Honesty Over Pretending

• The point of reading Scripture isn’t to perform for God or for others—it’s about getting to know God more.
• Reading the Bible may not always feel exciting or productive, but consistent “daily deposits” in God’s Word shape our hearts and minds over time.
• The Bible is meant to be read alongside community where we can ask honest questions without shame or maintaining the image of a “perfect Christian.”

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EP 55: 3 Hidden Challenges to Studying Scripture with Scott Mozingo

EP 59: How We Got the Bible with Tim Wardle

Knowing God Through His Word life change video

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I wish for myself, for us collectively, that we could just be honest and say we don't know. We don't get it. Comprehending this text is hard and just having those conversations because if we keep pretending, I think recent surveys of evangelical churches shows that we, with all the abundance of resources we have, we are not growing our biblical literacy. We cannot love God if we do not know Him. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Grace Church Podcast. I'm your host, Whitney Manus, and today I've got some sweet friends in the studio, Don Teets and Mary Beth Jackson.

Ladies, thank you for being here. Welcome. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. Before we kind of dive into our topic, would love for our audience to get to know you a little bit better.

So would y'all just do a quick introduction of how you came to Grace and maybe some of your serving roles and your family? Anything like that? Yeah, My name is Dawn Teets and my husband is Mark. We have two adult daughters. Sarah is 24 and Jess is 27. Both happen to live in the Upstate, and we're thankful for that.

We came to Grace in a kind of interesting sort of way. We lived in Greenville before the Secret got out in the early 2000s. Then my husband's job took us to Dallas for 10 years and we moved back in the memorable year of 2020. We had come back for summer vacations just to stay in touch with really close friends in the area and pretty much knew when we moved back that Grace Church would be our home.

And so we are at Grace Pottersville, otherwise known as the Shire, and just learning what life looks like is empty nesters and so thankful for our community. Yeah, it's great. I'm Mary Beth Jackson. My husband is Ross and we have four children. They're still young, 1086 and four. We've been at Grace for 13 years now.

We're at Harrison Bridge for about 9, and then my job moved and so we we moved as well and landed at Powdersville. Right now we're really involved in RTS, reading through the scripture. Yeah, that is awesome. We are so glad to have y'all here and you know, we just, we love having our members be on the podcast and represent a little bit of just what God is teaching us on a regular basis.

And so the three of us kind of sat down a little while ago and I really just asked what y'all might want to talk about. And I was just so struck that both of your hearts were just so passionate for the word. And that was very evident right away. And some of that was born out of, you know, being an RTS and just witnessing kind of what God is doing at the Powders Hill campus.

But a lot of that has to do with your own personal experience. So what what God has done for you, particularly just thinking around the idea of, you know, we all, we all know that we should read the Bible. We're all pretty clear that that's an important thing to do.

But it can be a hard thing and probably hard because it is so important and we do want to do it well. So as you guys were getting exposed to the word and learning how to learn to read it for yourselves, what were some of those difficulties or, you know, fears or maybe misconceptions that you had as you were trying to do that and tried to read scripture well? I think for me, I didn't want to read my Bible because I didn't know what I was reading or I didn't know where to start. Or should I start in Genesis?

Well, I've started in Genesis 125 Times Now, So what am I supposed to be doing? I think that about four years ago I was about to start region, going through region and just really realized for myself, I have not read the whole Bible. I mean, I've read what we listened to at church, what they're telling me to read. I'll do a reading plan, I'll do this and that. I'll do a Bible study, which all of that is, is great.

But I had not just sat down for myself and read the Bible like a book and to knock away all of the IT should look like this. I should have 30 minutes. I should have perfect quiet. I mean, that's not going to happen. It doesn't matter if I get up at at 5:00, notorious a kid is going to come downstairs. With four of them, your odds are high.

Yes, or the dog is going to start doing whatever. And so I like for things to be a certain way. I like for me to be a certain way. I like for my kids to be a certain way. I like for my family to run a certain way.

So naturally I like my Bible reading to to be a certain way. And so I just had to say, OK, I'm just going to to do a Bible reading plan and just start there and see what happens. And what happened is I read the Bible and it was not fancy or frilly or anything magical. It was just reading as I read any other book. Yeah. Did you have like this big epiphany or, you know, you're like, wow, the whole Bible suddenly makes sense, Sir?

She loved those genealogies. I know it. Right. That's right. Mapped it all out. No, I mean, there was of course moments where I thought, wow, that's amazing.

Noticed things, was able to to talk about things, but no, there was no Disney magical moment when I finished Revelation and all of a sudden I was a superior Christian. I already thought I was a superior Christian before I read the Bible. So. And then came regen you. Have to worry about that.

Yeah, no, it's not a magical recipe for enlightenment, but a lot of the power of it comes in the smaller daily moments and. That's right. It's just little seeds. Even if it what I read that day, I'm like, oh, I have no idea. I don't know what that says about God. I don't know what that says about the world besides that there was all of these people listed, but the Lord's using that.

I mean, I can trust that the Lord's going to use that in me, even if if it doesn't make sense in the moment. And the Bible even talks about like, writing his words on our hearts and on her minds so that we can come back to it later when we need it. It's not like every single day you need every single part of the Bible, but something recalls later on in a way that's helpful, so that's cool. What about you, Don? Yeah, I would say growing up, we, my parents became believers when I was in elementary school and we went to a church that had a really solid Christian education program, very clear on the gospel as far as salvation.

But what was lacking? And we didn't have a great student ministry. As I think about it, I was not clear through high school how to do the daily sort of rhythms, spiritual disciplines until I really went to college and got involved in a campus ministry where I learned more about who the Holy Spirit was, that it wasn't some like Casper the ghost person and that I could ask him to help me understand Scripture. Fast forward into my 20s and beginning a career. I happened to be single for a lot of years, so I had the luxury of time.

I did not have the interruption of children coming down. I could have like lengthy quote UN quote quiet times and be involved in a Bible study at our church and learn a lot. So I was grateful for those single years and what I learned and just learning more about the daily sort of walk.

But yet I was still striving and performing and feeling frustrated with myself living under a big cloud of condemnation. And it wasn't really until Mark and I went through Reengage when we were out in Dallas at Watermark. And then we moved here and there were some unfinished things in my life that needed attention. And it's funny how those things followed me from Dallas. And we got involved in Regen and my close group leader challenged me. And and I would say that she is a dear friend now, but I did not like her very much in that moment because she said, you know, Don, I don't think that you believe Jesus loves you.

And I was ticked off about that because isn't that something that we all learned? If you went to church as a kid, you learned how to sing Jesus loves me. This I know.

But when she said that and I got over my sort of pride being wounded and started asking God to show me, how do I not believe that you, you know, do I believe this lie that you don't love me? And something just became clear as I kind of pulled the curtain back a little bit more and he did some deeper soul work. And so I'm here for those who might be a little bit further along in life to say that we never can learn enough about Scripture. And He is always wanting to dig deeper into areas of pride, arrogance, unbelief, guilt, whatever lie we're believing or set of lies, that there is always room for Him to transform and renew our minds.

And I'm so grateful that He has taught me. I'm in a new season, you know, where he is just reminding me and how important scripture is and how needy I am for His word. So I I'm grateful for the different seasons of my life and how He continues to show me more of who He is and how I can delight in Him. Yeah, that's beautiful. You mentioned this phrase feeling a cloud of condemnation. What did that look like and sound like for you?

Yeah. What were some of those lies? I mean, I was, I think just through my personality and also my family of origin, I just was a performer. I performed to get more approval from my parents. I got into school and wanted to perform there, whether it was sports or music or academics and just always felt the need to perform. And it was exhausting.

And so there were, you know, just times when I, I realized, and there was actually one of our teaching pastors who came out on a, a rainy November night. I almost didn't go to Regen that night. And I'm so glad that God prompted my husband to encourage me to go because I heard something that was like an epiphany for me. And it sounds so simple now, but it was a game changer for me in that moment of struggling with condemnation, struggling to feel like I never measured up, struggling to believe that God cared enough to accept me, therefore I had to perform, right?

And So what this teaching pastor said was if God the Father tells us in Scripture and he does that what Jesus did was enough for him, then why is it not enough for me? And I don't know if I said that exactly right, but it was pretty much to that effect. And it just really was eye opening that it was a form of pride for me not to trust that Christ had covered my insufficiencies, my sin, my inconsistencies. And that just gave me some really needed relief to no longer feel like I had to strive and perform.

And you know, the journey continues. I continue to battle that, but that was a key pivotal moment for me. Yeah. And I do think it is so common. I mean, we can feel condemnation over all sorts of things. Mary Beth, do you kind of have any of those lies or kind of that condemnation for yourself that you have to work through?

I have. More of a fake it till you make it mentality and an appearance problem. I like to I already said I like to look a certain way. I want my people to look a certain way. I have an idea of, of how my life should go. I mean, thankfully the Lord has changed me a lot.

So the lie that I believe is that I can just do other things. I'm, I'm really involved. I'm very active in the church. We go any time the doors are open, we're there. I listen to Christian music, you know, any of those type of things, then I'm OK. Yeah.

And that you make a good point of just our cultural context, you know, so being in the Upstate of South Carolina and I mean being I guess is central to the Bible Belt is you can get. Don, did you grow up around here as well? No, I grew up in Minnesota, but we had our own version of the Bible Belt and Minnesota and was more Lutheran as far as denominational, but very ritualistic. And everybody went to church, you know, it was just sort of assumed.

But to get beyond that. And again, like we went, we were a blended family, went to a new community, got involved in a great church. But you know, I'm so grateful for that church, but for all the the different groups and opportunities that I've had since then because I really didn't know what to do day-to-day. And then I was like, I want to please God.

So I guess I just have to do it myself. And oh, it feels better to control the situation. So it's. A lot easier. Doing the checklist and certainly he'll be pleased with me. And then I got to college. Had a period of rebellion after college where the gravity of my sin was made super apparent to me as a young adult and my need for Christ became even more real.

So I'm just grateful that God uses even our rebellion, if we have that in as part of our story, that he can use that to teach us how much we need him and and the beauty of the gospel. Yeah, absolutely. And it is interesting. I mean, it's really not limited to the Bible Belt and it can take on all kinds of forms, but kind of this cultural Christianity of performance. And I heard someone recently use the word image management. And I like it 'cause it, it kind of implies that exhaustion of something that you do have to manage constantly.

And it can, it can be overwhelming. And Mary Beth, you kind of gave some examples of what that can look like of, oh, I listen to Christian music. And, you know, especially in the age of social media, we've got like can post a nice picture of our Bible and our coffee cup. And, you know, maybe your kids are screaming and the dog is barking in the background.

But nobody knows, 'cause, you know, you're putting out this image of, you know, what your life looks like. What other ways have you guys seen that kind of creep into our church and your lives or even just other people that you've talked to of this idea of image management and trying to look like we're doing it instead of actually doing it? I feel like we can move into a slow drift or become complacent. There was a period in our marriage where we were just kind of drifting and trying to survive the busy high school years with our daughters, and we let things slide.

We were in a church before Watermark where we didn't have accountability and community the way we have it here at Grace. There wasn't transparency. And so things just, you know, the sin, the complacency started to accumulate. We cannot be a neutral as believers. We're either moving forward and being renewed or we're stagnating and living in our sin.

And so for us, I would say we learned a big lesson as a couple and individually that we need to have community, we need to be in the word, we need to communicate as couple, we need to have a short accounts and confession repentance. It's just like let's normalize that rather than sort of maintain the image. And we were very much doing that before we went to re engage and then regen. Here, Yeah.

I think in my season that I'm in currently and have been in with young kids and young married and the image is that everything is fine and that my kids are fine. We're doing enough. We're we're doing, you know, XYZ to get them saved. I mean, I'm, I am reading the Bible to them for an end goal and that is not really what what I want them to see. I think in another image that we try to uphold, especially as women mothers, that we are doing everything right, that we are living as a Christian woman.

And sure that there is such a thing as a Christian woman, but there's not just one mold that we can follow. And the Bible does not lay that out for us on what that is the Bible. You know, we're going to love the Lord our God and we're going to love each other and that we can do that in a multitude of ways. I think there is a lot of shame wrapped in Bible reading and studying the Word and knowing theological terms. And I think there's a lot of just embarrassment and wanting to hide from that because we want to.

Gosh, I've been I've been in church my whole life. How embarrassing it is that I don't know. I don't know, a doctrine of end times. You know, how embarrassing it is that I can't tell you what happened in the book of Amos. You know, though, it's not embarrassing, right? It's OK. And, and just to be OK with saying, gosh, I don't know if I've ever read Ezekiel all the way through.

Just being honest with one another. That's right, and that's OK. And it is OK and it is freeing. And I think that for me, it has actually freed me up to say, gosh, I have read the Bible cover to cover, but I cannot if you try to tell me to find limitations like the fastest, I'm not doing that. I'm not winning a race in any of that. It's like.

Is that before Psalms or after psalms? It's not a it's not for that's OK and it is OK. What I think is has been not OK for me is just pretending or or shying away from a conversation because I don't, I don't know and I don't want to be involved to uphold an image that's hard, that's exhausting. There is freedom and just saying I don't know, but I want to know. There's freedom and saying I've never read the Bible all the way through. I'd like to, but it's hard and I don't understand.

That has freed me up a lot and going through RTS. We just said the Old Testament and. Oh boy. Oh, boy, mate, oh, boy is right. What? I mean, there were moments where we were like, what did we just read?

And that's OK. It is OK not to have all the right answers. Like you said, Don. I mean, you are further along in life than than I am, and you're still learning. Like we're not going to reach a pinnacle of just all right. We've arrived.

We have arrived. And that's OK. That is OK. I mean, it doesn't feel OK for me because I want to arrive. I want to be there. I want people to look at me and say she knows.

So just pushing those lies behind and pushing that image out of the way. I wish. I wish for us, for myself, for us collectively that we could just be honest and say we don't know. We don't get it. Like this is hard. Like comprehending this text is hard and and it's kind of boring.

So, you know, or, or I don't have a clue, and just having those conversations because if we keep pretending, I think recent surveys of evangelical churches shows that we, with all the abundance of resources we have, we are not growing our biblical literacy. We're not doing well with that. And as our campus pastor loves to remind us is we cannot love God if we do not know Him. And the Bible is first and foremost about Him. And I'm not trying to be preachy here, but I just have to remind myself that I need that daily bread.

I need to keep turning to Him. Now I feel everything that you guys are talking about and I'm even like self identifying as you're talking like conversations I've been in where somebody is like, oh, and you know, like this part of the Bible when this person says that. And I'm just like, yeah, for sure. Yep, I'm, I'm with you. And I'm. And then later on I'm like, I've never read that before. I have no idea.

But yeah, it's, it's partially growing up in the church and feeling like, well, if I've been around for 20 years or so, like I should probably know more than I do or the shame or the pride that gets wrapped up in it, whatever it is. Or even, I mean, just to your point about honesty where you read scripture. And I'm in Second Kings right now and I don't feel super inspired every single day. And. That's. OK. And right.

But like there's something in me that feels like, am I doing this wrong? Like I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of it. Like we just expect to have this spiritual experience. And sometimes you do, and that's a beautiful thing, but just because you didn't on a random Thursday doesn't mean that like God isn't present or that his word isn't living inactive. Like we just build up all these expectations that aren't always helpful.

So then we talked about just this idea of being honest with one another, you know, and, and being in community as we read Scripture, we ought to talk about that a little bit more. Just the fruit that you've seen, not just studying Scripture on your own, but doing it with a group of people and coming and talking about it. Together.

Well, it's struck me when we first started doing RTS how excited I was to be able to hear what other people read, what other people were thinking, questions that people had, and to put down my embarrassment or shame or whatever. That I don't want to ask a question because I want you to think I already know and actually ask questions and to talk. And how that just brought an excitement and a longing to read. Because I want to participate #1 I want to be a good student, number 2.

But it kind of grew into more than that, more than just, I'm expected to do this and I need to do it well. And we're going to start back in August and everybody, our group is so excited. And I think that I realized while we were doing it, the Bible is meant to be read in community aloud with other believers, and not just in the corner in my comfortable chair, that that is fine. I am doing that as well.

But to bring it and have conversation and to talk about it and to not expect anything. I'm just expecting that the Lord's with me. I'm not expecting that I'm going to feel any kind of way. I'm not expecting that Dawn's going to say something in our RTS group that is just going to enlighten everything. I'm not expecting anything just to come to the word with excitement of just of, of learning, of seeing what's there. Did you find, Mary Beth?

Like the little daily deposits we made, even when we, like you said, Whitney, it's not these big emotional aha moments. Sometimes it is. God's Spirit can do all kinds of things as we read and study his word.

But for me, Old Testament RTS at Pottersville was kind of daily compilations like daily deposits where he like there were some major things that happened in our family toward the spring. And if I had not had those daily deposits of Bible intake and just the context of how God worked through a broken, messed up, difficult group of people called the nation of Israel that I I was able to connect the God of the Old Testament in new fresh ways to my life today. But it was just those daily deposits of studying how God handled those people and related to them, had made them image bearers, but they had misdirected longings.

And then how he responded to all that was just super helpful. But I can't say that there was one particular week where it was like, I'm so glad I was here. Like this was the best. And and the community part, too, of just rolling up our sleeves and doing the work together and holding each other accountable and encouraging one another. If we had a tough week and didn't get through all the text and that was OK. Yeah.

Now I think all of that is so helpful and I mean really just doing anything like they tell you if you make a New Year's resolution, like to tell somebody about it. So then I mean kind of as we wrap up a little bit, can y'all just give some some practical examples of Scripture that you've been reading recently and just what God has been teaching you as you have submitted yourself to his word. And again, not with grand expectations, but like he is working through that in real ways. I am going back through Kings and Chronicles and interspersing profits in with them to semi create some sort of timeline in my brain.

That's awesome. Well, thanks, Don. You don't need to pump me up, but it is showing me. Well, I just read it. You would think that I would remember, right? I'm like what?

Who? Who is? This all the kings names sound the same so I can't keep them straight so I'm like I have to go read those 10 more times. Yes.

And so just rereading something that I read fairly recently has really just shown me how many times I'm going to probably, I mean, I'm going to read it for the rest of my life and probably have this similar experiences of wait, what, wait, what is this? How how did this or just finding other little things. I have a justice complex, but I don't really want God to to to do this kind of justice. I don't. It doesn't really make sense to me. When we read it in RTS, I thought this is terrible, this Bill's terrible, what are we doing?

We're killing everybody. But reading again, I have just seen the goodness and the mercy of God as well through that. So that's been really fun for me and encouraging as we're about to start the New Testament, just just to see the progression of the need for Jesus and to see the progression of my need for Jesus everyday look at these Israelites and it's easy for me to pass judgement on them and when really I I am that.

And so that's been that's been fun for me to go back through and also eye opening on how much I don't remember. Yeah. I would say that my recent reading of Scripture dovetails really well with RTS. We've had some women studies at Powdersville that have also been instructive for me.

But generally, even just going to the Gospel Coalition conference recently and seeing how the Psalms connect to the Savior, that we need Bible intake not to become seminarians. We can't fake it until we make it. Proximity is not enough. Precooked Bible studies have their place.

But really, meeting God in the pages of Scripture is so helpful. Just in a nutshell, our family has been through a season of lament. We've had four loved ones who have died in the last eight months, included an unexpected stillborn situation.

And So what does lament look like? I have responded to that based on what God has been teaching me little bit by little bit, those daily deposits, trusting on who He is, bringing questions to him, but still being able to express gratitude for my community, express gratitude for who He is and knowing that we will be OK, that hard things do not necessarily mean bad things. And just how to lament that. And like through an extension of of women in our community who have been like we have been so prayed for and we're so grateful for that.

There have been times when I didn't have words to pray. And so something that I have learned along the way in my journey is to simply pray Scripture back to God. And that has been super helpful during this season of lament of just praying Scripture. Just last night and this morning, I was detecting a root of bitterness starting to fester. And I, God's Spirit just recalled for me a recent talk I'd heard about turning to him as a good God even when things don't, circumstances don't seem good. And the example of Naomi and her bitterness and how through her experience, she came to see that God was a good God.

And so I just reminded myself and confessed that I was leaning toward bitterness. God just help me in my unbelief. Help me not to be like Naomi and become bitter and just praying some of the passages from Ruth or the Psalms back to him. That totally changed my perspective. Didn't change my circumstances, but it changed my perspective.

And so the word is active and living. The two edged sword. I can attest to that. Like we always say, your campus staff, leaders, and community are available to y'all and would love to have a conversation.

So if you've been listening to this and you just need to be honest with someone that maybe you don't know the Bible as well as you want to or you have questions. Or maybe you just need to confess that you've been managing the image of a good Christian instead of seeking relationship with God. Reading through scripture groups will kick off again this fall, so maybe that's your next step to set up some accountability and commit to reading through the Bible like Mary Beth did. That would be a great way to spend the next year or so.

And if you haven't listened already, we have some great episodes this year with Scott Mzingo on studying the Bible and with Tim Wardle on how we got the Bible. And if these episodes have left you with more questions, please leave them in the comments or send us an e-mail. We would love to equip you in any way that we can.

So Mary Beth Dawn, thank you ladies again for being here. This has been a really sweet conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you all for listening. Be sure to follow and subscribe and we will see you next time on the Grace Church Podcast.