Simple Faith with Rusty George

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Rusty George
This episode is brought to you by Serve HQ, train your ministry, volunteers, leaders and new members online. Fast and easy with Serve HQ.

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Intro/Outro
Welcome to Leading Simple with Rusty George. Our goal is to make following Jesus and leading others a bit more simple. Here's your host, Rusty George.

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Rusty George
Hey, welcome to Episode 228. I'm your host, Rusty George. Thank you so much for joining us. I don't know if you've heard this yet or not, but we have just recently released a brand new video training course for pastors. Now I say for pastors, anybody can purchase this and watch it and learn from it. But it's specifically designed for pastors who are leading churches because you're either in a crisis or you're headed towards one.

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Rusty George
Every single one of us face them. It just so happens here at real life, we walk through a lot in a short period of time, and we're going to share with you the things that we learned, the things we did right, things we did wrong, the things we do different, and the experiences we've had. So you can avoid any pitfalls in the future.

00;01;09;26 - 00;01;28;21
Rusty George
Some of this information will help you avoid some difficult circumstances. Some of this information will help you respond to difficult circumstances. Some of it you can just transfer into a staff meeting or a leadership training call at your own. I don't even care. I just want you to get the help. So we're going to provide all this for you through my website.

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Rusty George
Pastor Rusty George dot com. It's simply the video training course of 12 episodes leading through crisis without becoming one. You can check that out and make sure you pick up a copy of that. Today we are sponsored by our friends at Serve HQ Dot Church Survey. HQ does an incredible job of helping your church succeed by giving you the resources to train your leaders to be the very best they can be.

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Rusty George
Hey, every leader wants to succeed at the job they're doing. They want to feel like they're winning. They don't want to just show up and be told, Hey, stand here and make sure that no child escapes. They want to be told how they can succeed in leading kids to find and follow Jesus. So how can you do that?

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Rusty George
Survey HQ Dot Church has video training that you can give to your leaders. You can even upload your own. So check that out. Serve HQ Dot Church. Well, today our guest is Tiana Spencer. Tiana is a wife, a mother. She is a pastor. She's a leader. She's a teacher. She's a sought after speaker. She is very popular YouTube videos of her teaching from her church with Albert Tate in Monrovia.

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Rusty George
And it is an incredible honor to have her on the podcast. So I hope you're going to enjoy this and learn a lot from what she has to say. Here we go. Hey. Tiana Spencer, thank you so much for being with us. For our audience, that may not know you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

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Tiana Spencer
Well, I am live in that Los Angeles area. I am a teaching pastor at Fellowship Church. I have my husband. I moved up here about ten years ago. We have three girls, 15, 13, and my baby girl will be eight tomorrow. So we're kind of busy. My husband's a full time pastor at fellowship as well, and I get to travel and teach and get to teach there when I'm home.

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Rusty George
So that is fantastic. Are you from out here originally?

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Tiana Spencer
Yes, I was actually born and raised in San Diego. Oh. So lived there until high school, then moved to the Inland Empire. Temecula is where I went high school and then came out here, L.A. area to go to Baylor University and got a degree in biblical studies and somehow made my way back home for a little bit and then made my way back out here to like, raise our family so well.

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Rusty George
So at what point did you realize you had a gift to teach?

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Tiana Spencer
You know, I've been teaching. I got saved at 14 and I just fell in love with the scripture. And so God ordained and my my pastor, I was raised in a small black church in Temecula, really, when I got saved. And somehow my pastor had connections to Arthur and Priest Ministries. And so they offered the scholarship, me and like a few others of us, my small church to go to Chattanooga, Tennessee, for teen Bible boot camp and where I got certified, had and actually studied scripture.

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Tiana Spencer
And then I just began teaching others had and actively studied Scripture until I was 14. I, I just loved I would wake up in the morning for school and I would just study the word and I just I loved it. It was the only thing that actually got me excited more than regular school. And so I felt like I didn't ever see it as really teaching.

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Tiana Spencer
But, you know, there was one point even in high school where I went, I felt like that was calling me just to spend my lunch time reading because I was really busy and having that chance to spend time with the lawyers. I would spend my lunch time reading the Bible and pretty soon people were asking what I was doing and it ended up being a full blown lunch Bible study at a public high school.

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Tiana Spencer
So I feel like God has always been elevating me to these places of teaching without even me trying to do that. And he started doing that really at the age of 14. So that was when I kind of started thinking, this is what I want to do. And so I went to school for biblical studies knowing that it was really the only thing I wanted to study was more God's word.

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Tiana Spencer
And so and then, you know, it had complications, but I loved it. And I kind of just been teaching in certain ways ever since.

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Rusty George
I want to drill down on that. That's fascinating for any student out there listening and thinking, I'd like to do that. What are some ways you navigated your reading the Bible at school and people are asking questions? What would you say to encourage them to bring people in rather than just push people away? Yeah.

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Tiana Spencer
I mean, I feel like at that age, people are just trying to I mean, obviously, it is it was a different time. Teenagers now it's a different culture, you know. So I think but I think in some ways, everyone's just looking for belonging. They're looking for, you know, someone to give them answers to the deepest aches of whatever they're feeling.

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Tiana Spencer
So I feel like for me, I mean, I don't know, I didn't intentionally set out to do anything, but I just didn't turn anybody away. It was like, if you want to say the scripture, this is what it is. And we just did it. And people just kept saying, and then they kept inviting people. So it was like there was no watering down or changing anything.

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Tiana Spencer
It was like, I'm just going to be let's just sit in the word, let's just read it and let it speak for itself. And it just fostered dialog, you know, and for some reason and it's just God in his presence. He just kept doing it.

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Rusty George
You know, you've mentioned your love for Scripture and inductive teaching and those kind of things for somebody just starting out reading the Bible and they open it up and they just read it and it's just, okay, what do I do with that? What are some do's and don'ts as people are getting started that you've found to be really helpful?

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Tiana Spencer
I would start in the Book of John, I think just starting next year, just reading the Gospels, just learning about the person of Jesus. I think it's a good starting point for anybody. I think if you can do it in community where you guys can wrestle with the stuff together and ask questions together, I feel like that's something that's good as well.

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Tiana Spencer
There's a John I'm sorry. Francis Chan has a book called Multiply, which is I'm really letting out the basics of the gospel and the basics of Christianity that I think is good for a new believer. I was taking a new believer through it at some point, so I feel like there's resources out there for new believers. When I think about the Bible, I would think start with just learning about Jesus.

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Tiana Spencer
They, you know, they can get complicated. And so I just I feel like just learning about the person of Jesus, even just like reading it slowly and meditating on him and engaging him in a prayer and thinking about even just what you just read. I feel like that's like important because the theological questions don't come, but I feel like it's just spending time meditating on the person of Jesus and learning his ways and why how he did the things that he did.

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Tiana Spencer
And in all that, I feel like that's just a good starting point for any any believer.

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Rusty George
That's really good. What are you reading right now that God's using to speak to you?

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Tiana Spencer
Oh, I read a few things. I just. Oh, it's a name. That's the name of the book. Whatever I say, I've been reading. I just finished the other half of the church, which I loved. It's a book that specifically talks about how the church has been raised to really be left frame thinking. So we always we focus on the left brain, takes in information, so it's all on reading scripture and memorize the scripture.

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Tiana Spencer
Like all these things, it's just teaching and absorbing information versus the right side of brain is all about feelings and, you know, imagination. All this kind of all those things. This book makes the premise that we have just become a left brain discipleship, left brain church and how a lot of people, especially people who come from a trauma background, we all need to really be engaging in full brain discipleship.

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Tiana Spencer
So it gives you really good practices for actually bringing in the right side of your mind and all that. God is. And it's been fascinating. I've just been putting even even in some of the things in practice in my own life. I teach about this often in my sermons because it's been really healing to see that, yeah, yeah, we do.

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Tiana Spencer
Because there's something that you see in the church where some people are like, they can do these practices and it does nothing for them. Other people can do these practices and it just like changes them. And so this book is really addressing why that difference exists and how we can actually really further transform our discipleship ministries and whatnot if we start approaching it that way.

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Tiana Spencer
So I have loved learning about that.

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Rusty George
Well, that's great. It reminds me of that book years ago. Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas talks about the different ways we connect with God and and memorization and study is only one of them. There's so many different ways that we all get to God through Jesus, but we connect in different ways once we're there. And you're right, it's the church has become just a information dispenser rather than actually, you know, experiencing.

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Tiana Spencer
Yeah, I think we're seeing especially there's so much deconstruction happening now and everything. I think the younger generation especially like information is not doing it. We need encounters with Jesus, you know, in encounters with this presence. And there's so much that just taking information they've just been preached at for so long that we actually it's like, how do we foster and get an experienced and get to experience God and not just be given scriptures and, you know, all that stuff.

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Tiana Spencer
So I think we're we're seeing even like less and less like transformation. It seems like there's a culture just changing and people are like, then it's not, it's not enough to just throw spiritual people anymore. Like, you know, so I think we're kind of our prairie, our church a way me, my husband, my husband's I with information, discipleship, just really been praying like, what does it look like for us to begin to like radically transform even just our discipleship programs so that people can begin to experiencing more transformation by bringing in other practices and not just having them read, you know, just reading scripture or just, you know, be taught at on Sundays.

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Tiana Spencer
But they can actually put practices throughout the week that will help them experience transformation in Christ.

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Rusty George
How does that work, working with your your spouse? I know for some people it works really good and other people not. It seems like you're well.

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Tiana Spencer
We don't really work together. We probably work together more now. But I've been part time because I do travel and speak and I've just been part time speaking at fellowship. So he's more in the weeds itself. He's more in. I said, I just this past year we probably started working a little bit more. We used to work together full time when we first got married like 60 years ago, and that led not well, but that didn't go very well at all.

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Tiana Spencer
But you know, we were in first year marriage. It was bananas. But now he just has he has his own. I respect the work that he does. I'm more I teach, I do all that stuff. And so he respects what I do because he's like, I want nothing to do with the platform. I want nothing to do with preaching and I want nothing to do with his spreadsheets and his systems.

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Tiana Spencer
So I feel like it kind of works together because I know he has his own. He trusts me with I have his own and we can kind of like, you know, work in a marriage or those two. But, but generally we don't work a lot together, which I think is probably healthier.

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Rusty George
You know, we have a lot of church planners that that listen to this podcast and they're working with their spouse. I think the clear boundaries here's my lane. Here's your lane. That that's what a lot of them are figuring out. They're going to have. So I want to ask you about your parenting, because here you are studying the scriptures.

00;13;05;07 - 00;13;16;20
Rusty George
You have a certain way that you receive information from God. Are you seeing that your kids do it differently? How do you connect them to the scriptures in a way that makes sense to them?

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Tiana Spencer
Um, you know, I grew up in a very Bible teaching church and so, like I said, inductive study, Bible study was a big deal to me. And so I when the girls were younger, I really did was spending a lot of time teaching them how to simply simplify the inductive study for them. And it was going well. But as I've gotten older as teenagers, they now have those things in them.

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Tiana Spencer
But I don't like force them to stick with it because my, my, my one girl, she's a very creative, my middle daughter. And she just like I said, I asked her, When do you feel most connected to God? She was like, What? I'm listening to worship music that I might be able to go listen to. Worship means like, you know, I'm saying like I think there is there is beauty in teaching them how to study scripture.

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Tiana Spencer
And so my kids do know, but the the foundation. But sometimes you so most connected and I want you to like spend time connecting with God. I think in the end that's really what matters. Like I want you to spend time connecting with God, but does she still do her Bible study? Yeah, she does. I think my oldest one, she's become more of a journal learn.

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Tiana Spencer
And I've learned as I've been on my own healing journey and growing in my relationship with God. Journaling is a beautiful way to connect with God. And so for her, she has a foundation. She can always know how to go study scripture, and she does at times, but she connects with God and feels that connection with her through her journaling process.

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Tiana Spencer
And I encourage her to do her journaling. My eight year old, we're reading Bible stories every night and it's just fun to see how she thinks. And I've also been with her like we just had this the other night where she's just been having this fear of something bad happening to her. Her night. And it's been causing a lot of anxiety.

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Tiana Spencer
And so one night I brought her in the room and she's just crying and we prayed about it, but she's terrified to go to sleep. And I begin a teacher of this method. Right, and learn from the book the other half of the church and something I've been practicing. But I taught her like, hey, care what's happening and you're actually safe in your bed, but you're imagining you're not being safe and it's causing anxiety.

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Tiana Spencer
As I say, you have to understand how powerful your imagination is. You are imagining a moment where you won't be safe and it is wreaking havoc in your body. And I told her if imagining something bad can wreak that much havoc in your body, what can imagine something good? Do? So I'm taking her and I'm saying, Here's what I want you to do.

00;15;38;14 - 00;15;56;25
Tiana Spencer
I want you to get five core memories, memories where you felt, how I do for myself. You felt a deep joy. And in the sense of God's presence, I do this for myself. I get fond memories where I felt deep joy and a sense with God's presence. And so me and carefully picked out the memories for her. She's I can see the joy in her even as she's describing the memories.

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Tiana Spencer
So I think it's I want you to do let's do it together. Let's go back. Let's go close our eyes and let's go back and just relive that moment. And I want you to feel the joy you felt like play it aloud and then invite Jesus into that space and just engage with God, engage with him, talk with him.

00;16;10;27 - 00;16;30;10
Tiana Spencer
And so we're doing it and it was just beautiful. Course you use verses like this feels weird, but I'm like, you know, you're going to bed and imagining something bad. So let's go to bed and let's imagine being with God. I'm trying to teach her how to be with God is not saying it's a prayer. But you know, I'm not telling her, hey, you just go pray like I want you to go and experience joy.

00;16;30;17 - 00;16;43;18
Tiana Spencer
And so she goes to bed and she does it. And a couple of days later, she's like, Mommy, I did that thing again last night. She's like, and I was just talking with Jesus and we were just talking. She's like, When I finished, I opened my eyes. I was just smiling and I was just able to go straight to sleep.

00;16;43;27 - 00;17;06;21
Tiana Spencer
And I was like, Thank you, Lord, because what she's doing is she's praying and she's meditating on him. And she's also letting her brain even experience the joy that she once felt. And she's re experiencing that now and she's imagining a better story versus one that gives her anxiety. And so each approach with my kids has been different depending on the situation, but it's my main goal is I want you to experience God.

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Tiana Spencer
And so as I'm growing in things, I'm slowly finding ways to teach them because when they leave my house, I want them to have anchors. They can go back to. Should they go on whatever journey they go on, they will not forget. My mom taught me. I can experience God. Mom taught me. I can go and be with God in my mind at any time.

00;17;24;24 - 00;17;40;04
Tiana Spencer
I can go experience joy and peace at any time. I can stop and take these thoughts captive. I can open my scripture and figure out what does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply to my life? You know, I can they can have these principles in there and they'll be with them. My prayer is I will be with them for the rest of the life.

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Tiana Spencer
I trust a god. And these deposits were making will flourish them in the future.

00;17;46;06 - 00;18;08;17
Rusty George
That's incredible. I think that's worth the price of admission right there. A lot of people are really going to replay that and process such good stuff. Okay. I want to just shift gears to talk about your teaching element. I have heard from so many people what an incredible teacher you are, though we've never had the chance to meet physically or have you at our church to teach.

00;18;08;17 - 00;18;28;29
Rusty George
So I'd love to have that some time. You grow up in in a church where I don't know if women teaching was a thing or if you had to break through some glass ceilings to get there. But you work with Albert Tate, who has encouraged this. You know, what did he do to help you leverage this gift?

00;18;29;29 - 00;18;52;23
Tiana Spencer
He forced me to say, listen here. When the leveraging with Albert, if you need a visa for anything, I'm eight of it. He did not give me a choice. He scheduled me and said, This is the date you're preaching. Go. I think I did not grow up and seeing women preach. I also didn't have I didn't have an agenda I want to preach.

00;18;52;24 - 00;19;09;10
Tiana Spencer
It was like I just love studying God's word. I was teaching the Bible one on one across of tables since I was 14, just like even when I did youth ministry. I'm taking youth out. I feel like I started teaching, just taking kids out to get Mexican food and taking kids out to get in and out, you know?

00;19;09;10 - 00;19;33;06
Tiana Spencer
And so I've always been teaching in those contexts, but I think I did start to feel like my church did a thing where when you were on Youth Sundays, when youth would come up before the main sermon and just do a five minute sermon, those are really my first sermons I did. I did it twice. I still remember the passages I taught on and did not know that God was forming me for what I would do.

00;19;33;06 - 00;19;50;11
Tiana Spencer
But I remember even in those moments, adults in the room like, wow. And I didn't understand. It was a teaching gift, but it was just like, you know, I'm 15 years old and I'm just this is what I see in the text. Let me share it. And so I didn't have the I didn't have necessarily aspirations to be a teacher, but I started to feel this is what I'm called to do.

00;19;50;11 - 00;20;11;29
Tiana Spencer
I didn't have context for it, though, because I didn't see teen women being teachers. Now, I would see, you know, on TV and I watch Christian TV. I see some women doing it. But even still, it wasn't something that I was like set on. I just wanted to teach God's word in whatever way I could. And so when I got up to L.A. to fellowship, but obviously I went to school to get a biblical studies major.

00;20;11;29 - 00;20;27;03
Tiana Spencer
I still didn't say I didn't know what I was going to do with that degree. I mean, people would ask me, I said, I don't know. I just feel like this is what I'm supposed to do. I don't want to say anything else, but I had no clue. And I did not have these big dreams to be on stages because I didn't grow up in that context.

00;20;27;03 - 00;20;47;11
Tiana Spencer
But when I came to fellowship, I knew just from our conversations he'd never heard me teach, but from my conversations he would say he would have conversations with me and it would feel like he was talking to some of his other preacher guy friends, and he'd never had that with a woman before. He never had those kind of conversations.

00;20;47;19 - 00;21;08;26
Tiana Spencer
And so he'll say that at some point, like he made this decision, like if women come to his church because this is before, like we've been friends since our my 13 year old was a newborn. So this was before I came up to fellowship. We had conversations where he was like, he made it a prayer. If God sends women to my church, I'll empower them and I'll help them teach.

00;21;08;26 - 00;21;27;21
Tiana Spencer
I didn't know he made that prayer, but years later we felt like I was calling us to move here. And then he one day said, You're preaching, you're preaching. And I freaked out. And I was like, because I was like, no, like I grew up. It was like with the church, we had left town, like maybe 100 people that come to fellowship.

00;21;27;21 - 00;21;41;04
Tiana Spencer
The fellowship was a large church. I was like, I'm not preaching. I didn't tell him that because you don't tell him no. But I told my husband that when I got home later on that night, I was like, He's crazy. I'm not doing that. But at the same time, I knew I had a gift. I knew I could teach.

00;21;41;04 - 00;21;55;28
Tiana Spencer
I didn't know I could necessarily preach and put together a sermon, but I felt like, Okay, Lord, this is what I've been feeling like you're calling me to. I just didn't see it like this. He put me up there and it was almost one of those. It was just a God moment where I was like, I didn't know what to put together a sermon.

00;21;56;07 - 00;22;14;04
Tiana Spencer
Oh, I didn't know I could stand it. It was like God was bringing me into my gift as he was showing me. It's not just about meeting one on one on coffee tables, but I actually have a call in your life to stand up there and declare the Word of God. All these years of in-depth research in Scripture, it was not just for you, but it's actually now it's it's what forms your sermons.

00;22;14;04 - 00;22;33;10
Tiana Spencer
It's what forms how you read and how you then get up there and speak and so he put me up there the first time. And from there, you know, nowadays things get on YouTube and guys just started opening doors and and it came quick and and honestly, I don't even think I was ready for it in a lot of ways, because I did not I did not have an agenda.

00;22;33;10 - 00;23;00;17
Tiana Spencer
I want to be a traveling speaker and preach to thousands. I didn't I just wanted to be faithful. And so I didn't expect doors to be opening. I wasn't planning to get on planes. I wasn't planning to go to churches. But as God started doing, I was like, Oh, this is what you wanted. And part of me wanted to run for a lot of years because when you're doing stuff like that, you come face to face with yourself a lot and the pride and all those things.

00;23;00;17 - 00;23;26;06
Tiana Spencer
And, and part of me was like, I just don't want to get it wrong. So there was a part of me, I just wanted to, like, not do anything in public spaces because, my God, I don't want to get this wrong. And I see a lot of people getting it wrong. And so there was a I do this with fear and trembling, know I'm saying like it's like God, I honor you and the gift you have in my life and it is hard and it comes at a cost that most people don't understand, especially with my health, chronic condition, I feel like.

00;23;26;06 - 00;23;31;12
Tiana Spencer
But I do it to honor you and I just want to do it to the best of my ability.

00;23;31;23 - 00;23;51;06
Rusty George
You know, so much of that is understanding who we are in Christ. And I know that you talk a lot about our identity in Christ. Has that been a new revelation for you? Has that been a recent focus of your teaching or have you always been wrestling with that? Hey, let me interrupt this podcast for just a second.

00;23;51;14 - 00;24;14;00
Rusty George
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00;24;14;13 - 00;24;26;22
Rusty George
You can create your own training or use their video library. You can even automate next steps to onboard new people. Check it out at Serve HQ Dot Church. Now back to our conversation.

00;24;28;03 - 00;24;53;19
Tiana Spencer
Yeah, no, it's definitely new. Newer in the past, like been in church. I love the Lord's serve in ministry, but it wasn't until maybe ten years ago I hit a wall when I realized you could read all the scriptures you want. You can teach, you can do all these things. But if you don't have your own emotional healing, if you haven't done that kind of work, at some point you're going to hit a wall.

00;24;53;19 - 00;25;17;23
Tiana Spencer
Yeah, there was some me. There was. I had to I started getting in therapy and I started realizing how much trauma that I had that I did not realize. God began to do a deeper work in me. And from there beginning, I definitely stepped back into service because, you know, so many, so many people are functioning from an identity crisis and they have absolutely no clue.

00;25;18;04 - 00;25;41;14
Tiana Spencer
God and his grace began to reveal that to me about ten years ago, and I was into therapy and it's been a journey of uncovering and God has been surfacing. And my therapist tells me God is in service things the same as but to healers. And there's been a lot of healing, there's been a lot of healing that I've had to do over the past six years or whatnot.

00;25;41;19 - 00;26;03;17
Tiana Spencer
And I realize my husband I were just talking about is how much and so much boils down to identity, so many reasons why people are trapped and stuck and repetitive, sinister, wrong holes not moving forward and what God's called them to do because we are believing lies about who we are, who we aren't, because so much of us come from.

00;26;03;17 - 00;26;22;02
Tiana Spencer
Obviously, I feel like trauma is in fact all of us in some way, even if it's not these big T traumas, because we've all been raised by sinful humans who have their own traumas. So we all come into everything we do in some way with wounds and marred and our identities somewhat damaged. And so I feel like this is a process.

00;26;22;02 - 00;26;57;29
Tiana Spencer
My, my, my passion is emotional healing as well as like biblical teaching. Like I have a passionate for holistic faith because I was the Christian who did all the things and was completely emotionally broken and had no clue. My, my, my, the core of my life, I feel like, is to marry all of those things, to bring all of that to my teaching so that people in the body of Christ are not just memorizing scriptures, but they're actually moving forward and they're getting healing.

00;26;58;08 - 00;27;25;06
Tiana Spencer
And and God gave me a message some years ago called Daughters of Abraham, I believe, on YouTube. It's called Children of Abraham. But he gave me this message and I had no clue of what he gave me. But it was his message that was really dealing with emotional healing. And I remember the first time I preached it, by the time I got to the end of it, the room was just women on their faces weeping.

00;27;25;14 - 00;27;48;21
Tiana Spencer
And I had no clue that that was. And then for that whole year, God, every conference I had to do that was the message that they needed. I preach that message in rooms for that whole year and in every room at the end of that message, women weeping at their feet, just like weeping and broken over the wounds and stuff that had not been dealt with.

00;27;48;27 - 00;28;12;08
Tiana Spencer
It got to the point where I would tell the Congress people at the beginning, this is what's going to happen at the end. This is what you need to have ready prayer. People worship because God does something. The last time I preached it on that year, I mean, the the worship leaders were a wreck to where I had to sing my own worship song at the end because they couldn't even come up because God was just doing something.

00;28;12;08 - 00;28;29;23
Tiana Spencer
Everyone was a wreck. And after this lady came back to me in tears and she was like, We need a part to like, what do we do now? Now that we're like all this? And please expose what do we do? And I hadn't even started my own healing journey. I had even started therapy. I had no idea what God just unleashed and had these things like, I don't they're asking for something more.

00;28;29;23 - 00;28;44;08
Tiana Spencer
How do they walk out the healing? And I, I didn't know. But, you know, everyone can afford therapy. You know, you can send them all to therapy. But I knew that everyone couldn't. But at then God put me on my own healing journey. For the past six years I've been on that and now it's like I realize this guy took me that year.

00;28;44;08 - 00;29;02;27
Tiana Spencer
He showed me the amount of emotional brokenness that's in the church. He showed me the amount of trauma that's in the church and how much identity is broken in the church. And it's just become a huge part of what I feel called to do, putting together a part to for what? How can I help people now? It's got to surface.

00;29;02;27 - 00;29;21;03
Tiana Spencer
The stars walk them through healing. As I've learned to walk through my own healing. I feel like that's just been a huge call in my life. And identity is not something. It's just a non-negotiable. Getting people solid in their identity myself. It's just a non-negotiable to flourish and true healing and to be all that God called us to be.

00;29;21;14 - 00;29;27;06
Rusty George
Can you give us a teaser as to what might be in part to put you on the spot?

00;29;27;19 - 00;29;53;15
Tiana Spencer
And you are definitely when I was about that is still doing so much. He's uncovering so much back part two. I feel like he really is breaking down the journey that I've been on the past five years. The tools that God has given me, I my treating, especially as of late, has really included a lot of practical tools, one of just helping people uncover what's there, you know, peace because our does is great, the most unhealthy spirituality.

00;29;53;15 - 00;30;14;27
Tiana Spencer
It's just fascinating. The Enneagram, though it can be controversial to some people, has been greatly, greatly transformative in my marriage, just in my own wounds. It is it opened my eyes to so much. I think people understanding the first point of that message is recognizing your posture. The message is about the woman who was bent over for 18 years.

00;30;15;04 - 00;30;33;05
Tiana Spencer
A lot of people confuse her with the woman who was bleeding. But this is a different woman, a skeptic who was bent over for 18 years. And God said, come. And he held her. And he said, You're a daughter of Abraham. You're for your own freedom. Like this is who you are. You get to be free of the say because the Jewish people say, Why are you yelling?

00;30;33;05 - 00;30;51;27
Tiana Spencer
You're on this day? And God said, No, she gets to be free. So this woman, though I preach in that sermon, the first thing we have to do is recognize your posture, recognize that you need help. And I feel like the first part of part two is getting people to recognize the brokenness, recognize the trauma, recognize what's happening.

00;30;51;27 - 00;31;12;00
Tiana Spencer
So using tools to get that, and that's going to be various tools. I feel like that's part of it because most people are blind to that and we think that everyone else needs help and we have no idea how we're showing it. The second part would be just respond to his pursuit. When Jesus calls, you come in. What does it look like to respond seriously?

00;31;12;00 - 00;31;32;03
Tiana Spencer
The practices that we need to be putting in place in our healing. Some of the journaling we talked about, even the Imagine in prayer I talked about, all of these things have had great like in insane ways changed my life because I do come from a traumatic background. It is it has helped me to actually be able to heal in so many ways.

00;31;32;26 - 00;31;52;08
Tiana Spencer
And then the last thing is, is remember your position where God was like, she's a daughter of Abraham. They said, you can't heal. Today is Sabbath. He was like, But she's a daughter of Abraham. That's who she is. And there was a sense of like who she is determines the freedom that she's owed. And I feel like there's so many of us when we need to actually understand who we are, that we get to be free.

00;31;52;18 - 00;32;14;03
Tiana Spencer
How does that look like? I think it looks like a bunch of ways, but sealing our identity in us, understanding who we are, actually begin to memorize and and training our brains, etching new neural pathways like I'm into all of the neurobiology, everything. Like we can't even get into all of that today. But it's literally me understanding like how the brain functions and what do we need to do to begin to believe truths and not living in the lie?

00;32;14;04 - 00;32;31;25
Tiana Spencer
You know, I'm saying and I was just teaching about this this past Sunday at my church of just the function God created our brains that if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, literally neural pathways get to edge. But if you go a different route, if you create new ones by believing the truth, by speaking the truth of yourself, the thing is, most of us will not give the time it takes.

00;32;32;05 - 00;32;51;07
Tiana Spencer
We will give the time. We've been living allies for a long time. So those things are set in and they affect how we live and they affect and what we experience versus the living to actually actively take control. And that means we're spending time journaling because writing with pen and paper does so much for your brain that came against that.

00;32;51;11 - 00;33;10;25
Tiana Spencer
We're spend time journaling the truths about who we are and we are rehearsing these things over and over again and we are living it. So I tell my daughter when she's going to school, like, what if you lived as though the God's word was actually true? Like, what if the decision you make? I make a decision saying I am actually I'm loved and I'm a masterpiece.

00;33;11;23 - 00;33;30;23
Tiana Spencer
I make a decision based on that. Like, what would a masterpiece do in this situation? I asked my daughter, like, Do you know, not because you feel bad about yourself. So we're living that way because it's etched in our minds. But what what would a masterpiece do? How would they respond? You know, I'm saying what with someone who's fully loved by God and God has her back, how would they respond in this situation?

00;33;30;27 - 00;33;50;20
Tiana Spencer
Because we've got to begin to do live that way. And it goes against what comes naturally to us. But what come naturally to us a lot of times is just things that are wounds in our trauma. So I'm teaching my girls and I'm teaching myself and I prayerfully want to teach others this. God is doing this to me is how do you live according to the truth that He says versus the lies a lot of us have been conditioned to live against.

00;33;50;20 - 00;33;51;09
Tiana Spencer
Does that make sense?

00;33;52;18 - 00;34;17;21
Rusty George
Preach That is awesome. So what are some of the rhythms that you've put into place? Because it's one thing to surface the pain, it's another thing to even attach healing to it. But, you know, sometimes it's like that stain in the carpet, it just keeps coming back up. So what do you do to keep growing in your understanding of your identity?

00;34;17;21 - 00;34;20;19
Rusty George
What are some rhythms of renewal that you've discovered?

00;34;20;29 - 00;34;41;19
Tiana Spencer
Yeah, the biggest catalyst that that's helped me, it's a few of them, but and everyone can do this and I hate that it's a luxury to the shouldn't be but therapy's been a huge deal for me and I have a big soapbox about how therapy just should not be a luxury. But it is. And everyone can afford it.

00;34;41;19 - 00;35;00;22
Tiana Spencer
Before I could afford therapy, I would sit under people who had been in therapy for a while. Let me reach out to someone who's been in therapy, and I had a woman who was mentoring me and it was a blessing. Now, maybe that's not even an option, but specifically to therapy. One of the things it did was I had an environment where empathy was profound.

00;35;00;22 - 00;35;29;16
Tiana Spencer
Now my therapist does not practice on a license because she loves to do a lot of inner healing prayer and stuff like that. And so I kind of have a therapist, spiritual direction, pastoral, she's everything. But we spend a lot of time revisiting traumatic wounds, inviting Jesus into those spaces, letting him write new stories, engage in the right side of my brain has been a huge because it was a set down to trauma has been a huge part of my healing.

00;35;29;24 - 00;35;58;07
Tiana Spencer
Every morning after I work out, I get my Bible and I do the imagine prayer that I talked about, where I go back to one of those spaces that have felt deep joy and peace in the presence of God. And I just experience it and buy Jesus into that space and I just feel the feelings. And then I get to engage with God in that place that has been huge for me too, and to envision a God who's delighted to be with me, not just hear it, but to close my eyes.

00;35;58;07 - 00;36;16;07
Tiana Spencer
Remember, man, this is a God ordained moment. I remember these certain places where I just felt God's presence and His peace, deep joy. And I can go back to this for every day I do that, and then I spend time doing lecture theater, which is a practice scripture, or I'll just spend time meditating on scripture. That has been huge for me as well.

00;36;16;07 - 00;36;42;00
Tiana Spencer
The other thing that's been big for me is community. I don't think this gets done without community. I was just preaching this past week, the sermon I just did called One Last Word. I talked about shame and it is prevalent in the church. It is wreaking havoc on our identities. And if you study, Kurt Thompson is one of the guys I love to study, a Christian psychologist.

00;36;42;16 - 00;37;03;26
Tiana Spencer
He has a book called The Soul of Shame, his amazing podcast book called Big Known. But it says Shame actually is healed in community. Right. It can survive a lot of places. Bernie Brown, I'll say this, too, but if you want a Jesus version, go to Craig Thomson. Shame is healed and community destroyed in community and and in vulnerability.

00;37;03;26 - 00;37;24;19
Tiana Spencer
I have been a part of a group of ladies. We've met every other week for two years and we just go and we spend time. We confess in confessions native. We speak life over each other. Kurt Thompson says one of the ways to heal shame is to let them be part of a community of people who are speaking.

00;37;24;19 - 00;37;44;13
Tiana Spencer
The fathers delight over you because of what it does to your brain, he says. A then not only be a part of a community, people who speak and find delight over you, but intentionally and regularly confess your deepest shameful moments in that context of safe people, that sounds terrifying. You should be seen as righteous passively. They were terrified.

00;37;44;13 - 00;38;02;18
Tiana Spencer
But it's good. But it's healing. It is what destroys shame, because in that moment I get to sense my friends plight from my pain. I get the sense they're empathy. I get to be and then I get to tell myself a different story. And I told them I had this moment where I had to go and confess something shameless, shameful to this group of girls, something that I felt was shameful.

00;38;02;18 - 00;38;16;07
Tiana Spencer
You know, we all everything is way worse to us in our heads. But the story the enemy was telling me is your bad. You know, you can't tell nobody this. You were wrong and all that. And I'm believing all this stuff and I'm full of shame. And I remember going to the group and I was like, All right, I'm about to share this.

00;38;16;15 - 00;38;34;19
Tiana Spencer
And I remember saying out loud, I was terrified. But their response was just empathy. They told it in a different way to me. They felt the father's heart over it. By the time they were finished, I was, first of all, shocked because I was I had only seen it one way. If you learn anything about shame, it actually does.

00;38;34;19 - 00;39;05;15
Tiana Spencer
It disintegrates and it takes, you know, separates parts of your mind. So, like, I can't engage in right reasoning when I'm full of shame and it's the same thing. It creates isolation in your life as well, right? Because we isolate because we're afraid of being exposed in that moment. It was like part of my mind came back together where I started to see a different story and I can now tell that story without shame being attached to it, because the father's light was spoken over it because someone else helped to repair that rupture.

00;39;05;21 - 00;39;28;12
Tiana Spencer
Community has to be a part of healing, not just in a community, but a community where really you're the forces are present, you're being seen, soothed, safe and secure. That's that's what the forces of healthy attachment that Dr. Dan SIEGEL, the psychologist, he talks about everybody from the time a newborn comes out, in order for them healthy attachment, they have to be seen, soothed, safe and secure.

00;39;28;17 - 00;39;45;29
Tiana Spencer
And I told the church this weekend, what if we are committed to be people to anybody that comes in our presence? Shame is a story because I'm going to see them, I'm going to sue them and I make sure they feel safe and I make sure they feel secure. And to speak, the fathers delight over them. If we all became people like that, shame could be healed.

00;39;45;29 - 00;40;01;03
Tiana Spencer
Afterwards, people came up to me and just confessed because they just were holding stuff and they needed to just be the okay. You had the fathers had spoken over them. So I think those have been integral parts of my healing that can actually continue today.

00;40;01;03 - 00;40;25;06
Rusty George
But it's a strange oxymoron. We're living right now because COVID taught us how much we need community, but it also got us out of the rhythm of going to community like church, and we need that in order to resolve that. What can the local church do better to facilitate an arena of it's safe here?

00;40;25;26 - 00;40;53;09
Tiana Spencer
Well, I think it's a good I told them this weekend, it starts with everybody making that commitment. One, I think people just need to know most people don't know that this is what's needed to be safe like this. And I tell them it's like you have to be doing your own work a deep to become deeply self-aware so that because what's happening nowadays, people are just judgmental, you know.

00;40;53;09 - 00;41;16;14
Tiana Spencer
So it's like no one feels safe if they feel like they're going to be judged. If everyone, though is doing their work of getting to their own mess and understanding how human they are, and they get to a place where that fosters humility, compassion, then we become way more open to like. Paul talked about preaching in the last chapter Galatians this week, Paul talked about Restore your brother, knowing that it could have been you.

00;41;17;16 - 00;41;32;03
Tiana Spencer
Most people that we're not doing that because we're just we're pointing the finger at our brothers and sisters in Christ. It was like, no, in order to love and restore a person, in order to become saint, you have to first do the deep work knowing it could have been, you know, one that you're human, knowing that you can make mistakes.

00;41;32;14 - 00;41;52;26
Tiana Spencer
My generosity and compassion opened up once I began doing this deep healing work. I was a little more judgmental on the side early, you know, because I was like, you know, I think it's good if I'm not doing these big, huge, overt send, you start to feel like you're good. And I, I did I unintentionally so conscience I feel like.

00;41;53;02 - 00;42;09;17
Tiana Spencer
And so then it's easy to point the finger at the people. But when a lot was like tangible. Let me sit you down for a second. Let me let me show you your mess. And then I begin the process of therapy. The Enneagram opened my eyes everything day, and I was like, Oh, shoot. And then I started to see if I'm this wounded.

00;42;09;28 - 00;42;29;14
Tiana Spencer
And I've been acting from my words. What you're doing has actually nothing to do with me. You are wounded. You were acting from your roles, and you begin to have more of a compassion and empathy. When you are compassion and empathy, you become safer because. So I feel like the church has to do the work of like the emotional healing is why I feel like it's this big part of my thing.

00;42;29;14 - 00;42;46;06
Tiana Spencer
I'm like, we all have to do the work in motion healing. We all going to get to the bottom of our own trauma. We are to be practicing these tools where we become more empathetic people so that people can feel safe to confess because they know they're not going be met with judgment. Didn't met with people who know it could have been them and they're ready to receive you and speak the farthest delight of you.

00;42;47;01 - 00;42;57;20
Rusty George
That's so good. I needed to hear that today. Thank you to Diana of this has been amazing. Where can people find you on social or your website websites.

00;42;57;20 - 00;43;14;06
Tiana Spencer
Tiana Spencer dot com don't marry me because it's very outdated I need it this needs hook it out but. It still gets me. They speak of a place for mom there and there's, you know, email. You can email me so you will still find me. Those are some of the older sermons, but YouTube is all my sermons are on YouTube.

00;43;14;06 - 00;43;28;21
Tiana Spencer
If you look at charts are made for different churches, a lot of them are fellowship you'll find on the sermons and on Instagram. I'm Tiana and Spencer Facebook. I'm on their Instagram. I'm Tiana. Tiana and Spencer, your family, they do.

00;43;29;12 - 00;43;31;14
Rusty George
Awesome. Thank you so much for being with us.

00;43;31;21 - 00;43;34;11
Tiana Spencer
And you're welcome. This has been an honor. Thank you for having me.

00;43;35;23 - 00;43;57;10
Rusty George
Well, thank you so much for listening today. Make sure you share this with a friend. Such great stuff in there about how to deal with overcoming shame and and understanding your own personal passion and vision where God's taking you in your life. So make sure you pass this on to somebody else. Make sure you leave us a review next week, we'll be back with a a pastoral legend, Dr. Crawford Lloris.

00;43;57;22 - 00;44;20;17
Rusty George
He has spoken to presidents. He's spoken and led prayers at Super Bowls. He's led churches, he's led movements. And he has an incredible wealth of wisdom. I'm just still shocked. I got to talk to him and I know you're going to learn a lot from what he has to say. So Crawford Lorritz makes navigating culture simple. Next week I'm leading simple.

00;44;20;23 - 00;44;23;04
Rusty George
Thank you so much for listening. And as always, keep it simple.

00;44;23;15 - 00;44;46;09
Intro/Outro
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