Transcript of Safe to Hope Podcast: Premiere 3 with Darby Strickland

Ann Maree:  Hello and welcome to the Safe to Hope podcast. My name is Ann Maree and I'm the executive director for HelpHer and the host of this podcast. On the Safe to Hope. Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity podcast, we help women tell their story with an eye for God's redemptive purposes. All suffering is loss, but God leaves nothing unused in his plans.

We want to help women see his redemptive thread throughout their circumstances, and then look for opportunities to join with God in his transformational work.

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Ann Maree: We're back talking with Darby Strickland about story for the Safe to Hope. And last time we spent a good amount of time talking about the importance of language. As women talk about their stories. This time Darby's going to share with us a little bit of God's heart for sufferers in his word. Maybe if we could just start out with this question, Darby, how does God connect our stories through his word.

Darby: Yeah, that's a great question. It's, He invites us in to rub our lives up against Scripture, right? Scripture is actually a personal invitation to understand your own heart and to be connected with the Lord. And one way I think is just recognizing that the invitation of His word is, to create a relationship with Him, right?

His - God’s words. Even if we just think about the word incarnate, the whole purpose of them is a pursuit of His people. And so we wanna teach sufferers how to connect with God's word in a way that is personal, where they see their lives, their suffering, their anguish, their joys on the pages of Scripture.

Ann Maree: Yeah. That's good. You've even said that the gospel rewrites our story. Talk about that a little bit.

Darby: Yeah, I mean, even if we think about that just from the point of an Old Testament narrative, you know, we. . We read the story of Joseph very differently as New Testament Christians. Hmm. We read the story of Ruth, where God is absent very differently, understanding what a kinsman redeemer is now that we have a redeemer.

And so I think it's just. One - another way to understand the process of a victim. They have a history and they have a story, but until they make certain connections about God's heart for them, His desire to rescue them, His desire for redemption and restoration, they can't see the whole of their story.

Right… things, and details don't always make sense. But when they start to understand more of God's heart and His character and His pursuit of them they begin to tell their story in a different way. Different details matter. They can see little rescues that happened along the way, even in the midst of great suffering.

So yeah. In a sense, the telling of your story in light of Scripture is a process with many layers. And we also see that unfolded in Scripture itself. If we think about the narrative on of oppression by the Egyptian slavery of the Israelites, how many times was that story retold throughout scripture?

And every time it's told, it's to remind us that God has come to save His people from other people's sin