This special episode features an incredible interview with Coach Robin Pou from our recent Blue Cord Conference. You have got to hear this. When you step out in faith to share your faith, you will face resistance. Whether you’re hanging out on your sofa or in the harvest field, resistance will always be there. The question is what do you do when it happens? Robin reminds you that you have a choice in how to handle the situation. Share this powerful episode with friends.
This special episode features an incredible interview with Coach Robin Pou from our recent Blue Cord Conference. You have got to hear this. When you step out in faith to share your faith, you will face resistance. Whether you’re hanging out on your sofa or in the harvest field, resistance will always be there. The question is what do you do when it happens? Coach Robin (featured in Chapter 11 of The Blue Cord book) reminds you that you have a choice in how to handle the situation. Share this powerful episode with friends.
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Get The Blue Cord book, by Karen Bejjani here.
Learn more: TheBlueCord.org.
Learn more about iHOPE Ministries at iHOPEministries.org.
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Narrator: Today on "The Blue Cord Podcast."
Robin: I said, Lord, if the purpose of my life was my death, and you miraculously saved me, first of all, thank you. Appreciate that. That's awesome. Check. And yet, ah, what's the purpose of my life? And He said, Robin tonight, I do not demand your life. Knowing that you would give it to me is all that I ask, get up, dust yourself off and let's get to work.
Karen: If you're like most women, I know you want to trust the Lord and fearlessly share Jesus, yet something holds you back. Maybe you're struggling to navigate our culture. Maybe you wrestle with fear or lack skills. Maybe it's easier to stick in your comfort zone and keep your mouth shut rather than to talk about your faith, especially across cultures. That's what the Blue Cord Podcast is all about. I'm your host, Karen Bejjani and if sharing your faith has been hard for you and you long to be brave, strong, and courageous. This is for you.
Karen: Our recent Blue Cord conference was incredible. If you were there, you know what I mean. One of the day’s highlights was an interview I did with Coach Robin Pou on how to break through the resistance we all feel about sharing our faith. Today’s episode is a recording of that conversation from the conference. Enjoy!
Karen: Now that we know that there's a great spiritual battle, waging war for souls all around us. And we know that we should be stepping out in faith to open our mouths for Jesus. We're good Christian girls. We know that we're supposed to do that. And yet at that moment where the rubber actually meets the road, and we feel that nudge from the holy spirit that says open your mouth now.
And then we feel resistance. Has anybody ever felt that? Okay, good. I'm not alone. No, you're normal. We all feel that. When I was writing this book, "The Blue Cord," I got to this chapter and I knew this is a chapter about what, do we do, ladies when we hit that resistance, how do we handle it?
How do we break through that? I knew I had to go talk to my good friend, Robin Pou, who has been a coach and a mentor to me for many years. I went to him, sat in his office, and just peppered him with a million questions and took a million notes. And that really birthed chapter 11 of the book.
You can read it in detail, but today we're going to give you a little synopsis together, Robin and I, and we're going to recreate what we talked about together in his office a year ago. And so let me just tell you about Robin, because he's spoken into my life at critical faith-defining moments.
He is an author and speaker and CEO of a leadership development firm that he founded. His clients are fortune 500 senior executives, and leaders of high-growth organizations. And so he really helps people do those breakthroughs and that's why I'm so excited that he's here with us today.
So Robin, come on up here, Robin Pou, ladies and gentlemen.
Alright, so Robin. We've all decided when we leave here, whether you like it or not because we're going to buck up and we're going to do this because we are practicing learners. What can we expect when we walk out this door and we decide to live counter-culturally and share our faith?
Robin: First of all, good morning good Christian girls. Happy to be here. I am ready to buck up. I'm ready to defeat doubt, but I can't find my harp, so I'm not quite sure, but I have a sword and it's hanging up in the mudroom and sometimes I leave it at the house and I need to take it with me. When you step out, you're going to experience resistance.
But you're already experiencing resistance. So whether or not you're sitting on the sofa or you're out in the field, you're already experiencing that resistance to step forward. So we're all going to die. Very inspirational message. I'm sorry for that. None of us gets out of this alive, so you can either die in the field or you can die on yours.
Oh, you liked that one. Okay. Let's try it again. You can either die in the field or you can die on your sofa.
Karen (2): I'm dying in the field.
Robin: My point is either we believe, or we don't because if we believed and we know when we die, that's not the end of the story.
This is a matter of choice. Your mind is powerful. You control your mind. You have a choice in every situation. What are you choosing? II Corinthians 10:5, "take captive your thoughts and make them obedient to Christ." Take captive your thoughts. The Greek of the word thoughts is your spiritual capacity for truth.
We have heard that the culture is telling us its distorted view of the truth. The only true truth, which we now have to modify true truth is the inerrant word of God found in the scripture. So you either know the truth or you don't know the truth, and you will be susceptible to the lie. So take captive your spiritual capacity for truth and make it obedient to Christ and the Greek of the word obedient just means listen.
Our burden is very light. All we must do is listen. And then you get to decide whether or not you're choosing to obey. So I don't really know if that's an answer to her question, but that's what I wanted to share straight out of the shoot.
Karen: Wow. All right. So here. Some of us have been conforming to the world for a while. We've been on that sofa and it's easier to keep our mouth shut than risk judgment, Robin. So what do we do?
Robin: Yeah. So I will challenge the premise of the question that it's easier.
Karen: Tell us more.
Robin: If you are in alignment with what God is calling you. And you're attached to the vine. He's telling you things. He's sharing with you. He's calling you forward. So you can sit on the sofa in your comfort zone, but that is not on any level a comfort zone because you know, that you need to be doing something else. So it's quite the opposite of comfort. It's frustration.
So it's been improperly termed. So we just heard a minute ago, that the world distorts the argument so that it makes logical sense to us. Oh, it's the comfort zone. It's warm and cozy. No, it is not. It is the frustration zone because you know that there's something else that God is calling you to as a daughter of Christ. And because you're not going, you're frustrated. So it's a lie. The comfort zone.
Karen: Yeah, we got to write that down. The comfort zone is a liar and it's really the frustration zone. So why do we want to embrace being uncomfortable?
Robin: Either you're obedient or you're not.
Gosh, y'all are so great. I love this. I don't get nearly this response at home. A prophet is not welcome in his own hometown. You're either obedient or you're not. So 10 years ago I had a fairly massive spiritual transformation. I was on my first missions trip with our church. Circumstances were crazy that was offering me the opportunity to go.
And it did not go the way that we expected. It's a much longer story, but we ended up being taken captive and held hostage for about an hour and a half. Death was imminent based on some of the circumstances. And I had my face ground into the dirt, the red Kenyan dirt, and I immediately thought of my grandmother who had died six months earlier and I was going to be at the pearly gates and she was going to say what are you doing here? Because by all earthly accounts, 50 years should separate my entry into heaven and hers. And yet within six months there, I was going to be. And I realize that if 13 people are dead or dying in a ditch by the side of the road in otherwise peaceful Kenya at that time, the whole world was going to know about it, especially if we were Christian missionaries.
And so God was going to use our circumstances to shine a light on that region, which was being gripped by evil. This was not a one-time experience that we were having. It was something that was pervasive in the region. And so I realized at that very moment that the purpose of my life was going to be my death.
And in my death, God would shine a light on this region that would free a multitude of people. Now my practical way of thinking was please save us. Please save us. Because that was not actually my plan, but the impact of what He was sharing with me on my heart was enough to get me to say, Lord, if that's your plan, then I surrendered to it.
In fact, I surrender my life right here in the ditch. And a transcendental peace came over me and I began to say the Lord's prayer deliver us from evil. And my buddy, John came over to us and we could go, it was a miraculous saving. There was a car that had come the story's fantastic. And yet the point for today was in my own personal debrief, a couple of hours later in the safety of my hotel room. I said, Lord, if the purpose of my life was my death, and you miraculously saved me, first of all, thank you. Appreciate that. That's awesome. Check. And yet, ah, what's the purpose of my life? And He said, Robin tonight, I do not demand your life. Knowing that you would give it to me is all that I ask, get up, dust yourself off and let's get to work.
Now, this is a horrendously long answer to a very short question, but I'm doing the tee-up because even with that experience, a miraculous saving of the reluctant disciples, still showed up. My good friend, Todd was in the hospital. We got an email from our camp. That's where we had met, said Todd's in the hospital.
And I was like, oh, I should go see him. And then I didn't. And then I got another email, which said, oh, not only does he have pneumonia, he has double pneumonia. And we wanted to make sure that he was on your prayer list. And then I knew that God was calling me to his hospital room to go visit him. And so I put the appointment on the calendar for a couple of days.
Double pneumonia. Oh, two days later. And then two days later, when I'm ready to go to the hospital room, I look up the directions and it wasn't Baylor two blocks from my office. It was Baylor in west nowhere going to take me 45 minutes and I had not allotted enough time. I was like I'll go tomorrow. Next day, 3rd email.
We regret to inform you that Todd has passed away. God was calling me to his bedside. I knew it. And either out of comfort zone or task orientation or whatever, was my wiring after the Kenya story I had said not right now, God, because I was nervous as to what he was going to call me to do. This guy was my mentor and I was going to have to share the faith with him now, whatever God needed to get done for Todd, he got done.
The Lord's will prevailed. But I didn't get to participate. I was disobedient and it felt awful. And I'd like to tell you that I resolved and never be disobedient again, from that point forward. And yet this past fall, there was a woman who vanished from her house at 5:00 AM, a mom, and our school. And we were nervous about what had happened.
Was there foul play? What was going on? Come to find out? She was found in Oklahoma. She was fine, but it did signal that there were some mental health issues. And guess what God did, He called me to her. And the good story would be that I wind when I was called, but I didn't. I was like, okay, God, I don't know her.
She's divorced. I'm married. What am I going to do? Just knock on her door. She's just coming back from Oklahoma with mental health issues. There are plenty of Christian women who are surrounding her. Why are you asking me? So then I went into deal mode. I said, okay if you would like me to do this, I will be obedient on my terms.
Will you please bring her to me?
Karen: I've done that.
Robin: Ah, it's awful. It's funny, but it's really not because we're risking obedience versus disobedience. So you know what God did at homecoming where everybody was there, he puts her on the front row of the stands and I'm sitting there and I see her and all the parents were there.
Even the girl parents who didn't have boys who were playing in the game, because there was the little pep squad he was going to do the halftime show, whole schools there. Nobody was with her. And I was concerned that there was some element attached to her because everybody knew. So nobody was talking to her.
She was isolated in my mind. And I was like, okay, got it. Okay. So I didn't immediately go. And I looked over this way and when I looked back, she was gone and I scanned, cause I know what it means to be disobedient. So I'm looking and she's walking. I sprinted, I knocked over five different people to get to her.
And I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around and I said, we don't know each other very well, but God has called me to you. And she goes, oh, I know who you are. And I was like ew, all right. And I just said, God wants you to know that He loves you.
And so we embraced and I said, I'm on your team 24/7. You call me anytime. I don't know what's going on. I'm not participating in the community chatter. I'm safe. My wife and I are here for you. You just let us know.
She passed away three weeks ago. If she had passed away and I had not done what God had called me to do, I would be sitting here with not only the disobedience but the remorse that I missed the opportunity and the blessing. I did everything He called me to do. He didn't ask me to do anything else. I could not have saved her, but I did what I was called to do because Todd and God taught me the lesson 10 years ago.
That was outside my comfort zone and the community that I'm in, hugging the woman who has a mental health issue. And it's not okay to have a mental health issue these days, even though we're talking a lot about it. And that tight community that you're in, where you don't want to reach out to the woman who lives next door to you for fear that the other women on your street are gonna judge you.
That's a challenge. That's the discomfort zone.
So if we've debunked the comfort zone, and you're stepping across the threshold to the discomfort zone. That's the place of His calling. And he's always going to call you to do something from my perspective, that is not fully comfortable. So what's the old adage. He doesn't call the equipped. He equips the call. So He wants your faith in Him, not in your own understanding, do not lean on your own understanding.
He wants you to lean on His understanding, which means you have to take a step outside of the comfort zone, into the discomfort zone in order to be blessed for joining Him in the work that He's already doing. But your burden is light. Your burden is light. Jesus is carrying everything. All you must do is what he's calling you to do.
Am I'm going to go talk to this woman? I don't even know her. I'm going to give her a hug and public when it's clear that everybody else is ostracizing her or fearful of engaging with her. What's that then going to make me look like, I don't know. God will get it figured out. I haven't missed a meal.
I'm still here. I had a ditch experience. You're either going into a ditch, you're in a ditch or you're coming out of a ditch. So this doesn't mean being in a ditch and Kenya. This means you are here, we've survived. The worst thing that has happened, is a pandemic, like what are we waiting for? This is it.
We're all on gravy time. This is it. This is our time. So whether or not you've been equipped with a harp or a sword or a shield or a winsome hospitality, you bring those gifts to the table. It's God's to multiply Dallas Jenkins who wrote the chosen. Yeah, incredible, google his testimony, but at the depths of the movie that was made through the Hollywood machine, that was a faith-based movie that the focus group said was going to be a smashing success bombed at the box office.
That night of the weekend, his wife had been told by God's impression of her heart to go to the fishes and loaves story. And also God does crazy impossible math. And as He looked at the fishes and loaves story, He zeroed in on the little boy who had the five loaves and the two fish Jesus had been speaking to the 5,000 for three days.
And the disciples wanted to send them home because they were hungry. And Jesus said, no, they won't make it because they're too hungry. Did Jesus just preach for three days without an awareness of the fact that these people needed food? Did He preach so long that He put them in danger? No. He knew exactly what He was doing.
And this little boy shows up with two fish and five loaves. If I'm the dad of that kid, what's the instruction to that boy related to that food, hide it.
My job is to keep this family alive. If they didn't pack their food, that's on them. Plus, what are two fish and five loaves going to do for 5,000 people? That's my own little interpretation. You're going, not going to find that in the Dallas Jenkins version, but he brought my mind to that. And that's what I would have done to that little boy.
And he would have been subject to being in trouble. If he had gone against his father's wishes, submit to the authority of the household problem is the household was a greater authority. It was Jesus in that moment. So this boy brings the two fish and the five loaves. Jesus did the multiplication, all this little boy needed to do was bring what he had to the table, which was insufficient for 5,000 people. And it was God's duty. It was God's will to do the multiplication. You don't have to worry about multiplication. You just have to bring what you have.
And even if you think it's insufficient, God wants your obedience to bring it to the altar.
Karen: Let's talk a little bit about that obedience because I remember we were in your office and you were telling me a story of sticks. And do you remember the story of sticks? Okay. You were saying Take your crooked stick and line it up to the straight stick. Tell us that story.
Robin: So each of us has a belief system. And your belief system, my belief system is not a hundred percent accurate to the truth. If it were, I would be Jesus and I am good, but I'm not that good. And nor are you. And so on some level, our stick of truth is not a good measuring stick.
It's crooked on some level, which is why we're drawn to the word in order to understand what does scripture says about this. We sold our company. We moved to Nashville. There was a gentleman that wasn't going to be moved by the company who was acquiring us because he was an hourly employee, but Reggie was the greatest guy ever.
And I said I will help you come to Nashville to move from Dallas to Nashville. And he needed some money. And I said the acquiring company has a relationship with a bank and I can help get you a loan if that's what you want. So we're at the loan table. It was $3,500. It was going to be everything that he needed in order to make the transition.
And they said well, Mr. Pow, my last name is Pou. We would like for you to co-sign the loan. And I'm like, no, that was not part of the deal. You're actually vouching for him, but you're taking his money out of his paycheck. You've got a secure situation. So I immediately rose to the altruistic occasion and I co-signed the loan for him.
Only six months later for the acquiring company to shut down our company and guests who left under cover of darkness, Reggie guess who had co-signed the loan and who had failed to tell his wife that he had? Co-signed the loan? Talk about the discomfort zone.
Did you know that in Proverbs it says don't co-sign a loan? I wish you had told me because I would have been obedient to tell Reggie you're on your own. But I had a straight stick of my own choosing. My truth was that I was doing a good thing by co-signing the loan. And so it was a wonderfully horrible $3,500 lesson in the fact that the scripture has something to say about our everyday life and every day we can conform our understanding to God's understanding according to His design.
Karen: Okay, Robin last question. If many of you are like me, when I was sitting in Robin's office, I was thinking, oh man, I should have done this. Oh, man. He's right. I've been on the couch too long. Oh, man. I've been conforming to the world. Oh, man. My crooked stick. I've been thinking it's straight.
What are some good next steps for walking out here and boldly sharing Jesus?
Robin: Yeah, you have to make a choice. You have to make a choice in your heart. And in your mind, you have to decide whether or not Jesus is the King of Kings, Lord of Lords. Karen tells a story in the book that she's in the van.
What's his name? Yeah. Muhammad and Karen, why are you upset? I loved it. When you did it in your accent. I'm not going to imitate that, but what's the one I said,
Karen: he said why are you afraid? They have a living. God, they have a dead God. Why are you afraid?
Robin: I have never forgotten it because they're in a van going down the red zone or wherever, and she's thinking some snipers going to be shooting at the van and he's like, it's no problem.
We believe in a living God. So you either decide that you believe, or you don't, and then you, if you believe tune your ear and your heart to what He's calling you to do, and if it is outside your comfort zone, it's probably God. Cause you're like, how do I hear whether it's me or it's God, if it's illogical, if it's counterintuitive, if it makes your heart race, I think that's God, it's the holy spirit speaking to you.
And you can say what I said to Todd, oh, get there tomorrow or two days. And you can suffer the pain of the disobedience. He's not admonishing us. He's just saying I wanted to invite you to participate and you didn't and it's okay because I'm going to give you another shot. And He did with Jen and I did it.
I didn't know that she was going to pass away and my window of opportunity was going to be closed. But I am at peace that I did what I was called to do. So there are one or more of you. In this auditorium at this exact moment who do not even need to hear the rest of the conference, which will be awesome by the way don't leave.
But your heart is already pounding and you are ready to receive the Baton that Karen so eloquently talked about in her book.
Run the race as if to win. Eric Liddell says, when I run, I feel God's pleasure. You are not running alone. It is a four-person relay race right here. It is a billion-person relay race. You are not alone. And as each of you has this Baton, you then can pass it to somebody else because this is not to hold on to it.
This is to pass it along. And so this is a reminder that you are called to something beyond yourself. Jesus says you will do even more than I did. I cannot comprehend that, but I choose to believe every single day. Even when the doubt comes in because you have your Baton, you have your harp, you have your Bible, you have your friends, you have the living Christ in you.
The power that raised Jesus from the dead. Amen.
Karen: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to get more involved in the Blue Cord, start small. Read my book, The Blue Cord, and sign up now to get my e-newsletter at thebluecord.org.