Kay Warren [00:00:02]:We have it within our control to go deep into God, go deep into his word. Let him mold my character, do the emotional healing that I need to do in the broken places.
Introduction
Kim Moeller [00:00:16]: Today’s episode is one episode you are not going to want to miss. I had the privilege of interviewing Kay Warren from Saddleback Church, the church that she and Rick planted many years ago. And she shares her story, her story of generosity, her story of walking through the different seasons God had called her in, and how she learned to thrive and learned to make choices to say yes to God. And it’s an inspirational interview that I felt at the end of it, I want to say yes more. I want to make sure I’m not missing a season that God has for me, a door that He wants me to walk through. And I know you’re going to feel encouraged by hearing her beautiful story. So thanks for joining.
Welcome to the Generous Girl podcast. I’m thrilled today to have a very special guest who many of you know already. I have Kay Warren with me in the studio who is a well known author, speaker, and Bible teacher who co-founded Saddleback Church with her husband, Rick Warren, in Lake Forest, California in 1980. And after the loss of her son, Matthew, who lived with serious mental illness for most of his life, Kay has founded a number of initiatives, and one of them being Saddleback’s Hope for Mental Health Initiative, Breathe, which includes events like respite retreats, and her latest endeavor was forming the nonprofit called Hope for Brighter tomorrows. So I’m thrilled to have you here, Kay. Welcome.
Kay Warren [00:01:49]:Hey, Kim. It’s just great to be with you. We are just neighbors. I know. Used to be neighbors.
Kay Warren [00:01:55]: It feels like, hey, neighbor to neighbor.
Saddleback Church
Kim Moeller [00:02:00]:So, so true. And what Kay is referring to is my husband was one of the pastors at Saddleback Church. We moved back to Southern California in 2000. And the funnest part of that timing was that was right when the wave of Rick riding the Purpose Driven Life book happened. And so to be at Saddleback Church, I remember Rick would stand on stage and say, hey, we’ve got t-shirts and shorts. Anyone want to get baptized? And literally 100, if not a 1000 people would get baptized after the service. It was incredible. Incredible.
Kim Moeller [00:02:34]:And I often refer also on this podcast to the Journey Bible Study that several of us, five of us led. And the model of that Bible study was taking the next step, and we really modeled our teaching after yours and Rick’s. And what we loved about your teaching was you were real, you were authentic, you were never just trying to make it look like, hey, we’ve got it all perfect and all put together. But instead, you would be transparent so that the person listening to you would go, wow. I struggle with that in my own life, and Kay can take that next step. Yeah. So that gives me courage to take the next step. And, really, I have to say that was foundational to forming this podcast because there are many podcasts I’ve listened to where I listen, and it’s a great story, but I don’t know what I’m to do when I hear that.
Kim Moeller [00:03:23]:And this is the opposite kind of podcast. This is like people hear these guests that I have on the show like you, and they hear your story, and they are thriving, but maybe they’re struggling in an area and they go, wow. Kay and Rick were able to move forward. They were able to bless other people through the great things, through the tragedies, and it’s just so encouraging within the body of Christ. So great love and respect and admiration for you, friend.
Kay Warren [00:03:49]:Thank you so much. It’s mutual
Three Passions
- Kim Moeller [00:03:51]:You’re so sweet. Well, what I loved was right before we were starting, you talked about how just in our side conversation that there have been three initiatives, really, and three passions that you’ve had for women. And I think that would be great to start with that, in terms of how God’s wired you and how you’ve leaned into each of those areas.
- Kay Warren [00:04:11]:Yeah. You know, I hadn’t really thought about it until you had asked that question, and then I thought, oh, there have been these three main areas that have pretty well encompassed the majority of my life. The first was for pastor’s wives, because I grew up in a pastor’s home. My dad was a pastor, and then I married a pastor. And, so really a life in ministry is the only life the only ministry home I know. And, I don’t really know what it’s like to be a normal person. I’m a pastor’s kid and then a pastor’s wife. But from that came a real empathy and, spirit of camaraderie for other women who were living the life that I was living.
- Kay Warren [00:04:54]:And, the denomination that I grew up in did not allow for women to have any real, more, prominent leadership roles. And so I think if I had grown up in another denomination, I might have gone into myself because I always loved Jesus with all my heart, always wanted. So but what I could do was be a missionary. So I was going to be a missionary when I met Rick because that I could do as a woman.
- Kay Warren [00:05:20]:Then when I got married and became a pastor’s wife, pastor’s spouse, I was really fortunate in that Rick saw us always saw us as a team. Mhmm. And so we ministered as a team. But so from that, I had this real deep care for other women who were in that same role. There are some unique stresses that come from being, a pastor’s wife or pastor’s family. People have certain sets of expectations that they don’t have on their doctor, you know, or their dentist or their plumber, but they really do around their pastor and family. And so I grew up in that pressure cooker. It affected my parenting, affected my marriage, it affected my own walk with Christ.
- Kay Warren [00:06:03]:So I loved sharing and ministering to, pastors’ wives, encouraging them to not live for the audience of their church, but to live for an audience of one, Jesus Christ. So much so that I wrote a book, Sacred Privilege, toward the end of our years at Saddleback because it encapsulated the 50 basically years of serving Jesus in a ministry position. And then the second initiative was, around HIV and AIDS and, orphans and vulnerable children. That one had nothing to do with my lived experience. It had everything to do with just an encounter with God one day in my living room, picking up a news magazine and seeing a cover story on AIDS in Africa. And that was like in 2002 before they had the life saving drugs that they do now. And it was a crisis of of the pandemic that was killing millions of people and leaving millions of orphans, and vulnerable children behind. And God just grabbed me.
God Just Grabbed My Attention
- Kay Warren [00:07:06]:It’s like He reached out of that magazine and grabbed my heart and my attention. And I have to say my first response was you have got to be kidding me. I know nothing about this medical disease. I don’t know a single orphan. At that time, I didn’t know a single person who was HIV positive. So it just it felt ludicrous. You know? Like, you’ve got be find somebody else, God. I’m a soccer mom with a minivan.
- Kay Warren [00:07:32]:I I don’t know anything about this. And yet it also was one of those moments in my faith walk in which I was just brought into this place of I’m either going to say yes to God or no to God. It was that stark. Wow. And I couldn’t visualize me actually just flat out saying no. Mhmm.Yeah. No.
- Kay Warren [00:07:51]:I’m going to ignore what you just showed me in this call. I’m going to walk away from that. Keep doing what I’m doing. It’s good. I’m having a great you know, I’m doing good things here, so it’s not like I’m, you know, off the rails somewhere. But it just became really clear it was going to be a yes or no. And I took this huge leap of faith and said yes. And before I knew it, I had become, a global advocate for people living with HIV and AIDS, mostly women, because 53% of those who are infected worldwide are women.Kay Warren [00:08:21]:And so it is women who bear the brunt of this illness. And the most vulnerable person on our planet is a little girl.
- Kim Moeller [00:08:30]:Yes.
- Kay Warren [00:08:30]:So for women and girls, I spent a decade as an advocate learning everything I could, calling the faith community to see God’s heart of compassion for people who were sick, people who were vulnerable, not just to make orphanages. The goal was not to make better orphans. The goal was to make orphan sons and daughters again. And that was kind of our goal. Well, it’s been a decade doing that, and I loved it.Kim Moeller [00:08:56]:Traveling the globe.
- Kay Warren [00:08:58]: Oh, yeah. Just, you know, and I never ceased to be amazed at me, just this ordinary person with no medical background, God chose to use me in that moment, in that way. And then life changed again and changed what I was doing. So pardon me, it had been, you know, pastors, wives, and then God called me to, you know, HIV and AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children. And then our youngest son, as you alluded to, died by suicide in 2013 after he was 27, and he had spent 20 years with serious mental illness. He was diagnosed when he was just a little boy with critical depression. And it was horrible. And he lived and he suffered so much in his 20 years with mental illness. And after he took his life, I mean, one of the things I remember so clearly was standing in his front yard waiting for the police to confirm what we felt pretty sure had happened. And the awareness of, oh, my life just radically changed. Of course, it did, but it wasn’t just how it affected me as a mom or affected our family. It was going to affect what I did. Because I knew in that instant that I could not spread myself so thin as to continue to be a global advocate for people living with HIV and and orphans Mhmm.
Mental Illness
- Kay Warren [00:10:22]:And for people with living with mental illness, I clearly had to bring mental illness into the forefront of who and what I did in terms of ministry. So I have focused, a lot on suicide prevention in the last 11 years since Matthew died, but have really honed it down to what can I do in ways that serve women, in particular moms, in ways that I didn’t have at the time when our son was so ill? And so I’ve really focused in on a ministry called Breathe.
- Kay Warren [00:10:54]:As you mentioned again, respite retreats and services and support that most moms don’t have. Most moms who have children with serious mental illness live pretty isolated lives, a lot of stigma, even in the faith community. And it was like, you know what? I’m going to help those mamas. I’m going to do what I can to make sure that they are not walking alone, unsupported through what can be a very, very, very long journey. So the three passions have, you know, in some ways dovetailed. I’ve taken what I’ve learned, yes. In those seasons of ministry and outreach and all the things I learned, in HIV, believe it or not, and how to involve the faith community,
- .Kay Warren [00:11:38]:
- Transfer into the next yeah, into how can the faith community really step in and help meet need? So, yeah, those are my passions. Those are the things that I have loved, loved doing, and loved being a part of.
- Kim Moeller [00:11:54]:Well, you have said yes to God, and it’s a story, obviously, when you were 10 years old, 5 years old, 15 years old, you never could have written. I don’t think any of us can write what we think will be our story. We might think it’s one way. We know our gifts, our SHAPE, our calling, but, wow, you know, when we do look at those threads and I remember Rick always saying God never wastes a hurt, and then how that season prepares us for the next season. And, you know, I’ve heard other teachers talk about how they go through something super hard, and then they realize the next thing that is super, super hard. They never could have made it through if they wouldn’t have gone through the one that prepared them.
Being Prepared
- Kay Warren [00:12:38]:Right.
- Kim Moeller [00:12:38]:And, so hard sometimes, though, to keep that perspective and, you know, the media’s perspective of what a perfect lovely life looks like, and then the Bible’s perspective of, no, it never says life is easy. Right. Yeah. Totally. The battles that we’re all in, the warfare, the battles for our minds, our hearts, our attention, and, wow, it’s really a daily endeavor.
- Kim Moeller [00:13:08]:But the exciting part of seeing God and then I think of the timing with you talking about 2013 and then, you know, you think of everything with mental health in the pandemic and just the preparation that you would be in that place at the right time. I’m with the National Christian Foundation now, but I worked for Gloo for six years, and they are a tech platform. So what they do is if somebody is connecting, for example, maybe they see an ad, like, a He Gets Us ad, then they can connect to a local church, But they had a number of people that were texting in suicidal words. And what happened was we couldn’t send those people to ordinary churches and have a volunteer respond.
- Kim Moeller [00:13:53]:And there was this ministry in Phoenix, Arizona called Death 2 Life, death with the number 2 and life. And it’s a whole story of their own special needs child that led this beautiful couple. And so last I heard was, like, 5,000 lives have been saved through the tech of people the AI, you know, connecting with the words and directing them over there. And, well, it’s like God’s aware, right, of everything, but that fact that He uses ordinary humans. And, you know, that’s always what I’ve respected about you so much is that you’ve been willing to allow the hard things in your life to bless others. And you were a pastor’s wife, and based on how you felt, you thought, I felt lonely, so I don’t want to have that for people. And I love, love, love that about you because and I think for all of us, that’s the opportunity we have, right? When we have those areas that are struggles that God brings us through and we go, wow, I can actually give back because I don’t want others to feel like I felt.
Hope for Brighter Tomorrows
- Kim Moeller [00:14:52]:And so what you’re doing right now for Hope For Brighter Tomorrows is just so beautiful because I don’t know of another ministry that is really leaning into those families as you are. So that’s going to be exciting this decade. Kay Warren [00:15:05]:Oh, I am. I’m thrilled. We started it in January of this year. Actually, when Rick retired, pardon me, from Saddleback leading Saddleback Church, after 43 years in September of 2022, you know, he really felt he knew what God wanted him to do kind of the next step in world evangelism, something called Finishing the Task. So he was excited about that. And I was just planning to continue what I was doing around mental health ministry, speaking in a lot of churches, colleges, and all of those kinds of things. But I had also had this desire to try to help moms, you know, like I said. But then when everything changed, when we went through the transition of leaving Saddleback Church, I was not prepared for how challenging that would be.
Seasons of Change
- Kay Warren [00:15:48]:I mean, that’s a whole different subject. Right. But transitions after spending 43 years in the same place with the same people in the same roles, that has been massive. So there was a period for me of really pretty being pretty depressed, actually, just of everything changed. Mhmm. Good. Right. But sometimes good change still creates pain, you know, in us because we are all letting go of what we have to let go of. So I was in that place of all this letting go and wondering if I should just, you know, do the Breathe Ministry to moms just maybe a few more years and then, you know, shut it down as I fully retired.
- Kay Warren [00:16:26]:And I felt the Lord say no because, Kim, what you just said, I’m not aware of any other ministry. They could be there, but I’m not aware of any other ministry that is specifically addressing the whole person’s spiritual, body, soul, emotions to moms who have children with mental illnesses. And then providing services to them. And the need is only going to get bigger. It’s not like all of a sudden people’s mental health is going to just suddenly be great, and these women are not going to be in these positions. No. The need is only going to get greater as it did through the pandemic. And I felt the Lord say, okay.
- Kay Warren [00:17:05]:So to have that ministry continue, you’re going to have to do it in a different way. You’re going to need to invite other people in to share that burden and to share that outreach. And so began this, Christian non-profit, Hope for Brighter Tomorrows with the goal of it outlasting me. So rather
- than shutting down some years, I want this to go on long after I retire.
- Kim Moeller [00:17:33]:Your Legacy.
- And then your beautiful director, Kelly Rosati, and her own story and how you guys are connected.
- Kay Warren [00:17:40]:Our president. Yeah. She’s our president.
- Kim Moeller [00:17:42]:President.
- Kay Warren [00:17:42]:I’m no longer the president. I’m the founder, but I’m not the president because I don’t like president things. We don’t want to do the HR and the budget and the hiring and firing and the legalities. No. Let me do the speaking and creating and you know? And so Kelly has come in and is our president, with her own 4 children with serious mental illnesses.
- Kim Moeller [00:18:04]:Yes. Exactly.
- Kay Warren [00:18:04]:And, so she’s perfect for this role. We’re a really good team. Yeah.
- KimMoeller [00:18:09]:Well, again, I love your perspective. You know, you could have easily finished Saddleback in 2022, moved to Hawaii, sat on a beach, you know, in the hammock with Rick.
- Kay Warren [00:18:21]:Lake Mission Viejo.
- Kim Moeller [00:18:22]:Yeah. Lake Mission Viejo and called it a day. But no. I mean, you realize and you live as if your life is a gift. We don’t know how many days we have, and each day, you’re strategic with it. And you multiply what you have, your resources for the Kingdom, and, it’s just so beautiful. I want to ask you as you were talking, I just feel like you’re so grounded in who you are and your calling, your gifts, and what you’re leaning into. So what would you say to the listener who doesn’t feel as grounded? Like, she doesn’t know where she is.Kim Moeller [00:19:00]:Maybe she’s in the middle of raising kids. Maybe she’s just this new empty nester.But, like, any resources that really have helped you or any courses or anything you might recommend so that that woman can do exactly what you’re doing and just claim the territory that God’s given her and really change the world?
How to Prepare
- Kay Warren [00:19:21]:Yeah. Hadn’t thought about that per se, but I’m thinking of the things that have helped me on that path through. Definitely had, the years of a stay-at-home mom and, love that full-time volunteer at Saddleback, but stay-at-home mom. And, never foresaw, you know, some of these other things at all. And I used to have these moments where I genuinely would say, when is it going to be my turn?
- Kay Warren [00:19:50]:You know? When is it my turn? Rick has these amazing opportunities. He’s being part of this. He gets invited to this. You know, I have gifts too.
- Kim Moeller [00:19:58]:I’m making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
- Kay Warren [00:20:01]:Yeah. And for me, just to shorten that story, after a period of actual jealousy, you know, of some of the opportunities that Rick was getting that I was not and feeling a little bit left behind in that. Not from him, but from other, you know, just other people who had ability to recognize me and didn’t.
- Kim Moeller [00:20:22]:Right.
- Kay Warren [00:20:22]:I remember having an, again, another encounter, one of those spiritual moments whereI felt that I had a yes that I needed to say. And it was, God, whether you open the doors for me to do some other things that I would find significant. If I ever get the chance to write a book, if I ever get the chance to be a leader in some sphere, whether that happens or doesn’t happen, maybe what you have for me is to raise these three children in such a way that they are the ones who actually have some of the opportunities. And if that’s where I am, then my yes is a yes to you, and I will do it wholeheartedly with all that I have and leave my future to you. I will control what I can control, and leave the uncontrollables to you. And that became a principle for me throughout life in every area. Control the controllables, meaning there are some things absolutely within my control.
- Kay Warren [00:21:23]:And there are so many things outside of my control, including the life circumstances that come my way that we’re going to alter things that I can’t foresee and I don’t know. And I can either be anxious about those, which I have spent some my fair share of time being anxious about those things. But it doesn’t. It’s not productive, and it doesn’t do me much good. So it comes back to this place of, God, I will do what I can. I will prepare. Okay. So right now I’m not having opportunities to be out there or recognized or given these things, but I’m going to prepare. I’m going to prepare the person that I am.
- Kay Warren [00:22:02]:Mhmm. Who I am, the kind of person I am, what is my character, what’s the content of my heart.Those are things that are definitely within my control. Right. I can learn about myself. I can learn my spiritual gifts. I can learn my Enneagram number, which I think is such a great insight into this.
- Kay Warren [00:22:19]:Me too.
- Kim Moeller [00:22:20]:What is your number? I’m a 1. Oh, you’re a 1. Okay. I’m a 3.
- Kay Warren [00:22:25]:Yep. No. Rick’s the 3 in our family. I am very much always about wanting it to be right and do things the right way. Yeah. Much to sometimes my family’s great dismay. But I’m learning.
- Kay Warren [00:22:36]:I’m learning. But just some of those things of preparation because we don’t know when God will open a door. Right. And if He opens a door and then all of a sudden we’re like going, oh I’m not ready, then we might miss some of those moments. But we have it within our control to go deep into God, go deep into His word, let Him mold my character, Do the emotional healing that I need to do, in the broken places. Because we all have broken places and it’s my responsibility. I may not have caused them, but it is my responsibility to seek healing
- Kim Moeller [00:23:13]:Yes.
- Kay Warren [00:23:13]:And growth in those places. So it’s like – do all of that.
- Kim Moeller [00:23:17]:That’s good. Okay
Take the Small Step
- Kay Warren [00:23:18]:And then wait. And if God brings an opportunity, then don’t let your fear stop you. Take that small chance. Take that small even if it feels like, oh, gosh. This is way over my head. And let God unfold it. We’re always trying to, as my daughter says, make a plan for ourselves. And there is some value in that.Kay Warren [00:23:39]:It’s like, so many things. There are two sides to the coin. But one of the sides of the coin that we don’t like to acknowledge is that we often feel like we have to have the plan, that we must have it all planned out. When you look at Scripture, there are just so many places that say, you know, God will direct our steps. God will cause this to happen. God will cause that or shut this door or open that door. We need to find that place of being prepared and waiting when for Him to open those doors and then being ready and willing to jump, when He says go.
- Kim Moeller [00:24:19]:I love that. That is definitely, you know, a heart of surrender where you’re not fighting in that waiting room, but you’re saying, okay. I’m in the waiting room. How can I maximize this time here in the waiting room and become the most healthy, best version of myself who’s prepared and ready to take that next step? I heard this person recently speak about things that are in our control, not in our control, and he said, the things that are in our control put them on our to do list. Great. I can take this class. I can learn about this.
- Kim Moeller[00:24:52]:I can do that. Right. Things that are not in our control, put them over here on the left column for the prayer list. They are absolutely out of our control. We can pray through them, and maybe they’ll move over, you know, to the other side. But I thought that was wise, like, a way of just sorting the things that come our way because, honestly, it’s a lot of wasted energy and effort when it’s way out of our control. And it’s not worth our time, but that’s really really good. Okay.
Living Generously
- Let me transition to this whole area of generosity because one of the stories that I think changed the world is after Rick wrote the book Purpose Driven Life and it came back that, okay, Rick and Kay paid back Saddleback Church for their the salary he had taken all those years.
- Kim Moeller [00:25:40]:We’re living off of 10%, giving away 90%. I would love to hear your perspective on finances, what you’ve seen God do through generosity. Yeah. I mean, just kind of how you unpacked your own mindset of being prepared and ready. What is Kay Warren’s mindset around generosity? I think that’s going to be wonderful to hear.
- Kay Warren [00:26:01]:I feel really blessed in that. Both Rick and I grew up with generous parents, so it was modeled for us. I mean, my dad was a pastor of small churches. We never had more than enough, but we had enough. Mhmm. And Rick’s family too, lower middle class, dad’s pastor of small churches, but we just grew up with parents who modeled that spirit of giving and tithing and beyond. Everything that we owned belonged to God. So that helped set me up for when this totally unexpected windfall of affluence and influence came our way with, as you said, the publication of The Purpose Driven Life in 2,002.
- Kay Warren [00:26:44]:And, of course, there was no way that we could have ever known that was going to happen that way. It so completely caught us off guard. And so as Rick tells it, and has told it so many times, again, there are these decision points.God is always bringing us to these moments of decision where we are faced with, am I going to go what I think to be God’s way, or am I going to go my way? Am I going to say yes, or am I going to say no? That’s is our daily Yes. A thousand times a day encounters with God. And here is one of those moments of what are we going to do with all of this? It’s way more than we can use ourselves. So what are we going to do? So we, as you said, we designated 90% of our income to for charitable causes and Kingdom causes, and then we live on 10% because we felt that it wasn’t really for us, that we were supposed to be conduits of generosity to other people. God had given us so much, so that we could in turn be His hands, His feet in the world around those things that we felt very passionate about.
- Kay Warren [00:27:55]:So it was not a wasn’t a struggle for me. I think, as I said, because it had been modeled for me on a much smaller scale, but the principles, the heart attitudes, were there. And so, yeah, that was not a struggle. It was I don’t get all the financial stuff. Yeah. I did. God did not give me a math brain.
- Kay Warren [00:28:18]:So I don’t have to try to figure it out. I just get to direct, you know, some of where we choose to give, that money. But it gives me great pleasure to be able to know that there’s somebody who is really struggling. And this gift in that moment, this donation is going to make the difference sometimes between life and death.
- Kim Moeller [00:28:42]:Absolutely.
- Kay Warren [00:28:43]:The difference between making it and not making it. Sometimes it’s the good that’s going to be able to be done because of that, either in a ministry or a person’s life. And then it sets a model for our kids. Our kids are so incredibly generous with what God has given to them, and we are so proud of the ways that they are carrying on, you know, a legacy from their ancestors, you know, their grandparents and great grandparents. And, that’s a very tender spot in my heart.
- Kim Moeller [00:29:17]:Wow. So beautiful. And, you know, you always hear the phrase that our generosity fuels God’s economy, and it’s that opportunity of how blessed we are when we say yes. And, you know, we feel like, well, they’re the ones who are going to get blessed, but we always get blessed more by giving. Always. Being a part of it and just going, wow. I can’t believe God that you entrusted me with those resources. They were never mine, but they were always designed for this group over here in Uganda or wherever. And what if I wouldn’t have given those, and what would have happened to those people and those children? And we’re a part of his story.Kim Moeller [00:29:58]:And, again, in heaven, I think we all will have just no idea the one little dollar, what it did, or the $2 and how that made a huge difference.
The Kindness of Strangers
- Kay Warren [00:30:08]:Sometimes people will say, well, it’s not going to make that big of a difference. You know? Is it going to make a difference if I give this, is it going to make a difference even if it’s a really large gift or whatever, is this going to eradicate poverty? Or is this going to make that person on the street corner because it is one of my practices to give? I don’t give cash very often, but I, in case I’m out of gift cards, and this is just my own personal philosophy. Everybody else has to adopt this. But my brother, in the past was on the street as a heroin addict, homeless and living in his car, and I always prayed for the kindness of strangers, you know, for my brother. My son, Matthew, would have been on the street had we not had the financial ability to keep him housed. So the kindness I always see the kindness of strangers than in my own self. I can be that kind stranger to somebody else. Will my $20 gift card solve that person’s problems? No.
- Kay Warren [00:31:05]:They will not, but we don’t not give just because our giving doesn’t eradicate a need in the world. All we are responsible to live in this time and this place and what we do with what the money that is in our hands today. I am not responsible for the people who did or didn’t give in the past. I’m not responsible for the people who will give in the future, but I am for today in this moment in time where God has me living.
- Kim Moeller [00:31:31]:Yes.
- Kay Warren [00:31:32]:And the people that he brings into my path. And so I think that is just part of the fuel of continuing to give is I know I’ll stand before God. Yes. Yeah. I know that. My salvation is secured. Jesus Christ has purchased that.
- Kay Warren [00:31:51]:He’s not going to judge me. I’m not going to get into heaven based on what I did here, only the yes that I said to Jesus. But I will have to answer to him for the ways that I gave or spent or invested or wasted, what God let me be, be a part of my life, be in control of. And I do want to be able to have that heart of purity that can say, yes. In my moment in time, the brief, fragile years that I occupied territory here on planet Earth, I said yes to you. I faithfully gave. And I was a kind stranger as I passed by my fellow human beings on a daily basis.
- Kim Moeller [00:32:39]:Well, what I like about you making that distinction is it can be overwhelming. Like, I’ve been toTurkey and places andthe poverty. You’re on this nice air conditioned bus driving through. And I leave, I get on the airplane, and I feel like I’m carrying this massive backpack of weight of just the sorrows that I’ve seen, and I know that I’m going back. Yes. And it can feel paralyzing to be where it does just feel like I don’t have the millions to change the country and help those people. So what can my one life do? And I’ve had to really wrestle with God with that. Even the verse, the “poor will always be with you”.
- Kim Moeller [00:33:23]:So okay. But I have one life. I have the resources he’s given me. I have the time, and am obeying and just my life and where He’s placed me, in Southern California, okay, or it’s on a trip toTurkey. What does He want me to do? And then leave it at that and not leave carrying the weight of the world because that’s not my job. But it can feel just like God, why aren’t you doing something? Do you remember Anne Ortlund as a Bible teacher? I was in her discipleship group, and there were 6 of us. So we each got to travel on a speaking trip with her.
- Kim Moeller [00:34:05]:We went back to New York to this conference center, and she was the main speaker all weekend. I was her assistant and standing there with her as woman after woman shared just the saddest, awful stories. And I got back on the plane with her, and she was fine. Like, she was with her personality ready to go forward, and she told me, Kim, you’re a lot like my husband, Ray. Ray feels afterwards, and just that learning how to know that she ministered while she was there, and now we’re moving to the next. So, yes, just learning processes.
Philippians 4:13
- Kay Warren [00:34:39]:Just kind of as a side, it just makes me think of, when I first began as an HIV and AIDS advocate, I was traveling to all sorts of places in the world that I had never ever been before. Saw poverty and suffering and suffering, you know, out of the Orange County, California bubble for the first time. I was shocked and actually destroyed inside a little bit. Exactly. And and feeling guilty coming home to the grocery store. I had two whole rows of just pet food. You know? Exactly.I don’t think it’s pets.Kay Warren [00:35:07]:I had a pet, but but two rows of pet food when there were people that I had seen, you know, with nothing. And I didn’t know how to live in both of those worlds. I just did not know how to have a foot here in Orange County and a foot exactly in the rest of the world. And just one day, I was reading and came to Philippians 4:13, which we all quote so many times. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. But what we don’t do is read that in context. And in context, Paul is saying, I have learned how to have nothing Mhmm.
- Kay Warren [00:35:39]:And I have learned how to have everything. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. What that said to me was, if God you choose to take it all away from me today, I will love you and serve you. If you choose to let it all remain, I will love you and serve you. You have chosen today that I have all that I have. My call is not to then feel guilty that you have allowed me to live here with what I have. What my response is to be is to make sure that I do all that I can so that others have some of what I have. Mhmm.
- Kay Warren [00:36:19]:So that relieves some of the guilt that I had of living with what I have, and all that I’ve been blessed with, knowing that others will never have anything remotely close to that. So it’s not that I’m supposed to walk around feeling guilty that God has given this to me, but it is my responsibility to make sure that I try to alleviate the burdens of other people in such a way that I share in their burdens. Anyway, that helped me.
- Kim Moeller [00:36:49]:That’s good, Kay. There’s a Bible verse that I used to reference, Acts 17:26, and it’s about I’ve chosen the place where you’ll dwell and move and have your being, and these are your boundaries that I’m setting forth. And I like that with what you’re saying because it’s not a mistake that somebody’s living in Orange County or they’re living in Texas or Idaho or wherever. He’s planned that, and we have to embrace that as well and not regret or wish or look over here and wish we were somewhere else.
- Kay Warren [00:37:20]:Being sure that we’re generous with what we have, knowing that we can share, with what we have so that other people’s suffering is minimized or alleviated where it can be.
- Kim Moeller [00:37:33]:Yes. Well, thank you for sharing that. I’m just thinking here, in our time together, is there anything else you’d like to share or how people could lean into and be generous toward you in this new ministry that you and Kelly are stewarding and rolling out?
Hope for Brighter Tomorrows
- Kay Warren [00:37:52]:We’d love to have people donate to Hope for Brighter tomorrows to make life better, easier, to bring comfort and support to a mom who is living with a child who may have a very serious mental illness, who, unless God does a miracle, is not going to be healed in this life. Sometimes people with serious mental illnesses are homeless. They are on the street. They are in jail. They are at home because they can’t function in normal life. But think about that there are parents who are the primary caregivers and loving that person through everything.
- I’ve had moms at our retreat in their eighties.Their child is 50, and they’ve been living in this very, painful place. And you know what? Our society is not very forgiving or kind to people with serious mental illness.
- Kay Warren [00:38:45]:So to be able to support a mom to get a respite retreat, to have the opportunity to join with other women in her area for these local chapters. Yes. I would love to have people, feel that compassion through their churches, encourage their churches to care and be supportive places, and support the ministries of local churches that also minister to most, but also to Hope for Brighter Tomorrows, which also pays for treatment for some folks who are not able to pay their own medical care. It’s amazing how much mental health care costs and insurance does not fully reimburse it the way legally it’s supposed to, but they don’t. They find ways around it. And so the treatment is out of reach for so many people. So for treatment, for supporting moms and dads as they support their children with a lifelong condition. Yes. I would love it.
- Kim Moeller [00:39:45]:That’s awesome. We’re going to be excited to just watch what God does in this next decade of the latest thing He’s called you to. And it’s just so beautiful, Kay. I just love your story, and it’s so encouraging. I feel like I could have a day with you to ask the questions and glean your wisdom, but we’re almost out of time, and I want to make sure that we wrap up with the three questions of the current book you’re reading, a favorite Bible verse, and any recent bargain?
Book, Bible Verse, and Bargain
- Kay Warren [00:40:16]:Oh, sure. Well, the easiest thing is Bible verses because, Jeremiah 17:5-8, but the favorite parts are verses 7 and 8, that say, but blessed are those who and I always say women. Blessed is the woman who trusts in the Lord and has made the Lord her hope and confidence. She is like a tree planted along a riverbank with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Her leaves stay green, and she never stops producing fruit.
- Kim Moeller [00:40:56]:Mhmm.
- Kay Warren [00:40:56]:That is my goal. I want deep spiritual roots that stay so connected to the water of life, Jesus, that no matter what I’m walking through, I will still have green leaves on the tree of my faith and that its fruit is still being produced no matter what else is happening around me, no matter what my external circumstances are.
- Books. I love to read. I’m reading constantly. My new thing is to do a jigsaw puzzle and have a book on tape.
- Kay Warren [00:41:25]:So, if I’m going out, I can listen or stay home and do my jigsaw puzzle. I just listened to a novel called Northern Spy that I really enjoyed. And probably the book that is meaning the most to me in my spiritual life is The Only Necessary Thing by Henry Nouwen. I just keep going over and over it. That little book, it’s just got wisdom for unforgiveness, on community, on prayer, on solitude, creating. I’m a bit of a mystic, and so I love the idea that I might not live a monastic life with my own little cell where I get to but I can create a cell. My own soul can be a cell where I and God have alone and solitude, and I’m refreshed in His presence.
- My go to bargain, okay. This is where I am an anomaly as a woman, and sometimes I always think somebody’s going to revoke my woman card because I don’t like to shop. I hate to shop.
- Kim Moeller [00:42:30]:Actually, you’d be surprised. I have a number of guests who say they don’t know. I don’t have a bargain.
- Kay Warren [00:42:38] And what I came to is that Rick is our bargain. Rick is the bargain shopper in our family. He will go to Smart and Final and come home with bags of stuff, all of it on sale. As we look, this was 10 for $10. I’m going, but we didn’t need 1, let alone 10 of those. So he could give you endless bargains.
- Kay Warren [00:42:58]:I got nothing.
- Kim Moeller [00:42:59]:Or your sister-in-law, Chaundel, the queen.
- Kay Warren [00:43:01]:Yes, my sister-in-law, Chaundel, the queen. Yeah. Yeah. I I got nothing to offer.
- Kim Moeller [00:43:05]:Oh, well, you have many other things that you offer. And and one picture I had when you were talking about bearing fruit was it almost felt to me like the one season of being a mom, I could see all of these bushels of apples, and then He moved you into the HIV, and it’s bags of oranges, and then it’s lemons and then it’s limes. And it’s like this whole harvest of fruit from all the fruit that you’ve born through the various seasons. So thank you for sharing your wisdom, for your faithfulness. And I would just love for you to close in prayer and pray for the woman listening to your story and to hear what does God want her to do and what bushel of fruit does He want to produce in her life?
- Kay Warren [00:43:48]:Lord, I do pray for the women who are listening. Each one is beloved by you. Each one is your beloved girl, your beloved daughter. I pray for any who might be struggling, if the season of life that they’re in, Lord, has them not feeling like they’re able to do as much as they would like to or give as much as they would like to, finding others, getting opportunities that they don’t have. And that can just lead to some discouragement and feeling left out and that you have something great for other people, but not for them. I pray for that woman, Lord, that today as she hears this, she will realize you are working in her life. You have not forgotten her, that you want her to produce fruit where she is in the exact circumstances she’s in so that she’ll listen to the little piece of wisdom of preparing herself now, her character, her walk with you, that nobody can interfere or slow down her growth in you, Lord. She is in total control of that and that you will open doors in your time.
- Kay Warren [00:44:46]:But regardless of anything, she will just find life a continuous yes to you. And for the woman, Lord, who’s in a different season, who is very, very active in philanthropy or service or work and business or all those different places, ministry that we find ourselves, they might be weary in a different way, Lord, because the demands are hard and strong and divided in a million different ways. I pray that she too will send her roots deep into you, into your goodness, into your love, into the kindness of our Savior so that when harder times, harder seasons come, the tree of our faith, Lord, we all of us want, the tree of our faith. We want our roots to hold. So may we take that responsibility to send our spiritual roots deep into you and let you grow us and develop us.
- Mostly, Lord, we want our lives to be one long continuous yes to you believing that You have had such mercy and grace over us. And, we just want to be conduits of that back to other people.
- IKay Warren [00:45:51]:I pray the blessing. Thank you for Kim. Thank you for her heart, her willingness to open all these conversations so that we can grow. And I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
- Kim Moeller [00:46:02]:Amen. Well, God bless you, Kay. I’m going to follow your next journey in this nonprofit that you’re launching, and thank you again for your time. We love you. Bye.
- Kay Warren: You too. [00:46:19]:Thanks so much for joining us today on the Generous Girl podcast. We’re so glad that you’re here. And if you know of someone that you think needs to be a guest on this podcast, please reach out to us. New episodes are released every other week, and you can follow us on YouTube and on all platforms. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you next time!
