Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey. And today, we're going to be talking about one of my favorite things to talk about, which is God and the faith based community. And we're going to talk about wounded Christians. I think that's a key word I want to focus on there because there are so many of us who believe in God, but we have been hurt by the church, by people, or struggles along the way.So we're going to address that. But Our focus today is kind of on telling God's story through our own creative mediums, how we can use our talents to help spread the faith, because we are here with Reverend Cheryl Kincaid, who is an author of several books, and is doing her part to tell God's story in an imperfect world.So, Ms. Kincaid, it's great to have you here, and could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Oh, thank you, first of all, for having me. Um, well, as you know, I'm a Presbyterian minister. Um, I grew up in a Christian home, a home that professed Jesus, and we even went to church. But my father was, um, was a pedophile.He was, and he wasn't one that hid it very well. He was an alcoholic, he was an outlier, and everything. So my mom went to church, but dad was the guy who would, you know, get money from the church because his kids were hungry and spend it on booze. Um, and, and when he was in prison, this was the kind of a quandary or puzzle that's in my head, is when he was in prison, he was a pretty good witness for Jesus Christ when he was away from the booze and the drugs.One of the heartbreaking things that happened to me as an adult is I was preaching at a very small church in San Francisco. And it was my first sermon. And someone came up to me and said, you preach like your father. And I was drawn back, I kind of choked back tears. And he said, that's how he preached when he was in prison.But when he got out, the drugs and alcohol took over and the addictions. But at any rate, so I grew up in this home where I knew about Jesus, knew about eternal life in Jesus Christ, um, but this was happening to me. And I remember one night when my parents were having a fight about love. Um, I was listening into it, and I was feeling all the churning and anxiety that anyone in an alcoholic family feels when the screaming starts.You never know what's going to happen next. And, um, I went to a window because I had heard a story about the prodigal son, which was beautifully told and faithfully told. But, I, as a kid, interpreted it wrong. Um, in the story, they used to have something called chalk talks. Which was a talk where you draw one drawing in fluorescent chalk and the other one with regular chalk.And as you told the story, you turn on the fluorescent light, uh, the fluorescent light, and you'd see a picture behind the picture. So in the story, they were telling the story of the prodigal son, and they draw in this little boy that's inside a pig pen, eating the slop of the pigs, as is in the story.After he leaves his dad, he's so humiliated, he eats the slop of the pigs. And little did they know, the, the, the story goes, and she switched on the light, the father was there all along and there was a picture of heaven behind the boy and the heavenly father reaching out to him. What I got from that was that if I die I get to go to heaven.That's all I got from that. And so It was a window on the third story. I was going to throw myself off, but of course I didn't have the courage to do it. Went back to bed sobbing. When I got up the second time, I felt a warm hand on my stomach. I'd heard a voice say, God is love. Um, and that changed my life.My dad went away to prison for many years. Um, by the time he came back, I was 16. So he wasn't interested in me anymore because he liked little girls. And, um, I grew in my faith until I was about the age of 18. And that's when, because I was a very conservative Christian woman, I did not date a lot. I hung out with guys in the youth group.But that's the time when you typically learn about another kind of love, the love between a man and a woman, eros. And um, I did what statistically, um. a lot of women do. I refuse to date anyone but Christians, but I tended to find men who were violent and unkind. In fact, I was attracted to them and I knew something was wrong.Um, and my hitting bottom experience was when I had broken up with this guy who was just a very unkind person. And, uh, my roommates are like, why? Do you like him? But I started to have nightmares and flashbacks and because I was in a house with other Christians, we tried to pray it away. We tried, we thought it was demons.We tried to cast it out. And then, um, luckily I went to a church that had a counseling center that was training counselors and I got to see a counselor for free. And it occurred to me that, I told her about my past, she says, do you think the breathing and the imaging you, you're seeing has something to do with.What you told me about and it was in a second. I knew that it did and she said, you know to go forward you have to kind of patch up the things in the back and Expose them to God's love because you've been living this life Faithfully in the love of God, but when you accepted Christ none of the other stuff was even even brought before him because you weren't even you didn't think it was serious and So I that's when I started my road of recovery and About seven years later.I started to facilitate support groups for survivors of abuse and because I was a Christian woman A lot of Christian women came to me And I found out there was a lot of women that went to church and knew the Bible and knew Jesus as Lord and Savior, and yet even had this stuff going on with them at home.And learning to deal with the rage and anger, the difference between forgiveness and denial, the difference between wisdom and trusting someone, or folly, and learning to distinguish those things has been a big part of my ministry ever since. So, as far as your childhood and teenage years, do you feel like you knew of God, but didn't know him?You felt like you were living a life of faith, but didn't really have a personal relationship with him? No, I had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I think when I was 16, I had. Um, I had, well, what a lot of people call the, the filling of the Holy Spirit, but I believe you have the Holy Spirit the moment you profess Christ, but I had a very emotional experience where God led me close to Him.But from the moment I heard God is love, I, that's when I would say my conversion took place. And I was very much into the Bible and very much into youth group and sharing my faith with other Christians. That was a big part of my life. Um, and even when I was dating the men, like I said, I only dated Christian men, but I did not have that wisdom piece.I needed to get wise counsel to get that wisdom piece. And I knew it. In fact, I had memorized 1 Corinthians 13, that love is kind, love is patient, but somehow I wasn't interpreting love as being kind in my life. Um, and that. That it's a parenting thing. I had to learn to parent myself there With the help of the Holy Spirit and the help of some Christian counselors Okay, yeah, and so Another thing that I'm curious about which is you know The Bible is a story of forgiveness and like we said God is love What is your relationship with your father like nowadays?Because I know you mentioned he went back to prison for some time. So are you in contact with him? Have you forgave him? What is that? How is that tied into your faith? So my dad passed away. He drank himself to death in his early forties. Um, but let me take a moment to talk about forgiveness. Um, and the difference between forgiveness and denial, because I had to learn that with my dad.And sometimes When you have survivors of abuse, oftentimes in the church, they almost get beaten up with the word of forgiveness. And I've got to tell any of your listeners that if you grew up in an abusive home, children have an innate sense of wanting to be loved by the adults around them. Right. And they have an innate sense of excusing their bad behavior.And as a kid, I had learned that forgiveness was excusing or ignoring bad behavior. And that's not the same thing as forgiveness. You know, in the book of Matthew, the people want to make Jesus the king. And Jesus slips away in the crowd because the scripture says, For he knew the hearts of men, and he did not trust them.If Jesus reserves the right not to trust some people, we as Christians can reserve the right not to trust someone. So I'm just going to make a distinction that in order to forgive someone, in the Bible we have this wonderful teaching called Confession. And Confession says in 1 John 1, 9, If, and it starts with the word if, it's conditional, If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.Now it's conditional, and I'm not saying you have to remember every sin, but you have to come to God and say, I'm a sinner. So if you read first John one, it talks about that. He who says he has no sin is a liar. So you, you have to say, I'm a sinner. So in order to forgive someone, you first have to admit that what they did to you hurt you and what they did was wrong.And, um, if they're non repentant and non confessing, they will do it again. And you are not obligated to trust them. Forgiveness is when one person, by the act of their will, releases the anger and hatred to God, but also has a sense of caution. By saying I have trusted you. I don't have to trust you, but I realize you're a child of God and this is what This is what sin has done to you You're a human just like I am What for what denial says is what you did to me was not that bad or it was deserved Or I just don't like to think about it.Mm hmm, and it hushes the voice of caution So you subject your children and your grandchildren to this abuser You You don't have to forgive and forget. Now God forgets our sins and that He doesn't judge us for our sins, but God understands our frame. He knows that we're made of dust, the psalmist says.And we have to realize people are made of dust. And people who have bad habits, we don't expose them to temptations. So if you have a friend in your church who is a recovering alcoholic, don't serve wine at your dinner while they are there. That's simple intelligence. Don't, um, invite them to a restaurant where they'll be tempted.The same thing if you have someone who's a pedophile. You don't, you don't allow them to be around children. So for me with my dad, we, um, he came back in my life when I was about, you know, he left my life again. He abandoned our family when I was 17. By the time I was 18, he called. the house one day and I was able to talk to him about, um, he wanted my little brother to come over.Why he he can't have my little brother come over. And I was able to say with a very clear voice, Dad, I've always loved you, but you got a problem here. And I can't let you be around my brothers and sisters or around me anymore. And that was hard for him. And then when I was about 27, he got my phone number and called me again.And he wanted to talk to me. He said he was going to 12 step groups and says you have to make amends. Right. Um, he started to talk about stuff. I said, Dad, I know the 12 steps. And it says, make amends if it doesn't harm anyone. This conversation harms me. I can't handle it from you right now. And, um, again, I said, Innately, I loved you, but I can't have you in my life.Because he was drunk on the phone call. Um, when he passed away, I, I had no regrets because I had the ability to say to him, I love you, but you can't be in my life. Um, and I no longer have, because I give it to God, this, this, um, this driving force to tell him off like in some soap opera. That's not gonna help anyone.Dad could not hear the confrontation because his denial was so deep. Um. He made a profession in Christ, so I can assume that he's in heaven, and now he knows the full scale of what he did to me, and what his life did. And I can even feel sympathy for him, because he himself was abused, and he tried so hard to make it in the world, but the addiction kept getting him, and in the end, it killed him.Um. In fact, in his last days of life, if you, if you've known someone who dies of alcoholism, they are pickled by that. I mean that, that even when they're not drinking, they're drunk. It's so in their blood system and they cannot be sober when they want to be for the last hours to say goodbye. And their body shuts down one increment at a time.It's a horrible, horrible illness to die of. And for my dad's part, Um, there was something in his life he did not submit to God. I will certainly say that. John Calvin talks about the great mystery of sin and bondage, that I'll never know what that is, but that's between him and God. But I had full, um, release from cutting him out of my life in the end.And that's what I want to tell survivors too, of abuse, is that you can say you love someone, but I gotta love you at a distance, cause I gotta protect my job and my family. And my husband and my kids are my wife and my kids and I've got to raise a righteous seed or have a righteous ministry in the sake of Jesus.And that means I've got to cut you out of my life. I'm sorry. I agree with what everything you said was well stated. It's actually something we've kind of discussed before on this show because we've had a lot of episodes on. alcohol and addiction recovery, and especially in the episode with Dr. Brian LeQuannon, we talked about being held emotionally hostage and boundary setting because there's a lot of families that end up enabling because they forgive because of their relationship with that person and you know they don't set boundaries.So I think what you were talking about that denial and the one thing you said that I think will resonate most with people is that I just don't want to think about that part. You know, I love my dad, but I don't want to think about that part or my mom or whoever it is. I agree 100%. And I think especially as Children and teenagers, all we want is the love and approval of our parents.And so we try to push those things to the side. And I completely agree. You know, we've we've seen it in a lot of homes where addiction and trauma are prevalent. And I've never understood, you know, you talk about the way alcoholics tend to go out. I've never understood how that alone doesn't scare them, you know, cause I think about that and I, I just would never want that for me or for, for my family, you know, to, Not be able to properly say goodbye, but, you know, and, and everyone is different.I, I have addicts in my life who have gotten to that point, and then managed to get better, and then went back to that point again. And then I've had addicts in my life who got to that point, and got better, and said, how could I ever let that happen never again? But, addiction is one of those things that is just very destructive and very painful.Mind perplexing, but I think what you said about forgiveness is is great and definitely the first the Acknowledgement and actually meaning your your apology or your acceptance of forgiveness I think that the actual meaning behind it has been kind of just a lot of people have Gotten very surface level with it, but to truly heal especially in a situation like that You You need to go on that deeper and faith based level.And now what I want to focus on pivoting from there is what you're doing nowadays. And by nowadays, I mean also just the past few years. I know you've published several books And we'll go over all of them here because they're all different ways for you to help, uh, reach different types of people with the faith.So if you want to just start with your first one and and work your way through them and kind of go over You Who they serve and what brought this into your life, you know, writing and becoming an author? Yeah, well, I think I wrote as a child a lot. Um, but as an adult I Like I told you I grew up on welfare So when it came time to earn a living I had to work a couple jobs and go to school at the same time Um, and I did what a lot of first generation college students do I messed up on my student loans Maybe self sabotaged a little financially because I felt so guilty You That I was going to school, so I still think about that, there was, um, but at any rate, when I got my job in the ministry, um, I was in my early forties, that's when I started to write again, because finally I just had one job, and my job, and it took up a lot of my time, but I could come home and, and, and write, and um, put some of my thoughts to, to paper.So the first book I wrote was called Hearing the Gospel with Charles Dickens at Christmas Carol. I wanted to write this book since I was a little girl, actually, uh, when I, when we, we used to go to a church that was two miles from our house and we would walk. To the church and home from the church and most the time it was a pleasant walk occasionally We'd be harassed by homeless people, but most the time it was a very pleasant walk.So we went to this midnight Worship service and we walked home and when I got home I would watch before I went to bed a Christmas Carol the 1959 production by Alistair Sims Excellent production. But I always sensed there was something religious about it, but I couldn't put my finger on it. But the way that it ministered to me is that it saw the idea that if you were poor, it did not mean that you needed to be shamed.It did not mean that you needed to be treated poorly. And I had been somewhat shamed. I told the story about that my dad was the one who asked for money from the church and then would spend it other ways. And there were a lot of people who ministered to our family. In fact, someone paid for me to go to Christian high school.And I found out later as an adult, he did so by his wife losing the second car in the household. He was an engineer, but he wasn't. Wow. Um, so I, and there were people who paid for me to go to camp and church activities. But there were also people who thought she's going to grow up just like her father.And they said it with a near shot of me. So I felt the shame of poverty. I also felt the shame because I didn't dress as nice and I couldn't do the things that my friends did. Yeah. But, um, anyway. Um. I, when I was taking Hebrew, I found out the word Ebenezer means the Lord has brought me thus far in the Hebrew, that God has taken me thus far.Wow. And, um, I, I realized as I studied Advent in my church and celebrated Advent that there were four distinctive lessons in Advent and they correlated with each of the spirits in a Christmas carol. And so I did some research. I read a couple of books. Charles Dickens, um, Faith Journey. And read a couple of books on it.He wrote some letters to his best friend, whose name was Foster. And, um, he was struggling with the church. He was struggling with the church and the way it shamefully treated the poor. In fact, the line, Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? He heard in Parliament one day by a person of faith, when they were talking about creating good housing for the poor.And it incensed him. Um, so he writes a character by the name of Ebenezer. And the first Ebenezer, means the Lord has brought me thus far, he's sitting at home on Christmas Eve and Marley, when he comes, asks him the question, were there not similar houses? Why did I look at that blessed star in the sky and could it not led me to similar houses as the star led those wise men to that poor abode?In other words, because God had, um, because people had shut the Son of God out. We need to open up our, our lives to the poor. And then I read the Anglican prayer book. And then I, this was the clincher. In the Anglican prayer book, it, in America, when we celebrate Christmas, we go through the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter 2.which is the nativity story. That's our story. The angels look at it a little bit differently. They use the book of Isaiah and the book of Isaiah talks about how God's going to bring judgment and then God brings the Messiah. So they have an old Testament and new Testament reading. And the old Testament is all about that.You, you, you're shutting the poor out, you're judging the poor. And, um, I will. I will let the little foxes trample the grapes of wrath, which is why that song was written, unless you can't, and bring the Messiah. And then I'll bring a Messiah. And so, um, each of the Isaiah passages also fit with each of the spirits.And so I wrote this devotional, Hearing the Gospel through Dickens A Christmas Carol, which is on my website, RevCherylKincaid. com. Don't buy it through Amazon, because the prices are, uh, Go up in Amazon, but you can buy it directly from the publisher and not pay the tariffs. But um, yeah, I wrote that correlating each of the spirits to to what Each of the spirits of the lessons of Advent But also it was healing for me because I really related with Charles Dickens I his father was in prison.My dad was in prison. He grew up in a workhouse There was just so many stuff and he preaches in all his novels You Um, and he, you know, the big one is a tale of two cities where the main character has a conversion. He hears Jesus say, I'm the resurrection of life. He that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live.And he comes to faith in Jesus Christ. So it's in his novels. Unfortunately, if you see the movies, they kind of cut the scriptures out of it. And most people know Dickens through the movies. They don't know him through his books. So that was the first one I wrote. And then the second one was Karen Storn.So when I facilitate support groups for survivors of abuse, one of the things that women would complain about is whenever you saw a movie, a Christian movie or a play about a woman who had been abused, um, or a secular movie for that fact, you always made a, she always had an anorexic disorder. She was suicidal.Just crazy. And then in the Christian movies, they had her either pray a prayer of forgiveness at the end, or accept Christ, and then everything was better. That's not the way it works. Um, like anything, we incrementally accept it and incrementally give, um, the responsibility to the abuser and learn to trust God again.And most of the survivors in my group grew up like me. We were very conservative Christian girls. We didn't become prostitutes or promiscuous. We didn't come on to married men. We, um, you know, we, we, in my case, I didn't date till I was 18. We had this struggle, which happens to a lot of Christians. Why did a good God allow this to happen?Right. And I use the thorn because we talk about, you were talking about Christians with scars. We talked about the Apostle Paul who prayed three times. In fact, the Greek says he begged. We translate, he pleaded. He pleaded for God to take it away three times and God said, my grace is sufficient for thee.But my strength is made perfect in my weakness. And then Paul says, Therefore I glory in my weakness. And Carrie's struggling with the idea because she doesn't want to talk about her abuse yet, but it really bothers her in Sunday School, the story of Thomas that Jesus still has. And she was like, well, that's not fair.It wasn't his sin that did it. God should have erased his scars. And she struggles with that teaching. And comes to the end to realize that Jesus scars help Thomas believe and help us to believe. Because we have a God with scars. And it wasn't his sin, scars, it was humanity's sin. And sometimes we have scars in our life because of other people's sin.Not because of a mistake we made, but because of what someone did to us. And Carrie's Thorn is about that, and it follows a lifestyle from, um, basically nine to, um, fifteen. And then A Forgotten Door Called Home is about her and her girlfriend, Leiloni. And Leloni is, um, an Hawaiian girl that she meets inside the, uh, foster care system.Leloni's father's an alcoholic, um, and she also suffers from some generational abuse. Her grandma has some bad memories about being in a missionary school. But both of them are trying to say, what does it mean to trust God when the people behind me have problems with God? And what does it mean to make a home, when you don't have a sense of home?That's what this book is about. It's the sequel to Carrie's Thorn. And then I wrote, uh, two children's books. One is Jeremiah 18. If you haven't read that passage in a while, Um, it's a good Bible verse to read. For sure, yeah. Yeah, because the clay falls apart in the potter's hand. And he says, can I not make something different, says the potter.It wasn't my original purpose, but something happened in life. The clay had a flaw in it. It fell apart. Life has some incredible flaws. And sometimes God says, can't I make something different? And this is the literal story of it, but um, the little clay pot is set aside for a particular purpose and it's a purpose that was far better than what it thought it could have.Um, focusing on Advent, I got The Little Candle That's Frightened of the Dark, which is a story of a candle that's part of the Advent wreath, and it trembles because there's darkness all around it. And the Advent wreath goes around and tells them the story of Christ's birth, and at the end, I can do a spoiler alert because it's a children's story, the Christ candle said, Don't you know, little candle, that darkness cannot put out light, but light can pierce through the darkness.And that's the lesson of that. And one book that's just coming out, it's, we've had some trouble with the printing, it's called Please Don't Move My Grandma's Chair. And it's a story about a little girl whose dad is moving grandma's chair because grandma passed away. And it's how children deal with grief.Mmm, yeah. That's powerful. I think with the second and third book you shared, I appreciate what you're doing with trying to accurately represent how You know, Christian women who have been through traumatic experiences. I think it's important. Like you said, there's a lot of, I think just the faith based community in general, uh, like any group of people, there's a lot of stereotypes.There's a lot of ways we're portrayed that aren't accurate. So I think it's important, especially the faith based industry isn't really supported by Hollywood necessarily. There's, there are movies that come out every now and then. Uh, but they're usually the. lowest budget movies of the year. They're usually the least supported, at least advertised.Um, I've seen recently a lot more people on, on YouTube and other TV streaming services trying to make shows. Uh, whether they're accurate or not, you know, I can't say, but I have seen some inaccurate stuff online. I've seen some accurate stuff, but I think this particular focus is great. And I'm glad that the women brought it to your attention and that you decided to do something about it.And I definitely love to see your books turned into a movie or a show to continue to help spread that more accurate representation. And so do you think that you have any more books in you or that God has more books planned for you? Or do you think this is it as far as your writing journey? Well, I think I'm going to write for a while.I'm working on a devotional called A Hope and a Future for Survivors of Abuse because I know that sometimes I know my healing experience. I was in the middle of a tunnel for a very long time, um, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I wasn't sure it was ever going to be there. And I want to give the sense that it's taken with Jeremiah 1911, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.And it's talking about how you can embrace a hopeful future in the midst of, of healing from childhood sexual abuse. Thanks. Amen. And before we sign off, Ms. Kincaid, uh, I'd love for you, you kind of just did it, but I was going to ask you to leave us all with a Bible verse that you want to put forth. I know, um, I'm a huge Jeremiah fan as well, so I appreciate you quoting Jeremiah, but, uh, if you could pick.You could do another Jeremiah quote, but, um, other than what you just said, if you could leave us all with something, that would be greatly appreciated. Yeah, um, I guess my big, my big scripture was that he that began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. Amen. And I don't have to go into the Greek, but I'll just say it just because we need to parse things in the English.Until the day of Christ Jesus, it is in the subjunctive future. In other words, it's not going to happen all at once. Amen. It's going to keep on happening in you till Christ comes again. So don't give up on the work, it'll happen, but it's going to happen on God's timetable and not necessarily yours. No, that's, that's beautiful, and that's always a good lesson that we hear a lot, which is God's timing, not ours, His ways, not ours.And I think that's so important because we always want to constrain God to our world, our ways, our time, uh, but God transcends all of that and he can do great things. And so, ladies and gentlemen, if you appreciate and like Ms. Kincaid, we'll have her website and information below. I highly encourage y'all, especially.The women who have gone through some kind of traumatic experience to check out those books And I I think those are great resources So I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing them and it's great to see You know, there's a lot of people who have been through awful things and have Allowed it to lead them away from the faith So it's great to see you and hopefully we have inspired others who have gone through terrible things to know that Like you said with the the clay pot Uh, whether it's sin or just the sins of others, there's always stuff happening in life that can throw things awry.But God is always holding us in his hand and there's nothing he can't do. And there's nothing that can be done that can take away from that. And as it's written, what the enemy intends to use against us for evil, God will use for us. So I think that's awesome, but Ms. Kincaid, thank you so much for coming on the show.I appreciate your time. Thanks so much for having me.
