God’s word tells us that, as believers, we’re “seated with Christ.” And we’re “sent.” What do those things mean? And how do they weave together?

Resources:

• Heather's Website
• Seated with Christ: Living Freely in a Culture of Comparison by Heather Holleman
• Sent: Living a Life That Invites Others to Jesus by Ashley Holleman
• Other books by Heather Holleman

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and I am delighted this week to have my good friends Ashley and Heather Holleman as my conversation partners. Ashley and Heather and my wife and I have known each other for a very long time, have taken some pretty long road trips together, and they head up a ministry called Seated and Sent Ministries. I'm going to let them tell you more about that. Ashley and Heather, welcome to Questions That Matter.

Ashley: Thank you so much, Randy. We love being with you anytime we can be, including today.

Heather: Yes. We are looking forward to this conversation.

And this is one of the very first or second or third podcasts we're doing as both video and audio, so I'm I'm doubly anxious. And for those of you who are watching this, maybe you're saying, “Didn’t he used to wear glasses?” Yes, I did, and I think I probably will be again, but right now I'm in the middle of getting some things done to my eyes, and I'm not wearing glasses for the moment. I can't see anything. This is just going to be great. This is a blind podcast. For those of you who are only listening, you're thinking, “Well, I'm really glad I'm not watching. It sounds terrible!” So, Seated and Sent Ministries. So here's what I want people to know right off the bat: Quite a few years ago, you, Heather, wrote a book called Seated, about our position in Christ. And then you've written several other books. And then, not too long ago, together, the two of you wrote a book called Sent, how we are all sent to proclaim the gospel. So the first book’s on our position in Christ, and the most recent book, or Sent, is more about being in evangelism and proclaiming the good news.

I want to dig into how those two are woven together. But let's start with them separate, just to make sure we're understanding them. Let’s start with you, with Heather. What is it you wanted people to really grasp in your book, Seated?

Heather: When I wrote Seated with Christ, it just struck me how much I misunderstood this image in Ephesians 2, which has become my favorite chapter in the Bible, that God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. And it was a summer day in late July when I was reading that passage, and I looked at that image of being seated, and of course, being the grammar expert that I am at Penn State, I was really interested that it was a past tense verb. It was something that has already in part happened to us, and so I checked in with my my theologian friends, my friends who knew Greek and could help me with that passage, and they said, “Yeah, it's a declaration of something that is already true about us in part right now.” So as I was looking at that passage, I just thought, “Well, I do not live like a seated person. I live like someone who's trying to fight. I’m fighting for a seat at the table that I think will finally bring me life.” And that day I realized I'm already seated at the best table with the greatest King. And that means that I'm completely secure. I don't have to live my life in jealousy and comparison anymore. And so what I want people to learn is, when they're seated with Christ, they're living the life they're supposed to be living. They're set free to live out the end of Ephesians 2:10 that says, “We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” So it's a book about belonging and deep security in Christ.

Man! Well said! And I don't want you to say too much more about the book, because I want people to buy the book, and you may have wrapped up too much of it, so we want to just tease them. But I'm really sorry I didn't tell you who these people are that I'm talking to, Ashley and Heather. For a long time, they were with the staff of CRU, of campus crusade. That's where we got to know each other. Now they head up this ministry, Seated and Sent. Ashley gave leadership and guidance to a ministry to grad students which was just fascinating. In fact, now that I think about it, I first met the two of you when you were grad students, right?

Heather: That’s right.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Do I remember correctly?

Ashley: Yep, yep. That was one of my very first things I ever did with CRU, as a grad student, is I came to a day retreat, and guess who was speaking? You were speaking.

Heather: Randy Newman.

Ashley: I had to be late because I was taking an exam on a Saturday morning.

I do remember that. And I’m still a little kind of bummed. Like, he shows up at the retreat where I’m speaking, but… well, we'll work through that later. And Heather is an associate teaching professor of English at Penn State University, so when she said a minute ago that she was a grammarian, she wasn't kidding. This is what she studies, rhetoric and composition and communication. So, Ashley, let me point now to the latter book, Sent. What's that all about?

Ashley: Yeah. Basically it's the great idea that Jesus captures when He says, “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you,” which is a remarkable gift. It's a remarkable opportunity. It's a remarkable invitation to intimacy with Jesus, being on mission with Jesus, and being a part of the greatest thing that's happening in the course of human history, which is God is keeping His word and rescuing the people for Himself. And so it's the big idea that evangelism, outreach, moving into people's lives with the good news of the Gospel, with the hope and love of Jesus, is far more than just what we do. It's who we are. It's core to our identity as believers, and it's not just something we do for God, though that's true. It's something we get to do with God. And so the big idea behind Sent was we really wanted people to experience what we have over the last twenty years, which was just this incredible lifelong now adventure of being on mission with Jesus, where we get to—we don't just have to share our faith but we get to share our faith, because we’re believing that we're doing it with Jesus, and He’s going ahead of us, and we get to run with Jesus into people's lives as He sends us to them.

Hmm., I remember reading your book and feeling that enthusiasm coming through. And it was the enthusiasm of: We’re in this conversation that we're having with non-believers together with the Lord. And so it pointed in the right direction, I think. I think sometimes in evangelism, the focus is totally on us: “Here's how we do it. Here's what we should say. Here's the words that work.” Or it's all on them, the focus is all on them: “They're lost. They're going to hell. They’re separated from God.” And it needs to be somewhat on ourselves and somewhat on them but mostly on the Lord. “He has sent me. He has sovereignly placed me in this relationship at this moment in time.” And that's what your book is—that theme or that flavor or that ethos is woven all the way in. I love it.

Ashley: Yeah. That’s right, yeah. We believe there's really… a sent person believes three core things that's happening: Number one, God is always, always at work to draw people to Himself. Number two, He uses people to introduce others to Jesus. That's his plan A. And then thirdly, it's an invitation. We get to do this with Him, and He continuously offers us opportunities to see Him at work in people’s lives and allow us to be a part of it. So it begins and ends with Him, and we have a significant part to play. And the person, the people that we get sent to also get to respond, but ultimately, you're right, it's about what God is doing in His world.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me go back a little bit, to Heather. What you were saying. So you said you felt like, when you really dug into this word seated and that passage in Ephesians 2, you said, “I don't think I was living like someone who was seated. I was living like someone who was clamoring to try to get a seat at the table.” Can you say more about… well, why don't we start with that clamoring part? What was that like?

Heather: Well, what I love about this podcast right now is it really began with what you spoke about at the that retreat, when you talked about trying to make a name for yourself. That was what I was trying to do, and the way I was searching for a place at the table was really in three ways: I thought that you get a seat at the table if you are beautiful and attractive, like the goal was to just lose weight and be beautiful. So I was trying to find a seat at the table of appearance. The second table was affluence. I thought real life, the good life, is people with money, and my job is to accumulate more and more wealth. The third way I was clamoring was what you talked about about at that retreat, was achievement. I was trying to make a name for myself. I thought, “What’s the best way I can get a seat at the cultural table of influence?” and that is get a PhD. And what happened was I was really enslaved. And I would say I was oppressed, kind of what, in 2 Peter, you either are living according to the divine nature, or you are being held captive and corrupted by the world, and so, even though I knew Christ, I was really buying into a cultural narrative that was killing me, and so that day, when I read Ephesians 2, I thought, “Wait a second. I'm at the best table with the greatest King. Why am I fighting for a seat at the table? What if I believed I was already there?”

Mm. Good.

Heather: “Then what?” So that day, I made a little chart in my journal, and I thought, “Seated people don't worry about their appearance because they're so busy adoring the King,” and I thought of David. “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek.” He is gazing on the beauty of the Lord, and then of course my favorite moment in Psalm 34: “Those who look to Him are radiant. Their faces are never covered with shame.” The Holy Spirit just used His word to say, “Look, when you're seated with Christ, you're actually a marvelous, beautiful person, radiating the beauty of the Lord. And then with affluence, I knew I had access to all the riches of God's kingdom. And then finally seated people don't worry about achievement, which is what you were talking about. What would it mean if, instead of trying to achieve, I thought the goal of my life was to abide? A much better verb. And when you abide, the word tells us we're appointed for inevitable fruit, meaning that I don't need to compare it to anyone else. It’s not about achievement anymore. It’s about abiding to bear the fruit that God has ordained for my life, so what happened was a stronghold broke apart in my heart, and I no longer lived in jealousy and comparison. I mean it was so dramatic that people who know me best were… they were saying things like, “Heather, what happened to you?”

Ashley: Yes. “What happened to you?”

Heather: You have become a different person. So the word is so powerful, and Ephesians 2 then sets you free to live a sent life.

I'm remembering back to that retreat. Isn’t that something? I don't know whether I had done a whole ton of undergraduate student retreats at that point, but not too many grad student retreats, and I myself had finished grad work, a masters degree at a seminary, not that much earlier than that. And I remember, in one of my Old Testament classes, digging into the passage that I ended up preaching on, but it struck me in that class—we were looking at the story of the Tower of Babel-

Heather: Yes!

… when the people said, “Come, let us make a name for ourselves.” And just the way they were, “Let us make a name for ourselves.” and that was their whole motivation. “We don't need God. We're going to make the name.” And the shocking contrast is… I mean, obviously they failed. It didn't work. They said, “Come, let us….” and then God says, “Come, let Us….” Interesting. He's talking about Himself in the plural. One of those very few spots in the Old Testament, God talking about himself trinitarianly. I don't know if that's the right word, and I'm talking to a grammarian, so please just… let's just work on that later. But it was, “Come, let Us go down,” and thwart their efforts, because it would be tragic if they succeeded, if they made a name for themselves. Then they would really be convinced that they don't need God, which is a horrible untruth.

Heather: Yeah.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah.

But then, at the very next chapter, God approaches Abraham. He selects Abraham, and He says, “I will make your name great.” And the contrast of name and name-

Heather: Love it!

…. there’s even some contrast in chapter 10, with the word, the Hebrew word for name. But it's the contrast of allowing God to make your name great, and He does make all believers' names great when He gives them a new name of saved and seated.

Heather: Yeah. Mm-hm.

So it was a fun message for me to proclaim to graduate students, because if you go into grad studies or any kind of success venture, “I'm going to make my name great,” it’s going to be oppressive. It’s going to be horrible.

Heather: It was! It was!

And if you succeed, it's even worse.

Heather: Oh! I felt that-

Ashley: Amen.

That’s kind of the worst.

Heather: Yes.

So, Ashley, then you had this ministry for many years with grad students. How did all this play out? Were you able to present this message in ways that helped other grad students?

Ashley: Oh, all the time. I mean, one of the peculiar or kind of tailor-made struggles for grad students is this idea of the impostor syndrome. Everyone thinks that they are the only person in their department that doesn't belong. And the goal, of course, is to let no one else ever find that out about you. And so you have to be someone you aren't, or someone you think you have to be, just so you get to stay, because the idea of making a name for yourself is so important. But you're constantly fighting for that. That’s the seat at the table that grad students fight for, is, “I get to belong here. I get to stay here.” Everyone gets admitted, but does everyone stay? Of course, the problem is no one tells grad students coming in that you're not the only one thinking that. Everyone is. And if someone would just go first and break the ice and say, “I'm constantly worried about my time here,” everyone else will say, “Yeah. Me, too. Me, too.” And so we really spend a lot of time helping our grad students just be fine with the fact that maybe they don't measure up like they thought they would or others thought they would, that they don't have to fight for that seat at a table. And then to be that person that went first, to be the vulnerable, because they're in the safe spot, they're the ones seated with Christ. They have nothing to lose. They’re the ones that can actually go first with their peers who maybe don't know Jesus yet and say, “Guys, you ever just have to fight that feeling that you don't deserve to be here or belong here? What do you do about that?” Yeah. It popped up all the time, both helping our students work through it themselves as believers and then helping them minister to their peers as ones that have found a seat at the table with Jesus.

Heather: We do find that it really does impact any age group, though. As we travel around, people will admit they are fighting for a seat at the table in some way. Or they're lamenting a loss of a seat at the table. It's amazing to me how almost every age, there's this metaphorical table, that they think, “If I got a seat there, life would really begin for me.”

Ashley: Yeah.

We here at the C.S. Lewis Institute are very excited about a new monthly publication we are launching and have launched already and have sent out a few issues. In the legacy of C.S. Lewis, this new publication, which we're calling Challenging Questions, tackles subjects and issues regarding the Christian faith, with a hopefully winsome and thoughtful approach to provide believers with good reasons for their faith and to provide seekers and skeptics with some food for thought. This new publication will be distributed monthly. We hope that you'll share copies of it with friends of yours, neighbors, colleagues, and we would love to receive your feedback on it. Go to our website, look for Challenging Questions. There’s also a place where you can send us feedback and comments about it. Maybe you could offer some possible topics you'd like to see us address. So we really hope that this resource helps you as you reach out to people who are posing challenging questions to you.

So I'm thinking as you're talking, “Okay, this isn't just about grad students, and it isn't just about the academic world.” In the academic world, when you're trying to get a job in the academic world and once you've got a job, you're constantly having to update your CV. You do, you just have to. And you published another paper? You have to add it to the CV. Well, in other worlds, in the non-academic world, you have to keep constantly updating your resume. Any kind of achievement or accomplishment. You need to keep doing that. And so the tension for the Christian is, “Well, how do I do this, so that it doesn't seem like I'm promoting me?” Because in a sense you are promoting you. I mean you need to let people know. And I always find with people that, if you can think of it in terms of a stewardship and in terms of gratitude-

Ashley: Yeah.

Heather: Yeah.

… so, “Thank you, Lord, that You enabled me to get this paper published. I'm going to add it to the CV, because that's being a good steward of the gifts and abilities you gave me and the opportunities you gave me to publish that paper,” or to get that job or to…. And so gratitude and stewardship replaces, “I'm going to make a name for myself.” And I think there is a kind of freedom that comes from that, of, “Well, am I doing this because I'm trying to boast and have the attention on me?” Well, it could be. Or it could be, “God enabled me to have these experiences. It’s a legitimate and good calling. I want to be a good steward of that.”

Heather: I like that.

Ashley: Yeah.

Heather: That’s good.

You know, this is the C.S. Lewis Institute podcast, and so we have to quote C.S. Lewis every time. It's guaranteed. And here it comes. I'm just kidding. We don't really have to. But he wrote a great essay called “Learning in War Time.” It's in the collection of essays or messages that are part of the collection of The Weight of Glory. And he gave a presentation to students who were studying during World War II. And there was this sense of, “What are we doing back here in Oxford where it's comfortable and nice, and my relatives and friends and people I grew up with are fighting and dying and having terrible experiences?” Well, for those who are called to this academic world. It is a legitimate calling. It has its own sets of traps and pitfalls. But if God has indeed called us to it, we can be good stewards of that. Anyway, I'm sorry. I’m doing too much talking. So let's dig in about…. We've already touched on it a little bit, but I want you to say more: How do these two fit together, the seated and sent?

Heather: Well, the first link came—and I describe this in the book, that once you know you're seated with Christ, you actually are freed up with an incredible amount of energy. When you stop fighting for a seat at the table, I was amazed at how I could say, “Well, the next word was make myself available.” You can tell I love repetition. So I'm adoring, accessing, abiding, and I thought, “Seated people know. They really do develop a rich theology of place.” Think about it. Paul is writing about…. He's in a Roman prison most likely, and he's focusing on his seat in the heavenly realms with Jesus and then he’s also thinking about his ministry there, in prison, and I thought, “Well, where am I?” Acts 17. And that's when Ash and I really began to see an explosion of ministry opportunities, when we exclusively devoted ourselves to the one-mile radius around our home because of this idea, the theology of place. So we saw, in total, eight people prayed to receive Christ over the years, and we just made ourselves available to them and really believe that seated people, they look around the table and they think, “Who isn't seated with me? Who can I go and now get to come and have a seat at the table?” So that really began us living out the sent mindset. And so the reason why the book came about was we were living out of our identity of being seated with Christ. And one summer I was reading the book of John, and I noticed that the number one way Jesus describes the Father in the book of John is  “the Father Who sent Me.” Over and over again, He’s calling this identity to mind, and I really thought it was so instructive. What would my life look like if I called to mind my sent identity the way Jesus did, so it's astonishing, in John 20:21, when He says, “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” That’s when Ash and I began to get serious about cataloging what it means to live a sent life and helping others on this supernatural adventure with Jesus. So when you're seated, you’re secure enough to then go live a sent life. Is that what you’re-

Ashley: Well, yeah. And you're also not just secure enough, but I think you realize how…. Well, at least I can speak for myself. How much time I spent, mind space wise, literally time working in angst, worrying about my future.

Heather: Yeah.

Ashley: Worrying about-

Heather: Your seat.

Ashley: It wasn't just the impostor syndrome. It was like, “No, I actually might not make it through this program.” So it's not just a mind game. It actually might be that it doesn't work out. But when I realize more and more that Jesus has… I'm seated at the greatest table with the greatest King, and all that Heather had already talked about, what it means to be seated, including that He’s already prepared good works in advance for us to do, that ultimately, because my life is in God's hands, I don't have to worry about all that much. And then it struck me, “Well, so then what am I going to think about?”

Heather: Yeah. “What am I supposed to do here?”

Ashley: “What am I going to do with all this free time?”

Heather: Yeah. With my life? Yeah.

Ashley: And all this free mental space and emotional space and energy that I have given so much of to just almost like self preservation, and it's like, “Well, we're blessed to be a blessing. Who else needs to know this?” And it really freed me up for the first time to take my eyes off myself and not just put them on Jesus, but also put them on the people around me and move towards them.

You know, I want to underline that phrase that you've both now quoted several times from, Ephesians 2:10. “The works that God prepared beforehand for us to do.” It is a very, very different mindset, feel, set of emotions between on the one hand, “Okay, what is that I want to do? What is it that I want to accomplish? What is God calling me to do?” As opposed to, “What is it that God has already prepared for me to do?” It becomes, “Lord, what are the doors that You’ve already opened or that You are opening? Which doors do You want me to walk through and on the other side of that door, those are the people You’ve prepared for me to talk to. Those are the tasks You’ve called me to. And that's the job You’ve called me to that is going to bring glory to You, even if it's hard for me to see how that is. How is it that, in my business job or my teaching job teaching kindergarten kids or making things with my hands, those are things You’ve called me to do and You’ve prepared ahead of time.” It's a very different… again, it's an energy that comes from the Lord, instead of, “I've got to come up with this energy.”

Ashley: Absolutely.

Heather: Yeah. Tell him about led, not driven.

Ashley: Well, yeah. What Heather is referring to is this idea that, are we going to be led by the Spirit or driven by our own ambition or fears, whatever, or opportunities. So early on, when we came on staff with CRU and started putting a team of people that would pray for us and give to the ministry, we had a person who has a gift of prayer, and she goes, “I’m praying one thing for you, among others, that you would be led and not driven.”

Heather: It’s our family motto.

Ashley: It’s our family motto.

Heather. You’re led and not driven. And you begin to feel the difference, because the Holy Spirit…. It’s a gentle, joyful leading, whereas I feel like the flesh and the enemy, it's always a driving, frantic, chaotic feeling for me. You know how it says, “The sheep know my voice.” like you know the voice of the Shepherd? I would say the voice of the Shepherd feels like you're being led, not driven. And so, as I'm getting older, I know what the driving thing feels like. And when I'm driven, it feels like exhausting work. It usually doesn't bear good fruit. There's all these symptoms. It's like Galatians 5. You just see it play out. The fruit of the flesh is obvious. But we love… right?

Ashley: And you have to stop and ask yourself, “Do I honestly believe I can do a better job leading my life than the God of the universe? Do I honestly believe that? Because that's the way I'm living. Do I honestly believe that?” If I do, well, I probably should evaluate that. Right? And if I don't believe that, well, maybe I should rest in that, that the God of the universe, Who made me and the world I live in, can do this better than I can. “Okay, God,” like you were saying, Randy, “What do you have for me today?”

I laughed. And my laughter was a nervous, uncomfortable laughter because there's a step for me that’s in there, and it's the step of repentance and confession, because-

Ashley: Yes.

Heather: Yes, yes.

You’re not allowed to laugh at that. If I'm honest, there are times that I do think I’m… See, I can't even say it out loud. I can't even say it out loud.

Ashley: Yeah.

It's so idolatrous. But I feel like I can do a better job of leading my life, which is a horrible thing. But it's a horrible thing that was paid for on the cross. And so that's what sets me free of the idolatry of me, of making a name for myself, whereas, okay, “Lord, no. I relinquish this impulse.” Impulse is too light. It’s too mild. “… demand to lead my life.” Led versus driven. You're exactly right. When you said the word exhausting, yeah, driven. I mean, even just saying the word feels exhausting. So-

Heather: It’s exhausting. Well, we think about it a lot. The next project Ash and I are thinking about is really talking about what we've learned from that phrase and surrender. And the irony, because God is so kind and so wonderful. When you surrender these things and agree to be led, He often leads you to the very things that you thought you wanted, but now they're redeemed in some way, and they don't have a snare in your soul, and then you can really enjoy them for what they are.

Yeah. Right.

Heather: I earned the PhD, but it didn't mean anything, other than I can love students and get to teach them.  You know what I mean? I got the book published, but it didn't mean anything, other than now I get to talk to more people and be grateful and worship God. So He is so good to us. He is careful with the dreams of our heart, because usually even in the most sinful things, there might be an element of something good there that is put in there by God. So I don't know… Yeah.

This is fun for me, but we need to wrap it up soon. I want to just finish on: Your ministry now is a whole lot of training people in evangelism. You go to churches. You go to ministries. You equip people and help them see what it means to be seated. And then help them see, “Okay, if I'm being sent, where am I being sent and what does that look like?” So, I don't know if you can answer this question: What are you seeing there, as you're equipping and training people? So I'm not asking what do you tell them? What are you observing as people are on the receiving end of this training?

Heather: Well, something that struck me this week is a reader email that said, “Okay, I'm ready to do this. Which five Bible verses should I memorize?”

Okay.

Heather: And I said, “No, no.” And she asked, “What ones do you memorize for your stories?” And I said to her, “What would be better is if you chose the five passages of scripture that God has used most powerfully in your life to heal or comfort you, and then tell the story of God's powerful work in your life through His word.” And I said, “Here are my five stories of transformation.” I talked about Ephesians 2. I talked about some of the other passages God has used in my life. Well, she wrote back basically telling me that, not only does she not know the word, she doesn't read it. She doesn't have stories of God’s transformative work in her life. So what Ash and I are finding, especially as he does this incredible storytelling workshop, is how evangelism becomes really difficult if you don't have anything to share about your friend Jesus. But if you have things to share about Him, it's so easy! And that's what I’m finding. Yeah.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah. I can tell you the other thing that makes me really super grateful and excited. Heather's the extrovert. She's the one that has a natural gift of evangelism. We can go into this another time, because it's a longer story, but part of why I wrote—or the reason why I wrote this book with her is because I'm the introvert who doesn't have the gift of evangelism. But I’ve seen God use me by His gracious kindness for years. And to communicate that and to see the light bulbs go on, and to see people who probably, from 20, 30 years, have only associated evangelism with guilt, shame, “I could have,” “I should have,” “I never did,” with, “Now, I can do this, and I get to do this. And there's nothing holding me back, and God's going ahead of me, and I'm joining Him,” and just to see that whole mindset shift in what evangelism is and what they get to be a part of, that they don't have to stay on the sidelines, but they can jump into the game. I love that every time that we see people get that. Because I know they are now moving towards a life of greater joy, greater intimacy, and greater purpose, and their friends are going to come to know Jesus. And I don't know anything better to want for a person than those things.

Oh, that’s really good. That's so good. I know you know this, and quite a few of our listeners have heard me say: I have done a whole lot of study of listening to people's stories, hearing their stories of conversion, and so many, many, many people tell me about an ordinary Christian who was a good friend who shared the gospel, who kept listening to me, and they were not extroverts. They were not public speakers. They were not flashy. They were ordinary people who said things to them like, “Hmm, that's a good question. I'm not sure. Let me think about it.” And God uses the ordinary. Even though we're in a culture that celebrates the superstars, in God's structuring of His kingdom, He uses the ordinary. And so maybe that's a good place for us to draw this to a close. Any last thoughts you want to share about seated and sent?

Heather: Well, I just wanted to affirm that because I get to observe Ashley when we're out with couples who don't know Christ. He recently just asked the most thoughtful, Spirit-led question, whereas me being the extrovert, I just roll over people in conversation. I just control everything, where Ash really did have the question that unlocked a great spiritual conversation with this couple. So, like you said, the ordinary friend who asks good questions and listens, I get to observe that with Ash pretty much every day.

Ashley: But I will say this, too, and I know we're like the husband/wife, we’re doing the complementary thing now, but the person who got me excited about evangelism, besides the Holy Spirit, was Heather. Because she was doing it, and she was taking great steps, and she had this energy and enthusiasm about her that was—and still is—so contagious. And so we need all kinds.

Heather: I’d be like, “Ash, you’re coming over to Joe’s house. We're going to talk about Jesus today. And Eric will be there. Come on!”

Ashley: Okay. “Brace yourself.” I was like, “Okay.”

Heather: All right. Yeah. So that’s my final thought. God needs all of us.

Ashley: Yeah.

Well, this is great fun. This is really, really great. And we're going to have some show notes underneath this, things connecting. Heather has her own website, heatherholleman.com. Is that right? Did I say that right?

Heather: Yes.

Soon, soon there's going to be a seatedandsent dot com, dot org, dot something website.

Ashley: Dot com. Yeah.

And we'll also have links about the books, because these are really, really helpful tools for people. So thanks for listening. We hope this podcast and all of the resources that we provide at our website, the cslewisinstitute.org website, are really helpful for you as you pursue discipleship of the heart and mind and as you seek to love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Thanks.

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