FamilyLife Today®

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Jesus to me was the kind one of the Trinity. The problem is that women and men alike don't understand that Jesus and the Father are just alike.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann Wilson: I recently picked up a Bible study workbook, and it said, "Do you long to experience God, not just learn more about Him? That He's the living God who wants to encounter you in your life?"

Then it said, "Do you want more freedom, love, identity, intimacy, purpose, revelation?" I'm like, "Yes! This is exactly what I want."

Dave Wilson: By the way, she usually reads these kinds of things out loud. She loves to read these to me, and anytime I'm reading something, she says, "Read it out loud to me!" I'm like, "Honey, I just want to have this moment." But the other day, as I'm reading the Bible, she's like, "Read it out loud to me!"

Ann Wilson: Oh, that's so fun for me, though, because I raised three sons. And so it's like I get to be with my sisters today. We have Karen McAdams and Rachel Faulkner Brown with us today in the studio. We're so excited. Welcome to FamilyLife Today.

Karen McAdams: We love y'all already. We feel like family.

Dave Wilson: I'm excited, too. I just spoke at a men's breakfast, and there's something that happens when men are alone. But when women get together and talk about what we're going to talk about today, I think it's going to be dynamic.

Ann Wilson: What I was reading and referring to at the beginning of the program was their video-based eight-session study, which is called Father's House: The Path that Leads Home. You two wrote this together?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Yeah. Well, it's so fun. I was thinking about how women are multipliers. You give us a house, and we make a home.

Dave Wilson: Are you saying guys don't do that?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Y'all do that kind of. We just decorate it better. I can tell you don't think we do it as well. We birth children, and so we just multiply things. We have help, obviously.

But it is neat to do this with another woman, because it is rare in ministry to have a relationship like we have. We're better together. I honestly never want to go anywhere without Karen. I wouldn't call it codependent, but maybe a little.

Karen McAdams: We've been to counseling, though. No, I'm kidding.

Dave Wilson: How did you two meet? How did this start?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: I was on the podcast, so all your listeners have heard a little bit of my story—widowed twice, remarried Rod, moved to Atlanta...

Dave Wilson: Wait. You just skipped over "widowed twice" like it's no big deal. She likes to go right past that.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: They've already heard it if they listened. But if you haven't, go back and listen to this.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, because you did walk through the trauma of losing your first husband, then your second.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: Yeah. But when I was dating Rod, a friend had a little shower for us. And Karen and her husband were there.

Dave Wilson: You didn't know her before?

Rachel Faulkner Brown: No, I'd never met her. But Rod had traveled with her 25 years ago on a ski trip up from South Atlanta, and they'd had this great time. And now Rod has a wife, so we can all get together as couples.

I go to this dinner party, and it was like no one else is there. Karen and I somehow get on the topic of grace. And we'd had this powerful encounter with the gospel of grace—she and I in a different way. We didn't even really know how similar our stories were at that point. I'm kind of the brother in the field in the Prodigal story; Karen is a little bit of the prodigal.

Karen McAdams: I was the prodigal. But I was so not willing to admit that for years and years and years. To say that is the admission of all admissions, because when I would read that story, I thought it was a story about a good son and a bad son. I had no idea that there was a problem with the good son—that he wasn't able to receive on the basis of the Father's goodness rather than his own goodness.

Ann Wilson: And does that mean that you always saw yourself as the bad daughter?

Karen McAdams: Oh, yeah. In wanting to be the good Christian girl, for me, I grew up in a home where my family weren't believers. Rachel comes from a steeped background, born into the church pew. Whereas for me, I wasn't.

But I was one of those kids that looked around, especially at a pivotal moment when I was in third grade. We'd just moved to Atlanta, and that was church land. Everybody went to church. And I saw those people, those girls, that lived in those families. I thought they had ideal families. They had ideal lives. They knew how to quote scripture. They went to Bible camp. They did VBS. I didn't even know what those things meant. And I wanted what I saw in this one particular family. It was actually the woman—my best friend's mom—who led my mom to the Lord.

But not before I'd grown up in brokenness. My mom was an alcoholic. There was just a lot of dysfunction in our family, coupled with at a very early age, I was sexually abused at the church that we did attend for a short time by someone in the church. And it robbed my identity. For all of us, I really believe we can look back at a point in our life and say, "That's where the enemy came and hijacked my identity."

Ann Wilson: And was it a secret?

Karen McAdams: Oh, huge secret. No one knew for many, many years. And so what happens when your identity is hijacked and when you're living in shame? You develop a false identity because you're terrified if anybody finds out who I really am, or what you believe you really are—the lie the enemy sold you—you won't be liked, you can't be loved, you're not worthy of love. And so you cover it all up.

You do anything and everything to protect this identity. For me, that meant becoming a performer, an achiever. And that works for a while, at least we think it's working. It's getting us a little bit of recognition in that attempt to try and get love. Of course you don't know when you're that little that what I'm doing is trying to get love. I'm trying to get an identity. I'm trying to become somebody.

It just put me on this hamster wheel and I didn't know Jesus. Finally, when I was 17 years old, I was at a church rally that I'd been invited to at that big white church down the street. Remembering those moments is so good for you. I just remember the offer of Jesus, but I didn't get it. I was so desperate to know I won't go to hell for what I've done. I walked the aisle and I prayed the prayer and I thought, "Okay, I'll get to heaven one day."

They say I can have a relationship with Jesus, but He doesn't speak. So how do you have a relationship with this non-speaking person? Truly. We call it a relationship, and yet have no idea, nobody teaches you how to hear from God. So for me, I was great at performing for people, so I thought that's what you do: you perform for God. If people had high standards, then God's standard was unreachable.

I lived and tried to live up to that for a while, and then what happens when you can't meet a standard? For me, I just gave up. I didn't try meeting it anymore. And so when you're not living that way, you're living in the world, and you're living for the darkness.

For me, my life was very much defined by trying to achieve in the world through success. I became a CPA. But all the while, this shame-based identity was turning to men to try and get my needs met. And all that's doing is heaping more shame on me, more guilt, more self-hatred, really. I turned to a lot of alcohol for my anxiety and my insecurities.

I ended up having two really tough relationships. I got engaged twice and made it as far as ten days away from the wedding aisle on one of them. One of them went to prison and I spent three years going to prison and visiting this fiancé in prison. Life was just pretty much a mess. And I was a Christian!

Ann Wilson: You walked down the aisle to give your life to Jesus. I can so relate to that, because I gave my life to Jesus and I was so sincere, like, "I want You to have everything." But I couldn't get out of the shame part of that hidden "I'm so unworthy." I'm more unworthy than anyone in the room, but I will strive to be the best.

Dave Wilson: I'm just a guy making an observation: all three of you have abuse in your background. And that was a part of her identity, she thought. I can't even imagine going back to the same church.

Karen McAdams: Recently, I just did that just a few months ago to confront my past, to give the little girl inside of me a voice that never had that voice, to stand up for myself and to say what happened here wasn't right, and to reclaim that territory that was stolen of my innocence.

But I think the thing that's so sad, and why we're so passionate about Father's House and about this journey to the Father's heart, is because Jesus to me was the kind one of the Trinity.

Ann Wilson: Yes.

Karen McAdams: He was the approachable one. He's the one that died for my sins. The problem is, and we run into this all the time, is that women and men alike don't understand that Jesus and the Father are just alike.

And that Father is not angry, He's not disappointed, He's not disgusted in you because, oh, by the way, you're the prodigal. I remember reading that story through the lens of the Father's love—the Prodigal Son story—and realizing for the first time that He wasn't waiting to give him a lecture. He didn't even let the son get the apology out before He just tore away all of those filthy rags.

Bring the robe, bring the shoes, bring the ring. Bring it all! And the son can't even get the apology out. It never dawned on me He wasn't waiting for my professional apology before He would love me. That He loved me while I was away from Him. He loved me while I was in the pigpen.

Ann Wilson: He was with you. He was with you.

Dave Wilson: Where did you discover that? One of your chapters is "Lavishly Loved." You're talking about that right now. How did you two discover that? Because a lot of people that are listening have still never... I know I hadn't for years after being a follower.

Karen McAdams: For a listener, I would ask you this question: if you had to write down just a few words that describe God, what would you write? I remember doing this with a friend. She said, "Describe God to me." And I said, "I see spirit. I see all these words that are going around in that: spirit." Words like just, holy, righteous. As I'm picturing, I realize I'm not saying loving. I'm not saying grace. And maybe angry was in there!

Dave Wilson: It made me realize, "Oh, this is interesting. I would put those words with Jesus, but I wouldn't put them with God." If you're a listener, ask yourself that. Or maybe even ask your kids, "How do you view God?"

Here is a really good litmus test: how do you see what happened in the garden? When they sin and the Father comes into the garden after them—Adam and Eve—do you hear pounding footsteps? Do you hear screaming, "Where are you? What have you done?" like a pointed finger? That's how I used to see that story until the day He changed that story.

Suddenly I realized that He came in with a broken heart, saying, "Where are you? What have you done?" Knowing. "Where are you?" That brokenness of, "Why have you withdrawn from Me?" Even just the fact that He put them outside of the garden to protect them.

I never knew that for years. I thought He kicked them out, the belt's pulled out. But I'm serious! It's the same story, just read through a different lens. The words are all still the same, but we bring a lens to scripture. So the question is, what is the lens you bring?

For me, I didn't know how much that lens was affecting me until a moment we were in a ministry called Cloud Walk. My husband and I were in a small group, and the gentleman there—his name's Larry Green, incredible—asked the question: "How do you experience the Father's love?" It was the words "Father's love," not Jesus's love.

I said to him, "Well, I experience Jesus's love." And I thought that was enough.

Ann Wilson: That was a good answer.

Karen McAdams: He said, "Well, I want you to close your eyes and ask the Father how you experience His love." I had this vivid image, a vivid, vivid scene unfold in my mind. It's a bizarre scene. I see myself walking out into an ocean, only the ocean water never goes above my knees.

All of a sudden, it was like Spirit just downloaded in me: if Father's love is as deep as an ocean, then you're just wading in it. I knew exactly what he meant. He looks at me and says, "Karen, have you ever experienced the Father's blessing?" Again, I'm like, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Rachel Faulkner Brown: What does it even mean?

Karen McAdams: I remember saying to him, "I mean, I have a nice father." I felt so stupid. I didn't really know what he meant. He said, "Well, what we're going to do is we're going to ask the Father how He wants to bless you." It was this man Larry, my husband, and one other man. No other women were there that day. And they just started speaking blessings over me.

In the middle of this moment, I'm now seeing myself back at the church where I was being sexually abused. I'm in my first communion gown, and I see the Father come and kneel down in front of me on one knee. I'm thinking, "Why in the world am I seeing this? This is so bizarre." I'm trying to listen to the blessing, but it's kind of almost like it's not going in. I want to receive this, but I don't know why I'm seeing this.

But I could see His beard—not His face, but just knew it was the Father kneeling in front of me. My husband says, "I have a picture, Karen. It looks like you're about eight years old. You're in a short white dress, and I see the Father kneeling down in front of you on one knee. And He says, 'You are so beautiful.'"

He touched my eyes and said, "I'm giving you new eyes to see yourself the way I see you." In that moment, how I identified the Father, how I saw Him, completely changed. He came to me at my ugliest, most shameful, most debilitating moment of my life.

Ann Wilson: He gave you a different image. Instead of the old image of abuse in your old church, you now have this whole new image of the Father.

Dave Wilson: Did it stick? Because I know there's guys like me going, "Oh, that's awesome, that's beautiful. Does it stay?"

Karen McAdams: Oh, you have no idea how much it stuck. Now, there was a lot of unlearning and healing, probably. There was the heart shift: "You are not who I thought You were. This is the kind of Father I would climb up in His lap. This is the kind of Father that holds me when I fail, not pushes me away until I've repented enough and done enough times to get Him to turn the chair back around."

That changed, but I didn't have the theology. I didn't have the understanding of just how messed up my theology was. He began to heal that by then bringing the truth. I know a lot of people God can heal through just simply the truth. For me, I needed that encounter to really get to my heart.

Otherwise, I think a lot of us live out of the left side of our brain. That's why churches are full of people that are still broken and hurting and not transformed, because they haven't had an encounter. That's why the study is very encounter-driven. It provides opportunities for you to see God with the eyes of your divine imagination.

Ann Wilson: I even loved how you had the "Papa's Letter." Letter from Papa, that was beautiful. And all the scripture, beautiful.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: A human has to answer three questions before they can really move into higher levels of knowledge. The first one is, "Am I safe?" Karen and I and you and we all stopped there. The second question is, "Am I loved?" And the third question is, "How can I learn from this?"

It's very difficult to move past if you don't feel safe to get to the place where, "Am I loved?" And so we want women to experience an encounter with Papa and with Father God where they're like, "I know that I know that I know that I'm safe. And now I can know that I know that I know that I'm loved." When things do happen, "How can I learn from this and how can I bring others into this with me?" which is what Jesus and Father God have healed for us.

Karen McAdams: I think the problem is in so much of the way I was raised and what we were exposed to, the question most people ask is, "What can I do for You, God?" So they're looking to what they can do before they ever find out who they are, whose they are, and how loved they are. We skip. "Yeah, for God so loved the world." We can quote John 3:16, but we haven't experienced His love. And it's literally a daily need.

Dave Wilson: My youngest son was preaching a sermon just a few weeks ago. Isn't it interesting how God can speak to you through your kids? He's up there teaching a passage—the one you just mentioned, Luke 15, the Prodigal Son story—that I bet you in 30 years of preaching I've preached at least ten times. Every 18 months, you have to bring your congregation back to this story.

Cody makes this comment that I've never thought of. I've studied it in the Greek, trust me. I should have seen this. It was a simple comment: "What if the son was coming home, and instead of the Father running to meet him, the older brother met him?"

He just made this comment. He goes, "His view of the Father's love would be so distorted." Because the older brother would have said, "Dude, you can't be walking in here dressed like that. There's no way you're back here unless you do this or this or this. Go take a shower first, get your act together." When he said that simple thought, I thought, that is how most of us view the Father's love. It's not a Father waiting at the mailbox, longing to love us. It's that: it's works, it's religion.

Karen McAdams: It's even the way we categorize the story. We call it the Prodigal Son story when in Eastern cultures, they characterize it as the story of the running Father. The whole story is reoriented to, look what the Father has done. In our culture, we highlight it as though the son is bad. When honestly, the reality is, the only one that's enjoying himself that day is the one that was willing to receive.

Rachel Faulkner Brown: The good son turns out he's the—I hate to call him the bad son, but you know what I mean—he doesn't get grace. And that is grace. That is the perfect... I always say to Rachel, "What would we have done if that story was not in the word?"

Dave Wilson: I love Karen McAdams and Rachel Faulkner Brown. They bring energy and wisdom and insight. Their book is called Father's House: The Path that Leads Home.

Ann Wilson: You can get your copy by clicking the link in the show notes at familylifetoday.com. We would love to pray for you. I would personally love to pray for you, and we even have a team at FamilyLife that can pray for you. Just go to familylife.com/prayforme.

Dave Wilson: If this conversation encouraged you today, maybe it gave you some fresh hope or a new way to think about your marriage or family, don't keep it to yourself. Right now, share this episode with a friend, a couple, or someone you know who could really just use it. Just text them the link or tell them about FamilyLife Today. It's super easy and it might make a big difference for them.

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Ron Deal: Hey friends, Ron Deal here, senior director at FamilyLife. Did you know, according to the Barna Group's latest report on the family, only 14% of married parent families could be categorized as resilient? Only 14%. And 60% were struggling or fragile.

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Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today is a donor-supported production of FamilyLife, a Cru ministry, celebrating 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.