Gwynne Johnson

Kelly Arabie

Gwynne Johnson and Kelly Arabie, authors of Soul Thirst: Discerning Your Divine Design, explain how seeking to fulfill our needs in the wrong places harms us and our relationships. They provide a roadmap to enable women to recognize what they are thirsting for in place of the only one who can provide true satisfaction. God alone quenches our soul thirst.

This book is a blend of accessible story and biblical life principles that have transformed women around the world as they come to understand God’s design for the human heart.

You can also watch this episode on video.

00:20 Introductions

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. I’m so excited to welcome you to this episode of our podcast and it’s also on video. We are just delighted to have you joining us, and I’m thrilled with our two guests today—Gwynne Johnson, Kelly Arabie. I’ve known both of them for many years now, and I consider them good friends of mine.

Kelly and I actually met at D.T.S., where we were both starting DTS, I think the same semester and went through the same program. Definitely. So I got to know Kelly really well there. And Gwynne and I have crossed paths in many situations. We’ve been on a couple of boards together, so we’ve worked together on things. And I really have respected all of her ministry that she has done through the years.

If you want to know more about Gwynne and Kelly and their backgrounds, go to our website BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, and go to the pull down menu that is About Us. And look at Video Podcast Contributors. And you can read more about them, although I think they will probably talk some about some of their experiences as we go through this conversation today.

So thank you both for coming. Welcome on our podcast.

Gwynne >> Fun to be with you.

Kelly >> Yes, thanks for having us.

Kay >> Thank you. And you know, I did want to mention Gwynne and I are part of a group of women, and I just want to mention that because to me it’s been such a helpful group, all of us who had been involved in ministry for years and we started gathering somebody invited us to gather together at Christmas and we so we started having Christmas luncheons together and we just became good friends and we pray for one another.

We support one another and encourage one another and challenge one another. And it’s been a great encouragement. So for those of you out there, you don’t even have to be leaders, but everybody needs a group like that. So I just wanted to throw that in there too.

Today we’re talking about Gwynne and Kelly’s book Soul Thirst that they co-wrote.

And first, I just really kind of wanted to ask Kelly, what was it like to co-write this? How was your process here? Is it hard to do two people doing different things?

Kelly >> You know, it was really fun. And I would say being able to collaborate with Gwynne and the conversations that we’ve had over the years were just such a blessing and a gift. It was a gift that Gwynne invited me to this project. And I’m sure she’s going to talk a little bit about, you know, how this started with her ministry. But in 2008 was one of the first times that I think I went through Developing a Discerning Heart.

And as part of that, Gwynne came and spoke to our small group, and we just talked about the study and how amazing it had been. And then she said she was looking to write this for a popular audience and asked me to help with that. So it has been really a wonderful journey.

Kay >> Gwynne, do you want to add anything to that?

Gwynne >> I’m laughing because she said 2008. People today asked me, how long have you been working on this? That’s been at least ten years. But now I know it was 20 already. Well happened is that Covid came along and it gave us both some opportunity time-wise to really focus in on what we had been doing and to really try to bring it to fruition.

We still kind of are and we’re still working on it, but we’ve been working on this for a long time and we feel like we both feel very strongly that this is something God has asked us to do. I tell my friends that this is my last Ephesians 2:10 project. If you remember the verse that says their good works that God prepared before for you to participate in.

And I believe that first writing the curriculum Developing a Discerning Heart was something God had me do that God has blessed. And I feel like this book, this project that Kelly and I have been working on, is maybe the last assignment he’s giving me, maybe not. But anyway, I’ll be delighted to finish it and to get it on Amazon and make it available to a popular audience.

Kay >> Well, tell us more about Developing a Discerning Heart, because you have now mentioned it, and now I know it’s more of a curriculum type, and this book is different. So, Gwynne, tell me about that first. First, tell me how you came to develop Developing a Discerning Heart.

Gwynne >> I guess it’s good for me. Most of my ministry life has been in teaching the Bible and I taught for many years with Bible Study Fellowship. And I’ve done a number of other things. I think in terms of spiritual gifts, teaching is my gift. But many times as a teacher (and you know this Kay), that women would come to me and pour out their heart and their difficulties in just the most painful circumstance. And I would know that God and the Scripture had help for them to help them navigate those waters.

But honestly, it was often like they’d thrown a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle on the middle of the table and don’t know how to start. And give them the word of God in a way that didn’t seem like putting on a Band-Aid aid. And I was sharing that frustration with a mutual teaching leader at a particular time. I had spoken with another heartbroken woman whose husband had just left her and the children, and I was just struggling.

And she said, Well, you know, my pastor is doing a series. He’s been to Institute of Biblical Counseling with Larry Crabb and Dan Allender, and they’ve encouraged him to share their material, and he’s doing that. And it just so happened we were not living far from that church.

So I started going and there I began to discover the principles that about how to know how God designed us and I came to understand not only how to help others, but it was a huge step in my own personal journey with God.

And as I began to learn and be transformed by many of the principles that I was learning (again, I’m a teacher, so I’m always wanting to share it with someone else). And that’s actually the beginning of Discerning Heart. My husband and I were on staff at Dallas Seminary for a period of time, and while we were there, I was not teaching in Bible Study Fellowship, but I was invited to teach a course for how to counsel women.

This was some of what I’d been talking about, what I’d learned through the Larry and Dan seminar. And I developed the beginning of this outline, and I began to teach it because it had had such impact in my life. Because of that being publicized in the Dallas Seminary magazine, a girl who was a missionary, Wendy Wilson in Austria, saw that and invited me to come to Romania and teach that course.

<p>And so I went to Romania shortly after the wall came down, taught the course, and what happened was the women in Romania had been deceived so much, all they believed was the Bible. And of course, I love to teach the Bible.So I came back to the States and began to revise the course that I had taught through the seminary. I began to revise it using the characters from the Scripture to develop the principles right out of the Scripture Exposition.

Really, I personally think that’s probably why the course has been so well received internationally. Because all the truth that we develop comes right out of the Scripture. And so as we did that and we began to field test it, working with Entrust which was BE International at the time, now Entrust International.

We were amazed that God could use this very simple, clear really statement of how God designed people to allow women to look at their own hearts and draw closer to the Lord and find satisfaction and so as we did that, we ended up changing the name of How to Counsel Women, became Developing a Discerning Heart, and God has blessed. We have it now in at least seven of the languages of Eastern Europe and Africa.

But it was a very, it’s a college-level curriculum, ten sessions, which usually took, you know, several hours. And many times people had asked me, could we not get this into a more popular format? But it was difficult because much of the power in the course came from the interactions that we had as we listened to one another in a small group.

And so that’s really, I think, what Kelly and I, the strategy that we had. And I asked Kelly, “Is there a way that we could do this?” And Kelly suggested this idea of having fictional people in a small group go through the course. Kelly, why don’t you fill in a little bit of how that hit you?

Kelly >> Well, you know, when we talked about the material, its story is a way to deliver content in a way that is accessible and real. You know, recently I read some information by Eugene Peterson, and he says that, you know, “story is the Holy Spirit’s favorite literary genre.” That story is God’s revelation in the way that he reveals it to, you know, his self-revelation to us.

And so I have been there through the small group myself. I led a couple of other groups through it. And then my experience in pastoral counseling and Gwynne’s experience in pastoral ministry, you know, we just had encountered so many women who were transformed and through the curriculum. But we wanted to make not just the didactic teaching there on the page, we wanted it to come alive and to let our readers see how women could interact with the teaching.

So a lot of the stories are just stories. They’re fictional. But we have come in contact with a lot of people who lived through some of the same things that we wrote about.

Gwynne >> And one of the things that I’ve really appreciated. And so in format, what we do is we alternate chapters where we have a fictional chapter and then as we go through the curriculum with the group, we’ll have a nonfiction chapter. So the chapters tend to alternate between fiction and nonfiction. And then Kelly develops, which is such a wonderful thing, not only the interactions that the women enjoy, but they can also we can also share in a book what they’re thinking as they are processing the process and the information that we’re delivering.

So it allows us to have sort of a mini-small group experience, but within a reading situation. So that was our strategy.

Kay >> Well, and I think it comes across very well. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot so let’s talk a little bit about that.

We’re calling this you’re calling the book Soul Thirst, and what exactly is soul thirst then?

Gwynne >> Well, thank you for asking. That’s a great question. And we decided to center on the concept of thirst. We talk about four capacities that’s part of our divine design. But most of us have been familiar with the mind and the will and emotion. Those are not new concepts to us. But within Dan and Larry’s material, as they began to share with us, was the concept that we were created for relationship with God. Well, we all know that Augustinian quote that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

But we forget that when we fell in the garden, when Adam and Eve got us started on this journey of brokenness, there was created within every heart a vast emptiness. And that emptiness is painful and motivational. That is to say, how can I get away from this pain?

And that pain is the pain of the thirst. The soul is thirsty. What the soul is thirsty for is God, but it doesn’t know that that’s what it’s looking for. And so what we emphasize in this book and in the dialog with the women is while the way we go to quench the thirst may be sinful, the thirst itself is legitimate and not sinful.

So often when we something happens and we feel the pain of a heartbreak, we feel it’s our fault. And sometimes it is. But the pain is often related to the fact that we are not connected with God in the way that we would want to be. And sometimes it’s just the pain of a fallen world.

But the pain is designed to draw us to living water. I think of the woman at the well when she encounters Jesus. She’s been trying to quench the thirst of her soul with men through her life, and Jesus offers her living water. And even in just that moment, he awakens in her an awareness that there’s another way to meet the deep thirst of her soul.

And so that’s really why we emphasize the concept of thirst, because when I recognize that it’s not sinful and I learn how to turn to God in the midst of thirst, then I can choose with my mind and with my will. I can choose actions and obedience toward God so that my emotions can reflect constructive movement rather than simply acting on my emotions and trying to get away from the pain as quick as possible in ways that perhaps really are not productive. So as we begin to deal with each of those, how they relate to our desperate search to quench the thirsting of our soul.

Kay >> So this book, I mean, if you really want to get the most out of the book, it requires a lot of a self-exam and action.

Gwynne >> Yes.

Kay >> So you’re examining what you’re thirsty for, you’re examining what wrong thinking you have. You’re, you know, it all seems to go together, the thirst. And go ahead and name the other three.

Gwynne >> The thirst is motivational in that we are, it is a driving factor that moves us into something. And then with our mind, we think, how can I quench that thirst with my will? I choose those actions based on what I believe. And then I’m going to experience the consequences in my emotion of what I think and what I choose.

So it’s thirst, mind, will and emotion—those four capacities.

Kay >> And Kelly, you do a great job as you develop your characters in this material as far as giving some various thirsts that we as women may often have. Do you want to just tell our audience a little bit about what some of those might be? And they might be able to identify with those and realize that this would be helpful to them.

Kelly >> Sure. We really wanted to offer people this is a relational journey and we wanted to offer people an opportunity for reflection. Yes, there’s examination, but I think too often we don’t stop and examine ourselves. And as Gwynne said, the understanding of ourselves and our understanding of God go hand in hand together.

So in our story, most of the thirsts or many of the thirsts that are examined are relational.

<p>We have women who are in difficult marriage situations. We have women who are single. We have women who have had childhood trauma. And for a lot of them, they’ve simply pushed their emotions down. They’ve dismissed we call it deadening, distracting or dismissing.And you know, a lot of our healing happens relationally. So the women are invited along into a journey where they examine their relational wounds and they have the opportunity in relationship with each other to find healing in a relationship with God and as they walk alongside one another.

That’s been part of my own journey, and I know that it’s been part of Gwynne’s as well.

Kay >> And ideally, I would think that Soul Thirst, even though it’s not the curriculum laid out as the original was, that it would still be helpful to do it with friends, right?

Kelly >> Oh, absolutely. Yes. One can do it as an individual reflective, a study. But it’s best done in community. We are created as the body of Christ to live in community and getting together with a small group of friends to dialog about this is really our intent to be purposeful and intentional in that.

Kay >> Gwynne, do you want to tell us about the various resources at the back of the book that would be helpful to those who have the book?

Gwynne >> Yes. Because as you go through the book and because the chapters alternate with fiction and nonfiction (and with permission from the mission), we have substantial parts of the curriculum that are in the book with the same kinds of illustrations. And so at the back of the book, we have, I believe it’s an 11-week study designed for group participation.

And then because we also know that sometimes when you get a book, you end up working with it yourself. So we also did a self study with, I think, a six-week timeframe where an individual could take the book and use it for themselves.

And then also in the back we give a shout out to the mission and where a person could actually get in and study the curriculum itself with the mission if they so wished, or also then to take other people through the curriculum as well. So kind of getting at it from a lot of different directions.

Kay >> Right it sounds like you’ve kind of covered all the bases for what people might want.

Gwynne >> My hope is that we can help people develop a template for thinking about life. I found that (and Larry Crabb said this), that it’s a new way of thinking. It’s thinking about God with a reality of his care and love for us and his great desire to meet us in the difficulties and challenges of this life. I think I wrote you this note that the curriculum is teaching us how to count it all joy, as James 1 says, even if I’m not feeling it all joy.

Kay >> And that’s such a hard thing to do.

Gwynne >> It is. It is. And often when we’re in a difficult situation that doesn’t feel joyful, if we can stop and identify the thirst. And the thirst, really, sometimes I define it as saying, “What would life have been like if I still lived in the garden? What would this relationship, what would this circumstance be like if we still lived in the garden?”

Well, most likely whatever is going on, it would not have happened.

We had a precious— our daughter-in-law and grandson, not daughter but granddaughter and son became pregnant a couple of years ago and found out she was carrying a trisomy 13 precious baby Oliver, who lived only 30 minutes. He’s enjoying heaven while we’re waiting to get to know him. But my first words to Reagan as we talked it over, I said, “Honey, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be.”

I always kind of go back to the garden because then you go, “Oh, so I’m not crazy for feeling like I want to whatever fault broke down and cry.” So that going back to how would it have been like in the garden. “And now I’m not in the garden, so where do I go from here?”

The thirst is because we don’t live—we live in a broken world and not in the garden.

Kelly >> And that question has just been really wonderful to meditate on over the years. And as Gwynne and I have talked through various situations, this is just part of her thinking. She just automatically runs so much of, you know, any circumstance through that grid and would ask, you know, “What would this have been like if we lived in the garden?” And then asking Jesus, “When did you feel this way?”

Allowing yourself to think through, you know, what Christ, how Christ related to a particular situation is just also a valuable valuable peace.

Gwynne >> Well, and that peace, Kelly, thanks for reminding me, because what happens then as you think about how it would have been in the garden and you think about that we’re not in the garden. And then you think about the fact that the Lord Jesus left heaven’s glories and encountered our broken world.

And when you ask, “When did he experience this,” you are drawn inexorably to, first of all, worship and love him more, but also to experience through the Holy Spirit the comfort that only he can bring in unique situations. But he is faithful as you come to him and ask him, when did you feel this way? What He gives you through the spirit is greatly enhancing your relationship with him.

Kay >> Do y’all have some final words of encouragement just for the women out there.

Gwynne, you want to go first?

Gwynne >> Well, I loved what you said at the beginning, and even as you mentioned our group, that prays for one another, I just don’t think there’s anything that can replace women to women fellowship. That’s why all of us have been involved for years, and as you and your listeners are, involved in women to woman ministry, I absolutely believe that women do desire relationships with other women and that they and in those relationships can find the kind of comfort that God wants to give us.

And I always joke about, if you remember Esther, when she was captured by the King and put in the harem, she gathered around her choice maidens that walked with her for a year before she went into the King. So women have always been surrounded by and encouraged by other women. So just find a way to connect with other women.

And nowadays, with Zoom—Kay and I, we’re all on Zoom together and on text. And you can do it long distance.

Kay >> Absolutely. And that is true in the very fact that we are recording this on Zoom. When we first started this ministry, we used to bring people here live. Well, when Covid came, we could not do that. So and then people started using Zoom for everything, and we thought, “Well, we shouldn’t just be sitting around. We could do this on Zoom!”

And of course, that expanded our reach of guests, people and wonderful speakers that we would have missed out on if we had not been willing to try having conversations this way. And it’s just worked out great.

Well, Kelly, what about you? Do you have any words of encouragement that you want to add?

Kelly >> Well, I would just say that telling our stories is important that, again, I’ve been reading Eugene Peterson, and he says that God reveals himself to us in the kinds of stories that we tell and that we tell our friends who we are and what it is like to be human. So in sharing our story, it’s just a very, very important part of our journey to be real, to be open and honest.

And we tried to show that in this book, characters who are becoming aware of themselves and are willing to be honest in relationship with one another. I think that is really, really important.

And also just, you know, the encouragement that we have through this book. Really in John 7:37, when Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are thirsty.” It says, “Jesus stood and shouted to the crowds, “Anyone who is thirsty may come to me. Anyone who believes in me may come and drink. For the Scriptures declare ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’”

And in the Holy Spirit we have that. So we just invite that, it’s an invitation to the Lord and an invitation to fellowship with him into one another. And that’s really what our heart’s desire for this book is.

Kay >> I love that. That’s really wonderful reminder of taking our thirsts to him. And I read, I read the book very quickly, you know, getting ready for this conversation, but I know that if I had had the time to really reflect as I went, to really examine as I went, it would have been a really great practice for me to go through this because I’ve not ever heard this put in exactly the same terms that you have done so in the book.

And I really appreciate it. I know it can help many, many women. And as you said, Gwynne, we’ve run into many women who told us these stories for years. And to actually have a resource for them to go to would be great.

Gwynne >> Well, Kay, I hope, as I said at the very beginning, about a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle thrown on the table. We would hope at the end of the book that you would at least know what the straight edges and the corners look like. So you could begin to piece together situations that not only you encounter, but that others encounter in order to turn them toward the Lord and find comfort from him.

Kay >> I am just pretty sure I’m going to be giving this book to people, you know, for that very reason. Where can I find the book? Kelly, where is the book available?

Kelly >> It’s available through Amazon. We also have our website at SoulThirst.net, and we will have a link on the website as well to that. But you can find it on Amazon.

Kay >> Great. That’s easy for everybody I think. The name of the book again is Soul Thirst and what is the subtitle?

Gwynne >> The tagline is Discerning Your Divine Design.

Kay >> Discerning Your Divine Design. And in this context, your divine design are these four aspects thirst, thinking, choosing and feeling. Correct?

Gwynne >> Yeah.

Kay >> So I really highly recommend this. And let me just mention a couple of other resources we have that might help you as you grow as a person and move through hard times. Elizabeth Woodson and I had a conversation about Embrace Your Life, which is a book that she wrote.

And we have a conversation between me and Sharifa Stevens that is part of our Reimagining Discipleship series. And it’s The Kingdom Perspective, which is sort of about how you pray and how you think toward what would be God’s perspective as I move forward. So I thought maybe those two would be helpful to some of you out there as well.

You can find all of these resources at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, and you can just browse and look at our many offerings that we give you all for free.

And we’d love to see you again and look forward to having you again.

And thank you, Kelly and Gwynne, for giving us your time today and for writing this great resource for women.

Kelly >> Thanks for having us.