135: How God Redeems Our In-Between Places with Kat Armstrong

Kat Armstrong has been emboldening women to be all-in for Jesus for twenty years as a speaker, Bible teacher, author, and podcast host. She is the author of No More Holding Back and The In-Between Place. As cofounder of The Polished Network, a nonprofit connecting and gathering working women to navigate career and explore faith, her mission is to create holy curiosity. Kat holds a master of christian education from Dallas Theological Seminary. She and her husband, Aaron, have been married for eighteen years, and live in Dallas, Texas, with their son, Caleb. They attend Dallas Bible Church, where Aaron serves as the lead pastor. She comes back on the show today to talk about her new book, The In-Between Place: Where Jesus Changes Your Story.

What We Chat about in Today’s Episode:

~What led Kat to write her newest book, The In-Between Place, and what readers can expect

~Developing a “holy curiosity” about God’s Word and how the Holy Spirit teaches us more about the Word than we know already

~How God redeems our in-between spaces into hope-filled places

~The woman at the well’s story in John 4

~The fact that every step of your journey has purpose

~The eye-opening connections between Dinah’s story in Genesis 34 and the woman at the well’s story in John 4; what these connections reveal about the character of God

~Myths surrounding the woman at the well, and what, culturally and historically, is more likely to have been the truth about her and her actions

~The different outcomes in the stories of Dinah and the woman at the well, and why they are so important to grasp

~How different Jesus was from the majority of men in the patriarchal culture of the day

~Jesus’ tender, compassionate care for His daughters

~The most life-changing moments with the Lord being those moments that are in our in-between places in life

~What the woman at the well’s story shows us about the insufficiency of the self-care and self-help cultures

~Jesus’ sufficiency to meet all our needs

~The importance of believing we belong because Christ says we do; how to actually start believing who He says we are

~And more!

Resources Mentioned

Offer for a free audiobook and 30 day trial membership from Audible: www.audibletrial.com/HomeandHearth

My last podcast episode with Kat

Kat’s new book, The In-Between Place

Free Reader Book Guide to her new book

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard

INSPIRING QUOTES TO REMEMBER:

“I want to see women and men develop a holy curiosity about God’s Word, to dig in and ask hard questions, to discover what they have never discovered there before, knowing that the Holy Spirit can teach them so much more than they already know.”

“Jesus can change your in-between spaces (in between sickness and health, in between life seasons, etc.) into hope-filled places.”

“Every step of our journey has purpose.”

“The tragic story of Dinah in Genesis 34 feels like it gets no redemption whatsoever. But years and years later, the Messiah comes, and steps into the story of the woman at the well, bringing so much redemption and hope to her story.”

“Shechem was known as being a place of horror, where truly awful things happened. But years later Jesus, the Prince of Peace, comes there to speak to the woman at the well, and everything changes.”

“Jesus speaks up for justice and He, through the story of the woman at the well, brings the justice that Dinah needed in that place.”

“If Jesus can redeem the woman at the well’s in-between place, just imagine what He can do with us!”

“I don’t want us to look at the stories in the Bible and think they are archaic and unrelatable. If we look at them again, we will see just how much we can relate to what those people experienced, as well. And the hope Jesus brought is the hope He can still bring to us, too.”

“It is fake news that the woman at the well was promiscuous – cultural and historical context proves otherwise.”

“When she says Jesus knows everything she ever did, I think she’s saying He knows everything she’s ever done just to survive. He meets her deepest needs, and He can do the same for us.”

“Jesus loves to talk to His daughters about the hard things that are going on in their lives, even when no one else is willing to.”

“Jesus sees beyond the mere circumstances to the pain in peoples’ lives. We should do the same. That changes peoples’ lives forever.”

“We are broken like old, broken cisterns, but the good news is that Jesus is not and He fills us up with living water.”

“No matter what our needs are, Jesus can meet them.”

“The woman at the well was used to transform her story. But it wasn’t because her circumstances had changed – they hadn’t! Instead it was because God used her and filled her up to be able to spread the good news.”

“Just as Jesus met the woman at the well, He will meet you where you are, too.”

WHERE YOU CAN FIND KAT ONLINE:

Website – Kat Armstrong

Instagram – @katarmstrong1

Facebook – Kat Armstrong, Author

Podcast – The Polished Podcast

The Polished Network

To Leave a Rating and Review on iTunes

Have you been encouraged or inspired by today’s episode? If so, could I ask a little favor? If you could leave the podcast a rating and review in iTunes, that would be amazing! The more ratings and reviews a podcast receives, the more iTunes shows that podcast to other folks searching for shows to listen to, so by leaving me a rating and review, you truly are partnering with me in this podcast ministry to encourage and help as many women as we possibly can. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that! Here’s how:

If you’re on your computer:

Access iTunes on your desktop and type Home and Hearth in the search box on the upper right hand corner.
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