Show notes
Stories of God's Upside Down Economy with Kristen Welch (Episode 174) "In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:35 *Transcription Below* Questions We Discuss: Will you share your story of life being flipped upside down in the best kind of way? Will you share how God redeemed parts of your past to prepare you for exciting new endeavors with Him? What fruit has been produced from focusing on generosity in your family? Kristen Welch is an author, podcaster, and founder of Mercy House and Fair Trade Friday. In 2010, a very unexpected yes changed her life, her family and their future forever. At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World Raising World Changers in a Changing World Made to Move Mountains Kristen's Website Thank You to Our Sponsor: Justin Maust Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.” Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.” Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“ Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“ Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” *Transcription* [00:00:00] <music> Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here. [00:00:18] <music> Laura Dugger: I'm excited to introduce you to an old friend and today's sponsor, Justin Maust. He's an expert EOS implementer, a certified speaker for the John Maxwell team, and a passionate coach committed to glorifying God by helping business owners get everything they want from their business. There's a challenge from Theodore Roosevelt that says, Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are. My guest today is Kristen Welch, and she's going to share what that has looked like in her own life as God lovingly and unexpectedly turned her world upside down. Here's our chat. Welcome to the Savvy Sauce, Kristen. Kristen Welch: Hi, thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Laura Dugger: Well, will you just start us off by giving us a snapshot of your current phase of life? [00:01:18] Kristen Welch: I think I'm not quite middle-aged anymore. I might be more middle than aged. I am a wife and mom. I have three kids. Two are young adults in college. One's a senior in college, one's a sophomore, and then I have a freshman in high school. Been married 26 years, and I work full-time at Mercy House Global. Laura Dugger: Wonderful. Thank you for that picture. We know that stories communicate powerful truths. So will you share your story of your life being flipped upside down in the best kind of way? Kristen Welch: I would love to. I guess I have to go back a ways. I started writing really as a blogger in about 2007 and fell in love with that community. That was a long time ago when mom blogs were kind of a new thing. [00:02:18] That blog led me to Nairobi, Kenya in 2010 with Compassion International, where I traveled to write about poverty in an effort to tell stories. What really happened on that trip was the beginning of having my life turned upside down. So in some ways it was an ending of the American dream because I woke up in a slum in Kenya, and I woke up physically but also spiritually and really saw myself in a new light because for the first time in my life I was aware of the world's normal, not so much my own normal. And those two collided, and it changed everything. So when I say I woke up, I literally saw God in a new light and myself, and I haven't been the same since. Laura Dugger: And even to contrast the two, when you say you haven't been the same since, I remember you sharing a little bit of what trajectory your life was on prior to that trip. [00:03:26] So could you share a little bit more about that phase of life you were in and even the wrestling that took place before you surrendered to the Lord and said yes to going on this trip? Kristen Welch: Yes. Actually, at the time, I had a lot of, I guess, ambition, personal ambition, and I wanted to be invited on a trip like this, I think more for the invitation. I'm an introvert, so sometimes I like to be invited just so I can say no. Not that that's a positive thing, but it's at least honest. I think I had a list of things that would make me feel like I was a success. So when I did get invited to go to Kenya with Compassion International, I was honored, but I told them no. That night at dinner, I told my husband about the invitation, and he was shocked. He was like, "Why in the world would you say no to this trip?" Not only because it was a free trip to Africa, but because of the opportunity to do something good with the platform that I'd been given. [00:04:29] I came up with a list of excuses of why it wasn't a good time. Well, the kids were too little at the time. I had a two-year-old. He just sort of looked past those excuses, and just as someone who really knew me, he said, "I want you to answer me honestly. Why did you say no to this trip?" And so I thought about it for a second, and I was honest, and I said, "Because I'm afraid it will change my life." And he pressed a little harder and said, "Would that be a bad thing? Maybe it should change your life." He had seen a woman who loved her family and loved the Lord, but I was really struggling with feeling empty. I had a lack of purpose that I tried to fill with a lot of things of this world. So the next day, I called back, and I changed my answer and said, I think I want to say yes to this trip. [00:05:29] I don't think you have to travel overseas for your life to be turned upside down. My husband didn't. But I think for me, I needed to be out of my normal and my comfort zone and I needed to just witness God in a new way and experience Him in a new way. And that trip certainly did it for me. Laura Dugger: Well, that sounds amazing that you did say yes. Just in case any of us haven't been overseas before, can you give us a little bit more of a picture of how different it was from your American life at the time? Kristen Welch: Yes. Everything was different. One day in particular, I actually wrote a blog post, and that was our job as writers. Every night after we experienced beautiful and heartbreaking things, we would go back to our hotel and write about what we had seen. We were basically eyewitnesses. [00:06:26] I wrote a blog post that day, and it was titled, Today I Went to Hell. I don't think I'm a good enough writer to describe what I witnessed. It was every sense was on fire. What I smelled, what I saw, what I touched. We were led into the heart of the slum by armed bodyguards, and it felt dangerous. It felt like a cruel life. I learned a lot of vocabulary words that day, like survival prostitution, which is a term used to define girls or women who are prostituting for food, not money. I learned that a lot of mothers were actually putting their daughters into survival prostitution to provide for the rest of their families. Another term I learned was an orphan-led home. As we followed our tour guide into the heart of the slum, she stopped at a home of a boy named Vincent. He was an orphan who led his home, which basically meant that his parents had died, and he was in charge of his siblings.[00:07:53] Vincent was about 14 years old, and he invited us inside of his house, which was the size of my master bathroom at home. It was a tin shanty with a dirt floor, no furniture, no bed or table. He gave us a tour of his home and showed us how he took one candle, and that was his light for the house. He lit it, dripped the wax on kind of like a stool, and set the candle inside the hot wax so that it would stand up straight on that stool. He got out his blanket and rolled it out on the hard-packed dirt floor to show us where he and his brother slept. [00:08:49] The entire time he was answering questions and explaining his life, water was dripping through the slits because it was raining outside, and we were getting wet inside of his house. It was dark and dank, and I was overwhelmed with sadness for this boy. The one thing that was so surprising to me, I'll never forget, the entire time he spoke, he had a huge grin on his face. So beautiful. His smile just lit up the room. After he was done explaining how he would get up before school and pick up vegetables, bring them back, and sell them to people on their way to work, which is how he provided food for his brothers, and then he would walk to school. As he was explaining those things to us, he stopped and he asked if we had any questions. I'll never forget that moment. It is a defining moment in my life because I raised my hand. I don't think I thought through what I was about to ask, I just had to ask. [00:10:04] And I said, "Vincent, how can you be so happy? You have nothing, but you're so happy." He looked at me, and the look on his face described his pity for me. I remember thinking, he feels sorry for me. He said, "Ma'am, I have Jesus. He's enough." That was the moment that changed my life because I had Jesus, too. I realized, though, that Jesus was the center of this little shanty in the middle of the world's largest slum in Nairobi, and he wasn't the center of my life. I added in salt and pepper to a meal to season it, but he wasn't the center. I met a kid in Kenya who had more than I had, and I realized that after that day, I would never be the same. [00:11:11] So I came home from that trip, and since that day, more than 11 years ago, I've tried to make Jesus the center of my life and to walk in obedience. I would say those are my goals now. Laura Dugger: I love beginning here because your story shows how God transformed you from the inside out. As you continue to reflect back, what lessons did God continue to teach you about His economy, specifically as it relates to giving, stewardship, and generosity? Kristen Welch: I feel like I've lived a lifetime in the last 11 years just from the lessons that God's taught me. I think we feel like in our culture that the more we have, the more we have. But in the kingdom of God, which is really an upside-down world, it seems like the less we have, but we actually have more. So the more we give, the more we have. [00:12:17] I am living proof of that, that when the Bible says you can't out-give God, I think this is what He's referring to, that we're basically like a conduit, where we open our hand to heaven, and He gives us gifts, and He places things in our hand. If we keep the other hand closed, we just get uncomfortable and full of what we call blessings, but there's no release of that. The conduit doesn't work. But when we open our hand and we're just in the middle, whatever God gives us, whether it's resources, gifts, time, money, when we are freely opening both hands, we allow those things to run through us. We're invited into this. I don't think God needs us. He has everything, but He invites us so that we can receive the joy and in return the purpose of generosity. [00:13:20] So, for me, generosity has taught me that's where joy comes from. I traveled to Kenya really as a woman without purpose, and God used those circumstances and what I witnessed, and the obedience afterwards to give me so much purpose that it's hard to contain. So I think there's this misconception in North America that— I kind of cringe when I hear the word blessing, because we hashtag it and we put it on our wall in cute decor. We sign our emails with it, but we're really not blessed if we're keeping what we've been given. And I think it just means we're selfish. And so God has really shown me that every gift from above, which we know comes from God, if we keep it for ourselves, we're really suffering from selfishness. But if we open our hand and we become that conduit, that is when we are truly blessed. [00:14:24] And of course, it is more blessed to give than receive. I guess I've just been able to put into practice some of those gospel truths, and I've tested them, and they're true. Laura Dugger: I love how you've previously spoken on this topic, and I heard you say that God's formula for giving is not the same of ours, because two minus one does not equal one in God's economy. Two minus one is instead multiplied, just like the little boy and his lunch. That's what comes to mind when you say you're applying these gospel trut…
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