May 12, 2020
If you’ve followed this show or us on Instagram for any amount of time, you’ve probably noticed that we don’t shy away from sharing our faith. We’re both Christians and believe in Jesus and the Bible. While this podcast and The Heart University isn’t strictly a Christian podcast or company, we definitely don’t hide the fact that we believe in God. After receiving enough requests to do an episode on our faith, why we share it, and HOW we go about sharing it in our businesses, we decided to do just that.
If you’re a fellow believer, we hope this episode will inspire and challenge you as well as give you some tangible takeaways on HOW to share your faith without shoving it down people’s throats. If you don’t share the same faith as Evie and I, please don’t let that deter you from tuning in to today’s show. You ARE welcome here. We love you. We would love for you to listen even just out of curiosity for why we believe what we believe and share in the way that we do.
We get asked if we are afraid that by sharing our faith it will push away clients or potential customers. Our answer is absolutely not.
We want to chat about why we have chosen to do that and how we go about that in a healthy way.
A lot of people call us religious but we would disagree. Religion says “I must do this and follow this in order to be saved and have God love me.” Faith, on the other hand, is more of a relationship. Faith says, “I am already LOVED by the one who made me, and out of that love I will choose to follow His word.”
This is such an important distinction to make. We don’t view ourselves as religious because we are not following a law in order to be accepted. We choose faith in God and to cultivate a relationship with Him because He created us for a purpose and loves us more than anything in the entire world. Out of that love for us, He has a plan for us. When we choose Him and choose to follow that plan, that is when it’s a relationship. He doesn’t force us to love Him.
Our hearts behind why and what we share comes down to the fact that it is a very close and real relationship with our Father. When you have a close relationship with someone it naturally comes up in conversations. This is how we feel about our relationship with God. That is why there is such a distinct difference between religion and a relationship.
For us, our relationship with the Lord is so deep, personal, and real that we can’t help but talk about Him.
Many of us may have the mindset that our faith and relationship with God is personal. We may not want to share with others because it feels like it is exposing an intimate relationship with others. Evie had this perspective for years. She had a protectiveness around her relationship with God and didn’t want to share it with other people. Evie grew up in a faith-filled family and often kept quieter when there were conversations about God. This was true until she went to ministry school. It was a pressure cooker of Jesus. Every conversation was about the Lord, what He was teaching you, what you were learning, etc. That broke down a wall for Evie. She was in an environment where she had to talk about the Lord. Once that wall was broken down, she couldn’t stop talking about God. It broke down the fear of exposing that personal relationship, which turned out to be a fear of other people judging her relationship. Now that the wall is gone, she can’t stop herself from sharing. It is such a natural overflow.
If you are feeling scared, we have felt that way too. We challenge you to open up your heart and mind.
Not sharing it would be inauthentic to who we are. It is our mission and we are so in love with the Lord. When something is saturating who you are as a human being, you can’t help but share it.
We are the representatives of Jesus on earth. If we’re not sharing Him, then we believe we’ve failed at our jobs. He tells us to proclaim Him to the nations and we really believe that that is our job. Before being a photographer, a business owner, a mother, a podcaster… we are disciples of Jesus. That is our mission. For us, we use our jobs as a part of our ministry. That is why we share Him.
If we don’t share the Lord in everything we do, people may not ever see Him in our lives. They may not make the connection. We get asked all the time how we have so much joy or why we are so happy all the time. We truly believe that it is because of Jesus. We’re successful because of His blessings. We love because He loves us. Every action and step we take, and conversation we have is almost always connected to our relationship with the Lord. We want people to see that connection. We are able to have hope in the midst of chaos because of the promises in our Father. We want this to be transparent and vivid.
We want the legacy of our lives to be that we followed God, humbly shared him, made a difference in the kingdom, and helped people out of brokenness, not because we can, but because the Lord can and Jesus died for that.
Why are we in business? Why do we educate people the way we do? Why do we do this podcast? It’s to help people. You can help people without sharing your faith. But you can share your faith with it all and make a bigger impact.
Ask yourself why you hide your faith? Are you afraid of what others will think of you? If you are a believer, what matters more? Is it being faithful to your Father and sharing His name out of love for Him, or hiding Him because people will potentially reject you?
Think of these statements:
“You might be the closest someone ever gets to knowing Jesus.”
“You might be the ONLY church service someone ever hears.”
“You might be the ONLY verse someone reads.”
If you knew you had the cure for cancer would you keep it to yourself? “Oh I’m good. I’m saved from cancer. Good luck to everyone else. I’ll let them figure out how to be cancer free. But I’m good.”
This is such a great analogy to the gospel. This is exactly why we share what we share. We know God heals brokenness, we know that Jesus died for our sins, and we know there is hope in Him. The freedom, healing, joy, peace, hope, and everything that comes from Jesus we carry in us as believers. We have a cure for hopelessness. We have a cure for anxiety. As a whole, we carry the cure to so much of the world’s brokenness, so why would we choose to keep that to ourselves?
If you know the Lord intimately, you know His word is truth, and you know His love transforms lives and lifts us out of our brokenness then why are you hiding that?
THAT is why we share our faith. THAT is why we infuse it into our businesses. It goes so far above making money or doing a job we love. It’s our entire heart behind everything we do. Our businesses are a form of ministry. In everything we do, we are doing it for the glory of our Father.
You CAN respect other views while sharing your faith in a graceful way
You CAN be bold in the truth while not force feeding people to believe it.
For example, we have plenty of non-Christians listen to our podcast, attend our events, and continue following us who love our content. Why? We think we share our faith in a way that is true to who we are but doesn’t force people to believe the same thing. We want to encourage anyone and everyone to follow along on our lives and journeys. You do not have to have the same beliefs or viewpoints. You can be true to yourself and be who you are, and we are also going to be true to who we are. We hope and pray that it is clear that we are bold and open about our faith and beliefs while also respecting the beliefs of others in a graceful way. We never want to force feed people to believe the same thing we do.
Ultimately, you do not have to water down who you are to make other people feel okay. You can be bold in who you are and who God made you to be and also welcome other people to the table. That is the heart of Jesus.
Ex: “While having my quiet time this morning, I felt so much peace… etc” This is personal and no one can argue with your own experience. Make it about you and your relationship with the Lord, not about others and trying to change their minds.
Stop trying to force others to believe the way you do. This is mainly applicable to social media. When you scream at people and try and force them to believe what you believe, that is what pushes them away. It doesn’t bring them any closer to the Lord.
It all comes from LOVE. Approach people with love and compassion and use your own personal experiences. With everything that you do and share, make sure your heart behind it is to share love. Make sure you never have a secret agenda to change someone else’s perspective or views.
If you are trying to share the gospel or bring someone to Jesus, the best way to do it is to walk alongside them. If you care about someone and you want to see them have the same freedom as you, then walk through it with them. Invite them to church, pray for them, and pray with them.
All God asks us to do is to love others the way He loves them too.
Pick a situation, parable, truth, or something that you are learning and share it. Share about it in conversation, in a blog post, and on Instagram.
You don’t have to mention God, but you can still share truth and Biblical principles such as kindness, empathy, fear of failure, etc. that you have learned through your relationship with God and scripture.
If a friend, family member, co-worker, or heck even a social media follower comes to you with a problem and you feel called to pray for them, DO IT.
Even if they don’t believe and even if they think you might be weird, prayer is powerful. It’s going to benefit them no matter what.
Don’t be afraid to pray aloud.
We pray before just about everything we do: events, meetings, podcast episodes, mentor sessions, etc. We pray for the Lord to move in us and work through us. We pray that he will impact those who are receiving and listening. We ask for His truth to come through and surrender our selfish ambitions and control back to Him. We want Him to move and his glory to come through.
Pray before you write that caption or blog post. Pray before you meet with clients. Pray before your shoots and weddings. Prayer moves mountains. Pray it out.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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