The Gold Digger Show is all about finding God's gold in every story.
Season 1: Women’s Issues
“Yet, as citizens of the Kingdom of God, manure work is never for nothing because we are gardeners, following the example of our Lord. We plunge our hands into manure, we mine for God’s gold, we immerse ourselves in the slow work of our Lord, not because we are guaranteed results, but because we are inhabiting our new identities.
In Christ, we are life bringers. We are patient gardeners. We are ark builders. We are hope and love ambassadors. We are sin forgivers. We are gold diggers.”
Proverbs 31 is God’s blessing over you. It’s His beautiful way of saying, “I see you.” It’s His glorious blueprint – literally a poem – for how your family can express their gratitude and admiration and love when regular language would probably fall short. And the tradition is that this should be sung over you weekly, a reminder every seven days of who you are and the importance of what you do.
Perhaps one of the most ill-used words in Christianity comes from the phrase ezer kenegdo. This episode focuses on the true meaning of this phrase and its implications for the purpose of woman.
"Resurrecting the true meaning of ezer, therefore, is not about feminism or some silly notion of girl power. It’s not about claiming what’s rightfully ours as women or exalting ourselves as stronger than men. Laying hold of the powerful purpose of womankind is about the Christian mandate to live out the Kingdom of God, as much as possible, here and now – on this earth as it is in heaven."
Can the doctrine of female subordination have anything to do with women being silent about sexual abuse in the church?
When we hear the term female objectification we probably immediately think of nearly -naked swimsuit models or some pop-star on stage shaking every inch of what the good Lord gave her. I’m contending, though, that wives can be objectified too. Female objectification should conjure images of a bride on her wedding day and a mom in the carpool line as well because these kinds of every day women are being objectified in their marriages, families and churches daily.
Today’s episode dives into two books I’ve recently read regarding the objectification of women both in and out of the church. We’ll dig for God’s gold in this tough subject and find that the church has the message every woman needs to hear. The big question is: Are they hearing it loud and clear?
It's a new year and that often means many of us are working on resolutions and goals. Today's episode offers a unique challenge for women as they focus on what they want out of the year to come.
Are you taking up all the space in your own life? Or are you shrinking within the life you've been given.
We're going to explore what it looks like when we take up our own space -- not anyone else's space -- but, simply, our own. What makes it difficult for women to own what's been given to them to tend? Join me today as we dig for the gold in the empty spaces of our lives.
As controversy after controversy emerges in the era of #MeToo, Christians are faced with the dilemma of how to respond to both the victim and the accused in each allegation.
This episode discusses the docu-series “Surviving R. Kelly” and explores a unique Christian response in a time of vitriol, suspicion and hate.
Where is the gold to be found in the midst of abuse accusations? Perhaps love is the answer.
Have we made actual idols out of motherhood, married living and female nurturance? Today’s episode dives right into this controversial concept and asks the hard questions about a woman’s true purpose in life.
What is spiritual agency? Essentially, it's the capacity to exercise authority over your own spiritual trajectory. It's your ability to spiritually grow and change at your discretion, with God's help.
Many churches, marriages and families live under the notion that women's spiritual agency should be abdicated to the male authority in their lives. Even under the gentlest of circumstances, the surrender of one's own spiritual agency is deeply damaging.
Join me today to discuss the importance of spiritual agency and the beauty of God's design for all his children to have it and use it.
This is the very first episode of my podcast in which I discuss my new Bible study, A Seat at the Table: Moving from Hierarchy to Harmony, available on Amazon!
Season 2: God-Stories
We don't have to live half-lives. Abundance is right here. It's ours for the taking.
Our identities are restored when we discipline ourselves to filter all that we are, and everything that we experience, through Christ alone. Join us for the final installment of our Real-Life series, where we explore a few principles that will help us live in abundance every day. After all, it's our right. Our default. Our inheritance.
Whose voice is in your ears?
For many of us, we live as if it's okay with God that we make our own way in the world, defining ourselves however we think best. We pay little attention to the meanings we make of our experiences, relationships and the messages we absorb.
God isn't okay with it. In fact, He went to great lengths to secure our true identities for us. The question is, will we apprehend our true selves? Or will we allow our identities to be destroyed?
Once we've looked into the coffin of our dead God-stories, it's a pretty tall order to resurrect them. Happily, that's not our job! God is at-the-ready to use our powerful stories to connect us to others and to shine His bright light into a dark world. All we must do is cooperate.
What does cooperation look like? Today's episode focuses on four practical steps of cooperation we can take every day to resurrect our stories and live in the abundance of freedom and connection.
Justin Timberlake may have brought sexy back; but we, Gold Digger, are bringing back things much more compelling -- confession, repentance and obedience. Let's get to digging!
How is it possible to kill a God-story? Why would the enemy even care about your story or mine?
What if telling my story makes me vulnerable to rejection? What if it's useless or worse -- what if it's dangerous?
Episode 2 explores these questions and more by using scripture to give us the foundation of why our true and integrated stories are not only important -- they're completely necessary.
Okay! We get it! We've allowed the thief to steal, kill and destroy certain aspects of our abundance. What do we do about it?
The second episode of the series on the abundant life we're offered in Christ focuses on how we take our real lives back. Specifically, we explore practical ways to begin living free and connected.
We ask hard questions and search for good answers because we're Gold Diggers and that's just what we do!
Season 3: Acceptance
Radically accepting our circumstances? Sure. What other choice do we really have anyway? Radically accepting others? Ok. That's probably doable too.
What about radically accepting ourselves though? What about when we're the ones who caused someone else's pain? What about when we set things in motion that can never be reversed or repaired?
Join us today for the final installment of this series, as we engage in a conversation about how we can radically accept ourselves when we feel so unacceptable.
This episode tackles the big question of how to accept God when He doesn’t seem to act acceptably?
Sound disrespectful? Heretical? If we avoid this question then we do ourselves a huge disservice.
With suffering being a part of the human experience, it only makes sense that we ask ourselves how we can learn to accept a God who so often feels unacceptable.
Join me as we dig in the dark to find out how, when we accept God as God, suffering is reduced and we find more room to really love.
Episode 4 digs into the hard stuff: abuse, infidelity, injustice, death. We explore how radical acceptance is an empowerment in the face of the unacceptable, using Brandt Jean as a case study. We ask ourselves the hard question: How do I accept the unacceptable?
Maybe you're on the fence about the practicality and, perhaps, even the morality of radical acceptance. I mean, doesn't this smack of New Age mumbo jumbo or some kind of pop-psychology sold to the masses to help them deal with existential angst?
The short answer to those questions is NO! This episode is all about exploring God's radical acceptance and how he provided it as a framework for followers of Christ. We'll take a look at key passages of scripture which demonstrate Christ's radical acceptance of others and of life on life's terms. Together, we'll hone in on one of the keys that makes radical acceptance not just possible, but preferable.
Radical acceptance, huh? Sounds nice but how is it:
-Workable?
-Practical?
-Possible?
Episode 2 illustrates how radical acceptance can be implemented on a daily basis in your life to reduce suffering and grow love. We dig in the dark of cancer and emotional abuse and come out with God's gold.
Season 3 is LIVE and we're going deep, Gold Diggers! We're taking a look at the concept of Radical Acceptance. What is it? How does it help? What about those impossible-to-accept situations?
We begin in Episode 1 with the story of how my sister's cancer diagnosis thrust me into the journey of Radical Acceptance. Though the story is painful, we'll lean into it because it highlights how radical acceptance accomplishes what seems like the impossible -- reducing suffering and growing love.
Join me as we learn to dig in the dark this season, bravely looking for that gold that's shining in the most unacceptable circumstances.
Season 4: Living in Exile
In our final episode of Season 4, we talk with my dear friend Jen -- a former Communications Director for a non-profit and active lay-minister who was forced to step off the path of familiarity into a long decade of exile when her family of nine was thrust into crisis due to her son's mental health issues. Jen speaks candidly of nearly losing her faith and all of the anger and unrest that comes from being in exile with God. If you're struggling with your own season of exile, you don't want to miss this episode.
Today's episode is extra special because I'm interviewing my handsome husband, Chaplain Clayton Jones, about what he learned in a period of painful exile.
He conceptualized his time in exile as a three-part flow: loss, change and renewal. If you're disoriented from the radical changes in the world and in your own life, you don't want to miss Clayton's wisdom and insight.
The past two episodes have featured stories of radical generosity from our guest Meredith, in which we learned laws of stewardship and gained hope from the understanding that God appreciates the work we undertake with him.
Today's episode is a bonus because Meredith wraps up with some solid gold on what it means to dream with God.
In C.S. Lewis's famous sermon, The Weight of Glory, he proposes that scripture indicates God gives His people appreciation for participating with Him in good, Kingdom work.
Today's episode is the second installment of our interview with Meredith, who gave away a vast inheritance in an epic adventure with God.
We talk about dreaming with God, entering into the narrative He wants for our lives and opening ourselves up to receive His appreciation when we live with generous hearts.
In part-one of the first-ever Gold Digger interview, we feature the story of one woman's epic adventure with God. Meredith Meyer shares about how she partnered with God to give away a vast inheritance, down to the last dime.
We explore concepts of stewardship Meredith learned along the way and connect her story to the broader one going on in the world today. We uncover the gold of the empowerment Jesus offers us to resist our baser human nature and to get generous when it makes more sense to get greedy; to become self-giving when selfishness is the name of the game.
Jesus spent a lot of time trying to get us to understand how fear makes absolutely no sense when we live in the reality of God. Elsewhere in scripture, the Lord promises to give us some pretty big payoffs if we're willing to exchange our spirit of fear for the new spirit Jesus was telling us about.
Join Amber today in an exploration of how we can finally access the powerful, fear-free life we've been promised, even in the midst of very dark days.
Fear is a universal human emotion and, frankly, pretty helpful in many circumstances. So, why does scripture warn us to NOT fear over 300 times? How is it possible to live fearless in a world that, honestly, gives us so many reasons to fear? Perhaps Christ provides the antidote to fear when he tells us we must become like children in order to enter into God's reality. Join us today as we begin our exploration into the golden goodness that can be found even in the midst of chaos.
Season 5: God, Sex and Us
Consent is often discussed in the context of dating, but rarely is it examined in the context of marriage. Adding religious elements to the mix can make the conversation even more problematic.
On the last episode of this season, Clayton joins us again as we explore the intersections of faith, marriage, and consent.
What happens to your faith after the well-intentioned teachings of your church leave you disillusioned and devastated?
On today's episode, Anna continues her story of recovery from sexual shame to pursuing sexual wholeness.
On today's episode, we hear from Anna, a woman who did everything "right" according to Christian morality. She and her husband were married virgins, with high hopes for a future of love and happiness. Yet, her faithfulness and purity didn't save her from the agony of a divorce after only two years of marriage.
Anna tells the story of how God unraveled her sexual shame, one thread at a time, even as she wandered away in pain. If you've ever wondered how God can make something beautiful out of your immense suffering, you don't want to miss this episode.
What if I told you there is a book of erotic metaphor planted in the pages of the Holy Bible? Many people don't understand the intention of the Song of Songs, much less grasp its power and beauty. On today's episode, Bible leader and Co-Founder of the Dive Collective, Erin Richer and I discuss this unnerving book and its implications for understanding the relationship between God, sex and us.
If you have a hard time dealing with sexual issues directly, it's a sure sign you've experienced some kind of sexual harm, according to experts. Sexual injury can occur on a physical, mental and spiritual level. It can happen inside and outside of a relationship. It can take place between two consenting adults. It comes from many places, including culture and church.
On today's episode, we tackle the subject of sexual injury. What is it? What do we do about it?
On this episode, my husband Clayton Jones and I discuss the sexual challenges and points of growth in our 22 year marriage.
We discuss things like:
Are our churches promoting "cursed-based" thinking in Christian marriages, despite having the best intentions?
How do artificial hierarchy and rigid gender roles diminish intimacy in marriage?
What is the ONE thing we'd tell our younger selves about our sexuality if we could turn back time?
Join us as we dig for God’s gold in our married sexuality!
What if God actually exists and he cares deeply about us as sexual beings? Let’s explore this topic in Season Five with curiosity and grace.
Season 6: Advent
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
The Advent season calls us to remember, reflect and rejoice because God is with us. Come along every day of Advent, as we offer a five minute episode complete with a scripture reading, contemplation and prayer to keep your heart and mind focused on the golden beauty of Christ's coming this season.
Season 7: Lenten Gold
When Jesus was resurrected, he emerged victorious over death and hell. He paid the penalty for human sin in full, once and for all time. His resurrection both vindicated and validated him as Messiah and Lord of all. Theologian N.T. Wright explains the implications for the church in that the early Christians identified themselves as a resurrection people. For them, and for us, Christ’s resurrection radically altered the relationship between the Christian and the world in which we live. A resurrection people engage the world as if the Kingdom of God is already here…because it is! This means we expect to see dead things come to life in human hearts and lives. We expect to see restoration where there once was devastation; we expect to see beauty where there once was deformity; we expect to see safety where there once was danger and joy where sorrow once reigned. A resurrection people look for God’s gold in this world and we find it!
Today’s episode will focus on the spiritual battle Christ faced in the days leading up to his death and on the battle we, as his people, continue to face in this world. Often, we frame our spiritual struggles in terms of US versus the evil in the WORLD or US versus our sinful FLESH. Indeed, many of our battles do take place in those realms; however, there is a third, and significant, battleground that Jesus faced and that we do as well. The uncomfortable truth is that the Bible makes clear that there is are actual evil forces, known as demons and Satan, working against God’s encroaching kingdom at all times.
Today we focus on areas of our lives which we’ve held back from God because, honestly, they’re too precious to relinquish. Pastor Tim Keller often refers to the human heart as an idol factory, by which he means that we relentlessly worship the wrong things. We misplace our allegiance, our life’s work, our focus, our adoration and – ultimately – the love of our hearts on things that make us feel secure, significant, and temporarily satiated. Instead of giving ourselves – and our worship -- to the Lord, we hide away these idols for ourselves like kids with a secret candy stash. The tricky thing about idols is that they aren’t bad things, necessarily. In fact, they’re often really great, God-blessed, things that we’ve put in the wrong position in our lives because they are easier to control. Today, we go idol hunting!
Despite the fact that our ears work overtime in this age in which so many are competing for our attention, this over-stimulation has actually caused us to listen less versus more and to listen worse versus better. The good news is that listening is a skill that can be learned and re-learned. It can be cultivated simply through intentional practice. Lent is an invitation to quiet ourselves, put away our distracting devices, unplug from all the noise that takes up valuable real estate in our brains, and turn toward God, turn toward others and turn toward ourselves in order to offer the hospitality of our listening ears. Who knows what this "pocket of possibility" will hold!
There's empty and then there's empty. One emptiness leads to death and the other leads to life. Today's episode focuses on a certain woman who emptied herself at the feet of Jesus and found that she was filled with more than she'd ever imagined.
She carried the burden of her sin to him, but she carried so much more as well. She carried her worldly possessions, her pride, her reputation, her desire for approval and acceptance, her future, her past, her love, her pain. She carried whatever a human soul contains and she emptied herself of all of it, laying it down at his feet and at his mercy. She realized, for the first time in her life, that she was face-to-face with the one Person who she could trust with all of herself. He sees it all – what makes her worthy and worthless. Even with this knowledge, he welcomes her, he allows for intimacy, he responds to her tears and her touch. At his feet, she knew she could not – and would not – hold anything back.
Lent offers us a beautiful opportunity to have our own oppressed imaginations freed so that we can live in the world of God’s salvation. All of the competing realities we forge for ourselves will crush us under their weight. They aren’t life-giving, they have no capacity to heal or to hold or to nourish. Those realities only take, they don’t give back. God is offering an exchange of reality if we are only willing to open our hearts.
Friend, you and I have choices to make that decide what kind of people we become. We are not unthinking, hapless beings whose destinies are predetermined and outside of our own influence. God has provided us with free will and expects us to use it for goodness and right-ness in this life. God’s image implanted in us is at least partially reflected by our ability to choose, to create, and to order. We assess our sins in order to uncover and isolate the choices we’re making that lead to living as our false selves in this world, verses living as the people we were meant to become.
Lent is a time to take notice of our hunger and thirst. This season supplies us with opportunity to become mindful of our motivations and to take a long look at those things we spend so much time running after; and, perhaps more importantly, running from. It’s a time to examine what we’re using to satiate ourselves – those things we expend our precious time and energy on that are not the kind of bread which our souls really need.
Season 8: Making meaning
This entire season has been a reminder that there is no much we do not know, even when we think we do. We are constrained by our humanity. Our automatic brain processes, our insufficient categories, our implicit biases, our sin nature – all of these things and more work to keep us in reduced cognitive capacity even when we feel like we know so much. In order to understand our fullest meaning, we need to cooperate with the Divine Author.
The longer and more often we rehearse the connections and meanings we’ve made of things, the stronger those connections and meanings become. If those meanings are true and healthy, we have goodness that sticks. If those meanings are untrue and unhealthy, we have damage that sticks. Rehearsal is like cognitive glue and that’s why it’s so important to stop and consider the scripts we’ve been repeating to ourselves which are shaping our stories and our lives.
We quite literally can tell ourselves a story that will become our reality because of the telling. The meaning we make of our stories determines everything. How often do we box ourselves into rigid categories? How often do we do this with God?
When we float through life trusting our automatic brain processes, we’re literally unaware of how our story is taking shape. This sort of unintentional and incurious approach to ourselves and to others produces rotten fruit. When we don’t understand our stories, when we have accepted false realities and even false identities, we aren’t really living. We are existing and, most of the time, pretty miserably at that. What we find, usually in times of emotional crisis, is that we aren’t known by anyone, not even ourselves.
Scripture makes clear that humankind, while made in God’s image and capable of extraordinary goodness and genius, is also corrupted, limited, and to a large extent blind. Repeatedly, Jesus emphasized the importance of praying for eyes to see and ears to hear the truth because the bend of every one of our hearts is away from the truth and not toward it. When it comes to making moral meaning, the consequences of our blindness couldn't be more serious.
It's not an exaggeration to say that meaning making is one of the most critical acts with which we’ll ever engage and that this is terrifying because we are fallible human beings with limited capacity and understanding. Also, most of us muddle through life without ever questioning the meaning we have made of our stories and how that meaning is impacting us and so we continue making meaning without giving it a thought in the world, many times to the detriment of ourselves and others. Join in this season as we explore how to revolutionize the ways we make meaning.
Join my guest and dear friend, Tammy Jones, and I as we finish our conversation on the disillusionments of motherhood. There will be no tidy bows here, friends! We let the tension sit as we find God's gold in the realities -- beautiful and raw -- of motherhood.
I don't know about you, but Mother's Day comes with its complications. It's not that motherhood isn't meaningful, beautiful, and worthy of acknowledgment and celebration. The truth is, for many of us, motherhood has been far from the fairytale we'd imagined. As it turns out, we are much more imperfect than we understood and our children are no angels themselves. What happens when you realize one day that the journey you'd built up in your mind as the pinnacle of feminine purpose is actually more of a disillusioning, white-knuckle experience that has broken your heart in ways you didn't see coming? Join us today as we dig for God's gold in the less-than-Hallmark moments of motherhood.
Season 9: Dear God, What Are You Doing?
With so many legit reasons to be hopeless, this last episode of Season 9 focuses on how finding the evidence of God's work in our lives helps us tap into the "super power of hope." Let's end this season being "married to amazement," in the words of poet Mary Oliver. In finding wonder once again, we find our hope resuscitated.
Hate is a buzzword of our cultural moment; one with which most of us do all we can to avoid association. Yet, hate continues to be an issue of the human heart, no matter how enlightened we think we become as individuals and as a society? Why? Simply put, hate serves as an energizing and creative force in protecting us from harm. Unforgiveness is rooted in hate and will give birth to full-fledged hatred if harbored. Today's episode focuses on why God invites us to forgive and what we have to gain if we do.
When we find ourselves in the middle of a God-ordained, God-orchestrated -- or, at the very least a God-allowed -- circumstance that happens to also be terrifying, we rightfully ask: Dear God, what are you doing?
If God truly expects us to be able to live free from fear, which the Bible clearly indicates, then what is God doing when we are in the midst of situations in which fear is the only reasonable response? Tune into today’s episode in which we explore God’s invitation to us when we’re afraid.
Today we finish our conversation with writer and teacher, Lisa Cooper, who converted to Catholicism after living most of her adult life as a pastor's wife in the charismatic Word of Faith tradition. Lisa discusses how, after her faith was left in tatters from spiritual abuse, God led her into the desert to become intimate with him. We look closely at what God might be doing when we feel we have nothing left of ourselves.
Today we're in conversation with writer and teacher, Lisa Cooper, who converted to Catholicism after living as a pastor's wife in the charismatic Word of Faith tradition for most of her adult life. Lisa's story is filled with pain and joy, consolation and desolation as she tells of how God showed up in the most unlikely of places and in the darkest of times.
The Gold Digger Show marked a major milestone today as we celebrated 20k unique downloads! Join us for this intriguing episode as we enter into conversation with best-selling author and speaker, Katie Shugars, about her newly released book on the intersection of mental health and faith. Katie shares with us her experiences in finding God's work in the middle of the darkest moments of her life.
Dear God, what are you doing when I’m in profound seasons of suffering? When my will clashes with your will?
Drawing on Christ’s suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, we explore how we are to live when God won’t take the cup of suffering from us prematurely.
Today's episode is part two of a conversation with Loren Romeus -- writer, preacher, and Executive Director of the T & T Project. We discuss the Ravi Zacharias scandal as well as the controversial podcast chronicling Mark Driscoll's conduct as the pastor of now defunct Mars Hill in Seattle. We dig into the possibility that God is at work in these scandalous circumstances, digging new ground in the lives of His Church through the pain and discomfort of facing facts.
When scandal hits the Church, as it seems to do so often, it's difficult to imagine any good that can come from the pain, humiliation, and brokenness of these situations. Recently, as the Ravi Zacharias scandal made headlines and the investigative podcast "The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill" gained a large audience, we are faced again with questions of why and how and what now?
Writer, Bible teacher, and Executive Director of the T & T Project, Loren Romeus, joins me for a two part interview in which we dig together for God's gold in the muck and mire of Church scandal.
As we make our way through these strange times, and as confusion over what's right and true mounts, we find ourselves asking: Dear God, what are you doing?
This season we will explore the value in uncertainty, the hope in catastrophe, and the solid foundations upon which we can stand in confusing times.
Season 10: Transformation
When it comes to transformation, desperation may just be the necessary ingredient missing in our efforts toward growth. Join me in conversation with Executive Director of the T & T Project, Loren Romeus, as we explore what we can learn from people who leverage having 'nothing left to lose' in their journey of inner transformation.
When it comes to true and lasting inner transformation, context is critical. If we want to stay open to growth, trust and safety are necessary and those components are found in the context of belonging. Join me in transformational conversation with Loren Romeus, Executive Director of the T & T Project, a prison ministry focused on helping the incarcerated transform and transition into the healthiest and truest versions of themselves, as we discuss the role belonging plays in lasting inner change.
Sometimes transformation requires discipline and, other times, it requires rest. On today's episode we discuss how transformation occurs within, and helps us maintain, our 'window of tolerance,' which is the sweet-spot for healthy and wholehearted living.
When it comes to inner transformation, self-discipline is part of the process. Yet, our cutlure overvalues the sort of punishing hustle that leads to burnout and quitting more often than lasting change. How do we strike the balance between cultivating life-giving habits and resisting the urge to equate transformation with bare-bones behavior? All that and more on today's episode!
In part two of my conversation with Lang Charters, we discuss how a tragic accident which almost took his life actually led him to a fuller life beyond his imagination.
How does God use absurdity and tragedy to resurrect the lives we were meant to live? Tune in for this powerful conversation.
If true and lasting transformation comes from God alone, how do we access it?
Join me for part one of my conversation with author and yoga teacher, Lang Charters, as we discuss how he learned to plug his heart into God's heart amid painful trials and a near-death experience.
Psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson once dropped this bomb in his book Anatomy of the Soul: the more you try to figure God out, the further you move away from trust.
In part two of our conversation on inner transformation, Jen and I discuss the incredible power of asking God open-ended questions. Could this be one of the keys to lasting change?
We often think of transformation as something we can make happen on our own. The reality is that real and lasting transformation is a lot like a long, excruciating surgery of the heart. Join business owner and entrepreneur Jen Sloniger and I in part one of our conversation about the nature of inner transformation.
Often we long to change, we crave inner transformation, but we never go beyond that longing. We stop short of mustering the courage to find out the nature of the necessary changes and what it would take to experience them. Welcome to our 10th episode of the Gold Digger Show in which we will explore inner transformation through contemplative exercises and insightful interviews with wise guests.
Season 11: The Power of Friendship
Season 11 has been filled with golden goodness, as we've considered the topic of friendship deeply and from various angles.
From opposite-gender friendship to soul friendship to lifelong friendship to life-saving friendship to friendship in marriage -- we covered the gamut!
Join me for the last episode of this season as we pause to soak in all this goodness and reflect on what we've learned together. See you in the fall, Gold Digger!
We hear a lot about keeping the romantic fires burning in marriage, or how to resolve conflict with your spouse, or how to speak the love language of the one you love. Rarely, though, do we hear conversations surrounding cultivating and maintaining friendship in marriage.
Many people find the friendship within their marriages diminishes over time, as the cares and burdens of life and parenthood take their toll. Others realize, often years into the marriage, that they never established a firm foundation of friendship to begin with and now their spouse feels like an enemy or a threat.
Join me in conversation with my husband of twenty-five years, Clayton Jones, as we discuss why marriage is often lacking in friendship and where to begin rebuilding friendship with your spouse.
Seasonal friendships are important. They provide mutual strength and encouragement for particular times and spaces of our lives. We rely on them for variety, fun, and networking. But lifelong friendships that stand the test of time are harder to come by and take a lot more work. Building these kinds of friendships requires adaptability, humility, selflessness, and creativity.
Join me in conversation today with the woman I made the legal godmother of my children, the person who has been by my side through childbirths, adoptions, funerals, deathbeds, celebrations, and family reunions, Danielle Ramos. Together we discuss the secrets to our lifelong friendship, and how we've grown closer each year despite living far apart and having completely opposite personalities.
Perhaps the gold God has been trying to give you in friendship is hidden in the most unexpected person.
True, soul-level friendship isn't all fun, joy, and fulfillment. Every relationship is tested at some point. When our friendships run into pain points, we arrive at a cross-roads of sorts. We can resolve to fight for the beauty and love we've experienced together, or we can avoid the pain by abandoning the relationship.
When a relationship is unhealthy (or, of course, if it's abusive), walking away is the right choice. Yet, if the freindship has a foundation of love and is simply running into inevitable rough waters, we risk losing something essential by allowing temporary pain points to overshadow the good.
Join me in conversation with my dear friend, Dr. Tiffanie Wilson, as we discuss the joys and challenges of companionship, and how moving thorugh our own pain points led to a deeper, and truer, friendship for us both.
You can find Dr. Wilson online at https://tiffaniewilson.com/
In our ultra digitally-connected society, it's nevertheless common to be "ghosted" by fair-weather friends when the going gets tough. While we are constantly scrolling, clicking, and liking ourselves into believing we have rich communities, the truth is that many of us don't have a stable place to land when the worst happens in our lives.
Joining me in conversation today is Dr. Lang Charters, who vulnerably shares how his playful, loving, and loyal community literally saved his life after a series of devestations threatened to take him down. What are the ingredients to creating this kind of life-giving, sustainable and sustaining community? What is essential to strengthening and maintaining the kinds of connections that help us give and receive life-saving help?
We explore those questions and more on today's episode.
To find Dr. Lang Charters online, visit his website https://www.lightlovelang.com/ or find him on socials @lightlovelang
John O'Donahue famously introduced the Celtic term anam cara to the broader world in his book of wisdom thusly named. O'Donahue describes an anam cara as a soul friend, one in which we find recognition and belonging, cutting across all convention and category. These are the kinds of deep intimacies we have a hard time developing in this fast-paced world of surface-level connectivity. Spiritual friendship differs from other types of friendship, and it might just be what we need in our spiritual journey toward transformation. Today's episode is an interview with my anam cara, Jen Slongier. We talk about the special nature of our friendship, how we developed our relationship, and how we cultivate it.
Season 11 is all about friendship, and today's episode explores the topic of opposite-gender friendship. Can (and should) it be a thing? Christian communities sometimes erect elaborate rules, customs & courtesies around the interactions of men & women, with the idea that strict boundaries protect everyone. Is this perspective aligned with God's ideas about how men & women are intended to commune together in the Church? Join me in discussing these questions and more with my dear (opposite gender) friend, Loren Romeus. Together we explore the nature of our long-time friendship and how we navigate these issues.
Season 12: Disappointment & Disenchantment
Philosopher and theologian Cornel West posits that the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. That resonates, doesn’t it? What is our suffering saying to us? What truth is it offering?
Far be it from me to attempt to explain why things couldn’t have been different or how a good and omniscient God works with suffering. Theologians and philosophers and farmers and housewives have been pondering these questions since the dawn of time, and I have nothing novel to offer the debate on the problem of pain.
However, what I’m learning is that, if we can risk allowing our suffering to speak, we just might discover how pain can be helpful to the plan of our individual and collective lives.
Now, though, I feel an invitation to look at something else, particularly those things that we never see repaired in this life, those things that stay ravaged no matter what we do. Those disproportionate, unharmonious, impaired things which bring us the exact opposite of pleasure.
What am I not seeing? What errors in beauty am I making? I whisper this prayer, because “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” (John 3:16). God must see the beauty in this world to love it with this kind of ultimate passion and purpose.
I recall that Christ, resurrected from the dead, carries the scars of love on his body too. He came to us and offered Himself in death. The pinnacles of injustice and beauty crashed into one another with such cataclysmic force that they killed Him.
And He chooses to wear the evidence of this on His body, ravaged beauty as a signpost for Love.
After decades of this self-abandonment in the name of holiness, I am disappointed with the results. I really thought that if I prayed enough, read my Bible enough, and worked on my marriage enough, I would be made healed and whole. When I survey the damage done by piling all this rock between me – all of me, including my beautiful body and my wild life force – and the Light that is Christ, I shudder. Like most folks schooled in this crazy mixture of modern, Western, Cartesian dualism and ancient Christianity, I feel disembodied. I feel separated from my sensuality, my fleshiness and, consequently, part of myself. When it comes to knowing and loving my sensuality, I am soul sick, all ‘trembling teeth and bloody hands.’
It’s disappointing to get to the middle of one’s life and realize that so much of our First Act was spent maintaining boundaries around things that simply don’t matter, isn’t it? Meanwhile, we never got around to maintaining the fences meant to protect our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It’s devastating to realize that we let the wolves have their way with those precious gifts, those fruits of the Holy Spirit, all too often.
Let’s explore what happens when boundary maintenance fails in today’s episode.
I turn 43 in a few weeks and, I must admit, I’m feeling some kinda way about life. It’s widely known that middle age folk experience weirdness for about ten years between the ages of 30-ish and 50-ish. Mid-life crises have long been the go-to fodder for movies, books, songs, and TV series. Stereotypes abound – women scrambling for facial injections and men for sports cars. Everyone sadly grasping for the youth they can never recover and simultaneously dreading the downhill roll toward death that will characterize the rest of our lives.
Yes, the picture America paints for mid-life is quite bleak, even if it is sometimes comical.
But we don’t often get below the clichés to deal with what’s beneath this bleak picture, at least not as a collective people. We may do personal work, like finally beginning therapy or carving out space for a new hobby. We may even embrace physical aging and discipline ourselves to learn new things. These are all common aging practices we celebrate in our overly individualistic culture.
Yet what we emphatically resist doing, as a society, is naming the elephant in the room. The word we seem afraid to speak out loud, but which also keeps us up at night, is the one thing we like to avoid recognizing together – disappointment. No one talks aloud about the crushing disappointment of mid-life.
Every day, we are bombarded with sensory input which, if we were “awake” to all of it, would render us incapacitated in a corner somewhere. Our brains do us a big favor by quickly sorting all our experiences into neat categories so we can efficiently navigate the information-pandemonium that is human existence. And the crazy part is that we’re not even aware our nifty brains are doing this at all! Unfortunately, the price we pay for this efficiency is binary bias, which is distorted thinking that reduces things on a spectrum down to two categories.
Good and bad.
Right and wrong.
Or, if we want to take an example from the Bible, clean and unclean.
I could go on, but you get it.
We take concepts that are nuanced, complex, and multi-layered and we reduce them down so that we don’t have to do the heavy lifting of gathering all the information, listening to all sides, synthesizing opposing ideas, and formulating a comprehensive opinion.
Today’s episode focuses on the value of complexifying everything.
Advent helps to heal our blurred and bungled image of God. Suddenly, we see a God who is the exact opposite of the image that Hell Lovers have conjured. Indeed, as Charles Spurgeon so powerfully reflected on the meaning of Advent:
“God with us. It is hell’s terror. Satan trembles at the sound of it; his legions fly apace, the black-winged dragon of the pit quails before it. Let him come to you suddenly, and do you but whisper that word ‘God with us,’ back he falls, confounded and confused. Satan trembles when he hears that name, ‘God with us.’”
Incredible imagery, and in stark contrast with the men quoted above.
Advent is hell’s terror. The Gospel of Christ is hell’s terror. And no matter your viewpoint on hell, the meaning of these words echo with power.
The image of God our forebears have handed down to us may, in significant ways, be broken, untrue, and harmful. The Hell Lovers on Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter may be loud, terrifying, and even confusing.
But if we open our hands, eyes, ears, and hearts to receive the image of God we inherit through Advent, the confusion begins to evaporate like so much mist.
The truest thing about God and us is that God lifts up the lowly, nourishes the hungry, adopts the orphan, and goes back to find the lost.
Because God loves us, we lowly are made lovely.
The greatest malady this world suffers is our inability to comprehend the worth of the human soul. This is why we hate, hurt, reject, and ignore. It’s the source of our violence, our shame, and our shadowed evils. It’s why we deny God and seek our own self-interest. We’ve lost the wonder of a God who is so steadfast in love toward us that God comes to us, in us, and through us to heal us all and restore us to our rightful places in the Divine Dance of love.
Today, in the holiness and beauty of Advent, I invite you to pray with me that God renew our minds to the stunning implications of the worth of our souls and what God’s plan for communing and indwelling means for us all.
Who could you be if your life was firmly rooted in the soil of this kind of fertile love? Who could we be, all of us together, if we flowed in the freedom that comes from the Incarnation; that is, being fully seen, fully known, and comprehensively loved?
Like so much else in Christianity, Advent is offensive.
Perhaps we’ve grown numb, over the span of millennia and from the re-telling of this narrative and from the commercialization of Christmas, to the shock of incarnational theology; but, today, let’s sit with Advent afresh and attend to the shattering implications.
Because our paradigms must be shattered so that we can comprehend the truth, God came as a human baby through the body of a vulnerable woman. Because new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins, God devastated our cognitive categories and crossed every boundary.
Because God wants Creation to birth God into the world in every conceivable way, in every single moment, in all possible circumstances, and in every particular soul, God has deemed us theotokos too. Because God is faithful to us, and to everything God has created ex amore, or out of love, this baffling salvation has come to us through the mysteries of a woman, a manger, a cross, and a tomb.
Join me today in conversation about the offense of Advent and what it means for us all.
With quaint creche Christmas scenes depicting Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus alongside shepherds, wisemen, and various farm animals, the raw and shocking hope of Advent is often reduced to sentimentality. We may quickly glance at the nativity scene on the church’s front lawn while narrowly making it to our Christmas Eve candlelight service, or we may conjure the familiar picture of baby Jesus in our minds while singing Silent Night, but the warm feelings this invokes aren’t in proportion to the paradigm-shattering message contained within the story of Advent.
This Advent season, here on the show and at my Substack, The Golden Thread, we’ll be taking a different approach by exploring some of the darker themes that are often overlooked in our pre-packaged Christmastime lessons.
Today our conversation partners will be an unlikely group of women who the gospel writer Matthew included in the genealogy of Jesus. Their names are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba (the wife of Uriah), and their placement in the genealogical account of Jesus’ descent is unusual because they are all women of questionable repute.
Biblical scholars, theologians, and everyday Bible readers have scratched their heads over why exactly Matthew would include women at all (which was not customary), much less four of “questionable repute,” in this genealogy which is supposed to be a matter of pride and critical importance in establishing Jesus’s title as “King of Israel?” Consider the dark and twisted nature of these women’s stories, which we will not gloss over today in our search for what’s real in this Advent story.
Join me in conversation with these four women today.
Subscribe to my substack at https://amberhjones.substack.com?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web&r=2d2xps
Season 13: Christian dominionism & God’s Notions of power
What happens when we use our power and authority to honor others, especially those on the margins? What is possible when we serve the "we" instead of the "I?"
Join me in conversation today with Loren Romeus as we discuss stories in which we've been called to steward our power for the sake of those who have less power.
It stands to reason that Christians would want to model their leadership styles/stewardship of power after the example of Jesus. Yet, the One who taught us to wash feet, to use our power in service of others, to sacrifice the "I" for the sake of the "we" is often disregarded in churches, Christian homes and communities.
Why do Christians resist the example of Christ? What can we learn from God's own stewardship of power?
Join me in conversation today with Loren Romeus as we explore these questions and more.
We all agree that servant leadership is the kind of leadership style that values the goodness and well being of all people within an organization. It's the goal, the aspiration, and the gold standard of leadership styles.
Yet, we rarely see it sustained. We most often default to styles of leadership which are not in service of all. Why is this? What is it about servant leadership that is so difficult for us to sustain in the real world?
Join me in conversation with Loren Romeus as we explore these questions and more.
Season 14: Christian nationalism & the doctrine of dominionism (take 2)
Season 14 has been dedicated to exploring Christian Nationalism and the doctrine of dominionism that has become increasingly normalized in evangelical, and some Catholic, religious spaces in America.
Loren and Amber spend the final episode of the season discussing how they've been spiritually formed through the process of research, reflection, and dialogue regarding the nature of power and how Christians are called to steward it. Where is God's presence and activity in a post-election world, no matter what "side" one is on?
What is the meaning of freedom? What is it's purpose? If this election cycle showed us anything, it's that these questions are not only incredibly important, but are answered quite differently by various people groups. For a Christian, what are the foundational aspects of freedom that remain no matter what side of the political spectrum on which we fall?
Loren and Amber discuss these questions in light of Donald J. Trump's resounding presidential win and what it means for Christians who are increasingly divided.
On this week's episode, Loren and Amber discuss the Seven Mountain Mandate, Project 2025, and the implications of these worldviews for Christianity in America.
Questions we explore:
Should Christians strive for influence in the "seven mountains" of human civilization. If so, why? And how?
Do the "good" end goals justify "evil" means to achieve them?
What do sasquatch attacks have to do with anything?
What is truth and how do we live by it in a world of competing truth claims?
Are we attuned to the desperation we might be feeling in these troubled times? What do we do with that desperation?
Join us as we continue digging for God's gold amid the chaos and uncertainty of this American election cycle.
Season 15: Being brave in a new world
On today's episode we cover a lot of ground! Luther's two-shephere theology, "order of creation" doctrine, and the German Christian abuses of speculative theology in the name of Christ. Then we explore Ignatius of Loyola's "Ignation Contemplation" also known as "imaginative prayer." What does this practice have to offer us today? At the end of the episode we practice this form of prayer together.
On today's episode we explore the notion of "Toxic Empathy" that's been making the rounds in political and religious conversations these days. We begin with a story about how empathy saved Amber's family and then we explore how empathy makes us both more human and more like God who is Love.
Today's episode introduces two seemingly opposite topics that actually have surprising overlap -- Ignatian spirituality and the beliefs of the German Christian movement. Both topics hold much wisdom and challenge for us here in the Year of our Lord 2025. We begin with the Welcoming Prayer by Father Thomas Keating and discuss the Ignatian Examen alongside the mindset of the German Christians in 1933. What might God be speaking to us today through our own consolations and desolations?
Today's episode is a reading from a recent newsletter I sent out to subscribers of my Substack. It deals with the scapegoating of the trans community that's been on the rise since the election cycle began and offers a prescription for what ails us -- powerful mothering love. If you'd like to subscribe to my Substack and receive newsletters from me a few times per month, the link is below.
Hello there, Gold Digger! Welcome to Season 15 of the show dedicated to finding God's gold in every beautiful & baffling story. This season, Dr. Amber Hogan Jones will be companioning you through this new & often confusing world in which we find ourselves living in the Year of Our Lord 2025.
This season is gonna hit a little different as we talk politics, world events, & hot topics. What will remain the same is that we will stay laser focused on finding God's gold in it all. The goal for Season 15 is to offer a place of encouragement, kindness, openness and humility in a world that seems bent on going the other way.
We're so glad you're here!
Subscribe to the gold digger show wherever you get your podcasts!
