We all experience life-defining moments. Some of those moments can be good and life-changing while other moments are not so good. What happens when we allow those not-so-good moments to negatively define our identities? Speaker and best-selling author Laura Smith joins Elisa and Eryn to share ways in which we can learn to overcome the lies that we’ve believed and focus on God’s life-changing and freeing truth. 

Bio of guest: 

Laura Smith is an avid storyteller through her books, blog posts, and public speaking. Her recent book How Sweet the Sound focuses on the beauty and truth that come from Scripture-inspired hymns. Along with being a wife and mom, Laura’s hope is to use her writing and public speaking to help others discover the identity that God has instilled in each of us.

Notes and Quotes: 

• “I think it’s so interesting how, you know, you can grow up thinking one way about your family life, and then you step into this awareness of what it really is.”
• “He loves us for exactly who we are, because He created us in His image—because He created us!”          
• “In college, I had my Bible. I would read it every day, then I would put it under my pillow and go do whatever the heck I wanted. I believed in God, and I loved him, but I didn’t live like it.”
• “It was some sort of lie that I started to believe when I was younger, that if I do these things, then ‘this’ will make ‘this’ true.”
• “I am trying to honor the fact that forgiveness and trust are not the same thing.”
• “I can forgive [my dad] and be kind to him, but I don’t have to trust him and let him into my safe spaces.”
• “We tend to think that when we come to know Jesus that everything is just ‘BING’ and resolved and wrapped up in this box with a pretty bow on it. And real life is often: God promises and does meet the desires of our hearts. Sometimes it’s now, sometimes it’s  later, sometimes it’s not really in this lifetime.”
• Three resounding themes: God is almighty. He loves us unconditionally. He will never leave us.
• “So many of us want to throw out the pain in our lives; the hardness of our lives; the embarrassing, depleting, revealing in our lives; and think, ‘Okay, now God can come in, and now He can do something with me.’”
• “God planted good in the soil of your pain.”
• “We have to really focus on who we are listening to for our identity.”
• Three ways to stay in the truth that God created me as a masterpiece: Read the Bible every day; pray every day “Who do you see me as?”; hang out with core people you can trust and confide in.

Links/Books/Resources Mentioned in Show: 

• Show Notes on godhearsher.org
• God Hears Her website: https://www.godhearsher.org/
• Subscribe on iTunes!  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/god-hears-her-podcast/id1511046507?utm_source=applemusic&utm_medium=godhearsher&utm_campaign=podcast
• Order God Sees Her: 365 Devotions for Women by Women on Amazon.  https://amzn.to/32lYSgh
• Free eBooklet to Download: Know the Enemy: https://discoveryseries.org/courses/know-the-enemy/
• Order Laura Smith’s book How Sweet the Sound: https://amzn.to/36wMRqp 
• Elisa’s Instagram: elisamorganauthor
• Eryn’s Instagram: eryneddy

Verses Mentioned in Show: 

• Ephesians 2:10 NIV “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%202%3A10&version=NIV