May 4, 2025 • 29 mins
If the love of money is the root of all evil, how do we develop a healthier relationship with our finances? In this illuminating episode, Rodney Olsen speaks with Heather Day, author of "Money and Spirit: Surrendering Our Finances to the Work of the Holy Spirit." From crushing debt to financial freedom, Heather shares her family's transformative journey that began with a desperate prayer in a restaurant parking lot. Her story reveals how financial struggles often mask deeper spiritual issues about trust, security, and self-worth.
As Director of Marketing for Barnabas Foundation, Heather helps Christians give generously to their churches and favourite ministries. Through her personal experiences and professional insights, she offers practical wisdom on inviting the Holy Spirit into financial decisions, resolving money conflicts in marriage, and discovering the joy of giving beyond comfort zones. This conversation isn't about investment strategies or get-rich-quick schemes, but about surrendering our finances to God's purposes and experiencing His faithful provision.
WEBLINKS Heather Day’s Website Barnabas Foundation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening in for another powerful story of hope.
There are dozens of other episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
(00:28):
Please help others find hope and healing by sharing episodes through social media or word of mouth.
It's been said that money makes the world go around, but it's also the cause of arguments, struggles and misunderstandings.
If the love of money is the root of all evil, how do we get a better perspective on its place in our lives?
(00:51):
Today's guest can help us think differently about money.
On this episode, I'm in conversation with Heather Day, author of Money and Spirit, Surrendering Our Finances to the Work of the Holy Spirit.
As a marketing and communications specialist with over 20 years of experience in non-profit ministry, Heather brings unique insights on combining faith and financial stewardship.
(01:23):
Drawing from her own journey through debt and financial transformation, she now serves as director of marketing for Barnabas Foundation while actively leading in her local church community.
When she's not writing or serving others, Heather enjoys life with her husband, Robert, and their children, Emma and Jackson.
I'm so pleased to have her as my guest today.
(01:44):
Heather, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's my pleasure to be here.
Now, I know that you're someone who has had fingers in many pies over the years.
Can you take me through some of your work-life experience over those years?
Yes.
Well, I can explain it all by saying that I have felt a call to ministry since I was about 10 years old.
(02:06):
I had a very narrow view of what that meant and was trying to figure out what it looked like to be a missionary through college, high school and college.
But I have found that God just revealed to me that I had a gift in communication, so He's opened up doors along the way.
And I've always said it makes more sense in the rear view, looking back how He prepared me for the next step.
(02:27):
My first job out of college was working for a small public high school where I was able to just do some work with the community and parents.
They were a school that had a lot of racial issues and economic struggles.
It was a real joy just to get to know the kids and also find creative ways to get the parents in the community more involved.
From there, I worked with Bible League International as a project coordinator.
(02:50):
I helped coordinate the writing projects and the graphic design projects, and I got to see firsthand what a marketing department looks like.
I still draw on those early experiences in my work today.
From there, I went back to my alma mater where I graduated from Olivet Nazarene University and I served as director of marketing for nine years, helping to communicate with prospective students and our donors and our alumni.
(03:14):
And then I worked for a lead like Jesus for a couple years, and then lo and behold, here I found myself at Barnabas Foundation, where I get to work with about 200 Christian ministries, helping them learn how to communicate more effectively with their donors to help them to do what God's called them to do.
And I certainly want to dig a little bit more into the work of Barnabas Foundation, an amazing organization.
(03:37):
But first, I just want to touch on that thing that you say you felt called to ministry at the age of 10, yet you didn't know quite what that would look like, or you had your preconceived ideas.
I think that seems to be the case often, that God will plant something within us and yet not fully explain it to us.
(03:57):
So how was it that you started to realize that, ah, ministry doesn't have to look like being a missionary or working in a church or many of the things that we assume it to be?
Yes, I'm a pastor's kid, and I remember it being a missionary service where I first felt that call so strong, where I just knew that God had something in store for me, and I was trying to figure out what that was.
(04:19):
In my mind, as a high schooler, that meant that I could do one of three things that I knew a missionary was, either a preacher, teacher, or a doctor.
It seemed like a hard road to be a female preacher.
That seemed like an uphill battle, and I didn't really have an interest in being a teacher, so I was like, okay, doctor it is.
(04:40):
I went to all of that.
I had declared my major as pre-med, and I went through all the courses, and I was doing okay, but it was just a real struggle.
It went against my wiring.
I knew that if I were going to continue down that path, I can maybe make it out okay, but it was going to be a long journey, a long, miserable journey to get there, so that left me with a real crisis of figuring out, okay, what in the world am I supposed to do with this?
(05:07):
I had a professor who stopped me after a Speech 101 class and just told me, you have a gift in this.
You need to stick with this.
I love to plan things out.
I love to know exactly where I'm going, but for the first time, I just changed my major and said, I have no idea, God, what you're going to do with this, but this seems to be the natural path.
I learned a few things in that one just to lean into your gifts, and also the power of other people encouraging you and speaking into the calling they see in your life.
(05:34):
It's made all the difference for me.
There's so much in that, and I love the way that God has wired us all so differently.
I remember a phone call when I was working in radio some years ago, and it was an old neighbor who said, hey, look, I knew that one of you Olsen boys got into radio, and I thought it was and mentioned the name of one of my brothers, and internally, I just laughed.
(05:59):
I thought I could never imagine him working in that area, but he's so gifted in so many other areas, and as I look around at the variety of opportunities that we have, I just see that God has planted something in all of us.
Has that been something that has continued to figure in your life, being able to see some of those things in other people and point it out, just as that person back in that day had said, hey, you need to stick with this?
(06:31):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think one of the realizations I had through that experience, it was so shocking to me when he said that I had a gift in that, because I think the things that we're good at just come natural to us, and so we don't think of them as skills or anything that stands out.
So I have really, over the years, tried to live that out for other people to point out when I see that they are naturally gifted in an area.
(06:52):
At my church, one of my favorite things that I'm doing right now is I'm mentoring a group of student leaders, and it's so fun to speak into them and to help them realize areas that they have as gifts, or they're uniquely wired with their temperaments that they may not even see in themselves, but say, I see that you can do this.
Do you know that you have a way of connecting people, or do you know that when you walk in a room, it lights up, or do you know that your math skills could be used for God's glory?
(07:19):
It's just a really cool thing to be part of, helping people realize the gifts that they have and how God might use them.
I'm very interested in the work of Barnabas Foundation.
As you say, it affects such a range of ministries.
Maybe you can give me a thumbnail sketch of what Barnabas Foundation is actually all about.
Yeah, so Barnabas Foundation helps generous Christians give to their churches and their favorite ministries in ways that honor God and support their families.
(07:45):
So sometimes that looks like gifts of non-cash assets, which can reduce their taxes, or it might look like gifts in their will.
And one of the ways that we do that is we partner with over 200 Christian ministries to help provide them plan giving services.
So we offer them planning support, we offer them training.
In my role, I get the pleasure of creating marketing materials, and it's super fulfilling that I get to see ministries from local Christian high schools to big international ministries like Compassion International and Joni and Friends and all these other ministries that they have a unique calling that God's led them to, and we're able to provide this specific area of expertise.
(08:23):
So it's a great joy to work with them.
I know that there's a special joy that comes from us partnering with like-minded ministries and supporting the work that God has for that ministry.
Do you think that maybe some of these ministries feel that it's such a hard slog to get out there and ask for money, and they feel awkward about it, and yet you're able to come along and say, no, no, this is how it was designed all along, and that actually it's good for people to give?
(08:54):
Absolutely.
Particularly in our area where we're talking about
gifts in a will and giving away things that they've held onto for their entire life,
when people come to the decision that they are able or want to give in that way,
it's because they are so generous at heart, and we find that many of our ministries,
it's surprising to them that they're actually serving them and ministering to them
(09:15):
by helping them do what God has placed on their heart all along.
It's really fun when they talk to their supporters and they end up being thanked for, I didn't know I could give in that way, or I didn't know I could give such a transformational gift.
God's people are generous when they're tuned into God's Word, and they're tuned into what His heart is.
They can't help themselves but give.
(09:36):
Oftentimes we think that it's an arm-twisting exercise, when in reality, we're just opening up the new pathways to pour out God's blessings.
Your book, it's about managing our finances well, and we know that there are probably a lot of books about how do we as Christians manage money, and a lot of them tend towards how you can actually store up lots and lots of money, how you can get more stuff.
(10:03):
And yet there are people who would say, well, that's not what the Christian message is about.
So there are a lot of people that remain ignorant of how to actually use their money well.
And certainly your book is not one that says store up as much as you can.
It's actually saying God has blessed us, and we need to use that wisely.
But I know the story behind the book is a little bit harder, and it comes from your own struggles.
(10:28):
Can you tell me a bit about that?
As I mentioned, I went through college.
I had student debt.
I got my first credit card as an 18-year-old at college.
My parents gave me so many gifts and lessons in faith and all these sorts of things.
We talked about tithing, but we hadn't talked about managing and debt and all that sort of thing.
And so I kind of came in there and made a lot of early mistakes, just a series of a lot of little decisions that added up.
(10:53):
We got married.
We had our first home.
We had a car that broke down.
We need a new furniture.
You know, all these things that just began to pile up and pile up.
We were going out for a date one night.
Our kids were little at the time.
And I tell the story in my book about how I just felt like it was one of those nights where he was just picking a fight over every little thing.
And finally, I'm like, what is wrong with you?
(11:15):
I thought we were out to have fun.
You're all wound tight.
And what's going on?
And he confessed in that moment that the weight of our debt was so overwhelming to him.
And he just lived in this deep fear that any moment something could happen and it would just sink us.
I knew we had some debt, but I don't think I realized the magnitude of it or the repercussions of that.
(11:38):
And so we had this moment right there in the parking lot of Applebee's where we literally just stopped and prayed.
I said, I don't know what to do other than to pray about it.
I'm at a loss for what to do.
And so I prayed a real basic prayer, not wordy.
It was, God, we've made a mess.
We don't know what to do about it.
We need your help fixing it.
(11:58):
Can you please help us?
Something along those lines.
We went into the restaurant because we still hadn't learned the self-control of not spending.
So we went into the restaurant.
And right there in the lobby, I ran into a friend that I had not seen in quite some time.
And I said, Lamoris, what are you up to?
And he said, he was there with his wife.
(12:18):
And he said, we just came from a financial workshop and it's the best thing we ever did.
And we used to fight about money and used to stress us out and used to overwhelm us.
And it's been the best thing we have ever done.
And you should try it out too.
My husband and I looked at each other and our jaws hit the floor.
It felt like to this day, it remains the clearest and quickest answer to prayer I've ever seen.
(12:42):
It was just a reminder that God saw our mess.
We just needed Aspera's help.
And that started a ball rolling on a long period of just relying on his strength and relying on his guidance to find a better way to manage our finances.
I think most of us would be aware of the scripture that says that you can't serve both God and money, that one will be a master and the other won't be.
(13:04):
And we often think that that's around if we have lots of money and we worship that money and everything, but we are serving money when we put ourselves in debt so much that that's our focus.
Was that something that became clearer for you?
Yeah, I think we both had realizations in different ways.
So for me, one of the things that I struggled with, and I still struggle with, to be honest with you, is I like to give gifts.
(13:30):
That's a love language.
And I had to learn that it wasn't a true gift if I was giving beyond my means.
I had to learn to show love in other ways, and I had to rely and have self-control when the money wasn't there.
For Robert, he had different lessons.
Again, I had grown up in the church and tithing had been an early concept that my parents taught me that 10 percent right off the top goes to God.
(13:52):
And when we talked about that in our early marriage, that was a real struggle and a real disconnect for Robert because he said, but how?
How can we make that work that doesn't make any sense?
And so literally, he'll tell you one of the first decisions he made was just, okay, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to give to God right off the top, and if we have to pull back in other areas, we'll pull back in other areas.
(14:13):
It was a real jump of faith for him to do that.
And gosh, he points back to that as a transformation of our finances and his faith because this thing that he had lived in anxiety and fear over how will there ever be enough, it turned into a reliance on God as the provider of all things.
And he'll give us what we need at just the right time, but we have to be faithful in managing it for his purposes.
(14:35):
As you're talking to people who are struggling with finances, how often do you find that, for instance, you get a similar situation to what you and Robert had where because you come from different families, you just naturally have different understandings of money and how to use it.
And it's not to say one's right, one's wrong, but you both come from a different place.
(14:57):
How often does that figure into conflict around finances with couples, with families?
Oh, it's huge.
My husband and I are actually leading a Bible study through this book at our church, and that's been a consistent theme that's come up over and over again.
And what's funny is the source of the conflict is different for each of them.
They all have their different stories and what their hangups are, but it really revolves around the husband and the wife seeing things different ways and can't get on the same page.
(15:23):
And so it's a source of tension.
It's a source of anger, of frustration.
A big part of this book is not necessarily prescribing this is the way, go and do this.
It's more about inviting the work of the Holy Spirit and surrendering what does God have for us?
We work with a lot of Christians who have accumulated a lot of resources, and yet they live with open hands and are funding important ministry around the world.
(15:48):
God's blessed them with the gift of generating wealth, and they keep at it.
And I hope they keep at it because they are doing important work for that.
I've also seen people who are living with barely any means at all.
And the message of the book is that when we're living in surrender to God, it may look different, but He is the source of our joy, of our fulfillment, of our peace, of our self-control.
(16:10):
And when we lean into Him, He'll show us the way to go.
So it's not so much a money how-to, invest in this, don't invest in that, but actually helping us understand where the Spirit may lead.
Can you perhaps give us a bit of an inkling as to how do we start to look for the Spirit's leading when it comes to our finances?
(16:30):
One of the hardest things is to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
And I think you can, first of all, dig deep into God's scripture and know what He's teaching us to do and to lean into that.
It can also be just this sense, I've heard somebody describe it as this sense of ought, I need to do this.
We know it's God when it runs contrary to our selfish desires and He can use it.
(16:52):
So the Holy Spirit may just give us a gentle prompting.
I've had people that have come up to me on the street and I've felt like I needed to give in that moment and I needed to acknowledge them and I needed to talk to them.
And there's other times where I've not felt that.
So it's just a matter of really getting quiet and being prayerful and listening.
And I think also when we surround ourselves by godly people who are also deep in God's Word and praying, they can also help speak truth in our lives and help open us up to new insights of what God might be doing around us.
(17:21):
I think there are some churches that speak about money all the time and perhaps too much.
But there are certainly other churches that very rarely speak about money.
And yet the scripture is full of passages that talk to us about how we steward what God has given us.
Both ends of the spectrum are going to influence us.
(17:43):
How much influence does our background in church, how much does the prevailing thought in the church that we attend, how much of an effect does that have on the way that we manage money?
Oh, it absolutely has to have an effect.
And like you said, I know it's all over the spectrum, but my experience growing up is that it was rarely talked about.
(18:05):
I mentioned my dad was a pastor.
Kids are always hearing more than you think they're hearing.
And I remember being in the back seat and overhearing that so-and-so complained after the sermon because he had barely mentioned the concept of money.
I think there's been fear and it's been taboo to talk about for many churches.
We're so afraid of people thinking that we're trying to grab at money that we don't bring it up at all.
(18:27):
And one of the messages I hope comes out is that the people in our churches are really in bondage because they're struggling under the weight of misplaced priorities and debt and greed and all these sorts of things.
And yet we don't talk about that issue that is binding them.
So I think the more that we're authentic about it and talk about our struggles and talk about what God's word says about it, we have a real opportunity to break chains that are holding people down.
(18:53):
Your very quick answer to prayer wasn't that God suddenly helped you encounter a friend who said, here's a bag of cash, but rather someone saying, here's a way to actually get on the right track.
And it obviously took a while to get that debt under control.
And it's an ongoing thing.
It's not a once and done thing.
It's we need to continue to steward our money well.
(19:17):
So as you continue to do that, how freeing does it become to know that this is something that we have control over rather than having control over us?
Yeah.
So like you said, it was a long journey to get out of that hole.
We had to go really back to basics.
And for us, they were new basics.
We did the envelope system where we literally put cash in the envelopes and we only spent what was in the envelopes.
(19:43):
We built up an emergency fund so that every emergency wasn't literally blowing us up.
We had all of those disciplines.
And now occasionally when things start to get tight or we start to realize that we're slipping back into old habits, it's like going back to basic training.
You know, athletes still have basic training every year because we've got to go back to the fundamentals.
When we look and things are slipping out of whack, we think, okay, what is happening here?
(20:06):
Why are we slipping into lack of control or why are we spending more than what we make?
So we have to go back to those basics and really surrender our hearts back.
That's again, one of the one of the major messages we can have all the tactics in the world, but until we get our hearts right and figure out what this is a symptom of, usually our money decisions reflect our decisions around misplaced priorities.
(20:28):
They reveal what we're putting our trust in, what we're putting our security in, what we get our self-worth in.
So when we see those old patterns, ugly patterns slipping in, we have to take a step back and say, what is happening here?
And resurrender it to God being our source of security and God being our source of self-worth and peace.
You did touch on the fact that we come to a relationship often with very different perspectives on money.
(20:53):
Once you learned, oh, that's the way that Robert looks at money.
And he saw the same for you.
It's like, oh, Heather thinks differently about money.
Did that actually improve your relationship?
And did it make you start to think, oh, so maybe the way I assumed he thinks about something else might not be the way that he thinks about it and start to understand that actually we think differently on a range of issues?
(21:18):
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's such a tangible way to really boil down to what motivates us, what we're scared of, what brings us joy.
Walking through this, because we went through the course that we went through and walked through this journey together, all of a sudden that brought the dark things into the light.
You know, we're not going to hide this anymore.
I'm going to do this behavior over here and hope that Robert doesn't find out.
(21:40):
We're going to talk about it.
I'm going to talk about why I feel God is leaving me to give these things.
And one of the really fun discoveries along the way is realizing that even though we look at a lot of things different, we look at a lot of things the same.
There were times where he'd hear a message, again, him having not come from a church background, he'd hear a missionary in church, or we had a girl in our community that had a horrific accident.
(22:03):
And it was really amazing to see how God would speak to his heart and say, we need to give, Heather, this God's put it in my heart that this is a ministry that we can help fund.
That's been super fun.
Instead of financial enemies, we're financial partners that could live out what God is calling us to do as a married couple.
You're working in ministry in the field of communication.
(22:25):
When did it dawn on you that these lessons that you had learned, that God was asking you to use those giftings in communication to write this book?
I started out as a kid just writing stories.
I do writing assignments and all these sort of things.
And it started out in my 20s just with a blog that I had no purpose for it and just started writing because I just needed to get it out.
(22:45):
And it was kind of funny because I didn't publicize it or tell anybody about it.
And my sister came across it and said, why are you not sharing this?
It's been fun because again, those things that you don't see as gifts or you think this is just silly nonsense, how often people have come up to me and said, that thing you said really touched my heart and it spoke to exactly where I'm at.
(23:06):
So when I started writing this book, it was actually for work for Barnabas Foundation.
And to be honest, I was a little petrified of it because I don't consider myself a financial expert.
I was afraid people would start asking me about investment strategy and all these things that I just don't know.
I realized that it wasn't about that.
It was about me sharing my story and being open and authentic about this is how God has worked in my life.
(23:30):
And I think he can do the same for you.
I've had people come to me and say, this is exactly what I needed.
It spoke to me at just the right time.
It's so much fun just to see that happening as you're like, okay, God, this is my story.
I have no idea how you're going to use it.
I don't even know if there's any value in putting it out there.
And yet he takes whatever offering we bring to it and does so much more than we can possibly ask or imagine.
(23:52):
I know that you said you're working through a Bible study based on this book at the moment, but I'm sure there's many other people that have read it.
What has been the feedback that has come back to you once people have had a chance to read through the book?
One of my favorite early on things, I had some advanced readers read the book and give me feedback.
And I had somebody that came to me that said that he was struggling financially and he felt like he was all alone in it.
(24:19):
He prayed to God about his family and he prayed about health struggles.
He prayed about all these things, but for whatever reason, that seemed like an off-limits topic that he would pray to God about his money.
He talked about how that opened a new pathway that I can talk to God about this and God cares about this.
So it's been fun to see him put some of those things into practices as he's opened up and shared with God.
(24:41):
I had another woman come to me and she just talked to me about how she was in these really dire circumstances on the brink of bankruptcy and felt like there was no hope.
And in reading the story just felt like it just gave her a glimmer of light in a very dark circumstance that she felt like, okay, there is hope here.
God can work in any circumstances, including mine.
(25:04):
So that's been really fun.
And in our Bible study, again, sometimes it's just really little practical things in our Bible study that we're doing.
This woman came to me and said, I'm going to tithe.
I'm going to try tithing for the first time.
I'm excited for her because I can't wait for her to see how God is faithful and will open up pathways for her to do what he's asked her to do.
And of course, we know that there is a variety of opinions on tithing across various churches.
(25:30):
But when it comes down to it, there's a solid way to say, here is a planned way that I can actually give into the work of God.
And we're actually told to do that.
So whichever side of the line you land on, it's a good way to begin that to say, I want to be part of what God is doing.
(25:51):
And that's incredible as well.
Once we start to see the impact, and I'm sure that you see that through your work at Barnabas Foundation, when people feel that they can actually have a part in God's plans, that's an incredible feeling too, isn't it?
It really is.
Actually, this was a relatively new concept to me.
I'd grown up with tithing as just, you do it.
(26:13):
So I didn't know it was in some way a controversial topic.
And my take on it is it's just a discipline that challenges me to give beyond what I would have felt naturally inclined to do.
If I give based on my calculations, what I figure is doable, probably I would naturally give less than that.
But for my husband and I, it's just been a discipline of trust.
(26:33):
And then we give above and beyond that as the Lord prompts us to give.
So we give our tithe and then offerings above it as he challenges to give.
And it's not to say that there's some magical formula in the 10% or anything like that.
But I think it's just a challenge to trust God that when he asks us to do something, that he will be faithful and provide.
What's next on the agenda for you?
(26:54):
Are there any other books that you're working through right now?
Yeah.
So I actually am working on a fun project.
Like I said, I've been writing since I was a little girl, and this reinvigorated that desire to write a book.
And so I started praying, what is next for me?
And I was at an event, and this woman who I've never met before was awarded with a leadership award for what she's doing in the local community.
(27:18):
I felt clear as I've ever felt anything in my life.
God tapped me on the shoulder and said, tell her story.
She and her mom grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Mississippi, and she has just an incredible story about how God has redeemed very difficult circumstances to use her through the healthcare industry.
And now her and her mom founded a ministry that's helping children who have been discarded by society.
(27:42):
So I'm very excited about that, very early in the process, but it's sure fun to see what God's up to through that.
Heather, I'm sure that there are people who want to know a little bit more about your book, about the principles behind it.
Where's the easiest place for people to find you?
Yeah, the easiest way to find me is heatherday.net.
On there, I keep a blog.
(28:03):
I also have information about my book, different things going on in my life.
You can also learn about our ministry of Barnabas Foundation through barnabasfoundation.org.
Lots of great things there, lots of great resources for Christians who are looking to have greater impact through God's kingdom.
And I'll make sure that I put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you and find Barnabas Foundation very easily.
(28:27):
But Heather, it's been a delight to talk to you, to hear about your book, to hear about the journey that led you to writing it.
Thank you so much for your time on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you.
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Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen.
Welcome and thanks for listening in for another powerful story of hope.
There are dozens of other episodes waiting for you at bleedingdaylight.net.
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It's been said that money makes the world go around, but it's also the cause of arguments, struggles and misunderstandings.
If the love of money is the root of all evil, how do we get a better perspective on its place in our lives?
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Today's guest can help us think differently about money.
On this episode, I'm in conversation with Heather Day, author of Money and Spirit, Surrendering Our Finances to the Work of the Holy Spirit.
As a marketing and communications specialist with over 20 years of experience in non-profit ministry, Heather brings unique insights on combining faith and financial stewardship.
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Drawing from her own journey through debt and financial transformation, she now serves as director of marketing for Barnabas Foundation while actively leading in her local church community.
When she's not writing or serving others, Heather enjoys life with her husband, Robert, and their children, Emma and Jackson.
I'm so pleased to have her as my guest today.
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Heather, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you, Rodney.
It's my pleasure to be here.
Now, I know that you're someone who has had fingers in many pies over the years.
Can you take me through some of your work-life experience over those years?
Yes.
Well, I can explain it all by saying that I have felt a call to ministry since I was about 10 years old.
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I had a very narrow view of what that meant and was trying to figure out what it looked like to be a missionary through college, high school and college.
But I have found that God just revealed to me that I had a gift in communication, so He's opened up doors along the way.
And I've always said it makes more sense in the rear view, looking back how He prepared me for the next step.
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My first job out of college was working for a small public high school where I was able to just do some work with the community and parents.
They were a school that had a lot of racial issues and economic struggles.
It was a real joy just to get to know the kids and also find creative ways to get the parents in the community more involved.
From there, I worked with Bible League International as a project coordinator.
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I helped coordinate the writing projects and the graphic design projects, and I got to see firsthand what a marketing department looks like.
I still draw on those early experiences in my work today.
From there, I went back to my alma mater where I graduated from Olivet Nazarene University and I served as director of marketing for nine years, helping to communicate with prospective students and our donors and our alumni.
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And then I worked for a lead like Jesus for a couple years, and then lo and behold, here I found myself at Barnabas Foundation, where I get to work with about 200 Christian ministries, helping them learn how to communicate more effectively with their donors to help them to do what God's called them to do.
And I certainly want to dig a little bit more into the work of Barnabas Foundation, an amazing organization.
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But first, I just want to touch on that thing that you say you felt called to ministry at the age of 10, yet you didn't know quite what that would look like, or you had your preconceived ideas.
I think that seems to be the case often, that God will plant something within us and yet not fully explain it to us.
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So how was it that you started to realize that, ah, ministry doesn't have to look like being a missionary or working in a church or many of the things that we assume it to be?
Yes, I'm a pastor's kid, and I remember it being a missionary service where I first felt that call so strong, where I just knew that God had something in store for me, and I was trying to figure out what that was.
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In my mind, as a high schooler, that meant that I could do one of three things that I knew a missionary was, either a preacher, teacher, or a doctor.
It seemed like a hard road to be a female preacher.
That seemed like an uphill battle, and I didn't really have an interest in being a teacher, so I was like, okay, doctor it is.
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I went to all of that.
I had declared my major as pre-med, and I went through all the courses, and I was doing okay, but it was just a real struggle.
It went against my wiring.
I knew that if I were going to continue down that path, I can maybe make it out okay, but it was going to be a long journey, a long, miserable journey to get there, so that left me with a real crisis of figuring out, okay, what in the world am I supposed to do with this?
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I had a professor who stopped me after a Speech 101 class and just told me, you have a gift in this.
You need to stick with this.
I love to plan things out.
I love to know exactly where I'm going, but for the first time, I just changed my major and said, I have no idea, God, what you're going to do with this, but this seems to be the natural path.
I learned a few things in that one just to lean into your gifts, and also the power of other people encouraging you and speaking into the calling they see in your life.
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It's made all the difference for me.
There's so much in that, and I love the way that God has wired us all so differently.
I remember a phone call when I was working in radio some years ago, and it was an old neighbor who said, hey, look, I knew that one of you Olsen boys got into radio, and I thought it was and mentioned the name of one of my brothers, and internally, I just laughed.
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I thought I could never imagine him working in that area, but he's so gifted in so many other areas, and as I look around at the variety of opportunities that we have, I just see that God has planted something in all of us.
Has that been something that has continued to figure in your life, being able to see some of those things in other people and point it out, just as that person back in that day had said, hey, you need to stick with this?
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Yeah, absolutely.
I think one of the realizations I had through that experience, it was so shocking to me when he said that I had a gift in that, because I think the things that we're good at just come natural to us, and so we don't think of them as skills or anything that stands out.
So I have really, over the years, tried to live that out for other people to point out when I see that they are naturally gifted in an area.
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At my church, one of my favorite things that I'm doing right now is I'm mentoring a group of student leaders, and it's so fun to speak into them and to help them realize areas that they have as gifts, or they're uniquely wired with their temperaments that they may not even see in themselves, but say, I see that you can do this.
Do you know that you have a way of connecting people, or do you know that when you walk in a room, it lights up, or do you know that your math skills could be used for God's glory?
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It's just a really cool thing to be part of, helping people realize the gifts that they have and how God might use them.
I'm very interested in the work of Barnabas Foundation.
As you say, it affects such a range of ministries.
Maybe you can give me a thumbnail sketch of what Barnabas Foundation is actually all about.
Yeah, so Barnabas Foundation helps generous Christians give to their churches and their favorite ministries in ways that honor God and support their families.
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So sometimes that looks like gifts of non-cash assets, which can reduce their taxes, or it might look like gifts in their will.
And one of the ways that we do that is we partner with over 200 Christian ministries to help provide them plan giving services.
So we offer them planning support, we offer them training.
In my role, I get the pleasure of creating marketing materials, and it's super fulfilling that I get to see ministries from local Christian high schools to big international ministries like Compassion International and Joni and Friends and all these other ministries that they have a unique calling that God's led them to, and we're able to provide this specific area of expertise.
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So it's a great joy to work with them.
I know that there's a special joy that comes from us partnering with like-minded ministries and supporting the work that God has for that ministry.
Do you think that maybe some of these ministries feel that it's such a hard slog to get out there and ask for money, and they feel awkward about it, and yet you're able to come along and say, no, no, this is how it was designed all along, and that actually it's good for people to give?
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Absolutely.
Particularly in our area where we're talking about
gifts in a will and giving away things that they've held onto for their entire life,
when people come to the decision that they are able or want to give in that way,
it's because they are so generous at heart, and we find that many of our ministries,
it's surprising to them that they're actually serving them and ministering to them
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by helping them do what God has placed on their heart all along.
It's really fun when they talk to their supporters and they end up being thanked for, I didn't know I could give in that way, or I didn't know I could give such a transformational gift.
God's people are generous when they're tuned into God's Word, and they're tuned into what His heart is.
They can't help themselves but give.
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Oftentimes we think that it's an arm-twisting exercise, when in reality, we're just opening up the new pathways to pour out God's blessings.
Your book, it's about managing our finances well, and we know that there are probably a lot of books about how do we as Christians manage money, and a lot of them tend towards how you can actually store up lots and lots of money, how you can get more stuff.
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And yet there are people who would say, well, that's not what the Christian message is about.
So there are a lot of people that remain ignorant of how to actually use their money well.
And certainly your book is not one that says store up as much as you can.
It's actually saying God has blessed us, and we need to use that wisely.
But I know the story behind the book is a little bit harder, and it comes from your own struggles.
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Can you tell me a bit about that?
As I mentioned, I went through college.
I had student debt.
I got my first credit card as an 18-year-old at college.
My parents gave me so many gifts and lessons in faith and all these sorts of things.
We talked about tithing, but we hadn't talked about managing and debt and all that sort of thing.
And so I kind of came in there and made a lot of early mistakes, just a series of a lot of little decisions that added up.
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We got married.
We had our first home.
We had a car that broke down.
We need a new furniture.
You know, all these things that just began to pile up and pile up.
We were going out for a date one night.
Our kids were little at the time.
And I tell the story in my book about how I just felt like it was one of those nights where he was just picking a fight over every little thing.
And finally, I'm like, what is wrong with you?
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I thought we were out to have fun.
You're all wound tight.
And what's going on?
And he confessed in that moment that the weight of our debt was so overwhelming to him.
And he just lived in this deep fear that any moment something could happen and it would just sink us.
I knew we had some debt, but I don't think I realized the magnitude of it or the repercussions of that.
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And so we had this moment right there in the parking lot of Applebee's where we literally just stopped and prayed.
I said, I don't know what to do other than to pray about it.
I'm at a loss for what to do.
And so I prayed a real basic prayer, not wordy.
It was, God, we've made a mess.
We don't know what to do about it.
We need your help fixing it.
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Can you please help us?
Something along those lines.
We went into the restaurant because we still hadn't learned the self-control of not spending.
So we went into the restaurant.
And right there in the lobby, I ran into a friend that I had not seen in quite some time.
And I said, Lamoris, what are you up to?
And he said, he was there with his wife.
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And he said, we just came from a financial workshop and it's the best thing we ever did.
And we used to fight about money and used to stress us out and used to overwhelm us.
And it's been the best thing we have ever done.
And you should try it out too.
My husband and I looked at each other and our jaws hit the floor.
It felt like to this day, it remains the clearest and quickest answer to prayer I've ever seen.
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It was just a reminder that God saw our mess.
We just needed Aspera's help.
And that started a ball rolling on a long period of just relying on his strength and relying on his guidance to find a better way to manage our finances.
I think most of us would be aware of the scripture that says that you can't serve both God and money, that one will be a master and the other won't be.
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And we often think that that's around if we have lots of money and we worship that money and everything, but we are serving money when we put ourselves in debt so much that that's our focus.
Was that something that became clearer for you?
Yeah, I think we both had realizations in different ways.
So for me, one of the things that I struggled with, and I still struggle with, to be honest with you, is I like to give gifts.
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That's a love language.
And I had to learn that it wasn't a true gift if I was giving beyond my means.
I had to learn to show love in other ways, and I had to rely and have self-control when the money wasn't there.
For Robert, he had different lessons.
Again, I had grown up in the church and tithing had been an early concept that my parents taught me that 10 percent right off the top goes to God.
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And when we talked about that in our early marriage, that was a real struggle and a real disconnect for Robert because he said, but how?
How can we make that work that doesn't make any sense?
And so literally, he'll tell you one of the first decisions he made was just, okay, this is what we're going to do.
We're going to give to God right off the top, and if we have to pull back in other areas, we'll pull back in other areas.
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It was a real jump of faith for him to do that.
And gosh, he points back to that as a transformation of our finances and his faith because this thing that he had lived in anxiety and fear over how will there ever be enough, it turned into a reliance on God as the provider of all things.
And he'll give us what we need at just the right time, but we have to be faithful in managing it for his purposes.
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As you're talking to people who are struggling with finances, how often do you find that, for instance, you get a similar situation to what you and Robert had where because you come from different families, you just naturally have different understandings of money and how to use it.
And it's not to say one's right, one's wrong, but you both come from a different place.
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How often does that figure into conflict around finances with couples, with families?
Oh, it's huge.
My husband and I are actually leading a Bible study through this book at our church, and that's been a consistent theme that's come up over and over again.
And what's funny is the source of the conflict is different for each of them.
They all have their different stories and what their hangups are, but it really revolves around the husband and the wife seeing things different ways and can't get on the same page.
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And so it's a source of tension.
It's a source of anger, of frustration.
A big part of this book is not necessarily prescribing this is the way, go and do this.
It's more about inviting the work of the Holy Spirit and surrendering what does God have for us?
We work with a lot of Christians who have accumulated a lot of resources, and yet they live with open hands and are funding important ministry around the world.
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God's blessed them with the gift of generating wealth, and they keep at it.
And I hope they keep at it because they are doing important work for that.
I've also seen people who are living with barely any means at all.
And the message of the book is that when we're living in surrender to God, it may look different, but He is the source of our joy, of our fulfillment, of our peace, of our self-control.
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And when we lean into Him, He'll show us the way to go.
So it's not so much a money how-to, invest in this, don't invest in that, but actually helping us understand where the Spirit may lead.
Can you perhaps give us a bit of an inkling as to how do we start to look for the Spirit's leading when it comes to our finances?
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One of the hardest things is to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit.
And I think you can, first of all, dig deep into God's scripture and know what He's teaching us to do and to lean into that.
It can also be just this sense, I've heard somebody describe it as this sense of ought, I need to do this.
We know it's God when it runs contrary to our selfish desires and He can use it.
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So the Holy Spirit may just give us a gentle prompting.
I've had people that have come up to me on the street and I've felt like I needed to give in that moment and I needed to acknowledge them and I needed to talk to them.
And there's other times where I've not felt that.
So it's just a matter of really getting quiet and being prayerful and listening.
And I think also when we surround ourselves by godly people who are also deep in God's Word and praying, they can also help speak truth in our lives and help open us up to new insights of what God might be doing around us.
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I think there are some churches that speak about money all the time and perhaps too much.
But there are certainly other churches that very rarely speak about money.
And yet the scripture is full of passages that talk to us about how we steward what God has given us.
Both ends of the spectrum are going to influence us.
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How much influence does our background in church, how much does the prevailing thought in the church that we attend, how much of an effect does that have on the way that we manage money?
Oh, it absolutely has to have an effect.
And like you said, I know it's all over the spectrum, but my experience growing up is that it was rarely talked about.
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I mentioned my dad was a pastor.
Kids are always hearing more than you think they're hearing.
And I remember being in the back seat and overhearing that so-and-so complained after the sermon because he had barely mentioned the concept of money.
I think there's been fear and it's been taboo to talk about for many churches.
We're so afraid of people thinking that we're trying to grab at money that we don't bring it up at all.
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And one of the messages I hope comes out is that the people in our churches are really in bondage because they're struggling under the weight of misplaced priorities and debt and greed and all these sorts of things.
And yet we don't talk about that issue that is binding them.
So I think the more that we're authentic about it and talk about our struggles and talk about what God's word says about it, we have a real opportunity to break chains that are holding people down.
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Your very quick answer to prayer wasn't that God suddenly helped you encounter a friend who said, here's a bag of cash, but rather someone saying, here's a way to actually get on the right track.
And it obviously took a while to get that debt under control.
And it's an ongoing thing.
It's not a once and done thing.
It's we need to continue to steward our money well.
(19:17):
So as you continue to do that, how freeing does it become to know that this is something that we have control over rather than having control over us?
Yeah.
So like you said, it was a long journey to get out of that hole.
We had to go really back to basics.
And for us, they were new basics.
We did the envelope system where we literally put cash in the envelopes and we only spent what was in the envelopes.
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We built up an emergency fund so that every emergency wasn't literally blowing us up.
We had all of those disciplines.
And now occasionally when things start to get tight or we start to realize that we're slipping back into old habits, it's like going back to basic training.
You know, athletes still have basic training every year because we've got to go back to the fundamentals.
When we look and things are slipping out of whack, we think, okay, what is happening here?
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Why are we slipping into lack of control or why are we spending more than what we make?
So we have to go back to those basics and really surrender our hearts back.
That's again, one of the one of the major messages we can have all the tactics in the world, but until we get our hearts right and figure out what this is a symptom of, usually our money decisions reflect our decisions around misplaced priorities.
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They reveal what we're putting our trust in, what we're putting our security in, what we get our self-worth in.
So when we see those old patterns, ugly patterns slipping in, we have to take a step back and say, what is happening here?
And resurrender it to God being our source of security and God being our source of self-worth and peace.
You did touch on the fact that we come to a relationship often with very different perspectives on money.
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Once you learned, oh, that's the way that Robert looks at money.
And he saw the same for you.
It's like, oh, Heather thinks differently about money.
Did that actually improve your relationship?
And did it make you start to think, oh, so maybe the way I assumed he thinks about something else might not be the way that he thinks about it and start to understand that actually we think differently on a range of issues?
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Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it's such a tangible way to really boil down to what motivates us, what we're scared of, what brings us joy.
Walking through this, because we went through the course that we went through and walked through this journey together, all of a sudden that brought the dark things into the light.
You know, we're not going to hide this anymore.
I'm going to do this behavior over here and hope that Robert doesn't find out.
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We're going to talk about it.
I'm going to talk about why I feel God is leaving me to give these things.
And one of the really fun discoveries along the way is realizing that even though we look at a lot of things different, we look at a lot of things the same.
There were times where he'd hear a message, again, him having not come from a church background, he'd hear a missionary in church, or we had a girl in our community that had a horrific accident.
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And it was really amazing to see how God would speak to his heart and say, we need to give, Heather, this God's put it in my heart that this is a ministry that we can help fund.
That's been super fun.
Instead of financial enemies, we're financial partners that could live out what God is calling us to do as a married couple.
You're working in ministry in the field of communication.
(22:25):
When did it dawn on you that these lessons that you had learned, that God was asking you to use those giftings in communication to write this book?
I started out as a kid just writing stories.
I do writing assignments and all these sort of things.
And it started out in my 20s just with a blog that I had no purpose for it and just started writing because I just needed to get it out.
(22:45):
And it was kind of funny because I didn't publicize it or tell anybody about it.
And my sister came across it and said, why are you not sharing this?
It's been fun because again, those things that you don't see as gifts or you think this is just silly nonsense, how often people have come up to me and said, that thing you said really touched my heart and it spoke to exactly where I'm at.
(23:06):
So when I started writing this book, it was actually for work for Barnabas Foundation.
And to be honest, I was a little petrified of it because I don't consider myself a financial expert.
I was afraid people would start asking me about investment strategy and all these things that I just don't know.
I realized that it wasn't about that.
It was about me sharing my story and being open and authentic about this is how God has worked in my life.
(23:30):
And I think he can do the same for you.
I've had people come to me and say, this is exactly what I needed.
It spoke to me at just the right time.
It's so much fun just to see that happening as you're like, okay, God, this is my story.
I have no idea how you're going to use it.
I don't even know if there's any value in putting it out there.
And yet he takes whatever offering we bring to it and does so much more than we can possibly ask or imagine.
(23:52):
I know that you said you're working through a Bible study based on this book at the moment, but I'm sure there's many other people that have read it.
What has been the feedback that has come back to you once people have had a chance to read through the book?
One of my favorite early on things, I had some advanced readers read the book and give me feedback.
And I had somebody that came to me that said that he was struggling financially and he felt like he was all alone in it.
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He prayed to God about his family and he prayed about health struggles.
He prayed about all these things, but for whatever reason, that seemed like an off-limits topic that he would pray to God about his money.
He talked about how that opened a new pathway that I can talk to God about this and God cares about this.
So it's been fun to see him put some of those things into practices as he's opened up and shared with God.
(24:41):
I had another woman come to me and she just talked to me about how she was in these really dire circumstances on the brink of bankruptcy and felt like there was no hope.
And in reading the story just felt like it just gave her a glimmer of light in a very dark circumstance that she felt like, okay, there is hope here.
God can work in any circumstances, including mine.
(25:04):
So that's been really fun.
And in our Bible study, again, sometimes it's just really little practical things in our Bible study that we're doing.
This woman came to me and said, I'm going to tithe.
I'm going to try tithing for the first time.
I'm excited for her because I can't wait for her to see how God is faithful and will open up pathways for her to do what he's asked her to do.
And of course, we know that there is a variety of opinions on tithing across various churches.
(25:30):
But when it comes down to it, there's a solid way to say, here is a planned way that I can actually give into the work of God.
And we're actually told to do that.
So whichever side of the line you land on, it's a good way to begin that to say, I want to be part of what God is doing.
(25:51):
And that's incredible as well.
Once we start to see the impact, and I'm sure that you see that through your work at Barnabas Foundation, when people feel that they can actually have a part in God's plans, that's an incredible feeling too, isn't it?
It really is.
Actually, this was a relatively new concept to me.
I'd grown up with tithing as just, you do it.
(26:13):
So I didn't know it was in some way a controversial topic.
And my take on it is it's just a discipline that challenges me to give beyond what I would have felt naturally inclined to do.
If I give based on my calculations, what I figure is doable, probably I would naturally give less than that.
But for my husband and I, it's just been a discipline of trust.
(26:33):
And then we give above and beyond that as the Lord prompts us to give.
So we give our tithe and then offerings above it as he challenges to give.
And it's not to say that there's some magical formula in the 10% or anything like that.
But I think it's just a challenge to trust God that when he asks us to do something, that he will be faithful and provide.
What's next on the agenda for you?
(26:54):
Are there any other books that you're working through right now?
Yeah.
So I actually am working on a fun project.
Like I said, I've been writing since I was a little girl, and this reinvigorated that desire to write a book.
And so I started praying, what is next for me?
And I was at an event, and this woman who I've never met before was awarded with a leadership award for what she's doing in the local community.
(27:18):
I felt clear as I've ever felt anything in my life.
God tapped me on the shoulder and said, tell her story.
She and her mom grew up on a sharecropper's farm in Mississippi, and she has just an incredible story about how God has redeemed very difficult circumstances to use her through the healthcare industry.
And now her and her mom founded a ministry that's helping children who have been discarded by society.
(27:42):
So I'm very excited about that, very early in the process, but it's sure fun to see what God's up to through that.
Heather, I'm sure that there are people who want to know a little bit more about your book, about the principles behind it.
Where's the easiest place for people to find you?
Yeah, the easiest way to find me is heatherday.net.
On there, I keep a blog.
(28:03):
I also have information about my book, different things going on in my life.
You can also learn about our ministry of Barnabas Foundation through barnabasfoundation.org.
Lots of great things there, lots of great resources for Christians who are looking to have greater impact through God's kingdom.
And I'll make sure that I put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you and find Barnabas Foundation very easily.
(28:27):
But Heather, it's been a delight to talk to you, to hear about your book, to hear about the journey that led you to writing it.
Thank you so much for your time on Bleeding Daylight.
Thank you.
Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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