Moms of the Bible: Lessons from the Fearless, Flawed, & Faithful w/ Rhonda Stoppe | Ep. 43

Episode 43: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

This episode of the Upside Down Parenting Podcast features author Rhonda Stoppe, who shares candidly about mom guilt, comparison, and the loneliness of motherhood, emphasizing that God calls parents not to perfection but to daily faithfulness in dependence on Him. Drawing from her book Moms of the Bible and her own story, she explains how older, Titus 2-style mentors and deep engagement with Scripture helped reshape her parenting.

Rhonda unpacks biblical moms such as Lot’s wife and Jochebed (Moses’ mother) to show how loving people over possessions, obeying God in hard circumstances, and holding children and material things with an open hand can shape the next generation. She encourages everyday moms who feel invisible by reminding them that unseen acts of faithfulness—wiping noses, praying, repenting honestly in front of their kids, and linking arms with like-minded believers—are a God-ordained ministry that can influence culture in unfathomable ways.

Episode Transcript

Janel Greig (00:00):
Have you ever found yourself thinking, “I’ll be a better mom tomorrow,” only for tomorrow to come and it feels just as challenging? Motherhood has a way of taking us from confident to overwhelmed, from joyful to exhausted, and sometimes all within the same day. And in a world where comparison is constant, it’s easy to feel like we’re just not measuring up. But what if the story of motherhood in God’s upside down kingdom isn’t about perfection but about faithfulness through the ups and downs?

Today we’re joined by Rhonda Stoppe, author of Moms of the Bible, who reminds us that we’re not the first to wrestle with these tensions. From stories of failure to stories of fearless faith, the women of scripture show us what it looks like to follow God right in the middle of messy, real life. Rhonda brings the wisdom of someone who’s walked this road herself, helping moms of every stage see how God can use their everyday faithfulness to shape the next generation. Rhonda, welcome and we’re honored to have you on this show today.

Rhonda Stoppe (01:08):
Thank you. I’m honored to be your guest today.

Janel Greig (01:12):
On the Upside Down Parenting Podcast, Rhonda, we’re all about equipping moms and dads to raise passionate followers of Jesus. Yet I know that for so many moms, they are stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame. Why do you think so many moms find themselves stuck in that cycle?

Rhonda Stoppe (01:29):
First of all, I want to tell you I was you and I understand that cycle. At the very beginning of the book of Moms of the Bible: Life Changing Lessons From the Fearless, Flawed and Faithful, I wrote, “’I’ll be a better mom tomorrow.’ I whispered to myself before drifting off to sleep, but when tomorrow never came, mom guilt plagued my anguished soul.” Being a fun, loving, good mom was what I hoped for, but in reality, I spent many days in survival mode snapping at my kids when they spilled their milk or worrying over how we were going to pay for their extracurricular activities.

Motherhood, parenting, fatherhood, it’s all one day at a time. And honestly, I have never felt more lonely than when I became a mom because you feel like you’re the only one that doesn’t seem to have it all together. I had kids in the 1900s, back in the olden days before I had to deal with social media.

(02:25):
All y’all now are looking at social media going, “Oh, look, look at the nice meal she made for her family and how clean her house is. And look at the cute dresses she’s making for her daughters out of pillowcases. And now she’s selling them on her Etsy store.” And my kids had Cheerios for dinner and I don’t even know where their underwear are. That is the reality that you guys have to deal with. I just had to see it on Sunday morning when the families came in and the kids were all matching and their hair was nice. It was just not so much a comparison trap.

But the reality is none of us know what we’re doing. We’re all in the thick of it together. And honestly, that’s how God calls us to live. He calls us to live in a place that we don’t know what we’re doing, where we don’t say, “I’ve got this, God.” He’s like, “Look at me, seek me. Love me deeply with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. I’m going to do in and through you exceedingly and abundantly above all you asked or could even imagine in all the callings that he has on our life and specifically in the sacred calling of parenthood or motherhood.”

Dr. Matt Jones (03:28):
I’m just curious. I appreciate that. How did you come to recognize that you were in that unhealthy cycle and what were the signs for that in order to have your heart jump started to say, “Man, I have got to get out of the cycle,” because part of that is sometimes people don’t believe they can get out of it. So what’s the catalyst that helped you to say, “Man, I am not in a good rhythm or a good cycle there.”

Rhonda Stoppe (03:53):
My husband said, “Baby, you’re not in a good rhythm or cycle there.”

Dr. Matt Jones (03:56):
Okay, good. All right. All right. Way to go. Way to step in there, husband. That’s awesome.

Rhonda Stoppe (04:02):
Honestly, I feel like the reality of it really hit me when I had one of my children, I was born with postpartum and I was absolutely at the end of my rope and I knew I wasn’t the mom I hoped I would be. I would look around and I’m like, “I don’t know where to start.” But God’s word says that Titus 2, the older women are to teach the younger how to love their husbands, which means be a friend to your husband and love their children.

I wanted to know what those older women knew, which I always say #OldLadiesKnowStuff. I actually own that trademark. It’s the name of my podcast because older women have lived lives that can teach us so much. So my husband was in youth ministry at the time and I looked around at the moms of some of the students that their kids wanted to be with them.

(04:49):
They wanted to bring their friends home to their house. That was the fun house. I’m like, “I want to know what they know.” So I went to these women and I asked them to be my mentors and they were like, “Come to our Bible study.” I’m like, “I don’t need another Bible study. I went to Bible schools. I have Bibles versus memorized. I just need to know how to be a better wife and a better mom.” They laughed at me and they said, “Come to our Bible study.”

So I went and it was a precept study. It was five hours of homework a week. I had gone from corporate America to stay at home mom. So the loneliness is compounded because you’re not seeing people at work all the time. Literally nowadays y’all have cute yoga pants that you can wear day in and day out and nobody knows you wore them two days in a row.

(05:32):
Back in my day, it was like sweats. They weren’t even cute. But I wanted to go to this Bible study because I was like, number one, free babysitting for three hours, hang out with grownups, and I could get dressed up and look cute for the day. That was my spiritual reason for going to that Bible study. And when I went, it was a bunch of middle-aged and older women. I was the only 20-something in the room and I literally thought, “Oh, boring. It’s going to be so boring.”

But man, was I wrong. These women, as we studied scripture together, they shared from their highs, from their lows, from their upside down parenting experiences, they gave me a glimpse at the urgency of the time that we have our littles in our home and how quickly it’s passed and the importance of that time. They also gave me hope because they learned from their failures.

(06:24):
I always say I can write a letter to my younger self and it does no one any good, but if I write it in the form of a book and I put it into the hands of the next generation and I share honestly the raw, the real from my own stories, from the stories of these moms in the Bible, there’s some raw, real stories in there and from moms in history, that has the power to give us hope and to guide us.

So when I knew I needed help, I looked to older mentors and God sent these older women. One of them is still my mentor. She’s 85 years old. Her name is Gail. I love her dearly and she’s still cheering me on, praying for my children. I have 15 grandchildren, which I’m the winner-winner chicken dinner here. There you go. And she prays for my grandchildren.

(07:06):
And honestly, I know that I would’ve ruined my kids. I’m a people pleaser and I would’ve raised them for what people thought of me and I needed older women to speak into my life a non-emotional insight into how I was raising my kids. And that’s the value of having older mentors and that’s why old ladies know stuff.

Dr. Matt Jones (07:23):
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And it’s also that you had that humility to ask for that. That’s what we encourage. I encourage my students that I have in my classes. Man, if an older person is not approaching you to invest in you, then you go and ask an older person to invest in you. It’s okay if they say no. I am curious, what did Gail think of your books as an 85-year-old, Moms of the, not books, but Moms of the Bible? What was her response to it?

Rhonda Stoppe (07:51):
Well, her story’s in the book.

Dr. Matt Jones (07:52):
Oh, okay.

Rhonda Stoppe (07:54):
All right. But here’s Gail’s story. She was a teen mom. She got pregnant before she got married. She married her husband. She stayed with her husband. She had four kids. She lost a child and her teenage daughter, guess what? Got pregnant in high school and had to get married. And that was like they wish they wouldn’t have pushed her to get married because it didn’t work out very well. She’s honest. She’s real.

And she says, “If I’m not being real, how can I help somebody if they just think I’m perfect and have it all together?” That’s what I loved about Gail. And her daughter just died from cancer a few months back and she had come to visit Steve and I, her and her husband before her daughter passed away. I called her after Gail’s daughter died and I said, “How are you doing?” And we talked for a while and then Gail was like, “How are you doing?”

(08:36):
“How’s your kids? How’s your grandkids? How’s the ministry going?” My husband just retired from being a pastor at the same church for 25 years and she’s like, “How are you guys doing with that?” And I’m like, “Gail, I called to encourage you.” And she goes, “Rhonda, you have no idea how much it encourages me that you still want me to encourage you.”

Janel Greig (08:55):
That’s awesome. I’d love, Rhonda, if you could share, I read your book, really enjoyed the content, but moving to sharing about some of the moms of the Bible, which you’ve written about in your book, one of them, you talked about Lot’s wife and specifically the content was when your stuff matters more than obeying God. And as parents try to raise kids in this world that often pushes against biblical truth, we’re trying to do that upside down and promote that biblical truth, but how do we train with a sense of urgency for our kids and lay the firm faith foundation without going overboard sheltering?

Rhonda Stoppe (09:33):
Well, Jesus says the student will be like his teacher, not like the teacher preaches at him, teaches him to be. He will be like his teacher. So when they see us loving our stuff, our career advancement, our nice houses, nice cars, doing whatever it takes to keep up with the Joneses, that’s the normal Christian life, if you will, that they see. But if they see us holding our things with an open hand, I always say people over possessions.

For example, Steve and I planted a church in Austin, Texas back in the ’90s, and we had bought a brand new house on a lake. If you live in Texas, you’ve got to live on the water. And we opened our home to a youth ministry and 200 teenagers came to our house every Wednesday night and trashed our house in Jesus’ name. We had white carpet.

(10:22):
Why on earth did we have white carpet? The builder put it in so we didn’t choose it, but it was trashed. And we had sofas that I kept seeing holes in the arms of our couches and I replaced them a couple of times and I started watching, like, “Why are we getting holes in the arms of these sofas?” Well, these teenage boys would sit next to a girl and want to talk to her and they would be scratching the arm of the sofa because they were nervous. So you’re tearing up my couch worse than a cat. So we got leather couches the next time.

But do you know who was watching? My children and they were seeing we lived in a very affluent area in Austin, Texas and these kids’ homes were on the lake and these kids were raised in the Bible belt and they knew all about Jesus, but they didn’t know Jesus.

(11:06):
And as we opened our home, I remember this big football player, his name was Daniel. He was giant. He had a big bulldog tattooed on his arm and we fed them hot dogs every week. Steve made over 10,000 hot dogs in one week because if you, I mean in one year, if you feed them, they will come. But it was like, we’re just doing hot dogs and chips. We’re not going to make anything special.

And there was this big football player holding his hot dog in his hand on a plate with ketchup and mustard on it. And as we’re talking and literally the house is chaos because we would have free for all before we did the teaching and all that. And he said as he shook his hand in his plate, he said, “I don’t understand why you guys do this.” And as he did that, guess what rolled off of his plate, his hotdog face down ketchup and mustard on my white carpet and I chose to not break eye contact with Daniel.

(11:52):
I don’t know why that makes me cry. I chose to keep my eyes on him and to tell him, “We do this because you mean more to us than our stuff.” And that impresses on our kids. That impresses on our children and it doesn’t mean you can’t have nice things. It doesn’t mean you can’t work hard. I mean, my husband always flipped houses. We lived in them while we flipped them. Back when we did that, people thought we were crazy. Now we would have had a show because it was good, but learning to hold what we have.

Let’s talk about Lot’s wife, Mrs. Lot. When those angels came in and said, “You got to get out. You got to go.” I mean, what happened? The people, the men of the city came banging on the door for those angels. They wanted to have relations with those angels.

(12:40):
The male men wanted to have relations with the male angels. You think we live in a perverted time in history? I think so. So was Lot and his wife. So what does Lot say? He goes out and goes, “Guys, don’t do this. I have some virgin daughters. Take them.” What? Lot. How long have you been living in this perverted culture that you even think that’s a good idea? And here are these angelic hosts in your home and you’re trying to fix it when you’ve got God’s help right behind your door.

So of course the angels grab Lot’s arm, pull him inside. They strike all those perverted men blind. The men keep groping at the door. I don’t even understand that perversion, but they had witnessed all of that. And the angels are like, “You got to go.” And they try to tell their sons-in-law and the sons-in-law laugh at them.

(13:24):
They think they’re joking. Their testimony is not even solid enough that their sons-in-law believe them. And then finally the angels literally grab them by the arm and say, “You got to go.” So my first instinct is to blame Mrs. Lot. Why would you not just leave? You saw what just happened.

But you know what? It wasn’t long ago that our entire ranch was on fire in the California wildfires and we have an 80 acre ranch and it was completely on fire and we had to go and it was like 20 minutes we had to grab whatever we could grab. And my husband had a prize steer that he did not want to leave behind and he didn’t have a horse trailer for it. His friend was supposed to be coming up. We live on a mountain in a canyon. Fire travels like a wildfire through a canyon.

(14:08):
She said, “Go, I’ll be right behind you.” And I’m like, “I don’t want you to wait too long. I don’t want you to die saving the steer. Go, I’ll be right behind you.” And as I drove away, I looked over my shoulder one last time and we do the I love you symbol in our family, the sign language and we kiss each our pinky pointer and thumb. We do that with all of our grandkids. So I did that to him as I drove away.

You think I looked back? Yes, I looked back. So I get it, when they told Lot’s wife, “Don’t look back.” I get the temptation. Most likely those sons-in-laws were behind and historians either believe that her daughters were also married to those sons-in-laws that stayed behind. Some believe the daughters were engaged to those sons-in-law and they’re the ones that left with the mom and dad.

(14:50):
Either way, she had people. I love my sons-in-law. I understand why she looked back. I mean, all hell’s breaking loose behind her. I get why she looked back. But the point of that whole chapter is sometimes we just love our stuff more than trusting God, keeping our eyes focused on the future. And that’s what God asked them to do. Look ahead, look ahead, do not look behind, look ahead. And she didn’t do that and it cost her her life.

And then because they had lived in such a perverted culture, the daughters were like, “Let’s fix this. Let’s get daddy drunk and have babies with daddy because otherwise he has no heritage.” I mean, how perverted is that, that they thought that was normal? That was just a big mess. She’s definitely a flawed mom in the Bible.

Dr. Matt Jones (15:34):
If that doesn’t entice you to read Moms the Bible, I don’t know what else to encourage you with. That is great insight. So I am curious, moms are often told that their children are their greatest ministry. If that is true, that can certainly put a ton of pressure on moms. So how should we think about that idea out there that children are their greatest ministry and what does success look like in motherhood in raising children?

Rhonda Stoppe (16:04):
Let’s look at Jochebed’s story. Jochebed was Moses’ mother and a lot of times people want to say how hard it is to raise kids in our culture. Well, Jochebed was trying to hide a baby that was three months old because if they heard him, he would be thrown into the Nile River. He would be killed. She had an older daughter named Miriam that was watching this whole thing, an older son named Aaron.

And at some point when he was three months old and she could hide him no longer, somehow God put an idea in her heart to put the baby in a basket. And I can just imagine Miriam, that firstborn daughter, I have a firstborn daughter. They know everything, so I get it. Mom, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? She’s painting the inside of the basket with pitch. And then she walks down to the Nile River with baby Moses, baby Momo.

(16:48):
And I can only imagine Jochebed kissing his head one more time, smelling the smell of his head one more time, wrapping him in his little Hebrew blanket, putting him in that basket, covering the lid and letting go of the basket. Jochebed’s success was not found in what Moses did with his life. Her success was found in her obedience to her God. And God said, let go of the basket.

And sometimes we’re control freaks. There’s a section in the book called Control Freaks Raise Freaks. We literally think we control our kids into being the person that we think God wants them to be. And sometimes God’s like, “You can’t control it.” I know there’s moms that are listening right now or dads that have to send their children into a step family situation. Maybe the biological parent that they have to go spend the weekends with is not a believer.

(17:40):
Lets them watch R-rated movies, lets them look at the internet and do things that you would never allow them to do. And the idea of letting go of them when you’ve been court mandated, you have to. What are you going to do about it? You trust them. You let go of them and entrust them. Some of us have to put them in schools that are trying to indoctrinate them with an ungodly worldview.

So what happens? I love the story. Miriam said, “Well, I’m going to keep an eye on this baby mom. You go do you fit your thing.” I mean, this isn’t scriptural. This is me saying this is what that firstborn girl was thinking, right? And she watches until Pharaoh’s daughter sovereignly by the Lord takes that baby and knows it’s a Hebrew baby and says, “This one will be mine.” My oldest son, Tony, didn’t come to our family until he was 15.

(18:23):
He was a kid in our youth group. And when we met him, we were like, “This one will be mine.” He was in a troubled home. And then Miriam’s daughter says, “I know someone that can nurse that baby.” I’m sorry, Miriam says about her mother. I know someone that can nurse that baby and she gets to go get Jochebed. Jochebed probably had maybe four years to nurse her son. Culturally, that’s probably about as long as it would’ve been acceptable. About the time he’s dunking his Oreos in your milk, it’s like, it’s time. You need to wean the child.

But think about the four years that maybe she had with that baby. Jochebed would’ve sung songs of Yahweh over him. She would’ve prayed prayers over this child. She would’ve taught him about the God of Israel and all the stories of God’s faithfulness to Israel. And then one day it was time she had to walk back.

(19:13):
Can you imagine letting go of that baby and putting it in the arms of a woman who worships cats? I was just recently on a homeschool field trip with some of my grandkids and we went to an Egyptian mummy museum and we went to the section that was the religion of the Egyptians and there were those two large cats with the blackhead and covered in gold. And I told my grandkids, this is what Pharaoh’s daughter worshiped.

And this is what Jochebed had to give her son to and trust that God would remind him of what she taught him in his early years of his life. And we know the Bible said that Moses didn’t choose to stay with the comforts of Israel. When he was grown, he decided to suffer with his people. So what’s the point of that? The point of that is the importance that we have in those first four and five years of our kids’ lives.

(20:00):
If you’re a mom and you’ve got to go back to work and you’re going to put that newborn in a daycare, you make sure that person has a biblical worldview. Whether it’s grandma or auntie or a church friend, you make sure they’re telling them about the God of Israel, about the God of the Bible. You make sure that you’re not thinking they’re just a baby they don’t know. There is a huge impression on those newborns.

And maybe you didn’t do that and now you’re beating yourself up wishing you could fix it. What you don’t know, you didn’t know. But what God makes us aware of, he makes us aware of so we can start. So wherever you find yourself with your children, you can’t control who they’re going to become. You can obey God who says, raise the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and leave the results in the hand of your God.

Dr. Matt Jones (20:44):
That’s awesome. Thank you for those insights, Rhonda. Now we’re going to shift here. And Janelle, do you want to kind of go back and forth on this speed round? We have the speed round, Rhonda. Just get to know our guests a little bit more and so that our listeners can get to know a little bit more. And do you want to ping pong back and forth the questions to know?

Janel Greig (21:03):
Let’s do it.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:04):
Yeah. I’ll go first. All right, Rhonda. Okay. And we try to make the answers as short as possible. Okay?

Rhonda Stoppe (21:10):
I got you. I hear you.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:11):
All right. Tea or coffee?

Rhonda Stoppe (21:13):
Coffee.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:14):
Okay. Janel.

Janel Greig (21:16):
One word that describes motherhood for you right now.

Rhonda Stoppe (21:21):
Glorious. I’m a grandma.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:24):
That’s the grandchildren. That makes sense.

Janel Greig (21:25):
Yes, that’s the grandma. That’s the grandma.

Dr. Matt Jones (21:28):
A mom from the Bible you relate to the most. I mean, especially in light of this book, right?

Rhonda Stoppe (21:36):
Naomi, but not because she was the mentor, but because she went through the hardest seasons that she could possibly go through, death of a husband, the death of her sons, infertility of her daughters-in-law. And when she finally said, “That’s it. I’m going back to my God and my people.” That is when Ruth, who was watching her walk through the most difficult seasons of life, that’s when Ruth said, “God will be God. My God, your people will be my people.” Sometimes God takes us through the most difficult seasons of life to validate our testimony to someone who’s watching.

Janel Greig (22:09):
Yep. Yep. Favorite Christian book that you’ve read recently.

Rhonda Stoppe (22:15):
I read it almost every year. It’s by Howard Hendricks, Dr. Howard Hendricks, and it’s called Teaching to Change Lives.

Dr. Matt Jones (22:21):
Yeah, he’s great.

Rhonda Stoppe (22:22):
I love that book.

Dr. Matt Jones (22:23):
Oh, that’s great. All right. One word your kids would use to describe you, and glorious has already been used. Okay?

Rhonda Stoppe (22:31):
Cray cray. Little bit cray cray. That’s what I say. Mom’s a little bit cray cray, but she loves Jesus.

Janel Greig (22:36):
All right. All right. What about grandkids? What would be one word they would use to describe you?

Rhonda Stoppe (22:40):
Well, my kids did this personality test on us on Nana and they said, “You’re a yellow.” And I’m like, “What’s a yellow?” And they said, “You want everything to be fun all the time.” And my oldest daughter, Meredith, who’s very organized, she’s fun, but she’s also very organized. I said, “Mom, my childhood makes so much sense now that I know that you want everything to be fun.” I’m like, “Absolutely. That’s my goal.” So my grandkids would call me yellow.

Dr. Matt Jones (23:01):
Oh, that’s cool.

Janel Greig (23:03):
That’s cute.

Dr. Matt Jones (23:03):
All right. Worst parenting advice you’ve ever received.

Rhonda Stoppe (23:08):
You are enough.

Dr. Matt Jones (23:10):
We talked about that one, Janel. Remember?

Janel Greig (23:13):
Yes, we did on a prior podcast. The lies that culture tells you. That’s great, Rhonda. What’s one upside down value that you’re trying to teach? How about your grandkids? An upside down value you’re trying to teach your grandkids.

Rhonda Stoppe (23:29):
Love Jesus more than you love yourself and his love will spill out of you onto others.

Dr. Matt Jones (23:38):
That’s great. That’s great. All right. Well, you write, we’ll shift back into a little bit more longer questions here. So you write about how moms can influence the culture in unfathomable ways through the sacred ministry of motherhood, but many moms today do feel invisible like they’re just wiping noses or packing lunches or dealing with their kids’ personal hygienes. And the real world changers are doing quote unquote important work. How would you encourage moms who feel like their day-to-day life is ordinary or unimportant?

Rhonda Stoppe (24:13):
There’s a whole chapter on the moms with no name. And I’m going to read you a quote from that chapter. This leads me to the final unnamed mother I want to explore. I don’t know her name, but you do. She is you. My heart is so filled with hope for the next generation when I consider the influence you will have as you raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The influence of unnamed mothers has shaped nations, inspired leaders, nurtured artists, and motivated ordinary children to accomplish extraordinary achievements. Moms, this is your God ordained time in history. Let me ask you a question. Who made the lunch sack of loaves and fishes that Jesus used to feed the 5,000? My guess is that little boy’s mother. I don’t know her name. Who’s the mother of David in the Bible? We don’t know her name.

(25:07):
Historians have an idea, but it’s not mentioned. She doesn’t have a shout out in scripture and yet God used her son. He called him the man after God’s own heart. My son, Tony, was a fighter pilot in the Air Force. When he was a lieutenant colonel, my husband and I were visiting him. He just retired, so now he’s not doing that anymore. He flew the Raptor, F22. Anybody who knows anything knows that’s a big, thank you. The men always go wild. The women like, that’s a big deal. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes.

Dr. Matt Jones (25:31):
Congrats.

Rhonda Stoppe (25:32):
And so we got onto base in Hawaii and my husband was in the front seat next to him and I was in the backseat with his wife. And as we pulled in, he showed his credentials he wasn’t in uniform. And as soon as he showed his credentials, they saluted the heck out of that guy and they were just all about Lieutenant Colonel Tony and they didn’t salute me. They didn’t look back and say, “Are you his mom? Good job.” They said nothing.

But that’s our life. As moms, we wipe boogers and bums all day long in the name of Jesus. We live out our faith, the highs and the lows. And we live the normal Christian life in front of our kids so that they know we’re going to blow it and we’re going to repent and we’re going to ask God to forgive us. We’re going to have our kids to forgive us, our spouse to forgive us.

(26:20):
The hypocrisy. In 18 years of youth ministry and actually 25 years of adult ministries, the number one thing that drives kids away from our savior is the hypocrisy in their Christian home. You give me a kid whose mom was a crack addict and you say, “Buddy, Jesus loves you. ” And he’s like, “He loves me? ” Yeah, he knows your name and he loves you. He proved it because he sent his son to die for you. And they’re like, “Tell me more.”

And you tell a kid who’s been homeschooled, raised in a little bubble, kept safe from all the big bad wolf out there in the world and there’s hypocrisy. Mom’s gossiping about people at church. Mom and dad are having a fight before they get out of the car at a church and then they smile. And you tell that kid when he’s a junior high, high school, “Hey, Jesus loves you.”

(27:01):
And he goes, “I know. I’ve heard it my whole life. Big deal.” 75% of teenagers, the stat might even be higher than now. Leave the church and never come back. And the number one reason is hypocrisy in their Christian homes. We have to live out our faith in such a genuine way that it’s a light to our kids that they want to follow Christ to.

Janel Greig (27:22):
That’s great. That’s intentionality with our kids, right? And being very real. I want to ask you one final question in our time together today, Rhonda. As we close, what’s one piece of advice that you wouldn’t want a mom to miss as she walks away from listening to this conversation and seeks to live differently tomorrow in light of God’s upside down kingdom?

Rhonda Stoppe (27:45):
Your adequacy comes from the Lord. That’s what the apostle Paul said. If you think I’m not adequate, I know I’m not adequate, but my adequacy comes from the Lord and to what God has called us, he will equip us. But if you got called to deepest, darkest Africa to be a missionary tomorrow, how would you tackle that? You would learn the language, you would memorize as much scripture as you possibly can memorize.

I have the entire book of Philippians memorized because it transformed my life and I wanted it in my heart and mind. You would hide God’s word in your heart so you didn’t sin against him. He would seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. You would look for opportunities to tell people about the hope you have in Christ, but we don’t approach motherhood the same way. We move into survival mode.

(28:30):
Instead, it’s like this is the mission field to which God has called us and we have to prepare ourselves with the sword of the word. We’re wrestling not against flesh and blood, but against principalities of darkness who come to steal, kill and destroy our children. And if you don’t think there’s a battle raging for the heart and mind of your kid, you cannot shelter him or her enough to keep her safe from the onslaught of the enemy’s fiery darts.

But the effectual fervent prayers of a righteous mom accomplishes much, a righteous dad accomplishes much. Imagine yourself Moses on the mountaintop interceding as Joshua fights that battle. And when you get weary, you ask others to intercede with you. You’re not alone in this. God has called you to this. Link arms with other moms that are of the same mind. Can I read one real quick final exhortation?

Dr. Matt Jones (29:22):
Absolutely.

Rhonda Stoppe (29:23):
Okay. Well, I thought I had it. By the way, at the back of each chapter, there is a QR code of me teaching on each chapter of the book and it’s free. And you can also go to my website, noregretswoman.com and you can read, I mean, you can watch those and they’re free here too. From the beginning, God established mothers as the first teachers of biblical truth to their children. Moms are the makers of a future generation of godly men and women.

And dads, you are too. We’re not leaving you out. My husband was a big role in my parenting. This is your time in history. God is calling you to set aside whatever distracts you from this blessed ministry of motherhood. Link your arms with other like- minded women who will run this race alongside of you, cheering you on in your successes and picking you up when you falter.

Dr. Matt Jones (30:21):
Great way to end. Rhonda, we are so grateful that you took the time because we know you have a busy schedule. You took the time to join us on our upside down parenting podcast. And for those who are listening, please be sure to buy. Don’t just check out, buy her latest book, Moms of the Bible: Life Changing Lessons from Fearless, Flawed and Faithful.

Moms, we want to encourage you just as God was at work and the stories of the moms of the Bible he is at work in your life too. As you know, following Jesus in your everyday faithfulness matters more than you know. In God’s upside down kingdom, it’s often the quiet, unseen moments that shape your kids the most, even whenever you are flawed. So if this conversation has encouraged you, please share it with a friend. Don’t forget to subscribe so that you don’t miss out on future episodes of the Upside Parenting Podcast.

(31:12):
Thank you for listening. Rhonda again, what an honor and privilege to hear your stories and insights on Moms of the Bible. Janel, we keep getting blessed by these people who are on for guests. Amen, we do. So way to go to our producer, The Weird Bearded Wonder. We hope to hear from you next time. Thanks, Rhonda.

Rhonda Stoppe (31:28):
Thank you. My pleasure. Loved it.