[00:00:00] Speaker A: I knew there was something that I was missing on my journey.
There was something in my heart that just was not going to be met through this wild living, through searching on my own.
It was a real, true God who saw me, who seemingly gave me space to figure this out.
And whenever I was at the very cusp, the very end of this season of my life, when God just knew, all right, if we take this one step further, girl, I'm not going to let you go. I can't let you go. You are mine. I chose. I chose you.
And he met me in There was no one else around. I was in an empty house. I had no Christian influences in my life at all.
This was a real encounter that I had with a still, small, gentle, kind, loving father who saw me and met me in my real, true need.
Foreign.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: If you've ever tried to find peace by walking away from God, or from the judgment or expectations that once made faith feel heavy, Heather's story reminds us that freedom apart from God can feel good for a while, but it rarely satisfies. Real peace begins when we stop running and discover the One who never stopped pursuing us.
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Welcome to the Ex Skeptic Podcast. Heather, it's so great to have you with me today.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so great to be here on this beautiful morning.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: I met you not long ago and you told me your story and it was amazing. And so I couldn't wait to have others hear the journey that you've been on and why don't you tell me a little bit about who you are now, perhaps where you work and the kinds of things that you do.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I am living in Colorado Springs. It's such a joy to be in the midst of God's mountains and have these beautiful views every morning. I live here with my husband and my three kids, and I have the joy of working at Summit Ministries, where we equip and support the rising generation to embrace God's truth and champion a biblical worldview.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: What an amazing time to be working at Summit with the youth because certainly we've been seeing a rise in faith in God in the Gen Z generation.
And I'm sure you're witnessing all kinds of amazing things and openness to. To.
To God and to Christianity and what is true.
So I really appreciate the work that Summit is doing, and we'll put a link to Summit Ministries in our show notes. So if anybody's interested in that, it's a great place to send your high schooler or even college student, I think, to learn more about the Christian worldview.
So why don't we get started with your story? Heather, you're sitting here as someone who has already talked about God and Christianity and that it's a joy to represent all of that.
Why not? But I know that that wasn't always your posture in life.
So why don't we start at the beginning, though, and talk to us about where you. Where your life started, the kind of view you had of God and church and Christianity growing up.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: Sure. Yeah. It's. It's been really beautiful to have this prodigal story that I now get to share, because I started my. My journey of faith in high school. Very, very broken. But I grew up in Springfield, Missouri, in what seemed like this beautiful, healthy Christian family. My dad was always in church leadership, and our community at church was really sweet. It was so sweet. I look back at those times and. And I just. I rest in the community that I had that I still have.
But things shifted whenever I was going into my freshman year of high school.
My dad went back to school, and when he graduated, he took a church in Indiana.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: So when you. When you say he took a church, was he a pastor?
[00:06:03] Speaker A: Yeah, he took a church as a pastor. That's right.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: Okay, so you were a pastor's child.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: I was.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: What made that period really difficult for you? And how did that affect your view of God and your own faith?
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
So a few weeks into us being there, my mom and dad pulled me into their family van and. And they told me some pretty serious life altering family secrets that I wasn't allowed to share with anyone. I, I wasn't allowed to tell my brothers, but they were telling me because they were, they were going to need to go back to Springfield and take care of some, some things that had happened.
So my grandma was coming to stay with us. And so that really shook me. That was definitely a defining moment in my life that as I processed, really shaped my life into just showing me and training me how to wear a mask for the first time because I couldn't show my, couldn't show my feelings and what was actually happening in my life and what I was struggling with.
So one thing, I'll just explain it as I was recently reading the Wing Feather saga by Andrew Peterson to my kids.
And the way that Andrew Peterson sets up the family is that the firstborn is not the king or the queen, but rather he's the throne warden, he's the protector of the siblings. And so as I have looked back and reflected on that time in my life, I really saw myself as the throne warden to sin of my family, sin of my, of my dad's sin. And so I, I had to protect my brother, I had my brothers, I had to protect my, my community at church. I didn't want the secret to come out.
So I really became the protector of my dad during my high school time, which, which was, is not really 14, is not a great time to really take up the mantle of being someone's protector.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: It's interesting. Why do you suppose your parents shared such a heavy burden with you as a 14, 15 year old?
[00:08:09] Speaker A: That's a great question.
I don't know. The only thing that I can think of is that it was meant to be shared with me because God was going to use it to shape me and to shape my story and to be able to share with other people that the focus isn't on what your family does, but rather on what God can do with the story that you've been handed.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: So it's, it's, that's interesting because again at that age in your life, which is for any young woman, it's just a, it's just a very difficult with the normal course of life, much less now carrying a heavy burden and a sense of desire to protect.
And so as you were moving through this and obviously there were, there were difficulties there and how did that affect your personal faith?
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah. And this is why understanding a Christian worldview and being the same person everywhere you, in every sphere of influence is so Important to learn that at a young age, which I didn't. And so since I wasn't taught how to be consistent, how to live a life of integrity, I found myself being different people in different ways situation. So at school I was the pastor's kid and at home I was the protector and at church I was, I was the good pastor's kid who was leading worship and putting the bulletin together because I was doing journalism and newspaper at the time. So I was, you know, and I was teaching kids how to memorize scripture and teaching them the books of the Bible and, and so I was all of these things.
But when I was at school, most of my friends in high school were atheists.
And there was a starch contrast that I, that I noticed even at a young age between what I was experiencing at church where there was this culture of I would bring the wrong version of the Bible to church. And so then I would, my dad would get pulled into a room and then it would cause this division that I wasn't bringing the right version. And then, so that wasn't really a place for me to ask questions because I, I was just messing up, you know. And then I would go to school and all of my friends who were on the newspaper were atheists and we would have rich, deep dialogues that were intellectual about spirituality and they would share with me about their faith and then I would share with them about their faith and, and we would just go back and forth in this, in this beautiful dialogue. So that's something that really drew me to the world in high school and away from church was just that ability to have those conversations with people who weren't Christians and still walk away kind of high fiving and having this deep sense of community and respect for one another.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: You know, we all want to feel a sense of belonging and acceptance and when there's a rigid expectation and you feel a constant sense of being disappointing or feeling judged, I can imagine that it would want you to run from a church environment, the one, the place that is supposed to be safe, the place that's supposed to be accepting. But instead of their embracing of you in that time, they're judging you and pushing you in a sense to a place that feels safer and with again, more free to discuss and with depth and yeah, that's, that's sometimes very again disappointing that the church itself, Christians themselves would be so harsh to their own and right. And right and not meaning to, but really push people away. And it sounds like that's what you were experiencing.
So did you, what what did you do with that? Did you start to, again, kind of move to this place of belonging, accepting belonging and acceptance and, you know, rich conversation and. And away from the church and your belief in God or how. How did that. What. What happened here?
[00:12:21] Speaker A: Yeah, so when I got done with high school, I went to college at University, Indiana University, and that is where I made the decision that I was going to try to do things on my own. Um, I really struggled because if God wasn't big enough to reveal himself in a big, powerful way to my dad, like, how big actually was he? And just having these conversations that. That were so lovely with. With the world, it really drew me away from. From God in a really big way. In a really big way. In college, honestly, I look back and I carried my. My father's sins, my family sins, right. Right along with me. As much as I was trying to get away from them, I carried them, you know, right along with me. You know, I kind of. I think about the prodigal son and how we.
That was my prodigal moment, I think, is whenever I was like, okay, God, give me everything. I'm going to do this on my own. I'm going to take everything that you have. You have given me, and I'm just gonna. I'm gonna run.
And. And I audibly said that to God. I was. I was partying a lot my freshman year of. Of college. I would go to church on Sundays just because that was the normal thing to do. But then I started to realize that the people that I was partying with on Saturday were showing up to church on Sunday. And so that hypocrisy just kind of continued.
And so I just said. I just threw my hands up and said, this is not. This is not the life that I want to live. Like, if I'm going to be free, I'm going to be free, you know, So I just essentially, when I graduated from high school, just graduated from church as well and just dove into the world. And so what I did was I decided to. To start studying religion on my own. And I started by taking my first Taoism class, and after that I took a Buddhism class, and then after that I took a Hinduism class.
And that is where I landed. I landed in Hinduism because what that worldview offered was peace.
And my life was so chaotic, and I wanted peace. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to escape and have kind of my own. My own. My own view of God that really shaped my life according to my will.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: So you weren't rejecting.
I Guess spirituality. You were actually embracing spirituality, but just in a different form. In a sense you were going through different Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism. And you landed in Hinduism because it gave you peace. For those who aren't familiar with what Hinduism means is, can you just give us a little bite sized nugget of, of what Hinduism is and how it was that it offered you this sense of peace?
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Everything is spiritual. There is no physical, nothing in this world actually exists. We are, we are fully spirit. And, and that helped me kind of suppress the real feelings, or not the feelings, but the real experiences that I had had, the real hurts that I had had, the words that were spoken over me, I wasn't protected from. In high school I was able to kind of set those things aside and see the world as all spiritual.
And there was something really beautiful about going on a pilgrimage, going on a journey to find enlightenment.
So in Hinduism I really resonated with the idea of going on a pilgrimage and allowing the journey to bring me to enlightenment. I got really involved in the coexist movement. And so yeah, just sitting around and being. What, what being spiritual really means is we can all sit in the same room and have different beliefs, but at the end of the day we can accept your truth as real truth. And that is where I really fell into the lie of, of what subjective versus objective truth really means. Right, so every, everything was subjective. Whatever you wanted to believe was great. And that was the community that I found myself in. It wasn't Hindu community, but rather I was spending time at the Buddhist monasteries writing for the religion beat at call in college in my newspaper. So I found myself just surrounded by this community that everything was okay. Nothing was black or white. It was whatever you wanted it to be.
And everybody was okay with that. And we learned to coexist together.
[00:17:12] Speaker B: I'm just curious. You were looking for peace from and from the chaos, from the weight of the sin that you felt in your family legacy that the, of whatever you know, you were carrying.
If there's nothing wrong or bad, there's no distinct, there's no distinctions in Eastern faith. No good, no evil, no right, wrong. You know, those are, those are illusions. So then I'm curious, what did you do with what you prior considered wrong or bad or sinful or the things that were seemingly burdening you?
What do you do with those things or those concepts as you were searching for peace? Do they, do you deny them? I mean, how does that look practically in, in someone's life when you're trying to get rid of that kind of thing in your life.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: For me, I was. I was so convicted. Oh, man. I was so convicted. My freshman year, every time I would walk into a.
And there was one night. I will always remember this night because it was such a vivid memory. I'm walking down the sidewalk and I was feeling the conviction of like, okay, you're about to go into this party. Your night's about to start.
And I. I literally took my head, looked up to the heavens and I said, leave me alone. I'm doing this on my own.
I said that to God out loud with an audible voice.
And I don't know why or how or what, but I'll just tell you right then and there. The conviction of God left me for three years, and I did not hear his voice or feel him. Now, obviously, when I look back, I see that while I should be dead in a ditch for the lifestyle I was living, God protected me all along the way. My story could have been way, way worse. I might not even be here to tell you it right now, but that is what I did. I rejected God.
I still identified, though, as a Christian and a Hindu.
So I. When I went to my parties, we had philosophy parties, so we would all go. And I would identify as a Christian, Hindu because I still believed in the Avatar Jesus. You know, that's how we. We talked about Him.
And again, just like the experiences that I had in. In high school with my atheist friends, I would go to these.
These philosophy parties and someone would lay out their worldview.
One in particular was about Buddhism. So this guy just laid out this whole story of. Of where he was and how he was living out his Buddhism tradition. And I would turn around and I would lay out the full gospel of Jesus Christ. Full gospel. And then we would take a shot and we would. Cheers. We would take the shot and we would high five. And then we would move on in our life, as in the party.
And I never felt conviction about that.
There was something in me that knew that it was true, but I decided that I was going to do it on my own.
It's very confusing the way that I was living in college.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting you. You brought up just a minute ago, subjective versus objective truth, right? And so while you were sitting in this circle of everybody having coexisting with these other worldviews beside you and you through, you know, lay out the truth of the gospel, well, that for them is just your truth, right? It's just your. Your subjective truth. It had nothing to do with reality, but it was it was just your truth.
And so I guess with, with what was happening too, it's interesting when you said, God, just leave me alone, you know, he did remove, in a sense that. That prick of conscience that we get when we know we're doing things that we shouldn't.
So he let you, he let you go in a sense.
Never completely, as you say.
Yeah, but he allowed you to move in the direction that you wanted to go. You called yourself a prodigal. But I'm curious, how long did you kind of move in these circles, transform your way of thinking in this way? Because I would imagine leaving kind of a traditional religion, I guess you could call behind where there were very firm ideas and ideals, and now you're in this kind of nebulous, much more ambiguous spiritual world.
Was it easy to kind of leave all that behind once you said, let me, you know, let me go, leave me alone. You.
From a cognitive, intellectual perspective, did you feel that this was the more enlightened place to kind of be and exist and live?
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. I mean, I felt community deeper than I had ever felt it in my past.
Like I had said, like, just having open intellectual dialogue with other people was great. And then of course, I was studying Hinduism and in the funny. This is, this is kind of funny, but another broken piece that I like to, to talk through. But so I went to my advisor at college and she said if you take two Western religion classes, you can, you can double major in journalism and religious studies. And I was like, great, let me do that. So what I did in college was I took Intro to New Testament and Intro to Christianity. That was a bad idea.
That was a really bad idea to go in, to go dive into Christianity at this secular university.
That was, that was, that helped me really divorce myself from Christianity even more. Because if you know anything about Bart Ehrman, he was this, the book. He was the author of my text in my Intro to New Testament class.
And I was writing so many papers about how the Bible is so full of error. And I was comparing the Gospels and how they were, they couldn't possibly be true. And I took a whole semester of just diving into this, which then led me into this other spiral of, of, okay, I have the Gospel, I have what I know to be true my whole life. And then it just led me down these like, conspiracy theories of, of the Christian faith and of the Bible because it opened my mind up to, well, if the Bible is, is in error, then let's look at the whole thing and let's just Crack it on open and let's start making our own assumptions, especially if truth is subjective. Let's look and see from our subjective truth what in the Bible might also be an error.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: So it really led you down another path of just discrediting Christianity altogether, particularly the religious text, the grounding of, of the beliefs of Christianity. What did you think of traditional Christian religion, who that makes objective claims about reality?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Well, I don't think that I knew the difference between subjective and objective back then.
That was something that I learned when I, when I got more into apologetics later in my life. I think what I was thinking more of is freedom and peace.
I was chasing after freedom and peace. And it felt like there was just this stark contrast between the Christianity that I grew up in versus my journey of truly finding enlightenment and understanding what, what spirituality was. And while looking on the, on the outside looking in, you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have even, like I seen me and identified me as a Christian. You would have just seen me as the secular, secular person who, you know, had no, obviously no love or fear of the Lord.
But in my heart I was still so torn. So even while, like, I still held on to the Christianity, even in my Hinduism.
And so it was something that was very important to me to not let go of, of, of the gospel. And what I, what I ultimately knew was true while I was on this journey of my own to figure out where is God in the world and where is he moving? And like I said, it was just, it was a very confusing time in my life where I was doing what I knew to be the best thing I didn't have.
You know, I wasn't being discipled by anyone. I didn't have people reaching out to me and asking me how college was or like, you know, my parents were very fearful when I came home with my own necklace and my coexist bracelet. They did not know what to do with that. You know, they're ripping my coexist bracelet off and throwing it across the room and just making a statement that this is not the right way to go. This is not the right way to live.
Which then, you know, pushed me further away from Christianity because I'm like, well, again, this is not what I want. This is, I want to have civil dialogue. And as, as I was studying journalism, even looking at what is objectively true and trying not to go too deep in the weeds of, of opinion. And so, yeah, I just saw Christianity as this very subjective or. Sorry, yeah, very subjective thing that could be interpreted in different ways, but it was something that I didn't want to be a part of.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, especially I guess, having read Bart Ehrman and being convinced that the text itself was corrupt in some way are contradictory or not, you know, believable. And he does a really interesting job of the way he tries to undermine scriptural a text.
But anyway, so, you know, you. I would imagine that would have undermined a little bit of even your confidence in. Did it undermine the confidence in. In the gospel in any way? Or did you still hold on to that as it doesn't matter what, you know, if the Bible isn't, you know, perfect in all of its ways as. Or even not even worthy of belief according to Bart Ehrman. But. But were you still holding on to some tangible semblance of. Of. Of the gospel, even through all of that, or did you let it go completely?
[00:28:19] Speaker A: No, absolutely. I think I was holding on to it because I wanted it to be true, because it's all that I had known.
And so I had friends in college that I was. I would constantly just talk about Jesus with them or again, with my journalistic background, asking questions and just trying to draw people out and get to the root of their stories while I was trying to get to the root of mine.
And the only answer that I really had was peace and the gospel. And somehow there was like puzzle pieces all over the table that through my conversations with people, I was trying to piece them together, but in my own spirit, spirit and soul, they weren't pieced together.
And so I would talk about the gospel in hopes that maybe somebody had the answer to help me just put another little piece together.
[00:29:10] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, the gospel in the context of Hinduism, if there is nothing, if there's no sin per se, nothing wrong in Hinduism, we are all one, and all is God and all is good.
And so what does the gospel have to say? If you're already good and you are God and God is you and.
And all. Does that make sense? It's like the gospel wouldn't even really make sense within a Hinduistic worldview, but you were still carrying the need for the gospel and proclaiming the gospel, which I think is.
Is quite ironic, honestly.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Well, I wouldn't say I was proclaiming the gospel. I don't think I would use those words. Yeah, I was. I was proclaiming definitely a false gospel, for sure, but it was working for me. You know, my community was beautiful, you know, the friends that I had.
I was in a relationship for three years. Like, it was. It was Beautiful. There was nothing really seemingly broken about that time in my life apart from.
Well, there was a lot of things that I think were broken, but I, I knew how to kind of cope with them through partying and through lying and manipulation. And again, it goes back to the masks that I was taught to wear in my high school life. Like, I was really good at wearing masks. I was really good at being the p. The person that whoever I was talking to needed me to be. I was really, really good at that.
And nobody was, was questioning that. Right? They were just accepting it for face value.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: So what, what then made you turn the page, turn the corner, Reconsider the possibility of Christ in. In a different way.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Gosh, God is so such a good, good father, man. Okay, let me tell you.
So I was.
I finished my courses in 2008, in December with my double major. And so I had a free semester because I didn't want to graduate in December. I wanted to graduate in May with my classmates. And so I was working that, that semester just as a. At a catering company. And I was working essentially just to, to drink and to party. That's what I was using my money for. Because I was living, I was house sitting for some professors who were out of town all the time. So I didn't have rent, I didn't have any, any bills really at all. And so I would just work to party.
Well, that January, I.
Again, this is gonna just sound so confusing, but it only makes sense in, in God's story for my life. But I broke up with my boyfriend after three years. And do you want to know the reason why I broke up with him?
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Why?
[00:32:14] Speaker A: Because he wasn't a Christian.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Now that's ironic.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: That is like, if Satan isn't a liar. Like, let me just tell you, it was, it was just so weird, you know, I just. I knew, I knew, you know, I knew what I wanted my life to be, but I didn't. Again, the puzzle pieces were scattered all over the place.
So I broke up with my boyfriend and that the bottom just totally fell out of my life. It. It just led me down the darkest path you could have ever imagined. It was almost like my boyfriend was my like safety, right? That kept me from going out and partying and just sleeping around and doing all the things. Something was seriously wrong in my life.
I had.
For where I had community and where I had joy and where I had peace and where I had contentment, I was left.
I didn't have roommates. And so I would come home at night and I would be by myself and there was just this sense of numbness that just filled my body when I was alone in the quiet times at my house, I was just so numb.
Which then led me down this path of self harming not to die. I wouldn't like cut my wrists because I wanted to die, but I was so dumb, desperate to feel anything, that I just started self harming every single night. It was my ritual.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: That's very, very difficult. I can't imagine being in that place.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah, so one night I was. I was in the bath and it had to have been close to graduation, but, you know, I was doing my nightly, like, cutting and I heard a voice that I hadn't heard in so long.
Just that sweet, still, peaceful voice of the Father that I longed for, who didn't yell at me, who didn't scream at me, who didn't condemn me for the life that I was living and for what I was actively doing.
And he so simplistically said to me, are you done?
Come home.
And in that moment, I knew there was something that I was missing on my journey.
There was something in my heart that just was not going to be met through this wild living, through searching on my own.
It was a real, true God who saw me, who seemingly gave me space to figure this out.
And whenever I was at the very cusp, the very end of this season of my life, when God just knew, all right, if we take this one step further, girl, I'm not going to let you go. I can't let you go. You are mine. I chose. I chose you.
And he met me in.
There was. There was no one else around. I was in an empty house. I had no Christian influences in my life at all.
This was a real encounter that I had with a still, small, gentle, kind, loving father who saw me and met me in that. In my. In my real, true need.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Obviously, I'm sure you were overwhelmed by the love that you were feeling in that moment.
We're all drawn to love.
And it made you turn back in the direction of the One who loved you so and had not let you go, like you say completely, but he was waiting for you and calling you back.
What did you do then?
[00:36:33] Speaker A: So I went to church on Sunday.
This is when. This is where, you know, God doesn't just like, oh, now you're saved. Now you're good. Now you understand. Like, there is this process.
It's like when. When you hear of, like the lost sheep and the shepherd goes after the one.
The Bible says that the shepherd puts the lamb around his neck and nurses that lamb back to health and carries them and keeps them safe. And this was kind of the first step of that process happening.
So I went back to. I went back to the church that I had gone to my freshman year and I met a girl.
Well, she met me. Honestly, she, like, followed me. We were sitting next to each other in the service.
And, you know, at the end of the service, I just wanted to get out of there. You know, I had done my thing like, okay, I'm home, I'm going home. All right, now let me get back to whatever. Because it just didn't feel comfortable to me.
But this girl came and she found me. She introduced herself to me. You know who she was, who she was the pastor's daughter.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Oh, well, what do you know?
[00:37:49] Speaker A: What do you know?
She didn't know me from Adam. She had no idea who I was. But she followed the Lord's conviction and prompting to follow me. How often does that even happen at a church where you just follow somebody up? Like, this was. This was not her pursuing me. This was the Lord pursuing me through her. And so we became friends.
And through that friendship, I was able to see her life as a pastor's daughter.
A life of purity, of joy, of genuine faith.
And we just became friends. And let me just say to those people, I think one of the biggest things that, that I was faced with during this season was if I say yes to Jesus, and I really am going to go back all in to really figure this out and kind of abandon everything that I had been saying and proclaiming and the way I was living, I'm going to be so alone.
I'm not going to have anyone, right?
But God. God just went ahead of that doubt and said, no, you're not going to be alone with your faithfulness and my people.
I will bring together a community that is actually going to bring healing.
And once I started on this journey of going back to church, getting into an all women's Bible study, my community that I had in college, honestly, it felt it fell away. I didn't have to have any hard conversations with them. I didn't have to explain myself and why I was doing what I was doing.
Like, they just kind of went silent and I went forward.
And I think that was a really big fear of mine. Like, okay, if I, if I say yes to Jesus, then how am I going to explain this to everybody and what are they going to think of me and my identity, like, is going to shift and, you know, am I going to look like the hypocrite, like, you know, and God completely shielded me and protected me from that. I didn't have to explain myself to anyone at that point. It was just me and God. It was me and God on a road to reconciliation and to. To building back something that maybe I never had and reshaping what I actually could know about God. And I think the biggest thing that led to me, to my growth was not something that necessarily that I heard at church in those days.
It was the kindness of God that led me to repentance.
It was how kind he was, how gentle he was, how he didn't just rip me up by the arm or rip me down, like pulled me by my ear.
He was with me in the muck and the mire.
Every decision that I made, he was right there beside me, walking it with me, helping me make the next right decision. Did I always make the right decision? Absolutely not. I fell back into sin multiple times. Multiple times in that season of life, from September to December and onward, Right. It was this renewing of my mind that had to take place.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: I'm curious, since doubts were raised through that study of Bart Ehrman's textbook, what did you do with those intellectual doubts that he raised about the, the veracity or the validity of the Bible? Were, were you able to reconcile some of those as you were entering back in saying, okay, this is God's word, but you know, what about those doubts that, that were raised from the class that I took?
[00:41:34] Speaker A: No, I mean, now, yes, because I'm at Summit and I.
How I. How I came full circle kind of with that was I was listening to our friend Jay Warner Wallace, and he was doing this discussion or he was doing a lecture on this exact very same topic. And the way that he explained.
I don't even know if he brought up Bart in that talk, but the way that he explained it was so beautiful. I would recommend anything by J. Warner Wallace, if you are dealing with skepticism and in the validity of scripture, that you would dive into his works. Because the way that he unpacks it, he was a cold case or he is a cold case detective. And he experienced gospel transformation by approaching the text as a cold case detective detective, and unpacking it and just talking about the line of questioning that happens whenever you are trying to get, you know, to catch a killer, essentially. And what he said was if he were to sit down and interview, let's just say four, four people about what had happened at the scene of a crime, and all four of Them said the exact same things in the exact same way.
He would be very skeptical and know, okay, this was very rehearsed.
And he said, but when we look at the Gospels, we draw the parallels between what happened and they're all told in their own voice. Now, I'm probably butchering this, but.
But for me, that drew this line together that was like, whoa.
It wasn't just that he was explaining to me what had been unraveled in college.
What I learned from J. Warner Wallace and many other apologists was that we can have these kinds of conversations, that these answers to our questions exist, that we can have these types of dialogue that we can enter into to the world of apologetics with doubts that don't diminish our faith, but actually have the opportunity to strengthen our faith.
And so that is where things really came full circle for me whenever I got the opportunity to learn about Summit Ministries from a very, very random connection.
And when I pulled up the website for Summit Ministries and I started watching the videos of their two week conferences and I started hearing the stories of these 16, 17, 18 year olds who were on a very similar path that I was on that they are on right now, and that they were able to come and bring their questions and to be questioned. Because there was a time in my life where I was giving all the right answers and no one was questioning them at the same time. I had all of these unanswered questions that nobody was answering for me. And so what I saw was this place that students were coming and they were able to come in either with unquestioned answers or unanswered questions and be treated with dignity and respect and with as adults and responded to seriously.
They didn't just use these cliches like, oh, God said it, that settles it, or have more faith, or you're not reading the Bible properly or even you're not reading the proper Bible.
Right, Right.
So there, there, there was a community that existed that I had been searching for for so long, that existed within the Christian faith, that believed the truth of the gospel. When our identity is rooted in Christ, when our identity is a child of God, there's no fear in other people's doubts because we know the truth. And so we are able to be curious.
And that is all I wanted, Jana. That is all I wanted in my high school life, in my high school years. I wanted someone to sit with me and to be curious, to ask me questions, to question why I was doing what I was doing, or to say, okay, you're here. All the time. But yet I'm looking at your friends and they're not going to church. Like, it just seems like there's a disconnect here.
And that's why mentorship is so, mentorship and discipleship are so important, incredibly important.
[00:46:34] Speaker B: Especially at that age. I know in my research with former atheists, they adopted an atheistic perspective or identity around the age of 15, some younger, some much younger, because they want to know, they want to figure out there's a big world and there's a lot of ideas, a lot of competing ideas and they want to know what is true and real and worthy of belief.
And, and I know that you grew up in a, in a church where, where questions weren't welcomed, it seemed, and, and, and oftentimes that can be very dangerous, I think, for a young mind when their, their curiosity and their intellect isn't given the esteem that it needs really when they're trying to shape and form their, you know, moving into adulthood and trying to figure things out. So I, I love that the Lord has placed you right in this place where you had such a felt need and it wasn't answered for you. But you are there in a place where you're, you're that person for all of those other young people who are needing and desiring it. And sometimes they don't know how much they need until they're there at summit and then they realize and like you say, there's a transformation that happens even in a two week period.
I've seen it in my own daughter. So I love the way that the Lord has brought your life full circle from a place of really, you know, not understanding and carrying so much and wearing masks and trying to figure it out on your own and to a place now where you're, you're life giving to those who are actually searching and needing. And you're a beautiful example of it. It appears to me sitting across the table from you, that you have found that peace that, that seemed to elude you or kind of deceive you in a way that you could find it in other places. But you have found not only peace subjectively through the love of your Father and through the, through Christ, but also you've found objective truth which also gives peace to your mind. Because I think that knowing what is true objectively so, and not wondering, well, I think I know what's true. It's true for me, that's not a very solid place to stand. And it's hard to actually be at full peace at rest when you're really not sure.
Yeah.
But you have found a beautiful place to land on. The rock, the rock of your salvation in Christ Jesus.
It sounds like he's transformed your life and your mind and I love where he has you now.
There are those who may be listening to you. I can think of, well, let's just start here because it seems to me, and I keep hearing this more and more of parents whose children have left the faith for different reasons and they're heartbroken.
You, your parents were heartbroken. Sounds like a bit angry.
Didn't know quite how to engage with you when you were what you considered yourself to be, a prodigal.
If you could speak to parents right now for just a moment and, and give them a word of how best to talk with a son or daughter who may have made this, some similar choices as you just leaving their childhood faith or Christianity behind, what would you say to a parent who may be grieving at that loss?
[00:50:38] Speaker A: This, this hits home.
This hits home for me because I have, I have families that, that I, that are experiencing this right now.
And as much as I would love to just wrap my arms around them and say, don't worry, I came back, God is big enough.
I was just talking to a parent man, I think it was Saturday night recently.
[00:51:10] Speaker B: And.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: My advice to him, I said, you are, you are her daddy and you are the voice of truth with skin on.
So don't waver, don't waver in the truth, don't waver in building that relationship, but don't waver in the truth.
Because when your child is going to sleep at night, you're who they're thinking about.
Maybe not every night, but in their loneliness when they're far from God, the closest thing they have is their parents voice.
And if their parents are not speaking truth and are not seeking to speak truth in the context of a relationship, then that's one thing they can start to do. One thing that I was going to say is for me coming out of, you know, that, that transition between being at college and then moving home after college, I, I got in, I got involved at another church. My dad was still pastoring and his church went through a split. And so I was like, I can't, I need to really search. Like, I gotta get out of this chaos. So I found another church and that's something else. Like as a parent, if your child doesn't want to go to church with you, encourage them to find a church. Encourage them to maybe go with some of your friends or their friends who go to A different church, because God. God can meet them there.
Because it was at this other church where I learned that enlightenment is not something that is. Is something that I could attain.
Because if we think about a mountain of enlightenment, Jesus is at the top of the mountain and he saw that we were at the bottom, and we couldn't even take one step up that mountain because of our sin. And so while all the. The world is saying, oh, go find yourself, go on this journey, or in my case, go on this pilgrimage to enlightenment, God said, but you can't. And so he sent Jesus down, and before we could even take one step, he carried us through his death on the cross to the top of that mountain of enlightenment or salvation, as we would say.
And we don't have to strive. We don't have to sit in a dark room and just meditate and just hope that for peace to come, peace is a fruit of the Spirit that He freely gives to us.
And another thing that I would say to somebody who is really struggling with this, maybe you did grow up in the church, maybe you grew up in. In a very similar environment as I did, where the gospel was really more. Or the church was more of a barrier to the gospel than a bridge.
And to you, I would say that there's a difference between knowing God, because I knew God. All through college, I knew God. But there was something that happened whenever I left college and went home and started attending this other church where I realized that although I knew God, I had never surrendered my will to God for His will in my life.
And there is a big difference in that.
And so that's what I would say as a parent. Like, how can we walk alongside our kids in these seasons?
Get down on your knees and pray for them. Like, get all your clothes out of your closet and make that your prayer closet and just make that your war room for your kids. Because like I said, when the Lord called me to Himself, it wasn't through anyone. He called me and he gave me the ears to hear him and to listen to him and respond to his call.
[00:55:06] Speaker B: It is a work of God, a move of God. There's a mystery to it, and it's so intimate and between the one he calls and himself. You mentioned that you should be the voice of truth, that you shouldn't compromise on truth.
And in the context of relationship, and I would imagine that you would add to that the arms of love right within that relationship. It's the way sometimes truth is given that sometimes, even though it's true, it can be very off putting because it can be harsh, it can be arrogant and arrogant. And so there's a posturing from what I've heard from, from so many there, there's a posturing that has to come with that as well. And so that's really beautiful those words of advice. I'm sure that so many parents out there will, will savor all of that. Heather, if you, you, you were speaking a little bit to, to the one too. If they're curious, if someone is curious about, you know, they want the peace that you have, they want to experience that relationship with a heavenly father who loves them, a gospel that saves them from themselves. You know, it isn't easy. It does require you. You're giving yourself to him as just as he gave himself for us.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: What would be a good way forward for them? Would they, would it be opening the Bible, reading the stories of Jesus going to church? You mentioned those things.
What would be an entry point?
Praying to God, you know, because it is at the end of the day is between themselves and, and the one who loves them. Right. So are you real?
What would it be? How would you advise for someone to kind of enter in?
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the first, the first thing that you have to do is accept Jesus as your Savior. That's the number one first thing to do is surrender your will to God's will.
And then something that I did a few years after I did that was I started researching the characteristics of God because for me it was great, like Jesus was my savior. That's great. But practically I was still searching for three things that I didn't even know I was searching for until I read the characteristics of God.
And the three that stood out to me were protector, comforter, and provider. Those were the things that I was looking for in the world.
And when I read those, it almost like cut me to, to the core because I, I said, God, I accept you as my savior, but I don't think I've ever accepted you as my provider and my comforter and my protector.
And whenever I started to see God as more than just my savior, but he actually is able to meet needs that I am looking for in the world still. Even after giving my life to Christ, that healed me to a point where put all of the, the burdens and the expectations that I had specifically with my dad. But in, in every relationship, you know, I look to God to fulfill me in those things rather than my job or my kids or my husband or my family or my friends.
All of those things that I, all those Those relationships that I relied on.
So that would be my, like, tangible step. Yes. Open up the Bible and start to discover who the God of the Christian God of the Bible is, what he says about himself, and how we can rightly align our lives to who he is.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: You've been a wonderful guest, a wonderful storyteller of your story in so many different ways.
I appreciate your. Your honesty.
It's not easy to.
To sit there as someone who once, you know, professed Jesus and then went your own way in grand style, you know, even to the point where you're saying, leave me alone.
But again, I. I love the fact that he never let you go. He let you go because we have free will.
He let you do and define and explore and discover that life without him wasn't all that you thought it would be, that the freedom that you were seeking didn't bring you ultimate peace, that you. You found yourself harming yourself because you were in such a low place without God. But he. He does that out of love, doesn't He? He allows us to. To go the direction we want to go.
He allows us the dignity to choose.
But then he reminded himself. He reminded you of himself, of the love that was waiting for you all along and the open arms that were there for you when you were ready to return.
And it is a beautiful story of the prodigal daughter, the one again whose father is waiting with open arms, running for when you come back. And I. And I do hope and pray that. That there are many out there who are questioning and are trying freedom on their own and. And are finding that it is empty, that it's not all it's cracked up to be, that life without Jesus is really no life at all.
So thank you so much for reminding us of that. Of reminding us of the beauty of the love that you, the Father, has for you, that Jesus has for you, and that he's waiting for everyone to come into his open arms.
So thank you again, Heather, for coming.
If you've ever tried to find peace by walking away from God, or from the judgment and expectations that once made faith feel heavy, Heather's story reminds us that freedom apart from God can feel good for a while, but it rarely satisfies. Real peace begins when we stop running and discover the one who never stopped pursuing us.
If Heather's story resonated with you or might help someone you know, you might be interested in Summit Ministries, where young people wrestle honestly with questions of truth, faith, and worldview. You'll find a link to Summit in our show notes. Or just go to summit.org if you're a parent listening today. This is exactly the kind of environment Heather's younger self needed.
A place where young people ages 16 to 22 can ask honest questions, wrestle with doubts, and discover that God's truth really does hold up under scrutiny. Registration for summer 2025 is now open, with two week sessions in Colorado and Georgia. And if you register before March 31, use code XSCCEPTIC26 to save $500 on your students registration.
You can also explore more stories like Heather's on our YouTube playlist called Can I Believe Again? Featuring men and women who left faith behind but found their way back. It's an honest, hopeful look at rediscovery and grace.
And while you're on our site, visit xsceptic.org to hear more episodes, explore other curated playlists, and check out our brand new X Skeptic merchandise T shirts and sweatshirts that spark meaningful conversations wherever you go. If you'd like to connect with us or have questions for our guests, email
[email protected] and don't forget to subscribe, rate and share this episode with someone who's searching for peace or wondering if belief could ever be possible again.
And we'll look forward to seeing you next time when we'll hear another unlikely story of belief.
