Jen Oshman: What Lies Beneath

So I think I know the answer this question. But how do you do it earlier. Yeah, you never know with you but I guess and I think I know you say have you ever sought your happiness in life from me there immediately.

You are welcome to family life today to help you pursue relationships that matter most and Wilson Dave Wilson and you can find his life today.com or on our family life may not today. We got married. I really thought I will never find my happiness through Dave, because the Lord Jesus Christ is my King and I will serve him all the days of my life and that's where my contentment and my joy and my purpose come from. That was for sure, but I was going to do and then then we were married a while and I started like, oh wait he did the hat I did know he would be like that and then I started thinking, oh, he should change and I became kind of concerned with you changing and as a result, I thought I will be happy when he… And that's when I think it's you and married started to become an idol. I brought that up because I think that's pretty common. We experience that I think a lot of people doing different things in their life and we got Jen Osmond back in the studio with us today to talk about finding our hope and happiness in things that will never give us a guy, you know, it sounds like you're the person to do that you and I can relate to that. Absolutely. Who really know for sure putting our hope in anybody anything may be as adults. There's a time when we realize we put our hope in our own parents even you know we feel disappointed because I didn't deliver what we thought it when we put our hope in our spouses, our children, our career. I mean, there's 100 things that we asked to deliver peace and contentment and joy to us and they cannot bear up under the weight of that I can relate to what you said and I do think on that to my husband and my children.

But when you pause a long time about you so well just written a book called cultural counterfeits confronting five empty promises of our age and how we were made for so much more. Yesterday we beauty being one of the counterfeits. But today Dave what you started with what I be one of those five empty promises.

You mentioned is where we just started marriage and motherhood. What that's wrong because isn't this a priority of God should this be something really important. So how does it become an empty promise. Yeah so anytime I have a conversation you know that quick elevator pitch with anybody know what your book about how we start to sweat a little because it's like man is complicated, but it's about these five idols of our age and the first four are those of us who have this conversation and inside the church. The first were real obvious you know it's the obsession with our bodies. It's cheap sex it's abortion. It's the LGBT Q spectrum.

It's those things were we, the church readily say yes those are idols, we should not put our hope in those identities, but there's this for idol that I intentionally address and lump inside this book on purpose because it's the hidden idol. I think in our churches, and it's that we have elevated the very good and right gifts of marriage and motherhood and that we put them on a pedestal that they were not meant to be on. We've put on them the weight they were not meant to bear.

And so what I'm seeing in our church cultures. What I've seen in my own community is just this desire in this longing for marriage and motherhood, a feeling that I will not be happy. I will not have arrived my life won't have value or significance until I am married, or until I am a mom and because those are good gifts designed and ordained and given by God himself. I think the really sneaky they sneak around in our churches and we all sort of bow down to them without really knowing it, and they've that's cost a lot of harm D think it's harmed our single women hundred percent.

I mean, when ever I talk about this particular idol with my single friends they could sit and talk about it for hours and they're usually sharing stories story after story about how they have felt very marginalized, how they can have a conversation with anybody in the church without them asking what are you dating anybody anybody promising out there or somebody saying something like, well, you know you really won't get over selfishness until you get married or you don't shut.

Motherhood is sanctifying, you know, if only you could be so sanctified these things that people say it's not on purpose in its his very subconscious, but it comes out and it comes out out loud to our single sisters and brothers that you're not quite mature enough you're not quite, you haven't quite arrived because you haven't received these gifts yet marginalized, for sure. I think that if we were raising our kids today. I used to say their kids when you get married it'll be Bob Loblaw but now I think I would say if you get married so that they're not anticipating I have arrived.

When I do get married because God has a lot of living for them to do before they get married whelming to do to there's two women that were single at one time the both of you are either of you when you were single. Was it like all was this thing I know you talked about, you know, Prince charming and that will bring me happiness is that some you both experience so I know I'm coming out a very good one. Answer the question. I shockingly and scandalously married at the age of 20. That was not my plan.

I was somebody thought I would never get married. But God's eye. I have a really different for you, so we married when when I was 20. But I have a lot of single friends who I know are walking through this and wrestling with this is you went into your marriage.

At age 20, were you excited like all this is going to help me be complete.

I think that that was there subconsciously for sure NAI still put that weight on my husband. I still expect perfection from him so that you know my life is one of ease and comfort and security. My husband is perfect and I don't do that anymore.

I'm so, so, I guess. But did you ever make your marriage and idol.

Yeah, that has definitely happened I I remember specifically in early year of our marriage. I think it was maybe year to when I had expected. So much of my husband like specifically that he would meet my needs relationally that he would be my everything, my every friend that I could bear everything with him and he would be able to walk me through it and talk me through it and just the exact way that I wanted him to every member him saying Jan I cannot be all of that for you. I just can't meet all of those needs and that was a real awakening for me.

Okay, you're right. You are one finite man, I must first go to God above, but also drawn the community that God has given me this other sisters and brothers that the Lord has provided in my local church who wanted shoulder those things and walk with me 36. It takes the weight off of her husband because they weren't meant or made to be able to meet all of our needs right so I think that's really why were you word is a woman get that again.

I'm assuming we don't have that as men longing for happiness from our marriage and from our spouse, but I really see it.

You've talked about many times a woman really think some man's going to bring is that from the culture is that in the DNA of being a woman. I think it is in the culture. I think our culture has elevated marriage to them. I mean if you watch some of the shows on TV in the movies. You can finally be happy and whole. When you're married or when you find the right person. It's a little bit like the bachelorette and the obsession with that.

When you find him. I hate to admit this is flipping around. Just the other night I turned it off and I stop for a minute and answer there's going to tell what you said was like are you serious.

I was laughing out loud yeah because it's almost comical and I know there's some listeners that are just mad at me right is a look at this your guilty pleasure. But I mean you're watching this woman think, oh, this guy is all of everything I've ever dreamed of. My whole life and he's responding in this perfect way in and you literally sick as I watch like two minutes of zero turn that he's not, you just Nicorette it but I don't think most people are watching that snickering there long long. That's what I want and so I'm assuming it's just the culture that causes that the rise up within us as part of our sin nature and our longing in her own DNA for happiness but doesn't the culture sure promote that and we fall into it, absolutely.

In fact I talked about the bachelor and the bachelor in my book. The chapter on cheap sex so your it's kind of a double idol they're seeing in that particular show because were told him her condition not to play the field to date as much is you can't have as many sexual encounters and sexual relationships.

As you can before you settle down and in the way we make sex or idle. We gotta have as much sexual expenses as we can because that will be what's fulfilling that's working to find our identity, but at the same time, and even in the same show, the bachelor, the bachelorette. We say no, actually, after all those sexual encounters when you'll really arrive is when you have the perfect mate and your to find them amongst these 25 guys go ahead and spend time with all of them and you know you'll find just the right one and then you will finally be happy.

First comes love, then comes marriage then comes the baby and the baby carriage as though it's a fairytale that we live for.

But here's what I think happens is is God created us and created marriage good and created motherhood good. These are really good guess. But what happens is we often take the best gifts and we turn them into our idols and it happens all of us and happens multiple times a day unit with multiple idols as we look to those good gifts and we expect them to be the best gift we instead of looking to the giver of the gifts we look to the gift itself.

I remember saying that the group of women talking about this like having know if something's and idol might need to take a second right now in our listeners could do this right now and just gauge what you think about the most in a day. You know what goes through your head all the time and as I was thinking about that in different phases of my life.

Sometimes it could be Dave and how he is not measuring up. This is not a good thing about David saying that, so I let him time.

It would be worry and worry one of the things I worry about a lot, my kids, and as wonderful as that can be that where mom becoming a mom and our kids can be an idol if refining our work through them and what happens as we crush them under the weight of our desire and expectation we expect them to deliver what only the God of the universe can deliver to our souls and they feel that and they don't like it, not at all recounting many times of her pastor and author Tim Keller talk about idols so we prop something or somebody up to be the ultimate to deliver in the way he defines how you know I'm not looking at an exact quote some hope, and I remember this right. But he said is what you said it's the ultimate this person, this relationship is the ultimate so if I lose this, it's a bad thing. I'm sad but if it's the ultimate I'm devastated. I can't live anymore.

When this thing is removed from my life that he says is when you know well that's what two important. The only ultimate in your life is Jesus and God, you lose that is devastating. But if I'm in a relationship and were dating and she leaves and I can't get out of bed for a month.

Guess what, you made somebody an idol is that they were the determination of your happiness.

If you lose your job and you can't function anymore. It was more important that need to be talk about that in terms of mom's because I've watched women and stretch my own wife with our children is like children are in some ways the ultimate is like it's everything I was made to be and do my right yeah well I talk about in the book and the I open this chapter with an illustration, a story that happened to me a couple years ago and I was at a baby shower and the hostess of the baby shower said motherhood is a woman's highest calling, and that felt like a punch to the gut for me because I was sitting next to a dear friend who has struggled with infertility for years and she longs to be a mom and God has not seen fit yet in his providence to allow her to be a mom now we know that God created children and those are good gifts, and for some reason in his sovereignty she has not received that gift yet but for her to hear. Motherhood is a woman's highest calling then implicitly said to her, you aren't good enough. You have not achieved this status of Christian woman hiring complete woman you're a failure of factly that's that's what she heard, but we motherhood is a woman's highest calling is something we throw around in church a lot and that's not the only time I've heard that it's sort of a colloquialism that we exchange in church circles. And here's the problem in our kids grow up, kids leave and I mean this happened to me like who am I now what am I supposed to do and I think there's a lot of women that go into these empty nest years not remembering who they are and use like you have to go back like Jesus, I'm more than just a mom what you have for me because there was such a purpose, right in front of you, and there's still a purpose is not that we sever or break the relationships with our kids because our kids do not want to be the center of our world when they get out of the house and so I think it's just really good to go before God and ask him Lord, that was a time in a place but there's more for me what is that yeah marriage and motherhood. I just don't want the listener to hear me wrong, like they are good gifts and you don't receive them away. Yes, it's almost like they're good gifts throughout the ultimate they are not the ultimate absolutely and we just do a disservice to ourselves and to each other when we make them ultimate and so that's the cry of that particular chapter is this can be an idol and it's subtle and sneaky in the church. Let's not make this good gift to the ultimate gift. So here's a question. How do you break that because as I'm listening to you and thinking of idols in the Old Testament, they destroyed God said to hear them down because they work you know made out of brick and asphalt and they will they bow down to him. That's how we think of idols like I'll have an idol. There's nothing like that in our culture anymore with the myth that yes we do have idols, they don't look like gold statues anymore. They could be your kids. It could be your marriage. So in the Old Testament, they destroyed him. How do we destroy those what I think. It's like yesterday when we talked about the idol of outward beauty and ability we have to be renewing our minds we have to go back to the word and this is another area where we are being discipled by social media and how much of my Instagram feed is beautiful weddings and beautiful babies and beautiful families right so these images of perfection and beauty are coming across my screen, those images are wrong, but there discipling my heart to desire this perfect image that is not necessarily real so we go back to the word of God.

And let us not forget that Jesus was single and let's not forget that Paul was single. Let us not pray that it is better yes right inspired. He said I'd rather you be like this, in spite of inspired by the laser.

He said it's good for you to be single so I think we just misplaced things that are right in front of us. We want to put our hope in the tangible people right in front of us, rather than doing the work of returning to the word of God and remembering what is true about singleness and marriage and you're saying all this on family life today is it's all about marriage and family are very dated children, which he doesn't feel funny or I think what it feels like is it feels righteous yeah feels balanced. It feels like God's heart like emergent family matters for marriage and family are all about helping helping people pursue the relationships that matter most, which is what were talking about her family but yet there has to be this balance. It isn't the ultimate right right that's David and Wilson with Jen Oshman on family life today will hear Jen's response in just a minute, but first you know talking about cultural counterfeits today reminds me there are a lot of counterfeits in our culture when it comes to family. Family life is committed to bringing the clarity of God's word to a confused culture and we need your help.

Would you consider partnering with us financially. All this week as our thanks for your partnership. We want to send you a copy of Carolyn Lacey's book called extraordinary hospitality for ordinary people you can take action. It family like today.com or by calling 800-3583 29. That's 800 family L as in life and in the word today. Right now, back to David Anne's conversation with Jen Oshman and how we can make idols out of really good things like I was telling my small group the other night that I was coming here for this particular interview and they said the book to know what the fifth idol in the book is the first number like a were talking about getting you know that it was a pretty funny moment, but I think you know to have the best marriage to the best motherhood or fatherhood experience is to rightly order our lives to use that from the church father Augustine is how our love is rightly ordered and we cannot shove humans into the God shaped hole in our heart we have to place the Lord there put Jesus on his throne and receive from him the gift of singleness are the gift of marriage, the gift of motherhood or the gift of spiritual motherhood.

We see the calling of Christ in the great commission to go therefore and make disciples of all nations. We are all called to procreate, but is not necessarily physically and might be spiritually those are good gifts. So let's get real practical with your four daughters. They are living in a culture that is screaming at them. This is where you will find your happiness as a mom, how are you navigating that you talked about praying over them with them before they go to school in the car but how else like that. It's so hard and so tricky these days with our kids to try to get them to see. This is where you can find life true life.

How are you doing that is a mom and what can our listeners do. I think we just trying to have the conversation every night at dinner, we don't have dinner together every night, but most nights we do we sit around the table.

We talk about all kinds of things the way that's unusual it is and it's hard for you to yeah and we're just I think pretty candid.

You know my husband and I both come from long lines of divorce. Both of our parents were divorced, more than one time over and so we know what it is to be raised in a broken home, and we are thrilled that by God's grace our kids are growing up with married parents. We don't take it for granted. But I do want to constantly be reminding my kids that this is not my identity.

I am not first and foremost Mark's wife or you are I see this all the time and I tell you are not first and foremost a student or an athlete or a college student or whatever role God has rewritten and that's not who you are who you are is a child created by God in his image to reflect him to a watching world and to abide in him and to rest in him and so yes maybe it sounds cheesy, but I have to present to myself.

And so I'm saying that to them all the time and I just want them to be satisfied in Jesus and resting in Jesus and not putting their hope in a degree or a man or motherhood or any of these other things that are fleeting and temporary, but to be putting their hope in the eternal Christ, who made them and died to save them. Do they have pushback like mom I'm just look at my Instagram. Oh yeah yeah we have for sure, the cry of my household is can I get more screen time to moderate their screen time and so like every night. It's like I get more and sometimes my husband makes them do push-ups and they get so out of the way you view your screen you made it hurt a little bit of your screen type but I don't read more into that, then you should.

What kind of just the cookie family is the bottom line don't derive any principles for good living from that to be honest we are having that conversation have about social media about images about their friend's decisions their own decisions and mean. I am feeling my husband feeling they are feeling.

We have to keep returning to Jesus and ask for help. Of course, will fail, we are living in a battle and I think we forget that.

Like I would love for my kids just to be like mom you're so cool I listen everything you say.

But the truth is, were in a battle and we are loving the people in our culture, but were also fighting against disbelievers, the things that they're saying will bring us happiness you and that's a mantra like that we would talk about that all the time at home like where will you find real life yes and I think those are great conversations to have with our kids and share how even Dave and I share like guys, I did not find my happiness to dad is wonderful as he is.

He's not the ultimate. I like that you're saying that Dave will I was copying Tim Keller. But I think we have to keep reminding ourselves to not just for our kids because we said our case and yet I think if were not at the point where we can turn on a TV show like we mentioned earlier and laugh when we see lies before leaning in like believing that and we don't see that it's a lie. Then we don't know the truth. We have to be ingesting truth which is the word of God to remind us all yeah because I think what we talked today about marriage and and mothering could be fathering.

We have a phrase in our culture that highlights it's an idol we say. I found the one like what what is that mean, and we say it like I found the one hour and would be happy that I would just remind us if were followers of Christ. There is one such capital O and his name is Jesus, and he has to be first, you have found the two wars of God but never make your spouse one make them number two whenever they become number one we called in our book. Vertical merger you try to find life horizontally and that's what we think. Come and find her from her him. You're never indefinable when you go vertical you find it in Christ, then you come back to your marriage, and she hears number two now you have an overflow and that's a marriage that you will find happiness in because it's not where you drive your happiness. You've already got it to me that's what you're writing them is so beautiful to say all it's a it's a counterfeit from our culture and we have to be a be able to identify it from the truth of the word of God. So I anything. I'm hoping the listener goes to get in the word. I have not been there. I've been in the weight room doing push-ups, which is great. I applaud you and I hope you can do 100 like I can do in one setting but no if you're not working out your spiritual life that your step absolutely you been listening to David and Wilson with Jen Oshman on family life today. Her book is called cultural counterfeits confronting five empty promises of our age and how we were made for so much more you can get a copy@familylifetoday.com or you can call 800-358-6329. That's 800 F as in family L as in life and in the word today.

I got the president of family life David Robbins with me here in the studio and David were here in the thick of summer, but often when we're in summer were thinking about the fall and life change happening in kids getting older and you're no stranger to all of those elements in your life. The right. That's right, you know I had a mentor so you got 18 summers with your kids and bless them wisely, which stresses you out in one way, but also makes you intentional and actually the last two summers. I've had kids entering into six grade and Meg with my daughter and me with my thirds have done passport to purity is an amazing resource to get the conversations going with your kids around, you know the talk all that you grow up into as you become a young adult and what I love about it is that it makes the parent the hero the resource allows you to listen to content that does a lot of the hard work and when you turned each other and talk about what you just heard an amazing way. Yeah, that's great.

You can find out more about family life's passport to purity@familylifetoa.com. Next week David and Wilson are to be joined by Jessica Roan, who managed to find God's goodness in the midst of losing her spouse to cancer. That's next week on behalf of David and Wilson. I'm shall be added. See back next time for another edition of family life, family life to days of production of family life crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most