Write this Down! with Dot Bowen

Is it actually okay to want to be loved, seen, and valued? Dot and Cara take on that question, starting with Matthew 12:7 and a God who has desires of His own. They talk about the woman at the well, what it means to go to the Lord first without pretending you don’t need people, and why your worth never depends on who does or doesn’t love you well. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: Matthew 12:7 (00:08)
• Cara asks the big question, is it okay to desire to be loved? And Dot explains why she chose this verse (00:24)
• God has desires too, and He made us in His image with desires to be loved, valued, and seen (03:35)
• The woman at the well was looking for love in all the wrong places, and Jesus offered the living water (06:07)
• A word for the singles: wanting to be loved or pursued is not wrong or shameful (07:05)
• Go to the Lord first, but it’s still okay to want love from people, and why that makes you enjoy it more (09:18)
• Why only God’s love is unconditional, and why we can’t expect perfect love from imperfect people (14:35)
• Dot shares about wanting to hear her dad say “I love you,” and how understanding someone’s capacity to love changes everything (19:35)
• Don’t squash it, don’t shrink back, ask God to show you how much He loves you and then bring people who can love you well (27:24)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Matthew 12:7 (ESV) — “And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”

Is God really in control if we get to choose? Dot and Cara finally tackle the question they swore they would never bring to the podcast: God's sovereignty and our free will. They don't pretend to have it all figured out (spoiler: they don't), but they do walk through why God can handle our hardest questions, what the candy-or-broccoli choice has to do with it, and how Peter, Hagar, and Adam and Eve show us that there is always a way back. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: 1 Chronicles 29:10-12, David blessing the Lord as sovereign over all (00:15)
• Cara and Dot admit up front that they don't have this one figured out, and that's okay because God can handle our questions (00:54)
• Do I really want to surrender my life to a God who isn't in control? Why Dot finds comfort in not being the one in charge (02:09)
• God is sovereign, and out of that sovereignty he made the rules and gave us the power to choose (06:23)
• You don't have to understand everything to trust it: electricity, the cloud, and FaceTiming across the country (07:46)
• Why God gave us a choice: he wanted children who would choose to love him, and there is real freedom in owning our choices (10:47)
• Candy or broccoli: the parent sets the choices, but we still get to pick, and we don't get to pick the consequences (14:08)
• Peace in obedience, why it can look like the people choosing badly are winning, and what Jesus told Pilate about power (18:20)
• God knew what we would choose, Peter's denial, and why there is always a way back to him (22:51)
• Forgiveness doesn't erase consequences, but God isn't punishing you, and your story is not over (26:16)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

1 Chronicles 29:10-12 ESV — "Therefore, David blessed the Lord in the presence of all the assembly. And David said, 'Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of Israel, our father, forever and ever. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory, and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand, it is to make great and to give strength to all.'"

Have you ever looked up and wondered if God is even paying attention, or worse, if he sees but doesn't care? This week Dot and Cara sit with Hagar's story in Genesis 16 and the God who sees, El Roi. They talk about why God didn't change Hagar's circumstances but met her in them, what the Hebrew word behind "seeing" reveals about his heart, and a surprise monarch butterfly that reminded Cara she is seen. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: Genesis 16:7-13, Hagar and the God who sees her (00:15)
• God sees, but do you care? Dot and Cara on why that question matters (01:51)
• God didn't change Hagar's circumstances, and why that is exactly where we need hope (03:52)
• El Roi in the Hebrew: God doesn't just see us, he has regard for us (07:22)
• When God asks you to stay in the hard place, and the honest "if God loved me" questions (10:31)
• What good came out of Hagar's story, for Hagar, Abraham, Sarah, and for us (14:05)
• This isn't our story, but it is a glimpse into God's heart, and he is most glorified when he's all we've got (16:55)
• Cara's monarch butterfly story and the little moments that remind us God sees us (18:33)
• Circumstances can change in a minute, but seeing God in them is a gift: he gave her the strength to endure (27:18)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Ever feel like something is pulling against your faith, even when you can't quite name it? In this episode, Dot and Cara have an honest conversation about spiritual warfare, what it actually is, what it isn't, and why the battle for your heart was never really about you at all. They trace it back to Genesis 3, walk through the armor of God in Ephesians 6, and get real about the moments they've each felt distant from Him and how they've learned to fight back.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: 2 Corinthians 10:3-4, on the weapons of our warfare having divine power to destroy strongholds (00:01)
• Cara frames the conversation, there's a real battle for what stands between you and the Lord, and He is fighting for you (00:31)
• The different camps people land in with spiritual warfare, from over focusing on it to pretending it isn't real (02:17)
• Ephesians 6:12, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces of evil (06:04)
• What spiritual warfare is not, it's not just the consequences of your own choices (07:04)
• Tracing the war back to Genesis 3 and why the fight has always been God's, with us caught in the middle of it (07:57)
• How to recognize spiritual warfare in your own life, it usually starts in your mind, with doubt, fear, or distance from God (12:30)
• The enemy cannot touch your position as God's child, but he can chip away at your intimacy with Him (15:01)
• Putting on the armor of God, praying the blood of Jesus over fear, and remembering you are worth fighting for (20:26)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

This Episode’s Scripture Verse

2 Corinthians 10:3-4 (ESV) — "For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds."

What do you do when God asks you to hand back the very thing he promised you? In this episode, Dot and Cara sit with the story of Abraham and Isaac, the moment when a father who waited decades for a son is asked to lay that son on an altar. They talk about the danger of writing our own narrative onto what God is doing, why Abraham's silence on that mountain says everything about his faith, and how trusting the process matters more than understanding the plan. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down, Genesis 17:15-19, God renames Sarai to Sarah and promises Abraham a son through her (00:00)
• Cara welcomes everyone and frames today's question, what do you do when God gives you a promise and then asks you to sacrifice it (01:10)
• A quick refresher on Ishmael, how Sarah's plan led to Hagar, and why Isaac, not Ishmael, was always God's idea (02:12)
• Writing the narrative, Dot and Cara's shorthand for assuming we know how God's story ends before he's finished telling it (07:15)
• Jumping to Genesis 22, Abraham walks up the mountain with Isaac and never once brings up the promise God once took from him (11:39)
• Why Abraham telling his servants we will be back might be one of the boldest statements of faith in all of Scripture (17:18)
• Abraham had never seen a resurrection in his life and still trusted God could bring Isaac back, an easy detail to miss (17:49)
• Knowing God versus believing him, and why that gap is exactly where our faith gets tested (20:20)
• A story about a train ticket that never comes early but always comes on time, and what it teaches us about trusting God's timing (32:26)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Genesis 17:15-19 (NASB 1977) — "Then God said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai, your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her, and indeed I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings of people shall come from her.' Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and he said in his heart, 'Will a child be born to a man 100 years old, and will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?' And Abram said to God, 'Oh, that Ishmael might live before Thee.' But God said, 'No. But Sarah, your wife, shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. And I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.'"

Ever wish God would just tell you why? In this episode, Dot and Cara sit with the story of Job and his friends, three men who loved Job deeply but got it wrong by assuming they knew exactly what God was doing in his suffering. Together they talk about the difference between speaking for God and speaking to God, and why letting Him reveal the why, instead of manufacturing one ourselves, is where real trust actually starts. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: Job 38:1-7, God's answer to Job out of the whirlwind (00:00)
• Dot shares how Write This Down was actually born out of her deep study of Job's friends, and catching herself thinking "I would have said that too" (00:01:27)
• Job's friends genuinely loved Job and sat with him in silence for seven days, but the trouble started when they assumed they knew why he was suffering (00:03:14)
• We live in a culture that thinks it can know everything, even asking ChatGPT to translate a sign in a tunnel, and how easy it is to bow down to the god of knowledge instead of trusting God himself (00:06:07)
• Why the Book of Job never actually answers why, and what that means for anyone waiting on an explanation for their own pain (00:07:10)
• Cara opens up about her own season of wrestling with her trust in God being tested, and learning she could move forward without fully understanding why (00:10:10)
• The line Dot wants you to write down, Job's friends talked about God to Job, but Job talked to God about himself and about God (00:13:17)
• Learning to hold the fear and love of God together, and letting Him reveal what He wants you to know instead of stepping in to explain it yourself (00:16:23)
• The bottom line of Job's story, God isn't in the business of punishing you, He's shaping you stage by stage, so be careful of anyone who claims to know exactly what God is doing in your life (00:21:35)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Job 38:1-7 (ESV) — "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, 'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements, surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?'"

What happens when your trust in God gets shaken, or even feels completely broken? In this honest conversation, Dot and Cara sit with Psalm 13 and David's raw prayer of doubt and praise, and open up about seasons in their own lives when trusting God felt like being led off a cliff. They talk through the real difference between a faith that's shaken and one that's severed, and why struggling with God is not the same as walking away from Him. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

Episode Recap

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: Psalm 13:1-6, David's raw, honest prayer that swings from "how long, O Lord" to pure praise (00:00)
• Dot wonders if David has a split personality, until Cara points out the psalm is a perfect picture of being honest with God (01:32)
• Today's real conversation starter: a dear friend admitted out loud that her trust in God had been broken, and how rarely we say that in Christian spaces (02:15)
• Cara opens up about a season where she felt like she trusted God all the way to the edge of a cliff, and He let her fall (08:08)
• Dot's pool illustration, her husband Howard catching the grandkids mid jump, even in the split second before he lets them go under (10:05)
• The difference between a faith that is shaken and a faith that is severed, and why struggling with God does not mean walking away from Him (17:16)
• Dot shares how she prayed, even before knowing the details, that Cara would never mistake her hard season for proof that God did not care (26:57)
• Cara looks back at Psalm 13:5, written in her Bible years before this season, and how her past tense trust became her present hope (30:01)
• Dot tells the story of Jacob wrestling with God all night, and how whatever your circumstances are saying, the cross already proved God is for you (32:26)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Can you actually force yourself into more patience, more peace, more joy? Dot and Cara dig into Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit this week, landing on something freeing: this fruit isn't something you manufacture, it's what grows naturally out of abiding with God. They get honest about what real intimacy with the Lord looks like day to day, from Dot's own prayer journey to what it actually means to walk in step with the Spirit instead of white knuckling your way through it. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

Episode Recap

• Intro (00:00)
• Dot and Cara's throwback to a song they used to sing the grandkids about being patient, and why willpower alone never actually produces it (02:11) 
• Dot's shift in perspective, the fruit of the Spirit isn't something you chase, it's what grows out of walking in step with the Spirit (04:24) 
• What Galatians 5 means by walking in the Spirit, the works of the flesh versus the fruit of the Spirit, and why you can fake goodness for a while but it never lasts (06:10) 
• What abiding and intimacy with God actually look like day to day, hint, it's not striving, it's resting (11:39) 
• Dot's story of picking prayer as her word for 2025, and why being honest with God, even about the ugly stuff, is what actually builds closeness with him (16:09) 
• Dot's habit of writing down what she senses God saying in prayer, and the moments of confirmation that have followed (23:12) 
• Everyday ways to build intimacy with God, from a grandkid's God time to Cara's prayer walks (32:19) 
• Peter's do you love me moment with Jesus, and why falling in love with God has to come before we try to produce anything for him (35:16)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

What does it really mean to be the light of the world, and whose light are you actually shining? In this episode, Dot and Cara sit with Jesus' words in Matthew 5:14-16 and ask the harder question underneath them, are we living to be seen by God, or to be seen by people? It's an honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversation about motivation, influence, and who you're actually representing every time you walk into a room. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro (00:00)
• Write this down: Matthew 5:14-16, you are the light of the world (00:00)
• Cara opens with this week's question, what light are we shining and who's influencing it (00:39)
• Dot admits this is a hard conversation to have without sounding judgmental (01:09)
• Keeping the why nearby, and the difference between existing and actually living (01:47)
• What Jesus really meant by being the light of the world, and checking whether it reflects him or us (03:27)
• You're representing someone everywhere you go, even when you don't realize it (06:39)
• Resting in the Lord lets his light shine through without you having to force it (09:26)
• Peter rebuking Jesus about the cross, and what it reveals about chasing our own agenda over God's (12:50)
• Closing challenge, ask God who you're influencing and who's influencing you, then write it down (17:54)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV) — "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

Do you know something, or do you actually believe it? On this episode, Dot and Cara dig into the real difference between knowing about God and believing Him, from Dot's own journey with a prediabetes diagnosis to Cara's honest confession that she has believed God loves her but has struggled to believe He truly cares about the details. It is a raw, honest conversation about what it looks like to move from head knowledge to a faith that actually changes how you live, even when your circumstances have not changed at all. Pull up a chair, grab your Bible, and lean in with us.

Got a question about today’s episode or something else you’d like to hear us talk about on the show? Let us know! 

• Intro  (00:00)
• Write this down: Psalm 9:9-10, the Lord as a stronghold for those who seek Him (00:00)
• Today's question: what's the real difference between knowing something and believing it (00:29)
• Dot on birthdays as a turning point, and asking God "what's next" instead of pulling back from life (01:12)
• Dot's prediabetes diagnosis, and the moment the knowledge in her head finally became something she believed (06:30)
• Knowing what you deserve versus actually believing you deserve it (08:31)
• Cara gets honest about a hard season, and the moment she realized she believed God loved her but not that He cared (13:53)
• Choosing to believe God is tending the hard places even when nothing about the circumstances has changed (18:01)
• Why God wants a relationship, not a five step formula, and the invitation to just ask Him for the faith to believe (20:05)
• The miracle isn't God changing your circumstances, it's God changing your heart, something only He can do (23:03)

Are you interested in having Dot come and speak to your community? Email us at [email protected].

Watch Write this Down! on YouTube

Find Dot Bowen on Instagram and Facebook 

Psalm 9:9-10 (ESV) — "The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you."