Episode 224: Cultivate a Heart of Biblical Gratitude: Mary Mohler (Reprise)

[00:00:01] We're in the month of Thanksgiving here. There are all these cute towels that you can go into some of these stores now and it's like Grateful, Thankful, Blessed with a big cornucopia on there.

[00:00:09] And you put that out and it's like, see, this is great. And then come Black Friday, you are taking all that stuff down and getting out all your green and red and putting up Christmas

[00:00:18] and then those towels go into storage for 11 months. Which is not at all what we're talking about here. This is a like 24-7, 365 thing. So I'm thinking the book would be helpful to some who maybe just haven't given this much thought before.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome to Candid, where we never settle for less than the truth. I'm your host, Jonathan Youssef. Each week, we'll tackle tough issues, answer your hard questions, and take a candid look at the Christian faith.

[00:00:51] Would you mind leaving us a review today? By leaving a review and a rating, it helps others to find us and this would be a huge help. Using your favorite podcast platform,

[00:01:02] go to our show and leave a rating along with a review and perhaps next week we will mention you on the show. November rolls around and we are thinking about giving thanks. Our team got together and started talking about what biblical gratitude really is.

[00:01:20] Gratitude that isn't just 30 days of thanking God for the good things in our lives. One of our producers mentioned a gratitude book by Mary Mohler. Knowing Al and Mary Mohler, I knew

[00:01:33] it had to be good. So we reached out to her and today I have the joy of welcoming Ms. Mary Mohler or the magnificent Mary Mohler as her husband, Dr. Al Mohler refers to her. Mary Mohler serves

[00:01:47] in ministry alongside her husband, Dr. Al Mohler at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. She is also the founder and director of Seminary Wives Institute, an academic program for student wives that she started over 20 years ago at Southern Seminary.

[00:02:07] A native of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Mary is a summa cum laude graduate of Samford University where she earned her bachelor's in biology. She is a proud mother of two children and several grandchildren. She is also the author of the book, Growing in Gratitude, Rediscovering the Joy

[00:02:27] of a Thankful Heart, which we discussed today. Please join Mary and I as we discuss her book. I believe it will encourage you to cultivate a heart of gratitude that goes far beyond our usual checklists. Mary offers profound insight into this biblical teaching. So take a few minutes

[00:02:48] today to listen to our conversation and meditate on gratitude. Our hope and prayer is that this will help you see the glory of the Lord all around you in the joy and in the heartache. Now, onto our candid conversation.

[00:03:04] Pete Well, today my guest is the magnificent Mary Mohler as I think she's affectionately referred to by her husband, Dr. Albert Mohler, who we've had on this program. And in fact, Miss Mary, you may not know this, but we had your husband on right when he was deciding

[00:03:25] whether or not to shut down Southern Seminary and probably Boyce College due to COVID. He was quite busy in those moments right before he took the time to graciously come and be on our program in the middle of all the chaos and confusion.

[00:03:40] Mary Yes, those were memorable days that just hour by hour we had no clue what was coming next. But I'm so glad he was able to join you. And when I told him I was doing this,

[00:03:51] he spoke very highly of his experience with you. And so it's great to have another Mohler on. Pete Well, in that same vein, we are grateful that you have taken the time out to speak with us. And

[00:04:01] I know you've got grandchildren to go and see. And so what we're talking about today is a book that you've written, Growing in Gratitude, Rediscovering the Joy of a Thankful Heart. Well, I think before we jump into the book, maybe if you could just give us a little

[00:04:17] snapshot of Mary Mohler and her life and growing up and how your faith was really cultivated and developed. Mary Sure, I'm glad to do that. Always glad to do that. So I was blessed to be raised in

[00:04:29] a Christian home in suburban Detroit, Michigan. And to parents who were so eager to have children, it was much later in life for them when we came along. And so all my early memories are of being

[00:04:40] in the church. The Lord called me to Himself at a very early age, but I remember it clearly. And He has held me fast my entire life. I know that's an unusual circumstance,

[00:04:51] but even as young as I was, that's just every single stage of my life. He's held me fast and helped me to grow in His grace and knowledge. And so I'm forever grateful for that. I think

[00:05:01] it's a fantastic testimony. And I always push back when people kind of say, well, oh, so you're born a Christian home. There's nothing dramatic there. Yeah, it's real dramatic because I was this little goody-goody elementary school girl that never broke any rules or got in

[00:05:14] trouble for anything. But I was a horribly lost sinner, unable to save myself until the Lord made a way for me. And so I'm so grateful. Moved to Florida in junior high, got to go to Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale with Dr. D. James Kennedy as the

[00:05:29] pastor there. So that molded my theology for sure, even though I was still Baptist and attending a Baptist church. So that was a tremendous experience. Went to college, married my brother's roommate in college. So that's another story for another time. I have one brother and he and Al

[00:05:47] were best friends and roommates and the rest is history. So from the same home church, but didn't really know each other until we got 800 miles away to Samford University. And then we married, he was starting the PhD program. So we came immediately to Louisville where I have spent

[00:06:04] most of the last 38 years. Happily married to Al, we were four years in Atlanta actually there near you guys when he was the editor of the Christian Index. And then he was called back

[00:06:13] to serve as president. The Lord's given us two wonderful children and our daughter is married and has those three grandchildren that you alluded to. So we love our daughter and son-in-law there

[00:06:25] in DC and those three kids. The Lord's blessed me with a ministry that I did not look for. So I was a pre-med major at Samford and then the Lord had a plan for me to take me from that. I knew I wanted

[00:06:37] to be a stay-at-home mom. So when it became clear that Al and I were going to be married, then kind of changed my plans on that, worked for a surgeon here in Louisville for a while

[00:06:46] and then became a full-time mom and enjoyed the role here at Southern and eventually started a program for ministry wives that there just became a demand for. This was not in my wheelhouse at all, but it's now been 25 years ago that we started the Seminary Wives Institute,

[00:07:02] which is a certificate program for women who are here with their husbands preparing for ministry. And the Lord has blessed that beyond anything I could have ever imagined. It sounds like it's become your wheelhouse.

[00:07:14] It is. Yeah, it absolutely is. Love it. Love those women. Love seeing how the Lord takes them and they come in kind of wondering how they fit in all of this. And many times their husbands are

[00:07:24] very excited about their call to ministry and the wives are suffering under the illusions that you've got to play the piano and have all these weird misconceptions. And so we work through all

[00:07:34] of that. And I have a great team of faculty wives that help me as well as even the faculty at Southern Seminary who teaches our biblical studies courses for us. That's amazing. And you see, even in your own testimony, the blessings of a covenant household,

[00:07:49] a covenant home and seeing that being worked out, it's a beautiful story. And you're right, I push back against that as well when people say, you didn't really change from this to anything

[00:08:00] else. Where's the fireworks and the drama? And I think if you could just see what Paul talks about, the principalities of darkness and everything that's working, being essentially chained with sin and being released from that is always a powerful testimony regardless of the circumstances.

[00:08:17] So, okay, so your book, you've written this book, Growing in Gratitude, Rediscovering the Joy of a Thankful Heart. And I love that. I love the title and I love the subtitle. It's so

[00:08:29] necessary for this day and age. And I know you wrote this a few years ago, but it will span the test of time, I'm sure. So I'm just wondering in reading bits here and there, what were some of

[00:08:42] the personal experiences or the convictions that really drove you to write this particular book? Yeah, I'm glad to talk about that a bit, Jonathan. I actually was speaking on this topic and I'm not an author, have no experience in writing. And a publisher came up to me after

[00:09:01] the event and said, I was at your session. And I thought, oh, great. She gets out this paper. Comes the criticism. Notes on it. And it's like, I am not up for a critique right now. This has been a really long

[00:09:12] day. At the end of all that she said, I think there's a book here. And I didn't see that coming at all. And I laughed in her face and I said, okay, if there's a book, it's like 20 pages long.

[00:09:21] I spoke for an hour and she said, no, no. She said, there's more to this. And so she was right. And so the Lord just put that right in my way to where there was no debating whether this was

[00:09:32] something that came from him because I wasn't looking for it. And so I developed an outline, signed a contract, started working on this. I found out there truly was more to it.

[00:09:41] And of course, I learned way more about this topic and doing the research and the writing than the readers ever will. But the reason that I decided to speak on it or asked to speak on this topic

[00:09:51] was somewhat just of the increasing mentality I kept seeing even among believers of this entitlement mentality. You know, just this lack of gratitude, even from little things to like, where did please and thank you go to? We grunted each other now. And just the lack of that,

[00:10:07] but it's so much more than that because it's just this whole idea that I'm a pretty good person. You know, I've never killed anybody. This is of course, a secular mentality. I deserve all the

[00:10:16] best. And so if this guy has this or this family has this, then I deserve that too. I'm entitled to that. And then when you take that into the Christian realm, it's just so ludicrous because

[00:10:26] every single breath we take is from the Lord. And as we've already discussed, just the testimony that we have, we never get over the wonder of that ever. So that prevailing thought in our

[00:10:37] minds should always be related to gratitude at every turn. And so that's where I got into it. And then reading about it, I learned about these different types of gratitude that was just

[00:10:48] revolutionary to me. And then most of the book then is just like, well, why isn't this happening? Because you know, when I speak on it, all I've got to do is like for three minutes,

[00:10:57] quote all of these different places in scripture where we're told that we're to be grateful people and here's why. And then sort of what the thinking is, and I don't read minds,

[00:11:06] but you can sort of read the audience and be like, okay, so you're right. All right. So we need to be more thankful. We need to count our blessings more. We'll do that. Do we really need

[00:11:15] a whole book on this? Do we really need to talk about this the whole time? It's really not a big deal. And that's where the crux of the whole thing is that, yeah, it really is a much bigger deal

[00:11:23] than you think. This is not about a list of things we need to be thankful for. This is the mentality of the heart. And whether gratitude is a prevailing part of your thinking or not is

[00:11:34] really very telling as a believer. And so that's where I push back and talk more about how it has its roots in the Garden of Eden, where, you know, good was never good enough. Like they could have

[00:11:44] every single tree but this one, but that wasn't enough. So this is not a new problem, but it's one that we need to just stop minimizing. Right. It's Satan puts the focus on the prohibitions of God versus the provisions of God. Right. So it's, you're right. There's that

[00:12:02] entitlement world, you know, that word is used so much today, but it's, it is, it's just so prevalent. You know, I'm wondering in your research now, you know, my guess is your research was geared towards the nature of gratitude. And as you mentioned, the types of gratitude,

[00:12:18] was there anything in your research that you found what led to the decline of the sort of, please and thank you. And the, did you go into that sphere at all? Or you're more kind of stuck

[00:12:28] with getting people out of it? I'm looking to the history of how it declined. I mean, part of that's going to be cultural with different societies. And part of it is just the pace of our

[00:12:38] society where we just don't do things like they did in Victorian England, you know, we're just, the pleasantries just aren't there. Not to say that all Americans are rude or anything, but it just kind of became more of a thing that parents were not emphasizing. There's just,

[00:12:51] there are too many other things they were quote, worrying about versus that kind of second tier. You know, we're much more encouraging of them to do other things that seem to be more

[00:13:02] first tier. And this whole gratitude thing is like, yeah, we want them to be thankful and they'll write a thank you note to their grandparents at Christmas. So can we move on? This is not a big

[00:13:10] deal, but it really is. And if we talk just a little bit about those two kinds of gratitude, because that to me was the takeaway that changed my thinking and really it revolutionized my prayer life because this goes back to Jonathan Edwards, who really identified these two different

[00:13:25] kinds of gratitude. One being the natural gratitude that we're all aware of. That's the count your many blessings. That's a biblical mandate. We are expected to do that over and over again. We can read that, but that's a conditional gratitude. So we're thanking God

[00:13:40] for X, Y, and Z for all these wonderful things he's done. But there's a higher form of gratitude that Edwards argued that's this either supernatural or gracious. There's two different ways to term it there. And this is not conditional, it's relational. So it is praising the Lord for

[00:13:57] who he is and it doesn't say anything yet about what he's done. And so in my prayer life, when I would have this list of things that I praise the Lord for, and it's like, all right,

[00:14:06] I'm doing this well. Like I've got this list. It's a growing list. It's got this all random things on here because I'm thankful for all of this. But then I had to just totally change that.

[00:14:16] Vault to the top of that list and start with, I praise you Lord for all of the attributes that I can think of that are there. And praising for all the things that he always is that I'll never

[00:14:27] be because he is God. And then praising for the things that he is that I can hope to be in my sanctification and an eventual glorification. But that just revolutionized for me gratitude,

[00:14:38] because it's this sense of awe for who God is. And it's not this laundry list of, oh, thank you so much. I can see, I can hear, I can, all of these things that are clearly

[00:14:50] worthy of thanksgiving. But the bigger issue is clearly who God is and to be just overwhelmed in awe by that is the key. Yeah. It's sort of the baseline. If it was a sort of a melody,

[00:15:02] it creates that baseline upon which everything else is built. I know when you're doing the research, you probably found it was profound, right? Because I'm feeling the same way, though I know that these things are true, but hearing you sort of delineate between the natural

[00:15:17] and the gracious gratitude is profound. And so I'm just thinking down that track. And if you were to walk into any church's prayer meeting, you'd probably hear a lot of prayers of specific things being thanked for. But I'm even thinking, and I'm sure we'll get into the

[00:15:34] scriptural aspect of your book, but I'm thinking about in terms of when it comes to what is promised to us, which is persecution, there's an element of gratitude even in that. Because you think,

[00:15:48] if things are difficult and hard, what do I have to be thankful for? Right? So I think, you know, as our church sort of has this decline that's been happening, a moral decline, a virtue decline, whatever it is, people are finding less and less to be thankful for.

[00:16:06] Or to kind of use your terminology of counting your blessings, you feel like that number is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. But I think that it sort of comes out in your relationship

[00:16:16] with God, it comes out in the way that you handle your relationship with people, because then you feel like you have less to be thankful for. And so you kind of get either the entitlement mentality

[00:16:25] or just kind of the clutch and hold everything as close as you can. And you lose that sense of, even if everything were to be taken from me, God is still who He is. And He still offered me this

[00:16:38] gift of eternal life. And He's, you know, if I'm a child of God, I've been chosen and elect and set apart. I think there's so much beauty in that. I'm sorry, I'm just... What you said is so profound

[00:16:50] and I have so much to say with it in the moment. Yes. Yes, it's glorious. It really is. There's nothing humdrum about this topic. It is exciting and it is not something that we can at all gloss

[00:17:02] over. And it's deep. And it's what you said at the initial point that when you started talking about it and they said, oh, you know what? We count our blessings. Great. We've done that. You

[00:17:12] know, it's like people are looking for checklist items. And what you're telling them is, no, it's a heart condition. It's an attitude that expresses itself in all these different forms and ways. Let me ask you this. What do you find? And we've talked a little bit, of course,

[00:17:28] about the entitlement mentality, and we'll come back to that again. But what do you find are some of the other hindrances to keeping us from that life of gratitude? Yeah, I outlined four in the

[00:17:40] book, which I say in book. Like these four, you might say, I never would have thought of those four. So you write your own book because these are the four that I can afford. So the first one I

[00:17:48] listed, they're not really in order, is that some of us have a reluctance to just full out gratitude because we are so burdened by loved ones who do not know the Lord and who continue to reject the

[00:18:00] gospel. And so it is hard for us to fully, with our whole hearts, rejoice in all that we have and all that we look forward to for all eternity because we just can't imagine that this person

[00:18:11] isn't going to be there. So clearly Satan is all over that. Like, okay, you think you've got things great. Well, you know, and so this is where we have to just do you trust the Lord or not? Is

[00:18:22] He sovereign or not? Do you give this to Him? Do you realize He loves this person more than you do? So to me, that's the first one. A second one is geared a little bit more towards women, although clearly not exclusively, but it's just this whole busyness mentality,

[00:18:37] whether it's busyness in ministry or just busyness being a mom with all these plates spinning. And yes, I'm grateful, but I don't really have time to sit down and do this thing right now where I'm

[00:18:47] listing all this out. But the Lord knows my heart. I'm grateful. And so it's somewhat self-absorbed where you just refuse to acknowledge that in every season of your life, this is a top tier issue.

[00:19:00] Another one is that people struggle with doubt. So this is another spiritual warfare thing where yes, I'm grateful. Yes, Lord, I know You love me. And yes, I know You're holding me fast, but

[00:19:12] I had this horrible life before this. I did so many terrible things. Maybe this isn't really what I think it is and all of that. And then the last one is one that I have to deal with

[00:19:23] very delicately because as I say, at this point of writing the book, I'm healthy. I sleep well. I've never been in a car wreck. I've never gone to sleep hungry or scared, but there are people out

[00:19:33] there who are suffering so greatly. And so it sounds almost insulting to be on my soapbox here saying, you have to be more grateful, be grateful. And they can say, well, if you were walking in my

[00:19:45] shoes. And that's where we have to gently speak the truth that this is not a conditional. This is not, let's look at the Apostle Paul and his thorn. This is not you are grateful when everything

[00:19:56] is going great. Again, this is that gracious gratitude that is towards the Lord for who He is. Well, and that brings up a good point. So since you've written the book, have you had moments where you've gone through either doubt or trial or suffering in some

[00:20:13] capacity and you've had to sort of recall these, even your own writings in some sense, and kind of go back and read your own material to instruct yourself? I mean, if you had those

[00:20:24] moments. Yeah, sure. I mean, every single person is walking through things that we have no idea. And so even when you try to be the glass half full type of person, there are going to be those

[00:20:34] moments and Satan wants to pounce on that and say, what kind of hypocrite are you? Like, did you write this book on this? How grateful are you? And so this is where I developed kind of a weird

[00:20:43] thing. This came from a hymn writer named George Matheson, who wrote the hymn, I Will Not Let Me Go. And he became blind at an early age. And one prayer that was credited to him was a prayer about

[00:20:56] Lord, I've thanked you so many times for the roses, but I've never thanked you for the thorns. And this is where it starts getting counterintuitive again to say, okay, you want me to

[00:21:04] be more thankful. You want me to thank the Lord for these beautiful red roses I see around. And now you want me to thank him for these prickly thorns that caused my fingers to bleed? Well, yes.

[00:21:14] And so I then started a thorns list next to my roses list to where that one's going to be a whole lot shorter, we hope. But those thorns can be very, very, very intense. And so it takes some

[00:21:28] real effort to pray through that list and to genuinely thank the Lord. I didn't ask for this thorn. I don't enjoy this thorn. I want it to be gone. But I know that you are teaching me lessons

[00:21:39] through this situation that I wouldn't have known otherwise. And so I have one chapter in the book that's basically 10 ways to thank the Lord when it hurts. And so there are people who can do that

[00:21:50] way better than I can, who have been through circumstances that are much more intense than I have had. But we do need to be honest enough to say, everyone, whether it seems like it's all

[00:22:00] roses, everyone's got those things. And if you don't have one sticking in you now, we are told in Scripture not if you suffer, but when you suffer. Well, let's talk a little bit about what

[00:22:11] are some of the Scriptures that you sort of hang your hat on in this book? You probably cite a number of passages throughout all these points, but are there any kind of sort of broad, overarching

[00:22:25] ones that you run to? Yes, I use Scripture throughout the book. And I especially chose one Scripture to go with each one of those hindrances to kind of let's meditate on this

[00:22:36] and see if we can deal with that. But the Scripture that I reference when I sign the book, which is just fun to do and to point people to is the rich two verses in Colossians 2, 6,

[00:22:48] and 7. So, therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, being rooted and built up and established in the faith, just as you were taught, and then wait for it this last

[00:23:01] part, abounding in thanksgiving. And so the Greek scholars tell us that that word for abounding there is like filled up to the very top to the brim, to where if you bump into us, gratitude

[00:23:14] is what should spill out of us. And that's very convicting, because there's very few people for whom that is true, even most of the time. But that's our command. Like, okay, here's the deal,

[00:23:24] you've been raised, you've received Christ Jesus as Lord, now you're walking in him, you're rooted in him, you're established in the faith. So therefore, here's the result, you are supposed to be abounding in thanksgiving. So that's one of my go-to's. Also, I go through the Psalms and just

[00:23:40] pick out all the different ways that we are told to praise the Lord, whether it's from the rising of the sun to its setting, whether it's with your whole heart, just all the different ways that

[00:23:50] it's written there that we just can't miss. And so those are some of the helpful ways. And then also looking at just the short imperatives where we're told to just rejoice always, pray without

[00:23:59] ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. You don't need to be a biblical scholar to understand what those mandates are. Like, it's just shortened to the point and the give thanks in all circumstances doesn't say for all circumstances, but we're to be people that are rejoicing, that are praying,

[00:24:17] and that are giving thanks. That defines who we are. And so for however many days we have left on this side, each one of us, thankfully, we don't know the number of those days, but this is to be

[00:24:27] our mandate. This is what we're to be doing as we seek to sow seeds of the gospel. One other thing that I would add is about the gracious gratitude, that one that's the primary one, is that one

[00:24:38] little byproduct of that is that it helps those who have doubts with assurance of salvation, because that's the work of the Holy Spirit that you seek to and that you delight in praying over

[00:24:50] the attributes of God. There's no lost person out there that's like, okay, I think I'm going to go praise God that He's omniscient and omnipotent and eminent and transcendent and all

[00:24:58] that stuff. Was that good enough? No, that's not happening. So if that is the outflow of your heart and you do express that to the Lord, one little byproduct is like, you know what? The Holy Spirit's

[00:25:09] at work in my life because I enjoy doing that. Yeah, I love that because you're right. I'm kind of pulling apart two things here because I think when we say these things, sometimes people hear

[00:25:21] along the lines of the count the blessings. It's like, okay, or even the, hey, you've given me the roses. Thank you for the roses. It ends up can sound like a works righteousness thing. So, okay,

[00:25:33] Lord, I'm here to say thank you for these things versus what you called it a byproduct. It's really a heart response. So if your heart has gone from stone to flesh, then there is a response to that

[00:25:51] that is not works, but it is in relation to the grace that has been given. I wonder if there's even an equation there, and I'm not trying to create something here, but

[00:26:01] I know Jesus has taught on this in terms of the one who's been forgiven much loves much, but even a recognition of that, right? The Pharisee doesn't recognize that he's been forgiven much.

[00:26:11] He thinks he's got an entitlement to this thing because of his role, his position, his race, his gender. But here's a woman who understands her sin nature and understands what Christ is doing and

[00:26:26] to some extent will do. And so she has a right response of worship to that. So I'm just thinking about that sort of clarifying maybe what people think is, okay, here's a book that's giving me a list of things to do. And this is coming back to something

[00:26:42] we've already kind of hit on, which is it's not just the temporal thing. It is a deep self issue. It is dealing with your own heart issues and having a right response to understanding

[00:26:54] the character of God, the nature of God, the love of God. And really we can't understand those things unless we are in the Word and reading those things and filling our hearts and our minds

[00:27:05] with those truths so that we can have that attitude outpouring where the cup is tipped over and grace flows out. Because this is something I feel like as a pastor, I'm constantly bringing up and teaching on and just from different aspects of different texts. And it's

[00:27:24] always coming around, but I think you've so wonderfully put it together. You've even eliminated the roadblocks and the barriers that I think people have where they say, yes, but... And you say, yep, I can almost anticipate that that was coming. And so I'm going to say here,

[00:27:43] I can almost think through some of the scriptures that you would have had in line for, well, what about lost loved ones? What about busyness? What about doubt? What about suffering? And then having a biblical response to that to where they say, okay, maybe you're right about

[00:27:58] this. I give up. Yeah, that's right. I surrender. Which is exactly what we want. And we can probably add another 10 entrances. But those were four that I thought kind of covered different bases and especially pointing this book towards women, but not just towards women.

[00:28:11] And so I'm hoping that that was helpful, but the suffering one was the hardest just because it's very hard to look to people. And that's why I quote people like Johnny Erickson-Tata.

[00:28:22] She can speak to that in ways that we cannot and does it with such grace and points people to the cross at every turn. I'm just so grateful for her. Are there any sort of personal experience?

[00:28:34] I don't want to lean heavy into experiential sort of feelings, emotion-based things, but experiences are what shape who we are to some extent. So were there any sort of personal example of someone whose attitude of gratefulness left an impression on you? You've just mentioned

[00:28:52] Johnny Erickson-Tata, but I mean, is there anyone that's close with you, a family member or that's put that on display that you looked at and said, that is an attitude of gratitude that I'm grateful for? Yeah, the one that comes to mind, I actually do

[00:29:09] tell the story in the book and it's in the suffering chapter. And I name her by first name, but I'm happy to give her last name too, is Bobbi Wilgemuth. So Robert Wilgemuth's first

[00:29:21] wife who dealt with cancer in a way that I've just never seen anyone deal with it. And so we met together at a national meeting. I'd never actually met her face to face before.

[00:29:31] And so we just go into this room and meet. And I came away from that just saying, Lord, if I am ever called to suffer with a physical illness like this, it's catastrophic. She knows

[00:29:42] that it's a matter of days or weeks. Lord, would you please give me a heart to deal with it the way she did? Because there was no sense of guilt. There was no sense of urgency in terms of all

[00:29:54] these things I've got to do before the Lord calls me home. It was just a sense of satisfaction that she was walking this day by day. And she's actually asking me what she can pray for me for

[00:30:05] in her remaining days, which I thought was amazing. There was no poor pitiful me type of mentality. And she had a wonderful life with a wonderful family and wanted to be here to see

[00:30:16] those grandchildren grow up and all of that. But she accepted what the Lord's portion for her was. And so that was one powerful example. I had not started the book yet, but when I started thinking

[00:30:25] about who is really exhibiting that, that was just a poignant example to me of someone who, this is not theory for her. She is living this out. She's gone through this egregious process

[00:30:37] of all these different options and nothing has ended up working. And yet she's got a grateful heart at the end of it. And it is still you bump into Bobby and what flows out is gratitude.

[00:30:47] So it can be done. And so that was just a great example to me and one that I did incorporate in the book. And then even your own experiences, I mean, you don't have to go into much detail here.

[00:30:59] You don't even have to answer the question really, but were there times in your life when you went through that great sort of some trial, a suffering, or even just the busyness concept

[00:31:11] and then found yourself saying, no, wait, let me go back to this. Let me remember this attitude that we've been called to. Yeah, probably the greatest trial or in the top three anyway

[00:31:25] that I would talk about and that I do talk about freely. And at the time was just so horribly hard to handle was infertility that we suffered when my husband was a PhD student. And we're surrounded on

[00:31:36] this campus here by all these women that are just, they're pregnant, they're everywhere. And it's not something you talk about a whole lot when it's happening. And so it kind of got back

[00:31:46] to us, well, maybe the molars just don't want kids. Maybe they don't like kids. And that just broke our hearts. And so if I could go back and talk to my 27 year old self at that point, I would have

[00:31:57] had to like read my own book to myself because I don't think I was probably exhibiting the gratitude that I should have. I was trying to keep a little bit of a wall up so that I didn't just go crying

[00:32:08] around people all the time. Just the desire of my heart was so strong to be a mom. That's what I wanted. And I probably allowed myself to feel a little bit of that entitlement thing like, Lord,

[00:32:19] this is totally wrong. But it's like, here I've given my life to you. I've never gone off the path here. This is my desire. I didn't go to med school. I'm married to this great guy. We want

[00:32:29] to have kids. We'll raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And it's not happening. And so did I have a grateful heart in that? Most of the time, probably not.

[00:32:38] But the Lord taught me in that as we walked through that journey that His timing is indeed perfect. He gave us two healthy children in His timing. And now I can commiserate with student

[00:32:50] wives on this campus in a way that others can just kind of say, well, bless your heart, put their arm around them. Like, I'm so sorry. I can say, look, I walked that in these very hallways.

[00:32:59] And the Lord is good and the Lord is faithful. And you've got to trust Him. And you still, Colossians 2, 6 and 7 still applies to you even as you're walking through that. So that's probably the best example I can think of from my own personal experience. Of course,

[00:33:16] we've all had loved ones that have been lost. And my hindrance of those four is probably that first one because we do have a family member who's not walking with the Lord. And it is just very hard for me to imagine being in heaven without that family member.

[00:33:30] But the Lord's at work and I continue to not allow Satan to let that drag me down. I will continue to praise Him. I will pray through the Psalms on a daily basis in terms of what the Lord

[00:33:43] is just drawing out of that for me. And He proves faithful every single day. Tom Miller Amen to that. The true enemy of gratitude is this sort of entitlement mentality. How do we get over that entitlement mentality when it's just so deeply ingrained? I mean, it's our natural

[00:34:03] disposition. And then on top of that, you think of social media and just the extreme forms of sort of the self-care movement, social media telling us not only that we can have it all, but that you

[00:34:18] deserve it all. How do you sort of wade through those waters besides just turning off all your social media? Dr. Jessica Lott Right. Well, that's the first temptation is to just do that and crawl into a hole. And that's

[00:34:29] not what we're called to do. We're supposed to be salt and light, and we're to be modeling this. And so clearly, this is something that grows with you. So I'm not on social media a lot,

[00:34:40] but one of my favorite tweets I've ever read was the one that says simply this, a five-year-old is just a crazy straw and some chocolate milk away from the best day ever. So I mean, it's just true. You give a five-year-old, and my grandchildren would be

[00:34:57] this way. You give them this twisted piece of plastic, and you put some chocolate milk and watch it swirl all up, and they're like, this is the best day ever. Okay, well, you fast forward a few years. And if you're not carefully, diligently teaching those children as you

[00:35:10] walk by the way, and as you rise and sit and all of that, they are not going to be so thrilled by that crazy straw anymore. They're going to want what somebody else has, and they're going to

[00:35:19] want the smartphone sooner than later. And they are going to feel like they're good kids, they deserve this. And so if that is their, I mean, that's going to be their natural sinful inclination. And so that's what we as parents have to diligently and intentionally work against,

[00:35:33] to be teaching them and modeling for them. They're smart. I mean, they can tell if we have that mentality. If we- Yeah, monkey see, monkey do. I'm glad you brought that up and you used Deuteronomy 6 there. I think my big question

[00:35:47] of two little ones is thinking, how do we teach this to our kids? You're probably going to say, you have to model it for them, right? You do. You absolutely do. And I mean, look for those teachable moments. And at Christmas time, there's some families,

[00:36:01] I think that just make lists of like, what do you want? And then if everything on the list isn't checked off, and this year particularly, that may be a real problem with supply chain

[00:36:10] issues. But is that what's going to make Christmas for you? And if so, we have a huge problem. So every gift we have is a gift from the Lord. We want to express gratitude to the giver for that

[00:36:20] gift. That's something that has to be ingrained in an early age with children to where they want to express with their sweet little voices and their sweet little writings what they can do.

[00:36:31] Like, I really appreciate this. Thank you. I know that you didn't have to give that to me. And the thought that goes behind it means so much. And then just also just the whole,

[00:36:40] the please and thank you thing. Like that's gratitude as well. It's not just about thank you notes. It's about someone holds the door open for you. And in this day and age, I find that as

[00:36:49] women, I think there's some men who've been told enough times like, I can get the door myself. And so when I look at them and say, thank you, or when I need help putting my luggage up into the

[00:37:00] overhead thing, I'm looking for a man to help me with that. And believe me, I want to look him in the eye and say, thank you so much for your help. It's little things like that where, you know,

[00:37:09] there's the old saying that was written from a, not from a biblical perspective, but it's sort of like, be pretty if you can be witty, if you can, but be gracious if it kills you. No, but be pretty

[00:37:20] if you can be witty, if you must be gracious, if it kills you. So, you know, turning the phrase and showing up dressed in all the latest fashion have nothing to do with when you open your mouth and

[00:37:33] there's no graciousness there. There's no sense of lack of entitlement, not worried about what somebody just posted on social media in terms of the whole comparison game. So this is a contentment issue as well. Like, are you content that the Lord has given you these particular circumstances and

[00:37:50] are you grateful for those and stop looking to your right or to your left? Well, and I think about from the very beginning of our conversation, if you were saying how that gratitude, that gracious attitude,

[00:38:05] it's, you know, you don't see it almost anywhere these days. It feels so rare. And I was thinking, and I even made a note and I thought, shouldn't that be a mark of the church? Absolutely.

[00:38:16] Shouldn't that be what an aspect of what sets us apart as followers of Christ? Because, I mean, think about it. Any one of us who does encounter someone who looks you in the eye and says,

[00:38:29] thank you, and has gratitude. I don't think there's anyone who's not aided by seeing that and thinking, oh, like someone appreciated something I did, right? We all would appreciate that, right? A recognition of something.

[00:38:42] Try this sometime, like you're in an airport restroom or a stadium restroom or something, and there's someone in there that God bless them, has a job of cleaning those places. And you look

[00:38:52] them in the eye and you go, it looks really good in here. Thank you. I guarantee they're going to look at you like you are from Mars or there's some candid camera somewhere. But you're just

[00:39:01] like, what you're thinking is, I'm so glad this is a clean facility and that you've just freshly cleaned it. And you don't know their story. But this is a mark of who we are. And it's not to get

[00:39:13] any points or you're not keeping track of how many people you thank today, but it's an overflow of your heart. And when we've got those neighbors that they've got their guard up because they've

[00:39:24] heard you're some of those crazy evangelicals, like stay away from them. They're going to beat you over the head with a big black Bible and tell you you're going to hell. But the way that you

[00:39:33] are living as neighbors before them and the graciousness about you is going to show them just from the fragrance of Christ, something's different about these people. They thank us. They do kind things. They notice things in a way that other people just kind of grunt or don't

[00:39:49] care. And so yes, all of that does go together as a mark of who we are as believers that just, again, are bought with a price and cannot do enough to show our gratitude towards the Lord and towards the people that He's put in our path.

[00:40:02] This is good. I've learned much. I have been taking notes. And I'm grateful that the publisher came up to you after your speech and made you make this a book. Now we need to cover one more

[00:40:13] thing. So you mentioned that aspects of the book are directed towards women, but you recommend it for anyone, perhaps for men to give to women, but carefully. That would be kind of an on-the-nose type of thing. But sure. I mean, we're in the month

[00:40:30] of Thanksgiving here. And that is sort of a pet peeve. I will tell you that people, there are all these cute towels that you can go into some of these stores now. And it's like,

[00:40:39] grateful, thankful, blessed with a big cornucopia on there. And you put that out and it's like, see, this is great. And then come Black Friday, you are taking all that stuff down and getting

[00:40:48] out all your green and red and putting up Christmas. And then those towels go into storage for 11 months, which is not at all what we're talking about here. This is a 24-7, 365 thing.

[00:41:00] I'm thinking the book would be helpful to some who maybe just haven't given this much thought before. It's written to both men and women, although there are some chapters that where I'm directly speaking to women, particularly about those homemakers that are feeling like they are in

[00:41:14] a particular situation. But yeah, it'd be for both. And yes, I've been pleased how people have gotten back to me that they've used it for small groups. And even in Spanish and Portuguese

[00:41:26] now. So I'm excited about that. Yes, I love that it's been translated. And you have discussion questions at the end of chapters? I do. I have a prayer at the end of each chapter,

[00:41:34] and then two discussion questions that are not like yes and no answers. I've tried to make them questions that actually make you think and not just check the box. Yeah. I love that. Like,

[00:41:44] should we be thankful or not? Yes. Have you read this book? Have you read the cover? That's excellent. And I will encourage people, there are women's Bible studies that are meeting and looking for materials to use. I highly recommend Growing in Gratitude, Rediscovering

[00:42:02] the Joy of a Thankful Heart by Miss the Magnificent Mary Mohler. Now, my husband puts that name on me on social media. Let's be clear. I never put that adjective. Well, I'm going to follow his lead.

[00:42:14] And just one final question from us and some of our interviews this way. And our final question is, you've entered into the gates of heaven. You're in the presence of the Lord. What is the first thing

[00:42:26] you would ask? Wow, I've not given that much thought. I've thought about that moment so many times. And the older I get, the more I think about just how glorious it's going to be to be

[00:42:38] in His presence. And if I'm able to stammer out something, it will probably be something like, why me Lord? Why am I one of your chosen? Why did you bless me so richly? How do I get this

[00:42:51] privilege? And I know that it's all of grace, but that's just kind of my first reaction is like, here I am in the presence of the Lord. I'm so grateful. If there's a question, it's like,

[00:43:02] I mean, how great of the Lord, how unspeakably great of the Lord to make a way for us to be reconciled to Him forever where we will never, ever, ever again have to worry about separation

[00:43:14] from Him. Amen to that. Additional point for the book. It's an attitude of gratitude. So once again, growing in gratitude, rediscovering the joy of a thankful heart. Ms. Mary Mohler, thank you so much for being on Candid Conversations with us.

[00:43:29] Thank you, Jonathan. I've enjoyed it all. Thank you. Pleasure. Before we wrap up today's episode, I also wanted to let you know about a special offer going on at ltw.org right now. My dad has just released a new four-part Advent devotional that I think will

[00:43:46] really bless you and your family this Christmas. It's available this month for your gift of any amount. And it's a vibrant resource highlighting the incredible, overarching narrative of Scripture, striking comparisons between the first and second comings of Christ and more. If you're looking for

[00:44:07] new ways to celebrate and reflect on Christ this Advent season with friends and family, head on over to ltw.org or click the link in the show notes to request your copy for a gift of any amount.