Extended Interviews

Brenda Josee
& Nancy Moser

I’m Nancy Moser (on the right). I was a casual Christian for 40 of my 54 years. I grew up in the faith, but it wasn’t really personal until I was 40 years old. And actually a rejection for a book that I was trying to get published led me to re-evaluate everything and got me going back to church. It’s funny how something bad can turn into something good. And so I started going back to church and realized that I needed to have a better faith than just a C&E Christian. I didn’t even go on Easter or Christmas, because I was too busy. So really this rejection brought me back. Well, I was trying to get published and be rich and famous, and God sent me a rejection that made me go out on errands, and I entered a Christian bookstore and I found out that there was such a thing as Christian fiction. And this was new to me. And so that just kind of turned my world around. And I thought maybe I can achieve my dream and increase my faith through this matter. So that was the turning point, that one question. Is there such a thing as Christian fiction?

Brenda Josee (above on left): I had the privilege of being conceived in the womb of a godly mother and reared in a godly household. But you don’t inherit salvation. We know that. And at 11 years of age I had a very dramatic encounter. Out of just a childlike faith of seeking the Lord in my bedroom one night, I just had a very dramatic encounter with the Lord. And Jesus became so real to me that it became life-consuming to the extent that (I was) the brunt of many jokes and teasing, because for my 12th birthday I was given a Scofield Bible and began to study God’s Word. And when you do that as a child and out of innocence, you can tend to be very condemning of the rest of the family. So that wasn’t always well received. But the Lord continued to do a work in my life and protected my life, and guided me through education and Bible college, and marrying a Christian man, and has just given me wonderful platforms to use my knowledge of His Word to hopefully encourage others. And I will say that His attribute of faithfulness has been demonstrated and now, at this stage of my life, when I read the passages about in our old age we can speak of His faithfulness, I think I can do that a little more accurately.

Well, I was praying – I grew up in a very fundamental environment, somewhat legalistic. But I was praying sort of more liturgically as we were taught to do at night before we go to bed. And I just said “Jesus, I accepted You as a little girl” (which I did when I was very young, because I had that opportunity with my parents), but this particular night was just one of those moments when the Spirit of God was extremely heavy on my young heart. And I remember kneeling beside my bed – I just have vivid memories of the colors in the bedroom – and as I began to pray and talk to Jesus more like a person than something I had learned about in Sunday School, I just began to speak with Him and sense that He was hearing me, probably for the first time in my young life. And I looked on my bed and there was a dramatic – and this was not a vision, this is not an out-of-body experience – but in my little mind’s eye, I just saw - based on pictures I had seen of Jesus – I just saw this image of Jesus, and I began to move from His feet, up His robe, and His hands were just sort of there reaching out to me. And of course, when I got to His face, there was nothing. But it was a visual, emotional encounter that impacted my life to this day. I mean, I can rehearse it so vividly because throughout my life I’ve gone back to that point. And spiritually, I think that’s important. We have Bethany-type experiences, we call them. But when we have that dramatic encounter with God, we know that we know that we know that He has touched our minds, touched our hearts; it changes your life. I wish that for everyone.

"SISTER CIRCLES"

Nancy: A sister circle is simply a group of women friends whose main reason to get together is to cherish and nourish each other as sisters. A sister circle is all about looking beyond “me” to “we” to the group. It could be friends who knit together, or shop or scrapbook or cook or gather for a book club or Bible study. I think the problem is that we are so used to having structure for every gettogether – an agenda and a schedule – we’ve lost the joy that our grandmothers had when we just gathered and talked. And there wasn’t TV and dayplanners back then or e-mail. They met face to face and they bonded, and became a part of each other’s lives. And that’s what sister circles are meant to do, to bring us back to that simpler time, when we shared time with each other.

A sister circle can do whatever you would like it to do. We want women to bond as sisters in Christ, so Jesus and faith are the bonds that glue us together. And a lot of the places where we do meet women, we’re not allowed to share our faith. So this is a faith haven where you can come and share your life in all its entirety, including your faith. And a sister circle can have projects, and go out into the community and do things, or it can be a Bible study and be very intimate. We just don’t want to put any restrictions on it, or any agenda or anything. It truly can be whatever the women need it to be in their own lives.

Brenda: Well, my comment would be regarding women’s need for other women. There have been national surveys by women’s magazines and semi-annually there’s a large sampling of women surveyed. And the number 1 issue that surfaces rather consistently is loneliness. And that’s hard to understand when you think about the pace of our lives and - we’re never alone. With television, with e-mail, with cell phones, we are never alone. Yet loneliness, to me, is a spiritual dimension. And our desire for sister circles is that women understand what it means to bond.

Our desire and prayer is that women will make friendships for life. And the challenge with sister circles is no agenda. It’s easy to prescribe and say get together for 30 to 45 to 50 minutes, read a book, answer these questions. But we believe that women need to connect at a deeper level than being told what to do. I think women are pretty creative. I think that’s part of the way God wired us. And so, to give them a framework, I think even the term sister circle – I said make it an oval, a triangle, or an upside down diamond, I don’t care what shape you give it – just give it connection, so that the women connect with each other and it’s a safe place – not to air dirty laundry, we discourage that – but we do encourage them to share their faiths and their strengths, and obviously when you do that, weaknesses are dealt with. So I just think it’s a concept that’s so hard.

I think of it similar to Campus Crusade’s creating spiritual movements everywhere. How do you create a movement? Sister circles are little tiny movements. It’s women interfacing with women, encouraging, building them up in their faith, and the decorations – whether it’s a book club, moms meeting in the car pool lane, gals that share quilting secrets – whatever the bond, the affinity that draws you together is really irrelevant, because those things come and go. You know, we’re into something today and out of it tomorrow. But we’re always women, we always need to strengthen our faith, and we need sisters in Christ to do that.

Do we have a plan for Suzy Q? If someone’s listening to my words and just feels that tug on their heart that they want to form a sister circle, then God will equip her. They can go to the website and find out particulars and suggestions. We’re not very prescriptive. We try to just give guidelines. But if they want to form a sister circle, I would just encourage them to respond to that nudge. Because it’s probably out of a personal need, and they are going to find there are a lot of other women in their circle of influence that have that same personal need. And I’d suggest that she start small – 3 friends. Find 3 friends that just want to get together for coffee and talk about how God has put this little nudge on her heart. And out of that, just watch what the Holy Spirit will do in developing. I would be willing to guarantee that most women could find 2 or 3 gals who would share their desire to just build each other up in their most holy faith.

Nancy: I think the point of a sister circle is to help each other become the best we can be. And to find our purpose. We’re all searching for our purpose. You know, the whole trick is to find out what it is. And a lot of times we know each other’s strengths better than we know our own. And so if you don’t know your own strength – what am I good at? What is my purpose? – some of your sisters in Christ might say “Well you’re good at this. Don’t you see that?” Because a lot of times if things come easily for us, we discount it. “Well this can’t be important because it comes too easily to me.” And it’s just the opposite. If it comes easily to you, it’s probably a gift that God has given you, and He wants you to use it. And getting together with a group of women friends will really help us develop these gifts and use them, and celebrate the differences with each other, and also how much we are alike.

WOMAN-TO-WOMAN CONNECTION

Brenda: I think the connection – let’s talk about how we connect. We love to talk about the fact that women can bond standing in line at WalMart, or in the grocery store. Men tend to not do that, but women will strike up a conversation and share secrets and child-rearing tips, and you can bond and create a best friend right there. But the people we’re talking about are the people you have some connection with. Not necessarily your neighbors, which is great if you have connections with your neighbors. But perhaps soccer moms – women you relate with your children’s athletic events. Or someone in your church choir. Maybe you have 2 or 3 gals in the choir that you bond with. It’s just kind of a natural happening. You don’t have to force it. Or women that you play golf with. We have women that meet in a hot tub, for example. We’ve received information about that. They happen to call themselves the Froggy Sisters.

But women are extremely creative, and if you have something in common with another woman, you will seek her out. And I think one of the things that I’ve been thinking about just in the last week or so, is when those circles are intact and crisis comes, that’s your strength point. And I believe that’s God ordained. I believe that’s why the sisterhood is so important, that we have that network, that security system, that in a time of crisis - whether our faith is challenged, whether it’s illness, elderly parents, wayward children, whatever the need is – the joy that you have out of the fun of just being sisters and having something you share in common, when you’re the person in crisis, that’s where you’re going to have your support system. And I believe that’s very biblical.

Nancy: One thing that I have learned as I’ve gone through 33 years of marriage is that my husband cannot be everything to me. He cannot fulfill every need. And that’s what I’ve discovered with the sisterhood, is that I have friends who will listen to me ramble about whatever. And where my husband maybe doesn’t have that gift, I have sisters in Christ who do. And so they can really be an extension of the needs that we have, and we can fulfill their needs. And I think it really takes a lot of the burden of being everything to you off our family and our husband by making our circle bigger and letting these women into our lives.

Brenda: Okay, here’s my challenge to a woman who is maybe hearing these words on the radio, listening to them on the web. And she’s not sold on the concept. She hasn’t bonded with women at work, and she certainly isn’t into what we would call a “love me, give me, bless me” club, where you just get together and talk about nonsense. Or she maybe isn’t a part of a Bible study. I still believe the need is there for women to connect with women. And I would challenge that woman to just 1 week out of her life to look for 2 other women... 3-fold witness, 3-fold cord has strength as the Bible tells us – and if she would just look for 2 other women that she could share something in common with, be it ever so remote, but something in common with, and talk to them about just getting together on somewhat of a regular basis to talk. I have a feeling that she will find just an opening of her heart and mind and other women’s hearts and minds, and it will fill a void that possibly she hadn’t even identified.

I think that women – we compartmentalize our life. And it’s a survival mechanism. When you’re a young mom and you have little children grabbing at your ankles all day long, and you’re only with other young moms, everybody shares and commiserates with each other the challenges of rearing little ones. Then when you’re older and you’re only with grandmothers, and you’re trying to compete and tell each other the most wonderful grandmother story, that’s not very healthy for women. And the Lord has just put it on my heart very heavily the last few months, the need for intergenerational connection. And the passage that really gripped my heart was Mary and Elizabeth. I actually was preparing a talk for a pre-Christmas event, and I was thinking about Mary went to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth obviously was much older than Mary – they were both pregnant, and the excitement and the joy and the confidence that Mary felt she could share with Elizabeth. And that struck me as younger women talking to older women, and older women needing the vitality and excitement that younger women can bring into their life. So I just encourage women to not make your connections age brackets. Make it more topics and interest areas, and just enjoy that intergenerational connection.

STEREOTYPES

Nancy: Well, a lot of stereotypes that women have, and men have, are there because they’re true. And the fact that women like to talk and gossip is true, unfortunately. But there are things we can do to stop it. I know it’s so enjoyable because it lifts us up and puts someone else down, and for a moment we feel superior. And that does feel good. But there are ways to turn things around. For instance, if you’re in a group and suddenly they’re talking about someone’s bad marriage or a rumor or something, you can either be direct and say “We shouldn’t be doing this, ladies. Let’s stop it.” Or you can turn it around and say something nice about that person, or show compassion – though we can still gossip while we’re showing compassion. So we have to be careful. It’s this little niggling thing that goes into our conversation so easily. And as sisters in Christ, though, we have to stop that. And we have to build each other up as sisters in Christ.

Brenda: Well, I’m going to take a turn on gossip that I think might not be the ordinary thought process. I believe with women – it’s simply stated that men talk about things and women talk about people. That’s an oversimplification, to categorize that. But I think with women, we have to be wise, because I think there’s a point of discussion when it can be beneficial and helpful. I think the motive behind what we say is so important. I tend to be very blunt and straight forward, and no one has to ever really wonder what I’m thinking. That can be good and bad. I would never want to hurt or offend someone. But I think as a woman matures spiritually, her conscience will definitely beep when she knows she’s in an area that is malicious gossip. And I think the longer you walk with the Lord, the more you grow in His Word, you have more compassion. And I think one of the things with our sister circle that we have encouraged is for women to be courageous. You be the one to say “I’m not going to participate in this conversation. I don’t think it is pleasing to the Lord, and it certainly isn’t helping the person we’re talking about.” And we just need women who are bold enough to do that. And it does take courage. Now you may be excluded from a few conversations sometimes when they know you’re the point person who’s going to say that, but maybe the Lord will use you to stop unhealthy conversation. And I just encourage women to examine their own life. Don’t try to criticize the other women. You just look at yourself. And if we each did that, our sister circles would be pretty clean in conversation.

UNIQUE WAYS GOD CAN USE YOU

Nancy: One thing that God has done is that He used one of my books in a very unique way. When my first Christian novel came out, it had typos in it that were not there in the galleys, the final looks that we get to edit our book. And they didn’t know what to do with that. And so, finally someone took responsibility and they reprinted the whole first run of the novel. But they had all these other novels that had been printed already. So they donated them to prisons. And certainly prisoners were not my target audience. But I started getting letters from prisoners. And I have received 3 letters from male prisoners that said because of this novel, they now believe. And I really look at something that was a catastrophe at the time – oh my goodness, look, this book is not coming out right and there’s problems – and God turned it around. And in many ways, I think well maybe I wrote that novel just for those 3 men. And anyone else who has read it is frosting. You know, God would do that. And so, you know there’s sometimes something that we don’t understand. God can turn it around and use it, and bring somebody to Him through it.

Brenda: While shopping at Party City for party decorations, I went to the check stand to check out, and the little gal at the check stand was tearful. And I asked her what was wrong, and she just broke into a full blown explosion of tears. And her husband was in the military and apparently was coming home to tell her that their marriage was over. And so, I asked permission of her manager if I could take her aside for awhile and just talk to her. And I did. And I shared my faith with her. And she had some knowledge and background of what it meant to receive Christ, but we in Party City with people all around, she prayed and we agreed that the Lord would just strengthen her, and she would be prepared for whatever the road ahead was. And fortunately, when I went back in later, and I did try to go in frequently and check on her, the husband came home and they did get connected with a local church and got some counseling, and their marriage was restored. Now to date, I don’t have a current update, because she no longer works at the store and I lost contact with her. But it said to me that no matter how casual the encounter is, we still need to take advantage of those moments when the Lord will allow us to minister to someone. And I thank him for that opportunity and for that little girl’s life.

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