Bonus Episode: Moving Beyond Theory. Theology and Experiencing God with Phylicia Masonheimer | Words with Writers

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to another special episode as part of our Words with Writers pop up bonus series. I am so excited to have spoken with Phylicia Masonheimer today and we finished the recording just a little bit ago and it was so rich. So I'm jumping in to introduce her. Many of you know Phylicia already as an author, a speaker and the founder and CEO of Every Woman a Theologian. Our conversation covered all sorts of topics from contemplative prayer, which we actually experience an expression of contemplative prayer here in our regular Good God Talks episodes. We talked about her experiences with God, how she came to salvation, her own wrestling through questions that she had about God and faith, times that she experienced him differently, and even her own experiences of using poetry as a way to connect with God.

If you've heard the earlier episodes in this bonus series, you know that one of the reasons I'm having these conversations with writers is in celebration of my new poetry collection, A Beckoning to Wonder: Christian poetry Exploring God's Story so I'll have links for that as well here in the show notes. It's so fun to talk together as believers and to hear testimonies of how God has shown up in each other's lives. And I'm really excited for you to hear from Phylicia today. So let's get into it.

Phylicia, thank you so much for joining me. I'd love if you would just start us off by sharing a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yes, I am the CEO and founder of Every Woman a Theologian, which is a self-supporting ministry that teaches women and men how to know what they believe, live it confidently, and communicate it graciously.
So we do a lot of work in teaching basic Christian theology, but it crosses over with both evangelism and apologetics as well, because we think that theology should never stay just intellectual. It's going to impact your relationships, your discipleship of other people. It should always end up affecting your relationships and driving you to want to share Jesus with others.

So we are a theology ministry, but I think that we're also just as much an evangelism and discipleship ministry too. So we have the joy of, of working together as a team of about 10, including myself. My husband works with me at the ministry. And then we together have three kids who are eight, six, and three, and we homeschool them as well.
So we live in Northern Michigan. nice and chilly up here. It's, there's always snow on Easter. So we're looking forward to that and how fun we get to, yeah, make products and books that help people feel confident to disciple others.

I love that. I love that. And I can't imagine snow at Easter. I mean, I'm down here in Dallas. So we're like, hopefully we don't hit summer before then.

We're always jealous in March and April of Texas and the South. Sometimes I can't even go on Instagram because I'm so jealous of all the flowers and the leaves on the trees because we won't see those until the first week of May.
Yeah. Don't get too jealous. We get like 3. 5 days and then we go straight into summer. And then you're roasting. Yes. Yes. Okay, well, I love the focus of what you do and you talk about it so approachably in that and how you kind of break it down to knowing what you believe and why you believe it. For someone who's newer to even thinking about their relationship with God as engaging in theology, how would you walk them through that?

So when we hear theology, we usually think scholars, we think seminary; we think giant commentaries, but theology is simply the study of God, the study of the nature of God. So every Christian is a theologian. If we define it as the study of the nature of God, we are all supposed to be studying who he is our entire walk with him.

I do think that when we talk about being a theologian, there's obviously a distinction between the layperson, the lay Christian and the seminary trained scholar. I would not count myself as a scholar, but we are all theologians in the sense that we're all seeking after God. And we should desire to seek after God and learn more about him.

And the Holy Spirit equips us to do that. So we can call ourselves theologians in that sense, because we are all equipped by the Holy Spirit to go deeper in the word, go deeper in our understanding of God and our relational experience of God, because theology is never supposed to be only an intellectual thing.

It's supposed to also impact us emotionally and spiritually too. Oh, that's so important because I think even with that distinction, it can be easy to say, Oh, I'm going to study God and engage my mind. You're saying, Hey, study him and get to know and experience him in relationship. Yeah, for sure. And in the American church anyway, a lot of our church traditions tend to fall into one of two.

The ways we experience God. So in the evangelical tradition, it can be very intellectual, but not emotional. So thinking of our more reformed and Baptist spaces, and then in our charismatic churches, it can be very emotional, but not intellectual. And then in our more contemplative or liturgical spaces, it can be spiritual, but not emotional or intellectual at times.

So we have to think through, are we employing all aspects that God has given us to understand him or are you only employing one of those?

Do you feel like, personally, you leaned towards one expression more than another as you started to get to know God?

So I grew up charismatic. In the charismatic tradition, emotional experience of God is, I think, a gift. Obviously, every denomination has its weaknesses also. So there was a tendency to minimize the intellectual, but my parents were very heavy on education and reading and critically thinking. So I was blessed with a combination of the intellectual and the emotional in my childhood that I think really equipped me for what I do today.

But what had to happen and what did happen was an actual encounter with God himself. So coming to that point where it's not just about experiences or expressions, and it's not just about facts. It's actually about that experience. Of God surrendering to him and realizing that I was desperate for him and dependent upon him.

And so that's the spiritual side of it, right? Yeah, that had to happen in the Lord, you know, called to me. And when I came to Christ, I think that kind of brought those three elements together. And then, of course, I'm always growing in them until I meet him face to face. But I definitely had the blessing of different aspects of that, but had to actually come to the point where it wasn't just theory.

It was actually me saying, okay, Lord, I'm, I'm going to walk with you.

I can relate to that, too. I grew up all sorts of different denominations, and my dad grew up Nazarene, and when my mom came to Christ, it was Assemblies of God, so we were, I mean, we were all over the place, and it's beautiful to see the different expressions of the body and how they come together and complement each other, and I love that you got to see that even modeled in your church experience and with your parents.

It's wonderful. I often say it's because like you, I've been in a lot of denominations, almost a dozen denominations over the years. And I am so blessed by them and by the diversity of the church and the ways that it's expressed in the ways that you can learn and benefit from each of them in a very different way.

It's been a huge blessing in what I do now. So going back a little bit to what you were talking about with the experience of God, was that your salvation experience or was that afterward where you're able to recognize, wow, I'm really engaging with God? It was both. So I came to Christ as a teenager, was in a Christian home.

Most of my siblings actually came to Christ much younger than I did. I was a bit stubborn and very much a question driven, strong willed child. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know the reason why for everything, but especially for spiritual questions. And I was not willing to participate in the emotionalism of the charismatic church I was in when I did not actually believe it for myself.

So I guess I had a high level of honesty, you could say, but also, you know, I'm thinking about my parents parenting a child like that. You're looking at your child, like, what is going on? My kid wants nothing to do with this.

And I think about that now as a parent, that I was basically like, I'm not going to lie. And I think about that now as a parent, that I was basically like, I'm not going to lie.
I'm not going to pretend. And so I encountered God through my desperation to be good. So I wanted to be good and I wanted to do things right, but I wasn't doing things right. I was in trouble a lot. Again, strong willed, I was in trouble a lot. I was getting it, you know, getting corrected. I felt like that all the time.

And yeah. That is actually what drove me to seek God was I was like, I can't ever do things right. And I started asking like, well, why can't I? And why am I here? And what's the whole point of all this? And I knew all the facts about the Bible. I knew the Bible really well. I knew what the expression of faith looked like because that was, I was in church twice a week.

But when it came to actually surrendering my life to Christ, I had to first recognize my need. And The need that I realized is I can't be good on my own. I can't do this. And so maybe the reason is that I've been told that I'm not as good as I think I am. And I need someone to help me to actually choose what's right.

And so that's what led me to salvation. And then I read, you know, a lot of books after that, that really helped form me and helped me seek him. But that was definitely the impetus to it.

Again, I feel like that's so relatable. Whether it's I achieved well, and so I feel good about myself, but I still feel empty like that was my testimony. I could check all those good Christian girl boxes and still I was like I'm working so hard and this is not life-giving. I thought this was supposed to be life giving. Or the opposite, I'm trying hard and I still can't do it like what? The revelation of our dependence on him. And the availability he gives us to receive him.

Yes. I remember I had a book on my, my parents had a bunch of books, like just floor to ceiling bookshelves everywhere. And they had some books that like were given to them that they hadn't read or, you know, they didn't necessarily endorse.

I had found this book on the shelf. And it was called the perfect Christian. I don't even know who it was by I don't even think I read it, but I had gotten it down and put it on my desk when I was about 15. And I remember my dad coming in and seeing it on the desk, and he. Turned to me and he said, you know, you don't have to try so hard and I was like, you don't get it. You know, classic teenager.
I was like, you don't get it. Yeah, it is hard. And my dad said the Holy Spirit will work through you. He will make you into the image of Christ. He will bear the fruit in you. You just have to rely on him. And I was like, yeah, whatever, dad, like you just do so easy for you because you're so holy.

My attitude was, but that conversation still stuck with me to show me like, oh, I guess I am really trying really hard. Like you're saying, like, I'm trying so hard. I'm trying to be perfect. And finally realizing that Jesus said, abide in me and I will abide in you and you will bear much fruit. So proving to be my disciples, he's just saying it will naturally grow on you when you abide in me. So that's your only job.

Yes. So I think a lot of times, especially when we grew up in charismatic circles and we think about an experience of God, we can relate experiencing him to experiencing emotion at the same time. It was, emotive experience of the Lord. When you experienced him and you look back at that pivotal time, was there an emotive experience that was part of it? Or was it recognizing him differently? How did you know that it was an experience with God?

I know the day that I was saved. And not everybody does. I don't know the exact date, but I know the moment and I know where I was, the surrender to him. And obviously there are different theological perspectives on whether, you know, God regenerates you and then you respond or you respond and then he regenerates you.

But in this case, I just remember I was alone at sunset. And we lived on a farm. So I was in the back field. And I, I remember just saying like, I can't do this on my own anymore. I can't. I can't do it and I need you to do it for me. And it was emotive, but it was not big emotive. It wasn't showy. It wasn't flashy.

It was very simple. I don't think I cried or anything, but it was definitely involving my mind, my will, and my emotions, the whole of my humanity and acknowledging Christ is my King now. And there definitely was a transformation in my life after that in terms of my attitude and my view of myself and my siblings and, and I wasn't freed from all sin, of course, but I definitely had a different motive from there on out.

What encouragement would you give to someone who's questioning if they've actually experienced God? Because I think that example is really helpful. If someone's like, you know, I don't, I don't really know if I've experienced him, how would you encourage them?

Yeah. Absolutely. So, if they're questioning their salvation, I would, of course, try to encourage them: you don't have to have this big emotional experience. You don't even have to know the exact date—I don't—of when the Lord became your Savior.

Sometimes I think it's actually quite gradual for some people where they're turning towards God and he becomes their king. And they might not be able to name that date, but there was a shift of allegiance.

So that word for faith, the Greek word pistis for faith, I hold the view that that word, the way it's used in Roman times indicates allegiance to an authority, which would coincide with the idea of the kingdom of God and Jesus as the king of the kingdom of God. So you're turning towards God and giving him your allegiance.

So if that happened, you will begin to bear the fruit of the spirit. However, gradually you will desire what God desires. You would not desire what God desires if God was not working in you.

So when you're bearing that fruit and you're turning towards him, Jesus says, if you bear much fruit, you prove that you are my disciples. And this is fruit that flows naturally. It's not performance driven. So in terms of salvation, I always encourage people to ask themselves, you know, is the Lord your King? Are you growing in fruit? Do you desire holiness? Do you seek to hear the voice of God? These are the attributes of a disciple.

Even if you can't name a specific date, if they're, they know they're saved, but they're like, I don't really experience God, maybe emotionally. I think there's a couple things.

One, we have to be careful setting expectations that we will experience God the same way as somebody else. Yeah. Right. Maybe you see something on Instagram or hear something in your church and you're like, wow, I never experienced that. Well, maybe that was just how that person experiences God.

And maybe God communicates with you differently because you're a different person. That's okay. But also sometimes we don't experience God in certain ways because we're closed off to that option or we have never asked God. to experience him. And he says you have not because you ask not. God loves to answer our prayers.
So if you're like, I want to experience you more emotionally, God, you can ask him that you can maybe emphasize more prayer time or more worship time, listening to worship music, things like that, that maybe allow you to utilize the more emotional parts of your nature in your walk with him. Then even Bible study, Bible study can be emotional.

But again, In America, at least, the evangelical tradition has, has sometimes intellectualized that to the point that it can be hard sometimes to emotionally interact with God. Sometimes. I think that's really practical and meets people whatever stage they're at. And I love that encouragement to just ask him, like reflect back.

If you're bearing the fruit, you have experienced him. And if you want to experience him more, ask him. He truly does the light to answer our prayers.

Yes. So I want to talk more about that and really like those expressions that we can have and experience with him in some of those smaller ways. Like I know you write poetry and I love that, but I really want to pause before we go there.

If there's a listener who has a kiddo, it could be a young child or maybe even a grown child, but they're like, Oh man, my kid is honest like Phylicia was when you're like, I don't know about this. Why? I have questions. How would you encourage them to come alongside their kid?

Oh yeah. So now that I have kids and I look back on that, I just think, how did my parents not freak out? Because when I was older, after I was saved, when I was 18, I had a friend who was very interested in atheism and I actually started reading a whole bunch of atheist books because I really wanted to know and understand and I was comparing them to the Bible and my parents They didn't freak out.

And nowadays I think about that and I'm like, I would have been like heart palpitations and I talked with my mom about it and she's like, Oh yeah, my heart was palpitating. I was so scared for you, but they didn't say they didn't say that they didn't crack down on me, scare me, push me away in that. So I think one of the things to remember if you have a kid who's like, Nope.

not interested, be thankful that they're being honest with you. Instead of pretending they're being honest. It's better to know where they're at so you can pray accordingly and you can disciple accordingly, than to have a pretender who isn't showing you what's really going on inside. So that's a good thing that they feel like they can be honest with you.

The second thing is don't show your fear. Don't walk in fear, first of all, but that's, you know, the Lord can help you, free you from that. But don't show that you're afraid of them. Navigating this. Have confidence that God is big enough to reach them and continue to disciple. As long as they're in your home, it doesn't matter how much they don't like it.

It's your home. You can continue to disciple them at the table. They can sit in on. I was required to sit in on all of that stuff. I was required to go to church. It's not an option. We're a family. You go to church. So I went, even though I was not singing and I was probably pouting and only wanted to see my friends, they still brought me. And my presence there was absorbing truth. The discipleship at home was still being absorbed, even if I didn't want it and wasn't wanting to receive it.

And so when I did respond to God, I had this foundation I could build on. It was given to me. I knew where to go. Even if it doesn't seem like it's working or they're responding, you're actually still giving them a foundation they can return to, whether it's at 15 or 18 or in their 20s, that they have because you laid that, you laid that down for them.

Yes. Thank you for that. I think it's so easy to go into that fear mode with our kids. And that's not what we want to be motivated by. Mm hmm. So it's good. Okay. So your journey with poetry specifically started when you were younger. And I would love for you to start talking a little bit about that. Was that like angsty teenage years poetry? How did that love of words and beautiful language start for you?

I was home educated and my mom emphasized poetry in our education. My mom was not actually big on poetry herself, but she thought it would be beneficial to us. And so we read it, we memorized it, we studied it. And I, in particular, really enjoyed it and enjoyed writing.

So my mom would always facilitate pursuing opportunities for whatever our skill set was. Our education was very customized. So for me, she pursued a lot of writing opportunities and competition. She had me enter a lot of poetry competitions. I won several in my high school years. And it was just fun.

It kind of taught me to observe things that I wouldn't otherwise observe. Obviously, this is like before social media, right before the internet, I had so much time on my hands when I wasn't doing school. And when I wasn't working yet, I would just observe things and I would write them down in poetry, especially nature.

I read a lot of 1800s and 1700s poetry. Those are the poets that I really liked. And so that kind of shaped my style. But I stopped writing poetry really when my career started. So college and career. So probably around 22, 21, 22, I was just too busy. And I was like, this is irrelevant now. So I kind of stopped.

And then a couple years ago, I thought, you know, I read something that said you should try hobbies you enjoyed when you were 10. And I was like, that's a bizarre like piece of advice, but I'll try it. So I thought about what did I like to do when I was 10? And I like to write poems. So I thought, You know what? I'll start writing poems and maybe I'll integrate it into my quiet time.

So I'll do my Bible study and then I'll just write a poem at the end of it. And it became such a fun practice to push myself in a new way that I think since then I've probably written about 150 or 200 poems. Some of them are in a little book we have in our shop, but not all of them. And it really was a way that I found I could express my experience of God and interact with God's truths in a new way. So it's been a really fun practice for me.

I have your book, A Thing Worth Living In. I enjoyed it. I hadn't realized that you wrote poetry. And so I saw it in your shop and I was like, I'm getting this. And then I learned a little bit about how you'd incorporated it. In your quiet time routine through the introduction section, I was like, that is such a fun idea. I love that it connected back to a hobby when you were 10 years old, when we had free time, when we could just do whatever we wanted and what sparked joy in us.

Did you find that incorporating it in your quiet times with the Lord helped you notice him in a different way?
For sure. Yes. See, when you're writing poetry, artists of any kind, photographers, painters, I'm sure they would say the same thing. When you are working on something like that, you are forced to notice everything more.

And I tend to be most inspired by nature, the ways I see God in nature, the ways I see him in the air. Like everyday life and poetry forces me to look for that more attentively. Because if I want to describe it, I have to notice it. I have to sit with it. So sometimes it'll just be a line. One of my most popular poems was about body image and we were on vacation in Arizona.

And that's where I got one line of it. And then I thought more about it and I looked around and you know, it's sunny and everybody's wearing shorts and tank tops and stuff. And that's what made me think about it. And then that's what led to the full poem. So yes, very much just thinking about how is God glorified in this moment or how is God revealing his kindness, his goodness in this moment? Whether it's November when there's nothing, it's all brown and white and gray, or when it's a beautiful celebration, wedding, something like that.

As you incorporated it in your quiet time, are there practices that you would encourage someone else to try? If they're like, I don't really write poetry, but maybe I could try that. I want to connect with God in a new way. How do you encourage them?

So I think a lot of us—at least in the Protestant American church—a lot of us are nervous when we hear things like contemplative tradition because we've seen it abused or we've seen it only used in progressive spaces. So if you are an Orthodox Christian, someone who adheres to a conservative sound teaching interpretation of scripture, it can be like, Ooh, I don't know.

Is that okay? But all contemplative tradition is when it's grounded in scripture is a meditative approach to it. So you're thinking on the word, you're meditating on it. You're letting it simmer inside you. You're praying it back to God. You're asking God to speak to you through it. You observe disciplines like silence and solitude so that you can hear God better.

That's what it is at its core. And of course, people abuse it like they abuse anything. But practicing those things is what really helped me develop what I wanted to say in poetry and poetry in itself is contemplative. So it's kind of a both and it's like a circle almost. So if you say, okay, I'm not really a poet, but maybe you can start just by journaling.

One of the things that I really like to do is write out scripture, look up. Look up scriptures that directly counter the lies that you believe about yourself, about your job, about your fears. Look up those scriptures and then rewrite them into, into one, like, basically paragraph. So what I did was I rewrote them as if God was speaking to me.

And the reason I felt safe to do this is because it's just straight scripture. I'm not making it, I'm not adding to it. I'm not putting words in God's mouth that weren't already there. Okay. So let's say it's, you know, come to me, you who are weary and, and heavily burdened, I will give you rest. So I might write, You know, from God to Phylicia, come to me, Phylicia.

You're weary. You're burdened. I am here to give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I am gentle. I'm lowly in heart. You are going to find rest for your soul in me. So. Something like that is like borderline poetry in a way. It's still scripture, but you're writing it as if it's written to you and changing the perspective, which is a writing strategy, poetic strategy, changing the perspective can actually help you understand it better.

There was one poem I wrote. It did win an award in high school. They gave me a, like, they gave you a prompt. You had to write a sonnet and then they gave you a prompt and the prompt was between the lines. That's all you had. So you had to take a perspective to express between the lines. So I wrote two, I wrote one that was about a pioneer woman who was between the lines of a clothesline and her perspective.

And then I wrote another. about a soldier in the Civil War who was between the lines of soldiers during the surrender and his experience. So it was taking two different perspectives on the same like concept. With scripture, I think if you change the perspective, And you personalize it and say, okay, this is God speaking directly to me. That can be very impactful in terms of your experience of God, whether you're journaling or writing poetry, changing the angle, changing the phrasing, using a different Bible version, all of that can be helpful.
Yes. Oh, so, so practical. I'm probably going to put that in bullet points in the show notes because it's so practical to look at it. And I think in a lot of ways we can unintentionally remove ourselves from scripture. Like, okay, yes, God said that for other people. Oh, other people will know God that way. He meant that for us generally, but me specifically. I don't know that he really cares for me that way. And so allowing yourself to sit with the words and write them like God's really talking to you can be such a practical and powerful practice. Yes, that's beautiful. Thank you for that.

We've talked about this some already in your original experiences of God. But one of the things I love hearing from people is the time you saw God differently and what it did for your life.

That's a good question. One of the times I had to think about God differently was actually quite early in my walk with him.

I had this idea that a lot of us do that God was waiting for me to mess up and I wanted to be good and he wanted me to mess up. So he wasn't on my side. He wasn't for me succeeding. He was like, Oh look, you failed again. Ha ha. You know, good luck next time. Um, that was kind of the idea that I had about him.

And I read this book that I can't even recommend now because the authors actually kind of went off the rails, but at the time it was very helpful for me. And in it, she said, essentially, that it is in God's best interest for you to succeed and become holy. He wants that for you because it's coming out of intimacy with him.

He wants to be your friend. He wants to be, um, your Lord. He wants to walk with you. He is for you. And so I had to have this perspective shift from God as the judge, you know, he's against me to God for me. So the reason he opposes sin is because yes, he's holy, but also he wants the best for me. He's not opposing sin because I'm sinful.
He opposes sin because it's his nature, and he wants to free me from it because it's hurting me. It's like me and God against sin, not me and sin against God. and changing that perspective was huge. Yes. Pivotal. I can only, I'm like, I can only imagine. No, I know that from my own experience. Yeah. As like, assuming that he is against us or he is opposing us instead of experiencing that he is for us.

And I think you do that so well in the different resources that you provide. I'd love for you to talk about that. It's not a shameless plug. I'm asking you to do it. ‘Cause I think that comes through in, Like the family resources for discipling your kids and the home goods that you have for being hospitable and inviting community in your home for teaching people to know the Lord and to know church history to find ourselves in that story. Anything you want to share about any of the stuff you offer, I'd love to share about it.

That's so kind. But yes, I think our theologian is not just to create these intellectual eggheads. Like that's not the goal. The goal is for people to experience. relationally experience God, but they often have questions that are getting in the way of that relationship that they don't even realize.

They're theological questions. How can a good God allow suffering? Is God against me? Can I lose my salvation? What do I do when I sin repeatedly? Those are theological questions, but they're getting in the way of free relationship with God. Which gets in the way of evangelism and discipleship. So it's like this domino effect that if you go back and you answer those theological questions, you open the door to a free and loving relationship with God, which then in turn leads to disciples who want to disciple others.

So for us, yes, we're a theology ministry, but it will always be grounded in the relationship with God. And so any apologetics we do, it's always about how do we point people back to relationship? It's not about winning an argument or being the most intellectual brain in the room. It's about how does answering this question lead me to a more intimate experience of the God who saved me?
And if that is true, if I am saved by this God and He is this kind, then I can't help but share him with other people. And so that's where the hospitality comes in. That's where the discipleship of children comes in. And so that's why we have branches of all of those things in every woman, a theologian.

So we're our own press, we publish our own books, and then we have a hospitality line, a child's discipleship line, and then a Bible study line.

That's incredible. Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I will have links in the show notes for people to find you in all of the places. Are there any closing thoughts that you'd want to leave us with today?

I would just encourage anybody who's listening to know that God is for you and he favors you. That's what grace is. It's empowerment and it's a favor of God in Christ. And if he was willing to die on a cross because he loved you eternally, that means that he must love you presently and you can experience that right now.

Friends, this was such a great conversation and I'm so grateful that I got to share this with you. There are links in the show notes for all the places that you can connect with Phylicia online and I encourage you to ask God what he wants you to take away specifically from today's episode and how you get to walk it out in your daily life as a believer.

Thank you for joining me here for Good God Talks and we'll talk soon.

Connect with Jen on Instagram