Episode 1493: Interview with Rev. Cheryl Kincaid About How We Can NOT Fail Those Who Are Victimized

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1, 493 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:00:06] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I'm Reverend Cheryl Kincaid. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time and your voice. Your talent and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to realize that nothing you experience is beyond the healing grace of Christ is key.

[00:00:28] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this. The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:45] And she said, and this is a normal thing, but sometimes normal things feel extraordinary when they happen in your life. That's all she said. And that resonated like, oh, this is life. Things like this happen [00:01:00] in this life. We just don't talk about them as much.

[00:01:04] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

[00:01:09] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:39] In today's podcast episode, I interview Reverend Cheryl Kincaid. I asked Cheryl about how her own experiences with abuse led her to focus on helping others who have experienced violence. Cheryl shares what we get wrong and right when dealing with abuse survivors in the church. I also asked Cheryl to share more about what we [00:02:00] can do in those situations.

[00:02:03] I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the puzzle of your calling by mastering your time, your talent and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over at inspiredlivingbook. com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it as well as purchase a copy there.

[00:02:25] I'd love to see you there. Get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Reverend Cheryl Kincaid is a Presbyterian minister who studied marriage and family therapy at Beth El seminary and has a master's of divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary. Reverend Kincaid is a prolific author of four books, Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, The Little Clay Pot, The Little Candle That Was Frightened of the Dark, and Carrie's Thorn.

[00:02:56] Also, a forgotten door called home. Reverend Kincaid [00:03:00] seeks to tell the story of God's comforting, redemptive grace in the midst of an imperfect world. Reverend Kincaid has 20 years of experience in Christian ministry, and she confesses that many of her stories were inspired from witnessing God's redemptive grace unfold in wounded Christians lives, including her own.

[00:03:18] Welcome to the show!

[00:03:22] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for having me here.

[00:03:25] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. Talked a little bit in the intro about some of the things you've done, some of the things you've studied, some of the things you put out in the world, but I always think it's nice to go a little deeper in our journey.

[00:03:37] Oftentimes I think of introductions as like Instagram photos. We just show part of the journey. We don't show the whole journey. So going back in time a little bit, talk a little bit about your journey and what's brought you to the point where you are today in your life.

[00:03:52] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I think a lot of things have happened that, that put me into play of working on healing for the whole person.

[00:03:58] But I went to [00:04:00] a church as a kid. We went to, I think, a very good church as a young child. It was a Nazarene church and I heard the gospel and it was a powerful version of the gospel. But I grew up in a family that was alcoholic and my father was a pedophile. And that influenced me a lot, and one day, when I was in church, I heard this one, and it was told beautifully, the Sunday school teachers did nothing wrong, they told the story of the prodigal son, and in the prodigal son, they had the son, it was one of those chalk drawings where they draw something in pastels chalk, in one color, and in the back, they have a color that's in fluorescent lights.

[00:04:38] So they. in fluorescent chalk. So they told the story of the prodigal son sitting in the pig pen, wanting to even eat the food that was given to the pig. And he felt so alone. And then the teacher said, but little did he know that his father was there all the time. And she flipped on a light and the fluorescent light came on and you saw a picture of heaven behind him and the [00:05:00] father reaching down to him.

[00:05:01] What I took from that, and this is sometimes kids do, I took Perhaps the wrong message. I took the message that if I go to heaven, I'll be home with my father. Which was my heavenly father, which was preferable to my earthly father. And so one night my parents were having a fight about love and it was a pretty horrendous fight where they were screaming at each other and we lived on a third story and I thought if I just throw myself off this this balcony outside my room.

[00:05:29] I'll go to heaven and be with my heavenly father. I got up once, but of course was frightened, went back to bed. And when I got up the second time I couldn't make it even to the window. I was so frightened. Went back to bed. And the third time I tried to get up, I felt a warm hand on my stomach and heard a voice say, God is love.

[00:05:48] And that was the most significant. Mom went in my life and my father went away to prison. So we moved near my grandma. And I had a pretty stable life. [00:06:00] We still were poor. We still lived, we were living off of welfare. Nine kids. It was a tough existence, but we went to a Presbyterian church.

[00:06:09] And because the Presbyterian Church was more formal, they were very biblical, you didn't talk about hearing voices in the middle of the night. That just wasn't our style. So I took my testimony and I just, when people would ask me how I came to faith, I talked about the prodigal son and praying the sinner's prayer, which was true.

[00:06:28] But it, it happened quite differently and I never forgot it, but I learned to just put all the abuse away. My father came back into our lives about 10 years later and our life changed. began to unravel, and this is when I was about 16, and it began to be chaotic. Now, the sexual abuse didn't continue with me because he liked kids, but I'm pretty sure it continued with my sisters at that time.

[00:06:53] And then at that time, another thing happened to me. See, I'd steeped myself in the Bible. I wanted to be a [00:07:00] missionary. I wanted to tell everyone about knowing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, which is good. But as an adolescent, I started to learn about another love. So I learned that God is love agape. But I started to have to learn about romantic love or being attracted.

[00:07:14] And I did statistically what a lot of girls do for my family is I found anger and men somewhat attractive. And I was attracted to angry guys, and the nice guys I had no interest in. I didn't really date till I was 18, because I was such a conservative Christian, and when I did I the first guy I dated and kissed is the guy I got engaged to, and he was violent.

[00:07:40] Praise the Lord, there was a physician in his church that when I had I was having back pain, we went to him, he saw the bruises, and he made sure I got home right away and made sure the engagement got broken up. Praise God for people who intervene like that. And then the pastors of that church pretty much talked to him, but [00:08:00] he later ended up dying in a car accident and was in another violent relationship.

[00:08:06] He was in his own cycle of violence as well. But after that occasion I was 18 and started to go to school and realized that women got treated differently and I started to have nightmares at night. And I was in this discipleship house, so every woman in that house wanted to go into Christian ministry.

[00:08:28] And some of the women wanted to get married. Others wanted to just go into the service of Christ, but we had these elaborate prayer meetings and we took communion together. It was a wonderful house in some ways, but when I had the nightmares and the flashbacks. We thought they were demons, and we tried to pray them away.

[00:08:46] And I think what made it worse is I had just read for a school project the play Faust, and so I was certain it was satanic, but again, I had the church that I was going to, which was a very large Baptist church [00:09:00] because it was in walking distance, had a free counseling center. And I got a very good therapist who said, No let's talk about the dreams.

[00:09:08] And we talked about them and we went back to my abuse. And she says, Boy, you talking like that was normal. And she says, Cheryl, not every little girl goes through that. And I was stunned. because I thought that it was pretty normative. So that's when I started I was stepping into my gift of evangelism at the time, but I got training at the Rape Crisis Center cause I knew there were other Christian women going through this.

[00:09:31] And I started a support group called Growing Through the Pain, which was a lovely ministry I had for seven years. But in 1993 when I was in a car accident, And I realized, and my femur was crushed, so I almost died in the hospital. But it was one of those situations where you realize life is too short not to do what you want to do.

[00:09:53] I was studying to be a Christian counselor because I thought that's all Christian women could do. And as a Christian [00:10:00] counselor, I was learning very quickly, you can do a lot of good things, but you have to be non directional. Because they have to be non directional. They have to plot their plight or their path.

[00:10:10] They have to see where they're going. And I remembered very clearly in that hospital bed leading someone to faith. in Jesus Christ on San Diego State's campus. I said, God, I don't want to leave that. If I live, that's what I want to do the rest of my life. And I just told Lord, the Lord very clearly that.

[00:10:29] And when my life was spared, I changed my master's from counseling to divinity. And so now I'm like a Christian woman's counselor. And also a pastor, and in pastoral counseling, you can be very directional. And I get to preach the gospel, but I also get to talk about whole healing. Healing not only in your not only spiritually and being reunited with God the Father through Jesus Christ, but healing in your relationships with men, healing with your [00:11:00] own sexuality and healing from PTSD and other effects of alcoholism and childhood abuse.

[00:11:07] Scott Maderer: There's a lot there, obviously, in, in your journey. How, how did your interaction with faith Fetch. what you were going through and the decisions you were making and then how did your decisions and what you were going through affect your faith journey? You shared some of that, but draw out some specifics if you would of, how did you reconcile?

[00:11:31] Because I think a lot of times when people go through hard things, it's interesting to hear how people reconcile their faith with what's going on in their life and the challenges and the trauma they find. Because I think we've We respond differently sometimes out of that. So for you, how did that intersection fit together?

[00:11:50] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I think my faith helped me to survive. And when I joined a Christian theater company where there was a woman that was being harassed by a guy within the group. And then when [00:12:00] he turned on me, I remember saying, but this isn't what the Bible says. So I had that foundation of, this is not how things ought to be.

[00:12:08] That was a big point. When I left that ministry and I left it because someone had embezzled the money that the church gave me for my support, so suddenly I was questioning, because in my mind Christian service workers were way up here and the rest of us were down here, which again is not biblical, but I put that there I had a crisis in faith and my little sister who, walking home from school was assaulted in our home.

[00:12:33] And so I had a, and I could not read my Bible for five years, but you know what? This is how the Holy Spirit works in our life. I had a lot of the Bible memorized because in my Presbyterian church, our youth leader, Dave Shaw, would allow me to go to camp if I would memorize scripture for free. And that was such a gift to me because I have those for the rest of my life.

[00:12:56] So I had a lot of the Bible memorized, but my [00:13:00] grandma had given me a hymnal. And I don't even remember why she gave it to me, but she gave it to me. And when I couldn't read the Bible, I could read the hymnal. Because it seemed like God's promises weren't true, but these words, they were melodic.

[00:13:14] I was a poet at heart, and I liked Shakespeare and the great writers, and they're beautifully written. But the hymnals got me through, and I sang hymns. I remember I was working at Sears at the time, and sometimes I was, there late at night and had to walk about a half mile from the bus to my house in a bad neighborhood and I would sing those hymns all the way home.

[00:13:36] The hymnals got me through and God wooed me back again. And I, there wasn't like a specific time, but it got so I could say, I heard other people's stories as I started to go to support groups myself of other Christians, so you know that great, I'm going to talk about it this week in my sermon, the great passage in Corinthians where Paul said [00:14:00] there's no temptation that has befallen you, but yet is common to humanity, that the Greek word for temptation is also trial.

[00:14:07] In other words, what you've gone through is what everyone else will go through. Or more specifically, in the book of Ecclesiastic there's nothing new under the sun, what has happened before and will happen again. So I realized that my, my experience was common, that this happens to Christian women.

[00:14:26] that other Christian women have overcome it. And not just this, but there are other trials. I remember one day in church, this was a significant testimony for me. And it's one of those things that may have seemed little to anyone else, but it was big to me, is someone stood up and after the pastor talked, and this was a formal Presbyterian church, he says, Amen, pastor, and I'm going to do something for God.

[00:14:53] because of it. And then our pastor said, does anyone else want to share? And I stood up and I said, there's a lot of [00:15:00] things that have happened to me that I don't understand. And I sat down again. And an older lady stood up, and she might have been my age, she might have been in her 60s, but in my age that seemed old.

[00:15:10] But she said, I have struggled my life for the last two years because the man whom I love for 35 years left me too soon. He died. And she said, and this is a normal thing, but sometimes normal things, feel extraordinary when they happen in your life. That's all she said. And that's resonated like, Oh, this is life.

[00:15:36] Things like this happen in this life. We just don't talk about them as much. And maybe that's why I loved the hymns because they talked about it. And so that was a major point for me to start to read my Bible again. I started with Psalms. And Psalms is great, if you're going to start somewhere, because David felt like life wasn't fair.

[00:15:59] And then [00:16:00] I headed back into the Gospels, and then I started to read the Bible as normal, and I went to Bible college, and then I went to San Diego State and, Scripture memory and the discipline came over. There's a wound, and that's why one of my books is called Karen's Thorn. There's a definite wound there between me and God, a tender spot, because what happened to me as a kid and what happened to me as an adult and what happened to my sister, but I've realized that's a common wound in a lot of people's faith.

[00:16:33] And when we get to heaven, we'll have the answers. In Cary's Thorn, one of the things Cary struggles with, and that's my fictitional book about a girl in foster care, is why did Jesus still have scars when he came back? She hears a sermon by her minister about Thomas, seeing the scars, and instead of taking away from it isn't it great that Thomas saw the scars?

[00:16:58] It's but Jesus shouldn't have [00:17:00] had scars. He didn't deserve scars. He should have gone to heaven and had them washed away. And she struggles with this and she asked the adults in her life, and I modeled Karen after me because I was a theologically precocious child. So at a point in the Sunday school that I didn't understand why suffering was there, I wouldn't let it go.

[00:17:21] And I'd follow my poor Sunday school teacher all the way into church, trying to get her to answer a question that nobody can answer. Why does that happen? Why is that? And one of the healing Scriptures for me was the Apostle Paul's thorn in his flesh that he, that it's, it didn't say he just prayed for it to be taken away, the Greek word is he pleaded, he begged, God, take it away, and yet Paul even heals people, especially in Acts 28, he heals a man that's dying.

[00:17:51] He gives the healing that he himself has not received, which is the beauty of Christianity, I think. But I [00:18:00] realized at this time that this is going to be my thorn. And God is saying to me, my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in thy weakness. And with the Apostle Paul, I can now say about my molestation and my rape and my, and the violence.

[00:18:15] Therefore, I rather glory in my weakness that the power of the Christ may rest upon me. And I do that in my sermons. I talk about unanswered prayer, and the churches where I've served, that's where people have grown the most, is when I talk about my doubts, and how do you hang on to your Christianity in spite of those doubts, because we do believe, especially my tradition, Reformed Presbyterian, believe in the sovereignty of God, but we also believe in the grace of God, But the Puritans talked about something called a Vell of Tears, which we don't use, that's archaic language, we don't use it anymore.

[00:18:51] But they believed that the grace of God came to us through a Vell of Tears. In other words, the veil of sin. That [00:19:00] this, there's God created the world good, but humanity said, I don't need you, God. And so now there's a veil, or there's an encasement of tears around the world. And God's grace comes to us through that.

[00:19:13] And because of that, sometimes innocent people suffer.

[00:19:15] Scott Maderer: And

[00:19:17] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: that's been my life lesson. It's also the sermon that I preach constantly on.

[00:19:23] Scott Maderer: You mentioned earlier too that you had this feeling for a long time that what you had gone through was just normal. It was just, it was what you went through.

[00:19:33] Therefore that must be normal. How do you see folks struggling? A as they come to, whether that's coming to, to, to the church, whether that's just in their regular life as they're struggling with that idea of, how things feel normal and yet they also know that there's something wrong.

[00:19:54] How do you help folks reconcile or how do you see folks begin to reconcile those kind [00:20:00] of contradictory feelings?

[00:20:02] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: See, what I did before, I just want to explain what, what happened in my life, then I'll talk about how I reconcile. I went from saying, okay, I got messed with, but lots of girls do get messed with, and my sin was the depression.

[00:20:16] My sin was the erotization of me as a child, because after that's broken, you know everything. And so I had dirty thoughts in my mind. So I went from saying it's normal to the fact of, oh, it's not normal, realizing that I was violated. And so I went from, that's normal, why couldn't I trust God through it?

[00:20:35] To, that's abnormal, how can I ever trust God again? So I went to two extremes. No one goes through this with me. And the Lord had to bring me right back in the middle. One thing I tell women, and I tell men who've been abused, is trust your feelings. If you're feeling great feelings are a gift from God, in my humble opinion.

[00:20:56] And when I read the scriptures, they are. But if you [00:21:00] feel a sense of, this doesn't feel right, chances are it doesn't. And then measure it by the scriptures. Measure love by the scriptures, the Bible talks about being in love and essentially because, Jacob saw Rachel and he loved her, it doesn't apply.

[00:21:16] Isaac saw Rachel and he loved her. That's love at first sight. So it's in the Bible. We got the song of Solomon's love is a wonderful feeling, but love should not be violent. You have to go to the Apostle Paul's words that love is kind. And if he's not kind or she's not kind. That's probably not a good place for you to be.

[00:21:37] What I love about Jesus in the Bible is that in the book of Matthew, the crowds want to make Jesus a king. And Jesus and they, and Jesus slips away from their midst. And the scripture says very clearly, For, he did not trust them for he knew the hearts of men. One of the [00:22:00] things that I have found survivors of abuse get from the church, and I don't think people do it on purpose, but it's a mis teaching is that clearly your problem is that you can't trust and you need to forgive.

[00:22:13] and you need to just learn to trust people. And so what happens is they get themselves in more violent situations. I got to tell anyone who's listening to this right now, please hear me on this. If you grew up in an alcoholic, violent home, you know how to ignore it. and to forgive it in one sense. And I'm going to argue that's not true forgiveness, but you know how to look the other way.

[00:22:37] And you know how to say, I need to consider the good things in his motivations. You know how to trust something that's untrustworthy. But what you need to learn, and this is so important, is how not to trust. how to make someone earn your love, how to be treated kindly. So I, there's a big difference between forgiveness and [00:23:00] denial, and I just want to go over it real fast because forgiveness is a keystone of the Christian faith.

[00:23:04] We forgive because Jesus forgave us. That's right in the Bible. I'm not going to overlook that, but I want people to understand the difference between forgiveness and denial in Christianity we have this other wonderful teaching and the teaching is called confession that if we confess our sins He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness There's an if there That's in the Greek too.

[00:23:30] It's conditional. We have to own up to our sin. I don't think it means we have to recognize every sin, but otherwise none of us would get to heaven. But we do have to go and say, God, I am a sinner. What I'm doing is wrong. And then from confession comes something wonderful called contrition. I'm genuinely sorry that what I did was wrong.

[00:23:53] And from that comes something called repentance, which is to change your mind. To say, I'm not going to do that [00:24:00] anymore. Forgiveness, in order to forgive someone who's hurt you or abused you, you have to first admit that what they did to you was wrong, and that they could have done better. And this is the stickler, because they immediately go to, what happened to them what happened to me probably happened to them, therefore they excuse it.

[00:24:20] Don't do that. The Bible doesn't excuse it. Don't excuse it. Just say, they could have done better. And they chose not to do better. And with that acknowledgement comes something called caution. Like Jesus had. Don't trust someone who's going to continually to hurt you. Forgiveness is when you hand the anger over with what happened to you to God and say I can't fix this person and nothing I do will fix them.

[00:24:52] This person belongs to God. God will judge them. I will pursue whatever legal means I have to pursue to protect myself and my [00:25:00] children. But they belong to God. And then you turn that person over to God and you continue to live your life because they're a sinner just like you. And you continue to live your life.

[00:25:11] Pursuing healthier relationships. Denial says, what happened to me? Wasn't that bad? Or maybe it was deserved. And maybe to be a good Christian, I should fix this person. And denial, hushes the voice of caution. . And which is what Forgiveness, true forgiveness does. It gives us caution. True forgiveness gives us caution. Also, true Christ likeness, we have in the Bible a couple of admonitions that says that we can cut people off who have who are destructive in our life. And there's the case in Corinthians where a man was sleeping with his father's wife and the church is supposed to cut him off to have him hit bottom.

[00:25:53] But I think more of the Sermon of the Mount. And I think a lot of people don't think of this passage, but I do. [00:26:00] And it was very helpful to me. to work out of unhealthy relationships in my life. So Jesus is in front of this big crowd in the Sermon of the Mount, and this is taking place in Matthew 15 through 18.

[00:26:12] One long sermon, right in the book of Matthew. And someone says, What must I do to enter the kingdom of God? And Jesus takes a little child. And in those days, children did not have high status. So here's Jesus, the man, holding up a baby in a diaper, and some of the men are going, Oh, dude, that is so uncool.

[00:26:33] You gotta give that kid to the, to a woman, and we don't mess with kids here. But he holds up a child, and he says, Unless you humble yourself and become like a little child, you will not enter the kingdom of God. And then He does something that no one thinks that he'll do, is that he says, Woe to the world for its offenses.

[00:26:57] So it seems like he's deflecting. And woe to [00:27:00] the person who offends a little one like this. For it were better for them to tie a millstone around their neck and toss themselves in the ocean. And then he says, Woe to the world for its offenses, and then he says this onomous statement, But such things must come.

[00:27:15] This is in context of holding up a child. Children will suffer. Woe to the person who causes these children to suffer. And then in verse 7 he says, How terrible it will be. For the world due to its temptations of sin and temptations are bound to happen that such things must hatch him But how terrible it will be for the person who causes these little ones to sin And he says the angels are railing against them in heaven and then he says so if your hand causes you to sin Cut it off For it is better to be in heaven with one hand than in Guna, or hell, or the land of the dying, with two hands.

[00:27:57] And he says it's your foot that causes you to sin. [00:28:00] He's talking in the context of abuse, of a child being violated. And lots of people don't see it that way. I love that this is in the Bible, because when I talk to women who are in violent relationships, I would say, I know it's going to hurt to cut this hand off.

[00:28:15] I am not going to negate the love that you feel for this person. I know it doesn't make any sense. I'm not going to shame you for it. I know that's real, but right now, you and Guna, the land of the dying or hell, and in order to make it to a peaceful whole place, you're going to have to cut it off, for it's better to be in heaven than to be in hell, and I have met people that would prefer to be in hell with two hands than to be in heaven with one, so in that sense, I understand that even Jesus had boundaries, And Jesus He had standards.

[00:28:54] And so does the Apostle Paul when you go through the book of Acts. In some places he doesn't [00:29:00] continue to minister to them because they're not accepting it. You read the epistles and he knows that he has enemies. And he doesn't say those people are non Christians. He says they preach the gospel out of envy.

[00:29:12] And he knows there are people who don't like him. But he doesn't trust the people that he ha, that, that are in that camp. He gathers himself around people like Onesimus, the slave that was freed. Like Timothy and Luke. They're going to help him in the gospel because he's got a reason here on this earth and this stuff, the nonsense and the politics, that's just getting in the way of the gospel.

[00:29:36] So a lot of my ministry to people who've been abused is teaching them how to break the chains that keep them in bad relationships.

[00:29:44] Scott Maderer: Why do you think We struggle at the church with helping folks that have gone through these sorts of, whether it's alcoholism, whether it's sexual abuse, these sorts of things.

[00:29:56] What does the church get wrong and what should we be [00:30:00] doing instead when folks are coming to us with those hurts?

[00:30:04] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I think one of the things that's real common And this is coming with all of humanity, not just the church, so I don't want to get down too much on the church. We don't like pain.

[00:30:16] If a baby's crying on a bus, some people, no one, you don't see a lot of people saying that's just a baby. You get people, oh I can't stand to hear the tears, as opposed to babies cry. When questions are difficult, when something is painful, what we tend to do is want to hush it up. And I think sometimes the church does that.

[00:30:35] If you study to be a chaplain or a minister, you have to go through something called clinical pastoral training, or in some denominations, mine is one of them, where you learn to embrace pain. So you can sit by a death bed where someone is dying slowly of cancer and not hush it up. And not hush up the anger.

[00:30:54] So one thing is accepting the pain the way David does in the Bible. The Bible is fine with pain. [00:31:00] It's all over there. In the Old and New Testament, God tells us life is not easy, life is hard. And there are a lot of unanswered questions. The book of Job is most 29 chapters of Job saying, Why God?

[00:31:15] God never answers. Then in the last chapter, God tells his friends who were saying, Just trust God. You need to be quiet now. And and listen to my servant, Job, who is saying, I'll trust God in spite of the pain, but I'm angry about the pain. That's not the answer if we would write the Bible that we would want.

[00:31:33] We would side with Job's friends who were saying that Job was in sin. So one of the reasons is there, a lot of us got Job's friend syndrome. We want to say there's sin in your life. You haven't forgiven, and if you follow these three easy steps that I can put in a book and make a lot of money, you'll be better again.

[00:31:51] And that's not life. I've often thought, I've been in the ministry now 20 years, so I've seen a lot of my fellow seminarians and ministers [00:32:00] drop out of the ministry. And I've often thought that's a lot of the burnout is they go into it with, I've got the answers. And when I give them the answers, they'll be better.

[00:32:10] And that's not life. Life is trusting God in spite of a lot of obstacles and it's helping people over the obstacles and it's leading worship in the midst of pain. It's leading worship in the midst of sorrow. So that's part of it. I'd like the church, and I think we're getting better at it, but first of all, don't try to hush their pain, hear it.

[00:32:35] And then a lot of it too, is the idea of wanting to punish women for the sin that's befallen them. And that's a society problem. I think we put. And you may have heard the Madonna horror dichotomy, but we either make women, the women caught in adultery in John chapter eight, which has been assigned to Mary Magdalene, which we're not [00:33:00] sure it was.

[00:33:00] So either Mary Magdalene, the woman caught in adultery, the woman we thought was a prostitute, or Mary, the mother of Jesus. who had a baby without even having sex. And she doesn't get to be that middle person. And that middle person was Lydia, who was a dyer of purple and a business woman, probably the first pastor in the church.

[00:33:21] Cleo, who had a church in the book of Corinthians. There are middle people all over the Bible. Anna, the woman who was married for a while, and then she goes into the temple and she does a prophecy of a baby Jesus. or Elizabeth, who for years longed for a child, and God gave her one in her old age. We, so we need to see women more as human.

[00:33:42] I have found in my ministry, in my life, people are more accepting of men who go through PTSD than survivors of abuse who do. And then I think we need to embrace clinical counseling. And it sounds like a no brainer, but there was a time that. In my life, especially in [00:34:00] the 80s is when I really need to find healing.

[00:34:02] There was this rage that clinical counseling was secular humanism and you just need to stick to the Bible. And I don't even like the term secular humanism because humanism arose out of the church. It arose from Thomas Aquinas who believed because people were created in God's image, they deserve to be treated at a certain level of respect.

[00:34:21] That was called humanism. Then Francis Schaeffer wrote a book called How Then Shall We Live and redefined it. Man is the center of the universe. And I think he got it wrong because we threw away compassion at that point. Compassion's a great gift. The church has been known for it for 2000 years. Let's not throw it away.

[00:34:40] That's where the hospitals were built. That's where the schools were built. That's where the medical missionaries went out. Christianity has done wonderful work. In the name of creating people of Christian humanism, I would say. People are created in God's image, therefore I do this work whether they'll accept Christ or not.

[00:34:56] Salvation Army, I think, is one of the best at doing that. And the Catholic Church [00:35:00] does really well at that as well. But at any rate, I think that we need to embrace the idea that there are some things going on that I can give you the tools to know Jesus, but I may not have the tools to deal with PTSD.

[00:35:13] And referring them to a good counselor and encouraging them to take meds if they're on meds. I had to take some for three years and maybe I'm lucky that was, it was only three years, but I was scared to death of addiction until I learned that it's not that kind of medication. And as I embrace my abuse, I don't do it, I don't take it anymore.

[00:35:34] Occasionally I'll have a nightmare and a flashback, but now I have tools to work it through. But one of the things I've said in many of these talks is there's nothing you can go through that's beyond the grace of God. And I tell ministers that because we hear a lot of hard stories. I think that's why ministers drop out.

[00:35:54] Deathbed stories are tough because the person confessing to you harmed other people. [00:36:00] And you think about the harm that's in the world. And when I was going through my CPE, which is my clinical pastoral training I was working at a hospital, and this was in the 2000s, a lot of World War II vets were dying, and so I got to hear the stories of what happened out there, and it wasn't the stuff in John Wayne movies, let me tell you because they needed someone to say that God forgives you and I was able to say that, but it was tough to hear.

[00:36:31] If we start out from the beginning That sin brings pain in this world, and as John Calvin said, the greatest mystery of the earth is why does a good God allow it? But, the answer to that is that His grace can redeem it. You've got a good foundation to build your faith on. But, yeah, if a woman talks to you, first of all, believe her.

[00:36:55] Second of all, tell her you don't have all the answers. And then, I'd [00:37:00] say get a good reading list together, like David Seaman's The Healing of Memories. Get a good reading and my books are one of them as well, but get a good reading list together where you can refer them to books or refer them to counselors or to support groups.

[00:37:14] Scott Maderer: I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there, is there anything else about the work you do or the books that you've written that you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:37:25] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I, Yeah I think, it was I've written my whole life, but it didn't start to get, try to get published until 2010, and that was something like, inside of me, God said, this is the time to write.

[00:37:36] And it was 50 at the time, and I thought if I write, I know people have been writing their whole life and haven't gotten published. Am I going to get published? And God allowed the first book, Hearing the Gospel through Dickens at Christmas Carol, to be published within a year. But my books Hearing the Gospel through Dickens at Christmas Carol, deals with I've got a website, DickensandChristianity.

[00:37:57] com. I'm going to just challenge your readers to [00:38:00] Dear listeners to go to it, but I believe he bases it on the book of Isaiah, which is found in the Anglican prayer book, that each of the spirits go along with each lesson of Advent, and the reason he calls it a carol was called a moral lesson in his life, but I wanted to talk about poverty, because I grew up in poverty, and I wanted to not browbeat Christians, but I wanted them to grow up gain a greater empathy toward poverty.

[00:38:27] Carrie's Thorn was about my PTSD, a young girl going through foster care, and I wrote that after I had a foster child. And I realized how difficult it was to be on the other side. I was on one side where I was the foster kid, and now I was on the other side where I was trying to deal with all the stuff she brought to the table.

[00:38:46] And I wanted to talk about keeping your faith through your abuse. And I didn't want to write a formula book, where if you, because there was lots of books on incest by different Christian counselors who just said do this, and this. But I wanted to talk about [00:39:00] the mystery of healing. And then A Forgotten Door Called Home, what is Carrie and Leilani in the first book, is about a, is about these young girls going into womanhood when they're trying to make their own home.

[00:39:13] And then there's three children's books one based on Jeremiah 18, when the clay falls apart in the potter's hand, because that's what it felt like when I went through my PTSD and that's called The Little Clay Pot. The other one is The Little Candle That's Frightened of the Dark. It's about a candle that's frightened.

[00:39:31] The dark can overcome them, but it has to learn that the lightness overcomes dark. And the last one is, Please Don't Move My Grandma's Chair, about the death of a grandma. And I wanted to write about a children's book about that because I'd done so many funerals and watched how kids, people are very dismissive of children's emotions.

[00:39:48] It's we're, the grown ups are handling this right now. Grandma's in a better place. I wanted to write about that their pain was just as real. So all of them are at rev, cheryl kincaid.com. [00:40:00] And you, or you can Google pastor Cheryl's books or Reverend Cheryl's books and Rev, Cheryl Kincaid should come up and you can order them there.

[00:40:09] I recommend you order 'em there. Not. all on Amazon. Some of them are cheaper by the publisher, especially on the Dickens book because it's published in the UK and it'll be cheaper by the publisher.

[00:40:23] Scott Maderer: So my brand is Inspired Stewardship and I run things through the lens of stewardship and yet I've discovered over the years that's one of those words that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

[00:40:35] So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you and what is the impact of that word on your life?

[00:40:43] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I think this is one of the things where my growing up in the church I grew up in was very helpful. Ellis Shaw was our pastor and he would every month, every year, like we're doing in our church now, he would preach on stewardship.

[00:40:57] And stewardship was measuring out [00:41:00] your life, realizing your life was a gift from God and God had a job for you to do here on this earth. I have to say that's given me a great deal of meaning in my life. Also, when I didn't understand, I told you about that time when I couldn't read the Bible. When I did not understand why I was going through, Pastor Shaw's words ring strong in my head.

[00:41:25] That this was somehow planned, and that God had a bigger plan. I just needed to find it. And that time, I remember very clearly walking to the bus one morning, and it was still dark outside in a bad part of San Diego, thinking to myself, We'll just figure out the plan. Right now, I'm a Christian. That was given to me when I was a kid, and I, at that time, I didn't think I'd ever go into Christian service, which broke my heart, but what I'm going to do is get to Sears on time and do my job really well, and I'm going to tithe.

[00:41:59] [00:42:00] That was like a big thing in my life and I was going to read my hymnal because I couldn't read my Bible. So it's always been that sense that I belong to God. The Bible says too much is given, much is expected, but what I learned through that time of trial is even when little is given, so little is expected.

[00:42:18] And I can do it. I've said it from my pulpit. God will never ask of you something that you don't already have to give. It's inside of you. You can give it. Even if it, I just talked about Paul. In Matthew, in Acts chapter 28, Paul heals someone. He lays hands on someone and heals. And this is after he's written Corinthians saying, I asked three times for healing and God said no.

[00:42:44] It's true that you can give something to someone that you yourself, that gift, hasn't experienced. But it doesn't mean that you don't have it to give. It's inside of you to give. And I think that's one of the gifts that God has given me through. What I was taught as [00:43:00] a child is I can give away what God has inside of me to give and I all I Have to do is be faithful in what I have.

[00:43:07] I think a big part of stewardship And this is a just a life lesson. We all need to learn it's found in the book of Corinthians Compare I don't use King James although it's a

[00:43:25] In other words, I don't have to look to you and say, but you have more gifts to give. And that's mean. That's mean of God to do that to me. Or I don't have to say I'll give when you give me this gift, because you gave it to her, or you gave it to him. That's mean. That never works. It's a lesson of Peter where Peter turns to John and says, what about him?

[00:43:45] And Jesus essentially says, none of your business. What does it matter if he lingers till I come again? The reality is all I have to give is what God has given me to give. And the only road I need to take. And the only thing I'm going to [00:44:00] be asked for is what did I do with Cheryl's life? And that's quite enough to ask for.

[00:44:06] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everyone. Imagine for a moment that I could invent this magic machine and I could take you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the relationships, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind.

[00:44:31] What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:44:35] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I hope that people know that it's worth loving God. And even when God doesn't seem faithful, eventually you'll be able to see the whole picture. And I hope they get the picture of Hang On through the darkest times. I think my sermons tend toward that.

[00:44:53] I was out with a friend the other night, and they asked a question about we were talking about [00:45:00] life, our life journeys, and I said, there's a piece of me that would love to have just gone to sleep in 1979 and woken up in 1984, because The vast amount of trials I've experienced right in that time, that's when I had my big doubt with God.

[00:45:18] But then I said, I wouldn't be the minister I am if it wasn't for those years. I wouldn't be preaching the messages that I preach. So God does use everything. He doesn't cause everything, but He uses everything. There's no temptation that's following you that's not common to humanity. And And James, in the book of James, wonderful passage, where Paul says that every good and perfect gift comes down from God.

[00:45:44] Let no one say, I'm being tempted of God, because God cannot tempt. So God doesn't tempt you, God didn't put you in that situation on purpose, but sin and circumstances did, and God can redeem it. And that's the message of Christianity. [00:46:00]

[00:46:01] Scott Maderer: So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on your journey?

[00:46:05] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I'm working on another book called A Hope and a Future, which is a a Bible study, a 12 step study for women who are surviving from violence. I plan to continue to minister and continue to write books and try to market them to the best of my ability.

[00:46:23] Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Reverend Cheryl Kincaid and her books over at RevCherylKincaid.

[00:46:30] com. Of course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Cheryl, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:46:39] Rev. Cheryl Kincaid: I think, essentially, as I said earlier, Please believe me when I tell you what you're going through won't always be. That we live our life in seasons.

[00:46:50] And there's always healing. There's always light at the end of the tunnel. And I would tell them especially that there's nothing that has happened to you, or you've done to yourself, that's beyond [00:47:00] Christ's redemptive touch. Know that. Believe it. And just because you can't trust God with everything right now, trust Him with what you can trust Him with.

[00:47:12] Give him the little bit that you have. Remember the parable of the talents? He only had one talent. That's all he had to trust God with. He wasn't expected to trust God with ten talents because he wasn't given ten talents. So if all you feel like is you got one talent or one might like the story of the widow, give that one might to God and I promise you in time you'll get more to trust him with.

[00:47:35] But be patient on your journey where you're at. God can redeem you where you're at.

[00:47:45] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live [00:48:00] your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:48:08] com slash. iTunes rate, all one word, iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review, and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast, so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures. Develop your influence, and impact the world.