Hello and welcome to the Third Quarter Podcast. I'm Ben Everson, your host, and so glad to have you along with me today. And if you're a new listener to our podcast here, let me just explain real quick that this podcast's purpose is to encourage people no matter what quarter of ministry you're in. I come at it from a third-quarter perspective, but we have guests from all kinds of different quarters and such, and all kinds of different unique ministries, and such is the case today. I've got the privilege of having my sister-in-law on, Jodi Hendricks. Thank you for joining us all the way from New Mexico, right? Jodi Hendricks Yes, thank you for having me. Well, wonderful. We go way back. You and I both, I don't know what the word is for this, but you're like a double sister-in-law because you married my brother-in-law, right? So you and I have some commonalities in that we both married into the Hendricks family. Uh, right. And such, but so we have, we can have a fun time joking about that. But, um, in all seriousness, you have come up with this wonderful book that I had the privilege of reading through before just about anybody else. And I love this book, the, uh, the title of it. In fact, I want to give you a chance to talk about a whole series that you're planning, but no filter. And so Jodi, first tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and then what led you to write this book, which I love. And then we'll talk about the book also. Well, I grew up in church. I was born here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was going to church, you know, the Sunday after I was born. So I grew up in church and I grew up in a household where my parents served faithfully in church. And so I came to know the Lord at a very young age. I absolutely knew that I was a sinner and I needed to be saved by Jesus. But at five years old, I accepted Christ. But of course, you know, we grow, thank the Lord, throughout our lives and our walks with him. And I got to college and I realized, you know what, I need to make this my own. I need to no longer seek the Lord, because it's what my parents taught me. I need to seek the Lord because it's mine. And it's what I want. And I want this depth of relationship with the Lord. And so I began that process in college, really just learning how to study God's Word, learning how to dig deeply and not just take what other people were trying to spoon-feed me, rather digging into God's Word and saying, what do you want to teach me? Straight from you. And so I began that process. Growing up the way I did in the church family that I did, and of course, being in my family, my family was very known in our church for our service and just that reputation that you grow up in ministry. And I didn't realize it, but along the way, I began to kind of don these filters, these masks, that I believed made me look and fill the role that everyone expected me to fill. And it was really just, I had no idea that it was happening. I had no idea, you know, these masks that I was putting into place. I just had this concept of myself. This is who I am. I serve in church. you know, teach, I sing, I do all of these things. And this is this is what I do. So it's like a different persona. If you're adopting personas, these filter. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And so I, you know, in saying who I am telling you about myself, this is an important piece, of course, because it led to the journey that I've been on with the book, but because it was something that was so integral to my identity. of living up to this. expectation of who I thought I was supposed to be. But you know, life happens and throws curveballs at us, and we have to be able to walk through those trials, being willing to grow and see what God is going to do with us. But that's painful. And so we don't always like to do that. And so we go through stages of life, seasons of life, trials, whatever it may be, and we're holding on to these masks. of, you know, well, this is how this person should get through this trial. This is what this should look like. And somewhere along the way, we lose who we truly are. We lose what God is trying to do in us and through us. And instead, it becomes this facade. And so my my journey has been really being able to come back to that point in college where I knew this is me and the father and he is going to grow me and he is going to teach me and I want to be what he wants me to be. And having to realize how far I had come from that, to be able to recognize what it was that was holding me back, what it was that was really distorting the vision of who God wanted me to be and created me to do. And forgive me for interrupting a little bit of a delay here. Was there any like specific event? Were there any specific events that were going on in your life at the time? I know we personally know each other, so I don't want to pry too much. But as far as you're personally willing to share with us, were there anything, any events going on that kind of prodded you on towards this journey? Yes, yes. So, you know, like I said, throughout the years, I'd kind of been donning these masks really unaware that that's what I was doing. And really not something that was. so obvious, like, I don't want to learn in that trial or anything, you know, it's just kind of life, but you still hold on to the who I was yesterday type of idea. But really, it was, I call it a season of fire that the Lord allowed me to walk through. You know, Michael and I, we were married, and we started our family right away. And after we had our first born, we then ended up with two miscarriages. And that was kind of the beginning of our season of fire because that was a grief that no one could have prepared us for. We didn't even know what to do with that grief. We didn't even understand the fullness of that grief. And so that kind of started me down this path of, but this is how I'm supposed to look. This is how the me of yesterday, who I always thought I was, this is how that girl should respond. I had all the Sunday school answers. I thought I allowed myself to cry out in grief to the Lord, but really it was, not what it needed to be in hindsight. Because it was just stuck in, this is that girl and how that girl should respond, rather than seeing the situation as, you know, Lord, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for who I am or who I thought I was or what I thought you had called me to do? And Unfortunately, I wasn't really honest with myself about that at that time. So I went into this season, you know, dealing with this grief. We have the two miscarriages back to back within a year and I didn't understand what it was doing to me. I didn't understand what it was doing to my husband, and therefore what it was doing to our marriage. And so struggles that came in there and just trying to navigate things, we didn't even realize we were navigating. And so just really coming to a point where we're struggling with each other, and you know, anybody who's married knows that. Exactly. We're just not in sync. Something's wrong. So I don't know what it is. Right. Right. So there was that aspect that really, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, that girl who I thought I was like, Wait a minute, this we don't have marriage trouble. We don't have relationship issues like this is not how it's supposed to look. And so again, donning the mask of but but how do I think it should look and therefore how should I proceed through this and that was damaging to myself to my own heart. It was damaging to my relationship with my husband. It was damaging to my husband because here we then just start playing these roles. Both of us kind of just trying to live up to these expectations that we believed we had on us and what we had on ourselves. And then fast forward a little bit. My parents were divorced. They got divorced after 34 years of marriage. Again, I'm not that girl. You know, we're not those people. This doesn't happen to us. We grew up in this tight knit Christian circle. And unfortunately, there we were right in the middle of it. And it was painful, and it was hard, and it was difficult to navigate. And then Fast forward just a little bit more and we had major church hurt that was just really devastating. Friendships and ministries and just everything that's involved when you're so tightly drawn together in a church family that you've been in for years. And it was just heartbreaking to go through all of that. And it wasn't, though, until that time where my husband and I reached a point where we said, Okay, we have a choice to make. We are going to fight for our marriage. We're going to fight for our family. We're going to fight for the future of our children and for what God has called us to do. And so we need a new start. And so we had left the church that we experienced the hurt in, and we began this path of, Lord, where do you want this? And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of the Lord really beginning to open my eyes to all that I had dawned, all of these masks and these filters that I had put in place, and that while I thought they were needed, because I needed to live up to these expectations. Instead, they were distorting the original picture. They were distorting what God had created me to be and to do. And when I began to be able to look and realize all of these things that I had put in place that did not belong there, talk about freedom, being able to drop those filters one after the other was just amazing to be able to come back to that. It really is me and you father. It really is just. what you have called me to do and who you have created me to be with no one else's expectations on top of that, not even my own, being able to even drop that to say, I am willing to open my eyes and surrender to what the Lord is calling me, my creator is calling me to be and to do rather than what society and what the world has really made me believe. You know, I love hearing you talk about this. I'm reminded even in our secular world of some entertainers that obviously had internal issues because they put on so many filters, like what you're talking about. Jim Carrey comes to mind, where he has made public statements about just, you know, depression. I'm not going to get it completely right, but depression is when your inner self is tired of being that persona. in front of other people. And obviously he's been facing different things, and others who actually, unfortunately, are no longer with us. And so you hope that they came across someone shared the gospel with them at some point. But it's so easy then to create these expectations. So then what about the book itself? What led you to start writing these things down? Well, I've always been a writer. I've loved writing ever since I was a little girl, always wanted to be an author. And so I knew that, you know, I had this kind of idea, this thought brewing inside, that I would one day write a book, right? And, and more many books, hopefully. But it wasn't really until I received a phone call. And I talked about this in the introduction to the book, but I received a phone call from a A woman here in town who is the director of a pretty big ministry here in New Mexico. And she had heard me speak at an event and she called me up and she said, I want you to be our keynote speaker for our statewide women's conference coming up, you know, within the next year. She was calling me in 2019 for the 2020. So of course, I sat there on the phone with this woman and I was so excited because this was really kind of At the very beginning of this season of shifting for me, I had not yet realized truly what the Lord was doing in helping me really see and expose these filters and begin to drop them. But I'm excited because I'm like, okay, there's a shift in the road. My husband and I have made these choices and these decisions for our family. Here we go. This is really exciting. It was a huge honor to be asked to speak at this particular event. And so she talked to me on the phone and she said, my thought for the conference for next year is vision because it's 2020, right? Talking about having this vision. Living with a vision and that kind of thing. And she said, you can do whatever you want, but that's kind of what I've been thinking. So I said, okay, I will pray about that and I will spend time, you know, thinking about it. And so I did, I began to pray about it and really began studying and I was led to Paul's prayer for the Ephesians where he. praise that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened. And I thought, well, talk about vision, being able to see with the eyes of our heart, right? Our heart is that place responsible for belief, our faith system. And so what is it that I am seeing through that place of belief? And how is it determining what I How is it determining how I live? How is it determining what I say, what I do? I mean, every little piece of this life that God has given me to live. And so I began really looking into this idea of this vision as God has intended us to see it rather than what we ourselves see based on experiences, based on trauma, based on relationships, based on whatever we have gone through that really ends up filtering how we see things. And so I just kept digging, kept digging and began to realize, whoa, I've got a lot of filters in place. I've got a lot of things that are distorting my vision of God himself and of who he has made me to be. And I'm tired of it because those filters are exhausting. Trying to live up to what those filters say I should be. It takes way more energy than it's worth. And it's not Holy Spirit energy. It's not Holy Spirit. It's self energy. Yeah, it is. It is. And so that was really that conversation with her was really that process that started this more specific studying that began to open my eyes to it. So, of course, I was working on it and as I prepared to speak, and I had several sessions that I was going to be speaking for this event, so I thought, okay, I'm just going to write as I go. I'm just going to start getting it out and organizing those thoughts. And about halfway through the process, I realized, oh, so I think this is going to be my book, my first book. And I was like, well, that's cool. So keep going and fast forward, you know, 2020 comes and of course, we all know what happens at the beginning of 2020. And so unfortunately, the conference was canceled. And oh, I was so disappointed. But it was amazing, because that was exactly what I had needed to really get me on this path. First of all, for the Lord to reveal things to me. that I needed to see and that I needed to embrace in order to truly live out his calling on my life, but then also to be able to begin the process of just getting it out, writing it, and being able to start sharing it. So I began writing it, and then I am the director of women's ministry at my church, and I do Bible study twice a year. We do a fall and a spring Bible study. And so I thought, OK, we're going to teach hashtag no filter. We're going to we're going to walk through it. And I'm going to take what I've learned and I'm going to share it. And through that, it just grew and it developed even more. And I was able to see not only things that really spoke to my heart and kind of just opened my eyes, but things that made an impact in the women that I was teaching as well. And I was able to glean from that and to take some of those experiences and some of those lessons that really had even more of an impact than I thought they would, to realize, hey, this is important. I think women everywhere need this. And so just continue to develop it. And now here we are. It's the first in a series of three. Hey, well, I mean, I love hearing the background here and the whole genesis of this because, really, I think there's a dearth, there's a famine of good Bible study, whether they be devotionals or just straight-up studies or whatever, in women's writing. And that's not just my opinion. Women that I love and trust in my life have said that for years. And there's been a few that have stepped out and tried to fill that need. But as I was reading through and had the privilege of even writing the foreword for you, that's something that I focused on, is that as a husband, a father, as a minister, If you're a pastor watching this, if you are listening either way, video or audio, if you're looking for material that's going to have, it's not going to be fluff, right? It's not going to be just a psychobabble with a few Bible verses sprinkled on top to Christianize it. This actually has substance to it, and that's one of the reasons I'm so excited for this book and for this series. And it is built Correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean, it's built for a weekly Sunday school type approach, right? Yes. Yes, it is. So this first one is an eight-week study, so it is broken up into eight different weeks. Each week has three lessons. The reason it has three, of course, I tell everybody, I know there's seven days in a week. Especially as women, we're filling many roles, God-given roles. I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I am the director of a non-profit, so I have a business that I'm running. I'm homeschooling my kids, so it's not just, mom, I've got daily work to do for my kids. I'm involved in ministry at my church. These are things that are always vying for my attention. And as women filling all these different roles in the home and in our ministry, it's hard to have the time to sit down and spend two hours a day on your Bible study homework. The truth is that nobody's going to do it. And then they're not going to want to come to Bible study or they're not going to want to check in with their friends that they're doing the study with, because they're going to feel bad that they didn't do the work. Right. And so we, uh, I broke it down into three lessons per week so that you have the time. If one lesson needs to take you a couple more days, that's okay. You've got the time to do it, but then it also gives you the time to really chew on what you're learning because I'm a huge believer in teaching someone how to fish rather than giving them a fish. And this book is teaching you how to fish. This book is going to lay out the lesson. It's going to lay out the thought, but then it's going to challenge you to dig into God's word deeper to say, okay, now what can I pull from this? What deeper understanding can I pull from God's word itself rather than just taking something that's been regurgitated from someone else? And so I want the reader to be able to have that time to really dig deep and grow those roots down further. to be able to take ownership in what they're learning, to be able to make it something that is real and applicable to them, but straight from God's word. So yes, it is broken down eight weeks, three lessons a week. And if you don't have a Sunday school class, and you just want to get the book, it's beneficial that way. Obviously, that's how I read it. And it is, it's encouraging, and just challenging, really. And I read it thinking that I would swell, it's a woman's book. So you know, I'll just kind of read it from this certain perspective. And then I got about a third of the way into it. And I had to start thinking to myself, man, this is, it's just truth. You know, and something that in our Social media-obsessed culture, it doesn't matter what age you are, perhaps it affects you more the younger you are, but I mean, I think if you want to be relevant in this culture, we take the always relevant truth of the Word of God, but then we're naturally concerned with the channels that we get that truth out through. So that can also then breed this, oh, am I being heard? Am I being heard? And hence the filters, right? So it's a wonderful purchase. And I know it's the first in what hopefully will be a trilogy, right? In fact, exciting news, I just contracted with the publisher for the last two books. So they are on their way. The second book is Hashtag Thrive. It should come out in 2025. And then the third book is Hashtag Crowned, and it will come out in 2026. And it is the Hashtag Bible Study Series. That hashtag, because it's an identifier, right? The hashtag is always used as an identifier. And so these books are each focusing on different aspects of our identity in Christ. Therefore, we are learning what do I identify as in a society that tells us we can identify as anything or everything we want. We come back to the truth of God's word to recognize, no, no, no. I identify as what he created me to be and to do, and I need to understand the fullness of that. beauty of that, the value that is in that, so that I can truly walk confidently in what he has called me to do. Oh, that's fantastic. How can people follow what you're doing? What are your social media handles? They can actually go to my website, jodihendrix.com, and there you'll be able to find how you can connect with me on the different social media avenues. I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. I'm sorry, but I am still not great at Twitter. I try, but you probably won't find a whole lot of action from me on Twitter. I feel like you can't teach an old dog new tricks. That's how I feel when it comes to some of these things. So you'll find that on my website, though, all the different ways you can connect with me. Connect with me directly through my website to be able to contact make sure send me an email Make sure if you're going to Jody Hendricks comm it's not like Jimi Hendrix. Okay. It's not with an X. It's a CKS There you go, there you go see that's right, that's right, of course, my wife's maiden name was Hendricks so is Hendricks so she We were trying to add some credit to her name recently, and so I added her to one of our bills so that her name gets on there, and they put Hendrix with an X, and so I had to call them back up, like, no. So J-O-D-I Hendrix dot com. And I strongly encourage you to check it out when it comes time for purchasing that new set of curricula for the Sunday school or ladies Bible study, whatever it might be, strongly consider this. I know I have sent information about this book and some copies actually to different pastors, wives that I know that are going to be considering it coming around for the next cycle, whenever that is next book cycle, Sunday school cycle. And I hope they will take advantage of that. Jodi, thank you so much for joining us today. Appreciate it so much. May God bless you. Thank you, Ben. You as well. And we'll see you at the next family thing. Yes. Yeah, we love that. And thank you all for listening here on the Third Quarter Podcast. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Hope this has been a blessing to you. Let's keep going forward for the Lord.