Holding Hope for the Unbelieving: When Those We Love Aren't Saved w/ June Chapman

How do you hold onto hope when those you love don't share your faith? June Chapman, author of "Peace in the Waiting: When You Love People Who Don't Love God," joins us to unravel this complex and emotional topic. Drawing from her own experiences during the isolation of the pandemic, June shares her insights on connecting with non-believing friends and the transformative journey that led her to pen her soul-stirring book. As she walks us through her initial hesitation and divine inspiration to write, her story emerges as a beacon for anyone grappling with the ache of unanswered prayers for the salvation of loved ones.

In a world where control is often a coveted illusion, our conversation leans into the art of surrender. We dissect the spiritual struggles that arise when faced with the reality that we cannot will our loved ones into faith. June sheds light on the power of lament, taking a page from the Psalms to illustrate expressing sorrow while holding onto trust in God's unfailing love. With every word, we peel back the layers of doubt to reveal the resilience of a faith that withstands the silence, the waiting, and the uncertainty that can sometimes cloud our spiritual paths.

Wrapping up, this heartfelt episode offers more than just companionship in the wait—it extends practical lifelines for threading faith through the tapestry of everyday life. June and I talk about the profound impact of prayer and intercession, how worship can become an act of immediate faith, and the pitfalls of placing the outcome above the Almighty. The takeaways are rich and all designed to deepen your spiritual practice and sustain you through the seasons of waiting for those heart-deep interventions in the lives of the people we cherish.

Book: Peace in the Waiting
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Transcript

Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week, we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.

Ellen Krause: 0:30

I'm Ellen, your host, and today we are talking about a topic that every single one of us as a Christian can relate to the feeling of weariness for praying for loved ones to know Jesus.

Ellen Krause: 0:47

And this can leave us feeling helpless, sometimes frustrated, because we just have a natural tendency to feel this urgent need for our loved ones to come to know Christ, and we want that to happen now.

Ellen Krause: 1:03

Well, our guest today, June Chapman, has a new book titled, " Peace in the Waiting when you Love People who Don't Love God, and I'm super excited about talking about this topic with her and, for those of you that are listening, that we all are grappling with these emotions that come with waiting for a friend or family member to embrace Christ, and June has experienced this waiting herself and she has learned to walk in peace and put her trust in God, and she's going to share with us ways to navigate the complex nature of faith and relationships during spiritual uncertainty and help us, too, to find peace in our prayers for loved ones. June Chapman is a business professional in the greater Washington DC area, and Peace in the Waiting is her first book, which was, by the way, the 2022 winner of the Proverbs 31 Ministries Compelled Book Proposal Challenge with David C Cook. Which is such an honor, june, to have you with us today. Welcome.

June Chapman: 2:21

Oh, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm really excited to chat about the book and just looking forward to our conversation.

Ellen Krause: 2:28

June, I can totally get why this topic, this book, your writing style really won this proposal challenge. Tell us just a tiny little bit about that process and how you came to entering this competition and God putting this topic on your heart.

June Chapman: 2:52

Yeah, sure, I'd love to detail a little bit of the process. Thanks for asking. So I, like you said, live in the Washington DC area and I am actually just a business professional. I, for about 10 years and until very recently, actually worked in the accounting industry. So I didn't have any writing experience. You know, no writing background. No, no blog or public social media accounts or anything like that. And I was.

June Chapman: 3:20

I was so busy before COVID, I had triple booked plans every day, I was involved at church and things, but just sort of filled my calendar with the things that I wanted and that were comfortable and that were important to me. And then COVID shut down. Our city and DC shut down so hard and so many of my friends left the area. Naturally, they went back to be with family. They were working remotely. I don't have any family in the area and so I was sort of left alone. And there was this group of friends that also stayed behind. Some of them I didn't even really know that well until that time period, but we were sort of the ones that were left here and they became over the course of a few months, sort of like a surrogate family to me and they loved me so well and we showed up for each other in ways that were unexpected and unplanned. And just such a gift from God to have these people in my life and I just grew to love them so much. When you spend so much time with someone, you just come to know their hopes and their dreams and their quirks and you just see that image, bearing artistry, of God's hand. You know, by his common grace they just all reflected his glory so clearly and so beautifully.

June Chapman: 4:53

But the thing about these friends was that they were not believers. They did not follow Jesus and I did, and so there was sort of this six month descent into darkness and despair for me and I just started to wonder how is this possible? How are these people who I love and who have loved me, how are their lives pointed in a different direction and where are they spending eternity? And what do I do about this horrific reality that our lives are pointed in different directions? And I just couldn't grapple with those realities that there was this big divide between the way things were and the way I wanted things to be, and I just almost sunk into this deep depression and I felt the spirit start to nudge me to do something that I found very odd, and that was to start writing. And so I did what anybody would naturally do when they get a call directly from the spirit I just rejected it outright and ran in the completely opposite direction.

June Chapman: 6:16

I was like, oh, I'm out, you know, sort of ignored him and was like, well, that's silly. You know I'm an accountant, you know I've written a lot of emails that start with like for our last discussion. I mean hopefully, not really, but I mean I'm like okay, I'm writing like a lot of technical things, but I don't know how to share like thoughts or emotions or process feelings, you know, on paper, and. But I just kept feeling, feeling the spirit, you know, nudge me and say right, right. And finally, one evening I just threw up my hands and opened my laptop and sat down on like the stark rainy night after like a 10 hour accounting day at work, and I wrote a thousand words and a thousand words became, over the next two years, 30,000 words. That became 40,000 words, and I actually referred to this writing for about a year as the document at the time and she said, you know that I would come to appointments and talk about the document you know, working on this document and I I didn't even tell anybody I was writing except her. For two years I was, like you know, just writing this document that kept that, kept growing and growing and growing, and I don't know how this happened. I mean, I know how this happened, you know, praise God, but I don't remember sort of the details of how.

June Chapman: 7:42

I found out about this program called Compelled Training through Proverbs 31 Ministries, but it's a writing workshop group for women who want to write about their faith and share the hope of the gospel and the hope found in Christ, and so I'm an Enneagram one, and so I was like, well, anything that's worth doing is worth doing, perfectly. So I joined. I know, I know, no, it's an impossible standard, but I but I joined this, this compel training program through P31 decided, if I was going to write and if I had become an accidental writer, that I that I might as well attempt to do this well and, to you know, honor God and to sort of develop that ability and that talent. And so I joined and they had, like you said, this unique book proposal competition for first time authors, and so, in January 2022, they announced the 2022 book proposal competition and I at that point had like a 40,000 word manuscript and I just felt God say it's time to finish the book. And I was like the document, you know book, you know what book? And I so I just was like, okay, I worked really hard over that next few months. In May I submitted a proposal and I got a call from the organizers at Proverbs 3 Ministries and they said you know, David C Cook and Esther Press their women's imprint. They want to publish your book.

June Chapman: 9:22

And I mean, gosh, it is just all praise to God. Yeah, there's just, you know, no way I could have planned or expected, as an accountant, with with nothing, with no experience, but no natural abilities or talent, to write a book. And you know, people who've never written anything in their lives don't normally write books. And I, I'm just, I'm very thankful to God because I this is cliche, a lot of writers and authors say this, but it's, it's so true.

June Chapman: 9:54

I was writing the words that I needed to hear and the processing and the work that I was doing with the Lord when I was writing was just this time of intimacy between me and him and he was showing me and revealing to me all the things that he wanted me to know and that he wanted to comfort me with, and I didn't think that it would ever be for anyone but me.

June Chapman: 10:17

But that was good enough, because it was a project that we worked on together and it was just a time where he led me into such refuge and such peace, and it just couldn't have been expected and it couldn't have been planned. And he doesn't owe us redemption of all the broken parts of our story on this side of heaven, and we probably won't see resolutions to all of our problems, but it is so kind and so merciful that sometimes he does. Let us walk into these redemption stories for certain broken parts of our lives here. And so, even though I'm still waiting for the salvation of so many of my friends, he was able to take this pain and this struggle and turn it into something I could have never planned and never expected, and I'm so unthankful, I'm so thankful, but I'm also just so in awe.

Ellen Krause: 12:04

Yes, absolutely. What an incredible, incredible God story, because, as you said, you know, being an accountant and not with this background, you can see that in your weakness, God's strength just poured over you and he certainly worked through you during this process. One of the things, june, that I love how you really addressed this topic was to think of it in two parts the thoughts that we think right and then the questions that we ask. Let's start with the thoughts that we think, because I'm pretty sure everybody who's listening can relate to this in one way or another. Tell us you know some of the process that went on in your mind in sort of developing this collection of thoughts.

June Chapman: 13:05

Yeah, absolutely Gosh, that will take me back. I also have my copy right here and it is broken into those two parts. So you know, I have to admit that there wasn't much process. So I kind of opened an Evernote at the beginning and started pouring out all the thoughts and questions that I had, and there was no organization at all. I would open my laptop and I went on nights that I felt called to write and the Lord would just help me process all the things that were going on that day. And he led me so providentially into this organization of the book that you mentioned that I really feel like I was hardly even involved in at all.

June Chapman: 13:50

I certainly take responsibility for all errors in translation of the ideas, translation of the ideas that but.

June Chapman: 14:01

But I but to sort of go through some of the thoughts that folks might walk through when they're on this road.

June Chapman: 14:05

I mean, we might feel the sense of unfairness, like we have been entered into this cosmic birth lottery and chosen to be saved, and we might wonder, you know why our friends and family didn't win the same prize, and of course that's not how salvation works at all. But we are so powerfully struck, I think, initially with this feeling of unfairness. I think, before a lot of us can sort of go to the Lord and take the struggle to the Lord, we have to release this maybe frustration or anger that we feel about how unfair this situation is, and then we might even feel another thought is frustration even with our loved ones themselves Like why do they run from the Lord and why won't they listen to the things that I'm sharing and why can't they see God in the design of the world and in humanity? And so that frustration might lead us to just feel like hope is lost and that it's almost an impossible battle, and then we might start to think, well, what can I do about that?

June Chapman: 15:15

And that can lead us to actually place a lot of trust in ourselves. One chapter is actually on the frustrations I walked through about how my loved ones should see Christ. In my acts of service, I tried to sort of calculate salvation and figure it out and figure out how I could achieve it for people rather than recognizing it as this gift from God. And so I had to release my grasp and realize that for all my serving and sharing and praying and all these things, god salvation belongs to the Lord. Psalm 3:8 says that. And so then, when we get to the end of those thoughts, we start to just realize how painful this is and how painful this way is. And it's such a quick spiral into this place of deep grief. You know, when we are in this place that feels like such a void of hope. It is so Just such a quick decline into this place of deep grief. It is such an odd thing to mourn the soul of a person who's sitting across from you at the dinner table, and there is nothing quite like that, especially when you realize your place of total dependence and total powerlessness to achieve anything for that person. And that can actually lead us into the last thought that I talk about in part, one which is a disappointment, but not in our friends or in circumstances, and this is really hard to admit. And I, it took me. This was, I think, maybe one of the last chapters that I ended up writing, because it took me a really long time to pinpoint what this was, but I was actually really disappointed in God and in the fact that he hadn't answered and I stopped wanting to take to him my struggle and my pain because I was upset with him and I and that's a different feeling entirely than being upset at our own inadequacy or being upset with our friends or just being upset by the situation itself. You know, there's this acknowledgement that we have to recognize and actually to take to God that we might have been a little upset with him and he can handle that, and he wants us to take that to him and not to run away from him in that disappointment. But that's one of the thoughts that I detail as well.

June Chapman: 17:40

And then there are also some questions we ask, and that is part two. And so there's a really obvious one that I think probably comes to mind for a lot of us, and that's does God hear our prayers? Are we talking to an empty phone line? How can we pray for this person and intercede for this person for years and years and even decades and decades and see no results, at least in our perspective? And then we wonder when we're praying, nothing's happening, sort of. The second question is well, how do we wait? Well, you know, we've walked through all these thoughts and we have all of these feelings and we have these questions. So what do we do in the meantime? And so I kind of walked through some practical steps for that. And then we might even start to wonder and this was, I think, along with sort of that chapter on disappointment in God, the very last chapter I wrote because I didn't know the answers for so long and I'd still answers that I worked through and walk through every day but what role does our faith play in the salvation of our friends and family?

June Chapman: 18:46

Because I would read verses about mustard seeds of faith in comparison to God's mercy and I would wonder is it just too small? Do I play a role in what's happening to my friends? So I had to learn how to take that burden off my own shoulders. And then the last question I talk about in the in the book on chapter 10 is just sort of that ultimate question of whether or not our loved ones will be saved and what we do with that question, where we put that question, where we file it away and how we live with it.

Ellen Krause: 19:22

You know, when you have someone that you love so much and you were in this finite period here on earth and to think of an infinite period of not having that person with us does oftentimes feel so, so overwhelming. Oftentimes feel so so overwhelming I was hoping maybe you could walk us through um, you know an example of how you handled this from beginning to where you're at now in terms of and I know you did an excellent job of explaining to the readers that you were very careful about including people that are in your life but, at the same time, respecting their privacy. So I know you know this might not be about an exact person, but give us an example of how you've walked through this road, of all these questions and asking, and how God gave you the peace in the waiting.

June Chapman: 20:28

Yeah, absolutely, and that's a loaded question because I think the entire book is about how we find peace in the waiting and how we reframe our mindsets to that end and how we take this pain before the Lord and sit with him in that waiting. But I can talk through sort of what my practical advice and practical steps would be as like a starting place. So I think what was really important to me and what the Lord showed me as I walked through this journey, is how important it is to take captive every thought to the Lord. So what I tried to do with the structure, sort of those questions we ask and those things we think, is I've got 2 Corinthians 10, 5 here and it says you know, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And so each of those things that I just walked through are different thoughts and different questions that we have to take captive. And so that's where I started. I started by to quote a popular expression by thinking about what I was thinking about and thinking about the stories that I was telling myself and sort of recognizing the lies the lies that said this person can't be saved or I have no role in this, which isn't true, and we can talk about what our role looks like or that just the lies that looked at the situation and then said it's hopeless and there's nothing anybody can do. And why would I expect good things to happen? And so I had to recognize those things and I had to take them to God.

June Chapman: 22:14

And in this process of lament and what lament is is we see so many good examples in the Psalms and in scripture and in lamentations it's when someone in just abject pain and anguish of soul and deep depression and hopelessness and grief doesn't run from God but takes that pain to God and places it at the throne of his grace and says help me, meet me here and and and don't leave me alone, because I feel forgotten. I, I just love Psalm 13. David is crying out to the Lord and he's praying and he feels like the Lord has forgotten him. And even in this place of feeling forgotten, he takes his pain and he takes it to the Lord and he says but I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me and even in this example in Psalm 13, david realizes and I love this specific verse because he realizes this thing that we're waiting for too, that salvation is from the Lord. And so after I took my thoughts captive, I had to take them to the Lord as well, in this place of lament that just says I'm hurting and I feel like you've forgotten my request. But I will rejoice in your steadfast love because you've dealt bountifully with me, you've been good to me and I know salvation is yours.

June Chapman: 23:44

So once I sort of was able to do those things and they did not happen overnight, they took quite a bit of time I realized that I needed to replace the stories that I was telling myself with truth, and so that obviously came with spending a lot of time in scripture and I have to say that in a place of hurting, in a place of sorrow, that feels really overwhelming sometimes and that's totally okay and totally understandable. I opened up my Bible to Psalm 1 and just started there and I read a psalm a day, or a half a psalm a day, or one line of one psalm per day. Whatever you can handle, the Lord will meet you at your capacity with his mercy and he doesn't expect you to be able to bring him more than you are able in your place of suffering or in your place of hurt. And so, filling my mind with that truth, I started praying the truth and so trying to connect with the Lord as much as possible. And when I didn't know what to say, I know that the spirit interceded with just things that were just even too heavy for words, but I just would pray the Psalms, open up Psalm 1 and pray as simply as I know to pray, as briefly as I know to pray as briefly as I know to pray, and then Psalm 2 and then Psalm 3.

June Chapman: 25:09

My pastor made such a good point in a message once and he said sometimes prayer and worship are not a response to your emotions, but they're a revolt against your emotions. And so taking our thoughts captive and sort of taking those to God and laying them at his feet and lament, and then filling our minds with the truth, even if it's little by little, and then pouring out that truth to God in prayer and realizing that it might not align with our feelings at the time, ultimately will lead, and led me, to a place where my will was eventually conformed to God's, and where there were two wills previously, there was now one will. And I said, god, I trust you with the lives and hearts of my friends and family, and I know that you are powerful enough and big enough and able enough in ways that exceed my limited capacity and my limited ability to reach these people that I love. And so my process? It just. It recognized what I was telling myself. It filled. I filled my mind with truth where there were previously lies. I filled my mind with truth where there were previously lies.

June Chapman: 26:31

I went to God with my prayers, no matter how simple, and finally I had to just open my hands and say this is yours and it always has been.

June Chapman: 26:39

And you know he doesn't expect us to do any of those things in our own strength. He gives us the strength to do those things and he does it day by day. You know his mercies are new every morning and when we open our eyes each morning to new challenges, we have to open our hands at the same time, but he gives us his new mercies to do that and he meets us there and he doesn't expect us to bring more than we're able. And I just want to encourage folks to this process took years. You know it wasn't overnight and you might not be there tomorrow, but but God is so patient and he is willing to meet you with his mercy every morning and to just walk with you and wait with you. And he, he just wants to invite you along on his pursuit of your people, without their eternities on your shoulders. And so this peace is possible, but it's pursued day by day.

Ellen Krause: 27:36

Excellent, excellent advice there, and one thing that really comes to my mind is I feel like we know that Jesus wants to carry our burdens.

Ellen Krause: 27:50

He wants to yoke our burdens and share that load, and I think so many times we think of it, you know, maybe as it relates to sickness or something going on in our jobs or, but really it all, it also applies to this burden that we feel for wanting our loved ones to come to know him, and that is something that we can ask him to shoulder, that burden with us, and certainly through prayer.

Ellen Krause: 28:22

I love your suggestion of the Psalms as well, because that's something that we've sort of done here at Coffee and Bible Time is just poured into developing a Psalms Bible study and through that process you realize how much bigger God is. And if he created the whole world, if he created you and me and every person completely unique that ever has been, who's here now and who will to come, all of that, then we have to know that God is fully in control of the salvation of our loved one. What would you say to people who maybe you know, I think in the Christian circle a lot of times we always say you know well, it's based on God's timing, which is true. How do we, kind of you know, balance that with some of these other tools and strategies that you've given us?

June Chapman: 29:30

with some of these other tools and strategies that you've given us. Yeah well, it is based on God's timing, but I think one thing that I hinted at before that I love to revisit is that we do get to be involved, and God has invited us to be involved, so we don't have to sit idly by and wait. We can actually walk with God on this road of his pursuit of our friends, because he's invited us on this journey. So one thing that we get to do that is just an unmatched privilege is prayer and intercession. Charles Spurgeon writes that there is profit in all labor, but none so much as in the work of intercession. I think that's a bit of a paraphrase, but but we, um, we get this unmatched divine privilege to take the names of our friends and family before the God of the universe, before the creator of the entire world, and and we are told that he hears us and that he loves our friends and family and that he hasn't forgotten about them. So it's such a divine commission. I love that. When the world wants to serve the world, it looks like money or time or effort or striving, but the call on our lives to serve our friends and family is so much lighter than we might expect and all of our serving and our sharing is good. But our friends and family is so much lighter than we might expect and all of our serving and our sharing is good. But for me there is so much relief in that what God has called us to do, before and above anything else, is to prioritize taking the names of our loved ones to the Lord in prayer I think it's in 1 Thessalonians pray without ceasing.

June Chapman: 31:11

And it is such an unmatched privilege to be able to have this open line of communication with God, and it's not a dead phone line. He's on the receiving end and he hears us and he is so creative. No one is outside the reach of a holy, sovereign God and he knows things that we don't know and he can use people that we've never met to reach the person that we're praying for. But he doesn't expect us to just sort of wait and be like over here ruminating and trying to calculate and figure out and plan for him. He has invited us to wait with him in this call of prayer and it, you know, not only will he meet us in prayer, but he'll conform our wills to his and he will meet us with his just, with his divine peace, and we know that he sympathizes with our waiting, that he's walked roads of waiting, that he's walked roads of suffering and that he understands what we're going through. And so I think another thing that we can do, rather than waiting, is actually to follow David's lead and to worship.

June Chapman: 32:20

I used to sort of sit in bed at night to fall asleep and I would calculate and think about all these plans and I'd be like, okay, god, I know what you can do, you can, you can do this, and then this will happen, and then this person will be saved and and I can't wait to like worship you when that happens, and I can't wait to just fall on my knees and and just cry out my thanks to you and I. It will just be such a day of rejoicing and one day the spirit was just like you can do that now, you don't have to wait. You can bring your worship before me now and you can bring me your praise now and rejoice in this fellowship of suffering with Christ and just draw near to Christ and find this freedom and this refuge in him, and you don't have to wait until you have the objects of your devotion in order to praise me. I think a challenge that I would sort of make is that salvation is a good thing, it's a desire from God.

June Chapman: 33:27

We're told to make disciples, we're told to rejoice for people's salvations, but we can actually take good things and we can elevate them to this place of idolatry, and when salvation, rather than the salvation giver, becomes the thing in which we place our hope, we've actually created an idol out of this really good thing, and so we can worship God now, and we can worship the miracle giver rather than worshiping the miracle that we're waiting for him to give, and so, just removing salvation from this lofty thing that we are waiting on in order to worship, we can return our worship to the rightful king of the universe, the one who gives salvation. Salvation comes from the Lord, and it's this sweet gift you know, for by grace you have been saved, and it is not your own doing so that you may not boast, and so we get to boast in Christ and on his, his finished work on the cross.

Ellen Krause: 34:37

And that's such a beautiful thing that we, like you said, we can be part of this process of praying to God and worshiping when, instead of fretting right and, you know, being worried and anxious about what's going to happen. Well, two of the things that you've done in the book which I think really do help people become part of this process to really think about things is you have something called reflection rooms and prayer starters, so, as we kind of wrap things up, tell us what people can look forward to with those two things in the book?

June Chapman: 35:19

Yeah, that's a great question. So there are reflection rooms woven throughout the chapters and there are sort of four things that we do in reflection rooms. I hope my memory doesn't fail me here, but the reflection rooms help us take our requests to God, and so some of them are very brief prayers. Some of them help us to reframe our mindsets, and so they kind of take a look at lies that we might be telling ourselves or stories that we might be coming up with in our minds, but sort of compare that to the truth we see in scripture. Another reflection room lets us wrestle with certain thoughts or maybe with challenges or different perspectives that I share. And then the fourth reflection room is recall, and in those we actually recall scripture that we might sort of lean into during whatever struggle it is that I'm going through in that place. And there is a prayer starter at the end of every chapter.

June Chapman: 36:19

That's a bit longer that you can use to just pray or to start a prayer journal entry, but sometimes I think we might not have thought about all the facets of this challenge or this struggle, and so those prayer starters, hopefully, will be helpful tools that people can use as they're thinking through that particular struggle.

Ellen Krause: 36:41

Yes, absolutely, and you have a beautiful prayer at the end as well that people can use as a template to pray for their loved ones while they're waiting. Well, june, thank you so much for sharing this, again a topic that we all can relate to, and I just hope people walk away from this feeling a little bit lighter.

June Chapman: 37:07

Yeah, that's really well said, that's so well said. I, yeah, I just I think that walking in freedom is possible and our, our loved ones, belong to the Lord and he works in merciful, miraculous and mysterious ways to reach them and pursue them.

Ellen Krause: 37:26

Absolutely Well. Before we go, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions. The first one is what Bible is your go-to Bible and what translation is it?

June Chapman: 37:52

but I'm just an ESV person. I like the more literal word for word translation. I know some of the other translations take that approach as well. I do sometimes love the way verses are translated in the NIV too, so I like to mix it up, have a good balance. These are all interpretations and so I think it's good to examine many different versions, and just for that contextual awareness. But yeah, good old traditional ESV for me.

Ellen Krause: 38:18

All righty Awesome. Do you have any favorite journaling supplies or anything that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience?

June Chapman: 38:33

to enhance your Bible study experience. I think right now it's just a super fine point pen that doesn't bleed through the page. I don't hate it when I turn the page and I'm like oh, there's ink all over this side too.

June Chapman: 38:40

How did that happen? And so just a super fine point pen that won't bleed. I also really love those gel highlighters, because they're not ink and so they don't. They're not ink and so they don't bleed either. I I try to keep my supplies pretty simple. I I can become kind of distracted by all the pretty beautiful things and I I kind of like to minimize the distractions and just focus on that relationship that I'm building, and so so just keep it simple with my pen and my highlighter.

Ellen Krause: 39:10

Very good, all right, great tip. Lastly, what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools?

June Chapman: 39:19

It's really hard to pick one.

June Chapman: 39:24

Luckily I've listened to a few other folks on the show share some that I love, so I am really glad that at least other folks have mentioned them, like Blue Letter Bible and a couple other things. So I think I will say that my favorite tool is actually an audio Bible. So I use the Dwell Bible app that's a subscription, but I also have a couple audio Bibles that I bought on Audible, and the Bible app even has free audio narration and I just think there's something so sweet and helpful about hearing the word and it also just lets me engage with it more often, and I'm just even doing things around the house. So, yeah, for me that has been such a lovely tool to connect with God in a way that is even deeper.

Ellen Krause: 40:13

Great tip. You know so many people recommend the Dwell app and it really is like we have it as well, and it's beautiful. It just helps you immerse yourself, I think, in just another way. That really brings the Bible to life. Well, June, thank you so much for being here, encouraging us to have a renewed hope and trust in God concerning the salvation of our friends and loved ones. We really appreciate how God you've allowed him to work in and through you in such a mighty way, and so thank you for being here.

June Chapman: 40:57

Oh, thank you so much for having me on. It's just been a pleasure.

Ellen Krause: 41:01

Alrighty, and for our listeners, be sure and get a copy of June's book called Peace in the Waiting. We will have a link in our show notes. We love you all. We appreciate you listening. Have a blessed day.