Hole in My Heart Podcast

Therapist Matt leads us through a way we can pray that helps us envision the God who Sees Us and prepares us to lament.

When Laurie was a guest on Moody Radio, the station manager, Jack Haveman, was prompted to share this deeply personal and powerful story of God's breakthrough.

Friends? This podcast thing we do began as an act of obedience to God's prompting two years ago. We. Had. No. Idea. How. Much. it would bless us and others. No clue. Listening back to clips together got us feeling all the podcast feels again: Mostly, we felt the desire to fall on our faces and worship God who is knitting together this gorgeous thing called the Body of Christ. God is on the move, dear siblings in Christ. God is moving in and through the Church, and He wants to move even more through those whose hearts are fully submitted to Him (2 Chronicles 16:9). ​ Tune in with us as we reflect on the last season, and some of our favorite moments and yours: Episode 53: Saying "Yes" with Tom and Dana Mollhagen Episode 49: The Awkward Middle with David Bennett Episode 57: The "Whys" Behind Pornography Addiction with Jay Stringer ​ Episode 64: Exploring Our Souls of Shame Part 1 and Part 2 with Curt Thompson Episode 80: Fill These Hearts with Christopher West Episode 74: The Need to Be Seen with Jeff Maness and John Wilson Episode 83: Sexuality and Shame with Dan Allender Episode 81: Living an Authentic Life with Ann Voskamp ​   //: Do the Next Thing: That HIMH Podcast group? Check it out here! This episode.   //: Question of the Week for AUGUST: How has this podcast impacted you? What guest ideas do you have for us for season three? Or themes we should pursue? Email podcast@himhministries.com to answer!

A recent survey says that 90 percent of clergy believe it is their responsibility to speak on important social issues, but the top two issues they feel unequipped to speak on are LGBT+ and same-sex marriage. We need help. Thankfully, there are pastors like Bruce B. Miller who are willing to lead us as we lead others. In addition to walking us through beginning steps we can take as a church to better engage conversations around sexuality and LGBT+, we explore questions such as: ​What if the staff/elders/deacons aren't united? Can we be on different pages theologically? Do we have to do a sermon series? (How in the world do we do that?) What if people leave? This is another important equipping conversation to help us lead with grace and truth. (Click the links below for practical next step resources.)   //: Highlights: "To not preach on [sexuality] is to not give people leadership in an area where people have tremendous questions ... You either lead people in confusion or you give people wise guidance as a pastor." --Bruce Miller "We need to start with ourselves and face ... the fact that I am also a sexual sinner. Because every adult past puberty is a sexual sinner." --Bruce B. Miller "It's our bad theology of sex and our bad theology of singleness that undermines the vibrancy of our message to LGBT+ people." --Bruce Miller "If you're not offending people on both sides, you're probably not doing it right." --Bruce Miller //:Do the Next Thing: Find More.  //: Question of the Week for Next Week: It's our last episode of Season 2! How are you doing on your word for the 2019 year? Or your resolution? Where you at?  

One in two women and one in four men have encountered sexual trauma. The enemy's attempts to shred humanity through sexuality is pervasive, but those of us who have encountered sexual assault are not hopeless. Author and teacher, Dr. Dan Allender, guides us through this hope-filled terrain utilizing decades of experience and research in the field of sexual trauma. He unpacks answers to questions like: Why is shame linked to sexuality, and why is contempt often linked to shame? Why and how do repressed memories resurface? How can we engage painful past memories without pushing "eject" on our lives? How can we respond in healthy ways to triggers? ​ Additionally, we explore some of Dan's gospel story out of a life of drug dealing and elicit behavior (as a response to his own pain), and invite him to kindly poke fun at Matt throughout the entire episode.   //: Highlights: "The return on investment for the kingdom of darkness is profound in regard to abuse. [It] disintegrates some level of our faith, our ability to trust, our ability to dream and hope, and certainly our ability to give delight and pleasure to one another." --Dan Allender ​"When we use truth to deny truth ... we are doing what evil does when it quotes Scripture." --Dan Allender "​I've seen it literally thousands of times: People who enter the truth and allow their hearts to receive kindness ... that's the context for the Spirit of God to bring about remarkable change." --Dan Allender   //: Do the Next Thing: Find More.  //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What was your first car and what does it tell us about your personality?

Lament. We've talked about it. We love it. Let's dig deeper than we ever have into it on this episode. If we don't lament, what kind of people will we be? Is there a line of honesty with God we shouldn't cross? ​How do we really do it? ​Pastor and author, Mark Vroegop, guides us through these questions and more with wisdom that can only come from someone who has suffered much, and has found his way out of the darkness by singing the minor key tune of lament. Hear his story and practical care for our souls during today's conversation.   //: Highlights: "People who know how to lament are comfortable with saying less or nothing. They intuitively have a heart that is oriented toward empathy. They don't panic when their friend says something that is edgy or a little scary." --Mark Vroegop "Lament is not just crying. Lament is talking to God about what causes the crying." --Mark Vroegop "One out of every three songs in the official songbook of God's people--songs that had music and were sung--reflect this sort of minor key [lament] tune. We are not only unfamiliar with lament, but our churches are generally lament-light." --Mark Vroegop   //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What is something God has been teaching you lately and through what media? (Devotional, book, life experience, podcast, your version of suffering in this season...) //: Do the Next Thing: Find More. 

She has a huge platform: Hundreds of thousands of followers, millions of books sold, and many Christians are at least familiar with the name "Ann Voskamp." And yet when Ann writes, speaks, and engages social media, she does not hide behind the numbers. She writes grittily, authentically, and with boldness. How is this possible? How can someone with such a great impact on the world maintain such a humble, vulnerable, and others-focused life? We explore these questions as we engage Ann on living an authentic life. We talk the cost, the gifts, and the practical how-tos. (And of course, because we are the HIMH Podcast, we make time to take a trip to Goofball Island where we finally learn her real Enneagram number.) You're welcome to join us.   //: Highlights: ​"I honestly don't think there should be platforms for writers. Jesus didn't have a platform. He had an altar where he came, he laid down his life, and he died for his friends. Writing is about a place to be brutally honest, have no reputation, and to pray that out of your death there can be people's resurrections." --Ann Voskamp "We either have the mentality of [God as], 'Oh dear, I've messed up, Dad is going to kill me,' or 'Oh, dear, I've messed up, I need to call Dad.' ... David doesn't run from God, he runs to God, and he trusts that when we want a do-over Jesus covers us with un-erasable grace." --Ann Voskamp ​ "We are called to a table-like theology where we not only break bread around the table, but we break open our hearts around the table." --Ann Voskamp   //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What is a funny-ridiculous tradition your culture has? (Perhaps like how Laurie's Dutch family celebrates Tulip Time this time of year in Holland, MI. They dress up in old-timey Dutch clothes and painful wooden shoes and klompen dance.) What does your culture do that is silly like this?   //: Do the Next Thing: Find More. 

Matt and Laurie are doing an impossible thing (writing a book together?!) about their "impossible" marriage. Hear a little bit more about the start of their adventure!

Everything we do—good, evil, neutral—speaks to our longing for heaven. World-renowned teacher of Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and bestselling author, Christopher West, leans into this longing and unpacks it with outrageous wisdom and tenderness. This is one we are all going to be going back and listening to several times. It is that rich. (And don't worry: Those of you who want some of that goofball action, we make sure to talk about rats dying in Wendy's grease buckets. Yep.)   //: Highlights: ​"Here’s the whole Bible in five words: ‘God wants to marry us.’” --Christopher West ​"​We have three choices when it comes to our desire: We are either going to become the Stoic and repress the desire, an Addict and indulge in the finite pleasures of the world that never satisfy, or I am going to become…[an] Aspiring Mystic…someone who opens their hunger to the infinite.” --Christopher West   //: Question of the Week for Next Week: What were you modeled/taught to do with your emotions growing up? Share them? Bury them? Open up and emphasize certain ones? (Like anger?)   //: Do the Next Thing: Find More.

This is the story of a man who experienced attractions toward other men from a young age, found football, found God, found the Air Force (and excelled), and as a ministry leader came to grips with his same-gender attractions--now as a married-to-a-woman man. God helped this man, Mike Rosebush, remove shame about his attractions, but people and circumstances placed him in conversion therapy. A major part of conversion therapy is seeking to make people change from gay to straight. It did not work. However, as a licensed psychologist, Mike found himself in a position of counseling others who had a similar story. Mike had a choice: Follow the script he believed was unhelpful and unbiblical (to idolize sexual attractions as ultimate by making orientation change the primary goal), or find another way. He found another way: the path of sanctification and the path of daily surrender. Hear more of Mike's journey and decision, and his exhortation to pastors and all Christians seeking to engage the LGBT+ conversation biblically and faithfully on today's episode.   //: Highlights: ​ "Dear Friend ... We who have same-sex attraction, who are Evangelical, who devote our life to celibacy, and who absolutely believe everything in your orthodoxy, we are not your enemy." --Mike Rosebush ​ "I was not about to put those [clients] through what I was put through ... My perspective is: 'It's not going to leave. We don't know how it got into us. It's there. Let's live well with it'... [And] I absolutely knew and still know that the Trinity likes me and loves me--just as I am--even with these attractions." --Mike Rosebush ​   //: Do the Next Thing: Follow Mike on Facebook and check him out on his website. We mention a "The Shack" experience We also mention a Barna Study about pastors and leaders engaging the LGBT+ conversation We refer to Mike's letter he wrote to pastors. You can find it here. For More.