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We are covering a variety of topics today with my guest Cheryl Kincaid: surviving child abuse, spiritual abuse, forgiveness, denial, women’s empowerment, being called to preach, and the lesser known golden nuggets of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Join us for an exciting conversation!
Biography
Reverend Cheryl Kincaid is a Presbyterian Minister who studied Marriage and Family Therapy at Bethel Seminary and has a Master of Divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary. Reverend Kincaid is a prolific author of four books, Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (which is the winner of the 2013 Independent Christian Publishers Illumination Reward for bible study), The little Clay Pot, The Little Candle That Was Frightened of the Dark, Karrie’s Thorn and A Forgotten Door Called Home. Rev. Kincaid seeks to tell the story of God’s comforting redemptive grace in the midst of an imperfect world. Rev. Cheryl Kincaid has twenty years of experience in Christian ministry and she confesses that many of her stories were inspired from witnessing God’s redemptive grace unfold in wounded Christian’s lives, including her own. Visit her website at Pastor Cheryl Kincaid’s website to hear her sermons and hear more about her other books at https://revcherylkincaid.com/. To read about Rev. Kincaid’s inspiration for writing Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol visit her website http://www.dickensandchristianity.com/ and read about Charles Dickens’ faith journey.
This site contains information on where to buy Pastor Cheryl’s books as well interviews and sample sermons and samples Pastor Cheryl’s blog.
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Rev Cheryl Kincaid
[00:00:00] What does abuse and trauma, Christianity, forgiveness, have anything to do with Charles Dickens’ beloved book and movie, A Christmas Carol? You’re going to find out today. With my guest Cheryl Kincaid and that’s next on the Wounds of the Faithful podcast! [00:00:22] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer, songwriter, speaker, and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help. [00:00:48] Now, here is Diana. [00:00:54] Hello again, and welcome to the podcast. Come on in [00:01:00] get a cup of coffee cup of tea your favorite beverage and sit and Get cozy because we have a wonderful show for you today With Cheryl Kincaid [00:01:13] those of you watching On youtube you notice that I have a scarf on today And this was what you’d call a splurge purchase when I was on leave. This is a silk scarf from France and it has blue and red colors in it. And the pattern is the inside of the Arc de Triomphe. And so I had to have it and it cost a pretty penny to ship it. [00:01:39] And my sister loved it . And so I bought her one too and we were on a Francophile group today together, and we both wore our scarves for fun. Even as kids, we never dressed the same, but it’s fun to bring a little bit of glamour to our lives. [00:01:57] I did want to do a little bit of [00:02:00] housekeeping here because I’m just finding out that the ads that I’ve had on my show, the pre roll we call them, have included ads that I would not want to have associated with my podcast. My, [00:02:15] Hosting platform, Blueberry [00:02:18] We earn money on the podcast for having these ads, which are instituted by a third party. And on the Facebook group, we all found out we were getting ads like tobacco and, alcohol and casino and, political ads. [00:02:34] And so we all complained. And I had no clue, so I went back to probably January and listened to my pre roll and found out there was a whole bunch of casino ads. So they’re gonna remove them and ban them, the ones that we complained about, but just in case anybody thought that I had any control over those ads, I didn’t. [00:02:57] I’m sure that the people that were offended by those [00:03:00] ads are probably gone, but I apologize anyway for if you were offended by those ads, I’m taking care of it, getting those removed. So bear with me. [00:03:10] So now that that unfortunate, unpleasant business. Out of the way, we have our wonderful guest, Cheryl Kincaid, and I wanted to tell you a little bit more about her on her biography here. And she is the second ordained minister that’s a female that’s been on my show. I welcome more of you if you’re out there to come on the show. [00:03:35] I would have more, but no one has. offered to be on the show, except, you remember reverend Dr. Marcia Ledford. She was on first season. And today we have Reverend Cheryl Kincaid. She is a Presbyterian minister who studied marriage and family therapy at Bethel Seminary and has a Master of Divinity from San Francisco Theological Seminary. [00:03:58] Rev. [00:04:00] Kincaid is a prolific author of four books, Hearing the Gospel Through Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, and Which is the winner of the 2013 Independent Christian Publishers Illumination Award for Bible Study. The Little Clay Pot, The Little Candle That Was Frightened of the Dark, Carrie Storm, and A Forgotten Door Called Home. [00:04:24] Reverend Kincaid seeks to tell the story of God’s comforting, redemptive grace in the middle of an imperfect world. Rev. Cheryl Kincaid has 20 years of experience in Christian ministry, and she confesses that many of her stories were inspired from witnessing God’s redemptive grace unfold in wounded Christians lives, including her own. [00:04:47] You can visit Pastor Cheryl Kincaid’s website to hear her sermons and hear more about her other books RevCherylKincaid. com to read more about [00:05:00] Reverend Kincaid’s inspiration for writing Hearing the Gospel through Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol. [00:05:07] Visit her website, dickens and christianity.com and read about Charles Dickens faith journey. [00:05:14] So yes, I have heard her speaking on a couple podcasts and she’s a fascinating lady. We’re going to hear about her story and it’s almost Christmas coming up, and so this is a perfect time to talk about a Christmas Carol and learn maybe a little bit more about it. And we’re going to talk about her journey as a female minister. [00:05:37] So without further ado, here is my conversation with Reverend Cheryl Kincaid. [00:05:44] Please welcome my guest, Cheryl Kincaid to the show. Thank you so much for being here. This is going to be great. [00:05:52] Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here. [00:05:54] I did do a little bio, but, tell the folks a little bit about yourself,[00:06:00] what you do. [00:06:00] Thank you. [00:06:01] My name is Cheryl and I’m a survivor of incest and rape. I grew up in a home that where we went to church. On a regular basis. When I was a very young child, we didn’t, but we started to go to church on a regular basis when I was older. But my father was a chronic alcoholic and he was abusive and sexually abusive. [00:06:21] I remember my mother honestly struggling with the, scriptures that told her to submit and at that time there was a lot of stories out there. And I think some of them were fictionalized of women who just prayed. The man came to faith and the abuse stopped. And I think, and at that time, it was also Bill Gothard’s seminar, the umbrella of authority. [00:06:44] Oh, yeah. This idea that, that women have to go through men to get to God, which is entirely unbiblical, but it certainly is, is very real in the church. Um, so she had a hard time leaving him even after my pastor who [00:07:00] was a man who stood up for the Word of God in every way, told her, I think you should leave him. [00:07:05] But, there was a younger pastor who told her to take him back after he went to prison and she was abandoned again. But, as a result, I was abused and many of my sisters were. And I grew up, I had a wonderful conversion story where I was wondering if there was a God or if there was anything called love. [00:07:23] And I’d gone to Sunday school. And I heard about heaven and I thought, well, I don’t want to live here on earth because my abuser called the sexual abuse lab. And so I thought I would throw myself off a window and then I could be in heaven with Jesus. And then, what happened is I tried to get up the third time when I felt a warm hand on my stomach and heard a voice say, God is love. [00:07:46] And I went to church the next day and named Jesus as Lord and Savior. , So I grew up with the expectation, because I read lots of Christian novels, that I would meet some wonderful Christian man and he would rescue me from the [00:08:00] abuse and help me heal from the abuse. In fact, my favorite line in Much Ado About Nothing is When, , that one of the main character turns to the heroine and says, serve God, love me and heal. [00:08:12] And , that was what I was hoping would happen. And I also got the bug to teach and preach because the Lord Jesus called me to a gift of evangelism. So what happened, unfortunately, as I went into Christian service, the first job I got, I had a co worker who physically abused me in front of everyone and no one did anything. [00:08:32] Now, this was 1978. He slugged me three times on my back, but they still should have known better. I left the room and prayed about it and thought I should say, let’s work it out. I need to ask forgiveness because I was angry at you and expecting him to ask forgiveness and that’s not what happened. Uh, in fact, the theater company took the money my church had given me for my support and, and diverted it to pay other bills and [00:09:00] they fired me. [00:09:01] So that I, after that incident, I started to have flashbacks of my abuse. I only had like two or three boyfriends and all of them were physically abusive and emotionally abusive. So, I started to go to counseling and, first of all, I lived in a house of women who were all, we were all committed to Jesus Christ. [00:09:23] And we tried to cast out the nightmares and flashbacks. I was happy thinking they were demons. Again, completely unbiblical, demons are entities, they’re not emotions, but we tried to cast out the emotions of the abuse, and I learned in counseling as I went, I had to embrace those emotions that indeed I felt terrorized and frightened because this wasn’t God’s will and it was sin and we should be terrorized and frightened by sin and we should understand eventually that that Christ can empower us out of it. [00:09:54] But we have to learn to make wise choices. There’s a verse right behind me. It [00:10:00] says, peace. I will speak to my people, kindness. I will speak to my people, but let them not turn again to folly. So it also has to do with decisions we make. At that time I continued my journey. I was facilitating support groups for survivors of abuse. [00:10:17] I was in a car accident. I had a pastor try to bully me out of, suing the person who hit me, left me with a left paralyzed leg. and he was a good bullier. I left that denomination and somehow almost dying made me think I want to do what I want to do, which is preach the gospel. And if I’m a therapist, I can’t. [00:10:37] I can’t be directive. I have to be non directional. And I understand why they have to be non directional, but I wanted to be directional. And so I changed my major to Divinity, got a Master’s of Divinity, and I’ve been a preacher. I’ve written a couple of books. Hearing the Gospel through Dickens and Christmas Carol came out of my, trying to understand poverty. [00:10:59] And, [00:11:00] and I always says there was something religious about the book. But then when I started to research, and it was after I was getting over one of my car accidents, I saw that each of the spirits mirrored a lesson in Advent. And I studied about Dickens own life. He had a nephew who was paralyzed and, and the wound that Tiny Tim had was probably from child labor. [00:11:21] Because at this time he was fighting against child labor. So I wrote a book about that and then it was time to write the book about the abuse, the one I’ve always wanted to write. When I facilitate support groups for survivors of rape and incest, one of the complaints of Christian women was this, is that like the books my mom read. [00:11:40] Every book that was about abuse followed a similar pattern. Either the woman was a non Christian and when she accepted Christ, the abuse stopped. Or the woman was a Christian, but when she has this epiphany that she should forgive him more, then the abuse stops. When in reality, she needs to learn righteous [00:12:00] indignation. [00:12:00] She needs to learn the righteous anger of Malachi and Isaiah. That says you don’t treat people that way. The third scenario was that she, they’d make her a little crazy. She’d have an eating disorder. She’d be a prostitute. And one of the things when we talk about what about a book about a normal girl who goes to church every Sunday, and this is happening at night, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it. [00:12:23] And, so that’s what Carrie Storen is about. It’s about a Christian girl and her church are not villainized. Her church just don’t understand what to do because she can’t find the words to say with what was happening to her. and when it does come out, they do call the police and Carrie’s worst nightmare comes true. [00:12:43] Her world unravels as she goes into foster care, but she learns empowerment and then this and she meets a best friend named Maloney. A young girl from Hawaii who has gener generational abuse from what has been done to the Hawaiian people that’s [00:13:00] inside the book as well. The next book is A Forgotten Door called Home and it follows Carrie into a young adulthood and lon as well, and also follows her employer Isabella, who, is a counselor throughout the book and is Isabella’s grandmother, who, was at one time flee from Guatemala. [00:13:22] And so I hope the book, both books talk about women being empowered, women gaining a sense of righteous anger, and also deal with post traumatic stress disorder, which very few Christian books deal with. They want to talk about forgiveness. They want to talk about confrontation, but even in, and I won’t mention the name of the book, because I don’t want to slander the author, but in one of the more popular modern Christian books, she says, you only confront him unless it’s for his good. [00:13:49] No, you confront him for your good. And your children’s good. , and separating forgiveness and denial. That’s another important part of [00:14:00] these books. [00:14:01] Wow. How’s that for an intro? [00:14:07] Fantastic. so much to unpack here and your personal, story of abuse started when you were six years old, is that right? [00:14:19] Well, I think the abuse was before that. Cause I could remember it before that. Again, like Carrie didn’t have words for it. Yeah, I didn’t understand what was going on. [00:14:29] And my father was a pedophile. He should have never been around kids. But I remember it did stop after the conversion, but I’m pretty certain it went on to my other sisters because he liked them really young. By the time he got out of jail, I was 16, so I was too old for him. And I, by that time I developed words. [00:14:52] I had a vocabulary. I understood what foreign occasion meant. I remember as a young girl in Sunday school, [00:15:00] We had a King James Bible with the bed for an occasion. I thought it meant occasionally sinning. You know, you send for an occasion. It’s no, I didn’t realize it was sex outside of the bounds of marriage. [00:15:11] And, I remember struggling with that, trying to understand, well, what is sex? Is it fondling? Is it full in a course? And then to have the courage to talk about it. You know, I had two youth leaders. One was a music director and she really. really empowered me because although women couldn’t teach and preach in my church, as a music director, she did teach and she preached because she was, that was her expertise was music. [00:15:38] So people listened to what she had to say, but she also had the bold gift of preaching. But, and her husband and her encouraged me to teach and preach, but I had another minister, who was kind of a messed up guy. But he thought he should teach me submission, and every chance he got to squash my voice, or to put me down, or to embarrass me, [00:16:00] he took, and it wasn’t just me, in retrospect, there was a lot of women he stepped all over. But, the Lord had to take me down a long road, but my desire to preach the gospel was stronger than both of them. But, I brought that up, because when you have teachers who don’t understand it. It’s hard to, and this is the 70s, it’s hard to say aloud that this is happening to me. [00:16:25] I think the first time someone talked about it is when my Sunday school teacher gave me a book, by, from Teen Challenge. And it talked about it in the book of Teen Challenge, and I, I understood it, finally, what was happening to other people. This isn’t just unique to me. But I remember still that argument of, there are some times you can just obey, , and one of my leaders, no, no, no, you always obey. [00:16:50] It just puts women in a horrible position. Mm hmm. , to learn how to, just to be empowered. But, but praise God, I did find [00:17:00] counselors. And my knowledge of the scripture itself helped to empower me to understand that what they were telling me was false. [00:17:10] And you had been called to be a minister of the gospel. When was that day that you figured out that you were called to preach the gospel? You wanted to be a therapist at first, is that right? Yeah, I did want to be a therapist because I thought I could help other people where I’ve been helped. [00:17:28] But my call came earlier. I was working at a camp called Indian Hills Bible Camp. I was walking down a hill. It was late at night. And someone asked me, all the counselors got in the truck and said, we’re going back to camp. And I said, no, I want to walk. And I was walking and the sun was setting and earlier I had been able to pray with someone to accept Christ. [00:17:50] And it occurred to me that you can spend the rest of your life doing this if you want to. That was the notion. I thought, yeah, I can. And [00:18:00] that’s, and that was before I even knew I was going to be a preacher. Later in my twenties, I went to a Presbyterian church that did believe women could teach and preach. [00:18:08] And, I was breaking up with a guy who I thought was God’s best for me. And I did not want to let him go. And I remember I was counseling with the associate pastor. And, I said, I want to be this guy’s wife because I think he’s going to be a preacher and I want to be a preacher’s wife so I can preach. [00:18:27] And he said, well, first of all, I don’t think he’s going to be a preacher. And I don’t think you two work, which was kind of hard. I don’t think you guys work as a couple. He says, I, and he must saw the hurt in my face because he backed off. But then he said, but there’s something I want you to consider, Cheryl. [00:18:43] He said, I think you’re the preacher and, I think God may be calling you there. Because you speak boldly, you quote the scriptures correctly, quote them in context, and you don’t seem to care what other people think when truth is involved. And it [00:19:00] unraveled me so much that I left the church. It scared me because it scared me. [00:19:06] So that was when I was about 23. When I was 33 was when I enrolled in seminary and understood I was going to be a preacher. And that was the car accident when I realized life’s too short not to do what God is calling me to. And my mind harkened back to that time I was walking down that hill. And I want, I do want to spend the rest of my life praying with people to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. [00:19:30] Yes, a large part of it is counseling because of my background. A large part of it is hearing people’s stories and telling women, I have been there. But a lot of it’s , just taking apart the scriptures and teaching them the Word of God. Yes. And it’s a gift I’ve had since I was a kid. And Carolyn, I wasn’t going to mention names, but that was that music director. [00:19:53] He’d already given me a piece of paper, called the Priscilla Papers. I don’t know if you readers are familiar with them. [00:20:00] You can Google them, but their papers, you remember Priscilla and Aquila? Yes. They were found in Acts. They were a married couple. Priscilla was the wife, Aquila was the husband. And yet when Paul, we meet them in the book of Acts chapter 18, but when Paul commends, Priscilla and Aquila later in his epistles, he mentioned several times Priscilla without mentioning Aquila. [00:20:25] And he always puts Priscilla’s name first. So she was the voice of the two. So the Priscilla papers are biblical reasons why women can teach and preach. So I already had those. And when I went to seminary, I first went to a Baptist seminary. And it was Baptist General Conference that do believe women can teach and preach. [00:20:46] But I was able in my church history class, even though it wasn’t assigned material, to look up, stories about women, who were preachers in church history. And there was quite a few of them. And found out that [00:21:00] they, that God blessed them. And listen to their arguments as to why they could teach and preach. [00:21:05] And the Holy Spirit just kind of won me over and I love what I do. I hope I do it till the day I die. [00:21:13] There are so many examples in scripture about women, leadership and prophesying. We’ve talked about that a lot on the podcast. We did a study on Deborah, you know, I rarely hear a sermon on Deborah. She was a military leader, she was a prophetess, she was an amazing woman. [00:21:38] And we just don’t hear enough about her. And Anna was a prophetess, and Philip’s three daughters, they prophesied. And there’s so many examples. The woman at the well. I mean, Jesus sent her off to go and tell her whole village. First evangelist. And she’s an evangelist. I mean, a woman is the one that told the disciples, Hey, Jesus is risen [00:22:00] here. [00:22:00] So why is it that men in the church think that women can’t speak or evangelize or tell the good news? Because the Bible definitely has many examples. [00:22:12] And you know, I don’t mind discussing the theology with men. [00:22:15] When it gets harsh is when, when people get cruel and like all, bigotries, misogynism can be very cruel and heartless in the way , that people respond to you. So I, unless. I’m at the point a lot of times when I meet someone who doesn’t believe it, I say that’s fine, there are other churches you can go to, but the gifts, you know, in the book of Corinthians, Paul said are given without respect to slave nor free, Greek nor Jew, male nor female. [00:22:47] So they’re given to both of us, and when you stop someone from using the spiritual gift, you do something violent to their soul. It’s just violence. And, so, finding your way out. Christians for [00:23:00] Biblical Equality is something else people can Google. The Priscilla Papers, Egalitarians for Christ. [00:23:07] Those are organizations where you can get lots of, scriptures. To argue the case, ECO, which is Evangelical Covenant Order, my, my denomination has a theological paper. If you go to ECO, just Google ECO Presbyterian, and it’ll take you to our website, and you’ll get lots of theological treaties on it. [00:23:28] Thank you. On why we believe in egalitarianism, that women, are equal to men and creation. They’re healthy. The Great Commission was both given to men and to women. In the latter days, you old men will dream dreams, you young women will prophesy. I can go on about the many scriptures where God says that women can teach and preach. [00:23:50] And the bottom line is we do it for the kingdom’s sake. Yes. Not for anything else. Not for attention or some other foolish, assumption [00:24:00] that they have that we just want attention and do usurp authority over men and we hate men and blah, blah, blah. That isn’t the truth at all. [00:24:09] It’s not true. We do it out of our love for Jesus Christ. The same reason a man does it, or even as I heard one preacher say, men do it for a zeal for God, women do it because community is so important to them. Nonsense. Both of us are given the charge of keeping Christian community. We all do it because of the love of our Jesus Christ, gratitude to Jesus Christ, and a call on our lives. [00:24:34] They tried to keep you from getting ordained. Is that right? [00:24:37] I had some sexual harassment. I had people that tried to stop me from being ordained. Yeah. One was a close friend of mine, a woman actually, and she thought she was doing God’s work and slandered me horribly to my PNC. But I was under a minister who was, who behaved inappropriately. [00:24:55] And when it got to the point that I could not keep it to myself and I had [00:25:00] to go. To my presbytery, which are the ministers over him. He saw it as a great betrayal and he did everything he could. And he started some horrible rumors about me that unfortunately still follow me. Um, well, I was this massive seductress, Madame Bovier. [00:25:17] It hurt me tremendously. But yeah, and he had trialed some other men to continue in that. But, I finally, I did leave that denomination and joined a different denominations. Denomination I’m in now have heard the rumors, but they’ve been really bold about standing up against them and said, that’s not who Cheryl is. [00:25:36] We’ve worked with her. We know she’s a godly woman. And we suspect you guys are trying to to stop her career. And that’s been lovely to have them at my back. [00:25:48] I’m so glad. I know I see the Twitter wars. With Beth Moore on there, and they’re just crucifying her. I don’t know Beth Moore [00:26:00] very well, but she seems like a great lady. [00:26:04] She’s biblical, she’s Christ centered, she calls people to repentance in Jesus Christ. I mean, she left the Baptist Church for the Anglican Church. But I gotta say, who was it that put her down? I’m sorry. I mean, MacArthur probably. Yeah. John MacArthur wanted to stop teaching. He made a mistake because when she was a Baptist, she was primarily preaching just to women. [00:26:25] He told her to go home. There’s no evidence of women teaching. Well, if you want to take his strict hermeneutic of the Bible, there’s quite a few evidence about women teaching other women that he can’t deny. But by, by chasing her out of the Baptist Church, now she’s in the Anglican Church preaching to both men and women. [00:26:44] So all he did was widen her audience. But, sadly, to say he was cruel and rude, and, I’m saddened that she’s gotten what she’s gotten. I would hope that when this all happens, someone asks, what would you [00:27:00] say with Beth Moore? Maybe a more sober answer would be… She and I look at the scriptures differently. [00:27:06] I have some concerns, and he can quote the Timothy passage about women remaining silent. He could have done that. Instead, what he said, go home. There’s no evidence for women teaching, and the crowd applauded her, applauded him, and she wasn’t even there. You know, I saw a picture of her recently preaching to a crowd, and I thought, I looked at her face, and she looked like most preachers. [00:27:29] She looked like she was giving everything she had, but she looked just a little tired. It’s hard work to stand up there in front of people and deliver the word of God. And it was just a nasty blow for no other reason but conceit and maybe jealousy that people are listening to her. [00:27:46] It’s unfortunate. And we had a gal on my first season on the podcast, Dr. [00:27:52] Reverend Marsha Landford. She’s a lawyer and a, Episcopalian priest. [00:28:00] And, she was, terrific and she had a very interesting journey as well. So I like to support our women who are called into ministry and empower them. You are also facilitating support groups for women, safe places for women to talk. [00:28:16] Yeah, that was a big part of my ministry. Do you still do that? [00:28:20] I actually, I visit different churches and talk about it. I think the big miss. Mistake the churches make, and I just want to go into it right now, is the difference between forgiveness and denial. Oh, yeah, because women get beaten up by the word forgiveness. [00:28:37] And I understand it’s an important teaching in the church. Christians, we forgive because Christ forgave us. But the argument that’s used is that it’s more for you, it’s not for him, you need to let go of the anger. That’s not a biblical response. No, that’s not what Jesus did either. Let’s just define forgiveness. [00:28:59] [00:29:00] Forgiveness is the ability to give to God the judgment or the punishment of someone to him because you can’t carry them. Forgiveness, before you forgive, you first have to admit that you have been violated. You have to admit the severity of the violation. And if you bring that, that judgment to God and say, God, you judge them because I can’t carry it anymore. [00:29:28] It does not relinquish the pain. Pain will remain. You have the pain because you’ve been violated, not because you haven’t forgiven. It won’t relinquish the anger. You have what’s called righteous anger. The laws of God would disobey. So you have to ask God to help you to manage that anger and to integrate it. [00:29:49] Caution is the only response when you forgive someone because now you know that they’re violent. Denial says, what happened to you? Wasn’t that bad or worse, it was deserved, [00:30:00] or you had a role in it. Those are all teachings that you’ll find. Even at my, I went to at San Francisco Theological Seminary. Even at San Francisco Theological Seminary, I found that there, that you had a role in and that, , it hushes the voice of caution. [00:30:18] By saying you must reconcile and you should see things from their perspective, which believe me, if you grew up in an abusive home, you’re already used to empathizing with your abuser. It’s called the trauma bond. That’s the clinical term. You bond with them. It doesn’t make any sense, but you do it. And you already understand that they were abused. [00:30:39] You don’t need to be beaten up. It’s hard enough to separate yourselves from this person who’s hurting you. But, … Denial says, and it squishes anger so you don’t have a defense to say, get away from me when they come back to you. Or to file the restraining order, or to move to a place where they can’t [00:31:00] see you. [00:31:01] Christians often mistake denial for forgiveness. And they even go so far as to say that somehow that God’s not going to forgive you. And again. God’s forgiveness for gods who love the world, that he gave his only son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. [00:31:20] And, also forgiveness is a process. And, when someone came to Jesus and they asked him, how many times must I forgive my brother? And Jesus says, seven times seventy. Now that number is an eternal number in the Hebrew. So what did he mean by that? Well, I think he meant this. That some sins are so egregious and so painful and so cruel that you have to spend the rest of your life in the process of forgiveness. [00:31:52] And I think what Christians are told is that if you feel anger or hurt at the abuser afterwards, you haven’t [00:32:00] truly forgiven, you haven’t truly given it to God. What I want to tell you listeners is, yes you did! But now you have to go to God again and say, I’m in pain again. It’s not because you’re in sin, it’s because what happened to you was so egregious. [00:32:13] So you keep coming back to God, and that’s when He can draw you close in it. But the reality is that, the reality, is that this is not God’s will for anyone. This is sin. And in the sin, whenever there’s sin or violation, as it says in the book of Romans, the whole world grieves. It groans for its redemption. [00:32:36] And the word groan there is that it sighs. Have you ever sighed like, I can’t take it. Yes. Alright. I can’t believe that person’s still doing that. One of my, um, sexual harassment people in a church was transferred to my church to another church in Texas where he harassed a 16 year old and [00:33:00] I was just, No one listened to me, and it hurt. [00:33:04] Jesus stated that you have to bring forth fruits of repentance for forgiveness. Jesus stated that. John the Baptist said you need to repent and be baptized. And, God told the Israelites you need to repent from your idolatry for forgiveness. We’re not required to, reconcile with somebody who doesn’t repent. [00:33:30] In Ephesians chapter 5 verses 10 through 12, the Apostle Paul is talking to the church. And he says, Determine what pleases the Lord, have nothing to do with unfruitful actions that darkness produces. Instead, expose them. Expose them for what they are. For it’s shameful to mention those things done by disobedient people in secret. [00:33:58] It is okay to [00:34:00] expose your abuser. And sometimes, even if he has a wonderful reputation, all you’re doing is helping him to come to repentance. So please don’t feel guilty about calling the police or even talking to his board about what he did to you, because he will do it to other women. He will. And you want to have a conscience free to say, I said everything to anyone that people want me to say. [00:34:27] Yes, thank you for saying those things because I know my listeners have definitely been told that, Oh, we’re not going to call the police. We’re going to keep it in the church. And like you already experienced, we’re going to send this guy, this youth leader, who’s abused girls. We’re going to send them some other church, you know. [00:34:47] Or to counseling. And we need to go to jail. We have certain laws that, you know, this is what enrages me so much. If a man came into a church. And started to, set it on fire, [00:35:00] and vandalized the walls, and he was a minister. No one would have any qualms about sending him to jail, but a man comes into a church and vandalizes them, violates them, and we go, shh. [00:35:14] We’re going to send him to counseling so he can repent. No, send him to jail. Our laws are good laws that protect women from abuse and seek to stop the curse of abuse. Please send him to jail. [00:35:32] Yes. Instead of saying the girls are evil temptresses [00:35:36] And what did she wear? And yeah Yeah, no a grown man Seducing a child is there’s nowhere on this planet that that is right Yes, I agree with you. [00:35:49] So we want to talk more about your book About the charles dickens christmas carol Because holidays are coming up. [00:36:00] Yes, they are. This would be a great time to pull out some of those nuggets about this that maybe we haven’t noticed. And what was your inspiration for this book again? [00:36:13] Well, we used to walk home from church. Our church had moved. It was about a mile and a half away. And actually it was a very pleasant walk most of the time, at the Christmas Eve service. And then it was midnight. And so I watched. Carol. And, I had, I grew up in poverty and I thought Dickens got what poverty was all about. [00:36:34] He understood the despair that goes with poverty. And I love that in the book that, the characters. that were the most godly in the book were the poorest. You know, the Bible says blessed are the poor for God hath chosen them to be rich in faith. Not a verse that a lot of people quote anymore, but that’s a great Bible verse. [00:36:55] But, um, so it was during my car accident I read a couple books [00:37:00] about Charles Dickens biography and realized at the time there were poor houses, there was a poor man’s law, and there was a horrible economic theory called cash nexus theory. And it was a theory that said that, that there’s not enough for everybody. [00:37:16] That’s why people are poor. So it’s best for some people just to die out. And it was being practiced. And, if you read the Anglican Prayer Book, and the lessons of that, they’re all taken from Isaiah. The passages are. The Luke 1 through 3 is not in it. It all focuses in on Isaiah, because the idea was that we should, repent and clean out our hearts, let Christ, the Christ child come, because in his day, no one had any room for him. [00:37:49] And Dickens was enraged that the church was supporting the poor man’s laws. The laws where they set up houses, for the poor. Initially, the [00:38:00] poor houses were set up during the winter to provide a place for the workers who didn’t have a workplace. But then the church got a hold of them, and sadly they went to a bad place. [00:38:10] That somehow the poor were poor because they were depraved and sinful, and they were going to punish the sin out of them. Instead of introducing them to Jesus Christ, Which I think they tried to, but it became a very cruel place. And Charles Dickens heard Are There No Prisons? Are There No Workhouses? [00:38:27] from a clergy person on the floor of Parliament. And he wrote about it in the Mirror of Parliament, which was his newspaper. So he was trying to take care of the poor man’s laws, and he wanted to rebuke the church. In fact, there’s a quote, a famous quote from him, where he says The church has put the master of the New Testament out of its sanctuary, and he stands alone knocking at the door, and that’s kind of an illusion to Revelation 320. [00:38:54] Behold, I stand at the door and knock, which was written to a church, wasn’t written to non Christians. So, [00:39:00] follow the lessons of the Advent from the, from prophecy to, prophecy to, to love, to the Christ child, to repentance, and Scrooge repents at the end. And the word Ebenezer in Hebrew means the Lord has brought me thus far. [00:39:17] You all know the, some of you listeners, if they go to a traditional church, know the song, Here I raise my Ebenezer. Yes. Okay, that means, Here I raise, hither by thy help I come, hither by thy help I come. The Lord has brought me thus far. so he named the character Ebenezer. He called it a Christmas carol because carols used to be a way that poor people would sing moral lessons to rich people, for food, and they would often bring up the fact that the Christ child was rejected by the rich in the carols. [00:39:53] So it’s a lesson. He wants to tell a moral lesson, and he uses The four lessons of Advent, including the [00:40:00] fifth, the lesson of Christmas by the Spirits, and I’ll let people read the book if they want more. It’s best to buy from the publisher. Don’t buy it on Amazon, because it’s in the UK, and Amazon overcharges for it. [00:40:13] So, if you go to my website, RevCherylKincaid. com, no period after Rev, and the first page is books by Reverend Cheryl. You, can click on it, it’ll take you directly to Cambridge Scholars. if you’re on your phone, just Google Books by Reverend Cheryl, because if you put reverendcheryl. com, they’ll take you to Google Books. [00:40:33] And Google Books takes you to Amazon. The rest of the books are found on Amazon, but that one, is found, is best bought by Cambridge Scholars Publishers. [00:40:44] Yeah, I definitely have to get that for, for Christmas. That would be a good gift. Yeah, it’s a good book. It’s a good book. And your other books, are they on the same platform? [00:40:56] Yeah, they’re on the same, website. if you Google Reverend Cheryl [00:41:00] Kincaid dot com, are books by Reverend Cheryl. The, Kerry Storm, we talked about, but if you click on that, it’s at Amazon. And if you read it, please, write a review on Amazon. Forgotten Door called Home, is on Amazon. [00:41:15] They’re both in Kindle and in, hardback and softback. The other two are, The Little Clay Pot, which is a Jeremiah 18 scripture about a pot that falls apart in the potter’s hand. And he makes something different of them. And then the last one is the little candle that’s frightened of the dark. And really it is an Advent devotion, teaches parents how to use the Advent wreath with their children. [00:41:40] And it has little sayings that you can say as you read each, as you light each candle on your way to Christmas. So my prayer is that you would pick them up and they’re good books. Yeah, we need more good books for the kids that teach truths and some of that are fun and,[00:42:00] I know we talked a lot. [00:42:02] We were all over the place on topics. Was there anything that we didn’t talk about that you wanted the listeners to know? I think primarily I hope that when you get Keri Storm, it’s a compilation of women I’ve talked to and my own story. And my prayer is that as you read it, you will resonate from it. [00:42:25] I know a couple of people have reviewed it on online bookstore and they say that it’s helped them and they walk. Cause I incorporate. lessons of recovery in it. So my prayer is that you will find that, as a help to you, to their recovery. And you’ll realize that you’re not alone in this. It’s one out of every six. [00:42:45] Some statistics, the other statistic is one out of every three. There’s a debate, but it’s too many. I’ll just say that. There’s lots of us who’ve been through it. Lots of us who suffer PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are not [00:43:00] demons. You cannot cast it out. You cannot pray it away. But you can learn to integrate it in your life. [00:43:07] And, and while you’re integrating it, Christ can bring great healing in the situation. And I bear witness to that. [00:43:14] Awesome. Those all will be in the show notes for you listeners, so you can find them easily. I’m so thankful for you, Cheryl, and for your ministry. And I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your story and you’re welcome to come back anytime you write another book you want us to know about. [00:43:35] Thank you, I’d love to. Yes, that’d be lovely. God bless you. God’s blessings to you too. [00:43:41] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You can connect with us at DSW Ministries dot org, where you’ll find our blog along with our Facebook, Twitter, [00:44:00] and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week! [00:44:09]