001 Introduction, and who we are.

Porch Chat is an intimate, faith-based podcast that feels like catching up with old friends over a cup of coffee. Hosted by aunt-niece duo Christy and Madison, this show invites listeners to pull up a chair on their metaphorical front porch for honest, unfiltered conversations about faith, life, and everything in between.

Each episode features raw discussions on topics ranging from personal spiritual journeys and mental health struggles to finding authentic connections with God outside traditional church structures. Christy, a seasoned entrepreneur and homeschool mom, brings years of life experience and spiritual insight, while Madison offers a fresh perspective as a young adult navigating her newfound faith.

Porch Chat doesn't shy away from difficult subjects or pretend to have all the answers. Instead, it creates a safe space for exploration, questioning, and growth. Whether you're a long-time believer, someone who's struggled with organized religion, or just spiritually curious, you'll find a welcoming community here.

Join Christy and Madison as they share their stories, challenge conventional wisdom, and seek a deeper understanding of God's love and grace. Porch Chat: where faith meets real life, one conversation at a time.

Transcript

Christi Howes: 0:02

This is episode one of porch chat. Welcome to the porch chat podcast, a place where we kick off our shoes and gather to discuss topics about our faith life and wherever our hearts take us. So grab a cup of coffee, kick up your feet and join us on our porch. Chat you.

Madison: 0:40

Music, hello, hello.

Christi Howes: 0:47

This is Christy, and I am here with my beautiful and wonderful niece, Madison, hello. So we want to welcome everybody to our very first podcast favors. Yay. We're excited. This has been something that I have been wanting to do for many years, and something that my niece Madison has been wanting to do, and so typically, my personality waits until we have everything together and we are in perfect mode. Maddie, you can agree that's probably yeah for sure. And so we decided to just throw this together, because there's a lot of meat and a lot of things that have been happening in our lives. And I think we have a message, yeah for sure relates to a lot of people. And so we want to share with you briefly why we came up with a name porch chat, and what our purpose is in this. And we want to fully expose and bring you on the journey and the process of our own faith, of our own family, of our own life. And hopefully you can relate to that. So we here have our cups of coffee, yes, that we're sipping on. Don't mind the slurps in the background here,

Madison: 2:04

it's your one.

Christi Howes: 2:07

But a little bit about how we came up with the title porch chat, a I'd like Madison to share. Actually, Madison, how did we come up with that? Yeah,

Madison: 2:15

so I recently decided to stay here at my aunt. And

Christi Howes: 2:25

so Madison, you're actually, you moved to South Carolina. You're the cutest. You moved to South Carolina, and you've been there for several years, yeah. And so now you're 20. Your aunties, yes. 44 will, kind of you know, yeah. So recently, you decided to move to Ohio. Here with me. Yeah, in Ohio. And this is crazy, because we never, it's been a month now, and we've never, never thought that this was coming. But some big things have been happening in your life, and some of the greatest conversations that we've had has been on our front porch, where we just gather with a cup of coffee. The sun is going down. We're sitting on comfortable chairs, we're outside with the breeze, and we're just having these deep moments together and just wisdom, and God is just pouring out wisdom into each of us. And so it's been incredibly refreshing having you here. It's been incredibly refreshing for you.

Madison: 3:22

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I mean, I came here fully based off of the fact that I felt like the peace of God was leading me here, and I didn't know why, really, and that's a really uncomfortable feeling, but I just decided to follow that peace that I had felt in my heart and that came along with a cup of coffee and some wonderful chats. And you

Christi Howes: 3:45

worked at Starbucks, yes, for two years, for two years. So you're pretty you're pretty good at Coffee, coffee snow. We originally was gonna call this, what was the title,

Madison: 3:59

sacred sips. Sacred sips. Then we felt like that, maybe too. Yeah, welcome

Christi Howes: 4:04

to sacred tips. Okay, we're like, why not just call it porch chat? Because this is what it is. This is what it is. So anyways, we welcome you guys to our front porch. Gather, as it said in the intro, gather a cup of coffee. Kick up your feet and let's chat for a little bit. First, we want to share a little bit about ourselves so that you understand who we are and what we're going to be doing with this channel, and hopefully you can relate to it as well. I am a mom of two kids. I homeschool full time, so I'm a full time homeschool mom, but I also am an entrepreneur and a business owner, and we own. My husband and I, we're serial entrepreneurs. We've owned several businesses and have sold several businesses. And currently, we are childcare owners of several of three locations currently, and we also have an international virtual assistant business as well. We do some coaching. We're just starting to get into some speaking again. I used to do speaking back in the day, but. Yeah, so I am a faith based woman. I really love the Lord. He's a huge part of why I homeschool and what I do, a huge part of everything that we do. He is our why. In my life, he's our why and so, but these conversations with you has really spurred something inside of me to recognize that you know, God is doing a new thing. And just because you're a homeschool mom or a business mom, you can be both. But God really wants to use us now, not necessarily when our kids grow up, or when we get our act together, when our finances, finances are together, but God wants to do things in us now, every day, on a daily basis, and so a lot of these conversations with you has really pulled that out in me. So with you, you grew up in the church, yeah,

Madison: 5:49

so I grew up in the church at a very young age. So I was born and raised in Ohio, and I was born and raised in a church where we were around a lot of familiar people and people that my parents did grow up with, and the church was a Christian church, and I was around a lot of different influences in that church, and a lot of things happened, and I was around a lot of religion, and it was something that really paved the way for how I viewed Christianity, and so,

Christi Howes: 6:28

because it was never really for you, you did you feel like it was real to you or

Madison: 6:34

so? I mean, at such a young age, I it was a lot of tradition, it was a lot of routine. And, I mean, that's easy to do when you're young. It's kind of fun, you know? And so it's more of a habit, you know? You get up Sunday morning, you get dressed, you get a donut, or you get McDonald's and you go to church and a scent

Christi Howes: 6:57

of veggietale, yeah, right.

Madison: 7:00

So, so for most of my childhood, I was in the Sunday school and but also we I was in a lot of activities outside of Sunday school because we were close to the family who owned the church, and so I was in a lot of their personal life, and I was involved in a lot of their activities. We were, I was best friends with their kids. So we were really closest people. We really hung out a lot. I mean, it wasn't just Sundays, but, um, so

Christi Howes: 7:32

it was a part of your lifestyle. Yeah,

Madison: 7:34

it was influence, influence, my my view alike. I mean, also, I think being young played a part in it, because I'm growing and I'm learning, and so when I was younger, I mean, I always looked up to my parents as Christians, you know, what my view was as Christians, you know? And I think that they definitely, you know, played a role in, I'm sorry, introducing me in to God and who he was. And more than just the religion that I was being exposed to, it definitely had a faith base of their own. And I think I learned from that as a child as well. But I think, you know, growing up, it was, to me, a tradition. It was what religion is, you know, and it really, like I said, paved the way for my knowledge on God and Jesus And so growing up, I fell away from it as I grew older, because there was just some things happening in my life, and I had felt like as I got older and my mental change, you know, my I was being introduced to these new emotions like anxiety and, you know, emotions like that, I was having a really hard time correlating that with going to church and being a Christian like I thought it was because, for some Reason, it never seemed to line up or match, and how I would really process it. So anyways, about six years ago, I moved to South Carolina with my immediate family, and we tried a couple churches in the Carolina but they never really seemed to fit and they weren't really like. The church that we were just from was very familiar. You know, you had a lot of familiar faces that I grew up with, so going to new churches was so different and induced a lot of anxiety as well. And I had some things happen in the past church that really affected how I viewed going to church, which raised a lot of anxiety when it came to going to church. So now, when we're trying, you know, these, all these new churches, it just wasn't really lining up with me, and I think also my family had such a good relationship with the people of the church that that wasn't lining up with these new churches. Either. So we fell away from going to church at all, and so for the next six years, I, you know, didn't have a relationship with God, I didn't have a relationship with Jesus, because we were out of the tradition. Now, we were out of the routine of going every Sunday, and we were out of what we thought was the relationship with Jesus, and that's what Christianity was, right? So now we're not going to church, so we're not Christian, you know, I'm not a Christian. Now, you know,

Christi Howes: 10:30

I find that interesting, and I know we'll talk about that quite a bit on this. And you know, some, some of the things that we talk about, our listeners may totally struggle with they may totally disagree with it, and just because we're using this platform as our porch chat, as our time, because that's when a lot of the magic happens, when you and I are just talking back and forth and things come out of us. So we may say some things that are wrong, not accurate. We may say some things that are skewed. That's okay this podcast. We're not going to put on a performance. We're not going to pretend to be anything other than where we are at this very moment in our mindsets. And not everybody's going to agree with everything that we say. And

Madison: 11:13

before we actually decided just, you know, let's just hop on and let's just, let's just start talking. Let's do our first podcast episode. This thing was totally out of the blue, but something that we had kind of talked about before was, what are we going to get out of this? What do we want to get out of this, right? And so that kind of just reminded me, what do I want to get out of this? I want to be able to learn out of this, you know. And I want to be able to see, you know, the how far we go with just our knowledge and how far the Holy Spirit takes us, and simply having these conversations and looking back and seeing, you know, oh, okay, like we said this and did this, we can learn from that, you know, you know, we don't know how the Holy Spirit is going to move.

Christi Howes: 11:57

Sure, you know. And we totally welcome anybody that is willing to listen to this man pipe in. We are so interested in hearing we really are creating a conversation. Yeah, and we're welcoming people to our porch. To us, the porch is a place that is comfortable, many chairs, many chairs. It's a home. You know, you're coming to a place that we identify as our security and our safety. And so here we're secure and we're safe, and we're gonna say things that may not be popular, we're gonna say things that may feel offensive. We're gonna say things that are encouraging and enlightening. We may have to come back and be like, you know, I said this last podcast, and I really was wrong, and that's okay. We're gonna be authentically, 100% us, but let's just chat just a few more minutes here on, we're kind of setting the precedence for you saying that you grew up in the church. You grew up in this ideology that your relationship with Jesus was really attached to church. And clearly in my life, for for several years I as well, I was actually credentialed within a denomination as a female pastor, and not because I wanted it, because that's what was kind of expected for me as I was a youth director, and it was a fantastic eight years of my life. And God really got a hold of me, in many ways, in and I found myself frustrated with the common, normal American Church and its ideology and but I was never I asked you earlier, like, when you fell away, did you fall away from Jesus, or did You fall away from the church? And to me, that was, to you is synonymous, yeah, like, if you fall away and we, you know, when my husband and I decided to step away from the body that we were in, I had a lady come to us at a local store, and she, you know, we had just stepped away. And, I mean, we're heavy, heavy in ministry, vocationally, very well known in our denomination. And she said, I'm gonna pray that the Lord gets a hold of your husband gets a hold of you. And I'm like, Girl, I think he already has. I think that's why we're stuck now, you know. And I don't mean that offensive, because I find great value in the body, in the organization in America, because I wouldn't be where I'm at today, from my teen years and being in love with Jesus, had I not had a body of believers there for me to lift me up when I came from, you know, certain things in my family and experiences, I needed that, and I think you needed that as well. It really paved a foundation of understanding. You know, Christ is real, yeah, um, and you when you said, I didn't fall away from the Lord because I was always tender to him, but what you did is you were because Church and the relationship Lord was synonymous you so,

Madison: 14:58

yeah, I believe it okay you ask. Yeah, you believe in God? Yeah, I believe in God. But it almost was an open ended question, like, I'm waiting for an answer back, you know? Like, yeah, I believe in God, you know, but I'm waiting for you to tell me more. I'm waiting for you to tell me what, like, what really do I believe in I know I believe in God. I know God is real, but where's my foundation, you know, yeah, where is that relationship? Because I didn't, I didn't have one built, you know, I didn't have and to me that was going to church, yeah, your identity was in church and the organization. So, yeah, I believe in God. But then I was almost like, now, questioning myself, you know, yeah, like, but what does that mean? You know? Like,

Christi Howes: 15:40

what comes after that, you know, yeah, and often, if you and this is where I see, okay, LifeWay Research. I was looking at this LifeWay Research talks about, okay, there's a huge, a huge percentage of young people that drop out of church attendance, that drop out of church when they graduate high school. And they really assessed a group of people and said, Okay, why? Why are these people dropping out? They said that 34% of these people that they this is now young adults between the ages of 23 and 30 that attended a Protestant church regularly for at least a year in high school, and now they no longer do they. They asked them, Why did you drop out? 34% said I moved to college and just stopped attending in church. I find that is the greatest percentage of them. I find that interesting, because they immerse themselves in a different culture, and culture is what will move you so like when you are fully engaged in the church and in the organization, that's kind of what you know, and when you step out and the world is gonna get its hands on you, and the world and that is really gonna make you challenge you to believe, yeah, what you challenge what you believe. Do you believe really? What you believe? Do you really have a relationship with a true know what you believe? You know what you believe, yeah. And so the world gets a hold of you, but church, 32% said church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical. That was the second 32% right beyond and I, I kind of believe that I moved to college and stopped attending church. The 34% there's probably a little mix of, yeah, the church members seem judgmental or hypocritical on that.

Madison: 17:16

I mean, I've seen just in my life and in my childhood, what you know falling into the routine of church and following the culture of church, and when you're hurt by the church, or when you you know something doesn't sit right with the church, or when you know anything happens with within the church, right? I have seen people fall away. I have seen myself fall away, you know. And I think that's also something like we said earlier, is happening so much to people in America because you follow that routine, you follow that culture. Also, I think it's really interesting how our generation and how America is so tight knit to social media right now, and what social media teaches you to do is follow a routine, and it teaches you to follow a culture. It teaches you to swipe. It's literally teaching it's literally giving you directions on what to do and how to live your life. And so I think it's I just connect the two, because it's like our world, no matter whether it's in a church, whether it's in social media or It's teaching us a routine, and when you don't follow that routine, you're not doing it right. When you don't follow that routine, you're not it's almost like the routine is what gets you going. It's what gets you in it right. Now, like you said, when you fall out of that routine, now something's wrong, you know. Now you're not feeling it. You know, when you're not getting as many views or as many likes on something like something's wrong, you're not feeling it. And I you know. And that's exactly what happens at the church. You something happens, or something said, and you fall away, and now your routine is gone, you know. And with that, without that routine there, you aren't going to have anything to keep going.

Christi Howes: 19:06

You know, recently, in the past year, we've seen all over college campuses just massive revivals, yeah? College, the this generation. Oliver, yeah, oh, all over, and we're seeing massive impromptu baptisms. And so, you know, I see a lot of these students are students that left the organization. And I you're going to hear me a lot called the organization. And I think perhaps that sometimes, and we may not realize this, or think this, we may think that, you know, falling away from church sometimes does lead to students or people or anybody making poor choices, because when you're not connected to goodness and you're not connected to positivity and you're not connected to things that are flowing that type of mindset, often you make decisions and choices in your life that are contrary. So I can understand how, for like me, when I was 1314, 15, how. Having a church body and having the organization and the youth group where I could go to every week when I was, like, one of the only Christians in my family at the time, it was a it was great for that mindset, for that little girl. I needed that, and that was great that same organization as I got older, and I got to start seeing some of the bureaucracy and some of the issues and some of the things, and I was just getting saddened by it and grieved by it. I believe that God can and has and does call people out, and the reason being is and you can choose what to do with yourself when you're called out. You can choose to fall and it really shakes you, it sifts you and lets you see what you're made of. Do you really have a relationship with Christ? Or is church your idol? Is the organization your idol because the definition in the dictionary of idol is a person or thing that is greatly admired, loved or revered, and you see people that will fight to their death for their organization. And often, when you leave, they're like, Well, mine's not that way, but that church down the road, yeah, they're not doing it right. They're not speaking it right. But my pastor, yeah, try my pastor. Try that, you know. And like, I can tell you after when we started to step out and we were trying different things, because we're like, we gotta go find our fit. We gotta go find and everywhere we were going, it was like,

Madison: 21:29

exactly what happened.

Christi Howes: 21:31

I was like, rolling my eyes and wanting to get out of there. And then I felt like, Lord, am I losing it? But I knew in my heart I was not losing my love for the Lord. I was pursuing my love for the Lord. I was just greatly disturbed how the losing the organization, I was losing the idol in my life.

Madison: 21:52

And you know what the Bible says about idol? Says God will tear them down. He will tear down the idols in your life.

Christi Howes: 21:59

The dictionary goes on, it's an image or representation of a God used as an object of worship. And I think we all have established great, great objects of worship over our buildings and over our programs and over our pastors and again, I don't want to say that there's a well meaning people out there that are serving the Lord in the pastoral, pastoral role, and in my heart, isn't, is never to judge that man. Now, when I first stepped out, I did a lot of judging, and that's okay. It's okay to go through that process. Sometimes you have to be angry to change, and sometimes God calls us out, and we go through a season of anger, and we go through a season of confusion so that we can have clarity, right? And I think to that we don't stay in anger, we don't stay there, but that's a part of your journey. You You had went through some things, you had experienced some things. You had seen hypocrisy at its finest, and that's why a lot of young people fall is, is they seem they see that a lot of church members are hypocritical. And the very next percentage, the highest percentage that LifeWay Research gives you, is 29% says, I didn't feel connected to my people, the church. And then 25 is, I didn't 25% is I disagreed with the Church's stance on political or social issues. And then I mean So that right there, 3040, 5060, 70, almost 80, almost 80% of the people that responded in here a little over than 80% it had to do with connections, hypocritical, critical experiences and judgmental experiences, and Church's stance on political or social issues. So it's just, it's interesting. A lot of our young people and a lot of people that leave are really searching,

Madison: 24:00

I mean, and something that I mean, I see what I did myself was search, you know, and for those six years I that I have lived in South Carolina, that's what I did, was I searched. And what I saw the people around me do was search. And you know, what I see my generation doing right now is searching, and it's, you know, you are searching for the right thing, but in the wrong areas, in the wrong places, you know. And it's what, like I said, I did for for basically six years of my life, was just search for to connect that connect with the dots. When somebody asked me, Do you believe in God? And I said, Yes, I do, but, you know, I was searching for the rest of that sentence, you know, and I was able to, by the Holy Spirit, finish that sentence. And that was about three months ago. And. When I had finally, I had gotten tired and had rock bottom from all of the things that I was using to try to find that peace and try to finish that sentence, and it put me to a point where I had really just I was tired of trying. I was tired of searching and nothing, I felt like I was finding so much, but nothing was finding me. And I mean, I was in college, and I lost my passion for college, and I had really fallen away from having a relationship with my parents, and I was out a lot, especially when I graduated, and I had just become this person that I felt like was constantly searching, and I just wanted to be found by something. And so I had finally had it one night, and I was in a really bad spot, and I was really just, I mean, to be honest, I didn't have a will to live, and I was just tired and but I remembered, you know, I remembered the first part of that sentence, yeah, I believe in God, you know. And I stuck to that. And I was like, You know what? I remembered that I had a Bible in my closet, and I had got up from this bed that I was laying in for three days, and I was ripping down everything in my closet, trying to find it, and I couldn't find it, but I remembered I had one on my nightstand, inside of my nightstand that my grandmother had given me, and so I opened it, and I started to read. I was just flipping through all the pages and just trying to find something to read, like, you know, like, maybe, maybe, you know, this could work. Maybe this could be something. I just had that thought in my mind, like, honestly, I've done everything. I've, you know, I've tried everything that I felt like could possibly work for what I was going through. But I, you know, I didn't try this. So, you know, I just had that, that little hope, and I just started reading, and I asked, God, I said, you know what if, if you're out there, if you are real, if you you know, if this word, if this, if this book right, all of these words say that you know, you'll bring peace. You will, you know. And I'd had a very short, very, very, very short understanding of it, but I was like, what I'm reading right here is, in this, in this Bible, it's, you know, saying that you will bring peace and you will bring you know, that you will fulfill my life, and you are a father, you know. So can you show me like, can you come into my heart and take take this depression out and take these feelings out that have been laying me, you know, a handicap in my bed, you know? And also, just really, the depression and the anxiety and all these really bad feelings and things that had been keeping me for, you know, years at this point, and they were just troubling my heart so bad. And I asked him, I said, you know, can you just come into my heart and and cleanse me of it, like, can you just cleanse me of it? And can I feel your peace like I just want to feel your peace like, are you out there? And I was just kind of reading, and I was like praying a little bit. And that night, actually, it was that night I had started to feel different. I had started to feel different. And the next morning I woke up and I had complete peace, and I had all of the it felt like such a burden. And a weight was lifted off of my chest, and I was just, I remember, I woke up and I was just bawling. I was just crying, and I opened my Bible, and I was like, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But it was so it was such an it felt like out of this world experience, and I had just this feeling over myself, just complete peace. And it was almost like my mind was trying to be like, but you're anxious, but you're this, but you're that. And wait.

Christi Howes: 28:48

So logic, yeah, logic was trying to inform you no But yesterday, and reminding you,

Madison: 28:56

no matter what was being said, I was peaceful, and I remember just crying, and I had left the house really early, and I was just driving around the beach, just like listening to worship music that I hadn't listened to in six years. Just like crying. I just wanted to hang out the window and be like, God is real. God is real. He just really showed himself to me. And like I said, I mean, it was nothing. I mean, it's a day that I can never forget. It was, it was an experience that was was and you completely raw. I mean, it was completely

Christi Howes: 29:24

real, because you couldn't have conjured this up. No, and I tried, I tried, and it was just you were at a moment of utmost brokenness. You had been there for three days. It's so interesting. I

Madison: 29:38

mean, and that wasn't the first time, you know, I had very

Christi Howes: 29:41

was it three days? Literally, three days in your bed, three days. Was it three days? Oh my gosh, you hear that, Madison, three days you laid there, wow, wanting to die. And it was on the third day you rose up. You know what? You remembered? I have the word of God, yeah, in my closet. And you. And after it, and you got it, and something happened which you use. What you had happened to you is what the scriptures talk about in Philippians, four, seven, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, right? Your logic was like, No, but you're depressed, but you want to die, but you have been on medicine for this, but you've been doing this for six years, but you're using all of these, which is also

Madison: 30:23

something that incorporated. I mean, I had thought in my head like you tried like 10 different medications, like three different doctors, you know, how many? You know, like, all the illegal, you know, paths and roads that I went down, like you tried so much, like you really tried so much in this is what did it like, God is what did it like? Wow. I think also like, I just can't imagine. Like, if I hadn't gone through those trials and I hadn't really, really went out there and tried to search for those things, I wouldn't have really been able to sit there and be like, wow, like, Jesus is the only thing that can give me this, because I did this and this and this and this, and maybe it worked for for a minute or two, but then I felt even worse after, you know, or like, just years of the emptiness, you know, and I feel full now, you know. And we're

Christi Howes: 31:17

not talking just this wasn't a feeling. This was the doctors, actually, this is something significant. We can get more into this later in our podcast, but it was a diagnosed. You were diagnosed, had testing that your

Madison: 31:30

Yeah. So I was diagnosed with bipolar depression, and I was diagnosed with crippling anxiety, and I was diagnosed with ADD, and I was given multiple medications by multiple different doctors, and they all just, I mean, nothing worked, and it had made me feel like, helpless, you know, and have doctors sit there and be like, well, let's just see what works, you know, like, you know, like, we'll just see my guinea pig. Let's

Christi Howes: 32:00

just see your hair test.

Madison: 32:01

Yeah, what you said to me, you know, you're just, you're just kind of my guinea pig to see what works, you know? And it's like, but you're a doctor, and this is supposed to be your job, so if you can't fix me,

Christi Howes: 32:10

right? What hope do I have? Yeah, yeah. Hope do I have? God. Was like, Hey, so, like, a feeling. Feelings come and go. We have 500 feelings a day, right? This is like, like shifting shadows, like, it's the wind that that comes, Feelings come and go, but we can't lean on to our own understanding. No, I mean, that's what Philippians four seven says. It surpasses all understanding, all understanding. There's no logic behind what you're saying right now? Yep, there is no scientific logic against what doctors have said, against what you have practiced for six years that can tell me that still, to this day, many months later, you still are walking in peace, yeah.

Madison: 32:56

And I mean, it's, it's, you know, a whole, a whole journey in itself, right? And you, you are still going to feel emotions. You are still going but like, it's interesting, because it's almost like there was a time where you're trying to cure and fight off these emotions, but you're going to feel them because we're human, oh yeah, going to feel anxiety. You're going to feel and like, we can also go in, into that another time about depression and about, like, what you feel, and what that really can look like on your mind, and where it really stems from. But, um, I tried for so long to try to cure these things and trying, you know, I feel like it just made them worse and worse. But now, when I am, you know, feeling anxious, and I'm feeling these, uh, emotions that are coming back, it's, it's almost, it would feel like a haunting feeling, like, like, you know, like, but aren't, isn't that supposed to be gone, you know? And it's like, no, you know, we can't get rid of our flesh. That's our flesh. It's gonna happen to us. We're gonna feel those things. But, you know, that's why we use the word of God as, you know, like in, in Ephesians six, it says the Word of God is a sword of a spirit. When you're wearing your armor of God, it's literally our way. Literally our weapon. So now I'll use verses, and I'll read, I'll speak the word over myself when I'm feeling a certain way, and I'll have evenings where I or in mornings, and parts of my day where, yeah, I'll struggle. But then other than that, I will have peace. And I'm like, wow. Like, do I really feel good? Right? Now, I was talking to my cousin about that yesterday. Like I was like, I just realized I feel good right now. Like, it's such a feeling that I realized I'm like, What am I feeling right now? I'm feeling

Christi Howes: 34:27

good. And that you used to have to pop pills to try to get that feeling or take substances, yeah, and that's the scripture here in Philippians, four seven, and the peace of God, it says, will guard it's gonna guard your heart and your minds in Christ, Jesus, the peace of God. So when days that you struggle, that that you want to get into an anxiety issue, or you're having nightmares, that is in that's something you deal with constantly, is these nightmares and and you wake up and you feel this anxiety and this anxiousness, and you. Just you use your coping skills, which is, you know, focusing on the words of God, because you can combat your own words. But there's something powerful and we can, we can totally dive into, like, the canon of the Bible, and if the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and if there's errors in the Bible, and if Jesus is the only way, like, We could totally dive into all of that and have philosophical talks, and everybody can have an opinion, but when it comes down to it, for three days, you laid in your bed wanting to die, and on the third day, you rose, and you grabbed the words of God and you clutched to them. And instantaneous in your brokenness, God came through the darkness. It was not a religious moment. You were not in a worship service.

Madison: 35:43

I wasn't any not. I read the Bible when I was in church. I read this Bible when I was younger, you know. And they were words, right? And now I realize, and I think to myself, you know, a few months ago, and I had asked the Holy Spirit to come into my heart. I had asked, I had had welcomed him into my heart. And I'm thinking now, like these they, you know, these words, to me in the past were just words, and they, you know, you know, maybe I had felt like they hadn't had power, but to, you know, but behind them, but now, having a relationship with God, but being led by the Holy Spirit, you know. Now I'm reading this Bible with the Holy Spirit, and the words have so much power. They have so much meaning that I never had felt before, and that's because my heart is being led by the Holy Spirit. He's, you know, he's inside of me, literally leading me as I'm reading this. And it's totally different, like the words have power, right? And it's because of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of me that I can read that and like, wow, I'm reading this verse, I'm reading these verses, and eventually, you know I you will feel the power. You will feel it over your life. You will feel the anxiety go away. You will feel those things go away. And it's because the I mean, and I have personally experienced reading this Bible and the words, the feelings that you have, not the emotions, but the feelings that sit in your spirit and the peace that will pass over you is real, you know. And it's not something that's just like, oh, this is an encouraging, you know, letter, like, no, like, it's, it's a very spiritual book. It is a very powerful book with powerful verses in it, you know, powerful words, yeah.

Christi Howes: 37:19

And so nothing can. Can really combat that experience when you've lived it and you've been there. And so God brought you to this season, and he's doing a new thing. And so this is where porch chat has is started, and this is where it's going to evolve, is we're going to have these raw, real conversations and bring people in, in in onto the porch with us, those that that need to hear this. So we're down to our last sip. Here. We're drinking down our cups. So final words Madison, before we end episode one. Final

Madison: 37:52

words for me tonight are going to be, if you, if you base your knowledge of God off of what other people tell you and show you, and what you've learned by organizations and by churches, you're not going to get it. You are not going to fully, fully grasp the understanding of Jesus unless you have a relationship with Him, and you dive into the word for yourself, and you really welcome Him and seek. You really welcome Him and seek that for yourself, rather than just what you're being taught or what or what you are being shown. Because just by doing that myself, I have, I have been introduced to a whole new world that I never I never thought was even there. So keep going, keep going and keep going. Get into it. Keep going and get into it.

Christi Howes: 38:52

I love it. I love it. Well, we're so grateful to have everybody here with us tonight, those that chose to step in here with us, and we're looking forward to many more of this. We thanks for joining us tonight on our porch. Chat.

Madison: 39:07

Bye. You.