Raising Godly Women

Good Ground Gabrielle (GiGi)

• Sebra Ferrell • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Season 1 – Episode 3: Good Ground Gabrielle (GiGi)

 Show Notes

In this episode of Raising Godly Women, Charnae Leonce once again joins Sebra Ferrell as they take a closer look at Good Ground Gabrielle, GiGi!  However, this time, Charnae interviews Sebra!     
 
 In this episode:

  • Intro
  • Welcome to Charnae (01:21)
  • Takeaways from “The Women of The Soils” (01:55)
    • God is the Master Gardner (02:16)
    • We can be in different soils at different times (02:44)
    • Charnae's takeaway and what her daughter has learned from the podcast (03:49)
  • Why start the individual soil with GiGi? (05:13)
    • GiGi is the culmination of all of the soils (06:15)
    • GiGi knows what to do when her heart is not good soil (06:59)
    • GiGi gives us vision (07:53)
  • What is unique about GiGi that you want others to know? (08:15) 
    • She understands the there’s a difference in knowing Jesus as Lord and knowing Him as Savior (08:27)
    • Salvation is just the beginning (11:33)
    • The key to GiGi (13:55)
  • How does GiGi handle the responsibility of the Word when she shares it with others who may be in different soils in their heart, and it may result in rejection? (15:39)
    • Plant the seed and leave the result up to God (17:02)
    • Levels of understanding in Christ (17:15)
    • Rejection is okay (17:58)
  • Charnae’s testimony about a recent trial (19:28)
    • The answer to our prayers may not come like we want or expect (20:48)
  • Charnae’s pearl of wisdom (21:59) 
  • Preview next episode and encouragement to study the Word for yourself (23:06)
  • Sebra’s pearl of wisdom for this episode (24:09)
  • Thank you for listening (24:38)

 Other Episodes in this Series:

NOTE:  For a full description of the women, click here to access the transcript from Season 1, Episode 1, “The Journey Begins” located on our website.   

 Scriptures references:

  •  The Parable of the Sower and the Seed:
    • Matthew 13:1-23
    • Mark 4:1-20
    • Luke 8:1-15
  •  Additional Scriptures:
    • Hebrews 4:12
    • Romans 10:9-10
    • Hebrews 5:14
    • Romans 12:2
    • Proverbs 29:18
    • 1 Peter 2:2 

 Website:  https://raisinggodlywomen.buzzsprout.com/    

 Find us on Facebook and Instagram @raisinggodlywomen.rgw.  

 Subscribe on Apple or Google Podcasts to get notified of new releases.  Check out our website for other podcast locations. 


 

Season 1 - Episode 3 - Good Ground Gabrielle (GiGi)

Sebra: [00:00:00] Hi, my name is Sebra Ferrell, and I would like to welcome you to the Raising Godly Women podcast. I know. Why another podcast? Well, Raising Godly Women is about empowering a generation of women to empower the generation behind them. But what exactly does empowerment look like? Our goal is to help you become stronger, to help you become more confident in your everyday life, especially as it relates to your relationship with the Lord.

Sebra: As daughters of God, I'm sure you've heard about the Proverbs 31 woman and many of us, including me, we strive to be her. But what about the Titus 2 woman? She's that woman who shares what she's learned on her journey. She freely shares the tools God has given her with other women, especially those who are younger, maybe in age, or maybe even in faith to help them also become stronger and more confident.

Sebra: The [00:01:00]Titus 2 woman, she's what Raising Godly Women is all about. Our goal is to share some of our tools with you in the hopes that whatever God does for you here, that you will freely share it with someone else. So again, welcome to Raising Godly Women. We sure hope you enjoy your journey with us. 

Sebra: On today's episode, I have the absolute pleasure of, once again, welcoming my sister in Christ and my friend Charnae Leonce. Welcome Charnae. 

Charnae: Hi, Miss Sebra. 

Sebra: So today we are actually flipping roles. So instead of me interviewing you, you will be interviewing me. But before we get to that, I do want to take a moment and share my takeaways from our last episode. Takeaway is something that I like to do so that when I hear the [00:02:00] Word, I can say, what is that one thing, or those one or two things that I heard that stuck with me, because those are seeds that actually fell on the soil of my heart. 

Sebra: I had two specific takeaways from our last episode. The first one was where you shared that God is our Master Gardener, and that how, as our Master Gardener, He took us, and He planted us in the Garden of Eden, and that, that was good soil. Using that analogy, you likened that to us as seeds in His garden, it's up to Him to tend the soil of our hearts. And that really stayed with me. 

Sebra: And then the second takeaway I had was how you stressed the importance of understanding how we can be in different soils at different times. Sometimes we can receive God's Word in a Rocky [00:03:00] place. Sometimes we can receive it in a Wendy place. Praise God, sometimes we can receive it in a GiGi place. That was very important because as God tends our heart, we know that we are not alone when we go through our trials, especially when we're receiving it in a place other than good ground. The thing that actually comes to mind when I think about that is that, just like in nature seasons change, spiritually we change. And when we allow God, the Master Gardner, to tend our heart, we can expect some change, because that's what He does. 

Charnae: And what you just said was actually my takeaway, that last part was actually my takeaway that, depending on what the Word is, that it may fall in my heart onto different soils. And so that was my takeaway as well. 

Charnae: And I had a conversation with my daughter, my youngest [00:04:00] daughter, and she had like a revelation after listening. She said, "Whoa. I thought, all of these years, that God's word was changing. So, when I listened to the Word, I thought that the reason why I may have gleaned something different was because God's Word was changing." She said, "But after listening to the podcast, I understand that God's Word doesn't change. It's my heart that changed while listening to the Word." She said, when she was younger and she read the Word how she received it at that time, her heart was in a different place than where she is now as a mature grown adult. And so, it was a light bulb moment for her. When she said that to me, I was like, "Yes, you got it. You got it." That's what we were trying to convey; one of the messages that we were trying to convey in the last episode. 

Sebra: That's good. That's really good. 

Charnae: So [00:05:00] here's the thing, since we are switching roles today, I get to be the interviewer y'all. So the question that I have for you as we go into introducing the Women of the Soil is, "Why did you choose Good Ground Gabrielle, who we call GiGi, to start with? Why did you choose her?" 

Sebra: Well, when I started studying the soils, I started with Wendy, and I kind of worked my way up to GiGi. The problem with that was, as I made my way through each of these soils and started applying what I was learning to my everyday life, it's like I had all these puzzle pieces in front of me and I didn't know how they fit together. And that was very discouraging for me. It was frustrating, because it felt like I was always chasing this thing or that thing without understanding how does all of this come together? 

Sebra: One day I sat down, and I finally [00:06:00] got around to studying good soil, Gabrielle, GiGi. And one of the ways that I study, I like to bullet point things so that it makes sense to me. And when I sat down and I did my bullet points, I was like, oh, wow. GiGi is a culmination of all of the soils. She understands the Word. She accepts it, and she doesn't reject it. She keeps it in her heart, and eventually she produces fruit on it. That's what I wanna be. I don't want to keep chasing Wendy. I don't want to keep chasing Theresa. I don't want to keep chasing Raquel.

Sebra: I wanted to be Gabrielle. I wanted to be GiGi. So, knowing what this puzzle looks like, I was very encouraged, because then I was able to recognize this is what it looks like. Now when I go through my trials, I go through them in a way that I don't feel defeated thinking I'll never get to good soil.

Sebra: Now I [00:07:00] can recognize the moments where my heart is good soil. And then when it's not good soil, I can figure out why not, because I know what it's supposed to look like. So, it's like, if you have a puzzle and you walk away and a piece of the puzzle falls out, you know where it goes, and that's what GiGi is; she's the fullness of the puzzle.

Sebra: So, when something falls in a place, that's not a part of the puzzle, you know this is the piece that's missing. Now, let me go find it. And that for me was so encouraging, because when I tell you I chased all those other soils for years, I chased all of those other soils for years, and I felt like I was getting nowhere.

Charnae: What you said just brings to light to me the Scripture that says, without a vision, the people [00:08:00] perish. Having that completed picture of what the soil that is considered good ground looks like helps to have that vision. I just absolutely love that. Having that picture helps.

Charnae: I love that. So, in putting those puzzle pieces together, "What would you say is the key that GiGi understands in order for her to do that?" 

Sebra: I think one of the biggest revelations that I got on my journey to GiGi was understanding that there's a difference in knowing Jesus as Savior and knowing Jesus as Lord.

Charnae: That's good. 

Sebra: Let me tell you the story about that. I got saved in 1986 and I was very much a babe in Christ. I was looking for God to fix my life. I literally came to God, because I wanted a Savior to fix my [00:09:00] messed up, depressed, suicidal life. That's the place that I was in, and I wanted Him to save me from my circumstances.

Sebra: As a babe in Christ, I saw Him as Savior, as someone who was going to fix my circumstances. As time went on, I came to this place in 1996, where one day I'm riding in the car with a friend of mine, and it was actually New Year’s Day. And we were talking about this particular set of circumstances going on in my life, and it's hard to explain, but I experienced God in a way. I felt like I was having an encounter with Jesus Himself in that moment. And I remember saying, "Now I know what it feels like to know Him as Lord." 

Sebra: I can't explain it. I can't tell you how I got there. It was just one of those [00:10:00] moments where God gives you revelation. In that revelation, He was able to now begin to take me on a different journey and to teach me, "Baby, you're 14 years old. It's time to take the bottle out of your mouth." It was time for me to begin the process of growing up. So just like, as a newborn babe, you're going to give them a bottle. That's what He was to me.

Sebra: I would cry. He would fix it. I would cry, He would fix it. Well, He was now saying to me that it's time for me to stop crying for Him to fix it. And it's time for me to now allow Him to begin to change my heart towards the things that I was experiencing. And He gave me that visual of being a child because I was going to church. I was serving in the church. I was going into church, someone laying hands on me and me falling out in church. And then I [00:11:00] would go home and cuss my family out. And my husband would look at me like, "What is going on?" I was still acting like a two-year-old having temper tantrums. 

Sebra: When I say, when He told me it was time to grow up and to take the bottle out of my mouth, that was a rude awakening. That one. That stung! 

Charnae: Um hmm. 

Sebra: And sometimes His Word does sting, and that was one of those times, but it put me on a path. It put me on a journey. It wasn't a short journey. It wasn't an easy journey. But what I learned is that salvation is just the beginning. 

Charnae: Oh, that's good. 

Sebra: It is not the end point on this side of eternity. It is just the beginning, because when you look at what Scripture actually says. It says that when we confess Jesus as Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. If you know anything about [00:12:00] programming, there's always that if-then statement. The “if” is if we confess Him as Lord and believe in our heart, then we are saved. Well, I had it backwards. I had salvation. But I had no idea of what Lordship was.

Sebra: None, no idea. He had to take those two concepts of Savior and Lord and flip them around for me. I learned that Jesus, as my Savior, I'm focused on Him fixing my circumstances. Jesus as my Lord. Now, I'm focused on He's got to fix my heart because my heart has been damaged. 

Sebra: You come into this world, things happen, life happens, your heart gets wounded. You begin to pick up patterns of behavior that aren't healthy. You began to respond in ways that are damaging, not only to yourself, [00:13:00] but to others. When Jesus becomes Lord, those are the things that now He's going to fix those things if we submit to Him. 

Sebra: Unlike where I was, GiGi understands that once we accept Jesus as our Lord that now our journey is about submitting to the process of his Lordship. So instead of me focused on my circumstances, once I understood who GiGi is, what good soil looks like, I was able to surrender my heart to the Lord. And because GiGi is the culmination of all these soils, when she recognizes God's Word is not falling on good soil, she can now go and look back at all these other women and figure out, "What is my hindrance in this particular moment?"

Sebra: So, the key to GiGi: surrender to the [00:14:00] Lordship of Jesus, because what she understands is that in that surrender, there is true freedom. 

Charnae: Wow. Wow. That's powerful. That's a powerful word. And that's a very important key. You said the word submission. Most of the time we run from that word; we don't want to hear that. It's difficult, you know; it's a difficult word. 

Sebra: It definitely is. I remember when I got married. The only thing I remember saying that day is I promise to submit onto my husband as unto the Lord. So, it's interesting that, that is the one thing I remember, because it was in that submission that I truly learned how to submit to God, because even when you think about GiGi and you think about salvation is just the beginning, even in that process there's work that God wants to do in and through us. There's work that God wants to [00:15:00] do in and through GiGi, and it takes our submitting our whole heart to the Lord in order for that work to take root in our heart. 

Sebra: And it's the same way in any relationship, not just in marriage, but it takes submitting our heart to God, our whole heart. So that in any relationship that we're in, He's working in us so He can work through us. And that changes how you interact with people. It's not always easy. Sometimes it's messy, but the beauty of it is when He's your Lord, He can clean up any mess that you happen to make. 

Charnae: That's good. That's good. And that leads me into my final question. As GiGi receives the Word of God as good ground, and it begins to mature in her life, that Word becomes alive and active, so she will begin to live it out, and she will begin to share it with other people. So, my [00:16:00] question is how does GiGi handle the responsibility of the Word when she shares it with others who may be in different soils in their hearts, and it may result in rejection? 

Sebra: Wow. Okay. I have experienced that on several occasions, and it's interesting because rejection was a core wound for me. With recognizing that rejection was a core wound for me throughout all this time of moving from Wendy to GiGi, God has taken me through several rejections. Some of them, I have been able to reconnect with people. Some of them I have not, but what God has taught me is that my responsibility is not to plant the seed and [00:17:00] expecting a certain result. 

Charnae: Okay. 

Sebra: My responsibility is to plant the seed and leave the result up to God, because only He knows what the soil of that other person's heart truly looks like. Where I've made a huge mistake in the past in relationships and in interacting with people was making assumptions about where they were. I would make assumptions that just because they said they were a Christian, that there were certain understanding that they had, but that's not a good assumption, because a babe in Christ is not going to have the same understanding as someone who maybe that's a child, so they can understand a little bit more than what that babe understands, but they don't understand what a teenager might understand, nor do they understand what an adult might understand. I've had to learn [00:18:00] that rejection can come, and rejection is okay, because that just means that at that moment, that person wasn't ready for that particular seed. 

Charnae: Right. 

Sebra: And it's also made me more tender hearted towards praying and asking God to give me the discernment I need to be able to say, "Does she really understand this?" Or to be able to say, "Okay, Lord help me to communicate this in a way that is easier to receive. And that's not to say you water down the Word, but it's to say you meet the person where they are, and GiGi is able to do that, because now she knows if she gets rejected, that's not about her. That's about, this is where that person is [00:19:00] in that moment. And even if it is about her, the beauty of it is, that's okay. 

Charnae: Right. 

Sebra: Because just because she's not the person for someone in a season, it doesn't make her a bad person. It just makes her unhealthy for that person in that season. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn. It was a hard lesson for me to accept. 

Charnae: That is so good and key because the good soil is the soil that is nurtured by God. And as it receives the Word, it flourishes. And, so, as you go forward, then you share. Let’s give an example. We've had this actually between you and I quite recently. 

Charnae: There was a situation, and I was venting, venting. And you were saying, "But okay, where's your heart right now? Where's your soil right now?" And I was jokingly like, [00:20:00] "I don't know. I don't want to know;" just kind of rejecting it, but you were bringing me to a place to say, "Charnae, take a look at your heart in this situation. What does the Word of God say in this situation?" And honestly, it's difficult at times because when you're in the middle of a situation, okay. Like sometimes you're just like I don't want to think about what the word of God says. I want to respond to the situation. I want to feel what I'm feeling or think when I'm thinking, but it was so helpful for me that you were able to keep circling back around, "What does the Word say?" 

Sebra: And I saw where you were. I could tell that you weren't flustered or frustrated in a way that you were getting angry, but that you just needed that moment to process everything that you were feeling. So, it was a light-hearted moment. 

Charnae: Yes. Yeah. It helped because kind of after that, and then seeing where I was. There was something that you asked me in that conversation too. You asked me what have I been praying for? [00:21:00] And when I told you, you said, "Well, look at how this applies." And I was like, ugh, it does apply. It does apply. Didn't come in the package that I particularly thought it would; the gift wrapping wasn't the red bow and all of that. It was in a different package. It was a brown paper bag, but it came in a different form, but it was something that I have been praying for. And you helping me and reminding me come let's reel it back in, let's look at where your heart is. Let's look at how you're receiving the Word and how you're going forward with it. It was so helpful. 

Sebra: And looking at what you're praying, 

Charnae: Right 

Sebra: because how He answers our prayers is not always how we expect. 

Charnae: Yes. That's a word to process. Our expectations. That word expectation is one that often trips us up. Our expectation of the Word. Yeah. So that's good. I like that. 

Sebra: So, I get [00:22:00] to ask you. Out of all of that, "What is your pearl of wisdom from today?" 

Charnae: My pearl of wisdom is that there is a responsibility of the Word that GiGi understands, and that, just as liking God to being the Master Gardener, that as the Word grows in her and the seed is developing and maturing on that good ground that the Word becomes like a tree, and then it goes forth and it bears fruit. And so GiGi gets to learn from the Master Gardner, who is God, and she gets to use her gardening skills to help tend the seeds planted in the hearts of others. So GiGi, the good ground, reflects God's heart and is also an extension of God's grace.

Sebra: Wow. Wow. Wow. [00:23:00] Okay. GiGi reflects God's grace. 

Charnae: Yes, 

Sebra: That's good. That's good. And it takes me to thinking about when GiGi is dealing with other soils. Next, we'll be looking at Thorny Theresa and 

Charnae: My girl. 

Sebra: I know, right. I hang out with Theresa a little bit more than I would like sometimes, but she has her value. And next episode, we will be identifying the hindrances that each of us face when we are Thorny Theresa. 

Sebra: So, before we close today, I want to encourage those listening, always study the Word for yourself. If this is the first time or the third time, it doesn't matter how ever many times you hear this podcast, I will encourage everyone to study this for yourself. You can find it in Matthew chapter 13, Mark chapter 4, and Luke chapter 8, because each [00:24:00] of us needs to know where we are, because this whole parable is about how we, as an individual, respond to God's Word.

Sebra: So, until we meet again, I would like to leave everyone with my pearl of wisdom: the most important GiGi moment any of us can have is when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of our lives. It's in this moment that we become daughters of God and begin a journey like no other. And that is something to ponder.

Khara: Thank you for listening to the Raising Godly Women podcast and taking this journey with us to be the Titus 2 women. We pray that the seeds of God's Word shared today fell on great soil, and that soil is in your heart. Now, we hope that through these pearls of wisdom, that you have gained the tools to help you become stronger to help you [00:25:00] become more confident in your everyday life, most especially as it relates to your walk with the Lord. We also hope that you will share your tools with those who are younger in age, or even maybe younger in faith to help them become stronger and confident as well, so that they can help share with other women passing the baton to the generation behind them.

Khara: Just imagine the ripple effect, our sharing can have not only in our generation, but also the generations to come to build and strengthen the body of Christ as we all come together to empower each other. So, until we meet again, feel free to join the Raising Godly Women community. Let's talk about your connection with this episode on social media in the comment section. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Raising Godly Women. Be sure to tag us because we love to have you connect and be a part of the family. And on that note, may the Lord hear from you and keep you, may He make His face shine upon you and be gracious onto you. May the Lord shine His face towards you and give you peace. Shalom daughters of God. [00:26:00] Shalom.