Transcript

Gena: Becoming an Ambassador for God
Season 1: Episode 15

Carol: 0:14

Welcome to the God Is Good podcast where we share stories of everyday people who have reignited their faith in Jesus and experienced remarkable life transformations. My name is Carol O'Brien, and I'm your host for this podcast. I'm excited to have you join us today as we welcome an extraordinary guest whose faith was tested during pregnancy when she faced a cancer scare. With nowhere to turn but God, Gena surrendered everything and found strength she never imagined. Now transformed by grace and filled with purpose, she has become a passionate Christian writer, teacher, and sought after podcast guest. Gena's journey from uncertainty to fiery faith will inspire anyone facing hardship. She even shares some inspiring thoughts for parents struggling with the relationships with their adult children. I hope her powerful story of overcoming doubts will help you discover your purpose and allow God to make you his"ambassador to the world." So welcome to the God Is Good podcast, Gena, we're excited to have you here.

Gena: 1:24

I am super excited to be here. I love talking all things about the goodness of God.

Carol: 1:30

That's so great. If you've ever listened to the podcast before, you know that the first thing that I want to hear about is your Faith Foundation. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Gena: 1:40

So my story starts back into my childhood. My grandmother, we lived with her first season after my parents divorced, and I would see her, reading her Bible with her coffee and listening to her favorite, hymns on the radio and things of that nature. It was very personal for her and we were not, I would say, not pushed into going to church. And it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I understood the why behind that, which was there was a fraction in the family between some of her siblings because one of them had made the decision to start attending church at a different denomination. And it created this division that led to like literally not talking to each other for 40, 50 years. And so my grandmother, attempting to be a peacekeeper within her own family, was all about us understanding that there was a God and that God loved us, but never pushing us into anything because she didn't want to see division happen amongst her kids and then her grandchildren. So then when it came to time for my mom to try to teach those things to us, it was very much diluted and there wasn't a full understanding of who God really was, what Jesus really did. And so my faith foundations at a young age were very rocky.

Carol: 3:02

Let's go back a little bit to the divorce with your parents. How old were you when that happened?

Gena: 3:07

I was two.

Carol: 3:08

Oh, you were very young.

Gena: 3:09

Yeah. My brother and sister are much older than I am. I was the unexpected addition to the family. And for whatever reason, my father just decided that family life wasn't for him and very unexpectedly. My mom had no idea that it was happening. We thought we were packing the van to go on vacation, but really my dad was packing his stuff and he came in and handed her the divorce papers, told her the house was sold, and she had 30 days to move out and he left.

Carol: 3:37

Oh my goodness. And so what was your relationship with your father like? Did you have any relationship with him?

Gena: 3:44

In the beginning, we did. My mom had to obviously go to work. She was a housewife and a stay-at-home mom, so she had to get a job. And so my dad worked nights, my mom worked days, and so there was a lot of times where he was responsible for watching us when we were little. But my dad continue to really make some poor decisions. When my brother graduated high school, my dad came, enjoyed the graduation, gave him his card, and told us he was moving out of the state. And he literally left that night. And it would be another 15 years till I saw him again. I saw him one time and that was because his, wife called us and my dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson's. His memory was starting to fail and she just said, look, if you want to talk to him while he still remembers who you are, it's now or never. So my brother and sister and I made the decision to go and see him. But it was really more for us. That was the last time I saw my father. And he ended up passing away. And yeah, so the relationship, it just wasn't. I can't even say it wasn't great, it just wasn't. But those were, the choices that he made.

Carol: 4:54

I don't want to be presumptive, but I know that in certain situations our view of our parents have a profound impact on our view of God. So with your father being a distant father, is that how you viewed God, that he wasn't part of your life? That he was far away?

Gena: 5:09

I think as a child, yeah. I think I did see Him very distantly. One of the things that I tell people is that because of the circumstances that I was raised in, I never got a chance to see what a godly marriage looked like, and I definitely didn't get to see what Godly parenting looked like. How do you understand the Father's love when you don't have your father's love? And so I do think that was part of that, and I think that becoming a parent myself, it was more like now all of a sudden I understand what should have been there and those feelings that my father should have had for his kids.

Carol: 5:46

How did the absence of your father, how did that shape how you felt about yourself?

Gena: 5:52

There was definitely a hole. And when I had those opportunities to be around my father there was a desire in me that if I could impress him enough, that I could make him proud enough. If I could be enough like that, he would want to spend more time with me or be more present. I don't think that there was ever a time in my head I thought that my parents would get back together I never dealt with that, but I definitely thought that there was a way where if I could connect with him more deeply that he and I could forge a relationship in spite of that. And I don't know if it's like the DNA of who we get from our parents, but I'm actually quite a bit like my father even to a point where it annoys my mother. But I have a lot of the same interest as him and I have sometimes wondered are those like truly my interest or was that something that was birthed out of that young part of me that was like, these are the things that interest him? My father was very artsy. I love art. My father loved music. I love music. And maybe that was birthed actually out of that attempt to forge a relationship with him. And now it's just part of who I am. I definitely wondered if that was an impact and an influence on me at a very young age of who I ended up becoming. Because maybe if he would've been around and I didn't feel those needs to connect with him in those ways, maybe my interest would've been completely different. I it's something that I've thought about, but at the end of the day, this is who I am today. This is the person that God's using today. And I'm grateful for those parts of me, but I'm sure there's a few things my mom would love to see fade away into the ether. But I am definitely in a lot of ways, my father's daughter.

Carol: 7:36

So you said something very interesting you said, if I was good enough. If I tried hard enough. If I was perfect enough. And then you had mentioned how you used to view the relationship with God. If I'm perfect because God died from me on the cross and wiped away on my sons, if I'm absolutely perfect and can stay perfect for the rest of my life, then what? Then God will love me? Then God will be with me then, then what? What was it that you used to think if you stayed in that perfect line?

Gena: 8:10

I think it was this idea that if I could do all the right things, then all of the things that were wrong in my personal world would be righted. So if I was good enough, then good things would happen to me. And if I was doing all the right things, then God would bless all of those things and I would get the desires of my heart. And I think that was this idea of the, this was a way to earn good things. But as you mature, you start to realize, okay, his goodness falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. And you begin to learn that no is actually an answer to your prayer. And the desires of my heart begin to shift. It's not about me and it's not about what's right in my world. It's about me being right with him, and it's about me doing what he's asked of me to do in this world.

Carol: 9:01

I promise we're going to move on from this, but there is one thing I do want to ask about. When you fell short, when you were in that point where the relationship was very transactional, I do this, then you'll do this. If I do this, you'll do this. When you were in that part of your relationship or that, that mindset, what happened when you fell short?

Gena: 9:22

Yeah. It was a rough time. That would be like through late elementary school, middle school, high school, maybe first year of college really, was a very tumultuous time. One, there would be these things where it's okay I'm trying to do these right things and be this good person and be this right person, and there's no return on the investment, so I'm not seeing those things coming through for me. So you start to doubt. You start to question if there really is a God, if he really cares about us. I think you can even live in a space where you can go yeah, there's a creator God, he doesn't really give beans about those of us, little peons here on the earth. You start to think that way. But even at a deeper level, you start to question, is there something fundamentally wrong with me? Is there a reason I can't do this? But at the end of the day, what it really came down to for me was there was a point where I just completely felt like a failure, that I was incapable of being a good person, even though like I wasn't a terrible person. You know what I mean? But like in my head, I was incapable of being this good person that God has said, this is what you should look like. This is how you should be. I really thought at that point I was done for, I was going to hell in a hand basket. So what was the point in even trying anymore? And so then I went through a season of making some really bad decisions, being places I shouldn't have been with people I shouldn't have been doing things I probably shouldn't have been doing. And the more that you let that happen and give any foothold to that then it starts that cycle of then feeling worse for yourself because now you've just proven Exactly, yep. I can't. I can't. I'm terrible, I'm awful. Look at these poor choices I've made. Look at these bad decisions. Look at the circumstances I've gotten myself into. And then you begin to feel unredeemable, and then it just spirals you into making even more terrible decisions. It's this like moment where you have a choice to completely yield to giving up or grasp what hope there is.

Carol: 11:34

So I always say that we live our lives filling God-sized holes with everything but God. And it turns our hearts into stone and we just can't lift it anymore. There gets to be a point where we're like, God, that's it. I cannot do it anymore. Was there ever a moment where you just said, okay, God, this is it. I give it all to you?

Gena: 11:56

Yeah, in a lot of areas, but there was a time when I was pregnant with my second daughter. I was a couple years behind in getting my annual exams done and found out we were pregnant with my second go in. And during the course of the exam and some subsequent tests, it was determined that I had pre-cancer cells on my cervix, my uterus. So here I am, I'm pregnant with my daughter, I am being told that I have precancerous cells. Because of the fact that I'm pregnant, it can expedite the process of those cells and that there could be any number of things that could happen: treatment while I was pregnant. Her having to be, induced early and going into treatment. The risks that were with all of those things, it was a lot to process. I'm weighing out risks and, me and my nature, I'm researching. I had reached out to people asking for prayer. A couple people came back. I know somebody who went through something similar. Let me put you in contact with them. I was trying to, at that point, control what I could control and get for me, which for me is getting information. I want all the information so that I can make a decision. But you're faced with really an impossible decision, because of all of the different people that it impacted besides just my own self. And you have your maternal instincts, which are, I want to do everything I can to protect this baby, but then I also have this other child and, and then you're in turmoil and chaos, in your own mind and your heart. And that was a moment I was telling my husband that I was just broken hearted, about the weight of these decisions and the impact that it could have. And my husband said, God wouldn't have given you this baby just to take the baby away from you. And I said, women lose babies all the time. And I said, God could have given her to us to save my life. And that was probably the very first time that I can like tangibly put something to where I could say I felt the weight of all of it.

Carol: 14:02

So was that your moment, the moment you turned it all over to God?

Gena: 14:06

Yeah. I said, Lord, I am going to follow your lead on this. So I will do the tests and we'll wait for these test results to come back. And if it is your will that I start the treatment before she's born, then I will do that. But there was like a deadline. If we didn't do it here, then we had to wait till after she was born. And I said, but if it is your will that we're going to wait, then those test results will not come in before that date. I am not making this decision. I'm allowing You to make this decision. And I put it all completely in His hands.

Carol: 14:42

So now that you had that plan, how did you feel? What were your next steps from that point?

Gena: 14:47

After that there was a peace. At that point, it was no longer worrying about one thing or another. Instead, it was the ordered steps. And God is, he's a God not of chaos, but of ordered. And so instead of allowing myself to get into those places of the what ifs and the what abouts and all of that, instead, it was what's just the next step. And so the next step was, we're going to go to this doctor's appointment. We're going to get the test results back. We're going to talk about what the results say. We'll talk about what the treatment options are. And instead of thinking too far ahead,'cause I'm an overthinker, I'm a hundred percent the queen of overthinking. And so I know when I'm not overthinking, I am no longer acting in, in flesh. I'm, I am walking in spirit because i'm allowing him to say what we're going to do and when we're going to do it, and not thinking about tomorrow and not thinking about six months down the road. Or I get to see my kids get married and all those things that we tried to negotiate with God. It was, you know what, we're just going to get through this thing. And there was just this sense of peace about it that even if I didn't like the outcome, and even if I might have to grieve some of that outcome, I knew that God was in control of the outcome, and that was sufficient for me to be able to just deal with the moment.

Carol: 16:13

So what happened next and how did turning everything over to God impact your life from that point on?

Gena: 16:20

So the deadline came, the test results came in the day after. She was born early that was all Him as well. She came a month early with no intervention, and then I went right into treatment and did all my three month checks for several years after that. But it was definitely a defining moment in my life where I truly just handed the whole thing over to Him. And I'm giving it all to You. I'm not capable of this decision in my own flesh. It was a beautiful moment that I looked back with great fondness because it was a defining moment, definitely a push pin moment where I can say, I literally handed the whole thing to Him and I said that I'm putting it all in Your hands and I'll just go with whatever comes next.

Carol: 17:03

God is so good because you were, I hate to say the word, but you were helpless. You couldn't change any of the situation around you. You could just give it to God and let Him go with it. That's absolutely beautiful. So you had that moment, you had that transformation. How were you different from, one day to the next day? What was going on in you that was changing and becoming on fire?

Gena: 17:26

I think the beginning was certainly a fire for the Word. Like I said, I'm a researcher. I like to have the information and so it was digging in and it was reading the word, it was bible studies. It was sitting under great teachers. It was trying to consume it all and utilizing everything that I was bringing in to really understand the full picture of it. And then through that was this like simplicity of how I'm going to walk my life. You start to get a clarity about yourself. It's not selfish and it's not being self-centered because what you're really doing at that point is giving that I'm stopping my worrying about everybody else. I'm going to worry about me and I'm going to worry about how my relationship is with the Lord and how I am behaving as his ambassador to this world. And then going and just sharing the goodness of him with the rest of the world.

Carol: 18:34

Yeah, I loved it. I wrote down ambassador to the world." I'm going to switch to talk about your favorite scripture, which I love. It's John four, verse 39."Many of the Samaritans of the town began to believe in him because of the word the woman who testified, he told me everything I have done." So tell us why that is your favorite scripture.

Gena: 18:57

For years and years and years, I've heard the story of the woman at the well. We talk about that. Jesus went out of his way to find her. We talk about who she was in the town. This outcast, this woman of many husbands that she would come to the well at the times of the day when the crowds wouldn't be there because she just didn't want to see the people. She didn't want to face the judgment, she didn't want to hear the gossip, the rumors. She didn't, she just lived this. This life and that he went out of his way to encounter her. And because of this conversation they have at the well, she had this life-changing moment and she was saved. And I've heard that story over and over again. But there was one day she's the topic of subject again and I kept reading and I turned the page and I see that he told her everything that she was about herself and that she went back and she told the town. And because of her testimony, many were saved. There were so many times I've heard the story, but I didn't hear that part. That it wasn't that she was just made new. It was that she had a purpose and that she had a responsibility to now go back to her town and tell everyone what he did. It changed her life so dramatically that she ran to the people she had been hiding from to share this encounter that she just had. And they believed her. They believed her enough to go and investigate it. They believed her enough to hear what she had to say. They believed her enough that many were saved that day because of her testimony. And I think that so many of us are fed this lie that we're not good enough. That our past is too shameful. Our sins are too great, right? How could God use someone like me? And that tells us right then and there that's exactly how he used her. She impacted not just those people in the town, but she impacted generations because that set the fire to that town. And so that verse became my favorite because I think in my overthinking this self I try to discount myself all the time. Who am I? Who am I that God would think anything of me? Who am I that God would want to use me? I'm too broken. I've messed up too much. I'm whatever. And he is constantly showing me. Nope. I still have more things for you to say. I have more people for you to talk to. I want you to go and have these conversations.

Carol: 21:33

That's so true. God uses the sinners among us, including ourselves, to really accomplish some wonderful things. And I know we're going to get into talking about some of the amazing things that you've done, but is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience before we move on to that next topic?

Gena: 21:52

I really I had no idea I was going to talk so much about my kids today. But I look back at the relationship that did not exist between me and my father because of choices that he made. And I wanted to be able to look at my kids into their adulthood and go, my kids are going to make choices because of the way I behaved. Someone most recently said to me, So long as they have breath, I will love them and I will pray for them and I will care for them regardless of the decisions that they're making. So that would be my last little tidbit to wrap up the part about the family and the kids.

Carol: 22:22

That's so perfect. And I do think the reason that you were talking about the kids is because somebody out there needs to hear it. So let's talk about your ministry. Tell us when and how it all started.

Gena: 22:33

It's such a weird, and unexpected storyline that can only be of the Lord, right? So I knew that I was being called into vocational ministry. I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I just knew that's where I was going and I was like, I need the credentials to back that up so that somebody will hire me. I made the decision that I was going to go back to school and I was going to pursue getting a divinity degree. So I had already done some courses and we were working out these transfers and I called them up one day'cause I said, look, my credits aren't right. We're having this conversation about those credits and I just very jokingly made a comment and I said if you ever need somebody to teach a course on women's ministry, I'm your lady. And they said, oh yeah? Why don't you send us a course syllabus? So I sit down and I work this out and I send it to them and they said this looks great. We want to bring you on to teach this course. And I was like, oh my gosh. Okay, this is really cool, but now I've gotta actually like, write out the course. So I'm working really diligently. I'm writing out my course printing out the pages so I could go back and edit them, so I could get that final version together. I look at my desk and I'm like, that's a book. I just wrote a book. And stunned because that was definitely not the direction I saw for me. I did not think I was going to be a speaker. I did not think I was going to be an author. So yeah, I was I just stunned. And so I sent a copy of it to a publishing house and didn't hear anything. And I was just like, oh, what was I thinking? And a couple years later I decided to go to a writer's conference. And it was one of the ones where they would have meetings with publishers that you could pitch your book to. And I thought, all right, I've got this book, like that's just sitting there. I'll bring it. I met with three publishers. All three publishers were interested in it. I was like, just stunned by that. Just absolutely stunned by that. So then the first book was published and, after that, it was like the flood gates had opened. And there's so many titles and so many books that I'm working on. But I'm yielding to the Lord on what I do and when I do it. I released my first book on women's ministry, Women's Ministry with Purpose." In that process of doing the releases and the promos for it and things like that, I got to encounter some amazing leaders from all over the world. And what I started realizing was there was also a real struggle for women in ministry. And that's what led me into the second book, which is," Still here and still struggling to serve." And it was a real look at the struggles that women are having in serving, in leadership, in churches and ministries. And it all came about because I read a book called Our Struggle to Serve that was written in the seventies. And then now I'm working through a devotional series The first one just released this past week, which is"Deep Forgiveness." This real exploration on, what it means to be forgiven.

Carol: 25:39

So now tell us where people can get your books and your devotionals.

Gena: 25:44

You can order all of them on Amazon. It's the easiest place to find everything. Gena B McCown so GENA, the letter B-M-C-C-O-W-N. Just search that up and you'll find'em. Or you can just my name.com and that'll direct you to everything else.

Carol: 26:01

Thank you so much, Gena. This was wonderful. I know that your story has definitely moved hearts towards Jesus. So thank you for being on the God is Good Podcast.

Gena: 26:10

Thank you for having me. I am so humbled and just thrilled to just continue to be used as a vessel wherever he needs me.

Carol: 26:18

And thank you to our listeners for liking and following this podcast. It does help us move more hearts towards Jesus, and it means to the world to me. And by subscribing you'll make sure that you never miss an episode of the God Is Good podcast. We are excited to have you join us for our next episode. In the meantime, remember Friends, God is good.