of "marriage" over this last year. So what do we do if we struggle in our marriage? How do we honor God as things seem tough? Today we have Coletta Smith back on to talk about guarding your marriage from sudden catastrophe and the slow drift. 

Also, stick around for another "I'm Diggin' It" with Kelly McSparran as she and Stacy go through some really cool aspects of life they're enjoying.

Deb Mitchel, director of Re engage, and Eileen and Mike Sienkiewicz, are sharing with us how they took their marriages to the next level and how you can too. Re|engage is a ministry here at Mission Hills (created by WaterMark) that offers hope to marriages by helping couples move toward oneness through stories of grace and teaching, focusing on things like humility, confession, forgiveness, and commitment. Don’t you want to be fulfilled in your most intimate relationship? Whether your marriage is a solid “8” and you want to get to a “9” or you’re stuck on “2” and wondering if you’re going to make it through another year . . . settle in and listen to this.

Join Stacy, Jacque, and special guest Kim Fearing as they discuss the “Importance of an Invitation”. Kim’s calling is guiding women towards rediscovering the joy, laughter, and purpose in their everyday lives. As a speaker and writer, she delivers a vulnerability and humor while connecting God’s fundamental truths about who He uniquely designed each of us to be. She will challenge each woman to consider God’s calling on her life and to boldly live it out as an adventurer. In this podcast, the ladies discuss the Bible as a collection of invitations, that we are called to follow this example and invite others into God-ordained moments that grow us as well as them.

When I hear the word submission, it often makes me cringe. It can lead us to believe it demands a shrinking of ourselves, a lessening or deforming of who we are. But I wonder if Esther can give us a different picture of submission being an empowerment of who God created us to be in his image as servant leaders. What if the deformation of ourselves is a version of compliance, not submission? One is the outcry of fear and the other of trust. Esther does things her way, but not out of rebellion. It is birthed from a place of trusting in a God she confidently knows is a Rescuer who freely extends his favor to her because of who she is. She still wrestles with the how, but in the end, she embraces who she is to creatively do things her way, while mysteriously also doing it God’s way.

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Reflection:

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✅ When you hear the word submissive, what emotions does that evoke? Where has submission not gone well in your life? On the flip side, can you think of a time where being submissive to authority has brought you peace and assurance?

✅ Are you in a situation where compliance has become the virtue rather than submission? Are you able to shift it from positional into building relationships? Can you communicate safe boundaries and expectations? Or has it gotten to a place where deformation is happening rather than transformation? 

✅ What is your “Hineni” that you’ve been dragging your feet on? What has God been asking you to do that you’re delaying in your response of Here I am. Use me. Send me.

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The Story of Esther:

A Product of Anchor + Waves

Channel Credits

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🎙️ HOST:: Kim Fearing

🎛️ PRODUCER:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions and the Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Posting on social media can often feel freeing and sometimes necessary but may not helpful. Join Stacy, Jacque and special guest Frank Trimble, Executive Director at Family Time Training, as they discuss how to evaluate and filter your posts before you put them online. The group will talk about how potential blind spots, hurts, concerns and relationships can impact how you post.

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Anchor + Waves: Channel Credits

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🎙️ HOST:: Jacque Carlson, Stacy Ludwig

🎉 SPECIAL GUESTS:: Frank Trimble w/ Family Time Training

🎛️ PRODUCER + MIXING:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions + The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

We often speak of our “calling,” but what does that really mean? Mordecai exemplifies the model of where we find our identity, because that is where we will find our favor. We must know the caller before we can know how to respond.

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Reflection:

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✅ What would you name as your “calling” other than following Christ?

✅ If it’s true that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less, how often do conversations and actions revolve around you? Do you model self-forgetfulness?

✅ “What if you were created for such a time as this?” - What does that mean to you, personally?

✅ Who is the “caller” in your life, or who consumes your thoughts? In other words, who has your attention?

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Scripture Reading:

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📖 Psalms 30

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The Story of Esther:

A Product of Anchor + Waves

Channel Credits

=============================

🎙️ HOST:: Kim Fearing

🎛️ PRODUCER:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions and the Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

The things we put in front of us every day can have a great influence on our focus and attitude. God designed us to be free, not to be caught up in the daily gains and losses that can be a distraction from the good God has for us. Join Stacy, Jacque, and special guest, author Whitney Lowe as they discuss ways to adjust our focus so that we can be filled and purposeful with our lives.

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Resources:

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🔗 How To Take A Personal Retreat PDF

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Anchor + Waves: Channel Credits

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🎙️ HOST:: Jacque Carlson, Stacy Ludwig

🎉 SPECIAL GUESTS:: Alayna Lehman

🎛️ PRODUCER + MIXING:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions + The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

There is none who Haman loves more than himself. The real danger arises when we surround ourselves with those who validate our ego. Pride, like lust, is a thought sin, and unseen sin can be the sneakiest. So, how do we take our thoughts captive and bend them to Christ out of submission and humility? When we seek favor from within ourselves, we will always live from a place of unrest and anxiety. 

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Reflection:

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✅ How would you define pride? I threw out a lot of descriptive words in what Samuel associated with pride: disobedience, rebellion, lack of trust and idolatry, anger, fear, insubordination. How would you customize a definition that is specific to your life and struggle?

✅ What prideful parallels did you begin noticing in your personal life? What people, circumstances, and events stir up anger and insubordination within you?

✅ What areas of your life feel impossible to be submissive and find serenity?

✅ Make a list of things you could do this week that might put you in positions of humility?

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Scripture Reading:

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📖 2 Corinthians 10

📖 Philippians 4:8

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The Story of Esther:

A Product of Anchor + Waves

Channel Credits

=============================

🎙️ HOST:: Kim Fearing

🎛️ PRODUCER:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions and the Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Amidst our current culture that still struggles to say “no” and find our “best yes,” we meet a king who is the ultimate people pleaser - always saying “yes” at any cost in order to gain favor and maintain his ego. He seems to beg others to find their favor in him, as he estimates his own worth based on their impressions of him. But finding favor from others demands scorekeeping, and the seduction of idolatry - of oneself.

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Reflection:

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✅ Whose favor are you seeking more than that of God? What about them causes you to desire their favor and acceptance more than God?

✅ In what subtle ways do you petition others to seek your approval and favor?

✅ Earlier I said the line: “I don’t have favorites, but if I did, it would be you.” Favor is the Latin root of the word favorite and means “preferred before all others of the same kind.”

Can you believe you are God’s favorite and preferred before all others of the same kind? Why or why not?

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Scripture Reading:

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📖 Psalm 84:11

📖 Romans 2

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The Story of Esther:

A Product of Anchor + Waves

Channel Credits

=============================

🎙️ HOST:: Kim Fearing

🎛️ PRODUCER:: Lepard Productions

🎨 CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland

A Product of Lepard Productions and the Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO.

© Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved