FamilyLife Today®

Dave Wilson: Hey, we just wanted to give you a heads-up before you listen to this next program. Today's conversation on FamilyLife Today is a little sensitive. We're covering some important subjects, but I'm just going to be honest with you, it might not be suitable for younger ears.

Ann Wilson: We're encouraging you as parents, just like we are parents, to use discretion when listening to this next broadcast. It's good stuff, but you might think, "I don't think my kids should hear this." Make sure you have that conversation with them and talk about it if they do listen to it.

Dave Wilson: That's what you need to do as a parent. Don't just listen to it and then move on. Let's have a conversation afterwards because you're going to have a lot of thoughts and a lot of questions. All right, let's jump into it.

Dealing with the father wound is crucial. It's key. It's the key designation of the identity of God is Father. Jesus referred to God as Father in the first person, and in John, they wanted to kill Him. They said that He was committing blasphemy because He was doing that. So He gives us a new picture of who God is. When He tells us to pray, the first words are "Our Father."

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.

We've got another great day for you with Rick Altizer and Rochelle Starr. You're going to love this day and you're going to be inspired, and you might just cry. Let's go.

Ann Wilson: These words, "God give me a people and a purpose for my life." I've prayed that prayer, but I didn't say the "people" part. "God, what's the purpose for my life?" The people part, like, who are my people? What's my purpose? That's really interesting. I think listeners are probably thinking, "I still don't know what mine is." What would you say to them? How do you direct them when they're saying, "Do I pray that prayer? What's that look like?"

Rochelle Starr: I love that. One of my favorite parts of my ministry now is to the Christian people and to help women find their calling and then be obedient to that. God says, "Love God, love people." My dad drilled that into my heart and head, and it came out my hands.

What I would say to people that have prayed, "God give me a purpose," is that that's good. That's a great godly prayer. But I think in the kingdom of God, when we've been given and we've discovered God's mercy for ourselves and our salvation, and He's given that to us, how do we take what God has done in our hearts and move it to our hands? What is it going to be to? That's going to be to other people.

There's nothing in this life that we can take into eternity except for the people that we were able to lead to Christ. So I think my encouragement to anybody would be to start praying it. Don't be scared of it. Like I said, I was willing to go anywhere, and God said, "No, you're going to go three miles from your house." Now that Scarlet Hope is across the nation, He continues to say, "Go here," and we listen, we go there, and then God does a great work. It's just the best thing you could ever do.

Dave Wilson: Why is it called Scarlet Hope?

Rochelle Starr: I tell everyone when I share this story, I was not called to start a nonprofit organization. He just said, "Go and share My love." But about six months in, we were helping so many women with housing and physical needs and groceries and all these things. My church at the time, my husband was on staff, was so kind and generous to help.

The elders had come to me and said people started writing checks to say, "Strip club ministry for Rochelle," and put them in the offering plate. They said, "We can't really keep doing this. We'll help you start a 501(c)(3)." Those were foreign words to me. So fast forward, I actually had said, "No, thank you," and went about my way.

But a CPA that was an elder at our church came up to me and said, "I heard about the work that you're doing. I'm going to pay for your 501(c)(3). I'm going to do it for you and I'm going to submit it. I just need to know the name of your ministry." I said, "Well, I don't have a name." He said, "Well, when God gives that to you, let me know."

This was on a Sunday morning. Sunday night, I'm reading in Scripture, and I'm reading the end of Matthew where Jesus was stripped of His clothing. He was beaten, He was mocked, He was spit on, and they put a scarlet robe on Him. Back when the Lord gave me my people, my purpose, that day I was driving, it was always, "Bring the Gospel hope to these people."

But I didn't know exactly why did they need hope. I truly did not understand. As I'm reading the Scripture, it was like Jesus brought it to life. I had already been in the clubs for six months, and I had seen people with bruises head to toe. I had seen women be spit on. I saw a man spit on a woman, and I just saw this visual of God covering those women and me with this scarlet robe, which represented His blood, and it covers everything.

I ran into my husband's office and I said, "The name is Scarlet Hope." He goes, "Let's pray about that." I was like, "No, it's Scarlet Hope!" But we submitted it to prayer. Four days later, we go to the club for our 9:00 PM meal. We had brought this night the best meal that you could ever imagine. It's truly a Southern meal: fried chicken, baked mac and cheese, rolls, pie, green beans.

I have volunteers all over now that make it, but I was making it at this time. We brought this delicious meal and we set it up. I see a woman across the club, and this time we weren't in the dressing room. It's too small, so we were out in the open. This woman comes staggering into the club. She has a blue sweater on, it's kind of draping off of her shoulder, she has jeans on and a bag.

I thought to myself, "Either she's a patron here or she's coming to work." So I just beelined to her and I said, "Hi, my name is Rochelle. Would you like anything to eat?" She looks me dead in the face and she says, "Well, does it cost money?" I said, "No, it's free." She said, "Well, I—" She didn't know what to do. She was stumbling all over words.

She tells me that she has five children at home that had not eaten in about a week. She was at the gas station trying to beg for money, and some guy said, "Lady, you should just go down to the strip club and get a job." So she goes into the strip club. The manager says, "Well, you have to interview. You have to take off all your clothes." She goes, "I've never done this before, but I need to feed my kids."

So he says, "Why don't you go get drunk at the bar next door, come back, and then interview." When she came back was when we intersected. We're standing there and she says to me, "Yeah, I want to eat. Can I take some to go?" I bring her over to the table and my friends and I start serving her. I had really never up to this point been around a truly drunk person.

When we started giving her the mac and cheese, she took the spoon from us and started shoveling it into her mouth. My friend leaned to me and said, "She's probably going to throw up. She's not even chewing the food." I said, "Okay." So I grab the pan, I go over, set it on a high-top table, and as soon as I do that, she throws up all down the front of me. I'm thinking, "God, You have got to have a plan for this. This is not my idea of ministry."

Well, she looks at me in her throw-up. It's on my hands. She grabs my hands and we did not go in there with Bibles outwardly. We do not go in there with church ladies' names on our shirts. We show up with Jesus and we wait for opportunity to speak the Gospel, share the Gospel. In the beginning, that was very important because we were building trust.

She didn't know I was a Christian. She had no idea where I was from. She looks at me and she goes, "Will you pray for me?" She grabs my hands, we start praying, she drops to her knees, and she says, "God, please, I don't want to do this. Please save me. Please give me hope." There was that word, and I thought, "Yes, this is exactly, Lord, what we come here for."

We're on our knees in the middle of a strip club with throw-up on us, and the music goes off, the lights come up, and in my mind, I'm thinking we're going to get kicked out. The manager comes over, he taps her on the shoulder, he says, "You know what? You can't work here." She goes, "That's okay. I don't want to work here."

My team had boxed up all the food for her to take to her five kids. We were going to help her as soon as we left the clubs the next day. We boxed that all up. In the state of Kentucky, if someone is drunk in your club, the manager has to call her a cab. So I don't even think she had a vehicle, I didn't ask, but he said, "Your cab's already waiting for you."

So we pack it all up, we help her, we load her out to the car, and I looked at her in the cab window. It was down, and I said, "Hold on, hold on, I did not get your name." She said, "My name is Scarlett." I just began to weep. I said, "I am standing on holy ground. Jesus is right here right now, saying this is exactly what I want you to do and this is exactly where I'm at." The name was Scarlet Hope ever since that moment.

Ann Wilson: As a listener, you may feel like God doesn't see you, He doesn't know you, He doesn't care about you. He knows the number of hairs that are on your head. He knows if your babies haven't eaten in five days. All we have to do is say, "God, help me, give me hope." Amen.

Dave Wilson: I look at both of you and I think you're using all the gifts and passions that God's put in you, and you're impacting people. How do you know, either one of you, when you say, "God told me"? There's some that are listening going, "I've never in my life sensed that that strongly," or heard an audible voice or such a nudge from the Spirit that it wasn't a whisper, it was a push. How do you know it's God?

Rick Altizer: That comes from relationship. When I'm familiar with someone, then I know what their voice sounds like. When I know who they are, a shepherd and a sheep, the sheep know the shepherd's voice because they've spent time with him. Someone who's come in and just speaks, you know.

We're all on this process of sanctification. We're justified when we're saved, and that's a one-and-done, and that's forever and ever and ever, and that's a work of God. But the sanctification is this ongoing work where God is making us like Christ. As He does that sanctifying work in us, we're able to recognize His voice more.

There are times when God will clearly speak to us or communicate to us in our hearts where we have this strong sense. But we recognize it the more we know Him. So the more time we're in the Word, the more abiding in the vine that we're doing, the more familiar we are with who our Father is. We get to know our Father and we know that we're known by Him, then we can hear Him in a much more clear and profound way. At an early age, you heard Him clearly.

We come up with these father wounds and we want to work to it and figure out the magic way to do this. There's nothing magic about it. It's about relationship. Our Father will communicate to us as we get to know Him and we know what His voice sounds like by knowing what His Word says and knowing who He is. By spending time in His Word, spending time in prayer, seeking Him, we recognize His voice.

Ann Wilson: What's also interesting, Rochelle, is you shared the story how you thought this was the name, but you submitted it to prayer with your husband.

Rochelle Starr: My husband made me submit it. He said, "We better pray first!"

Ann Wilson: But even that, like God's like, "Let Me confirm and affirm that prayer and that word. Let Me show you." And it was like He dramatically showed you. It's not always dramatic, but He did in that case. What would you say to Dave's question?

Rochelle Starr: I agree with everything Rick said. I think, and I know this isn't everybody's story, especially watching this movie, you're going to see like we all have father wounds and all of that. But my dad, leading by example, made it easier to know when the Lord was speaking.

Yes, it was because I had my own relationship with the Holy Spirit and with the Lord, but my dad helped guide me along my life and nurtured me to hear it. So when I did hear it for the first time, and again, that journey of praying and asking God for a people and a purpose was a couple of years. When I did finally hear it, I was like, "Yes, this confirms for me everything my dad had taught me that Jesus would do."

It also lines up with Scripture and the command to go into all the world and share the Gospel. It's like a muscle. The more you use it, the more you hear it, the more you seek it, the more you'll find it. God does not ever, ever withhold from His children. So yes, it could be in a dramatic way or it could be in a very small way, but we've got to be attuned to it.

Dave Wilson: Okay, real quick, you've got to join us on the "Love Like You Mean It" marriage cruise, February 13th to the 20th in 2027. You don't want to miss it.

Ann Wilson: There's a sale going on right now through March 17th. This is the time to sign up.

Dave Wilson: Go to familylifetoday.com and click on the banner, and we'll see you on the boat.

Ann Wilson: What do your kids and grandkids think about what you're doing? You have a 12-year-old son and a 5-year-old son, Rochelle. They know what you're doing. Do you talk about it? Is this part of your discipleship piece with your kids?

Rochelle Starr: With boys, it's a little harder because of what I do. But what my boys think I do every Thursday night, they say, "Mommy's going to tell people about Jesus." They've been involved in our kids' programs that we have and a lot of our community programs.

What I want them to know and see is that we are called to share Jesus with everybody. So we try to do that in other ways to teach them that. But I often teach my boys, well my 12-year-old, not my 5-year-old so much right now, is how to see women the way God sees women and begin teaching them how to have that godly perspective and view.

In the world I minister in, I see both sides. I see the demand side, I see all of the men that come into these establishments and women. We deal a lot in the pornography world as well. So I want to teach my boys to love God, love people.

Ann Wilson: Will you share the story that you shared at lunch about the Las Vegas woman who received a text from your ministry?

Rochelle Starr: Our advocates, our volunteers, sent a text message to about 250 people. This one particular woman received that message and she was in the process, literally in the process, of committing suicide. She had sent her suicide note to her family and she was about to drink cyanide.

The text came in and the text sounded like this: "Hey girl, how are you today? Is there anything we can pray for you about?" She immediately said, "Is this real?" Our team is trained in suicide prevention, and they responded immediately and said, "Yes, this is real. My name is Emily. I would love to talk with you."

She said, "Well, I'm about to take my own life." So we proceeded through the process of helping her, why was she doing that, what was she doing, can we get her help. Through about two hours of conversating with her and finally getting her on the phone, we were able to get care to her at her house, and it has been confirmed by all of the team that showed up that she had emailed her suicide note and she had had the things there to take her own life.

Now, this woman had been trafficked for many years. Her trafficker cast her out. She wasn't worth any money anymore. So she didn't know how she was going to live. She said, "I just simply cannot keep doing this anymore."

People who are trained in suicide prevention know that from the time someone sends a note or a message to whomever, their family, to the time they take their life is five minutes. Our text message came within that five-minute window and ultimately saved her life. Now she's in counseling and therapy and care, and she's still alive today.

Ann Wilson: And so as we finish today, there's so many things that we can apply and understand and know. One, that God loves you. He cares about you. Your calling, He has assignments for us. I don't know about you, but I can tell that you guys are thinking, "I don't want to miss any of those assignments." As a listener, what's their action plan? What's something they could do? What would you say, Rick?

Rick Altizer: Obviously you go see the film, and there's a free curriculum you can get that can help you with that. We're also on our website offering discounted counseling services from a vetted counseling center of Christian counselors. But I think that's important is to start to see, okay, when these things happen in my life, what is my response to God? What am I believing about God right now?

How is that tied with my own dad and what I believe about myself? What was imparted to me in my own identity and self-worth? Rochelle had this amazing dad who modeled Christ. What if I didn't have that dad who didn't model Christ to me, who modeled to me that you're really not valuable and not worth my time and not worth for me to stick around for?

Is God like that? It's going to be different for that person to hear from God. It's going to be different because there's so many things that are connected about what they think about God that's not true. So it's unlearning because we're projecting these things onto God.

Dealing with the father wound is crucial. It's key. It's the key designation of the identity of God is Father. In John 14, the word Father is mentioned 23 times in one chapter. When Jesus calls God Father in the first person, He's the first rabbi ever to refer to God in the first person as Father. We have Father in the Old Testament as a metaphor—the father of the nation, as a hen gathers her—they're metaphors for God.

But Jesus referred to God as Father in the first person, and in John, they wanted to kill Him. They said that He was committing blasphemy because He was doing that. So He gives us a new picture of who God is. When He tells us to pray, the first words are "Our Father." This is the key identity as you are His daughter, you are His son.

We're all sons of God in the sense of our inheritance. This is going to freak you out. This is going to blow your mind. God loves you with the same love that He loved His Son. Think about that. The same love He has for Christ is the love He has for you. That is a life-changing, completely paradigm-shifting truth.

When I'm not there yet, it's going to be hard for me to know where I'm supposed to go because I'm not on the path yet. I'm this functional orphan. So I think the key relationship is God as Father. Once I can relate to Him as Father in a new fresh way that's healing and I find healing for my own father wound, I think I'm going to be much more likely now to be able to respond. When a door closes, it's not going to be, "There you are again, God, I knew you had it in for me. I knew you were going to close the door because that's what dads do."

As soon as I can get beyond that, it's, "Oh, you're closing a door. Oh, you must have something for me because I know who You are and I know that You're going to lead me and guide me and I can trust You." So it's just a different paradigm when you see it that way and different understanding. Then now I'm able to be led. Rochelle got it early on because she had this amazing father who showed her that kind of what a godly father is.

Rochelle Starr: We can't heal what we don't acknowledge. We have to first acknowledge that there is something broken within us and that there is no way to fix it except through Jesus, and that He absolutely can become our Father and we are His daughter. Then out of that, we can take steps for action. We love people to be a part of our ministry. We have hundreds and hundreds of women all that have father wounds that have all been restored and redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and now are bringing the message of the Father to other people.

Dave Wilson: 30 minutes ago, you said, Rochelle, "God show me my people and my purpose." We all have a people and a purpose. I think until we discover what that is, we're just sort of floundering in life. But when we discover that, we're on a legacy mission.

I always say, "Make a dent where you're sent." People think, "Well then you have to be sent and you're sent. You're in a studio, you're a pastor, whatever." I'm like, "No, you're sent where you are." Wherever you are, God wants you to make a dent, make an impact. That's what you guys are doing.

Rick Altizer: It comes from identity, though. My purpose is tied into my identity, knowing who I am. I can't know who I am till I know who my Father is. That's where my identity comes from and it comes from outside of me. It's given to me by Christ. It's not anything I have to earn or work to get.

Dave Wilson: "He Calls Me Daughter." Go see the movie Tuesday night, Tuesday day, Tuesday and Wednesday. Two days only. Don't forget, go see it, take your friend, take anybody. If you're in Michigan, come join us, we'll be there. The way this works is you've got to buy a ticket. If you don't buy a ticket, this just doesn't work. You can buy tickets now at hecallsmedaughter.org. You can find the curriculum and other resources there. Thank you, guys.

Ann Wilson: Thank you both. It's been awesome.

Dave Wilson: What if the questions you're too embarrassed to ask are the ones your marriage needs answered?

Ann Wilson: "Marriage After Dark" is FamilyLife's newest podcast where a real married couple talks openly about healthy, God-honoring sex. Yes, the stuff you'd never ask your pastor or your friends.

Dave Wilson: Yeah, so for more, go to familylifetoday.com/marriageafterdark because intimacy shouldn't stay in the dark. Again, that's familylifetoday.com/marriageafterdark.

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