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Sep 19, 2024 · 50 minutes

Heidi St. John returns to “The Corner.”

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0:00 - 15:00. Esther 8:16. For there was light, gladness, joy and honor. 15:00 - 31:00. Heidi St. John returns to “The Corner.” 31:00 - 48:00. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is persisting in the face of it. www.afaaction.net/life To donate call : 877-616-2396

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Transcript

9,334 words, in two-minute parts. Made by machine, so a few words may be off.

0:0049:33

  1. 0:00

    Darkness is not an affirmative force. It simply reoccupies the space vacated by the light. This is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio. It should be uncomfortable for a believer to live as a hypocrite. Delivery people out of the bondage of mainstream media. And the philosophies of this world. God has called you and me to be his ambassador. Even in this dark moment. Let's not miss our moment. And now the Hamilton Corner. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Hamilton Corner here on American Family Radio. I am your host, Abraham Hamilton, the third broadcasting live. Day two from the Home School Legal Defense Association's National Leaders Conference here at the beautiful Sheraton Music City Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. I know y'all thought you would have to ask, so you always have to opry land. Not today. Not today. I am so excited that you have made the decision to join us here on the program. I am joined as usual by the corner contingent right across from me again seated to my right produce extraordinaire often imitated but never duplicated the real J. Matt ladies and gentlemen and back on the home front we have my man a hundred grand man in the controls there It was a DJ, you might have called him on the was and twos. Mr. Bobby Rosa. We are ready to rock and roll. With today's edition of the program, I had the opportunity this morning to address. I think I was told it was nearly 500 leaders here from homeschool associations and conventions all across the country. All over this land, they are homeschooling groups. in each state of the country. And this is a conference to help you encourage, to equip, and to inform, and sharpen leaders so that they can go and serve in their communities.

  2. 2:04

    HSLDA's website is a great website for to kind of serve as a clearinghouse, hslda.org is a great website. Let me make sure I got the website now. Cause I tend to, that's right, hslda.org It's a great website to get involved in your local homeschooling group. And it was said here by veteran homeschooler, Zann Tyler said, don't homeschool without being an HSLDA member. It's been an amazing, amazing conference. So far I'm looking forward to the rest of it. Uh, I brother in the Lord, Dr. Renton Rathbund spoke. I just left a breakout session. Uh, he is the director of worldview at Bob Jones university. And this brother is such a blessing to the body of Christ, man. It was, it was amazing. He talked about how do you know if you're doing apologetics correctly? How do you know if you're doing it correctly? It was such an encouraging and encouraging presentation. I'll give you a small hint. The word of God is pre-imminent in your involvement. What an amazing time. Thank you again for tuning into the program at this very moment. Many of you, if not most of you are making your transition from your part time jobs where you generate an income to your full time jobs, where you cultivate an outcome. And as you do so, I want to remind you to make that move with intentionality, understanding the primacy that God places on the family. Before there was a New Testament order of the New Testament church, before there was an order of priests, an order of prophets, the modern iterations of civil government, the first human institution that God established was the family. That is not a coincidence. That is not a mere happenstance. That is a, is a, is a, the feature of divine design. God established the family as his primary institution to establish multi-generational faithfulness to him and his kingdom. We must, we must, we must be about our father's business.

  3. 4:06

    And in order to do that well, we need to understand the primary to the God places on family and welcome His primacy to inform our approach. Glory be to God. We will never be able to out politic or even out church deficiencies in the home. That is not God's way. Because what goes on in your house is far more important, far more important than what goes on in the White House. Back to the word of God we go today. We're going to return to Esther chapter 8 because I want to talk to you some more about this. Yesterday we described as the story of Esther, her Hebrew name, Hadassah is recorded for us in scripture. How she ascended to become the queen of the Persian Empire, the Aggagite Haman developed, well I should say, had a deep-seated hatred for the Jewish people, put money aside, 750,000 pounds of silver to bribe the Persian king Xerxes or a hazardous, is the Persian name recorded in scripture, to annihilate the entire Jewish ethnicity within the entire experience of the Persian Empire. Mordecai found out about it, informed his cousin, Haddasah, who he had raised as his own once Haddasah's parents had passed away. The scripture unfolds in a time period that gives us clear indication that both Mordecai and Haddasah were most likely born outside of the geographical boundaries of Israel, outside of the geographical boundaries of Judah. The Bible gives us clear indication that both Haddasah and Mordecai were Benjomites, descendants of Kish specifically, and we know that part especially especially for Mordecai. But when the plot to annihilate the Jews was learned by Mordecai, he wept, he prayed, he wore sackcloth and ashes, he appealed to Hadassah to Esther to intervene. Once Esther recognized the gravity of the situation Mordecai showed her a printed copy of the decree. It was a decree that was issued in the first month of the year that and said that on the 13th day of the last month of the year, of the 12th month of the year, that would be the day that all Jews would be annihilated in the entire expanse of the Persian Empire. When Adasah learned what was the gravity of the situation, she asked Mordecai and the believing remnant to pray and to specifically fast for her for three days, then she would appeal to the king. She ultimately does so, discloses to the king that Haman's plot would include her own annihilation to which King Xerxes didn't take too kindly. He ended up ultimately elevating Mordecai to a position of authority in the Persian government, gave Mordecai the authority to write the decree, to nullify the previous decree to annihilate the Jews. But the decree that Mordecai wrote gave the Jews, not just like an Ijumudrini blink of the eyes, blink, everything is over with. But it gave the Jews the authority to fight for their own lives. And I said yesterday that many of us have become somewhat conditioned and even developed an expectation that deliverance from the Lord looks a certain way. You know, we think, you know, it looks like the prison door is opening and the chains falling off and us walking out. When that's not consistent with what the scripture reveals, the scripture reveals that yes, that those types of things happen sometimes.

  4. 7:56

    But the scripture also reveals the Lord's deliverance sometimes looks like being given the opportunity to fight. And I'm gonna revisit that text again. So I'm gonna go back to Esther chapter eight. I said I was only gonna go to one verse, Jeff, but I'm gonna go to more than just one. I said I was gonna go just to eight, 16, but I'm going all the way back to verse 8 and read up through 16. And this is what the word of God says. Verse 8 begins with quoting King Xerxes. Now you speak into Mordecai. Now you write to the Jews as you see fit in the king's name and seal it with the king's signet ring for decree which is written in the name of the king and sealed with the king's signet ring may not be revoked. So the king scribes were called at that time in the third month. That is the month of seven. and on the 23rd day, and it was written according to all that Mordecai commandant, that all that Mordecai commandant to the Jews, the satrips, the governors, and the princes of the provinces which extended from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces to every province according to its script, and to every people according to their language as well as to the Jews according to their script and their language. He wrote in the name of King Ahasaras, that is Xerxes, and sealed it with the king's signet ring, and sent letters by couriers on horses riding on streets sired, sorry, riding on steeds sired by the royal stud. In them, the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women and to plunder their spoil. On one day in all the provinces of King Ahasaras, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, that is the month of Adar, a copy of the Edict to be issued as law in each and every province was published to all the peoples, so that the Jews would be ready for this day to have binged themselves on their enemies.

  5. 10:04

    The couriers hastened and impaled by the king's command, went out, riding on the royal steeds, and the decree was given out at the citadel in Sousa. Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king, and royal robes of blue and white, with a large crown of gold and a garment of fine linen and purple, and the city of Sousa shouted and rejoiced, for the Jews there was light and gladness and joy and honor." Now some might ask, well, why couldn't the king just say all right, now you know, can it annihilate the Jews? Well, the previous decree was an irrevocable decree signed with the king's signet ring. So the only thing he could do is order a subsequent decree that doesn't nullify the previous one but gave the Jews the opportunity to respond accordingly. So the first decree would allow their annihilation. The second decree gave them the privilege to fight. The decree also gave them access to the spoils. You read the scripture you find that the Jews didn't take any spoils, they just defended themselves. This passage of scripture is what gives rise, book, I should say, in his culmination in chapters 8, 9, 8, 9, and then 10 record the introduction of the Feast of Purim in the Jewish experience. The Feast of Purim is directly connected to the 12th month, the 13th day, and the 14th day being days of deliverance for the Jewish people. But the deliverance didn't come to them with the eye dream of Jeannie Wink of the eyes. The the deliverance that they enjoyed was a right to fight. And when they learned that they were given the right to fight, look at the reaction, verse 16, there was light and gladness and joy and honor.

  6. 12:09

    Light, gladness, joy and honor. Why? Why? Man, now I have a chance. Now I can fight back. Now I can be engaged. Now I can be involved. I'm sharing this with you because too many, in too many circumstances, especially enjoying the environment that we enjoy, we can take the right to fight for granted. We can take the right to fight as if it's something that we should be guaranteed by virtue of breathing. When that ain't always the case. The Lord warned the people of God, both the believers in Rome and the believers in Colossae, I'm writing to the Colossians so that you would not be deluded. I'm writing if the delusion is allowed to metastasize, it could grow into full-blown captivity. The deliverance in the book of Esther that the Jews enjoyed was the right to fight. I'm continuing to emphasize this because I don't want us to misunderstand what God could be making available to us. You've heard me saying this program numerous times. Sometimes they're a prisons of constriction and lack and deprivation and even, you know, impoverished circumstances. But the enemy also works in prisons of luxury and prisons of neglect and prisons of abundance because we become easily seduced into a lethargy to where the concept of actually standing up and responding is a foreign idea. where engaging with you. Oh, that's too stringent. But I want you to peer into this and I pray that the Spirit of God would minister to you beyond the words that I am conveying to you. Because the deliverance that the Jews enjoyed in the Book of Esther, that culminated in the Feast of Purim was them being made aware. Oh, you thought annihilation was your portion, but now you have been blessed and delivered to the privilege of fighting back. You've I've heard me say in this program, I never intended for it to become like a jazzy saying or anything.

  7. 14:22

    But God has ordained you and me for this very moment we live in. Acts 17, God determined before time, before time began, He and His divine foreknowledge established the times in which you and I will be alive and the geographical boundaries of our habitation. That is the what, and then He gives us the why. Why? that men should seek God. This is the moment that God is ordained for you and for me. My prayer for this audience is that we do not, and we will not miss our moment because the right to fight is a blessing that God has given such a time of justice. Meet Kelsey. When she found out she was pregnant, she wasn't sure where to turn. But after meeting with the counselors at a pre-born network clinic who loved and supported her, and after hearing her baby's heartbeat on a free ultrasound, she chose life. When a mother looks at her child through a sonogram, it does something to you. You know, I ended up deciding to keep my son, who is now five years old today. He's amazing. He brings absolute joy to my heart. I could not imagine life without him. Not only did they help me save his life, they saved my life. By introducing a woman to her baby on ultrasound, a baby's chance at life doubles. If you have the means, would you consider a leadership gift to save babies in a big way? Your tax-deductible donation of $5,000 will sponsor Preborn's entire network for 24 hours, helping to rescue 200 babies, to donate Dial Pound 250 and say the keyword baby that's pound 250 baby or donate securely at preborn.com. That's preborn.com. Shiting light into the darkness. This is the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio.

  8. 16:25

    Welcome back to the Hamilton Corner, Abraham Hamilton the third here. I am delighted to have on the program with me. A woman who many of you already know, she is host of the Heidi St. John podcast. She's an author, speaker, podcast host, mom, woman of God. I would also add a fearless warrior who I'm honored to have on the program with me today. Heidi St. John. Hey. Hello. Great to be with you. Great to have you here. I should have also added a member of the HSLD board of directors as well. And actually you forgot MAMZY. My grandkids call me MAMZY. Well, you know, I thought that that was something if you wanted to share with a few of our friends. that would be something you would share, but I thought Mamsey was kinda cool. Such an honor. Yes. I love it, I love it. Nothing better than being called Mamsey, it's great. Well, I wanted to have you on the program for a host of reasons, but I wanted to start here because I know you are just, you have been on the front lines in contending for the faith, and particularly, particularly including ministering to women and ministering to your own family and encouraging others with the reality that you can train your own children. You don't have to outsource them to the government for the shaping of their hearts and their minds. And so would you just talk a little bit about that, how you got to the place where that became central to who you are and what you do? Well, I think it's important to frame the conversation and that I did not ever anticipate being a homeschool mom. I grew up, my grandparents put me through a private school, through a Christian school. Interesting, my granddad and my grandmother really understood the power of education. And so from a very young age, they were like, you're not going to a public school. This was a long time ago. I mean, dude, this was in the 70s, in the early 70s. And so we went to a Christian school and my parents couldn't afford it. And so everybody kind of pooled their money together and they put us in a Christian school. So I have had a framework for Christian education my entire life. And what the Lord did in my heart when our youngest daughter, who's now in her mid 30s herself, she's soon to be a mother of five, when she was in second grade and she was in a public school, we couldn't afford a Christian school, right?

  9. 18:33

    So we get, you know, Jay and I get married and you know, I'm 19, he's 21. And he's a pastor so, you know, we're broke. And we're trying to put our kids in a Christian school and we just couldn't do it. We just couldn't do it. We couldn't figure it out. We did it for about a year and a half and then thought, man, we're just going to have to try the public school. And I didn't hate the public school. I didn't have a terrible experience there. But what I noticed happening was that, you know, my daughter would get on the school bus like all the other kids in the neighborhood and comes at like 7.30 in the morning. I noticed that she was the school had her for the better part of the day and then she'd come home in the afternoon her little sister would come running out to meet her and Savannah was tired and kind of just couldn't care less when to come home and sit in front of the in front of the television and I was starting to just feel like really there's there's got to be more than this there's got to be more than this but I didn't know what that more was and to be perfectly honest everyone who I knew homeschooled I thought they were super weird I was like why would you guys do that I mean I'd I know paradigm for that like why would a woman in her right mind, keep her kids home all day long when a yellow bus come take away for free. And you get a shower by yourself and relative peace and her house stays sort of clean and maybe get something done. And so I just didn't have a framework for it. And when we went to enroll our second daughter into the school, she missed the cutoff by a couple of weeks. And here I have this inquisitive little girl who I think is just ready to learn. And so I made the fateful decision to go down to a homeschool supply store and say, Hey, Could you give me something so I can buy some time? And they gave me a book called Teacher Child to Read in a Hundred Easy Lessons. And God did such an amazing thing in my heart in the three months that followed. And I realized, first thing I realized was why, I've been massively lied to. I went to one of the most prestigious private schools in the Portland area and in Oregon. And somehow I didn't feel equipped to teach my own totter to read. Graduated with honors from high school, went off to Bible college and did pretty well. And for some reason, I had it in my head that I wasn't smart enough or capable enough, or called enough, or equipped enough, or educated enough to teach a five-year-old to read.

  10. 20:37

    What is wrong with that? And I realized I'm spending 20 minutes a day with her. And not only Abraham is she learning to read, I am loving teaching her. I love it. And so while her older sister is at school, I'm teaching Sierra how to read. Well, a few weeks go by and her dad comes home from work and I be like, you know, Sarah, tell your dad what we did today. We learned, what did we learn today? And she would say the word, you know what I'd be like, I did that, I don't know that, that was me, that was me. And before you know it, I've got the alphabet, you know, up around the ceiling, you know, ceiling tiles in our living room and I put posters of the president's will to be fair, only my favorite president's up on the wall as is my right as their mother. And pretty soon we're teaching history and Bible, and I'm loving every minute of it. and the Lord said to me, just in my prayer life, one day this responsibility never belonged to the school in the first place. It's always been yours. And I'll equip you if you'll trust me. And so I went to my husband, maybe a month later, on a Saturday morning really early, and I remember just sitting across from him, just saying, honey, what would you think if we homeschooled our kids? And the man about dropped his coffee and was like, who are you? What have you done with my wife? That's a crazy idea. Remember how we've always talked about how crazy that is? And I said, would you pray about it? You pray about it. And the Lord got ahold of his heart, like you got ahold mine. And at the end of that year, knees knocking, trembling, I went to Savannah's teacher who actually loved. And I said, we're gonna pull Savannah out of school, and we're gonna homeschool her. And she looked at me and I know this was the Lord Abraham because I needed to hear it so desperately. She said, Heidi, if I could start over again, I never would have put my kids in school. She said, you can do it, you can do it. And that was the beginning of a journey that we've been on now for the last 25 years. All the rest of our kids, we have seven children. The rest of them never darken the door of a public school or a private school for that matter. And now their parents themselves and entrepreneurs and some of them have gone to college and some of them haven't. But the main thing is that they're walking with the Lord.

  11. 22:41

    And I care less about them going to Harvard and nor about them going to heaven. I want my kids to know the Lord. Someone asked me why do you teach your kids to read so they can know God's word. That's the reason. And if they get a great job out of it, awesome. And you can read a contract, super great. But I want them to read the word of God and know it and understand it. And God's given us this word as a guide. Your word, if I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you, how will they know if they can't read his word? And so that was the impetus. And it was a decision that changed the trajectory of our family. And eventually, of course, I started writing books and blogging, and that's a whole different story in and of itself, but our youngest, our seventh child, is now in high school. And the rest of them, the six of them have graduated. We've got one left. And like you and I were talking about yesterday, don't blink because you miss it. It goes by fast, such a privilege. Absolutely, absolutely. Let me mention this before I forget to do it later. HeidiStJohn.net is Heidi's website. All things Heidi can be found there. H-E-I-D-I-S-T-J-O-H-N.net. You can get links connected to her podcasts, her blogs, her books, you can find her speaker schedule, she speaks all over the country all the time. She really is a great blessing to the body of Christ. And you mentioned about the Lord doing the work in your heart and it begins with you and your family. And then it grew to you wanting to encourage and really strengthen others to recognize that they could do it too. What was that journey like? Well, I think it came out of a principle that the Lord really showed my husband and I as we walk out our marriage. And this is sort of this principle of abundance, right? That God says love me with all your heart, so mine is strength out of an abundance of what God does between me and him, I pour into my husband. And out of an abundance in our marriage, we pour into our children. And out of an abundance in our family, we are called then to pour into the community. And the reason I always start with that is because I think some people get it backwards in this age of social media. We're pouring into other people, but our families are a mess. And so I always tell people, this is the foundational piece that God blesses and he has ordained, which is the family, right?

  12. 24:45

    And as I looked around, my husband was pastoring up in Northern Washington. And as I looked around, I realized, you know, I needed community. And what God was doing in our family was so phenomenal and so unexpected. I came from a broken home and didn't really see parenting done right. And God was doing a work of healing and restoration as we were focusing on what He says to focus on, which is training up your children. When I started, you've known me now a little while, if I learned something, I got to teach it. And so we started a homeschool cooperative up in Northern Washington and Mount Vernon, Washington, thinking that maybe we'd get 15-20 people come out for a first meeting, took all my kids around and we put little posters up in the grocery stores and the coffee shops and we said, hey, we're going to start a homeschool co-op. If you're interested in homeschooling, come out. And I thought, you know, 15 people show up and if 75 people show up at first meeting and we started a homeschool cooperative out of that- So 75 came to the first meeting? Wow. And I realized, boy, there's a need. You know, what is happening in our public schools and people need to understand this. Education is not neutral. There is nothing benign about education. People think, oh, reading, writing, and arithmetic. Well, how did we get to the place where we've embraced socialism and communism and gender ideology and all the ridiculous things that we see coming out of the alphabet mafia? Well, that didn't start in college, dude. It starts in kindergarten. And it's coming from our schools. And so I realized, okay, I'm not the only one. And maybe more people need to hear this message that God's given to me and my husband, even as we're walking it out, even as we're learning it ourselves. And so that began the very fruitful ministry that God gave us. Eventually my husband stepped out of full-time ministry in churches and he and I started working together. We've been working now full-time in the homeschool community for, for gonna say, 17 years, I think. So a long time and outside, And inside of that, my passion for just reminding women that their primary responsibility that God has given them inside the home is to train their children up to love and serve the Lord and that the feminist movement has taken so much from women.

  13. 26:49

    It has robbed us body, soul, mind and spirit of the thing that God gave us that makes us special. And that's the ability to carry a nurture human life. And so to remind, and it's everywhere I go, and as you rightly pointed out, I mean this time next week and I'll be in North Carolina. Everywhere I go, the message is resonating. Because women are realizing, wow, I missed something. Well, it's in the Word of God. It's right there. And it's a message that I think is needed now for this generation probably more than it's ever been needed. You said several things that I want to just explore a bit more. But I want to pick up at that last one first. You mentioned that the feminist movement has robbed, I would say, nation, our men and our women, frankly, from glorious revelation, insight, purpose and understanding that God has provided for our female bearers of God's image and our male bearers of God's image. Would you just speak a little bit more about what are some of those things that we have been deprived of almost willingly as a result of embracing the lives of feminism? Well, think how many women, I mean, how many times have we heard anything a man can do, I can do better? saw at the Portland airport and maybe this may be a couple of years ago, a woman walking through the airport with a shirt on this at the future's female and I laughed out loud my husband was like be quiet don't do that don't fight with the leftist in the important airport why not this would be a great place right and I'm sitting right there by the way I can see him but I can see yeah that handsome hunk of burning love that guy is mine I'll leave that assessment to you yes and we're coming up on our 35th wedding anniversary next weekend actually congratulations so but anyway I saw I see this this woman and I'm going to And I'm thinking the future is female. I mean, how, what a stupid, ridiculous statement. You do realize that if the future is female, there is no future. Right? Hello, newsflash. But I'm thinking of all of the lies that we have believed as women that are roles as mothers and as women who are able to nurture life, right, has been stolen from us on so many levels.

  14. 28:55

    Long time ago, I went to the Seattle School of Midwifery and actually dropped out of the program because it was run by a bunch of angry lesbians who actually hated men. They just assumed to deliver your baby as a board it. And I realized that in midwives, and I realized that in the midwife community, it's very spiritual to them. But it's about empowerment in women's bodies and what women are capable of doing. They worship the creation rather than creator who's forever blessed the Bible says right. And so this upside down ideology that we have embraced as women says, we'll put off childbearing as long as you can. And for women, having a baby is a pretty stark biological reality. I mean, I'm 54 years old now. I'm not having any more babies, right? And women have been told, oh, put that voice inside of your head that says, maybe I might want to have a family. Well, why would you want to do that? Isn't earning a living much more important, you know, make money. And so we put these things off. And then when we do have babies, we're told, I remember, you know, people making fun of Jay and I when we had our fourth baby, like, why would you do that? Well it turns out that God's ways are the best ways. He says that children are a blessing. How counter cultural Abraham is the word of God to what the world is telling us. The world says children are a burden. God says no they're a blessing. God said I made you male and female in my image and here we are trying to distort and up the end the very image bearers that God has given us in the form of male and female. And so we need to start seeing these things as what they are. They're a tax on creator. these are spiritual attacks, every single one of them, which is why I'm so passionate about politics, right? Politics determines policy, policy shapes a nation. Why aren't Christians shaping the nations? Why aren't we doing that? Well, we're not doing it because the narrative's been stolen and we've actually given it up like we seeded the territory. You guys go ahead and take it. We'll just sit back here and watch. We'll hold a net downstream. And God calls us upstream. He calls us to the headwaters. And at the headwaters right now is the discussion of male and female. at the headwaters right now is this idea. I mean, you talked about this earlier in your general session today, that this idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria, which I've been talking about for years and years, and it's a social contagion, right?

  15. 31:05

    Because these young women, especially, are being influenced by this. Think of what the enemy takes from a 15-year-old girl when she signs up for a radical mastectomy, and will never understand how beautiful it is to breastfeed a child. Think of what the enemy is stealing from these young women when they go in and they have hysterectomies and they're starting to take testosterone and they lose their feminine mystique that God gave them is so precious, right? And so I'm like, boy, God made us male and female. If God made it, it must be beautiful. Why aren't we embracing what God says? Oh, I know because we bought the lies of the enemy and we decided that we know better than what God said. And you can almost hear Satan in the garden. Did God really say? This is an attack against Creator God and the people that should be speaking to it are the men and women of God. And now is the opportunity, now is the time, and we mustn't waste it. Amen. So well said. So well said. I one time described the feminism trajectory as the talking snake suggestion being embraced by people to where, oh, I'm a woman, I'm just as good as a man. To where I'm a woman, I'm equal to a man. I'm a woman, I don't need a man. I'm a woman, I can be a man. That is, has been the byproducts of the feminist movement, frankly, on our nation. I wanna toggle back to something you said before, which is profound, that you mentioned your own upbringing. You came from a broken home. Yet, that circumstantial reality did not deprive you from responding to God's call for your life. Indeed. which is something that I think is worth revisiting, because sometimes people yield to the lie, how can I do this, look where I came from? But the circumstances of your arrival don't dictate the destination that you are to pursue. But for God. But for God. So I wanna delve into that. One more, two more things on the other side of this break. You're listening to the Hamilton Corner.

  16. 33:05

    My guest is Heidi St. John. Are you being honest and dependable in your personal money matters? Honesty is one of the first things Jesus requires of new believers. When some tax collectors approached Jesus to be baptized, they asked, teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than what you have been ordered to. You need to be honest, to be effective for God's kingdom work. Tune in to Faith and Finance with Rob West. Weekdays at 9 a.m. Central on American Family Radio. Hamilton Quarter Podcast and One-Minute Common Terrors are available at eafr.net. back to the Hamilton Corner on American Family Radio. Welcome back to the Hamilton Corner, Abraham Hamilton the third here, having a conversation from the HSLDA National Leaders Conference at the Sheraton Music City in Nashville with my sister and the Lord's fellow member of the HSLDA board, author, speaker, podcast host, former, US Senate candidate. Yes, Congress, yes. From the Pacific Northwest, Heidi St. John, her website is Heidi St. John.net. All things Heidi can be found there. I wholeheartedly encourage you to go there, visit, get resourced up so that you can be fortified for the times that God has planted us in. Before we went to the break, we were talking. And you mentioned something that I wanted to revisit because one of the lies that is, I think, and you said this during the break and it's gonna feed into our conversation, that the willingness or the ease with which many have fallen prey to feminism is because of a lie that's not only told but has been practiced, that would communicate something other than women being fellow Bears of God's image just as much as men are. I have said on this show repeatedly that men and women are equal qualitative Bears of God's image. The reality however is that God not even however the reality in addition to that is he's made us complementarily distinct from one another with different roles. The differences in our roles does not communicate a variance in degree of quality before the Lord.

  17. 35:29

    And that is one of the lies that not only is often told, but more often practiced, that has led to many of our sisters being being easy prey for feminism. Well, and they're wounded. I mean, how easy is it to pick off someone who's wounded? Right. I mean, a person who's wounded is easily preyed upon. This is why you see wolves. If they're looking to go hunting and they see a flock of sheep, they're going to look for the outlier. they're gonna look for the wounded lamb. They're not gonna go for the one in the middle, right? They're gonna go for the wounded one. And I think, you know, we have an opportunity as God's people to reframe the message, right? That God says, no, I made you in my image. You got different roles. It's a beautiful thing to be a woman. I want all five of my beautiful daughters to know how beautiful they are. In the sight of the Lord and in the sight of me and in the sight of their father, one of the things I've loved as I've watched my husband raising these girls, you know, which is, yeah, hormones on the whole thing, it could be bumpy. And I would watch him periodically throughout the years and they would come downstairs time. And every once in a while, my husband would just stand in amazement at the bottom of the stair and go, what is this image, this beautiful young lady coming down the stair and you could see the countenance of my daughter just changed to now. Her dad said she was beautiful. It matters, right? We have different roles to play. And it's a beautiful thing, this complimentary in these roles that God has given us. And my husband has often said, I gave my wife a house, but she made it a home. Now women are multipliers by nature. God's given us the ability to be multipliers. And we have the opportunity to influence, we have tremendous influence in the lives of our husbands, tremendous influence in the lives of our children. Women are heartbeats of homes. Incredible role. not to be mistaken for the leader of the home, which God said, I gave this role in the authority to the husband and to a father inside of a home. These are gods, this is God's created order.

  18. 37:29

    And when we don't abuse it and malign it and twist it upside down on its head and then market it as if God said it. If we actually read the scripture and apply it, it's not that hard to understand, but in our quest for significance. And I think I've seen this in my own life, absolutely, when I got married, I struggle with it because I grew up in an abusive home. My father was very abusive toward me. And when I read Paul's admission, especially when he said women are be silent on their show, I'm like, that's enough, I've had enough of that. I don't wanna read that. And my husband was like, let's read it again, let's understand what's happening. I needed healing to happen in my heart so that I could see God, I could see my husband the way God saw him and see my role the way God created it to be. And having this wonderful, like I told you, Jayna, we're very young when we married. And when Jay married me at 19, I was about as broken as a 19-year-old girl could be. I was literally broken physically, broken spiritually, broken emotionally. And God took this broken woman and through the process of this wonderful man and learning his word and the sanctifying process of becoming a mother, God's been healing in my life. And I want women to hear that. because we have a very unique role to play. And when we give that role away or when we misunderstand the preciousness of it, we miss the blessing. And it is such a blessing. I love being here. I mean, I love serving on the HSLDA board. I love writing books. I love speaking. There's no place I'd rather be in the whole world than at home of my kitchen making sourdough bread with my grandbabies. There's just no place I'd rather be. And God's put that in me. I also know I have a part to play in the culture right now. and that my job largely of raising children, which I poured myself into for 20 some odd years, God's shifting what he's doing with me right now. And so I think it's a question of, are we listening for the Lord? Are we willing to walk out what God asks us to do? And in part of that is embracing what God says about men and women in his word.

  19. 39:30

    And it's beautiful, why? Because God made it. And what did he say? He said it was very good. Very good. Leave it to people to mess it up. Yeah. Absolutely. And you mentioned something, and I don't want to go back here entirely, but just run a highlighter over it, that it wasn't a hindrance perpetually for you having come from brokenness in your home, but you met the healer. And in the process of having met the healer, you were allowed and drawn to flourish even in spite of that. There's some listening to us right now, they're experiencing all kinds of difficulty and have no concept of thinking, but God, do something in me and through me and you are exhibit A of what God can do no matter what the background may be. And you mentioned something else in the previous segment that I thought it was worth revisiting. You mentioned that you and your husband, Jay, were moving into what God was doing in you and in your own home. And then as that abundance overflowed, you moved on to offering what God had offered you to others as you were still learning. You didn't sit and wait. I'm gonna wait until I become an expert in all things before I take one step forward. But as you were learning, you were willing to offer what you had, I thought that was something worth revisiting. Yeah, well, I think the beautiful thing about that is that God says His power is actually found in weakness. And the culture, you know, the culture is steam's power. And our weaknesses. Right, absolutely true. And the culture is steam's power. We don't esteem weakness. We esteem strength, right? And God says, no, I'm gonna meet you in your weakness. Why? Because He gets the glory. Amen. You know? I imagine sometimes, as I'm getting older, especially, I imagine sometimes my homecoming and what it will look like. And I often think, you know, I'm gonna get to heaven, You know, my hair's gonna be stinged, and my knees are gonna be bloodied, and my elbows are gonna be scuffed up, and I imagine the Lord Jesus just going, hi to your hair, boy, you look bad, but you are here, right? I wanna fall flat on my face, lift my hands to the heavens and say, thank you, Jesus, that was all you. Because it is all him, and we misunderstand any success that we have in our lives when we don't give glory to the one who gave us that success.

  20. 41:36

    And I think that comes in parenting, it comes in homeschooling, it comes in in marriage, absolutely. And to look to the healer, he said, his grace is sufficient and his grace is actually found in our weakness. And so when we acknowledge the weakness, let me say Lord, work through me, right? And we find this is true. I'm parenting. It's sanctifying. I was just having this conversation with my daughter who is getting ready to have her fifth baby. And boy, she is she is in it to win it at this point, right? She's got she feels like she's got kids just coming out of her ears. And the other day, she's like, Mom, I just don't think I can do it anymore. And I'm like, Congratulations, you're right where God wants you. You're right where he wants you because he's gonna do a work in your life through the sanctifying process of raising these little ones and you're gonna know him in a deeper way and he'll be the rescuer, he'll be the lifter of your head. That's what he wants to be. And where do we find that Abraham? We find it when we cry out to the Lord. We very rarely find it in the mountain top experiences because we're people, we get all prideful. Stay up on top of the mountain too long and we start thinking look at me I'm a really good mountain climber. The wink. Right? God wants to meet us where we are. And it's one of the things I love about walking with the Lord. He's not looking for perfection. He's looking for surrender. Man, I'm so grateful even for you sharing that experience because our culture has this lie that once they're 18, they're grown and gone, but you're even sharing your own family testimony that you're even revealing how you as Mamsi, you're continuing as a ministerial resource for your own daughter. Like you've known her through adolescence. And now you're knowing her as a mom, mother of five herself, and her recognizing even at that stage, she still needs help from mom, but just in a different way. You're no longer, you know, it's not the pedagogical offerings, it's not the adolescent development, but now you're still there for her. Kind of like Jethro was there for 80 year old Moses. That's right. Well, and think about how backward again our culture is. When we esteem retirement, you know, just can't wait till we get to that magic age, whatever it is, 65, 70, we'll just retire, we'll go live in a golf course. Where is that in the Bible? I would really like someone to tell me.

  21. 43:36

    It is in my book of first flesh alone. Yes, I think it is. The very first time I ever did an interview with my friend Dr. Dobson was probably maybe twenty years ago now. And he could tell that I was nervous and he was trying to get me to talk about something that didn't make me nervous. And he said, Heidi, what do you think about retirement? Well, I'm pregnant with my sixth child. And I was looking down at my burgeoning belly and I was like, well, it's nowhere in my future. in any kingdom, person's future. He said, God's gonna use us until he takes his home. And the seasons change, and maybe our ability changes, and maybe our energy changes. But the mission remains the same. So the question is, God, what do you want me to do now? So at this stage, and now I've got, you know, soon to be six grandchildren, and I'm loving every minute of it, you know. Praise God, we say in our local church, we don't retire, we refire. Yes, come on. If we don't retire, we refire. Let's go. Occupation may change your mechanism of an income generation may change But what does not change is your devotion to the king of kings and the Lord the Lord of lords and Willingness to obey him by keeping your hand to a plow. He has placed before you. I love it Yeah, I love that one other thing because the disrespectful clock is here, too Again, we'll have a few minutes left It's not like you have nothing else to do right. You're just sitting around popping bonbons I think it's sourdough. I'm sure you're waiting on what else can I do amongst all of the things you're doing? You're writing, you're speaking, you're, you're, you're, your podcast, you're traveling all over the, all over the place. And you agreed to join the board of HSLDA. Why would you do that? I love the mission. I love the mission of the Home School Legal Defense Association. We've been a part of it now for about 25 years. And I believe in what they're doing when Mike Ferris called and said, Hey, we're, we're, we'd like to know if you'd consider, you know, being considerate. for the HSLDA board. I thought this is probably one of the highest honors I've ever been asked to participate in outside or just being a mother and a wife. And yeah, and shockingly, they invited me to sit on the board. I'm the first woman to sit on the board of HSLDA.

  22. 45:38

    And I love the mission of advancing homeschool freedom. And really, HSLDA is the watchman on the wall for homeschool freedom in here in the United States and actually even globally in many cases. And I think we're going to live to see more attacks against the freedom that we have. People are very comfortable in it right now, but we're starting to see attacks come from the academic elites and people who think that they know better than you do who should raise your children and who should make those decisions. And HSLDA has been defending homeschool freedom since 1983. It's such an honor. It's an honor to serve with you. I love the prayerful attitude of the board of HSLDA. I think God blesses it when we come before him and say, okay, Lord, we're gonna talk about a bunch of stuff, but we recognize if you don't give us wisdom, we ain't got nothing. You know, we got nothing without the Lord. And that has been the humble attitude of the men that have started HSLDA, and it continues today with the staff. It's an extraordinary organization that I'm proud to serve. Man, it is, you know, this is my first National Leaders Conference with HSLDA staying for the whole conference, and I was able to attend my first board meeting in person here at that conference, And I didn't know what to expect. And we started that time, that meeting off with nothing but prayer. Yeah, it's precious. The first thing I told my wife when I got there, I said, baby, wouldn't believe this. These are our folks. These are our folks. And one of the board members said that they know for a fact that the successes that God has afforded HSLD as an organization are directly proportional to the prayer that is engaged in by the leadership of the organization. And I always move personally, frankly, not just for the business of the organization, but to recognize to, which I knew before, which is why I agreed to join the board for sure. But to- It's different when you're, that was my first reaction to, I've served now for about four and a half years and my first meeting that I went to in person. I was just so moved by the fact that we all just, we went around the table for quite a long time.

  23. 47:40

    It was like two hours. Yeah, two hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just share, I mean, really deeply personal things. And there's not a perfect person that sits on that board. And these are all people that are surrendered to the spirit. It's beautiful thing to watch. And you rightly pointed out that's the blessing, right? Behind it. Also the blessing of the country. Amen. The United States under the blessing of God, because our founder sought the wisdom of heaven. And that's what we need to be doing. So well said. Heidi St. John, ladies and gentlemen, I know we have like a minute and some change left. You can probably tell why I asked her to join the show. If you've been listening to the wild, you kind of get an idea where I am. And I kind of identify people who identify with me. And I consider hiding among those. Among the things that you're facing and what you've been doing in the ministry in about 30 seconds, what do you think is one of the most important things you could say to the people listening to the program now? Well, I'd say God has you here for such a time as this. Get involved, get off the bench, get onto the battlefield. We need to engage. Christians are needed in every sphere of the influence right now. We're needed in education. We're needed in politics. We're needed in entertainment. We're needed in medicine. God's people are needed. This is no time to sit this thing out. We've got an election coming up, get involved, ask God for wisdom, and then do your part. Do your part. Thank you for tuning into the program. One more day live from HSLDA. Hey David, he's saying, hey daddy. My brood has come into the room. One more day live from the HSLDA National Leaders Conference. We'll be live again tomorrow, right from this exact same room. Thank you for tuning into the program. You guys know it just like I said, on a daily basis, darkness is not an affirmative force. It really reoccupies the space that is vacated by the light. Let's light up the darkness. The views and opinions expressed in this broadcast may not necessarily reflect those of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.

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